Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Gordon Goes Global

I was interested to read the publicity blurb for Gordon Brown's as yet untitled book, which is due to be published in November. He says...
We now live in a world of global trade, global financial flows, global movements of people and instant global communications. Our economies are connected as never before, and I believe that global economic problems require global solutions and global institutions. In writing my analysis of the financial crisis, I wanted to help explain how we got here, but more importantly to offer some recommendations as to how the next stage of globalisation can be managed so that the economy works for people and not the other way around.

In case you were wondering, this book's going, er, global.

I do hope Gordon owns a copy of Roget's Thesaurus...

PS It started in America...

43 comments:

Jabba the Cat said...

Must be destined as the mother of all publishing lemons. Is some publisher actually dumb enough to front some money on this one, or is it all being financed by the taxpayer via his parliamentary salary and expenses?

Anonymous said...

Gordon Brown could say whatever he wants in this book and it would still sell. It makes sense for him to use a word such as 'global' multiple times as it was something he did throughout his Prime Ministerial run.

Anonymous said...

Iain, please don't mention that man, it spoils my day.

Praguetory said...

If he believes that everything is global and nothing can be done from a national perspective why did he want to become PM? Globalisation does exist, but it actually heightens the importance of sound domestic policies because your economy can be very quickly punished if you have a left-wing university lecturer holding the reins.

Jabba the Cat said...

If MacMental is short of a title, I would put forward "FUBAR In Downing Street - The ZaNuLab Years".

Max Atkinson said...

Maybe he's read somewhere that using a key word repetitively on one page gets you a higher ranking on Google! As for his potential book sales, Private Eye claims that the book of speeches he published on April Fools' day has only sold 32 copies!

A comment on my recent blog on this sad news at http://bit.ly/cl8D8L has the full words of an extraordinary song entitled 'Gordon Brown be my angel' by someone called Eva Jo Frogster - which can be heard being sung to the tune of Brahms' Lullaby on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCEWhEuhRoo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCEWhEuhRoo

Boo said...

Clearly, he still believes in big goverment, so big its... er... Global

Anonymous said...

Will he explain why he ran deficits even when he had growth?
Will he explain why he allowed public expenditure to run pout of control?

What had that got to do with global issues.

Brown has a track record of talking and publishing wordy meaningless gibberish.
He was on GMTV this AM, - the first thing he did was give his sickly smile - I turned it off.

Oh happy day - he is out of office.

Unknown said...

That would be glob-al, rather than glo-bal.

How many references to 'endogenous groth theory'?

Anonymous said...

I liked 'Jabbas' suggestion for a book title, my variation would be 'FUBAR - My only achievement'.

Cynic said...

"Here I am, brain the size of a planet......."

"What are you supposed to do if you are a manically depressed robot? "

Marvin the Robot
Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy

"Well, if you call it a robot. It's more like an electronic sulking machine"

Arthur Dent
Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy

Penfold said...

In other words, its a load of BALLS.

Anonymous said...

Bet it ends up in the reduced bucket at Amazon within a month, joining the cursed ones other weighty tomes in like Courage, How to ruin a country, How to sell your armed forces short and the How to lie to Pariament for Dummies

Beware of Geeks bearing GIFs said...

Wonder if it will be published by thisisglobal.com? :)

wv:plash - the sound of McRuin's rewrite of history dropped in the toilet.

Page With A View said...

The rest of the blurb is even better:

"The book will also offer measures Brown believes the world should adopt to regain fiscal stability."

Priceless, the blind leading the blind. And it gets worse:

"Long admired for his grasp of economic issues..."

By whom? Robert Maxwell, Adam Applegarth and Fred Goodwin?

John said...

Of course if he asked, you wouldn't publish it would you?

Billy Blofeld said...

Gordon the historian clearly needs reminding of these global events that occurred before his dawning realisation that we lived in a global age.

Jim Baxter said...

On a point of literary style, Strunk notes that 'elegant variation', whereby a 'writer' uses synonyms to give spurious 'freshness' to mind-numbing drivel, is risible. I refer the court too to the principle of Gertrude Stein; A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.

The stupidity of 'elegant variation' can be seen in any BBC science report about Mars. Mars cannot be just Mars. It is first 'Mars', then 'The Red Planet' then Mars again, etc..

On the other hand, Brown is a bore is a bore is a bore, etc..

Unsworth said...

Apart from not wishing to hear any of Brown's 'explanations', I'm astounded that he's only just woken up to the concept of multi-national organisations - and their relative immunity from national governments. JK Galbraith - that noted economist - was banging on about this in the early 1960s.

Did/does Brown not regard himself as an economic genius? What a telling indication of Brown's lack of knowledge and/or understanding - of any bleeding thing.

Anonymous said...

The title the c*** uses had better be awfully carefully chosen, or the public will delight at yet another occasion to bash him about the head.

I predict humiliatingly low sales - and a ready excuse for that already being concocted by the Mentalist.

Victor, NW Kent said...

This book will head the list of political memoirs that I will not buy. It is a long list but Brown will top it.

Patrick said...

Any idiot can put "Global" in front of a noun... and has.

Dave H said...

"I never used the word global.'

Gordon Brown, a few years from now.

Brian said...

I suggest a quote from Bigotgate: "That Was A Disaster”. An alternative title is how he described himself after apologising to Mrs Duffy "I Am A Penitent Sinner". Not as good as the former but the marketing posters would be easy to adapt to the deeper truth.

HampsteadOwl said...

"....so that the economy works for people, not the other way round"

Obviously, I don't have Gordon Brown's huge grasp of economics, but I always had the impression that people working for the economy was, well sort of the whole idea really.

Unless you live in Brownland I guess, where everyone works for the state with salaries paid for by money the country hasn't made.

cynicalHighlander said...

A total waste of paper and ink.

The Grim Reaper said...

Good for Gordon. Nice to see him working hard, but not on the job that he's paid by the electorate to do. The only global thing about the man is the fact he's a global ████.

Four letters, starting with C. You work it out.

Bill Quango MP said...

Have you seen the fun people have been having with the tag listings at amazon?

search for this listing under:
Medicated
Mental illness
Worst PM ever
Obama is my friend

and so on

Anonymous said...

I love all the "tags customers associated with this product" linked to Brown on the Amazon site.

Mark M said...

Fantastic insight into how Gordon's mind works. His ideas are all top down - if economies are global then government and control must be at least at that level, pushing down. No idea that we might be able to better solve problems bottom up, as individuals.

There are 6 billion people in the world - yet Gordon would rather a select few (probably him as one of them) had a say over every single one of them.

I think I'll put this one on my "Don't Buy" list.

David Anthony said...

PS It started in America...

.. but It Began in Afrika! ka-ka.

50 Calibre said...

This book will have less appeal than Katie Price's latest load of claptrap.

I so want it to bomb...

cassandra said...

Gordon who?

Who is this Gordon Brown chap? Is he one of those stars in their eyes runner ups going round opening local mini marts?

Glyn H said...

Brown does not need to justify what he did; he set out to do it. He believes it and it's what socialism does. The excuses need to come from Blair who got him in under a cloak of 'New Labour' and then let the vile malevolent ******** get on with doing his damage. All those bombastic budgets which unravelled within days. Once he levered Blair out (instead of being fired himself) he used the our money to rescue N/Rock for pure Labour advantage and has printed money like we are a banana republic.

We are on a wing and a prayer if this can bbe rescued without stagflation. We did it in 1991 (and it cost me my career). Let us pray to the sky fairy.

Glyn H said...

Re. last post. For 1991 read 1981 and add; if chunks of those state employees hired in non jobs and quangos as labour vote fodder since 1997 are out on their ears - bring it on!

Cynic said...

I feel sorry for those affected by the Pakistan floods.

Who on earth thought it a good idea for Gordon to front a request for donations?

Sean said...

I think you guys are cynical bar stewards.

If you check the facts you will find indubitably that all the good things that happened at the beginning of New Labour's term of office were down to Gordon, especially his prudence, and all the bad things that happened towards the end were a result of Evil Capitalists.

Dual Citizen said...

The great thing about pre-announcing your book on amazon is that people can generate "Tags that customers associate with this product".

http://amzn.to/9YAKw8

Priceless, and please do add some more.

Brian said...

@Sean Haffey: Inheriting a booming economy and stable public finances ("What do you want me to do? Write a thank you letter?"), destroying private pensions, selling gold reserves off cheap came at the start of his mismanagement.
Broon started low and dipped.

Clive Bates said...

If you say global, global, global fast and in a Scottish accent, it sounds like a turkey.

Ruth said...

Suggestion for a name for Brown's book 'How I ruined the economy & democracy of a perfectly good country, bringing it to its knees & implementing a police state while reducing it to 3rd world status'. He'll dedicate it to Robert Mugabe & Erich Honecker. Personally, I hope the b****** roasts in H*** for what he did while he was in government. Mentally ill he may well be but he is also an evil & malevolent feeble failure of a man with moral values that would make Hitler blush with shame.

Dual Citizen said...

Apparently it's got a title - "The Crisis, the Next Crisis, and What Happens Next".

There's also a new page on Amazon.

http://amzn.to/dqruIf

The price has gone up 9 quid overnight. His "Global" crap has gone from the editorial review.

And most annoyingly of all we'll have start adding those "Tags that customers associate with this product", all over again.

Dual Citizen said...

Oops! Actually that's the American site I just landed on. Hence the different price. Still need to load it up with tags though.