Martin Stanford, Sky.Com News Presenter

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I’ve chalked up another first today – just as Alistair Darling was delivering his first budget speech to Parliament.

You may have caught the Budget Unplugged programme that I hosted online (and Sky News Active) where we tried to dissect the budget measures as they were announced.>/p>

We certainly spotted an recurring theme – Stability seems to have overtaken Prudence as The Chancellor’s Favourite Budget Day Word.

With the benefit of a few moments hindsight it does seem as the first Darling wasn’t so much daring as dull, which my tax expert guests reminded me, is just what the financiers in the City were both expecting and were demanding.

Putting the numbers into the specialist KPMG spreadsheets and it seems an average family on the average wage with two average kids will be a little better off this coming year – but there’s nothing much to look forward to after that.

And that doesn’t include the extra taxes being put on booze, the car tax disc or even, the most quirky measure of the day, single use shopping bags!. Kill ‘em off or we will legislate to make you do it, was the Chancellor’s message to shopkeepers around the UK.

More on this at 7.30.

Also tonight – the stories getting the most clicked online today. The bad weather that’s still about for some and has left a trail of damage in its trek across Britain.

And the sad death of a senior policeman. Why did Michael Todd, Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, meet his maker alone on a Welsh mountain? What had happened to bring him to this spot? We’ll ask Crime Correspondent Martin Brunt for some answers.

See you online and on TV – at half past seven.