Meanwhile, the government proposes mandatory drug testing for benefit claimants.

“The legislation would allow them to ask benefit claimants searching questions about their drug or alcohol use. Those suspected of having a dependency or of misusing drugs will then be asked to undergo an assessment and, if they refuse, face having their benefits withdrawn for a maximum of 26 weeks.”

Few indeed!

So, a churno gets lambasted for asking questions about ‘pills’ & ‘pain-killers’ – but would it be OK to ask if GB is getting his oats regularly?

Isn’t there a public interest issue here? – if the PM is sexually frustrated surely it must impede his performance during delicate negotiations or complex policy formation?

I hope Andrew ‘Fox News’ Marr is brave enough to pose this delicate yet politically important question?

4 – Maybe he’ll answer like Tony ’5 times a night’ Blair. It gets harder and harder to demean politicians, as they do such an excellent job of it themselves.

So Mr. Marr, having cut himself some slack by asking Salvatore Mundi about prescribed medication, will now, in the interests of, “Balance”, quiz the Cameleon (sic) about his youthful experiments with recreational drugs. This is, of course, a social crime which no journo has ever committed. I trust the same shock-horror about such innapropriate questions will reverberate thoughout journalistic circles, and that Sunny will br instrumental in leading the disgust which will eminate from the August Halls of the Media.

6 – Marr has apparently asked David Cameron whether he took drugs on three separate occasions since he became Tory leader. He was also asked it by Jeremy Paxman and on Channel 4 news. I’m sure Sunny will retrospectively condemn them all.

[7] but the implication of each answer is very different though, Tim J – namely, did you used to be a bit of a lad during your days as a student vs is there a pill-dependent nutter in charge of the country.

As someone who has taken drugs medicinally AND recreationaly I’d prefer a PM who chilled out at the weekend than one who needs them to keep the voices out.

And you are getting fucking desperate when you quote SKY NEWS REPORTERS as if they don’t share your anti-BBC agenda.

LOOK OVER THERE!

*sigh*

David Hencke is no longer at The Guardian but is Westminster correspondent for Tribune.

The trolls have had 24 hours to name the labour party member who said Brown is on drugs.

They have failed to do so despite claiming it was OK for Mar to ask the question because it had been revealed by a Labour politician. They then quoted numerous quotes about control freak, but they have don’t seem to understand that calling someone a control freak does not mean the same thing as claiming he is on drugs. All we ever get from the trolls is lies and snark but no substance,

As Sunny pointed out when the McBride story came out the crocodile tears from the Right were all bullshit. Nobody smears like the right wing.

So the trolls have lied (no surprise there then) but it is also fascinating to watch how any piece of shit put out by Guido (a man with zero credibility having claimed he hated all politicians and now rubbing his nose up “call me Dave’s ” back side.) will bring the them out to defend their lord and master.

@ 7

What the A&E charge nurse said, plus the fact there is a big difference between having partaken in illegal activity and now asking to be the person (in part) responsible for enforcing laws against that illegal activity (and maintaining the illegality), and being somebody who is medically unable to do that same job.

Though I find it hard to believe you couldn’t see the difference for your self…

Agreed – Marr was out of order. I kind of hoped this would remain a non-partisan issue (though perhaps that is a little too much to ask) – I think the essential objection is that the question didn’t need to be asked in that particular place, in that particular manner, and on such flimsy evidence, especially when it had already been answered (how satisfactorily may well be another matter) behind the scenes, as it were. The whole thing does sniff a bit of the BBC trying to be intentionally sensationalist, or perhaps of trying to demonstrate some bizarrely conceived notion of impartiality, and whilst not particularly impressed with Mr. Brown I think he has every right to call foul play.

Sally i personally have no idea who put word of GB’s frailty about, in answer to your question.

I wonder if you would now return the favour?

During the US presidential election (where Sunny volunteered), much was made of McCain’s health as an election issue.

Can you point to any British Left Wing blog (especiall one of Sunny’s) that said how inappropriate it was back then? If not, why all the fuss about Marr’s question now? Shoe on the other foot?

Given the (unwanted) currency of such scurrilous rumours through malicious whispers, barroom gossip and web speculation by the usual suspects, Andrew Marr probably did Gordon Brown a favour by bringing the rumours out into the open.

It’s even possible that Brown – or Brown’s aides – suggested this to Marr or the Marr production team before the interview.

@ 15

1. Brown does not have mental health problems

2. McCain has had cancer (several times), and is in his 70s (so is fairly likely to die within the next 4 years, and certainly, statistically, more so than Obama)

3. Asking questions about whether a man will be able to do a job he has not yet been picked for (esp when his Vice Candidate is a loopfruit) when that man has proven health difficulties is quite different from alleging a man who has been picked for a job is unable to do that job because of health difficulties, when in fact those difficulties are made-up.

“Silly” is an appropriate monicker for you indeed.

“It’s even possible that Brown – or Brown’s aides – suggested this to Marr or the Marr production team before the interview.”

I think perhaps you should put “Biased BBC” into google and follow the links. You may find yourself more at home there…

Who picked Brown exactly?

#18: “I think perhaps you should put “Biased BBC” into google and follow the links. You may find yourself more at home there… ”

I’ve never felt “at home” with the “biased BBC” crowd – at least since the BBC and Orla Guerin were dubbed “antisemitic” for reports like the one on Khiam Prison in South Lebanon:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/correspondent/1002463.stm

Right-wingers hate whataboutery until they do it themselves. I’m truly shocked

“Who picked Brown exactly?”

As I recall, he was annointed by a Labour Conference in the absence of any alternative candidate for the position of Labour leader and therefore PM, given Labour’s majority in the House of Commons.

I must admit that I am fascinated by this story. Not about the smear itself; if the PM needs to pop pills to sustain his mental health that is his affair and I trust his aides to keep him away from the red button labelled “Blow up world, they all deserve it” in his hypothetical moments of blues. I just have a trust, possibly misplaced, that if any PM is bonkers, wise heads will intervene. Nota US President Richard Nixon who bugged opponents but was neutered in other ways.

My fascination is the culture around the story: those who provide titbits to journalists; Brown’s personal history; most of all, the uninformed speculation of which I am guilty in part.

Thus far, Marr has asked a single question and been rebuffed. Is there going to be a follow-up?

What surprises me is the surprise at the fact that Marr was recycling a cheap question from someone/somewhere else. When did Marr ever show signs of original or independent and incisive thought? He strikes me as the kind of person who would be surprised at the controversy around his question: someone somewhat removed from the real world who would not blink while suggesting that politicians were somewhat sheltered from reality.

#23: “that if any PM is bonkers, wise heads will intervene”

To go by history, we can’t altogether depend on that. Churchill as PM had a serious stroke in 1953 when he was 78 but the public were never informed at the time. He finally retired under mounting media pressure in 1955.

Following that, there was the whole Suez debacle in 1956 when Eden, Churchill’s successor, was PM. More than a few in Parliament and elsewhere at the time thought Eden was off his rocker and he retired soon after on health grounds. With the “Special Relationship” an’ all that, President Eisenhower saved us from being completely daft by threatening to pull the plug on Sterling in the foreign exchange markets unless we withdrew British forces from the Suez Canal Zone. We duly complied declaring the mission accomplished.

However, this isn’t just a British thing. President Woodrow Wilson (1913-21) was struck down by a debilitating stroke in 1919. News of that was suppressed and his wife and personal physician somehow managed to keep the office of President running until Wilson’s term of office expired in 1921.

With continuous media pressures nowadays, I guess that it is near impossible to successfully keep the lid on news that a PM or President has become verging on completely debilitated. Just for starters, in Britain there’s Prime Minister’s Questions every Wednesday when Parliament is in session.

Adam Boulton is being downright slippery here. During the summer, he was the one peddling stories about Brown being retired on “health grounds” on his blog and on Sky News. He’s simply jealous that he wasn’t the one who asked the question first.

and yet from the conference today it is as clear as day he doesn’t take mind altering drugs to sort his mind out, that kind of insane is all natural!

Can we has articles about real issues rather than this toy throwing exercise? Poorhouses and more guilty unless proven innocent policy for example?

Let’s look at what that fucking scum John Ward thinks, shall we?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/conservative/1582757/Sterilise-parents-on-benefits-says-Tory.html

Tory filth.

8/13 – I don’t disagree, but a common reaction on here (as in 6 for example, which I was replying to) has been that if Marr is going to ask Gordon Brown whether he’s taking prescription painkillers or pills, then he ought to ask David Cameron whether he took drugs. And the answer to that is that he has, three times.

For what it’s worth, I suspect (and he has semi admitted) that Marr was motivated at least partly by the Charles Kennedy factor. The entire lobby, and most of the press, knew that Kennedy was an alcoholic but nobody ever said anything. That really was an abdication of responsibility.

28 – He’s also a 16th century pirate! And the Bishop of Leavenworth! And he used to play cricket for New Zealand! Different John Ward, idiot.

Hahaha – Nick “stinging rebuke” Assinder’s blog tells us that:

“Brown will be hurling staplers and mobiles across his hotel room tonight.”

http://assinder.wordpress.com/2009/09/30/the-sun-switches-watch-out-bbc/

@28 – are you Sally’s alter ego?

I very much doubt that is the same John Ward.

31 – as in “So for the record, I am NOT the neo-Nazi Tory John Ward suspended by the Conservative Party recently.”

http://www.notbornyesterday.org/brownhealth2.htm