Oh Danny!
From the Telegraph, a full month before the silly season, an amusingly cringeworthy non-story:
As Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander is supposed to ensure that Britain does not spend beyond its means as he helps implement the Coalition’s austerity plan.
But the senior Liberal Democrat was left embarrassed when he found himself unable to balance the books when he joined in a children’s shopping challenge.
Pupils from Cauldeen Primary School in Inverness all passed the test for buying food for one person for a week within a £10 budget.
However, when Mr Alexander went through the checkout at Asda’s store in the Highlands city, his bill came to £11.16 – more than 10 per cent over budget.Instead Jamie Mackie, Mr Alexander’s constituency assistant, took the blame for misreading the price of tinned tomatoes while helping fill his basket.
We had a wee look at the tinned tomatoes on the ASDA website. How was that even possible?You go for the cheap own brand stuff. We should definitely be told what was in the rest of the basket.
Ah well, in the heat of the moment, we’ve all done it, and we feel sorry for that poor staffer. The last thing you ever want to do is land your boss in it.
You just have to wonder if tinned tomatoes are cheaper in Legoland. If you are wondering what on earth I’m talking about, a few weeks ago, Danny discovered the Adventures of Lego Danny Alexander blog. This will be why the Treasury, in an attempt to bring a bit of humour into the independence referendum campaign, did a list of 12 things you could buy with the £1400 “UK Dividend”illustrated by lego figures which might have worked had it been, you know, funny and if you actually knew about the Lego Danny Alexander thing which was a bit of an in joke. Anyway, the Treasury had to take it down after Lego objected.
We think it might be useful for Danny to go supermarket shopping with the woman who called into Nick Ferrari’s show last week to talk about how she went without food when her kids needed new shoes, or to pay for a school trip. He might then have more awareness of the realities of life for many people who, despite the Liberal Democrat tax cuts, are still struggling. That might focus his mind on how best to help these people and give way to some radical ideas for our manifesto.
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8 Comments
How odd that blame always goes downward, credit upward.
How very ungallant of Danny Alexander !
Why did he need help filling his basket in the first place & really, how bad do you have to be to be incapable of adding up £10 of goods ?!
Supermarkets want to you to believe that their own brands are cheaper, so that could make the marks ready to buy them even when they’re more expensive!
Guardian money runs an example of silly pricing every week. Many of these examples are based on customers having the mindset that, for instance, larger quantities have a lower per-unit price.
A recent example I found: Bic 4-colour pens; eye-catching pack “2 + 1 Gratis” £4; just below single pen packs £1.
If I do a large shop in a supermarket I do an approximate running total, rounding up to the nearest pound and write that total down on my shopping list (replacing the total from the previous aisle). Would have had to do it exact to the penny to avoid Danny’s embarassment….
Of course, there might have been differences between the price on the shelf, the price on the item (if any) and the price in the data base used when the barcode was read at the checkout. It can happen. And the item on the shelf may not be sitting exactly where its shelf price is. (Picture for yourself Ian holding an item in his hand while comparing the 10-digit item code on the item with to code on the shelf label.)
I’d guess it would have been better if he’d just owned up to an error in mental arithmetic – enough people can sympathise with that – rather than admitting he couldn’t fill a supermarket shopping basket without the help of an assistant.
Building on Ian’s comment, you also need to read the label: often the cheapest tin of tomato’s/beans etc. will will contain an larger quantity of ‘water’ than slightly higher priced varieties.
Similarly with bread; here I’m a little surprised there hasn’t been an announcement by the ASA as it it obvious that both the supermarkets in their shelf labelling, pricing and promotion and the manufacturers in their packaging are in collusion to confuse people. As it is only by reading the label on the bag can you be sure that you have actually picked up an 800gr loaf rather than a 750gr loaf.
Chris, if you actually read the Telegraph story, you’ll see that Danny didn’t say anything about it.
Ian, my husband makes it his life’s work to go round and identify these often misleading supermarket promotions..
Caron. I’m not that thorough, but if I’m actually going to buy an item where there is a special offer, I do spend a minute working out price per 100 gram (cheese) or per litre (orange juice).