So what is the cost of milk and bread?

Our Prime Minister was criticised yesterday for not knowing the cost of milk and bread. Apparently he should have known because it relates to the "cost of living".

Yes, it does relate to the cost of living. Yes, it is important. But how many people actually know the answer to the question?

Some of us will but plenty of others will have no idea. How many know the price of a litre of petrol or a dozen eggs?

Of course the price of milk and bread also varies greatly. It used to be that you bought "milk" but now you can buy "low fat milk" and "organic" milk and milk with extra this or that or something else and milk from a variety of companies. You can buy UHT milk and "milk" made from soya beans or oats or rice or something else. Monday I could have bought two litres of low-fat supermarket brand milk for $2.60 or two litres of labelled milk $4.30. (I bought neither.)

But yes, I suppose the PM should know the price of a litre of ordinary everyday milk.  No, wait a moment. Where does he live? The price of milk can vary according to your location and even where you shop within that location.

And the price of bread you ask? That is even more complicated. When I was a very small kitten we lived in a very small country town. It was large enough that it did have a bakery. The baker provided "sandwich" and "high top" loaves - white only. He also produced "currant buns" - yeast buns with currants in them. I doubt he made any profit out of the latter because we children used to line up on the days he made them knowing that he would have produced  a lot of small ones specifically to give to us. But the bread was ordinary bread. I have no idea how much it cost of course. At age three and four you don't think much about such things, if at all. 

When we returned to the city you could still get "sandwich" and "high top" and, on special occasions, "cob". You could also get "wholemeal" but it was a poor relation to the wholemeal of today. There were the same sort of currant buns too. Hot Cross buns appeared at Easter. That was about it. 

Now of course, in the city, we can buy white, wholemeal, whole grain, multigrain, oat, seed, French, Greek, and more - much more. An "everyday" sandwich loaf can vary significantly in price. On Monday I could have bought a "yesterday's" loaf for "$3" or a "bakery" loaf for "$6.80". (I bought neither.) 

When I was a kitten I doubt men knew the price of milk and bread as often as the women did. They probably thought of those things as "expensive" because they were mostly the wage earners and had to hand over the money to buy food. Even now I doubt they always know because, like it or not, it is still women who do most of the food shopping - and even they won't necessarily know. They are much more likely to know the price of a litre of petrol or the variation in prices of car tyres. This is not "sexist" as such. It is the way labour and responsibilities tend to get divided. The lines are often blurred.

So is there really something so terribly wrong about the PM not knowing the cost of a litre of milk or a loaf of bread? I think I could stand in the shopping centre this morning with a clip board in my hand and ask people to tell me those things - and most of them would fail.