Malibuflyer – yes, I did wonder if this is exactly what she said?
Mind you, it also demonstrates the point, that the careful choice of words can so easily create an inaccurate impression. Many people (wrongly) would doubtless say both phrasaes mean or convey the same message, simply by associating “EU” with “exporting”. She could also have said “pharamaceutical companies with bases in the EU have exported x doses” which would have conveyed a more accurate message. Of course I understand politicians are tuned to playing to the gallery.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
Mind you, it also demonstrates the point, that the careful choice of words can so easily create an inaccurate impression. Many people (wrongly) would doubtless say both phrasaes mean or convey the same message, simply by associating “EU” with “exporting”.
Even if a linguistic analysis would show that the phrases are different, in practise there is absolutely no difference because everyone knows (or should know) that the EU as an organisation doesn’t produce or trade in vaccines.
So it seems to me that people are not interested in what message UvdL or anyone else actully wanted to convey, but are actively looking for reasons to criticise.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
Many people (wrongly) would doubtless say both phrasaes mean or convey the same message,
Even more: In many ways they do convey the same message! Therefore it is also important when looking at individual quotes in which context they were said and what message the original author wanted to convey.
“England won the World Cup” is in most situations a (linguistically ;-) ) perfectly fine statement and would be correctly understood by most. Applying the same amount of scrutiny that Graham used on the vdL words, however, it is obviously complete bullshit! England won nothing as technically the FA would have received the cup and it would not have been “England” who won the final but the team of 11+ people.
Malibuflyer wrote:
Do you have a source for that?
No, I don’t have a source. It’s reported as what she said in multiple media outlets, but not as a verbatim quote.
If it’s not what she said and is inaccurate, then I apologise.
Malibuflyer wrote:
“England won the World Cup” is in most situations a (linguistically ;-) ) perfectly fine statement and would be correctly understood by most. Applying the same amount of scrutiny that Graham used on the vdL words, however, it is obviously complete bullshit! England won nothing as technically the FA would have received the cup and it would not have been “England” who won the final but the team of 11+ people.
I see what you’re saying linguistically but the example doesn’t hold.
In the phrase “England won the World Cup” the word England is (assuming you refer to 1966) generally shorthand for “the England representative men’s football team as selected by the Football Association”.
Contrastingly “the EU exported…” is not shorthand for “foreign companies with a factory in the EU exported…”
In any case, it isn’t specifically what UvdL may or may not have said on that particular occasion. There has been plenty of noise from many sources, for several weeks, about “the EU exporting” when clearly it does no such thing.
But I do take your point about the accuracy of the actual words, see my apology above if it is not what she said. Just like Boris’s bus never actually said the NHS would get an extra £350m a week, but everyone who doesn’t like him pretends it did ;-)
Hmm, the bus may have been ambiguous, but the billboards explicitly did say that!
Graham wrote:
Contrastingly “the EU exported…” is not shorthand for “foreign companies with a factory in the EU exported…”
In the right context it could be. “The EU exported 100,000 fewer cars than last year”. We bring to the table our background knowledge of whether the EU is a command economy that decides how many cars to manufacture and where to export them to.
Whatever was said in this context, I think it’s generally unrealistic to expect politicians to talk with the precision you would find in a PhD thesis or legal document. I doubt it was ever realistic, and now we live in the age of Twitter.
My recollection of the statement(s) was: the EU has exported 30M doses while the UK has exported nothing. The obvious “drift” there is obviously disingenuous and intended to make the UK look like a tight mean bastard, when in reality AZ is contractually committed to ship the fist 100M or whatever to the UK because the UK ordered it first. Everything else in this saga is to cover up the initial procurement screwup by Brussels, which all of the EU is tragically paying a heavy price for. But this is “standard UVDL” – one learns to expect that nowadays from that very small group of officials. The rest of the EU political class has been much more restrained – as observed e.g. here.
The French foreign minister has weighed in. He seems to be under the impression he has the UK over a barrel.
This is getting really nasty.
Re ‘the first 100M’ I think it is even simpler than that.
The UK contracted with a UK subsidiary of AZ using UK facilities, the EU contracted with a Belgian subsidiary of AZ using mostly EU facilities, although the EU would also allow that sub to use UK facilities.
I don’t think any serious EU politician would want to be President of the EU Commission, which is why people like UVDL end up there.
