Sorry seems so hard to say!

What seems to be an ultimate priority in both government and corporate circles is to have people working for them that are either powerless to say sorry or too bovine to say sorry. Having an ability to obfuscate, to deceive or just manipulate the truth is uppermost on most executives CVs. The HMRC is no exception.

HM Revenue and Customs Permanent Secretary Dave Hartnett sees nothing wrong in 1.4 million people getting a tax bombshell. He just puts it down to administrative niceties. Mr Hartnett told BBC Radio 4's Money Box programme, "I'm not sure I see a need to apologise. I've read the papers, listened to the media and heard stories of HMRC blunder and IT failure. Neither of those are true." Maybe not, but his high-handed attitude to customer service stinks. Possibly it's that kind of ability they prize highly in HMRC.

I didn't hear of such a kerfuffle last year. Why now? And is Mr.Hartnett so devoid of practical nous that he doesn't see a customer relations failure in front of his face?

Of course, this "stuff-the-customer" approach is endemic. bmibaby have just been caught out with a sleazy trick at East Midlands Airport (and others too!). Exposed on BBC's Watchdog they have been shown having two sizes of cabin bag gauges. One at the general check-in and one at the gate. Of course, the one at the gate is the smaller one, ideal for fleecing the passengers for having "wrong-sized" bags. Staff said the bosses knew all about this scam but when confronted by Watchdog they claimed hardly a soul had complained! Really? The moon's made of green cheese, by the way. This money-earner has been put out of action, but should we be on the lookout for others like it?

Supermarkets too were covered in this programme. Shoddy tricks over meal deals. I confront the staff at my local supermarkets now. One trick they play is to have an offer going for a while then take it off but they do not put a new bar-coded price label on the shelf. The idea is to fool the customer into thinking the price is as it was. A similar trick is to place more expensive items in the cheaper items shelf space. A busy customer could well be fooled into buying the more expensive item. A staff member told me this was seen as been normal practice.

It seems all are at it in some way. Utilities, banks, you name them, corporate Britain is getting the Del-Boy style of executive leadership. Except the laughs are in short supply.

I think we need a proper consumer organisation to campaign for and champion the customer's side of the fence. "Unexpected item in the bagging area!" says the machine and the customer gets pounced on. It was suggested to me that I had scanned an incorrect bar code. "The bar codes are not my responsibility," I retorted. Maybe Shami Chakrabati could head up some organisation, or Ann Widdecombe. These businesses need a good going over!