A six-month Vat holiday for small firms, nevermind a cut in National Insurance, is not the antidote to recession. It will be impossible to recover the deferred tax.
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Woolworth has emerged as the latest pension fund with a business attached but giving away the operating assets is no way out of the problem.
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The headline on this blog’s adviser to Alistair Darling last month was “A stamp duty cut would boost the economy – but wait”. The chancellor obviously liked the idea, but instead of waiting he has talked about it. Now he has no choice but to act immediately – even if it is to kill the idea.

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It was only in June 2008 that the governor of the Bank of England had to write his grovelling letter to the chancellor explaining why UK inflation was above 3 per cent when the target is 2 per cent. But inflation is galloping ahead so quickly that July’s figure will already be over 4 per cent  - and it is heading quickly towards 5 per cent.
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Of course business objects to the threat of a windfall tax, but if politicians have to collect revenue from someone, companies making windfall profits are an easy place to start.

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With public finances collapsing, the chancellor may think this the last time to give away money. But it is because tax revenues are falling that he can afford to waive the taxes he is not receiving anyway.

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Alistair Darling has been forced to scrap his proposals of taxing foreign profits but the problem has not gone away. The probability now is that the chancellor is so dizzy from performing U-turns he chooses to sit back and do nothing.

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We should not expect the government to stand guarantor to every company in Britain – whether manufacturer or investment vehicle. Yet that is effectively what the financial ombudsman is expecting in demanding compensation for the policyholders of Equitable Life.

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French president Nicolas Sarkozy and Britain’s lorry drivers are unlikely bedfellows but they have something in common: they have both got it wrong in demanding cuts in fuel tax to compensate for rising oil prices.

The problem is that demand for fuel exceeds supply. The rising oil price is the mechanism that will bring those two into equilibrium - encouraging more production and discouraging consumption. Cutting the tax on oil and thus reducing the price to the user will merely stimulate demand and push the untaxed price higher still.

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Alistair Darling flips his 10p coin and instead of tails, 5m people lose, it is heads, 22m win. Yet Darling emerges as a loser either way. He has dug a large hole to get himself out of a small one and he now needs to dig an even bigger one to extricate himself from the latest tax changes. And despite his largesse, he has received no glory.

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