Budget 2011 Special Review

 The box was filled with gobstoppers and other tuck

Yesterday was Bring Your Child To Work Day in the House of Commons, and I must say the kid they let announce the budget was really impressive. Budgets are generally hard to understand – a multidirectional numberfuck endlessly picked over by an army of nerds emerging in TV studios like the Orcs in the Mines of Moria. But fortunately for you, Word-Happener is very clever  - I call myself the thinking man’s Einstein – and I can wrap it up pretty neatly. This budget protects the vulnerable and puts the burden of the recovery onto the shoulders of those who caused this mess. That’s right – you, you bastards.

A key policy, reiterated in the budget, is to lower Labour’s bank levy by £1 billion. And in another bit of good news for Big Money, corporation tax will now be lowered by 2%. This is a big relief for everyone – for example, Vodafone can now pay 2% less of the billions of pounds of taxes they don't pay.  So the rich are getting some much-needed relief – they’ve had a really rough couple of years, ok, and actually everyone’s been pretty rude to them and I know one millionaire who was so sad about it all he paid his butler to cry himself to sleep, so just back off, ok?

But obviously Osborne knows that the rich have to play their part – that’s why he said the government would “encourage” wealthy people to give more. Not tax them more, you understand. But “encourage” them. This is, hopefully, part of a new wave of light-touch government initiatives. In future, I would like the government to “encourage” the Army to go to war, “look favourably upon” the police catching criminals and send good “vibes” to NHS doctors. Aside from hinting very strongly that wealth distribution might be nice, in another bold policy some marginal sections of society (specifically ‘everyone’) will pay more tax on most of what they buy with a VAT rise, and there’ll also be that huge reduction in public services everyone’s quacking on about. In short, this is a highly progressive budget, especially impressive given the Chancellor's age.

This budget has to be tough, because of the mess Labour landed us in. For those who are too young to remember the 2008 financial crisis (the Chancellor, perhaps), here's a guide.

History of the 2008 Financial Crash

In retrospect, it was an audacious manifesto pledge

In 2007, Labour was spending too much. That’s why at the time the Tories had an audacious alternative - they said they would stick to Labour’s spending if elected, indeed raise it. Just before making that pledge, Osborne also said he favoured much less regulation in the nation’s finances – saying we should “look and learn from across the Irish sea” (the fact that Ireland’s finances just suffered a kind of monetary equivalent of the Hindenburg disaster is neither here nor there). 

Then – BAM – for some MAD reason, Gordon Brown caused the US housing bubble to burst. According to sources in my mind, he did it because he found it “funny”. Labour then spends loads of public money - either to make things worse or to stabilise the economy, I forget which. The polls at the time showed the public clearly trusted Brown over Cameron to sort out the crisis – but don’t forget, the public have also attended Justin Bieber’s 3D biopic Justin Bieber: Never Say Never in high numbers, so they’re clearly idiots. Cut forward to the present: banks bailed out with taxpayer money receive billions in bonuses, and everyone else is fine. I assume. Now, I gotta go catch that Justin Bieber: Never Say Never - apparently in 3D he's even dreamier.