The fallout from today's budget has resulted in 'experts' swarming all over the text to contest some of Osborne's claims. Even Osborne himself was vague at the despatch box over, for example, the £100 million figure for the 50p tax rate.
"It raises at most a fraction of what we were told, and it may raise nothing at all."
The Guardian naturally disagrees with his assertion that proposals today would raise five times the amount with new taxes, while I'm sure Tory sites will be fully of the opinion that his sums are correct. In truth, nobody really knows.
Just like Osborne was waggling his todger in the wind in predicting 2.5% growth for 2012 last year, as he was to admit today with the OBR's assessment that it will actually be in the region of 0.8%.
Look. We're not stupid. While political commentators get into a frenzy about all this statistical overload and oracle gazing, the rest of us are quite understanding about it all. Osborne has to satisfy the Tory core vote - with a nod to Lib Dems with the £9,205 personal allowance - while Miliband is forced to act, as he did in rebuttal, the yah-boo-sucks immature schoolboy to cultivate a faux class war to regain union trust and impress the more puerile demographic in his party's heartlands.
One says the budget acts to save money for the less well off, the other says it is punishing them. The vast majority of the public wouldn't know who is telling the truth, nor does the statistics bun fight make them any the wiser.
They do know, however, what each party stands for and would actually - just on the odd occasion - wish that they COULD BE FUCKING HONEST.
For those jewel thieves who have lost the will to live at this point, let's drop a similar example in. Today, tobacco controllers were having orgasms over this article detailing a study which only comprised a mere 6 respondents. This, they trumpeted, means that tobacco companies are corrupt and their assertions nothing but lies.
Yet just last month, they themselves were also coming in their pants at the revelation that just 13 kids had 'proven' outdoor smoking bans to be the best thing in the world. Ever.
Just stop with the patronising pretence, for crying out loud!
Osborne, you want to gain votes by bribing those your focus groups have identified as amenable. Stop pulling figures out of your arse to pretend you're being progressive, you're not convincing anyone. Miliband, stop appealing to the middle class as if you're their friend, using your own sympathetic stats to do it. You're not. We know that, and you sure as shit do too
We're bored with statistics. We're bored with people pretending that they are anything but the natural self-interested beings that we all are. Just admit that you want what you ideologically want, and leave the bent statistics alone.
They are a major part of the problem we now find ourselves in, you irresponsible, immature, economy-wrecking, selfish, liberty-destroying, career-massaging bastards.
For once, I actually crave the soma of mind-numbing TV after reading the crap of today. That, or a lie-down in a darkened room, white noise would even feel comforting by comparison.
