The PBR: "Bingo and Boilers" - Failed on Fairness? Some initial reactions.

But the big picture is that there is likely to be a sharp axe on public expenditure at some point, and the PBR didn't go into any detail. The pain is still coming though, surely, and a comprehensive spending review will be needed at some point. Of course, ahead of an election Labour won't go into detail and have left it to the Tories to detail the cuts. But with tightening opinion polls that itself presents Osborne with a challenge.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the day was the increase on National Insurance from 2011; NI will go up another half a percent. Corporation Tax was held at 21p in the pound of course, but was little consolation for business. The Tories will attack the NI rise as a tax hike.

Meanwhile, the one-off 'Bank Payroll Tax' comes in straight away and doesn't even last a full year. Darling has promised anti-avoidance measures, and said that ithe bonus tax may be extended. Next time round though the Financial Services Bill rules will be in place (if Labour get it through).

Will the Tories accept the bonus tax? Probably. Ken Clarke, the shadow business secretary, said on earlier today that a possible one-off tax on bankers' bonuses is "all tinsel really - because they will pay themselves in other ways. It's just the sort of stuff that Gordon and Peter have insisted the chancellor, who they didn't want to be chancellor, put in". So the Tories are already saying it's not a big deal.

But that bonus tax does raise some cash that will go to helping young people in finding work, so fair enough.

On public sector pay, the Tories have proposed a public sector pay freeze; Labour have limited it to 1%. So with Labour a public sector worker will be 1% better off. Is that enough? Vince Cable has a better idea - a flat sum across the board of £8 per week or £400 a year. That would make more sense and would be worth more to an NHS cleaner than a BBC executive. So Cable claims that Darling 'failed on fairness'. He has a point.

OK, the top 2% will still be worse hit with a 50p tax and they will lose higher rate relief on pensions. But we knew that already from the budget. The extra pain here is on banking bonuses and National Insurance rises. And overall if I got Darling right then the banks will pay an extra £500 million. But taxpayers (and average earners) will pay an extra £3 billion - that's not very progressive overall.

In addition, the freeze in inheritance tax threshold at £325,000 isn't clear cut. Yes, the government won't raise it to £350,000 but it will allow couples to pool the total to £650,000. For some couples (and their children) that's a real tax cut.

Basic state pension will rise by 2.5% in April, a real-terms increase of nearly 4% - with that and the bingo news the government seems to be making a big play for the grey vote (although many of these will have fixed line phone lines so will face a hit when the levy on this to support broadband comes in).

Darling now expects Public Sector Net Borrowing this year to be higher at £178 billion this year, £176 billion next year, then £140 billion, £117 billion, and £96 billion by 2013. These are big figures.

The battle line is over the government not cutting sooner, as the Tories want. The government wants to spend more to support the economy in the short term, as against more rapid cuts under the Tories. The latter claim that more rapid cuts are needed to reassure the markets.

In fact the markets hardly moved after the PBR. I support the view that the government does need to run large deficits as the spender of last resort in the short term, given that households and firms are cutting their debts and spending less.

The Tories, if they cut too soon, do risk snuffing out a fragile recovery. But, and this is a big 'but', there is still the need for a credible set of measures to cut the deficit longer term, and that wasn't revealed today.

Overall, we'll need more detail at some point soon and maybe even before March. Everyone knows there's more to come. What is it?

Professor David Bailey works at Coventry University Business School.