Now I alone sit by the fire, And one remains of three; For two have got their heart's desire And left their grief to me. - Enoch Powell

Public and private expenditure are not the same in their financial and economic effects. There is a very important difference between your expenditure and mine and the Government's expenditure. If you and I intend to spend but find we have not enough money, we have no choice but to think better of it. Not so the Government; if they are short, they can either make you and me pay more in taxation, or else they can actually create additional money... For politicians to increase public expenditure is easy and sweet; to refrain from increasing it, let alone to reduce it, is hard and uncomfortable. Thus it is that government intentions to spend get carried through, irrespective of whether this results in money being created faster than goods and services—irrespective, in other words, of the inflation which ensues. That is why Lord Cromer was perfectly right in saying that a high level of public expenditure causes inflation.

When a man offers to sell you something at less than its market price, it is a pretty good sign that you are about to be swindled.

"God save the Queen"... is the distinctive self-assertion, come what may, of one nation against the rest; she is not their Queen, she is our Queen, and her allegiance marks us off as a separate people.