Originally Posted by Archimedes

"I was aware of arrangements whereby David Abrahams gave gifts to business associates and a solicitor who were permissible donors and who in turn passed them on to the Labour Party and I believed at the time my reporting obligations had been appropriately complied with." Are the words in question.

Thanks, and I think they bear out the charge of incompetence reasonably well. Not too sure about lying. 'Believed at the time' means that subsequently he changed his mind. Ergo something made him re-examine the situation and he found that he had got it wrong.

We all make mistakes, but this was quite a serious mistake to make in the field of ARRSE covering.

8 o'clock news on the Ministry of Propaganda & Misinformation - Radio 4 this morning mentioned the word 'brown' five times in the first sixty seconds.

PS: This was immediately following a lengthy and uninterrupted political broadcast by Brown's 'best friend' the comical and wholly ridiculous Balls.

Ahh this cheered me up no end: betrayed by his own choice of poem.

Gordon Brown chooses Invictus – the favourite poem of the locked ward

"Gordon Brown has mentioned the poem “Invictus” as an inspiration. This is a very bad sign – not quite as bad as having LOVE and HATE tattooed on the knuckles, but pretty bad.

It is equivalent to choosing “My Way” as a Desert Island Disc. It indicates an incorrigible lack of self-awareness combined with an invincible conviction of self-righteousness. “Invictus” is the sort of poetic anthem that Hitler would have savoured in the bunker as Magda Goebbels poisoned her children and Eva bit into the capsule.

WE Henley’s poem casts the narrator as the hero of his own drama. He boasts of “my unconquerable soul”. “Under the bludgeonings of fate,” he claims, “My head is bloody, but unbowed.” Well, I don’t know if you have come across someone who has been bludgeoned, not by fate, but by a bludgeon. His head, I assure you will be both bloody and bowed.

Henley knew better than he wrote here. He spent years in hospital, his limbs mined into by tuberculosis. He had a leg amputated and another only saved with difficulty. Yet he claims through the voice of Invictus “I have not winced nor cried aloud.” I bet he winced like mad in his hospital bed when the dressings were changed, and cried aloud at pain in the night.

To do so is human. With its deranged perspective – “I am the master of my fate: / I am the captain of my soul” – the poem “Invictus” is a superhuman fantasy. Fantasy supermen all too often turn out to be subhuman. "

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture...e-locked-ward/

I don't suppose that there is any chance of the moronic Brown 'handing over' temporarily - until the general election maybe?

The flaw with that supposition is: which numb-skull would take over?

Possibly the easiest solution is for the monster Brown to 'retire' PERMANENTLY as the result of a general election.

"post-imperial guilt"

Luv it Cuddles.
Say it again.
john

Originally Posted by jonwilly

"post-imperial guilt"

Luv it Cuddles.
Say it again.
john

Like very many 'posters' on this site, I am immensely proud of our 'Imperial' past.

Only in Africa does it appear that our illustrious predecessors failed somewhat.

I am proud that New Zealand, Australia, small nations throughout the Pacific Ocean, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Burma, much of the Near and Middle East, Cyprus, Malta, Gibraltar, Canada, Belize, Guyana and even America were all once part of our Empire. With very few exceptions, all these nations are democratic and well organised and governed.

Apologists - get stuffed and learn to live with the facts!

E&OE

Originally Posted by lsquared

Originally Posted by jonwilly

"post-imperial guilt"

Luv it Cuddles.
Say it again.
john

Like very many 'posters' on this site, I am immensely proud of our 'Imperial' past.

Only in Africa does it appear that our illustrious predecessors failed somewhat.

I am proud that New Zealand, Australia, small nations throughout the Pacific Ocean, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Burma, much of the Near and Middle East, Cyprus, Malta, Gibraltar, Canada, Belize, Guyana and even America were all once part of our Empire. With very few exceptions, all these nations are democratic and well organised and governed.

Apologists - get stuffed and learn to live with the facts!

E&OE

I disagree only in this. I think much of Africa has now broadly returned to what it originally was - with just a very thin veneer of what we tend to call 'civilisation'. I know several people who have worked for international voluntary charities on major projects in various countries who say, simply, that after they hand over to the local populations and leave it is generally only a matter of months before everything they have built is abandoned and looted.

Originally Posted by Cuddles

Mr Brown obviously has never heard that charity begins at home. Yes, it has been nice for certain people to allay their post-imperial guilt by chucking cash at the Commonwealth and the wider Third World. However while chiuldren are still in morbid danger of a number of bad outcomes in say,Bris;ington, then my charitable giving is focussed on UK. I commend this POV to the PM.

Theo nly exceptions should be where aid directly and demonstrably supports either UK trade or UK security.

I've never quite understood why being born on a island off the European coast makes one more worthy of receiving other people money than being born in some of the less affluent parts of the world.

I'd far rather my taxes went to alleviating real poverty and providing real opportunities to people who need it than to providing plasmas and broadband to idle chavs.

Originally Posted by BuggerAll

Originally Posted by Cuddles

Mr Brown obviously has never heard that charity begins at home. Yes, it has been nice for certain people to allay their post-imperial guilt by chucking cash at the Commonwealth and the wider Third World. However while chiuldren are still in morbid danger of a number of bad outcomes in say,Bris;ington, then my charitable giving is focussed on UK. I commend this POV to the PM.

Theo nly exceptions should be where aid directly and demonstrably supports either UK trade or UK security.

I've never quite understood why being born on a island off the European coast makes one more worthy of receiving other people money than being born in some of the less affluent parts of the world.

I'd far rather my taxes went to alleviating real poverty and providing real opportunities to people who need it than to providing plasmas and broadband to idle chavs.

I agree with you about the chavs they don't deserve to get given anything but how about a system where people who work hard for what they get are allowed to keep it and chose who they give it to. I for one am getting sick of my hard earned being handed to the great unwashed both here and abroad.

Britain got it right in so many cases.
Africa ! well their armies where well trained up, however the the Political side was in the main never fully sorted, but the World wanted Britain out of Colonialism so we left too soon and now they have gone back to what they understand, Tribe.
john
Sounds a bite like Arabia.
"post-imperial guilt"
Almost get a hard on.