Airport Duty Free My Arse!

Over the last 2 weeks I've spent a little bit of time in the airports
around the world, yes hardly the most exciting way to spend my time, not only am I having to be up at stupid'o'clock when I travel, but I have to then spend my time queueing at the airport just to get to the departure lounge... well that in the UK anyway, the European airports seem so much more organised!

So today I'm going to have a slight moan about the prices of duty free, undoubtedly if I were a smoker (which thank god I'm not) then their would be a huge saving to be made on the little cancerous sticks, so I will leave tobacco out of this, I'll even leave wines and spirits out since I haven't needed to but any of that juice for at least a year (although coming back a month or so ago through the Channel Tunnel I did look at buying some wine, I have to say it did go back on the shelf, cheap it was not, in fact far from it, at almost 15 euro a bottle, I nearly fell over!) anyway I digress, looking at aftershave, perfume and electrical items....

No I know that the pound is nowhere near as strong against the euro as it used to be, but I picked up a bottle of Diesel for myself knowing I was running a bit low of the love spray at home, paid my cash at the counter thinking I must have a bargain, only to get home and look it up online.... I'd been done! The same bottle from an online store in the UK worked out with delivery almost 10 quid cheaper! I was devastated!

So the following week, a different airport I started looking at some electrical items, specifically a nice HD video camera to capture my baby's growing days (or was I hoping to capture something funny to sell to Beadles About or whatever it is these days) anyway, again I'm doing the math in my head for the euro to sterling conversions.... and low and behold I could probably by it in Curry's or Comet cheaper, in fact, I would have to say it wasn't far off list....

So when did airport duty free get so expensive? I'd hate to look at some of the clothing, have you noticed how Gatwick and Heathrow only have the real high end stores in there, Burberry, Harrods etc etc, yeah take the VAT off that and it is a little cheaper, but cheaper of already expensive doesn't make it cheap!