I was simply doing what thousands of other webmasters were doing, I told them. I asked why they had not picked this argument with all the others; why just me. They refused to say.

I asked the OFT officers what parts of my website were not complian. Again they, they refused to tell me.

They ordered me to take my websites offline and go put right the offending parts of the sites (while not telling me what the “offending” parts were). They threatened me with fines and imprisonment if I did not take the sites down.

I advised them that if my websites were down for any length of time then they would lose their high ranking in the search engines, particularly Google. They said it would only be a couple of weeks. So I took the sites offline.

There then followed a series of absurdities which would be outrageously funny were it not for the serious mater of losing my livelihood behind it. In ine case an officer said he would look after this case. Then he went on holiday for ten days, and when he came back he handed the case over to his colleague!

I kept reminding them that this was time-critical. They did not respond.

I kept asking them to tell me specifically what parts of my web content they considered to be non-compliant. They kept on refusing to tell me.

I then started to see my website rankings falling on Google. Had anyone clicked on the link, of course, they would have simply seen a holding page. I pointed out that the ranking of my sites was falling. They did not respond.

Several weeks later they told me that they considered that my websites were now compliant (which was puzzling as I had not changed anything).

I had an email from them saying that they had re-entered my websites into their register of compliant sites, and they gave some list of websites. None of them were my websites. Some of them looked similar but were incorrectly spelt.

I pointed this out to them and they sent me another list. This list was also incorrect. None of my websites were listed there.

They then sent me a four page document in which they said all my websites were listed. In those four pages there were over 50 errors.

I put my sites back up. But it was too late. My sites had lost their ranking. A business that I had built from nothing over eight years had been destroyed in eight weeks.

I had to dismiss two employees. I was no longer contributing tax to the exchequer. I was no longer earning foreign revenue from overseas clients. I wad broke and I had to sign on as unemployed and live off benefits.

It was a lose-lose scenario for all concerned! Hooray for the OFT!

I don’t remember much after that. I spent a couple of years under several psychiatrists and it wad only quite recently that I came off the medication.

We all assume that government departments know what they are doing. But believe me when I say that there is an abundance of incompetence waiting around the corner, and it can destroy people’s livelihoods at a moment’s notice.