Thursday 24 December 2009

The land of milk and honey

No, scrub the honey. As I said yesterday, we have milk delivered three times a week, yesterday was a milk day and the milkman was unable to get to us, so we went to the supermercado and stocked up. The milkman was not due again until after Christmas but - bless him - he came this morning and delivered yesterday's order. We are now almost overflowing with milk, but at least what we bought yesterday can go into the freezer.

I am, however, unhappy with the dairy. I received an email yesterday telling me that the price of milk will go up from 1 January. To quote: "For the past year we've all been enjoying the reduced VAT rate of 15%. Unfortunately this can't last forever and the government are increasing the VAT rate back to 17.5% as of the 1st January 2010. There's nothing for you to do, we just wanted to let you know that our prices will be going up in line with the VAT increase." Now I read that as meaning that the price will go up because the VAT element will be increased from 15% to 17.5%. But milk is zero-rated so there is no VAT element in the price (delivery is free). To both me and Mrs S this seems an underhand way of increasing the price and we are cancelling our order. We shall just have to go back to buying at the supermarket.

Oh yes. After 24 hours of more than zero temperatures the snow and ice have virtually disappeared. Long may they stay that way.

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