The difference between an anomaly and an absurdity can amount to a form of words, but a great deal of money.

The Value Added Tax bills imposed on Police Scotland and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service are as absurd as they are pointless. Treasury rules, such as they are, are no more than a justification for opportunism. The result, nevertheless, is that our police lose £23 million; our fire-fighting £10m.

In a time of budget cuts and government stringency, a smart politician could probably make a case for such a regime. Someone - perhaps a Chancellor of the Exchequer - could assert that we are all in this together, that burdens exist to be shared. A noble thought. But the VAT impost is specific to Scotland's reorganised services. No other police force in the United Kingdom faces such a tax.

You could wonder, in philosophical policy realms, how a charge once devised to extract revenue from "luxury goods" ever came to involve policing. You could ask a Westminster politician if he or she would manage an amalgamation of English forces in the face of such a surcharge. You could, guessing the answer, ask Chief Constable Sir Stephen House about VAT and the "extreme" budgetary measures he is planning.

The paying public will take a different view. Here are our police and fire services. Each does vital work. Each is obliged, for the sake of some tiny Treasury victory, to hand over tens of millions of pounds that could surely be better spent patrolling our streets, aiding the victims of crime or disaster, and providing the kind of reassurance on which society depends.

The anomaly is as glaring as the absurdity of it all. The reform of these services in Scotland was much debated. There were many good arguments for and against. The final decision had as much to do with budgetary benefits as anything. Then in stepped the Treasury. In its collective mind, new forces meant nothing more than new money. Peter was robbed, and robbed blind, to pay Paul.

If Scotland's Edinburgh Parliament and our 56 new Scottish National Party Westminster representatives need a cause to fight, this would be it. The injustice is obvious; the possible consequences depressing and infuriating. A principle that does not apply anywhere in the UK save to Scottish services carrying through reform is as clear a case for raised voices as any.