The words in which Sir Richard Dannatt, the Chief of the General Staff, expressed his historic opinion about withdrawing British forces from Iraq were of some interest. ‘We should get ourselves out some time soon because our presence exacerbates the security problem.’ Or was it, as many papers reported ‘sometime soon’? Aurally there is no distinction between some time and sometime, and while it is the accepted convention to spell it as one word in the slightly pompous usage of ‘sometime mayor of Eastbourne’, I have been a little annoyed lately by the running together otherwise of some and time.
Disagree with half of it, enjoy reading all of it
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