Budget response

There have been some excellent Lib Dem responses to yesterday's budget statement. They will no doubt appear on the local party's blog and Facebook page in due course, so I will not attempt to cover the same ground here. However, it did strike me that Mr Hammond was unduly pleased with the GDP growth rate of the UK. It is not just that it is low in historical terms - the global economy has after all been hit by various depressing actions recently, not least the trade war started by the US against China and other nations - but that it is low by comparison with other leading nations, including virtually all our fellow-members of the EU.

Aside from the official statements, Caron Lindsay's post on Liberal Democrat Voice struck home.

I don’t live in a terribly affluent household, but, even so, a budget that gives us £20 or so extra a month while people are really struggling to find even the most basic housing, or to put food on the table, has got its priorities well and truly wrong. I would much rather pay a bit more tax to make sure that people got the public services and medical treatment and social security that they need.

Add to this injustice the fact that Universal Credit has only had half of what George Osborne took out of it in 2015 as soon as we were out of the picture put back. If Iain Duncan Smith reckons it needs £2 billion, then it probably needs more to make it work for people.

"We are all in this together" has an increasingly hollow ring.

One other item struck me at the time of delivery, that:

We will open the use of e-passport gates at Heathrow and other airports, currently only available to European economic area nationals, to include visitors from the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Japan.

So whites and honorary whites get the welcoming treatment, but not those from our Commonwealth partner, probably soon to overtake us in the world GDP league table, India, nor from Singapore.