WELL, now we've had the budget, do we all feel better off???

The trouble is, lots of the things that are now going to happen sound quite sensible, taken as individual items.

Like stopping people who earn £30,000+ from getting subsidised social housing, and making them pay the same rent as someone in a private let. Until you realise that having to pay the market rent will mean they have less money for other things, and are either more likely to get into debt, or to fail to pay their rent at all.

Only allowing tax credits for two children in a family, however, seems frankly odd. It's hardly likely, to be honest, to have much effect as a birth control measure. And how are they going to decide which two children one gets tax credit for in a household formed where two people who already have children get together in a new relationship? Would any children of the new partnership be treated as tax credit exiles?

It's more than a bit Victorian, rather as if someone in Government is saying that the 'hard-working family' should only be a small one, limited by economic necessity.

Presumably because in this day and age someone somewhere has realised that now we all live longer, thanks to our marvellous NHS, the 'deserving poor' don't have to have dozens of children in the hope enough will survive to look after them in their old age. Two is enough. Any more and the State will assume you are being greedy, and refuse to help you if times get hard, because its all your own fault. It's a bit too much like China's much-derided one child policy, to my way of thinking.

Having a living wage seems like an OK idea: but why should it only apply to over-25s?? It's not even as if it is a huge annual salary, either: once it reaches the dizzy heights of £9 an hour in five year's time, someone working 40 hours a week will still not earn enough to have to start paying back their student loan. At least it will, finally, ensure that people doing important but undervalued jobs (like cleaning buildings, or looking after old people who in their own homes) get paid something approaching what it's possible to earn for working in an over-valued, but better educated, role.

Oh yes, student loads: that's the loan all students will have to have from next September if they want to head off to college or university. No grants any more, not even for those who are unfortunate enough to have parents who are out of work, or unable to work through illness. Generously, the rules will let them borrow more money if their parents are on a low income, but that, coupled with the tuition fees, will still leave them saddled by a hefty debt come graduation time.