Ancient and Modern – 26 September 2003

So Gordon Brown’s Treasury has overspent its budget by 40 per cent – all on itself! No wonder the officials didn’t know where the money had gone. What fun if they had had to account for it in classical Athens …. One of the most extraordinary innovations of Athenian democracy was the appointment of executive officials. To simplify and omit some of the steps in the process, most of them were picked out of a hat from those who put themselves forward. Here was true ‘power to the people’ (the original meaning of d