SOREN JESSEN, a sometime Merrill Lynch banker who now owns City eaterie One Lombard Street, is mad as hell. He has just incurred a £54,000 stamp duty charge for renewing his lease on the premises — ouch.
He's so angry, in fact, that he is petitioning the Government to suspend stamp duty on business leases during the recession. Best of luck with that, Soren, but you've probably got no chance. Anyway, isn't the recession now officially over? “The Government should be doing everything it can to support business in the current climate,” Jessen moans. “The restaurant industry has been hit hard by the recession, so taxes like stamp duty on top of our rising costs are a kick in the teeth.” If you can be bothered, his petition is here: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/businessduty/.

* AT Ascot, a punter put his top hat on the bonnet of a car while enjoying a picnic lunch — only for it to be snatched within seconds by a young miscreant who was last seen heading off with it through the crowds. They cost around £500 apiece, so someone at Ascot is doing a roaring trade, and it's not just the bookies.

Uh-oh, dialling up trouble...

AH, the curse of technology. “In the olden days, I remember, phones were terrible things,” writes Dominic Casciani in a letter to BBC in-house newspaper Ariel. “To place a call, one was required to lift the handset and dial the number. The new Voip phones thankfully come with a double-lock on my decision-making. Firstly, I pick up the handset; then I dial the number; finally I am required to press ok' to approve my consciously taken decision to make a call. If I'm unsure what I'm doing (an everyday occurrence), Siemens have provided a five-second cooling-off period before actually making the connection. I typically use those five seconds to contemplate the full existential gravity of speaking to someone I cannot actually see.
“On other occasions, I muse whether the BBC can ever do something the simple way, when
a more complicated option is available.”

We can't have too many quangos

AMONG the proposals contained in Lord Carter's Digital Britain report is the creation of “a digital delivery agency for digital Britain”. The move will come as bad news for those employed in the five (yes, five) “digital delivery” bodies
that exist at present. They are: Digital UK, set up to “deliver TV switchover by 2012”; Digital Radio Delivery Group, supposed to “drive digital radio upgrading by 2015”; Stakeholder Consortium on Digital Participation, which promotes “digital participation”; Digital Inclusion Taskforce, “helping the socially and digitally excluded”; and USC Network Design and Procurement Body, “delivering the Universal Service Commitment by 2012”. One Digital Delivery Agency, says the report, could bring “significant” benefits, including “significant economies of scale”; “removal of unnecessary overlaps” and “greater clarity for consumers about to where to go for help and advice.” Brilliant.

* DIGITAL Britain proposes a 50p per month household broadband tax to help pay for the country's super-fast networks. Except it's not called a tax at all — or a levy, charge or fee come to that. Carter prefers the convoluted phrase “small general supplement on all fixed copper lines (that is, residential copper lines, the equivalent business analogue and cable telephony lines) from 2010 for a Next Generation Fund.” Small general supplement? Next Generation Fund? It's enough to make a government spin doctor proud. Give that man a peerage! What do you mean, he's already got one?

* ANOTHER recommendation in Digital Britain is the establishment of a “Usability Centre for Video Games”. The idea is it will be a “video games centre of excellence”, based in MediaCity in Salford, destined to be a the new home for much of the BBC as it relocates out of London. The new venture would combine “usability testing, applied research, internship training and public interface components”. Any suggestion it is a giant amusement arcade for BBC staffers pining for the capital is of
course completely wide of the mark, and so old-school...

* ONE jarring note in the thumping 238-page report produced by Carter, the soon-to-depart communications minister is, er, that a whacking 43% of the British population don't want digital at all. “Despite the advantages of digital participation, as outlined in this document, 43% of those asked in a recent Ofcom study said that even if offered a free computer and broadband subscription', they still would not choose to be .”
Some people, they just don't get it, do they, Lord Carter?