Your duty is to keep it down

Well done to George Osborne in last week’s Autumn Statement to not only postpone the planned increase in fuel duty, but to scrap it entirely.

I suspect it has now got to the stage where fuel costs are such a critical component of the typical household budget that any further rise is politically impossible before the next general election.

In general quite a deft performance by Osborne in the face of the generally appalling economic situation. The pratfalls of the 2012 Budget were conspicuously avoided.