Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling has made it clear during his Budget announcements this morning that there are grim times
ahead in his opinion.
Growth expectations have been slashed and he has had to announce huge increases to Government borrowing.
The overall tone of the Budget statement was hardly what you might call upbeat and even the ‘good’ news was tempered almost immediately by bad. There are some headline items that appear to be good news though:
- £17 a week increase in Child Allowance for the poorest families could see up to 150 000 children elevated above the poverty line
- All fuel duty increases have been frozen until October at the earliest
- £12m in funding to encourage female entrepreneurs
- 30% of all Government contracts will be awarded to small business in the next 5years.
- Basic rate of tax cut by 2%
- Charities set to benefit from new transitional tax rates so they can claim more back on donations
Unfortunately, as I said earlier, the good was quickly followed by the bad:
- Cigarettes up 11p
- Beer up 4p per pint
- Wine up 14p per bottle
- Spirits up 55p per bottle
- Inflation set to rise and continuing to prevent the Government hitting their target
So all in all it was not the most positive of budgets, but it was hardly the disaster described by leader of the Conservative party David Cameron:
As this country enters troubled times it could hardly be worse prepared
But then -
He would say that, wouldn’t he?
I have run out of coffee - fancy buying me one? Tags: Alistair Darling, Allowance, Beer, borrowing, bottle, Budget, business, Chancellor, child, Cigarettes, country, Darling, David Cameron, disaster, duty, Exchequer, fuel, funding, Government, Growth, headline, increase, Inflation, leader, morning, news, October, opinion, party, pint, positive, poverty, rate, statement, target, tax, the, week
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