Gosling's Grouse - A way to reduce that guilty feeling

"I give this portion of my estate as a thank-offering in the firm conviction that never again shall we have a chance of giving our country that form of help which is so vital at the present time" - Stanley Baldwin, first secretary to the Treasury, 1923.

At the time, national debt was 14 times what it had been in 1914 before the First World War – ring any bells? Patriotic MPs back in those days were urged to pay off this extraordinary debt, which compared to the current level of £178bn, seems like chicken feed. What makes Baldwin’s action extraordinary by the standards of any generation is that firstly he wrote to The Times informing them he had spent a fifth of his personal wealth buying up War Loans, but he then promptly handed them back to the Treasury to be burned, effectively cancelling this part of the nation’s debt. It set me t...