PSA : Farage vs Brand on question time tonight …

jimster01 – Member

Brand looked like a sulky teenager for most of the programme. Only person who came out looking good was the times journalist.

Was surprised to see Brand so out of his depth.

Thought that labour woman was stupid for the comment about ‘women being shouted over’ and then shouting over others herself, especially as it wasn’t a matter of sex; just typical ranty political people trying to get their point across THE LOUDEST….

The journo woman did pretty well of all the comments that I heard (I went to bed before it finished).

Given Russell Brand’s propensity to use frilly language in his trademark high-speed manner to make what he says sound more intelligent, why did he struggle so much with the word, adversarial? Obviously not on his list of poncy words to practice.

stumpy01
The journo woman did pretty well of all the comments that I heard (I went to bed before it finished).

Camilla Cavendish did a good job of holding the system to account. She derided MPs from all parties for failing to show diligence on matters they were voting on.

Perhaps the most damning criticism was for a problem that has long been acknowledged – even mocked in satires such as Yes Minister – which is that no matter who gets voted in, nothing much seems to change. the intractability and unaccountability within Whitehall is damaging.

I’m surprised that you’re surprised.

Mash

Nwind

Just because it’s a daft nonsequitor doesn’t mean you don’t have to be ready to deflect it, because the way things are, people will applaud a daft nonsequitor as long as it seems to hit the mark.

Classic example of chronic Branditus syndrome – it can be cured – correct to non sequitur and you’ll soon feel superior – again

Was surprised to see Brand so out of his depth.

So was I. I thought his response to ‘you should stand’ was ‘no, because I don’t want to become one of them‘ was just cheap and lazy, as was his propensity to be champion of the people one minute but “just a comedian” as soon as he comes up against someone with more brain cells than your average daytime TV chat show host. As the people’s poet Randal Graves once said, I reckon Brand needs to shit or get off the pot.

I’ve never been much of a fan of RB, ever since he came to fame on some reality TV thing (BBLB? Possibly) and spent the entire time trotting out tedious pre-prepared lines about his “dingle,” but I’ve been warming to him in recent years as he’s shown to be pretty intelligent and quick-witted under that hateful foppish Poundland Jack Sparrow persona. Some of the stuff he’s written of late has been thought-provoking and bang on the money. After watching QT last night though, it’s apparent that he’s not as sharp as he thinks he is.

@obadiah- Oh no, I missed out a space, while using a dead language! I suppose I could retaliate by correcting your horrible syntax, but that would be unseemly 😆

I thought his response to ‘you should stand’ was ‘no, because I don’t want to become one of them’ was just cheap and lazy

Not to mention shallow & vacuous.

I’d warmed to the guy a while back, but now he’s returned to the one trick pony that he is.

I had to turn over when the Labour dickhead pointed out the “only” 10% of UK land mass has been built on.

jivehoneyjive – Member
For the doubters regarding how the financial crash was engineered, an Oscar winning documentary:

That’s okay, but like most TV documentary, it lacks rigour, detail and scope.

For me, the best account I’ve yet to come across was the book “Fool’s Gold” written by Gillian Tett of the FT.

jimjam – Member
It looked as though Brand went there with the intention of destroying Farage with some premeditated put downs. Farage went there with the intention of appearing reasonable and articulate and came out of it well.

Regardless of Farage’s politics he has a stateliness (in the loosest possible sense) that his mainstream opponents lack.

in a land of oompah loompahs maybe. 😆

i wonder kind of drugs it requires to make farage look statesmanlike. 14 pints and a few whiskys most likely!! 😆 ffs.

I think it’s pretty obvious from last night, brand choose to bite his tongue rather than generate headlines. People can interpret that as being out of his depth, I wouldn’t.

Thought Brand did alright (you weren’t expecting Bill Clinton in his pomp, were you?), thought Farridge was remarkably quiet and made some sillier, more flippant comments than Brand. The audience were pretty depressing though.

jekkyl – Member

Quote of the night: “Ee’s a poundshop Enoch Powell and we’ve gotta watch ‘im”.
Has anyone ever described farage so succinctly?

It might sound that way but Brand has also described his view on the people that frequent poundshop. 🙄

People can interpret that as being out of his depth, I wouldn’t.

Hmmm, well he looked very much out of his depth to me – I was hoping he’d say something useful but no.

For the doubters regarding how the financial crash was engineered, an Oscar winning documentary:

What this fails to mention is that there are always two sides to every story.

The bankers were only giving the masses what they wanted. The fact that we all believe we have the right to massive houses we can’t really afford and demand flat screen TVs (see the recent fights in Tesco on Black Friday) and flash cars only fuelled the supply of credit.

Now we’ve only shifted the problem to governments who are now borrowing the sh$t out of everyones futures. The only real solution is big inflation (to inflate the debts away) or serious cuts/pain. The problem is far bigger than bankers.

So was I. I thought his response to ‘you should stand’ was ‘no, because I don’t want to become one of them’ was just cheap and lazy, as was his propensity to be champion of the people one minute but “just a comedian” as soon as he comes up against someone with more brain cells than your average daytime TV chat show host. As the people’s poet Randal Graves once said, I reckon Brand needs to shit or get off the pot.

I’ve never been much of a fan of RB, ever since he came to fame on some reality TV thing (BBLB? Possibly) and spent the entire time trotting out tedious pre-prepared lines about his “dingle,” but I’ve been warming to him in recent years as he’s shown to be pretty intelligent and quick-witted under that hateful foppish Poundland Jack Sparrow persona. Some of the stuff he’s written of late has been thought-provoking and bang on the money. After watching QT last night though, it’s apparent that he’s not as sharp as he thinks he is.

I’m not a big fan of him myself but I do respect him for taking a stand for what he believes in.

He’s got a high profile and was offered an opportunity to make his point to a wide audience. Doesn’t mean he has to want to be PM as well.

djambo – Member
The bankers were only giving the masses what they wanted.

Like drug dealers?

Watched this this morning.

Not seen much of Brand before, but many of his basic points are quite sound.
If written down succinctly they’d take up no more than half a page of A4.

Farage is a very unpleasant man.
The tragedy is that the mainstream parties could have initiated a sensible, reasonable, unprejudiced discussion on immigration and population control at any point over the last thirty years.

But they were too scared, so now we’ve ended up with UKIP pushing this as part of a very unpleasant unspoken agenda.

For the doubters regarding how the financial crash was engineered, an Oscar winning documentary:

http://www.vimeo.com/39617101

And a couple of more recent articles:

‘Bankers bonuses rise twice as fast as the rest of the workforce’

‘Billionaires double since financial crisis’

It’s a harsh truth and not easy to comprehend how some buggers can be so greedy, turfing people out of their homes and increasing pressure on the majority of folk, but it is the way of things.

Apathy and denial isn’t going to change that…

Don’t be daft, wealthy bankers and CEO’s have suffered immensely after the financial crash, I read it in the telegraph! 😆

chewkw – Member
jekkyl – Member
It might sound that way but Brand has also described his view on the people that frequent poundshop.

You can only come to that conclusion if you define people by what the purchase.

Rusty Spanner – Member

If written down succinctly they’d take up no more than half a page of A4.This is true, but nothing to do with eloquence, more that the problems in society are blatantly obvious and are actually very simple.

The only real solution is big inflation (to inflate the debts away) or serious cuts/pain.

Or taxes on the banks:

Wonder why this hasn’t been implemented?

Could of course tax big business too, and rehash many of the worlds wealthiest tax havens which fall under the authority of our Monarch to distribute the wealth more fairly…

Wonder why no parties have promoted that solution?

Still, nice that MPs got a pay rise…

Brand is right. Farage needs to be watched. It has been by not taking him and UKIP seriously the last two years he has built so much momentum and support.

@johny – I’ve seen that film. The financial crises was quite simple, there was an orgy of debt taken on by individuals, by companies and by governments. Everyone was feeding at the trough be that the people lying on their loan applications, the banks not bothering to check anything or the governments themselves who also borrowed and borrowed and borrowed as well as turning a blind eye as asking people to reign in their spending or borrow less isn’t popular. Greece is a perfect example of a country that just borrowed excessively and then gave that money away to it’s population – a good way to stay elected and bad way to run an economy. When the music stopped, they couldn’t repay.

As for billionaires doubling globally, of course. There are many economies particularly in Asia and those with commodity related economies who where largely unaffected and who have made big profits in the past 5 years.

I had to turn over when the Labour dickhead pointed out the “only” 10% of UK land mass has been built on

Me too!
I just shouted you f’ing wotsit and switched the telly off. I was just so infuriated that people so stupid are on the front bench.

@jony – because its a terrible, unworkable idea.

Those proposing the transaction tax must understand it will be paid by consumers, ie us. When we put money on deposit in a bank the bank knows it must be available for us to take it out again tomorrow. So they invest it overnight. 240 trades a year. Adding what sounds small 0.01% tax on trades is 2.4% a year tax on our money, not on the interest, on the whole amount. A transaction tax would decimate most markets banks use to borrow money, so if the banks cannot borrow they cannot lend. The Swedes introduced such a tax in the 80’s and it resulted in their government bond market collapsing, ie the government couldn’t borrow – they shot themselves in both feet with both barrels.

We have a transaction tax on shares called stamp duty, had it for years. The other EU countries don’t. They should follow our lead.

Bill Nighey is a good actor, he’s not an economist or a politician. He has no real understanding of the damage such a thing would do.

On tax havens, you cannot solve that unilaterally. In any case biggest culprits in tax dodging impacting the UK are Ireland and Luxembourg.

He’s got a high profile and was offered an opportunity to make his point to a wide audience. Doesn’t mean he has to want to be PM as well.

Agreed. I think he was obviously under pressure to have a go at Farage as the politicians in general fail to land any punches on the slimy git. I thought he kept Farage quieter then most do so that’s good in my book.

He’s obviously marmite (Brand) but having seen the time he spends supporting causes that do not gain him any publicity or celebrity I think his heart is in the right place.

Bill Nighey is a good actor, he’s not an economist or a politician. He has no real understanding of the damage such a thing would do.

Oh, I see, so since Bill Nighey is the actor playing the part of the Banker, he is the one who came up with the idea of charging the banks (not consumers) for transactions?

Is that the same banks that through the global standard of Fractional Reserve banking, can conjure money out of thin air?

Of course, the video above mentions dollars, but since dollars are generally regarded as the global reserve currency as the majority of the worlds oil supply is tied to the petrodollar system, dollars are perhaps more relevant to the overall state of the worlds finances.

London, which regularly comes out as Worlds #1 financial centre will deal with much of the Money involved (before a good chunk is scooted off to Jersey, the world’s wealthiest Tax Haven)

So, given your mention of damage, who is it you imagine the damage would be done to?

Global Fractional Banking, I hope you understand that’s absolute total bollix. Banks cannot and do not create money, only a government can do that by printing more. Banks borrow money (inc from the government) but it has to be paid back so nothing is created.

Damage would be done to everyone, to you and me. Banks just shuffle money around, if you tax banks more their clients or shareholders will just pay – clients is you and me, shareholders are our pension funds.

The idea of a transaction tax is credited to Tobin back in the 1970’s although I believe we have had a transaction tax on share dealing for longer than that.

London is indeed the #1 (or #2 vs NYC) financial center in the world, that’s how its 10% of our GDP and generates such huge amounts of tax and why because of the financial crises which damaged that businesses the UK has suffered quite badly. If you took away the channel islands tomorrow as a “tax haven” that business would switch to Ireland or Luxembourg either country falling over themselves to have it.

If anyone cares, Brand’s written a follow-up blog post.

chestrockwell – Member

He’s obviously marmite (Brand) but having seen the time he spends supporting causes that do not gain him any publicity or celebrity I think his heart is in the right place.

yup, Brand said some stuff about Farridge that made lots of people applaud and cheer, which made MrF look rather uncomfortable.

good.

well done Brand.

(i understand that the applauding and cheering, etc. is all rather pointless, it’s only a tv show, but y’know, Farrage is a git)

When did RB first start commenting on British politics? Just curious.

Am I wrong in assuming Brand is just a reworking of Chauncey Gardiner?

Banks cannot and do not create money, only a government can do that by printing more.

Fractional-reserve banking is the practice whereby a bank holds reserves (to satisfy demands for withdrawals) that are less than the amount of its customers’ deposits. Reserves are held at the bank as currency, or as deposits in the bank’s accounts at the central bank. Because bank deposits are usually considered money in their own right, fractional-reserve banking permits the money supply to grow beyond the amount of the underlying reserves of base money originally created by the central bank.[1][

My Bold

it is also factually wrong as a description of money as well

The money supply of a country consists of currency (banknotes and coins) and usually includes bank money (the balance held in checking accounts and savings accounts). Bank money, which consists only of records (mostly computerized in modern banking), forms by far the largest part of broad money in developed countries

Ire its not just paper money as you suggest
Two points and two errors
Glitch in the matrix?

So anyway, you know how the Government’s national debt is over £1Trillion and still rising; what would happen if interest rates went up?

Who is the national debt owed to anyway?

If the government has that much debt, do the institutions it is owed to have political sway over the government’s policies?

People need to understand that it is the national debt to GDP ratio which is the important factor. If somebody owes £100 and has no personal assets, then this person is in a poor financial state. If somebody owes £100 but has cash in the bank, cars, houses etc then all of a sudden that debt isn’t so much of an issue.

Having Government debt is not bad. Ddebt should be measured in proportion to GDP, which is why this government has focused so much on growing the economy (in effect shrinking the debt).

Oil prices are a big problem at the moment. This will massively reduce tax revenues and may lead to deflation.

You’ve kind of avoided all the questions; perhaps you should try a career in politics 😆

what would happen if interest rates went up?

Who is the national debt owed to anyway?

If the government has that much debt, do the institutions it is owed to have political sway over the government’s policies?

and an added bonus:

If oil is tied to the dollar, would it be possible for those who control the Dollar to control the oil price?

If anyone cares, Brand’s written a follow-up blog post.

Well worth a read and reinforces to me what I thought.

there’s some regret in that blog, which is good; and then there’s some charidee parading and some knocking of Fardge for being a booze-hound which is a bit pot & kettle.

brakes – Member

which is a bit pot & kettle.

Brand’s teetotal now… But as a former/recovering alcoholic, he’s pretty qualified to comment, no?

Don’t think so. People in glass houses and all that. So Farage likes a drink, so do quite a few people. Is he an alcoholic ? Might be but does Brand know that ?