It is normal that no one ends up hundred per cent satisfied with the choices made in the annual government budget; including those who are most responsible for it, like the finance minister himself and the Prime Minister. This is because necessarily, the budget must reflect a substantial number of compromises - between what one wishes and what is possible; between what can be implemented concretely and what gets baked in dreams.

For in the end, everything must get measured against a merciless, unforgiving standard - that of financial doability. Over one year, two or three, governments can play about with accounts to create an atmosphere of feelgood for one and all. But eventually, the day of reckoning will arrive. If the accounts are not to end up revealing a prospect of financial abysses, they have to be built year after year on the basis of realistic compromises that leave no one completely satisfied.

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IN GERMANY

The level of disquiet being felt in Germany at the state of the economy is itself disturbing. Not only industrialists, politicans and trade unionists worry, but "common" citizens as well fear that the social state built in the wake of the Second World War is under threat of collapse.

Some twenty five years ago, the country experienced similar tensions as unemployment rose and investments stagnated. Socialist chancellor Gerhard Schroeder then introduced tough reforms with an austerity programme that antagonised trade unions. The socialists lost the following election and Angela Merkel at the head of the demochristians became chancellor. With Schroeder's programme, the German economy underwent a remarkable recovery, from which Merkel and her party benefitted greatly.

Today a demochristian chancellor is at the helm. Will he follow Schroeder's example?

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WAGE INCREASE

Leader of the Opposition Alex Borg does not want to accept the wage increase he has received as part of the recent hike in remuneration that MPs and members of the government have gotten. This was in line with the wage adjustments for civil service workers under the latest collective agreement for the sector.

I had to smile on hearing the news for I recalled how as leader of the opposition in the year 1992, I too made the same decision. The Fenech Adami administration had introduced a whopping rise in ministers' salaries and had included me in the package. There were then no standing arrangements (as exist today) by which politicians' wages were pegged to the remuneration scales of the civil service. I considered the then government's move (I believe correctly) as an effort to show me as complicit in their decision to increase the remuneration of politicians. This does not apply in Dr Borg's case.

But I'll be curious to see how he will manage the issue. In my time, I was told there was no way a government wage payment could be amputated at source. So I began to deposit the increase in court, and it totally disappeared I don't know where. Since then, I never ever heard anything about those funds. Meanwhile nobody took any notice of this story, not the media, nor the public. Many told me I was just being foolish not to have taken the money. Today the "independent" media might be tempted to boost Borg's story before it gets forgotten. We shall see.