23rd March 2011

It is amazing how much better the sunshine makes you feel. What a glorious day it has been in our part of the North of England.

Hexham was bathed in warm sunshine as we strolled around the charity shops, sat outside in the sunshine to drink our espresso coffee's (what a pity it is not possible to make that a caffe corretto in Hexham) and then later walked along the River Tyne exercising both ourselves and the puppy.

Lunch had been taken in Wetherspoon's in Hexham, a pie and a pint, and had been affordable because of Wetherspoon's tight pricing policy that continues to make both a beer and a steak and kidney pudding affordable in these straightened times.

As we ate and drank, on the far wall of the pub, a TV showed the Chancellor making his budget speech. Nobody appeared to be watching. They were chatting amongst themselves, drinking or eating, or relaxing or waiting for the football.

It was a perfect British Pub lunchtime with plenty of craic, some joshing amongst the regulars and a warm welcome for anyone who had the price of an excellent pint of Holy Island Bitter Ale at less than two pounds a pint!!

Fantastic!

Almost cheaper than the diesel that I had filled the fuel tank of my car with earlier in the day!

So the heir to an Anglo-Irish Baronetcy delivered his budget speech whilst being listened to by his fellow MP's and ignored by the lunch-time crowd in Hexham. It was almost like watching wall paper, moving wallpaper, which was not necessarily inappropriate given the chancellor's family business.

It was, apparently, a budget for growth and jobs.

The measures were announced, a wee bit of help here, a wee tax cut there, a penny off fuel at 6 00pm (that was very precise) but with no mention of the fact that the rise in VAT had added three pence to the cost of the same fuel in January.

But the ending of the fuel escalator, was apparently being paid for by a tax on fuel producers linked to the price of a barrel of oil. On the way home I heard this described on the radio as a windfall tax, which is an interesting way of describing the effects of civil war in Libya! Certainly not a windfall if you live in Benghazi!

But back to the Budget, even the routine hike in tax on Alcohol and Cigarettes raised no eyebrows in this Wetherspoon's. Perhaps it was just expected or we were just resigned to it, hard to say, but even with the rise in taxes the Holy Island Bitter will still be under Two Pounds a Pint, so that's a relief. And the regulars gathered round the door to smoke seemed unperturbed at having to find another fifty pence a packet to indulge their habit.

The budget seemed in rather too many ways to be a non event but I am sure that the Conservative MP for Hexham Guy Opperman will be talking it up at his next constituency meeting.

This year living costs for an 'average family' would apparently have risen by two hundred pounds a year but when the increase in VAT is factored in, that rises to Four Hundred and Fifty Pounds. And according to the commentariat the budget has done little or nothing to change that.

But what is the 'average family'?

If you don't drink, don't smoke, don't drive a car, have a secure job, are planning to buy a new house and are a first time buyer, then this is the budget for you.

Pretty much for everyone else that doesn't fit into this average description of the average family then it is a fudge-it rather than a budget, delivered by the heir to an Anglo-Irish Baronetcy.

It will take time for all the implications to sink in fully, but it is hard to see how or where the benefits will be felt.

The back story to this budget is the tired narrative that it was Labour who overspent and frittered away the cash on luxuries like health, pensions, and support for young people. (Not to mention the financial services sector).

In the nineteen eighties I worked for two years with a Government Task Force. I started a Theology Co-op to attempt to bring the development of public policy in the Thatcher Government under the critical scrutiny of the bible.

We developed a hermeneutic of the Chancellors Speech which was critical of words and intentions that promised one thing and delivered another. I proposed that instead of tax breaks and grants and subsidies, we worked out how much the Task Force had to spend, divide it by the number on the electoral role and however much that came to, send each householder a cheque, a bit like premium bonds but without the Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment, just everyone getting the same share as announced by a Rams Horn in Leviticus 25.

They would spend the money on what they wanted, that would create demand, the money would circulate and business would be business for another forty nine years .....