If there’s one phrase guaranteed to make me choke on my sole meunière, this is it… If I hear the phrase “a fish rots from the head down” in relation to the sleaze allegations assailing the Conservative party once more, I think I’ll scream. As will my wife. There we were, listening to _Any Questions_ when the Labour MP Barry Gardiner spouted this ubiquitous nonsense. “No they don’t – they start rotting from the bloody intestines, you stupid man,” she rebuked the radio. And the science is on her side. Where the phrase derives from is open to conjecture; the Greeks, the Chinese and the Turks are all cited as possible sources. But just type the phrase into Google and prepare to be overwhelmed by examples. I was rather taken, though, with another Labour MP who asserted boldly that the fish rots from the head up, which is an altogether more surreal and beguiling concept. (I was equally taken by a protester at the Cop26 summit in Glasgow who complained bitterly that the delegates had “kicked the most important issues into the short grass”. Again an interesting concept.) Continue reading...
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