"He may well have been the author, but it was you who chose to use it in in accusatory fashion against the Tories, who, if I may remind you, are one half of a coalition."

Don it's obvious to me that you only read what you want to in your haste to identify and pillory those you suspect of New Labour sympathies

I'm sure that most people will understand that I was in fact criticizing the LibDems for what many of the people who voted for them see as a betrayal' of their Election promises.

However I stand totally by my view that, in response to the title of this thread, the budget is neither fair nor well balanced.

As Seumas Milne observed

'This isn't the first time in Britain's history that politicians with a programme of savage cuts have claimed "we're all in this together". An iconic Labour movement cartoon from the early 30s, when another coalition came to power in the wake of a financial crisis and slump, shows four class stereotypes of the day on a ladder. A cloth-capped unemployed man is standing at the bottom, up to his neck in water. "Equality of sacrifice ? that's the big idea, friends!" says the silk-hatted figure at the top. "Let's all step down one rung"

Strip away the anachronisms and that's exactly the message George Osborne tried to give in his budget, as he unveiled the deepest and fastest cuts in public spending since the same period'

Now I have never claimed to be 'one of the poorest' or to follow your hyperbole 'to panic and contemplate suicide.'

Unfortunately I know many people who are dependent on benefits, not from the fecklessness that some seem to ascribe to 'hideous scroungers' but from long term illness or caring for others

If I am 'crying my eyes out' it would be for these people who bear the disproportionate brunt of Tory 'fairness' and LibDem sell out.