Examples of smothering

• Its near-monopoly of both generation and distribution must be broken, as it is keeping others out of the market and smothering competition.

• The recession is smothering businesses and climate change grows ever more stark.

• One of the reasons for the holding back of our 1940s-style public services was their smothering by bureaucracy.

• There is no evidence to support the view that smothering is the cause of the majority of cot deaths.

• This found siltation of the river gravels and a corresponding smothering of fish spawning reeds.

• They were smothering it so badly that she kicked them out.

• The concordat should not become an excuse for smothering initiative in national and regional agencies.

• It has become a great big smothering blanket.

• This provision requires carbon-dioxide appliances to be built into vessels for fire smothering purposes.

• There is the nationalisation of shipbuilding and aircraft, thereby smothering two more industries under the blanket of nationalisation.

• All experience clearly indicates that that expenditure is smothering the nation.

• Refuse dumped at sea leads to plastic film damaging aquatic life, smothering fish and plant life and wrapping round the propellors of ships.

• We are trying to find ways of pooling our efforts and our energies without smothering that diversity.

• That leads one to ask why this smothering blanket of secrecy that so many have argued against is not swept away.

• It is one of only three remaining broads not to have its water quality impaired by a smothering of its aquatic flora by iron ochre and silt.