Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast

"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."

"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast"

Alice in Wonderland 

Rebekah Brooks, David Cameron's friend and former editor of the News of the World during the time her reporters were hacking the mobile phone of a missing child (subsequently murdered), isn't very happy that people are doubting her integrity.

I hope that you all realise it is inconceivable that I knew or worse, sanctioned these appalling allegations.

Really? I'm going to accept for now that she never read any of the disgusting, intrusive stories her newspapers published.

I can - with some effort - believe that she never once thought that a juicy quote or incredible detail must have been acquired through some kind of skulduggery.

I can even - somehow - bring myself to assume that she never once cut corners in her long climb to the top, and that none of her colleagues ever once let slip that they had a few illicit means to acquire scoops, despite her telling Parliament that her paper had illegally paid police officers for information (a claim she later withdrew, claiming she wasn't thinking of anything specific').

But given the lies and distortions her newspapers have pumped out over the years, I don't think that she really believes that we'd find it 'inconceivable' that the presiding genius at the most vicious, bitter and arrogant newspapers in the world would have known about this kind of behaviour. Allegations that she knew may well be 'untrue', but they sure aren't 'inconceivable'. I've conceived it. So have millions of other people.

Lewis Carroll had other relevant things to say:

'What I tell you three times is true'.

The Hunting of the Snark 

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all."

Through the Looking Glass