No-one seems to be mentioning the lack of increase in personal allowances. If he is not increasing them this year or next surely we are all paying that way for the supposed "£100 better off"

Ian, Lincoln, Lincs

The bottom line of uncle Gordon's budget is that he has taken money off the less well off and they can only get it back if they ask him for some tax credit on the right piece of paper. The playground bully is taking your dinner money off you and letting you have 80% of it back if you grovel and ask him nicely.

This budget isn't about tax, it's about a control freak who wants to decide your standard of living for you. The nickname Stalin comes to mind very readily. This budget has borne out the accustaion of the previous day very nicely.

REMEMBER IT AT THE NEXT ELECTION!!

KR, Stockport,

Gordon Brown has over the last ten years raised the tax levels to hisorically high levels. Families are now on average paying some £1,300 a year more to pay for Mr browns profligate and uncontrolled spending.
On pensions his record is even worse. At a stroke he destroyed a pension system that was the envy of the world.

This was a budget for Gordon Brown's political ambitions, not a budget for the country.

J Moore, London, England

More spin in the message Riddell - "four in five householdes wil be better or no worse off " should read "one in five will be better off, three in five wil be no worse off and one in five wil be worse off" - same arithmetic but different message isn't it. Lets be precise please

Red Bannion, Coventry, West Midlands

Dear Peter - why do you so overlook the 3% rise in corporation tax on small businesses? That makes the owners much worse off. My household is likely to be £2,000 p.a. worse off. This certainly isn't a neutral budget for my family. I just don't understand why it was necessary to whack small businesses when we work so hard and have no-one to fall back on but ourselves.

Bob, Thames Ditton, UK

Hooray,I will be about 100 pounds a year better off.My life will change.I am so happy.I can buy 3 new shirts each year. Thank you Gordon.

Seriously ,to eliminate the 10 %percent tax band is a disgrace and will directly hurt the lower paid.
It should have been increased.

Mr Brown,it's a poor show.

Nic Singlehurst, royan, France

Gordon Brown may have been "clever" but the New Labour spin cycle is still running! The 2p basic rate cut is more-or-less offset by the removal of the 10p band (an anachronism in these days of tax credits) and the alignment of the higher rate income tax & NI bands. Surely it would have been more honest to present the budget as a rationalisation (which it is) than a tax cut (which, basically, it isn't). Ah, "honest politician" - there's an oxymoron.

Having made the alignments, will his successor (Tory or Labour) finally have the balls to merge tax & NI, to save the taxpayer and businesses the expense of running two separate taxes that basically do the same thing?

Mark, Oxon., UK

the budget is like gordons personally insignificant and boring and of no benefit to anybody, even blair would be better to carry on and replace gordon, and put him charge of scottish affairs with all his other scottish cronies,yours delusioned by back door scottish tactics, from an english crusader

anthony williams, stafford, england

This was another superficial and flashy Budget from Gordon Brown, with no attempt to solve the deep-seated problems of public finance (spend now, borrow later) or the damaging absurdities of the tax system.

Frank Upton, Solihull,

Am I the only one who has looked at the change to NIC which is taken at 11% not exactly indirect tax is it!!!!

Mark, London, England

Peter Riddell will be better off, that's magic. I'm not quite sure that those on less than £19,000 will agree.

David Leslie, Perth, Scotland

Households better off by £100 per year. About £2 per week then. I can hardly contain my excitement.

A Brady, Hampshire, GB

The savings to the average family depend on which newspaper you read.The journalists who compose their daily view on all that matters are about as reliable as the politicians who rule us,people who believe either are very silly folk indeed.

mike, Alford, u.k.

I haven't yet read why the 10% rate was abolished to pay for the cut in basic rate. If the overall impact is neutral, what was the point? Other than prompting infantile '2p/ To be' headlines in the papers?

Paul, Borehamwood, Herts, England

The Conservative's fox has been shot.

Robert, London,

Almost 3.5 million families will be worse off as a result of this Budget. Hundreds of thousands of people on low incomes will end up worse off unless they claim tax credits. And at the moment, four out of ten eligible families fail to claim. But criminal gangs have no compunction about making fraudulent tax credit claims. In one year alone, they helped themselves to one billion pounds of taxpayers' money. Why has Gordon Brown allowed them another opportunity to enrich themselves at our expense?

Ray Burke, Stockport, England

Grow up Riddell. Most people outside Westminster can recognise a three card trick when they see one. It is not "magic", it is boring and tiresome like its pretentious exponent.

You must be pretty desperate to maintain access to "Uncle Gordon".

R Topham, Northallerton,

There's another dimension to this budget that has thus far failed to attract much notice. In shifting taxes more towards indirect rather than direct sources, it promotes a more regressive funding scheme which "disproportionately" falls on the less well off.

An angle for the Tories to work, perhaps?

Pat O'Donnell, Ascot,

Peter Riddell has clearly not understood that all the poorest and lowest paid and those on fixed incomes in Britain will, with the loss of the 10% income tax bracket, be subsidizing tax cuts for the middle and higher income earners. To have been of any benefit to all those with an income of less than £18,000 per annum the personal allowance should have been raised considerably and the 10% income tax band extended. This budget is a disgrace.

Kenneth Armitage, Suffolk, England

Well you guys voted them in......

mark mcfarland, dubai, uae

Looks like extra mileage has been worked from the 2p income tax cut. – by announcing it one year and two weeks before it takes effect.

Maybe the focus groups should look at the possibilities from extending the time shift in such announcements even further. Why not a much larger cut, but to take effect in two or three years?

That way, if any interim adjustments are needed to make up shortfall, there’s plenty of extra time to modify, postpone or even cancel the cut, having worked the feelgood from the initial announcement for all it’s worth.

dr venables preller, Warminster, UK

Thank goodness I no longer live in England.
My sympathy goes out to the English trapped there and unable to seek aylum in free democratic countries.
How will this conjurerer's budget affect the rest of the U K?
Will everyone be conned on an equal basis?

antony, Limassol, Cyprus

Brown giveth and Brown take away more.
The man wants locking up for the damage he has done to the moral of this country.

D Crossingham, Birmingham, England