A pedant writes
This is a minor point but interesting nonetheless for the tiny ragged band of us who still give a stuff about the way our language is abased on the altar of ambition.
Via Mr Eugenides on the latest Home Office incompetence, we get this:
The prime minister’s official spokesman said there was no evidence ministers knew of a backlog of cases or the scale of the backlog.
What the transcript of the press briefing says is
However, there was nothing to suggest that Ministers knew about the problem of the backlog.
Read that again. It’s a lawyerly use of words. Not a categoric ‘ministers did not know of a backlog’ but ‘nothing to suggest that Ministers knew’. That’s two different things, isn’t it?
Posted on January 11th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
| See also • Depends what you mean by ‘lethal’ • Paedogeddon Redux • Jackie Ashley: The party should remember that pride comes before a fall |
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It’s also paradoxically self-contradictory: the very fact that they would choose to make that statement is itself strong evidence that ministers did know about the problem of the backlog.
There’s nothing wrong with the use of language - the second quote is a good translation of the first, and they’re both weaselly verbal fog of no interest or use. Typical Britpol shite.
Peter is right (on both counts). There is no discrepancy between the two sentences: “there was no evidence” means the same thing as “there was nothing to suggest”.
I realise the two quotes are effectively the same.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear - I was trying to point out difference between an outright denial (’ministers did not know of a backlog’) and what the spokesman said (’nothing to suggest that Ministers knew’) - that is, they’re saying ministers might have known but it’s for others to prove it.
Ah. I see. Sorry for misunderstanding.
Nah, that’s just normal for lawyers and civil servants (and I speak as a former lawyer). It doesn’t mean necessarily that they are trying deliberately to be weasely and not deny it properly, just that it is almost pathologically impossible for a lawyer or a bureaucrat (and this smacks of a statement written by someone who is both) to state a definite opinion.
That’s not quite right. It’s not abnormal for a lawyer to state a definite opinion. It’s just that the closer the court case comes, the less definite the opinion becomes.
As for the bureaucrat, of course a definite opinion is possible. It is their definite opinion that you have gone to the wrong office and it is definitely the case that another office has the responsibility for your problem. Gratifyingly, in the office that you go to subsequently, they also have a definite opinion - that you are in the wrong place and that the place you went to first is definitely the right one.