The Spectator

How profitable are Britain’s biggest oil companies?

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issue 28 May 2022

A slip of the tongue

George W. Bush condemned a political system where one man could wage a ‘brutal and unjustified invasion of Iraq’ before correcting himself and saying ‘Ukraine’. Some other Freudian slips by US politicians:

– In the 2012 US election Senator John McCain, who had been the Republican candidate four years earlier, made a speech in which he attempted to look forward to a Mitt Romney presidency, but somehow managed instead to say: ‘I am confident that with the leadership and the backing of the American people, President Obama will turn this country around.’

– At another event in the same election, Romney himself introduced his running mate, Paul Ryan, as ‘the next President of the United States’.

– As for Barack Obama, he made a speech on penal reform arguing that America must make sure it was not ‘incarcerating non-violent offenders in ways that renders them incapable of getting a job after they leave office’.

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