On Mon, 02 Sep 2013 12:17:05 +0000, Jethro_uk wrote:

All I know is despite several reprimands from the EU, HMRC have a long-
established policy of preventing UK citizens exercising their rights in
the purchase of tobacco and alcohol in *any* quantity for personal use.

I can kinda see both sides of that one. Yes, there's been serious abuse
by HMRC, and there have been a lot of genuine personal-use imports picked
up on illegally.

But, at the same time, there has undoubtedly been one **** of a lot of
smuggling for resale. I'd hazard a guess that those which have gone
through unquestioned outnumber the false-positive stops probably in the
thousands to one.

And, yes, there are ways to solve it at source. But people want less
union across the EU, not more...

It's a bit rich of the UK to complain about customs stops when we hardly
have clean hands ourselves.

If you think that's even remotely similar to the deliberate blockading at
La Linea, though...