Chancellor George Osborne today joined Twitter and was immediately bombarded with advice about what to do in his Budget this afternoon.
Mr Osborne’s first tweet came on the morning of the most important economic statement of the year, and promised he would “present a Budget that tackles the economy’s problems head on helping those who want to work hard & get on”.
It came complete with a link to the Chancellor in shirt-sleeves, apparently putting a final touch to his statement with the famous Budget red box on the desk in front of him.
Within hours, Mr Osborne’s account had picked up more than 20,000 followers many of them eager to give him the benefit of their economic advice.
Tweeter Luke Howard called for a cap on private landlord rents, Paul Gregory told him to tighten tax loopholes used by multinationals like Starbucks and Amazon, while Davey from Liverpool said he should lift pay rises for nurses above 1%.
Some advice was more satirical. Comedian David Schneider suggested the Chancellor could cut Twitter’s 140-character limit on message length to 135 characters, with an exemption for those with more than 200,000 followers to avoid driving them abroad, while David Keen suggested “a tax on Budget U-turns”.
Former deputy prime minister Lord Prescott begged: “One personal plea. Please don’t introduce a tax on tweets. It’ll ruin me.”