H. Coleridge

"She is not fair to outward view"

SHE is not fair to outward view,
As many maidens be;
Her loveliness I never knew
Until she smiled on me.
Oh, then I saw her eye was bright,
A well of love, a spring of light.

But now her looks are coy and cold,
To mine they ne'er reply,
And yet I cease not to behold
The love-light in her eye:
Her very frowns are fairer far
Than smiles of other maidens are.

Traditional Mandarin & Politicians:

Lord Butler's traditional Mandarin vs Blairite dictum that the government "needed to say what we mean and mean what we say".

Traditional Mandarin's complex sentence structure is as follows:

Allows exponents to leave readers with a clear sense of what is being said, even though the literal analysis of the text would allow the author to deny ever having suggested such a thing.

A favoured technique is to place at the beginning of a sentence an avowed denial of everything that follows.

Classical example:

Traditional Mandarin(TM): Without any implied criticism of the present or past chairman,,,we see a strong case for the post of chairman being held by someone with experience of dealing with ministers in a very senior role and who is demonstrably beyond influence and thus probably in his last post.
Modern English(ME): The chairman was clearly too junior, too inexperienced in the ways of ministers and too eager to toady to his political masters to secure his next job.

TM: We do not suggest that there is - or should be - an ideal or unchangeable system of collective government, still less that procedures are in aggregate less effective now than in earlier times. However, we are concerned that the informality and circumscribed character of the government procedures . . . reduces the scope for informed collective political judgment
ME: The changes to the style of government instituted by Tony Blair helped cause this cock-up. Things were much better in my day

TM: It may be worth considering the appointment of a distinguished scientist to undertake a part-time role as adviser to the cabinet office
ME: For God's sake, let's get someone who knows what he's talking about

TM: he JIC, with commendable motives, took responsibility for the dossier
ME: In trying to help, the JIC really screwed up.

But it is when Lord Butler raises the prospect of Mr Scarlett's being forced out of his new job - while making clear that he is calling for no such thing - that one sees the true subtleties of the dialect in the hands of a master.

TM: We realise that our conclusions may provoke calls for Mr Scarlett to withdraw from his appointment as the next chief of SIS. We greatly hope he will not do so.

ME: There is more than enough in this report to prompt calls for his resignation but don't try pinning it on me. And besides, as a former head of the civil service, I'm reluctant to draw too direct a link between error and accountability