Seneca The official British government website publishes transcripts of major political speeches. This afternoon our disastrous departing PM, Elizabeth Truss, stood outside 10, Downing Street and gave her arrogant and unapologetic farewell speech. A couple of hours later it appeared on the website. In this extract with its pseudo-intellectual quotation, they ironed out her bumbling hesitation:- As the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote: “It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare. It is because we do not dare that they are difficult.” An accurate transcript of her delivery of this piece should have gone something like this:- As the Roman philosopher Gurr (stumble) Seneg..(momentary pause) ca wrote: “It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare. It is because we do not dare that they are difficult.” I wonder who wrote Ms Truss's last speech? Clearly she is not a student of Roman literature. It would have been advisable to rehearse it with a sp...
