The American Spectator

br> Pasadena, California /p> p> LABOUR PAINS br> Re: Hal G.P. Colebatch’s Blair’s Britain Turns Ten : /p>

Hal G. P. Colebatch left out the bad news about the Blair government — Gordon Brown is the hot favorite to be the next Prime Minister. If you think Britain (I left out the “Great” because it doesn’t apply anymore to the British) has problems then you can hardly believe what is said about this guy. A former head of the civil service called him a Stalinist who treats his Cabinet colleagues with open contempt and a coward who runs away from making decisions. People who have worked with him describe him as having the interpersonal skills of a whelk.

He is routinely described as rude, arrogant, thin skinned, bad tempered, deceitful, secretive, surrounded by yes men, incapable of accepting criticism and incapable of making decisions. A Cabinet colleague openly wondered whether he was psychologically impaired. Gordon Brown has now increased taxes in Britain 100 times and he presided over an incompetent disaster called a tax credit that has inflicted fear and suffering on thousands of the lowest income earners in the country — there are Members of Parliament who claim they spend the bulk of their time trying to intercede with the government on behalf of constituents who have had their lives turned into an absolute misery by this frightful scheme. That is on top of a massive and sustained tax grab on the British pension system that has destroyed the retirement prospects of large numbers of retirees well into the future.

Gordon Brown’s ability to screw taxpayers and squander money that should never have been taken from their pockets is second to none. Only in a declining, decrepit, self righteous failure like Blair’s Britain would this record be judged as competent.

p>I can only wonder just how bad things are in Britain for this massively incompetent and disagreeable man to even be appointed to Cabinet, let alone considered as the Prime Minister in waiting. I sure am glad my father immigrated to Australia from England when he was a young man. Conditions here in Australia beat what the British have hands down, the government of John Howard is everything that the Blair government isn’t and I am pretty certain the differential will increase further in the future. br> — Christopher Holland br> Canberra, Australia