praise

we all like to be praised, to hear words of encouragement, to be told we are good at our jobs, that we are nice people, that we are funny (ok i admit i have to imagine what it is like to get praise).
words of praise must be even better when you have been suffering stinging attacks from colleagues, like water to a thirsty man.
gordon brown had just given a very good speech to the labour party conference. the conference enjoyed it, but they would. ok there were some naysayers over the speech: it hadn’t gone far enough or it was too little too late.
so hats off to the conservative shadow chancellor george osborne who offered up some lovely words of praise to gordon brown. osborne would normally be among the last people to praise gordon brown, so when he says something good about the speech you know it was a winner.
what was it that osborne said?
george osborne said that gordon brown had “retreated to the left”, ok he did say he had done this to save his job, which undercuts the praise a little – but i guess he thought he had to have a little dig at gordon.
but just fancy that a labour politician retreating to the left. amazing. who would have thought it.
so it looks like osborne has given brown’s speech the thumbs up. now it is time for the those labour members of parliament who have been whinging and whining to also give him the thumbs up as well.