It’s Official: The Supermarkets Rock

Photo credit: Alex Liivet

Who did you think was going to help us a little with petrol prices?

It certainly wasn’t going to be the government, the petrol companies or even your favourite motoring programme. Thankfully, if there is one institution I still have a degree of faith in it is the great British supermarket.

It is hard to recall now but there used to be a time when our only reasonable shopping options were the local corner shop or the mini market which opened up a few blocks away. In either of these shopping emporiums one could have expected to find out of date Hula Hoops, chocolate biscuits of dubious origin with no English written anywhere on the packets and a grumpy assistant.

No More Cheese Sauce?

Things all changed when one of the big chains decided that they would bring us the modern shopping experience in an all singing and all dancing new hypermarket. This was just a year or so after our local Wimpy had turned into a Burger King.

I was a trifle disappointed to lose forever that bizarre cheese sauce they used on their burgers but the sense of progress was palpable in my community.

Anyway, my local supermarkets now offer me the chance to buy some cheap goods (I got a great camera the other day) with the benefit of a reasonably entertaining few hours into the bargain. And now they’ve gone and kicked off a blooming petrol price war.

Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and Asda are the chains who have decided to lop a couple of pence off their unleaded petrol and diesel. Between them they account for 1,250 filling stations across the UK, so hopefully it will have a knock on effect across the industry. A couple of pence isn’t a very big hill of beans but it could be the start of a new trend if we are lucky.

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