I'm afraid I've still not managed to work out just how much worse off I'm likely to be after the budget.

It all depends on how much the fuel-tax hike puts on to the price of every item bought and every service delivered. That's the great unknown for us all.

What I am certain about is that, as someone whose children are grown-up but who is not yet a pensioner (but is the owner of a 1600cc car), I fall outside the main categories to benefit from the Chancellor's largesse. The losses outweigh the gains even without the extra inflation caused by higher transport costs for everything.

I'm not grumbling. Someone has to lose so that others can win. If you exclude the incalculable inflation caused by higher fuel taxes, my pensioner parents will certainly be better off. My daughter and her husband might just about break even when higher family allowance and adjustments to tax rates and limits are set against their extra petrol costs and the loss of MIRAS.

There were some good things in Gordon Brown's budget. But there were some odd ones, too. The oddest of these was passed over in a quick sentence and reflects the madness of our society.

New mothers are to be given a £200 Sure Start Maternity Grant, replacing the present £100 DSS payment for buying essentials. To qualify for it, they will have to attend appointments offering health advice to help with their child's development.

What sort of a barmy country to we live in when mothers have to be bribed to take their babies along to see a health visitor or doctor, to have them weighed and examined and given the injections they need to help them to grow up safely?

Have we not got that the wrong way round? Rather than paying mothers to do the right thing by their children, shouldn't we be calling them to account if they don't? After all, such neglect is in effect child abuse.

Surely if a mother fails to take her baby along to benefit from these free services, the approach shouldn't be "How much need we pay her to persuade her to do so?"

It should be: "Is this a fit person to be entrusted with the responsibility of bringing up children?"

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.