A newsletter from CFSP land contains an unusual link. It details a programme that’s been taking place called the “Anti-Corruption Jolly Ambassadors”.
How refreshingly honest. A lot more to the point than an MEPs’ sunshine “study break”. A spade is a spade and a jolly is a jolly, unless they were thinking of Santa Claus and arctic elven contentedness.
Before the anti-corruption campaigners get righteous, fair enough, it’s a worthy cause in general terms – though I’m not entirely convinced that public money is necessarily being properly spent if it is going on supporting a huge blue envelope walking around a town, and a street basketball match between a “Corruption” and the “Anticorruption” teams. We all know who’s going to win that match. Unless it’s just a ruse to get the criminals to turn up and arrest them.
But now the New Labour lexicology has seemingly been binned, I wonder in a British context what other expressions a more plainspeaking Whitehall phrasebook might contain?