Slightly Different Blog

So sayeth the man. He wasn’t really referring to the 2009 Chancellor’s Budget statement though.

So the long awaited budget has happened, and there’s nothing spectacular in here for the average man on the street. While we’re not experts, and this entire post should not be something you want to be basing your budgets on, here’s the Slightly Different summary of what we’ve gleaned from today’s statement:

Fuel – up by 2p per litre from September, then increases for the next four years by 1p per litre above the rate of inflation;

Cars – £2000 discount off a brand new car, if your old vehicle is more than ten years old and is scrapped;

Children – Child Tax Credit to increase by £20 from April 2010;

Stamp Duty – increase in the timescale for stamp duty holiday until 31 Dec 09 which means no stamp duty is payable for houses worth less than £175K bought this year;

Savings – ISA savings limits will be increased from £7,200 per year to £10,200 from next year;

Alcohol – tax to increase by 2% from midnight tonight which will add about 5p to a pint, and substantially more to a bottle of wine;

Tobacco – tax to increase by 2% from 6pm tonight.

So, the bottom line seems to be that if you want to buy a new car to replace the 10 year old heap that you’re currently driving, if you’re looking to buy a house this year worth less than £175K, or you’ve got £10K to put aside in an ISA then you are a winner.

If you want to drive anywhere start putting your coppers aside now so you’ve got a stockpile to use in September. Also, don’t forget to put a note in your diary for September and each subsequent April so you can complain about this budget for the next five years. Presumably when subsequent budgets further increase fuel duty this will be on top of this increase in fuel duty, so this will definitely be the budget that keeps on giving.

Finally, if you want to put your smoking jacket and slippers on and console yourself with a glass of brandy and a cigar, thinking wistfully about what could have been and planning what you’re going to do with your extra £20 in Child Tax Credits (assuming you are eligible in the first place), then you’ve got until 6pm today to buy your Cubans, and then the rest of this evening to drink yourself into a condition where you won’t really care about the budget. Maybe that’s the whole idea.

—
Sonnet 18:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

–William Shakespeare