The start of the tape
Business secretary Vince Cable announced another crackdown on red tape. But where did red tape come from? It seems to have been a product of the Holy Roman Empire.
— Spanish officials in the reign of Charles V (1516-56) would tie up documents relating to issues which had to be discussed on the Council of State with red tape; other, lesser documents were bound with rope.
— The tape was called Boldoque, after the Dutch city in which it was manufactured (S’Hertgenbosch in Dutch). The Spanish have retained the word for red tape.
— As for the Dutch, they have made amends by inventing the ‘one in, one out’ rule, now adopted by Cable’s department, under which for every new piece of legislation an old law must be abolished.
From the vaults
Some argue that the world’s biggest economies should go back to using the gold standard.
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