Stand off over baked potatoes

The government and M&S are at loggerheads over the price of baked potatoes.

The government sees baked potatoes as a staple food and wants supermarkets to keep prices low, to ease the cost of living permacrisis.

M&S sees their premium range gastropub Heston's Favourite super-indulgent baked potatoes as a luxury item. 'Yes,' said a spokesman, 'they ARE twenty pounds each. But it's not JUST a jacket potato...

'To be serious,' he continued, 'our profit margin on these jacket potatoes is wafer thin. You'd think potatoes were cheap, but our wastage rate is 97% because we will only accept the very best. And each jacket is individually curated in its own protective traylet, and served with precisely 57 baked beans (don't ask) and 24 grammes of artisan cheddar.

'Contrary to the nonsense on TikTok, we do NOT buy our cheese from Lidl.

'We have to pay for wages, packaging, curation, social media, authentic potato smell, wastage, shoplifting, dividends, taxes, political donations, and executive pay. It all adds up.'

A government spokesman said, 'Yeah, right. Spuds are 50p a kilogramme retail, so a jacket potato should only cost 10p max. Twenty pound potatoes are seriously buggering up our inflation figures. If M&S won't play ball and cut their prices, then our only option will be to take the cost of vegetables out of the inflation calculations completely. We'll replace them with own brand instant noodles, as they are really cheap. Then we'll have the cost of living permacrisis properly under control.'

image by Google Gemini