SMUGGLING
Old joke - I hate people who take drugs. Like Customs officials.Smuggling is bad, smuggling affects the economy of your country, it's a naughty thing to do. It has also been a UK tradition since about 2 days after the first introduction of import tax, boats whisking back and forth across the Channel by dead of night, Customs officials hurriedly created, and a very quiet war has raged ever since.
I smuggle one thing - cigs. I've been caught once, and had 5 cartons confiscated but on the whole I was lucky and my last few trips to the Continong have been to countries in the EU, where you can bring back as much as you are likely to need to turn your lungs into kippered flappy bits of cardboard.
Since I was in Spain in March, and in Portugal in April, it's been a while since I had to buy at UK prices. My last carton had packets of 20 cigs, from Portugal, with the price pre-stamped on them, 4.20 euros, so the carton was 42 euros. That's Portuguese law, the price is set by the government across all brands.
So I bought this morning - 68 smackers for a carton of 10 packets.
Now guess how many cigs there are in each packet. Go on. Guess.
SEVENTEEN.
So I guess I'm about to turn smuggler. That's just GREEDY, Britain. GREEDY.