"Your arguments are overwhelming. You’re obviously right — and the answer is No."

Joel Barnett Politics See all quotes by Joel Barnett →

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“As chief secretary, I was having a terrible time doing what I didn’t go into politics to do — cutting public expenditure. And I was having meetings with every departmental minister about their budget. They all wanted more money — Tony Benn and Barbara Castle more than most. I decided that I could get rid of three Cabinet ministers — the secretaries of state for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — if I could settle on a formula for their budgets. So I set up this method for allocating public expenditure that the Cabinet then agreed to.”

“The real problem is that now no politician wants to tackle it. The Barnett Formula saves people trouble. It saves prime ministers worrying. That’s the way with politics… Here we are, about to make the wrong decision again.”

“We know that you have a very arduous duty ahead of you. We hope you enjoy the best of health; if you go on looking as attractive as you do tonight, it will be very beneficial.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Having destroyed the social power of the nobility and the guildmasters, the bourgeois also destroyed their political power. Having raised itself to the actual position of first class in society, it pr…"

— Friedrich Engels

Philosophy1796–1860

#politics

"What is the lesson to us to-day? Are we to go the way of the older civilizations? The immense increase in the area of civilized activity to-day, so that it is nearly coterminous with the world's surfa…"

— Theodore Roosevelt

Politics1858–1919

#truth

"Once ... I was offered a lift by some carters ... It was the Thursday before Easter. I was seated in the first cart, with a strong, red, coarse carman, who evidently drank. On entering a village we sa…"

— Leo Tolstoy

Literature1828–1910

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