Gordon Brown to pen new book

January 25, 2012 11:26 am

According to the press release:

“In 2025: SHAPING A NEW FUTURE Gordon Brown charts the massive technological, demographic social and political forces - including the explosive growth of a global middle class, reinventing our world. He shows that by 2025, for the first time in human history, the majority of people will live in urban areas and one billion will have a university degree, families will be under pressure as a minority of young Western adults choose marriage, and Brown asks whether and how we can convert a new wave of scientific and medical progress into a more sustainable and widely shared prosperity which ends avoidable poverty.

Drawing from his wealth of experience as a world leader, Brown identifies as the main drivers of future change not just the familiar change makers – IT, globalisation and medical invention – but also new forces: global migration, the new demands of the new global middle class, a revolution in the way we educate our children, the growth of global pressure groups and the restoration of’ ethics.  He suggests that if the 20th century was the century of women’s empowerment through ending women’s exploitation, the 21st will be about a higher form of empowerment – women’s leadership as a force for change.  But as he argues, the future is never fixed, and he shows how we can all play our part in promoting and managing change in ways that make the world a better place for all our children.

2025: SHAPING A NEW FUTURE will be published in November 2012.”

  • JC

    If he has such vision, why didn’t he share it with us when he was Prime Minister? If he doesn’t, will the book be worth reading?

  • Anonymous

    With all due respect, I can never see the point of books like this. They remind me of those “Future Shock” type of books that Alvin Toffler wrote in the early 70s,
    fortelling some wonderful Utopia by 1980 when we would leave  everything to the omputer and we would live a life of leisure and luxury. A world free of disease, warfare etc etc etc.

    Would that it were, would that it were.

    This book will probably become interesting in 2026 to see how many of the runes cast actually  came true.

    I doubt though that his book will be as vainglorious as “A Journey”, which even as we speak is making it’s way to a Poundland near you.

    • Anonymous

      Money  Alan?  and history when he’s gone to the great bankers convention in the sky his books will be in most Jumble sales and Charity shops.

    • Anonymous

      You can get a copy of “A Journey” on EBay for 99p. No need to rush since there are zero bids at present. The downside is that the postage and packing costs over two and a half times what the seller thinks the book is worth! But there you go.

      • Anonymous

        That made me chuckle…

  • Marcus Tankus

    Why is this man being paid for a full time job ?  the citizens in Las Vegas have seen him more often than he has represented his constituency in Parliament  in the last year.

    utter disgrace ! 

    • John Ruddy

      I think you will find that he has represented his constituency very well. An MPs job is not to sit all day in the chamber to make sure he gets seen on the telly. And as a Scottish MP, his constituents have MSPs to raise issues concerning Health, Transport,etc.

      • Anonymous

        How? A lack of questions in the House, a lack of attendance in the House and a poor voting record combined with private writing and overseas lectures.

        • John Ruddy

          He has represented his constiuents in many ways – by raising the issue of the aircraft carriers which are being built in his constiuency, and the issue of the MOD removing radioactive debris from a beach in his consituency.

          Like I said, an MPs work is about more than sitting in the commons getting his face on the telly. My local paper covers his consituency, and I can tell you I see him doing more for Kirkcaldy than my MP does – but that could be due to the publicity he can get as a former PM.

          By the way, if I write a book, does that mean I havnt been doing my job? Or can only unemployed people with loads of free time write books?

          • Anonymous

            So two questions in the last year then and he is well below average generally as an active MP.

            You don’t think that  he could have been of more use in Parliament given his experience as Chancellor and PM and his pre-election defeat world summit?  

            It’s not just about being in the Commons though I agree. It’s about interacting with parliament which is what he seems to not have done whilst travelling the world and writing personal books.  Maybe he opens a lot of school fetes and supermarkets in his constituency? If so fair enough, maybe they are happy with that.

            Someone with a full time job and a very busy lecture / promotion tour and a book to write will have to cut back in places. As he is supported by the taxpayer it is legitimate to ask what he is spending his time on when he is not in parliament but is addressing conferences all over the world.

            If most people didn’t show up at their place of work, travelled the world talking for money and then knocked out another book questions would be asked.  

          • Anonymous

            No but when the Cameras were in the house for the Murdoch’s he was present, telling us how hard he had been hurt, the bloke should do the decent thing and give us his cosy job. he gets a pension

          • Anonymous

            Then why not become unemployed he is not doing his job in Asia, he is not doing his job sitting at home while every other Labour MP has to go to Parliament, be interesting to see his expenses at the end of this year.

      • England85

        If his constituents have MSPs to raise these issues then again what does Mr Brown do for them exactly? I understsand there have been calls from within his constituency for him to stand down? So it sounds like a valid question

      • Anonymous

        So sitting at home or in Asian being paid sending a few emails to  Parliament is working, strange when I said I be working on a building site it did not normally mean me being at home all day or In Asian making money

  • Anonymous

    He is well past his sell by date, and all he is doing now of course is making money while the sun shines for him Bankers are now all over him, the reason they are not talking the blame so they like Brown to tell them it was the welfare state, yes the welfare and the poor and the explosion of the middle class labour made to try and keep them selves in power.

    Why has he not retired taken up a position more suited to his style working on the front of RBS

  • Anonymous

    A world leader who the hell made him a world leader.

  • Anonymous

    Beats working for a living I suppose.

    Has spoken in 2 debates in the last year — well below average amongst MPs. Has received answers to 14 written questions in the last year — below average amongst MPs. Replied within 2 or 3 weeks to a medium number of messages sent via WriteToThem.com during 2008, according to constituents. Has voted in 16.36% of votes in this Parliament with this affiliation — well below average amongst MPs. (From Public Whip)
    http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/gordon_brown/kirkcaldy_and_cowdenbeath

    • Anonymous

      But he has spoken to banking in Asian a number of times we are told for a nice little sum of £100,000

      Brown has not spoken in the House of Commons since he stood down as
      Labour leader, despite remaining MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, and
      has only been seen in the chamber on a handful of occasions. He has been
      writing a book, The Financial Crisis, on how Britain dealt with the
      economic downturn. But the Spectator magazine’s website hasreported that
      Brown had signed up with an agency that could book him in to speak in
      the Middle East and Asia, commanding $100,000 a time to speak on areas
      covered by the book.
      Interest is said to be particularly high in
      the Gulf, and anyone who booked him to speak would also have to stump up
      for five-star hotel accommodation, as well as one first-class and three
      business-class seats. Brown’s wife, Sarah, can also charge an
      appearance fee of $20,000.

      http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/aug/18/gordon-brown-speaking-engagements

      • John Ruddy

        You do realise that all the money Gordon Brown makes from speaking engagements and book sales goes to charity, dont you?

        • Anonymous

          Still not the same as doing the job he was elected to do is it?

          • John Ruddy

            But what if he IS doing the job his constituents elected him to do? They seem happy enough with him (other than those activists of other parties, who obviously want rid him – but then they would want rid of any Labour MP, regardless of how well he or she does their job).

          • Anonymous

            If they are happy with the service and his poor Parliamentary record on their behalf  then fine. Does not mean other people who pay to support this pubic servant won’t ask questions though from all parties.

            And of course, do his constituents even have a choice?  

        • Anonymous

          Nope a percentage goes to charity, any way this was the bloke that brought in Welfare reforms with Blair,  feeling guilty.

        • Anonymous

          “You do realise that all the money Gordon Brown makes from speaking engagements and book sales goes to charity, dont you? ”  John Ruddy

          No it doesnt   … It goes to the office of Gordon and sarah brown ltd…a registered company for his and hers  lobbying…not  a charity 
          The money raised is used to pay for a retinue of staff and to cover his expenses travelling around the world in the manner thus befitting an economic global savoir of the planet  . 

          And it took him a whole month to comment on the radiation exposure in his constituency. Obviously of minimal importance …to him ?
          When the welsh miners got trapped  ,Peter Hain turned up even before the rescue crews arrived , and didn’t leave until after the last camera went … Made it a dead cert that everything that could be done , would be …!   

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Robert-Moore/648163551 Robert Moore

    Hello, are the actually any LABOUR supporters here? 

    • Anonymous

      Why are you the last one, this bloke  took this country into this mess then saved it by using tax payers money something he was very good at.N

      Now the bloke is supposed to be in work he’s at home picking up a bloody good wage sending emails and writing a book, if you did that in any other jobs you’d be sacked or called a work shy scrounger.

    • Anonymous

      More here than in the Shadow Cabinet certainly.

    • England85

      Oh yes voted Labour when I turned 18 in 1979 and then voted Labour in every election since. But each time I saw less and less of anything in the party that actually had anything to do with me. I won’t vote at all in 2015 as party politics within the sphere of Parliament had ended. It’s just managing decline for the proles and letting the elites get their hands on what’s left.

  • Anonymous

    Did anybody actually read Gordon’s previous opus “Beyond the Crash: Overcoming the First Crisis of Globalisation”?

    • http://twitter.com/gonzozzz dave stone

      It deserves to be influential.

      Brown favours a moral market, global financial regulation and a global growth pact.

      And, interestingly, Brown approvingly quotes the response of people in some in the poorest countries in the world, in Africa, whose people were having free-market policies rammed down their throats. There is no other way (TINA) said the IMF. The Africans replied with THEMBA – there must be another way.

      As in now becoming all too clear, the Africans were right.

      Brown ends his 2010 book with a warning: The crisis is not over.

      • Anonymous

        I’m not as educated as brown and I knew the crises was not over, and I suspect we all know Africa is going to be the next big target for the money makers and money grabbers as the tree’s and the Oil and the gas giants, start ripping countries to bits for money, mostly from America and I suspect China

  • Anonymous

    Gordon who?

  • Anonymous

    Another book… 

  • Anonymous

    So that was what he was writing when he promised.. and promised.. and promised .. to reveal his “Vision for the UK”.

    Must rush out and buy it.

  • http://profiles.google.com/alanmdouglas Alan Douglas

    November this year ? Excellent, I should be able to run a nice real fire from remainders bought before Christmas then.

    Alan Douglas

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