Follow the Money: 'Gripping and horrifying... witty and brilliant. Buy it' The Times

This book is the antidote to naivety that our political class needs. Anyone, in fact, who has strong views about how society should be run would benefit from reading it, because every political ambition costs money and as Johnson writes, "someone has to pay for all this"... The story he tells may leave you reeling... Johnson's buoyant yet acerbic style will keep you engaged. The sobering realities he lays out are peppered with entertaining asides - Book of the Week, Sunday TimesSo gripping and horrifying that it should probably come with a trigger warning: readers may find the content concerning the state of their country's governance upsetting... Given its subject matter, the book is a surprisingly easy read. That's thanks to Johnson's clear, witty prose. Few other writers could produce such a palatable explanation of the system of local government finance or make their readers guffaw over the details of VAT collection... This is a brilliant book. Buy it, read it and weep - The TimesA treasure trove of killer facts - GuardianRead it, absorb it, and understand how the country works. Johnson uses his talent for crunching the complex into the comprehensible to produce a cheerfully skeptical guide to the British state, revealing it's wisdom and idiocy, and where our money really goes. - Laura KuenssbergThis is an important book by the economist who has set the terms of so much political debate over the past decade. If you want to understand why crazy politics routinely trumps economic rationality in government choices, read this. - Robert Peston[A] powerful dissection of the stupidities of how we organise taxing and spending - Observer