What’s the score on ‘score’?
The courtship rituals of the Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility last ten weeks. The consummation is a fiscal event, such as the Budget coming in the autumn, if we survive. Eligible young ladies used to have dance cards on which to enter the names of their suitors. The Treasury has a scorecard on which its proposed measures are drawn up for the OBR to score. The analogy is with the cricket field rather than the ballroom. The OBR score indicates its forecast for spending, receipts and public debt. It also takes into account knock-on effects of a policy change. This is called dynamic scoring. I had to ask
