Telling tales of his mother and father
Fraser Nelson 4:03pm
Gordon Brown does not have much of a personal “backstory” but he does talk about his family. When he’s feeling guilty about something, he mentions his father. But today, speaking to the Welsh Labour Party, he again talks about a figure we heard about a few days ago: his grandfather.
“Like so many here I come from a family whose grandfather went without work during much of the 1930s. A grandfather whose small savings gave his son, my father, the chance of an education, the first in our family to go to university. And the lesson of those days is that even in the worst of times families helped each other, supported each other, came to the aid of each other through thousands of acts of friendship caring and support. And that reveals the most important lesson of all; that it’s not markets that create morals: morals spring from the compassion of our hearts”
Given how utterly unremarkable it is to have grandparents who had a tough time in the 1930s, one can only presume that Brown’s aim is to contrast this with Cameron’s grandparents. But playing the “poor family background” card really is pushing it. As a Church of Scotland minister, Brown’s father was in a position to give his family a very comfortable life. Brown simply does not have a poverty song to sing.
Worse, the horizontal ties that he speaks about – where families help each other – have been steadily eroded by the vertical ties which bind individuals to the state. This is precisely what a Conservative government aims to reverse. As Cameron said in his video (more of which later) the Tories will pass power from the state to communities. Brown’s grandfather would have been delighted.
But most strikingly, we hear a local version of the “2.5 million new jobs” Brownie which surfaced in his Economist interview yesterday. He tells Wales how good they’ve had it under Labour with 100,000 more jobs. But, as nationally, how many of these were imported? Surely matters is to what extent economic growth helped those on benefits in Wales. In its case, not very much – as the below graph shows (data from DWP)
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Liz Brown
February 27th, 2010 4:30pm Report this commentOh my god! pass me the vomit bucket and hankie
Wasn't his other grandfather a landowning farmer?
Anne Wotana Kaye 1
February 27th, 2010 4:45pm Report this commentI truly feel sick with disgust. In his own words Brown speaks of the strength a united family gives to its members. This from a man whose party advocates and actively supports single motherhood, the denigration of fathers, same sex 'marriage', and everything which mocks and downgrades traditional moral values. He even wants children taught sex education (Nu Labour's perverted version) in schools which fail to teach the 3Rs satisfactorily. He is a hypocrite who surround himself with other hypocrites, traitors and perverts.
Philip Walker
February 27th, 2010 4:50pm Report this commentRight, so let's get this straight: Gordon Brown was the recipient of his parents' and grandparents' hard work and application. Very well: so am I, as it happens. Many of us could say the same.
So why does this make more government the answer? Surely what he's just shown is the importance of family and voluntary institutions, rather than the importance of making the State everyone's grandfather?
ToMTom
February 27th, 2010 4:52pm Report this commentSo Gordon Brown's grandfather was a shepherd but his son could still get a decent secondary education and a Scholarship to St Andrew's University.
He did not go to war, but he did get to University. That must make him a lucky man indeed compared to his peer group born in 1914.
So Gordon Brown is right to think educational opportunity was better before Labour screwed it up.
John Law
February 27th, 2010 5:05pm Report this commentIs Brown a secret Tory.
Family values, the benefits of charitable foundations providing education and opportunity for the poor.
Or as somebody got the decimal in the wrong place again in his IQ; is it after all 18.0
strapworld
February 27th, 2010 5:14pm Report this commentWhy didn't he go to war?
Richard
February 27th, 2010 5:20pm Report this commentBetter the son of a modest farmer than the son and heir to a fortune based on slavery, murder,rape and pillage.
How many of the tory party can trace their origins to ancestors who conducted immoral and illegal practises. How many sons of northern mill owners who reaped the rewards while families died making the profits they whored and drank away on "The Grand Tour".
I suppose the image of the tory toff out of touch with the people, living in moated houses will take a little longer to dispell. Thanks to the duck houses and moat cleaning Tory MP's
Just why are we paying the interest on the chuckle brothers mortgages? why do they need a mortgage at all? How did William amass a 20 million fortune whilst in office on 64K a year.
Still a lot of angry people waiting to cast their judgement on these troughers.
WrinkleybutNice
February 27th, 2010 5:24pm Report this commentThis was the Rev McBroon delivering his Sermon on the Mount, resonating with moral hubris, Welsh heroes with soot on their faces, and his legislation to give every ("suitably qualified ....")school leaver the statutory right to an apprenticeship. And one and half million new jobs for Wales in the high-tech (highly qualified) energy and pharma industries.
Rapping out his Labour achievement/Tory target stuff, preserving front-line services while the Tories will be off riding to hounds financed by their inheritance-tax-free windfalls.
With never a mention that every single public service - paid for by wee people like me who have worked themselves into the ground, and been taxed to the hilt - is on its knees: illiterate school-leavers (ripe for those high-tech jobs!), teenage pregnancies and STDs despite the millions thrown at sex education, a tax system that impoverishes the poor and the pensioner, a pub owner thrown in jail for letting his customers smoke, a benefits system and free health care that pays out to instant immigrants but abandons the families of severely wounded ex-servicemen, .... sorry I can't go on, or I will lose the will to live.
But - we are exhorted, give Gordo another chance. He's going to ensure we have the biggest this, the finest that, the most glorious other, anywhere in the world. Well actually only in Gordo's fevered brain.
Because it seems his minion Liam Byrne has just let us all know that Labour investment in the NHS (ring-fenced - remember ?) is going to be slashed - in about 5 minutes - by £billions. (And that's after Mandy's slashing of the higher education budget : hang on! What about all those high flyers for those one and half million new high tech jobs ? And that was just in Wales.)
Oh well, I suppose there will be plenty of well qualified and really hard-working Polish families who will be very grateful for the opportunity.
Tory Conference - please hammer all these lies and tell it like it is. Only a few weeks left.
teledu
February 27th, 2010 5:24pm Report this commentProtected occupation?
Chuck Unsworth
February 27th, 2010 5:28pm Report this commentWhy does the idiot Brown believe that because his grandfather or his father may have been upright, virtuous and principled (and that's open to considerable debate) then he is? Does he believe that such traits of character are somehow genetically implanted? This is eugenics in its crudest form.
No one with even the slightest understanding of humanity would seriously believe that the morals and behaviours of children mirror those of their parents.
When Brown talks of such things he hopes that no one has the dirt on his antecedents. Well, no doubt there are those who have already started digging. How many generations back do we need to go before we find a charlatan, a con-man, a shyster or even a murderer in the Brown genetic strain? Brown should be very careful when pursuing this line of argument.
Occasional Ostrich
February 27th, 2010 5:31pm Report this commentFer Gawd's sake! Just get that man outa my face!!!!!
2trueblue
February 27th, 2010 5:32pm Report this commentTo use an expression of Balls 'So what?'
How utterly, utterly unremarkable.
What is remarkable is he learnt nothing from his family that he applied to running the exchequer or the country.
Now that is remarkable. What a waste of a good upbringing.
2trueblue
February 27th, 2010 5:34pm Report this commentChuck Unsworth, you don't have to back to find a charlatan or a con-man in Browns life he is both of those things.
John Law
February 27th, 2010 5:42pm Report this commentstrapworld
February 27th, 2010 5:14pm
"Why didn't he go to war?"
Be grateful, we would have lost.
Beer Moth
February 27th, 2010 5:51pm Report this commentI agree fully with the assertion that Brown is an idiot.
But eugenics?
The morals and behaviours of parents do tend to get passed on to offspring. Genetics may indeed play a part in this, but this is in any case, augmented by the normal process by which children adopt the ways of those who raise them. Surely?
teledu
February 27th, 2010 6:02pm Report this comment"Och wee Gordon, tell your Grandpappy what you've been doing down in London these last few years."
"Well grandad, I've screwed up the economy good style, allowed unchecked immigration, sold the UK's sovereignty down the river, got less for the UK's gold reserves than if I'd put it in an envelope and sent it off to Cash4Gold, introduced dodgy postal voting, briefed against anyone in the party who disagrees with me, lied at PMQs, given out scores of dodgy statistics, clacked a few wee secretary hens, encouraged the feckless and lazy to get by on benefits, crapped all over the education system and made the UK's tax regulations practically indecipherable. I've created millions of non-jobs in the state-sector to ensure they all vote Labour. Oh - almost forgot, underfunded British troops fighting in two wars"
"Och ma wee bairn, you have been busy. And what will ya do if you win the next election?"
"Well grandad, I'm thinking of changing the electoral system so that the oppostion can never regain power . What d'you think of that Grandad?"
"Well done my wee laddie, that'll teach those English bastards; never forget Culloden."
toco
February 27th, 2010 6:10pm Report this commentI make no comment regarding the relatives of the dysfunctional and dangerous Brown save to say surely they would be embarrassed and bewildered to have him in their family.
TrevorsDen
February 27th, 2010 6:13pm Report this commentMy dads father worked down the pit and had a hand paralysed in WW1.
Its not going to make me vote Labour. Usual dissembling from Brown
Robert Upfold
February 27th, 2010 6:14pm Report this commentHeverrybordy sing to Onward Christan Soldiers:
Lloyd George knew my father
My father knew Lloyd George
ad nauseum
Bruce, UK
February 27th, 2010 6:21pm Report this commentThank the heavens the Mendacious Manseman's family are not props.
Given his background and known employment how fortunate it is that J G Brown is a millionaire, how did he manage that while tirelessly championing the class war?
Roger Daley
February 27th, 2010 6:30pm Report this commentHe is getting ever so melancholy these days. All false of course. I think he takes inspiration from that old t.v. series "The Waltons"
Goodnight Doughboy !
George
February 27th, 2010 6:33pm Report this commentMy father left school at 14 and worked on a farm. He served his country in WW2 and fought with Montgomery at El Alamein. I'm the first in my family to have gone to university!
What a privileged life Gordon Brown's father lead - did he fight in WW2?
Anne Wotana Kaye 1
February 27th, 2010 7:11pm Report this commentSeems that patriotism equated with serving one's country during war time is not the norm for some of the sires of the garbage now in power. Example: Our Minister of Justice, Long Straw. His daddy took the option of going to jail rather than be a member of HMS Armed Forces.
Chuck Unsworth
February 27th, 2010 7:14pm Report this comment@ Beer Moth
I look forward to your treatise on Nature vs Nurture. Meanwhile, whatever the root cause, Brown remains a lying despot.
Dorothy Wilson
February 27th, 2010 7:22pm Report this commentBack to the Mills & Boon saga again!
Beer Moth
February 27th, 2010 7:32pm Report this commentChuck Unsworth
Mawky pants.
David Ossitt
February 27th, 2010 7:53pm Report this commentRichard
“Better the son of a modest farmer than the son and heir to a fortune based on slavery, murder,rape and pillage.”
Little Dick, you are at it again, you are letting your class jealousy eat away at your insides, ugly nasty thoughts, will in the end be bad for you.
No, what the hell, keep it up, be unhappy.
Alan Douglas
February 27th, 2010 8:34pm Report this comment"A grandfather whose small savings gave his son, my father, the chance of an education, the first in our family".
And quite possibly the last. To "get" an education, one first has to have the idea that there is something that one might possibly need to learn ....
Alan Douglas
Noa Zrk
February 27th, 2010 8:37pm Report this commentSoon this odious multi millionaire bully will be retired from government, with his fortune, pension, peerage, autobiography and directorships.
We will of course all be the poorer when he goes, though poorer still should he stay.
We can however, look forward to the continuation of his bombastic self-regarding crap as he moves to senior statesman status. Or we can free ourselves of Scotsmen from the Lords and Commons by granting Scotland full independence.
Almost singlehandedly he has made Scotland loathed throughout England.
2trueblue
February 27th, 2010 9:22pm Report this commentteledu, You do tell it like it do be, loved it.
TGF UKIP
February 27th, 2010 9:37pm Report this commentJust a minute, I'm sure I read somewhere that the Brown family had a very comfortable merchant and business and property owning background.
Now this MIGHT just be his maternal grandfather but what the plan patently is, is to paint himself alongside"the people" in contrast to the Silver Spoon Spiv.
Your mates had better find a counter to this James cos it's going to be a recurring theme alongside that of Gordon economic saviour of Britain - and they don't seem to have a clue how to counter that.
Yow Min Lye
February 27th, 2010 9:48pm Report this commentIs Brown able to name one Conservative politician who has ever even vaguely suggested that markets create morals?
TrevorsDen
February 27th, 2010 11:23pm Report this commentLuxury!
W' use't live in a shoe box in an 'ole in't middle't road. Wi'd get up, eat a bowl o'gravel, work 28 hours a day fer aff o'loaf o' mouldy bread, cum 'ome, scrub thole in't middle ut road .... an when our dad cum 'ome frum't pit he'd thrash us within an inch of our lives wi 'is belt, drown our mum in't dirty bath watter un then cut us in 'alf wi' a carving knife.
An if you say that t'young folk t'day - 'they'd never believe yer'!
Ruby Duck
February 28th, 2010 2:35am Report this commentGrandfather unemployed for most of the 30s but able to save enough to put his father through university ?
Richard
February 28th, 2010 12:44pm Report this comment@David Ossitt
attack the post not the poster!
" I may disagree with your views but I will defend your right to say it".......who said that?
I am sure you are decent tory but please try to put aside your inbuilt sense rightousness and adopt the alien sense of being fair..... and it will be a future fairer for all.
Kennybhoy
February 28th, 2010 5:22pm Report this comment"Better the son of a modest farmer than the son and heir to a fortune based on slavery, murder,rape and pillage.
How many .....profits they whored and drank away on "The Grand Tour".
To the extent that there is ANY truth in this puerile caricature of history, it applies to ALL of us then and now.
"All left-wing parties in the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something which they do not really wish to destroy. They have internationalist aims, and at the same time they struggle to keep up a standard of life with which those aims are incompatible. We all live by robbing Asiatic coolies, and those of us who are 'enlightened' all maintain that those coolies ought to be set free; but our standard of living, and hence our 'enlightenment', demands that the robbery shall continue."
George Orwell
Kennybhoy
February 28th, 2010 5:56pm Report this commentWee Mentula wrote:
"attack the post not the poster!"
As I recently said to your distaff Wingnut equivalent Verity, do you have any capacity for self-awareness at all? Ad hominems are your stock in trade you ridiculous wee troll!
Richard
February 28th, 2010 6:27pm Report this comment@Kennyboy
Follow the money far enough and you will find the orgins of many of the ruling classes come from slavery.
To see how this effects people even today take just one tory (Zac Goldsmith might be a good place to start or Canerons mother in law) and follow the money.
Elitism bought from the suffering of those who could not fight back.
relevent today because the tories want us to rob from the poor to make the playing field better for the rich to contimue the casino lifestyle.
I have never met a tory with a heart in social reform for the benefit of the poor only for the benefit of tax cuts for the wealthy. 40 billion pound in offshore accounts due to the taxman...now that would paydown a lot of debt.
Kennybhoy
February 28th, 2010 7:08pm Report this commentteledu,
Your splendid "Och wee Gordon" post cheered me up no end! You should think about doing more of them man. Along the lines of the "Hitler finds out.." YouTube series.
One wee nit pick though! Brown's Presbyterian ancestors would have been on the Hanoverian side at Culloden. Jist sayin like! LOL
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