The Medway Handyman wrote:

Just got back from a trip to Belgium. Bought beer, wine, fags, tobacco.
Gordon Brown forces me to DIY and circumvent his system.

I spent just under £600. Compared it like for like with UK supermarket
prices and realised I just saved myself £500 for a 5 hour round trip door to
door.

I'm starting to wonder how much brand name power tools are in France &
Belgium. Do they work on UK voltage? Since I go every two or so months
this could be interesting!

Whenever I go to mainland Europe (most recently France, The Netherlands
and Germany) I have a scout around the shops and compare prices of
things I know in the UK and I've never found a significant difference.


Admittedly I don't smoke and can well believe that there is a huge
difference between tobacco products. But when it comes to consumer
electronics, whisky, kids clothes etc. I really havn't found any huge
gulf in prices making it worth lugging the stuff back on the plane.
Booze and fags are on obvious exception if you are driving. (Even then
I just think you consume the stuff quicker if it's there rather than
getting better value out of it, but that's another issue).

Some relatives of ours used to sing the benefits of Spain because of
the cheap booze and fags even the cheapness of pepper corns for christs
sake, completely forgetting to mention that the water and electricity
are hideously expensive where they are.

Even petrol on our recent trip to France was within 1p or 2p of UK
prices. Then you had to add peage. Over our 1700 mile round trip the
running costs (petrol and tolls) per mile were within fractions of
pence of some of the long trips we've done over here recently.

--
Steve F