It's hard being a cowboy in Rochdale, but it’s a hell of a lot harder being Gordon Brown.

There’s an old military saying that you should never discuss politics or religion with friends, especially if you want to keep them. I would quite like to keep you, dear reader, but this news story from my hometown prompted me to share my two penneth
Having been heard on microphone calling Gillian Duffy a "bigoted woman", Gordon Brown returned to her house to apologise claiming ‘I understood the concerns she was bringing to me, and I had simply misunderstood some of the words she'd used.’
That has to be the best bit of political jargon I’ve heard in weeks.
To be fair to Gordon Brown, a lot of people from Rochdale are bigots*, some because life experiences have left them bitter (but at the wrong people). However having watched the video of what was said and reading the transcripts Mrs Duffy doesn’t seem to be one of them. Aside from a brief comment about Eastern Europeans ‘flocking’ in she mostly seems concerned with the deficit and his policies, for example:
I used to be a dyed in the wool supporter but now I’m almost ashamed to say it… But how are you going to get us out of all this debt, Gordon …We had it drummed in when I was a child with mine … it was education, health service and looking after the people who are vulnerable.

Labour must be getting nostalgic for when all they had to worry about was being snubbed by a cartoon pig




*as a Rochdalian lass born and mostly bred, although now escaped, I reserve both the right to say this and the right to get offended if someone else says it.