Not so many years ago, the approach of Budget Day used to be accompanied by a collective heightening of tension and expectation as people waited with bated breath to find out what the new price of basic food such as tinned tuna would be.
Maybe, we still have somewhere that old heightening of importance given to Budget Day, the sight of the minister with his box ascending the Palace steps, going to the President to give the incumbent a sneak preview. And then solemnly ascending the few steps to the Chamber flanked by flunkies of all sorts. And then the speech on televised country-wide coverage. You cannot get away from Budget Day unless you switch to a foreign TV station.
Who knows how they will manage when they move to the new Parliament? No doubt, more ceremonies will be added and more media attention will focus.
Then, in recent years, after the Budget Speech was read, a whole new ball game was created - the minister gave interview after interview, so did the prime minister and not to be outdone the Leader of the Opposition. The media circus became so huge that the heads of the constituted bodies soon gave up on giving a joint press conference.
The accent today may not be on the price of tinned tuna any more but Budget Day remains a focal point in the parliamentary and political year.
The Budget Speech itself is turgid, full of abstruse words which go over, also thanks to bad delivery from an over-taxed minister, the heads of many people. So at the end what matters is the spin given by either side, which is then amplified and extended through the entire Budget debate which will occupy the House for the next three weeks or so.
The real reason of Budget Day is for the country to learn how has its economy been doing. But today we have a plethora of sources which tell us the same in even more detail. There are the rating agencies, the European Commission, and what have you which all tell us, impartially, the state of our State.
Budget Day is important because in it the government outlines its plans for the economy, but even that today is being whittled down especially by the Dual Pack of governance in the EU and euro area which insist on pre-vetting the Budget's main lines with the proviso they can force a change of direction.
In short, Budget Day is an enormous spin-fest but the real decisions are taken elsewhere. Nor are there any of what used to be the excitement of the past - the price increases of things like petrol, alcohol, etc - with the media locked in until the minister finishes his speech so that no one would benefit from insider trading and rush to eg fill up his car.
The political and media machine still goes into overdrive on Budget Day but the excitement is wrongly-placed. In our small, Byzantine, world, Budget Day is a day to be seen but it is increasingly devoid of content.
The first impressions after the reading of the Budget Speech are many times misleading, and that is what usually the government spin-machine aims at. But give it a few hours and some dispassionate analysis and unnoticed holes and gaps start to appear.
No other country, to the best of our knowledge, treats the Budget like this, not even the Queen's speech in the Commons. At least there, they have the pageantry and the colour to mask what the entire country would have long known - the government's plans for the economy.