Does the way Brown is treated give you the blues?
On the phone in from 9am, do you feel sorry for Gordon Brown?
Lauded for saving the global banking system by economists, honoured as world statesman of the year and yet still nothing goes right.
26 percent down in the latest polls. Another minister quitting, denials of a rift with the White House, even questions about the PM's health. Do you have any sympathy for the Prime Minister?
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Podcast
5LNPI: Do you have sympathy for Gary McKinnon?
10:21 Fri, 27 Nov 09
Do you have sympathy for Gary McKinnon? He's the British computer hacker who could be sent to the US to face trial. He's admitted to hacking into American military computers, and has since been diagnosed with a form of autism.
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Comments
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I don't feel sorry for Gordon. He was held by many in Labour circles as some kind of economic messiah when he was Chancellor when really he was squandering the nations finances when he should have been saving for a rainy day. He helped create hundreds of thousands of non-jobs in the public sector. He deviously kept PFI and public sector pension deficits off the Governments books so he could borrow more and claim he was still within his own economic cycle limits. He was a poor Chancellor but as usual in British politics it is only after the event that we can see the damage he caused.
Since he has been PM he has been a disaster. He appointed Peter Mandleson of all people into the cabinet. This conniving schemester is universally hated by the British public yet he is in a position of power thanks to Gordon. He is a ditherer, unable to make a firm decision as demonstrated in the election fiasco last year. He is unable to give a straight answer to a straight question. Recently he waqs shouting from the rooktops about Labour investment over Tory cuts yet 6 weeks later he admits Labour needs to cut too. An untrustworthy individual who has done much to damage this country. His legacy will live for many years as our children and grandchildren pay off his debts.
My only hope is that he stays party leader until the election next year so I can witness the Labour Government wiped from the electoral map.
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I was puzzled. Yesterday at least two acquaintances sort of cut me dead after I hailed them. They were busy with either their own thoughts or in one case - sorting out deliverys of important goods.
I was a bit hurt but I understood and moved on. I will say hello next time whislt I bide when to cut them dead! lol
Why does appearance need to be so important? One world leader meeting another world leader?
Isn't it enough to be a world leader? I would be chuffed and last 10 minutes because I would slight those I didn't take to - forgetting I was talking on behalf of the Rest of The World to those particular world leaders. Oops! One former diplomat suggested yesterday on the radio - when he was in that arena - there was allegedly a sort of "truffle hunt" by certain media representatives to find "snubs" and then blow them up perhaps out of sensible proportion.
I was listening to Today, today and the line "I almost forgot where I parked the soap" from one listeners text was read out. I will not embarrass listener by mentioning gender but I spent a worthwhile 5 minutes remember that old TV series on crime busting. No Hiding Place! Raymond Francis' TV detective I have no doubt blushed - if he had insight to my thoughts.
Subject: I almost forgot where I parked the soap
Anagram: Dai Moor - streetwise - Flake photograph
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"do you feel sorry for Gordon Brown?"
No - absolutely not. The quicker we're shot of this disaster, the better.
"I am taking all the right decisions," he told Mayo the other day. Deluded fool!
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Do I feel sorry for Gordon Brown no, he knew what the job entailed when he took it. He wanted it, is he being treated fairly, probably not. We live in a society that does not want government interference, but holds the government responsible for everything. We want the best services in the NHS, education etc but we do not want to pay for it. We get the government we deserve.
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This is a strange choice of phone in today for the BBC. Aren't you supposed to not favour one party over the other despite this little spat over the Tories asking for more Conservatives to be recruited as it is so one sided (according to them) at the BBC, where Labour and its policies are so favoured. The fact is to have this Gordon Brown subject just allows the Labour conference to start two days early, after all we will be hearing about all of it all next week, so why not have the phone in afterwards? And why such a personal phone in anyway? Did we have one about Clegg? Will we have one about Cameron?
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Gordon is not the great saviour that he thinks he is. No man is an island. He has ruined this country financially and is well on the way to destroying it culturally. Roll on the election.
In Brown's great desire to be PM he should have remembered, Be careful what you wish for.
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I shouldn't read newspapers on line. I sighed just now and wished......
I am puzzled. Why do we look backwards in history with todays sensitivities in mind all the time? In ten years time we will think we all today are awful. Why didn't we see what us doing meant.....?
OK - warts and all biographers but then to suggest it could have been other than it was like then. Too much in my view.
We have a spate of them. American Presidents, royalty from all over the world and shock horror - Attila the Hun didn't send his children to nursey school.
Which is fine but let us keep some of our dreams and memories no matter how wrongheaded they are.
I plan to keep all my memories intact thank you world of Dire Media.
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Lets not forget that Brown started the slide in value of our pensions by removing pension tax credits in the belief that the rise in stock market values would offset it, whilst of course giving themselves increases in their own pensions! Did you note the body language of Obama?
Brown was doing his useless best to be jovial whilst the President looked the other way?
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Does anyone remember the "Macavity - The Mystery Cat" poem ?
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We need to feel sorry for the country and the Labour party. If this was a commercial organisation then he would have been removed from his position many months (years) ago. Regardless of his capacity to do the job (which seems lacking) no person can keep a position of this type with so little confidence from people within his own orgabisation - let alone those looking in! The desperation he shows to keep hold of his position - at the expense of his own party - is quite shocking.
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I can never forgive Gordon Brown who, as chancellor saw fit to abolish the 10p tax rate also he has presided both as chancellor and prime minister over the accumulation of the greatest debt this country has been saddled with since the last world war and yet has still handed millions / billions to other countries, like China and India! And there's India with the funds to have its own space program.
Gordon Brown wanted power, he wants to pose and look good on the world stage. he is totally out of touch with the British people and is not somebody that inspires trust.
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Don't be too harsh on Gordon Brown. Angela Smith is completely right in saying that the PM has never done anything just to benefit himself and that everything he does is for the country. What you have to realize is that what is good for the country is Gordon Brown, therefore his moral compass is quite happy with U-turns, telling fibbs and double standards. He's more than happy to look you in the eye, lie and then deny it because that is what this country needs.
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How many more Government Sttoges are going to be allowed to dominate listeners contributions????
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Very lacklustre moan-in so far this morning.
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Thought that I'd wandered onto some Tory blog for a moment but the comments by 'steelpulse' threw me - Diazapam anyone????
Of course you should feel sorry for Gordon Brown - he's picking up the Banker's table tab and we're all having to pay for their excesses.
I do feel sorry for the UK too - Cameron in the wings brushing down his tails and tying up his white tie - it'll be party time down Slough and we wont be invited...
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HI
Listening to program now, following point should be made. Recentely said that it was difficult for a politician to get re elected in current economic cris. WELL HE IS WRONG. The german chanceller is ahead in the polls as she faces an election. WHY because she has actively saved jobs in Germany, and intervened to save jobs at Opel, plus Car Scrappage bonus was her idea. Gordon Brown apart from was waffling on Bankers bonuses, has NOT intervened in Vaxhall/ Opel GeneralMotors negociations, just let Germans do it, and had let LDV vans go out of business. Many other examples, fall of pound reflects what world thinks of him.. Also finally Germany is out of recession now, unlike UK. SO that is why MR Brown does not deserve our praise. John of Bournemouth
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Of course I do not feel sorry for Brown.
He did not in anyway single handedly 'save the world'. He and others made a rushed job of saving the UK banking system after inventing the half cocked regulatory system that allowed the crash to happen in the first place. He repeatability encouraged a 'light touch' regulatory system
On top of which he encouraged a botched merger between Lloyds and HBOS which has ruined Lloyds and shareholder value in Lloyds.
A shambles of a performance - and even as we speak bankers and others are back in business with their obscene bonuses.
The whole paradigm that Brown viewed the world by has been shown to be rubbish. His meddling over 12 years has led us to a bigger ruin than need be. Lets be clear - even in periods where Brown was claiming 'growth' - we were running up deficits. A return to growth will not of itself cut our deficit never mind pay back the national debt.
Browns final years as chancellor - when all this was brewing were entirely self serving. He was positioning himself to throw out Blair and become PM so was happy to see debt rise and ignore warning signs if it kept the pot boiling. His play with 10p tax was typically self serving - all so he could create a headline in his last budget.
The man deserves absolutely no sympathy. He was an idiot when rector of Edinburgh University and he has not changed one bit since.
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The reason our economy has been hit harder than many other countries is because we are so heavily dependant on our financial services industry. This was all started and encouraged in the Thatcher years when our manufacturing industry was decimated by her and the Tories. We are finally paying the price for this. Brown is picking up the pieces - yes perhaps he should have reversed the trend but remember it was the Tories who encouraged our dependancy on financial services and the greed/bonus culture. Brown is substance but no style and Cameron is style and no substance he would have done nothing but there again he is a millionaire so doesn't really understand how the majority of British people live. Unfortuantely we are becoming a nation who prefers style over substance (initiated by the media). Foreign leaders appreciate Brown's substance it says a lot about the integrity of the British people these days that we are hanging him out to dry. Why not the Thatcher government for their part - after all this is where it all started.
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Yes, carrie, I'd have a phone in about David Cameron. However awful Brown is [and he IS awful] Cameron is no White Knight and shouldn't be handed the Premiership and a massive majority by default. Hope people demand a full account from this man before the election. Nothing about his performance so far leads me to suppose he's got any of the answers.
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Well put, post no. 1.
Some might call you cynical Carrie (post no. 5) but I think you're spot on (and so is Zelda).
In fact all the comments on here aren't exactly Gordon-supporting - wonder if the Beeb is surprised?
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I think dancingvalerie makes a very valid point. I have been watching with increasing dismay as over the years the media (including the BBC) has singlehandedly turned the nation against Gordon Brown. Even the mass-murdering Blair hasn’t had the same level of unfavourable coverage. Every headline, every seemingly innocuous issue featured in the media has a subtext, always carefully devised to lead the politically-disaffected majority to conclude that Gordon is no good. Meanwhile David Cameron strides on unchallenged on policy. Despite possessing that familiar evasive unctuousness which has never boded well in a politician, the propaganda pumped out by the media day in and day out from when he first became leader of the opposition has invariably been positive.
I can’t help but feel that there is a darker force at work here. Why should it be that the media will only ever support someone who is implicitly committed to looking after corporate interests at the expense of the common folk? The question is, can a democracy really be called a democracy if the voting turkeys are brainwashed by the media to vote for Christmas? The people whose votes will be decisive in electing Cameron in are the very people who will suffer the most under the Tories.
Give me Gordon over Cameron any day. I believe in his integrity over Cameron’s manufactured all-things-to-all-people nice guy image. It is just such a pity that whatever happens, we appear to be forever doomed to elect the same unsuitable leaders, whichever party they happen to be in.
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No Brown deserves no sympathy at all.
In answer to 18 dancingvalerie - you have been listening to too much left wing propaganda. It was not Mrs Thatcher that destroyed our manufacturing base it was the brothers - our very own Trades Union boys.
Remember demarcation disputes in the shipyards - wrong man twanged the chalky string to mark the steel plates for cutting - all out on strike. Result: ships so expensive and late that orders were cancelled and the yards closed. Remember Red Robbo in the car plants, similar actions same result. Remember the steel mills... I could go on but it is too distressing.
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Sorry you are distressed yeomanofdevon but my sympathy is more with the likes of you than with any politician!
How the public perceive their political leaders in 4/5 yearly party electoral systems is in the main determined the state of the capitalist economy - an economic system which Maggie Thatcher, Gordon Brown, the majority of mainstreasm parliamentary politicians and all BBC FINANCIAL AND BUSINESS CORRESPONDENTS all advocate. How healthy the system is, (or manipulated to make it appear it looks healthy) underpins other policies like health, education, welfare etc.
Gordon Brown today, like all his predecessors and foreign counterparts is just taking the blame for the state of the economy because he is the leader. In reality leaders are insignificant.They can only manage according to the diktats of the system and this, in essence, is what parliamentary democracy is about. When capitalism falls into slump or the theories goes wrong the corporate media simply revert to attacking whoever's in charge because its far easier to encourage the lay public to attack personalities as scapegoats rather than addressing the actual circumstances as to why slumps occurred in the first place. To this end whilst US president Obama may seem to be strutting around the globe today with a halo above his head he'll be getting the same flak as Brown once the US economy goes into double-dip recession after a mild recovery, something which all the experts are privately predicting. Consequently by this process Tory governments are elected all the time albeit they may call itself New Labour!
As for the issue that Gordon Brown wasn't personaly elected as PM, this is irrelevent. General elections should be about electing the party which voters perceive as having the soundest set of policies to run the country. It's the party that elects it's leader, that'sif it wants a leader! If the PM has to be personally elected by voters, then what about the Governor of the Bank of England, leading Bishops, Director General of the BBC, Chief medical officer etc etc. These wields a far greater influence over everyone's lives than the Prime Minister!
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Yes it makes me angry when anyone criticises Gordon. I demand the BBC stop printing anything negative and fill the run up to the election with pr-Gordon stuff in order to redress the imbalance in coverage. It wasn't Gordons fault he spent all that money, or sold our gold, how was he to know we'd ever get into trouble again?
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Gordon Brown has proved on almost every measure that he has failed to govern the UK.
How can New Labour fight an election based on what Cameron 'might do' when Brown has proved without dispute that he unable to govern the UK and has put us into recession and given us years of high taxes and reduced services to pay back the debts!
Michael
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"Do you have any sympathy for the Prime Minister?"
His own MPs unanimously elected this PM. His party were excluded from the vote; the general electorate was excluded. It is hard to respect Brown when he has such a narrow mandate as leader of this country.
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I have a lot of sympathy for him. He was given an award last week for getting not only his own country, but the world, out of a possible depression. It's a pity the papers have it in for him.
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