Panic buying?

I think there are times Prime Ministers should give us all a good ticking off. And now is just such a moment. Why on earth have we started panic buying food? Confronting the empty egg and bread shelves on Saturday I recalled the dismal days back in the seventies when – for reasons I can’t now remember – we had regular salt and sugar shortages. I was at the time the Consumer Affairs reporter for the Croydon Advertiser – no laughter please, the Croydon Ad is an admirable title. It was a job I was very bad at, as it happens, and from which I escaped with the Editor’s agreement after only a few weeks because I found hanging around supermarkets indescribably tedious. But I was infuriated then by the whole idiocy of stockpiling. Then and now, most of it is being done by people who are not at any risk of being marooned. Once the supermarkets said “two bags each only” it all stopped. As Husband grimly observed on Saturday, the trouble with irrational shoppers is that the only rational response is to start doing same. Can we please all STOP?