You have to laugh when pound shops start cost-cutting in a price war.

It started in Torquay, apparently, when bargain basement stores slashed some prices to 90p. Now it’s reported that shops in Dunfermline have also joined battle.

A 99p Store dropped its prices to 95p and a Poundland nearby undercut them by selling items at 93p.

Customers are delighted but where will it all stop?

Huddersfield seems to have more than its fair share of pound shops and I thought that, as Britain headed out of recession, prices would start to rise.

What would they call all these stores then? The 110 Pence Store? The Pound And A Bit Shop?

Many years ago, every High Street had a Fifty Shilling Tailor where a chap could buy a suit for £2.50 but times and inflation wait for no man and those days are long gone.

So, eventually, will be the pound stores who will have to change their names to take account of the rising cost of living.

I first encountered the equivalent of the pound store in America where they have The Dollar Store.

My wife Maria’s mother, who was not short of a few bob, loved to wander round its tackiness of plastic picture frames and packets of balloons and oven mitts. Our pound stores are certainly superior.

These days the dollar is only worth 60p so how on earth do the dollar stores still manage to conduct a thriving business?

By selling in bulk.

A drinking glass is still a dollar but they only come in a minimum pack of 12. Coffee mugs are a dollar each but you have to buy 24. Washing up liquid is a dollar but only if you take 20 bottles of the stuff.

Maybe this will be a way forward in the UK? Using a sort of sleight of word in the way bargain shops promote products?

They may charge £1 for eight Weatabix biscuits but as there are 12 in a packet that will be £1.30, please. You get the drift?

Think what they will be able to do with a box of cornflakes.

Five thousand cornflakes for £1!

But as there are 7,122 cornflakes in a 500 gram Kellogg’s box, don’t be surprised if your are charged £1.50.

Now you are wondering how I know there are that many cornflakes.

Well, a chap called Luke Stephenson bought a box and not only counted the contents, he photographed each flake. Luke is an award-winning British photographer with a sense of the absurd.

“I wanted to see how many were actually in a box and there is also something about how every individual cornflake is completely unique.”

A video of the shoot is on Youtube and his cornflake pics (and many others) are on Flickr.

His work is worth a look; one of his latest projects is a poster of 99 pictures of 99 ice cream cones (www.lukestephenson.com) .

His photographs provide a different way of looking at the world. A bit like pound shops.