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Mon, 19 Feb 2007

"To Control/Curb the Shopping Madness from south"

Yes, the "customs department" (or whatever its proper English name is) of north Cyprus announced that they are taking action to control/curb the shopping madness from south. This was reported in Yeniduzen Newpaper (http://www.yeniduzengazetesi.com/index.php/cat/1/news/11223/PageName/Haberler) with a whole bunch of unprofessional reasoning announced. They are stopping milk and meat products from crossing to north. The reason is not something (potentially) meaningful such health of the public (to be fair, buried all the way down, they mention that too). The real reason is buried down the text where Uzun explains how it had to be done because it is (a) one sided trade and (b) Greek Cypriots search the cars going from north sometimes with a lot of scrutiny. Hah hah. As we say in Turkish, "tell it to my hat" (kulahima anlat). What is even better is their explanation of their investigation (!) into the prices in south, they claim they go often to south and check prices and north is much cheaper. So, ask yourselves the question; "why do my people go and shop in south instead?" rather than introducing more controls over a crossing that (a) should not be there in the first place, (b) is overly controlled anyway. If anyone has any doubts about how unprofessional and unreasonable this is, don't you worry, because they help out with this too by announcing their targets ; (a) To get rid of the image that the customs office does not carry out proper controls at the gates, (b) to accelerate trade (really??), (c) to curb illegal smuggling, (d) to ensure tax security, (e) to improve the image and prestige of the office, (f) to record in order to form a statistical database". It is as if they hired writers from Monthy Python!

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