Too Much Outrage
I have been listening to the news and noting the pious, righteous fuss about Brown’s badly written letter to the mother of Jamie Janes.
The mother of a soldier who was killed in Afghanistan has accused Gordon Brown of disrespecting her son’s memory by misspelling their surname in a letter of condolence.
Jacqui Janes, whose son Jamie, 20, of the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, was killed by an explosion on October 5, received a hand-written note from Mr Brown, which began: “Dear Mrs James”.
After reading reports of her outrage, Mr Brown personally contacted Mrs Janes this morning to assure her that he had not meant any disrespect and had no intention of causing offence, Downing Street said today.
Well, no, I don’t for one moment doubt that he didn’t intend to cause offence. The man may be an appalling prime minister, but there is no evidence that these letters are anything other than what they are intended to be; letters of condolence. Brown chose to handwrite them apparently as this was more personal.
My handwriting is pretty appalling. It tends to look as if a post coital praying mantis has fallen into the ink and sprawled across the page trying to find its way as it hopelessly attempts to wipe the ink from its eyes, forgetting that its head has been bitten off. There is a reason for this; my brain is moving faster than my hand. Consequently, letters get missed and some are incomplete. It doesn’t matter how much care I take, the results are always the same; a semi-decipherable scrawl. Looking at the pictures of Brown’s writing, his is much like mine.
All in all, this is a classic example of manufactured outrage used by the Sun to ram home a political point. I disagree with the war in Afghanistan. I am appalled that politicians will cheerfully send others’ sons and daughters to die as political pawns in their power games. However, the British army is a volunteer force. Guardsman Janes was a volunteer who willingly gave up his freedom of choice and ultimately his life for his chosen career. His mother has every right to disagree with the politicans’ choices. She is, naturally, grief stricken, but running to the Sun because she objects to the scrawly nature of the prime minister’s letter of condolence demonstrates rather more disrespect than he has. Surely Jamie Janes’ memory deserves a little more respect than being dragged through the red tops in order to wound a politician who is already a dead man walking.
You won’t find me siding with Brown very often, but on this occasion, I detect a hurricane whipped up for no good reason, so I do. There are plenty of reasons to despise the man, but this isn’t one of them. This is pure faux outrage designed to create a bit of cheap publicity and to make the Sun look righteous in its moral indignation. Doubtless in Mrs Janes’ postion, I would be equally upset by my loss. I might be critical of a letter that appeared badly written and misspelled. But I would not be calling the Sun to tell them about it.
A pox on all their houses.
![[Valid RSS]](http://www.longrider.co.uk/blog/images/valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed")