Yet there is a serious point at issue.
That is a major point at issue in the legal quagmire that is emerging at Refco, the bankrupt commodities brokerage firm.
When the federal finance minister, Paul Martin, meets his provincial counterparts in Winnipeg on October 22nd, a big point at issue will be not, as in many countries, how to cut soaring welfare spending and deficits but how best to spend the latest huge addition to the surplus of C$23.7 billion ($15.3 billion) accumulated from 1992 to 1997 in unemployment insurance.
However, there is a further point at issue here.
The status or identity of the person making the 'donation' is a more fundamental point at issue.
To give a few examples, we speak of a commission as defining the boundary between two nations; of the Supreme Court as defining, through its rulings, "person" and "citizen"; of a chemist as discovering the definition of gold, and the lexicographer, that of 'cool'; of a participant in a debate as defining the point at issue; and of a mathematician as laying down the definition of "group".
Jerry Hawthorne, a lawyer for the Methodists, says: "the point at issue is whether she was a servant of man or a servant of God".
A. Indeed, the point at issue is a certain form of discussing the German issue by the six mentioned states.
It is true that the eligibility as Queen of a twice-divorced woman was the point at issue.
The central point at issue in a flurry of books published in recent years is whether the overthrow of Mossadegh led somehow to the Islamic Revolution 26 years later.
They accept that the point at issue is a technical one, but they are also making it clear that there is a principle at stake.
