swill453 wrote:By "volume" they mean volume of pure alcohol. So the average person would buy less scotch.
Scott.
ah - cheers Scott.
didds
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swill453 wrote:By "volume" they mean volume of pure alcohol. So the average person would buy less scotch.
Scott.
Lootman wrote:What is to stop canny Scots doing shopping runs across the border on a massive scale? Don't such arbitrage opportunities completely undermine attempts to deliberately over-price alcohol, or anything else, when you have a completely porous border?
UncleEbenezer wrote:I worked very briefly at Ispra, on Lago Maggiore in Italy.
Colleagues who lived north of work - near the Swiss border - would cross the border for things that were much cheaper in Switzerland (headed by petrol). Those who lived near work, or in directions other than north, wouldn't bother.
Crossing borders for cheaper shopping is literally an issue at the margin. I expect the "booze cruise" to Calais has been bigged up in the meeja, and in reality it's just a handful of idiots who do/did it other than when they had a real reason to make the crossing.
UncleEbenezer wrote:I worked very briefly at Ispra, on Lago Maggiore in Italy.
Colleagues who lived north of work - near the Swiss border - would cross the border for things that were much cheaper in Switzerland (headed by petrol). Those who lived near work, or in directions other than north, wouldn't bother.
Crossing borders for cheaper shopping is literally an issue at the margin. I expect the "booze cruise" to Calais has been bigged up in the meeja, and in reality it's just a handful of idiots who do/did it other than when they had a real reason to make the crossing.
UncleEbenezer wrote: I expect the "booze cruise" to Calais has been bigged up in the meeja, and in reality it's just a handful of idiots who do/did it other than when they had a real reason to make the crossing.
didds wrote:UncleEbenezer wrote: I expect the "booze cruise" to Calais has been bigged up in the meeja, and in reality it's just a handful of idiots who do/did it other than when they had a real reason to make the crossing.
Nope. I grew up in central North kent. Locals used Calais as a once a month shopping trip - you could save money by shopping there if you got the right (cheap!) ferry/tunnel ticket, had an almost empty tank to fill, and smoked and drank. Bonuses were the stuff that was way cheaper (olive oil, washing powder etc). Most friends' homes had french wasghing powder in their utility rooms etc.
And I can testify that the ferries etc were full of white van man with vans loaded to the gunwhales with beer and tobacco for trips as far as Newcastle (they must have been making a profit !). Some of them didnt even get that far ... coming out of Dover Eastern Docks was Jubilee Way (A2) - you'd see vans parked on the side there flogging/moving the contraband onto other white van men before turning around and going back to Calais.
Then there was the report of Kent police pulling over a coach on the M2/M20 etc which on inspection had its luggage holds rammed with beer. The aisle of the coach was stacked floor to ceiling with cases of beer. Each passenger - the coach was full - had cases of beer on their laps.
CF https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews ... glers.html
(as the page starts to load press ESC to avoid the paywall)
After that it was quite usual to see coaches headed for, or returning from Calais, towing a very large industrial trailer...
Some of these may be extremes - but the booze cruise did exist and was a thing.
https://www.kentonline.co.uk/dover/news ... ce-227264/
didds
Nimrod103 wrote:These things were only possible because of the single market. Go back before that, and the duty free limit for entering from Europe was much the same as anyone now entering from outside the EU. One litre of spirits and/or a certain limited amount (I can't remember how much) of beer/wine.
Re-introduction of those limits will protect British pubs and British brewers/distillers, and probably protect a lot of livers as well.
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