Art and fiscal fusion

This week economists and artists had their Grand National, the one date in the calendar when the country takes a punt on something about which it knows practically nothing. As usual, critics were divided down the middle: while its supporters said The Turner Prize (C4, Thursday) had had another prudent, cautious year, the opponents of The Budget (BBC2, Tuesday) whipped up the usual souffle of frothy hysteria. But ordinary people couldn't tell the difference between Douglas Gordon's interminable horror movie and Kenneth Clarke's. Someone said he didn't know much about economics, but he knew what he liked.

Spokespeople for the low-income artistic community said that while 26p off a bottle of spirits was a positive move, there was outrage at the extra 15p levied on a packet of cigarettes. Analysts at the Tate Gallery immediately calculated that an average person who drank a bottle of gin and smoked four packets of cigarettes a day would be pounds l.70 a week out of pocket. On Newsnight a sculptor who makes plaster casts of dead people's intestines told Jeremy Paxman he was gutted. So gutted that he was considering making a plaster cast of it. He also warned that artists may well have to convert to more affordable stimulants, like meths and Uhu.

In a shopping centre in Leeds, a pensioner with hair dyed an absurd shade of black said he was unhappy that there hadn't been bigger tax breaks on hair colourant. Popping up on Channel 4 News, Newsnight and Question Time, Labour's shadow Treasury secretary Alistair Darling was eerily silent on this policy gap: with silver hair, silver stubble but ebony eyebrows, no politician has ever been in greater need of competitively priced dye.

Generally, though, experts couldn't decide whether the Budget painted a black or a red picture. Gordon Brown's tie helpfully signposted his view on the matter. Paddy Ashdown spied in Clarke's impressionist canvas an image of smoke and mirrors. The Six O'Clock News reported from a swimming pool in the Chancellor's constituency, a rare indication of BBC bias towards the men in the Hockneyesque blue corner. In the studio, a gremlin graffiti artist doodled a tangle of lines on Peter Jay's face, like a graph illustrating PSBR fluctuations. Peter Snow, meanwhile, submitted a virtual reality portrait in the naive style of a British townscape. "Here's Peter Snow at the graphics interface in Budget Town," said Paxman witheringly.

Over at the Tate, a frothing opposition spokesperson said this was a Turner Prize shortlist that had nothing for women. Onlookers were reminded of John Major's first Cabinet. The panel of experts, however, was exquisitely balanced, including a token critic, a token woman and a token pop star who knows absolutely naff all about art (take a bow, Jarvis Cocker, and a long holiday while you're at it). Joan Bakewell came on to present the prize wearing an installation necklace that most commentators agreed depicted a 3D representation of the solar system. In the end, the judges couldn't distinguish between Clarke's entry and Gordon's, and awarded them both a big windfall. Gordon's video of two hands apparently battling with each other reminded everyone of the Chancellor's brilliant illusion of giving with one hand and taking away with the other.