Heel-dragging

Guy Keleny, one of my favourite columnists, has an excellent item in today’s Errors & Omissions in The Independent about a misconceived turn of phrase I had not noticed before:

Bit of a drag: The Thursday essay was about fertility treatment. The introductory blurb said: “Those who can afford it pay up to £10,000 for IVF, but a gentler technique, priced at just £174, could soon be available to all. So why are the experts dragging their heels?”

If somebody is trying to pull you in a direction you don’t want to go, you may dig in your heels. If you are proceeding slowly and reluctantly, you drag your feet.

He is right, you know. Dragging heels would occur only in the situation illustrated. And this morning the same phrase cropped up in a Daily Mail Comment on Equitable Life compensation.

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• JohnJustice

  The illustration perfectly depicts how, by going too fast, this government is taking us into its public expenditure cuts, the biggest drag of all.

• LancashireLad

  Was David Kelly dragged by the heels?One of the first police officers on the scene where Dr Kelly’s body was found said”His jeans — he was wearing jeans, they were pulled up slightly, exposing the lower half of his leg or his ankle. It looked as if he had slid down and his trousers had ridden up”The search team that found Dr Kelly said he was sat against a tree; the ambulance technician who checked the body for signs of life said he stood in a gap between a tree and the head of Dr Kelly’s body.That’s a heck of a slide!Lord Hutton said in his summing up”I have seen a photograph of Dr Kelly’s body in the wood which shows that most of his body was lying on the ground but that his head was slumped against the base of the tree – therefore a witness could say either that the body was lying on the ground or slumped against the tree. These differences do not cause me to doubt that no third party was involved in Dr Kelly’s death.”Non of the three accounts can be reconciled with the other two.He was either sat against a tree, a distance from a tree or head touching a tree. The good thing is that photographs taken by the police and forensic teams show the position of the body when the photos were taken; unfortunately these photos had to be locked away for 70 years.Hutton could have shown the photo’s to witnesses at the inquiry and asked; was this this the position of the body when you saw it? He chose not to!The post mortem revealed that the body had been lay flat on its back after death by livor mortis (by how blood settles in the body and discolours the skin) so if Dr Kelly was found sat against a tree, he didn’t die there.And if he didn’t die there he died somehere else and was placed against the tree. Prima facie evidence of third party involvement in the death and cover up?

• http://www.autopartsexpress.com/ Dodge Parts   

  Great post though, although I have forgotten what its about now Ive finally reached the bottom.

• petersimplex

  But he sure as eggs are eggs didn’t have rigor mortis so he hadn’t been dead all that long because his arm could be moved. Explain that John Rentoul (CMG to be, perhaps KCMG for propping up the establishment so well)
  When is a head touching a tree not a head touching a tree? When it is locked away for 70 years.