I got a letter from the council this week about next year’s business rates bill. To the uninitiated, these are basically the business equivalent of your council tax – it’s what the local authority charges you for the privilege of employing a load of people in their catchment area (you’d think they’d be grateful). Now given that we’re still knee-deep in recession, and cash is tight for most businesses in the area, what do you think has happened to my bill? Is it going down slightly, perhaps? Is it being frozen until the economy picks up? Or maybe it’s inching up at the rate of the inflation? Well, none of the above actually. In fact, it’s going up by A THIRD.

I nearly fell off my chair when I read the letter. Are these people completely insane? Do they have some kind of perverse wish to kick lots of small firms while they’re down? Do they have a cunning plan to drive every business from their streets so they can save money on pesky stuff like road maintenance, and street cleaning, and rubbish collection? I know their budgets are probably under pressure too. But why are they taking it out on me?

Anyway, there’s no mistake (I checked). In fact, when I asked around, I quickly discovered that I’m by no means the only one facing a bigger bill. It’s not that I object to paying it in principle – I prefer it when the council actually does the stuff it’s supposed to, and makes the neighbourhood look decent (although I don’t see why I should have to pay more for the privilege of being in the centre of town – that’s why I pay more rent).

But here’s the idiotic thing: our bill has apparently been calculated based on April 2008 rental values, i.e. before the recession. So we’re going to have to cough up for far more than this place is actually now worth. How dim is that?

And the annoying thing about business rates is that nobody could care less about them, apart from business owners. Politicians know that if they promise incentives for start-ups, like the Tories have been doing this week, it’ll probably go down well with the voters. Whereas if they promised to reduce business rates, most of the population wouldn’t give a monkey’s. In fact, they'd probably tell you that because it's a local council issue, it's nothing to do with central Government anyway - while the local lot will say their hands are tied and blame it on Whitehall.

Either way, there's no incentive for anyone to try and keep rates down; they can just keep squeezing more cash out of us, and the electorate won’t bat an eyelid. And unless I get myself elected to the local council, I don't see that there's much I can do about it.

That’s the trouble with democracy, you see. Not enough votes for me.