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Also worth pointing out to those who see a Murdoch plot here that a radio mike is fitted to any politician doing a walkabout, but to avoid him looking like a Xmas tree, the various media outlets agree to use one mike and to allow all the companies to take the audio feed.
On this occasion the mike was supplied by Sky, but the sound was being monitored by the BBC, ITV, Ch4, the PA etc etc. So it’s a pretty safe bet that if Sky hadn’t used the material, someone else would have jumped in just as quickly as they all had his words on tape.
Blaming Sky is a classic case of blaming the messenger rather than the message. Which is prety appropriate as that was the immediate reaction we got from the Bottler as well.
Not of course that the facts should ever be allowed to get in the way of a good conspiracy theory. It’s only surprising that someone hasn’t suggested that Mrs Duffy was a Tory plant ……
AP
APRacing: Completely agree with your last post.
Besides, can’t feel too much sympathy for a guy who’s quite willing to use the likes of Damian McBride; Draper; Whelan and Campbell etc. to bully and blacken those who stand in his way.
I rather think that Brown is one good grilling by a journo (who’s done his homework and isn’t afraid to make blunt points(not too many of those around)) from a breakdown.I happen to think that everyone who disagrees with me, no sorry questions anything I say, is a bigot .. or mentally sub-normal.
I would never be so silly as to say it to anyone’s face though, or they might think I’m some sort of arse hole.
Davros resurfaces – with a typically forthright pile of sh*ite.
What next? Stevedvg returns from the ether?
.. your obviously just a bigot and everything .. lol .. I’ll be round to give you an insincere apology later.
Personally I’m not sorry to see him gone, but I do wonder what people will remember him for and how he’ll be viewed in ten or twenty years time.
For me he epitomised the idea of politics as a personal feud, but unusually in his case, most of his venom was reserved for members of his own party. The one great decision he made that has, and will continue, to benefit his country was the refusal to join the Euro.
If that had been on the basis of solid economic theory, or even just a principled defence of the pound, then it would have been a masterstroke. But the reality is that his opposition was merely an automatic reaction to the knowledge that Blair was keen to join the euro in order to boost his own credentials in Europe.
If the Blair feud was damaging, the one with Mandelson was entirely understandable. You can admire a man that simply refused to talk to Mandelson for many years. But how on earth can you reconcile that with his submission to a totally unchanged Mandelson in the last year or two. That one I’ll never understand.
His failures as PM will surely cloud any consideration of his earlier career. The bottling of the early election when he simply stood in front of us and lied about the reasons. The failure to deliver on the manifesto promise for a referendum on Europe combined with his sneaking in a side door hours after the main event to sign the treaty was embarrassing.
Then the Rochdale gaffe during the election. The fact that he called Mrs Duffy a bigot was neither here nor there for me. What was revealing was the fact that a conversation that had seemed to end amicably and was potentially one of the best moments of the campaign for Brown, he viewed as a disaster.
That highlighted his total inability to listen to people, to cope with usual social niceties of everyday conversation, what might be summed up as a tin ear. If he could read that simple conversation so totally wrongly, how could he ever be trusted to run a cabinet government.
In the end though, I suspect it will be the sea of debt he leaves behind for which he’ll be most remembered. The full scale of the PFI that has been kept off the books, the future outlay on pensions, the current massive annual deficit – ultimately the governments for the next ten years have only one sure way to get these things under control and that’s inflation. In which case we’ll all live to regret the era of Gordon Brown.
Perhaps his legacy should be to end his life ennobled as Lord Brown of Carey Street.
AP
A good man, villified by goons and idiots – and betrayed by the self-serving pseudo socialist, Tony Blair.
Gordon Brown is not a people person – he simply could not do smarm and insecerity the way Blair or Cameron can.
I agree that keeping inflation under control is the main priority for any government.
AP says we may live to regret the era of Gordon Brown.
Not half as much as those of us who were around during the 80s regret the era of Margaret Hilda Thatcher.
Gambling Only Pays When You're Winning
History will judge him with mixed results:-
PLUSSES
Probably did the right thing during the banking crisis
Kept us out of the Euro
Gave independence to Bank of England to set interest rates
Money dished out to NHS and schools (results probably not in proportion though)
MINUSES
Left a massive deficit behind
Bottled out of calling an election a couple of years ago which he probably could have won
Tax raid on pensions
Flogging off the gold reserves at a knock down price
Had inability to communicate with ordinary people
Failed to ensure effective regulation of financial sector
That’s a fair enough summary APR which I’d agree with in the main
I still believe he’s essentially a good man with deeply-held moral convictions of (what he believes to be) right and wrong, as you’d expect of one whose formative years were spent in a Presbyterian Manse: the protestant work ethic is all and all must devote themselves to public service and the public good
Nothing to be ashamed of there but therein lies his problem. A rather cloistered one-dimensional upbringing with ideals set in stone and knocked into him – I suspect – by a stern father does not lend itself to an understanding of the disparate ways of the public-at-large nor is it likely he’d relish a questioning of those ideals by colleagues or find it easy to accomodate modifications to his life’s masterplan. Hence the numerous reports of him being a bully and not suffering what he regards as fools gladly.
I believe he’s expressed an interest in teaching now he’s moved on, and that would be right up his street I reckon. The sort of teacher who instills a degree of fear into his class, isn’t liked, but is respected, and gets results through a combination of strict discipline, a love for his subject and the over-riding wish to get the best out of his pupils so giving them the ‘best possible chance in life’
I’m glad he’s gone as I never warmed to him, particularly as PM – an office he should never have taken – but nevertheless he was infinitely preferable to Blair who I detested from day 1
History won’t be kind to him as he’ll be forever remembered as the Chancellor who presided during the credit bubble, and the fallout from that has yet to reach the ground.
‘Prudence’ ha!
A fair summary APRACING.
One of his major flaws (perhaps one that most senior politicians have) was an inability to admit when he was wrong.
Thought his farewell speech though was a credit to him.
Bad things of Brown in power in No. 10 & No. 11:-1)UK pensions destroyed (well, holed below the waterline in comparison to their previous strength).
2)Gold sold off in a manner that ensured the price fell beforehand – costing the UK more than our withdrawal from the EMR (Black Wednesday).
3)Reneging on manifesto commitment to hold referendum on EU constitution.
4)Disingenious hiding of PFI, Public Sector Pension Liability and Railtrack re-nationalisation from accounts.
5)Misleading use of figures both at PMQ and in TV interviews (generally called "Brownies" by MSM.)
6) Failure to reduce debt when economy was strong.
7) Complete and utter cock-up in re-structuring the financial regulatory system. Creating beauracratic, inefficient 3-legged FSA.
Allowing the likes of McBride, Campbell, Whelan to have undue influence. (And latterly Mandelson).
9) Too cocky in pushing the prudent / end-of-boom-and-bust / best-placed to recover from recession line.
10) Refusal to give straight answers to any PMQ’s that embarrassed him.
11) The "poverty" gap (that meant so much to him to reduce) actually widened.
12) 10p tax rate removal fiasco.I could go on.
Good things:-
1) Minimum Wage
1a) kept us out of the Euro
2) …er, his Mrs seems nice.Oh – and I’ve got a gut feeling that the effect of the mega qantative-easing will come back to kick us in the goolies in a year or two. Just hope voters remember if it does, who was responsible.
One of the lying idiots who took us into war with Iraq, then on into Afganistan.
Hopefully we now have a Government we can trust.
He was a politician who just sought power for the benefit of himself and never thought about the "national interests" once. Oh, he kept us out of the Euro. And the Conservatives wouldn’t have? He lied over and over. The defence budget went up. Oh wait it never. Child tax credits, which was one his great ideas, was another mess. The poor got poorer thanks to Brown in the end, despite the minimum wage.
He will be viewed as an unelected disaster who will go down as one of the worst Labour leaders ever.
Wish i wasnt writing from a mobile, but will remember him as an arrogant, dishonest, incompetant sherriff of nottingham who ruined a perfectly good country and brought the pound to its knees. Wouldnt lace thatchers boots IMO. Once again the tories have an uphill struggle. The minimum wage destroyed the jobcentre (made business out of finding even basic level employment) and is facile because it only created more sub minimum wage backhander wages in small businesses, largely filled with foreign nationals and those on the double. Treated the armed forces with absolute contempt in so many ways, but gave part of their tax back when in afghanistan and iraq, gee, thanks. Along with blair turned farming from a profitable industry to a heavily subsidised one. Treated the honest and willing 2 work british citizen like vermin, both as chancellor and pm. He and blair swamped the public sector with so many unnecessary middle managers providing less service for higher cost. Lied about the economy to hide his own failings and drove us into a horrific recession. I could go on but imo he is little more than a first world idi amin hellbent on holding on to the power to do whatever he wanted. I am not a spiteful person but i loath gordon brown and his whole party with every ounce of my being and pray that labour never spin their way back to power…
Treated the honest and willing to work British citizens like vermin? And Mrs Thatcher didn’t? Do I exist in a different universe to other people? My memory must be failing me.
Moe your version of the Thatcher years and mine don’t correspond. I’m sure we’ve probably covered that ground before, so won’t do so again.
As this thread is about Brown, has anyone read theSunday Times’
front page article today "Labour hid ‘scorched earth’ debts worth billions"?
Here are a few snippetts from it:-Vince Cable, the business secretary, said: “I fear that a lot of bad news about the public finances has been hidden and stored up for the new government. The skeletons are starting to fall out of the cupboard.”
The new cabinet has been discovering previously unknown contracts and uncosted spending commitments left by their spendthrift predecessors. …
David Willetts, the universities minister, claimed that Labour had left behind “not so much an in-tray as a minefield”.
Billions of pounds in public money was committed in the run-up to the election campaign in a deliberate strategy to boost Labour’s chances at the ballot box and sabotage the next government.
One former Labour minister told The Sunday Times: “There was collusion between ministers and civil servants to get as many contracts signed off as possible before the election was called.
One former adviser to the schools department said there was a deliberate policy of “scorched earth”. “The atmosphere was ‘pull up all the railways, burn the grain stores, leave nothing for the Tories’,” he added.This comes as no surprise whatsover to anyone unless they rely solely on the
Daily Mirror
and the BBC for their info. A contemptible and irresponsible attitude to government. Brown and his acolytes clearly put party before country.
By the way, please don’t say that theTimes
is a fawning Conservative-supporting paper. It hasn’t been for many years. (In fact they supported Brown in the 2005 election.)
If anyone wants to read the full article, here’s the link:-
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7127819.eceMarble, I’ve gone on at length on here in the past about my recollection of the Thatcher years. It may or may not have been in response to a comment on here by Moehat or even a thread started by Moehat; perhaps it wasn’t.
I’m quite happy to make those points again – but, as this thread is about Brown and not Thatcher, I won’t.Feel free to start a thread relating to the Thatcher years if you wish and I’ll make them again on there.
FWIW, if you want to while away 30mins or so, I’ve just found this thread (originally on Martin McGuiness). My opinion on Thatcher’s years are contained somewhere in this thread.
http://www.theracingforum.co.uk/horse-racing-forum/post286370.html?hilit=thatcher#p286370Suprised we havent had a contribution from the poster who claims "OUR GLORIOUS LEADER", although himself comes close
Most of the pluses and minuses have been covered above but in my mind he was the new Richard Nixon
Another politician who was formidably bright and actaully achieved a few relatively unrecognised feats, but ultimately was utterly unsuited to be a leader due to various personality traits best described as a generally suspicious, childish, ungenerous and often vindictive nature.
Also too ambitious for own good and not enough self awareness of limitations.
Nixon probably had a better relationship with most of his colleagues (not difficult) but was possibly more paranoid about external enemies.
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