VAT & SMOOTHIES

Eighteen months ago Innocent Drinks invited all its customers to write to their MPs asking them to consider reducing VAT on smoothies - an extremely sensible idea since their smoothies are only crushed fruit - and there's no VAT on fruit. I wrote to John Pugh, our Lib Dem MP and received a rather sarcastic reply saying that the idea was a non-starter because it would open the floodgates to other "healthy" drinks such as Guinness and Horlicks asking for reduction in the VAT on their products. Well, blow me down, the latest Lib Dem policy, as announced at their conference in Liverpool,  is a reduction in VAT in smoothies - I didn't hear John Pugh shouting Vince Cable down and heckling that his idea was a non-starter so I take it that now that Innocent have managed to get 20,000 signatures on a petition to Downing Street - which the Lib Dems see as 20,000 votes, the non-starter has become a policy. Cynical, moi?