Next year's prospects were poor, and the staff, bedazzled by the expensive offices, rebelled, demanding impossible concessions.
But by demanding impossible changes, those who want to leave can simultaneously name-check the prime minister's plan, indicate their dissent and nudge ordinary Britons towards outism.
So they are indulging in the political equivalent of bossnapping, taking Mr Barroso's second term hostage to demand impossible concessions.
Even some other environmentalists believe that Clean Ocean Action is demanding impossible purity in what is used for the protective cover of the Mud Dump.
We demand impossible standards of proof when confronted with something we don't want to hear, but will believe any old cobblers if it confirms our prejudices.
Christian McKay gives a game impersonation of the young Welles, being mercurial, demanding, impossible, etc, as he mounts a challenging new modern-dress "fascist-militarist" version of Caesar – reminding isolationist Americans of the gathering storm across the Atlantic.
The pressures on companies in both countries are similar: if the bosses demand impossible performance figures, there is a temptation for their subordinates to cook the books rather than admit failure.
They will demand impossible conditions for allowing Kerkuk oil through.
Telling ourselves that we are "ungrateful," "overly demanding," "impossible to please," and thus somehow to blame for the deprivation that we are experiencing, is a strategy to reject our pain and thus eradicate the anxiety that contradiction arouses.
Gross negligence, by contrast, is a crime that can only be committed by a pattern of bad behavior ― looking the other way, ignoring red flags or demanding impossible results in the face of obvious legal barriers.
