How to Win Every Argument: The Use and Abuse of Logic (2006)

160 How to Win Every Argument

You will find it useful to invent extreme positions on one side,

in order to cast the opposing views as extremist also.

Councillor Watson has urged free travel for senior citizens. Others have

suggested we should charge them 50 pence per journey. Surely the

sensible course would be to reject these extremes and opt for a moderate

charge of 25 pence?

(Of course, the debate was between 25 pence and zero. The 50

pence advocates are conjured up in support of your ad

temperantiam.)

Try to cultivate the company of Foreign Office officials. It

comes so naturally to them when someone makes a claim

against Britain to concede half of it that you will learn to commit

the fallacy at speed with apparent ease. You will need to be quick

off the mark because the fallacy has a large following.

When two countries are disputing the ownership of a couple

of islands for example, you should be the first to leap in with the

'one each' suggestion. There will be plenty of British diplomats

trying to beat you to it.

Thatcher's blame

When the round black hat first appeared it was dubbed a bowler.
This was because it looked like a bowl, and because it was made
by the Bowler brothers. The term 'Thatcher's blame' might
similarly catch on for two reasons: it was regularly used against
the lady herself, and it covers all cases, just as a thatcher covers all
of a roof.
In her first few years in office, Lady Thatcher was blamed for
poverty and unemployment in Britain. Seamlessly this switched
to blame for the culture of shameless affluence as the emerging