According to the Chancellor, "Britain is walking tall" - growing, creating jobs. In fact he claimed in last week's budget speech that economy is expanding so much, that it is bound to outstrip Germany's! And all thanks to the difficult decisions his government has made "in the teeth of opposition"!

Besides the fact that many working class people have never had it so rough, the very idea that "within 15 years" Britain "will have the potential to overtake Germany and have the largest economy in Europe" - is absurd. Osborne is either raving mad, living on another planet, or he thinks that we are...

Germany has a population of 83 million today, compared to Britain's 64 million - and in the wealth league, Britain is not just behind Germany, but it is also behind France - coming third! Britain's GDP is $2.6 trillion, compared to Germany's $3.7tr and France's $2.8tr!

But never mind, Osborne's grandiose nationalistic rhetoric was obviously not meant to stand up to any kind of scrutiny! He even summoned up the Battle of Agincourt, 600 years ago, as an opportunity for anti-EU, anti-French and anti-Scots bigotry: it was "a victory secured by a (plucky!) band of brothers" against an "ill-judged alliance between the champion of a united Europe - meaning France! - and "a renegade force of Scottish nationalists"! Obviously he was too busy vandalising restaurants with his fellow Bullingdon Clubbers while he was at Oxford, to look at his history books...

At times the speech was just plain ridiculous. For instance, when he said that his government had now paid off the debts incurred by the South Sea Bubble ... in 1720! And this is meant to impress?

Their serial lies

Anyway, Osborne and shadow Chancellor Ed Balls were both put on the spot this week in a "Q&A" hosted by Sky News and Facebook. Osborne was challenged over his statement that "more people have jobs in Britain than ever before".

A questioner asked : "Conservatives are banging the drum about more people [being] employed than ever before, but are they getting work? Are they getting a pay cheque? Are they getting stability?"

And she answered for him: "No, they are getting a zero-hour contract job, no support from the benefit system, even though they are actively looking for work. These are the people that need to be more considered because that's reflecting straight onto mental health as well. People are depressed because they are stuck in a rut, they can't find work and they've got no help in the system."

She was spot on. Osborne's answer was this: "Of course ... I want to get rid of that. But the way you get rid of it is not ... by thinking I can sit in Number 11 Downing Street and write some law that stops it happening."

Funny, but that is exactly what we thought he could do - write a law! And in his budget speech he actually claimed that "zero hours contracts are regulated"! In other words, he claimed that he already had imposed some kind of legal restriction on them - which is an outright lie!

But, of course, given the ConDems' drive to make the working class pay for the crisis, the only way Osborne could boast about his government's "achievements" was to lie through his teeth.

So, he boasted that since 2010, "over 1.9 million new jobs have been gained. How many of the jobs are full time? 80%. How many of the jobs are in skilled occupations? 80%".

The government's own statistics show that over half of the so-called "jobs" created over the past years are non-skilled, low-paid, part-time, and casual. And thanks to the punitive harassment of the unemployed, the self-employed now make up 15% of the workforce - an all-time high - while their incomes have fallen so drastically that 80% among them live at, or under, the poverty line!

He even dared to claim that "satisfaction with the NHS is rising year on year". This, when, for months, the papers have been filled with scandals caused by the under-funding and under-staffing of NHS hospitals!

Not a penny for the capitalists!

The minimal tax cuts which were in the budget for the low-paid, should be compared to Osborne's maximum handouts to the well-off. Corporation tax is to go down to a record low of 20%. Never mind that lower tax returns will hardly shrink the government's deficit!

The giant oil companies will be awarded tax cuts and new subsidies, under the pretext of the fall in oil prices. No matter that they all made obscenely high profits when prices were high!

Employers will no longer have to pay NI contributions for workers under 21, nor for apprentices - in addition to being allowed to continue paying them peanuts!

But the real aim of the budget was to re-impose austerity - behind all the electioneering and the nationalist bigotry. Osborne said it in one single sentence: "£30 billion further savings are necessary by 2017-18... £13 billion from government departments. £12 billion from welfare savings. £5 billion from tax avoidance, evasion and aggressive tax planning."

Jobs, wages, benefits, the NHS, welfare and education - all to be cut. Workers to pay yet more, yet again. Why should we allow it?