Foreign Perspectives

In common with most things in France, the dead hand of government is evident here and shops are only allowed to have sales on set periods each year so the “Boxing Day sales” can’t start until January 10th and will end on February 17th (up to the 20th in some Departments). It is, of course, typically French to have overlly strict government regulation where much less is required and, of course, to ignore everything outside France. Amazon France seems to get away with ignoring the limitations on sale dates although I imagine that’s only because the French regulators haven’t gotten around to looking at the Internet site yet.

Unfortunately, that date means that each year the shops locally lose a considerable amount of business as many Spanish come here for their Dia de los tres Reyes (day of the three kings) on January 6th. In Spain, January 5th is effective Christmas Eve and the children receive their presents on the 6th (though globalisation means that they generally get presents on Christmas Day too these days).

One of the things that we did ourselves, in common with a considerable number of French who live around here, was to check out the pre-Christmas offers in Spain. Among several things that we bought there was the lovely little Nikon S10 (the updated version of the S4) for EUR 299 vs the £405 (about EUR 600) that Jessops in Belfast were asking for the outdated version. Of course, that means that we paid the slightly lower Spanish taxes rather than the French ones and naturally such practices mean that the French customs people create a massive backlog of cars at the border point with a view to illegally attempting to recover the French tax from people. In fact, the French government seem to be the only one on the continent that’s ignorant of the fact that no additional tax is payable on personal imports from another European country.

So, sorry if you were looking forward to some Boxing Day sales in France but at least you’ve not long to wait now.