The Press Takes A View On Customs Matters

 

I’ve said before that I think merging the Inland Revenue with Customs and Excise wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but shifting the Law Enforcement side over to the Border Force helped to unbalance HM Revenue and Customs moral compass. 

Even so, while researching the HM Customs on TV articles, I’ve been struck by the antagonistic attitude of the press. In 1986 the Sunday Mirror trailed The Collectors TV series by asking readers if they’d, “ever tried to smuggle a bottle of booze or packet of ciggies through the customs? And cursed the peaked-cap Customs man for an interfering busybody?”

And in the Belfast News Letter, columnist Charles Fitzgerald began his review of The Duty Men by saying, “If you believe that Governments should not interrupt the free circulation of such indispensable items by imposing monstrous taxes on them and pricing them out of reach, then like me you’ll not think beating the Revenue to be much of a crime, “ and boasting, “many’s the bottle of good French brandy I’ve got past the ‘anything to declare’ lads when I lived and worked on the Channel coast, just a hen-hop from air France.”

But Fitzgerald then sobered up: “things have changed now in the smuggling world, and the reality now is the illicit trading in drugs that destroy hundreds of lives. It is a filthy trade!” 

Even so, he concluded that, “Maybe less time chasing poteen makers and more on putting the drug barons out of business would be in the interest of all of us. After all, if we didn’t have so many bureaucrats wasting so much money, all those punitive taxes on everything that makes life worth the living would then be unnecessary. And we wouldn’t have to employ so many revenue men either.”

That was 1987. I dread to think what those journalists would write about the Border Force now: ““A little bit of weed or a line of charlie doesn’t hurt anyone but when are they going to stop the boats?”


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