Gary , it's a time old thing.. anything from the US we get stung tax wise.. go look at any US branded stuff in say digital village.. brands like Mackie etc also have had their pricing go up
I would wait for it to appear on a monthly special perhaps, it's bound to.
I use NI battery instead.. there are lots of drum things.. other companies do drum type things for around that cost though or not much more.
if you don't mind doing a bit of programming you can pick up sample packs from other things and use them
or just use a sampler and import them into that..
http://www.meldaproduction.com/mdrummer/ the small one might be of interest also. .but go look on KVR there are loads of free drum players
even have a look at things like minidrumz
http://dskmusic.blogspot.com/p/downloads.html