How Whitehall Foiled the Russians

[ORAC]

The Times: Whitehall jargon foiled Soviet plan (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,172-2345079,00.html)

Sir Humphrey would have been so, so, proud..... :D :D

Sir Humphrey: Well Minister, if you ask me for a straight answer, then I shall say that, as far as we can see, looking at it by and large, taking one thing with another in terms of the average of departments, then in the final analysis it is probably true to say, that at the end of the day, in general terms, you would probably find that, not to put too fine a point on it, there probably wasn't very much in it one way or the other as far as one can see, at this stage.

[talktohtehand]

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

[GOLF_BRAVO_ZULU]

Clearly the Times people couldn’t spot jargon if they saw it: or more precisely, can spot jargon that they can’t see.

[GreenKnight121]

One must differentiate between jargon and obfuscation.

[Tim McLelland]

But then a Soviet diplomat with a decent grasp of English would be able to spot that it doesn't actually fudge any agreement at all - and that the grammar stinks! :p

Or maybe the Work Experience girl who wrote-up the story for The Times was incapable of transcribing a paragraph without dozing-off?

[cribble]

:) The relevant paragraph was graded 1.39 on the "wankometer" (url The Wonderful Wankometer (http://www.cynicalbastards.com/wankometer/)), classified "considerable"