[…] in a world of mandatory diminutives, a corporation of jolly Bills and Jacks and Herbs and Teds in which an unabbreviable given name like Earl must have been a minor handicap, Oat was the best that could be done for a man with the given name of Otis.

Not a single one of those umbrageous trees, of which our Mayor declaimed so feelingly, has yet been planted; […] They should protest against his withdrawal from that station, until the banks of the Monongahela and Duquesne Way are once more covered with umbrageous trees, […]

These performances had been a success with audiences, also refreshing the 'typical' Opera North demographic and making the transition from concert-goer to opera-goer more fluid.

For entirely self-serving reasons, ministers and civil servants never dispelled the public belief that uncaring 'fat cat' privateers or foreign state railways were in control, ramping up fares and creaming off profits which either enriched shareholders or subsidised European rail fares. DfT left train operators to 'take the heat' - which they dutifully did, fearful of speaking up and 'biting the hand that feeds'.