Most men have always known instinctively that shopping is not fun. By now, surely, no one in their right mind should even hope that it can be fun. Yet it remains a national leisure pursuit, emptying our bank accounts and filling our homes and our lives with pointless tat.

The British are champion shoppers, the biggest users of credit cards in Europe, with the greatest amount of personal debt. The Earth is being plundered to fulfil British consumer demand, as jumbo jets and giant freighters carry stuff to us from across the world. Yet, repeatedly, the British are scoring badly in international surveys about quality of life and happiness.

So, you see, men were right all along. Shopping does not make you happy. Faced with the suggestion of a major shopping trip for almost any reason, the typical male has a simple response: “Why do we need a new one? The old one is perfectly fine.”

Advertisers know that men are the enemy. That’s why so many TV adverts now portray men as morons. It’s not just that most consumer activity is female-led. The advertisers know that most consumer resistance is male-led, so they try to undermine us before we can speak.

The standard psychological explanation for the differences between male and female shopping attitudes has long been that men are innate, solitary hunters who like to make a quick killing, while women are sociable gatherers who are happy to wander around in groups for hours.

This is all nonsense. Ask a bloke to take part in a trip to a faraway department store or shopping mall, and he will come up with plenty of sociable alternatives. Let’s just stay home together instead. Let’s go to the pub. How about a coffee on the high street? Do you fancy a drive in the countryside? Any man who pretends to be happy about a day in a shopping mall — like a man who agrees to go on a date to an art gallery — is simply hoping it may lead to sex. Sadly, surveys have shown that many women prefer shopping to sex. Their day has already climaxed before they get home.

The male shopper is often a little confused, but this can work in his favour. It’s mid-August and he’s about to go on holiday, so he wanders into a clothes shop to buy summer gear and finds to his happy amazement that the summer stuff is on sale, all prices reduced. This is because the shops and the more competitive women shoppers always think one season ahead and space is being cleared for autumn. Some women are already shopping for Christmas.

When I decided to write a novel about a confused everyman trying to find a meaning to life in the modern world it seemed only right to make him a grumpy lifestyle journalist. This is because “lifestyle” — the idea that all our human longings can be satisfied by buying something in a shop — has become one of the great modern delusions, driving up our envy and our expectations to levels that can never be satisfied.

From all this, there are several evident truths: any time spent watching a TV shopping channel can be a sign of depression or inadequacy; there is no point worrying about having the very latest electronic gadget, as it will be out of date within a month; it’s madness for parents to work ever longer hours to buy stuff for their children when the stuff is simply a guilt payment for the longer hours.

The consumer society has become an Orwellian nightmare. Adverts are the propaganda, sudden changes in fashion are the ever-changing allegiances, debt is the enslavement, freedom of choice is the big lie. And, as in 1984, we are always watched: most CCTV cameras are in shopping centres. Blokes hope to be the masters of their pleasures, not the slaves.

I’m happy to potter about my local high street: it’s part of my community. Supermarkets, bookshops, music stores are all fine, and I’ll go to a department store if it’s an absolute necessity. But shopping as a big day out, as a leisure activity? No thanks. Life has its own joys and challenges without the big stores telling us what we should want.

Avoid the stress. Save your money. Save your time. Save the planet. Stay in the neighbourhood or get out into the countryside. You don’t need a loyalty card there.

David Wilson (The Times London)

25 rules of shopping

1. More choice means more decisions. When you see an advert offering more “choice”, just insert the word “decisions” instead. It is always said that people like having more choice. Do you want more decisions?

2. When you find a product that you really like, it will have been redesigned or discontinued the next time you go to buy it. Or the shop that sells it will have closed.

3. When you finally get used to the layout of a store, they will rearrange all the sections so that you can’t find anything you want.

4. When you pay a lot for something on impulse, you will see it cheaper in a sale within two months.

5. When you postpone buying something so you can think it over, you will never find it again. Instead, you will find something not quite as good but more expensive.

6. When you have more choice (see Rule 1 above) you will always be left with the nagging doubt that there was something better that you have missed.

7. When you finish decorating a room and go out to buy the furniture for it ready-made, it will not be available for delivery for two months, so that you sicken of the whole idea before it even arrives.

8. If you buy a flatpacked self-assembly kit, you will never be absolutely confident that you have assembled it correctly. (This is because anarchists have infiltrated the flatpack factories. The junior anarchists work on the assembly line and always make sure that they omit one part in each pack, or add one extra. Senior anarchists write the assembly instructions. Their plot is to undermine our confidence in the consumer society. The plot is succeeding.)

9. Helplines often don’t (help).

10. All machines go wrong. The more functions a machine has, the more it will go wrong. The best machine has one fault which you know about and can always fix.

11. When “comfort shopping” for yourself, remember: a packet of Jaffa Cakes is often just as good as shoes or jewellery.

12. Only two big facts are known for certain: you are on a large, spinning rock hurtling through lonely space at about 67,000 mph, and one day your body is going to die. Will another new pair of shoes really help?

13. Remember that even though you are looking round the shops, it is not compulsory to buy anything. Deciding that nothing is good enough for you is a triumph of self-will and taste, and saves a fortune. No one should mock a spouse who returns empty-handed from an epic shopping trip.

14. The ability to go shopping without buying anything can be doubly fulfilling if you can think of moral objections to a product or its country of origin. (This tactic is especially favoured by impoverished intellectuals.)

15. The newer the till, the smaller the brain of the shop assistant operating it.

16. When you are in a hurry to pay at the supermarket, you will find yourself standing behind: a) a garrulous man who is paying by chip-and-pin in the Ten Items or Fewer queue but can’t decide which card to use or whether he wants cashback and all the while he is jabbering on his mobile phone; or b) a woman who seems surprised to be asked for money at all, so it’s only when she is told the amount that she rummages in her shopping bag to find her handbag, then rummages in her handbag to find her purse, then counts out the money penny by penny.

17. When you get angry, think before you tell the manager of a local shop that you will never set foot there again. You will spend years going miles out of your way before you make a humiliating return, only to find that the manager left some time ago.

18. Never believe that anything is going to be the Next Big Thing. They said that the computer was going to replace the printed word. If this was true, why are there so many computer magazines?

19. When you want to buy something complicated or technical, there will be no sales assistant available who can answer any questions. When you want something simple, a sales assistant will pounce within seconds and talk for hours.

20. The last thing that the world needed was a choice of musical ringtones for mobile phones. Naturally this was invented before lots of stuff we really need.

21. The simpler the product, the more ridiculous the safety warnings. A bag of peanuts has a warning: “Contains nuts”. A can of paint has a warning: “Not to be taken internally”.

22. One of the biggest lies in the world is on small packets of ready meals. It says: “Serves two”.

23. With any publication, whether it is an electricity bill, a magazine or an instruction booklet, there are always at least two enclosures telling you about other things that are somehow connected. You will always throw away the important ones.

24. The most important information in any glossy publication is usually unreadable. This is because a new generation of young designers thinks it is groovy to put white lettering on a yellow background, or red on pink. They think it’s still readable because they have the eyes of hawks, albeit with the brains of sparrows.

25. No, you don’t need another credit card.

(Adapted from David Wilson’s novel This Age We’re Living In)

Why do you love/hate shopping? Tell t2@abpmail.com