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?
