Not sure if these are downloadable, but listening on the radio I was really struck by the difference between Gordon Brown and David Cameron’s speeches on winning their constituencies.
Mr Brown is in the wrong job, and needs to resign tomorrow no mater what the final results, but the speech was heartfelt, interesting, passionate and genuinely moving.
Mr Cameron sounded like the kind of personality-free senior manager who gives corporate Powerpoint presentations that mean nothing, are full of waffly buzzwords, are delivered with intensely loatheable smugness, and generally make you want to die.
I don’t think I could stand living in a country where someone that personally dislikeable (which Gordon Brown, for all his faults, isn’t – you might hate his politics and/or his competence, but I genuinely can’t imagine anyone disliking the man, personally, on meeting him) was main national figurehead and spokesman. So I suspect I’ll be out here for a fair while then…
(FX: checks “permanent residency” requirements again…)
…if you think that a grumpy machine politician without any human empathy, who could not even buy fish and chips unless he could make some asinine point about "these are not Tory fish and chips" such as Gordon is in any way likeable, please would you send me your address so that you can have deep, meaniongful conversations with the jehoveh's wsitnesses who plague me…. the guy is a total jerk…Goebbels without the charm
No, the point is, your stereotype how the Sun paints Gordo, and it's how he comes across at many of his official speeches, but it's the opposite of how he comes across when he says something he actually cares about or talks to an actual person, rather than trying to sound "statesmanly". The speech at Kircaldy definitely fell into the second category.