Sour not sweet as Chancellor Osborne endorses controversy

A bitter pill or foul taste the budget has left here at Quick Loans central today. It seems that our very own Chancellor, Mr Osborne endorses controversy. He will, apparently, do right by the next generation "no matter how difficult and how controversial it is". As we said last week and we’ll say it again; yet more evidence of contradictory political scruples when our very own ‘Best of British’ silver-spooned politicians can court controversy but the companies that make them uncomfortable are scorned and forced out of business for being – yes – the very same; controversial according to you guessed it, Mr Osborne!! 

Delivering his eighth Budget, Mr Osborne admitted that government debt will rise as a proportion of GDP this year - breaking a key rule he had set himself – and low and beyond, economic growth forecasts have been revised down sharply. An increasing debt is allowed for the government but not for the consumer when they choose to take out loans it seems. Well, if the economy is a lot weaker and the potential of the UK is also considerably lower than previously thought, shall we just proffer that maybe people’s bank balances are equally weaker and capping the payday loans industry has done little to help those when they need alternative access as traditional lenders slam their doors firmly shut? Where will Mr Osborne find his next lump sum we wonder? 

It really is simple maths; weaker growth means higher debt and higher borrowing. Maybe it’s just us, but can anyone else see the irony in the fact Mr Osborne has announced maths would be made a compulsory subject for students until the age of 18!! As ever, he plays a different tune over and over to suit his own, and the governments’, consistent failures as they hoodwink the voting public. No wonder Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is quoted as saying that the Chancellor's Budget was the "culmination of six years of his failures" and had "unfairness at its very core". 

“Unfairness” is quite mild vernacular compared to the unscrupulous help given to the oil and gas industry, apparently because they’ve been hit by falling global prices and by way of reward Mr Osborne is "effectively abolishing Petroleum Revenue Tax". We’re literally speechless….. help the fat cats line their pockets deeper but cut public service spending by £3.5 billion and insult hard working people by increasing the amount of money you can earn by a paltry £500 a year, rather than say “abolishing” income tax?!  How very generous of you George; we’re sure the voting public applauds you as they choke on their evening meal having to digest your verbal diarrhoea.

If we just look in isolation at the announcement of a sugar tax on soft drinks by Mr Osborne we feel the pain of Gavin Partington, director general of the British Soft Drinks Association, who has said the move was "extremely" disappointing. Well Mr Partington, welcome to our world; the vilified payday loans market. One where dictatorship is alive and kicking and disappointment is par for the course under the current government’s rule. The slogans promoted by Coca Cola that “things go better” and “open happiness” don’t seem to ring true when it comes to this government or their budget.

Rejecting the "dangerous advice" that Britain now needed to start spending more, Mr Osborne has told us that we must "live in the world as it is, and cut our cloth accordingly". Well, as most people’s cloth isn’t cut from Savile Row Mr Osborne, we should all take heed that this budget doesn’t really make much of a fiscal difference to help the people you’re meant to put first, the consumer.