Gordon Brown’s eyesight is causing concern among aides
I mean he’s got people to read him stuff. Is this a big deal re his ability to govern?
Are you nuts? Being able to look into a foreign leader’s eyes and evaluating the quality of his soul is impossible to do if one is blind!
I looked into Putin’s eyes, and I saw fuck-all.
It shouldn’t affect his ability to govern, depending, of course, on the trustworthiness of his aides.
One of our ex-Home Secretaries is blind, so it’s not entirely without precedence.
Although i’m not sure how good a reference David Blunkett is.
Well, reading should be faster than having people read to you, but I doubt the PM does a lot of “reading the whole 1000-page report.” He’ll need to get more verbal digests, that’s all. Maybe he should find some “read out loud” software that can understand politicalese…
Now, here’s an idea for the people here who work for MS:
a boss of mine had the same problem of needing very large print. He needed to find the “resize font” menu pretty much by touch, which is difficult when you aren’t touching anything. Calling me to resize documents was faster. There are “magnifying glass” programs but they don’t work too well. Perhaps a way to resize the menus themselves, user-dependant, would come handy.
The press are going to lap it up, on both sides (heroic struggle against personal circumstances vs Magoo). Not sure if that makes any real difference, though.
I did too. They were blue.
We had a president that was blind as a bat and yet got elected (yet again) and re-elected even after it was clear that he was blind, very old and infirm (Time, or Newsweek - can’t remember - declared him and Thurmond the oldest, most powerful people in the planet). I didn’t like the guy, but to be fair we had seeing presidents that fucked it up real good.
In Gordon Brown’s place I’d be very concerned about getting handled by the people who decide what documents are read to me and what gets into verbal summaries for me. I’d have to trust my aides’ competence and personal loyalty much more than if I’d still be able to skim long documents.
I thought I heard some odd noises coming from the bathroom.
My governor’s blind and he’s doing okay.
I think it could do. A lot of the criticism of Gordon Brown has been presentational: if this is true, and Downing St can get out the message that “if he looks awkward and uncertain in the crush, it’s because he can barely see” it’s going to put his percieved maladroitness in a different light. Equally, the oh-so-witty-and-apposite “Bottler” label will look rather shabby in light of the fact that he’s clearly been confronting a pretty alarming disability in private while trying not to let on in public.
His banking rescue plan has been getting a lot of positive press and seems to be being used as a blueprint for other countries: if he goes into the next election as the man who overcame a private struggle to pull together an international response to a global crisis, he’ll recapture a lot of his missing gravitas.
David Paterson anyone?
Hair growth of the palms is surely soon to follow.
I think it could do. A lot of the criticism of Gordon Brown has been presentational: if this is true, and Downing St can get out the message that “if he looks awkward and uncertain in the crush, it’s because he can barely see” it’s going to put his percieved maladroitness in a different light. Equally, the oh-so-witty-and-apposite “Bottler” label will look rather shabby in light of the fact that he’s clearly been confronting a pretty alarming disability in private while trying not to let on in public.
His banking rescue plan has been getting a lot of positive press and seems to be being used as a blueprint for other countries: if he goes into the next election as the man who overcame a private struggle to pull together an international response to a global crisis, he’ll recapture a lot of his missing gravitas.
But hopefully still lose.
Consider the alternatives.
I did that last time his head overflew my house.
I’m voting monster raving loony and I encourage you to do the same!
Control Panel -> Display -> Settings tab -> Advanced -> General tab
You can set the DPI size for the default font. Normal is 96 (100%), by using the custom size you can set it up to 200%.
And still able to get some outside nookie!