Order of the Bath

The news this morning is full of commentary on the probability that the European Court will declare that Excise Duty should be paid at source even for transactions across member country’s borders. This means that if I buy wine (for personal use) on the internet from a French dealer then I will pay French tax and duty, not British. Some of the implications of this, which also applies to tobacco, are being discussed e.g. the lower price paid by the purchaser, the impact on the local retailer, the death of the traditional Booze Cruise trips to Calais and also the impact on the Exchequer. Here are a few other effects that have not been mentioned.

• Another subject for the spammers to get their hooks into.
• Many people already buy from mail order dealers so unless they move sharply, the loss to their trade; one I know has only just moved its distribution from one location in the UK to another. I would imagine that specialist sales companies will be established, probably subsidiaries of the existing mail order retailers. I don’t think buying direct from the vineyard will be commonplace.
• Another market for the scammers and dodgy web sites.
• The extra workload on Customs and Excise and police checking that it is “for personal use”—even more of a problem since their income will have dried up.
• The removal of the tax disincentive which has been used for many years to dissuade people from smoking and to a lesser extent drinking.
• In theory the same ruling would apply to motor fuel but I can’t think of a practical way to arrange personal imports.
• If the ruling comes into effect immediately, consider the rush for Christmas.
• There is the possibility of theft en route. The transport is likely to be of lower security than bulk imports by dealers and, because it is the purchaser’s responsibility, will need to be insured by them.
• The increased transport costs and impact; for example consider the export of Scotch to a low tax EU county only to be purchased by mail order to be sent to a Glasgow customer.

The principle task for an interviewee on the Today program is to get John Humphrys to understand what you are talking about. I congratulate the spokesman from NO2ID for achieving that delicate task, this morning when he clearly explained the problems with the new RFID passports with no hype or ranting.

Thanks, too, to Michael for sending me a link to a very funny, but disturbing piece of fiction. Unfortunately I can’t find it now; Perhaps if I ask nicely he will post it in a comment here.

If David Cameron had made a speech in which he referred to Patricia Hewitt as “Quite pretty but a lightweight” there would have been an uproar and shouts of “sexist”. The speaker would probably have had to suspend the sitting whilst order was restored; the fallout may have affected his chances in the next election. But it seems that when the situation is reversed then it is quite acceptable; there was barely a murmur when she patronised him in that manner. Perhaps this is an indication that non-PC language is now acceptable, and I say three cheers to that.

Sorry for the lack of posts recently, I have been veeery busy with the church video system. We are nearly there now.

Anyway, there was an item of note on the news this morning about supermarkets doing more to reduce packaging and marking those items which can be recycled. For once I have some sympathy with the mega-chains. How can they sensibly label packages for recycling when the local authorities who organise the recycling are all at odds with each other. Here they don’t recycle plastic at all unless you take it to one of the two depots or a few isolated collection points. The council just to the north, in the area where I work, the system is totally different. If you stand on the border you can see both systems in operation with different categories, timing and collection policies.
Returning the sympathetic view, the collectors and consumers do also have a problem distinguishing the different sorts of plastic so perhaps if they all worked together to create a standard then we would all be better off.

My teachers would have been the first to say that language was not my strong point. In fact, I have the unenviable distinction of having reached the end of formal education without a single language qualification to my name. But as a scientist, it bugs me when people use incorrect words because it conveys incorrect meaning and thus makes the communication pointless or even dangerous.
In the news this morning there were two prize examples. A chief constable from somewhere said that emergency calls this Halloween had been down by a third from the previous year. It a subsequent sentence it was clear that he meant down TO a third. Perhaps this is a mathematical inaccuracy but I think it was more likely to be careless use of words.
The second was an interview with someone responsible for the WHO report on depleted uranium weapons where he said that a contrary research paper was not included because it was not collaborated by other research. Now at best this is meaningless but at worst it implies that he was expecting there to be collusion between independent research projects. Of course what he meant was that the paper was not CORROBORATED by other research; Mrs. Malaprop would have been proud.
In both cases it was the interviewees that made the error under stressful conditions but I would have expected the interviewers to have picked it up and asked for clarification.
Another one that frequently bugs me is the apparent interchangeability of “site” and “sight” in emails but here I blame the reliance on spell-checkers and an inability of most people (including myself) of being able to proof-read their own writing. Having read this, if any of you want to turn the finger back on me for the poor spelling, use of language or proof-reading on this web site then I welcome it—you will be doing a service to other readers; but please point out the necessary corrections in detail else I will never be able to find them.