Bingo or Afghanistan or Education or The NHS? Bingo, Please.

In a fairly odd Pre-Budget Report (PBR), it did not get more bizarre than the cut in tax on Bingo.

What was really odd about it was that it was so specific and announced with such gravity that it seemed every citizen in Britain would derive some benefit - hence its headline billing in the PBR. There were no free prescriptions for everyone, no free hospital parking, no extra help for working mums, no lowering of the dental fees on the NHS or boosting the availability of dentists to people. No new kit for the army, no new armoured vehicles, no new bullets for the TAs, no new police on the beat - but there was a boost for Bingo.

It is hard to believe that we are actually in financial dire straits, with a record post war budget deficit which is legally pledged in the Fiscal Responsibility Bill, farcically passed in the Queen's Speech, to halve by 2014. Here we are handing out money for people to play Bingo.

If a Martian landed on earth today and looked at the priorities of this Government they might think it odd, but if you are an earthling you would think it bizarre to the point of absurdity.

It's as if as the Titanic sank, people debated whether the Foie Gras was game enough.

Maybe I'm the daft one here - perhaps my wife and I, our immediate family and entire entourage of friends are the odd ones out in that not one single one of us has ever stepped into a bingo hall let alone played it. Maybe we are the out of date ones that don't see that the crucial mood and well being of bingo players is vital to the financial recovery, health and education of this nation. Maybe the Government knows something that I do not - maybe all bingo players are in fact mathematical maestros who underpin the design of our health system or are intelligence officers who are secretly guarding us against the growth of terrorism from within. Perhaps bingo players are capable of launching Weapons of Mass Destruction within 45 minutes and therefore this is a move to appease them.

There has to be some reason. Or is it just that John Prescott's wife plays bingo twice a week and he still has Brown by the short and curlies? Or was it a misprint in the report that Darling read out and should have said, 'Drop income tax for everyone and BINGO we win the election.'?

I haven't run the figures yet but of the £31 bn boost to spending this PBR represented I am not sure what decreasing the tax on bingo actually contributed to the bill but I am sure there must have been a corresponding multiple in benefit for the nation carefully calculated. For instance, it must outweigh the cost of one new heavily armoured vehicle sent to Afghanistan or another helicopter, or a better bullet proof vest, or some more food or even just a poster for the barracks wall that says, 'You may not think it but you boys dying in Helmand are worth more to us than people who play bingo.'

You could not make this crap up, frankly, and I apologise for my crudeness but it is the only word that describes it adequately. In the deep mire of financial mess and the blood of Helmand province, the best thought leadership of this nation came up with a 2% decrease in tax on Bingo and announced it to the country as if it was crucial to our global recovery plans.

Even Brown's cartoon character hero, Superman would have a laugh. This is a pointless Government doing pointless things at a time of crisis - Jim Callaghan and his 'Crisis? What crisis?' Government would be so proud of New Labour.

Cut One's Budget Deficit

Amid a ceremony which might have been required some 300 years ago, the Queen will today effectively be the puppet to Lord Mandelson and read out what he thinks the General Election will be fought on next year.

There will be the grandstanding and total impracticality of a bill designed to curb bank bonuses which you can almost guarantee that it will not make it to law but if it does it will just cause chaos because it is so ill thought through and irrelevant. Then there is the superbly named 'Fiscal Responsibility' bill which will be a Government pledge to cut the budget deficit by half over four years.

The chances of the latter making it to law in the 70 or so business days left for the existing Parliament are virtually nil but should it actually get enshrined in law then it will probably be meaningless. By 2014, it is predicted by authorities like the IMF that Britain's borrowing will be over 90% of its GDP. The only thing that could decrease the budget deficit by half would be an incredible upswing in the UK economy so as to wipe out the requirement for further borrowing over that period - the sort of suicidal growth the country does not need or swathing cuts to public expenditure which the Government tells us it will not do.

Other than that, the whole thing is a complete con trick to make you think that the sad bunch has an iota of knowledge about what it is doing. That has been decisively been proven to be not the case in the last two years, though arguably for the last 12.

There are important things that need to be attended to between now and May of next year. Yet again, we have a missed opportunity to get to the heart of some the real problems in Britain for the sake of leading us down the vote decision making path as early as possible. The opposition are up in arms, maybe be rightly, as they don't get the same opportunity. But the howling shame will be that, despite Harriet Harman's lie the 'most' of it will be come law before the election, hardly any of it will actually get on the agenda to become law.

We now have one of the Milliband's spouting off to tell us that we will hang about in Afghanistan until the Taliban are no longer a threat, condemning our Armed Forces to an interminable new Northern Ireland - a tour of duty no one will want as it is where an unseen enemy can take potshots and hone their killing skills on you without much you can do in return. Such a vague strategy has been at the heart of the issue - what is it we want out of Afghanistan as illegal drug production is at a peak, the violence is getting worse and the democracy there - which we sponsored - is a sham amidst a corrupt regime?

The Queen's Speech is about as irrelevant as the content of it - the only important thing to note is that she and the Commons will be summoned to Mandelson's feet in the process.