I had exhausted my change on people begging near the Embankment and yet inside at “Your Marks and Spencer” which amazingly was still open at 10.15pm they were throwing away perfectly good Camambert, salads, sandwiches, cooked meals that in a few hours were going to be out of date. Yet a few yards away were starving people.

 

I realise that there are perfectly valid reasons for date sensitive food to be removed from shelves but there has got to be something wrong with this M&S strategy that does not allow discounting at the end of the day to sell food coming to the end of its shelf life. It happens at all supermarkets and even the late night trains offer At least the food would not be thrown away and even at the lower prices maybe some of the people begging outside the station would be able to afford some good food at cheaper prices.

 

I don’t really think that “Your M&S” is correct because it is almost saying that we are aware of and agree with this sort of behaviour and ethics. Stuart Rose talks so glibly about Plan A, but how about getting the basics right to start with. I mean if airlines, buses and trains can alter prices depending upon the time people travel how about people selling food pricing based on how fresh it is i.e. the older the stock the cheaper it should be. Personally I think it’s about time that the food industry got its act together and stopped throwing perfectly good resources away and came up with some solutions like time pricing.