Dull Brown

The Telegraph has a quite blatantly made-up story about how Gordon Brown has chosen some very dull pictures for No. 10. It's very easy - and right wing people love doing it - to assert someone's inferiority based on subjective judgements.

Unforturnately the article links to a pre-succession story about how the public were sceptical about "dull" Brown:

As the figures in the chart show, a mere 12 per cent find Mr Brown remotely engaging. More than five times that proportion, 66 per cent, reckon he is "dullsville".

"Dullsville" doesn't acually appear in the poll by the way. This is one of those interesting uses of quote marks that doesn't mean that a quotation is being used but the opposite, that no-one has actually said the word or phrase in question. You sometimes see it advertisements and promotional material, where it looks as if someone has said something good about the firm/product in question but it's actually made-up.

In the real world the Telegraph reports that dull Gordon's Labour party has a ten point lead over the Conservatives. You have to read quite a long way into the article to find out that the poll was actually done for the Sunday Times.