So Gordon Brown delivered a budget today, a particularly well attended budget, and one of the shortest on record clocking in at just 50 minutes.
Any pre-election budget usually has one eye on the electorate and this was no exception being referred to as a "vote now pay later budget" by Michael Howard as it contained mainly positive points, in particular for pensioners, who get their pensions increased to £119 per week, free use of local bus services and a council tax refund of £200.
Brown also singled out the rise of emerging economic powers like China calling for Britain to take the lead in the skills, science and knowledge economy creating "science cities" which is hardly surprising given that today the Office for National Statistics "reported that the number of manufacturing jobs lost since 1997 - when Labour came into power - came close to 1m".
We have to admit we did skip straight to the booze and fags section first to find out that beer goes up 1p per pint, wine goes up 4p, the price of spirits is frozen and a pack of 20 fags goes up 7p. By the time that 1p finds it way to west London it looks like we'll be hitting the tequila a lot earlier in our evening.
Time will tell what it really means for London overall as there is funding for local initiatives including "new skills and entrepreneurship centres in areas of high ethnic minority unemployment" but what we do know for sure is that there's going to be a monument to the Queen Mother in the Mall funded by a new coin to celebrate the Queens 80th birthday.
Gordon did take a moment out to make with the funny when he "joked that unlike Arsenal's 49-win running streak, there had now been 50 consecutive quarters of economic growth".
Here’s hoping he works on his material before he makes his play for the No.1 spot.
