Chancellor Promises ‘No Welfare Cuts Before the Election’; Perth Reads the Last Four Words Twice
John Healey's budget aftershocks continue. Kinross pensioner gets out a highlighter. Accountants say the important bit is always the bit after 'before'.
The Treasury, where every sentence has a second half. Photo: Jim Osley, “Westminster , HM Treasury building - geograph.org.uk - 6802743”, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
Chancellor John Healey’s pledge of “no welfare cuts before the election” has been warmly received in Perth by everybody who stopped reading after the word “cuts”.
Those who carried on to the end of the sentence were less sure. “Before the election,” said a retired bookkeeper in Kinross, highlighting the phrase in yellow, then orange, then a sort of alarmed pink. “That’s like a dentist saying it won’t hurt until he starts.”
The budget has had a bumpy few days in the national press, with one paper calling it a humiliation and another describing the Chancellor’s week as “a learning experience”. The Treasury insists the numbers add up, if you add them in the right order.
Local financial expert and Perth taxi driver of 30 years’ standing said the lesson was simple. “Never trust a promise with a date in it. My brother-in-law promised to return my ladder before Christmas. He didn’t say which Christmas.”
The Chancellor is expected to clarify his remarks at a later date, though not, aides stress, before the election.
The real story: UK politics (BBC News)
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Highlighted it in pink. My grandson says pink means ‘panic’. He’s 9 and he’s right.
— Margaret E., Kinross, 30 October 2026 -
Still waiting on that ladder. Which Christmas indeed.
— Robert A., Bridge of Earn, 30 October 2026 -
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— Sandra K., Letham, 30 October 2026
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