Is anyone else getting a sense of being talked down to in the past few days? You know the sort of thing - economists huffing that inflation is actually in decline, grocers and commentators sniffing about shoppers "getting emotional" over supermarket prices, asks Kathy Sheridan
The charge of getting emotional is the last gasp of the losing side, is always levelled at women, is designed to knock the fight out of them and works a treat. It implies the intellectual capacity of a two-year-old.
In this case, it is perfectly targeted because it is of course, mostly women who do the weekly shopping. So the woman whose instincts tell her that something is going horribly out of control in her little household economy is dismissed as "emotional" by the big boys who prefer to be seen wrestling with the macro-economic picture or boardroom machinations.
This is exemplified in the treatment of Tesco Ireland's first-half results. A company that will sell €1.5 billion worth of groceries in Ireland this year (the price of three or four national stadiums), rated no more than a few paragraphs in yesterday's financial news.
So, as a shopper, aren't you a mite curious about the profits Tesco coaxed out of Ireland? Think the truth of the situation is lurking in there somewhere, as with the motor insurance industry? Ah no, says Tesco man, couldn't tell you that, but hark to that nice economist quoting the consumer price index. Say what you like, pet, but according to his bible, food inflation is only at 2.8 per cent. The rest is for us to know and you to find out.
So what do we know? In the first six months of this year, Tesco increased sales in Ireland by 8.4 per cent, more than twice that of its British operation (which fell by over 3 per cent on last year). But despite its disappointing performance in Britain, the company as a whole made a healthy 13.3 per cent profit. This figure, said its CEO, was fuelled substantially by overseas expansion; and its Irish performance, he added, was in line with the company's expectations.
That's as much as we know but it is surely reasonable to infer that Tesco's Irish grocery sales produced profits rather higher than 13.3 per cent.
Call me simple but can anyone explain how that squares with the consumer price index food inflation figure of 2.8 per cent? To some of us, Tesco's declared margins seem a more plausible fit with the kind of increases the Consumers Association of Ireland found in its survey of prices between January 2001 and January 2002.
Eggs: up 20.7 per cent. Large sliced pan: up 4.5 per cent. Box of 80 teabags: up 6 per cent. Twin-pack yoghurt: up 8.7 per cent. Six-pack of crisps: up 12.9 per cent. Packet of Easi-Single cheese slices: up 13.9 per cent.
As an exercise in micro-economics, it may well be beneath the economists, but out here, we can still do their sums.
Anyone making a cheese or egg sandwich for lunch today with a cup of tea, followed by a packet of crisps or a yoghurt - basic, hardly extravagant fare - is getting a good, practical lesson in Irish inflation which, lest we forget in our emotional state, is still the highest in Europe at 4.5 per cent and could climb to 5 per cent by year end.
So says the same economist who was chiding us for getting sucked into the "urban myth" about runaway prices.
On top of that, we are still grappling with the import of the Forfás report, which revealed that the cost of living here since 1999 has risen to become the second highest in Europe. If "getting emotional" is another term for "worried" or even "incensed", then maybe it's about time the Irish consumer got really emotional.
It's not all the fault of the big grocers of course. Anyone following the Vodafone saga - whose tactic of no negotiation led to newsagents slapping 40 per cent on to the cost of already outrageously expensive mobile phone cards, mainly used by children - knows how it feels to be elbowed by both sides in a game.
Meanwhile, we can only marvel at the amount of sponsorship the same company is able to sink into the GAA, which has enabled the latter to make and screen - at length - its brilliant current ad campaign.
There seems to be a notion that the massive increases in service charges hardly matter; of course no one will die as a result of not visiting the hairdresser or the cinema, or getting a take-away or a pint or a meal out once in a while.
But add to those the unavoidable childcare costs, electricity charges, VHI, TV licence, doctors and dentists fees and doubled registration charges for third-level.
Rural households, which have subsidised the DART and the Luas, have no choice still but to run several cars (with all the tax, insurance, parking and maintenance costs these entail) in the absence of a decent infrastructure and public transport service in non-urban areas. If inflation halts at 5 per cent by year end, it will be a miracle.
Just what, exactly, does it take to make an Irish consumer rip-roaringly emotional?