Richard Morrison, chief music critic and columnist, always writes wittily and thought-provokingly in The Thunderer:
'I am pedantic to the point of nerdishness about written English, but cavalier verging on insouciant about how people talk the lingo. Similarly, some people (let's call them men) can be mind-numbingly pedantic about, say, sports statistics, yet catastrophically cavalier about doing small but necessary procedures around the home, such as closing the shower door before turning on the water, or inserting one's front-door keys in a pocket before leaving the house.'
Now that rings a bell...
'In Britain the power struggle between pedants and cavaliers is eternal. It is basically what the English Civil War was all about. But in recent years the cavalier tendency has been very much in the ascendant. In public or private, most of us bend the rules as much as we can get away with — and then feel aggrieved if some nitpicker chastises or punishes us for so doing. Of course, individuality is important and the slimy tentacles of the Nanny State must constantly be checked. “The better the state is organised,” wrote Nietzsche in one of his wiser aphorisms, “the duller will be mankind.” But I sense that the pendulum is swinging the other way. Faced with the spectacle of obscene greed at the top of the country, most of us would welcome a period of puritanical pedantry and ruthless scrutiny.'
View partial source: Times Online & BBC
* The Daily Universal Register's last word:
"The height of cleverness is to be able to conceal it."
Francois de La Rochefoucauld. More from the wise FdLR here.
