In the year since we brought things into the open with a clean breath of fresh air at City Hall we have learned about corrupt spending practices and unethical conflicts of interest that waste your money... and keep Dallas from being the great city of our dreams.

Unless you're living on the street and surviving on a diet of discarded turkey drumsticks there's no point in being gloomy. We've spent too long trying to cheer ourselves up by spending money on brightly coloured things we don't really need. We've stopped using our imaginations.

Where is the politician who has not promised to fight to the death for lower taxes- and who has not proceeded to vote for the very spending projects that make tax cuts impossible?

If we can't have the courage to tell our constituents hey we've got to cut back then if we can point to something and say I would like to vote for more benefits for you but this balanced budget amendment or statutory spending cap or whatever the device is is preventing me from doing it.

America needs jobs smaller government less spending and a president with the courage to offer more than yet another speech.

It's great that people are basically spending their two weeks of vacation to come out and be with us in some weird part of the world. And I think we owe it to them to take 'em to some cool places.

Rather than saying 'My checking account is a wreck ' change it to 'I will learn how to track my spending and balance my checkbook.'

If one's honest about it spending time in a car with children is pretty ghastly.

Spending $1 for a brand new house would feel very very good. Spending $1 000 for a ham sandwich would feel very very bad. Spending $19 000 for a small family car would feel well more or less right. But as with physical pain fiscal pain can depend on the individual and everyone has a different threshold.

Barack Obama's life was so much simpler in 2009. Back then he had refined the cold act of blaming others for the bad economy into an art form. Deficits? Blame Bush's tax cuts. Spending? Blame the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. No business investment? Blame Wall Street.

In principle there are only three main components of spending that much matter to monetary policy: consumer spending business investment and exports and trade.

If you have a line of business - I know this as a CEO - or if you have a teenager - I know this as a parent - who have a spending problem what do you do? You quit giving them money.

My approach to cutting spending as president is to do a ten percent across the board cut of all federal agencies and then ask each of my new agency heads to find another ten percent by drilling down. That's what you do in business to come up with approximately 20 percent cuts for the first fiscal year budget.

There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down simply by spending his money somewhere else.

I don't know much about auctions. I sometimes go to previews and see art sardined into ugly rooms. I've gawked at the gaudy prices and gaped at well-clad crowds of happy white people conspicuously spending hundreds of millions of dollars.

Megacollectors suppose they can enter art history by spending astronomical amounts.

It was Public Art defined as art that is purchased by experts who are not spending their own personal money.

I love being around my friends and my family and spending time with my husband. I like being normal and recharging my batteries and I feel like I have the coolest job in the world where I get to get on stage and perform and get to do a lot of really amazing things.

But there's not enough time in life to go sit at a party have a drink and make idle conversation. There's too many important things to do. Just being together with my husband spending time alone which I have very little of.

The foundations of a strong economy don't rest alone on the decisions of Chancellors or the spending programmes of government.

I just broke up with my boyfriend and I've been spending more time alone than I'd like.

What troubles me is the Internet and the electronic technology revolution. Shyness is fueled in part by so many people spending huge amounts of time alone isolated on e-mail in chat rooms which reduces their face-to-face contact with other people.

We need quiet time to examine our lives openly and honestly - spending quiet time alone gives your mind an opportunity to renew itself and create order.

We can be tired weary and emotionally distraught but after spending time alone with God we find that He injects into our bodies energy power and strength.