Back

I've been away on a trip round the Baltic and now hope to get back to regular blogging.

Keeping in touch with the UK was done using e-mail but I did have my mobile phone with me. I'm a very recent convert to the mobile phone phenomenon and was impressed with my el-cheapo machine bleeping at me every morning with a message like "Welcome to Norway, calls cost 95p per minute." In one country - it may have been Germany - the welcome message also gave the number of the British Embassy...

But now I hear that the Eurocrats want to cut the high cost of using a mobile abroad, or at least within the EU. When I say, "cut the high cost", I don't of course mean that any of these people are going to enter the phone business. No, they mean legislation to bring down prices. Last night on the TV news an industry spokesman actually defended his employers by saying that competition was the best way to reduce prices. Apparently, the British phone companies could reduce prices of international calls but would have to make up the lost revenue by increasing the cost of our subsidised handsets. There's no such thing as a free phone.

In the quest for lower consumer prices, I place far greater trust with profit-seeking entrepreneurs than with politicians whose prime motivation is the creation of a European superstate.