He once described Gazza’s wonder goal against the Scots at Wembley as one of his favourite footballing memories.
But Gordon Brown, who no longer courts the English vote, has now spoken of his heartbreak at watching Gary McAllister’s botched penalty for Scotland in that famous Euro ’96 match.
In a plea to Scots to vote against independence in September’s referendum, the former Prime Minister said he ‘yields to no-one’ in his love of Scotland.
He spoke fondly of his trips with the Tartan Army to Wembley, Spain, Italy and France and recalled Jim Baxter’s skills against then-world champions England in an historic 3-2 victory for the Scots in 1967.
Mr Brown also said he was as ‘humiliated’ as any Scot with the rugby team’s massacre at the hands of the Welsh in last weekend’s Six Nations match.
'The only comfort is that we were beaten by Wales, and not England,' he said.
His comments, made at an event in Perth where Labour is holding its annual Scottish conference, are a far cry from previous attempts to woo English sports fans when he was Chancellor and Prime Minister.
In the run-up to the 2006 World Cup, Mr Brown said: 'Two-thirds of all Scots want England to win, and I’m certainly one of them.
'[I have been to] lots of England matches, but the most memorable were the Euro 96 game against Scotland, with Gazza's great goal, and the 0-0 game in Rome the following year when England held on to qualify for France 98.'
...
Mr Brown said: 'I yield to no one in my patriotic pride in being a Scot. I was there when Gary McAllister missed the penalty.'
'Few who remember Gordon Brown as Chancellor and Prime Minister will have seen him as he saw himself.
According to his evidence to the Leveson Inquiry, he was calm and seldom got angry.
He had little interest in what the newspapers said about him. He never courted Rupert Murdoch and other proprietors.
And he never authorised his staff to brief and scheme against Tony Blair or anyone else.
The Brown version was given unchallenged by the inquiry QC - even though the most frequent epithet used to describe it by veteran journalists was "jaw dropping".
The question is what Leveson will do with all this testimony. For example, either Mr Brown or Rupert Murdoch must have lied under oath about the declare war phone call.'
'But you would also need the virginal innocence of a Carmelite nun to think – contrary to the impression of his former colleagues – that he never asked, nor knew about, the toxic-waste tactics of his feral spin doctors. As they say in Fifeshire bell-ringing circles, ‘pull the other one, Jimmy’.But that's The Mail, I hear the Brownites cry. Although I remember The Mail being far too tolerant of Gordon Brown's oddities and misdemeanours whilst he was Chancellor of the Exchequer and then Prime Minister.
...
Mr Brown swore on the Bible that he would tell the truth.
...
The polygraph industry will study, perhaps with admiration, Mr Brown’s claims not to have known about a plot to unseat Tony Blair. He said he never allowed vested interests to be favoured over the national interest. He insisted, glowering, that he never had the much-discussed telephone call when he reportedly declared war on the Murdochs. At mentions of the Tories, his lip curled like one of Ali Baba’s slippers and his eye acquired an Arctic frost. At the end, as he left, he made awkward smalltalk with members of the public.
One could dispute much that he said yesterday but afterwards my chief feeling was was one of sorrow – for this once powerful man’s plain unhappiness, whatever its cause. A certain amazement, too. Is it really only two years since those gnawed digits were within thumping distance of our nuclear button?'
'"Jaws hit the floor... there was disbelief" in the political press, he said, when Mr Brown denied he had authorised his aides to brief against Tony Blair.' Nick Robinson then directly calls Gordon Brown out for lying on air at the 2007 Labour Party Conference.
' #LevesonInquiry overheard at RCJ veteran hack: either the police or men in white coats should be waiting for GB when he finishes.—What is interesting is that the BBC's political editor has called Gordon Brown a liar for what he said on air in 2007 and more than gently hinted that Gordon Brown lied under oath at the Leveson Inquiry, yet the BBC are not pushing that angle or even publicising it; I wonder why not?
adamboulton (@adamboultonSKY) June 11, 2012
Were his aides involved in trying to force Blair out. 'I would hope not'. Did he say they could 'No.' Does he know he is on oath?—
Tim Shipman (Mail) (@ShippersUnbound) June 11, 2012
Gordon Brown's comments on the activities of his press aides are prompting gasps of incredulity in the parliamentary lobby.—
tom bradby (@tombradby) June 11, 2012
Wow. He 'didn't know' about the September '06 plot. Wow. My ghast is well and truly flabbered #leveson—
Benedict Brogan (@benedictbrogan) June 11, 2012
No one on the Lobby corridor is even laughing at this display of disingenuous nonsense. The only sound is jaws hitting the floor—
Tim Shipman (Mail) (@ShippersUnbound) June 11, 2012
"We cannot learn the lessons about the media unless there is some honesty involved". Well quite. #leveson—
James Kirkup (@jameskirkup) June 11, 2012
What will James Gordon Brown's father think? Ex PM swore on bible to tell truth #leveson—
Nicholas Watt (@nicholaswatt) June 11, 2012
One is forced to conclude GB has a problem facing reality.—
tom bradby (@tombradby) June 11, 2012'
'I TRULY AM @NicholaJW: "@SarahBrownUK should be incredibly proud of her husband at #levenson He has acted with integrity, honesty & dignity"—'integrity, honesty & dignity' - Hmmmm
Sarah Brown (@SarahBrownUK) June 11, 2012'
'While he’s now a stranger to the Commons, former PM Gordon Brown, with wife Sarah in tow, was a guest at the wedding of former Doctor Who star David Tennant to actress Georgia Moffett.
‘Gordon took to the dance floor, eager to strut his stuff to Abba’s Dancing Queen, and he’s a better mover than you might think,’ reports my source improbably.
It hardly bears thinking about.'
"It would be wrong to claim that there was a plot to get rid of Tony Blair; there was no plot. A plot is secret. This was an open campaign, and as far as the Brownite cabal were concerned, you were with them or against them. It was a fairly brutal regime, and many of us fell foul of it."I'm glad he's made that clear. I can't see that quotation being reported on the BBC though, I wonder why...
'The third reaction on reading Alistair Darling's memoir, after enjoying the quality of the writing and the nicely understated humour, is to wonder again how Gordon Brown was ever allowed to be Prime Minister.The Labour party was full of cowards who feared Gordon Brown and his attack dogs more than they feared what he could do to the Labour party and the Country. Well cowards; thanks a lot!
Of course, we knew the main points of the story at the time. It was no secret that Brown resented Tony Blair's seizure of the Labour leadership in 1994, or that Brown was impatient to succeed him from 2004, or that towards the end there were policy differences between them. It became known, especially during Brown's three years as Prime Minister, that he could be rude, difficult and bad-tempered.
Related articles
With each successive diary and memoir, though, our knowledge of Brown's unreasonableness advanced another notch. Each advance was surprising, but small, and produced diminishing returns of outrage, so it was easy to lose sight of how far we had come. Now we have to look back and conclude that his behaviour should have ruled him out of high office.
...
The third volume of Campbell's "complete" Diaries, published in July, recounted one appalling example of Brown's conduct after another – and still only took us to 2001, four years into Blair's 10-year stint at the top. Because there were so many,and because we had already got the basic idea – Brown was a monster – much of it went unreported. Some of the accounts of Brown being monosyllabic or childishly unhelpful when asked direct questions in meetings are pure John Cleese: so embarrassing they are not funny. Campbell tells of a discussion about Europe in 2000, when Peter Mandelson said that "we had to be more positive" and "Gordon literally turned away to look at the wall".
...
Then there are the questions for others in the Labour Party: How did Brown succeed unopposed to the leadership? And why did the party not change leader before the 2010 election? We do not need Darling's book to tell us that the hopes many in the party had that Brown would operate differently once he was in the top job were quickly dashed – although this weekend's revelations add brushstroke detail and depth to the picture.
John McTernan, who had been Blair's political adviser and who worked at the Scotland Office until last year, tells how Brown replicated his own broken relationship with Blair in his dealings with his own Chancellor. Brown wanted the 2010 election to be about "cuts versus investment". In one meeting of advisers from Nos 10 and 11, McTernan asked: "Surely the real choice is between our cuts and theirs?" He wrote in The Scotsman last week: "This was dismissed, but later No 10 issued an edict to Darling's staff. While they hadn't supported my line, they had rolled their eyes while No 10 staffers were talking."
Darling, too, managed to replicate one important feature of the dysfunctional relationship with No 10 of his predecessor, which was that he made it hard for the Prime Minister to sack him. Thus he was able to see off Brown's feeble attempt to appoint Ed Balls as chancellor, which has already been recounted by Peter Mandelson in his memoir – Brown asked Mandelson to find out how Darling would react to the possibility.
...
The portrait of Gordon Brown that emerges from the memoirs and diaries is so bad that it can't all be his fault. Blair, Campbell, Mandelson and Darling stopped short of doing something to stop Brown when they had the chance. David Miliband and Alan Johnson, who never said a bad word about Brown but who could have sought the top job, chose not to do so. In my view, either or both should have done.
No doubt Alistair Darling thinks he could have done better as Labour leader at the last election, and I would agree with that too. But none of them did what had to be done, so it is not much use arguing now over who was right and who was wrong.'
'Media Matters, funded by left-wing gazillionaire George Soros , hates Fox News . (And all things conservative, but they love to hate Fox News especially. If your side was pumping out partisan gas disguised as news at places like the broadcast networks, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post -- to name a few -- unchallenged, for decades and decades...well, you'd hate Fox News and the Fair and Balanced crew too.) But it’s not possible for rabid lefties to hate Fox News without really hating Rupert Murdoch and the News Corporation. Murdoch, of course, is the media entrepreneur who will be forever regarded in America as the man who made it possible to break the liberal media monopoly.'
'Rupert Murdoch attacks Gordon Brown in first interview since NoW closed
Speaking to Wall St Journal, media tycoon defends News Corp's handling of scandal and says MPs' comments are 'total lies'
...
In his first interview about the crisis that has engulfed his media empire, Murdoch said some MPs' comments on the scandal were "total lies" and singled out Brown for criticism over the former prime minister's accusation that News International was guilty of "law-breaking on an industrial scale".
The media baron said Brown "got it entirely wrong" when he alleged that Murdoch's British papers had used "known criminals" to get access to his personal information when Labour was in power.
"The Browns were always friends of ours" until the Sun withdrew its support for Labour before the last general election, he told the Wall Street Journal, his flagship US paper.
On Twitter, Murdoch's biographer Michael Wolff said he "seemed genuinely distressed about Gordon Brown not liking him anymore."'
'Spare us Gordon Brown. You sacrificed your morals to Rupert Murdoch long agoShe asks some really pertinent questions, ones that the BBC are completely and deliberately ignoring as they ceaselessly attack News International and promote their beloved Labour party:
For Gordon Brown to complain about the invasion of 'private grief' is like Faustus moaning that someone had forged his signature with the Devil.'
'Here’s one you might like to try at home. If a person betrays a distressing secret concerning your child, possibly obtained via illegal means, and reduces you and your spouse to tears, how would you behave towards that person in the future? Would you:
a) Sever all connections with them and contact your lawyers or the police?
b) Pay a visit to them taking an electric hedge-strimmer?
c) Invite them to a sleepover party and attend their wedding?
Incredibly, Gordon and Sarah Brown went for option c. The former prime minister told a BBC interviewer that he cried in 2006 when Rebekah Brooks, then editor of the Sun, rang the Browns to say that her paper knew their son Fraser had cystic fibrosis and was planning to run a front-page exclusive. You can imagine the way Brooks’s call combined that wheedling, insidious tabloid blend of sympathy and threat. It was heartless behaviour at a time when the Browns were still coming to terms with the fact that their new baby faced grave health problems.
Truly shocking, but then I think back to the jolt I felt when I heard that, four years earlier, the Browns had invited several tabloid editors to the funeral of their daughter, who tragically died at 10 days old.
What on earth can they have been thinking? One of the invited journalists told me how incredulous he was that Gordon Brown felt it was appropriate to ask high-profile movers and shakers to such an agonisingly personal event.
For Brown to complain about the invasion of “private grief” was like Faust moaning that someone had forged his signature on the pact with the Devil. Brown told the BBC, “There was nothing you could do, you’re in public life.”
Actually, there were plenty of things that Brown, as a senior member of the New Labour government, could and should have done. He could have told Brooks that it was a private medical matter under Press Complaints Commission rules and she would not have been able to print a word. Or he could have gone completely crazy and put moral principle before political advantage – a quality he extols in his book Courage. But the fact is Gordon wanted to help Rebekah Brooks out. However upset he and Sarah were, the thought of upsetting the Murdoch empire was worse.
Brown’s attack in the Commons yesterday on News International’s “lawbreaking on an industrial scale” would have been magnificent had he made it when it might have personally cost him something.
Spare us the righteous indignation of politicians who suck up to hacks when it suits them and then play the avenging angel as soon as the moral weather changes. Let me put it another way. Sarah and Gordon Brown were so devastated by Brooks’s exposure of their baby’s illness that they invited her to a girly sleepover at Chequers. The other guests included Wendy Deng, the present Mrs Murdoch, and Rupert’s daughter, Elizabeth. These people weren’t just getting into bed together; they were throwing a pyjama party, for heaven’s sake. '
'What a performance! Gordon Brown raised himself up to his full height in the House of Commons yesterday and delivered a thunderous sermon about the sinful behaviour of Rupert Murdoch and the “rats” who work at his British newspapers. These lowlifes had “descended from the gutter to the sewer”, we were told. They intruded on the “private sorrows” of “innocent men, women and children” – his own family, no less – and treated their “innermost feelings” as the “public property of News International”. Unlike his predecessor and his successor, who both allowed themselves to be seduced by this modern-day Mephistopheles, he had been desperate to order a judicial inquiry into the “criminal” behaviour of Murdoch’s employees, but had been cruelly thwarted by Sir Gus O’Donnell, the slippery head of the civil service. Had he been re-elected – which he surely would have been if the minds of the electorate hadn’t been poisoned by this Australian schlockmeister – he would have seen to it that the British Isles were cleansed of every trace of Murdoch’s vile presence.
It was marvellous stuff, a fitting climax to the high drama of the past week. But it does raise one or two awkward questions.
1. As Jacob Rees-Mogg asked when Brown allowed him to get a word in edgewise, if he found the methods of the gutter press so abominable why did he employ both Charlie Whelan and Damian McBride who routinely spread lies and misinformation about the ex-Prime Minister’s political opponents in Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers?
2. As Nadhim Zahawi pointed out, if Brown was so morally disgusted by the behaviour of Rupert Murdoch and his minions, why did he allow his wife, Sarah, to invite Rebekah Brooks, along with Murdoch’s wife Wendi and his daughter Elisabeth, to a “slumber party” at Chequers in 2008? And why did he and Sarah attend the wedding of Rebekah and Charlie Brooks in 2009?
3. If Brown and his wife were “in tears” and “incredibly upset” when the Sun called them in 2006 to ask them about their son’s cystic fibrosis, why didn’t they apply for an injunction to stop the Sun running the story? Why did they, instead, try to ensure the story got the widest possible coverage? According to yesterday’s edition of the paper:
The Sun ran the story after speaking to Mr Brown and wife Sarah. She gave us their consent to run it.
We agreed not to publish until they were ready to go public.
They also asked that the story be allowed to run in other newspapers. We agreed. In the following months the Browns showed no sign of any discontent with The Sun.
They attended a number of functions with The Sun’s then editor Rebekah Brooks and the paper’s owner Rupert Murdoch.
Not only that, but Brown gave his first ever interview as Britain’s Prime Minister to one George Pascoe-Watson of the Sun, the very same journalist who wrote about his son’s illness nine months earlier.
4. If, as Brown claims, the Cabinet Secretary obstructed his efforts to order a judicial inquiry into the dastardly goings-on at News International, why did Sir Gus O’Donnell issue a denial immediately after the speech claiming that the decision not to launch an inquiry was Brown’s and Brown’s alone? Sir Gus is now seeking permission to publish the confidential advice to rebut the allegation.
5. Could it be that Brown’s unhappiness with Murdoch doesn’t date from 2006, when the Sun broke the story of his son’s illness, but from the Labour Party Conference in 2009, when, on the eve of Brown’s keynote speech, Murdoch’s British papers decided to withdraw their support from the Prime Minister and throw it behind David Cameron instead? On Monday, Andrew Neil wrote the following Tweet: “Labour Conf ’09. Brown calls Murdoch to stop Sun deserting to Tories. Fails. “I will destroy you,” says Brown. Slams down phone.”
I hope that Gordon Brown, or anyone who thinks he delivered a “powerful speech” yesterday and believes his “moral outrage” is “justified” (see today’s leader in the Guardian), can answer these questions. Because on the face of it this looks like a classic case of Presbyterian hypocrisy. A son of the manse indeed.'
'Andrew Boff (Tory AM): I think it’s very important to ensure that the mayoralty cannot be compromised by undue influence. Bearing in mind when [the hacking] took place [during Ken's term of office], can I ask the mayor to look into the meetings the previous Mayor had with News International?Somehow I doubt that the BBC wil be interested in examining Ken Livingstone's previous links to News International. The BBC have adopted a 'year zero' approach to this as with many other stories.'
Boris (grinning broadly): Is this the guy who’s been popping up attacking me for having meetings with journalists?
Boff (innocently): Oh, I wasn’t aware – did he comment?… Could you also, Mr Mayor, look into any contracts that may have been entered into with the Murdoch dynasty?
Boris (mock surprise): Contracts? Involving taxpayers’ money?
Boff: Yes, contracts with the Murdoch dynasty, with Freud Communications [owned by Murdoch’s son-in-law].
Boris (mock incredulity): You’re joking!… I think it would be unbelievable and monstrously hyprocritical, would it not, if the previous Mayor, having broken bread with the hirelings and the leaders of Rupert Murdoch’s group, were then to attack any other person for doing so…wouldn’t it be an unbelievably opportunistic thing to do?
Boff: I think, I’m not sure, that the contract includes a jolly to China that the previous Mayor took.
Boris: Was GLA taxpayers’ money being paid to the Murdoch dynasty?
Boff: I think it was, Mr Mayor.
Boris: That’s unbelievable. What, you mean the thing I terminated as soon as I got in? I think you’ve opened a very fruitful avenue of enquiry! (Laughter)
Labour’s Len Duvall pointed out that what he called “Fraud Communications” was not part of News International. But then in came Dick Tracey on Ken’s relationship with NI itself.
Tracey: Talking about boot-licking News International, do you know there have been 26 bylined articles in NI newspapers since the hacking scandal broke in July 2009? The byline, Mr Mayor, is Ken Livingstone.
Boris (putting on serious expression): You’re joking. I sincerely hope no payment was received! It would be unbelievable, would it not, if cash actually went from agencies of the Murdoch empire into [Ken’s] pockets. Do you think that can have happened?'
'Guardian reader's remedy on press regulation, p6- don't tuck away apologies on p58. Guardian apology to the Sun- p36.'It's worse than that though, look at The Guardian website front page, can you see a mention of the apology at all?
'What a performance! Gordon Brown raised himself up to his full height in the House of Commons yesterday and delivered a thunderous sermon about the sinful behaviour of Rupert Murdoch and the “rats” who work at his British newspapers. These lowlifes had “descended from the gutter to the sewer”, we were told. They intruded on the “private sorrows” of “innocent men, women and children” – his own family, no less – and treated their “innermost feelings” as the “public property of News International”...
It was marvellous stuff, a fitting climax to the high drama of the past week. But it does raise one or two awkward questions.
1. As Jacob Rees-Mogg asked when Brown allowed him to get a word in edgewise, if he found the methods of the gutter press so abominable why did he employ both Charlie Whelan and Damian McBride who routinely spread lies and misinformation about the ex-Prime Minister’s political opponents in Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers? Doesn’t McBride’s attempt to smear David and Samantha Cameron in the wake of their son Ivan’s death constitute an intrusion into their “private sorrow”?
2. As Nadhim Zahawi pointed out, if Brown was so morally disgusted by the behaviour of Rupert Murdoch and his minions, why did he allow his wife, Sarah, to invite Rebekah Brooks, along with Murdoch’s wife Wendi and his daughter Elisabeth, to a “slumber party” at Chequers in 2008? And why did he and Sarah attend the wedding of Rebekah and Charlie Brooks in 2009?
3. If Brown and his wife were “in tears” and “incredibly upset” when the Sun called them in 2006 to ask them about their son’s cystic fibrosis, why didn’t they apply for an injunction to stop the Sun running the story? Why did they, instead, try to ensure the story got the widest possible coverage? According to yesterday’s edition of the paper:
The Sun ran the story after speaking to Mr Brown and wife Sarah. She gave us their consent to run it.Not only that, but Brown gave his first ever interview as Britain’s Prime Minister to one George Pascoe-Watson of the Sun, the very same journalist who wrote about his son’s illness nine months earlier.
We agreed not to publish until they were ready to go public.
They also asked that the story be allowed to run in other newspapers. We agreed. In the following months the Browns showed no sign of any discontent with The Sun.
They attended a number of functions with The Sun’s then editor Rebekah Brooks and the paper’s owner Rupert Murdoch.
4. If, as Brown claims, the Cabinet Secretary obstructed his efforts to order a judicial inquiry into the dastardly goings-on at News International, why did Sir Gus O’Donnell issue a denial immediately after the speech claiming that the decision not to launch an inquiry was Brown’s and Brown’s alone? Sir Gus is now seeking permission to publish the confidential advice to rebut the allegation.
5. Could it be that Brown’s unhappiness with Murdoch doesn’t date from 2006, when the Sun broke the story of his son’s illness, but from the Labour Party Conference in 2009, when, on the eve of Brown’s keynote speech, Murdoch’s British papers decided to withdraw their support from the Prime Minister and throw it behind David Cameron instead? On Monday, Andrew Neil wrote the following Tweet: “Labour Conf ’09. Brown calls Murdoch to stop Sun deserting to Tories. Fails. “I will destroy you,” says Brown. Slams down phone.”
I hope that Gordon Brown, or anyone who thinks he delivered a “powerful speech” yesterday and believes his “moral outrage” is “justified” (see today’s leader in the Guardian), can answer these questions. Because on the face of it this looks like a classic case of Presbyterian hypocrisy. A son of the manse indeed.'Five powerful questions that Gordon Brown needs to answer honestly; do you see the flaw in that point?
'The Royal Air Force's most advanced warplanes have been unable to drop bombs on Libyan targets because defence spending cuts mean that pilots are not fully trained, The Telegraph can disclose.Thank you Gordon Brown for so denuding our armed forces of funding that we don't have any pilots considered safely trained to drop bombs. If the first duty of a government is to defend the country then you failed. If you ever came to the House of Commons maybe there would be a chance of you being held to account for this failure. If the media in this country was not so supine maybe they would ask you to answer for your failures not that you would answer the questions.
The Ministry of Defence announced last week that RAF Typhoons would drop bombs on Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's tanks and other ground targets.
But so far this has not happened, because the planes' pilots are not considered to be properly trained in ground attacks.
In a further embarrassment, laser targeting pods for the Typhoons, which cost £160 million, have been left in packing crates because the RAF has not been able to pay for its pilots to train to use them.
Nato leaders have said that more international military power is needed in Libya, as the rebels struggle to make progress against Gaddafi forces.
Four of the 10 Typhoons based at Gioia del Colle in southern Italy were to be sent on bombing missions until the RAF realised that pilots were not qualified to drop weapons.
...
A National Audit Office report this year said that only eight of their pilots were trained in ground attack operations.
It has since emerged that pilots were "out of date" on training, having completed their ground attack courses three years ago. RAF insiders said the MoD failed to fund annual refresher courses.
A senior RAF officer said: "The guys are not considered safe to drop live bombs on live targets. '
'The RAF Typhoon multirole jet has for the first time deployed its weapons on operations - destroying two of Colonel Gaddafi's tanks.
...
Flying a joint mission with Tornado GR4 aircraft over Libya on Tuesday evening, a Typhoon dropped two Paveway II bombs.
...
Responding to reports that there were an insufficient number of Typhoon pilots trained in air to ground attack, AVM Osborn said that although Typhoon was due to be fully multirole capable by 2015 the UK is "deploying early capability to meet the needs" of the Nato mission.
"We would not deploy capability if we couldn't support it."'
"We set up the FSA believing the problem would come from the failure of an individual institution. That was the big mistake. We didn’t understand just how entangled things were... I have to accept my responsibility"Those are the words of Gordon Brown at this weekend's Bretton Woods conference. I wonder how the BBC will report this admission...
'"We know in retrospect what we missed. We set up the Financial Services Authority (FSA) believing that the problem would come from the failure of an individual institution," he said.Sorry Gordon, had you not boasted of how you had 'abolished boom and bust' I might have been prepared to partially forgive you but you were vainglorious and were exposed for what you are, so I hope your reputation is trashed and that you are as hated by the rest of the country as you are by this blogger.
"So we created a monitoring system which was looking at individual institutions. That was the big mistake.
"We didn't understand how risk was spread across the system, we didn't understand the entanglements of different institutions with the other and we didn't understand even though we talked about it just how global things were, including a shadow banking system as well as a banking system.
"That was our mistake, but I'm afraid it was a mistake made by just about everybody who was in the regulatory business."'
'There is something about Gordon that just makes children smile, and something about children that makes Gordon beam.
I have read all the comments about how he smiles, whether it looks real, whether it is his best look — many comments, barbed and cruel. What I know is: put him with a bunch of children, and you just get a giant grin from him — and them.
So says Sarah Brown in The Mail. 'I often wonder if children have that extra sense, not yet lost, instinctively to recognise a good person' or maybe they are just laughing at the badly dressed, clumsy, obvious freak that is trying to appear normal in front of them.
I often wonder if children have that extra sense, not yet lost, instinctively to recognise a good person.'
"...no inspection without justification, no form filling without justification, and no information requirements without justification, not just a light touch but a limited touch."
'Lord Turner told MPs: “All the pressure on the FSA was not to say why aren’t you looking at these business models, but why are you being so heavy and intrusive, can’t you make your regulation a bit more light touch?Do remind who took regulation away from the Bank of England and split its responsibilities in a tripartite system that spectacularly failed to do the job adequately? That would be Gordon Brown and his right hand man Ed Balls.
“We were supervising people like HBOS within a particular philosophy of the way you do regulation, which I think in retrospect was wrong.
“It was not the function of the regulator to cast questions over overall business strategy of the institutions - you may find that surprising.”
He added: “I think (the FSA’s actions were) a competent execution of a style of regulation and a philosophy in regulation which was, in retrospect, mistaken.”
John McFall, the chairman of the committee, said the remarks had raised serious questions about the FSA’s independence.
Mr Brown and Ed Balls, previously his key adviser, had regularly boasted of the benefits of so-called “light touch” regulation. '
"Gordon Brown and Ed Balls" were personally responsible for making decisions that helped to cause the economic crisis in the UK and should be held to account."
'The Northern Rock crisis is threatening to cost every taxpayer up to £1,800, as it emerged Gordon Brown was warned a year ago that "urgent action" was needed to prevent a banking meltdown.In fact the whole extract is crucial in more than one way as it shows first that Ed 'second choice' Balls and Gordon Brown ignored the calls for 'urgent action' on the possible collapse of a retail bank and second that after Gordon Brown and Ed 'second choice' Balls changed the UK banking regulatory structure 'Britain was the only major developed economy not to have the necessary safeguards in place'.
In a further development, the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, revealed that the Prime Minister had been informed that Britain was uniquely vulnerable to a run on a bank.
Mr King told MPs that Ed Balls, one of Mr Brown's closest colleagues, was part of a top-level Whitehall group warned last year that "urgent action" was needed to deal with the potential future collapse of a retail bank.
Mr Brown, the then Chancellor, was copied in to minutes of the meeting in November 2006 but the Government failed to introduce new safeguards before the Northern Rock crisis erupted in the summer.
Britain was the only major developed economy not to have the necessary safeguards in place, according to Mr King.
MPs on the Treasury select committee, which is investigating the crisis, last night demanded the Government release the minutes of the crucial meeting to reveal the full extent of the missed warning.'
'Britain has fallen out of the top 15 most economically free countries in the world, according to a damning report today.Well done Gordon 169th out of 179 for 'fiscal freedom' and 156th for 'government spending', are you going to apologise to the people of Britain any time soon?
The UK has slipped five places to 16th in the Index of Economic Freedom published by The Wall Street Journal and the Institute of Economic Affairs.
Hong Kong was top and Singapore second followed by Australia, New Zealand and Switzerland.
Britain ranked a shocking 169th out of 179 for 'fiscal freedom' - the tax burden - behind nations such as Zimbabwe, Eritrea and the Congo.
It came 156th in 'government spending' as a result of the mammoth debts racked up by Labour.'
