It seems that Mr Brown made a bit of a boo boo while I was wending my way to Russia. Others have commented enough on Gordon saving the world so I won't add my two pennyworth, except to say that I have expected him to add "from the crisis which started in America." I was more interested in what he added afterwards, which no one seems to have picked up on. Listen to the clip above and you can clearly hear him say...
"Not a single depositer in Britain lost any money".
That is not just what Fraser Nelson would call a 'Brownie'. It was a whopper. Indeed, it is not unfair to call it a lie. How does he think he can get away with these constant untruths?
I really do think there's something deeply psychological going on here. I have no doubt that in his own mind he really does believe that he personally has saved the world. It wasn't a slip of the tongue. That's what he really thinks. This is a man so delusional that he has come to believe his own propaganda. Very dangerous.
47 comments:
Brown is a freak, end of.
Well spotted.
Many, many of us have and continue to:-
lose our pensions
lose interest on savings and the capital value
lose value in our investments
we've had our shares stolen, so no dividends or capital
our income is stolen to pay for Brown's farce
Maybe some enterprising journalist could do a piece on how much 'hard working families, and couples, and singles', have actually lost!! And then estimate how much we and our children, and our grandchildren, and our great grandchildren, are going to lose!!!
Another lie, 'we're going to end poverty', up there with 'boom and bust' I'd say!!!
To be objective Summer, losing value on equity markets is not the same as losing a deposit in a bank.
I doubt this is what Iain meant - were you thinking of the over-£50K savers in foreign banks Iain?
A good spot, Sir.
I don't believe this should go unchallenged, so I'm also posting it on my Blog, along with a request that any other Blogger reading it post the same clip, the same quotation and a request to the PM to explain his words to the House and the Electorate:
"We call on the Prime Minister to make a statement clarifying his words in Prime Ministers' Questions, and to answer IN DETAIL how he can state that 'not a single depositor has lost money in Britain'."
http://dungeekin.blogspot.com/2008/12/say-what.html
I've also passed your link on as comments on John Redwood and Douglas Carswell's blogs, and will do the same with others.
Brown is far too fond of lying to the House. PMQ's is a chance to hold his actions to account, his words must be held similarly accountable.
Cheers
D
I think the point you make about people not picking up on things Britains unelected Leader says is a good one for one main reason, he is becoming more incoheriant as each day passes, his boring, monotone, hard to understand, put you to sleep voice is just to much for any normal human being to bare, I now have to wait for people to point things out about what he has said as I can no longer bare to listen to him.
So thanks Iain for not only pointing this whooper out but for tranlating it :o)
No facts in your link Dungeekin, just a repost of Iain's remarks. Who actually did lose deposits? I'm not disagreeing, just curious, as all the media have been stating as fact that no depositors lost money.
DespairingLiberal:
Good point, well made.
The aim of my post is to keep the story moving.
I am working on research to provide a link-heavy tirade about this one - unfortunately I'm not a 'pro' blogger, so the day job keeps inconveniently interfering.
Watch that space, I'll have something meaty up as soon as I can.
D
Clarkson has lost money!
Apart from that, the only example I've heard of is the Icelandic banks depositors and I thought they had all been covered, but perhaps not - does anyone else have an update?
Brown and Bliar are going to go down in history as the two most corrupt, deceitful, evil, treacherous crooks who have ever been British prime minister.
Unless, of course, the Common Purpose Ministry of Truth manages to rewrite all the history books.
Stop common purpose - are you human, or a bot? If so, which keywords trigger your autorants please?
which depositors lost money out of which banks / building societies?
Despairing Liberal:
I think what we have here is yet more dishonest semantics from Mr Twit.
Firstly, with the exception of London Scottish the Government have never actually *said* they'll guarantee deposits >50k.
Plus you'll have to wait until any administration process etc is completed, and then the Government has to pay your money - which means you're not actually getting YOUR money, back, you're adding to the overall UK debt which will then be reclaimed from you in punitive taxation.
Also, the word 'depositor' was, I imagined, carefully chosen. That way it removes from consideration the thousands of people who've seen their pension funds collapse and who now can't retire because their fund can no longer afford to purchase an annuity.
That's from 30-odd minutes of research, which is all I have time for right now - I've updated my Post with links, and will follow up more deeply tonight.
Weasel words from a weasel PM.
D
Not quite I'm afraid.
Listen again - carefully.
What he actually says is "No depositor actually lost money in Britain."
This gives him an easy out - a bit like many commentators have been saying about not telling lies per se but just not telling the whole truth.
What he said was correct - the only people to lose money will be those with deposits in (Icelandic for example) banks offshore (not in Britain).
Very clever as it makes him sound like the saviour of the universe but actually doesn't quite paint the real picture
.
I suspect that the UK Treasury is also panicking: "What to do about Gordon?"
Undoubtedly the fault lines are such that the germans are trying to say for treasury boffins what Darling cannot.
All this Greater Crash play-out would have ben different had Brown had the election and won. Who can doubt he would not be throwing our cash and our children's future down the toilet other than he knows history - his Phd subject - will mock him and he is deeply frightened of such failure.
He may yet end up in Bedlam. Our governmental controls are not there to prevent this from becoming, through Brown's madness, the destructive financial hurricane to wipe Britain's centuries-old wealth from the face of the land.
One small addendum to my last comment.
A scan-through the FSCS documentation would indicate that only your invested capital sum (up to the limit) is guaranteed to be compensated.
So - if you had 50k in the failed bank of your choice, and the Administration process took six months, you have LOST the interest on that investment.
That, surely, is a depositor losing out?
D
I agree Dunkgekin, but he didn't say "a depositor with more than 50K could lose out", he said none had in Britain. I actually think that is correct and therefore Iain's piece is (sadly, increasingly typically for Iain) well off the mark and won't gather pace anywhere other thank with the most blinkered Tory hardliners.
What we need are attacks that will stick, not just half-baked name-calling.
Losing the interest is indeed lost money, but it doesn't have the same ring as
"I put in 100k and all I got back was 50k".
Can anyone say that, yet?
DesperateLiberal
I disagree with you there.
An increasing problem in politics (and I'm not just meaning Mr Twit, though he is the biggest offender) is the misuse of language for a soundbite.
While I know that politicians were ever thus, this is becoming so blatant that it's ridiculous.
Mr Brown's argument is likely to be along the lines of 'no investor with money saved in British banks will lose their capital investment' - but instead he chooses to use words that are outright dishonest in order to sound good.
I think Iain is right to challenge it, and it's something that should be raised and attacked much more frequently.
Besides, I've only done a small amount of research, perhaps Mr Dale is going to hit us with some more damning detail later?
Cheers
D
What about depositors in Lehmans and Singer and Friedlander?
Don't businesses losing their deposits count?
I don't think the Prime Minister is delusional - he seems to be best when dealing with a crisis (serious times and all that) and it is better that the clunking fist is occupying itself with the problems of the world than brooding in his lair.
william br jeremy - the oldest trainees
Despairing Liberal, you seem to delight in arguing against yourself. You wrote: "but he didn't say "a depositor with more than 50K could lose out", he said none had in Britain. I actually think that is correct."
How on earth can that be correct?
Guido:
Good point. I've only been looking at consumer depositors, not businesses. I'll redress that this evening.
D
The Gordon Saves World line of spin is sweet to his ears...as is 'Brown intends to bring Sterling into the Eurozone' sweet to EU ears.
The irrelevance of Parliament and the British media to what's been agreed is not even shocking any more. Brown can claim historical significance and pass on to the EU Hall of Fame and the Sainthood. He's trying to tell us what is about to happen, but no one can believe it. The problem is that in order to take it in, you have suck on your own irrelevance.
Brown's the greatest democrat of all time, conning all of the people all of the time for a whole decade and he's still succeeding at doing it. Lincoln thought it would be impossible. Brown has rewritten the history of political deception, and proved its greatest practitioner.
Lies? Of course, Iain. Please tell us if you ever catch him telling the truth. That at least would be newsworthy.
Iain
This isn't about logic, it's about facts.
WHO has lost HOW MUCH from WHICH British-regulated bank?
Brown will dismiss Guido's examples as "foreign".
I'm really ignorant, so I'm really just asking.
British people with savings in the Isle of Man or Guernsey off shore operations have lost money - following taken from Huddersfield Examiner
"A HUDDERSFIELD man who had £200,000 invested in an Icelandic bank was last night named in the Commons as a victim of the financial crisis.
David Speed, of Farnley Tyas, is one of up to 2,000 Britons with savings in Icelandic banks on the Isle of Man and Guernsey.
Labour MP Mary Creagh told the Commons that Mr Speed and the others had held personal accounts in Kaupthing Singer Friedlander on the Isle of Man (KSF IOM).
The Wakefield MP, whose area covers parts of Kirklees, said the Manx government had now agreed to cover deposits of up to £50,000 after the Iceland bank's collapse.
But, unlike the Financial Services Compensation Scheme in the UK, there was no money "in the pot", Ms Creagh said.
Mr Speed recently sold his business and put £200,000 of the proceeds into a one-year bond with KSF IOM on the recommendation of his accountant."
Disgusted...
I really didn't think I would need to spell this out to my intelligent readers...
1. Business depositers
2. Local authorities
3. Anyone who had more than £50,000
4. Any British citizen who had money invested by offshore banks - eg Isle of Man
5. Anyone with less than £50,000 will lose interest on it
He said "Not a single depositer in Britain lost any money". This isn't a question of semantics. It is simply factually wrong.
Re dungeekin's argument:
I don't quite see what Brown was supposed to do about the FTSE. Share trading is gambling. You win, you lose. Investments go down as well as up. No one has a right to make money. That's capitalism. As for the banks, so far what you say doesn't really add up. If banks collapse at least in part as a result of their own behaviour and depositor's money is put at risk, how else is the government supposed to help? The only other answer surely would be just to let them go, and everyone's money with them...
Iain 9:59 - I think any reasonable person listening to PMQ would have assumed he meant personal UK savers in bank savings accounts.
What is the evidence to support your assertion in your blog posting that he is wrong to claim that no depositors have lost out? When clearly they haven't, at least so far. Disregarding businesses - fair point Guido!
It's all in the assumptions. If GB was talking about individual depositor's savings in the UK to date, then he is correct.
Just saying he isn't doesn't get us very far does it Iain?
What I'm asking you to do is flavour your politicking with a few facts so that the smears might gather some running power, rather than just be amusing blog-fodder for your fan club. Or am I missing something significant about your approach? Is it that in fact you don't care much, so long as you keep being identified by the media as "leading Tory blogger Iain Dale" and thereby keep getting all those TV appearances?
Running through your "fact" list Iain:
- businesses - at what point did anyone say the government would underwrite all business accounts? That would be bonkers even by the bloated public spending excesses of NuLab.
- Local authorities - are you thinking of Iceland here? Not a UK bank deposit.
- More than 50K - assured for UK banks so far. Iceland? Not a UK bank deposit.
- Offshore - I think we've covered that.
- interest on 50K plus - no British accounts so far affected unless you are also counting reduced interest rates but that could have happened anyway.
Oh dear. Your central thrust appears to be a non-starter.
@Dannyrye:
I've responded to your comment on my own page, so I won't reproduce it here.
Suffice to say that this isn't about his actions but his words.
Cheers for the comment
D
@DespairingLiberal:
Running through your "fact" list Iain:
- businesses - at what point did anyone say the government would underwrite all business accounts? That would be bonkers even by the bloated public spending excesses of NuLab.
Sorry, but I think you're missing the point here.
Business depositors are not covered, therefore they have/will lose out.
Therefore, Brown's statement in Parliament was wrong, because British depositors (in this case businesses WILL lose out).
That's the simple point, whatever the machinations behind it.
D
Thank you, Iain, and intelligent readers, for your forbearance.
Am now convinced. Brown said (according to Hansard) "not one depositor actually lost any money in Britain".
Not restricted to personal depositors or British banks. Just any depositor in Britain.
Not true.
@disgusted:
No forbearance needed.
I wished I'd linked to Hansard in my original post. I have done so since.
D
Also -- reading Hansard its clear without a doubt that not only did the PM make an arse of himself - he completely refused to answer the question (about bank lending to businesses) - had no answer because he refused to admit his policy was not working - and indeed the very point of his gaffe was he was rambling on about quite inconsequential matters and not the real economy.
Camerons questions exposed him ruthlessly, but the BBC News chose not to show the full exchange. This really should shut those who say that he his ineffective. He is not - this PMQs was good, indeed brilliant, Cameron, but it was not widely reported. 6 questions once a week, if that, and half of it not reported. Get real people.
Disgusted/Dungeekin - I can admit you are technically right - my point is just that this is fairly thin stuff, since most people would have taken his line to mean the obvious - British personal domestic savings accounts.
BTW, to those like Guido citing Lehmans - are you really now saying that the British government should underwrite all foreign banks as well, including the US$ 1 trillion debt of Lehmans? Given that official Tory policy appears currently to be to do nothing to intervene?
My point being of course that one of the underlying causes of the drift back to Labour has been Conservative Party inability to address issues factually and coherently. Osborne/Cameron have been all over the shop in their attacks and it's frankly just a muddle. This blog-based line is similar. Now the Tories are 9% adrift of NuLab.
All a huge shame and a genuine opportunity missed for a hung parliament and LibDem ministers!
Our local children's hospice stands to lose £5.7 million from the failure of Kaupthing Singer and Friedlander. There is a pretition on the 10DS website asking Brown to help:
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/CharityHelp/
There was a debate in Parliament on the matter last week (4th), but the PM was obviously not listening.
Sorry, DespairingLiberal, but I just don't get it.
You say "my point is just that this is fairly thin stuff, since most people would have taken his line to mean the obvious - British personal domestic savings accounts." So you are allowing for the PM to use weasel words with an IMPLIED meaning.
Yet in the third paragraph, you criticise David Cameron and George Osborne for "Conservative Party inability to address issues factually and coherently".
If you are making assumptions as to the meaning of Mr Brown's speech, rather than taking his words at face value, then he is not speaking "factually and coherently".
If the PM had applied those caveats you say are implied to his words, then there wouldn't have been an issue.
Instead, he didn't. So when looking at the facts of his words, they become dishonest dissimulation. Which was the basis of Iain's comment, and the subsequent (updated) followup on my own blog.
I'm more than willing to continue this, as it's an enjoyable debate. However, perhaps we shouldn't tie up Iain's comments thread - you're very welcome to respond on mine if you wish.
Thanks for the debate.
D
Doh, you're all missing the point - read my post at 9.29
@Blaad:
I'm not sure that we are.
You see, what I'm saying is that his words were carefully chosen (as you do, indeed, mention).
However, what I'm saying is that while his comments do indeed weasel out of the offshore banks issue, they don't cover things like business depositors, loss of interest through delays in administration, or the fact that any government-paid compensation will be recouped by punitive taxation.
Hence my position that he was STILL misleading the house, even if you take the implied statement into consideration.
D
Not doubt posted before but worth another view.
Obsessive compulsive personality disorder
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive_compulsive_personality_disorder
"A mnemonic that can be used to remember the criteria for OCPD is LAW FIRMS.
L – Loses point of activity (due to preoccupation with detail)
A – Inability to complete tasks (compromised by perfectionism)
W – Worthless objects (unable to discard)
F – Friendships (and leisure activities) excluded (due to a preoccupation with work)
I – Inflexible, overconscientious (on ethics, values, or morality, not accounted for by religion or culture)
R – Reluctant to delegate (unless others submit to exact guidelines)
M – Miserly (toward self and others)
S – Stubbornness (and rigidity)"
Sound familiar?
Who is this 'Despairing Liberal' whi bats for Brown et al. A hired hand by Lord Sleaze and his cabal?
Norman - I feel hurt - I loathe M'Lud Mandlesohn but then again so do most people, it's not hard. Also, please pay attention - I am a LibDem.
It's just despair on my part (as my name suggests) that we will ever again have an Opposition worthy of the name.
Or need I bring up the fact that our own Vince Cable appears to be much more of an opposition than anyone on the Tory benches, Osborne and Cameron included?
Fair comment Dungeekin, I just take a view on how the electorate will hear statements like that from Mr Bean-Stalin. I assume you agree that I am right and the public will not hear it as a definitive statement, even if technically he is wrong?
How wrong do you have to be BTW for a claim that you misled Parliament to be filed?
Watching this dreadful man run the country into the ground is like watching a multiple car crash with fatalities in slow motion. All very, very worrying...
'Not a single depositor in Britain lost any money.'
Surely he knows about the British who, for reasons of not having a permanent home in UK but wishing to save in UK (and pay UK taxes), banked with Kaufthing, Singer and Friedlander on the Isle of Man.
Around 5,000 tax paying British people have had their life savings stolen by Alistair Darling and many are now destitute.
This bank was completely solvent but was caught up in the Icelandic banking seizure.
So 5,000 and their £500m+ are ignored. The UK government refer to the Isle of Man as a tax haven. That's just rubbish.
Shame on Gordon Brown. Many of the people who have lost their life savings are nearing retirement age and are broke.
What a legacy Gordon. Thief as well as liar.
Just in case anyone's nervous about UK banks or banks under UK law here's the website. Have a look because it could happen to you.
http://www.ksfiomdepositors.org/
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