What’s in a word?
A lot, as it happens, and today there’s a curious one being thrown around by the hacks and it’s the word “urged.”
As in, a court judge has “urged” Dave King to comply with the Takeover Panel order that he make the outstanding offer for the shares which he has conspicuously ignored for so long.
Urged is such a benign word, isn’t it? If you and your mates are going down the pub and one of them is stuck in the bathroom, you urge him to hurry up. If you are cheering on someone in a race, you urge that person on. It’s a word that suggests a certain desperation, a word that suggests pleading almost. But the judge today was not pleading, and he wasn’t urging either.
He was ordering. He was putting King on final notice. This wasn’t a supplicant, begging for mercy here. This was someone in power, with a hold over someone else that is like iron, telling them in no uncertain terms what the facts of life are.
So where did that magic word come from? From what I have read online, it didn’t appear in any of the transcripts of the case. The judge did not say “I urge Mr King to comply.” So how come that word appears on STV? On The Herald? In The Scotsman?
Did it come off a Dave King press release?
Do these people have even a modicum of spine?
What was actually said today in that court room? Bannatyne’s statements are all over the same reports that use that neutral word.
“The only question is compliance, not how or where he gets the money from,” Lord Bannatyne said. “Which trust provides the money or how that money is brought to the UK is of complete disinterest to both the court and the panel.”
There’s no “urging” in there.
That’s a demand, as cold and hard as you’ll ever see.
The court wasn’t interested in excuses or further stalling tactics.
They are instructing him to comply and making it clear that there will be consequences if he does not.