Brown loves power of web
TO many it is a talking shop or a playground for perverts. But for Gordon Brown the internet is a new force for global good.
In a keynote speech yesterday, the Prime Minister declared the internet “the most powerful weapon for justice ever put in human hands”.[>
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He said that in a “new world divided by vast distances” people were being united by the “instant ties of cyberspace”.[>
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“Some dismiss the internet as a shouting match without a referee, but let us remember its power for change,” he said, reminding his audience of how Burma’s monks “with only a begging bowl and their blogs” gained the world’s support in their fight against oppression. [>
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He foresaw “a world without walls, borders, barriers and frontiers… meeting on Facebook if not face to face”. [>
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And he called for “a single moral universe” to fight HIV/Aids and bring about change.[>
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The speech – to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in Edinburgh – came 20 years after Margaret Thatcher’s “Sermon on the Mound”, laying out her ideas on capitalism and the market economy, in the same city. [>
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It also followed a week in which Mr Brown has toured TV studios to insist he won’t quit as Labour’s leader despite his plunging popularity.[>
