Series

Written to be read in order, though nothing terrible happens if you don’t.

Derek

Derek is a reasonable man. He shops around, he pays on time, he has nine years’ no-claims discount and a meerkat on the mantelpiece. Eight essays on the ways a British consumer can be charged for his own virtue — each one a different door in the same house.

Part 1

The Great British Insurance Swindle

Thirty-five million motorists renew each year believing their no-claims discount is a reward for careful driving. It is a discount off a number the insurer chose, and the most durable frauds are the ones the victims defend.

13 April 2026 · 8 min read
Part 2

The Great British Comparison Swindle

Derek shops around, which is precisely where the market would like him to be. The four great oracles of British consumer life are paid by the firms they rank, and the ranking is a game whose rules he was never shown.

17 April 2026 · 12 min read
Part 3

The Great British Honesty Tax

Tick the box marked “monthly” and the price rises by more than any credit agreement can account for. Derek has paid the loading for fifteen years without being told it exists, and the day he works it out is the day the industry should dread.

24 April 2026 · 12 min read
Part 4

The Great British Write-Off

Nineteen years of premiums end on the Kingston bypass, under a bin lorry, in a single afternoon. What arrives is not the value of the car but the lowest number the insurer can defend, reached by a process Derek has no standing to inspect.

19 May 2026 · 10 min read
Part 5

The Great British Haircut

A pipe bursts on a Sunday morning and does £6,200 of damage. The cheque is for £3,425, and the missing forty-five per cent is a clause Parliament believed it had abolished in 2012.

26 May 2026 · 11 min read
Part 6

Acting on Behalf

It is the settled fate of the broker to pass his whole working life acting on behalf of other people — a professional middle, a sort of human preposition. Then came the afternoon he had to put on a lender’s coat and answer to a lender’s name in order to buy a number he wanted for himself.

2 June 2026 · 5 min read
Part 7

The Spinner That Belongs to Nobody

For once nobody is trying to take Derek’s money; they simply cannot work out how to accept it. The fare engine prices his room flawlessly across ninety subsystems, and then the page shows him a small rotating glyph — the truest thing these companies publish.

12 June 2026 · 16 min read
Part 8

Unreasonable Future Claims

Experian sells insurers a score that identifies customers who will not make unreasonable future claims. It contributes nothing to CUE and so draws nothing from it, and no claims department has ever typed an adjective into a field that does not exist. Two retractions, and the ugliest corollary in the series.

7 August 2026 · 15 min read

Lower Marsham

A fictional English village on a real river, and a real government scheme that has spent a decade removing the price of water from the price of a house. Seven episodes, ending with a prediction the author intends to be held to.

Part 1

The Vanishing Discount

The Hendersons paid the full asking price for a cottage that has been under water twice since the war, and not one person in the chain lied to them. It takes a government scheme to arrange a swindle in which everybody is honest.

23 July 2026 · 5 min read
Part 2

The Tariff of 1991

The flood risk of a house is priced by its council tax band, and council tax bands were fixed when John Major was newly in office. Marsham Hall, which floods in six figures, pays £1,613 and has never been asked to explain itself.

23 July 2026 · 6 min read
Part 3

The Estate Beyond the Willows

Ninety-four homes have gone up on the field the village always knew the water goes to, named — with the industry’s gift for accidental confession — Willow Rise. Homes built after 2009 are barred from the scheme by design, so Plot 41 gets to meet the actuarial price of the ground it stands on.

23 July 2026 · 5 min read
Part 4

The American Letter

A flood insurance renewal notice arrives from outside Baton Rouge, annotated in furious ballpoint, and causes more discussion at the village book club than the book. America’s temporary scheme is fifty-eight years old, tens of billions in debt, and entirely legible from Norfolk.

23 July 2026 · 5 min read
Part 5

The Door Nobody Fits

Mr Bryce’s cottage has flooded three times since 2016 and been restored three times, identically — same skirting, same floor, same sockets thirty centimetres off the same screed. After the first £70,000, why did nobody move the sockets up the wall?

23 July 2026 · 5 min read
Part 6

The Deadline That Hinges

The scheme’s expiry is not a press release but primary legislation, which is a genuinely strong safeguard and the whole case for optimism. Every number that ought to be falling as 2039 approaches is rising instead, and this episode ends with a prediction the author intends to be held to.

23 July 2026 · 5 min read
Part 7

How to Help Without Lying

Six essays of demolition earn the reader a proposal, and a critic who withholds one past this point is merely decorating his objections. The problem was real, the subsidy may even be justified, and the honest version fits on a single page.

23 July 2026 · 6 min read
Companion

The Sunset That Will Not Set

In the spring of 2016 something remarkable happened to the price of a wet house: the discount vanished, and so did the information it carried. The full argument in one sitting — and the American programme that has been running the same experiment since 1968.

13 July 2026 · 11 min read