The highly-respected Lausanne-based Institute for Management Development (IMD) has just issued its 20th anniversary ‘World Competitiveness Yearbook 2008’. It is not a pleasant read for the UK. In this annual assessment of national competitiveness, the UK has fallen one place from twentieth, to twenty-first, having been overtaken by Israel. But, more significantly, the IMD report downgrades the UK’s position against its global rivals on the crucial factor of economic performance, from seventh out of 55 countries to an alarming sixteenth. And the cause of this decline? Yes, you have guessed it - the rising tax burden and worsening business environment. I could go on and on, about higher food, petrol, and energy prices. But the point is already painfully clear. When times were good -“nice” to employ Mervyn King’s acronymic word - we could just about stomach nonsensical ‘Green’ trumpery over things like the Climate Change Levy and ‘Green’ taxes, which did nothing whatsoever about climate change, but which ‘sustained’ politicians in their pontificating about “Saving the Planet”. By stark contrast, in the present challenging world economy, such follies, such self-inflicted burdens, have, recalling the words of Benjamin Franklin - “even a small hole can sink a big ship.”