The Budget Explained

That nice young chap Alistair Darling has delivered his Budget, managing to do so while keeping a straight face which was quite impressive. Well, drawing on my own extensive experience of such announcements, I offer my translation of what he had to say....

“We will introduce a new 50% top rate of tax for people who earn £150,000 a year”......this is a clever move to get gullible journalists to write headlines like this, this and this which say that only the rich will pay for the ghastly amount of borrowing that we're announcing. No one will notice that it will only raise a teensy fraction of the money needed and that the poor will pay all the rest...at least not until after the election. I personally am not worried about this, incidentally. Anyone who is stupid enough not to take their money in stocks so that they don't have to pay any income tax at all doesn't deserve 150 grand a year!

“All under 25s who have been out of work for a year will be offered a job or training”.....We'll bung them on a course where they'll get a worthless NVQ. Hopefully this will be so unattractive that they'll claim disability and that'll get them off the jobless statistics.

“You can't cut your way out of a recession!”....We're going to try to scare everyone into thinking that the Tories will close their local hospital to save money. We'll cut spending to ribbons but only after the election.

“Alcohol duty will rise by 2%”....Drunks won't notice

“Duty on tobacco will rise by 2%”....Smokers won't be able to help themselves.

“Fuel Duty will rise by 2%”.....if you say it quickly no-one will notice that this will actually raise as is supposed to be raised by that new tax on the rich.

“The annual ISA limit will increase from £7,200 to £10,200”.....no-one has that much money in the bank anymore anyway

“The economy will grow at 1.5% in 2010 and over 3% per year after that”.....It won't

“The Budget deficit will be £175billion this year”.....You're f***ed, we're f***ed, everyone is f***ing f***ed.

I also notice that the Treasury have had a great new idea for how to keep bankers off the dole queue. They will now be modestly remunerated for selling all the extra government debt which is necessary to bale out those selfsame bankers. And so the circle of life is complete.