Wednesday, December 05, 2007

INSIDE POLITICS - BUDGET ONE

It's now just 3pm - 45 minutes away from the most difficult budget Brian Cowen will give.

The speculation that's flying along the correspondents' corridor at the moment. 1. A big move on stamp duty. 2. A bigger carbon budget that the conservative-minded Cowen will be prepared to openly admit. 3. More money for cancer services. And 4. Ministers may make a decision to waive their pay increase (even though Bertie Ahern said this would be a futile gesture).

I'm just not sure about no. 4. Journalists are as prone to being gullible to unfounded rumours (maybe even more so!) than anybody else.

Whatever, all will be revealed over the next two hours!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

A big driver for new homes is 1st time buyers and they are stamp duty immune. So we're at the mercy of the ECB for the housing market.

24,000 new jobs is really low.