Panacotta and rhubarb

There's no better way to relax after a non-stop 12-hour Budget day than to enjoy a panacotta and rhubarb ice cream in the House of Lords.

Well, it worked for me. The ice cream was provided by Mr Creemy of the Rhondda, whose MP, Chris Bryant, was at the hub of a reception in aid of the Prostate Cancer Research Foundation.

Chris is running the London Marathon for Prostate Research. It's a very unwise thing for men in their forties to do, but you can find out more about his efforts here.

His sponsorship has attracted cross-party support, although Lord Kinnock apparently found it difficult to remember panacotta and rhubarb ice cream in the valleys of his youth.

Chris is infuriatingly fit for his age and appears to be devoting far too much attention to beating me to the finish line on April 13.

I wouldn't say he's competitive but last year a text of his time arrived on my mobile within seconds of him finishing. One of his Labour colleagues has offered me an extra fiver in sponsorship to beat him.

Sadly, my efforts to persuade him to eat more Mr Creemy products at the reception fell on deaf ears.

You can sponsor him here. Or better still, buy him a bag of chips and a doughnut and sponsor me too.

Thanks to the generosity of friends, colleagues and politicians of all parties I've reached my self-imposed target of £2,000 for NCH, the children's charity one month before the race.

In the style of politicians everywhere, I feel duty bound to move the goalposts and raise the target, but a big, big thank you to all those who've coughed up so generously.

All I need to do is run the actual 26 miles and 385 yards thing.....

Budget Day fall-out

UPDATE: The Budget will mean an extra £5m over three years for the Welsh Assembly Government to spend, a result of changes in the UK Government's "modernisation fund".

One of my colleagues, who possibly needs to get out more, has already calculated this as "roughly equivalent to 0.01% of the Assembly Government's total budget (of circa £47 billion) over the same three year period."

Don't spend it all at once......

Budget Day

Today's Budget title is "Stability and Opportunity - building a strong sustainable future". Who was it said something about campaigning in poetry and governing in prose?

We're told not to expect rabbits out of the hat, to use a cliche of the day, and to expect few surprises.

There may be some extra money for schools, as The Guardian reported yesterday. But this, I'm advised, is a re-allocation from an underspend in the English schools budget.

As the money isn't new - except to the schools - that means Wales and Scotland won't get much by way of a share of the spending, but that probably won't stop the "snub to Wales"press releases that drop into my inbox later today.

I'm not sure if bookmakers still take bets on the length of the speech but we're told to expect Mr Darling to speak for around 50 minutes.