I haven’t voted for years, Russell Brand has never voted.
His reasons echo my own.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YR4CseY9pk[/video]

I like Russell Brand… 🙂

As much as I want to keep thinking Brand is a complete tosser, pretty much every time I’ve seen him speaking on political matters recently I can’t help but be impressed.

Yup, me too…

I understand how he feels. I do vote, however, because it was a very hard won right, particularly for us birds.

However, whoever you vote for, the government always gets in….

As well as pretty much agreeing with what he’s saying, I’m sitting here going “I wish I had that eloquence and sharpness of thought”. Hope he’s right about the revolution. 🙂

He’s very good at making himself sound clever. Look at how often he repeats the same words – his vocabulary isn’t half as varied as he’d like us to think and whilst he’s a fast talker and quick thinker, he’s not as eloquent as he’d like to be.

The problem is that the hoi polloi that are blinded by his flowery language are also the sort of people that would follow Hitler if they heard him utter the words “Bankers’ Bonuses”.

Naive, populist drivel from a good comedian and a master of delivery and cadence.

This clip did the rounds on Facebook and I was amazed by how many people thought Paxman was lost for words.

Bemused, amused and unable to get a word in edgeways would be a better summary.

Unfortunately I think he’s using too many syllables for the disenfranchised masses to understand his point. if there was an idiots guide for the ‘underclass’ then I’m confident this would get the attention it deserves.

Hmm.. he was flustered in that, for sure. Not used to being grilled by the likes of Paxo. If he’d remained calm it’d have gone better, or at least anticipated the questions.

I was almost shouting at the tv with things he should’ve said in response to Paxo’s questions about how to make it better. I’m not forming a political party or running for government either, but there are a few easy ideas. If he’d have properly broken down the problems rather than just railing against the system these ideas would’ve been obvious I think.

Much as I like him, I think he’s been much better on the subject previously, and I don’t think he ‘won’ that particular interview.

Naive, populist drivel

Not one of the “one percent” are we, Shib? 😉

He does have quite a salient point about they system being effectively broken, as evidenced by fewer and fewer people giving a damn enough to vote. But I’m buggered if I know how to fix it either.

Brand should be a politician. He’s already mastering the skill of answering questions without actually saying anything useful. Either a politician or a man down the pub.

Mind you, he’d certainly make PMQ’s more entertaining.

Race to the bottom there Shibboleth.

He makes the point well that party politics and politics are not the same as each other. I can’t see the revolution he talks of coming, but agree with his broader point about disenfranchisement. I would summarise Paxman as sympathetic to Brand’s standpoint. I’ve never voted.

he’s not as eloquent as he’d like to be.

aren’t we all.

Oh and godwin in half a dozen posts, chapeu.

To go back to the OP

I’ve voted once, last time, to try and stop the tories getting in.

I won’t be doing it again.

I like the interview, Brand has a good point of view, and expresses himself well, but i think ultimately his view is pretty naive.

Absolutely nothing he said stands up to any form of scrutiny. That interview does nothing apart from fuel “disenfranchisement” (Christ I hate that word!!) and rally the masses that know nothing about politics and understand even less about global economics.

It panders to the lazy, envious underachievers that think the woes of the world are caused by a miniscule percentage of the financial services workforce getting bonuses, and whose ears prick up at sound of the words “redistribution of wealth”!

Where on earth would this wealth come from if it wasn’t for financial institutions and global corporations??

In Brands deffence, this is Paxman doing the interviewing. Most people come out of his interviews looking like a bumbling crettin, coming out at a narrow loss is a good result!

populist drivel

populist is not a dirty word.
he is eloquent, he is clever, he is entertaining. what he isn’t is coherent. he babbles around topics and throws in some flowery language to confuse people and make him sound intelligent. even when he writes stuff down he can’t help but do this.
I’d like to know what his agenda is, and if it’s anything beyond inflating his ego.

What’s all this about winning and losing an interview? It’s not a competition!

My opinion of Brand has completely changed over the last couple of years, I think he’s great now.

But….

Naive, populist drivel from a good comedian and a master of delivery and cadence.

…i agree with Sib here. It just felt like someone regurgitating tabloid headlines and trying to make it sound intellectual by throwing lots of big words in the delivery. I can’t help but feel a little bit disappointed by the interview, I thought he was capable of a bit more.

hat think the woes of the world are caused by a miniscule percentage of the financial services workforce getting bonuses

I would suggest that the greed of said financial services, and multinationals, have an awful lot to answer for, over the last 50 or 60 years.

Where on earth would this wealth come from if it wasn’t for financial institutions and global corporations??

He’s not saying ban banks, he’s saying the money they make as profit is obscene, and that money needs to be taxed heavily. Instead, the government of today give large companies ways of hiding their money and not paying tax, while penalising the poorest people who are deemed to have too many bedrooms in their council house.

Populist pseudointellectual drivel with no content!

I’m not interested in what he thinks is wrong and what he won’t do.

I would be very interested though to hear from him what he will do, when he will do it, how much it will cost, what’s the source of funding, how will he define success, what are the key performance indicators, how he will engage and manage the stakeholders, how he will manage the risks and opportunities, etc., etc.

Basically, I see the electorate as the project sponsor for whatever the Government does. I’d like to see the politicians as the project managers but sadly they invariably fall short on most measures of a good pm.

[edit] Shib’ for president! [/edit]

I can’t help but feel a little bit disappointed by the interview, I thought he was capable of a bit more.

He is, I think. Under prepared.

What’s all this about winning and losing an interview? It’s not a competition!

That’s why I used quotes. It’s not, or shouldn’t be a competition, but Paxo style interviewing makes it so. A win is deftly handling all the questions with panache, a loss is being stumped by them.

They play devil’s advocate, which means expressing the opposing point of view, so you are in conflict with them.

Shibboleth – Member

Where on earth would this wealth come from if it wasn’t for financial institutions and global corporations??

😆

Brilliant.

This thread has cheered me up about STW. I think shib and others have summarised Brand exactly. It is all about the ego..

PS if everyone just voted for what they believed in we would have a very different world, does not voting achieve anything other than leaving the field wide open to let the arseholes in?

Where on earth would this wealth come from if it wasn’t for financial institutions and global corporations??

Firstly I assume you have been asleep for the last 4 years then if you have failed to notice how much wealth these ignoble institutes have delivered upon us 😕
Even when we owned them and we gave them the **** money they still did not loan it out did they.
Secondly the wealth comes from hoarding capital – gained by theft essentially as it was all unowned one day – and from the exploitation of the workers who get paid less than they earn so that the morally vacuous greedy hoarders of excess wealth can sneer at them as

lazy, envious underachievers

whilst suggesting they are noble “wealth creators” from their overly laden palaces of excess

it does not grow on trees and it sure as shit does not come from their own hard work and honest toil.

He’s not saying ban banks, he’s saying the money they make as profit is obscene, and that money needs to be taxed heavily. Instead, the government of today give large companies ways of hiding their money and not paying tax, while penalising the poorest people who are deemed to have too many bedrooms in their council house.

I don’t think Mr Brand is poor. Is he happy to submit to more taxation in order to right the social wrongs he quite rightly highlights?

Super tax a la Francois Hollande, if all European countries did it the tax dodgers would have fewer places to hide.

I know the whinge, “I built my wealth through hard work blah blah, I should be able to keep my money” but individuals with vast wealth have usually built it up on the back of the hard work of others, even if they have worked hard themselves and made sacrifices. Branson wouldn’t be a zillionaire without the workforce, many of them pretty low paid.

Since our taxation system, ludicrously, subsidises low paid workers rather than compelling companies to pay a living wage, then it allows companies to pay low wages and make more profit. The least they can do is share more of that profit in tax to subsidise the lowest paid workers who can’t survive without state benefits.

Interesting that the rantings of a former smack head, watched by many millions, have had such an impact.

Naive, populist drivel

Yet here we are, talking about it.

I don’t think Mr Brand is poor. Is he happy to submit to more taxation in order to right the social wrongs he quite rightly highlights?

he’s said often he would happily pay more taxes.

I’ve voted once, last time, to try and stop the tories getting in.

This is the problem with voting in this country, imo. People vote to try to stop people getting in, rather actually voting for what they want.

IMO, PR would sort this issue, unfortunately it’s up to the big two parties and that means it’ll never happen. We had a chance to get a step closer to it but we blew it by allowing the blues and the reds to spin a load of balls.

We really need to stop listening to politicians.

Yet here we are, talking about it.

Yup, but we’re unlikely to be showboated on the telly as the modern voice of politics as a result

Interesting that the rantings of a former smack head,

are you suggesting that previous drug use devalues his opinion?

No, merely pointing out something he himself is completely open about.

Something that may or may not prejudice opinions of him as a person. The stigma of addiction is such that individuals can find themselves alienated and disregarded. That Mr Brand has managed to overcome this, and
then become the focus of so much attention, is a great credit to him as a person. I have far more respect for him, than I do for any of the lying scumbags who tell us crap like ‘we’re all in it together’.

Firstly I assume you have been asleep for the last 4 years then if you have failed to notice how much wealth these ignoble institutes have delivered upon us
Even when we owned them and we gave them the **** money they still did not loan it out did they.
Secondly the wealth comes from hoarding capital – gained by theft essentially as it was all unowned one day – and from the exploitation of the workers who get paid less than they earn so that the morally vacuous greedy hoarders of excess wealth can sneer at them as

Junky clearly understands even less about economics than the… Erm… Junky!

Are you suggesting that previous drug use devalues his opinion?

Can this be copied/pasted into the thread about how to be insufferable on this forum? 🙄

Populist pseudointellectual drivel with no content!

Paul Mason has a pretty good take on it http://www.channel4.com/news/russell-brand-jeremy-paxman-anti-capitalist-revolution-bbc. Also you may want actually read his piece in the New Statesman: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/10/russell-brand-on-revolution. You may disagree but can’t just dismiss it. His very point is that the current status quo is designed to dismiss/ignore those who oppose it unless they do it through the inherently corrupt and ineffective medium (ie parliamentary democracy) which the system provides.

My only hope is that he’s genuine in his beliefs and it’s not some sort of Hollywood stunt. He openly admits to being a ‘trickster’ so I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he came out in a year or so and said it was all rubbish and he was just acting a role to see how far people would take it.

Free movement of global capital will necessitate the free movement of an affordable labour force to meet the demands that the free-moving capital has created.

Ladies and Gentleman, Brand on Immigration. You’re all right! he’s a right ol’ loony who don’t know nout bout nuffin! lolol.
(from the article from dazh’s link)

A lot of heat and not much light, to be honest. And he used the word “underclass” way too much.

I vote, but only in Scottish elections where it’s a bit less pointless – Douglas Adams (of course) had it right about democracy:

“No,” said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, “nothing so simple. Nothing anything like to straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.”

“Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.”

“I did,” said ford. “It is.”

“So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t the people get rid of the lizards?”

“It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.”

“You mean they actually vote for the lizards?”

“Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.”

“But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?”

“Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in.”

No, merely pointing out something he himself

ah right fair enough, wrong end of the stick.
He used to piss me right off but he’s growing on me, but I don’t have the political knowledge to tell whether he’s waffling as suggested by some.

Junky clearly understands even less about economics than the… Erm… Junky!

ad homs are the most powerful form of rebuttal everyone knows this 🙄

I don’t have the political knowledge to tell whether he’s waffling as suggested by some

I wouldn’t let that worry you. Nor do plenty who are suggesting he’s wafflijng. 🙂

Political reform is essential in this country. Our society has changed completely in the last 100 years, beyond recognition, but our political system hasn’t.

It’s lunacy. Use technology to get the people’s actual opinion on issues and abolish political parties.

I nominate usage of the word “populist” as a pseudo-intellectual insult to go into the insufferable thread.

Added to that, I’ll also nominate usage of the preface “pseudo” in a condescending manner.