In English the "customer is king," or at least theoretically. In Czech the "customer is our master." More often, though, Czech customers are people to be toyed with and bamboozled, because they don't follow the very basics of self-protection. How can a self-respecting society allow the chief lobbyist for the large foreign-owned grocery chains, Pres. Tomáš Prouza of the SOCR retailers' union, to also act as an adviser to the minister of industry and trade (Jozef Síkela of STAN), who is responsible for appointing the head of the very agency (ČOI) that is supposed to monitor and inspect the business practices of the retailers? Lidl used advertisements this week to announce a 6% price cut on more than 1,000 products, but Právo reported today that Lidl had raised some of its prices at the end of last year and was now returning them to where they were originally. With Prouza as one of its public faces, Lidl clearly thinks it can get away with this, because, after all, the customer is ... Czech.