It’s my favourite television show!

Last Sunday’s two-part finale was awesome.

In the last two weeks I’ve noticed that the price that we pay for our milk – 3 litre own brand Trim milk at Pak’n’Save – has gone up from $4.44 to $4.64. That’s a 4.5% increase. Similarly the price of semi-soft butter has also gone up noticeably.

The NZ Herald today is predicting milk and cheese prices will fall soon:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10535474

Supermarkets use milk and many other products as “loss leaders” to get customers in the door. It doesn’t necessarily match production costs.

I’ve noticed cheese and yoghurt prices falling substantially in the past couple of months. I haven’t bought butter in 20 years, ghastly stuff.

In the last two weeks I’ve noticed that the price that we pay for our milk – 3 litre own brand Trim milk at Pak’n'Save – has gone up from $4.44 to $4.64. That’s a 4.5% increase. Similarly the price of semi-soft butter has also gone up noticeably.

Yet I heard this morning that, in September, dairy prices on the world market – the very same market that Fonterra maintains is responsible for New Zealand’s domestic pricing – dropped 7.9%.

Even allowing for the semi-softening of the dollar, I’m struggling to marry the two.

I’m mindful of two things.

One was Theresa Gattung’s unguarded comment that Telecom had used price confusion as its chief marketing tool. I’ve always suspected that they are/were not the only company or industry to do this.

And, two, I should have stayed awake in my Economics classes.

Any thoughts from the panel (other than on my imprecise grasp of economics)?

I use the term in irony. Congratulations on being the first to challenge me on this.

The world will never run out of oil. It will be replaced by new technologies — probably not yet discovered — long before oil runs out.

Only 130 years ago, it was being predicted that modern society was doomed because the rapidly increasing use of coal would soon ensure none was left. Today, the world has thousands of years of coal reserves.

About 1798, Malthus said we would all starve to death because population increase would outstrip the food supply in little time. There were a few hundred million humans on all the planet then, and there are now some 6.5 billion, the healthiest, best-fed and longest lived in human history.

Armageddon predictions never come to pass.

We humans are amazing. That is why there are so many of us. Humans rock.

You frequently use the phrase “Peak Oil” which you say occurred on July 7.

What I believe you mean is on July 7, in NZ, prices peaked, which, if that is so, the phrase you should use is “peak price”.

Peak oil is something quite different and relates to the volume of oil pumped from the ground. Peak oil is that point at where the most oil was pumped and from that point onwards oil production is reducing. That is to say, the number of barrels of oil produced by the world’s oil producers will be less (year on year ) than the year(s) before.