Spreading poisonous portents about prices and empty shops should be punished with a prison term

Being told what it will cost in a few months took the edge off Alf's appetite.

Full of Christmas cheer and that joy-to-the-world feeling, Alf was dismayed to find the NZ Herald giving news space to some grumble guts from the Institute of Economic Research who plainly is intent on destroying the mood of merriment built during the festive season.

The bugger is telling us that food prices are soaring, which is not what Alf wants to hear as he clambers into the Christmas dinner left-overs.

Alf especially does not want to hear it when he is still celebrating his MPs’ pay rise.

By March, the economist predicts, food prices will be 8 to 10 per cent higher than they were last March.

This merchant of misery and peddler of pessimism is the institute’s principal economist, who no doubt lost any aptitude for feeling merry as a consequence of being named Shamubeel Eaqub.

Anyone who wandered into the Eketahuna Club and introduced himself as Shamubeel Eaqub would be suspected of being foreign, maybe Islamic, and perhaps with bombs strapped to his under-garments or stuck up his nether regions.

He would be given a wide berth.