Play With Words

在昨天的 Prime Minister’s Question Time (PMQ)上，保守党议员 Greg Hands 也来嘲笑 Gordon Brown:

With three different police investigations under way, two members of his cabinet … falling foul of the law, and his general secretary facing charges, is this what he meant when he called himself a ‘conviction’ politician?”

Simon Hoggart’s Guardian sketch: The cruel spectacle of Brown at bay.

Simon Hoggart described the shadow Home Sectary David Davis in his Guardian sketch:

Davis was not exactly discombobulated, but on the other hand, you could not describe him as entirely combobulated.

discombobulate 是来自美国的俚语，指 To throw into a state of confusion

有趣的是，虽然有 discombobulated，但很少见到使用 combobulated 这个词。

Gordon Brown used the word ‘passerelle‘ in his first Common’s speech after signing the new EU treaty in Lisbon. Guardian’s Simon Hoggart helpfully looked it up from an EU website:

…Instead it means “a word meaning a footbridge, referring to the possibility of either moving a policy area from the intergovernmental third pillar to the supra-national first pillar, or changing the voting rules in the council, or the extension of the article’s scope of application.”

No wonder we are not getting a referendum.

I have read the sentence three times. Still clueless.

昨天自由民主党(Liberal Demorates Party)的两个高层(副领导人和主席)一起在党总部门口宣布领导人 Menzies Campbell 已经辞职的消息，当事人却不见踪影。虽然事先已经告知，不会回答记者任何问题，但是在简短的公告刚刚结束，人群中立刻有人高声喊道：

Did you wield the dagger?

一切联翩的浮想似乎可以回溯到恺撒之死。

《卫报》(The Guardian)上的 Simon Hoggart 为我们作了生动的描述：

…Mr Cable, the deputy leader, came next. It was he who had announced yesterday that there was a “debate” about Ming’s future.

This is the political equivalent of the knife between the shoulder blades. Or even the machete into the skull. There must have been a bubble of rage in Sir Menzies’s throat when he heard that. “Et tu, Vince,” however, lacks a certain resonance.

在星期二布莱尔最后一次记者招待会上，布莱尔被问道对他的继任者有没有什么建议？我们来看记者们是如何话外听音的：

Simon Hoggart on the Guardian:

Someone asked if he had any advice for his successor. “No”, he snapped. “He is perfectly capable of doing the job on his own.” The word “Not!” hovered unspoken in the air.

Andrew Gimson on the Daily Telegraph:

“Do you have any advice for your successor?” another correspondent ventured, to which Mr Blair replied with a brevity almost worthy of Clement Attlee: “No. He’s perfectly capable of doing the job on his own, thank you.”

Some of us took this to mean that Mr Blair will leave Gordon Brown to make a terrible mess of being Prime Minister and will then have a jolly good laugh at his expense.