Initially it was disappointment, which then quickly turned to annoyance. Now the private sector is downright livid about the government’s decision to scrap business rate relief on empty buildings. But how do you get the message across so that it means something to the public at large? ‘It’s like making the unemployed pay income tax,’ said the British Property Federation (BPF) this week. That’s a pretty powerful analogy. An alternative might have been ‘it’s like docking the benefits of disabled people who don’t find jobs’. Austin Macauley, editor, New Start Online magazine