So Alastair Darling has presented his last budget before the election and possibly his last budget for ever, who knows. It was a nothing budget. It said nothing, offered nothing, achieved nothing. Much ado about nothing.

What we do know is that it was a typical Brown Budget, as upbeat as possible, with some nice little titbits BUT all the detail missing. With Brown and Darling the devil is definitely in the detail. As usual it has already turned out that some of the  nice little sweeteners won’t actually happen until 2012 – if they happen at all. Meanwhile he forgot to mention the cuts. Now we all know we face cuts, we were all expecting if not the nitty gritty, more detail than we got. To give us no detail at this time is unfair and unnecessary and shows that Labour are intent on manipulating the situation to their advantage all the way to polling day if possible.

Whilst Labour won’t give public spending cuts details and neither will the Conservatives (yet), only the Lib Dems have said precisely how they would cut the budget deficit with £15bn of specific measures announced already.  Yet within 24 hours of the budget Alastair Darling was letting us know that the cuts, that he can’t tell us about, would be as bad as under Thatcher. Only for the Tories to insist , well we will cut even more then.

It’s a ridiculous unholy child like squabble of who can cut most between the Tories and Labour. When what the people deserve is to know what will be protected, to what extent, how will the cuts break down and as for taxes, how will they be affected.

We need more openness (especially after the expense/lobbying/foreign trips/ scandals) and on a need to know basis, the British Public need to know. Isn’t that the least they deserve, after all they will be paying the bill!