"We have no certainty of how much funding is behind that, but we have a degree of confidence there is an acceptance at the very highest level that this is one of the schemes that the secretary of state, the Department of Health [and] all the other bits of the regulatory system want to see happen.
The troubled, soap-opera existence of Amy Winehouse has been one of the more dramatic of recent times though at least there is, in artistic terms, a degree of substance behind the substance abuse.
The tactics that have been used are too similar, the individuals concerned are too closely linked and the behaviour of a few parents and governors too orchestrated for there not to be a degree of coordination behind what has happened".
Stories of the type in circulation today, in which anonymous government sources claim China and Russia have access to the Snowden documents and that this has had a material impact on the safety of British agents, have a degree of strategy behind them.
That leaves them a few steps — and a degree of courage — behind the times to which they are speaking.
She knew that there was a degree of force behind each and every one of us that was unquestionable, and the fact that this man, Salim, could have this quiet reality and still be brazen, out to the world is really just a testament of how incredible each and every one of us is to our core.
When Rangers returned to the SPL, they could do so with a degree of financial muscle behind them and legitimately believing they have served time for the wrongdoing of the past.
The carefully controlled public spaces in GCC states mean it is inconceivable that such attacks on a fellow member state could have been made without, at the very least, a degree of official sanction behind the scenes.
There is, however, a degree of sympathy for him behind the scenes and a desire to give him the benefit of the doubt in the hope that he might be reinvented under a different manager.
A degree of secrecy was a must.
