Exploiting grief
I have nothing but sympathy for Jacqui Janes. I can’t begin to imagine what she’s going through. No parent should have to bury their child, but it must be near-unendurable to wonder whether more could have been done to save Jamie Janes’ life.
I’d love to know if the Sun has passed money to Mrs Janes. I don’t begrudge her it, but if the PM called me up out of the blue, I doubt I’d have the presence of mind to record the conversation. It’d take me a minute or two of fiddling with the phone to work out how to do it. Unless, of course, I’d been primed to do it by person or persons unknown.
I think putting a private letter in the press is a little tasteless. I do wonder how this ended up in the Sun’s hands; was it sent from Mrs Janes’ initiative or were the Sun speaking to each bereaved family, just on the off chance?
It’s no great secret that Gordon Brown is visually impaired and doesn’t write particularly legibly. Perhaps he should have rewritten the letter; perhaps not. If it has be checked by someone else, it probably would have been rewritten; there’s the rub. Instead of the PM’s honest & personal feelings, future letters will be drafted, scrutinised and typed up by a Wykehamist and then just signed by the PM, with all trace of human emotion and fallibility erased lest it end up on the front page of the gutter press.
The Sun seems to be using the anger occasioned by the loss of a son and soldier to score party political points. That dishonours his memory.
xD.
UPDATE 2150 – lots of other people have expressed similar sentiments to me, but there are a couple of particularly apposite posts by Bob Piper that I’d like to flag up. One is also called Exploiting Grief; the other is a fill-in-the-blanks form from 1916 that passed for a letter of condolence.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Dave,
It’s the fact that Brown is so totally inept at practically everything he touches.
To send a letter with spelling mistakes is pretty shoddy and although I was critical of Mrs Janes for placing this info in the media after hearing her berate Brown over the helicopters she now has my sympathy.
If Browns children had to fight in a war where the government has the nerve to appoint an ex Trot as defense minister – especially one as useless as Ainsworth then not have a War Cabinet and then underfund the effort – well you get the picture.
I don’t read the Sun but it seems to me that at least it is highlighting these issues.
I’ll bet Gordon Brown spelt Susan Boyles name right when he wrote to the X-Factor….
November 11th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Anon E Mouse,
Utter rot. OK, you don’t like Brown. Fine. I disagree.
Let’s say there were spelling mistakes in the letter for the sake of argument. What does this tell us? Firstly, that Gordon Brown has bad eyesight and can’t clearly see what he’s written. Secondly, that it was a personal letter that wasn’t corrected by someone in the Garden Room. He wrote it – personally – and meant it.
Now, it is contested that the apparent spelling mistakes were because of his poor hand-writing. Quite what you would want him to do about that, I don’t know.
Perhaps you should start reading the Sun. You’d see that it is a cheer-leader for the next government being Conservative and will throw whatever mud it can to damage Brown and the current administration. You’d see that it is cheap and nasty. I believe it is at least plausible that the Sun have been going to every family who have lost a relative in Afghanistan, looking for a story, and they found a perfect one to use to attack Brown.
November 11th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
Hear hear. I am disgusted at The Sun’s behavior.
I remain &c.,
Disgusted, Tufnell Park.