Budgets: Can't live with 'em . . .

So yet another Budget has been announced by the Chancellor. (They don't seem to do Budgets anymore in the States.) The usual spin, counterspin, creative headlines, and endless TV analyses and interviews with "ordinary" people ("Why didn't he even mention [fill in the blank or blanks]") are all good fun. But the truth is Europe is still in recession, and just when you think things may have semistabilized a Cyprus comes along. America is hardly in better shape, with the Fed's QE policies continuing till . . . when?

So the UK doesn't have any support from a buoyant economy elsewhere and cannot either spend much more (loss of credibility/rising cost of government borrowing/inevitable rise in taxation) or cut much more (adding to unemployment/depressing growth/political suicide). Longterm planning is the only effective way to go, but unfortunately the election cycle is now 5 years, not the 10 or so that's probably required to get the Conservatives another term in office. Whether they can scare enough voters about what a Labour or even Lab/Lib coalition would do - as they did successfully in the days of Foot and Kinnock - remains to be seen, but it's doubtful at best.

So the Chancellor is in fact on fundamentally the right course (give or take), but it may prove all for naught when the other side gets in in 2 years' time. Hey ho.

And we could do with some decent weather too!