Cliche Corner

We Brits are very fond of our cliches. I was very stuck (and totally in agreement with) George Monbiot's examination of the recent very popular exhibit 'Learning to live with it' (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/07/learning-live-covid-climate-breakdown-failing-government-flooding). According to Monbiot, 'Learning to live with it', actually means 'doing nothing about it and hoping for the best'. He illustrates this with reference to the UK government's response to the Covid19 pandemic where it means 'if you die, you die'. Monbiot says the UK government response to climate breakdown is broadly similar. Sensible precautions to reduce the possibility of flooding (e.g. slowing the speed of river water movement and not building housing on flood plains) are largely ignored. This made me think about other cliches, popular in UK circles and their actual meaning. There is 'We have been learning the lessons' , which generally means 'We will do the absolute minimum and hope you will forget about this issue as quickly as possible'. What about, 'We are following the Science'? This often means 'We will use the advice that we like best and ignore anything that doesn't fit our world view'. The ever popular 'Commonsense tells us', meaning 'Our biases are, hopefully, the same as yours'. 'Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel' aka 'We hope that things will be better, in the distant future'. 'With all due respect', translated as 'You, Sir, are someone whose opinions are not worth listening to'. I can't help but think we will not be using the cliche 'And they all lived happily ever after' anytime soon.