The Janes saga continues today. What started as a non story is being milked for all it’s worth by the sleazy Sun (no I won’t link to the bastards). This comment, however, is a gem:
He said sorry 16 times, but he never apologised once.
“If he calls that an apology he doesn’t know what the word means.”
According to my dictionary, the word “apology” means to express one’s sorrow at having caused insult or injury and “sorry” is an exclamation expressing apology. If one says “sorry” that is an apology.
Brown’s choice of words is interesting.
Er, er, I’m sorry that you’ve taken offence about that…
That sums it up perfectly. No offence was ever intended. Mrs Janes chose to take offence, as is so often the case in our thin skinned world. There’s nothing much Brown or anyone else can do about that.
This brings back a conversation I had with an erstwhile manager of mine some thirty years ago. His advice was simple; if you have made an error, say “sorry” as this usually diffuses the situation. On those rare occasions when it has not, ask if they want blood as clearly the apology wasn’t enough. It seems that the “soaraway Sun” and Mrs Janes want just that. They are milking this one ultimately to their own detriment. The pair of them have achieved what the Labour party spin machine has failed to do; make people feel empathy with Gordon Brown.
Well done.
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Update: I am currently watching the BBC news and they are reporting that the public response is overwhelming in its sympathy for Gordon Brown on this one, including those responding on the Sun’s website, apparently. So that’s a fail, then.
“This brings back a conversation I had with an erstwhile manager of mine some thirty years ago. His advice was simple; if you have made an error, say “sorry” as this usually diffuses the situation.”
Some situations can’t be defused, though; because they aren’t really about what they seem to be about on the surface:
http://oxfordspring.blogspot.com/2009/11/gordon-brown-handwriting-story-is.html
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Oxford Spring makes a fair point, I think. However, this particular story is tacky and ultimately exploitative on the part of the Sun. As I and others have said in the earlier post on this; there are so many valid areas of attack, this one is best left alone. After all, even I have found myself feeling sorry for Brown. Now, how bad is that?
Pretty bad.
And if this was the thing, of all things, that forced his resignation (and stranger things have happened..) wouldn’t it be a little sad and pointless?
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Mrs – or is it Miss? – Janes seems to be an exceptionally umbrageous lady, and is doubtless being paid handsomely for it by the ‘Sun’. The objective of this ridiculous storm-in-a-teacup is not merely to humiliate Brown, but to show him up as utterly unfitted for his high office.
But most people with a grain of sense knew that already. Unlike you, I don’t feel sorry for him because I don’t think it is any part of a Prime Minister’s proper business to be writing letters of this sort, by hand or otherwise. Surely doing so betrays a great uneasiness, and guilt, that our soldiers are being sent to fight such a pointless and unwinnable war. He exposes his incompetence on all counts.
I dont feel sorry for him at all. This is an example (albeit sordidly and unfairly manufactured) of just how unfit this man is to be the prime minister. Im with Obo on this one.
Anticant, fair point indeed. My feeling sorry is purely on a human level. It’s a bit like seeing someone taunt a dying animal – either put it out of its misery or leave it to expire in peace, don’t keep prodding it. Ultimately, I feel that in the eyes of ordinary people, this damages the prodders more than the prodded. While I agree with the point about equipment and the matter of incompetence and fitness for office, the undignified public display of grief is tasteless in the extreme. I despise the Sun rather more than I despise Brown and his government.
JuliaM – yes, it would.
A cornered fox being mauled by a pack of hounds doesn’t have any choice – the PM does. He could have resigned long ago, but has repeatedly asserted that he is the best person for the job. So doesn’t he deserve all he gets?
As for the ceaseless mawkish televised displays of private and public grief, the Wootton Bassett funeral ritual, the intoning of names in the Commons to the insincere mantra “they will never be forgotten” – all this would be incomprehensible to the World War I and II generations who fought and died for their country without expecting to be drooled over. And they – unlike today’s soldiers – were mostly conscripts.
Far too many people today – not least politicians and media pundits – are shamefully thin-skinned and undignified.
Well, yes, but for me that isn’t the issue. We are supposed to be made of better stuff, rising above such tawdry displays. Apparently not, it seems. Whatever happened to dignity?
Agree entirely about the mawkish displays of grief going on – it’s on the box at the moment. The Diana syndrome. God help us if we ever had to fight another Hitler or Kaiser.
Whatever happened to dignity? Ask Rupert Murdoch. He knows where the body is buried.
On this occasion, I beg to differ*, but then I would, wouldn’t I ?
That excuse for a letter should have been pulled somewhere between his desk and the mailbag.
*and indeed have done so at some length.
Quite possibly so. But it should never have been a news story as it is counter productive. My first reaction to this was much the same as others cited by the BBC; sympathy for Gordon Brown. Given that I felt that, I knew damn well I wasn’t going to be alone and that this story was likely to backfire. Any attacks should be on policy, not his piss-poor attempt to do the right thing. Wrong target. Massive fail. Wholly counter-productive and it relinquishes the moral high ground big time. But, then, given the toxic nature of the Sun, what should I expect? Anything to shift copy, no matter how damaging or who gets damaged in the process.
It’s not just about selling papers. It’s about debauching public standards of morality and debate ever lower and lower so that when the time comes for a putsch there will be little if any principled resistance.
An interesting comment on Craig Murray’s blog alleges that Ms Janes was hooked up to the Sun by Help for Heroes (who also recorded her phone conversation with Brown). One of the trustees of H4H – a fund-raising ‘charity’ – is (according to this poster) a senior board member of Agusta Westland, who make Merlin helicopters (and for whom my father worked during WW2!), and it also receives support from several other military-industrial companies. Another trustee is Sir Richard Dannatt. The plot thickens…..
True, this whole saga has been tacky, but let’s also understand that Brown is a professional politician. As such he’ll have made several calculations about how and why he should respond to such accusations. Indeed he’ll have done the same when deciding whether to even write to the grieving relatives. He’s surrounded by acolytes and advisers, most of whom could have checked over the letter for spelling, puctuation, content and presentation. After all, how did Brown know any of the details of this soldier and his death? Someone must have briefed him.
What we’re observing is the outcome of Brown’s inability to do anything properly, or to seek or take advice. Even his cack-handed phone call was disastrous. What on earth induced him to make the call at ten o’clock on a Sunday night to a woman who’d just lost her son and who was already remarkably pissed-off? He’s a complete bodger.
The Sun may well be toxic – but Brown should’ve understood that long ago – having dealt with The Sun for many years, and used its services himself.