The offcuts conspiracy: from sausages to sweets, are we all just eating discarded scraps?

An acquaintance is convinced that almost every product in the shops is the detritus of some elite product we can't afford. Could they be right?

I'm not allowed to write about my mother any more, in case she has enough and decides to protest against the injustice of 25 years of me doing it. It's a risk, I guess. There comes a point in most people's lives when they wake up thinking their neighbour has stolen their paying-in book. This would be like that, except true: I have been stealing her best material for a quarter of a century.

Anyway, someone else I know from the prewar generation - born before 1945 - has a new conspiracy theory. (Gen prewar is different from boomers - born between 1946 and 1964 - even though society tends not to distinguish between one pensioner and another, which happens either because society is ageist or because boomers are greedy and want the category to themselves. But we can discuss that another time.)