There’s been all sorts of spluttering about the question Andy Marr asked Gordon Brown about whether he was using drugs or whatever. Sunny H has got very hoity toity about it for example.
However, here’s something I’ve not seen mentioned as yet.
Marr asked, something along the lines of “many people use prescription drugs or pills to get through….are you?” (there might have been a “to cope with pressure” or something in there).
To which Brown answered no.
However, the actual rumour, the gossip, was not that Brown was using valium, percocet, or other mood altering drugs at all. It was that as a result of mental illness he was using heavy duty anti-psychotics.
That’s not quite the same thing as was asked: you could, if you were a politician, find the question Marr asked to be about drugs to deal with stress and so on. You could, again if you were a politician, quite righteously answer “No” to the question about using drugs to get through, to cope, just as you would answer no if you were at the time taking penicillin to deal with that toenail fungus that wouldn’t go away.
As it happens I don’t think Brown is taking those heavy duty anti-psychotics: I’ve still enough faith in the political system that he would have been turfed out, if for no other reason that he’s got the button for the Trident missiles, if he were.
But he wasn’t asked and didn’t answer the actual rumour, yet everyone is acting as if he was and did.
16 responses so far ↓
1 Bugger. « Swimming against the tide // Sep 29, 2009 at 9:54 am
[...] September 29, 2009 by Harry Haddock When Marr asked that question, I spat at the TV ‘He’s let him off!’, having to explain to my assembled house mates exactly what Tim has written here. [...]
2 Gareth // Sep 29, 2009 at 10:02 am
And yet few scoffed and blinked when Cameron’s experiences of drugs was running high amongst the chatterati.
3 Doug // Sep 29, 2009 at 10:04 am
Yet another reason for a politician never to deny anything. You can’t alter gossipmongers’ beliefs, they just cast around for all the lack of evidence that supports their delusions. Just like conspiracy theorists.
4 Newmania // Sep 29, 2009 at 10:14 am
No sorry Tim that post is , almost uniquely for you ,entirely wrong . Monoamine oxidase inhibitors are not ‘heavy duty’ lots of people got onto them at one point and I was one . This is why Brown`s dietary requirements would have immediately sounded the ‘alarm’ .It is so distinctive and so well known.
Personally I started taking them at University due to a mis-diagnosis of what turned out to be minor neurological problem . I suspect what has happened to Brown is what happened to me
The Body adapts to certain side effects and long after the original reasons are forgotten .Finding the months or weeks at least in your life to re –adapt is always something you can put off. In my case I put it off until about three years ago. There is no danger nor is it right to assume there is any psychosis involved . Brown was a brooding and odd young man , he was probably depressed long long ago .( They are never prescribed now and have not been for years ).
Still whatever the right s and wrong of people’s attitude are the fact is he is certainly taking them those dietary requirements are unmistakeable .
5 Matthew // Sep 29, 2009 at 10:21 am
Gareth’s comment is in fact almost 180 degrees wrong. David Cameron has remarkably got away with saying something along the lines of ‘I have not taken class-A drugs as a public figure’ which is bizarre as when/if he’s prime minister I believe he is going to keep the taking of them as a criminal, ie public, offence.
So it’s pretty blatantly one law for him and one law for everyone else, and this is on a criminal matter. God know what else he’ll inflict on us.
6 Kay Tie // Sep 29, 2009 at 10:59 am
“So it’s pretty blatantly one law for him and one law for everyone else”
*cough*Baroness Scotland*cough*
7 Kay Tie // Sep 29, 2009 at 11:00 am
“( They are never prescribed now and have not been for years )”
They are when SSRIs don’t work.
8 Serf // Sep 29, 2009 at 11:24 am
‘I have not taken class-A drugs as a public figure’ which is bizarre as when/if he’s prime minister I believe he is going to keep the taking of them as a criminal, ie public, offence.
Perhaps he thinks that taking them was wrong. It is a possibility.
9 Newmania // Sep 29, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Perhaps he thinks that taking them was wrong. It is a possibility
Like that !
10 Gareth // Sep 29, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Matthew,
It’s not what Cameron has or hasn’t said that I was taking issue with but the gossip around Cameron’s past that the likes of Kevin Macguire are content to repeat.
11 Matthew // Sep 29, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Katie, I don’t understand your Baroness Scotland remark – surely she has nothing to do with David Cameron’s drug-taking past?
“Perhaps he thinks that taking them was wrong. It is a possibility.”
Possibly, though there’s no evidence. But that doesn’t make it a private matter for him but a public matter when everyone else does it.
12 Kay Tie // Sep 29, 2009 at 2:54 pm
“I don’t understand your Baroness Scotland remark”
David Cameron isn’t the only example of a politician disregarding a law that they expect the rest of us to obey.
13 Doug // Sep 29, 2009 at 3:33 pm
“isn’t the only example of a politician disregarding a law that they expect the rest of us to obey”
No, but he is attempting to be prime minister – not just another politician.
IMO that means he should be held to higher standards – he’s going to represent the values of the UK to the rest of the world, and if he’s a slippery little arrogant weasel unable to come clean about, and too weak to take responsibility for, his past actions, then he’s a media liberal.
14 Kay Tie // Sep 29, 2009 at 11:38 pm
No, but he is attempting to be prime minister – not just another politician.
So our current Prime Minister will be registering with the ISA in order to visit schools and gurn at the children? Or will he just exempt himself from this particular law?
15 Newmania // Sep 30, 2009 at 12:09 am
IMO that means he should be held to higher standards
Thank god that as yet we are not reduced to such a collection of pofaced sanctimonious pains in the collective arse.
16 Matthew // Sep 30, 2009 at 8:36 am
Kaytie – Oh I see what you mean now – not very relevant though to the point is it? If I’d said ‘he’s the only politician who believes there is one law…’ maybe.
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