Does the budget offer the chance of making a few quid?

Tomorrow is budget day which has in recent years developed into a great political betting occasion. For some reason the bookies put a lot of interesting markets and smart punters can sometimes do very well.

I like the markets on the words and phrases that Darling might say. the reason – well you can can do a quick computer scan on previous Darling speeches and find out whether he uses particular words or phrases. Thus he NEVER uses that tedious Brown cliche “hard-working families”

Just go to his PBR speech here for the last big Chancellor occasion and use this to decide your bets. Thus he did not say quite a lot of the phrases on the list but he did say “Credit Crunch” several times. What’s the chances of him doing that tomorrow? Worth the 3/1

And what about “sorry“. Is that worth the 7/1? I think so – it’s in vogue at the moment.

Another betting arena is the spreads. I’m on “sells” with Sporting Index on the number of times he will say “Billion” and “Education”. I’m also betting on the number of sips of water.

Best of luck and have fun.