February the earliest for any past budget

While we’re on the subject of early elections, the Office of the Prime Minister has reacted to yesterday’s news story on the suspicious timing of next week’s budget speech. In a press release today, sent with the stated intention of assisting the media with their research, we are given the dates of the last fourteen budget presentations. Ironically, rather than refute the suggestion that this year’s January seventeenth date is unusually early, the list confirms that a January presentation is unprecedented, with just two of the last fourteen budget speeches coming in February. The figures supplied today, however, do reveal that we made a research error on yesterday’s newscast when we reported that the 2001 budget speech was made in March. The presentation was indeed made on February twenty-third. It was the debate that came in March.

And while on the subject of dates, while we could not get confirmation from the Election and Boundaries Office, political sources indicate that if the election is in fact held in February, then, tomorrow, Friday, is the last day on which you can register to vote. All those eligible are urged to exercise this most basic democratic right.