If this budget were a painting it would be an exemplar of surrealism. The epitome of the absurd came with the suggestion that borrowing £167 billion this year is somehow a virtue, something we can all be pleased about. Similarly, that we should all take a collective sigh of relief at the fact that this has been the deepest recession on record, yet it wasn't as bad as we had feared. It was almost like twisted schadenfreude - a celebration not of someone else's misfortune but our own.