I went to the Campaign against Climate Change (CCC) conference on Saturday. My impression is that everything is turning a bit red-green – there was a heavy presence of the alphabet soup of revolutionary socialist groups. Perhaps the CCC event is typical of what’s happening to the climate change movement.

The headline on the front page of the Guardian today was: “£15,000 the cost of a green home – watchdog“.

The watchdog in question is the Climate Change Committee (henceforth this, not the Campaign against Climate Change will be known as the CCC!), headed by Lord Turner. It seems to me that the Committee’s brief should be to advise the best things to do, not everything that comes into their heads. And I should imagine most people would understand cost-effective to be one of the main criteria determining what is “best”.

Have they run the numbers?

Maybe we should before we spend £300bn (20 million houses at £15,000 each).

David MacKay reports that he was able to reduce his gas consumption by 27kWh/d, a staggering 67%. David was lucky in that he had cavity walls that are more cheaply insulated than the solid variety. I expect he was also highly motivated to maximise savings (and his savings include some thermostat manipulation), and not everyone would achieve such a good result. Let’s assume, though, that David’s 27kWh/d is the sort of energy saving we get for spending £15,000 on the average house.

There are about 20 million houses in the UK and 60 million people. The cost to save 27kWh/d/p is therefore around £5,000 per person by home improvements, or £5,000/27 = £185 per kWh/d/p.

How does this compare with other options?

MacKay lists costs of energy generation options in his Table 28.3. He doesn’t give the cost per kWh/d/p, but we can easily work it out:
- onshore wind provides 4.2kWh/d/p for £450/p, so £450/4.2 = ~£107 per kWh/d/p.
- offshore wind provides 3.5kWh/d/p for £650/p, so £650/3.5 = ~£188 per kWh/d/p.
I mention wind in particular because there will be a good correlation between wind availability and the need for domestic heating, since the wind cools the houses down. (Many homes have gas central-heating, of course. Electricity will displace gas burned in power-stations if it is not used to heat homes directly).

It’s clearly significantly better to build onshore wind than insulate homes at £15,000 a pop. It’s a toss-up between offshore wind and insulation.

Installing heat-pumps would, according to MacKay, cost £1000/person (implying £3,000/house) but save 12kWh/d/p, at ~£83 per kWh/d/p. People should definitely buy these. But Lord Turner doesn’t mention heat-pumps at all:

“Britain was running out of ‘easy things’ to do in the home[, Turner explained]. ‘After home insulation and more efficient boilers, we now need more intrusive things – double glazing, cavity wall insulation, solid wall insulation.’ ”

And I hate to say it, but according to David MacKay, nuclear power is cheaper still at £1000/person for 16kWh/d/p, i.e. £62.50 per kWh/d/p.

But. There’s always a but. This one is that I simply don’t believe you get as much saving for every £ of that £15,000. By the 80:20 rule, most of the energy will be saved by the first 20%. Here’s what I reckon: it’s a better deal to spend considerably less than £15,000 on each home – let’s say £3,000 – and instead invest in as much wind energy as we can possibly produce.

But. There’s always another but. The cost should be paid by home-owners. I think what I object to most is the statist approach. Apparently:

“The CCC believes that the cost of the scheme would be paid for by a combination of government subsidy and higher electricity bills.”

It’s not clear who pays through their electricity bills. Maybe the idea is you take out what is in effect a loan. But home-owners are generally fairly credit-worthy, so should take out a bank loan (or remortgage), if necessary, to make cost-effective home improvements. What’s proposed, though, is that at least some of the cost of the home improvements is to be spread amongst around – in particular, some, it appears, is to be borne by the taxpayer. This is just wrong. Why should those who don’t qualify for the subsidy pay to increase the value of other peoples’ homes? In ways that might not even be cost-effective.

In fact, if home-owners don’t take financial responsibility for the exercise it will certainly not be cost-effective. Consumption needs to be monitored to ensure the expected savings are made. And what’s more, home-owners need to manage their houses to ensure that energy consumption doesn’t bounce back up, that is, not simply turn the heating up or keep a few more windows open.

Simply handing out money is a good way of wasting most of it.

Instead, we should let the cost of energy be what it’s going to be, using the most cost-effective forms of low-carbon energy.

And then, sure, we should provide advice to home-owners – public information ads detailing how they might save money, and all that.

But people should then make their own informed decisions as to whether to save money or not. If necessary, the price of carbon should be allowed to rise until enough people do save energy or switch to renewable forms.

They say moving house is one of life’s more stressful experiences. It’d be a helluva lot less stressful if it was not for the numerous bureaucracies you have to deal with. Telecomms providers must be among the worst.

A final straw has been added and I have to let off steam.

My fun and games with Virgin Media started before I even moved in. I had the affrontery to attempt to close the account I’d had for 5 years at my previous address. I thought I’d take up an introductory offer when I moved. Maybe I’d remain faithful to Virgin, maybe not. I’d dared to think I might have a choice as to who delivered my bits and bytes. Well, as someone famously said, in a democracy you may be free once every 5 years when you cast your vote, but as a Virgin Media customer I discovered I was even less free than that.

My mistake was that I had changed the package I received 10 months before I moved. I’d been using phone, TV and internet, but wanted to restore the 24 hour news channels I’d given up some time before. I’d understood it was part of the Virgin offering that you could change your TV channels from time to time. Virgin’s twist is that they’ve invented various discounts. Even though the only change to the service was to add some channels and the bill increased by a few pounds each month, it seems I moved from “Ultimate Double 2″, to “Ultimate Triple”. Apparently, just because I’d moved from one bundle “offer” to another, this required a “new” 12 month contract. I have to take Virgin’s word that such a thing exists because I don’t have it on file. I found I was locked in to Virgin and had no real choice but to arrange to use Virgin at my new address. And guess what? I’m now locked-in for another 12 months.

It’s not something most consumers spend a lot of time thinking about but I’d be very surprised if the management of service-providers don’t employ a few MBAs to devise subtle ways to lock in their customers. A high degree of lock-in – that is, high switching costs for consumers – is actually in the interest of ALL incumbents in an industry. At the expense of consumers and new entrant providers. Think about it. Or just trust me, I’m an MBA!

Don’t get me wrong. It’s logical for a provider to require a period of commitment by the customer to cover up-front costs – think mobile phone contracts, or in this case the cost of sending an engineer to carry out the cable installation. But I hardly think a call to change the TV package constitutes a major up-front cost.

Theory would suggest that service will in general be poorer, the higher customers’ switching costs. I’ll leave the reader to judge whether such a conclusion is supported by my experience with Virgin. Here are a few of the straws that have been heaped on my back since I moved:

• Letters about my new contract were sent to the new address where an installation had been arranged in 2 or 3 weeks time, not the old one where I was actually living. One was returned to sender since other tenants didn’t recognise the name!

• Even more irritating was that the cardboard box Virgin sent for the return of my old set-top box – which lived at my old address, of course – was also sent to my new address. Duh. So, rather than post it back, I had to pack and transport Virgin’s set-top box. And take time as soon as I’d moved in to find where the Post Office keeps undelivered packages around here… – Still, on the plus side, Virgin’s engineer did turn up for the installation…

• …but left before the internet was working. He’d rung up, found there was a 20 minute delay before some gobbledegooky thing would happen (even though this appointment was made several weeks before) and gone to his next job. He did leave a mobile phone number, though. So when Virgin’s software asked me to ring up to “register the modem” (what does that mean?) yet their help-line couldn’t, um, help me, I rang him. He’d done his job, he said. Surreal. I went out for the rest of the day, rather unhappy, of course. When I came in, the modem had clearly managed to “register” itself and soon I was happily surfing away…

• …until last Thursday. No internet from around 5pm until sometime between 12 and 1pm on Friday. Call me a ninny, but I consider that a significant outage. My direct costs were £30.18 and my indirect costs £29.99. £30 because I’d received an email including a half-price offer for something I wanted to buy anyway. By the time I tried to buy, it was sold out. 18p because I’d been in the middle of registering a temporary Tesco club-card, which was still next to my PC when I was next in Tescos. £29.99 because I went out and bought a 3 mobile broadband USB device and £10 credit for next time this happens.

… …
I’ve tried getting compensation from Virgin before, and it’s not worth the effort. As I recollect, they will only pay from when you ring to report the problem – which you don’t bother to do when you hear the recorded message about the problems in your area – and only pro rata, i.e. they refund one day’s broadband charge per day of loss of service. This is pathetic. You’re paying for continuous, not patchy service. Consumers on their own are isolated and not in a position to change supplier behaviour. Government should represent the mass of consumers and impose sensible terms. In the case of broadband supply, outages of more than 12 hours should trigger automatic refund of an entire month’s charge; more than an hour or an hour cumulatively over a month would cost the supplier at least a couple of day’s charges. Of course, such outages would become very rare – this is called setting the right incentive. (Did Virgin work through the night last Thursday to resolve the problem affecting my service as quickly as possible? I somehow doubt it). If broadband internet is so important that we need a tax on landlines to subsidise its supply, then it’s important enough for companies to be compelled to provide a reliable service. And for customers to be compensated for something approaching the costs of non-performance by suppliers.
… …

• And we haven’t even reached the final straw yet. I’d opted (at my old address) for Virgin’s “eBill” service. This might be convenient if the bill was actually attached to an email. It’s rather irritating that you just receive an email telling you to log on to Virgin’s site to find your bill. Still, you pay £1.25 less (surely rather more than the bill costs to produce – we allow Virgin to create an incentive for us to do the right thing and save paper, whilst failing to give them sufficient incentive to provide a reliable service). OK, £1.25 won’t even buy a skinny latte these days, but it’s still an unnecessary expense. You’ve probably guessed by now that a few days ago I received a paper bill, complete with £1.25 “Paper Bill Charge” at my new address…

• Nope, there are more straws. Clearly I’d need to re-register for “eBilling”. But first, I thought I’d check my old bills. Doh! Of course, Virgin have given me a new account and deleted the old one (or at least made it inaccessible via my email address and the PIN provided). So the closing bill for my old account – only recently paid by Direct Debit – is inaccessible. How do I know I’ve paid the right amount? E-billing is all very well. It’s the future. It’s potentially efficient. But companies need to be compelled to keep data available. Again, government needs to step in and set some rules. I hate to say it but maybe it’s not really in suppliers interests to have consumers checking their old bills. Maybe when they’re not thinking about how to keep you locked in, some of those MBAs are working out how to keep you in the dark about charges…

I recently commented on and suggested solutions to the traffic problems in my little corner of Cambridge. I was moved last week to attend a public meeting on the issue. I’ll report on that shortly.

First, though, I wanted to give a brief update on one area of lunacy I’ve previously mentioned, namely the taxi-rank in St Andrew’s Street. I can now report that absolutely nothing has changed. Rules clearly don’t apply to the St Andrew’s Street taxi-drivers. Most of the times I’ve looked, the taxis are “over-ranking” by as many as 6 vehicles, forcing buses leaving stops behind the rank to pull out further than necessary into a narrow road, where there are cyclists and pedestrians all over the place.

Worse, behind the taxi-rank there is a natural crossing-point, between Lion’s Yard and the city centre shops and a pedestrian walkway to the Drummer Street bus station and the Grafton Centre. Because a line of taxis now crosses this point, people have to do exactly what you’re taught not to in primary school, that is, cross the road between parked cars. This is dangerous. Especially if you’re in a wheelchair. And that’s what I saw this week – a woman in a wheelchair trying to see over a line of taxis parked on double-yellow lines. On this occasion she didn’t end up under a double-decker bus, but one did come thundering past as she was trying to cross.

But salvation is at hand! A Cambridgeshire Transport Commission has been established. Public meetings are being held. I went to the Cambridge Guildhall on Thursday 19th March, when Cambridge City Council, South Cambridgeshire District Council and the Cambridge Preservation Society gave evidence. I’m not going to give a blow-by-blow account of the meeting, partly because Richard Taylor has already done so (I don’t know Richard, I just came across his blog last week, somehow).

But I’m also restricting myself to a few observations because I rapidly developed a severe headache, not entirely unrelated to what I was listening to. I couldn’t help thinking that, as ever, our decision-making capability is hopelessly compromised by a failure to recognise those two great contradictions in terms: local democracy and the rural economy. We fail to realise that the more local the influence on decision-making, the less democratic it is. And the more economic activity in an area the less rural it is – you can’t have both, you have to make decisions.

So here are my considered reflections on the politicial process to resolve the chronic traffic problems in Cambridge:

1. What public debate?
About the first thing I discovered at the meeting was that the deadline for responses from the public had passed on 13th March. A questionnaire has even been completed, already (see the Transport Commission website).

Interesting. I’d only just heard about the public meetings, yet I missed out on having my say. I know these “public consultation” processes always work like this, but wouldn’t it be better to have some discussion to help people formulate their ideas and then ask them about their views?

By conducting the questionnaire and asking for submissions as a first step the Commission has ensured that it has only gathered data based on uninformed views. OK, the Commission is tasked with a problem that has been around for years, but by taking evidence only before the public meetings, it minimises the amount of fresh thinking it can tap into. And ensured that most influence is wielded by insiders in the political process who are most aware of the timetable. Engagement with members of the general public interested in just this one issue has become a very one-way process.

If I were to make a submission, I’d rather not look totally ignorant, so would have liked to have heard the City Council’s and others’ views before putting finger to keyboard. Tricky when the submission deadline was 13th March and the public meeting 19th March.

2. Cambridge City Council priorities
I say I would have liked to hear Cambridge City Council’s views, but when I did I was shocked. Truly shocked.

Get this: the top priority of Cambridge City Council is climate change, expressed as “reducing carbon emissions”. Now, if I was to decide who should get the contract to solve climate change I wouldn’t award it to Cambridge City Council. It’s the wrong level of government. Are my local councillors going to invent the electric car? Build a Supergrid to bring to the UK renewable electricity generated from Atlantic wind and Sahara sunlight?

So one minute we’re talking about traffic congestion and the next about emission targets. Some exchanges were surreal. Sian Reid, the Transport person on the City Council, tried to convince the head of the Commission, Sir Brian Briscoe, that transport plans should take account of the effect on carbon emissions in the whole region, not just Cambridge City. She was right. It’s daft for Sir Brian to tell everyone just to worry about their own little bit. That is the trap of local democracy, and we’d never get anywhere.

Or rather, Sian Reid would have been right, if we were talking about carbon emissions. But we’re not. We can only include such a discussion in a limited way, as otherwise we have to make sweeping unjustified assumptions. We would not, for example, propose to create a railway running coal-fired steam-trains. But to equate the level of traffic in the city with carbon emissions is absurd. What if people start using electric cars?

My head started hurting at the meeting and it’s hurting again now when I read on Richard Taylor’s blog that:

“The hypothetical question of why not close the city centre car parks to discourage people driving in was raised. It was pointed out this could be ‘done tomorrow’. [Good idea!] Cllr Reid who is responsible for car parks defended them pointing to the new emission based car park charging system which she said would be accepted as people were used to paying their vehicle excise duty on the basis of emissions.”

What on Earth is Sian Reid on about?

The amount of traffic coming into the centre of Cambridge already is a massive problem. And it doesn’t scale. The roads are clogged and we’re expecting more people to want to travel in the region.

Forget carbon emissions. In fact, strike this from the Council’s objectives altogether. Just sort out the transport system.

3. Who’s in charge?
Ah, but we can’t “just sort out the transport system”, because we haven’t yet answered the question “who for?”.

Because we haven’t identified who the transport system is meant to serve, progress is hamstrung.

Human nature being what it is, everyone focuses on the congestion charge proposed as part of any transport improvement. Central government has apparently made the £500m for transport improvements conditional on a congestion charge.

But the purpose of the congestion charge (cc) is unclear. Here are two views:
1. The aim of the cc is to reduce the inconvenience to Cambridge City residents from outsiders coming into the town or driving through it.
2. The aim of the cc is to reduce delays on roads in a crowded part of the county.

The first perspective implies the City Council would have “sovereignty”. They would take responsibility for the commercial success of their constituency. Accordingly, one would expect the congestion charge to cover a zone, requiring payment on entry, with those living inside exempt from payment. If high charges deter shoppers, then so be it. It might actually be better for everyone if there were fewer shops in Cambridge and more in the surrounding area.

The second perspective implies that the transport problems of Cambridge are just a subset of those affecting a larger area. The County Council has “sovereignty”. But then it has to take a broader perspective than just Cambridge. The whole idea of a single congestion charge zone makes little sense.

Instead we have a farcical situation where the County Council has appointed a Transport Commission who are consulting local councils. That was the purpose of the meeting I went to. South Cambridgeshire District Council (SCDC) were able to announce that they oppose the congestion charge. Indeed, the head of that council explained that, because the buses were so slow, his 17 year old kids had been allowed to drive to Hills Road 6th Form College in Cambridge. Unbelievable. Cambridge University undergraduates aren’t allowed to run cars, but 17 year olds can. Someone should have a word with Hills Road College.

It is lunacy for SCDC to “oppose” the congestion charge or to give them a platform to do so – this statement should have been ruled out of order. SCDC were at the meeting purely to provide a perspective on transport in the Cambridge region, not to take a position on anything. As I’ve explained, the congestion charge must either be the responsibility of Cambridge – at least the majority Lib Dems in favour – or Cambridgeshire – all parties in favour. I know this, because someone wrote to the local paper asking who he was supposed to vote for. Maybe he shouldn’t bother. Maybe he should take the time to ask himself why he thinks he knows better than everyone who’s looked into the issue properly.

SCDC residents can only influence transport in Cambridge through their County Councillors, not their local Councillors. It is ludicrous for SCDC to have a “position” on the congestion charge (unless it extrends into South Cambs of course).

Personally I think it would be far preferable if Cambridge City Council took decisions on transport in Cambridge. Because the wider constituency represented by the County Council has the final say, we are drifting towards a vision of Cambridge as there to provide a service to the surrounding area. It is turning into a giant shopping centre. It would be preferable to tweak the political system to shift the balance so that transport and other planning in Cambridge reflects the needs of residents of the city rather more and the needs of those living elsewhere in the county a little less.

4. Strategy, what strategy?
Because we haven’t decided who the transport system is for, we have no clearly defined objectives.

One might have expected the Transport Commission to start out by identifying objectives. Every project I’ve ever been involved with has started with some kind of high-level statement of requirements. But when it comes to the future of Cambridge’s transport system, we go straight to arguing about the – at this stage hypothetical – congestion charge and who would be exempt from it.

What Sir Brian and Professor Tony might more profitably have done was:
1. Identify the objectives of the exercise.
2. Validate these with the public.
3. Produce some (internally consistent) options for meeting the objectives, based on something resembling logical reasoning.
4. Consult the now better informed public again.
5. Select one of the options.

Instead we have had uninformed public comment – many saying “no congestion charge” rather than addressing a complete solution – and will no doubt end up with an incoherent strategy.

Let me suggest what some of the objectives might have been, reconciling the interests of Cambridge residents and those from the surrounding area:
1. Reduce the usage of Cambridge City Centre (inside the inner ring road) by motor vehicles.
2. Ensure inexpensive, efficient transport options exist to support the needs of an increasing population in the Greater Cambridge area.
3. Minimise delays to traffic using designated through-routes.

A strategy could then be devised to meet these objectives. This stage should be the province of professionals. It requires objective reasoning, not subjective opinion. For example, the Commission might use the concepts of “limiting factors”, “efficiency” and “incentives”.

They might conclude that cost is not the limiting factor determining whether people drive into Cambridge or not. Any congestion charge would therefore likely have to be very high to be effective. No, the limiting factor for many journeys is surely the availability of parking. So, to meet objective no. 1, reduce traffic coming into the centre of Cambridge, we could close the Grand Arcade car-park. We could convert some of the railway station car-park into cycle parking. And we could tell Hills Road 6th Form College it is not acceptable for their students to drive into Cambridge.

The limiting factor for many journeys across Cambridge is very likely the existence of routes. If we don’t allow people to take short-cuts by leaving designated through-routes, then people will have to stick to the main roads.

Another limiting factor affecting cyclists (and even pedestrians) is the available space. There are too few cycle lanes and even pavements are congested in some parts of Cambridge! To achieve a modal shift away from cars, more cycle lanes and wider pavements are required.

Once some of the limiting factors have been addressed, the Commission should start to look at the efficiency of the system.

This will likely mean far more one-way streets. It is ludicrous, for example, that buses travel both ways, not only along Regent Street, but also along Emmanuel Road into the Drummer Street bus station.

But ultimately the Commission needs to consider the geography of Cambridge, with a busy centre confined on 3 sides by the river Cam and historic buildings. The obvious solution is for the main transport interchange to be located at the railway station (perhaps with a similar arrangement at Chesterton), with a high-capacity, high-frequency shuttle service – preferably a metro train in a tunnel, an elevated monorail or even the dreaded pods – between there and the town centre. We need to be prepared to invest in such a scheme. The Commission should not rely on vested interests, such as the bus company, but on its own reasoning.

Closing car-parks, closing minor roads to through-traffic and improving the design of the system will all help, but to meet objective 3, to minimise delays, we have to look at incentives. And now, finally, we have to consider a congestion charge. But what we’re left with are the busy routes around Cambridge and elsewhere in the county. Surely, rather than a zone, the charge should be levied purely on those using particular roads that are exceeding their capacity, causing delays for everyone? For example, a charge on the inner ring road would push some through traffic onto trunk routes. If some of these roads are too busy, a lower charge could be levied on them, moving some traffic onto public transport, or to travel at less busy times.

To sell a congestion charge to the public it must be presented as precisely targeted on busy routes. People need to be very clear what they’re buying. Rather than a zone, it would be far better to charge a fee for each busy road used – Gonville Place, East Road, Newmarket Road say – with a daily cap. And any talk of carbon emissions should be taken out of the discussion. Global warming is a different issue to traffic congestion.

5. Joined up thinking
It is impossible to separate traffic policy from housing and other planning policy. The head of SCDC pointed out at the meeting that Cambridge residents are on average 400 metres from their nearest bus-stop, but that this rises to 1000 metres in South Cambs. Look, the greater the housing density, the more customers there are for public transport (and for specialist local shops and small supermarkets!). It was refreshing to read today that someone is actually spelling this out. Here’s what Centre for Cities have to say:

“All cities are different. However, denser cities can be more efficient and more sustainable. Research has shown that denser cities around the world have a lower private transport energy use per capita. Private transport energy use in Boston, for example, which has an average urban density of 12.5 persons per hectare, was 50,000 per capita in 1990; while in Hamburg it was 20,000 per capita (37.5 persons per hectare) and around 3,000 per capita in Hong Kong (300 persons per hectare).

Growing through densification rather than urban sprawl therefore has the potential to make transport in Cambridge more sustainable, as more residents are able to walk or cycle to work.” (my stress)

I commented a few days ago on the Cambridge Supermarket Wars and later on my own shopping habits. Since then the battle has intensified on the Mill Road front, and a fundamental change has been made to the shopping environment!

First, the bad news. Sadly, the Locomotive on Mill Road is up for sale. The physical reminder of those karaoke nights may soon be no more.

But the good news is that a new convenience store could open on the Locomotive site.

But the other bad news is that (as usual) the politicians are meddling. According to the Cambridge Evening News report:

“…there were calls yesterday for [The Locomotive] to be retained as [a] community pub…

Cambridge city councillor Ben Bradnack, who represents the Petersfield ward in which The Locomotive lies, said: ‘We already have two convenience stores on this side of the Mill Road bridge and they must be finding it difficult anyway.

‘I am not in favour of pubs closing in principle and these stores are for the daytime economy when we really need to think about the nighttime economy.’ “

I’m as concerned as anyone about the loss of our traditional watering-holes. This is often put down to a change in our habits – we drink more at home. But why? We are such social creatures, after all. The reasons are undoubtedly complex, but what surprises me is that Sky TV’s subscription policy is so rarely mentioned as a problem for smaller pubs. We now take it for granted that live televised sport is the right accompaniment for a beer (pork scratchings out, English Premier League in). Smaller pubs tell me that they can’t afford a Sky TV subscription. Custom is drifting away to larger pubs, or, since large crammed bars are not everyone’s cup of tea, people are simply staying at home.

It should not be up to the Council to decide whether the Locomotive site should become a store or whether it should reopen under new management as a pub. At the end of the day, someone has to decide that it is worth investing their money in a business on the site. That’s the system.

And, as I’ve argued before, it is not sensible for the Council to decide how many supermarkets we need. Far better to provide people with a choice. No-one is forced to shop at the Mill Road Tesco. Nor would they be at a new convenience store on the Locomotive site.

The dangers of pretending it is possible to all agree whether or not a Tesco store should be allowed on Mill Road is well illustrated by the emotions that have now been unleashed. Apparently, a pro-Tesco campaigner has been attacked. In front of the local MP!

How local councils (I’m sure Cambridge is not unique) have drifted into the sort of planning micromanagement we now see is a story that should be told. I suspect the problem is that local government has been so emasculated over the years that elected representatives are now trying too hard to find something to justify their own existence.

And, second, the really bad news. The reason I am revisiting the food shopping topic today is that Sainsbury’s have messed with their operation. To my horror, I found yesterday that they have only gone and replaced the multi-queue tills with a self-checkout system.

Remember, as someone following a life-style I thought society was trying to encourage, that is, not running a car, I have little choice as to where I buy my groceries.

I’m especially vulnerable, because Sainsbury’s is a de facto monopoly. They’d therefore have to screw-up big-time before enough customers took their business elsewhere for them to realise they’d made mistakes.

Today was fairly quiet in Sainsbury’s, I presume because the students are away. I dread to think how long the queues will get when they return.

In principle I support the idea of self-checkout. It will eventually reduce the amount of work that has to be done by society as a whole, moving us one step closer to a utopian world of leisure. But the technology is not yet customer-ready.

I noticed yesterday that Sainsbury’s staff were already running around between customers struggling with the new check-out machines. I dread to think how long the queues will be when the students return. Especially as staff approval will be necessary whenever anyone buys alcohol. Some of the students look quite young so we’ll all have to wait while they produce their id. When I was about 12 one of my mates was in the local paper after having had his stomach pumped to remove the whisky from another friend’s father’s drinks cabinet (hey, why wasn’t I invited?). But now we seem to think we’ll keep kids off alcohol by putting the onus on shop-keepers. They can get in serious trouble if they sell liquor to minors.

Obviously Sainsbury’s need to change the system elsewhere in their store. I’ll check sometime, but I didn’t notice that they’d done anything to anticipate this problem. The “obvious” thing to do is to monitor cutsomers’ ages on entrance to the booze section of the store. This would make their wine offers near the entrance to the store rather problematic, but then they should have thought all this through before they brought the new machines in.

Similarly, the delays at the checkout caused by the need to weigh fruit and veg could easily be avoided by having this done in the fruit and veg section. As is the case in many other countries. You simply print out a label with a bar-code which is later scanned at the checkout.

But my really big issue with the automatic checkout system (which is identical to that I’ve used a few times at Asda) is that it (moreorless) forces you to take disposable plastic bags. Yeap, the bags for life system – for which you even get an extra Nectar point on each use – is out the window. That campaign a year or two ago to use fewer plastic bags is clearly no longer a priority. Now, I don’t think cutting out plastic bags in itself is going to save the planet, but I abhor waste. If I end up bringing home plastic bags I refuse to throw them out – they’re bound to come in useful, I think – so they pile up in the corner. I am psychologically incapable of using the new checkout process.

And the reason Sainsbury’s force you to use new plastic bags? Well, it’s because they are dispensed over a weighing panel. And why do you have to weigh all items? Because they don’t trust you, that’s why. They reckon that people would deliberately or accidentally slip a few unscanned items into their bag if they didn’t have the weighing check.

You can skip weighing on the screen, but you have to do this for every item. As the queue builds up behind you. And (at least when I tried it at Asda) after you’ve skipped a few items the machine makes you wait for a member of staff to check your not a thief. You could put all the items in disposable bags, I suppose, and take them out again after completing the transaction. But then you’d look like a complete nutter.

There is a way round this problem though. We could achieve a nirvana of efficient self-checkout and reusable shopping bags. What Sainsbury’s could do is put RFID tags rather than – or perhaps as well as – barcodes on their products. These can be detected within, say, a metre (depending on the set-up). As a first step, Sainsbury’s could tell when you had put a tagged item into your bag without scanning it. Heck, they could even detect you leaving the store with an item you hadn’t paid for. Ultimately, though, you could simply pass your bag in front of an RFID reader and it would register everything.

I really resent being inconvenienced by the introduction to the busiest Sainsbury’s in the country of a system that isn’t the finished article. Especially when I have no alternative supermarket to go to.

I wrote yesterday about campaigns to block a new Tesco on Mill Road and a new supermarket of provenance as yet unrevealed (at least to me) on a site in West Cambridge. I’ve also commented on some of the shortcomings of the supermarkets that do exist in Cambridge.

It’s my proposition that – from the perspective of a no-car household – there are not too many supermarkets and food stores in general in Cambridge, but too few. To substantiate this argument, I am prepared to reveal to the world some of my secret shopping habits.

As I mentioned in a previous rant, I do most of my shopping at Sainsbury’s in Sidney Street, the only general mid-market supermarket in the City Centre. Because this Sainsbury’s is essentially a monopoly I have no choice but to put up with the length of queue that the Sainsbury’s management deem reasonable (they have the power to allocate more or less space, and/or more or fewer staff, to tills). Luckily for the customer, perhaps, there is little room to waste on queues in the store, so their length is limited even if – because of the lack of alternatives – the market would stand a longer wait.

But the main problem is that shelf-space is severely limited in the Sidney Street store. Sainsbury’s sometimes run out of particular lines – often as a result of their rather annoying BOGOF policy – and have an irritating habit of phasing out branded products from time to time and replacing them with their – in my opinion – inferior own-brand products. When Sainsbury’s lets me down, I either have to lump it and buy an alternative, or find the product I want at another store.

So here’s the confession part. Where else do I shop? And why?

There’s the market of course, but I’ve never really developed a rapport with any of the stall-holders. Perhaps because my father ran a fruit and veg shop for some years, I have a strong preference for choosing my own individual items, which is rarely allowed in a market. I remember once in Croydon I was “accidentally” given a bag of rotten avocados. I made sure that, while I was getting my money back, my loud complaints cleared the area of customers. Maybe it’s my suspicious mind, but I always suspect that market-traders think they see me coming, little suspecting my professional experience. I occasionally buy fresh herbs (in absurdly large quantities), an apple, or, on an impulse, some strawbs, in the market, but not much else. I just kind of feel the prices should be lower and I worry that, distracted by the melee around the stalls, I’ll end up with dodgy goods.

Occasionally I visit Asda on Newmarket Road. Unlike Sainsbury’s, this store is entirely geared up for drivers doing their weekly shop. For me Asda is a pain to get to, and queuing behind even a couple of overloaded trolleys is a tedious process. So why do I go there? Mainly because it stocks Kellogg’s Sultana Bran. Sainsbury’s used to sell KSB, but now have an own-bran alternative which a) to my palate is made of cardboard and b) comes in a taller box which doesn’t fit in my cupboard. Of course, whilst in Asda I pick up a few other items which Sainsbury’s doesn’t stock (or at least didn’t when I got in the habit of buying these things at Asda): usually Whole Earth sparkling organic lemonade and ginger beer, and Mexicana cheese (warning: contains peppers).

I even more rarely visit Tesco on Newmarket Road, which is even further than Asda. I can only remember going there a couple of times on emergency missions. The giant stores on Newmarket Road are unsatisfactory alternatives to city centre Asda, Tesco or other mid-market alternatives to Sainsbury’s.

Then, Cambridge being one of the country’s more affluent cities, we have no less than three M&S outlets: at the railway station, in the Grafton Centre and in Market Square.

Now, I’m a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to supermarkets. In my opinion they are shops, not food producers. We’d all be better off if they kept it simple and just offered as wide a choice as possible of branded products. Then we’d get the benefits of sensible competition. You’d choose your store on the basis of location and shopping experience factors, such as stock-control effectiveness, queue-length and ambience, and you’d choose your product based on what you actually want, not what the only convenient store in your area wants to sell you.

Why, for example, M&S does own-brand wine and beer is beyond me. Do not touch this stuff! My experience suggests money spent on M&S booze would be better used by making an offer to the guys in the park for whatever they’re drinking.

But life is rarely as simple as own-brand bad, branded-brand good. In particular I can heartily recommend M&S’s soups, particularly the spicy red lentil. They are superior, in my opinion, to the tired Covent Garden brand stocked by Sainsbury’s. Of course, everyone has the canned varieties from Campbell’s and Heinz, but few new recipes have been introduced by these companies since the coronation. Of Queen Victoria. The best soup I’ve ever bought in Cambridge was borsch at the International Food Store on Mill Road, but sadly supplies of this delicacy are sporadic, to say the least.

It’s convenient to pick up some M&S soup at their busy little store at the Railway Station, but that outlet doesn’t stock the most important product I buy at M&S: their Unsweetened Fruit and Bran Muesli. As I’m allergic to nuts, it’s a big deal to identify a satisfactory nut-free muesli product (I used to buy some Jordan’s lines). Now, the Grafton Centre M&S food-hall is about to close and relocate to Newmarket Road, so to avoid a trek, I now rely on the Market Square M&S for my muesli supplies. Let’s hope Sir Stuart Rose doesn’t decide the Market Square space would be more profitable if stocked with bras and knickers.

And, while we’re upmarket, there is a Waitrose in Cambridge, but I’d need to drive to it. The John Lewis store, disappointingly, has no food-hall. As I said, there are not enough supermarkets in Cambridge, not too many.

I shouldn’t forget the farm shop that has recently opened at the junction of Lensfield Road and Regent Street. Handy, and I regularly pop in for a treat. But I couldn’t afford to do all my shopping there.

It’s a curious little area, because mere yards from the farm shop, along Hills Road (there’s a map in one of my previous posts) we head what I can only call down-market. It’s convenience-store land. On one side of the road is a One-Stop. Handy for picking up a paper on the way to the railway station, where the WH Smith’s cannot be relied on to be queue-free (funnily enough, they have a monopoly on the station – anyone spotting a pattern, here?) – the managers who decided it would be a good idea to scan newspaper bar-codes and vetoed an honesty box for payment in the Cambridge Station WHS should be fired, and their pensions confiscated. Occasionally I’ve picked up a snack, a stale dough-nut perhaps, in the One Stop, but not much else, though I have noticed it would be an excellent place to pick up that really tacky card, for when you want something so bad that it’s good.

For emergency purchases, I prefer to cross Hills Road to the Co-op. It’s good for fresh cream and, when I spilt a glass of red wine, the internet recommended diluting it with white. It took a whole bottle, but did the trick. I defy anyone to locate the original spill. Thanks to Co-op for that bottle of cheap white wine! Judging by those ahead of me in the queue – and on the my few visits to the store I’ve had plenty of time to ponder – some use the Co-op as their main shop. This seems a bit of a stretch to me.

Mill Road is good for more than just borsch. All kinds of delicacies are on offer, from Polish sausages to caviar! Arjuna is good for spices and lentils. And there are plenty of convenience stores – Nip-In is good – though I most often pick up milk if I’m short from my newsagent on Regent Street, which is nearer.

But the general picture must now be clear. I actually have only one practical choice for my main supermarket shopping – Sainsbury’s. I’d say Cambridge has too few supermarkets, not too many.

It seems to me that the planning system is not the right mechanism for determining how many supermarkets we actually need. Surely if someone thinks a new store is viable – that they could run it profitably – then the default position should be that they are allowed to do so. Then we can all choose whether or not to use it.

The major public concern seems to be that a chain (Tesco most likely) succeeds in executing the Starbuck’s business strategy of dominating an area by monopolising all the available outlets. But, assuming that at least some people would choose another coffee-shop or supermarket in preference to Starb’s or Tesco, this strategy can only work if the number of outlets is limited. It’s much better for competition, then, if planning permission is easier to obtain than if it’s more difficult. Commercial rents will tend to be lower, and some business models – such as independent coffee shops and specialist food stores – will be more viable. And we might all spend somewhat less of our lives queuing.

Supermarket sensation!

I had no idea local politics could be so interesting. It seems like only a fortnight ago that I mentioned the campaign against the Mill Road Tesco store:

“…the anti-Mill Road Tesco campaign … will be counter-productive as the specialist food-stores, cafes and so on on Mill Road – which does have character – would gain more from passing trade to and from Tesco than they would lose to the new competition.”

Imagine my surprise to read in the Cambridge Evening News (CEN) a couple of days ago of “traders coming out in favour of the store”. CEN reports that:

“The fight against the Say No to Mill Road Tesco campaign will see a petition launched today by traders supporting the supermarket giant.

Joyce Charles, one of the petition organisers, who owns Rollers hair salon in the Broadway, Mill Road, criticised the anti-Tesco campaigners.

Mrs Charles, who has owned the shop for 23 years and has the backing of other traders, said a growing number had had enough of the campaigners.

Other shops with petitions include Cambridge Resale, Greg’s Cycles, Halls Locksmith and the RSPCA shop.

Mrs Charles said: ‘We need Tesco to bring a bit of life to the street. In just a few hours we have had 23 signatures in our shop. …

‘These protesters are killing business in the street and putting people off setting up shop here. I have started to see more empty shops appearing and the protest has just made things worse.

‘As a hairdresser, I talk to many people and have found that those who actually live and work around here want Tesco. Why shouldn’t we have a choice? Many of these protesters are just against Tesco.

‘They are not thinking of Mill Road. They have painted the empty store and it looks awful.

‘Businesses won’t come here now because they are afraid they could be targeted next.’ “

I’ll be rushing down there to sign the petition!

And the excitement doesn’t stop there! There’s yet another plan for a supermarket in Cambridge. I’d be very interested to find out which chain this is – we should probably have a Lidl, Aldi or Morrison’s before another Tesco, on competition grounds. Otherwise, though, I’m afraid to say it seems to me that the local politicians are trying to outdo each other in objecting to these schemes – it’s very easy to say “we don’t need another supermarket”. CEN quotes Belinda Brooks-Gordon as saying about the proposed supermarket:

“It would bring with it giant delivery lorries travelling through our streets.

It could also attract hundreds of shoppers from the north and west of Cambridge, who could converge on this area.

The extra traffic it could generate would be disastrous.

It is imperative that we act now to stop these plans getting the go-ahead.

I would urge everyone to get behind this campaign.”

I can see downsides to a supermarket off Madingley Road, but I can also see benefits. The concern, of course, is indeed traffic. I’m sceptical though that a new supermarket would generate “extra traffic” – the potential customers must be buying their food somewhere already! And surely traffic is minimised by having as many supermarkets as possible so that journeys to supermarkets are as short as possible. The “hundreds of shoppers from the north and west of Cambridge, who could converge on this area” must be buying their food somewhere at the moment, many non-drivers likely at the dreaded City Centre Sainsbury’s, so will have another choice, which may require less travel. Those who drive to the supermarket may have less of a journey than to the Newmarket Road Asda and Tesco.

Similarly, a new store in itself can’t generate more delivery traffic. Unless the residents of Cambridge eat more because of the new store, the same amount of food must be being transported.

I’m a little more concerned that the store is envisaged to be the “biggest supermarket in the city”. Perhaps the proposed store represents another step towards Cambridge turning into a massive shopping centre for the surrounding area. But if this creates traffic problems these should be managed by traffic solutions. Otherwise, if we are making a value judgement, we should be asking whether it is a valid one. Surely if people want to shop in a huge supermarket, they should be given that choice. Maybe it’s efficient. If people don’t have time to do more than one weekly shop by car (I’m thinking of the thousands of families I see with trolleys piled high at Asda or Tesco when I occasionally venture a trip to Newmarket Road of a weekend), should we really be making life more difficult for them? Especially if we simply nudge them into driving further to another supermarket on the already clogged streets of Cambridge and the surrounding area.

On the other hand, there are clearly systemic reasons why large edge-of-town stores are so dominant. But some of these are under the control of local councils. Because it is even more difficult to get planning permission for local stores than for out of town supermarkets, the market allows landlords to charge much higher rents in town centres and residential areas. Sure, scale economies – which are a fact of life – and buyer power – which should be constrained – give large supermarkets an advantage, but I suspect a major competitive disadvantage for local, specialist food stores is the high cost of commercial property. And councils could reduce these by being more willing to give planning permission. In other words, in trying to stop massive edge-of-town supermarkets, councils are addressing a problem they themselves are responsible for creating!

It seems to me that using the planning system to constrain shopping choices is the wrong way to address the problem – if, indeed, there is one – and that it would be far better to grant planning permission much more readily, bringing shop-keepers’ costs down and allowing people more choice in where to shop. If people don’t want to use large out-of-town supermarkets, they’ll simply lose money and close down.

—
Taxi trauma!

But that’s not it for the excitement in Cambridge just now!! In a sensational move, the police actually arrested a taxi-driver! CEN writes:

“The driver was parked at the end of a row of six cabs on Thursday on a six-space rank in [St Andrew's] street, which has become a flashpoint for the battle.”

But the story actually seems to be that if the driver had simply obeyed a police officer the arrest would never have occurred. Though I suppose – since, amazingly enough, it’s not just me, and according to the CEN, there have been “calls from the public” about the rank – the police would have had to take some action eventually, since, as I observed, taxis have simply been returning to the rank as soon as the coast was clear.

I’ve nothing against taxi-drivers. I have a lot of sympathy, since it’s obvious what’s happening. The problem is that taxis are the coal-mine canaries of the recession. There’s an incredible (and often remarked upon) feedback loop. People are less willing to drop a tenner on a taxi-fare, more taxis end up waiting at the ranks, meaning drivers have to work longer for the same return, leading to even longer queues… And that’s before even factoring in those drivers who have lost another source of income because of the recession, so need more income from fares anyway.

But as I’ve already pointed out, the taxi-drivers at the St Andrew’s Street rank are simply taking the piss. It’s not clear from the picture in the CEN article, but there are a number of bus-stops behind the taxis waiting on double-yellows. Quiet apart from clogging the street up, buses have to manoeuvre awkwardly round the taxis at the back of the queue. I’ve even seen taxis blocking bus-stops!

So now a situation has developed:

“Pc Steve Hinks, who is carrying out the sweep on taxis after calls from the public, says he and his officers have had abuse hurled at them by angry cabbies.

But cabbies criticised the ‘overzealous’ officers, saying the row was ‘the beginning of the end of a good relationship’. [what, one where the police don't do their job?]

Now furious cabbies are threatening to turn Friday and Saturday nights in the city centre into mayhem by refusing to take drunks away from trouble hotspots.

And some are even talking about strike action or a blockade of the city.”

To be honest, the drivers need to calm down a bit. Threatening to create mayhem when it exists already seems more than a little hollow. Besides, I suspect they make a lot of their money on Friday and Saturday nights since there’s no public transport to take people out of the City Centre. They probably get a fair few £25 fares to villages and small towns all over Cambridgeshire, and are no doubt earning all the time, because they don’t have to queue for fares. Otherwise, given they choose their own hours, drivers simply wouldn’t work the party-shift.

The solution, of course, as I pointed out before is for the St Andrew’s Street taxi rank to be closed. People should walk – sorry, I know this is a novel concept for many – 100 metres to the Drummer Street rank, which appears to be redundant at the moment. There simply isn’t space for 6 taxis in St Andrew’s Street, let alone the 12 who are often there.

Maybe I should start Twittering, as perhaps I’ve already said what I want to say – and I was able to use the letter format again. Nevertheless, I’ll explain, since I consider myself a trainee Undercover Economist, although I prefer to point out failures rather than successes. I’m just a monitor evaluator kind of guy!

A little earlier on – before I was distracted into a short riposte in order to save capitalism – I stopped by Sainsbury’s in the centre of Cambridge.

One of the key items I wanted to purchase was a loaf of Warburton’s Seeded Batch (WSB) bread. I don’t consider myself overly fussy, but, after a long period of trial and error, I have established a clear preference for this particular loaf.  A slice toasted and with marmalade goes nicely with a cup of tea in the morning.  I recommend WSB, though it may not be the right bread for everyone. A while ago I was mildly concerned when a report suggested that WSB contains more than the average amount of salt compared to other loaves.  But in the end I found myself laughing in the face of excess dietary electrolytes.

It was around the time of the sodium chloride exposé that Sainsbury’s started a promotion: £1 rather than £1.51 for a loaf of WSB. Over several months when this offer has been in place much of the time, I have never once succeeded in profiting from it. The casual observer might notice that Cambridge is full of students, for whom the chance to save 51p is an opportunity not to be passed up. Loyal customers end up suffering. If there is a logical, Undercover explanation for this pricing policy I have not yet identified it. Today the inferior and more expensive (£1.59) product I ended up with is a Hovis Granary Original. Original in the sense that it was apparently unevenly sliced by hand.

Does the manager of Sainsbury’s in Cambridge city centre understand supply and demand? The idea surely is to find the highest price at which the day’s supplies of WSB sell out just before the shop closes, disppointing the minimum number of customers who may choose to shop elsewhere next time. Or, perhaps the price should be that at which profit is maximised, although, given the cost of clearing unsold product and, again, the risk of losing customers, this may be at the same point. Reducing the price to £1 and selling out by lunch-time on many days over a period of months does not seem to me the most intelligent promotion. What about giving free sample slices instead?

The Cambridge Sainsbury’s manager is obviously a bit of a keenie. Today he was also offering lemons at a special price of 10p each! What is this, the Soviet Union? Don’t we import citrus fruits from around the world in order to provide a constant supply? Is a promotion really necessary? Cambridge is an international kind of place. Are there perhaps potential lemon customers who’ve never tried one, and may baulk at 30p for a strange subtropical fruit? I suspect the true explanation is a glut of lemons in the store-room after over-enthusiastic marketing of the ingredients for pancakes with lemon and sugar for Shrove Tuesday a couple of weeks ago.

But that doesn’t explain the pile of cross-cut shredders (for paper, I presume, rather than lemons) at £10, reduced from £29.99, that I nearly stumbled into on my way out of the store. What is this? A recession warehouse clearance outlet or a supermarket?

One wonders what the manager of the Cambridge Sainsbury’s does understand, as the store can’t be accessed by car, so those shopping there arrive by bicycle or on foot. Many customers are students who, by and large, do not have access to a freezer, or at least a secure one. Why, oh why, then, all the BOGOFs and other offers on heavy, bulky items? Tomato juice is my “favourite” of the “offers” – I say it is an “offer” as this one has been in place for years, it seems. I enjoy a slurp with lemon juice (am I lucky today!) and Worcester sauce before dinner. But there is a significant saving – relative to the price of industrially squeezed tomatoes, that is – if you buy 3 cartons at once. Is there a car-park outside the Cambridge city-centre Sainsbury’s full of SUVs owned by the purchasers of these cartons? No, they have to lug them home on foot or bicycle. Smart. But this is less an offer by Sainsbury’s than a payment to the customer for tomato-juice storage.

The Director of my MBA programme was fond of pointing out that, on more than one measure, the Cambridge city centre Sainsbury’s is the busiest in the country. Part of the reason, I reckon, is that rents in the centre of Cambridge are so high that only a small number of competing food stores would be profitable.

Because it has a de facto monopoly, there’s no way to tell whether or not the bizarre pricing policies at the city centre Sainsbury’s are what the market wants. True, there’s an M&S foodhall, but that serves the sort of people – of which there are quite a few in Cambridge – who don’t go to Sainsbury’s. And vice versa.

True also, there are a couple of other food stores near where I live, a little way from the centre, but I always feel I’m in a movie when I go to them. The sort of movie where men with guns walk in and shoot the place up.

Competition would be somewhat improved, I suspect, if campaigners hadn’t objected to Tescos plans for its store on Mill Road (the store will open, I understand, but without some of the facilities Tesco wanted). At least some people would have a practical choice between the new Tesco and Sainsburys.

Denying people a choice of shop hardly seems democratic to me. Where is the need to apply the political process? – shops are not mutually exclusive.

The idea seems to be to preserve “independent” stores in Mill Road. Why the locals want to pay over the odds for milk is beyond me. And isn’t it possible that the specialist food stores on Mill Road would benefit from freeing space up from staples for higher value-add specialist products?

The concern is that Tesco would be too strong a competitor – as I pointed out en passant to my MP, if we bar Tesco from the location are we saying that we’ll close down the nearby Co-op if it sharpens up its act?

But the way to level the playing-field is to eliminate distortions of the market for – say – milk due to supermarket chains’ buyer power. If smaller retailers are at a disadvantage this should be addressed by the competition authorities, not through the planning process – as I noted in another context earlier today, the planning process is overused – arguably abused – in the UK.

I expect, insofar as the anti-Mill Road Tesco campaign has achieved its objectives, it will be counter-productive as the specialist food-stores, cafes and so on on Mill Road – which does have character – would gain more from passing trade to and from Tesco than they would lose to the new competition.

Cambridge is clogged with traffic, and it is also part of the environmental agenda to get people out of their cars.  Blocking companies’ plans for local food stores seems a perverse way to achieve a transport modal shift in the town. Green revolutionaries needs to be a bit smarter than this.

Vast amounts of information provided by UK taxpayers during the self-assessment process could be delivered much more efficiently to the taxman by the financial services industry.

At times my self-image is something like that of Mel Smith’s eponymous character in the late 1980s sitcom Colin’s Sandwich. There has been much cursing chez Joslin over the last few days as, inevitably – following a natural law normally applied to computer programs – my tax form remained, seemingly permanently, in a state of 90% completion.

Eventually my partner asked what all the fuss was about. I pronounced the whole process entirely futile. “Why”, I asked in despair, “don’t the banks just send the data direct to the Inland Revenue?” “Oh, that’s what they do in Estonia”, she replied. I’d previously attributed the lack of fuss around her tax returns in the Baltic state to the sort of innate female efficiency epitomised by Louisa Rix’s Jen, Colin’s girlfriend in the classic BBC sit-com. Or perhaps to a lack of complexity in her financial affairs. But it turns out that Estonian taxpayers only have to report changes in circumstances affecting tax allowances. The taxman already knows about their bank interest, share dividends and so on.

Here’s my advice. If you should ever happen to own some shares or investment funds, do not, on any account, make a profit. It’s simply not worth it. I now realise how stupid it was to sell investments during the last tax year. If I’d waited until the markets crashed late in 2008 I would have saved myself many hours of effort working out my capital gains tax (CGT).

If you share my views and start on a rant about CGT in the pub, then, at around this point, some smart alec will almost certainly whine: “Why don’t you get an accountant?” Because I’m not George Soros, that’s why. The cost would dwarf the amount of tax I have to pay. In fact, a win-win situation could be achieved if it was possible to simply negotiate with the taxman: “Look, I’ve done most of it but I think I owe around another £200; if you let me off having to work it out exactly, will you take £250?” But the main justification for tax DIY is that gathering the data is 99% of the work. All an accountant has to do is add up some numbers and type them into a form. Which you may as well do yourself. Once you have itemised all the interest, dividends and capital gains and losses, it should be childishly simple to enter them online.

Except that the Inland Revenue clearly did not employ a child to design their system. The obvious way to handle CGT would be to provide a spreadsheet where you could enter line after line of item, date bought, cost, date sold, proceeds of sale – and that’s about all you need. Then it would be a simple matter to calculate the tax. But no, they’ve implemented a full page form plus additional pop-up calculators for each entry. It’s almost beside the point that I couldn’t get the form to work, since you could only fill in a maximum of 10 sheets. More than 10 items and you had to do the calculation yourself.

So I started tidying up my own spreadsheet for sending to the taxman, before realising that simply calculating the tax for each transaction and then adding them all up won’t do. Oh no. The online tax form required separate sub-totals that it hadn’t occurred to me to derive. After all my fiddling in Excel, you might suppose that the Inland Revenue would want the ability to check the formulae used in my spreadsheet. Wrong again. It turns out that the Inland Revenue only accepts PDF files. Without access to the formulae used, do they have some high-tech way of validating your calculations? Hardly likely, is it?

And get this. The form asks if you want to pay any outstanding tax through your 2009-10 tax code. It turns out this is simply a mistake. You can’t. You’d think some junior programmer could have made an emergency change. For example, they could have replaced the text: “Do you want to pay through this year’s tax code?” with: “Don’t tick this box, it doesn’t do anything”, which might have been a little less confusing.

The galling thing is that I only incurred a CGT liability because of an unfair, retrospective tax change. I was virtually forced to sell assets to avoid higher tax liabilities in the future. My tax form nightmare was entirely the fault of Alistair Darling. With one stroke of his red pen the Chancellor did away with the decades-old principle of providing relief against inflation when calculating CGT.

Taper relief and indexation have been abolished from the start of the current tax year (2008-9) and replaced with a new flat CGT rate (18%). The unfairness of this change received very little publicity at the time because it was overshadowed by the furore over the removal of the 10% tax band. True, there was a protest over changes to the CGT rules for those selling businesses, and concessions were made. But the voice of private investors (pdf) who were seriously affected by the CGT change was barely heard. The change hugely increased the tax liability for assets held for many years, especially for lower-rate taxpayers. In a double-whammy, some will end up paying 18% tax on a large capital gain rather than 10% on a gain protected from inflation by taper relief and indexation. It would be difficult to devise a more prejudicial tax change – it has the effect of dramatically increasing the tax burden for some taxpayers based on the type of assets they have, not their wealth or income. Furthermore, your house is exempt, but, if you happen to have rented and invested some money instead, you could face a hefty tax bill. Is that fair?

What’s more, Darling only announced the CGT change after the start of the tax year prior to it coming into force. This meant that if, like me, you had disposed of some assets in April 2007 (fearful of possible stock-market falls later in the tax year), it was too late to remain under the CGT threshold when doing the logical thing and taking profits under the old rules on investments that you’d held for many years.

One reason given for abolishing CGT taper relief was to “simplify” the system. But since you need a complete record of your transactions anyway, and the calculations are carried out electronically, not in your head when drunk at a party, it simply doesn’t matter how tricky the arithmetic is.

If we really want to simplify the process, though, here’s my suggestion: implement a system exactly like that which apparently exists in Estonia. Simply instruct the banks, share nominee account providers and other custodians of individuals’ investments to upload a simple list of interest, dividends and capital gains to the Inland Revenue. Employ a few of the IT professionals currently being laid off in the City, and all the taxpayer would have to do would be to add anything that has not been captured automatically and sign the form. Implementing such a system would most likely pay for itself in reduced tax evasion.