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A fact from To rob Peter to pay Paul appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 2 February 2017 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that "to rob Peter to pay Paul" means to eliminate one debt by incurring another?
"Rob Peter to pay Paul" supposed Kipling quote[edit]
Until I see a quote to the contrary, there is no Kipling quote "Rob Peter to pay Paul" put forward to Conservative Central Office, just unsupported and unevidenced rubbish put forward by User:Dahn with no evidence. FieldOfWheat (talk) 18:08, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
First off, the rubbish put forth is by whoever the genius is who added the url to the wrong volume of the book, and by the genius who doesn't seem to grasp that the organization in question existed, if under a different name, in Kipling's time, and by the genius who isn't able to comprehend that the note refers to the whole two phrases before it. I no longer have access to the 2004 edition, but you can check the 1990 edition, on page 55, regarding the poem and the verse (quoted in the previous paragraph): "There ought to be, an elementary (Q and A) catechism out already by that dam [sic] Conservative Central Organization. Or something like The House that Jack built to explain the elementary fact that only out of the savings of the thrifty can be made the wage-fund to set other men on the way to be prosperous." (Note how part of the quote is and was in the text exactly as you were asking for a quote. The other part was not quoted directly simply because the Kipling original is convoluted, and he uses an obscure name for the institution.) Now cease your sperging. Dahn (talk) 18:48, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This goes to show you that we are fast approaching an era where some users will feel entitled to add "citation needed" after every tidbit that is not immediately known to them, regardless of whether or not the citation after it verifies it. Dahn (talk) 18:51, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@FieldOfWheat: Are we done here, or have you since devised another method to waste my time? Dahn (talk) 19:06, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Who's wasting time? I wanted a reference to Kipling saying the Conservative Central Office should have "Rob Peter to pay Paul" as a catechism. The reference you give isn't that at all. You might as well say that reference means Kipling wanted "The moon is Stilton" as a catechism of the Tory Party. The paragraph about catechisms is separate from the quote about robbing Peter to pay Paul.
There is no evidence from that reference that the quote was put forward to the Conservative Central Office at all. FieldOfWheat (talk) 19:41, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@FieldOfWheat: What are you on about? The text does not say that it was put forward to the Conservative Central Office, just that Kipling thought it should. And yes, the letter, the paragraph, and our text, refer to the poem being usable as a catechism for the Conservative Central Office, it takes an amazing amount of absurdity to read it otherwise. In the paragraph that ends immediately before the quotation, which is a conclusive statement on the above, Kipling states that each and every bit of the poem should be used in such catechisms, and specifically mentions the Peter-and-Paul phrase as one of the things that should make it in there. Dahn (talk) 19:46, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Let's also note the slide from "[it] doesn't say that at all" (emphasis mine) to "there is no evidence from that reference that the quote was put forward to the Conservative Central Office" and the like. We call that moving the goalposts, and it is a huge waste of everybody's time. Dahn (talk) 19:55, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
