Gordon in the USA: it's not THAT bad

Apparently Labour are "down in the dumps" what with the relentless media criticism of Gordon Brown, who appears to be less of a clunking fist and more of a funking twit at the moment. Well, never let it be said that I can see a sad little chicken without giving them a comforting word or two.

Mr Brown has been coming in for a load of stick over his US trip - particularly because of that dastardly Pope stealing his lime light. But frankly the media, not for the first time, seem to have missed the point - this time by a mile. Brown has a line of meet ups including the President, all three of the likely Presidents in waiting and he has a meeting with bankers and financial big wigs. All of which seems eminently reasonable and none of which requires any press attention at all in order to be effective.

I mean I know the press are self centred but to say that the trip is essentially a disaster because he's not getting on the tele, that much seems a rather skewed way of looking at the world to me. So in the shadow of a global financial crisis his talks with the US money men may as well not have happened because he didn't get on Oprah Winfrey? What?

Now he's trying to play the show bizz bit a little it seems to me - appearing on This Morning America and American Idol ffs - but if we'd like our PM to actually do something useful then we shouldn't fall for the froth and look at what his trip will achieve in the long term over our relationship with the United States adn the markets. Now, obviously, me and Brown part company on the content of what he should be saying in these meetings but the fact they are happening without much press attention is neither here nor there really.

If we're going to have a Prime Minister then he should be having cosy private chats with the US President. Once he's close enough in with a quick bash in the kidneys, get him into a headlock and bundle him out the back for a real going over. At least I assume that's what anyone with any moral fibre would do when meeting Bush.