If John Prescott has spent £10,000 on a study to decide whether fire engines should stay red (conclusion: yes), should we be surprised if the Government has also splashed out nearly a quarter of a million on advising older people how to wear slippers?

These are just two of the more striking examples of Government spending highlighted in the Bumper Book of Government Waste. This chronicle of waste is to be published by the Taxpayers' Alliance, which shows that the Government has made a national industry out of profligacy and is throwing £80 billion down the drain every year.

This preposterous figure is made worse by the cost of the Government getting things wrong for small businesses. The Bumper Waste report comes hot on the heels of Computer Weekly's report on 10,000 firms wrongly fined for errors in their tax returns, and £15 million disappearing from the tax credits system.

It's enough to give a small business the January blues.