I've been looking at this case for a while now. A Portsmouth pub landlady was taken to court for using a Greek decoder to show sports matches in her pub, which cost her about a quarter of what Sky would have cost, and the public got to see the same games. Excuse me, but Greece is in the EU, so a British business person should be allowed to buy Greek products if they choose, hein? Well, it seems the European Court of Justice thinks they should. Good. I hope that ruling stands. I have been thoroughly fed up since coming to live in France in 2007 with the increasing, not diminishing, barriers to cross-border trade. First I could buy English-language e-books from WH Smith and Waterstones. Then I couldn't. Leaving me very little choice in English other than from Amazon (of course). Then I got an iPad and found it stopped working when I reached the bank of the Rhine, about five kilometres from home, because I do not live in Germany and therefore do not have the credentials to have a German SIM - and of course my French SIM stops working "outre-Rhin" as we say here. And naturally enough when I visit the UK I have to get my daughter to take out a month's contract for a UK SIM on my behalf. Then I bought concert tickets from a German website for a concert in, yes, Germany, and found that because I live in France, 5K inside it from Germany, in a place that has been German in recent living memory, the tickets would cost me not 7 euros (steep enough) to have posted to me, but 37. So I contacted a colleague who lives just over the border in Kehl and he agreed I could use his address to receive the tickets. And don't even start me on the price of goods. My favourite John Frieda hair products cost in the UK about half what they do in France, less than that with three-for-two offers, and in Germany, which I can cycle to, about two-thirds.
Globalisation? I'm thinking of demonstrating in favour of it.
Oh by the way most of the bananas you can get in my local shops and markets come from Cameroon (former French colony y'see) and are DELICIOUS. I never saw Cameroon bananas in the UK, not even in the African market in Brixton, where we used to live.
Grrrr.
1 comment:
lets hope this bring the whole vile empire down and puts the peoples game back with the people. lets have some real competition and lets stop paying the unworthy the unspeakable.
Questions :what else would these boys do if they took a 90% pay cut.
answer. i love football and i want it back.
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