Today has been one of those days. It started with the news that Gordon Brown had sent a handwritten letter to a mother of a dead soldier that was full of clumsy mistakes and spelling errors. The woman was furious… and promptly called the media. Cue media storm and Brown landed in yet another steaming pile of his own dung.
I ‘tweeted‘ my immediate reaction:
The PM’s atrocious letters are a serious PR blunder. Makes him look like he writes too many and doesn’t really care.
Fair enough? Other people replied along the lines that he does write too many and he doesn’t care. I thought that was it.
Then, because I’m insufferably insensitive, I did some mock letters from the PM full of spelling mistakes, terrible handwriting and ‘don’t give a shit’ attitude. For a laugh, see.
An hour or so later I realised I’d offended and upset a few people – cue huge blazing row about the fact that Brown only has 30% of the sight in his one remaining eye and so, technically, flaming Brown for this letter is effectively picking on him for being disabled. In fact, making me feel like even more of an arsehole, it was pointed out that whether or not Brown can spell or write properly doesn’t really matter… whether he’s disabled or not. Not in the big scheme of things, anyway.
And, you know… that’s all true. So I thought about it even more and realised that the letter being a bigger story than the death of the boy itself is…. well, it’s obscene.
People are right to expect absolute professionalism in these sorts of letters. It’s about showing the appropriate level of respect to the recipient by caring enough to get everything right. Brown’s problem here is that, in attempting to send a handwritten rather than typed letter to every single family he has overstretched himself. If he learns anything from this, he should learn to concentrate on quality, not quantity – not just in this but in everything. Get things right not just done. It’s probably better if he doesn’t send these letters as they currently are, or, at least, devotes the appropriate amount of time to it. Either way he’s apologised and I don’t really see what else can or should be done.
Of all the things to criticise Brown for (and the litany is legion), his unfortunate, clumsy or careless attempts at letter writing barely register, do they? It doesn’t prove he doesn’t care about the troops. It doesn’t prove he doesn’t care about the grieving relatives.
So yes, I’ve changed my mind on this story over the course of the day. I made a concious decision not to be an arsehole about it. Hmm I’m mellowing out. What’s going on?
Andrew Hickey said...
9 Nov 09 at 6:39 pm
Good for you. It’s very rare for people to admit to being wrong publicly. You’re not an arsehole precisely *because* you recognise when you are being one and try to learn from that.
(I’d have said much the same things a few years ago, before a) marrying someone with very limited eyesight and b) associating with people like Debi and Jennie who have made me more aware of the prejudices one reinforces with that kind of thing.)
SteveShark said...
9 Nov 09 at 6:52 pm
Yes, I had a similar Damascus moment to you.
I don’t like Brown and have no respect for him as a politician but after hearing all these self-righteous people today all over the media slagging the guy off I’ve come to the conclusion that this is a rather poor excuse to criticise the guy.
It also trivialises the real damage he’s done…
Leon said...
9 Nov 09 at 6:58 pm
Mucho respect for having the decency to be upfront about your views on this. Few bloggers of your calibre show this kinda integrity.
Roger Thornhill said...
9 Nov 09 at 6:59 pm
Would Blunkett allow errors? I doubt it.
Admitting flaws and personal limitations appears alien to Brown and this one example, I fear.
Ok, I too thought it near the mark to produce the other letters, but to put focus on the letters as a manifestation of a number of issues at the (rotten) heart of government? No, I believe that is justified. The loss should not be overlooked, for sure.
Kudos to you, Charlotte, but do not be too hard on yourself or let others lord it.
Samantha said...
9 Nov 09 at 7:11 pm
Having limited sight (or any other disability for that matter) is not an excuse for a poorly written letter of condolences from a PRIME MINISTER. The idea to send hand written note is an honourable one, but if you cannot take the time to spell the poor boys name correctly, it shows a lack of respect.
Gordon Brown has enough staff to have asked someone to check the spelling and grammar, or he could have picked up a dictionary and checked it himself.
That’s what any one of us would have done when sending a note on a matter this sensitive.
Blaming this on his disability is a cop-out. How do you expect our children to learn when the PM cannot be bothered to check his own spelling?
Matt Wardman said...
9 Nov 09 at 7:15 pm
He has my admiration (for about the first time for a lnong time) for taking the time to write hundreds of personal letters, and particularly for not making political capital out of doing it (unless I missed that he did
.
I think the reaction from the family was too harsh.
SteveShark said...
9 Nov 09 at 7:39 pm
“How do you expect our children to learn when the PM cannot be bothered to check his own spelling?”
That’s a totally specious argument. You might as well say that the government sending troops into Afghanistan is to blame for childhood aggression.
It doesn’t work like that – not unless their parents make the link through some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.
blind steve said...
9 Nov 09 at 7:46 pm
flaming Brown for this letter is effectively picking on him for being disabled
No. It isn’t. It is lampooning him for being an arse with comedically bad handwriting and poor attention to detail. This despite having an office full of people whose job it is to stop him making such cock ups.
I have partial sight, and my handwriting is appalling. And yet I saw your parody letters and laughed my ass off.
It’s actually quite patronising not to mock him, because that suggests that he is less than a normal person. After all, if he had no disability but just crap handwriting and poor attention to detail, would we not mock him for that ? Should we take him less seriously, expect lower standards from him, just because he has such a disability ? The day you start to think this is the day the PC thought police have pwned a part of your brain. I urge you to fight it.
I bet I am the only partially sighted person you’ve heard from today. Anyone claiming to be offended on my behalf – and I see there were many of them – can just fuck off and mind their own business.
Stacey Riley said...
9 Nov 09 at 8:00 pm
I agree with blind Steve. I’m am not partially sighted but I do have a disability. Having a disability does not excuse getting the name wrong or poor spelling in my opinion.
Just because one has a disability doesn’t mean that we settle for lower standards than anybody else.
Charlotte Gore said...
9 Nov 09 at 8:06 pm
Hmm you’ve got me there. I’ve used exactly the same argument myself in other contexts and other times.
But I think generally laughing at someone for something they can’t do is… well… being an ass, as the Americans say.
Of course, when someone claims to be able to do something they demonstrably cannot, it all changes. They become fair game. He’s claimed to have saved the world and ended boom and bust… so the mockery he gets from that he’s brought entirely on himself.
But Brown has never claimed to be able to spell or write properly, so picking on him about it just makes us look like bullies and … well… arse-holes.
Charlotte Gore said...
9 Nov 09 at 8:09 pm
I don’t think the disability has anything to do with the spelling issues.
It’s the thick pen and huge writing and scrawl that I mocked in my spoof letters which has made me feel like an arsehole. Otherwise the disability (or lack of it) isn’t the issue. It’s the ‘there’s more important things to worry about’ and ‘we’re being dicks’ thing.
I don’t feel remotely guilty about mocking his spelling.
guy herbert said...
9 Nov 09 at 9:48 pm
I think I’d want to attack him for writing the letters at all, and think better of him if I believe he skimped it deliberately. Is this sort of thing really a good use of Prime Ministerial time?
OK, so Brown is a disaster, and the less he gets to play with the machinery of government the better; but in principle it is as pointless and disgusting sentimentality as the ritual reading out of names at Question Time, which obstructs holding the Government to account.
If previous Prime Ministers had done the same thing in any of the previous 3 Anglo-Afghan Wars (never mind any of the big ones), they’d have had no time for anything else for months. They, however, accepted the wars have casualties, and understood it is the job of soldiers to kill and to risk death – as did the public through the 19th and most of the 20th century.
But now, it appears, it is more important for Brown to show he ‘cares’ than to do anything that might conceivably be useful. And the performance does not do even that, because, as the mother’s outburst shows, this appears to be popularly expected behaviour – so a calculating, unfeeling, votegrubber would be more likely to spend time doing it carefully than anyone with a conscience about governing properly.
John V Bell said...
9 Nov 09 at 10:14 pm
My own trivial point is that if I were sending a letter of this importance I would certainly have it double and triple checked. To allow mis-spelt words and incorrect grammar is unforgiveable. For example, the fact that brown does not know that you cannot offer condolence’s’, only condolence is a basic error. It is worrying that a man who purports to lead the country has such a poor grasp of English. What else is he poor at??
Frugal Dougal said...
9 Nov 09 at 10:27 pm
Well done for your brave turnaround. I’d been tempted to do a blog on the letter myself, then had a look at the spelling in a couple of my blogs. Decided not to.
Peter said...
9 Nov 09 at 11:31 pm
There is nothing wrong with retiring from a position you’ve taken, unless you’re in a punishment battalion, where, I expect, the wonk who let this gaffe get through will spend some time.
Any sympathy you might have for the PM might, however, be tempered with the acknowledgement that he’s thrown himself behind the former PM, whose track record on starting wars isn’t that good, to become the next Emperor of Europe. Whether the PM is aware that everything he touches turns to salt can safely be dismissed.
I want to know why he’s writing these letters. Does he see himself as some latter-day Guy Gibson, faithfully penning out fifty-six condolence letters? At least he was in the chair, and paid the price a year later.
Would it not be more reasonable to say that these men had died for something? What is this something? And how long will we allow to achieve it? These men have died for the square root of naff all. You know it, the PM knows it, Terry Taliban knows it.
In essence, Brown could have sent an SMS along the lines of sry abt yr boi he is with angels in hvn if the poor lad had breached the Moehne Dam, and it would have meant something.
Please don’t be afraid to vent your spleen at this lot. That’s what we pay them for, because God knows, they’re not fit for anything else!
Your frend
Peter
Praguetory said...
9 Nov 09 at 11:39 pm
I prefer to continue to look at things from the recipient’s perspective. As far as she is concerned, she is receiving a letter from the person ultimately responsible for sending her son to his death. If the PM can’t manage to send something above the level of screed and pass it off as a letter of condolence he should think of a different way to communicate.
Matthew Huntbach said...
9 Nov 09 at 11:56 pm
I felt the hand-written letter, as shown in the press, was rather touching.
He could have just got a PA to top and tail a standard letter and add his signature to it, he didn’t. The fact that he’s done it himself, so it’s not professional done by a PA stuff, says to me he does care.
I’m sure the soldier’s mum is wracked with grief, and has not seen this and just lashed out. OK, it must be terrible to lose a son like this. But the way the press have jumped on this to insult Mr Brown, who I am quite sure meant this to be a personal gesture, is disgusting.
I’ve never heard if the surname “Janes” so it doesn’t seem to me to be a hideous unspeakable error to have written something similar that is more usual. I have a surname that frequently gets misspelt – I’ve learnt to get over it when that happens, most people aren’t doing it maliciously.
Dick Puddlecote said...
10 Nov 09 at 1:02 am
I came here to say ‘nonsense’, but Blind Steve has done it already.
“No. It isn’t. It is lampooning him for being an arse with comedically bad handwriting and poor attention to detail. This despite having an office full of people whose job it is to stop him making such cock ups.”
For crying out loud. Remember that this is the uber-controlling Labour party. Every utterance being fed through a myriad of security-conscious spin doctors. It’s not some vision-challenged old guy sending a Christmas card.
Remember, too, that this is the party of ‘education, education, education’. The guy is a product of his own preferred system of education and he can’t bloody spell.
What’s more, it would seem that his office didn’t spot the errors either if they were asked to run a cursory eye over it. Please don’t try to tell me that a party so mired in checks and double checks, to the extent that they don’t allow input from the public anymore in case it is embarrassing, didn’t do so.
And even if Brown plonked the stamp on himself and jogged (see what I did there?) to the post box, it just makes him even more incompetent than I already believe him to be, seeing as he was dealing with an incredibly sensitive subject.
And don’t ever say sorry, or they will use it as a stick with which to beat you.
Frank Davis said...
10 Nov 09 at 4:22 am
It seems to me that the problem is that Brown has been writing too many of these letters. It used to be less than one a month. Now it’s more like one a day. With the best intentions in the world, he was bound to get a bit slapdash.
Blackacre said...
10 Nov 09 at 9:56 am
I suppose a whole load of these must have made it through successfully without controversy over spelling and handwriting (sadly), so this looks to be a one-off. Probably written at 4am just as he got up/went to bed, so dog tired. It would probably be better for them to be done by civil servants and topped and tailed by GB in the usual way, but the effort of hand writing individual letters is admirable to me.
Kevin Boatang said...
10 Nov 09 at 10:07 am
All bollocks (not you lot, the hoohah).
I have every sympathy, but the clue in the job title is ’soldier’. Soldiers fight wars, lose limbs and get killed. It’s very sad, but that is the reality of war. The Sun are using this woman’s anger and reaction as part of their own current campaign against Labour. But, Brown’s PR team must go down as one of the worst in history for its constant ability to turn the minor into the major.
At least he wrote the letter himself, despite the 25% vision or whatever it is.
Meandering Mammal said...
10 Nov 09 at 11:39 am
I’m not in a position to criticise wither the state of the handwriting, or his own spelling. My handwriting is abysmal and I’m dyslexic, so my spelling can be a bit hit and miss. However I mitigate for both of those, is use tools to assure spelling and if I’m handwriting anything I give myself time to make sure it’s legible, and generally ask someone else to cast an eye over it before it’s sent.
He gets a lot of credit in my eyes for taking the time to do it, but not having management controls in place to mitigate for the recognised issues is inexcusable.
Getting the soldiers name correct is an important aspect, and should have been easy. The whole debacle highlights the weaknesses in the PMs private office.
As I understand it the process is that the letter is drafted by the Chain of Command, and then passed to No10 for the PM to use as the basis for his own. Someone, somewhere cocked up. That cock up should have been trapped by the management controls in place, it wasn’t.
When I was a Commanding Officer and it would have been my responsibility to put the basic material together. I had a small file with basic information on everyone under my command that could have been pulled out and used. Fortunately I’ve never had to write on a fatality, although I have had a few with permanent and significant injuries, both physical and psychological. Having these mechanisms in place means that it’s more likely to be correct when it’s submitted, it reduced the risk of me cocking up if it happened.
Mark Newlands said...
10 Nov 09 at 1:08 pm
Would it be treasonous to speculate whether and how much Mrs Janes is getting paid by the Sun and whether it is plausible that she just happened to record her telephone conversation with the PM? Is it not more likely that she was told to expect a phone call and that the Sun was ready and waiting to record and then publish it? In other words noone comes out of this tawdry affair with any credit.
JuliaM said...
10 Nov 09 at 1:15 pm
“…whether it is plausible that she just happened to record her telephone conversation with the PM? Is it not more likely that she was told to expect a phone call and that the Sun was ready and waiting to record and then publish it?”
Does anyone truly doubt that this is exctly what happened?
Not sure what difference it makes, mind you. Yes, they’ve not behaved well, but he’s behaved worse, and without the excuse of grief…
Mark Newlands said...
10 Nov 09 at 1:22 pm
The difference it makes, Julia, is that if Mrs Janes is doing it for money her claim to the moral high ground (if there is one in all this, which I doubt) is completely undermined
NickofTime said...
10 Nov 09 at 2:18 pm
We are talking about a mother whose son has been killed in Afghanistan, where the British government is being criticised, rightly so imho, for not equipping the army properly. This man deserves no sympathy from anyone in Britain until he rights the evil he has brought upon us all. What a disgrace he is and what a disgrace that so many in this country are so fickle that this grieving mother has been forgotten or even criticised in this sad story. This would just be a load of emotional tosh if it weren’t for the awful reality of how our government and our prime minister have ignored or treated with contempt our armed forces.
Meandering Mammal said...
10 Nov 09 at 3:11 pm
@NickofTime
All governments ignore the Armed Forces. Thatcher presided over a wholesale culling of our capability, Major did the same following the failure of WARPAC. Cameron has already indicated more significant gutting out of the capability.
Defence is an expensive and complex business, and there aren’t enough votes in it to be worth paying much attention to in the vast majority of cases.
It’s a concern that the Lib Dems don’t have a coherent defence policy either particularly given the strength of the party in some fairly AF significant areas.
Nobody is coming out of this well, but equally nobody should get a waiver based on the immediacy of their grief.
Rankersbo said...
10 Nov 09 at 3:59 pm
I agree with Matthew Huntbach. Nicely and reasonably expressed there.
JuliaM said...
10 Nov 09 at 6:11 pm
“The difference it makes, Julia, is that if Mrs Janes is doing it for money…”
Oh, I doubt that. The ‘Sun’ is certainly doing it for money (to wit: circulation) but I don’t think anything other than grief and vengence is motivating Mrs Janes.
NickofTime said...
10 Nov 09 at 8:51 pm
Rankersbo and Matthew Huntbach, you are both decent and charitable people to think the way you do and it is a credit to you. Unfortunately our prime minister has neither of these qualities and neither is he nice or reasonable. I am sorry but again imho he has used up any possibility of benefit of the doubt because he has been caught holding the reins of a thoroughly nasty, snide, intrusive and arrogant governing party, who have destroyed so much of our once proud nation.
Meandering Mammal, you are right that the other parties are probably as bad concerning the armed forces as the present incumbents, but this lot have damaged so much of our culture, heritage and national pride (not JUST our armed forces) that there is simply nothing left in us (well, in me anyway) to cut them any slack on any matter whatsoever.
James said...
10 Nov 09 at 9:39 pm
This is the problem with this country.
Stop being so gulible.
“It doesn’t ‘prove’he doesn’t care about the troops.It doesn’t prove he doesn’t care about the grieving relatives”?
It FAR from proves he does either.
It proves he doesn’t care about the post and office he holds.
It proves he has NO respect for his position as Britain’s Prime Minister.
It proves he is lazy at best and shoddy at worst.
It proves he is unthinking, settled for a condolence letter with shoddy errors(spellcheck/dictionary)and sent it to a dead soldier’s mother with mistakes crossed out.On top of that gets the names wrong.
NO excuses,NO sympathy,NO respect…and believe me I know it is mutual on Brown’s side.He respects nothing.
He does not respect himself enough to make sure he does things right.We are just meant to be grateful the poor excuse of a man and Prime Minister did it in the first place. What a cop out.
The lady who recieved this scrawl probably wishes he HAD NOT BOTHERED.(And it showed he didn’t).
He does NOT need two eyes to know how to spell.
This is not the local fool, this is the PRIME MINISTER we are talking about.
PRIME- of the first importance, of the highest eminence
or significance,a prime example.
MINISTER- a person appointed by or under the authority of a sovereign or head of a government to some HIGH OFFICE of STATE.
Harsh? NOT when you think WHO the letter came from,
WHO was receiving it and under what circumstances.
Rankersbo (Simon Jerram) said...
11 Nov 09 at 10:09 am
In her period of grief Mrs Janes’ response is understandable. Understandable but not reasonable.
The Sun’s exploitation of this woman’s state of mind to score a cheap point is dispicable.
RichieP said...
11 Nov 09 at 2:53 pm
Three or four times every year, I have to write condolence letters to the families of work colleagues who’ve died, colleagues who I might not even have known by sight, never mind their more personal aspects. It’s difficult, even though condolence letters are relatively formulaic (as was Gordo’s I noted).
The issue isn’t the formula – most people are just glad that someone is at least attempting to show some sympathy for and understanding of their bereavement. The difficulty comes in ensuring that you get it all right – names, details etc. That seems to me to be one of the most crucial aspects, because it’s the bit that the families *will notice if I get something wrong; I also realise that I *will upset them if I make errors. I check them several times over for precisely this reason.
I’m not the PM, I’m an ordinary person who tries to take care over such things because I know it’s important to the recipients. And that’s where Gordo seems to lack any real insight into the situation. If he doesn’t do empathy, as so many people claim, then he simply wouldn’t grasp this point. But someone on his staff should have done and that letter should simply not have gone out as it was – and it’s therefore pretty understandable to say, especially in the emotionally charged issue of a soldier killed, that Gordo was insulting and frankly incompetent in his approach to this task. Do it properly or not at all.
Jonathan said...
11 Nov 09 at 3:22 pm
Hi Charlotte,
Great blog by the way – it’s my first comment post, although I’ve been marvelling at your intellectual consistency for some time now!
You’ve got a lot of credit for your about turn – but you didn’t specifically apologise (the post was a politician’s non-apology apology – whereas Gordo at least manned up and did apologise (for this, even if he hasn’t for everything else).
I’m not saying you owe anyone an apology, but if you’re going to do an about turn because you feel like an arsehole, it may be an idea to apologise to those who made you realise you were being an arsehole if they were offended by your letters. Just if we’re talking about attention to detail and stuff you understand…
Unless of course, you’ve handwritten your apology (and spell checked it, and run it by Max Clifford) already.
Incidentally, RichieP, having been on the receiving end of condolence letters (not that that makes me any more qualified to comment, so I don’t really know why I’m mentioning it) it’s probably not a good idea to tell people that you’re using a formula. Kind of spoils the personalisation of it all…
Andrew Hickey said...
11 Nov 09 at 4:31 pm
Jonathan,
Charlotte doesn’t have anything to apologise for. I don’t think she offended anyone as such (I was one of the people who was arguing with her most vociferously, and I don’t do offence). I think she did say ’sorry’ on Twitter, but either way, she didn’t do anything that hurt anybody and she admitted that her initial tweets were in bad taste…
RichieP said...
12 Nov 09 at 10:50 am
@Jonathan
Perhaps I wasn’t very clear: the general shape of the letter is relatively and loosely formulaic – look at any sympathy card in a newsagents as example, people expect certain things to be expressed – but it’s desperately important to personalise it as far as is possible. I certainly wouldn’t send out some kind of bland pro forma, with each letter simply being a direct clone of another. If I actually know the person I will talk personally about what I know about him/her in as unstilted a way as possible. When you don’t know someone it’s much more difficult to do that and a general format is a helpful guide to making sure you say the important things. And, in any case, my letters are also offers of help and support and will result in me dealing directly and in person with the bereaved family. That’s the toughest part to get right and it’s that that went very badly wrong in the subsequent phone call GB made.
Please note though that I don’t however pretend here that what I have to do in any way equates to writing to the mum of a dead soldier.
RichieP said...
12 Nov 09 at 11:18 am
I think the point I was actually trying to make was that if you don’t have a personal/friendship/family connection and you want/need to write to bereaved people, a structure and understanding of the important things to say helps. We deal with death in an odd, roundabout way nowadays but socially there are still ritualised qualities and expectations attached to how we go about it and which need to be observed. That old poem Brahn Boots sums up how mixed up we can become in the face of it.
http://www.monologues.co.uk/Brahn_Boots.html
(And no punning or facetious reference intended here.)
RichieP said...
12 Nov 09 at 1:10 pm
Take a look at this. Hannan is hardly one of GB’s cheerleaders.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100016498/gordon-brown-doesnt-deserve-this-criticism/