‘Song and dance’ not ‘bolts and nuts’

Dear Editor,

It is early days, but already the hands down winner for this week’s Bull of the Week award must go to APNU’s Debra Backer.  She simply cannot be bested this week, given her description of the Home Affairs Minister that “He’s a bolts and nuts man.”

Ms Backer should know that a “bolts and nuts man” is someone who pays attention to details, who sweats those same details, and then gets the whole machinery ‒ in this instance, the GPF ‒ to mesh smoothly.  A real “bolts and nuts man” knows when to get down, and which side is up.  Further, such an individual is smart enough to know when he does not know; when to delegate; when to escalate.  Bolts and nuts men are doers; they are neither jokers nor pretenders.  Clearly, the man at Home is out to sea, and heavily waterlogged.

I think that Ms Backer would be on much firmer ground if she were to label the Minister “a song and dance man.”  For not so long ago the dismissive posture from him was over a scorned and pathetic “vocal minority.”  Now the same “bolts and nuts man” does cartwheels to express fear about peace and good order, as threatened by the said sad “vocal minority.”  Either a screw (or many) is slack somewhere and there is sludge at all levels; not just the dismal one that the minister monopolizes.

My last comment is this: if the minister is a “bolts and nuts man” then I am a Rolls-Royce engine. And I am not. Still, congratulations are due to Ms Backer.  Perhaps, she will outdo herself and next recommend an acetylene torch to remove some of the corroded and frozen bolts and nuts around here.

Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall