"He thins an already diminished rank of distinguished stalwarts – Bernard Cribbins, Clive Swift, Stanley Baxter, Tim West, Geoffrey Whitehead still among them – who like Briers himself thrived in the vintage TV of yesteryear but were to some extent homogenised by the medium's over-appetite for that style".
From the diminished ranks of a once mighty movement, the most talented opted for Westminster; no wonder the Scottish party in Holyrood – with a few striking exceptions – is so barren of ideas, of ability, of inspiration, of anything.
Legitimate concerns that future generations of Americans will inherit a country where entrepreneurship is stifled; class mobility, impossible; and healthcare standards, diminished, ranks high amongst them as it does with many on the Left.
For Republicans, it underscored the limits of their party's diminished ranks.
Many readers wrote to NYTimes.com to sympathize with the survivors and discuss the significance of their diminishing ranks; below is a sampling of the responses.
Its diminishing ranks and relevance may cause smiling feminists to say, Knock yourselves out, boys.
But Mr. McConnell's room to maneuver is shrinking with the rising calls against compromise and the diminishing ranks of Republican deal makers.
Considering how the state Republican party has savagely punished members of its diminishing ranks who dared to side with Democrats — such as on last year's important cap and trade legislation and the long-overdue increase in the gas tax — that kind of bipartisanship is extraordinarily unlikely.
It will arrive at a diminished world.
In addition, these methods rank in a diminishing sequence of sidelobe elimination ability from CLEAN-SC, CLEAN, DAMAS, Fourier-based NNLS, NNLS to DAMAS2.
Even as a teenager, however, Eisen picked up on a diminishing intellectualism in the Conservative ranks.
