Sorry is the easiest word

There was a time, not so long ago, when sorry seemed to be the hardest word. No longer. After Bill Clinton's public mea culpa on Monica, US corporate bosses, led by Ford and United Airlines, have been buying television advertising time to beat their breasts over their companies' errors. Coca-Cola, too, has been playing the we're-to-blame game.

There was a time, not so long ago, when sorry seemed to be the hardest word. No longer. After Bill Clinton's public mea culpa on Monica, US corporate bosses, led by Ford and United Airlines, have been buying television advertising time to beat their breasts over their companies' errors. Coca-Cola, too, has been playing the we're-to-blame game.

Now it's catching on here. Scotland's education minister tells schoolchildren how sorry, how very sorry, he is that their exam results were screwed up.

Cynics might point out that all of these sackcloth-and-ashes wearers have hung on to their jobs, and that some of the apologies may have been prompted by lawyers wishing to avoid compensation battles. After all, it turns out, talk is cheap - actions speak louder than apologies.