semi-detachment

The claim was wildly optimistic – and betrayed the British semi-detachment from events.

And in this slow semi-detachment, they have begun to appreciate each other in a new light.

Brecht lived in glorious semi-detachment from the time he was a schoolboy.

But he also believes Britain's history of semi-detachment from the E.U. rules him out.

However, given America’s new semi-detachment and Europe’s economic austerity, there is a clear danger that “doing less” rapidly becomes “doing nothing”.

But our absence from the euro and other aspects of our semi-detachment (the withholding tax is a very good example) does inevitably slow developments.

Real semi-detachment is not an option; our economies are now too closely bound to be unravelled, and so are our fortunes.

Continental European preconceptions about Britain's semi-detachment from the EU project have once again been confirmed.

It was easy to laugh as animated and smiling Drew explained how he progressed from a journalistic semi-detachment to find himself deeply entrenched. ad infinitum.

So long as the United Kingdom is perceived as being in a state of semi-detachment, what chance is there of forging alliances for reform?

"Stevie," which Mr. James narrates in a tone of guarded semi-detachment, is also an uneasy meditation on the filmmaker's relationship with his subject.

“There is a semi-detachment which even some senior British diplomats are concerned about,” said Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform.

In a hard-hitting speech, Mr Sarkozy challenged the “old habits” and “self-satisfaction” of Gaullists who defended France’s semi-detachment from the Atlantic alliance.

The first half of the film also suggests a parable about professional and chemical semi-detachment, since everyone, including Emily's boss, chats knowledgeably about the pills they have been popping.

But the result is a deception of the British public, which is thus enabled to live in a world of semi-detachment from Europe which bears scant relation to the reality.

President Sarkozy has now confirmed a decision he mooted during his election campaign: he intends to take France back into the military command structures of Nato after 43 years of semi-detachment.

The move has triggered strong resistance, not least from senior Gaullist figures inside the governing UMP party who say France’s semi-detachment from the Atlantic alliance gives it additional diplomatic leverage, particularly in the developing world.

The president, as commander in chief, said France's long-standing semi-detachment was now counterproductive: "Our rapprochement with Nato bolsters national independence and our proclaimed but unrealised distancing from Nato limits our national independence," he said.

The best estimate is that roughly a third favour full withdrawal, a third favour semi-detachment and the radical repatriation of powers, and a third back the leadership’s “Wait and see, and don’t offend the Lib Dems” approach.

Dave's relationship with the SNP's Angus Robertson has often in the past been one of visceral mutual contempt - their couples therapist says it might be because they are both too similar - but now they have found a way of maintaining a polite semi-detachment.

An inner part of me marvelled in a kind of semi-detachment while the rest consumed two or three fish, a whole chicken, some slices of meat, a pile of vegetables, fruit hidden under mounds of stiff cream, and more than a quart of milk, without any sense of surfeit.

The issue is I don't believe that will ever meet the test which is actually being set by the vast part of the Conservative Party, which is that they don't just want another treaty change with a bit of reform, they want a complete semi-detachment or indeed total exit of the European Union.