The Boarding Pass Revolt: why passengers are taking a stand

Boarding pass … will you keep showing yours? Photograph: Alamy

Age: Three days

Appearance: Really rather cross

Title: The Boarding Pass Revolt

How about the Great British Boarding Pass Revolt? Sure, why not. It’s August.

Splendid. Now tell me what it is. An unspecified number of people at airports are refusing to show their boarding passes in duty free shops when asked.

I thought we all had to? Isn’t it for security? Or how they can tell you’re a traveller and thus entitled to duty free? No! That’s what everybody thinks but it isn’t true! The whole thing is a great big late-capitalist lie!

All right, calm down. What is the truth then? The truth is that these so-called “duty-free shops” don’t have to pay VAT on sales to people leaving the EU, so they ask to see people’s boarding passes in order to establish which purchases are eligible.

Sounds good. The shop pays less tax, I pay less money. Ah, but do you? A lot of shops just charge the same price and pocket the savings. The Independent singles out Boots, WH Smith and Dixons among the offenders.

But this is naked brigandry! Some people take that view. For their part, the shops insist that they pass the saving on evenly throughout their stores, that their stuff is still cheap by high street standards, and anyway offering different prices to different customers is a faff. Or as WH Smith put it, a “practical impossibility”.

Yeah right. I bet a lot of people feel misled anyway. Probably. “Dozens of readers have come forward to say they will refuse to show their boarding cards in future,” the Independent reports.

That sounds rather vague. OK, well, the Telegraph has conducted its own reader poll, in which 85% of people said that they will no longer show their boarding passes either.

Ha! That’ll bring the fat cats to their knees! How have they responded? They’ve said it’s fine. “Any of our customers that do not wish to share this information can shop with us without the boarding card being scanned”, said Boots.

Oh. Indeed.

Do say: “You’d like to see my boarding pass? Certainly …”

Don’t say: “…JUST PRISE IT FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS!”