[Tubby Isaacs]

Improving the DWP wouldn't be a thing for the budget necessarily but the amounts paid don't suggest any great interest in it. Nor have I heard any separate announcements. The move on part time carers is positive, but again. they're a group that the public identify with more than others who are destitute.

[Tubby Isaacs]

IFS says Reeves's long-term government spending figures almost as unrealistically low as Tories' were

This is pretty harsh. The projections aren't as bad, and they don't involve dumping all the tightening till after the election, because that's too far in the future. The IFS sometimes gives the impression both are equally bad, though they actually do say the Tories are "science fiction" and Labour "light fiction".

[Tubby Isaacs]

Thread from Big Dan Neidle, who's argued for restricting this agricultural inheritance tax break for a while. Turns out that farms valued at £1m won't get hammered at all. Where are Rupert Harrison and Jeremy Clarkson? As Reeves says, 3/4 of farms are likely to be exempt (Dan says 87% in this thread, but corrects himself later).

I think this is going to be another "Telegraph rages at bollocks" issue.

[Youngian]

You'd think the inheritance was an apocalypse listening to an NFU spokesperson on the Farming programme this morning. Get over yourself.

Telegraph assembles it's budget expert team

[Andy McDandy]

Don't like the look of this new romcom.

[Youngian]

Haven't checked this claim but doubt Lowe has been mucking out pig shit in his wellies at 6am.
Lowe likes to trumpet how he's a great guy giving away his MP salary to good causes in his constituency. The salary is chicken feed for a gentleman amateur landowner.

[Tubby Isaacs]

This isn't great. Think a fair bit of money will have to be moved about.

Care England, the leading voice for adult social care providers in England, has expressed deep disappointment in the government’s Budget announcement, which overlooks the financial pressures bearing down on the adult social care sector. With a 6.7% increase in the National Living Wage (NLW) alongside a 1.2% rise in Employer National Insurance contributions and a cut to the Secondary Threshold to £5,000, the sector faces an additional circa £2.4 billion funding hole to plug.

Most likely some of this gets moved out of Health. Had this been done in advance, nobody would have cared. The Health budget boost would have still been welcomed. Now it'll all look like a chaotic con. Unforced error.

[Philip Marlow]

2 years freeze of Local Housing Allowance. That's objectively bad, though I declare an interest.

Unfortunately I don't think the government really give a shit about sorting out the safety net. I mean, they're obviously not going with the Tory "scrounger" rhetoric, but they haven't shown any interest in sorting out the DWP or even looking at the punitive regime designed by George Osborne. They just want to go after fraud* and get people off the sick. Got to wait for the actual plans of course, but I suspect with regards to benefits it's going to be same as it ever was.

The idea that we are beset by fraudulent claimants living high on the hog at the expense of Decent Hardworking People is, I suspect, too politically useful to ditch, even if the Labour version of it is less openly rebarbative than the Tory version.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Haven't checked this claim but doubt Lowe has been mucking out pig shit in his wellies at 6am.
Lowe likes to trumpet how he's a great guy giving away his MP salary to good causes in his constituency. The salary is chicken feed for a gentleman amateur landowner.

He may have an interest in opposing this "family farms tax", I reckon. He would seem to be the sort of person that's being targeted.

Years ago, I'd have been relaxed that this stuff would have dissipated quickly as the Opposition were asked if they could agree to restore the relief, and then flounder. But Lowe doesn't have to be disciplined, he's not the Opposition. Then again, the Opposition don't have to be disciplined these days.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Why do people say stuff like this? Fuel duty should have risen, but what's that got to do with The Sun? It's not like it's some special favour that only affects Kelvin McKenzie.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Yep. Capital investment is a slow burner. I don't get this fuss about the budget not "raising growth".

[Bones McCoy]

You'd think the inheritance was an apocalypse listening to an NFU spokesperson on the Farming programme this morning. Get over yourself.

Telegraph assembles it's budget expert team

This expert team was not available.

[kreuzberger]

So, these tory-tears might not be widespread but, even in their sparse volumes, they are the stuff of pure Schadenfreude.

Today has seen Clarkson and Dyson outraged that their tax dodge has been cruelly stamped out. Rachel Johnson is imploring us to think of the landed gentry, and the Telegraph has unearthed a couple of scrimpers and savers from their boat (there's always a boat) who claim to have been forced - since yesterday lunchtime - to offload a portfolio of 60 buy-to-let dwellings.

Yes, it is all really rather amusing, but these tickle-taxes on the rich are generally assumed not to be sufficient to right the ship. Another nine billion quid from the blisteringly wealthy?

[Youngian]

Telegraph has unearthed a couple of scrimpers and savers from their boat (there's always a boat) who claim to have been forced - since yesterday lunchtime - to offload a portfolio of 60 buy-to-let dwellings

The sad faces of wronged Telegraph readers. The paper has long since departed from Planet Earth.

[Nigredo]

One year's work experience in a think tank is enough to qualify someone as an "economist" apparently.

[Abernathy]

Sounds as though even Lesley Riddoch gets it. Actual article is behind a pesky paywall.

Rachel Reeves budget is a sign of what lies ahead. Stealing SNP’s progressive thunder. Carving them out of governance. Making the big public spending pledges Scots have longed to hear. Bypassing Holyrood.
It was easy for the SNP to be distinctive with the Conservatives in charge at Westminster, and easy-ish during the first stumbling days of this new Labour Government. But more public spending - even with winter fuel and two child cap policies still in place - means it won’t be so easy for the Scottish Government from now on.
The SNP needs to communicate an alternative vision for Scotland fast.

https://www.thenational.scot/politics/2 ... Wgnqw-86kQ

[Tubby Isaacs]

The Guardian seems to be keen to play up the austerity.

Reeves told she will have to raise further £9bn to avoid UK public service cuts

This is referring to 2026/7. It refers to some departments only. Cuts to them would be a bad idea, but we're some way from that. I think it's unlikely they do that in the run up to the next election. And it's not like there won't be another budget before that.

[Youngian]

I'd like to announce I also have no plans to meet Jeremy Clarkson

[Tubby Isaacs]

Farmers are not being well-served by this. The Guardian pointed out that there are some pretty serious cuts to farming in the budget, but all the attention is being taken by a bunch of ignoramuses and land owners, who are about as sympathetic as the fox hunters who the Right lined up with back in the day.

Foxhunting was another gift that Theresa May- Nick Timothy bestowed on Jez in 2017.

[kreuzberger]

It looks like a media frenzy in the UK, trying to create the illusion of spooked markets in response to Reeves' budget. At no surprise to anyone, the broadcast charge is being led by Tufton Street's Radio 4 Today disinformation unit.

Only this morning, Felicity Quite-Posh (who I generally like, chiefly because she is not the infantile Yam-Yam Brexit fanboy who introduces captains of industry as "Bossiez") tried to get a Frankfurt luminary to play the game. He was having none of it and put her firmly in her place over wafer-thin fractions of a percentage point which are statistically irrelevant.

Audiences are being ill served and mislead.