Budget days have always been busy in my life, and yesterday was no exception.

The Office for Budget Responsibility's leak changed the course of the day in many ways, but I'm not particularly complaining about that. It succeeded in making Rachel Reeves' attempts to create drama look futile, and that might be a good thing for the future. Maybe budgets in this style are even over.

The day was long.

I was pleased to note that our morning video attracted more than 50 times more traffic than Rachel Reeves' HM Treasury video did.

The early-afternoon video I recorded outside the BBC was a new departure for me. I am not alone in thinking that recording in an open space with people walking around you is not easy, especially when you are talking and recording at the same time, but it worked really well, and this is making us think that there are new opportunities available for video production that we have not previously given much thought to.

Then, once back at base, we recorded the video for this morning in a single 23-minute take, which required a lot of editing because there are many charts in it, and I'm grateful to Tom for working on it until late into the evening.

The effort, however, was not without reward.

We had more than 110,000 views on YouTube by the end of the day.

Yesterday was the best day on this blog this year, with 50,000 views.

And our new PDF download shop saw more than 500 downloads during the day, of which over 300 were for the Alternative Budget, with many who came for that reason picking up others in their basket at the same time, which is exactly what I hoped for. I am also grateful to all those who made donations during their visit. This is much appreciated.

The day began at 6:15 and ended at about 21:15, with only a few breaks on the way. But it's important to point out just what the scale of the crisis that we face as a consequence of our mainstream political parties' dedication to antisocial neoliberal economics really is, and that is what makes this effort worthwhile.