This is turning out to be a really rubbish June.Scoring one-all with the Yanks last week while having to put up with a thousand Swahili trumpets for90 minutes was bad enough. Now, apparently, the country’s finances are in such a state VAT is going up to 40% and a bottle of plonk will cost £8 and old folk will be turfed out of their nice care homes and have to sleep on park benches – assuming they haven’t closed all the parks.This new Office of Budget Whatever (I thought they were scrapping quangos?) originally announced that, on the one hand, maybe things aren’t as bad as we thought, but there again, on the other, maybe they’re much worse.Of course, Boy George Osborne doesn’t want the good news. The worse the better. That way he can either blame the old lot for all the squillion pound cuts he’s going to make or, alternatively, he can cut much less than he’s been threatening, and sound all caring.The whole point of the last few weeks has been to work the public into a complete lather. If you believed these ministers you’d think we’ll be living off boiled leather with town halls sold off and tax rates higher than North Korea.‘Course it won’t be like that.It just means we won’t mind when the tax rates are ‘only’ at the level of Cuba and VAT ‘only’ goes up to 25% instead of 40%.It’s called spinning…Me, I’m off to Calais to stock up…
