How Old Should You Be Before Work Stops Owning You?
In 1870, a ten-year-old in a Lancashire cotton mill was not a child who happened to have a job. He…
Posts by Stuart Lang
The School Fee That Has Nothing To Do With School
Walk past a school like Eton or Harrow and you might wonder what, exactly, you are paying for. Teachers, buildings,…
The Lump Sum vs. The Slow Leak
Imagine two people equally bad with money. One blows a fortune upfront, then lives quite cheaply for years. The other…
The Subscription Service You Signed Up For When You Bought a Car
Nobody sends you a welcome email. There's no cancellation page, no 30-day free trial, no cheerful notification that your payment…
The Number on the Windscreen Is Not the Price
Walk onto any used car forecourt and the figure in the corner of that windscreen is presented like a fact.…
The Ghost in the Classroom
Walk into almost any secondary school in Britain and you will notice something odd: thirty children all facing the same…
The Busiest Thing in Your Car Has No Idea You’re Relaxed
There's a small irony in the name "automatic". It implies ease, passivity, something that just sort of… happens. And from…
The Recipe You Can Read a Thousand Times and Still Not Know
Imagine you're handed a recipe for a Nigerian-Mexican fusion dish – jollof rice spiked with chipotle, say, or a suya-spiced…
The Gravity Well Nobody Puts in the Travel Guide
Paris doesn't just make Paris expensive. It makes everything around it expensive, in a rough circle spreading outward, thinning as…
The Gap That Runs Faster Than You Do
Picture two horses leaving the starting gate at the same time. One is your car's value, the other is the…