My favourite misquotation is “money is the root of all evil” or for those of you with a Latin bent, “radix malorum est cupiditas.” The correct quotation of the words from the King James Bible, 400 years old almost to the day, is in 1 Timothy 6.10. “For the love of money is the root of all evil;…..” The addition of the concept of the love of money completely alters the usual misquotation.
Now I would not want my reader to think that references in the rest of this piece to the Bribery Act 2010 are all about a failure to quote correctly or accurately. Much has been written about this piece of legislation since it was first passed last year not least because of the furore over the inability of the MoJ to publish the guidance promised by section 9 which in turn has led to the postponement of the date when the Act comes into effect. In fact more nonsense has been written about the Act than on almost any other topic I can currently think of. There are of course honourable exceptions to this broad criticism but when you realise that US business has had to deal with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for over 30 years it is difficult to understand what the fuss is all about.
