Fancy a bet on George Osborne's tie?

As George Osborne delivers his emergency Budget speech, why not try a few side bets to claw back some of the money he'll no doubt be taking off you?

By
published
in Features

Tomorrow, George Osborne will deliver his emergency Budget speech. And doubtless, quite a few of us will feel poorer as a result of the measures needed to claw back Britain's huge budget deficit. However, just because he'll likely be delivering a gloomy message, that doesn't have to stop you from having a bit of fun and making some money too.

At paddypower.com, the UK budget specials part of the political bets section of the website allows you to bet on all kinds of budget-related facts.

Think Osborne will wear a purple tie? Fixed odds of 10/1 mean you'll get £110 back for a £10 bet (£100 plus your original stake). Or perhaps you think he'll only need two sips of water during the entire speech he's bound to be a little nervous after all. In which case odds of 3/1 are currently on offer.

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Of course one of the favourite bets traditionally is the length of the speech. That's trickier to gauge for a new boy. At the moment anyone thinking it will last between 51 and 55 minutes can get odds of 2/1.

And let's hope it doesn't last much longer than that the longer he talks the bigger the list of budgetary nasties he is likely to inflict.

Tim Bennett

Tim graduated with a history degree from Cambridge University in 1989 and, after a year of travelling, joined the financial services firm Ernst and Young in 1990, qualifying as a chartered accountant in 1994.

He then moved into financial markets training, designing and running a variety of courses at graduate level and beyond for a range of organisations including the Securities and Investment Institute and UBS. He joined MoneyWeek in 2007.

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