jiggery-pokery

jiggery-pokery

Illicit, dubious, or morally questionable activities, especially those done discreetly or in secret. The purpose of the new legislation is to root out the jiggery-pokery going on with many businesses' financial figures.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • jiggery
  • pokery
  • stay on the straight and narrow
  • stay to the straight and narrow
  • keep on the straight and narrow
  • keep to the straight and narrow
  • keep to, stay on, etc. the straight and narrow
  • be on the straight and narrow
  • on the straight and narrow
  • woodshed
References in periodicals archive
I still reel at the hypocrisy of a lifelong socialist who cheerily described over lunch how he had saved himself a million pounds in tax through some jiggery-pokery involving transfers between jurisdictions with different year-ends.
"e main disa$ection lies with a union that should never have occurred and political jiggery-pokery that allows designer consultation to return preferred results.
And, to be fair, there was a lot of political jiggery-pokery doing the rounds this week.
NEWS that there's been a bit of jiggery-pokery in the football betting world should not surprise any battle-weary punter who's been in the business for more than 15 minutes.
And then, on top of that deflating defeat, came more revelations about Sisu's financial jiggery-pokery.
Those governments like Germany's that pursued relatively restrained policies and supported industrial growth rather than property bubbles and financial jiggery-pokery like the Labour party in the UK, are most likely to weather the latest storm.
Now that guy with 1000 gold coins will not like being asked for 500 and will soon be calling his accountants for some advice on a little off-shore, trust-fund, ghost company jiggery-pokery.
The presenter insists there's an upside to all this jiggery-pokery, but he's also keen to stress the darker side of the industry.
There is no digital jiggery-pokery, no image manipulation, no lipstick and blusher courtesy of Photoshop.
Also, thanks to some newfangled technical jiggery-pokery (called a Resonance Manipulator), new characters of almost every hero and villain archetype now have access to an additional primary and secondary Powerset, the super powers your character uses to survive.
I wonder what financial jiggery-pokery was employed by the Government to determine that the UK's defence spending is second only to the US in real terms - the only people they may be fooling are themselves.
But once their unlikely double-act glides onto the ice, Blades Of Glory triple flips to delirious comic heights, allowing the leads to perform death-defying moves with the help of computer jiggery-pokery.
Read uses his technical jiggery-pokery to interact with a six-year-old cartoon boy called Little Howard who stars alongside him on a video screen.
Then he talks about a former champion jump jockey who "some trainers wouldn't put up because he'd tell other people about the horses he rode", "quite a lot of jockeys" in his era who liked a bet, and "jiggery-pokery at the sales".
In his attack - as he discussed a sum of pounds 1.2 million which he claims was borrowed from the capital accounts - Mr Steinberg said: 'This looks very much like jiggery-pokery.