I have to get to the Beeb so I will leave you to read the juicy details yourself. But it comes to a pretty pass when the Cabinet Secretary has to tell the Prime Minister to stop abusing his staff.
UPDATE: this is from Simon Walters' article.
Britain's top civil servant ordered Gordon Brown to 'curb your volcanic
temper' after complaints that he was abusive to his Downing Street staff, it has
emerged. The unprecedented rebuke, delivered by Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus
O'Donnell, was revealed amid explosive disclosures about Mr Brown's wild and
violent outbursts.
The Prime Minister was forced to go on television to deny he had
physically assaulted his aides as a new book claimed: Sir Gus ordered an
official inquiry into allegations of bullying by Mr Brown.
Paranoid Mr Brown grabbed an aide violently and shouted: 'They're out
to get me!' The raging PM thumped the rear of the front seat of his car so hard
that it scared the bodyguard sitting in it; while an aide sitting next to Mr
Brown thought the PM was going to smash him in the face.
Mr Brown dragged a No10 secretary from her chair and took over at her
keyboard. He manhandled a senior adviser who told him he was late for a meeting
with VIPs, yelling: 'Why do I have to meet these ****ing people!' The bombshell
revelations, some of which were reported by The Mail on Sunday three weeks ago,
feature in The End Of The Party, a new book by respected political journalist
Andrew Rawnsley.
This newspaper has also uncovered new evidence of Mr Brown's
extraordinary eruptions, including an incident in which he hurled a tirade of
foul-mouthed abuse at Bank of England Governor Mervyn King in a stand-up row.
A ranting Mr Brown lashed out at Mr King's '****ing ego' and accused
him of talking '****ing bull****' ina heated confrontation at an economic summit
in America.
UPDATE 11pm: In case you are wondering why I am quoting the Mail on Sunday rather than The Observer, it's because quite astonishingly, The Observer has nothing about this on its website. Fail.
24 comments:
Well if not true then Rawnsley is a liar - and this needs to be exposed.
Brown my like to gloss over it even if not true.
But surely O'Donnell must step forward if not true.
We can exaggerate the exact nature of any Brown tantrums - but if O'Donnell actually spoke to Brown then that is a fact.
If he did not, or if he did in an apparently less severe way, then we need to hear him say so.
Marie Antoinette got her head chopped off for just saying let them eat cake - she never threw a Nokia at anybody.
"They're out to get me!" Yes Gordon we are out to get you.
So he's a pottymouth with a bit of a temper.
I'm shocked I tell you, shocked.
Brown is a hoon. SHOCK HORROR!
WV: hothoon
Since we are doing God tonight, here are the Nine Fruits of the Spirit, the kind of attributes you would expect to see in a Son of the Manse, someone with a strong Moral Compass:
"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control." (Galatians 5:22)
and Matthew 7:16
"By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?"
This is not being made up. Peter Watt, Lance Price and Andrew Rawnsley are not bit players and neither are they masochistic enough to invite a libel writ.
They are, merely, as it turns out, headliners in a saga atop a volcano of anecdotal evidence.
The Guardian/Observer website hasn't been working for hours. There isn't a single piece on Gordon Brown's "launch" at lunchtime today.
You'd normally expect them to have had a Live coverage of the speech plus at least three articles on CiF by now.
What's going on ? Surely they can't have run out of money and closed down already ?
And the Labour Party couldn't, at repeated opportunities, summon up enough collective dislike of the man to rid themselves - and us - of him? Says a lot about the whole darned bunch of them, doesn't it?
I'm simply amazed that the Labour Party have as much support as they do in the polls! How can a 1/3rd of the country support this lunatic?
www.makelabourhistory.com
Observer want you to buy the paper - they do need the money: Explaining the reasons behind the move, he said: "Because we’ve paid good money. This is a property which virtually every other newspaper in Britain wanted, it’s been the result of an incredibly amount of work on Andrew’s part, I think it’s reasonable in this particular case to say you might need to actually leave the house and buy the paper to avail yourself instantly on Sunday morning of the kind of work and effort that Andrew’s put into that book."
Andrew Rawnsley and his like take it as a personal affront that there is a Prime Minister who holds degrees but not from Oxbridge (among those other than Rawnsley, and particularly in the BBC, not from Oxford specifically). A non-graduate they could and do almost tolerate, albeit only as an occasional curiosity rather than with any hope of being treated as a serious figure. But a non-Oxbridge graduate is beyond the pale.
Nor can they stand the fact that Gordon Brown makes no attempt to hide his Scottishness. David Cameron is an archetypal posh Scot, but that is usually enough to pass someone off as English among the English. Tony Blair built a whole career on pretending to be Southern without ever quite saying something so absurd on the part of a man more Scots-Irish than anything else, born in Edinburgh, and educated there and in Durham before Oxford, after which he was back as a County Durham MP, and married to a Liverpudlian, by the time that he was 30. His house in Trimdon Village, about five miles outside Durham, has not been sold, so there seems little doubt as to where he will retire, where he will die, and where he will be buried.
But he made enough of an effort that the Andrew Rawnsleys of the world were prepared to avert their eyes to the necessary extent. A fat lot of good the supposed roots of New Labour in the North East ever did us, but we are our own worst enemies, uniquely putting that party at the top of the European poll last year, unlike even the Welsh. And now the media have David Cameron, anyway: the figure whom Blair was pretending to be.
Not that Brown has effected enough of a break. If Rawnsley's mates in the City are entitled to State aid, then how come Teesside steelworkers who paid for it are not, especially since such aid, allegedly illegal under EU law, is routine to the point of being unremarkable in every other member-state? Nor has any of those states ever heard of the supposed ban on the trains and the track being in the same ownership, including the trains and the track in Rawnsleyland, where they have rather a lot of both, being permitted to retain the sort of network not enjoyed by the rest of us since the Sixties, though of course at the expense of the rest of us, not least the Teesside steelworkers.
Those workers, please note, largely inhabit Labour-Tory marginal seats. Except that you are only one of those if the media say that you are. And they deny outright the existence of such things in the North, every inch of which is classified as "the Labour heartlands" in order to avoid having to report us. But, whether Rawnsley and his kind like it or not, it is thanks to those workers that there is a Labour Government at all. They have certainly not always voted Labour, but they did on the last three occasions. Rawnsleyland, by contrast, voted very heavily for the losing party in 2005. Yet its view matters, while that of the people who backed the right horse does not. Both horses, all three horses, belong in the knacker's yard. As does Andrew Rawnsley.
No, this is a transparent smear. Reason why Observer doesn't have it, is because they (unlike the Mail) prefer to limit themselves to printing true things.
Who killed Maddie McCann and who helped cover it up, 2 questions for Brown and his crew.
"Gove" would do well to spill his guts about it too. Who told Gove it was a kidnaping, or did he make that bit up. ?
Simple questions for simple politicos.
The Police, seem to know what happened, but they were, castrated by Gordon and co !
We ain't going away.
David Lindsay, David Cameron was born in London.
His father was born in Scotland.
Let's explain it this way. I was born in Birmingham, my sister, however, was not. I am a Brummie, but my sister is not.
I can't believe we have a leader who is so desperate for public approval that he thinks it wise to go on television to defend himself against an author's accusations.
What I would expect from a person with the status of leader is that they acted in a dignified manner and left any comment to one of his many spokespersons.
I described it as pitiful and it is.
Watching the story break this morning, I'm getting the strong impression that the Observer has been teasing. They suggested that there would be definite content regarding the Prime Mentalist's use of physical violence, but haven't followed through in the actual article.
This gives the PM the opportunity to deny the derivative story in the MoS, and it's these categorical denials that the media will report.
I have just been watching BBC news coverage of the papers.
Very quickly passed over. PM attacks his staff ok next story.
Imagine BBCs coverage if top Tory attacked his staff.
Even had one tosser claiming it shows Brown human side.
Stop Workplace Bullying
The Guardian has this, which is also being linked from the front page of the Observer site. Beyond that it is obvious that they want people to buy the actual paper this morning.
It's true there is animus between Rawnsley and Brown, this is mentioned several times in various diaries, including Mullin's and Campbell's.
I am curious about the position of Gus O'Donnell - has he himself denied the "investigation" story, or is this a generic Cabinet Office "denial"? If the latter, given that it's boss is one G Brown Esq, I think we can treat it as the horse dung it no doubt is. As for the former, I haven't heard him deny it, but then again, he probably wouldn't as a serving Cabi-Sec would he?
Nokia are introducing a new Nokia Brown model with special features for the UK market:
Screen
Inverse magnification to make the numbers look smaller
Calculator
As soon as you enter £ sign all numbers automatically turn red.
No zero key. Only works with billions.
Messaging
Endless repeat feature allows you to make same false claims again and again and again
Camera
Special "smile detection" feature that only takes photo when someone smiles. Can be disabled (as camera would otherwise never be used)
Instant Messaging
With special auto 3 day delay feature while it thinks of a line to take
Internet Browser
Auto filter feature for ignoring bad news. Home page preset to guardian.co.uk with new statesman option
Calculator
Auto randomise feature ensures you never get same numbers twice.
Battery
Comes with maximum of 12 weeks battery life left
All this in a neat package with specially rubberised case for easy bounce and minimum risk of injury.
If Brown is claiming that the claims made by Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer are untrue then it has to be asked why doesn't Brown sue the Observer and Rawnsley for defamation.
If Brown does not sue then we must conclude that the Observer claims are completely true as it would not have printed this story if it wasn't absolutely sure it could backup its claims such is the horrendous cost of losing a libel action these days in England's courts.
I actually much preferred the previous Alan Partridge-style naked ranting allegation featured earlier on this blog. See here for another take on this burning political issue:
http://jontomes.typepad.com/blog/2010/02/somene-allegedly-has-a-temper.html
Like an abused wife, Downing street are rallying round and refuse to press charges. (ICD-9 code 995.81)
Someone is not telling the truth, if it is the Observer then why has Brown not instructed O'Donnell to explain everything he knows. At present Brown seems happy to depend on O'Donnell's silence.
Iain, you and your commentaters miss the point that the deniaols from Brown are not what was actually alleged.
Nobody said Brown actually hit anybody, neither did anyone claim the Treasury Secretary launched an inquiry.
Rawnsley actually said Brown did a lot of bullying and gave examples, and the TS "made some investigations" - not the same thing, hence they issue their denials all over the media without fear of contradiction.
I wonder if the recent news that 'Gordon Brown eats bananas' has been inspired by the Downing Street staffers who have to deal with this sociopathic weirdo every day.Think about it. It would allow the Downing Street catering staff to go up to him five times a day and say 'Your Bananas' to his face.
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