Quote:
Originally Posted by OLD BOY
He eventually sold all the assets. There was nothing left when the coalition took over in 2010. They said so themselves, just as they did in 1979.
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I'm afraid you're wrong.
1. The gold sale was a move from one asset class to another.
2. It was only half of our gold reserves, not all of them.
3. Liam Byrne wrote the note which was intended to be a joke. He explains so here:
Quote:
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And so in my final hours of office, I was writing thank-you notes to my incredible team of civil servants. And then I thought I’d write one letter more to my successor. Into my head came the phrase I’d used to negotiate all those massive savings with my colleagues: “I’m afraid there is no money.” I knew my successor’s job was tough. I guess I wanted to offer them a friendly word on their first day in one of government’s hardest jobs by honouring an old tradition that stretched back to Churchill in the 1930s and the Tory chancellor Reginald Maudling, who bounced down the steps of the Treasury in 1964 to tell Jim Callaghan: “Sorry to leave it in such a mess, old cock.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...neral-election