FEELING a bit peckish? Tempted by those tasty-looking sarnies in the canteen? Well, the good news for sandwich-eaters is that you should soon be able to scoff as many of your favourite BLTs as you like without the usual side order of VAT. The Court of Appeal has ruled in favour of Compass Group, which supplies the BBC with lunchtime sarnies, in a case brought against Revenue & Customs, that sandwiches sold by contract caterers should be exempt from VAT, says personneltoday.com. The decision could cost the taxman millions a year. It’s enough to put Gordon Brown off his lunch.

. . . BAD WEEK

THINK your job’s bad? At least you’re not a Frenchman with a sensitive nose. Because if you were, you might have been recruited to work as a technician in a new olfactometry lab in Paris — smelling sewage all day. Suez, a utilities group, is training sewage-sniffers to differentiate between different offensive odours, according to BusinessWeek (July 3). The French “noses”, perhaps more accustomed to savouring perfume, wine and cheese, have to be able to identify odours such as “fermented” and “putrid”, and their causes (rotten cabbage, dead animals), with a view to neutralising them.

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