Revealed: why Gordon Brown sold Britain's gold at a knock-down price

[Doggy Styles]

I don't really understand the fuss. 400 tons of gold is only worth about £20bn which would be nice to have in the bank but it's bugger all in the grand scheme of things.

£1500 isn't much in the grand scheme of a contractor's bank balance.

Would you give that £1500 to me if I paid you £300 for it?

[AtW]

I don't really understand the fuss. 400 tons of gold is only worth about £20bn which would be nice to have in the bank but it's bugger all in the grand scheme of things.

It's the question of competence, or more like incompetence in this case.

He thrown far more money in other mistakes such as PFI.

[doodab]

£1500 isn't much in the grand scheme of a contractor's bank balance.

Would you give that £1500 to me if I paid you £300 for it?

No, but I wouldn't give you tuppence. If however you wanted to buy some of my old junk for £300 and it turns out to be worth £1500 in a few years time then good luck to you.

The sentiment that gold is now basically useless so may as well get rid and use the cash for something else was actually quite sensible IMO, and an awful lot of central banks were doing the same thing and kept doing it for years afterwards. The timing of the sale was bad, yes, although it looks a lot worse in the light of the financial crisis and even now with gold close to all time highs the loss equates to only 6 weeks of the current deficit, so I think we have much more important things to worry about.

[Doggy Styles]

Oh dear...

[doodab]

He thrown far more money in other mistakes such as PFI.

Exactly, why keep harping on about a few billion quids worth of gold when there are hundreds of billions of pounds worth of far more serious ****ery to concern ourselves with.

You could also argue to some extent that the utility privatizations resulted in a similar loss to the taxpayer.

[hyperD]

So we are agreed then, the "one eyed Scottish idiot" was yet another glorified Labour cockhead? Yes?

[TimberWolf]

Yeah, a drop in the ocean compared to the £1/3 trillion money printing operation, with another £50 billion printed this week.

[OwlHoot]

Exactly, why keep harping on about a few billion quids worth of gold when there are hundreds of billions of pounds worth of far more serious ****ery to concern ourselves with.

Isn't it obvious? Because pallet loads of gleaming gold bars are easy to visualise, and everyone knows it is "precious", and hoards of it are in the common imagination the bulwark of a healthy stable economy. So selling that at a knock down price is a potent symbol or representative of his other follies.

PFI by contrast sounds all technical and abstruse to many, and the losses less clear cut. Also, PFI sounds more like a planned strategy, worked out by clever civil servants, whereas selling the gold seemed and presumably was a sudden act of desperation.

[BrilloPad]

So we are agreed then, the "one eyed Scottish idiot" was yet another glorified Labour cockhead? Yes?

I don't believe being Labour had anything to do with it. Look at the current bunch of incumbents.

[petergriffin]

Who is Gordon Brown? And what is Gold? I only watch Justin Bieber.