I read with amusement the article about the loo roll expense and MP Bob Russell’s follow-up letter.

Feeling flushed with ideas about how to comment further on this, I offer the following for amusement.

I checked out the website Mr Russell used and indeed (and I’m only assuming here) you can get 120 soft toilet rolls for £69.90, plus VAT, which comes to £82.13 Now this is what I find interesting.

Each roll works out to be about 64 pence each. Now Mr Russell says this is less than half the cost of the official central purchasing catalogue price.

So with that in mind, we can expect the taxpayer to fork out £1.28 per roll under normal circumstances, unless this website Mr Russell uses is used by all constituency offices.

Now, a quick Google search brought up there are about 645 constituency offices in the UK.

Based on the official central purchasing catalogue price of loo rolls being at least twice the price of Mr Russell’s purchase, 120 times £1.28 comes to £153.60. If each constituency office purchased a bulk 120 rolls at this price, the taxpayer would be looking at paying out £99,072 over the year.

Having lost a career several years ago due to stresses imposed on me by the CSA, I know all about saving money, and many years ago, loo rolls were one of the many cutbacks I had to make.

I wonder if Mr Russell and other politicians are aware of the marvel of places called supermarkets.

At a well-known one you can buy a 12-pack for only £1.46 – which equates to about 12p a roll.

Even a quality brand, for a ninepack works out at only 50p per roll (still less than Bobs Russell’s purchase) Based on my workings out, if all 645 constituency offices buying the cheapest loo roll and the same amount as Mr Russell ordered, it would cost £14.60 times 645, which equals £9,417 – a saving of £89,655

Jason Spurgeon
West Mersea
Colchester