Tuesday, 9 September 2008

Spare us the sob story, Gordon, we don't care

With his one good eye on events the other side of the Atlantic, Gordon Brown has decided to share his personal 'story' with us.

He has convinced himself that if he reminds us about his rugby injury and his dead daughter, we'll forget about his incompetence, deceit, duplicity, dishonesty, downright lying, bullying, cowardice, volcanic temper tantrums, vanity, sulking, unjustified sense of entitlement, betrayal, bungling and boasting.

We'll be so overcome with emotion, empathy, sympathy and admiration that we will overlook the fact that this is the Man Who Stole Your Old Age, who shamefully sold out our sovereignty to unaccountable foreign politicians and judges, flogged off our gold reserves to the lowest bidder, destroyed the Union and taxed us into penury.

Sorry, guv, some of us have memories longer than a dragonfly's.

Which bit of getting kicked in the face when he was a teenager and losing a child equips him to be Prime Minister and erases his atrocious record in government?

Today, he attempted to disguise his contempt for the paying public by venturing out of his bunker and holding a Cabinet meeting in Birmingham. What was that all about?

How does having his Rag, Tag and Bobtail army trample their carbon footprints all over the West Midlands help anyone?

It's supposed to prove that he's 'listening'. Some hope. Gordon may be blind in one eye, but he's deaf in both ears when it comes to public opinion.

In the morning he pitched up at the Jaguar car factory, turned on his unnerving, insincere grin and attempted to bask in the reflected glory of his fellow Scot, Andy Murray  -  a young man who says he has no desire to be seen as 'British' and, just like Gordon, makes no attempt to conceal his contempt for the English majority.
Clearly, Brown has no sense of the ridiculous.

As Prime Minister  -  and previously, as Chancellor  -  he has done his level best to put Jaguar out of business.

He has piled tax upon tax upon tax upon drivers of 'gas guzzlers' like Jags, which stand accused of poisoning bay-bees, punching holes in the ozone layer, slaughtering polar bears and generally being driven by Tories in the south of England.

That's why sales of luxury cars have gone through the sub-basement and Jaguar's sister company, Land Rover, has been forced onto short-time working.

If he had spoken to typical Jaguar production workers  -  as opposed to the usual, carefully selected procession of suits and sycophants  -  he might have heard a few home truths.

Gordon Brown at Jaguar's Castle Bromwich plant

Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling on a visit to Jaguar's Castle Bromwich plant in Birmingham

They'd have told him to slash road tax and stop holding a highwayman's pistol to our heads at the petrol pumps.

They would also ask him why he set out to smash private sector, final-salary pension schemes and make them work until they drop  -  while at the same time raiding their pay packets to provide gold-plated, index-linked, early-retirement pensions for public 'servants' who contribute less than zero to the real economy.

It would have been a waste of breath. Gordon would simply have ignored them.
Instead, we are to be treated to a heap of drivel about his own 'personal life experiences' designed to tug at our heart-strings.

He's been inspired by the extraordinary stories of Barack Obama, John McCain and Sarah Palin, which are being peddled to destruction in the U.S. The trouble is that Gordon hasn't got a 'story' which comes anywhere close to these three.

Obama is the son of a Kenyan goat-herd and Kansas mother, who rose from relative poverty to become the first African-American presidential nominee of a major party.

McCain served his country as a member of the armed forces and picked himself up after enduring unspeakable torture in a Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp.

He has a proud record of political integrity and has never been afraid to vote against his party on principle.

Sarah Palin is a mother of five, from humble beginnings, who has been a mayor, a state governor and is now the first woman to run on the Republican vice-presidential ticket.

Gordon's problem is that he hasn't really got a 'story'  -  aside from being kicked in the head and losing his daughter shortly after she was born. He is entitled to our sympathy, but nothing else.

Sarah Palin
Barack Obama

A PM with no 'story': Gordon Brown has never had to juggle career and family, like Sarah Palin, or struggle, like Barack Obama

He's never had to struggle, like Obama, or endure, like McCain. He hasn't had to juggle career and family, like Palin.

No one could accuse Gordon of having any political integrity, or being a maverick. Or standing up for ordinary people. He's never even had a proper job.

He seems to have been born believing it was his destiny to become Prime Minister. He spent ten years in a petulant sulk because Tony Blair beat him, and then, having driven Blair out, had no idea what to do when he got there.

Unlike his American role models, Gordon didn't go out on the stump, glad-handing voters in village halls, travelling thousands of miles talking to Town Hall meetings or taking part in televised debates against his opponents.

He didn't have to go through a gruelling primary season to become PM. His 'campaign' involved a bit of boasting to a few audiences chosen from Labour Party central casting.

Gordon didn't even face an election. He went out of his way to avoid one and then signed away Britain's political birthright while reneging on a promise to hold a referendum.

When he has been forced to come face to face with the electorate  -  in Crewe, in Glasgow East  -  he's been humiliated.

For someone who considers himself the heir to Keir Hardie, he has reduced the Labour Party to a hated rabble, less popular than when they were run by Worzel Gummidge, and led Britain into what his own Chancellor describes as the worst recession since the Norman Invasion.

He asks not what he can do for his country, but what his country can do for him.

That  is Gordon Brown's story.

So spare us the violins, old son. We're not interested.

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Pregnant police

Welcome to a special edition of Mind How You Go meets You Couldn't Make It Up.

At this rate, they'll be taking their children out on the beat in pushchairs once they've given birth.

How long before Mothercare starts stocking stab vests?

In the spirit of diversity, Cumbria Constabulary has commissioned a range of maternity wear for pregnant policewomen.

According to a report in the local rag, the new outfits are 'stylish, practical and comfortable  -  ideal for mothers-to-be who are fighting crime with the modern police force'.

The new uniform comes in response to complaints from expectant mums that they were being forced to wear unflattering XL-sized trousers and blouses.

Call me old-fashioned, but why are pregnant women 'fighting crime' on the streets of Cumbria?

I'm all for equal opportunities, but what use is an eight-months-gone WPC when it comes to chasing shoplifters or tackling football hooligans?

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In Herefordshire, hurricanes hardly happen - thank heavens

In the  event, Hurricane Gustav didn't hit New Orleans with the same devastating force as Katrina three years ago.

But if it had, this time they would have been ready  -  just as they will be if Hurricane Ike, currently bubbling around in the Gulf, makes landfall in Louisiana.

Would that we could say the same in Britain. Last year, heavy rain caused widespread flooding and caught the authorities hopelessly unprepared.

More from Richard Littlejohn...

 

As yesterday's pictures of Tewkesbury illustrated so graphically, this year it was déjà vu all over again.

The jobs pages of The Guardian are packed with adverts for 'climate change' co-ordinators.

But when the heavens open, it's the same old story  -  just as it is when it snows in the winter.

There are no evacuation plans, no flood defences, simply the usual headless-chicken incompetence.

Anything above light drizzle has our so-called 'emergency' response teams frozen in the headlights.

While we're worrying ourselves sick about 'global warming'  -  adding new tiers of bureaucracy and dreaming up ever more ways to fine, bully and inconvenience people  -  we still haven't got a clue what to do about the weather.

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Who does this stupid boy think he is?

Having scrapped weekly rubbish collections and urged us all to install slop buckets to save the planet when he was Environment Secretary, David 'Don't Tell Him' Miliband has been outed for tearing up the ozone layer in the Royal Flight.

He's used the official private jet more than Her Maj  -  at least 16 times in the past year, often to short-haul destinations well served by commercial airlines.

Maybe he thinks he's Prime Minister already, or he's making the most of it before he's consigned to a lifetime in Opposition.

Most of us wouldn't mind him using the Royal Flight  -  provided it was a one-way ticket to oblivion.

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After health minister Ivan Lewis spoke out against Gordon Brown recently, he was turned over for sending suggestive emails to a young female civil servant.

A headline in yesterday's Mail wondered if he was a victim of Number 10's dirty tricks department.

I think we can take that as a 'yes'.

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From CMD to NWA

A few weeks ago, I imagined a conversation between Call Me Dave and Barack Obama in which CMD spoke in rapper chic, homeboy black-slang.

To be honest, it was a pretty laboured attempt to illustrate the chameleon nature of the Tory leader.

Then, on Sunday, when asked about Gordon Brown's predicament, Dave replied: 'They should either sack the guy, or back the guy.'

It was straight out of the Eminem song book. Old Etonians just don't talk like that.
I hope I haven't been putting ideas in his head.


Posted by Britannia Radio at 11:08