The English language is like a broad river on whose banks a few patient anglers are sitting, while, higher up , the stream is being polluted by a string of refuse-barges tipping out the muck of Fleet Street and the B.B.C.
Palinurus (Cyril Connolly) – The Unquiet Grave (1944)
The pollution we never dealt with.
In any public arena, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer uses polluted political language to avoid the embarrassment of conveying any meaning whatever to his dwindling band of listeners.
Starmer has nothing to teach us, nothing to teach anyone, but polluted language allows him to stagger on with dead speech after dead speech. He wouldn't even be worth meeting and surely that's something to dwell on.
No one over thirty-five is worth meeting who has not something to teach us, - something more than we could learn by ourselves, from a book.
Palinurus (Cyril Connolly) – The Unquiet Grave (1944)
Palinurus (Cyril Connolly) – The Unquiet Grave (1944)
4 comments:
"No one over thirty-five is worth meeting who has not something to teach us, - something more than we could learn by ourselves, from a book."
C'est bien trouvé, old fruit.
Perhaps Starmer's legal training (and his nature) mean that he sees the world around him as a set of cases or particular circumstances that are ‘decided’ and then can be left behind? He is probably astounded that people can keep bringing up and revisiting ‘decided’ issues.
It worked well enough to keep Labour together while in Opposition. But in power, with a large majority of perennially dissatisfied MPs, that 'decide and forget' strategy will not work.
From the Daily Sceptic: some ingenious soul has found a way to make a Council perform its duty.
"Brighton council has sparked anger after ignoring a van with a Palestine flag for months, then towing it the moment a St George’s cross went up, according to GB News."
dearieme - it was a charity shop book, so underpriced I still feel a little guilty.
DJ - that feels like a sound way to read him, as if he sees 'decided' issues in much the same way as laws which have been passed and tested in court. He's far too limited to be PM.
dearieme - ha ha - ingenious ways to get back at officialdom are almost always entertaining as well as ingenious. Long may it continue.
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