The health secretary this week clumsily invoked Oliver Twist to scold doctors wanting more funds. So we wondered what other great words politicians could mangle?
Health secretary Jeremy Hunt this week quoted Oliver Twist as he argued down pleas for more money for the health service, dismissing a report by the lobby group NHS Providers as amounting to saying: “There isn’t enough money, please sir, can I have some more?”
It was presumably lost on Hunt that the bearer of the begging bowl is the hero of the piece – a small orphan living in that Victorian forerunner of the welfare state, the workhouse. Bearing in mind the political power of selective quotation, we have ransacked the annals of literature to find some more useful quotes, ready for misuse.