This week a government-ordered inspection report accused the council of being in collective denial about the scale and extent of its failings.

We have all been in a kind of collective denial and are waking up, as if from a trance, and hearing the birds sing.

The regulator said a 'culture of optimism' had contributed to 'a collective denial' over the impact of the credit crisis.

It's a denial of freedom of expression and anachronistic.

The frequent use of barbed wire on prison walls, around concentration camps, and the like, has made it symbolic of oppression and denial of freedom in general.

Among these violations are long working hours, illegal pay deductions, lack of safe and sanitary working conditions and denial of freedom to associate and bargain collectively.

Many will see this as a wilful denial of reality from a man who made a fortune thanks to politics.

Moreover, invoking the hippie dream can also feel like a wilful denial of reality.

Even then the rebels stuck to a principled denial of reality rather than negotiate.

A poetic prediction or a poetic denial of reality.

This denial of reality and prejudices are creating a social order in which people are happy on their own, showing no interest in others.

I had expected a flat denial or even a refusal to contemplate such a notion.

Some were in flat denial, others just had blind faith they would get out one day.

He has mastered the use of error, omission, exaggeration, diminution, equivocation and flat denial.

Last week there was a flat denial of wrongdoing, so this would make $340 million an immense penalty for the 0.1 per cent of transactions that supposedly slipped through the net.

The first line of defence by his entourage and friends was flat denial.

Fielding had to issue a denial on the story and was forced into hiding by jealous fans.

Broad was even forced to issue a denial that he had any involvement in the account after it emerged that he was a friend of its creator.

However, she issued a denial that she and the duke were 'back on' and had been for a while.

This could be the first transfer tale in history to provoke an official denial before anybody outside the newspaper publishing the story had read it.

Membership offers the only hope cutting down the unelected hierarchies and ending official denials.

The speed of the official denials was almost as startling as their bluntness.

However, official denials have done nothing to quell the conspiracy theorists.

That made some of the party's official denials look more than a little ridiculous.

Note the pledge not to offer an excuse while offering what looks very much like an excuse, along with a half-hearted outright denial.

In the old days, of course, a straightforward outright denial might have sufficed.

Or, indeed, outright denial and a valediction from the courts.

In some cases, their accusations are validated by a vague, carefully couched quasi-admission of guilt; in others, they are met with outright denial.

Outright denial, or something more cunning?

It's the repeated denials and lies that have upset me.

On the tapes he makes repeated denials.

The claims were backed by testimony from an alleged victim after repeated denials by the authorities.

She repeated denials that their claims had been orchestrated by a higher authority.

Despite repeated denials of such rumours by the police, the public did not believe them.

I found that at the time the best way to deal with it was to be in total denial.

Such a total denial offended justice and propriety.

Even when, in 2006, he woke up in hospital after a two-week alcoholinduced coma, he was in 'total denial'.

She really wants him to, so she's in total denial.

Is everyone in total denial about the reason?