Once upon a time, long, long ago (about twenty years, to be precise) important people never typed their own documents or letters. They wrote them out by hand or dictated them onto tape & sent them to the typing pool. That is if they were not quite important enough to have a personal secretary.
The work would be sent in special envelopes which had space for you to say how soon you needed to have the job done. If it was pretty urgent, but not urgent enough to say Within The Hour, the accepted convention was to put ASAP, meaning As Soon As Possible.
One day I waited patiently until nearly the end of the afternoon, with no sign of my work returning. Enquiries revealed that it had been sent to Portsmouth, where we had an outpost, because the London office was very busy & in view of the person in charge ASAP meant As Long As It Takes.
I thought of that as I caught the tail end of a discussion between former diplomat Sir Christopher Meyer & Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger on the Today programme this morning. They were arguing over the allegation that the Americans had been spying on UN diplomats, including the Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. This based on one of the wikileaks which contained a long list of names about whom US staff were instructed to find out as much personal detail as possible, including bank accounts.
Sir Christopher maintained that a diplomat would always react to this kind of list by saying ‘Well that’s just impossible’ - & ignoring it
