Mark my words & other cliches

Behaving badly

"Prague is counting the cost of Brits behaving badly on booze- fuelled stag weekends". The allusion to the laddish comedy series sometimes seems to undermine the phrase's surface meaning in order to imply that stag parties are having harmless fun which would be more appreciated by Czech policemen and British consular staff if only they had a sense of humour.

Lurch

"Davies warns against lurch to the right". The requisite verb to describe a political party veering away from the centre ground in favour of pandering to its core voters. The connotations may be of a large ship listing in the water as its passengers run to starboard, or of a drunkard keeling over to his favoured side of the pavement and so considered particularly apt by Labour when Brown was in charge of the economy (George, not Gordon).

Plea

Outside of courtrooms, pleas always seem to be impassioned: "Councillors have made an impassioned plea not to sell off the seafront Carlton Theatre at Teignmouth".

Royal watchers

"Royal watchers say that it is almost inconceivable that there will be two marriages in the same calendar year". Whereas the workings of democracy require observers (the EU appointed a team of them to monitor elections in Sierra Leone), a monarch's family always seems to attract watchers. The phrasing depicts the Windsors as a rare breed and hints at the voyeuristic or clandestine tendencies of the entourage following them.

Switch codes

This sounds as if it should refer to spymasters, computer programmers or members of religious sects, but it is used exclusively to denote rugby players moving between league and union: "Despite switching codes Vainikolo reportedly had a clause in his contract making him available for the semi with Saints".

Affordable housing

"Plans to build three million new homes, including affordable housing, by 2020 have been announced by the Government". The choice of phrase looks curious in that all homes, irrespective of their price, would seem to be affordable for those who buy them - unless Peter Mandelson filled in the mortgage application. But this is the adjective favoured by the authorities, now that "social" or "subsidised" risk a slur and because "cheap" is more likely to describe certain tastes in interior decoration than the market value of the bricks and mortar.

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