This pedantry stuff is WAY above my paygrade. 
Was that back in theGrauniad days? 
You will probably prefer this lot (I do)
Interesting, in speech the egs sound coldly formalā¦
There are no people I recognise here.
She says she has no friends.
In both cases Iād instinctively say ā ā¦nāt anyā
But OTOH both egs are slightly sombreā¦
Strangely, I donāt look at it like that, although a frequent critic of that country I think it was one, in fact two, of the times it got it right. As a matter of principle, countries and people should not jump into fights which do not immediately threaten them.
I have criticised the rush to arms by Britain in both world wars, I know it had treaties, but they should not have been made in the first place and I thought it was wrong to attack before being attacked. Vital space was lost when better preparations could have been made which might, in the event, never had been needed. The same could even be said about the wars following the French Revolution. France was, or at least felt, itself threatened by the gathering of menacing monarchies. Who knows if that gathering of nations, who should have had no interest in the events in France, had not thrown themselves into halting the march of history, a Napoleon might never have risen to devastate Europe and much of the world as he did.
Which entirely sums up my feelings about Ukraine, every effort and expense should be made by the so-called democracies to help Ukraine fend off its invader, short of wading in again with widespread and destructive war. So I hope, whatever happens to Ukraine, it will never be said āwe turned up lateā.
Sorry but this is 20/20 hindsight, and also IMHO not really correct.
The whole point of the mutual defence treaties between Britain, France and Poland was to deter Hitler from aggression - and precisely to buy time for Britain and France to rearm - which to some extent they did. The RAF was in much better shape in 1940 than it would have been in 1938 - and even then it was a close run thing,
Had those treaties not been in place, Hitler might well have invaded Poland before September 1939 - and would have had even less respect for the will of the Western Powers to oppose him.
The fact that he was a megalomaniac for whom no rational deterrence had much effect does not invalidate the principle of peaceful countries forming alliances to counter the rise of a militaristic power.
As for āattacking before being attackedā - if Britain had waited until the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe had conquered France and were lined up all along the Channel coast, it would have been far too late. And in fact from from attacking Germany, in 1939-40 both Britain and France held back - the RAF confined themselves to dropping leaflets on Germany instead of bombs for many months.
Nor did they do the one thing which the German High Command were most afraid of - invading the Ruhr straight away and creating a two-front war - German generals are on record as saying that had they done so, the Germans would have been unable to sustain both campaigns (their economy was never put on a full war footing to the same extent as Britain, and not really mobilised until after the Battle of Stalingrad was lost).
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Indeed. Towards the end of the Peter Preston era.
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So, do you think it started going downhill when you left?
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It was when they stopped calling it the Manchester Guardian 
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I still do in moments of nostalgia. 
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