This might be the most annoying TED speaker ever (come to think of it, the only one).
He might have something valuable to say but his voice and attitude are just too aggravatating to keep listening.
He might have something valuable to say but his voice and attitude are just too aggravatating to keep listening.
Still, I had to pause and rewind the video several times, because he talked too fast. Thats because several links sprung up in my head, and ideas came.
I thought that just made it better - people who are interested in what they're talking about and want to tell you about it tend to be more interesting than those that just do it because they need to.
http://www.ted.com/talks/gordon_brown.html
Not only does he have the stage manner of an uncaring dentist, it's worth remembering he's an undemocratically elected leader espousing all sorts of nonsense about democracy.
Care to explain what you mean by that?
(I should point out that people might not understand the Westminster system even if they live in a country that uses it. In Canada last year, there was a fiasco about how three opposition parties wanted to form a coalition government to replace the Prime Minister without an election. Perfectly legal, but a lot of Canadians were convinced that it was a sort of coup. The current Prime Minister exploited this and ended up keeping his seat.)
That's legally true but pragmatically false. Sure, we vote for the MP to represent our local seat and then a majority of MPs results in a leading party, but that's not how elections are pitched.
Back in 1997, we had a worse than useless Conservative party headed by John Major and a fresh, rebranded "New Labour" party headed by Tony Blair. People voted for Labour MPs in their droves to get Tony Blair into power. He was not technically democratically voted to the position of PM but that was considered the natural result of voting Labour.
We did not, however, vote for Brown in any form, legally or pragmatically. Indeed, it was not even considered at the time that he would be a successor. The same situation occurred with both Callaghan and Major but I personally feel the British public has less of a taste for the old school Westminster style and has a better feel for the almost presidential style brought in by Blair.