Spend spend spend Chancellor of the Exchequer

There have been so many leaks of all the good stuff to come out of the UK Government Budget Statement made in the House of Commons today that no surprises were expected. But there was one surprise. Rishi Sunak, elegant and articulate, said he planned to spend £180 billion!! After the mountain of money he dished out during the pandemic lockdowns to keep businesses solvent and stop employees being sacked up and down the country, you would have thought so much had been borrowed that there was no room for any more spending until at least a chunk of the debts had been paid off. But no, here we go, it's spend, spend, spend. I was never that good at maths at school but I understand the basics. You can only spend money when you have actually got it in your pocket or your bank. Sunak has borrowed, borrowed, borrowed and has committed the country to paying interest for years on something like £500 billion pounds, and now the banks are warning of interest rates rising, so the interest bill will get bigger and bigger. How, Mr Chancellor, are you going to balance the books? As with all Budget Statements it's the small print that needs checking and this generally takes 24 hours more of poring over the details. The Institute of Fiscal Studies does this job for us voters and its ubiquitous director will be on every television channel and radio explaining how the Chancellor has made 2 plus 2 equal 6. Joe Biden the other side of the Atlantic has this grand plan of taxing billionaires to find the money he needs to cover the $3.5 trillion he is planning to spend in post-pandemic recovery. But I suspect billionaires are not billionaires by giving their money away to the taxman and sure as hell they will find ways of evading Biden's money-grabbers. Boris and Sunak will probably find the same problem if they decide to tax, tax, tax the rich.