Unless you were on Mars yesterday (more of which, later), you’ll know the Chancellor of the Exchequer read out his Autumn Statement in Parliament on Wednesday.

A sort of mini-Budget which falls half-way between the main Budgets in April, it makes very good telly.

Watching MPs in the run-up to George Osborne’s big speech was like a behind-the-scenes documentary set in a dodgy infant school during a 10-minute free-for-all while the teacher had nipped to the loo.

Witney MP and Prime Minister David Cameron thundered that we were “...seeing a solid recovery....we have the fastest growing economy of any G7 country.”

Oh, no we don’t, Labour MPs yelled. Jobs being created are not very well paid and there’s a cost of living crisis, they jeered.

At this moment, the teacher, aka the Leader of the House of Commons, stepped in and told them all to sit nicely in their seats and listen to That Nice Chancellor Man.

To be fair, he cracked a couple of pretty good jokes while delivering his statement.

Telling the House that Britain will be leading a European Space Agency mission to Mars, he said the true-blue Tories had “long gazed at the barren wastelands of the red planet and given up on finding intelligent life there”. Ho, ho, ho.

And when he revealed there’ll be new tax breaks for children’s TV production, he couldn’t resist pointing out the uncanny likeness between the main man in Wallace & Grommit and Labour party leader Ed Milliband.

After that lot, viewers might have needed a lie-down or a holiday. Or both.

If so, they’re in luck, as the cost of a family holiday just got cheaper.

George is scrapping air tax for children under 12 from May next year and it’ll be extended to include under-16s from 2016.

So, a family of four (two adults, two children) flying to the USA will save £140, or if they’re going as far as Australia, it’s £200.

Even on a jaunt to Spain, it’ll shave off about £20.

There were a few other sweeteners for hard-pressed families in Oxfordshire.

From April next year, the first £10,600 of earnings will be tax free, up from £10,000.

And workers will not pay the higher-band of tax of 40 per cent unless their pay packet tops £42,385 a year, up from the current level of £41,865.

But perhaps the biggest boost was for first-time buyers and young families, who’ll find buying a house cheaper.

A new system of stamp duty tax came in to force at midnight on Wednesday, which saves those at the bottom of the housing ladder thousands of pounds.

It means the first £125,000 of the purchase price is stamp-duty free, as with income tax.

So, anyone buying at the average Oxfordshire price of £288,000 will pay stamp duty on just £163,000, saving about £4,000.

Let’s hope it helps some of those many people who feel that being able to afford a home of their own is still light years away.

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