In Britain we have a delightful annual tradition called the Budget.  Once a year the Chancellor of the Exchequer comes out of No. 11 Downing Street waving a battered red briefcase, called the Budget Box, and everyone takes his picture. 

Here is the Chancellor of the Exchequer with the Budget Box.  Inside the box is The Budget.

This Chancellor is called Alistair Darling.  That is his real name.  The Budget Box he is holding belonged to William Gladstone in 1860 and that is the real box, though Gordon Brown, who used to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but is now Prime Minister, had a shiny new red box made by Scottish apprentices which he used instead.  In these tough times Alistair (Darling) obviously felt we needed the comforting genuine and grown up Gladstone stuff.

The Chancellor’s emergence from No. 11, like a butterfly from the chyrsallis,  used to follow 6 weeks of what was officially called Budget Purdah, when there was a total blackout on financial news.  Now we have instead several months of unattributed briefings from “sources close to the Chancellor”.  Besides, Budget Purdah is probably politically incorrect.

Nevertheless, and though the plans are widely leaked, there is still some frisson of anticipation when the Chancellor stands up in parliament.  Everyone in my office peeked at the BBC website at some point this afternoon, though we all knew that when the Chancellor sat down, the price of beer, fags and petrol would have gone up. 

Budget Day is the moment when the Chancellor announces what the tax rate for the next year will be, how much money each week people on state pensions will get, how much the government will tax retirement plans, savings accounts, capital gains, inheritance, whatever.  And just, by the way, he can throw in anything he likes.  He always likes to make it more expensive to smoke, drink and drive.  Sometimes he likes to make it more expensive to read or eat or buy clothes too.  He can make it a good plan or a bad plan for me to retire or get married or buy a house or a car or a solar panel or a pint of beer or a porfolio of shares.  He can make anything he likes more or less expensive, because he can tax or untax anything I might buy or see or plan or do.

One year the Chancellor made takeaway food whose temperature is raised above the ambient air temperature 17.5% more expensive.  At a stroke milkshakes to go became more tax advantageous than coffee to go

What larks!

When he has delivered his budget the Chancellor says, I commend this Budget to the House.  And at last he sits down.  There are a couple of hours of debate.  All political parties get five minutes airtime to explain their position to the people and then there is a division (=vote) in Parliament and the Budget is passed.  I haven’t the energy to explain Parliamentary democracy here, so you will just have to take my word for it or look it up yourself.  The Budget always passes, because if it didn’t the Government would fall.

Meanwhile, while Alistair Darling has been thinking hard about the economy, the Prime Minister has had his mind on Pariliamentary pay and allowances.  The issue is a little tedious, but Gordon Brown’s response, announced in an unexpected video on the Downing Street website has got everyone wondering about the PM’s strangely inappropriate, sudden and intermitent grins, grimaces and eyebrow gymnastics as he explained the new rules.