Budget 2017: A light-milk budget of little nourishment and no cream

Instead of the giveaway or takeaway budgets, we have now been reduced to the old Roman governing formula of bread and circuses. A few crusts are thrown here and there to the citizenry, all wrapped up in a spectacle that could pass for a three-ring circus, writes Michael Clifford

DURING the Celtic Tiger, budgets were all milk and honey. In recent years, they were bread and water. Yesterday’s was our first watery milk budget.

It was neither here nor there, offering little in the way of vision or preparation for a future that is growing more uncertain as a result of Brexit. Something for some of those who need childcare, a few bob for pensioners, a wodge for rural Ireland, spread like manure to soften the cough of the hardy bucks in the Independent Alliance.