Budget for growth or survival?

Budget Day was last week. The Chancellor of Exchequer, Mr A Darling, delivered his second Budget statement under very difficult economic circumstances as he had to juggle cutting public expenditure and raising both direct and indirect taxes and has borrowed to balance the book. Both he and Gordon Brown stressed fiscal stimulus to keep the economy running. The economy is in its deepest trouble since the second World War.

For the first time since the 60's we are in a deflationary situation as RPS has gone down to -2. With the co-operation of the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervin King, the Treasury has resorted to quantitative easing.

Let us hope the medicines prescribed by the current Chancellor will work. Let us hope the scandal of expenses claims by our lawmaker MPs are genuine and more transparent. They must give examples of honesty, sincerity and humanity. They must pause for a thought for the millions of underpaid workers, pensioners and people living in genuine hardship who have to live within their limited incomes.

Where there is fairness and genuine distribution of the national cake, the society benefits and we don’t need to create have and have not’s. We need to encourage business people to invest in Britain so that they can be wealth creators. This will support economic growth and could increase employment.

We can not go back to taxing and spending days.