In my mind when I first heard about this I saw a full-page, flexible screen with flashes pointlessly shimmering down it a la any Philip K Dick story adapted by Hollywood. The reality is a tiny wee screen housed in some cardboard pages that’s sure to annoyingly interrupt your enjoyment of all the beautiful people.

Lamer yet is when you find out that this is costing CBS thousands and thousands of dollars, and is only getting put in mags for subscribers in LA and NYC. Not sure how the numbers got crunched here, and the channel is keeping quiet on budgets, but I think it was conceived in their “cool stuff that makes it look like we’re really innovative, no matter how unsustainable the cost” department. Admittedly the traction is getting increased by people like us talking about it, but the reality is that this campaign just isn’t going to reach enough people to justify its cost. With ad margins getting smaller mid-recession, this kind of showboating seems like a dangerous course to take.

If you do expensive, limited experiments, do them like Fallon recently did with their Make Me A Supermodel campaign. By creating an interactive shop window, they wrung every bit of engagement from and exposure to its audience, which was constantly refreshing itself on the pavement in front. By contrast, CBS’s video screens have much less reach, and will look very average once the battery runs out. They also have to be inserted by hand, which makes the whole thing take on a distinctly pre-Cambrian tone.  

But perhaps the most annoying aspect of this whole thing is the stuff its actually advertising, the toxically unfunny “comedies” How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory, Two And A Half Men, and new show Accidentally On Purpose, whose title alone makes it sound like it’s straight out of a two-minute brainstorm in 1986. These are shows which can only be enjoyed when off work with swine flu, when ER seems like Len Loach and when you need a show with an extra-loud laugh track to flag the jokes up for your tired, monged-out brain. If this is the future, then its sitcoms still suck.

As Gillian Tett notes in a sarky, dare I say bloggy tone, “Chocolate coins are now deemed safer than gilts” – she points out that it costs less to insure an investment in Cadbury’s than it does in the UK government. The worry is that if gilts are seen as being risky, demand for them will go down, which makes the “yield” (basically the risk and costs involved in investing in them) rise and the price of them fall. For now, gold and shares are still unattractive prospects too, so the gilts market isn’t too bad, but it’s going to be a nervy few months for the government as they see whether anyone wants to buy what they’re selling, at a price that’s worthwhile.

Today, prices are falling and yields are rising, just what the government doesn’t want. Robert Stheeman, head of the debt office that’s issuing the gilts and whose parents may or may not have spelled his name wrong on his birth certificate, said: “It’s a challenging remit but I am confident that there is strong ongoing demand for gilts and we will work closely with the market to successfully deliver it.” The weakness of the pound may scupper your chances of a continental holiday this year, but at least it’ll help make gilts a more attractive investment. Every cloud, eh? Though if the pound continues to tank then returns on the investment won’t be as good, so they’re a potentially poisoned chalice.

It’s enough to make us average Joes go and exploit the bigger ISA allowance, despite the crappy returns they dole out. And as we noted yesterday, we need to rise above party political sniping to create a unilateral vote of confidence in the British economy over the next few years – if investors believe that, then we’ll get more money from selling off these gilts, as we’ll get higher prices for them. But let’s face it, this is open season for Cameron. On such times are general elections won and lost, no matter what the effects on the economy.

Darling is offsetting the bad news of this debt (which Cameron rightly lambasted him for rushing through) with an optimistic forecast of how the country is going to grow out of the recession. He sees 1.25% growth in GDP for 2010, much earlier than the IMF and guys like Roubini and Krugman place the end of the recession. After the 3.5% contraction he forecasts this year, that’s a pretty big and quick swing back to growth; he cites, as he did earlier in the week, “underlying strength” in the economy as effecting it.

He mentions creative industries, manufacturing and green tech as all being areas whose growth will ensure Britain’s march to financial stability – more signs that Labour believes a “green New Deal” is the answer to our woes, as it was to Obama. Darling also dubbed this the “first ever carbon budget” – £100m for energy efficient housing, a 34% cut in carbon emissions by 2020, £435m for energy efficient buildings, £525m investment in wind farms, a total of £1bn against climate change. Insulated amongst these announcements were rather less green moves, like taking power plants that store the heat they generate off climate change levies, and further North Sea fossil fuel prospecting.

Alcohol and tobacco taxes both increased by 2% – note that Cameron attacked the former of these as he couldn’t get away with the latter – as well as fuel going up, all of which is pretty sound, creating £6bn by 2012. Also encouraging were the tax breaks to support business investment – surely the taxation from job creation will outweigh these breaks.

More headline-grabbing is the increase in the top income tax band to 50%, though as it affects 1% of taxpayers, it’s likely to create more political debate than it is tax revenue. And while it’s morally defensible, there is a danger that the 50% rate, a psychologically significant amount, will prompt an exodus of talent from the City. 

What’s really worrying though, as well as the nagging feeling that the £606bn figure will get increased at some point, are the vagaries of this budget announcement. Darling announced £9bn by 2014 from “efficiency savings”, a maddeningly subjective term. And rather like the G20 summit, there are announcements recycled from old news – asset-backed securities, Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report, Lord Turner’s regulatory reforms. There’s announcements that jar with existing promises – the £400m for 16-18s to stay on in educations not really dovetailing with the recent £60m cuts for sixth form colleges. Then there’s the time given to pure vote-winning measures – £50m for renovating armed forces accommodation - and the krazy schemes – a £2000 discount on a new car when you trade in your old one, with nothing to tie it to directly generating sales from British industry (or, presumably, stopping you from buying a second-hand car for less than £2000 and exchanging it for a profit).

As for the political implications of the Budget, they’re massive, and Cameron’s performance after it was delivered was pretty laser-guided (aside from a sloppily-delivered closing remark). His oratory and ridicule will certainly win him votes, but they come a time when the international market needs to be convinced of Britain’s security and profitability, and so they could prove damaging to us all.

We’re taking on debt by selling on gilts – a nebulous commodity like shares or bonds – to foreign countries, and spending the money we get from them on the Budget promises. The foreign countries need to think they’ll see a decent return on these gilts, and if they perceive a country to be in dire financial straits, they’ll stay away – we saw recently the frantic soothing of China by the United States when the quality of the US as an investment was questioned. If Cameron smears Darling’s name too hard, the debt will go unsold, Darling’s plans won’t come to fruition, and the country will suffer. It’s a fine line to walk on – political gain versus state security.

This is a budget that trades on optimism. Optimism will generate the foreign investment in our debt in the short term, and Darling hopes that it will generate consumer spending too (he’s preserved the VAT cut for the rest of the year to help). And beyond that, he’s optimistic that house-building, green technology, young people being prompted into work, and ongoing business investment, will all add up to a thriving Britain that will have bounced back in record time, and will easily be able to pay back its debt. We really, really want to believe that.