The Quintessence of Parochialism

We're doing some stock development work with a few other library authorities and to help it along some of us have bought into an online service that does a lot of the hard work for us. One of our colleagues wants to join in the purchase but is having problems caused by their Executive Procurement Unit, who says:

"Council policy is that we do not purchase directly from companies based in foreign countries."

The company's head office is in Glasgow.