When he was revising the costs awarded to lawyers in the Beef Tribunal, the Taxing Master of the High Court, James Flynn, unburdened himself of his thoughts on the fourth estate. The following extract, which landed on Quidnunc's desk via an impeccable legal source is the Master's response to newspaper reports of his written judgment in which he had described the work demanded of a solicitor as "lilliputian in comparison with the amount of preparatory work encountered by others . . ."
The extract says: "Secondly, `lilliputian' was to describe the differences that abided between the work in other matters that were performed before the Tribunal of Inquiry. In this regard the term was a relative adjective by way of simplification. Regrettably journalists do not understand nor do they cultivate pure English usage and by and large they do not grasp the offences against modern usage. They fail to analyze expressions and merely sensationalise words they feel are emotive in tone and deploy purgoritive [sic] meanings to phraseology or style so that they can achieve their object of peddling stories which ultimately betrays the ethics of a once professional class of people. Lawyers do not have that facility . . ."
So that's us in our place.