WOODY ALLEN, in the prologue to his Oscar-winning comedy Annie Hall, tells a great old vaudeville joke, which contains a profound truth.

Two elderly Jewish women are sitting in a restaurant and one of them says: “Boy, the food in this place is really terrible,”

and the other one replies: “Yeah I know, and such small portions.”

Well, that is essentially how I feel about George Osborne.

The Chancellor’s policies have heaped unhappiness on vulnerable people across the country, but I keep hoping he will do more. Not implement more spending cuts – God forbid, only a madman would want to see more austerity measures, which have already had a disproportionately damaging impact on women, the poor, young people and the North-East.

Shareholders, company bosses and estate agents in the South have been the big winners during Mr Osborne’s tenure.

What we have had so far from the coalition is a combination of savage cuts and half-hearted attempts to support business, such as the woefully underfunded Regional Growth Fund.

Students looking at this period in years to come will wonder why a Chancellor would make it a priority to sanction the cut-price sale of the Royal Mail, but fail to address crippling fuel poverty that Age Concern predicts could mean 24,000 pensioners die this winter.

Is it too much to expect that in next month’s Autumn Statement we will see some progressive policies that show a real commitment to growth?

This week, the manufacturers’ organisation EEF urged Mr Osborne to cut business energy costs to help them compete with overseas rivals.

EEF called for support for energyintensive industries to be extended from the 2016 cut-off to 2021. This would be a real boon to a business such as steelmaker SSI in Redcar, which supports thousands of jobs in the region.

Even simpler would be to embark on some easy-to-implement infrastructure projects. I’m not talking about expensive vanity schemes such as HS2, but how about a road improvement programme that fixes every pothole in the country?

Fixing potholes, repairing bridges and tackling pinch-points that create traffic jams would be quickly repaid by the positive impact it would have on the economy, while also offering much-needed work to the construction trade.

More likely I fear that Mr Osborne will hold back on any radical measures until closer to 2015 for maximum electoral gain.

I really hope he isn’t so cynical. What are the chances that he surprises us all with some early Christmas gifts?

As Annie Hall says when she struggles to find words to fill an awkward silence: “La di da, la di da, la la.”