Kept in the dark by George Osborne’s budget eclipse

We were warned that people in Scotland would suffer the darkest conditions on Friday, and so it came to pass.

But don’t blame the eclipse blame the feeling of hopelessness on yet another Con/Dem budget!

It was their final one before the General Election though given current polls and the

lamentable position Labour find themselves in it won’t be the last we will have to endure from the Tories.

Minority government or coalition, mark my words the Tories will again be in charge!

The good news is that the crawling Lib-Dums won’t! They’ll be lucky to fill Danny Alexander’s yellow briefcase with votes let alone win a seat, especially here in Scotland.

For many the budget from this greasy Westminster coalition was full of pre-election cheer or, in layman’s terms, bribes.

The whisky industry raised a glass to a 2% tax cut, as did our beleaguered oil and gas industry.

As our Deputy First Minister John Swinney correctly pointed out, successive UK government’s stewardship of this sector has been poor. This action had to be taken to protect and secure its long term future.

The price of beer was cut by a penny but, given the dire state of the licensing trade at the moment, it was like throwing a washer into a beggar’s cap.

The UK Government’s habit of hiking the price of fags to add to the coffers of the besieged Chancellor, while maintaining they are concerned for our health continued.

Fuel duty was again frozen, first time buyers, savers and

pensioners all came off slightly better and the banks got another well-deserved financial clattering.

But, as we all know, it’s not what’s in a budget we should be concerned about, but what is not and this one had more gaps in it than Putin’s diary.

Why didn’t Chancellor (or rather, chancer) Osborne

mention anything about the imminent £30+ billion of austerity cuts that will kick in during the next parliament?

Cuts that have been agreed by Labour and which will be carried out even if by a freak accident we wake up on May 8 and find Ed Jellybam fumbling with the keys to Number 10.

Cuts that will slash and irreparably damage already weakened council services and further target those the Tories always seem to kick when they are down the low paid, the unemployed and those on benefits.

Osborne is already on record stating he wants to cut a further £12 billion from the Welfare budget.

Can he please explain to everyone how another Tory government plans to achieve that target before we go to the ballot box and not after?

It’s not just the Institute for Fiscal Studies that wants to know, I’m sure most of us would as well.

The budgets for the NHS,

education, welfare and the armed forces will have to have huge holes cut into them if he wants to achieve his crazed aims. Yet we seem to be a bit light on the detail of how he will do it.

We are being kept in the dark.

Since 2009 Scotland has seen its budget cut, in real terms, by a humungous £3.5 billion and it’s reckoned on day-to-day spending by the end of 2020 the cuts from Westminster will be worth about £14.5 billion.

An eyewatering sum of money and one that will undoubtedly affect every man, woman and child living here.

Yet, again, we are not told the hows, whys and whens just put up or shut up.

Sure the UK national debt might come down over the next five years, whether it be the Tories or Labour’s grubby hands at the Westminster tiller.

But one thing is guaranteed to go up the number of charity food banks and queues of those desperate families needing help.

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