in the paper version of NWN this week was a letter from K Harvey commenting on the price of milk. Specifically that the major supermarkets charge £1.29 per 4 pints whilst Iceland charges only £1.00.

May I say that Lidl and Aldi also only charge £1.00

!n thatcham at a so called convenience store they wanted to charge me over £1.50 and the container was only 2 litreS rather than the usual 4 pint/2.227 litre normally sold.

But in defence of Tesco/Sainsbury etc I have to admit that when I was recently in Northern Ireland their stores there charged only £1.00. In fact even small village stores did not charge more than £1.05.

To conclude then, it is really the Newbury area that is being subjected to higher prices BECAUSE THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH IT.

To conclude then, it is really the Newbury area that is being subjected to higher prices BECAUSE THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH IT.

only if you are daft enough to pay £1.29 when there are several places charging £1.00

and last night in a Tesco Local it was £1.39 - another 10p rise!!
are they taking the mickey?

Or daft enough to make a special journey to a place just to save 30p, so I'd say the OP has a point.

Yup, that's how a free market works, and shouting about it doesn't change that. Want to pay less? Then buy less.

Farmers complain that it costs them more to produce the milk that the price the supermarkets are willing to pay. Fine, so produce something else, or produce milk more cheaply.

Time was when you would have to labour all day just to afford bread and milk - that's all anyone did (apart from maybe the Lord of the Manor), and farming was so inefficient that at times a day's work would still not pay for a day's bread and milk, and you'd starve to death. Agriculture has become more efficient so now for every hoary-handed son-of-the soil there's a hundred telephone sanitizers, management consultants, and marketing executives and in addition to buying the staples such as bread and milk we still have enough disposable income to afford an iPhone, patio furniture, a Citroen Picasso, and a fortnight in Pierrefitte-sur-Sauldre.

To conclude then, in a free market economy the market sets the price that dynamically balances the consumer's demand against the producers ability to supply.

Isn't this just free market economics doing its thing?

Are you saying then that the rest of the prices in Texo are cheaper then Lidl thus negating any saving on milk?

Daft to whine about the price of a single item really.......

More of your customary 'homme de paille'


What is daft about complaining of a significant increase in a price of a staple food from a major outlet that promotes keen prices? Of course there might be better savings else where, but perhaps that would have been a better opening argument for you?

Convenience stores are always more expensive, but if you go to Tesco Extra now, milk (2l bottles), are 3 for £3.

not really.



if the OP had been able to show that food prices were more expensive in certain stores in newbury for a range of grocery items I may have given the thread more creedence.

to complain about a loss leader in a few small outlets seems churlish.

And in an environment with improved communications, it is perhaps a good idea to bring about pressure by exploiting said technology?

Tesco et al. have created an idea that they will be amongst the cheapest places to shop, it is reasonable to assume that outside special promotions elsewhere, that they will not be making 30% mark-up, but a free market would have the large stores competing with each other, not apparent supporting higher prices.

Having said all that, I tend to shop at Tesco because it is convenient, not because it is necessarily the cheapest, but I would expect them to be within a certain range with the rest. I also understand that Tesco Extra in Newbury make very little money from grocery sales.

The other thing of course is consumer pressure to keep lowering prices inevitably means fewer jobs, or out sourcing. Then we have people complaining of 'scroungers'.

Yes really; you tried to install an argument that I never made.


The OP wasn't complaining of the price of his shopping basket, only that an item in it, a staple food item, was much more expensive than he would have expected. I see that as neither 'daft' or 'churlish', as you put it. Perhaps 'naive' would have been more suitable?

You were infering that any special journey would only save 30p - as if the milk was the only saving, thus implying Tesco was cheaper on everything else........unless you meant buy everything bar the milk at Tesco & then complete the shopping elsewhere to save 30p...

I know the OP wasn;t moaning about the cost of groceries.....just one loss leader....

have you been talking to GMR again?

No; you were doing the inferring, I was doing the implying! I was implying that it would be a false economy for someone to make a special journey just to buy milk. So correct the second time!

No but I have heard rumours from others that Tesco Extra make their money from no-food (hence my starting the sentence with, "I understand..."). I believe supermarkets operate on very fine margins compared to other commercial concerns.

insinuating....

8% apparently.

Exactly. Newbury is an affluent area so the mainstream supermarkets charge more, that's how the market works. If you want to pay a pound for milk shop buy it in one of the budget shops.

The alternative would be a fixed price for milk which I think would be unworkable as how would you enforce this and why wouldn't you apply it to other grocery items too?

'User23 ... specialised subject ... the bleedin' obvious!' So in other words, user23 and Simon, are agreeing with the OP's rhetorical question.

Forums aren't all about bickering you know, they can be about sharing common views.

Don't you agree?

Although you and Simon did choose a rather snide way of 'agreeing' with the OP I thought. I think shop prices is a valid debate, yet you, Simon, and dannyboy, seem keen to trample on people that speak out, as if they are being unreasonable for complaining.

I think there are two crucial points that could have been made:

Yes they will charge what they think they can get away with, but...

1 The price of milk is probably too low.
2 Cheap milk in some places is quite possibly a loss leader.

I'd also add that striving for the cheapest price has a pay back too: loss of jobs, if not low paid or outsourced.

In a convenience store, you pay for the convenience, the answer is in the title. Anyway, if our Mr Pickles gets his way, his latest idea suggests they'll be converted to housing. Must support those philanthropic big four grocers, with their marginal 5%. Revealing yet another EC 'shock horror' difference - over there grocers are on 2.5% - dreadful isn't it!

Which, I no-doubt, will be quickly purchased by the buy-to-rent brigade!

What I see here are people bickering over 20 p!!!!

If you want to pay 20p less for milk then DRIVE or WALK or CYCLE 5 miles to another shop. By which time your money saved by purchasing the cheaper milk would have taken up more of your TIME or FUEL or space hopper air supply.


Milk is never going to be a high profit item unfortunately it's sold at small profits (hardly any at times) in bulk to make up some of the numbers.

I don't personally like milk it bums me out.

That there is a difference in price proves the market is working! We apparently live in a capitalist society, or so we keep being told. That is being reinforced even now by the sale of Royal Mail. OK, its only 20p, but if people really do want the price to be exactly the same where ever its purchased, we'd need to revert to the socialist method. One shop, one price... no complaints. Aaah but wait, remember that 'one shop' is a state monopoly, so the 'one price' is likely to be the high one. As for me, I do like milk, and am more than willing to pay a few pence extra, and able to buy it any time I want, including 11pm Sunday evening.

There has been quite a bit in the news recently about the major supermarkets using their purchasing power to squeeze dairy farmers so that milk was being produced at a loss. No business can sustain that, so as more and more decide it's not worth while, the commodity will become scarcer and market forces will drive prices up anyway.

At least the major supermarkets have now agreed to pay a fair price, so why are people complaining? The small chains can only be using milk as a loss leader, as they cannot negotiate prices for themselves.

Perhaps in dairy farming, yes.

But the money saved by the purchaser can then instead be spent on other things, thus boosting a different sector of the economy.

So it's a zero sum game overall.

That will to some extent depend on what is done with that money.

It does what, sorry?

Slang: to disappoint, upset, or annoy.

Oh, thank God for that!!
I was worried about MM's nether regions!

I would argue that the free market is not a zero sum game; it's the free market that creates wealth.

...and poverty.

No, you're still thinking about the economy as a zero sum game, where personal wealth is at the expense of someone else's absolute poverty, but economics doesn't work like that: Wealth isn't a conserved property, the total wealth of an economy can increase, just as it has in the West, and there are plenty of examples of autocratic interventionist economies that have destroyed what wealth they had - look at our own corn laws for example.

The problem with creating wealthy people, is that, quite understandingly, they will seek to protect that wealth.

That's not a problem of wealth, that's a problem of power - it was the land-owning farmers who brought in the corn laws in order to protect their personal interests, and as a result net national wealth was harmed - when the market was freed total national wealth rocketed as the industrial revolution was enabled.

It is not simply the amount of money in circulation, but the velocity of money as well, of course.

But in the simple example of spending money on milk or on something else, the purchase of the "something else" is just as likely to create jobs as spending it on milk would preserve jobs in the dairy industry.

Or the money could be deposited in a bank, fractional reserve lending could be used by bankers to magic ten times as much money into existence, and the bankers would then be rich enough to p*** - er, I mean, trickle it down on us mere mortals at some usurious rate.

I agree. Adam Smith basically nailed it - a happy coincidence of self-interest in a free market is that things typically work out for the best for everyone.

I don't have the historical knowledge to challenge what you all say, but I can't help feel that one is being a little 'simplistic'.

For starters, I don't believe a 'free market' truly does or could exist. 'Free-er' maybe, but not free. Also, my comment regards pushing down costs and its social impact. Yes, it is true that money can be invested else where, but it is inevitable that when a product is labour intensive, the labour has to in effect be removed. Unemployment is inevitable, at least on a national scale. And the jobs that are created are low paid jobs else where. Jobs indeed, that perhpas make the difference between life and death for some people.

Although this has gone deeper than I can manage. my original point was to explain to people complaining of price of goods, is that their desire to push down prices will mean more unemployment locally. Jobs lost, like those that happened with the repeal of Corn Law and the Industrial Revolution, were not created in equal measure else where.

My view is that the best economic environments will contain a mix of the economic philosophies we hear about (free enterprise, socialism, etc). And this is because one size doesn't fit all, especially as Man is not one size.

Hey! Listen up you guys. The supermarkets seem to have listened to this thread and the correspondence in the printed paper.

All (I think) of the main supermarkets are offering three 4pint containers for £3. Not quite as good as £1 each but a good deal better than £1.39 which is now the standard one pack price.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE copyright Wolfie Smith

Tesco were already doing three for £3, which is £1 each. Sainsbury's are not doing it, and Waitrose are doing 2 for £3 which is £1.50 each, still 11p more than the £1.39 originally mentioned. According to their websites anyway.

I wouldn't necessarily argue that unemployment abroad is more acceptable than unemployment in the UK, but the UK is a net importer of milk (100s of millions of litres of milk per annum) and, according to .gov.uk, "[t]he UK currently imports £1.2 billion more dairy produce than it exports."

So lower milk prices would benefit the UK economy, if the money saved is instead then spent within the UK on UK-produced goods and services.

That is possibly true but also a contrived scenario and doesn't undermine my main point. Also, I seem to remember in our seminal business studies class, which I never pursed or properly understood, that there was an importance placed on balance of payments. It seems the UK heavily import a number of things, and I presume that comes with a risk or cost.

You're going to need a pretty large family to get through 3 containers by the due date. On my own, I have a job to get through one.

You can freeze it, if you have the space, but that then removes the cost saving against keeping it frozen.

You don't need a large family, just some keen milk drinkers. Mrs B and I get through 3 or 4 pints a day (more if rice pudding is on the menu).

Not that we pay much attention to due dates, if it tastes ok it's fine by me. I often buy four 4 pint containers at a time.

The counter argument is that higher milk prices will reduce the need for imports and benefit the deficit reduction programme. In addition an increased price at the farm gate would keep some more farmers in business, reducing the number of bankruptcies and generally improving rural economies as they spend on farm improvements, additional staff, etc.

But higher prices means that the money would have to come from somewhere else in the economy, the first people being the consumer.

Consumers can go bankrupt too.

And if prices are higher, and imports are still required, (i.e. unless people cannot afford more expensive milk), then the higher cost of the imported milk would not help our deficit.

The only deficit reduction programme I am aware of is the (supposed) reduction in public spending. I don't think most milk consumption falls into that category.

You are also forgetting these factors:

Higher milk prices > higher cost of living > demands for higher wages > higher manufacturing costs > less demand for products abroad > lower exports > deficit increase.

I don't think it is a case of forgetting factors, in truth, I think anyone could build an economics model that shows the same outcome starting from an opposite stance. Economics is a lot more complex than this.

The point I have been trying to make is not that I advocate higher prices, only that there will be a cost somewhere. Lower costs will impact jobs; even if others are created, there is no guarantee they will replace those lost, and another factor is quality. Look how seemingly easy it is to sidestep standards in the food industry (unknown doping of meat with additives, including with other livestock) when great pressure is exerted on food costs.

I think it was Jamie Oliver who went shopping and remarked how cheap chickens were being sold for. He felt that it should not be possible to sell chicken at that price without cutting corners.