I had an interesting discussion with a commissioning editor last week. It was, you’ll recall, shortly after the mini-budget. Anyway, I had a case study of a company that had saved loads of money with remote technology rather than physically visiting people to do its work, and a nice study from the Carbon Trust about how small business could be saving billions if only it would get its act together and put some green measures in.

I’m the first to admit it’s a perennial story that had been told a number of times before. I couldn’t help but be surprised, though, at the answer - if it wasn’t about the shift in capital gains tax, the paper wasn’t interested.

So, do we assume that when there’s a single major event that it’s officially deemed that nothing else is happening of any interest? At all? The funny thing was that on the same day I had the polite turn-down I was chairing a meeting of small businesses, a focus group thing, and asking them what issues were affecting their day to day activities. Granted my pushing of a green agenda didn’t deliver anything they wanted particularly - green issues were a sidshow, they reckoned. You don’t have to agree with the view to accept that it exists. However, CGT didn’t come up much until they were pushed, either.

I’d be very interested to hear from readers about just how important the CGT debate was to them, and whether other financial considerations are actually more important.

capital gains tax | carbon | carbon trust | emissions | green | tax