Gordon Brown

p.c. babble, or the only honest man in this is Gaddafi

Bloody Lawyers, Gordon Brown, New Labour, UK politics
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So then Megrahi was freed, went home to Libya and got a heroes welcome, in the process providing us with yet another opportunity to witness how much political news is route, ritualised scripts. Was anybody surprised that the White House condemned the release? That the then director of the FBI as well as the American leader of the Lockerbie investigation were not best pleased? And of course the family and friends of those who died in the bombing are angry and upset, though interestingly there seems to be somewhat of a mid-Atlantic split in their attitudes, with the British survivors being more inclined to be merciful, if only because they’re more sceptical about Megrahi’s guilt. For the Americans this was all a bit of a bombshell of course, having missed much of the buildup towards the release and only hearing about it days or even hours beforehand.

All these responses could’ve been taken as read, none of them was “news” in any real sense of the word, but they still ate up hours of news time. As did the protests coming from Westminster about the way the Libyans treated Megrahi –did Gordon Brown really think either Gadaffi or the Libyan people believe in Megrahi’s guilt? Might as well expect the pilots involved in the 1986 US terror bombing of Tripoli to be made honorary citizens….

More interesting, the even more indignant and outraged squeels following Gadaffi’s thanks to Brown and the queen. Dropped Brown right in it, he did. Everybody knew or suspected that Megrahi’s freedom had been prepared from Westminster as much as Edinburgh, for example by having signed a prisoner exchange treaty with Libya a while back, that all the diplomatic spadework had been done from London,, but nobody mentioned it until Gadaffi. What a world we live in when it’s the “madman dictator” who tells the truth rather than the “democratically elected statesman”.

Because the truth is that Megrahi was just one concession given to Gadaffi for being a good boy and that all attempts to leave all responsibility soley to the Scots are just toytown Machiavellianism. Sure, the SNP is in the doghouse at the moment, but this will inevitably boomerang back to Westminster.

Meanwhile, why is it so hard to understand that Scotland has no control over the Libyan reception of Megrahi, that the Scottish justice system has no obligation to take into account the feelings of the US government on this matter, that the Libyans do not believe in Megrahi’s guilt, or that the feelings of his victims do not have or should have anything to do with granting his appeal for compassion?

Oh Sugar, Sugar.

Gordon Brown, New Labour, UK elections, UK politics
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I thought Sirallun famously abhorred bullshitters but he seems to be pretty good at it himself.

One minute I’m listening to The Apprentice’s Alan Sugar telling us BBC listeners how utterly fantastic and in control Gordon Brown is (but only after Gordo promised to ennoble him in pursuit of temporary glory while The Apprentice is still on air. He didn’t come out and say it before that). Then I turned to the Guardian’s politics liveblog to find this post:

1.09pm: A Tory press officer has just been round with a photocopy of a letter Alan Sugar (as he then was) wrote to the Financial Times in March 1992. This is how it starts:

Sir, I have noted with disgust the comments of a certain Mr Gordon Brown who has accused me of doing well out of the recession after reading the letter published in the Times from 40 top industrialists.

I do not know who Mr Gordon Brown is. Excuse my ignorance, but I don’t. Whoever he is [shadow trade and industry secretary], he has not done his homework properly. The man doesn’t know what he’s talking about. How he has the audacity to say that Amstrad or Alan Sugar has flourished in recession is a complete mystery to me.

Hahaha. Poor old Gordo, he really is a disaster area.

UPDATE

1 Apparently that quote was broadcast on last night’s Newsnight, so I’m well behindhand with it. But I didn’t watch Newsnight, it’s on the same time as Question Time so again maybe I’m not.

2 Shuffling continues apace – the latest is that Hoon’s resigned and Tom Watson, self-described digital MP, has Twittered his goodbye; it reads like something addressed to Kim Jong Il:

However spitefully your character is traduced and your triumphs degraded by Labour’s enemies, they can never erase these towering achievements to your name. To have had the opportunity to serve the public as one of your Ministers has been an honour, for which I thank you.

Pass the sickbag, Mother.

3 And another one gone, another one gone, another one bites the dust…. Margaret Beckett’s going too, to spend more time with her hanging baskets.

4: I was right: next goes Caroline “I am staying in the Government. I am very proud to be in the Labour Government, I am very proud to be part of Gordon Brown’s Government” Flint, who actually spoke in support of Brown this morning. Now going, she’s saying he treated her like so much “Female window dressing’. This from the woman who recently appeared glammed up in a flame coloured frock and killer heels, posing coyly on a chaise longue for one of the Sunday papers.

5 Ha! One of my most loathed Labour MPs, Employment Minister Tony McNulty, is off too. The trickle’s becoming a flood. The brass-necked, greedy dishonesty and sheer hard-faced gall of Employment Minister Tony McNulty, who’s been highly visible in the Guardian’s pages and elsewhere demonising non-existent cheats and scroungers with his hateful ‘no ifs or buts’ anti benefit fraud campaign, beggars belief. Talk about rubbing the faces of the 2 million unemployed in it. What an asswipe. His constituents think so too – someone graffitied “that’s £60,000 you owe me Tony” on his constituency office door.

I Expect Gordon Brown Already Has His Complimentary Copy, Not that It’ll Do Him Any Good

Election Skullduggery, Gordon Brown, New Labour, Totalitarianism, Video
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North Korea’s video instructions to the populace on how to vote:

See, apathetic UK voters, it’s easy. Step up, bow to the nice party officials, and don’t forget to vote overwhelmingly for the Dear Leader. It certainly works for Kim Jong Il, who got 99% of the vote in the last North Korean election: it could work for Gordo too. He could put a copy through every letter box along with the swine flu leaflets.

It’s the only way Labour under Brown will ever get elected again anytime soon, despite their members’ best efforts to subvert the vote.

Labour MPs know this. They see the gravy train rapidly steaming out of the station. That’s why there are so many carefully placed rumours Charles”I’m ashamed to be a Labour MP” Clarke is plotting for the leadership as a Blairite ‘safety’ candidate, just to get rid of Brown.

Prepare for mean, stalking safety elephant on a media rampage and worse; like the once-laughable Squirrel Nutkin Hazel Blears and the lightweight James Purnell being touted as actual contenders for PM.

But the Blairites’ve tried it numerous times before, and like the Dear Leader Brown’s still there, despite being universally loathed by the public and his own party alike.

They’ve all failed to dislodge Brown; despite every failure, every disaster, every mismanagement and however many Nokias and printers he’s attacked in temper, the bugger’s still bloody there. It’s at least a year until the general election. We may yet get the instructional voting videos in the post.

The Sound Of Worms Turning

Blogs, Funny, Gordon Brown, New Labour, UK politics
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worm

How little authority has Gordon Brown left with New Labour’s dwindling rank and file? Poster ACLB at Labour Home certainly feels free enough of the big clunking fist enough to wax lyrical on his potential exit:

“Fifty Ways to leave your leader…”

“The problem is all in No. 10” said Clarke softly,

“The plan can be easy if we make it confidentially,

We need Brown Balls and all that crew gone if we are to be free”,

There must be fifty ways to dump our leader.

_____________

She said “it’s really not my habit to intrigue,

Furthermore, I hope you’ll never put any more stuff on YouTube,

But I’ll repeat myself, at the risk of being smeared,

There must 50 ways do dump our leader”,

Fifty ways to dump our leader.

Read the rest (if you can bear it)

“Attack him with pith, Smith…”? Do not give up the day job, ACLB.