http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/mar/19/budget-2013-oysterity-sean-obrienYes, I dare say.
But not quite as good, or as profound, as Simon Armitage's observation of last year, or it might even have been the year before, that it might simply be over for Western Europe now.
Perhaps we are not the rich and rightful inheritors anymore and from now on it is going to be a bit harder.
Perhaps the economy isn't ever going to do its usual trick of eventually bouncing back and producing an upturn from which some comfortable types can feel the benefit so that the whole country can rejoice on their behalf.
Perhaps it is all over. But whatever one thought of Margaret Thatcher, there is nothing quite as majestic as a state occasion even if it possibly shouldn't have been one, and I certainly didn't feel like paying for any of it. But there was George Osborne crying. Oh, so you do have some feelings, then, do you. At least we have established that. Even if they were only feelings for the icon of selfishness that you had modelled yourself on.
I have had my reservations about a fair number of politicians over the years but George Osborne is something else entirely.