LANGUAGE

Sunday, June 23, 2019

Remedies.

The very best articles/speeches/comments/exam essays rehearse the arguments of the opposition carefully and truthfully before going on to say why they don't work.
If you have understood the opposition and can explain, simply, what they think, then people will listen whichever side they are on as you go on to explain where you yourself stand.
One of the very best online news sources does this regularly. Here Spiked Online speaks about Boris Johnson:


Is it right to record a couple’s private conversations, through the walls of their home, and then publish their words verbatim in a national newspaper? Most people would say no. Most people would consider that a grotesque invasion of privacy. Most people would think it profoundly morally wrong to spy on a couple’s most intimate moments and then salaciously expose those moments to readers hungry for scandal.The Guardian clearly thinks differently. Its publication of the literal words spoken by Boris Johnson and his girlfriend Carrie Symonds in a late-night row in their own home, which it got from a recording made by a neighbour, suggests it cares little for privacy.


Or Sir John Redwood:
The Governor of the Bank of England tells us we cannot escape tariffs by offering to negotiate a free  trade agreement. If the EU agrees to free trade talks as we leave the EU then we can.


This way of arguing goes back centuries, of course. It is by far the most thorough way to discuss anything at all.
The problem is that because it demands an audience with the patience to wade through paragraphs before getting to the nitty gritty, people who do not rehearse the opposition's case fairly before dismissing it, often assume they know what it is. And that leads to danger.
If you do not know what you are talking about, then you are in deep trouble. Here is Guido Fawkes quoting John McDonnell doing exactly that.
In 2011, John “Lynch The B*tch” (Mrs May?) McDonnell spoke about his desire to use physical violence against Tory and Lib Dem MPs “getting worse.” He told a Unison audience:“I’m getting worse. I sit in Parliament opposite a group of multi-millionaires, who are cutting these services with alacrity. My problem is I’m beginning to feel physical towards them. These people need a good slapping.My McAliskey moment is coming to me, and I’ve already been thrown out for grabbing the mace once.”
There can be no doubt at all that very few MPs on the front bench on either side (including Labour) are multi-millionaires. He just got it wrong.

On Brexit, too, the “divorce settlement” (the billions to be paid out when we leave), the “Single Market” (The EEA has two parts: the EU and the Efta columns), the “Irish Backstop” (why backstop? What does that mean? Who knows? How does it tie in with the EEA?) - these are all grossly misleading terms. If people had been careful and, before shrugging them off, had been able to describe them simply, we might not perhaps be in the current mess.


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