{"id":6873,"date":"2010-05-17T14:49:01","date_gmt":"2010-05-17T12:49:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=6873"},"modified":"2010-05-17T14:49:01","modified_gmt":"2010-05-17T12:49:01","slug":"it-was-a-joke-not-a-good-joke-but-a-joke-none-the-less","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2010\/05\/17\/it-was-a-joke-not-a-good-joke-but-a-joke-none-the-less\/","title":{"rendered":"It was a joke &#8211; not a good joke &#8211; but a joke, none the less"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/politics\/2010\/may\/17\/liam-byrne-note-successor\">Ex-Treasury secretary Liam Byrne's note to his successor: there's no money left | Politics | guardian.co.uk <\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The right are wetting themselves about former Labour chief secretary to the Treasury's note to his successor, Lib Dem David Laws. It read:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\"I'm afraid to tell you there's no money left.\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>They're taking it a literally true.<\/p>\n<p>And that - as we all know, is not the case. With just one minor, purely technical hiccup the UK has been selling its bonds as if they're the best deal in town - which quite probably they are.<\/p>\n<p>So, as Byrne says:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\"My letter was a joke, from one chief secretary to another. I do hope David Laws's sense of humour wasn't another casualty of the coalition deal.\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But it looks like it was.<\/p>\n<p>Admittedly it was a poor joke.<\/p>\n<p>But for the right to jump on this is some sign of their desperate desire to drive this country into a genuine economic crisis - which seems to be the only policy they have right now.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: xx-large;\"><span><strong><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ex-Treasury secretary Liam Byrne&#8217;s note to his successor: there&#8217;s no money left | Politics | guardian.co.uk . The right are wetting themselves about former Labour<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2010\/05\/17\/it-was-a-joke-not-a-good-joke-but-a-joke-none-the-less\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6873\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}