This year's battle of the budget is generating more anguish than any for years, John Major's cabinet now realize what a parliamentary mess December might turn into with week-long debates on both the Queen's speech and the budget to pack in, and worse to come in the spring, a budget combining taxes with public spending seemed a good idea at the time Norman Lamont announced it, but with November the thirtieth just a month away the political down-side is appearing, of course with a fifty billion pound deficit in the Government's accounts this years spending round would have been hard pounding anyhow, but the usual noisy haggle over the available cash among departments is now amplified by posses of Tory backbenchers trying to head off this or that tax increase, and there's an incentive to keep that up right through the finance bill after Christmas, since most new taxes would not come in until April.