Don't cock my snook

More fun expressions culled from recent editions of The Economist:

"Pet food, lorry tyres and toothpaste..."

"Goldman Sachs lost a packet when something happened..." (presumably this is like losing a bundle?)

"Charles Schumer, a tub-thumping senator..." (can I get some Chumbawumba?)

"...hope that it will not be scotched by..."

"...there were attempts to make a better fist of things."

"...spend the next 17 months on the back foot..."

"...speech included a bunch of tosh about..."

"...accompanied by a pet monkey in a nappy." (that's one we heard a lot in our pre-natal--or should I say ante-natal--class)

"...relations...have been scratchy at best."

"...recently fulminated about the yobs who urinated..." ("yob" ranks right up there with "chav" in terms of fun British derogatory expressions...oh, and if you're ever in Australia, yobs are called yobbos)

"Though a new broom and a gale of fresh air..." (I wonder, when I got back from Basel did my work colleagues here say I was a new broom?)

"...the modern HR kitbag seems to go down well..."

"...at the fag-end of their careers."

"...doctors had no choice but to take a blunderbuss approach..."

"Cocking a snook at America seems an odd way..."

(Speaking of which, on the London Underground possibly the only thing more entertaining to American ears than taking the Bakerloo line to Elephant & Castle is taking the Piccadilly line to Cockfosters.)