Finance Minister Paula Cox pulled off the near impossible yesterday ? introducing a budget than angered nobody and pleased just about everybody.

Indeed Hester is fast warming to Ms Cox who always seems to have shopaholics firmly in mind.

Last year she removed the stipulation for people to be out of Bermuda for more than 72 hours to qualify for the $100 duty allowance and this year she brought in Sunday trading.

Certainly Ms Cox had the House in rapt attention during her speech.

Government MPs are often quite blase in such set-piece events with a "we are in the know, we know what she's going to say" type attitude as they read unrelated journals and casually chat among themselves. But this time around most dutifully followed the text with their fingers, mostly in enthralled silence, with only a few moving their lips.

Indeed with her clipped tones and obvious authority Ms Cox resembled a feared schoolmarm who is known as a dab-hand with a well-aimed board rubber.

But though her delivery was faultless, her crisp English accent did slip once as no true Bermudian can resist the temptation to mangle and elongate the vowels in Homeroom.Com.

The computer tool for classrooms thus became "Hooooom.Roooomm".

And the class were allowed to join in with teacher's jokes as she prodded them into lauding her plan to install an elevator in sessions house.

The session did have some spontaneous bursts of enthusiasm including over plans to raise pensions and to fix Lefroy House.

The obvious joy was partly due to the humanitarian nature of the measures but mostly out of undoubted relief that they might at last help spike the guns of the dreaded Louise Jackson who has made Government's life a misery on the issue of seniors.

However while Ms Jackson might have less to work with this year, Government's plan to raise the debt ceiling undoubtedly has Grant Gibbons slavering at the bit to dissect this plan in tedious detail after tedious detail in the forthcoming Finance Ministry debates.

Certainly Ms Cox's voice raised more than a few decibels amid noisy support as she trumpeted her Government's achievement in reducing debt inherited from the UBP.

This prompted a party of schoolkids ? who until then had seemingly been eagerly drinking in the nation's economic statistics ? to walk out.

It was understandable really. Nothing spoils a financial briefing for an eight-year-old quicker than an unseemly political rumpus.

Ms Cox also tried to use her time in the spotlight to breathe life into the flagging issue of Independence as she promised the Social Agenda would help Bermudians realise their potential as citizens of the world.

The social agenda is of course the buzz word of the moment with the Premier identifying 66 key programmes to that end, which will be monitored on a monthly basis.

Hester can't help wondering whether the workload is already taking a toll on the Premier who seemed to sleep through large parts of the speech.

If Government has 66 key programmes then how many non-key programmes does it have? No wonder they want to increase the public debt.