Another Brown job

Del Preston

"For Brown's plan to work, no one must challenge his figures. And I suspect no one will."

Certainly not the BBC, who have done their dutiful bit by carrying our Supreme Leader's directive at length complete with admiring mugshot.

Our Government and our tax-funded broadcaster rely on each other for their continued existence.

It's a dangerous combination.

Polly and Alice's mum

"It is fairly easy to see that he is fibbing...."
Well, doh! Whenever he opens his mouth he is fibbing.

Liz Brown

Smacks of British jobs for British people - of those that were created, most went to immigrants - and the last thing the British people need is more public employees, which is without doubt what these will be

Lance Grundy

On Labour's past form about 80,000 of those 100,000 jobs [if 'created' at all] will be filled by immigrants.

TGF UKIP

He was also at it again with his "We are in a better position because we have lower debt than any other major economy." Then when Marr mentioned 58%in a couple of years, he countered with US at 80%, France already at 58% and Japan and Italy at over 100%.

Going to be interesting to see if Cameron challenges not only Brown's Enron accounting but, more particularly, Marr for letting him get away with it.

Will Dave actually pluck up the courage to mix it and say something like "and andrew you really shouldn't keep letting him get away with porkies like that."

And on the other hand pigs might fly.

Verity

"up to includes the number zero". Ha ha ha ha ha ha! V good!

Enron Gordon. Thank you TGI UKIP. I hope it gets picked up.

JimBob

Brown misspoke. He meant to say:

“we are creating 100,000 non jobs while the Tories would do nothing”

Another cunning way to increase the public sector guaranteed vote for him and his chums while offering zero value for the taxpayer.

Verity

Instead of the Iron Chancellor, for 11 years, Britain had the Enron Chancellor.

Now we've got the South Sea Bubble Prime Minister! His plans to create, out of thin air, 100,000 new jobs are the South Sea Bubble writ large.

Verity

Instead of the Iron Chancellor, for 11 years, Britain had the Enron Chancellor.

Now we've got the South Sea Bubble Prime Minister! His plans to create, out of thin air, 100,000 new jobs are the South Sea Bubble writ large.

Chuck Unsworth

'Create'? Possibly.

But how long will they last, and how many others (the 'old' jobs) will be lost in the meantime?

The only thing Brown has created in a decade is a major economic disaster.

TGF UKIP

Fraser, have just been over to the NOW site to read your column and you're not there. Sunday off or have you parted company? I hope not, you're much more down to my level over there.

J

I think he will achieve this partly because his DWP behemoth is already fiddling job entries through its Local Employment Partnership which essentially lays claims to job entries without doing anything other than getting respective employers to sign up to it.

In our area there is one medium-sized seasonal work employer that regularly takes on up to 200 people a year. This has always been done with the help of the local jobcentre. Last year and this year will be no different but for the Local Employment Partnership which will now suddenly catagorise these jobs as created by the LEP.

This is going on up and down the country with thousands of employers who would have taken people on anyway.

At some point a minister will stand up and acknowledge the huge success of LEP when in fact it achieved nothing, but cost a fortune in administration and bureaucracy.

Tp

PS Brown also tells the Observer he wants to help “everybody who is genuinely trying to pay their mortgage back”
. . .so I also assume ,as a matter of urgency, that he will also instruct the high court to suspend the appeal by the likes of the greedy Nationwide, and repay the millions of people they currently owe illegally taken bank charges from?!!

Bill Quango MP

Hmmm..
I understood that the school refurb contracts went out in November to be completed during the coming half term.
The money has not yet been agreed and I understand is to come from existing school maintenance budgets.
If Mr Bean announces an increase to budgets then the work will definitely go through, instead of 'highly likely' as it is now.
But it will "create" zero jobs. At best tide over small contractors for a few weeks.

Andy Nicholas

Jocky McBroon lying? Really? what next Jaqui Spliffs a fascist?

Fraser Nelson

TGF, thanks for yr concern but i was off for a week! Just got back to London today. And you should buy the NOTW - saves you reading all the follow-ups on Monday.

Verity - that "zero" line isn't mine. I borrowed it from the great Martin Waller, who does the Business diary at The Times. A first class wordsmith. I used to sit next to him when I was a teaboy, and he has this newspaper cutting on his computer saying 'Waller writes as well as he can, and believes every testosterone-sodden word of it".

NotaSheep

The actual quotation that I have seen is that Gordon Brown promised "to create probably 100,000 additional jobs over the next period of time". What period of time? So it's probably 100,00 jobs over an unspecified period of time. Wow! Maybe the media could analyse their glorious leader's words rather than just report the spin in future.

Ian Olive

Brown trots out statistics, numbers and percentages which he probably believes, but have little foundation in reality. He is clearly in denial and the only reason his own party haven't dumped him is because nobody really wants the job.

So the best thing to do is to let him get on with it and in the meantime get as much into the pension fund as possible whilst extracting as much as is humanly possible out of the MP's expenses account.

Well wouldn't you if you were a labour MP in the full knowledge that the game is up and it's just a matter of time to the next election. I bet there will be huge sighs of nulab relief as they graciously hand over their seats folowing the returning officer's short statements...

Darth David

First off I have no problem with most jobs going to 'immigrants'. When we went to America, Canada, Australia, we didn't seem to have the same views of locals first then. Likewise if you want to expel all our Polish workers fine but take back all the elderly English people in Spain. Globalisation happens. But in the case of the Polish, its not forever. Suck it up. Maybe actually enjoy the fact that our kids can go to multicultural schools now.

As for GB creating jobs why can't he? Can't he just spend it on infrastructure? Bringing forward money from future is still creating jobs, either now or later.

Altho again would be great if we had all that gold he sold about now.

Susan Hill

It`s like the Sales. 80% off. With 'up to' in fairy writing.

Verity

Fraser, whoever wrote it, it is a great line and I am going to pinch it.

On Brown, I think they know they've got a madman at the wheel and no one wants to wrestle it away from him, because at least the wreck will be blamed on the driver, and not them.

The Enron Chancellor morphs into the South Sea Bubble Prime Minister.

Watervole

100,000 won't do it - hasn't he heard, we're heading for 3m unemployed, so the great mentalist needs to add a few more noughts to his fantasy to make it more credible.....

Matt

100,000 jobs.

Where? What sectors? What industries?

Insulating houses was mentioned (during his last 'we will create jobs' statement.

Will this create 100,000 jobs? I doubt it very much.

30,000 Woolworth staff, all of the MFI staff. There's two sets of people needing real jobs, ASAP. Not pie-in-the sky Brownian non-jobs.

And placements on training schemes do not count as jobs, Mr Brown.

Just so as you know for the future.

Common Sense

Fraser, the first time I realised the significance of "up to" was when I saw an advert for a pheromone spray: "Buy this spray and sleep with up to three women each day".

Didn't take a lot of working out, really.

See you in the pub.

seb

Who, it is alleged, said these words to John Edmonds of the GMB in 1993?

"I don't believe in promising full employment. It gives the impression of a government creating worthless jobs at great cost."

First prize for whoever guesses the right answer is a week's stay at the Kirkcaldy Hilton. Second prize - two weeks!

MrDavies

he wants to help “everybody who is genuinely trying to pay their mortgage back”

Does anyone know where I have to apply to get my certificate showing that I am Genuinely Attempt To Repay My Mortagage (GATRMM)?

Perhaps the GATRMM will be included in the incredibly useful HIPs package.

RW

The quote begins "I want to show how we will be able to create..." Classic Brownian linguistic sleight of hand. Notice that he isn't actually promising to create anything, he's only saying he'll show us how he is able to do so. Probably.

Provided we don't pin him down to anything specific, and let him do it over his favourite auto-extruding temporal unit, the Next Period of Time, which can be as long as he wants it to be.

Characteristic grandiose verbal confidence trickery. Man's a charlatan.

hadrian

RW- 'the man's a charlatan'- perfectly correct: he's a socialist, statist which amounts to the same thing. Cloud cuckoo land, utopia, nowhere, fanatasy world. He can afford to live in it ( for now) while the rest who truly suffer from what's happened on his watch will be swept neatly under his fraying carpet, out of sight, out of mind.
Of course his schemes need challenging, which, as I've said before, is why we are supposed to have an Opposition. They're there to lead, so, if they cannot manage it they scarcely deserve to oust him. However, what Broon cannot defy forever will be the reality of the recession as it bites more and more deeply. Bungling Broon will eventually be shown to be Canute Broon too. Let's hope by then most people wil have lost patience with the buffoon and stopped listening to his nonsense.

Ahmed Resistance

Isnt it obviouse ? He is going to deny benefits to thousands of people who cannot find work ( because there isnt any.)

Then he is going to deny benefits to the disabled and sick who cannot work (he is already doing this.)

Voila ! unemployment figures reduced = jobs created.

Of course , everyone will support him on this - because the media told us that everyone on benefits is really a scrounger.
Stupid government for stupid people.

OlafTheViking

Let us remember that King Canute (or Knut) was in fact a wise man who pulled that stunt to show his opposition to flattery.

p.s.
Brown is of course the very antithesis of a wise man and his words seek but to deceive.

Let all who know this correct those that don't!

hadrian

Olaf- thanks for that piece of fascinating history on Canute/Knut. I must confess I hadn't ever realised he'd done it as an illustration of the limitations of kings and governments. In that case Brown is definitely not wise as he'll sit in state holding back the tidal wave of reality and unlike most common sense folk around him actually believe his own rhetoric.When the wave crashes into him he cannot complain he wasn't warned- except to the lackeys in his own circle.