I don't really think that the budget should primarily be judged on its effect on folk(ish) music and pubs.

Further, if transport costs were the prime mover of pub closures there could never have been many pubs in the first place. The pubs arose when most people had no convenenient way of travelling long distances, and beer deliveries beyond the range of a horse and cart were ou of the question.   The loss of pubs is due (again) largely to the bitch Thatcher whose Hayeck-driven economics produced the dismantling of the pub tied house system (which did have faults that needed addressing, but not the way she did it) and its replacement by the rapacious corrupt and venal pubcos.

House prices in the long term must rise faster than earnings - the planet is becoming more densely populated.

The only reasonably safe way of saving is government savings.

Death duties and progressive (and universal, watch out Lord Ashcroft) taxation are the only ways to provide the structures that the civilised states provide (transport, health, governance, security, power) and teh so-called "polluter pays" principle has again no place in a society where risk is managed by insurance-like principles of risk-spreading.