Henry Tang's budget has received plenty of good press today. Amongst other gems, the SCMP reports:

Profit-making companies and the highest income-earners who pay the standard tax rate will not benefit from any tax reduction under the principle of "pay as you can afford", Mr Tang said. But the number who pay the top rate is expected to shrink from 35,000 to 5,000 after a revamp of marginal tax bands and rates, taking them back to 2002-03 levels.

He conceded that the now-defunct goods and services tax had upset the people, but was adamant that the narrow tax base was an issue that needed to be addressed.

"The GST is not at the bottom of Victoria Harbour," he said adding that the next government would be given a report after the current consultation closes this month.

So our next chief secretary basks in the glory of "turning around the deficit clouding the government's treasury since he became finance chief in August 2003, when the fiscal deficit was mired in a deficit of about HK$60 billion." He's managed to do this by, ummm, riding a property and economic boom and staying out of things. Tough job but someone's gotta do it.

Yet amongst all the hype, there are some glaring gaps. The budget does very little for the "working class" - those that don't pay any income tax at all (why is there so much talk about class in a supposedly non-Communist economy)? And what about the army of domestic helpers that were forced to take a cut in their minimum wage to help "share the burden" when times were tough a couple of years ago, on top of which they were effectively taxed on their income whereas Hong Kong residents earning the same amount aren't? Can we expect helpers to see a rise in their minimum wage and abolition of the duty on their wages?

Finally, in the middle of today's SCMP there's an advertisement in green, which takes half the page. It's full of hand-written scrawl and arrows to vacuous questions. This is what passes for political advertising in this city. Why does The Don bother and surely with the oodles of money he's raised he could at least find someone who can write more neatly than himself? The Don's website doesn't have the ad that appeared today in the People's South China Morning Post - they'll get the hang of this internet thingy-majiggy soon. The Don should ask Henry Tang for a government hand-out to help with "developing internet infrastructure".