THOUGH many may dismiss his questioning of Clitheroe's need for another supermarket as the pious parish-magazine ponderings of a cleric - and, no doubt, the hard-nosed decision makers behind the town's new Sainsbury's store will - Ribble Valley vicar, the Rev Rodney Nicholson actually does provide shoppers and consumers with food for thought.

It is not, however, a matter of whether there is a demand or scope in the market for a fourth supermarket in a such a small, if relatively prosperous, rural town.

Rather, it is Mr Nicholson's misgiving that supermarkets "advertise the glut of food in Britain and the west" that ought to make people stop and think.

For although all may not share his view it is "almost obscene" that, in a world of poverty and hunger, people here are constantly tempted with new varieties of food and drink, but may only see such offerings as fair rewards for their own industry and enterprise, how often do we pause to consider how poorer peoples fare? There is, perhaps, no better or more telling contrast of people's wealth and lifestyles than what can be found on the shelves of a supermarket in the west and in the food markets of the Third World. And there is a stark example of this in Mr Nicholson's story of an African woman once expressing her shock to him at seeing different varieties of pet food on sale here when, in her own country, there was not enough food for people.

It may be that we need not feel guilt for this - especially when, the workings of the global economy and immutable market forces defy the efforts of statesmen and international regulators, let alone those of ordinary people, to spread the abundance evenly across the world.

But if more of us gave thought more often to how we are blessed as we fill up our trolleys and stopped to think of those who are not and asked how we might help them, then the message Mr Nicholson attempts to deliver may nurture the poor and the hungry whom we can so easily forget when we are surrounded by ever-increasing plenty.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.