"Chernobyl was a disester no one up top wanted to admit, and to be honest, have done little to rectify. As bad as any situation moght be,however, there is the hope that there is always a silver lining beneath it."
1)I would have written it in a slightly different way. First, I would change "there is the hope that" to "There is a hope that..." or "There is hope that"?
2)Second, since hope can refer not only to the present but things in the future I would use the future simple instead of the present simple "there is a hope that there will always be...".
3)Frankly I doubt "no one up top" being correct. How about "atop" or "on top"?
Last edited by ostap77; 22-Mar-2011 at 07:23.
It's hard to know what you mean though. What's the subject of "have done little to rectify"?
"No one up top wanted to admit that Chernobyl was a disaster." Who can it be then that has done little to rectify it? I think you mean that no one has done much/anything to rectify it, or those up top have done little to rectify it.
You can't have no one doing little.
It doesn't make a meaningful difference. You can say either. But you begin the sentence with, "As bad as any situation might be, however ...". This implies future situations as well, so the meaning is future - "As bad as any situation could be, there is always hope for a silver lining.*"
If the sentence were, "As bad as the situation might be, however ...", then obviously you're dealing with a more limited set of possibilities.
My best advice is to write what you mean. If you want to include the future, do so.
* Also, "there is always a silver lining beneath it". The saying is "Every cloud has a silver lining." I haven't heard the version with "beneath it". From my personal observation of clouds, this isn't true; but when it is, the lining is often above the cloud, not beneath it.
Note: I'm assuming you've made a metaphor from clouds, and that your hope isn't that the Chernobyl reactor was lined with silver.![]()