We're being spoiled aren't we? Not content with the actual budget just a few weeks ago (it probably seems like longer) - George Osborne is giving his red box another outing for an emergency budget. The emergency being that he's not had chance to have his own way in the coalition, presumably.
All that means a political budget to set out the political agenda for the coming five years - with moves to come good on manifesto promises and to start to admit to where the cuts will come.
Yet amid the pre-budget excitement (if you can call it that) and the Labour leadership excitement (no, probably not) I couldn't help by getting frustrated at the fact that so many so many complex issues are reduced to overly simplistic debates under the cloak of common sense.
Take some examples of issues under debate at the moment.
On last week's BBC Question Time, health secretary Jeremy Hunt appeared open to the prospect of charging patients who miss their appointments. Fair enough, you might think. After all, these missed appointments waste valuable time that could be given to other patients.
Yet, when you think about it, it's not so simple. Which is probably why Hunt had the rug pulled from under him by 'Government sources' in the days to follow.
The problem is that, in order to charge people who missed appointments, you'd need to set up a bureaucratic system to administer the fines. You'd have to handle appeals and chase payments. You'd also have to acknowledge that some people miss appointments for very good reasons - public transport/traffic issues or ill health, for example.
Plus, I dislike the idea of putting a financial transaction at the heart of the health service. The issue here is that when, for example, the hospital writes to you to inform you that it needs to move your appointment at short notice - by which time you've already arranged cover at work, say - how long before the patient seeks financial recourse for their own inconvenience?
Just as with student tuition fees - making the debate about price transforms the patient/doctor relationship into one that, like student/tutor, becomes rooted in money and what you should expect from that money. While no-one appears to be suggesting charging for appointments yet, the value for an appointment would be clear from the level of the fines set out.
So an unwieldy system of fines that would cost money to administer, would likely 'catch out' people with legitimate excuses and would put a financial relationship into the heart of something that shouldn't be about money. Not such common sense now.
Far harder, but also more palatable, is a longer-term drive to make missing appointments socially unacceptable. Still, you worry that long term and hard work aren't as attractive.
That hits at the main problem about framing policy as a 'common sense idea'. It's a ploy to make sure that the opposition can't oppose you despite the fact that, beyond the rhetoric, your idea might not be all it's cracked up to be.
Take another example. English votes for English laws (the horribly named EVEL) is another catchy soundbite that sounds like good common sense politics. Why should the Scots have a say on English laws?
Yet, here we go again. How does this work in practice? If a backbencher proposes spending big money on quickening the pace of the establishment of academy schools, for example, that might have a cost implication on the budget as a whole and, as a result on the resources for Scotland. So, where do we draw the line on what constitutes an English-only issue? Having spent so much time and energy keeping the Scots in the union, might we be in danger of showing them the exit again?
And why stop there? Should MPs for cities in the north west of England have a say in what happens to me in Lincolnshire? Does our MP have a right to have a say on HS2, which comes nowhere near me?
It all sounds like something that is a thinly veiled excuse for one side or the other to use to reform the voting system in the favour. Especially since history from the last 15 years shows that this 'problem' has affected...well pretty much nothing.
Barely any votes on laws since 2001 would have changed if Scottish MPs were taken out of the equation. Albeit, granted, that has been with a slightly less feisty bunch of MPs from north of the border but it shows that Scottish representatives have not, up until now, skewed the course of events.
Far better to solve the issue of 'nodding dog' MPs who blindly follow the party line regardless of what their constituents think. But, as with GPs, this is probably harder to achieve.
On a similar note, you often hear people talk of the need to 'means test' benefits to pensioners, namely things such as the free television licence, winter fuel payments, bus pass etc. Why, the argument goes, does a millionaire pensioner need any of the above?
That again, sounds sensible. However, as with the GP example it requires red tape to administer and, importantly like 'EVEL' it creates a wider problem.
The whole system of taxation in this country works by everyone paying in, regardless of what they 'take out' in services used. Small symbolic gestures such as these show that everyone gets something out of their relationship with the state.
If we start to question someone's worthiness of getting 'something back' then we open up the question of whether that person feels the need to chip in in the first place. We also begin to question, as a society, our wider relationship with the state. Why must I, as a non-smoker, contribute to services that assist those wishing to quit smoking? Why do my taxes need to go to pay for infrastructure projects in parts of the country that I do not visit?
The principle that everyone pays in and everyone gets something back for their contribution should not be undermined so easily.
It is, of course, easy to be cynical about politics and politicians. But the point remains that saying something that sounds like 'common sense' is not the same as carrying out a well thought-out plan. Poor legislation can be enacted for the right reasons. But it pays to be wary of anyone who offers a simple, black and white answer to any issue - be it a Labour leadership contender, a Tory celebrating their first proper budget or one of those lesser-spotted Lib Dems.
