is it just me or does andreas rogge makes one of the most beautiful set of pipes? i only saw the picture of them on the web.. but, they are the most beautiful things i have ever seen..
on that note, what is involved in buying a set from oversea? what is VAT? does the buyer pay the VAT, duty and other stuff?
regsards,
peter kim
Well…No…its your opinion.
VAT is Value Added Tax for EU buyers. If the items were exported to the US, no VAT would be collected or due.
I was once going to import some pipes from the UK so I asked my mother (who is a U.S. Customs broker) to look up the duty I would have to pay. If I recall correctly all bag pipes are duty free when importing them from anywhere into the U.S. (the scotish and irish politicians where probably responsible for that 
) So it should be a matter of shipping costs.
Well, as they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I like the looks of his pipes, and he surely caters for individual desires. But there are certainly other makers whose sets look very good, too. I would rather go for good sound and playability (of course, Andreas’ pipes fit the bill here, too).
Right you are about US Customs; bagpipes are specifically excluded from import duty.
But do NOT make the mistake of thinking that bagpipes are duty-free into Canada. The Evil Former Soviet Socialist Republic of Kanuckistan’s Stasi, or Securitate, or KGB (known as Customs Canada) will open ANYTHING and EVERYTHING to tack on at least a 15% tax.
Can you tell I’ve been burned by Customs Canada? And you know what burns me up even more? I’ve had packages come in from the UK and Ireland, one of which contained a whole flute, which didn’t merit even a passing glance from customs. But noooooooooooo, I get a headjoint sent up here from the US, a friggin’ HEADJOINT, and I get the third degree from CC and an import duty. I think they just hate for things to come up here from the US.
Really, Canada’s OK, (or NICE as Bono put it just recently), but their customs service . . . kind of like their police force, they’re just looking for something to do.
(/end rant)
Stuart
Come on down to the U.S. of Good Ole Boys and try getting decent health care and/or a secure job----then we can talk about getting burned.
They’re for grabs if you want them.
Gosh I know we could really derail this . . .
One hospital in Ontario can provide emergency cardiac catheterization 24/7 for patients having acute MIs (heart attacks). ONE. Luck of the draw if you live near it, and in a province this big. . . Emergency catheterization is standard-of-care in the US, for anyone, insured or not, who fails drug therapy for heart attack.
So don’t perpetuate the idea that health care is somehow better when you socialize it. It’s not.
But back to the topic . . .
Stuart
EDITED to add this: I apologize for the sideline. I’m quite sensitive to the whole health-care argument issue, and I believe in providing health care for everyone . . . but I really don’t think their (Canadian) or our (American) systems works.
Ya, no doubt.
I was in a car accident a few years back and was wisked to the nearest hospital’s ER. There they gave me an MRI scan of my neck and back because X-ray’s were inconclusive. There were 7 hospitals with MRI machines in the Denver metro area at that time and only 4 in all of Canada then. 
Scott McCallister
Not that I am happy with the situation, but something that seems to get lost in the shuffle is understanding simple demographics. Canada is geographically larger than the US, but you could fit the entire population of Canada into the population of the Greater Los Angeles area. Social medicine is a fine concept, but you have to have a population base large enough to pay for and maintain it.
Similar arguments are made about just about any service in Canada, like government services, utilities, even postal services, compared to the US, but lets face it, the US Postal Service does not ship a half a bag of mail at a time. We just don’t have enough taxpayers to establish the same kind of base that is available in the US.
On the plus side, this also means we don’t have the same levels of crime and poverty as the US, and are too small for Al Qaeda to even notice. 
djm
Amazing.
A thread that began with some laudatory comments about Andreas Rogge’s pipemaking abilities, and just 10 Replies along and the discussion has quickly turned to health care issues and… Al Qaida!?!
It’s all due to the wepnsamasdersducshn factor. And Mike Moore, if you’re of the opposite persuasion.
Michael Moore - yes I have enjoyed reading his books, I’m amazed he find time to make pipes as well. Anybody know what his waiting list is like?
Ken
Just how far off topic can we go before this hits 20 posts?
No no, it’s my fault. Entirely. I made an offhand offensive remark about Customs Canada, which lead to a comment about the differing health systems . . . which is a topic close to my heart, and about which I have ZERO frontal-lobe-filter.
Sorry. Back to Rogge.
Yes, I have/had a snakewood narrow-bore D set which is visually stunning and easy to play. His pipes are nice!
Stuart
That’s why this board is so great! I can read any thread, whether I am interested in the topic or not, and know that it will branch off into umpteen different directions. I find this stimulating, and immensely entertaining! I am not averse to giving a little push in assisting this sort of anarchy. 
djm
Hmm, yes. I’d really like to know what incoming PM Paul Martin’s stance is on the issue of waiting lists. Forget health care and customs, can’t he get those Canadian pipemakers to work faster?
I’m a Yank with a Canadian girlfriend so we have this whole health care debate thing all the time. Reading this forum can be eerie at times…
Getting back to Rogge, yes he does make nice-looking sets, doesn’t he? Then again, so do many, many other makers. They also sound quite nice in my opinion, but some people on this forum would probably not concur with me there. I’ll be receiving a new chanter from him soon so I’ll let y’all know what I think of it after putting it through its paces.
Actually, I just got an e-mail from his workshop saying that the chanter’s taking a bit long to finish because Andreas is ill at the moment. Hmm…what’s the deal with health care in Germany?!
Looks like I good 'n derailed this thread. Oh, well!
You know, I find two things amazing. One: there is SO much propaganda here in Canada that the American system is crap. An amazing amount. Seriously, the Canadian population seems to believe that there are thousands to millions of folks south of the border with no health care. Their media, and their government, have equated no insurance with no health care. That’s ridiculous, as anyone with any experience in the US public health system can tell you. The US private system is excellent, and the standard of care in the US is the gold standard the world over. There are MANY people in the US without insurance, that’s true; there’s a weird web of welfare-based stuff they have to navigate to get care, also true. Many don’t know how, also true. However, when you get into that welfare-based system, standard of care is standard of care. Folks at big public hospitals get state-of-the-art treatment, just like the paying folks do. We need to figure out a way to insure the uninsured, yes. People fall through the cracks, yes. No one is turned away from hospitals in the US because they can’t pay. Clinics, yes.
Second, in the US, there seems to be propaganda that equates health insurance with available medical care, and that’s equally false. People here in Canada, especially in this province (with zero private medicine) have no choice but to wait for things. Even procedures I consider semi-elective (or semi-urgent . . . half-full vs. half-empty) have waiting lists months long. I have OHIP, the Ontario provincial plan, since I’m a foreign worker here for more than 3 months. Anyhoo, I tried to go get seen by someone when I had pneumonia about a month ago. They told me they could see me in 4 weeks. I asked if they understood that I thought I had pneumonia, and they said, yep, 4 weeks. So I pulled out the trump that works in the US . . . I’m an MD, can someone just listen to my chest and see if he/she thinks I need antibiotics? Nope, 4 weeks. Or I can go to a walk-in clinic. I called the walk-in: 8 hour wait. Um, nope. I called in a prescription for myself in the US and had a relative overnight it to me. I had a patient not too long ago with a serious condition, the treatment for which involves cardiac catheterization. Instead of getting the cath while she was in house, she was sent home on an antiarrhythmic drug and put on the list for the cath study . . . she’ll come back for it in April. That would never happen in the US, she’d never have been sent home.
Yes, care must be rationed. Medicine is a limited resource. But, there are distinct advantages to a free-market (or non-socialized) medical system that seem lost on the people up here.
I guess I’m just glad to see that another government (Canada) isn’t forthright about something, and disheartened to hear there’s so little insight up here. We’re so close, but yeesh, the border seems wide sometimes.
Stuart
Actually, I haven’t been able to get a regular doctor. I’ve never had one. They stopped taking new patients here several years ago. The only option is the walk-in clinics. The doctors were bleeding the system dry and living very well indeed, so the government cut back (probably too far), and the doctor’s reacted by refusing to take new patients, or heading to the US for bigger salaries, meanwhile defaulting on the government loans that put them through medical school in the first place. Socialist medicine at its finest.
You got a doctor? You’re LUCKY. We used to have to get up half an hour before we went to bed, lick the lake clean, eat a bowl of steaming hot gravel, and before we went to bed oor da’ would slash us to pieces wi’ breadknife, and dance upon our graves singing hallelujah. An you try and tell that to the young folks today, and they won’t believe you.
djm
I didn’t get a doctor. I still don’t have one here. It sounds like toooooooo much trouble, unless I get SARS or mad cow or something.
And in that case, there’s no treatment anyway.
Kind of WIN-WIN.
Stuart