The European Union Hates Books and Education
Posted on Wednesday, 13 December, 2006
This morning I received the two excellent books “Object Oriented Perl” and “Perl Best Practices” by the eminently competent and entertaining Dr. Damian Conway that I had ordered on Amazon's US site. Imagine my consternation when the postman grinned at me as though I had illegally ordered cigarettes on the Internet again and told me: “Alright then, that would be €11.79 for custom duties.” Since my postman is more than 2 meters tall, I did not dare to object and went to get my wallet. But then I had to ask: “I am just curious, but between you and me, 12 bloody euros in tariffs? I mean, it's two books that are barely worth 35€!” As it turned out, it was only a 5-euro duty, along with a 7-euro processing fee, but still a 15% (!) duty on educational books? Are you kidding me? I mean it's not like I ordered the Great Anthology of American Porn by Hugh Hefner or How To Build A Dirty Bomb by Osama Bin Laden, but an educational book on computer programming! Isn't that at odds with the EU's purported aim to “become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world”?
Categories: Free Thought, Free Markets Web Development and Programming
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