A letter in the Guardian responding to Richard Gott’s absurd column.
Tony Blair is clearly not Neville Chamberlain. Neville Chamberlain appeased a fascist dictator. Tony Blair helped remove one. America is not comparable to Nazi Germany. Saddam’s Iraq was.
John Medhurst
Hove, E Sussex
Five short sentences was all it took.
As well as dealing with Gott’s nonsense those five sentences also reminded me to go and have a read of Orwell’s Politics and the English Language:
Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Never us a long word where a short one will do.
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
Never use the passive where you can use the active.
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
