Gordon Brown is a man of the people. When the people are around.
When alone with aides, he dismissed as bigoted a woman who expressed concerns about how immigration from Eastern Europe would affect the economy. But moments earlier, in public, he praised the woman.
As reported in The Telegraph:
Gordon Brown has been caught unawares calling a Labour-supporting pensioner who confronted him on the election campaign trail a “bigot”.
Gillian Duffy, a 66-year-old widow, told the Prime Minister that she was concerned about immigration from Eastern Europe.
Mr Brown chatted to her for five minutes and appeared to end the conversation amicably, telling her she came from a “good family”.
But he was unaware that his microphone was still on as he got into his car and sped away, and was heard berating his staff for allowing the encounter.
I guess they have bitter clingers in Britain, and politicians who love you in public and hate you in private. Just like us.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/template/utils/ooyala/telegraph_player.swf
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Comments
Well now this IS the problem isn't it. Politicians either get elected or take over and in both cases the result is the same: they become self-satisfied, self-serving, intolerant, egotistical Yahoos and all that Swift meant by the term. I am sure Brown is descended from a Yahoo. Sadly,the struggles in life all center around battling Yahoos. To do so lowers us to their level. That is the pity of it. Ah, well, carry on mates. Stiff upper lip and all that and another round of Pimm's Cup. http://www.chow.com/recipes/10279-pimms-cup
Add a few more points on the LibDem scorecard. God help Europe if the LibDems get power.
Sad, isn't it. Well, at least he didn't curse like an uneducated street urchin like our elected officals do (i.e. Obama, Joe Biden, Carl Levin, etc.). They have such filthy mouths someone needs to wash their mouths out with soap!
Believe it or not Gordon Brown has apologized to the woman in question.
I do not like Gordon Brown – not one bit – but the mark of a gentleman is the ability to recognize when you have been wrong and apologize. I salute him for doing that one thing that puts him well ahead of Obowma
"the mark of a gentleman is the ability to recognize when you have been wrong and apologize"
Yeah, well, in this case it was more like, "I'm sorry I got caught!". Whether you're a gentleman or not really depends on how you act in private, not for the cameras and the press.
Note that Brown was concerned about being around someone who could be seen as bigoted: It'd be like a politician here finding out afterward that he posed for a picture with a Grand Kleagle of the KKK. Brown's real problem is that he doesn't see any difference between her and a Grand Kleagle of the KKK. She's just an ordinary citizen – er, subject – with a concern. He's not concerned about it as a public official or as a person and that's really where he was coming from. It's that datum point, not so much what he called her, that should be considered by the voters.