100 Massive Rackets

Somewhere in Britain right now, someone is paying £4.49 for a painkiller that costs 35p on the bottom shelf of another shop. Nobody lied to them. That's the problem.

Most rip-offs don't need a lie. They need a shelf, a label, a renewal letter or a red percentage on a website. 100 Massive Rackets takes the things Britain buys every week, in the trolley, the bathroom cabinet, the home, the holiday and the small print, and shows exactly how each one works, who it works for, and the one thing you can do about it this week.

Forty-two short chapters, and every one ends with a grade:

RACKET. Untrue or against the rules, and there's proof.
DESIGNED. Every word on the packet is true, and you still lose.
BACKFIRED. Somebody meant well, and the fix made a problem of its own.
JUST IGNORANCE. Nobody rigged anything. We did it to ourselves.

Why is the medium popcorn on the menu at all? Why can coffee in a pod cost more by the kilo than wagyu beef? Why can the same vitamin cost more than four times as much once it's shaped like a sweet? What exactly is hiding in the asterisk after unlimited? How does a forest that was never in danger make a flight carbon neutral? And why does the government sell your address to parking firms for £2.50?

Most chapters come with one fact you'll be repeating over Christmas dinner, sums shown, and some come with a drawing that makes the sum obvious. Every figure is sourced: regulators' rulings, court judgments, filed company accounts, answers given in Parliament, shelf prices checked in the shop, and requests for information made for this book. Every company gets its best defence, at full strength. And a few of the things you were sure were scams turn out to be something else entirely.

Ninety-nine of these rackets hide in plain sight. The hundredth needed a secret: a cartel, signed in Geneva two days before Christmas, 1924. The cartel is long gone. Its idea isn't.

Funny, fair and short enough to read in a queue: the stocking filler for the person who reads every label, and the one who never does. Black Friday is coming. Read this first.

This book has never been on sale. You can check.