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Unread 10-28-2010, 02:35 AM
John Whitworth's Avatar
John Whitworth John Whitworth is offline
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Default Speccie: Major to Minor

Bazza won the fiver. Deservedly. The new competition looks difficult to versify. Hum!


No. 2673: MAJOR TO MINOR
You are invited to submit a pompous leader on a trivial subject (150 words maximum). Please email entries, if possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 10 November.
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Unread 10-28-2010, 08:48 AM
Roger Slater Roger Slater is offline
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I'm not sure I understand "leader" here. Does it mean "lede" or "lead," as in the opening lines of a magazine article?
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Unread 10-28-2010, 08:58 AM
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basil ransome-davies basil ransome-davies is offline
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Default take me to your leader

Hi Roger,

It means an editorial in a 'serious' newspaper, as in 'The Times' first leader', i.e. pontificating, as a rule.
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Unread 10-28-2010, 09:47 AM
Roger Slater Roger Slater is offline
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Thanks. And congratulations on your latest win.

I guess I should read a couple of 'leaders' in the Times, but I dashed off this one first just to get started:

The proliferation of novel pasta embodiments and proportions may well discountenance even the connoisseur of cutlery when prevailed upon to select the most felicitous implement to effect the pasta's journey from plate to buccal cavity. Pasta configurations too large for a spoon, yet too small for the tines of a fork to penetrate without the risk of bespattering one's table companion, present the conscientious diner with challenges undreamt of by the pastaphage of simpler and more innocent times. Although we are forward-looking and utopian in our aspirations for a world made better by a principled refusal to embrace stasis, we find in our rich heritage a limited set of verities from which no future generation should be called upon to deviate, chief among them being the fork, the spoon, and the knife, and we reject any and all neoteric comestibles that cannot be conveniently dispatched by recourse to this tested trinity.

Last edited by Roger Slater; 10-28-2010 at 05:03 PM.
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Unread 11-01-2010, 03:38 AM
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basil ransome-davies basil ransome-davies is offline
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Critically adapting the principle of multum in parvo, we may say that the indices of a national culture's health appear as expressively in the mundane, symptomatic detail as in its official image or its major overt preoccupations. Juvenal identified the public's taste for 'bread and circuses' as a sign of Rome's decline, and we might argue the same of Britain's current addiction to cheap, exploitative entertainment. Yet with our eyes on that spectacular phenomenon, we may overlook other disturbing evidence. How many men, for example, now wear the traditional 'knife-edge' crease in their trousers, that visible emblem of personal discipline and ordered regularity? All-conquering denim (which, one gathers, it is de rigueur not to iron) has laid siege to the trouser-crease, demolished its citadel and isolated its surviving adherents. We do not speak of the 'stay-pressed' trouser, that upstart preference of the idle and indiscriminate.
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