LBS vs Online stores

I defy anybody to remove a BB in 5 minutes, clocking the time properly from the time the previous job goes out of the door to the time the BB removal job does the same. Just go through all the stages of doing a job, from greeting the customer as he enters to waving goodbye to him on his way out, and you'll see that a job which needs 2 minutes of hands-on-tools action from a mechanic takes at least 15 minutes.

Quite right. Jeez baulks at the 22.5 minutes to remove a BB, at £40 per hour. Even if it was removing a nearly new, super greased-up BB it'd only take just shy of that when you factor in all the other processes involved, but if it's a manky old thing that's all but welded in... Of course you'd gladly pay more than they quoted if it turned out to be like that? No, didn't think so.
And £40 p/h to cover staffing, overheads, upkeep of equipment, profit etc etc sounds pretty reasonable to me.