It's time to panic!

Disaster! The recession has finally hit home in Britain and the nation is united in its sympathy for the greatest victims of them all – the billionaires. The Sunday Times have revealed that those poor people have lost £155 billion between them, so you can see why they are so annoyed at having to pay higher income tax. I'm told that one, Peter Hargraves, who made his money and, no doubt, his own personal contribution to the bankrupting of the British economy, as a fund manager in the City during the boom, has threatened to go and live in the Isle of Man to avoid his new tax bill. Protesters are reported to be rioting on the streets of Douglass as I write. There is no truth in the rumour that a disabled former soldier has been running the London Marathon to raise the money to buy him his ticket.

On a lighter note, the Budget! I have discovered why Alistair Darlings growth projections and GDP forecasts were so far off what everyone else said. It seems that he has been using the wrong type of tea – when one is trying to predict the future, one should use darjeeling and not tetley.

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.

Darling to the Rescue

I had lunch today with Toby, an old friend who works for one of the investment banks in the City and who is well connected with the Treasury. I wanted to pick his brain about Alistair Darling's newly announced prescription for the ailing British economy ie. Borrow a fortune and hope that everything will be all right.

'The main thing,' he told me, 'is to protect the irresponsible lending industry which has made Great Britain what it is today. The Government must take the lead before it is too late! I mean, how will anyone afford a new BMW if they can't borrow the money against the value of their home? They can't all have an accident at work and sue their employer!'

I asked him just how much he thought the Government would end up borrowing. He wasn't sure but he thought it was roughly equal to around three quarters of the entire economic output of the planet. I suggested that this sounded like rather a lot. 'That's nothing', he said, 'the American will soon owe about four times the entire economic output of the solar system. Apparently they are having to invent a new number to express it.'

There was just one thing I didn't understand, however. Who are we actually borrowing all this money from? Toby wasn't certain. 'The Chinese, I think. Probably.' But doesn't this put the Chinese in rather a powerful position? 'Only if we pay it back' he said with a smile.