A view on the Darling Budget

The first conclusion is that it was not really Darling's budget. The burdens placed on the poor were from Gordon Brown last year. He abolished the 10% band, and reduced the standard rate of tax to 20%, with a great fanfare.

We knew that most of us would gain slightly, but those with an income of about £17,000 or less would lose. It now appears that that people just into the tax bracket, will pay more tax and also lose benefit. The number of people with an effective marginal rate of tax of about 70% will be rising from about 600,000 to almost 2 million. Their marginal rate will be higher than that for millionaires! Is this a budget by the Labour Party?

Otherwise it was a budget to displease many groups - greens, drinkers, smokers, drivers, for example. Some will have some sort of compensation, such as winter fuel allowance small increase.

So if you are 80, and a non-smoker, non-drinker, don't drive and are not bothered about the environment, you may feel slightly pleased, despite yet another above inflation hike in council tax, and rapidly rising fuel prices. Perhaps you would need to have a good income as well!

As David Cameron said, above all this budget will do little to ameliorate the economic slowdown we face. The damage for all this was done by G Brown in spending as if there were no tomorrow.