Guess who's back

M. Rowley

No sign of an apology then for screwing royally the country's finances over the past thirteen years.

Michael Taylor

'Impact' is a noun, not a verb. Please.

Maggie

I thought it was exceptionally generous of the BBC to spend such a large chunk of their licence fee income accompanying Mr Brown on his PR trip to Africa. They should introduce a special programme devoted to fawning interviews with former ministers/prime ministers. It seemed rather out of place in the News.

JohnOfEnfield

The focus of the debate between the New Labour leadership candidates might have moved on - the view of the profligacy of the New Labour government by the electorate certainly has.

No one is marching in the streets to put out the Bonfire of the Quangoes.

Have you also noted that the tenor of public debate has become much quieter and more thoughtful - apart from Unite that is.

Good riddance.

alexsandr

M Rowley. Nor an apolgy for sitting sulking in Krkcaldy since the election instead of doing the job he is paid for.

Mycroft

His total inability to admit that he's ever wrong about anything will limit his influence in the future I think; if he takes that line in his forthcoming book, people will find difficult to take him seriously, even to the extent that they do at present.

salieri

The remark that his face looks like the map of a man's soul - at least his own soul - is fair comment, to judge by this very informative picture. Dorian Gray he ain't.

Dorothy Wilson

He may look well but he still appears to be deluded.

Rhoda Klapp

Aaaaah. Soul?

Austin Barry

The Independent's article is overwritten tosh by an excitable, self-regarding Christina Patterson, whoever she is: e.g.

"I bet you didn't think you'd be doing this," says Brown chummily, as I swap my dainty black pumps for chunky builders' boots and stuff my hair into a yellow plastic helmet."

You really need someone like Christopher Hitchens to de-construct Gordon Brown.

Diomalco

Skimmed the hagiographic article in question as it ran to at least 5000 words of utter droning drivel. Anyone who writes more than a paragraph on GB is obviously in love. Since that condition is allegedly blind it would explain how the author missed the subject's incompetence and lying to the public from the heights of the Treasury & Downing St.

Pete Hoskin

Michael Taylor: or, rather, it is a noun and a verb. Check Chambers dictionary for confirmation...

TrevorsDen

Mr Taylor the English language has flourished because of its flexibility.

If Brown wants to help 'world development' than he should hold a garage sale. He can go out the way he came in. He could always dig ditches in Somalia.

But as long as world development involves him spending peoples money other than our own and takes him as far from these shores as possible I do not care. Just Lord save us from his preaching.

Alexander

Having watched the UTube video of Gordon Brown in Africa I was (for the first time) very sorry for him.

The Africans were all smartly dressed and obviously had made an effort for the occasion.

By contrast Gordon looked like a tramp - no tie - rumpled suit - probably be slept in it on the plane. It was obvious he needs "Sue" or Sarah or someone to look after him. The way he looked showed an amazing lack of respect to his hosts. Fine to dress like that when doing the gardening in Fife BUT it is not fine to dress like he did when he is representing the UK as our ex-Prime Minister.

Yam Yam

Can't someone just nominate him for the chairmanship of the Royal Institute of Chartered Tractor Statisticians?

charles hercock

Gives you the creeps does he not

Paddy

He looks healthy and fit:

I'd be happy healthy and fit if I was sitting at home doing nothing and getting paid.

The man is deranged. I have nothing but loathing and contempt for him and his henchmen.

And now he rubs our nose in it with that stupid look on his face.

2trueblue

I just love it; 'He understood what was happening' during the financial crisis. Yep, we all did, but did he understand how he took us there?
The really good thing right now is not hearing his voice on the tv, cringing when they say the PM will speak.
That said the BBC are still giving a good showing to the Liebore lot. Until we clean out the BBC we will not get and real reporting.

BigAl

Gordy still thinks he would be the best PM and Labour leader and is waiting for his party to call him back. Although delusional, this is what he believes. Beware!

Paddy

He comes out of his bunker now Parliament is over. He ought to be ashamed.

Chris lancashire

Who paid for his trip to Africa?

anne allan

Make your choice of weapon - wooden stake or silver bullet.
The world deserves, nay needs, it.

yank

I can't understand why we've put a discussion of Mr. Brown in here... you're just all sort of bigoted people. Never should have happened.

Who's responsible for this?

Richard of York

@Chris Lancashire

I don't know but I suspect it wasn't Chris Cooke who paid for Camerons helicopter trips so he could influence the Sheffield Forgemasters loan.
Maybe the free trips for Vague to St Helina had an influence on Ashcroft's friends building their new airport on foriegn Aid money. No wonder it's been ring-fenced.

Andy Carpark

Screw Chambers Dictionary. The verb is impinge.

David Bouvier

Pete - "to impact" is of course a verb, its meaning since the 18th century being "to wedge into" or "to press closely upon" in the sence of a meteorite smashing into a moon.

I can't quarrel with your description of Brown tic-like embedding himself once again into the body politic. We saw an inkling of this when he had ot be prised out of No.10.

If you meant "to impact" as in "to have an effect on" in the sense of pursuing some worthwhile agenda, then you are using an ugly and recent usage that is increasingly widespread but which I am happy to deprecate.

And I take the flexibility of English to give me as much right to deprecate an ugly, unneccessary innovation as anynoe has to adopt it.

Frank Sutton

Impact' is a noun, not a verb. Please.

I think it's been verbed now.

Cuffleyburgers

I'm with Mr Taylor - impact as a verb as you have used it is an ugly thing indeed.

Lazy.

Chuck Unsworth

Apparently he's wandering around in Westminster today, flanked by his heavies. The question is: are they to protect him - or protect us from him? Brown will never be able to sit at ease with his colleagues in the House of Commons. Nor will he ever escape the public's contempt, loathing and anger.

His face is "like a map of the man's soul"? A truly ghastly sight then.

Chris lancashire

Richard of York: Funny you should know who funded Cameron's and Haig's trips but not Brown's.

Ian Walker

Impact is of course a noun and a verb - "Subsequent to my car's impact I ironically impacted my toe upon the kerbstone." It's gramatically correct in the article, but semantically it's a bit rough and ready; although the imagery induced is quite grotesque and thus appropriate to Brown.

Personally, I'd have used "impinge" instead.

Simon Stephenson

Mycroft : 12.48pm

"His total inability to admit that he's ever wrong about anything will limit his influence in the future I think"

You're looking at this the wrong way, perhaps? Aside from Brown, look at the following list - the five Labour leadership contenders, Miliband Major and Minor, Balls, Abbott and Burnham, plus Clegg, Cameron, Hague and Osborne from the other side, with an historical entry from such luminaries as Jacqui Smith, Mandelson and the one and only Anthony Charles Lynton Blair - none of these has ever admitted to getting anything wrong either.

Isn't it wonderfully reassuring to know that we have such an endless stream of faultless talent feeding into our political hierarchy?

Pete Clark

'Impact' is neither a noun not a verb. It is an abomination.

Magnus

Michael Taylor, impact is a noun and a verb. The OED traces impact as a verb to the 1600s.

Bean Counter

97 mentions of 'I', 'me' or 'mine' in one article. Self-regarding indeed - is shea well-connected summer intern?

Sir Everard Digby

@Chris Lancashire. 'funny' is not a term I thought I would ever hear as a description of Dick of the North's activities. I am truly saddened to see anyone who is locked in tribal politics with no hope of escape.

In2minds

Gordon Brown - his face, "like a map of a man's soul."

Interesting, there's an exercise for saxophone students, all to do with conditioning the facial muscles ready for playing. Do you think our Gordo has got himself a hobby?

Marcher Baron

"Fine to dress like that when doing the gardening in Fife BUT it is not fine to dress like he did when he is representing the UK as our ex-Prime Minister." Alexander, GB has never dressed appropriately for his office. Remember that truly awful lounge suit at a white tie dinner in the Guildhall as Chancellor? Ghastly and insulting! A pity the good people of Kirkaldy didn't have the sense not to re-elect him.

Graham Booth

Austin Barry @ 1255

I like this; Christopher Hitchens does a book on Brown. Title - 'Gord is Not great'...

Victor Southern

The childish Richard of York is back today. It is his shift.

The airport for St. Helena is suddenly brought into a discussion about Gordon Brown - an Africa. The airport was promised to the colony as far back as 1960.

William Hague [wittily referred to as Vague by the young lad] has not visited the island.

It is not accessible from the mainland by helicopter. Its only physical contact with the outside world is by the RMS St Helena, overdue to be retired. Nevertheless the Indie's description of the island as the remotest place of permanent human habitation on the globe is very far from being correct. Tristan da Cunha is amongst the 6 or 7 places more remote still.

There is no great money to be made out of the airport by Ashcroft or anybody else. It has been impoverished certainly since 1855. Air links will bring development and employment to the island - always welcome in Africa and happening even without Gordon Brown.

Mycroft

Simon Stephenson, Fair enough, but perhaps the difference is that Brown actually believes that he is never wrong (on the main issues at least), while other politicians just refuse to admit it? There is something rather strange and disquieting about his attitude.

Hysteria

Rhoda nails it - again !!

Boudicca

Why can't the media just completely ignore the Moron.

Dimoto

My guess is that Brown has been at home waiting for all those calls from the UN, IMF, World Bank, various US "peace" foundations, the Organisation of African Unity etc etc whilst "getting together his ideas on what sort of stipend he will ask for" - he has a kind of baffled look.

I think his African adventure is designed to remind people he's still here (as in jumping up and down and waving his arms about).

He'll probably be invited by the BBC to host a new economics programme (Peston and Evan Davies as researchers) for some vast fee, given his media prowess.

I wonder if Balls, Alexander and Miliband E, are answering his calls yet ?

Snowman

Rhoda Klapp @ 12.53:

says it all, and most charmingly, too.

Andrew Kennard

It is going to take a lot longer than 10 weeks before most people will remember him with anything other than complete and utter contempt. 100 years more likely.

ollie

I was hoping we had seen and heard the last from this obsolete idiot. He was a con man as a chancellor, an absolute catastrophe as a PM, and truthfully, he is a shambles as a human being. I utterly despise him, and I hope he fades away into the obscurity he so richly deserves.

Anne Wotana Kaye 1

Gordon Brown - his face, "like a map of a man's soul."
Goodness gracious me, isn't it rather like The Portrait of Dorian Gray in reverse?

Moraymint

Take cover.

Brownloather

Suggested titles:

1) "It started in America"
2) "I was right all along"
3) "Infamy, infamy, they've all got it infamy"

Paddy

Trickie Dickie: Ashcroft Ashcroft Ashcroft.

Change the record - you are becoming boring!

It's only because the Tories won't sink to your level that Lord Paul and the like aren't mentioned.

They have got enough on Labour to sink them into oblivion if they so wished.

Get back to Campbells blog.

Greenslime

what's a verb?

Major Plonquer 1

Brown's face does look like a map of a man's soul. Unfortunately his arse looks like a map of Cowdenbeath - lots of red bits (with the occasional yellow blotch) covered in a patchwork of blue veins. This startling resemblance comes largely from the fact that he's been sitting on it now for three months while writing his book.

And what's this work of literary genious to be called? Where's Gordo? Or maybe he's collaborated with his friend and bank manager, JK Rowling, to pen a new piece of fiction? Gordy Snotter and the Vanishing Gold? (Note: Rowling also had her inspiration whilst picking up free money from the public purse and sitting on her arse in Scotland.)