Mark Daniels: Dear George...

Dear George,

Firstly, let me congratulate you on your promotion to Chancellor of the Exchequer. I'm sure it was quite exciting, 'winning' the General Election and being given the keys to the country's safe, and I bet there were quite a few glasses of sherry quaffed the evening that appointment came.

And then I'm sure the first official thing you did was sit at your computer, call up Great Britain's online bank account and think: "WTF?!"

It didn't take a genius to guess that you and DaveNick would announce straight away that the country is in a much worse financial state than any of you ever realised. Of course, we all knew this already, and the trouble is none of us were really sure which of you would know just how to fix the problems, which is why it took so long for all of you to figure out just who had actually won.

And, of course, we're all aware that by saying the country is in a much worse state than you ever thought possible you are effectively opening the door to excuses for having to administer the much needed nasty medicine to fix it.

We're all anticipating that worse is to come before it gets better, but I own a village pub and I can't help but think that if you just make the obvious hikes in tax in the hopes that you'll be able to reap more money, then you're just flailing around in the dark as much as poor old Alastair was.

For instance, raising tax on soft targets such as fuel, alcohol and cigarettes is going to do nothing other than cause more suffering for the poorer amongst the country's residents. It's what Labour have been doing for thirteen years and it doesn't really seem to have stopped us heading ever further down the negative spiral, does it?

What we actually need is the innovative, forward-thinking approach to the situation that we keep being promised by our "new kind of politics" and hitting the above mentioned topics yet again will simply be seen as weak and an easy tick-in-the-box.

It will simply force those with less money in their pockets to look elsewhere for their guilty pleasures. Probably the supermarkets, who appear to be utterly oblivious - or somehow immune - to the constant barrage of tax hikes such products keep getting.

Each morning I do the same as you: I make myself a cup of tea, open my business's online bank account, and utter an expletive. I may have a few less zeros on the end of my overdraft than you but I nevertheless feel the same puckering of my butt-cheeks as I try to consider the best way forward with keeping my business afloat.

Unfortunately, if you increase tax on alcohol yet again next week (which has already risen a staggering 26% in the last two years) I will have little choice but to either swallow the rises, which my cash margin simply won't allow me to do, or push my prices up. That would make it an unprecedented third time in just six months that I've had to raise prices (VAT rise in January; duty rise in March) and would therefore force a lot of my customers to reconsider their social habits, and would have the effect of reducing my turnover yet further.

Reducing my turnover will have the result of, at best, me having to make at least one member of staff redundant and, at worst, closing down my business altogether.

Then I'll have to apply to you for a house. And some money. Which I know you haven't really got but will have to find a way of giving me anyway and so I'll become yet another burden on your already beleaguered benefits system. And I'm but just one publican; imagine what it'll be like if you multiply my situation by all the others who are sitting there praying that they'll be able to survive yet another tax rise and then subsequently have to come to you for help from the benefits departments.

The strain on the system is therefore likely to far outweigh any benefit you might gain from raising alcohol duty for the second time in less than six months.

We, as a nation, know you've got a difficult task on your hands but I urge you, George, to think very carefully before next Tuesday's Emergency Budget and look for solutions that don't include just whacking more tax on to product lines that already serve you greatly.

Regards,

Mark Daniels

What happens next?

I'm not sure who must have felt worse on Saturday night: Rob Green or the chap in ITV's high definition control room who thought it'd be a good wheeze to switch to an advert just as Steven Gerrard scored.

I'm used to taking a bit of abuse for making unpopular decisions, but the hostility I faced when, for a few brief moments, my customers thought it was me who had deliberately switched the game off was like nothing I'd ever experienced. As if I'd do such a thing...

Still, it could be amusing, should England find themselves in a penalty shoot-out situation, to use the pause button on the Sky HD remote.

Can you imagine the look on my customers faces as the picture freezes and I shout "what happens next?"