It is disappointing for the 150,000 would-be students who have failed to gain a place at university, but degrees wouldn’t be worth much if if they were available to everyone who wanted one.
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That students will have to pay more of their education costs is now a given. The question is whether the payment should be up-front or in arrears – higher fees while at university or higher taxes after they leave?
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Every user of the National Health Service should be presented with a bill as they leave their doctors’ surgery, chemists’ shop or hospital. They would not have to pay it - that’s how the NHS works - but it would make them appreciate the value of the service.
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Having demanded a stamp duty holiday, the housing industry ungratefully dismissed the one-year suspension as insignificant. But it’s not the start of the holiday that will make people buy, it will be the end.
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It was only in June 2008 that the governor of the Bank of England had to write his grovelling letter to the chancellor explaining why UK inflation was above 3 per cent when the target is 2 per cent. But inflation is galloping ahead so quickly that July’s figure will already be over 4 per cent  - and it is heading quickly towards 5 per cent.
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It is an irony of MBAs that those who have one fear these qualifications are being made worthless because these once-rare degrees are now being handed out by confetti, while those without one will do anything to obtain what they still think is a holy grail.

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With public finances collapsing, the chancellor may think this the last time to give away money. But it is because tax revenues are falling that he can afford to waive the taxes he is not receiving anyway.

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Once companies gave money to the Conservative party as freely as trade unions funded Labour. But whereas workers could opt out of their political donation, investors’ only choice was to vote out the motion at the annual meeting or to sell out of the shares.

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Alistair Darling has been forced to scrap his proposals of taxing foreign profits but the problem has not gone away. The probability now is that the chancellor is so dizzy from performing U-turns he chooses to sit back and do nothing.

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Is a slow recovery better than an imminent crash? Governments are trying their best to ensure stability even if it means a long haul: business might be better off seeing the economy allowed to sink to its natural level now so that the recovery can start sooner.

The housing market offers an easy analogy of the choice. If property values are 20 per cent too high, then six years of flat prices while inflation creeps up at 3 per cent would bring values back to their equilibrium level. Alternatively, prices would be allowed to crash by 20 per cent now and then start rising again as soon as the market has bottomed. That analogy can be applied to stock markets, consumer confidence, business profits or the whole economy.

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