OPINION: Budget 2012

Yesterday, George Osbourne presented his third budget to the House of Commons and today, and for most of the next week or so, the petty bickering, attempts at point scoring, and politicking goes on.

As far as I can see, yesterday's budget tinkered. There were a few good things, a few bad things and just about everything except the so-called "Granny Tax" had been leaked in advance.

Yesterday's budget can best be summed up as "meh".

There was no great innovation on the proposals. There was no vision for the future. There was no sense of a new political ideology or fiscal system.

George Osbourne may as well have stood up and said "Everything increased by inflation. That's it!"

Where are the great pitical visionaries? Why is there no desire to do more than tinker? Where I'd the politics of principle and ideology?

Yesterday's budget, once the dust has settled, will be viewed as a non-event that did nothing for the UK, its citizens, or the wider world.

The UK has become a one-party state, but a one-party state with different faces so that the proles think that change has happened.

Opposition oppose for the sake of opposing but offer no alternative and no vision for a better future. And yet, while they're busy opposing, they refuse to say they'd do anything different or reverse decisions.

We have hit a stalemate in which bland consimerist capitalism is the only choice available and it makes no difference who delivers the budget.

Why call George Osborne "Gideon "?

You hear it and read it all the time; Labour supporters who refer to George Osborne as "Gideon".

Why do they do it?

Isn't it just name calling and bullying?

Ok, ok, George Osborne's birth certificate has him as Gideon but he has, as is his choice, become known as George.

So Gideon is his real name? Yes. But Ed Miliband and Ed Balls are both really named Edward - should we insist that they are always called that? Should Ken Clarke always be Kenneth? Should Maggie Thatcher always be Margaret?

Labour supporters object, quite rightly, to Cameron's name calling and bullying but lose all respect when they call George Osborne Gideon because it is being done to try to make him sound posh, privileged and Tory.

George Osborne wants to be called George. Labour supporters should respect that.

Miliband's PMQs cock-up

Either George Osborne goes on budget holidays or cleaners and dinner ladies are paid a lot....



... or Ed Miliband is a total muppet!