We should know the outcome on May 7th, or maybe we won’t if the polls suggesting a hung parliament come to pass. The forthcoming General Election has occupied all available column inches and broadcasting hours for weeks now, so I didn’t think I could let the occasion pass without covering it for ‘Money Matters’.

I have no intention of indicating political allegiance to any party or of trying to persuade you which way to vote. However, almost every survey of voters has put the Economy at the top of the agenda in terms of matters of importance, and probably rightly so.

Most of the items that follow it on the agenda – the NHS, immigration, foreign policy and aid, jobs, student finances etc. – are in many ways functions of what is happening in the Economy, coupled with the fiscal and spending policies of the government of the day. So maybe it would have been more interesting to have heard from the likes of George Osborne, Ed Balls and those who would shape their party’s financial plan, rather than the ‘Magnificent Seven’ stood at their podiums!

Simplify the political rhetoric
It would certainly be more helpful to the electorate if we could simplify all of the political rhetoric to which we have been subjected. All it would take is a couple of pie charts, one representing the incomes available to the government and the second one spending plans of the would-be Chancellor. Every time they commit to spending, say £8 billion on the NHS, they would either have to increase the income pie to match or reduce the expenditure one by a similar sum in a different area.

Once all the commitments had been entered into the pies, we would have a clear picture of how our taxes and borrowing would look under each major party and how they would be spending the money raised. Conquering the current budget deficit would, of course, simply be one of those items of expenditure in the pie.

Simple isn’t it? And we all love a picture. They seem so much easier to understand than all those weasly words.