Budget for the future

Mar 15 2005 By Helen Logan Evening Gazette

A giveaway bonanza or a damp squib - just how will tomorrow's Budget shape up?

If the amount of interest generated in the run-up to it is anything to go by, then it will be very low-key.

Normally the business desk at the Evening Gazette is swamped with wish-lists, predictions and comments from a whole host of experts.

But this year - perhaps the brouhaha about the new anti-terrorism laws and the phoney general election campaign have proved a distraction - there has been only a trickle.

This will be the ninth Budget delivered by the Chancellor Gordon Brown.

With just two months to go before an expected General Election in May, will the tone of his speech be political, rather than economic with loads of measures to woo the voters?

Prudence has become the watchword for Mr Brown so he may hold things on a steady course rather than trying headline-grabbing tactics in advance of an election.

Tax breaks and the like always catch people's attention.

But the fact is whatever a chancellor does - and it doesn't matter which political party they belong to - at the end of the day the books still have to balance.

So what is given away with one hand in a blaze of publicity often ends up being taken away with the other but in a more subtle, less noticeable way.