The US government has issued several corrections of its original story about Osama bin Laden’s final moments. Crucial differences include that a woman was not used as a human shield, and that bin Laden himself was unarmed. The BBC’s Mark Mardell, regretting the gap between the two accounts, says “there is no mileage in misleading… Read more »
I have written before about giving numbers bite, getting big figures across without producing glazed expressions. The FT had two brilliant examples yesterday on the ‘shutdown’ of the US federal government. $7 billion, the amount in dispute, was alternatively: 1) dollar bills laid out, stretching as far as the moon, three times over. 2) the… Read more »
We bought Rosie a shape sorter. It’s a wooden box with holes cut out – a square, a star, a circle, a pyramid and so on – and pieces for her to push through the holes. It is cleverly designed such that each piece will fit through only one hole. Rosie normally tries it for… Read more »
What’s this? Credit for your phone? Moisturiser to combat wrinkles? No, a little more on the subject of government ‘cuts’ and what we can learn from the political battle for language. ‘Top-up’ and ‘temporary uplift’ both refer to the Winter Fuel Allowance – specifically, the extra money given to pensioners over 80, to help with… Read more »