This will be the year of two UK budgets – and the year of none. The chancellor’s pre-election budget will avoid tough action for fear of losing votes and the post-election budget will avoid it because the manifestos shied away from tough threats.
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Perhaps Britain’s businesses should add up their spending plans and publish a corporate-sector budget. It is commerce that creates wealth and government that spends it and Alistair Darling’s latest budget depends totally on business reviving the economy.
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Do people who drive cars until they’re nine years old really replace their clapped-out bangers with brand new vehicles?  That’s the theory of those advocating £2,000 grants to scrap old cars.
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If there is any doubt about the size of the financial problem, look at the scale of the solution. Britain is undergoing its most radical economic change since the second world war.
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