Since when is Russell Brand such an expert on politics ?

Why only yesterday the press hated him for being a sex mad ex heroin addict and now he is someone who has the power to sway peoples minds on politics !

Who actually cares what he might think ?

One thing is for sure he must have a great PR team

Or am I missing something ? Tell me ?

I think he is just personally clever. No PR team could have trained him to perform as he did with Paxman.

Regardless of whether or not one agrees with him, I don’t see any reason why an articulate passionate individual should not take an opportunity to speak about politics given the chance.

It’s when he graduates to ‘pundit’ that he should just shut the up.

EDIT: self-censorship

Who actually cares what he might think ?

Not me.

He’s clever int he.. And history has shown that we could do much worse than pay attention when someone clever has something to say, just in case something useful comes out of their gob..

I remember years ago he was interviewed by Nuts magazine (or similar) and they described him as “terrifyingly clever”.

I was amused at the thought of Nuts magazine and their riders finding intelligence to be terrifying.

He just shoe horns large and uncommon words into sentences and his mouth obviously works faster than his brain. Pre existing paradigms n that innit Guvnor.

He does have more charisma in a single whisker of his goatee than the entire house of commons put together which makes him an entertaining watch for millions of people who don’t know the first thing about politics.

I find his perfunctory non-deference for simple parlance quite anachronistic.

Wouldn’t say he is an authority, more sharing his opinions. His recently appointed Editorial position and Public image brings this to our front rooms.

Wether or not his opinions (and weak solutions) are credible are irrelevant but at least his musings make the general Public (free) think, instead of being fodder fed the press / politicians etc etc

He’s very outspoken and very good at it, he’s caught the medias eye with his opinions I doubt very much he’ll claim he’s an expert.

I don’t see any reason why an articulate passionate individual

Sorry, I thought we were talking about Russell Brand? I think verbose is more his style, somewhat removed from articulate. Suffering from verbal diarrhea might be more apt.

He’s a damn sight more articulate than half the political gobshites I hear yammering on daily on the Today Show.

Since Newsnight was required to dumb-itself down?

Ha Ha Ha he’ll be waving one of those absurd “No Cuts” placards soon.

How many people share the opinions he’s voiced about our supposed capitalist consumer utopia and our benign and democratically legitimate benefactors? Opinions formed from their day to day experience?

Lots

How many of those are given a platform to voice their criticisms of the neo-liberal consensus, that seems to serve the interests of fewer and fewer people?

Erm….. None

Hence people’s enthusiasm for his recent outbursts.

Politics and media ownership in this country is now exclusively a self-aggrandising, London-centric closed shop, dedicated entirely to its own interests and that of its rich friends, to the total exclusion of everyone else. So it’s hardly surprising that when some frightful working class oik eloquently and passionately articulates this, then it tends to strike a chord with a lot of people

And if you took the trouble to read or listen to what he said, he never claimed to be an expert. Far from it! The opposite in fact. So if you think that, it’s probably more of a comment on you than him, and how prepared you are to question the opinions the corporate media spoon feeds you

Clever? Seriously? Ringing up an old duffer on live radio(you know the rest) clever?

Somebody posted that paxman interview on arsebook re the new statesman piece, my response:

got to 1.00m but the utopian rehashed communism with added environmental naivety meant the pause button was clicked. look at the bigger picture and all i see is declining sales of a magazine and a marketing departments brainwave to appease a willing doe-eyed audience lacking the ability to think beyond narcissism.

Rob webbs (from Mitchell and Webb) response

Dear Russell
Hi. We’ve met about twice, so I should probably reintroduce myself: I’m the other one from Peep Show. I read your thing on revolution in these pages with great interest and some concern. My first reaction was to rejoin the Labour Party. The Jiffy bag containing the plastic membership card and the Tristram Hunt action figure is, I am assured, in the post. I just wanted to tell you why I did that because I thought you might want to hear from someone who a) really likes your work, b) takes you seriously as a thoughtful person and c) thinks you’re wilfully talking through your arse about something very important.

It’s about influence and engagement. You have a theoretical 7.1 million (mostly young) followers on Twitter. They will have their own opinions about everything and I have no intention of patronising them. But what I will say is that when I was 15, if Stephen Fry had advised me to trim my eyebrows with a Flymo, I would have given it serious consideration. I don’t think it’s your job to tell young people that they should engage with the political process. But I do think that when you end a piece about politics with the injunction “I will never vote and I don’t think you should either”, then you’re actively telling a lot of people that engagement with our democracy is a bad idea. That just gives politicians the green light to neglect the concerns of young people because they’ve been relieved of the responsibility of courting their vote.

Why do pensioners (many of whom are not poor old grannies huddled round a kerosene lamp for warmth but bloated ex-hippie baby boomers who did very well out of the Thatcher/Lawson years) get so much attention from politicians? Because they vote.

Many of the young, the poor, the people you write about are in desperate need of support. The last Labour government didn’t do enough and bitterly disappointed many voters. But, at the risk of losing your attention, on the whole they helped. Opening Sure Start centres, introducing and raising the minimum wage, making museums free, guaranteeing nursery places, blah blah blah: nobody is going to write a folk song about this stuff and I’m aware of the basic absurdity of what I’m trying to achieve here, like getting Liberace to give a shit about the Working Tax Credit, but these policies among many others changed the real lives of millions of real people for the better.

This is exactly what the present coalition is in the business of tearing to pieces. They are not interested in helping unlucky people – they want to scapegoat and punish them. You specifically object to George Osborne’s challenge to the EU’s proposed cap on bankers’ bonuses. Labour simply wouldn’t be doing that right now. They are not all the same. “They’re all the same” is what reactionaries love to hear. It leaves the status quo serenely untroubled, it cedes the floor to the easy answers of Ukip and the Daily Mail. No, if you want to be a nuisance to the people whom you most detest in public life, vote. And vote Labour.

You talk of “obediently X-ing a little box”. Is that really how it feels to you? Obedience? There’s a lot that people interested in shaping their society can do in between elections – you describe yourself as an activist, among other things – but election day is when we really are the masters. We give them another chance or we tell them to get another job. If I thought I worked for David Cameron rather than the other way round, I don’t know how I’d get out of bed in the morning.

Maybe it’s this timidity in you that leads you into another mistake: the idea that revolution is un-British. Actually, in the modern era, the English invented it, when we publicly decapitated Charles I in 1649. We got our revolution out of the way long before the French and the Americans. The monarchy was restored but the sovereignty of our parliament, made up of and elected by a slowly widening constituency of the people, has never been seriously challenged since then. Aha! Until now, you say! By those pesky, corporate, global, military-industrial conglomerate bastards! Well, yes. So national parliaments and supernational organisations such as the EU need more legitimacy. That’s more votes, not fewer.

You’re a wonderful talker but on the page you sometimes let your style get ahead of what you actually think. In putting the words “aesthetically” and “disruption” in the same sentence, you come perilously close to saying that violence can be beautiful. Do keep an eye on that. Ambiguity around ambiguity is forgivable in an unpublished poet and expected of an arts student on the pull: for a professional comedian demoting himself to the role of “thinker”, with stadiums full of young people hanging on his every word, it won’t really do.

What were the chances, in the course of human history, that you and I should be born into an advanced liberal democracy? That we don’t die aged 27 because we can’t eat because nobody has invented fluoride toothpaste? That we can say what we like, read what we like, love whom we want; that nobody is going to kick the door down in the middle of the night and take us or our children away to be tortured? The odds were vanishingly small. Do I wake up every day and thank God that I live in 21st-century Britain? Of course not. But from time to time I recognise it as an unfathomable privilege. On Remembrance Sunday, for a start. And again when I read an intelligent fellow citizen ready to toss away the hard-won liberties of his brothers and sisters because he’s bored.

I understand your ache for the luminous, for a connection beyond yourself. Russell, we all feel like that. Some find it in music or literature, some in the wonders of science and others in religion. But it isn’t available any more in revolution. We tried that again and again, and we know that it ends in death camps, gulags, repression and murder. In brief, and I say this with the greatest respect, please read some **** Orwell.

Good luck finding whatever it is you’re looking for and while you do, may your God go with you.

Rob

Only a fool would have him as the arbiter of political thought for the common man, has he got a book out or something? The mans a cretin.

Lol at the tory lapdogs spewing bile.. Mind your ulcers now chaps 😆

You don’t have to be an expert to tell everyone what you think about a subject. This forum is a good example of that.

If you are famous what you say is more widely reported, not necessarily more right.

FWIW I thought Brand and Paxman both made fair points. The current crop of career politicians are a bunch of self interested ****.

tried to listen to PMQs the other day the level of a whoopin, a hollerin and jeering was ridiculous, it was like a crowd at a WWE wrestling match

you could barely hear the stage managed, spin doctor prepared soundbites of bullshit churned out by the respective party leaders

in that respect he has a point

I like what Webb has said in that letter, but I only think Brand is a cretin if he continues to spout off like that, and turns it into a schtick.

As for the telephone prank, I agree that it was reprehensible on every level. But because of my unmitigated loathing for Jonathan Ross, I prefer to lay the blame for that fiasco entirely on him. 😛

He’s fulfilling the classic jester role – saying what everyone is thinking (inequality and disenfranchisement is rife) but are too entrenched in their positions to say.

Our current system is unsustainable – I for one welcome someone starting the conversation on alternatives.

Binners, how many of his fellow “working class oiks” (if that is the correct description) give a toss about a “revolution of the consciousness.” Or perhaps they pass it off a pretentious BS that most grow out of after Uni or giving up drugs?

There are far more eloquent and intelligent people out there capable of presenting the needs of “working class oiks” better than RB

There are far more eloquent and intelligent people out there capable of presenting the needs of “working class oiks” better than RB

Yeah but they won’t get on newsnight and go viral on the interwebz. At least someone is stirring up some trouble.

But it isn’t available any more in revolution. We tried that again and again, and we know that it ends in death camps, gulags, repression and murder.

If we don’t do revolution any more, we do what we do now. Stagnate.

Does it matter if there are more qualified / intelligent people to represent the point of view. The Jester has the charisma, audience, independence and intelligence to start the conversation.

It’s not sudden, he’s been saying the same things since his days on XFM ten years ago.

Exactly my point THM. There are probably more eloquent people. How many of them will be given a platform to voice their opinions by an entirely corporate owned media and political system?

None. So in the absence of an alternative, he’ll do for me. It seems that it’s taken as read that once you’ve made a bit of money, then you’re expected to keep your mouth shut and tow the party line . He hasn’t. Good on him!

As he said himself – when he was poor and criticised the rich establishment, he was labelled bitter and envious, when he’s rich and does it, he’s labelled a hypocrite

Sound familiar?

wasn’t the jester’s job to tell the King that he was being a bell-end without fear of having his head chopped off?

His irrepressible and charismatic style, coupled with his innate ability to concisely articulate his point make him a perfect spokesperson.. No doubt there are others that will offer more depth to the argument, but as a spokesperson he’s hard to beat, perhaps impossible to beat even..

Why on earth would we expect one human to have all the attributes required to provide a solution? I blame too many superheroes on TV when we were kids

He’s a comedian. Only his jokes aren’t funny.

Robert Webb manages to write in an even more flowery and baroque way while saying even less, interesting.

Brand doesn’t have to be an expert to state the bleeding obvious- whoever you vote for, the government gets in. You have a couple of choices, and there’s a pretty good chance you think all the realistic options stink and the unrealistic options are no better than just not voting at all.

I think what this and the last thread show is that some people like him, some people don’t and some are ambivalent – but only some. Such is the nature of the likes of RB, that’s he’s unlikely to provoke ambivalence. The views of those three groups are decided before they even listen and evaluate what he’s said. They will find justification in whatever way suits them to agree with or denigrate his opinion – but mostly, it seems, to use personal insults or elements of his past questionable behaviour to denigrate it.

Such is the way of today’s soundbite driven opinions and editorial. Most of us have decided whether we’ll agree or disagree with something someone says before he or she even says it. Nobody **** thinks about stuff anymore (well, y’know, not nobody but too many). I’ll watch QT later. I’ve already decided that everything the stuffed puppets say is going to be bollocks because it’s likely they may not even mean it anyway.

Our system stinks, that’s for sure. But we all **** stink with it. And the stuffed puppets braying shit through the tellybox this evening know it. And they’re smilingly smugly on the inside about it.

And where does this idea that one has to be an expert come???

When exactly are you qualified to express your opinion?

his innate ability to concisely articulate his point make him a perfect spokesperson

he is anything but concise. and to be articulate you need clarity. he does not have clarity.

Oh don’t be silly.. The words that he chooses are precise and accurate, over your head maybe but precise, which is a rarity

And spoken with passion. Not ” his not very precise… He’s got no clarity” how bleeping beige can you get

[quoteWho actually cares what he might think ?[/quote]

Some of the 9 million that have viewed the Paxman interview on youtube for starters.

I think what this and the last thread show is that some people like him, some people don’t and some are ambivalent – but only some. Such is the nature of the likes of RB, that’s he’s unlikely to provoke ambivalence. The views of those three groups are decided before they even listen and evaluate what he’s said. They will find justification in whatever way suits them to agree with or denigrate his opinion – but mostly, it seems, to use personal insults or elements of his past questionable behaviour to denigrate it.

It’s not really about him though (for me) it’s about the system that readily promotes a popular figure to the position where every word is given credence as the somehow unheard voice of the disaffected who are bored of politics. He’s not offering a new way or some radicle theory for the new world. He’s bent over, some PR breeze has parted his cheeks and we have to listen to what spews forth.
It could have been anyone from the pages of the daily mail/hello/failed britains got x talent dance factor contestant but they chose a scruffy ex-comedian druggy with a flawed moral compass and an over inflated sense of self worth.

I think the idea that somehow you need to be qualified to have an opinion on how your life is run by other people (as the title of this thread, and some of the comments suggest…) is pretty much part of the problem.

It’s clear that all those weighing into him haven’t listen to a word he’s said, beyond the tabloid headlines

I never thought I’d find myself defending the bloke – I couldn’t stand him – but since reading some of his stuff, he talks a lot of sense! And he’s as much right to voice his opinion as anyone else.

But if you’ve made your mind up already …….

Preposterous 😀

I think the point is that we shouldn’t have to put all our faith in some starchy buffoon who has lived a blameless life of little or no substance..

It’s wasteful and a sleight of hand trick that neatly empowers those in power with the power to take away power from someone simply for not conforming to an impossible ideal.. Hmm, very **** handy indeed

There’s plenty of intelligent folk down amongst the dregs.. Why should the Whigs and toffs have it all their way..?
You mr smith are letting them shaft you in the butt and defending their right to do so..

you great wally 😆

He is a tosser, I mean the politicians are tossers to but at least they can be assed to polish their shoes.