Please listen......
I may have mentioned it before but the best lesson I ever learnt was from my university tutor who told me “stop listening to what people say, listen to what they don’t say.”
So when a politician is accused of taking an illegal payment and says “I have not taken any illegal payments” It might just be so they can later claim they didn’t think the payment was illegal.
Or if you are accused of robbing a bank and say you have never robbed a Post Office, alarm bells should ring.
It is an attempt to muddy the water, to pretend that you are denying the specific charges, to pull the wool over gullible journalists eyes. And it normally works.
Politicians do this all the time, political hacks fall for it again and again. Businesses do it too and business hacks fall for it too.
But next time just listen to what is not said.
Anything that is not an unambiguous statement of denial of the specific accusation or claim is not a denial.
This is why President Clinton’s “I did not have sexual relations with that women” was such a mistake. He replied to the direct accusation directly and therefore was caught in a lie.
Politicians and everyone else have learnt that lesson well. Journalists still haven’t.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media