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Ireland is beautiful, it's cheap for us to get there, no silly border checks and I always hope to bump into Pierce. 😉
I used to buy all my DVDs/BLURAYs/books in the UK. Sadly, I have to go elsewhere now. I tried a few times but the extra costs went through the roof. I also wanted to take my wife to London for our Honeymoon since she's never been there. But obviously I'm not paying for our visa. I regret this. Visits to the UK happened often and with a smile. Now I just don't feel particularly welcome there anymore.
What you have to pay up to a value (purchase price plus transport costs, generally speaking) below 150 euros is the importation VAT, which is the same as your local VAT (i.e. 19 % in the case of Germany), but no additional customs levies in the strict sense. This would mean to me that your Hitchcock box cost about 368 euros or so, if the Belgian VAT level is at least similar.
But still thank you, trying to analyse this I first realized that the minimum limit for importation VAT (of EUR 22.00) no longer exists, so I'll be very reluctant to buy from amazon.co.uk anymore.
At work, they are doing right now an animation (game, bets and quizzes) about the Six Nations Rugby Tournament right now. But they did one tiny mistake. To present each country, they had flags. All was fine for France (of course), Italy, Ireland, Wales and Scotland, but to represent England, they used this :
Instead of this :
Now i know that, from a non british viewpoint, England and the United Kingdom are often confused with one another, but still, would it have been that difficult to find the right flag ?
https://www.today.com/parents/banned-books-list-t245898
Stuff like this, things being edited out of movies, etc. is a complete insult to artistic freedom and should never be allowed to happen under any circumstances.
MAUS is still mandatory reading in my school!
Censorship really is pathetic. Just take a deep dive into the history of the video nasties in the UK, a terrifyingly barbaric hysteria running rampant in the '80s and '90s, spearheaded by daft sods like Mary Whitehouse, a textbook case of a failed nun who hates sex and blood and decides everyone else should too. She talked ambitious politicians into supporting her witchhunt; consequently, video stores were raided, livestock was confiscated and even destroyed, owners were fined or even imprisoned! All of that happened because of horror and exploitation classics like Maniac, The Driller Killer, SS Experiment Camp, Cannibal Holocaust... Over here in Belgium, meanwhile, I could easily walk into a video store and buy these films perfectly legitimately, as a 14-year old no less (and looking not a day above 12). But in the UK, hopelessly conservative politicians issued bans following the crippled rhetoric from old hag Whitehouse, false and fabricated statistics and religious turmoil (which, for some mysterious reason, people still pay attention to). When real-life violence was blamed on Child's Play 3, hands-down the lamest of the series, UK censors went loony. At one point, even Schindler's List was confiscated by overzealous policemen, thinking the film was just another 'video nasty', which tells you something about the intellect and practices of these idiots. Pam Grier's classic Foxy Brown was blacklisted and even Rambo: First Blood and Michael Winner's Death Wish films were targeted by moaning Whitehouse.
Fredric Wertham tried it in the '50s, Mary Whitehouse, CBE(!), repeated it in the '80s. Both are dead now, and I'm enjoying my comic books and violent movies, neither turning gay -- which Wertham disgustingly described as an illness boys would get from reading superhero comics -- nor turning violent, although if Whitehouse were still alive, I might consider making an exception. No one tells me what I can read or watch, nor at what age. If she was afraid of penises, breasts or limbs, so be it. My abilities to tell fiction from reality are, however, still perfectly functional.
It saddens me, @FoxRox, that these forms of censorship persist. We had one crazy mother a few years ago, who demanded to read the school's book selection for her daughter first, so she could cross out all the sentences she perceived as disturbing and render them unreadable. Some coming-of-age material for teens evidently contains a lot of sexual material, such as detailed descriptions of the act of masturbation. Mommy returned one book with almost half of all sentences scratched out, because to the unintelligent woman's surprise, words or sentences alone are often meaningless; thoughts pervade entire paragraphs, sometimes even entire chapters. In the end, not a lot of "book" was left for her daughter to peruse. The mother stated religious motivations. Apparently, Jesus thinks sex is filthy. My colleague instantly knew she was dealing with "one of those" and decided to arrest further attempts at trying to reason with this deplorable person. Luckily, the daughter was smarter. She smuggled a new copy into her bedroom, read the whole thing, had a blast with it, and thanked her teacher. "Mommy has some issues." Of course, she has. Otherwise, you wouldn't prefer censorship over having an actual, relevant discussion about things. See Maus.
I'm sure current media would have the poor girl in quite a dither. Glad to see her efforts didn't pay off. But I am still appalled by the lack of apologies sent out to the honest folks trying to make a living renting video tapes.
Oh, I completely agree. Left, right, ... doesn't matter to me. Censorship is its own kind of evil.
Thank you, @FoxRox. Maturity. Yes, that's what it boils down to, doesn't it?
What you find shocking, someone else might not. Even if you believe that some content leads to bad behavior, wait for hard evidence first; and failing to find any, do not fabricate any yourself. Lastly, live and let live; what's out there in terms of books and films has a readership and viewership. No one is saying you need to partake, so don't tell others they can't.
It's immature, like you said, FoxRox!
Couldn't have said it better. And along those lines, not trying to get too political about this - as I've said everyone's guilty of it - but I find it amusing how each side finds different things more "offensive." Like on average, you have the conservatives flipping out about nudity and sexual things, and on the left it often is more to do with violence or attitudes that were simply part of the times. Funny thing is James Bond gets to piss off all of them at once! XD
But seriously, it's all just media too. Why get worked up over fiction and then ruin it for the rest of us that can maturely process everything? I think it's important especially to keep everything as it was in circulation to understand some older attitudes conveyed through media and stuff. The wise quote goes: those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. This stuff's important beyond just an artistic level too. I feel we need it to remember. Disagreeing with actions of characters or attitudes presented through media isn't the same as being a child about it and trying to erase it from existence.
In a word, religion.
Sometimes people want to be told how to think instead of thinking for themselves.
I remember when I was a teen and the Catholic newspaper said, "Octopussy--O [offensive]." It made me want to see it all the more...
I've actually been tempted to go into a really long rant about religion on here, but I fear it may not end well.
Take it from me (creator of the eventually closed Religion and Faith thread here) that that will indeed not end well. :)
Yeah, that's true. Censors come flying in from all sides. Religion doesn't monopolize censorship at all.
Certainly and of course limited discussion of religion and politics in regard to censorship is fine. Those are the main sources of censorship within a state, although I think the influence of the Church is certainly waning in the area of censorship. Self-censorship and the chilling effect of the modern day "cancel culture" are also factors to be considered.
It is when one specific side or other launches into polemics against the other and things start to get personal that we have problems here. That's why the Religion and Politics threads (many of which were admittedly mine) ultimately had to be closed down some years ago. I've learned the hard way that it was for the best.
You "pray" that it can be reopened someday ;)
Oh, heaven forbid! :)
Keep on rockin in the...um...
Well I suppose that you did once give confession. ;)
Aha, I always thought OMC was just a spelling mistake from your side.