Nine quid for two?

The Daily Mail explains that this viral video features "Marnie and Mylah, from Burnley, [who] hit out at the ice cream van for high prices":

A transcription, courtesy of Jadrian Wooten at The Monday Morning Economist:

Mom: Girls, what’s just happened?

Girl: So, there’s an ice cream van there. It’s silly, just 2 ice creams with 2 chewing gums in it, is bloody £9 for two of them.

Mom: 9 quid, for two?

Girl: Yea, 9 quid. That? He’s gonna get no where. The ones that come to my street have it £1 a piece or £2. That? He’s going to get no where with that.

Mom: No, he ain’t is he?

Girl: No! No, he aint!

Mom: That’s well bad, isn’t it?

Girl: Yea, he should know. And he only does bloody card. I stood there with me cash. Bloody hell!

Mom: That’s well bad, innit?

Girl: Bloody well bad. Yea, and I bet he can hear me.

Jadrian's exegesis:

While it might seem like Marnie’s reaction was all about the high price, there’s a lot more going on here. This situation gives us a perfect glimpse into the fundamental concept of "anchoring" in behavioral economics. It’s a principle that helps explain why we react the way we do to prices and other financial decisions. […]

Anchoring is a psychological bias where we rely too much on the first piece of information we’re given—the “anchor”—when making decisions. Once this anchor is set in our minds, we adjust other judgments around it, and there’s a tendency to interpret new information relative to the anchor in our minds.

For Marnie and Mylah, their anchor came from past experiences with ice cream vans on their street at home. Marnie tells us that “the ones that come to my street have it £1 a piece or £2.” This price range set their expectations and became the anchor by which they judged the new price.

So, when they saw a price of £9, it didn’t just seem high; it was shockingly out of line with their anchored expectations. This led to their strong reaction of shock and disbelief. Their blunt comment, "He’s gonna get nowhere with that," highlights how expectations shape our perception of what is fair and reasonable.

That link came to me in email from Bob Shackleton, who noted that he "wouldn't have been able to place [the accent] any better than somewhere in Lancashire or Yorkshire. As it turns out, our young economists are from Burnley in Lancashire, 20 miles north of Manchester and a mere 8 miles from the thriving metropolis of Shackleton in Yorkshire….."

In other linguistic news, the version of the viral clip on Sunland.tv has an odd word substitution — "ascent" for (I think?) "accent":

That channel is based in Ghana, so maybe the writer pronounces "accent" as /ˈæ.sɛnʔ/, which would motivate the 's'.