Brown's golden error
Fraser Nelson 4:49pm
The price of gold broke $900 an ounce on Friday. So this gives us another chance to reflect on Brown’s calamitous decision to sell British gold reserves at $275 an ounce five years ago. By my calculations his disastrous foray into asset management has cost the British taxpayer £3.1bn so far. Tackled about this on Marr last week, he said he was simply responding to those “asking us to diversify our portfolio of holdings from simply gold to other currencies.” The real, extraordinary story is in this definitive Sunday Times piece from last April.
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kinglear
January 13th, 2008 7:00pmWhat nonsense - who was asking "us" to diversify? The man has no understanding of economics - or even how to make a trade properly. He is utterly incompetent at every level
TGF UKIP
January 13th, 2008 8:32pmFraser, as I have posted elsewhere Marr was most careful in this exchange with Brown to avoid using the very embarrassing figures, thus effectively giving his mate clear passage to continue his economic expertise waffle. The occasional backbencher raises this at PMQ's but with one question it is easy for Brown to duck. Why don't the Tories make more of this together with all the other of Brown's Big Decisions (tax credits etc) which have cost us all billions.
Fraser Nelson
January 13th, 2008 10:34pmTGF UKIP, I'm agree - Brown always manages to get away by dragging the issues down into tedious statistics. So rather than sound like an issue of "you flogged our national gold for a third of its value" It's suddenly "let's enter a debate about allocation of the assets and the Euro's relative performance to the Yen". It's a really effective put-down, which scares away Tories and interviewers every time. We end up into the same lonely territory you and I recently entered over CPI v RPI inflation. The audience quickly slumps to zero. Infuriating, but that's how it is.
TGF UKIP
January 13th, 2008 11:00pmFraser, given our inflation stats debate was only last week, even as I typed I guess I knew what your view would be on the gold issue too. And I agree really, there are very few political anoraks and normal people would blank out a stats debate especially when Gordon just drones on talking over the interviewer as he usually does. Perhaps, an answer could be a mix of media to mount an attack. For instance a newspaper ad "What Brown's Big Decisions have cost You -the taxpayer!" This then puts the specific issue and numbers central so when he (or, knowing Gordon) whoever he puts out drones on and dodges the issue they will be seen as being even more shifty than usual. Because such newspaper ads would be so unusual, they could not be ignored by the broadcast media nor by Labour.