N44 : Forty-fourth lesson S00-TITLE : A Prime Minister remembers (An extract from "The Wilderness Years, the Memoirs of a former PM") S01 : After Prime Minister Mary Wilmot stepped down, the party leadership was up for grabs, and I intended to grab it. S02 : I had long been in a political wilderness because I had stood as a stalking horse against Wilmot in the previous elections. S03 : It was the old story about giving a dog a bad name. But I didn't care. S04 : I really wanted to make my mark on the party, so I did a little fence-mending - and some arm-twisting, too. S05 : Of course, the whips tried to warn me off, but their threats cut no ice with me. S06 : I pulled a few strings here and there and persuaded a couple of the party's rising stars to back me. S07 : I knew I was not the front-runner - Steve May was the golden boy - and the pundits had already written me off. S08 : But my hopes lay in winning the swing vote, the Great Undecided. S09 : You see, I wanted root-and-branch reform, which was something we badly needed at the time. S10 : Corruption was the elephant in the living room. S11 : The whole party was engulfed in sleaze and the long-awaited changes were proceeding at a glacial pace, if at all. S12 : True, Wilmot had once appointed a "reform czar", but her initiatives soon fell by the wayside. S13 : So I ran a grass-roots campaign that targeted rank-and-file activists who were sick to the back teeth with spin doctors. S14 : No more smoke-filled rooms, I promised, no more gerrymandering, filibusters or underhand tricks. S15 : No more baby-kissing, blarney or pie in the sky: I will fight a fair fight. S16 : I must admit, I had the gift of the gab in those days. Quite the orator I was. S17 : Should I win, I shall make you proud and you can hold your heads high once again. S18 : But if I should lose, I will accept my responsibilities and return to the wilderness whence I came. S19 : Heady stuff. As you can imagine, I won by a landslide and the party gave me a blank cheque. T00-TRANSLATE : Exercise: Translate T01 : Want to grab a drink? Twist my arm! T02 : I'm fed up to the back teeth with the entire party leadership. T03 : The bank has written off billions of dollars on bad loans. T04 : I hardly see my children any more, if at all. T05 : Once the ice had been broken, the party went very well.