I dislike Gordon Brown. I think he takes lying and spin to a new level when trying to paint himself as the economic genius and the man to save us from the recession. Here are some quick examples:
He Abolished Boom and Bust
Hurray! No more recessions. Build some statues of the Man. Name streets and towns after him.
There have been recessions and there have been bubbles since economies existed. What made Gordon think that he had managed to change this? The current economic downturn was apparently a complete surprise to him. Great effort form our top economic guru.
The Golden Rule
This is his trade mark. Essentially: “We save in the good times so that we can spend in lean times”. Great idea. Not exactly rocket science, but certainly a sound and prudent way to run a country’s finances.
But when where the good times? Did I miss something? The UK is running some record deficits and has been increasing its borrowing for a while now. Gordon claims to have presided over the longest period of continuous growth, yet there is no spare cash in the public purse at all!
The golden rule seems to be more about “Go for broke, spend while you can and borrow when you can’t”. We went into a pretty nasty recession in 2008 completely unprepared. Thanks Gordon. He says he is the man for the job and knows how to get us out of it. We believe you, Gordon.
The 10p ‘Mistake’
A pretty daft move for an economic genius. He introduced it and then he abolished it. Abolishing it was essentially a kick in the teeth to people on below average incomes. Then to fix it the tax free allowance was raised, helping everyone (including the highest earners).
Anyone who has ever done a tax return and had a calculator handy could have worked out roughly who and how would be affected by these changes. The government apparently could not be bothered with such simple arithmetic.
A Genius? I think not.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Gordon Brown is all about a list of errors. He did have a few good moments. On average, however, the hopless blunders he managed to come up with are just too much.
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