Page 22 Daily Mail, Thursday, August 1, 2019
‘Give my tailor
an inch and he’ll
use a kilometre’
Metric: There is no such thing as
metric. All measurements are
imperial. I order my own suits by
the yard and inch, never by the
infernal metre and centimetre.
This may account for what many
people regard as their somewhat
baggy appearance.
No problem: One is endlessly
hearing the phrase ‘No problem.’
‘Can we leave the European Union
with an excellent deal, even at this
late stage?’ ‘No problem!’
‘Will the Rt Hon Mr Boris
Johnson, Esq., M.P., prove to be one
of our greatest Prime Ministers?’
‘No problem!’
‘Can we proceed to spend
billions on crowd-pleasing
measures without
having to raise taxes?’
‘No problem!’
My goodness, how coarse
it all sounds! I much pre-
fer the grammatically
correct: ‘Nothing could
be more simple.’
Out of the box: In my
experience, there is little
or no point in thinking
‘out of the box’. The last
time I tried, I was on a
sunny beach, clad in my
usual double-breasted
suit. Someone sug-
gested that I should
think ‘out of the box’
and remove my suit. This
I did. And what did I find?
Another double-breasted
suit beneath it. The moral of
this story is that those who
attempt to think ‘out of the
box’ are sure to find
themselves trapped in another
box, a little bit smaller.
Party: A noun, yes; but
never a verb.
Perchance: He who
would fain be consid-
ered civilised must
utter the word ‘per-
chance’ at every oppor-
tunity. For example: ‘No deal is bet-
ter than a bad deal, perchance.’
Poptastic: Not a word in one’s
vocabulary.
Pounds, shillings and pence: I
always insist on sticking to our
time-honoured British currency
rather than this new-fangled
European ‘decimalised’ nonsense. I
demand an exchange rate of 240
pennies to the pound, which is
what makes me the very wealthy
man I am today.
Rocket science, it’s not: A
meaningless phrase and one best
avoided. As it happens, rocket sci-
ence is a comparatively easy disci-
pline to master. One simply lights
the blue touch paper and steps
back. A day or two later, one or two
of your best chaps find themselveson the Moon, ready to make them-
selves useful with their buckets and
spades and what-not.
Slade: To my mind, the ditties of
Mr ‘Noddy’ Holder and his col-
leagues in the Slade popular music
group leave much to be desired.
I have delivered firm instructions
to all my staff that the lyrics of
Slade should never be quoted
without first being rendered into
correct English.
Mama Weer All Crazee Now is a
case in point. When it was sug-
gested as the theme song for the
Brexit movement, I was in com-
plete accord, but only if it were
changed to ‘Mother, We May All Be
Prone To Unstable Decisions In
These Current Circumstances’.
Under; Help, I’m going: As it
was sunny, I decided to change into
my double-breasted pin-
striped swimming trunks
and go for a swim in the
sea. While I was out swim-
ming, I saw a young man
flailing about. ‘Help! I’m
going under!’ he yelled.
‘You assert that you
are, and I quote, “going
under”,’ I replied. ‘But
you fail to say exactly
what you mean by
“going under”. It is an
expression so vague as
to be meaningless. And
when you say “Help”, you
fail to elucidate whether
you are seeking help or offer-
ing it. Might I politely suggest
you place a little more effort
into correctly phrasing your
call, and then come back to
me when you are ready?’
Fortunately, by the time I
had finished taking him
up on his execrable use of
English, the gentleman
in question had finished
his yelling and disap-
peared from sight. I
returned to the shore
delighted to have been able to offer
him a word or two of kindly advice.
Verily: The only acceptable
substitute for the ghastly
Americanism ‘OK’.
With it: A modern expression
meaning ‘modish’ or ‘up to date’,
e.g., ‘The Swinging Blue Jeans are a
very “with it” pop group.’
Xylophone: No gentleman ever
plays the xylophone outside the
privacy of his own home.
Zip: No gentleman employs a zip.
The Lord would not have supplied
us with buttons if He did not wish
us to do them up.
Zounds: A first-class expression of
surprise or indignation. ‘Mr Corbyn
has proposed increased taxes for
the better off! Zounds! Whatever
will the bounder think of next!?’Craig
Brown
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/craigbrownJACOB REES-MOGG’S STYLE GUIDE (PART 2)
The new Leader of the house of Commons,
the Rt hon Jacob Rees-Mogg, esq., M.P., has issued
his staff with a guide for writing documents...V1either, when the pound took
a battering during the
financial crisis.
Nor in 2016, when sterling
dropped like a stone after
the EU referendum.
I realise, of course, that
under Mr Johnson’s new
regime it is considered bad
form to be a doomster.
Even so, it strikes me as
deranged to see a tumbling
pound as anything other
than bad news.
To put it very simply, the
further our currency falls,
the more we pay, not just
for sunhats and ice lollies
on holiday, but for the
fruit and vegetables in
our supermarkets, the
appliances on our High
Street shelves and the cars
on the dealer’s forecourt.
Higher prices mean lower
living standards, a slowingeconomy and, in the long
run, higher unemployment.
Nothing to celebrate there.
And one more thing. This
week’s dire sterling figures
suggest that if we do crash
out of the EU without a deal,
the pound would take an
even more severe hit,
plunging towards parity with
the euro and perhaps even
with the dollar.
That would be a colossalvote of no confidence in
Britain’s economy, as well
as a crushing international
humiliation.
And with import prices and
inflation surging, the Bank of
England would be unable to
cut interest rates to kick-
start the economy, which
would otherwise be theobvious response to the
shock of No Deal. In other
words, we would find
ourselves up the proverbial
creek without a paddle.
The irony is that in his
barnstorming speech in
Downing Street last week,
Mr Johnson told the cameras
that ‘the people who bet
against Britain are going to
lose their shirts’.
But the reason the pound is
falling is precisely because
so many people are betting
against Britain — not because
they are paid-up agents of
Project Fear, as some
Brexiteers claim, but because
they think there are better
places to put their money.
And if Mr Johnson is not
worried, he should be.
For if the pound continues
to plunge indefinitely, the
only people who will lose
their shirts will be us: the
British people.FROM PAGE 18
The PM should
be worriedSLIP