The Grumpies' local branch of Tesco's is selling "Frontera" wine from Chile - in fact they've got the merlot rosé on special offer - an enormous double-size bottle for a fiver.
It's described on the label as "Chile in a glass", and The GOS is a bit puzzled about this. Does it contain bits of your actual Chile, then? Like, grains of sand or specks of vegetable matter from the Chilean forests, or little blobs of jaguar-dung or Indians' toe-nail clippings?
No, of course not. The label is actually a lie - the bottle contains no Chile at all.
But there's much worse to come. Down at the bottom in fairly big letters the label claims to be "bursting with fresh strawberries and raspberries". Now, like many rosés, the wine certainly has a fruity taste, but we'd be very surprised indeed if it really contained even the tiniest trace of either fruit.
So, another lie from Tesco's.
Some time ago we wrote about Val Temple, who runs the Sergeant Bun Bakery in Weymouth. Dorset's trading standards department told her she couldn't sell "pig pies" because although they were shaped like pigs, they weren't made of pork. Her bird-shaped "robin tarts" weren't made from genuine Erithacus Rubecula, and her "paradise slice" contained no genuine paradise.
Then there was the Black Mountains Smokery in Wales who got into trouble because they were selling "Welsh Dragon Sausages" that contained no actual dragon.
So how come small traders find themselves flattened by the weighty disapproval of their local Trading Standards Officers when they just try to bring a little humour and imagination to their products, while the mighty Tesco's can tell downright lies with impunity?
One law for the rich …?
either on this site or on the World Wide Web.
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