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No campaign-trail platitudes about caring and joy could make up for a lack of decency.

Janice, who is unwilling or unable to open up, is not nearly as needy as her spouse, who starts espousing biblical platitudes with the desperate certainty of a drowning man grateful for any life raft.

Such cheerful platitudes would carry a taint of irony, in retrospect, when authorities exposed the harm and suffering they alleged had been inflicted under Guo's watch.

That’s never going to happen, and whatever compromises party elites could make to try to force it would amount to nothing more than a pile of platitudes.

Mr Means said he felt the minister had only provided "platitude after platitude".