Benevolent dictator

It's Sunday night outside a Blackpool Tesco Express, and my girlfriend has refused to get out of the car. She's not happy, but it's a compromise - I'll go to the pub quiz with her, so long as we can go via Tesco. Not to make a purchase, but for a few goes on a lucky dip where points mean prizes.

Tesco's Clubcard is a source of some suspicious mumbling in cynical quarters. The conspiracy theorists shake their heads dolefully as, for a few pennys savings, we offer up the contents of our baskets to the scrutiny of the Corporation's evil quants. Such is the suspicion of some, that they will not sign their souls over. Their unclaimed points, recorded in barcode at the bases of their receipts, haunt it even after death.

For those willing to trawl about the car park peeling waterlogged receipts from the tarmac, or fish crumpled tallies from the bin, these points may be resurrected and claimed against one's own account. I am one such unfortunate addictee.

Pity then the computer or technician charged with decoding my purchase history. Some weeks my grocery bill will stretch into the thousands. I think my best haul was over 1200 points - £1,200 spent on groceries in Blackpool, Norwich and Edinburgh, in a week. Though I don't smoke, some weeks I'll appear to spend a sudden £100 on tobacco, without any brand loyalty (no points on this, we note). Two cars are insured against our Clubcard account, both unleaded - yet some month's the two of us buy hundreds of litres of diesel.

You can imagine the wild fluctuations in product choice and spend as it appears on their systems. My point is not to boast about the £50 pounds or so I make each year by sifting through other people's rubbish (though it's interesting to note that on a crude pence/hour basis I'm better doing so on Tesco's car park than I would on a Guatemalan landfill). The point is that unless their tyrannical software fuelled strategy to rule the world isn't as efficient as we're led to believe, they must surely be aware of my sordid games.

Why would they let it continue, then?

Well, I suppose that for all the obfuscation, my core purchases could be deduced with reasonable certainty. All the peripheral noise of other people's discarded chicken drumsticks easily filtered away to expose that 2 pint full-fat organic milk that trundles the rubber week on week.

And that noise does reveal on additional fact - that I am so bargain obsessed that I'll hit the bins - even as they scalp me for an extra 30p on that organic milk. No doubt that amuses someone with an MK postcode. Perhaps they scalp me for enough 30ps on organic this and thats that I'm profitable enough for them not to risk offending me by confronting my post-transaction kleptomania.

Perhaps, when they rule the world, they will be a benevolent dictator. Offer Clubcard points on the executioners bullets and the like, when the greiving kin are billed.