Well I just thought I would link to this, simply because it made me laugh a lot. Yes it is, that’s a perfectly good reason.

The situation Norm complains of – having to buy three kinds of cat food, two of which his cat doesn’t like and won’t eat, because the kind she does like suddenly comes in a variety pack with two others instead of on its own – is a classic, a pure, a definitional example of what Kingsley Amis so rightly called sod the public. There’s a lot of it in the UK. I’ve always noticed that. There’s too much obsequiousness and groveling for the customer over here, perhaps (except of course when there isn’t), but over there – well. I could tell you stories. There was that salmonella sandwich at Salisbury station, for example – no I didn’t eat it, that was the point. But it’s a long story, I won’t tell it now (because I have to go, that’s why, I’m late already, I should have shut this wretched thing down ten minutes ago). I’ll just quote a bit of Norm’s post and urge you to read the whole thing.

OK, so we’re talking market transactions here, are we not? And if they can do it to us, can we not start doing it back to them? Otherwise, where’s it all going to end? I’ll get on the bus one day and be told ‘Sorry, mate, you can only get a ticket to Piccadilly if you also take the digital watch and prawn sandwich that go with it. That’ll be £17.50.’ Or you won’t be able to buy a copy of the Guardian without the ‘It’s all about oil’ badge and Madeleine Bunting knitted pantaloons.

[Mopping eyes] Oh dear, I do want a pair of those pantaloons. Especially after all the nice things my colleague has been saying about Bunting lately. I’d like to send them to Sandra-Carol Foo-Ko. I think they’d look nice with her frilly turtleneck and her heavily emboidered ethnic jacket-thing.

Nighty night!