All it will mean is that, after a brief interregnum during which media folk can enjoy shocking the more squeamish members of the bourgeoisie, the words will lose their usefulness as ejaculations to express extreme emotion. We shall then lack such terms altogether, until new ones have been invented, which may take a matter of decades.
● A propos Oxbridge’s supposed Brideshead image. The following, from a recording of a conversation between Poland’s foreign affairs minister and its former finance minister, seems more representative of the contemporary Oxford-educated elite, and of modern politicians in general (whether or not they were members of the Bullingdon Club).
Jacek Rostowski: [Cameron] thinks he’ll go renegotiate and come back, no Polish government could agree to it ...Familiarity is said to breed contempt. Perhaps informality breeds dumbing. Yo, Blair!
Radoslaw Sikorski: It’s either a very badly thought through move, or, not for the first time, a kind of incompetence in European affairs. He f***** up the fiscal pact. He f***** it up. Simple as that. He is not interested, he does not get it, he believes in the stupid propaganda, he stupidly tries to play the system ... his whole strategy of feeding [his critics] scraps in order to satisfy them is just as I predicted, turning against him; he should have said, f*** off, tried to convince people and isolate [the sceptics].
Rostowski: For the Polish government to agree, someone will have to give us some mountain of gold. The Brits won’t give it to us, and the Germans, in order to keep the Brits on board, won’t give it to us either. So the answer will be f*** off ...