{"id":252,"date":"2006-12-15T18:08:44","date_gmt":"2006-12-15T17:08:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=252"},"modified":"2006-12-15T18:08:44","modified_gmt":"2006-12-15T17:08:44","slug":"christmas-lunch-with-the-chancellor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=252","title":{"rendered":"Christmas lunch with the Chancellor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My half brother Chris works as an official at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hm-treasury.gov.uk\/\">Treasury<\/a> (for non- British readers, that is the UK equivalent to other countries&#8217; Ministry of Finance). We have a little tradition that each year he invites me to have Christmas lunch in the building&#8217;s excellent canteen.<br \/>\nI was there this lunchtime for turkey and six vegetables plus cranberry sauce followed by Christmas pudding and brandy sauce &#8211; delicious! On the next table but one to us, there was the Chancellor of the Exchequer <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hm-treasury.gov.uk\/About\/Ministerial_Profiles\/minprofile_brown.cfm\">Gordon Brown<\/a>.<br \/>\nI was tempted to wander over and discuss <i>&#8220;neoclassical endogenous growth theory and a symbiotic relationship between investment in people and infrastructure&#8221; <\/i> (a quote from a famous Brown speech of 1996), but I decided that I should respect his privacy and allow him to enjoy his last Christmas lunch at the Treasury. Next year, he&#8217;ll be in No 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My half brother Chris works as an official at the Treasury (for non- British readers, that is the UK equivalent to other countries&#8217; Ministry of Finance). We have a little tradition that each year he invites me to have Christmas lunch in the building&#8217;s excellent canteen. I was there this lunchtime for turkey and six [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-life-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}