As in shoestring. Robbed of the ability to offer any meaningful giveaways, Osborne attempted to make much of relatively little. His emphasis from the start that this would be a "fiscally neutral" budget was, I suspect, largely intended as a dart in the direction of Gordon Brown, who tended to balance spending based on imagined increases in future tax receipts rather than anything as prosaic as actual income.

This emphasis on fiscal neutrality was heavily in evidence in the pairing of any nominal giveaway with a corresponding tax hike, such as the the 1p per litre reduction in petrol pump prices, which was funded by a £2bn raid on North Sea oil companies. Or the £800m hike in the bank levy to offset the 2% reduction in corporation tax. Meanwhile, if any proof was needed of the efforts to which the chancellor must have gone to spin out what was a meagre serving of fiscal and legislative measures into an hour-long speech, it was evident in the fact that potholes and the upgrade of a rural branch line were considered newsworthy.

Underwhelmed was the overwhelming response from the people I spoke to in the wake of Wednesday’s announcements. For printers, there are a few measures that may make life that little bit easier – in particular the extension to the small business rate relief holiday and the moratorium on new business regulations – but I doubt whether the majority of our industry will notice much difference in the coming weeks and months.

The frustrating thing from a print perspective is that it needn’t have been like this. There was much that could have been done to benefit the industry (and the Treasury’s coffers) without resorting to tax giveaways or other fiscal measures that would require balancing elsewhere. Changes to legislation on pre-packs to make it harder for directors and companies to – in some cases repeatedly – dump debt (including to the state) would meet with widespread approval while also preserving jobs at those firms that are being responsibly run. While the BPIF’s call for all companies to conform to some form of prompt payment code, with a minimum requirement of stating explicitly what their payment terms are, would benefit all industries – not just print.