• irmoz@reddthat.com
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      5 months ago

      She said: “I was wondering if it would be possible to perhaps make a request that members of departments think about their communication to councillors a little bit better. "

      This is also peak Britishness. The amount of hedging in that sentence. It’s so indirect it almost misses.

      “Wondering”, “possible”, “perhaps”, “request”, “think about”, “little bit”.

      • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        From the other side of the pond, I find this tendency for understatement impressive. If anything, it gives one more headroom for expression. If understatement is “normal”, and direct statements are a kind of exaggeration, then overstatement must be a whole other tier we don’t even have in the US: we have to say that part louder, instead.

        Edit: I also read that sentence as: “I’m putting you on notice with ample room to save face, but ignoring my generosity is going to come off as very rude.”

  • KptnAutismus@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    as a german citizen, it’s almost impressive.

    the A7 thingymajig has been under construction since 2020, and there’s always at least one construction site every 5 km.

    my current drive to work has 3 construction sites, each limited to 30km/h and littered with speed cameras.

    you british do it even better. you actively destroy your main mode of transortation outside of dense cities.

    • WIZARD POPE💫@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Oh god you reminded me of Italy. As soon as you leave Slovenia and go towards Trieste and Venice on the Italian motorway you will see a fuckton of roadworks that have been going on for as far as I remember. Whoch is at least 10-15 years. That part of the road has never not been under construction

    • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      This sounds a lot like SH58 here in NZ, except there’s been roadworks for at least a decade, on an almost continuous basis.