The race to the general election started with the TV debate tonight between the three parties' likely chancellors of the exchequer (if the party wins). Indeed Cable (Lib Dem) is hotly tipped for chancellor if there is a hung parliament.

Well, I thought Darling (New Labour) got a couple of good licks in, and Cable got a nice closing barrage in at the conservative party's rich backers.

But they really let Osborne (COnservative) off the hook over his incredible promise to use the very public sector savings that he was denigrating last week as "imaginary" for tax (well, National Savngs) cuts for middle England rather than than the deficit reduction that last week he was saying was the only real issue and so important that it had to take priority over fighting the recession. He even tried to present those earning £20,000pa as the poor.

And no-one called him on the bankers culture of greed being the legacy of Thatcherite-Reaganite "trickle down" Hayek based economics.



Osborne is the eldest son of four children and heir of Sir Peter Osborne, 17th Baronet, co-founder of the fabric and wallpapers designers, Osborne & Little. He is heir to the Osborne baronetcy (of Ballentaylor in the County of Waterford). This makes him a part of what is known in Ireland as the Ascendancy, the old Anglo-Irish aristocracy.

Osborne was educated at the private Norland Place School in Holland Park, St Paul's School independent school and Magdalen College at Oxford University, where he received an upper second-class degree in Modern History.

Whilst at Oxford, Osborne was a member of the Bullingdon Club, a private dining club of Oxford University students; it was "infamous for riotous behaviour" and was open only to sons of aristocratic families and the wealthy. Osborne's friends David Cameron and Nat Rothschild (er, guess what his family does) were also members of the club.