In response the Health Minister, Edwin Poots, said the comments by Mr Ford were a "clumsy attempt to cause confusion and unnecessary concern".

BBC: Over 100 women sign abortion change protest letter

This might open the door to different tactics: even, perhaps, to revived attempts to persuade ordinary Cubans to try to topple Mr Castro, rather than using the clumsy instrument of international embargoes.

ECONOMIST: Cuban-Americans

Mr Gross denied any wrongdoing, but his clumsy attempts to explain his personal finances only made matters worse.

BBC: NEWS | Europe | Analysis: Czech political crisis

Yet Mr Obama is going about it in a clumsy way.

ECONOMIST: Barack Obama��s deficit plan

With many more demands ahead including an urgent need for reconciliation between the Sinhalese majority and the bruised Tamil minority Mr Rajapaksa's government is looking as clumsy and paranoid as ever.

ECONOMIST: The president tightens his grip

The result was a victory for neither side: the protest movement risks seeming more radical and left-wing, sapping it of middle-class support, but the state looks clumsy and afraid, its celebration for Mr Putin tarnished by armoured vehicles in the streets.

ECONOMIST: Vladimir Putin

Yet Mr Lee is not just some academic out to poke fun at clumsy companies and economic peculiarities.

ECONOMIST: Chain reaction

The interplay between Mr Hyman's reflections on government and his experience in real life is sometimes clumsy, but never dull.

ECONOMIST: Politics and education