Blog:Mr Broon and The Letter
From Bolton Interweb
Helen Hywater, Westminster Correspondent, 14th November 2009
Who would have believed it? Courtesy of his new worst enemy, The Sun, Gorden Broon suddenly becomes a figure of public sympathy. Mr Broon took the time to hand-write letters of condolence to Mrs Janes, bereaved mother of Guardsman Jamie Janes killed in Afghanistan. Without public fanfare he writes to the families of all servicemen killed on active duty and genuinely offers any help within his power. I didn't know our Prime Minister did that, and I'm guessing most of us didn't. And impossible though it may seem, he has gone up in my estimation ten fold, both for the act and the fact that it was done without publicity.
But The Sun, a rag I have long argued should be banned from calling itself a newspaper on trade description grounds and fined out of existence for the pretense, decided to exploit a clearly distraught Mrs Janes and Mr Broon's excruciatingly bad handwriting and spelling, for its own disreputable agenda. Disreputable because The Sun exists only to serve the dubious commercial self-interests of the Murdoch family and no-one else. It is no coincidence that The Sun switches political allegiance to the Conservatives when Murdoch realises they are his best bet to ongoing political interference, sorry influence.
Mrs Janes was clearly in a very vulnerable state, and Broon's Afghanistan policies are increasingly exposed and unpopular as more body bags are flown home for no apparent or credible reason. Put the two together and some dipstick in the Murdoch empire scented political blood. Mrs Janes was ill-advised to become The Sun's political patsy and The Sun's decision to use her, and I mean use, was utterly dispicable. And, inevitably, it backfires badly when the vast bulk of the citizenry think that, actually, Broon is to be commended for hand-writing letters to the bereaved and offering help, and to be forgiven for handwriting made worse by the fact he is half blind. Some have said that his office should have checked the letter before it was sent, but in some ways the fact that it was sent mistakes and all, from the heart and not tampered with and sanitised of errors, to me makes it more personal.
The Sun then compounds its hypocrisy by referring to Mrs Janes as Mrs Jones. Why do people buy this insult to journalism? The people of Liverpool wised up to them long ago over their Hillsborough lies, and The Sun barely sells a copy on Merseyside even 20 years on. It is about time the rest of the UK followed suit. And it wouldn't do the Conservatives any harm to disassociate themselves as quickly as they can.
So Broon now has the sympathy vote. And you can see what happens in the X-Factor when a contestant is lambasted and bullied by Simon Cowell - the public vote to spite the bully. In this dumbed down world of reality TV voting, don't for one moment imagine that this would not be translated by some voters into the world of General Elections. Don't get me wrong, Gordon Broon is the Tory Party's best weapon, having buggered up the economy and taking every opportunity to deny the bleeding obvious on about any issue you could mention. A Prime Minister should be respected not pitied, a leader not the victim of bullying. Along with quantative easing, diluting our money, Broon had also been engaging in qualitative easing, diluting the quality of our governance. But, is there a chink of a real human being in there, one that makes spelling mistakes like normal people do? Is there something the man on the street can relate and connect to? Perhaps Gordon needs to dump the spin doctors and just be himself, warts and all. Perhaps it is possible for him to claw his way back into a contender by dropping the crap. Who knows, but nowt else is working and largest party in a hung parliament isn't impossible.
© Evrose, 2011
