Hamish Champ: The VAT cut was a waste of time. Discuss

It beats me why Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling thought that knocking 2.5 percentage points off the VAT rate would have us consumers hurling ourselves back onto the UK High Street like demented lemmings.

The price of a 42 inch plasma screen all-singing all-dancing HD-friendly TV went down by about what a little girl in India makes to produce a dozen pairs of top-of-the-range pairs of trainers, and let's face it, who was ever going to get excited about that?

And with this supposedly munificent if redundant gesture about to run its course, licensees are now bracing themselves for the moment when, on January 1, they will have to rejig all their menus, whack up their prices to comply with the new - or should that be 'restored' - rate of VAT, namely the 17.5 per cent one, and prepare to deal with a customer base that will bemoan another round of price increases for their favourite tipple.

Now there might be a few among you, dear readers, who will argue that putting up the price of a pint by a couple of pence will not matter very much. That where a pint of a Dutch imported lager already costs well in excess of a heart-stopping £3.60 in a pub in Central London the restoration to the full rate of VAT won't exactly be an earth-shattering event.

But when the price of a pint is less than two thirds that rather overblown figure, what then?

Movements in VAT are subtle phenomena to observe. As someone pointed out to me the other day, hardly anyone notices a cut of 2.5 per cent. But put the rate up a couple of points by restoring it to an old rate, as will be the case in less than six weeks' time, and people get jittery.

It might make little difference to the average consumer in terms of the amount of cash he or she shells out for various goods. But it still feels like an empty gesture has been found out, and the perpetrators are 'fessing up.

Perception is a powerful driver in many walks of life. The current perception is that taxes are heading inexorably northwards. Whether 2.5 percentage points added back on to the price of a pint actually makes pub-goers less likely to buy the same numbers as when the rate was temporarily lower is debatable.

Similarly it is unclear if the scale of suffering likely to be experienced by the nation's pubs will be any more than that which has already been seen this year.

The fact is for UK pubs the VAT cut last year - which was in effect negated anyway by the duty hike - was ineffectual from the word go.

The return to the 17.5 per cent rate at this stage of the economic 'recovery' feels like nothing more than government penny-pinching.

And, lest we forget, we've a Budget to look forward to. What joy...