Is That Mic Off? E-Book

Phil Mason

• Herausgeber: The Robson Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

If you want to hear something stupid, just listen to the nearest politician. From the authors of Read My Lips and Mission Accomplished!, this completely new collection of politicians' gaffes, slips and brain freezes brings the verbal misstep into the present era of coalition government in Britain, the 2012 presidential election campaign in America and the global phenomenon of Wikileaks. Here is a treasure trove of the finest worst utterings from the men and women whose main skill is meant to be their power of communication. From Bush, Obama and Palin to Brown, Cameron, Clegg and co., the mad, the bad, the stupid and the shameless are all in attendance -watch them shoot from the lip and hit themselves in the foot. If, as they always say, politicians want to be judged by their words, let them be these.

Leseprobe

IS THAT MIC OFF?

MORE THINGS POLITICIANS WISH THEY HADN’T SAID

PHIL MASON AND MATTHEW PARRIS

To Paddy (now Lord) Ashdown, who uttered the prayer that should be the watchword of every politician:

‘Lord, make my words sweet and reasonable: someday I may have to eat them.’

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Introduction

1. ‘I wish I’d kept my mouth shut …’ Simple blunders

2. ‘Now, why don’t we …’ Mad ideas

3. ‘Could I have your attention …’ Public announcements

4. ‘Let me be perfectly clear …’ Slippery words

5. ‘Ooops!’ Off message

6. ‘Now, when I said …’ Second thoughts

7. ‘Calm down, dear …’ Sheer bloody nerve

8. ‘I hate to say so, but …’ The sharp riposte

9. ‘A sort of bigoted woman …’ Election and coalition special

10. ‘My fellow Americans …’ American election special

11. ‘Now, don’t tell anyone, but …’ WikiLeaks – the US cables

Index

Copyright

INTRODUCTION

So here we are yet again. It will come as no surprise to those avid collectors who already have our earlier offerings, Read My Lips and Mission Accomplished!, that despite (or perhaps because of) the requirements of modern 24-hour news and social media, there still remain many, many politicians who discover themselves to be ill at ease with what ought to be their most honed and perfected asset – the mouth.

Is That Mic Off? is a further collection of magnificent gaffes, faux pas and idiotic utterings that have slipped from the lips of our elected governors (or in the case of WikiLeaks, from supposedly tight-lipped diplomats).

While the content is completely fresh, the patterns remain the same as before. We have idiotic blunders where the problem is ignorance, confusion or just plain mangling of language, and a selection of spoken catastrophes that really should have been prevented, as they were supposedly pre-scripted public pronouncements. There is, too, a surprisingly rich array of stupid ideas. If we elect our politicians because we feel they might have a better take than the rest of us mortals on how to improve the commonweal, time to think again.

We move to the more familiar and unsavoury traits of politicians – the slippery words, the deceptions, the backtracking (which does not necessarily entail admitting error or a change of mind). Sometimes it is history that does the undoing – a politician’s convictions, strongly held at one point in time, morph quietly into something very different later on. But they rarely tell us. We have to chisel out the past for ourselves, a service Is That Mic Off? thirsts to undertake. Sometimes, it is technology that undoes a politician. Microphone gaffes are here aplenty, when the private thoughts of public figures are exposed, showing them in a different light to the persona they cultivate on the public stage.

And then there is the audacity, the effrontery, the sheer bloody nerve of some politicians. Possibly, on ‘mature recollection’ (as a senior Irish politician once classically put it), a number of them regretted their words in the cooler light of day and would not be proud to have them replayed to them. Many perhaps remain immune to the shamelessness of their remarks. That is sometimes the character of the beast.

Three distinct recent historical moments form the concluding sections. The British general election of 2010, fought at the end of thirteen years of an increasingly wayward and maligned New Labour government (remember the unbounded optimism of ‘Cool Britannia’ in 1997?), produced an unexpected outcome: the first formal peacetime coalition government since the 1930s and the rapid eating of many pre-campaign words, particularly by the chief beneficiary of events, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, who suffered some tortuous contortions.

The United States is, as we write, engaged in its regular four-yearly mad-fest of sound bites, ‘debates’ and cross-continent campaigning. Mercifully for us, unlike their British counterparts who get the whole thing over in three weeks, Americans take nearly two years, so this investment account already shows a healthy balance, months before voting day. From supposedly the most sophisticated political system on the planet, there continue to stream extraordinary blunders, including, this time around, what one seasoned commentator called the most excruciating collapse of any politician in any debate since they began in 1960. Find it in Chapter 10.

Finally, there was WikiLeaks. To be honest, the release of a quarter of a million US diplomatic cables revealed little more than the regular traffic between embassies around the world and the home capital, full of the quotidian inanities familiar to anyone working in this arena – but they were eye-opening for the general public, laying bare an astonishing new world. Among the slough, there were inevitably some sensitive nuggets which had been intended to remain strictly confidential. We have done our own draining of the bog and offer a selection of observations that were certainly never meant to be put into the public domain.

The fact that we could do so from the comfort of our office is just one illustration of how modern communications technology presents such a challenge for our slip-up stricken politicians. Less than a generation ago, such a mass release would have been inconceivable, as it would have required the capture of the physical documents; certainly, researching them would have been a highly restrictive exercise requiring tangible access. Today, anyone and everyone has access and can scrutinise the material themselves.

The evolution of the media is laying down a frighteningly wide range of traps for politicians, and they are still behind the curve in their response – again, mercifully for collectors like us and you, good reader. A political strategist for the Democratic Party reflecting on this during the 2008 presidential election campaign mused on how the odds were now stacking up against politicos. ‘In the olden days,’ said Jenny Backus, the problem of a candidate saying something they later regretted ‘wasn’t an issue because if you said something that could be problematic, you just denied that you said it. These days, it’s too easy to have cold, hard proof.’

She was talking about the ever-present horde of film crews feeding the beast of the always-demanding 24-hour news channels and, an even more recent phenomenon, the amateur ‘gotcha’ stalker, always hovering and armed with a camera phone, able to load an embarrassing clip onto a social media site for the world’s consumption within moments. ‘You’ve got to have a strategy to combat the YouTube video,’ she added. ‘Now, one mistake can be replayed often.’

Options for response, she went on, boil down to two. Politicians can choose to stand firmly behind their comments, admit no mistake and simply motor on. This stratagem is based on the belief that to confess to having messed up, to apologise or clarify, shows weakness and muddle-headedness instead of strength and confidence.

The alternative is to accept the error, repent or clarify, and try to move attention quickly somewhere else. On the positive side, it can look honest, and convey a sense of being ‘only human’ rather than that worst of modern politicking, the political automaton. Too often, though, attempts to repair things leave the struggling politician looking like damaged goods; guilty of not being clear-minded; someone liable to wavering when the pressure mounts: not a good commendation for high elected office. Sometimes, too, as you will see many times in what follows, the attempt to put things right only makes things worse.

As you proceed through the collection, we’ll leave you to judge which approach tends to come out better in the dance with the verbal devil.

This volume draws its material from the capacity of politics to throw out ever-changing challenges to those who make the decision to take on the responsibilities of public life. We regale the equally consistent inability of many of that self-selected group to rise to those challenges. The essence of the battle was perhaps never better captured than by a politician you’ll probably never have heard of, Liberal MP Frank Owen, who had a spectacularly short political career – just two years – at the height of the Depression. He magisterially summed up the vicissitudes of political life: ‘In 1929, the wise, far-seeing electors of my native Hereford sent me to Westminster and two years later in 1931 the lousy bastards kicked me out.’

We continue to revel in the legions of would-be successors to Frank Owen who keep casting themselves into the public glare, slip gloriously, and leave us with an indelible contribution to our sort of political history. Long may they keep on coming. We’ll be here waiting.

Phil Mason and Matthew Parris

2012

1

‘I WISH I’D KEPT MY MOUTH SHUT…’

Politics is all about making an impression. Sometimes, it has to be said, it would have been wiser for politicians to follow the old advice of ‘don’t say anything unless it improves the silence’. Here follow some simple blunders, of the mind and the mouth.

I’m so glad to find you here, Lord Killearn, because I was told that your predecessor Lampson was an awful shit.

An UNIDENTIFIED MINISTER arriving at the British Embassy in Cairo in 1943 and being greeted by Sir Miles Lampson, the Ambassador, who had just been elevated to the peerage … as Lord Killearn.

•

If anyone had said fifty years ago that the people of our world would … tear down the Berlin Wall … no one would have believed it.

GORDON BROWN, speech to the Church of Scotland Assembly, May 2008. In a way, he was right – fifty years earlier the construction of the Berlin Wall still lay three years in the future.

•

My trip to Asia begins here in Japan for an important reason… For a century and a half now, America and Japan have formed one of the great and enduring alliances of modern times. From that alliance has come an era of peace in the Pacific.

US President GEORGE W. BUSH, speech to the Japanese Parliament, February 2002, appearing to forget the small matter of Pearl Harbor and the Pacific War.

Free nations don’t develop weapons of mass destruction.

BUSH, speech at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, October 2003, appearing to forget that the US invented the nuclear bomb.

I have a record in office, as well. And all Americans have seen that record. September the 4th, 2001, I stood in the ruins of the Twin Towers. It’s a day I will never forget.

BUSH, memory lapse again, speech at Marlton, New Jersey, October 2004.

Mr Prime Minister, thank you for your introduction. Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit.

BUSH, confusing his organisations at the Australian-hosted Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, September 2007. Neither the US nor Australia are members of OPEC – the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries – the global oil cartel.

[He visited] the Austrian troops in Iraq.

BUSH, same speech, mixing up his host again, recalling how the Australian Prime Minister had visited his troops in Iraq as Bush had done en route to the summit. There had been no Austrian troops in Iraq.

And over the centuries, [the United States and France] stood united in moments of testing – from the Marne to Omaha Beach to the long vigil of the Civil War.

BUSH, getting into another historical tangle, this time on D-Day, in a speech at the 2008 commemoration ceremony. France was neutral in the American Civil War. Aides later said he ‘meant the Cold War’.

•

I think it’s important in life to speak as it is, and the fact is that we are a very effective partner of the US, but we are the junior partner. We were the junior partner in 1940 when we were fighting the Nazis.

UK Prime Minister DAVID CAMERON having his own Second World War moment, during a television interview in the United States, July 2010. Britain stood alone in 1940, and America only joined the war in December 1941. He later had to apologise to war veterans, saying he had meant ‘the 1940s’.

I think [Turkey will] be a good political influence because they can help us solve some of the world’s problems like the Middle East peace process, like the fact Iran has got a nuclear weapon.

CAMERON tripping up again, during a question-and-answer session in Hove, Sussex, August 2010. Iran (as of 2012) does not possess a nuclear weapon.

•

Teachers should allow them to miss classes… What is better – two days of geography or a day they’ll remember all their lives?

Government-harnessed anti-poverty campaigner SIR BOB GELDOF calling in a radio interview on Radio Forth in May 2005 for Scottish head teachers to allow children out of school to demonstrate at the G8 Summit being held in Gleneagles that July – which, Geldof appeared not to know, was during the school holidays.

•

I myself have become convinced that the August bank holiday weekend – what some have called ‘the great British weekend’ – has the virtue of being in the summer, and already being a bank holiday.

LIAM BYRNE, Immigration Minister, June 2008, also getting his dates mixed up when he proposed creating a ‘Britishness Day’ which would promote ‘shared standards’ providing a social glue at a time of high immigration. He was unaware that the commonality of standards did not even stretch to celebrating the August bank holiday on the same day: Scots pointed out that north of the border, it was marked at different times in the month than in England and Wales. The idea sank without trace.

•

Over the last fifteen months, we’ve travelled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in fifty-seven states, I think – one left to go.

BARACK OBAMA, showing that geography might not be his strong point, presidential election campaign, May 2008.

The Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries.

Nor history either… OBAMA, a week into his presidency, January 2010.

Senator Clinton, I think, is much better known, coming from a nearby state of Arkansas. So it’s not surprising that she would have an advantage in some of those states in the middle.

A further geographically challenged OBAMA, when he was pitted against Hillary Clinton during the same campaign, seeking to explain why his rival was proving more popular in Kentucky, seemingly unaware that his own home state of Illinois actually borders Kentucky, while Arkansas does not, May 2008.

On this Memorial Day, as our nation honours its unbroken line of fallen heroes – and I see many of them in the audience today – our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.

OBAMA, speech commemorating America’s war dead, New Mexico, May 2008.

•

I’m in House Chamber waiting for Netanyahoo to address Congress.

Senator CHUCK GRASSLEY from Iowa mixing up Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with an internet channel in a Twitter message, May 2011, illustrating the modern pitfalls of using social media to announce one’s importance (and ignorance).

•

When I meet with world leaders, what’s striking – whether it’s in Europe or here in Asia…

OBAMA, press conference during the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference summit that he was hosting in Hawaii, November 2011. Commentators found his slip-up hard to fathom, given that the Pacific US state was his birthplace.

•

We have a lot of work to do. It’s a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq–Pakistan border.

Senator JOHN MCCAIN, who based his campaign for US President on the extent of his foreign experience, offering a confused geography lesson, ABC News interview, July 2008. Iraq does not share a border with Pakistan.

•

[Venezuelan President] Hugo Chávez has tried to steal an inspiring phrase – ‘Patria o muerte, venceremos.’ It does not belong to him. It belongs to a free Cuba.

MITT ROMNEY, campaigning for the 2008 US presidency, trying to ingratiate himself with Florida Cuban exiles, March 2007. The tag, which translates as ‘Fatherland or death – we shall overcome’, was in fact the trademark sign-off at the end of speeches by Cuba’s communist leader, Fidel Castro.

•

[We will be marketing Ireland] as the innovation island – like Einstein explaining his theory of evolution.

MARY COUGHLIN, Deputy Prime Minister of Ireland, in a speech outlining a plan for an ‘aggressive’ approach to developing Ireland’s ‘smart economy’, venturing an un-smart understanding of basic science, September 2009.

•

[One of the main island issues is] the building of the harbour wall at Achmore.

Hapless Conservative candidate SHEENA NORQUAYcampaigning for the seat of Western Isles in the 2010 general election. Aberdeen-born, she had fallen for a popular local ruse for tripping up non-locals. Achmore, set high in the centre of Lewis, is renowned locally as the only community on the island not to have a coastline. She lost disastrously in the election, finishing bottom of the field of five with just 647 votes – 4.4 per cent of the ballot.

•

If [English] was good enough for the Sweet Baby Jesus, [it’s] good enough for the schoolchildren of Texas.

MIRIAM ‘MA’ FERGUSON, first female Governor of Texas (1925–7 and 1933–5), rejecting proposals for teaching Spanish in the state’s schools (attrib.).

•

Today, we have two Vietnams, side by side, North and South, exchanging and working. We may not agree with all that North Vietnam is doing, but they are living in peace. I would look for a better human rights record for North Vietnam, but they are living side by side.

SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Democratic member of the US House of Representatives for Houston, Texas, speaking in Congress in July 2010 and seeming not to know that Vietnam, a country the US fought and failed to keep divided, had been unified for thirty-five years.

•

I’m not aware of the problem… I’m not a politician.

CLAYTON WILLIAMS, oil billionaire running for the Governorship of Texas in November 1990, speaking to a journalist who had asked him for views on locally controversial and widely publicised proposals for changing the way the Governor appointed members to public boards and commissions, adding an unusual explanation for not knowing. He lost.

•

Iqualuit.

CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER’S OFFICE, misspelling the name of the capital of Nunavut, the autonomous indigenous Inuit territory of northern Canada, on its official press releases covering a visit of Prime Minister Stephen Harper in August 2009. It should have been Iqaluit, which means ‘many fishes’. Iqualuit is a local derogatory term for ‘people with un-wiped bums’.

•

Yes, I’ll make it quite clear, fiscal, F-I-S-K-A-L.

Australian Senator STEVE FIELDING having his ‘potatoe’ moment, explaining to reporters his views on the economy, September 2009. He had earlier been noted for often mangling his pronunciation of the term as ‘physical’. The exchange was captured on camera.

•

Why does the Air Force need expensive new bombers? Have the people we’ve been bombing over the years been complaining?

Alabama Governor and four times runner for President, GEORGE WALLACE, date unknown.

•

I am … saying that … because I’m in Germany… I’m in Alsace.

NICOLAS SARKOZY, French President, making a toxic gaffe when visiting the (French) Alsatian town of Truchtersheim, near the German border, in January 2011. He appeared to have forgotten that the province was now in France, having been fought over by France and Germany for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

As far as French nationalism is concerned, you can’t really make a more inflammatory mistake. As a region, Alsace sums up the hatred which existed between the two countries for years.

JEAN-LUC ROCHE, French historian, commenting on Sarkozy’s slip.

•

I support all of my Liberal colleagues… [asked to name the candidate] I’ve forgotten it.

Australian Prime Minister JOHN HOWARD tripping up while election campaigning in the seat of Franklin, Tasmania, July 2007.

•

It had to do with Cuba and missiles, I’m pretty sure.

DANA PERINO, White House Press Secretary, admitting she had never heard of the Cuban Missile Crisis, December 2007.

•

It is great to be back in the state of Tex—, state of Kansas.

President BARACK OBAMA, just recovering at the start of a major policy speech in the small town of Osawatomie, Kansas, December 2011.

One of the first things that I did was to express my appreciation for the institution building that’s been taking place in Russia … er, in Georgia…

OBAMA, less successful during a press conference after talks with Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgian President and arch foe of Russia, with whom Georgia fought a brief war in 2008, White House, January 2012.

•

Can [the Chief Secretary] tell the House why anyone should believe a word the government say on asset sales when they have announced every single one before? The Tate in 1999— [interruption]. No doubt it is coming. The Tote announcement was made in 1999 and was in the Labour Party’s 2001 election manifesto…

PHILIP HAMMOND, shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, mixing up two national assets, House of Commons, October 2009.

•

France will never forget the English, Scottish and Irish soldiers who fought on our soil as if it was their own.

French President NICOLAS SARKOZY addressing the Armistice commemoration at Verdun, 11 November 2008. He appeared to have forgotten the Welsh, despite the presence of the Prince of Wales as Britain’s official representative. It was not the French leader’s finest day. He and wife Carla were late for the main event of the ceremony, the two-minute silence at 11.00am, which had to be held when they arrived at 11.10.

•

Without doubt, Zadig et Voltaire. It is a lesson about life and I dip into it often.

FRÉDÉRIC LEFEBVRE, French junior Trade Minister, attempting to show off his intellectualism in typical Gallic fashion when responding to an interviewer’s question about his favourite literary work at the prestigious Paris Book Fair in March 2011. The name quoted was, however, a well-known French women’s clothing store.

•

The universal message is best summed up by Shakespeare’s great words: ‘They failed because they did not start with a dream.’

FRANÇOIS HOLLANDE, Socialist candidate in the French presidential election, campaigning in January 2012. When journalists could not find the quote in any of William Shakespeare’s works, it transpired that Hollande was mistakenly quoting from a 1989 novel by Nicholas Shakespeare, a British journalist and writer.

•

Alferd Packer exemplifies the spirit of fare of this Agriculture Department cafeteria.

US Agriculture Secretary ROBERT BERGLAND, speaking at the dedication ceremony for his Department’s dining facility, 1977. His department was in dispute with the federal government-appointed contractor over the quality of the food. Staff had decided to re-name the canteen after a nineteenth-century explorer and pioneer of Colorado. The unhistorical federal authorities later discovered that Packer’s fame to aficionados of history (and food quality) lay in the fact that he had killed and eaten five of his fellow travellers, and was convicted in 1874 of cannibalism.

•

I think it’s about thirty quid now, isn’t it?

Liberal Democrat party leader NICK CLEGG, responding on a local radio phone-in to an agitated pensioner who asked whether he knew the size of the weekly state pension, September 2008. The rate for a single pensioner at the time was £90.70.

If a government can ask people of that age [sixteen] to go and fight for our country and lay their life on the line for us, it seems to me that the minimum we should morally do is give them the right to elect the people who ask them to do that in the first place. It’s a basic principle of democracy.

CLEGG, displaying his ignorance on military matters during a general election question-and-answer session, Birmingham, April 2010. While teenagers can join the military from sixteen, they are not sent on active service until they are eighteen.

Sorry, it’s not a matter for me.

CLEGG, now Deputy Prime Minister, replying sheepishly after being caught unawares during a visit to a community centre in Shepherd’s Bush, London, August 2010. The photo opportunity to mark the coalition government’s first hundred days in office turned into a PR disaster on arrival when the DPM’s officials realised that the centre was earmarked to be axed under the government’s emergency budget cuts programme,

•

Pick up a primer – ‘economics for beginners’.

ALAN JOHNSON, asked what his first move would be on his surprise appointment as shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer by the new Labour leader, Ed Miliband, October 2010. Johnson’s brief tenure – he resigned three months later due to personal problems in his marriage – was one catastrophe after another.

Miliband ought to have had his suspicions…

Imagine knocking on the doors on the Gipsyville estate saying ‘Yeah, your child trust fund’s gone and your child benefit’s frozen and your jobs have gone and you’re paying more for your food because of the hike in VAT.’

JOHNSON, a month before his appointment, betraying basic ignorance about Value Added Tax, which is not charged on most food items.

I’d be delighted if David served in the shadow Cabinet, and I have no better person to keep the seat warm for.

JOHNSON confessing he would be willing to give way to former Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who had retired from frontline politics after being beaten by his younger brother for the party leadership, December 2010.

We set out £57bn of savings in something called the Budget which is itemised in the Red Book… And you’ll know it very well, you’ve probably read more of it than I have.

JOHNSON, on BBC’s Today programme, January 2011.

The accusation of economic novice is that when you take over a new job, you have to ensure that you bone up on these things.

JOHNSON, suggesting he was getting to grips with the brief, interview with Sky News, January 2011.

Rising by 1 per cent from 20 per cent to 21.

JOHNSON, a minute later, asked what the rate of national insurance paid by employers was. The interviewer had to tell him it was actually 12.8 per cent.

•

I value the trade union link… I think that link will be maintained, I think it will go through difficult times, easier times, I think that’s been the cycle for – whatever it is – a hundred years – but I think that link will be maintained and I want it to be maintained.

ED MILIBAND himself fluffing the basics, unable to recall when trade unions helped to form the Labour Party, January 2012. It was in fact in 1900 – 112 years previous.

•

Henry VII.

DAVID LAMMY, Minister for Higher Education, in answer to the question ‘Which monarch succeeded Henry VIII?’, BBC Celebrity Mastermind, January 2009.

•

Who painted it?

HILLARY CLINTON, two months into her role as US Secretary of State, while visiting the sacred Basilica of Our Lady in Guadalupe, Mexico, March 2009. The site is the second most visited Catholic shrine in the world, famed for housing Latin America’s equivalent of the Turin Shroud, a mysterious cloak bearing an image of the Virgin Mary. The image is said to have appeared miraculously, and the phenomenon is unexplained to this day. In response to Clinton’s awkward question, her host equally miraculously came up with an instant, tactful, reply: ‘God!’

I have never understood multiparty democracy. It is hard enough with two parties to come to any resolution, and I say this very respectfully, because I feel the same way about our own democracy, which has been around a lot longer than European democracy.

CLINTON, in the same month, astonishing her hosts at the European Parliament, seemingly forgetting that Greece was the birthplace of democracy, while the world’s oldest operating Parliament, Iceland’s, was founded in AD930 – making it already seventy-odd years old when the Vikings first arrived in America.

•

‘Acheiving’ … ‘Recieving’ … ‘Maintainence’ …

JIM KNIGHT, minister in charge of school standards, which include basic literacy, revealing some elementary spelling errors on his blog, February 2009. He also got currently (‘curently’), similar (similiar’), recess (‘reccess’) and archaeological (‘archealogical’) wrong.

•

Think about what we are buying with the funding over the five years from 2005 to 2014…

RUTH KELLY, Transport Secretary (and former Treasury Minister), giving evidence to the transport select committee, June 2008.

•

We’ve tripled the amount of money – I believe it’s from $50m up to $195m available.

GEORGE W. BUSH, speaking on the scale of planned American aid to Peru during a visit to the country, Lima, March 2002.

•

We’re doing everything we can to help bring about a private sector recovery. That’s what the enterprise zone in Plymouth is about.

DAVID CAMERON lauding a business growth scheme on a visit to Plymouth, February 2012. The government had, in fact, rejected the city’s proposal for an enterprise zone six months earlier.

•

No Exceptions. No Excuses. No Escape.

Tag line for the television campaign launched by the DRIVING AND VEHICLE LICENSING AGENCY in 2003 as part of the Department for Transport’s crackdown on car tax evasion. The advert used the eccentric car used in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to promote its powerful message. Motoring buffs quickly pointed out that the car had been built in 1967; being more than thirty years old it was exempt from car tax under the DVLA’s own rules.

•

What we’re doing at the moment is refuelling mid-air and getting some new policies on board, err, and we’re also changing the pilot and co-pilot mid-flight, err – maybe this wasn’t such a good analogy after all.

ALAN JOHNSON, Education Secretary, launching his bid for the leadership of the Labour Party following Gordon Brown’s succession to Tony Blair as Prime Minister, May 2007. He lost.

•

Rich Whitey.

Unfortunate typographical programming error in electronic voting machines used for early voting for governor in the multiethnic state of Illinois, October 2010, identifying the Green Party candidate Rich Whitney.

•

We begin today by welcoming a strong friend of the United States… This is your speech!

BRIAN COWEN, Irish Prime Minister, to President Obama at a White House St Patrick’s Day reception, March 2009. He was reading from the autocue, which had been loaded in the wrong order, so that President Obama’s speech came up before his own.

We’ve done a hard day’s work, now it’s time to have the craic, as we’d say at home.

COWEN, compounding the error. Hastily realising that craic – Gaelic for ‘fun’ and pronounced ‘crack’ – had a different connotation Stateside, he added, ‘I hope everyone understands that’s an Irish thing.’

•

Speaker, I thank the premier for his question… Speaker, I thank the leader of the opposition for his question.

JOHN BRUMBY, Victoria State Premier in Australia, making a Freudian slip at the start of his response during the last state parliament Question Time session before elections, October 2010. It was indeed an omen – he lost the election the following month.

•

Thatcher has died.

Text message sent by Canadian Transport Minister JOHN BAIRD to a friend at a black-tie dinner with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, November 2009. It led to a frantic middle of the night telephone call from the Canadian premier to a bemused 10 Downing Street to offer the nation’s condolences before Harper was informed that it was Baird’s pet cat, Thatcher, that had passed away.

•

Sad to hear that Bob Holness has died. A generation will remember him fondly from Blackbusters.

Labour leader ED MILIBAND attempting to chime with the modern world by maintaining a Twitter feed, getting mixed up on the name of Holness’s show, Blockbusters, January 2012. The error attracted even more attention than it would have done because he was in the midst of a racism row in his party, after a member of his shadow Cabinet had had to apologise for appearing to portray a racist view of white Britons only days before, also on Twitter.

•

When I see some of them looking for returns of 20 or 25 per cent, at a time when fellatio is close to zero … that means we are destroying businesses.

RACHIDA DATI, glamorous French former Justice Minister, confusing oral sex with inflation during a television interview, September 2010. She used ‘fellation’ when she meant to say the French for ‘inflation’, which is the same as in English.

•

Riga City: Easy To Go. Hard to Live!

Translated campaign slogan of the LATVIAN TOURIST BOARD promoting its capital city to English-speaking markets, November 2009. The £500,000 advertising blitz was scrapped when the wrong translation of ‘hard to leave’ made its way into the final production copy.

•

I have read a number of books, starting with novels, that I particularly liked. I’d have a hard time recalling the titles of the books.

Mexican presidential hopeful ENRIQUE PEÑA NIETO, campaigning at a book fair, December 2011, struggling to answer a questioner who had asked which three books had had particular influence on him. After four more agonising minutes of silence and rambling, he volunteered the Bible.

•

‘Allon enfants de la patrie, le jour de gloire est arrivé.’

Belgian Prime Minister, YVES LETERME, responding to a journalist in July 2007 who asked him if he could sing the opening lines of the country’s national anthem after a poll had revealed that three out of four Belgians did not know them. Leterme was one of them – he sang the opening of the French national anthem.

The proclamation of the constitution.

LETERME, same interview, revealing he did not know why his country’s national day, which they were celebrating, fell on 21 July. It is the anniversary of the day King Leopold became the first King of the Belgians in 1831.

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So far as I’m concerned, [the Conservatives] are lower than scum.

ANDREW SCOTT, local Labour Party official in Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, seemingly unaware that scum rises to the surface, September 1999.

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What’s the G20?

GEORGE W. BUSH, apparently unaware of the group of leading developed and developing countries, October 2008. The lapse allegedly occurred in a telephone call with Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd who had told Bush that plans being developed by the smaller G7 group of western countries needed to involve a wider range of economies, namely his own and others in Asia which gathered as the Group of 20, or G20. Rudd denied that he had leaked the account of the conversation, which appeared in The Australian newspaper.

Prime Minister Anzar.

BUSH mispronouncing the name of his host, José María Aznar, while giving a television interview in Spanish during his visit to Spain, June 2001. ‘Ansar’ in Spanish means ‘goose’.

Amigo! Amigo! How you doing, Silvio? Good to see you!

BUSH, greeting Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi at the 2008 G8 summit … in Spanish.

We spent a lot of time talking about Africa, as we should. Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease.

BUSH, after an international summit, Gothenburg, Sweden, June 2001.

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It was also interesting to see that political interaction in Europe is not that different from the United States Senate. There’s a lot of – I don’t know what the term is in Austrian – wheeling and dealing.

BARACK OBAMA, apparently unaware that Austrians speak German, Strasbourg, April 2009.

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I think the future of nuclear energy is a glowing future.

JAMES B. EDWARDS, US Energy Secretary, 1981–82.

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The government’s welfare and social security safety net is full of holes.

MICHAEL MEACHER, shadow Social Security Secretary, January 1992.

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Pensioners were not born yesterday.

STEVEN WEBB, while Liberal Democrat spokesman for health, 2005. His insights were clearly appreciated. In 2010 he was appointed Minister of State for Pensions in the coalition government.

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The overwhelming bulk of fast food purchases take place at fast food outlets.

Queensland state Health Minister GEOFF WILSON, introducing new food labelling regulations, trying to explain why the new rules targeted popular fast food chains instead of corner shops, December 2011.

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We have the means to take collective action and take collective action together.

Former Prime Minister GORDON BROWN, speaking to a conference on global development, Oxford, July 2009.

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I’m not indecisive. Am I indecisive?

JIM SCHEIBEL, Mayor of St Paul, Minnesota, 1990–94.

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My question’s for the Prime Minister. Did the Prime Minister say to the Australian Parliament and people, and I quote, I can guarantee, or words to that effect…

Australian opposition leader KEVIN RUDD, Australian Parliament, May 2007.

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It is very important that we keep that economic policy in place at a time when we see the winds of international instability lapping at countries around the world.

PETER COSTELLO, Australian Treasury Minister, September 2007.

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Today is a big day in America. Only 36,000 people lost their jobs today.

HARRY REID, Senate Democratic leader, attempting to convey good news on the economy to the Senate, February 2010. The figure represented a slowdown of job losses, which had been 651,000 in the same month a year before.

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The bear does not change his spots.

LORD BURNHAM, Conservative defence spokesman, on Russia, in April 1999.

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