00:00What it has done, it was a budget that was kind of, it had a grand sort of introduction insofar as that we were told that there were going to be sort of some dreadful sort of things in terms of taxation.
00:12But as I say, because of the fact that we were kind of well-worn what might happen, that the shock is somewhat lessened.
00:18Most important, I suppose, let's think about the big issue, the debt that this country has is something like 2.6 trillion.
00:27The budget landed after a rare leak of the full economic forecast just before the speech, putting Westminster on edge.
00:36Its headline measures raise around 26 billion through frozen tax thresholds and new wealth-based charges, balanced with limited support on wages and energy bills to steady living costs.
00:49So what this budget was about most particularly was trying to sort of to put money into the economy in the hope that the sort of the growth will start to take place, which reduce the debt, which will then free up sort of money to spend on sort of vital public services.
01:03It's all a bit complex. And of course, for sort of the average sort of voter, how much more tax am I going to pay on a whole wealth of sort of things that we sort of normally consume?
01:15And of course, the usual suspects now, tobacco and alcohol. But most particularly, there's been no increase in taxation.
01:22But the sort of the big issue is going to be the fact of sort of so-called fiscal sort of drag in so far as to sort of the thresholds at which we start paying 20 percent tax and 40 percent.
01:32And indeed, if people are interested, the 45 percent where you have to be earning sort of like £120,000, they are going to sort of remain fixed.
01:40They've been fixed since 2021. They're going to remain fixed for the next three years or three years beyond sort of when they were due to run out.
01:49And what that means is, of course, the proportion of tax we pay increases.
01:53And so the overall headline, if you like, is that this this is about some increasing revenue coming in.
01:57And indeed, so by and large, the money markets, I think they're sort of fairly sanguine, which is very important because, of course, what that means is that we're not going to see a Liz Trust moment,
02:07where, of course, she was going to sort of cut taxation.
02:11And, of course, the sort of those concern about where the money was going to come to run the government.
02:16And there was a sort of like a run on the money markets, which, of course, the sort of the price of sort of borrowing for the government.
02:23So but I think from the average person, they're probably going to feel at best neutral and probably I suspect a lot of people will be feeling a lot worse off.
02:29But I think that's a lot of people will be feeling a lot worse off.
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