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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Sometimes, good things come in small cages. Or in 70-page documents. Or when you’re in an aeroplane over the sea.
FT Alphaville was delighted to land at Washington Dulles airport to find a freedom of information response has landed in our inbox from one of our favourite UK government agencies.
The Office for National Statistics (for it is they) have come through bigly with a response to our recent request for:
any current ONS guidance regarding the exact type of items the price observers employed by the ONS (be they ONS staff or third-party agents) are being asked to observe.
If this is all totally new to you: the ONS and its agents observe prices for a “basket” of representative items in an attempt to monitor price changes (aka inflation). However, they’re not always super transparent about what those items are, even when it’s really, really ambiguous and the outcomes are weird.
You can read the response and (unwieldy) document in full here.
Because civil servants are cruel, the document’s formatting is horrible, half of its text isn’t actual text, and there are redactions. 🙃 But there’s some interesting stuff here!
The ONS says . . .
We have redacted individual business names from the release, as businesses collaborate with us under the expectation that their information will not be shared.
. . . and that . . .
Specific product names have also been redacted under Section 29(1)(a) of FOIA. This exemption applies when the disclosure of particular information would likely prejudice the economic interests of the UK. Disclosure of the specific product names that do and do not contribute to the CPI could enable major retailers to influence the CPI by changing the price of the in-basket product, and perhaps offset it with changes in price of other similar non-basket products.
. . . to which our response is: yeah, sure, OK.
So what can we find out? Well, given our unusual tastes, our first response was to search for the word “mammal”.
And we found success!
We are told, furthermore, that when observing small caged mammal prices, one must:
Price only the animal, do not include cage or any accessories
We do still have questions. Where have the ONS’s agents been consistently finding £60 rabbits? They must be posh rabbits, right?
The document has plenty more oddities (including some interesting stuff about gig price collection dates, which we will DEFINITELY be returning to), including stipulations that:
— cream crackers “Must state ‘Cream Crackers’ on pack”
— an individual meat pie must be cold
— inflation-suitable onions must be brown
— raisins are a banned dry fruit
— “No mini pizzas or pizza slices”
— a value carpet must still contain natural fibres, we’re not animals people ffs
— a man’s casual sleeve top must NOT fully open at the front
— appropriate wall hanging mirrors choices are ordained only by size, which is why last March the ONS took in a capacious price range for this item of £1.99 —£3,695
— hair type must be tracked when recording conditioner inflation
Let us know in the comment section if you spot other delights. We’ll try to make a tidier version of the ONS’s table soon, and get to protesting about those redactions.
Further reading:
— small caged mammal
— small caged mammal infinity
— The mystery of the £39 orange
