As usual nothing has been done to lift pensioner's out of poverty. The one off payment of £50 extra while welcome still won't allow us to heat our bedroom. With coal at £10 a bag it will keep our fire in for 3 weeks. As we live in a very old stone built house we can't benefit from grants to insulate. For eg. Cavity wall insulation is no good we don't have cavity walls. Roof insulation  we don't have a loft so that doesn't apply. Other years we have used electric oil filled radiators but with electric being the price it is and with food prices rising, and fuel costs escalating this year we have been unable to afford to heat the bedroom. It really has come to the choice of heat or eat!!!! Council tax is a crippler it takes all my husbands pension and some of mine one week in four to pay our council tax. Our income is fixed so I can only see things getting worse. What is needed is a real raise in the Old Age Pension a realistic amount to live on. Without the humiliation of going with a begging bowl for for means tested benefits. Who wants to give this government personal information they are incapable of looking after it!! The abolition of the 10% tax means we will again have to pay tax which will wipe out the small increase in out state pension for 2008 - 2009 so we haven't been helped only hurt by this budget.

This budget makes me realise why the government wanted 24 hour drinking !! they can now maximise their tax take on boozy britain !!!

Green taxes Bah! humbug! again the worse off are hit hardest how does saying, if you can afford to pay its alright to have as big a carbon footprint as you like. How on earth is that going to prevent Global Warming???? The answer surely is to stop making gas guzzlers and stop lighting up our towns with advertising neon signs, and all the lighting  of shops when they are shut ! think of the power saving if they were all switched off. Instead we encourage all night clubbing what a waste of power !! Can't we turn our waste to energy? We are an island think of all the renewable power twice a day with tidal power !

For Budget 2008 read Fudge it 2008 !!