Budget 2017

Oh you are such horrid little ingrates! Have you any idea just how difficult it is to get ‘Eeyore’ Hammond to buy a round, never mind announce an end to all our economic woes and save the retail industry at the slash of a pen?

But all I see on @#Twitface is the trashy cynics among you claiming that cutting business rates only for those who pay virtually none anyway is tokenism, and that the high street strugglers won’t benefit at all. And even some grotty trots who claim that the digital tax, if it ever happens, will amount to rather less than the dog licence.

Well, to those people I would simply make this argument: tough luck! If you want to know whether this was a successful Budget or not, just look at the Tory papers! They’re positively frothing in every unmentionable region (including Humberside) and so I think we might be hearing a bit less from Moggy and Boris for the next few weeks. A price worth paying!

Dear Helen at the BRC was quite grumpy about it all, but then what hasn’t she got to be grumpy about? The most important thing is that this is the beginning of the end of the end of the beginning of austerity or whatever, and that takes pressure off yours truly in trying to prevent a Brexit-inspired total collapse of our food supply system, which would be an awful shame, wouldn’t it?

I suppose it was a good weekend for ‘Slasher’ Burnley to bury bad news, along with 2,500 soon-to-be-ex-bum-slapping colleagues.

Must be off, darlings. I have a rendezvous at the Lords with the forthright and courageous whistleblower Peter Hain. Let’s just call it parliamentary privilege!