Darling gets 50% of top earners' takings!

I've not contemplated the budget in any great detail, but have chanced to read that those earning over £150,000 will have the top slice cut in half. Not exactly an Old Labour tactic, more an Up-To-Our-Necks-In-It Labour reaction. Forget about Sats and league tables at schools. All school leavers will have to use every ounce of grey matter figuring out how to pay back the dire results of Gordon Brown's reckless abandonment of Prudence. Because we are all involved and will all be involved for a very long time.

Those about to get the big bucks and bonuses creamed off the top of their pay packets may feel aggrieved. If they ever voted for this lot, then it's one big fat free range chicken coming home to roost. They should know that it always ends in tears for Labour.

The Confederation of British Industry puts it quite well when it says that this budget does not set out a "credible and rigorous" path to recovery. No, it doesn't. Gordon Brown has not been credible in much of this. Ever since the sub-prime fiasco came tumbling apart, he has sought to suggest it was all the fault of others. They were involved, certainly, but his "light touch" allowed those who should have known better to turn blind eyes, to keep quiet about dodgy dealings or to bury their heads in their hands.

He knew the economy was all going pear-shaped long before he eventually admitted it publically. How anyone could think that a further five years of a Labour government is worth contemplating, I do not know.