Whopping pork pies.
If my Cypriot dad wanted to identify someone as “loose with the truth,” he would call him a Pattihari – Pattiha being the word for watermelon in the Greek-Cypriot dialect. The far from flattering moniker would invariably be accompanied by a gesture where my father would hold out his hands, all the further apart to show exactly how big a liar he considered the scoundrel to be. Since my dad was a great judge of character – his own being legendary amongst those who knew him – a Pattihari to him, was one to me too.
I could not help reflecting on GM sized watermelon ‘looseness with the truth’ when I recently read these words in the Telegraph: “Downing Street is drawing up plans for retailers to introduce Price Caps on basic food items such as bread and milk to help tackle the rising Cost Of Living, this paper can disclose.”
That I knew a prime minister so well in tune with commerce would never countenance such nonsense was enough for me to see a red flag. See a big pattiha and call foul on the entirely ridiculous notion. And yet the lie grew not only legs but wings, and before long was flying all over the place, even resulting in one investment bank putting out a scathing piece of research demanding “the plan” be abandoned. A plan to be clear, that had no truth to it; just a big lie.
Those who have lived through the Wage and Price Controls of the ‘70s will be perfectly aware just how woefully impractical and unworkable such Soviet-style edicts are. Now, if the Prime Minister in the least thought there was “collusion” amongst food retailers to “price fix” or “rig” the market and “starve the population of affordable food,” then surely the proper course of action would be to call in the competition and markets authority (CMA).
The simple truth is that stubborn grocery price inflation has been the result of the UK’s traditional supermarkets trying to protect their top lines under the onslaught of our having evermore prepared foods delivered into our hands; and as such, not delivering money over to them, but to the likes of Deliveroo. They have in short pushed up P, in a vain attempt to compensate for lowering V. Now, at some point very, very soon the reality will dawn on commercially minded supermarket managements that they cannot bring back the lost V, which represents the secular shift to the food we eat at home being prepared by others. The penny will drop that they have made this shift happen all the more by the very nature of their stubborn P. The natural result will be a fierce Price War – aided by the aggressive arrivistes Aldi and Lidl (market share now c18% combined) – to win back that part of reduced V they lost because of their elevated pricing. To be clear, this will come about without any need for there to be pressure from the PM.
