Thursday, Apr 29, 2010
Gordon's Gaffe
Telegraph: Gordon Brown meets a real voter and it all goes horribly wrong
Gordon Brown finally gets to meet a real voter and it all goes pear-shaped
Posted by sold 2 rent 1 @ 08:55 AM (1869 views) Add Comment
46 Comments
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1. mrmickey said...
This and the expenses fiasco gives an insight in to the utter contempt that a lot of politicians have for the electorate.
2. sold 2 rent 1 said...
Whilst driving to my 5-a-side footy game last night I was pondering Gordon’s gaffe and I thought I must check when the song “Gordon is a Moron” by Jilted John was in the UK pop charts.
Later on I checked and it was in the charts in August/September 1978.
Due to the complex harmonics of Calleman’s model, from now until early June we are resonating not only with the period 1978-1980 but also with the period 1981-1983.
The “Gordon is a Moron” resonance gives us another indicator that we are resonating in very turbulent times
During early/mid May we may have resonance with any of the following:
- Winter of Discontent (1978-79)
- Recession of 1981/82
- Falklands war (probably more conflict with the oil drilling going on down there)
And of course to top off the prediction we have a gold peak on 19 May with a gold stocks peak in early June.
3. sold 2 rent 1 said...
Jilted John's Third TOTP Appearance
4. str 2007 said...
Hi s2r1
Brilliant resonation (if that's the correct expression).
Re: your Gold comment and stocks peaking after the metal.
I thought that the stocks followed the metal price pretty closely, afterall their future profits depend on flogging their findings at those rates.
Why the 2-3 week delay in price movement between the two ?
5. paranoia blue said...
I wonder where the publication of Vernon Coleman’s book by the same name, fits in?
6. str 2007 said...
What on earth did we used to listen to back in the eighties. A quite unbelievably appauling song.
Thank goodness I wasn't called Gordon, maybe it was this song that gave Broon his drive to prove a point. (or not as the case may be).
7. sold 2 rent 1 said...
str 2007,
Gold peaked in Jan 1980 at $850 (19 May)
Gold had a lower secondary peak in Sept 1980 at $720 (2/3 June)
Gold stocks peaked in late Sept / early Oct 1980
8. sold 2 rent 1 said...
paranoia blue,
Vernon Coleman’s book was published in Aug 2007.
I guess it was just keeping the phrase "Gordon is a Moron" in public consciousness
9. uncle tom said...
I've just listened to the whole of Mrs Duffy's original encounter with GB (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8649308.stm)
There is absolutely nothing unreasonable about the concerns she raised, or the way she raised them. GB on the other hand, clearly had no interest in what she had to say, and was patronising to the point of rudeness.
The encounter was barely newsworthy, and that GB should have thought it a 'disaster' in the first instance; illustrates GB's complete detachment from Labour's core vote.
Very telling though was the way he sought to blame his own discomfort from the encounter (which, as a politician, he shouldn't have found discomforting at all), on the failings of others.
His assistant, Sue Nye, had a brief to bring GB into contact with 'ordinary' voters, the Labour campaign having been stung by taunts that GB was only going before the cameras in the company of pre-arranged stooges; so she was only doing her job.
And Mrs Duffy expressed no bigotry whatsoever.
Is Gordon a moron? No, he is quite a clever guy; but he has always been (even, it seems, in his student days) a compulsive and shameless liar.
More importantly though, it is clear that the trappings of high office have got to him, and he needs to be taken down a peg.
This event, though different in many ways, reminds me of the occasion when Mrs Thatcher announced: "we are a grandmother"
I thought then: - 'she's lost it'
I think now: - 'Gordon's lost it'
10. andrew said...
The first thing that I thought upon hearing GB's normal voice in private, is that Gordon is not as thick as I have believed him to be. His public speaking voice and manner is however awful and he has shown himself to be a complete fake and a bare faced liar.
The real Labour party stood for something, served it's purpose in the 20th century, then died sometime in the 80's.
11. sovietuk said...
The most disturbing thing about this is that if the combined Lib Lab seats in a hung parliament are higher than the other parties then Gordon Brown will
a) still be prime minister next Friday morning
b) could easily be the on going prime minister
It is unlikely that the Tories will do any kind of a deal with the Libdems so the Libdems would have no choice but to do a deal with Labour under the circumstances - with whoever Labour chose to be as Prime minister. "Sorry Libdems where else are you going to go - the Tories don't want you" says the labour man to the Libdem man. So there you have it choose Libdem - Brown stays.
12. andrew said...
Agreed sovietuk, a scary thought.
Think about it, GBrown hates the traditional Labour voters that have voted Labour for their entire lives. Who does the New Labour party stand for really ?
13. wiltshire said...
Oh my god. Look at some of the other songs in the chart in August 1978 -
Darts "It's Raining". It quite literally IS as I write.
The Stranglers "Walk On By". If only Gordon had.
The Motors "Forget About You". I bet Gordon wishes we would all forget about Gillian.
David Essex "Oh What A Circus". Hmmmmm.
Uncanny.
14. jack c said...
I watched the whole thing unfold live yesterday and one definite error of judgement (IMO) was the decision to return to Mrs Duffy's private residence - surely Mr Brown and his advisers would realise that Mrs D would subsequently be subject to intense media hounding. If they really cared about this particular elderly member of the public/voter they would have resolved the matter privately and let her get on with life as normal.
15. theboltonfury said...
You are saying that the song 'Gordon is a moron' (which he is) resonates to this model that you live by?
I'm stunned. Absolutely stunned. Where is this rot all going to end?
16. icarus said...
"They should never have put me in front of that bigoted woman. Whose idea was that". It was his idea to do this walkabout to talk to randomly selected voters. The person who chose this voter wasn't to know how the exchange would go. Brown's instinct to blame an aide for something that wasn't her fault is as damning as the other things he said.
17. uncle tom said...
In terms of hung parliament alliances, the one that no-one seems to have mused on is the possibility of the Tories making a deal with the SNP.
That might sound incredible, given the SNP's bolshy left wing credentials; but it actually makes a lot of sense.
The Tories are officially a unionist party, but few of their supporters give a stuff about Scotland, so it's not a major hurdle.
More autonomy for Scotland is what the SNP want, and if Scottish MP's are removed from Westminster (or have their voting rights confined to national interests only) then the Tories are home and dry...
The Tories need about 310 seats to make that work - they might just get there..
18. p. doff said...
Crikey, it also resonates with Donald Vesco riding his 21ft Kawasaki motorcycle at 318.598mph on August 28th 1978. That clinches it for me - the models are truely aligned.
19. luckyjim said...
sovietuk @ 11
The other scenario is a rerun of the election. The public don't like this and tend to take it out on the party that caused it. The only thing the Lib Dems will insist upon is a referendum for electoral reform. It would be very difficult for the tories to defend denying the public a referendum so I think they will do a deal.
20. uncle tom said...
I doubt that either the Libdems or the Tories really want to get into any sort of formal alliance now - I think they both perceive that the Labour party is on its deathbed, and making Labour the official opposition in parliament would only serve to resuccitate it, especially as the next government has some horrible decisions to make..
I think the Libdems are hoping for a Lib-Lab alliance with Clegg as PM, but that's probably too much for Labour to swallow.
A possibility is that the Tories will form a minority government with issue by issue support from other parties. They might even do a deal to put Clegg in at PMQ's, instead of Brown, or alternate the two. However, that sort of arrangement is likely to come unstuck quite soon.
A second election this year seems quite likely, if the Tories fail to top 300 seats.
21. mrmickey said...
Do labour really want to win, wouldn't it be better for them to lose then put a nice new shinny Miliband up as leader and start planning for the next election. Lets face it if they'd replaced Gordo with a Labrador puppy they'd have a better chance of winning.
22. timmy t said...
I think GB alienated a lot of people that have always voted Labour yesterday, and I can't see many of them ever voting Tory. I also reckon a lot of people never voted Lib Dem before because they always thought it was a wasted vote. I seriously reckon it could be their year...
23. tenant super said...
If the Conservatives are only short by a few seats, they could form an alliance with the DUP. This might slightly upset the alliance they already have with the UUP but the DUP are just a hardcore version (right-wing unionist) of the UUP anyway?! This would give them an additional 8 seats as opposed to an additional 7 with the SNP.
24. titaniccaptain said...
I have heard there maybe a Tory pact with some of the minority national parties but how much this would go to give them effective rule presence in parliament is uncertain.
25. andrew said...
I think GBrown is a comic genius, i'm sure many people haven't laughed so much in ages.
That dour face, the forced smile even more forced, act II scene 1 and 2 were the best, you have to hand it to him.
Apart from that I think life long Labour voters should think about why they are life long Labour voters.
26. jack c said...
I think it is a pretty poor state of affairs from a Conservative point of view that they are contemplating (based on comments above) the idea of doing a deal with minority groups to effectively sneak into power. Mr Cameron should be in a strong position to expose publicly all of the Labour shortcomings and head for a majority, but at this stage a hung parliament looks more and more likely. The Blue team must surely be disappointed with the proceedings to date.
27. str 2007 said...
It never ceases to amaze me how in this country you could actually get the most votes overall (by coming second in every seat and not get any representation in Parliament.
I'm voting to change that, so it has to be Lib Dems for me.
The added bonus is that VC seems no worse (possibly better) than other No.11 options and Nick Clegg seems ok to me.
All will never be perfect, but everyones individual vote should definitely count.
28. jack c said...
str 2007 - I believe a lot of people share your thoughts, we'll have to wait until May 7 to see if we get the changes many now seek.
29. tenant super said...
Labour has alienated its traditional core vote as have the Conservatives. People like me (a former 'Young Conservative') can no longer see the values which initially led us to support the Tories in their manifesto. The nail in the coffin for me was the withdrawal of support for grammar schools in 2007 and until they claw-hammer this nail out, I would never vote Conservative, not even strategically.
So all you have left is a vague centrist pool of floating voters, reluctant strategic voters, apathetic non-voters, habit voters and as str 2007 points out, lots of wasted votes.
30. luckyjim said...
If I was Clegg I would answer every question tonight with the same answer.
First, I would hold out my left hand, palm up, and I would say "George Osborne".
Then, I would hold out my right hand, palm up, and say "Vince Cable".
"George Osborne" - "Vince Cable"
"George Osborne" - "Vince Cable"
31. luckyjim said...
David Camerons fag - Lecturer at the LSE
32. luckyjim said...
2.1 in History - PhD in Economics
33. tenant super said...
Osborne is a liability and ironically, despite DCs attempts to modernise the party by introducing candidate lists based on PC ideology rather than ability and getting posh sounding people to change their names (Annunziata Rees-Mogg refused to be Nancy Mogg) , I think a Hague and Clarke partnership (rather than Dave / George) would actually just scrape a clear majority .
34. uncle tom said...
ts @ 33
Agree - and why are we hearing so little from Hague and Clarke in this campaign..?
..to my mind they are the best ambassadors for pulling in Tory waiverers
35. letthemfall said...
str2007 "A quite unbelievably appauling song."
Nonsense, it's a classic.
s2r1
Where does John Shuttleworth fit into your model? (btw, the title was Jilted John - eponymous)
Oh, and as for Gordon's Gaff, I'm sure it's a relief all round that such talk about electors is inconceivable from the other leaders.
36. letthemfall said...
UT
Tories waiving their right to vote!! Does Dave know? Switch on the News
37. sold 2 rent 1 said...
letthemfall,
"Where does John Shuttleworth fit into your model? (btw, the title was Jilted John - eponymous)"
The model is about time resonance of public consciousness.
At the moment we are resonating with summer/autumn 1978.
See "Greece is the Word" article just posted
38. doom&gloom said...
On the assumption that the UK is in for a huge round of cuts and/or a sovereign debt crisis some time next year, winning with an outright parliamentary majority this year could be something of a curse. There must be some in the Tory party who think the worst is yet to come, and that a hung parliament on May 7th is the best outcome while we wait for the chickens to come home to roost.
Personally I would love to see the Brown & Darling Dream Team hang around just long enough to take responsibility for what they've really done to UK Plc, but not for another four years to totally destroy any chance the economy ever has of recovering.
PS. I'm leaving before it's too late.
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40. tenant super said...
"Personally I would love to see the Brown & Darling Dream Team hang around just long enough to take responsibility for what they've really done to UK Plc."
Me too, as it would hopefully lead to the removal of the Notting Hill set from the Conservative leadership and the restoration of a proper opposition.
I believe that we are moving into the post-modern phase of politics somewhat later than the varieties of post-modern thought changed art, literature and other aspects of culture. People are rejecting grand or meta-narratives and looking at micronarratives and so the old party ties are breaking and the micro-narratives are being told by the modern media in a way that for the first time shows the internal mechanisms. Voters are not cynical because politics is any more corrupt than it has ever been; it is simply that they are seeing the way it works for the first time (TV cameras in the Commons, the expenses leak, the microphone gaffe, Cameron going through a red light on his bike, manifestos being available online). What is concerning is that this is being filtered through the media but many viewers do not realise the tint of the lens. With the Mail or Guardian, the lens is more obvious but I have spoken to my colleagues and there is geenral lack of awareness of the right bias of Sky and ITV vs the New Labour bias of the BBC.
OTOH, though I see the possible advantages to the Conservatives not assuming power next week, I have concerns about a possible change in the voting system that leads to a set-up that will give more lib-lab coalitions in the future. Whilst PR has advantages in that I might vote for a minority party which actually gets a seat; under PR, the goal of the Liberal Democrats is a permanent, centre-coalition and consensus which is also a kind of ‘elective dictatorship’. You only have to look at the corruption and cronyinsm in Fianna Fail and its coalition partners to see where this can end up.
41. uncle tom said...
I believe Jilted John and John Shuttleworth are the same guy; real name Graham Fellows
And yes, the song is a classic!
42. mr g said...
Huddersfield Town won promotion in the 1979/80 season and could possibly do so again this season.
However, the clincher really is that each set of years end in 9 and 0, so that's it then, all the predictions on here are correct and we are about to have a re-run of the late 70's, early 80's.
43. tenant super said...
I have been reading about the Calleman models as a result of these posts with some interest and I am not one to dismiss anything out of hand.
However, my understanding is that the resonance is that X past event maps to Y current event in the model. But this is not convincing evidence of its validity since you can take any year or month in wikipedia and find significant events in there which can be equated to current events. Take the year I was born, 1976:The Cray-1, the first commercially developed supercomputer, is released; Cuba's current constitution is enacted; Jovian-Plutonian gravitational effect is first reported by Patrick Moore; earthquake hits the Friuli area in Italy, killing more than 900 people and making another 100,000 homeless; end of the cod war; Viking 1 lands on Mars; In San Francisco, during his second televised debate with Jimmy Carter, U.S. President Gerald Ford stumbles when he declares that "there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe" (there is at the time).
And these resonate with current events; the cod war and the Icelandic banking crisis or volcano, the Gerald Ford Gaffe with UK televised debates and yes, Huddersfields promotion.
Calleman also claims that the consciousness shift may happen automatically or "on the other hand the student of the Mayan calendar will know that in order for a consciousness shift to manifest the human beings must be in resonance with it and at some point at least subconsciously have made a choice to align with. Hence, a large-scale consciousness shift is not something that can happen against the will of the human beings."
So this is hedging bets. Any current affairs event will be taken as evidence but if nothing major happens, Callerman claims we were not willing to align our will with the waves. Some Christians do this with intecessionary prayer... they pray for Auntie Matilda to be healed but add the caveat "if it is your will" just in case she dies.
44. sold 2 rent 1 said...
tenant super,
Glad you are interested in this subject.
Calleman is a smart guy but he only follows one model - his own. He spends most of his time trying to prove his model is right to the 2012ers and to mainstream scientists.
As a consequence he hasn't really made much progress since his book in 2004.
I was hoping his latest book would include other models or a comparison to the "black hole" singularity put forward by Stephen Hawking, but it didn't.
I guess after 20 years of work you get diminishing returns on ideas.
45. uncle tom said...
S2R1,
Sometimes, just sometimes, you have to say, "yes, fascinating theory; but it doesn't work.. does it?"
Calleman is simply playing the Nostradamus card - if you say enough things might happen, some of them will..
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