How much is a Freddo these days?
The Freddo returns as the nation's unofficial inflation gauge, from 10p in 2005 to 45p now. Taylor's angle is 'internal reference prices': the expectations we form from past experience, and why a Freddo stings so much (we imprint its 'normal' price in childhood and compare today's to pocket-money memories, not to last year). A neat parallel with US egg prices, and with how the age you first met dollar prices shapes your mental exchange rate, makes the behavioural point stick.
Why everyone is talking about gold
Why is gold, which pays no income, so prized in uncertain times? Taylor contrasts it with dividend-paying shares and interest-paying bonds, explains 'safe haven' demand, and then makes the sharper point that the same instability can hurt gold: when conflict pushes up inflation and central banks raise rates, a metal with no yield starts to look like dead weight against a savings account. The piece uses a fall from $5,600 to $4,600 an ounce to show a safe haven is not a safe be
Don't sweat the small stuff
Parkinson's Law of Triviality, or 'bikeshedding', is the hook: we agonise over a £350 bike shed while nodding through a £10m nuclear plant because the small decision is easier to have an opinion on. Taylor applies it to personal finance (haggling over a phone contract while ignoring the pension) and to the national narrative that blames young people's finances on brunches rather than graduate pay, student loans and house prices. It is a light, thought-provoking piece rather t