AgentAxeman

I've forgotten nothing. I was the one who started the thread to point out Brown richly deserved a slagging for decisions that have dropped us in the shit. The Sun also deserve a slagging for wholeheartedly endorsing those decisions across the board...and now visciously turning on the party so they can be on the winning team. very true happy, but which team would you prefer to be on? anyway, back to the bashing (ooer missus!) "Gordon, but if you must apologise, what about the things that ARE your fault? Prime Minister Gordon Brown Apology: Gordon Brown to say sorry for the Child Migrant Programme which send youngsters abroad between 1930 and 1970 Before I start, please let me apologise. For... oooh, I don’t know, just about everything including what follows below, along with anything I might have done in the past which might conceivably have damaged or offended anyone. Or while I’m about it, anything I might do in the future. There! Now I feel so much better. Absurd? Of course. But we seem to be living in the Age of Apology. No political or public career appears to be possible without just such a display of public breast-beating. The latest example is Gordon Brown’s expected apology today for the UK’s role during the last century in sending thousands of British children without their parents’ knowledge to lives of great hardship in former colonies such as Australia or Canada. To which one has to ask — why in heaven’s name is the Prime Minister apologising now for this, of all things? For sure, it was a terrible episode in British and Australian history. Under the Child Migrants Programme, between 1930 and 1970 some 500,000 children from British orphanages or children's homes were sent to a 'better life' in Australia, Canada and elsewhere. As they were shipped out of Britain, many of these children were told wrongly that their parents were dead. Many parents were totally unaware that their children had been sent to the Dominions. In many cases, far from having a 'better life', they were educated only for farm work and were treated with great cruelty involving physical, psychological and sexual abuse. So, undoubtedly a shameful episode. But what has it got to do with Gordon Brown, who wasn't even alive when it began and certainly was never in a position to do anything about it? He says 'the time is now right' for the Government to apologise for the actions of previous governments. Accordingly, it appears he is co-ordinating his apology with a simultaneous act of contrition by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. But this is absurd. Governments don't pass down their sins to their successors. A country cannot be held responsible for a policy introduced by a government some eight decades previously. At this rate, it surely can't be long before Mr Brown feels obliged to apologise to the farming community for the 19th-century Corn Laws or to the Queen for the execution of Charles I. What is the reason he has suddenly felt moved to apologise for the 'forgotten children'? Is Britain perhaps teetering on the brink of some gigantic deal vital to the national interest involving trade in kangaroo hide or maple syrup, for which such an act of abasement to Australia or Canada is a required precondition? Given that the Prime Minister appears to be in confessional mode, however, what a missed opportunity this is. With all due respect to the sensitivities of Australia, there are many, many things for which the British people would rather like an apology from their Prime Minister. He could have started, for example, with his ruination of the British economy. He could then have said he was sorry for flogging off our gold reserves at a knockdown price, bankrupting the country with the largest public debt in its history and allowing the banking system to be brought to its knees on his watch. He could have said he was sorry to have changed the culture of this country by stealth through a policy of mass immigration, to have destroyed Britain's ability to govern itself by ratifying the Lisbon Treaty, and to have broken his manifesto promise to the British people in doing so. He could then have gone on to apologise for ripping the heart out of the professions, along with our once-peerless Civil Service and police force, not to mention the emasculation of Parliament and the British constitution. And while he was about it, he could have gone down on his knees and begged forgiveness for enslaving ever greater numbers of the British people through the dependency culture, and for destroying the life chances of millions of British children through the onslaught against marriage and the twoparent family along with the destruction of the British education system. His litany of offences could have ended with the act for which no apology can suffice - the heinous crime of committing British soldiers to a war in Afghanistan without a coherent strategy or adequate equipment to safeguard both military and mission. But there has been not one syllable of apology for any of these things for which he and his government are responsible. Instead, he chooses to issue an apology for a policy in which he had no involvement whatsoever. As a result, such a declaration is both proverbial bus. The result has been a veritable epidemic of political apologies. Two years ago, on the 200th anniversary of William Wilberforce's Bill to abolish the slave trade, there was fierce competition to denounce Britain's role in this trade - even though the whole point was that Britain was the country that led the drive to abolish it. That egregious grandstander Peter Hain, then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and Wales, even fatuously apologised for the role Wales and Northern Ireland had played in international slavery. Comically, such 'gesture politics' apologies are often made to people who are dead. Thus Gordon Brown's abject apology to Alan Turing - the brilliant wartime Bletchley Park code-breaker, who was also a homosexual and who committed suicide in 1954 after being prosecuted for an act of gross indecency. Similarly grovelling to the grave, the Archbishops' Council of the Church of England issued an apology addressed to Charles Darwin - 126 years after his death - for 'misunderstanding' his Theory of Evolution. But then, the Church of England seems to spend all its time apologising for everything ever associated with it, including slavery, the offensiveness to Muslims of Christian doctrine and missionary activity in the Third World. Indeed, the Church appears to be apologising for the very existence of Christianity itself. And this surely is the most troubling aspect of this mania for acts of abasement. It is that these meaningless apologies for the past tend to be made by those who are busily destroying the present. While political or church leaders wear their consciences on their sleeves by apologising on behalf of (or even to) the dead, the damage they themselves have caused to the present- day condition of Britain or to the Church is incalculable. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that such leaders are actually ashamed of the country itself for which these past misdeeds stand proxy. It is for that treacherous attitude that they really should be apologising."

ffs, a lot of people on here seem to think that the labour party is a victim here, convieniently forgetting the last 13 (or is it 14) yrs of shit. what the sun has done is absolutely no surprise to me.

cheers for the link Laz. just watched it as i've been out all night.

Looks like it. Don't suppose it can hurt to give him a contract till the end of the season with a promise of another one if we get promoted, as he plays an area were we are a bit short. given also that we are playing with big lads up front, i reckon it makes sense to get a winger in to provide crosses.

Hiccy Burpday!!

oh dear, i'm scared. someone please protect me................

I hate Larndan with a passion. Too noisy, too crowded, people too rude & unfriendly. I would be happy if i never had to go there again. just my opinion.

Hi guys, sorry i'm a bit late to the party but can someone stick me on the list for £30. cheers!!

Meh!

if theres any spare, would love an invite. pretty please.................

All sides of british journalism are sickening imo. everyone has their own agenda. you cant blame one or t'other without showing your own bias.

as i've stated in earlier threads, Gordon Brown is NOT the financial wizard he would have us believe. for too long he has spent way beyond this countries means. I understand that he is no longer chancellor and as such has little direct control over how the tax revenue is spent, but the damage was done early in new labours reign when he was. he has consistently sold off the nations assets at low prices (Gold reserves being an example). imo this was done to pay for the huge increase in public sector workers that we have had in the last 13 yrs to try and achieve the "world class services" which they are still trying to achieve. this is not a pop at said workers who for the most part are dedicated, hard working professionals.

gonna replace the orange fella from Hull maybe??

Can you really see this making him think one morning "oh these dont like me i think i'll sell"?? NO He will when and only when we get promoted and someone pays him well over 100mil for the club. Until then we can only make it as uncomfortable and embarrassing for him as possible. Not exactly true, he will sell as soon as someone offers him what he is looking for, which at this moment in time is £80million. dont think he will unfortunatley. he'll hang on and try and get promotion to sell "the product" at a better price. Fat lad will only sell us for that if we dont get promoted. but of course nobody will buy us for that whilst we are in the CCC. catch 22 i'm afraid!!

tbh, i think Krul might have the no.1 shirt by then. if he hasnt been sold of course!

What a load of shit. Only Enrique and S Taylor are Premier League quality. Can you not remember how utterly awful these players were last season? Sunderland spent over 80m when they came up and just survived. It would take a similar level of investment for us. yeah but they had Roy Keane as manager who thought it was a wheeze to pay WELL over the odds for average players. I reckon if the fat one is still in charge he'll go down the Stoke route. ie. inexpensive. who's out of contract at the end of the season btw??

seconded!

Canny looking Jackson here...........

Yup, good call!!

well i've spent a canny bit wedge in the last year or so to try and get "the sound" that we all hear in wor heads and i reckon (or at least hope!) that this'll do it. Ibanez guitar - Blackstar HT dual pedal - Marshall JMP 100 head - THD hotplate - Orange cab

Gan on Tom, you KNOW you want it!!!! always remember - take the credit card but leave the common sense at the door!! (or summat like that) Just ordered one of these......... Should be a larf!! EDIT: oh, and guitar babes... Susanna Hoffs

How on earth did you guess??

"David Cameron's U-turn on a 'cast-iron guarantee' to hold a referendum on the European Union's reform treaty has devastating implications for British democracy This a desperately sad moment for British democracy and sovereignty - a moment when the great majority of voters have been disenfranchised and left with no serious political party to represent their views. The implications of David Cameron's retreat over Europe are as simple and devastating as that. It is an ineluctable fact: poll after poll has shown that most Britons are strongly against the expansion of the EU's power - and an even greater majority demand the referendum promised by all three main parties in their manifestos at the last General Election. Of course, it goes without saying that the true scoundrels in this debacle are New Labour. Once safely re-elected, they chose to ignore their unequivocal commitment to the electorate, hiding behind the lie that the Lisbon Treaty was substantially different from the EU constitution that Tony Blair had promised to put to voters. Mr Brown, to his eternal shame, also reneged on his promise of a referendum. Then at 3pm this Tuesday, when Czech president Vaclav Klaus gave up his lonely resistance and added the final signature to the treaty, the betrayal was complete. After eight years of anti-democratic plotting and bribery, the empire-builders of Europe had finally got their way. The European superstate was born, with all the trappings of an imperial power, from a president and a foreign minister to a defence policy of its own. Tories will give people a vote on any future transfer of power to Brussels, pledges Cameron (but not on the Lisbon Treaty) Only one hope remained that the voice of the British people would be heard - and that the EU might yet be forced to repatriate some of the powers that Gordon Brown had signed away. Hadn't David Cameron offered us his solemn promise that he would give us that referendum we demanded? To quote his very words, which he wrote in the Sun newspaper in September 2007: 'Today, I will give this cast-iron guarantee: if I become PM a Conservative government will hold a referendum on any EU treaty that emerges from these negotiations.' Not much room for doubt there, was there? But yesterday, the Tory leader's 'cast-iron guarantee' melted away like wax. True, a referendum after the treaty has come into force would present certain practical difficulties of wording. And no doubt Mr Cameron feared that a referendum campaign would distract him from the pressing crisis in the public finances. But if this is the case, he should not have raised people's expectations by promising a referendum. For great leadership is about honouring pledges and acting on conviction and belief - not the laws of short-termism and expediency. The cancer destroying faith in modern politics is that the ruling class keep going back on their word and denying voters their say. Put simply, this paper cannot understand why we can't have a referendum, even now that Lisbon has been ratified. As former Shadow Home Secretary David Davis argued so powerfully in yesterday's Mail, it would greatly strengthen Britain's hand at the negotiating table if our Prime Minister could claim a popular mandate for opt-outs on such issues as justice, asylum, immigration and human rights. But instead, Mr Cameron pledges only to put any future treaties to referendums, while saying he will introduce a 'Sovereignty Bill' to ensure the supremacy of UK laws. With our system of government at stake, this is pretty sorry stuff. And of course the worst aspect of Lisbon is that it obviates the need for future treaties, since it gives the EU authority to change its own constitution. Moreover, what good can it do to pass legislation asserting the supremacy of British laws, when we've already signed that supremacy away? What makes Mr Cameron's backpedalling so depressing is that he has often seemed to stand apart from the political class - all the more necessary when the MPs' expenses scandal has opened up a yawning chasm between Westminster and the people. True, he has been far too reluctant to voice popular concerns over such issues as mass unrestricted immigration. But on such matters as the importance of the family, the need to clean up Westminster - and, yes, until yesterday on Europe - his gut instincts have been far closer than New Labour's to the views of ordinary electors. He must find the courage to trust those instincts and fight for what he believes. At this of all times, Britain is crying out for politicians of integrity who will put into words and action what the majority believe. That is what democracy is all about."

howay then Leazes, I'm still waiting to hear how badly you failed!!