It is difficult to summon up much sympathy for politicians these days, whatever their political affiliation.

But I found myself in that surprising position when talking to the hapless Colin Botterill of UKIP about his EU election leaflets, which were, as the Daily Mail put it when picking up on PrintWeek’s story, printed in GERMANY.

Imagine, dear reader, my original joy and delight when spotting that both UKIP and the Labour Party had printed with Johnny Foreigner.

But then I came to something of a realisation. Outrage was not really appropriate. I know Saxoprint is German because it’s my job to know that sort of stuff.

Any normal person, ie someone not zipped into a print anorak, would struggle to find any mention of this minor detail on Saxoprint’s UK website.

It has a ‘.co.uk’ address. It has an 0800 freephone number. It has a registered office in west London. It talks about 400 staff but doesn’t mention where they are located. It says it is ‘printing in Europe’ and then lists nine countries, without pointing out that it is in fact printing in Germany.

There is a hint of ‘Germlish’ to the text but how many people would really notice that?

The non-expert buyer of commodity print items is hardly likely to be aware that the sort of industrial print outfit that runs two eight-colour Speedmaster XL162s and an XL145 is unlikely to be located on Chiswick High Road. They’re just looking for a cheap/easy way to purchase leaflets.

All in all, it’s a hat-tip to Saxoprint. Its setup is very clever, and there is nothing of course to stop UK firms doing exactly the same thing in reverse by targeting continental buyers in the same way.

An alternative approach, for those web-to-printers who do print here on the small island, is this: how about making more of the ‘Buy British’ zeitgeist?

If you don’t have a suitably prominent ‘Printed in the UK’ mark on your web-to-print shop, then why not? It should help to attract the partisan printing pound.

And who knows, come next year’s general election, you might pick up some leaflet work for Labour and UKIP.