Comparative shopping
This morning dear readers, you find your humble correspondent smitten with life threatening man-flu: at least that is what my lawyers assured the jury it was, shortly before I was being cleared of all charges relating to improper behaviour in the hen house. The snuffles started on Sunday & this morning as I sit on my train to London, I feel more virulent than a French poultry farm … which is nice. At least it means that for some reason I have managed to secure an entire half a carriage to myself, as I sit here coughing & snivelling.
All of this is why yesterday afternoon, en route to Free Market Towers I dived into Sainsbury’s to score the mandatory half a hundredweight of drugs that the British Medical Association recognises is the proper male response to catching a cold - thus it was that your humble correspondent stood in front of an entire aisle of products all claiming to both sooth & heal, each making ever increasingly improbable claims, although full marks to one particular pharmaceutical company whose wares seemed to be endorsed by none other than Lazarus … or I maybe I just mis-read that as my eyes were streaming as the time.
However, having selected a shortlist of potentially life saving products, I thought as a quick exercise, I would compare the active ingredients in each & see if there was a correlation between them & the spread of prices ( £0.84 to £2.44 for 16 tablets). The contenders in this impromptu competition included such market leading brands as the ones that ‘sort the men out from the boys’, ‘until theres a cure … blah blah blah’ & Sainsbury’s own bland.
Well, what a surprise - it wasn’t just that the ingredients are the same – the quantities of each ingredient were absolutely 100% identical as well. So you can pay nearly three times the price as the supermarkets own brand for …. errrrrrr … exactly the same product abet with much cuter packaging.
It was at that exact moment of realisation that I found new strength & my heart was uplifted. My recovery started. Any economic system that can offer the consumer such a choice of identical products with a 300% tolerance on pricing is a wondrous thing. Free markets are just fantastic. You pays your money & you takes your choice with no interference from government. Not since daylight robbery (aka marriage) was invented has there been such an efficient method of hoovering your wallet. Wonderful! I feel better already.
Comments
You have my commiserations....
I'm only just feeling better, after having what I can only call a low grade flu &/or bad cold for the last two weeks.
As soon as I thought it was improving I felt lousy again...
OH! And to make things worse whisky doesn't touch it.
Posted by: David | March 7, 2006 2:39 PM
Kindly old Doctor MP prescribes single malt and naps. Alaternate until you feel better
Posted by: MP | March 7, 2006 5:25 PM