Who do you think Gordon Brown is most like ?

After Gordon Brown allowed himself to be compared with Heathcliffe from "Wuthering Heights" a poll carried out by YOUGOV in the Sunday Times asked the 1800 voters which fictional character they thought the Prime minister was most like.

The options YOUGOV gave and the percentage answers were:

Macbeth (ruthlessly claimed the top job then it went wrong) 33%

Uriah Heep (Dickens's ‘very humble’ but insincere character) 11%

Macavity (T.S.Eliot's cat who always disappears when things get tough) 9%

Oliver Twist (who always asked for more) 6%

Dr Dolittle 3%

Mr Pooter (the city clerk in Diary of a Nobody) 2%

Heathcliff 2%

None of these 19%

Don’t know 15%


I'm with those who voted, if a little tongue in cheek, for Macavity the mystery cat:

"Macavity, Macavity, there's no-one like Macavity,
He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity"

... and each verse ends with:

"But when the crime's discovered, Macavity's not there!"

Comments

Quentin Langley said…
He is A.

A, you may recall, is bureaucrat described by C. Northcote Parkinson in Parkinson's Law, who rather than split his work with an equal, B, chooses to appoint two subordinates, C & D, and an ever-expanding group of sub-subordinates below them.

While scheming to take over from his boss (W, according to Parkinson, but TB in reality, though some do claim that W was TBs boss) Brown eliminated all the Bs from the cabinet. Robin Cook, David Blunkett (twice), Peter Mandelson (twice), John Reid and Charles Clarke were all leaked against from within the government. As a result, Brown's cabinet is a group of non-entities who might as well be called C, D, E, F, etc., for all the general public would notice.
9:10 am
Chris Whiteside said…
Excellent analogy, Q: I think Yougov and the Sunday Times should have included that one in the survey !
11:20 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more