Scorn of the day

"If the Lisbon Treaty is not yet in force at the time of the next general election, and a Conservative Government is elected, we would put the Treaty to a referendum of the British people, recommending a 'no' vote. If the British people rejected the Treaty, we would withdraw Britain's ratification of it."

This came from here.

There is something in the world of logic knows as iff, that's right and i followed by TWO f's.

Wikipedia defines iff as this "the truth of either one of the connected statements requires the truth of the other, i.e., either both statements are true, or both are false. The connective is thus an "if" that works both ways."

With this in mind we can rewrite the conservative policy like this instead, as to save words and seem 'down' and 'hipp' with the hoi polloi (ambiguity is a favourite past time for all party apparatchiks why they can never produce a policy which is written in plain English).

We would put the Treaty to a referendum of the British people, recommending a 'no' vote iff we are elected and the treaty has not been ratified.

Now with the logic explained above, in mind, this means that they would not put the treaty to a vote if they did not come to power (this is reasonable) and they would not put the treaty to a vote if they had come to power but it had already been ratified (this is not reasonable). They would do nothing should both statements turn out to be false.

There you have it. Make more sense? Not really.