Dull and grey
The man was the message. Alistair Darling, the chancellor mocked for being dull and grey and lacking charisma delivered a Budget which was, well, a wee bit dull and grey and lacking anything very much to get political pulses racing. That, though, was the point. Indeed, it had been the advance billing from the Treasury.
That is why Mr Darling dubbed his own statement "the responsible Budget". That is why he repeatedly pledged to maintain "stability".
Starved of funds and still paying the price for producing too many rabbits from his hat in last year's pre-Budget Report, Mr Darling posed today as the unflashy man who you can trust to maintain a steady course as fierce global economic winds batter Britain.
The chancellor did, however, make two big choices today - one political, one economic.
First he dared to force people to "think before they drink before they drive" - by raising taxes on alcohol and cars to pay for a renewed effort to cut child poverty and to subsidise pensioners soaring fuel bills.
His second choice was, you might think, rather out of character - to gamble that Britain's economy will weather the storms and that the country's soaring borrowing will eventually take care of itself.
I'm 
Comments
Budget day is a good day for bad news, yet another Conservative MP resigns/looses the whip, is Mr Cameron after the record.
Of course, he has no alternative course but to gamble. To get up once again - as Gordon Brown did almosy every year - and announce with a straight face that borrowing will improve (it never did). That we will soon be in surplus (we still aren't.)
He has no choice but to whistle for a wind. The root cause of this boxing in is nothing more or less than incompetence in the management of the economy for the past ten years.
Putting the most benign slant on it -and perhaps stretching a point - the government's aims might be laudable : Better health, education, transport infrastructure etc. But we repeatedly see - generation after generation, administration after administration -that the government does not, indeed could not possibly, have the competence to deliver the promised land. We are expected to fall for it every time.
And so we fudge and mudge, tax and waste, and the country regresses in world terms with every new set of undeliverable promises.
For the first time in my life I detect the stirrings of revolution in this country. So does the government. That is why so many subjects can't be mentioned in front of the children.
The blame for this widespread discontent can be firmly laid at the door of New Labour.
I love the photo caption: you can actually see the puppet-master pulling the strings.
Why have the ´óÏó´«Ã½ failed to report Ed Balls' comments - when Cameron was delivering his response he stated that we're now living with the highest level of taxes ever... Balls' pathetic cry, "So what".
Disgusting. It shows the government up for exactly what they are... there complete contempt for the public beggars belief.
Balls is often tipped to be the next chancellor, yet this is his attitude towards the public. Why wasn't this reported on the ´óÏó´«Ã½? It's on the recordings for all to see...
Another budget that punishes success, if you ask me. Knocking the upper NI threshold up means my household will actually have less money this year, despite my partner's payrise. And no, we're not rich, we don't throw money around like water. We're just trying to save up to buy a home of our own and create some small level of financial security.
Will 'services' improve? Of course not. Do many of us who actually pay the taxes even use these 'services'? Beyond bin collection and very rare use of the NHS, I don't.
Is it so wrong for a working person to be free to enjoy the rewards of their own labour? It certainly seems that way. Take, take take.
A very glum and dismal piece of work. Thanks for nothing, Darling.
Yvette Cooper, speaking in a Budget debate on C4 News last night, never uttered a single sentence without saying 'stability' at least once.
I kept expecting J. Snow to ask her if she had an unusual version of Tourette Syndrome. It was comical.
How I miss Spitting Image.
Another budget that punishes success, if you ask me. Knocking the upper NI threshold up means my household will actually have less money this year, despite my partner's payrise. And no, we're not rich, we don't throw money around like water. We're just trying to save up to buy a home of our own and create some small level of financial security.
Will 'services' improve? Of course not. Do many of us who actually pay the taxes even use these 'services'? Beyond bin collection and very rare use of the NHS, I don't.
Is it so wrong for a working person to be free to enjoy the rewards of their own labour? It certainly seems that way. Take, take take.
A very glum and dismal piece of work. Thanks for nothing, Darling.
Never have the public been so well informed and been made so aware of how out of touch with them their government is.
And never has a government been seen as caring so little about the gulf between them and the people.
"So what?" says Balls - I worry that he will soon find out.
For a senior minister (the chancellor) to actually agree to be interviewd live on the Today program shows just how desparate they are.
Even minor ministers and functionaries have treated requests from the Today program with contempt in the past...
So he put up the tax on our booze
You buy a big car, and you lose.
But the way he delivered
Set no one a quiver ...
It was an excellent time for a snooze!
'Vote dull and grey!' which party in the past hundred years arrived at a successful election victory with that for a rallying call?
The mistake this government makes is to think that we don't know who caused all this and we don't want an alternative.
If on their retirement one's parents announced that they had remortgaged the house many years ago and were now deeply in debt no one would call them a 'safe pair of hands'. This is how the dull and grey budget is trying to brand itself. Utter poppycock.
As for Ed Balls shouting "so what?" at Cameron's allegatons about us having the highest ever tax burden on record - the contempt in which this govenrment holds its subjects is breath taking.
We must be getting to the pits if all that's left to tax is plastic bags !!
Please Bottler, call an election now so that the electorate can show you what they really think of you - the longer you leave it, the harder it's going to be for us to pick ourselves up from the economic diasaster you have landed us in.
Ed Balls might say 'So what' and in Denmark that would be a perfectly acceptable comment from a politician because, despite stunning high level of taxation, compared to England, the Danish Government spends the money efficiently.
That is the beginning and end of it.
In this accursed country, the Government is incapable of spending taxpayers money wisely so we end up with the worst of all worlds.
English (not British) people must recognise this and do something about it!
Nick - is there something subliminal in the tale of the red budget boxes? I remember Gordon B comissioning a new red one from British apprentices for his first budget (says: modern, innovative, iconoclastic, supporting manufacturing). Darling seems to have reverted to the old, battered version ...
I think we should be told.
So now the tax on a will be as much as it is on an E Class Mercedes Benz - just wonderful!
the uk will be in recession by the end of 08,the reason being a shrinking economy. construction, financial services and the service sector are going to be hit by lack of consumer credit and consumers shrinking disposable income ,brown and darlings flawed tax and spend policy is going to make things a lot worse than they should be ,when other countries are cutting taxes to stimulate their economies in hard times ,we have two idiots putting taxes up and hoping for the best,lets hope recession does'nt turn into deppression.