Nobody shops in the land of Far, Far Away

I am so confused. On the one hand, my local Council tells me to shop locally. It's supposed to be good for the local economy, good for the environment and presumably helps cut down on traffic.

On the other hand, I am castigated by a silly cow in the Daily Telegraph for being too lazy to drive more than 2km to a supermarket.

That is borne out by the discovery that almost 70 per cent of those living in inner metropolitan areas, and 58 per cent of shoppers in outer metropolitan areas, travel less than 2km to do their shopping.

Supermarket executives understand our laziness and take advantage of it.

Ever heard of the expression "time is money"? Travelling to a more distant supermarket not only consumes more petrol - it consumes that precious commodity that is constantly running out for all of us - time. I am not lazy when I shop locally - I am simply making a rational choice given my circumstances.

Aldi is the cheapest place to shop and Coles is cheaper in 52 of the 61 regions surveyed around Australia.

But even though we know it is more expensive, more shoppers use Woolworths stores to do their grocery shopping - 30 per cent compared with Coles’ 25 per cent and Aldi’s 6 per cent.

Aldi is cheaper because it sells shit. When Aldi first opened in NSW, I put on my pith helmet and went and did an anthropological expedition to their closest store to me.

I didn't buy a single thing.

Not one of their products appealed to me. Cheap and nasty jam. Awful looking carrots. Mutant tomatoes. Toilet paper from hell - even the stuff that we had in boarding school for bum wiping was better than the Aldi offering.

Besides, how much home cooking does the average family do these days? How many meals are prepared at home, and how many are either eaten away from home (the office working buying a sandwich for lunch) or take away/home delivery for dinner? Given that the average family are spending more and more money on take away food, the best thing Woin could do is compare the price of Chicken Tikka Masala, Fried Rice and Red Beef Curry between suburbs.

Even then, price is not always a factor. We have tried take away from every Thai restaurant that does home delivery in our area, and we have settled on one and it is not the cheapest. Convenience is not even a factor - they all take about the same amount of time to get the food to our door. The winner is the one offering the best quality, even if they are 10-15% more expensive than the next best restaurant.

I am rich enough to no longer having to put up with eating shit.