Sometimes one has to concede defeat. Gordon Brown has won.


As a sole practitioner, I have recently turned my hand after some years' inactivity to conveyancing. But the stamp duty land tax procedures have proved a hill too far. Filling out the form after a purchase from a foreign vendor, I inserted all the (I suspect) pointless details of the foreign address, including a postcode.



Back came a form telling me something was wrong, but not saying what. I managed, after a couple of telephone calls, to speak to an adviser who told me the postcode on the form only meant a 15K code, although it didn't say so. So now all I have to do is send the correcting form, having left off the code, to be re-signed by my client before resubmitting it to the Inland Revenue.



No doubt this story can be repeated countless times by other practitioners even more exasperated than I am by a complex over-automated system. I have promised my wife I will do no more conveyancing and I am happily in the position where I can probably keep the promise. But how I would like Mr Brown to have to spend several weeks dealing with these forms himself.



Roger Sceats, Surbiton, Surrey