Gordon Browns speach

[OhAmBackAgain]

Was so refreshing to see, I had it on in the background and then was drawn into listening.

Unfortunately Kier Starmer has just had the opposite effect, the same effect every currently Tory, Labour, libdem politician has on me at the moment, which is yeah yeah fuck off.

Ah dear old Gordon the pension fund robber

Haven't heard it yet but he just seems to have a real conviction that Starmer lacks, sadly. I've got a huge amount of respect for him (and I'm sure someone will be along in a minute to tell me that he was responsible for the global economic crash yada yada)

lol compared to the shit show of current politics and politicians what went on under his leadership is miniscule 😂

it's like when you watch old HIGNFY and you only laugh at the pettiness of the gribes then, as you think you have no idea of the storms to come 😆

*speech

that was to Georgeskitchen

What did he do with pensions?

Gordon Brown had good vision/ideas, but with nearly everything he did, the implementation was disastrous, whether it was the pension fund raid, IR35, selling off gold reserves, tax credits, and constantly lengthening the "economic cycle" to try to get a balance rather than deficit. He managed to spectacularly foul up lots of the big changes he made, when it would have been relatively easy to plan and think about them properly and foresee the inevitable consequences.

Briefly explained here

pensionsandsavings.com/pensions-tax-relief-changes-legacy-of-gordon-browns-pension-raid-should-be-a-warning-to-the-new-chancellor/

He was rather dishy in his day

I think that his problem was that he wasn’t media friendly which really shouldn’t be an issue but unfortunately it is with politics

I think he had good ideas and I think his heart and beliefs were in the right place even if he did make an almighty mess of certain policies and implementing them

But unlike Tony Blair who was very media savvy and friendly Gordon Brown didn’t have that appeal to the media

Should have gone to Specsavers 😉

I disagreed with many of his policies, some mentioned earlier. However, he had a clue and reasoning as to why he did them.

Of the current government I struggle to think of three capable ministers, and given Michael Gove is one of the three, shows how low the bar has become.

I also respect the fact that since being PM, his public comments have been few but worth listening to. No sniping from the sidelines as Ted Heath did.

I'm sorry.

But it's not all about the media image. Gordon Brown beggared up the implementation of some of his "big ideas" - that's nothing to do with how they appeared in the media!

I suspect a lot of it was bad advice from the civil service mandarins and advisers, i.e. the "Sir Humphrey" senior civil servants who clearly didn't point out potential problems to him (or maybe he ignored their advice), or maybe they even deliberately sabotaged some of his changes that they didn't agree with.

I think the mandarins do a lot of damage really in the background. We all know that the Ministers don't do the work themselves - they're just "mouth pieces" - the real work is done by the civil servants in each department. I certainly know that in the Treasury dept, the mandarins give the Chancellor a list of "options" when it comes to the Annual Budget and the Chancellor just "ticks" the options he wants to move forward with, rather than a Chancellor coming up with ideas himself. After all, very few Ministers have relevant experience/qualifications in their department, so their reliance on the civil servants must be immense.

Dear old Gordon’s most peddled line was ‘No more boom and bust’….. then what happened? Not helped by his vision of selling off most of our gold reserves either

Never recovered from his encounter with Gillian Duffy.

He was.

This with huge spikes knobs on - I’m still bitter about decades later.

Have you actually met him? I spent 30mins interviewing him. Charismatic, a good man, and rather dishy.

The decision to sell gold reserves was right, but it was handled badly. To much tied up in gold is not good as it yields nothing. The money from the sale was used in short term dollar binds which yield interest, a better diversification of reserves. The loss caused by his sell off was £5 billion, a trivial amount compared to what the Tories have pissed up the wall over the years, not to mention the 10s of billions lost on dodgy PPE contracts to their mates.

He was also responsible for saving the international banking system when the sub prime crisis hit. It was his idea to intervene and he worked hard to convince other countries to intervene.

Liz Truss blew £30 billion in the brief time she was PM.

I always liked GB, but then I've always been more suspicious of the supposedly more charismatic, polished type of politician. Took one look at Tony Blair and thought "smarmy weasel". Couldn't stand him.

@Georgeskitchen guess you feel sorry for the Waspies (Women against state pension equality) too who have been massively shafted by the tories the tune of millions.

@TheSilentPicnic I've met him, before he was PM. I think he's quite charismatic, nice accent and voice, looks maybe not, but yeah, I get what you mean!

Kept us out of the Euro, thank god.