Search Results

“... Week Nought. After months of media discussion as to the likely election date, we were finally put out of our misery: it was to be April. What was rather more of a surprise was the Chancellor’s Budget: no penny off the basic rate of tax, but a new tax band of 20 per cent for the first £2000. Did no one remind him that Labour had tried much the same thing – a 25 per cent band when basic rate was 33 per cent – and that his party had eliminated it? At any rate, the proposal caught Labour with its ideological trousers down, unable to object, without sounding churlish, to the poorest-off workers paying less tax ...”

“... The City of London has always had a streak of lawlessness, partly because great fortunes could be made and partly because regulation has been relatively light. Advantage has repeatedly been taken of the latter, and certainly the past few years have seen a series of scandals, notably Lloyd’s, Guinness, Barlow Clowes, BCCI and now Maxwell. Indeed, Maxwell bids fair to be one of the best ...”

“... after 9 April. It is difficult not to read ‘Goodbye, Great Britain’ with this in mind. Dr Burk, the historian of Anglo-American financial relations, probably has a better feel for the details of the IMF intervention than anyone; Sir Alec Cairncross writes with the authority one would expect from someone who is not only a distinguished academic ...”

“... some of those students felt there was more to be said. Sisman hadn’t even read all the books, Kathleen Burk protested – and he certainly hadn’t footnoted properly. Her own account, published in 2000, could not be faulted on those grounds. Burk didn’t neglect the political and private life, but she ...”

“... reserves of gold. When the money did become available, it was on humiliating conditions: as Kathleen Burk has pointed out, the American Treasury gained a degree of control over British government expenditure that HM Treasury had failed to secure. The reversal of fortune that the war brought about was permanent, however contrary the ...”