One article that did catch my eye, however, was the report from the Office of Budget Responsibility that the Treasury's economic modelling 'was over complex and opaque.' I think this is a polite way of saying, the Chancellor is convinced we have the most improved economic performance of all advanced economies, but we a buggered to know how he reached this conclusion.
Now this is where experience of the payment system on Portuguese motorways can help throw light on the purpose of having a deliberately bewildering system, for this, like the Treasury's forecast is deliberately over-complicated and opaque too.
Take a look at this map.
The purple coloured roads are conventional toll motorways with grumpy cashiers in booths collecting euros. The red roads are also toll motorways, but they collect the tolls electronically through number plate recognition. This is where it gets complicated and 'opaque'. The two systems work independently of each other, which is tricky for the natives, but designed to fleece tourists. The electronic system covers the main entry points from Spain. Unsuspecting tourists buy a three day motorway pass costing €20 thinking it covers them like a Swiss 'vingnette' for all the motorways, only to be walloped with more demands for money when they reach the first toll-boothed section.
If you join the network from a more minor crossing, like we did, then the system is even more opaque, there is no information whatsoever as to what to do, apart from a foot square sign with a car with radio waves being zapped at it.
Had we not stopped at the next service area and managed to talk to the cashier about buying a three day pass, then we would have been merrily whizzing through electronic cameras notching up all manner of fines. Except fellow campers are convinced that the system can't cope with British number plates; are they right? Or will they get a nasty demand from the Portuegese authorities in a few months? Who knows, it's all a big secret.
The temptation is to dismiss this confusion as some sort of Southern European predilection for disorganisation and inefficiency- the 'Manuêl fallacy'. You would be dead wrong. The disinformation is deliberate, the distribution of electronic toll and conventional toll booths deliberate, it all is designed to remove as many Euros as possible from the pockets of bewildered tourists.
Then it dawned on me, the UK Treasury's chief economic strategist has a second home in the Algarve. He looked at the faux-chaos of the Portuguese toll system, how apparent disorder filches money from the unwary. That's how to run a modern economy, he thought. Suddenly Tory economic policy becomes transparent - it's designed to be opaque! Blissfully innocent citizens become so bamboozled, the fact they are constantly done-over escapes their notice. Like the motorways in Portugal it's a beautiful scam masquerading as incompetence.
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