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Competition

Published 30 August 2004

Win vouchers to spend at any Tesco store

Competition No 3844

Set by John Crick, 9 August

India Knight wrote: "It goes without saying that shopping can be political." So what is political shopping exactly?

Report by Ms de Meaner

It's quite exciting when I have absolutely no idea what you'll do. Some of you sent in actual shopping lists ("Whitewash for covering the cracks in the party facade, cotton wool for pulling over the eyes of the public . . ."); one person sent in a song based on Milne's "I had a penny, a bright new penny"; a few sent in learned essays. I was sorry to lose Anne Du Croz's seven shopping trips, each one with a friend from a different political party in a different car. Ditto Ian Birchall's diatribe against Blair Brothers ("They used to do a nice line in cloth caps. Now it's gone upmarket"). £20 to the winners. The best is indisputably David Silverman, who also gets the Tesco vouchers.

Robin Hood is my role model. Not a shopper, exactly, but he didn't have my shoppertunities. Like him, I aim to (1) redistribute wealth, (2) preserve the greenwood aka rainforest, and (3) encourage country living. Shoppertunities aren't great in Little Gushing, with its shop/post office, gastropubs and ironmonger. Mr Ironmonger does a thriving trade in damsons (local, organic, delicious) two weeks of the year, but won't sell to me since I reproved his failures in forest-friendly purchasing. Mounting my bike with trailer, I set off for the shop. Stock has improved markedly of late with the influx of new residents, although I'm less pleased about grouse hanging behind the door. Ms Shop is surprisingly unenthusiastic about fair trade, local production, green transport, etc, answering too many queries with a sullen "Don't know". The growing queue prompts the arrival of old Mr Shop, who not only rejects my anti-GM poster (hand-made, on recycled paper) but declares himself pro-GM, adding that protesters "should be strung up - the lot of them". Too much for me! I get out the 4x4 and set off for the out-of-town Tesco's - after all, if it's good enough for the NS compers, it's good enough for me.

Lydia Shaxberd

I'll be brief. Very brief. All shopping is - and always is - an overtly political act. And, by its nature, a destructive one.

The charges are many. It dehumanises people, transforming them into Marcusian puppets in a mechanical economic transaction. It reduces everything to cash, burying true value under money. It encourages the worst aspects of exploitative, greedy capitalism. And it feeds a lot of unnecessary and wasteful packagers and advertisers who contribute nothing.

Shopping, in short, is a political act.

So that's why I was shoplifting, my lord . . .

Michael Cregan

"Excuse me. Where do you keep the kidney beans?"

"I refer the customer to the reply I gave a few moments ago."

"Yeah, Aisle 20? They're not there."

"With respect, if the customer listened to the totality of what I said, it was that you might like to try Aisle 20. I did not state specifically that . . ."

"I've looked in every aisle in the store and there are no kidney beans."

"With respect, this obsession with focusing on individual isolated cases is unhelpful and defeatist and, sadly, the media deserve much of the blame for this. If you take our record overall, you'll find that over the past five years we have consistently stocked 15 per cent more beans in real terms than any other store - and, I might add, considerably more than the shameful record of the shop opposite. Consistently more butter beans, more broad beans, more baked beans, with and without added sugar and salt, more red lentils, more yellow lentils, more chickpeas. I'm not one to use cheap soundbites, but customer feedback shows that we have our finger on the pulse of the nation."

"So, no kidney beans, then."

"Your words, not mine."

David Silverman

Competition No 3847

Set by Gavin Ross

The mayor of Bedford is saving money by using filtered petrol from abandoned cars in his official vehicle. Let's have more creative suggestions for councils to save money and reduce spending.

Max ten ideas by 9 September. E-mail: comp@newstatesman.co.uk

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