The Budget – good for some?

When you read the (few) pro Labour Party newspapers it’s easy to be misled into thinking that the country is being run by a couple of Tory toffs with only a few brain cells between them, with their FibDem lapdog in tow. Of course it's true they did have that trigger happy idiot Bush running America for years. (People can blame Blair for a lot but it’s a shame we can't ever know what might have happened if Clinton had been there instead.) But after having a good laugh at the lampooning cartoons, we must be careful not to underestimate either of them.

George Osborne actually played the right cards with Wednesday’s budget, coming out with quite a few things businesses wanted to hear – they in the main being Tory voters. Being in business myself (definitely NOT Tory in case you weren’t sure!) I do have total sympathy for other small companies who have been perilously close to going under because of fuel costs, so I have to support those measures in the budget that has done something to alleviate the situation. What I am not so sure about is the apprenticeships promise – sounds good but …

The government wants the private sector to take up all those who are going to be out a job because of their cuts. Apprenticeships – yes this is good news but just because they are available doesn’t mean that they will all be taken up, and even those that are, this certainly wont mean that they all automatically turn into a job. And incidentally the pay is just £2.50 an hour.

And pursuing this further, the notion that the private sector will be able to create enough jobs for all those who are going to be made unemployed – at least ½ million, and probably a lot more – is stupifyingly ridiculous!

So coming full circle it’s easy to see why I’m tempted to believe that the country is run by idiots after all!

Les