A wise client once said to me, "You know something? According to cv's, everyone is a world-beater". Never was it more true than during Alistair Darling's budget prologue today.

Athough one could hear the gulps of MPs taking Pro-Plus as he rose, to be fair to Darling he obeyed every last rule of giving a Budget speech. These are known in the trade as the Seven Deadly Spins, and they go as follows - in exactly this order:

1. Just look how well we've done While we've been in power, more of everything good has been done, and less of everything bad. Nothing nasty has been done at all. All this despite the appalling mess we inherited from the last lot. "Between 1783 and 1809 under a Tory Government, Britain grew more slowly than the Black Death and at just half the pace of the Spanish Empire which was at the time engaged in an expensive genocide campaign in Chile. Whereas since 1997, more taxes have been introduced at a lower rate than ever before"

2. Just look how absolutely ghastly things are everywhere else Look at the debt problems in the USA. Look at Canada (why the fuck should we look at Canada?) and the G7. The G7 always screws up - but we're doing better than anyone else anywhere else ever since the World began, and especially in the G7 which is crap, even though we're in it

3. To prove this I'm going to read you lots of positive statistics. Thousands of the beggars. When they should be up they're up, when they should be down they're down. When they should be steady they're as solid as a Rock, ah, I mean, a jolly large solid thing. On and on they go: 40% higher and 7.993% sideways, over under left-flip downwards spiral avoided by 31.668%. "Today there are fewer people looking for jobs and getting them than ever before in history, as well as more workers finding jobs quickly after losing them and before tax, VAT not included"

4. Listen to all these top bananas who agree with us The ONS, the NAO, the BoE. Never mind that they've rubbished everything else we did. BOAC, ECG, MUFC, NATO - they are think we're top

5. Listen to how unbelievably quickly I'm talking Well you can try to, but the idea is to leave you all numbered out, more confused than a cat coming out from anaesthetic. Gabblegabblegabblegabblegobblegobblegobblegobbledygook goo goo such that by the end of next year, this country will be some four hundred working days ahead of where it is now, and yet at the same time carbon neutrally zero efficiency streamlined caring targeting the right word in the right order on the right occasion

6. Except when talking about how much I admire all the nice folks "I have always had the highest regard and greatest respect for nurses who, under this Government, have saved the country billions of pounds wisely spent on people called Mengele, Himmler and so forth and so on and also the amazing job done by policemen, firemen, soldiers, babies, librarians, mothers, mothers' unions, mother's milk and Mothering Sunday"

7. Imagine how much better it's all going to get if you just leave us in charge "Under New Labour, more better things will be promised than under any Tory Government in history, less inflation will be even more tightly controlled than it would be if it was going up which it was but isn't any more because more banks than ever before in history have decided to lend more small sums and no big ones thus making the whole thing fairer and I commend this Budget to the house"

 

Not that anyone's really interested, but in the face of the biggest debt, carbon output, credit squeeze, alcoholism levels, cancer deaths, crime levels, aged care expenses, market monopolies, population spurts, pension shortfalls and overspent departmental budgets in the history of UK Parliamentary democracy, Ali D did the following:

* Higher road tax for gas guzzlers, but no petrol rise * Supermarkets to be forced to charge for plastic bags * Packet of fags up 11p * Bottle of booze up 2% above inflation * Child Benefits increased * Winter fuel benefits up to £400 for anyone over 80.

Deckchairs, icebergs, Titanics.....

The Budget has raised £1.9 billion in direct taxation. Or roughly 1% of a Rock. Initial response has been summed up as 'muted'. Neutered might be a better word in relation to Alistair Farthing.