{"id":3160,"date":"2018-01-18T15:56:08","date_gmt":"2018-01-18T15:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.spiffingwebsites.com\/douglas-watkinson\/?p=3160"},"modified":"2022-08-16T15:59:00","modified_gmt":"2022-08-16T15:59:00","slug":"two-little-words-sit-by-my-doorstep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/post\/two-little-words-sit-by-my-doorstep\/","title":{"rendered":"Two little words, sit by my doorstep…"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve grown to loath and avoid two small words in the last few months, largely because of their hidden purpose. They\u2019ve never offended me before, in fact both are remarkable by their insignificance, but now they can be heard daily, hourly, on television and radio interviews and have a far greater meaning than they deserve.<\/p>\n

This morning, for example, on the Today programme (BBC Radio 4) the CEO of John Lewis used one of them FOUR times in the space of a 3 minute interview.<\/p>\n

\u2018Look\u2019 he said, as an opener to every fudged answer he gave. It\u2019s shorthand for \u2018Look, you stupid idiot, can\u2019t you see that what I\u2019m about to say brooks no argument? It\u2019s the definitive statement on the matter, so get back in your interviewer\u2019s box.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"Look<\/p>\n

I\u2019m afraid it\u2019s almost the same with \u2018so\u2019. The other day I read a tweet which commended a professor of some ology or other for lasting five minutes before uttering this currently abused word. It\u2019s more polite than it\u2019s cousin \u2018look\u2019 but has become a euphemism for declaring that what follows is the cut and dried, unarguable, conclusive explanation of the subject in hand. Its hidden purpose is to prevent the interviewer, the questioner, from delving any further.<\/p>\n

So look, next time you hear either of those words I suggest you\u2019ve been listening to someone who thinks you\u2019re stupid and can\u2019t draw conclusions of your own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve grown to loath and avoid two small words in the last few months, largely because of their hidden purpose. They\u2019ve never offended me before, in fact both are remarkable by their insignificance, but now they can be heard daily, hourly, on television and radio interviews and have a far greater meaning than they deserve.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":3162,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3160\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiffingwebsites.com\/douglaswatkinson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}