Guest 653- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,540
24 December 2008
07:5611473#1
A young man named Gordon bought a donkey from an old farmer for £100.
The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day, but when the farmer
drove up he said, 'Sorry son, but I have some bad news... the donkey is on
my truck, but unfortunately he's dead.
Gordon replied, 'Well then, just give me my money back.'
The farmer said, 'I can't do that, because I've spent it already.
Gordon said, 'OK then, well just unload the donkey anyway.
The farmer asked, 'What are you going to do with him?'
Gordon answered, 'I'm going to raffle him off.'
To which the farmer exclaimed, 'Surely you can't raffle off a dead donkey!'
But Gordon, with a wicked smile on his face said, 'Of course I can, I just
won't bother to tell anybody that he's dead.'
A month later the farmer met up with Gordon and asked, 'What happened with
that dead donkey?'
Gordon said, 'I raffled him off, sold 500 tickets at two pounds a piece and
made a huge, fat profit!!'
Totally amazed, the farmer asked, 'Didn't anyone complain that you had
stolen their money because you lied about the donkey being dead?'
To which Gordon replied, 'The only guy who found out about the donkey being
dead was the raffle winner when he came to claim his prize. So I gave him
his £2 raffle ticket money back plus an extra £200, which as you know is
double the going rate for a donkey, so he thought I was great guy!!
Gordon grew up and eventually became the Chancellor of the Exchequer and
then Prime Minister and no matter how many times he lied, or how much money
he stole from the British voters, as long as he gave them back some of the
stolen money, most of them, unfortunately, still thought he was a great guy.
The moral of this story is that, if you think Gordon is about to play fair
and do something for the everyday people of the country for once in his
miserable, lying life, think again my friend, because you'll be better off
flogging a dead donkey.
Roger
PS: I was going to just put it on the jokes page, but really, it's no joke at all.
Guest 640- Registered: 21 Apr 2007
- Posts: 7,819
24 December 2008
09:0911475#2
Gordon has of course grown in stature over the recent months. His field of excellence is finance and given there is a global financial crises he was able to come into his own, to get the bit between his teeth, and do what he felt was right for the British people and the British economy. Of course financial planners can never agree on anything. So one mans road to financial utopia is another mans road to ruin, and Gordon has nailed his own particular financial plan to the mast and we will sink or swim on that plan.
Gordon suffered as anyone would coming in the wake of Tony Blair. No matter what side of the political divide you are on, you can recognise the Tony Blair success story, winning an unprecedented 3 victories for Labour. Coming in that wake is nigh on impossible, as John Major found after Maragaret Thatcher. Gordon started well enough but soon fell foul of the media when he bottled out of that early general election.He didnt have the Blair PR skills to turn the tide in his favour for some while after that.
But now, as Lazarus before him, he has risen from the dead, the political dead, and strides the world stage with aplomb. The British people have a renewed faith in him as a leader, a leader in a time of war, financial war. But will he go the way of Churchill and lose all when next the public vote. He may do, but at least Labour are back in with a real chance of winning, whereas before the financial crises all was lost.
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
24 December 2008
10:5711481#3
PaulB - Now you really have got into the realms of a fairy story....
Gordon Brown will go down in history as the most incompetent Chancellor who's mismanagement resulted in us being the first nation in to the deepest global recession for 80 years, the worse hit of any major nation and the last out of recession. He will be seen to be responsible for the worse collapse of international confidence in sterling in its history.
I cannot point to a single economic measure for which he is responsible that has turn out to be correct. Oh, perhaps the decision to stick to Ken Clarke's spending plans in the first two years of his Chancellorship. Even what seemed the right decision to give the Bank of England independence over interest rates, turned out to have been a disaster due to combining it with the tripartied arrangement for regulating banks he also introduced.
He has enjoyed his initial, crisis inspired, Brown bounce, but it is now clear that the public have latched on to him now and it will be all downhill for Brown. I predict that he will be back in political oblivion territory within 3 months.
His 'saved the world, claim is also falling apart, you just need to see the latest comments from the IMF and the German Chancellor (yesterday) to see that.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
24 December 2008
11:1311483#4
i bet that gordon is a good boy to his mother though.
that is the important thing
Guest 640- Registered: 21 Apr 2007
- Posts: 7,819
24 December 2008
11:2411484#5
Its worth while remembering though BarryW that Gordon Brown has presided over the longest period of sustained economic growth in our history, has he not? Over 10 years and then into his own Premiership it all went swimmingly forward until the recent global collapse. This is the first period that the graph went downward, in anyones book that must be seen as a good performance over a long period of time.
Whether you are a fund manager or the MD of a company.. to experience sustained good management like that, well most would happily settle for it.
His current economic strategy of extensive borrowing is obviously not the utopian path for everyone. The Germans clearly dont see Gordon's way as the best way and are aligned with the Conservatives but they seem to be the only ones.
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
24 December 2008
11:5611490#6
PaulB - That 'longest period of sustained growth' is a myth created by his keeping the economy afloat only on a sea of debt and that is why we will be so badly hit now. It was a total economic fantasy that he created and we are now coming down to earth. It worked only for as long as we had a benign international economy, as soon as a cyclical downturn started the chickens have come home to roost.
Yes we do have a global problem, Brown is not wholly responsible for that, but he is responsible for how badly the UK will do compared to other countries.
His economic policies were only sustainable for a short period but he believed his own hype of an end to boom and bust.
We now see him totally screwing up the response to the recession. The VAT cut is a flop, his 'rescue' of the banks has failed in its main aim, why? because of the terms he laid down to the banks for his bailout, thats why.
He says he will increase taxes just as the economy may be recovering and that will cause a weakened economy to falter, perhaps fall into a double dip recession.
He is inadequate for the job.
As for his borrowing - you have bought the spin. Look at what the IMF have said openly yesterday. They do support a stimulus, yes, but not supported by a level of borrowing that is unsustainable. They say that only those countries who are in a position to do so should borrow for this purpose. Britain is not in such a position. If you do not believe me then you need to look at the international reaction to it - the collapse of sterling.
Brown/Darling have been hopelessly optimistic in their economic forecasts. Independent and international forecasters are more realistic and that means the 160% of GDP (not 44%!) borrowing will be a lot worse than even that eye wateringly appalling figure.
There must, must, be large scale puiblic spending cuts. He will not do it and we will all suffer as a result.
Sid Pollitt
24 December 2008
13:4611494#7
Was the donkey's name David? I thought it was going to be a festive story but Barry couldn't rustle together three wise men. I hope he gets a new record for Christmas because this one is starting to grate.
DT1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 15 Apr 2008
- Posts: 1,116
24 December 2008
14:5311495#8
There once was a small village that had gone through immense hardship in previous years, fighting with a nearby town ruled by a nasty little troll with a funny moustache. Resources had been stretched and many had gone hungry. As no one in the village ever wanted to go hungry they decided to club together and buy some livestock and farmland to provide for the village in times of trouble. They had been united by the atrocious conflict and realised that by clubbing together they could achieve more and provide security for one and other. They lived well and when times were hard they had their shared food and resources to fall back on.
One day around 1979 they elected a new town mayor and all seemed to be good until she started to sell off the livestock to the villagers (who actually already owned them) She did not replace any of the livestock or farmland but promoted the idea that it was if you owned more livestock than they needed it would mean you were better than other villagers. Some villagers lost the access to the livestock altogether and never saw a penny of compensation. Some of the money was used to wage a war on a frail old man who lived the other side of the kingdom in a useless shack, everyone was very pleased that 20 villagers kicked the crud out of 1 man and rejoiced on their return, almost forgetting the crazy things the mayor had done before.
After time many of the villagers had all the livestock and most were left with nothing. The ones left with nothing found it hard to forget what the wicked mayor had done and decided to adopt the 'sod you jack, I'm alright' attitude exemplified by the villagers with everyone else's livestock.
The moral of this story is that lies come in many forms and that the mayor was actually a wicked witch.
Sid Pollitt
24 December 2008
15:3311496#9
Then one day the Tory Party treasurer, Michael Spencer, got himself in a right mess after he became the second Conservative figure to be embroiled in a share scandal. Spencer, who has raised milions of pounds for the Tories in his role as treasurer, is chairman of the stockbroking firm Numis and the company has informed the City that Spencer's entire holding of 13.1m shares - 12% of the company, worth about £15m - has been used as security for a loan with HSBC .
This deal has been revealed in the wake of a similar furore surrounding fellow major Tory donor David Ross, the multimillionaire co-founder of Carphone Warehouse. Ross quit as the firm's deputy chairman two weeks ago and also resigned his position on the board of the London Organising Committee of the 2012 Olympic Games.
The latest controversy emerged when private investment company IPGL, of which Spencer and his family own a majority stake, revealed he used the shares as collateral. Independent legal advice at the time the arrangement was made appeared to suggest that such a switch "did not amount to a dealing within the meaning of the AIM Rules", the Numis statement said.
The trouble is that this a true story and another example of why the Tories are unfit to run the country.
Guest 674- Registered: 25 Jun 2008
- Posts: 3,391
28 December 2008
11:3311567#10
Roll on the general election and BARRYW etc can go back after losing this seat and not getting into govt
to attacking labour and having no answers.
Oh by the way anyone heard of DC lately?