*Actually, good English teachers and accountants know that bankruptcy only applies to individuals. The alternative is "insolvency" but that only really applies to companies. A new word is needed?

Last Wednesday’s budget was shocking.

Over a pint of beer, my flatmate and I came up with some controversial measures:

Taxes Rises

The national debt is massive. Tax rises are inevitable. The alternative is to print money and inflate our way out of trouble (sound familiar?)

• The "Levi’s Tax" – tax on jeans with a waist size over 40 inches
• VAT to 20%
• Basic rate to 25% (OUCH OUCH OUCH)

Spending Cuts

Time to trim the fat.

• Cancel the Olympics – the money could be put to better use.
• Prescribe running shoes instead of medicine.
• Privatise schools and introduce a school voucher system. Efficiency savings all round.
• Cancel the £2000 rebate for cars – bad for the environment, everyone will still buy foreign cars anyway.
• No more agricultural subsidies. This is the real meaning of Fair Trade.
• Goodbye department for culture and sport.
• Cancel the aircraft carrier and issue everyone with a pitchfork.
• Cancel Christmas
• 99% pay cuts for junior doctors who once attended Merchant Taylors Boys School (sorry guys).

Tax Cuts

Tax cuts to stimulate the economy. Keynesian-style.

• Reduce employers National Insurance rate
• Give child benefits to schools to provide breakfast and free school uniforms
• Cancel the tax disc and increase fuel duty instead
• Cancel TV licence – expensive to administer.
• 50% tax on incomes over £1,000,000, not £150,000. I don’t think we should be scaring away the entrepreneurs.

Reforms

Reforms as a platform for the future. Monetarist-style.

• Massive investment in education
• Make engineering glamorous again
• More business/entrepreneurial education from an earlier age
• The environment – Carbon taxes, congestion charging

We sound like right-wing nuts. The other stuff wasn’t legal to publish. Suggestions?