Robert Thompson pays penance to Gordon for Easter?

In the past couple of weeks it's fair to say that the Times has not exactly been friendly towards Gordon Brown. First we had the "Black Tuesday" front page which led on the Lord Turnbull "stalinist" comments. Then last week we had the splash thanks to a FoI release that Brown had been blocking for two years which showed how he was warned in no uncertain terms that he was going to ruin the pensions systems and chose to ignore it.

The Times editor Robert Thompson is known to be quite good friends with Gordon (to the point that - if the Evening Standard didn't lie to me - he even take his family out with family Brown, so you can imagine that he probably being treated like Bukharin right now without the show trail. Penance is thus in order and this morning's Times clearly carries it, not once, but twice.

First we're subjected to an op-ed from Koba Brown himself that essentially repeats his "big idea" to tax us all a little bit more so we can pay for free education to all in Africa. This might seem laudable but for the fact that we all know what actually happens to aid when it goes into Africa. If the structural deficiencies of African governments are not resolved it will change very little.

At the same time Brown also links this big idea to fighting terrorism saying that if we don't cough up all the kids will taught by radical Islamist loonies instead and - presumably - they will all start blowing themselves up on the tube. Certainly possible, but let's be honest, it's just an ad metum argument, and we should note it come hot on the heels of an ad misericordiam argument in the very first paragraph.

Ironically, the second piece which bigs Brown up is about the Big Brother psychologist, Geoff Beattie, who has analysed what politicians said in interviewed and worked out who gave the straightest answers. David Davis actually won, followed by Ming Campbell, but you wouldn't know that unless you read the whole piece which is titled "Gordon Brown is best of a bad lot for straight talk". Also you certainly wouldn't, without close examination, notice that Cameron and Brown scored the same in this subjective pseudo-scientific study.

Instead it's just all Brown. Apparently, he is the most trustworthy straight talker politician - based purely on his interviews in the last 16 months (of which they haven't been many) - presumably we are expected to ignore the entirely non-straight talking use of logical fallacies in his article on the previous page?

Still, the most important thing is that Robert Thompson has done his penance right? He grovelled to his mate just in time to ensure that the bank holiday weekend doesn't make the barbecue too tense an experience. He gave him an article and bigged him up whilst playing down (a) the bollocks of the study and (b) spinning the results so they make Brown look like the champion. Gordon will be happy and Easter is all about forgiveness and Resurrection after all!