As I gaze into my crystal ball.

As you may (or may not) be aware, there is a budget coming up this Wednesday. As I'm such an astute and clever fellow, I'm going to make a few predictions regarding it and it's effects. Nothing too heavy or in depth, just a bit of light satire and customer cussing.

1. The budget will do very little to actually relieve this recession.

Well, that's a no brainer really. Most of the steps this government has thus far taken have done little to bugger all to improve things. The VAT cut didn't make any appreciable difference, the stamp duty threshold change didn't kick-start the housing market and bailing out the banks didn't exactly get credit flowing in any meaningful way.

2. Car tax will go up except for a very very few low emission cars, none of which are cheap to start with.

Again, this is a no brainer. Car tax steadily creeps up every year except for the years when it jumps up like a jumpy thing (apologies for metaphor failure). A few cars have become a bit cheaper to tax but nearly all of these are pretty new cars and are bloody expensive to buy and therefore have been taxed to buggery already on the purchase price when new.

3. My customers will be pissed off when car tax goes up as soon the budget is finished and the prices on their reminder forms are no longer accurate.

This happens every single year. And yet nearly none of my customers learn from it. Every single year they come in (usually a good few days after their tax has run out already) and then look all surprised that they've got to pay a little bit more than it says on the reminder form. And every single year they says something along the lines of "This happened last year too." And every single year I bite my tongue and don't say "Well, why didn't you learn from that and be a bit more organised this year you stupid twat? Also, it's not my fault. Don't whine at me, I couldn't give a toss. You horrible little bell end, now get out."

4. Customers who own cars with high emissions will also get pissed off that they have to pay more.

Due to our dumbed down media, practically everyone in this country believes that it's only four wheel drives that have to pay large amounts of road tax. For some reason, four wheel drive is a far more attractive thing to say on telly or in newspapers than large engined cars. I can guarantee that nearly every report about the budget that your average shit-muncher will be exposed to will bleat on about 4x4 car tax going up but won't mention anything else (ie, actually be accurate).

Allow me to explain how car tax actually works for the hard of thinking.

For cars registered before 1st March 2001, tax was based (for most cars) on engine size. There were two bands, below 1549cc and above 1549cc.

After that, things were based on how much CO2 the car emits. I can't be arsed to put the bands down here cos they're dull. Suffice to say that whether the car had two wheel drive, four wheel drive or fifteen wheel drive was totally irrelevant. What mattered was how polluting the car was AND NOTHING ELSE.

So the next time some tosser comes in to tax his 4.2l Jag and moans about how much tax he's paying on it despite it not being a 4x4 I'm going to fucking scream. If you can afford to buy such a car then you can afford a wee bit more in tax. Frankly, the amount of tax pails into insignificance when compared to all of the other running costs of your average big-assed car. Petrol costs a few bob these days (and is heavily taxed already). Insurance is pricey (and taxed too) and depreciation means that the car costs a fuck load to run. Does anyone moan about that to me (not that I want them too, I hear enough moaning as it is, but I would like folk to be in possession of all of the facts before whingeing at me)?

So, to sum up. The budget will result in me getting moaned at a bit more than normal by morons.