A very good morning to you. It's three minutes after ten and I thought in the spirit of my Catholic faith I'd begin with a confession this morning.

I never really know what to do on days like today. I'm not stupid. There's a story about stupid people actually in the news today that I think we'd probably have to get our teeth into.

Well, that's not fair. You can't say stupid. We'll just say the, perhaps the, the less intelligent among us,

feature in the Times. But I'm not stupid. And I do know, I can do some, so I can understand basic

arithmetic. But I don't have what you might call a fully integrated approach to fiscal events. I don't know whether you do. Do you have like an

internal abacus in your head? So when they say we're going to increase the threshold at which you

pay tax, or we're going to decrease the percentage of national insurance that you pay up to 50,000

pounds on your earnings. Do you have a fairly clear idea immediately of what that's going to mean to you?

Or do you rely upon the media for it? Because we do appear in this industry to like nothing more

than provide hours and pages of analysis and explanation,

or do you like me find yourself letting it all sort of wash over you? And I don't mean that in a

smug or insulated sense. Whatever my financial situation was, I think that I would, well, I did,

just sort of let it all wash over me and wait and see, notice when the pay packet comes in,

or notice when the bills come in, whether or not I can detect any meaningful change in my personal circumstances.

And then I look at the politics.

So 11 billion pounds worth of tax breaks for business, which you sort of think that that will be good

if it is spent on investments. But we live in a country where giving cash to businesses has

recently seemed to be just a roundabout way of giving cash to shareholders. You know, look at water

companies. So I don't, that's what I mean is I don't know.

State pension going up by eight and a half percent as the triple lock is honoured in full

looks very political, doesn't it? The last thing you want is people in the autumn of their years

to be struggling unnecessarily. But equally, if everybody else is struggling, then how confident can we be that

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