Sadly though it's not the government that we groan under the yoke of, but the Australian one that has just done something extremely sensible. You may or may not recall that a few weeks back various Oz MPs were getting very hot under the collar about why various tech products cost a lot more there than they do in other countries. They called in the execs and had at them and various fairly weak justifications were offered. Transport costs, small market, high costs of infratstucture and so on. No one quite had the chutzpah to point out that they were simply profit maximising businesses. They charged more in Australia because they could charge more there and that's simply it.

It does appear though that the MPs uderstood what they weren't directly told, for:

Acknowledging that companies have the right to decide the pricing of their own products, the committee made a number of recommendations to address the price of goods in Australia.

Ooooh! What?

It wants the import restrictions in the Copyright Act, 1968 removed and add a clause to allow consumers to circumvent geoblocking to ensure they're getting the best price. It also wants to teach Australian consumers how to get around geoblocking and provide more access to technologies that allow them to do so. Needless to say they will also need educating on how far Australian Consumer Law allows them to go on this.

• If companies do not agree to lift geoblocking, or to give consumers the tools they need to circumvent it, the committee recommended enacting a ban on geoblocking "as an option of last resort". It also recommends voiding any law which seeks to enforce geoblocking.

Blimey, can I emigrate? Politicians make recommendations, based upon the evidence and further, recommendations that will actually solve the problem?

For the companies charge higher prices because they can. Remove their ability to do so by removing the artificial restrictions upon consumers and they will no longer be able to charge those higher prices. Thus they won't.

Isn't this so joyfully different from our own dear Margaret, Lady Hodge, and her practice of offering soundbites without demonstrating any understanding of the basic underlying problem?