There's too much to cover: I almost threw my hands in the air and gave up. The Budget, ESA cuts, the short campaign for Holyrood (and Wales, and London) starting next week, lobbying and land reform legislation at the Scottish Parliament. Europe. And I've wasted so much space already. *deep breath*
In the runup to the Budget we were told it'd be a tough test, that'd we'd see how skilled Osborne is (by coincidence I wrote here last year with begrudging admiration for his pre-election budget strategy - I also doubted the "no overall majority" consensus, but who ever listens to Cassandra?). But this year's effort looked like a careless Budget from a Chancellor who thinks he has little to fear from the opposition. The income deciles chart looks particularly grim. Unto those that have shall it be given.
Apart from soft drinks manufacturers. The sugar tax is presumably meant to give the Budget a pseudo-lefty sheen, but a lot on the left think it's just a paternalist gloss on a tax that takes more, proportionally, from people on low incomes. The "tampon tax" is another strange mess, especially now the EU has now waived the rules there. The Chancellor's line in this story is "it's great because we've used the money to support women's charities and it's even better that we won't have to do that any more". No wonder the Treasury has always been so institutionally sceptical of hypothecation.
The Budget's "reverse redistribution" also echoes the ESA cuts that have caused so much outrage amongst disabled people, cuts which have already cost Zac Goldsmith a role with a disability charity. We'll hear a lot more about that during London's mayoral election campaign, where I'm going to go with the consensus and predict a Sadiq Khan win.
As Holyrood concludes its traditional end-of-session binge-legislation spree, clearing the decks before next week's dissolution, two items jump out. The lobbying bill is billed as a win by transparency campaigners. I'm sympathetic as a private individual, but as someone who does lobbying in my spare time (primarily on fish, trains, and recycling), I expect the upshot will merely be a bit of public bragging about what I'm working on. Personally I think open Ministerial diaries and a ban on corporate donations to political parties would have achieved much more.
On land reform, the SNP followed their usual path: trying to look radical from a distance while rejecting most of what campaigners pressed for. Tax havens got a pass, as did vacant land. There probably aren't many votes amongst tax exiles, let alone from empty land, but the backlash here won't be keeping Nicola Sturgeon up at night. Her maths-defying "both votes SNP" campaign will sail on, and a reinvigorated Scottish Green Party won't prevent her getting a majority in her own right in May. That would require a much stronger Labour Party, and although Kez Dugdale is a marked improvement on Jim Murphy...
Finally, shout-out to a project a friend worked on. The PigeonAir campaign on air quality made international news, and was retweeted by the UNEP and Twitter itself. Bravo!