Of course, the headline announcement was that the 22p income tax rate is to be reduced to 20p. Except that the cost for this, is the end of the lower 10p rate. This means that the main losers out of this "tax reduction budget" are the poorest tax payers!

Ministers claim that this will be offset by Brown's various tax credits. But this is a lie. If only because few households paying taxes are entitled to tax credits anyway, and certainly not those occupied by single adults.

In fact a single worker earning anything between £7,500 and £16,500/year will lose out due to Brown's alleged tax cuts! And yet this is a level of income on which it is virtually impossible to make a living, especially in large towns where costs are higher.

Since it came to power, Labour has perfected the tax system introduced under the Tories to indulge the richest even more. Britain's current 54 billionaires, with their combined £126bn wealth, get away with paying only £74 million a year in taxes - less than 6p for each £100 they own! And this is under a government which dares to pride itself in its "fairness".

In this system, people earning high salaries are entitled to pay a smaller proportion of their earnings in National Insurance Contributions, as if the social solidarity underlying the National Insurance principle was only meant to apply to the poor!

This is also a system in which living off fat dividends, while doing nothing, is actually cheaper in tax terms than slaving away for a wage: because financial earnings are taxed at a lower rate, with many legal exemptions, and do not incur NI contributions.

And this government's indulgence of parasitic, idle shareholders is all the more revolting, given its obsession to force the poorest into casual low-paid work, including the disabled and long-term sick!

Meanwhile, budgets are cut in real terms where it matters most for the working class. Hospitals close wards and cut nurses' and doctors' jobs. Local councils fail to renew the stock of decent social housing which is desperately needed in the face of the present housing crisis, because they just do not have the funds.

But what does it matter to the Browns and Blairs of this world, as long as the City high-flyers give them good marks? What does it matter to them, at least, as long as there is no backlash against their anti-working class policies. But the more they bend the stick in favour of the rich, the more likely it is to break.