Darling's spin and stealth.

It's taken me the best part of a day to digest all of the information contained in Darling's tax grab budget, and find how out just how much more worse off I'll be. Now, I'm not middle class by any stretch of the imagination. Both my wife and I work and have an average household income. I have two cars (a Corsa and an Astra - real gas guzzlers aren't they?), a little bit of savings, two kids, and a mortgage. Basically, your average Joe.

However, yesterday I got royally screwed by Darling's budget. Apart from the fact that the delivery of it was so dull, that most human beings would fall asleep, he basically bored us into submission so as not to spot his admission that the government has got it wrong. This budget is set to hurt, just at a time that the economy is on the verge of falling into recession. Only a radical budget could save it, and this wasn't it.

So how much worse off will I end up? Well, the tax on my cars will increase from £315 to £435, and the scrapping of the 10% income tax threshold in Brown's last budget is about to kick in, which will increase our family tax bill by around £250(-ish). Now factor in the alcohol duty increase, plus changes to tax credits, and my family end up just over £500 a year worse off. Gee thanks!

Now looking at the bigger picture of the budget it concerns me even more. A lot of the announcements really sounded like a bit of gap filling in the speech. This will happen in that year, that will happen the year after, but what about the next twelve months. A lot of pressure groups are saying how welcome the increase in child benefit will, they are almost praising the government. But they have fallen for the spin as this won't come in until next year, and because of last year's crapping of the 10% income tax bracket, families would still be worse of. So, no help to families at all then.

But what worries me the most was summed up by David Cameron's response. Where has the money all gone, and why was nothing kept back while the economy was booming? The fact is that while the money was rolling into the treasury Gordon Brown hemorrhaged money, a billion for this project, another billion or so wasted on failed IT projects. Spending commitments made on growth forecasts that were always wrong. Not once did Gordon Brown get a growth forecast right, he had to down grade every single one of them. The result is that this country is £20billion in debt, and at a time when your average person is being told that they owe too much, the government is hardly setting a good example. He has already downgraded his growth forecast since the pre-budget report, and most analysts think that even 1.75% is seriously optimistic.

Although, one of the biggest omissions from the whole budget was Northern Rock! Not a single mention. Now, considering that as much as £110billion of the treasury's (taxpayer's) money will be tied up in it, you would have thought that the Chancellor would mention how it was going to be paid for, but alas no. Just lots of drivel, and stealth tax after stealth tax.

This was a bad news budget in every sense of the word. The Government (most notably Gordon Brown as Chancellor) has run this economy so badly that it is in debt, at a point when the global economy is teetering on the brink of recession. We are badly in debt, the family silver has been sold off, and the rainy day pot was never contributed to.

The fact is that Gordon Brown handed out money with out a single reform, so we ended up never seeing any improvements in services, and nothing being kept back for that rainy day, and those clouds are brewing now.

So what is their answer, much like I predicted a few days ago, we pay. Yes, we pay for their incompetence at running an economy. They were too busy going for the spin headlines of "millions for this service" that they were never prudent, and it is people like you and me that are paying for it.