GORDON Brown has for years enjoyed a reputation as a brilliant Chancellor. That bubble has now been abruptly burst.

He was told in advance, and in detail, his tax plans would devastate Britain's private pensions, then the envy of Europe.

Specifically, he was told his raid on pension funds would hurt the poor he claims to care for.

He probably hoped a healthy stock market would keep pension funds fat. But the collapse of the dotcom boom exposed his grasping behaviour.

Even then he did not relent. He continued in his single-minded determination to pump our money into the welfare state, despite evidence that such policies generally fail.

These events are bad omens for his takeover of the premiership - reckless seizure of other people's savings, rigid attachment to dogma, secretiveness and unwillingness to admit mistakes.

We are told his arrival at Downing Street will reveal an open-minded Gordon Brown, quite different from the scowling, tax-loving figure we have come to know.

If so, it will be a good time for him to admit his attack on pensions was wrong and will be put right.

If not, bad times are just around the corner. Can we trust Gordon? I think not.

DT Murray, Coxhoe, Durham.

IN your Comment column about Chancellor Gordon Brown (Echo, Apr 3) you stated: "Mr Brown is not as black as his critics paint".

What were you thinking? There is one column in your paper where this phraseology would not have seemed out of place, but in yours, it is extraordinary. Yours, in disbelief.

John Billinge, Durham.