Argument is one thing, government is another

摘要

Memories of the 1997 inquiry on the nuclear reprocessing plant at Windscale come flooding back with the Northern Ireland Executive's brush-off of the recent review on environmental governance The Victorians had a taste tor elegant epigrams. One ot the more memorable is from the historian Macaulay. He wrote: 'We must remember that argument is constructed in one way and government in entirely another.' I have no idea what led him to condense so much bitter experience into such a verbal jewel, but I do know how I learnt to appreciate its enduring truth.