Make mine an extra tax, squire

Well we knew we were being softened up for something with all those carefully timed reports about binge drinking and upping the price of booze. No one stops to wonder, mind you, why booze is dirt cheap in Continental supermarkets, where licensing laws hardly seem to exist, yet they don't suffer drunken yobbos - until the Brits arrive on holiday that is - but we will let that pass for another day.

The excuse for these price hikes, if the need ever arises to justify them, will be that the increases are to curb excessive drinking but in reality it just means that the millions of us who can manage to drink without trying to punch the lights out of anyone who looks in our direction, or ending up comatose in the gutter, or pebble dashing the pavement with carrot soup, or ending up in A&E will be paying more for our tipple. And I suspect the binge drinkers will not even miss a gulp so it's Bacardi Breezers and export strengths all round on that one.

And in a real sneaky move there will be a two per cent rise over inflation on alcohol for the next four years, so the rises are going to be even bigger next year and the next and the next without even having to mention it again. But it is all for our own good so that is all right and the fact it pulls in an extra couple of billion for the Treasury is just a coincidence. With fags up as well just get ready for the whining from Whitehall when the booze cruises start up again in earnest - joined up Government is not a strong point these days.

As Budgets go though, this one gave boring a bad name. If Gordon Brown's speeches are a cheap alternative to Mogadon then Alistair Darling comes a close second with his Librium delivery. It really would take an effort of Herculean proportions to raise any sort of excitement listening to him or indeed not lose the will to live long before the end.

But it does seem we are now being softened up for congestion and road charges with consultants no doubt already fighting each other to the death to get first snout in the trough to develop Darling's new road pricing schemes. Mind you it does beg the question of what happens to the billions in taxes that revenue and customs already squeeze out of us in road fund licences, excise and fuel duty? Road charging will have a Green excuse, for our own good again you see, as will the plan for plastic carrier bags - and how Gordon is just itching to slap a tax on that nice little earner. Even if it ends up with supermakets imposing their own charge the Treasury can still leap in for the second prize of VAT.

Still at least the super rich can breathe easily knowing that this Government will leave them in peace for at least this Parliament and the next and has left enough loopholes for some of them, at least, to pay less tax than the average hospital cleaner.

Meanwhile this budget has the dead hand of Gordon all over it so there will almost certainly be lots of details, ticking little time bombs, hidden in the small print that haven't been mentioned but are just waiting to jump out and grab us by the wallets sometime in the future. The Government hope we won't notice so it is time for the Opposition to earn their corn and dig them out. It won't stop them being railroaded through but at least it will be nice to see our Scottish double act blustering their way uncomfortably through awkward questions.