Next time you’re in a shop, as you pass the digestive biscuits, make a note of the price.  I have to buy a lot of them as my parents get through several packets a month. What I’ve noticed is that the Digestive biscuit has almost no price at all, it’s one of the most slippery items around.

For example, I’ve several times seen two 500g packets of McVities Digestive biscuits on offer for anything between £1- £1.74 in a large Sainsburys. Go to a Sainsburys Local, and you might find that one 250g packet will set you back 89p. At worst, that’s almost a 400% difference in price within the same company. A single 500g packet, last time I looked, was £1.89 in M&S local. If you can get two for between £1 – £1.50 in Sainsburys (or Iceland too), you’re a mug to buy them in M&S.  In the Co-Op today (I had to go as I was doing shopping-for-parents) I saw one of those large packets for £1.09. That’s more like it. But look closely, and you find that it’s actually a 400g packet. It’s still cheaper, but you could easily think it’s much cheaper than it really is. Curiously, it seems that you’re better off buying two 250g packets than one of 500g.

Local shops, at least the ones near me, don’t do this smoke-and-mirrors stuff with prices, which is just one more reason why I don’t miss supermarkets one bit.