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Try unsuccessfully to influence something that cannot be changed.
‘Bertie may just be whistling in the wind with this one.’
‘For years politicians and anti-drugs campaigners have chanted ‘Just Say No’ but they might as well have been whistling in the wind for all the effect this mantra, repeated incessantly, has had.’
‘That means that taxes will be upped when the Government decides to up them, and Parliament can whistle in the wind.’
‘But hoping that the breakthroughs of tomorrow will wash away the problems of today is just whistling in the wind.’
‘However, unless the message is spread around the constituencies by the people on the ground, he may as well be whistling in the wind.’
‘And the Wanderers' club skipper insists he is not whistling in the wind.’
‘To act as if it were not so is a futile gesture, like whistling in the wind.’
‘Famed liberal journalist and political commentator Bill Moyers recently remarked ‘I believe that journalism is all about writing in the sand and whistling in the wind.’’
‘In the face of this growing terror, it may seem to be whistling in the wind to call for confidence.’
‘Donald Dewar intervened personally to try to make this clear, but he too was whistling in the wind.’
‘We are whistling in the wind if we think we can do it on our own.’
‘I don't know offhand, but if you do not adjust for inflationary effects and the GDP you are whistling in the wind.’
‘That's probably why we enjoy being told how bad things are, which means the bearers of good news like Mr Trichet and others are simply whistling in the wind.’
‘But it is like whistling in the wind, because we are talking about a socialist Government that wants to hoard the money of taxpayers as it does not trust ordinary New Zealanders to make proper choices.’
‘Polly and many others are whistling in the wind.’
‘He was whistling in the wind and we all knew it.’
‘However, they may be whistling in the wind, for they entrusted the precious volume to a tabloid journalist, of all people.’
‘But he feels he may be whistling in the wind, with precious little hope of forcing a change in the short term.’
‘Too often, ‘alternative’ medicine is just whistling in the wind.’
‘Unless they can come up with a credible political and judicial scenario for the realisation of their objective, I fear that however strident their demands they amount to no more than whistling in the wind or baying at the moon.’