I feel I have a duty to find something good in what George Osborne said.

The spend on transport may be one such thing.

I fear the Green Investment Bank is not — it is so far neither a bank, nor new funding.

The cut in council budgets is incredibly bad news for so many social services, and the removal of budget ring fencing within councils is an invitation for abusers like Suffolk County Council to pile cuts on the most vulnerable. But maybe, just maybe, letting councils borrow is good news — but how paradoxical that this is how Osborne is to relieve pressure on local councils when he is saying for central government to do just that would be wrong.

And is it that instead he has closed down the Public Works Loan Board  - the traditional source of capital funding to local authorities? If he has I haven’t even found good news here.

It’s that hard to find a silver lining to what is a disaster for this country.