Our parliamentary editor Sir Howard Elston gives us the lowdown on all the hi-jinx on that budget debate that is keeping the UK voters riveted to their I-gadget things
The kid gloves have come off with less than two months to go as the Tories unveiled their last budget before the national elections in May.
In Westminsterland (UK), an Oxford graduate told his fellow 650 MPs that personal tax allowances have been raised, the oil industry will get more cash and, to assuage the country’s alcoholics, there’ll be less tax to pay on beer and whisky.
In response, another Oxford graduate who is the previous Oxford graduate’s shadow in the Treasury said this was bad news, not only for Oxford, but other bits of the country too.
The coalition treasury spokesman for the Libdems, an Oxford graduate, backed the budget and then added it was drinks all around down at the CS Lewis Memorial pool hall next to the Bodleian Library come spring break.
The Prime Minister, an Oxford alumnus, then weighed in backing the first Oxford graduate who is the Chancellor against the two opposing Oxford men who called for the first Oxfordian to resign.
Oxford boy
Things quietened down when the leader of the opposition, an Oxford graduate, called in his dogs and asked the Depute PM (shock: a Cambridge Alumnus) to distance himself from the Tory budget which had been tabled originally by the first Oxford grad.
In a press statement, meanwhile, the mayor of London, an alumnus of guess where, said politicians are out of touch with common people who went to Durham, the LSE or Harvard. This was seconded by Tony Blair, former PM, an Oxford graduate and also Prince Charles, the next in line to the throne, who is unfortunately a Cambridge lad (albeit with a paltry 2.2)
Phil, a retired second-hand car dealer from Bradford and an emeritus professor at Leeds Polytechnic Metro University of Media Studies said: “If they can’t bloody well speak like David Hockney or Geoffrey Boycott, bloody well hang ’em from the nearest bloody lamp-post.”
@sirhiwardelston
