ate my hamster.

make Brown's government look like losers without decending to using the man's disability as a stick to hit him, there's something pretty seriously wrong. God knows there's plenty of legitimate ammunition to throw at him.

Melanie Reid writes about this very subject in The Times today.

What’s happening, in reality, is the public bullying of a man who does not deserve it. Because no one deserves it. The foam-flecked nonsense on the internet aside, the majority of the public do not like unfairness, nor cruelty, nor to watch the wings being pulled off flies. And that, from where I’m sitting, is what it feels like.

I concur.

between Brown and Mrs. Janes should have entered the public domain.
It seems odd to me that she recorded it.
Not that I wish to be negative about the poor woman.
Brown is the man who can do no right - so broad are the brush strokes being used, and so forgetful are the electorate that I think Cameron is safe.
I will be wasting my vote on the Liberals.

at Wootton Bassett - ex-servicemen all - were universally on the PM's side (at least in the BBC's report, anyway).

... after a while, everything starts to look like a nail.

Which is my rubbish way of saying that having decided to vote Tory next year, The Sun is now going to bash Brown ceaselessly with whatever comes to hand - this week a badly-written letter, next week something else. They've certainly overcooked this, but somehow I don't think the sympathy factor will outweigh war, the worst recession in history and the expenses scandal.

PS I'm sure this doesn't apply to you Five-Centres, but in a previous life I had to deal with people from The Sun quite regularly, and they were collectively the most spectacularly dreadful people I've ever had the misfortune to have to be polite to.

agrees that Brown is being unnecessarily pilloried for not doing enough, when he's clearly busy. They also said they don't remember Thatcher doing all this!

Thanks mystery caller!

From the Sun's website this week...

This episode has shown that the PM just cannot do anything without an aide present. Brown is without a shadow of doubt the worst PM I can recall in my 40 years but this has been blown out of all proportion.

He's a busy guy, blind in one eye and fading sight in the other - a slip of the hand in hand writing a letter off his own back freehand at no doubt some ungodly hour of the morning - a little leeway perhaps? On top of which he's handling the worst economic crisis in 70 years with an equally incompetent Chancellor whilst juggling his idiot "nose in trough" MP's expenses.

Nasty and vindictive. What we've come to expect from the Sun really.

The Sun has been a baleful influence on British life, with an arrogant sense of its own influence and not much puts it off its stroke for long, as its stance on its disgraceful Hillsborough coverage has showed.

It has decided to come out against Gordon Brown, deliberately announcing that it no longer supported Labour on the day of Brown's party conference speech, and it has a big barrel of muck, which it will be flinging pretty much non-stop until at least election day. It is what it does.

it won't be enough for The Sun to come out in support of Cameron. Such is the over-inflated sense of their own importance I feel they will make it very much a priority to do everything in their power to do Brown down.
Expect much of the same for the next few months.

As folks have said above their attacks on the PM seem to have created a certain amount of public sympathy for him, whether or not you agree with his politics.
So does this mean, if Labour win the next election, once again, it'll be The Sun Wot Won It?

The whole episode hints at what Brown is (regardless of political preference he does seem to care) and clarifies exactly what the Sun is (a steaming, pile of hypocritical, sanctimonious........you can provide the rest).

Gordon Brown's alleged bullying, controlling tactics when incumbent both in Number 11 and Number 10 but of late I can't help but feel a tremendous amount of sympathy for him on a human level. This most recent debacle is a perfect case in point. Like many others, I was an optimistic soul in 1997, but Blair's legacy will always be the war and the toadying to Bush (Wanna talk about worst leaders in history?)
it seems like Brown is paying for Blair's sins as I recall him being more automaton party-line follower than true zealot in his support for the war. On the other hand, the toadying to the city built the new labour 'Miracle' on very shaky foundations.'Third way' my arse.
The election of Cameron will be a sad, if inevitable event.

as for the Sun.....Irrelevant, u-turningly populist, jingoistic and wrong on almost every level.....

when it was that the sun became an important newspaper !!!. I remember about thirty years ago when i used to take a copy upstairs for a hand shandy once in a while but that's about it.

it ill behoves GoBro to shed salty tears when his fickle inamorata leaves his bed for another.

The Sun's approach to this story is tawdry. It is using a mothers grief and, at worst, a flawed attempt by the PM to pay his respects to a grieving mother to sell newspapers. I do not blame the soldiers mother for her attitude or approach - she absolutely has the right to be angry.

CNN is reporting the story and casually dropping in the fact that it is hardly seemly to critise the handwriting and spelling of a man who is partially blind.

It is terribly sad that soldiers die, and if my son was one of them I would be desparate to blame someone, anyone for it. I might well start with the government. But the fact is that soldiers die. The papers are shamelessly using the parents of the war dead for their own ends, to bash the government. The Americans have a lot more people, helicopters and equipment out there than us - and their soldiers are dying in large numbers too. Shame on the writers.

Gotcha!

It had to be said.

Handful of points:

- As far as a lot of the press has been concerned, Brown has been fair game for a lot of stick since he bottled it over a general election two years ago. That was a massive clanger that created the impression he isn't up to the job and it has been used, often unfairly, to interpret everything he's done since.

- Despite that, The Sun is widely seeing as having gone over the top. Most decent people are sickened by how it has behaved, and it's deservedly getting a lot of stick for it.

- Brown will get sympathy for this, but it won't turn around his fortunes in time for the election. The aforementioned retreat has determined the way millions of people see him, in the same way that Black Wednesday made millions decided John Major was out of his depth. Sometimes one incident like that will finish a politician. In a couple of years, when people can see that Cameron has a mind that can only process soundbits, a lot of them will speak fondly of Brown ... probably the same ones who have been loudly abusing him for the past two years.

- The Sun can swing a million or so votes in an election, and lot of readers will say they don't approve of how it reports something like this (or Hillsborough), but carry on buying it, and carry on parroting its opinions. One of the uncomfortable facts of a democracy ... a lot of voters are stupid.

What stuck in my craw was the recording of Brown's 'phone call by these parasites.
Ok in the dark world of politics have a pop but when the man picked up the phone to speak to the woman what low life sat there recording it? no doubt doing a Gareth Cheeseman and cracking one off as he listened to it!!

Vermin!!

has a go a dreadful prime minister ( Big deal!) I'm sure Brown can deal with what that Ar*e rag has to say about him -Probably worth a couple of thousand votes for him, until Harriet Harman opens her gob

Unfair and un-British.

Interesting though that for all the talk of the public being sick of spin and falseness, it turns out that what they really don't seem to like is honest, flawed reality. Kind of depressing.

Isn't the new editor of The Sun that twerp Dominic Mohan, who seemed to spend most of the 90s trying to schmooze Oasis in his capacity as editor of the Bizarre column?

At least Piers Morgan used his time as editor of The Mirror to rail against the invasion of Iraq.

does in this case appear to be a mass of incandescent gas.