90 Nicker Knicker Allowance

The £90 ($150) lingerie-and-blouse allowance provided to senior female attorneys at a British law firm.

The Guardian’s Emma Sibbles recently reported:

Women lawyers at top City firm Clifford Chance are bucking the trend for reduced expenses now that their £90 lingerie-and-blouse allowance, if they work later than 11pm, has been reinstated. Inevitably dubbed the “90 nicker knicker allowance,” this may or may not be the most reliable indicator yet that the credit crunch is over. (Business is apparently so hectic that the firm has also installed sleeping pods.)

(“Nicker” has been British slang for £1 since the mid-nineteenth century. The Oxford English dictionary suggests the term derives from the world of horse racing.)

The BBC recently noted other (dubious) indicators of economic health, including:

The Popcorn Index. Sales of popcorn at the cinema are, it was suggested in a newspaper recently, a sensitive barometer of consumer behavior.

The Crane Index. How many cranes are visible from a given point. Really a measure of optimism about the prospects for commercial property.

See also: Tunnel Index