Originally posted by OwlHoot
View Post
What a prim, plebby attitude.
William Pitt the Younger was the best and most inventive sovereign money manager this country ever had, and deserves much of the credit for defeating Napoleon by his financial astuteness, not to mention putting the East India company on a sound basis that paved the way for making India a successful part of the British Empire.
But his personal finances, for one reason or another, were completely chaotic, and he was usually in serious debt. I suspect some of this mismanagement was a cover for paying a small army of below-stairs informers to keep him posted on other MPs and influential people. But it was probably mainly because he was so frantically busy with state affairs that he could spare no time for his own. After his untimely death, it took 20 years to sort out his finances!
Also, Julius Caesar, Winston Churchill, and many of the best leaders (or the most successful anyway) had to contend with chronic personal debt and financial mismanagement for much of their lives. Would you rather someone like them running the country, or some non-entity with personal finances in apple pie order.
(Actually, I think on balance I'd prefer the latter, unless we were living in very "interesting" times!
)
William Pitt the Younger was the best and most inventive sovereign money manager this country ever had, and deserves much of the credit for defeating Napoleon by his financial astuteness, not to mention putting the East India company on a sound basis that paved the way for making India a successful part of the British Empire.
But his personal finances, for one reason or another, were completely chaotic, and he was usually in serious debt. I suspect some of this mismanagement was a cover for paying a small army of below-stairs informers to keep him posted on other MPs and influential people. But it was probably mainly because he was so frantically busy with state affairs that he could spare no time for his own. After his untimely death, it took 20 years to sort out his finances!
Also, Julius Caesar, Winston Churchill, and many of the best leaders (or the most successful anyway) had to contend with chronic personal debt and financial mismanagement for much of their lives. Would you rather someone like them running the country, or some non-entity with personal finances in apple pie order.
(Actually, I think on balance I'd prefer the latter, unless we were living in very "interesting" times!
)
Comment