VAT gloom - but books are still tax free!

All day the news has been full of the increase in VAT from 17.5% to 20%.

However, there is no VAT on many items considered to be basics or essentials - and happily this exemption still applies to books. The good old-fashioned printed kind that is - ebooks appear to count as a luxury product and attract the full rate of VAT. No skin off my nose as I personally would never dream of converting!

It continues to baffle me that people will pay the same price (or sometimes greater) for an e-book as for the real thing - as I will no doubt persist on calling them until the end of my days when shelves full creaking with actual books become as unusal as a comprehensive vinyl collection is these days. And as impressive!

As you may guess, even if the price of e-books were significantly cheaper, I would still not be tempted. I'd just turn to the second-hand market once again, as often before when times are tough. Unlike music, where I can understand the appeal of carrying hundreds and thousands of songs around at any one time, I never feel the need to have more books than I can physically handle on my person - I, for one, can only read one book at a time and don't switch between many in the space of minutes.

And the sheer joy of a weighty book in my hand, with the smell of the paper, the cover, the wonderful FEEL of flicking through the pages... I can't put it into words, but you know, don't you? You know!