For those who don't know (or don't care) Gordon Brown is the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the UK (Finance Minister in most other countries). He is trying to become Prime Minister and as a consequence spends a deal of time sucking up to foreign heads of state and cuddles a lot of African babies in order to show what agreat guy he is. He also wishes to maintain a reputation as a 'prudent' chancellor and a scourge of tax dodgers.

His main attack on 'tax dodgers' has been to steal billions of pounds from pension funds thus discouraging prudent saving and personal responsibility.

His latest attack is described in the Sunday Times today. Essentially he seems to have decided that authors' agents are not a tax-deductible business expense. Now I am one of the first people to decry the role of the literary agent in contemporary publishing but to pretend they are not a legitimate business expense is absurd. I'm sure this tax-raising nonsense will fail but it is symptomatic of current British politicians to think they might get away with it. As they say in the Drones Club, harrumph.