You may have missed this thought-provoking article on the art of political writing over the weekend. In it Philip Collins (no, not that one) talks about how modern politics tends to debase the language used in speeches, biographies and other writing by politicians. It is made all the more interesting by the fact that Philip was a speech-writer for the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Collins writes:

Current political rhetoric is so flat, so stale, so much the opposite of inspiring…We are writing now, in a very diverse nation, for the lowest common denominator.