They seem to be a strange lot over in Austria.

As has been widely reported the country has one of the lowest uptakes of Covid inoculations and so unsurprisingly the country has just entered a new lockdown, but before that happened people were apparently throwing Covid parties attended by people to get purposefully infected, which strikes me as particularly unhinged.

One such 55-year old anti-laxer party goer got exactly what he wanted, picked up the virus and promptly died!

Meanwhile back at home news has emerged of the results of a study carried out by a university on the characteristics of supermarket trolleys!

Yes, I never cease to be amazed at some of the studies made by university professors.

One of the latest was undertaken by Professor Zachary Estes of the City of London’s Bayes Business School which has come up with the finding that changing the shape of supermarket trolleys could boost sales by anything up to 25%.

So if supermarket trolleys were designed with handlebars placed parallel to each other rather than the normal push bar, the study shows that people would spend more money.

And why might this be so, you may well ask? Well so the theory goes trolleys with a regular handlebar make you use your triceps – a movement associated with pushing things away which therefore makes you pick up less, whereas using a trolley with handlebars placed parallel to each other – a little like a wheelbarrow – we use our biceps which are used to pull things towards us, and so you put more in the trolley.

In tests, customers with regular trolleys spent an average £22 in store but those with adapted trolleys spent £7 more.

Well I guess you can’t argue with science like this!

I’ll see you again tomorrow,
Scott