Well this has been a interesting afternoon. The budget brings with it a lot of the usual “give with one hand, take with the other” juggling of finances, but this time offers real hope to get the country back on its feet.
A number of years living beyond our mean has left us with budget deficit of £155 bn (yes, that’s £155,000,000,000 or £7700 for every single household in the UK) clearly action needed to be taken.
Obviously the big headline is the VAT increase from 17.5% to 20% in January next year, but although this is a 12.5% increase in the VAT rate in reality only represents a 2% increase in the final price of items. So, if you were going to go out and buy a new pair of shoes for £45 would a price increase to £45.90 actually deter you? I doubt it.
We shall of course see how things pan-out as a result of this, but one fun part of the day was seeing Harriet Harman’s response, which seemed to be based exclusively on the fact that Nick Clegg was having to modify his viewpoint rather than whether the budget was good, bad or indifferent.
Come on Harriet, if you can’t do better than that it’s going to be a very dull few years ahead!
Oh, and if you think you can do better, try this quite good fun to see how much money you can save/spend!
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