DIYbanter - View Single Post

Terry Casey

In article ,
says...

I recollect VHS VCR's coming through France had to be
opened, inspected and recorded before being shipped on to
us.

Hardly.

Machines from the Far East would have been shipped by sea
direct to the UK and imports from Holland and Germany would
have been shipped through Dutch and Belgian ports - no need to
go anywhere near France!

What you are getting mixed up with was the French using the
most devious means possible deter imports from damaging the
business of their own manufacturers.

THeir TV market had ben protected by the use, first, of their
unique 819-line system (in the same way as our 405-line system
protected the UK market) and later by the use of the SECAM
colour system.

However, VCRs didn't fit into this protectionist mechanism so
another way had to be sought. What they did was to choose a
point as far away from any port or border as possible - from
memory, the site of a disused mine in central France and set
up a Customs post solely for the import of VCRs. So, any
imports had to travel halfway across France to the post where,
no doubt, the French worked at a very leisurely way to incur
the maximum level of delay, to befire being tken to their
eventual destination which may well have been the poibt that
they'd entered the country in the first place.

The effect of all this was to push the cost of all these
imported VCRs to artificially high level.

The French were very good at this before the EU instituted its
open border policy. Another example was diesel fuel which was
taxed at a much higher level than in neighbouring countries.

Coaches and lorries entering France were only permitted a
maximum of 110 litres of fuel and what a Belgian coach driver
described to me as the French Flying Patrol would stop
vehicles at random and dip the tank. The penalty for having
excess fuel without proof that it had been bought in France
was a very stiff fine - payable, in cash - on the spot!

The day after he told me this we were stopped a short distance
from the border as we were returning to Belgium but there were
no problems!

This was in the days of two colour typewriter ribbons and I
later noticed his worksheet for the day had the following - in
red - typed right across the middle of it:

Niet meer dan 110 liter gasoil in Frankrijk moeten worden
genomen. Vergeet niet!

I think you can get the gist of that!!

--

Terry

---
This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.
http://www.avg.com