Okay, I'm taking back my praise of GAME on Dawson Street and their handling of Wii preorders. See if you follow me here.

I walked down a little while ago to hand them the twenty euros required as a deposit. I hadn't yet done this, though they'd signed me up for a preorder there anyway over the phone.

As I handed the guy behind the counter my 20 quid, he said: "Great! Now in December you only owe us another 250 euros!"

I got dangerous. "Hold the phone. What? The suggested retail price is 250 euros. I just gave you twenty."

"Well, yes, but that's for Europe. Our VAT is higher."

I'm sorry, this shit stinks. As you may or may not know, VAT is the exorbitant regressive tax (ie: a tax that extracts more money from those with low income than it does from those with high income) that Europeans have to pay on every purchase. In Europe, it is an average 16.5%. In Ireland, it is 21%.

Okay, I'll pay your Mickey Mouse Socialist Tax, you fuckin' rat bastard commies. But let's see who's getting gouged here. European VAT is 16.5%, which is 4.5% less than Irish VAT. So, at most, I should be paying 4.5% more than the average cheese-sniffing Frenchie or Bratwurst-flossing German. 16.5% of 250 euros if 42.25. That means that 20 euros is actually almost twice as much as the difference in VAT.

You know, it's not like I can't afford an extra 10 or 20 euros. Hell, that's less than my daily booze allowance. But there's a reason Europeans complain about the price of consoles and games and it's because we're constantly getting gouged on shit like this. Being a gamer in this country is more expensive than heroin. Florian Eckhardt