Don Pumsey: at the Department of Retail Infrastructure and Pricing

Grocer, Sept 22, 2007

I suppose there must be some Morrisons bosses who can read and have a bank account. And of those there must be some who chose to keep their whippet-track winnings in Northern Rock. So, by extension, it can't be ruled out that, queuing this week outside its Cleethorpes or Huddersfield branches, there may have been some who were wondering to what extent the Bank of England would have stepped in to bale Sir Ken out had his severe dose of indigestion over Safeway have turned into full-blown case of colitis.

The answer, ye boreal pie-munching troglodytes, is that you work for a supermarket and not a bank. The bread you purvey is Hovis and not hippy cash, and whatever DRIP's semi-official view on the health risks of a diet consisting entirely of chips, tripe and Irn-Bru, it is an incontestable fact that without the supermarkets, the impecunious masses would be spending more on their groceries, and many wouldn't have a job. So when I popped my hypothetical question on a 'supermarket support package' to Mervyn King over a very good lunch at Brown's, it was rather disappointing to watch him almost choke with mirth, gabbing his Chateau Couilles de Chien back all over the double damask.

For such is our industry, fellow sufferers. We are grabby, lowly and unfashionable. So while there is a limitless supply of public moolah to bail out the pinstripes, HM Govt (of which I am but the most shrivelled member) and the 'liberal' meedja seem to regard those who look after the alimentary needs of the nation as something of a blight.

Hopefully there'll be something left in Mervyn's coffers to pay for the printing of Freeman's worthless report in 2011. And hopefully the poor punters at Morrisons, Tesco, Asda and JS will have stashed something away to finance the higher bills that will follow.