Dunno, maybe it's just that we're a banana republic over here, but I do think people tend to be very hard on their elected politicians in the UK. Maybe he shouldn't have made hay out of it, but nobody can deny that Gordon Brown suffered terribly - he's paid a high enough price. He appears to be an honest and able man. Maybe that says little about Ireland that I'm impressed by that, as opposed to what passes as business as usual, but I'm inclined to think "let the man govern, unless he's done some grievous wrong"

I can't forgive him for being part of the gang that took us into Iraq.

Honest and able? I'm not so sure of that. He projects an image of rocklike integrity (the face helps) but I think the reality is something rather different

People who have had to work for him report his behaviour as devious, bullying and generally disfunctional.

I found a site that was talking about Gordon Brown's bullying behaviour but was put off it when they started accusing him of "discounting the Irish vote" on Lisbon. I don't like it when we're used by Eurosceptics.

Then I found a Simon Hoggart article in the Guardian that made me laugh but shed no light.

Then I found this link:
http://www.roguegunner.com/2010/01/gordon-brown-is-bully-boy.html
and yes it does sound like he has an anger management problem! I heard rumours about flying printers too. I hope they weren't laserjets.

Re Iraq I think his crime was to go along with it rather than initiate it. I still don't understand what motivated that man Blair to take an unwilling populace into a pointless, destructive war all for the sake of a man who was a mere son of a WASP, who was manifestly inferior in intelligence and sensitivity even to him.

They all went along with Blair on Iraq- with the exception of Robin Cook who is dead- even though most of them had their doubts. If Cabinet members as senior as Brown or Straw had had the guts they could have stopped the whole thing- but they didn't. That makes them as guilty as Blair in my book- perhaps guiltier, because at least Blair believed in what he was doing.

I see that you, too, are sometimes thrown into a situation where you need to choose the lesser evil. We have had far too many such situations over here. The last one seemed to have broken that curse, but now we "hopefuls" are developing a "wait and see" attitude. The recent Massachusetts election for a Senator in Congress to fill the empty space left by Ted Kennedy seems to have been a case where my fellow Bay Staters chose the lesser evil. I hope they were right. Damn! Yet another Republican goes to Washington to block progress and attempt to put us back to the 1950's or sooner.

There's a song by Neil Innes (of the Bonzo Dog Doodah band) that goes

"No matter who you vote for, the government always gets in"

please see email
Jenny

You have been quiet for a while, (though admittedly, lurking back here to check, not as long as I'd thought). I do hope all is well.

Thanks for noticing.

Everything is fine- I've been on holiday. To the Lac d'Annecy. I had hoped there might have been a wifi connection at the place we were staying. There wasn't.