Sean Connery's new casino on the Isle of Man was nearly deserted for lack of tourists, who normally come over by boat from Britain at this time of year.
Chicken farmers on the Orkney and Shetland islands off Scotland's northern coast were stuck with 2,000,000 eggs and no way to get them to market. On the Channel Islands of Guernsey and Jersey, potato farmers worried about how they would ship this year's crop to Britain.
The inhabitants of Britain's fringe last week were indeed feeling the pinch of Britain's three-week-old shipping strike.
But in London, Leeds or Liverpool, the average person was...