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Reader question: Please explain “sitting on their hands” in this sentence: Still, regulators want to make sure that they cannot be accused of sitting on their hands. My comments: Well, apparently something bad, say an industrial accident, happened and regulators snapped to action, ready to introduce, say, a whole bunch of new regulations. My interpretation is, and I may be wrong, is that the new regulations are not going to work because they’re made just for the sake of it so that the bureaucrats won’t be accused of “sitting on their hands”, i.e. doing nothing when they’re supposed to be doing something. And so there you have it, a whole bunch of new regulations to come. It’s the bureaucrats’ way of saying, we want to help. To be fair, there are those situations in real life, where some sort of help is better than nothing. Take another mining accident, for instance. It would make family members feel better if bureaucrats promptly do something on their behalf. Anyways, “sitting on their hands” is the expression in question here. It is an American expression and it is a position to avoid in general. The position itself is often seen in kindergarten. To prevent two- or three-year-olds from playing with their hands while listening, or rather not listening, to the teacher, the teacher sometimes order these toddlers to literally sit on their hands, i.e. putting both hands, palm down, under their hips. | 
