The November 2024 Inheritance Tax protests by farmers generated some unwanted flack about "rich farmers driving around on duty free red diesel." In among the concerns about townies not understanding the problems of country folk, the whole issue is like a red oily rag to a bull.  As HMRC Notice 75 will tell you, rebated marked gasoil (or red diesel) is not intended for use as a road fuel.  The law behind this is the Hydrocarbon Oils Duty Act 1979, which says that marked gasoil, ( or chemically marked and dyed gasoil) can only be used in ‘excepted machines’.  The definition of an excepted machine depends on the type of vehicle (for instance, an agricultural vehicle) and the use (for instance, agriculture).  It must be classed as an agricultural tractor by the DVLA and be unlicensed under the Vehicle Excise Registration Act. If a tractor has a general vehicle excise license as a haulage vehicle, it cannot use red diesel because it is not solely intended for agric...

 90 Degrees In The Shade isn’t a film about Customs or Excise (or even VAT) but I think it’s a very vivid dramatization of the experience of an audit.  Donald Wolfit and Rudolf Hrusinsky The film was made in 1965 as a pioneering co-production between Britain and communist Czechoslovakia (the Czech title Tricet Jedna Ve Stinu restores the temperature to Celsius) with the script co-written by David Mercer. Anne Heywood and James Booth play employees in a Czech state grocery store, who have been selling off the stock of brandy and replacing them with bottles of cold tea. Booth’s character is the prime-mover in the fraud and has been having an affair with Heywood.  Czech stage star Rudolf Hrusinsky and Britain’s Sir Donald Wolfit play inspectors who come in to audit the stock. Wolfit’s character is part of the local management, laid back and friendly. Hrusinsky has been sent in from head office as a meticulous ‘scalp-hunter.’  The movie recreates the combined tension and...

  Covid 19 and the Bus and Coach Industry by Glynne Stewart Pegg  North Riding Classic Bus. £14.99 ISBN 978-183841687-4 This book covers the effect of Covid 19 on the Bus and Coach industry from 2020 to 2023. It is “profusely illustrated” (as they used to say) and this makes it a valuable document of a time which already seems to be vanishing from our collective memory. Photos showing hand sanitizer bottles on buses, signs saying “keep your distance” and warnings not to talk to the masked driver already look like stills from a science fiction movie. Glynne Stewart Pegg was an economist, industry historian and part time bus and coach driver throughout lockdown. Ironically, he had been due to make a work visit to bus manufacturers in Wuhan in January 2020 but was advised to delay his journey as the first news of Covid was acknowledged. The first UK death from Covid was announced in March 2020, and this was quickly followed by full lockdown. Pegg wrote the first edition of the bo...