Budget Bribery

After months of speculation we now know the size of the carrot Labour wishes to bribe us with but in typical Cullen style we are going to have to wait for it. The money won't be in our paws for another 6 months and we will have to wait until 2011 for the last bit of the carrot.

Still it isn't a pack of chewing gum sized tax cut this time but a full block of cheese sized cut for most of us. The fact if we got it last year it would have bought nearly 2 blocks of cheese is purely coincidental and nothing to do with government policy we are told.

Insert your favourite conspiracy theory or Tui ad here.

The timing of the first of the loot is spacious enough. Even most wombles have figured out that the election happens just 1 month after that.

It's enough to make the oldies look nostalgically back to the dates when Muldoon's Budgets had them sitting on the edge of their seats watching the TV with the car keys clamped in their sweaty hands, ready to race down to the nearest petrol station and fill up the car if the petrol tax was to be increased at 8pm that night. The annual budget night ques at the local garage had to be seen to believed I am told. The speed at which they vanished the moment the clock struck 8pm bore a striking resemblance to the more resent phenomenon of a flash mob.

Speaking of petrol, it is now offical, petrol now cost $2+ a litre whatever the octane or place of puchase. Somebody has to be making a lot of money out of this.

For now we will have to tighten our belts further and wait of the October windfall and hope like hell that it all won't have to walk directly into the nearest bank by way of interest rate increase or staight to the petrol pump or supermarket for that matter.

I pity any poor sods whose fixed rate mortgage rolls over just then.