Making Me Loaf

The Prime Minister has come under fire after struggling on radio (an interview I heard myself on LBC) to name the price of budget supermarket bread. David Cameron replied: "But you can buy a loaf in a supermarket for well north of £1." And revealed that he preferred to bake his own bread (plugging a local Cotswold flour as he did so).
You cn guess what happened next right? Within an hour of finishing the interview, newspaper were carrying the story online and readers were filling the comments area below with cries of how out of touch with 'real people' the British PM really was. The clueless, rich oaf! The uncaring toff!Why he knows nothing about the daily struggle of hardworking people, the normal man on the street. Pah! *Rummages for pitchforks*
Do people seriously expect a man who works full time, you know, running the country, with very little time to himself, to know the exact cost of a loaf? Do folk really think that the Prime Minister of Great Britain does the weekly shop down his local Morrisons? Stunning ignorance if you do. Must think being a world leader is no different than working any other job. Perhaps Barack Obama hits his local Blockbuster with the kids on a Friday to rent the weekend movie? (I realise Netflix is King these days but you get my point).
Only the lazy thinking and pedantic would honestly believe that men with such important jobs think this way. Maybe because they have too much time on their hands? Im not Cameron's biggest fan (far from it) but feel someone needs to show some support. I don't know the price of everything in the supermarkets, I simply throw whatever it is that takes my fancy on that particular week into my trolley and head to the checkout. I love sliced beef, fresh from the local butchers, but couldn't tell you the price for toffee because I have more important things to keep in my head. So come on! Its a tad harsh to be putting our PM against the wall for this trivial nonsense. Oh and lastly, do remember that Cameron is a man. Shopping lists are not much of our thing.

Brand vs Value, Round 6

Now theres fancy!

Tesco ditch basic range after admitting shoppers are 'too embarrassed' to buy the blue and white striped products", so sayeth the Daily Mail (four months after everybody else mind you.)
Dai Jakes is going to be a tad extreme here to make a point (the point being that hardly anyone cares who buys what. I might go off on one so thought I had better be clear from the start.)
Why dont the supermarkets just have 'Skint' and 'Not So Skint' aisles? Afterall its what they are doing anyway with these value packages, its just less noticable. Im not being funny (or trolling) here, im genuinely being erm....genuine. People appreciate honesty. Be honest with yourselves, if you see someone pick up a cheap pizza or something, you do think they are struggling. And theres no shame in that, a lot of people are these days. Nobody thinks any less of people who buy the cheaper stuff.
In fact its brand snobs who are thought of with disdain when some are buying them purely because they think its better and some things are not. (Mr Jakes used to be one of them.) I admit that the value meat like sausages can be foul and I wouldn't feed it to a dog but the tinned stuff can be good. Im speaking from experience here because as readers of my other (food) blog will know, I have had 'face offs' between the brands and budget types and quite a few times cheapest came off the clear winner. Soup is a good exaapmle. Some of the pricier soups are like drinking a mug of salt while the budget labels don't pack so much of a sodium punch.
So I dont see a problem with having cheap and pricey aisles because like I say most folks don't think less of others who are putting the budget brands in their shopping trolley. And those that do are fools. (God only knows what they think of me when they see me buying both branded and value groceries when I do my foody based 'face offs'. Laughs Out Loud.)