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Saturday 21 September 2024

A special kind of sensible



Lisa Nandy says Sir Keir Starmer 'very sensible' to accept football tickets worth thousands

The minister for culture, media and sport also said she had never accepted free clothes, joking: "I think you can probably see that I choose my own clothes sadly".

Lisa Nandy has said Sir Keir Starmer's decision to accept thousands of pounds worth of football tickets was "very sensible".



It goes on and on. Clearly "very sensible" is a version of sensible not available to the rest of us. It is "very sensible" to accept gifts worth thousands even when it isn't sensible.

4 comments:

Sam Vega said...

I think "sensible" is when you save a little bit of money; buying second-hand suits, for example, or choosing a cheap pair of glasses at Specsavers, or settling for the cheapest season ticket at your local club.

It becomes "very sensible" when you are wealthy enough to afford top-quality, but allow a donor to buy the very best for you. It's a version of "sensible" that very few of us can rise to, so we don't really understand it all that well.

A K Haart said...

Sam - yes that's it, we probably aren't ambitious enough to climb out of the plebian depths of "sensible" into the superior realms of "very sensible". It is also "very sensible" because the plebs pay for it.

dearieme said...

@ Sam: I bought my dinner jacket second-hand. Eventually I got too fat for it and sold it. So rather uselessly I own two black bow ties and a cummerbund. All offers etc etc.

My academic gown was also bought second hand.

I played cricket wearing a box that was second-hand viz my father's. (To be fair, I used to use a rather ruder expression than "second-hand". Schoolboys, eh?)

My glasses are indeed by Specsavers.

But I've never held a season ticket. I was taken once to Twickenham on a corporate jolly and good fun it was. Once in a forty year career doesn't seem outrageous.

A K Haart said...

dearieme - this morning we bought Granddaughter a second-hand jacket from a local charity shop. £4.95 and hardly worn from the look of it, but she just wanted to make alterations to it which is something she likes doing.