On April 22, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced The Budget. For those of you not living in the UK or who prefer (wisely) not to know about these things, the role of the Budget is to provide an update on the state of the economy (in a word, dire) and the public finances (worse) and to present new forecasts for each, to set out the government's economic and fiscal objectives (as far as I can see, to stifle investment by small and medium-size companies), to report on the progress it has made toward achieving its objectives (like what?), and to explain the further steps it is taking to meet them (soak the rich). The record for the longest Budget speech is thought to be held by William Gladstone on April 18 1853, lasting four hours 45 minutes. Fortunately, this year's took slightly less long.
4月22日，英國財政大臣公布了財政預算案。對那些不住在英國、或者（明智地）選擇不去了解這些事情的人，有必要介紹一下財政預算案的作用：它提供關于經濟狀況（兩個字，糟糕）及公共財政狀況（更糟糕）的最新信息，提出對兩者的最新預測，設定政府的經濟與財政目標（在我看來，就是抑制中小企業的投資），通報在實現目標方面取得的進展（比如？），并闡明為實現目標正在采取的進一步舉措（對富人課以重稅）。最長的一次財政預算案演講據說是由威廉?格拉德斯通(William Gladstone)在1853年4月18日完成的，那次演講花了4小時45分鐘。令人慶幸的是，本年度的演講稍短一些。