The Budget: The Newspapers Decide
HELPING you to make sense of the Budget are the newspapers, which delivers the news without bias nor prejudice. Anorak rounds-up:
Daily Mirror (front page): “SAFE PAIR OF EYEBROWS”
To illustrate the fact that Chancellor Alistair Darling is “on a Budget winner”, the paper solicits the thoughts of “THE SINGLE MUM” on benefits, “THE PENSIONERS”, “THE UNEMPLOYED FAMILY” and “THE LOW EARNER”.
To even up the narrative the Mirror also hears from “THE AVERAGE EARNER”, who just so happens to be saving hard for a new home (Darling told of a Stamp Duty “holiday”) – and “THE SMALL BUSINESS” which can’t see how the Budget will “benefit”. But, then, there’s no word on how it can’t see how it might lose.
This insight is given the headline:
Budget 2010: Are our six Mirror readers better off or not? Click here to find out…
Six? Ooer! Unless the mighty half dozen can get the word out that Darling is good, the Government really is shafted.
The other papers also delivers all you need to know in nakedly polotical front-page headlines:
The Times (front page): “Nakedly Political”
Alistair Darling combined a raid on the rich with the theft of Conservative ideas in a highly political Budget yesterday that postponed the pain of spending cuts until well after polling day.
Daily Star (front page): “GORD’S KICKED US IN THE BALLOTS”
CHANCELLOR Alistair Darling yesterday tried to con voters into saving Labour’s necks – by clobbering the rich. He played Robin Hood with a raid on the wealthy but crammed his Budget with cheap tricks that will keep Britain’s snail-pace recovery barely ticking over.
“SOD THE ECONOMY…VOTE FOR US”
The Sun (front page): “Darling just screwed more people than JT, Ashley, Mark Owen and Tiger Woods”
And you can have post-coital drink and smoke but it will sort you more. Although cider drinkers – 10% more tax – are too pissed to understand nor care much.
Tom Newton Dunn opines:
NORTH Korea’s finance minister was executed by firing squad recently when he screwed up his country’s economy.It’s a sad story that Alistair Darling even found time to joke about with the Cabinet yesterday morning before he delivered his Budget. The Chancellor knows he won’t face poor old Pak Nam-gi’s fate here. Though when the scale of Labour’s monstrous economic crimes emerge, many Brits might wonder why not.
Daily Mail (front page): “£15bn stealth tax raid on the middle-classes”
Daily Telegraph (front page): “Tax raid on middle classes”
The Shadow Chancellor said Alistair Darling had “not been straight with people” in his Budget speech and had tried to cover up a decision to freeze tax bands.
With inflation pushing up earnings, couples will be liable for an extra £100 a year as tax thresholds do not rise correspondingly, he said.
Daily Express (front page): “A BUDGET OF ENVY And SPITE”
The Guardian (front page): “Keep calm and carry on”
His first budget bore the fingerprints of the bloke next door. His second budget coincided with fears of a second Great Depression. Yesterday, with an election only six weeks away, was the first authentic Alistair Darling budget and it showed. The package was cautious, methodical, sensible, coherent and unflashy, because with the chancellor you get what it says on the tin. It was also, all things considered, rather good.
Darling approached the budget with three economic challenges. In the short term, he wanted to prevent the economy sliding into a double-dip recession. In the medium term, he had to lay out a deficit reduction plan that passed muster in the City. And in the long term he aimed to make Britain less dependent on the speculative activities of the financial sector. He also had one political objective: to plant doubt in the minds of voters about the wisdom of handing over a still-fragile economy to David Cameron and George Osborne.
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Posted: 25th, March 2010 | In: Money Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
