23/08/2026
£29.87.
That’s what this joint of beef cost me today.
By the time I’ve added everything else, tonight’s family Sunday dinner won’t be far off £60.
And no — this isn’t a dig at farmers. In fact, I suspect they’d have something interesting to say about how much of that £29.87 actually reaches them.
What made me stop was something completely different.
I run an oil analysis laboratory.
For roughly the sort of money we’re talking about here, we can take a sample from a machine and potentially identify wear, contamination, coolant ingress, fuel dilution, lubricant degradation and other problems developing inside equipment that might be worth tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Yet I still see companies deliberate over whether that sort of testing is “too expensive” or a luxury service.
Meanwhile I picked this up, looked at the price, thought "Beef’s expensive now”… and put it in the trolley anyway.
It made me wonder:
Have diagnostic services become too expensive; or have we become completely disconnected from what £30 actually buys?
Interested to hear what people in maintenance, manufacturing and farming think.
Especially farmers — when a modern tractor, combine or other piece of machinery can represent a six-figure investment, does £30-ish for regular oil analysis feel expensive… or cheap?
