Thanks to Google Alerts, I can report that some British newspapers have finally started to post news about Daniel Hannen's speech on their websites (mostly in their blog sections). Click on titles below to inspect what they're saying:
12.34 p.m. THE TIMES:
Daniel Hannan - the Americans just love him
POSTED BY TIMES ONLINE NEWSDESK ON MARCH 26, 2009 AT 12:34 PM
14.28: p.m. THE GUARDIAN
Why has Daniel Hannan become an internet sensation?
Posted by Andrew Sparrow Thursday 26 March 2009 14.28 GMT
3.32 p.m. DAILY MAIL
Tory MEP ambushes Brown, branding his leadership 'devalued'... then becomes surprise internet hit
By NICOLA BODEN
Last updated at 3:32 PM on 26th March 2009
Media coverage of Daniel Hannan's attack on Gordon Brown in Strasbourg
Yesterday, when I posted news of Daniel Hannan’s speech to the European Parliament, it had already attracted 22,000 viewings and 208 comments on YouTube in less than 24 hours. The latest score at the time of writing has shot up to 660,691 viewings and 4,560 comments.
Yet there’s still been no mention of it on any BBC news programme or on its website. Nor will you be able to find any reference to it on the websites of ITN, Sky News or Channel 4 News.
If you search through the websites of leading British newspapers, you’ll find that the only one with any reference to the speech happens to be the one for which Mr Hannan writes and on which he has a blog, namely The Daily Telegraph.
But the US media has been rather less neglectful in their coverage of this story, and anyone interested in hearing more about the speech can see an extended interview with the MEP on the Fox News website HERE.
And you can watch this space for some comments on the rhetorical highlights within the next day or two.
It's time Gordon Brown stopped recycling other people's lines
I’ve warned Gordon Brown and his speechwriters before (HERE) that it’s not a good idea to lift lines from other people’s speeches. This was prompted by one of the lines from a speech he made in July last year:
“There’s nothing bad about Britain that cannot be corrected by what’s good about Britain …”
This bore an uncanny resemblance to something Bill Clinton had said in his inaugural address in January 1993:
“There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.”
Then, when Brown spoke to the US Congress three weeks ago, he came up with:
“There is no old Europe, no new Europe, there is only your friend Europe.”
Not surprisingly, this got some commentators wondering if his scriptwriters had now started borrowing from the collected works of Barack Obama, whose address at the 2004 Democratic Convention had included the folowing:
“There is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America -- there’s the United States of America.”
Obama subsequently recycled a similar version in other speeches, including the one in Chicago after he had won the election:
“We have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states. We are and always will be the United States of America”
Recycling your own material may be acceptable, but there is nothing whatsoever to be gained from recycling material that sounds as though it’s been lifted from someone else – other than the kind electoral disaster Joe Biden experienced when his unattributed use of lines from a Neil Kinnock speech brought his otherwise promising 1987 campaign for the Democratic nomination to an abrupt end.
But Brown and his speechwriters still don’t seem to get it. So, here we are, hardly three weeks since he told the US Congress:
“There is no old Europe, no new Europe, there is only your friend Europe”
we hear him telling the European Parliament:
“There is no old Europe, no new Europe, no east or west Europe. There is only one Europe – our home Europe.”
Pass the sick bag please ...
“There’s nothing bad about Britain that cannot be corrected by what’s good about Britain …”
This bore an uncanny resemblance to something Bill Clinton had said in his inaugural address in January 1993:
“There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.”
Then, when Brown spoke to the US Congress three weeks ago, he came up with:
“There is no old Europe, no new Europe, there is only your friend Europe.”
Not surprisingly, this got some commentators wondering if his scriptwriters had now started borrowing from the collected works of Barack Obama, whose address at the 2004 Democratic Convention had included the folowing:
“There is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America -- there’s the United States of America.”
Obama subsequently recycled a similar version in other speeches, including the one in Chicago after he had won the election:
“We have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states. We are and always will be the United States of America”
Recycling your own material may be acceptable, but there is nothing whatsoever to be gained from recycling material that sounds as though it’s been lifted from someone else – other than the kind electoral disaster Joe Biden experienced when his unattributed use of lines from a Neil Kinnock speech brought his otherwise promising 1987 campaign for the Democratic nomination to an abrupt end.
But Brown and his speechwriters still don’t seem to get it. So, here we are, hardly three weeks since he told the US Congress:
“There is no old Europe, no new Europe, there is only your friend Europe”
we hear him telling the European Parliament:
“There is no old Europe, no new Europe, no east or west Europe. There is only one Europe – our home Europe.”
Pass the sick bag please ...
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