“It is a matter not so much of concealing as of withholding and what is withheld is not so much the truth as the facts.”
—cabinet secretary, Sir Burke Trend, 1963
The magazine Private Eye provoked panic in Whitehall when it identified C, the letter used to denote the head of MI6, hitherto secret papers released at the public record office yesterday [Wed 16 Feb 2000 01.44 GMT] reveal.
The
magazine broke existing media conventions by naming Sir Dick White as
C, standing for Chief, in a column by Claud Cockburn, in August 1963. In
a small paragraph headed "Note to foreign agents" he named Sir Dick as
the "head of what you so romantically term the British Secret Service".
"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn’t see exactly where or how
to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse
than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the
next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others,
when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You
don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of
your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of
doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that
restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
https://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
Sauce for the Goose: A primer on legal clichés
By Alexander Chandler KC
June 24, 2020
Headings:
“Conclusion
No advocate, however eloquent, can avoid using clichés altogether. However, we would all do well by resisting the temptation to resort to such easy, hackneyed phrases as “sauce for the goose”, “cutting one’s coat/ cloth” or “meal ticket”.In Politics and the English Language Orwell proposed six rules which, if anything, apply more forcefully now than they did 70 years ago:
When a copy of Mr. Oscar Black-
ford’s Christmas Circular came into
my hands, I was much struck by the
appropriate words which headed the
long list of Christmas gifts—" Scatter
Sunshine with Xmas Cards."
“Too many people thinking too much was the key problem with the modern world. Think about your garden, sure, think about what you're going to have for tea, think about some things you have some actual power over, but everybody spending all day thinking about things they couldn't influence, where did that lead?”
"― Richard Osman, The Impossible Fortune
"
“In the far corner there’s a table of six tucking into their roast dinners. Three couples, one of the women cooing over the gravy, one of the men letting his wife tuck a napkin into his shirt. You’d probably find a photo of the same six somewhere from thirty years ago, tanned and smiling, all raising glasses of sangria to the camera as a Spanish waiter took their photo. There’d be no napkin being tucked in, but the friendships would be the same, and the six of them would swear they hadn’t aged until you showed them the photograph..”
"― Richard Osman, The Impossible Fortune
"
“When things are noisy, and everyone is asking you to look at something right this instant, we mustn’t forget all the things still going on in quiet corners. There’s the news, and then there’s life..”
"― Richard Osman, The Impossible Fortune
"
“Joyce’s love for her is unconditional, Joanna knows that, but, really, unconditional love has a huge flaw. If you love me no matter what, who I actually am doesn’t matter. If someone loves your essence, your very being, what can you do to make them love you more or love you less? Nothing: there is no space. So the only option left to you is to continually prod at that unconditional love, to test it and stretch it, to mock it even. And it’s not just that. There is a further problem with unconditional love, isn’t there? Because what if you don’t love yourself? What if, like Joanna, you obsess over your flaws and weaknesses, you constantly update the balance sheet of your own personality and find it wanting? Well, then the unconditional love of a parent is a sign that they simply don’t know you. If they truly knew you, their love would be peppered with caveats. “I love you, but….”
"― Richard Osman, The Impossible Fortune
"
