The postcode lottery
From one type of lottery to another - no this has nothing to do with the level of childcare nor hospital facilities (thankfully) but er... postcodes. While I accept that being abroad, and expecting to be able to carry on as if I still lived in the UK is somewhat of a high expectation, but that's what the EU is supposed to be all about. You should be able to live where you want, buy and sell where you want - without much ado (provided of course you pay your taxes)*; and you would think that with the dawn of the 'virtual' commerce and 'e-business' it would be possible to do this, and pretty much anything else, from anywhere, provided you have a computer and internet access to hand? Happily this is true most of the time, indeed if it weren't I would not be in France working for a British firm. However some things are still as painful as queuing at a UK post office on the first Monday of the month (behind all those pensioners). One righteously [...]