> I have recently got digital satelite television. As I live in England, that has made the number of channels I can access go up from just four to about two-hundred.

We've had pay TV start up in Australia over the last few years, and I can't imagine watching enough television to make it remotely worthwhile. We have 6 stations, of varying quality, and that's enough for the couple of hours that I watch.
>
> As a result, I have got into the terrible habit of channel hopping. If I'm on MTV, and a song come up that I don't like too much, I jsut flick through the other ten or so channels until I find a song I do like.

My boyfriend's a channel hopper. I try not to let him have the remote control.
>
>
> This extends throughout. In my local supermarket you can get over ten varieties of plum tomatoes in tins - whole, chopped, peeled, in sauce, without sauce, extra value pack, small pack, puréed... If I ever need chopped plum tomatoes, I just get whole ones and chop them up. Other people buy them ready chopped - for a much higher price. Indeed, with some products you pay twice as much for chopped as for whole!
>
> The situation has got worse with the problems about Genetically Modified foods. There is now an "organic" variety of everything you could possibly want - from cheese to toilet roll (how they figure that one out I don't know) - as well as versions for vegetarians and diabetics (which I can fully understand, mind you).
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> Even worse is the range of flavours and colours you can get. A whole aisle for jams and preserves? A whole aisle for tea and coffee? Please!
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> This is really confusing. Indeed, Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) described this process as a "confusopoly" - the opposite of a monopoly.
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> Unfortunately, I'm running a losing battle. I don't see why hundreds of thousands of people pay twice the price just to have something cut in two - but they do.
>
> Chrico "Still, I'm happy about the TV..." Rinotir

We also have the GST to contend with here. Recently, a women wrote a bestselling book on how to beat the GST, and that was her basic argument: buy fresh goods instead of pre-packed, chopped, whatever. There's no GST on fresh goods.

ding"don't go intot he chicken thing..."dong