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Tuesday, August 19, 2008

The sound of a boomerang...

...hitting someone firmly on the back of the head.

From the Times, courtesy of the revived EU rota:

Vodafone today added to the increasing cost of living burdening Britons after it announced plans to raise its minimum call charges, leaving customers paying higher mobile phone bills.

How could they! The heartless swine!

Industry analysts say operators are slipping in price rises to combat lost revenue as the European Commission plans to cut termination rates — the price that mobile companies charge each other and fixed-line operators, such as BT, to connect calls to their networks.

Aha. The saintly EU tries to directly fix prices - but ungrateful businesses simply respond by increasing other prices. Typical.

The whole ludicrous operation is like a flashback to the 1970s. There used to be a vintage 1975 pamphlet called "The Attack on Inflation" lying around the Open Europe office.

It explained why inflation in Britain had hit 25%, and answered what now seem to be rather curious questions like, "Why did the Government not just freeze all prices?"

Such questions seem retro in the era of basic economic literacy, but apparently there are some people who still don't get it. Perhaps we will dig out our copy and mail it to Brussels...

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