Taxing times for good sense

Cutting VAT to 15% will make a difference of about 2p in the pound to shoppers. Wow. Increasing the tax burden for those people who can still afford to spend, spend, spend to pay for it is, frankly, perverse. And I think someone is forgetting the really rich don't pay their taxes here anyway.
But while VAT is such big news let us look at an example of just how increasing government meddling at all levels of British life has contributed to us arriving at a point where the national product of GB plc is bureaucracy.
Car Parts Direct has internet customers in 40 countries and generated the sort of jobs you won't find in the Guardian. Not a single Crank Case Support Mentor on the staff.
As its customers have such a wide international base, CPD lists prices without the VAT element. Well, why not? Some countries don't have it, others have it at a different rate but all know what taxes they must pay at point of import. For domestic customers the VAT element is shown at checkout.
This is not good enough for Nottingham County Council, a consumer protection officer of the local authority wants every price on every page listed VAT inclusive.
This, says CPD boss Mark Cornwall, would kill the business with his prices appearing most unattractive to foreign buyers. So that's change 60,000 prices or face a fine and jail.
M.P. Alan Duncan, Shadow secretary of State for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform said: "This is a perfect example of bureaucrats at the local level misinterpreting the law - and of the need for businesses to be able to appeal to someone to get this kind of ill-judged bossiness off their back. I am dismayed by the stubbornness and lack of initiative being displayed by Trading Standards."
Mark Cornwall said: "Trading Standards should be dealing with banks, power companies and debt collectors at national level where consumer complaints are rife. Instead they employ the unemployable to stalk and bully private companies such as ours because they think we cannot protect ourselves - they are wrong."
I say; when will someone rein in this insidious, creeping tide of jobsworths and public-employed nuisances who can spend months chasing something as pointless as this but can't arrange the simple gritting of an icy road?