…bottom line, there are far better people to drive these changes and to represent others

He’s arguing exactly that!

Anyway, addressing the original point: Russell Brand has been poor, rich, addicted, clean, grown up in working class slums, lived in posh places, and dealt with a vast range of people in the process.

Whereas most of our top-level career politicians grew up in privilege and did the same “qualifications for the boys” course at the same two elite universities.

So… why are we asking “Since when is Russell Brand such an expert on politics?”. I think the question’s better directed at the people actually doing the politics.

The other point Tony Benn made is very relevant here: He retired from the house of commons “to spend more time on politics”. He felt he had more effect and engagement just being out there talking to people, because the political system was so sewn-up.

That’s pretty much what Brand is doing. He might not be 100% correct on everything here, but he’s articulating a much better point than Robert Webb is in response, I think.

I saw Tony Benn make a great point once: Why is the slight fluctuation of the FTSE index a mainstream daily news item, when a lot of things of more direct daily relevance to more people aren’t. His example was trade union activity – e.g. discussing events at a major trade union’s congress.

But I do think there is a point about the effect of the internet, and that’s why big states are mobilising every surveillance weapon they have against it.

The system as it stands can be changed from within simply by mobilising the vote

Part of the point is making is that it can’t. And I agree with him: Everything is set up to entrench the status quo of politics being owned and controlled by a bunch of Oxbridge PPE graduates. First-past-the-post massively reinforces big parties and when there’s finally a chance to defend it, the campaign against it is utterly dishonest (i.e. put in a very complex type of sub-proportional-representation as a straw-man and then say how complex it is).

As that “Robert Webb is a Prick” blog put it:

Such is the case with Robert Webb, one half of Mitchell and Webb, who wrote a piece in the New States­man this week cas­tig­at­ing Brand and claim­ing he would be re-?joining the Labour Party in response. In the vis­ion of demo­cracy Webb out­lines to Brand, which is based on the primacy of the vote, “elec­tion day is when we really are the masters”.

That is, for 1,826 out of 1,827 days, which is the length of the last Labour Party gov­ern­ment, UK voters were not really the mas­ters: someone else was. Another way of put­ting this is that under Brit­ish lib­eral demo­cracy, accord­ing to Webb’s descrip­tion, UK voters are not really the mas­ters 99.945% of the time, or, for short, 100% of the time.

I voted Lib Dem last time. Do you think I got what I voted for? Of course I didn’t, but it was excused by top-level politicians as being done on a “mandate” of “the national interest”. A hatchet job which utterly disenfranchised my contribution at the last election.

Mogrim – not everyone is that well off.

But the points he is making go much wider. You’re not addressing his points on representation and democracy, which is the main thrust of his argument

They’re only subverted if you choose to take that line on anyone who isn’t the ” valid kind of person” to speak out. His point, in part, is that that list of people is controlled by the self-interested in the established media, political and corporate class. He’s right.

He makes well argued points here, but it’s easier for people, clearly, to bury their heads and not even try to constructively disagree. Look at the very title of this thread!

As he puts it…

The reality is there are alternatives. That is the terrifying truth that the media, government and big business work so hard to conceal. Even the outlet that printed this will tomorrow print a couple of columns saying what a naïve **** I am, or try to find ways that I’ve **** up

Almost nobody criticising Brand here has addressed his point, just smeared his background, character, lifestyle and personality.

Congratulations, you’re the new politics and you prove his point completely

Here’s a very good reply to Robert Webb’s article

Robert Webb is a Prick

Let’s say there have been two kinds of neg­at­ive response to Brand. First you have people on the left exas­per­ated at people treat­ing Brand’s inter­ven­tions as some kind of rev­el­a­tion, and treat­ing him as some kind of mes­si­anic fig­ure, given his his­tory and cur­rent pos­i­tion of privilege. Then you have oth­ers who view Brand’s inter­ven­tions as an affront to their con­ceived notions about the exist­ing polit­ical sys­tem, and even a threat to the proper func­tion­ing of that sys­tem. He must be shown to be wrong. So Brand is a wealthy ego­ma­niac, an ‘adoles­cent waffler’ (Joan Smith, The Inde­pend­ent), and even a proto-?fascist who sym­path­ises with ‘the death cults of ultra-?reactionary reli­gious fun­da­ment­al­ists’, as well as someone who writes like a ‘pre­co­cious pre­pu­bes­cent’ (Nick Cohen, The Observer), or talks like a a ’17-?year-?old cider enthu­si­ast’ (Don­ald Clarke, The Irish Times).

You couldn’t say this kind of thing is unex­pec­ted. Whatever legit­im­acy the exist­ing polit­ical and eco­nomic sys­tem has is in no small part the product of intense striv­ings on the part of people who identify with and believe in that system’s basic legit­im­acy. Some of these people, espe­cially those who believe the sys­tem has bestowed a sweet smile upon them and recog­nised their worth, will find it hard to res­ist the oppor­tun­ity to slap down, with no small amount of glee, any kind of attempt, how­ever strug­gling, to artic­u­late some kind of rad­ical con­crete opposition. The demon­stra­tion of super­ior powers of reas­on­ing, the act of tear­ing apart the con­fu­sions of some poor sap, the ample biceps of polit­ical matur­ity flexed along­side the puny flap­ping twigs of the polit­ical pre­pu­bes­cent for all to see—dear oh dear, what a mess, tsk! tsk! tsk!—can be passed off as evid­ence of the Reason of the Super­ior Power.

I’m with molgrips on this one, as someone who has to work away a lot. If the company wants you to be staying away, with limited access to fridge/food cupboard and often nearby shops, they should pay for three reasonably priced meals a day.

I work in America quite a lot, and it’s amazing how much anti-union sentiment there is amongst ordinary working people. “Oh that airline is awful because of the unions”. “I can’t get cheap whojamiflips because of the unions”.

I always want to shout at them “YOU GET TEN DAYS HOLIDAY A YEAR!!”

I like the idea of middle managers sitting in comfortable, air-conditioned/heated offices, taking time to post on a mountain bike site before heading home at 5pm for the weekend, asking if workers’ organisation has ever achieved anything in the long term.

So, what are you planning to do with your weekend?

I think this is the most poignant tribute so far (in the Reading Post)

They attack red kites in the Chilterns

Ventoux is great fun, if you want a nice HC. The Bedoin route is about 9% for five or six miles through the forest. Constant effort, but manageable for a fit cyclist

“being stressed” is not an excuse for bad driving. Many drivers are constantly stressed by the many factors that mean they can’t go where they want to go as fast as they’d like to. Hence it’s a non sequitur. If people are that stressed that they are debilitated as drivers, they need not to be driving.

Non sequitur

I give very little of a damn about bad cyclists, to be honest. They’re no more than a tiny tiny blip of a cause in the road casualty problem. Most of the objection to people doing “bad things” on bikes seems to stem from some sense of etiquette rather than actual casualty rates and impact.

Cyclists on pavements? Sure, annoying. But 150 times more people are killed ON PAVEMENTS by motor vehicles than by cyclists. Cyclists without helmets? Bothered. Good on them, it’s pretty safe and if we really wanted to bring down head injuries we should first make helmets compulsory in cars.

Cyclists complaining disproportionately about cyclists behaviors while the vast majority of motorists are complete scofflaws, and put us all in far, FAR more danger. Weird.

my treat of the day was the guy on the Cove Handjob who berrated a pedestrian for getting out of a car without looking and walking in front of him (as he undertook stationary traffic)

It’s illegal to open your car door in a way that endangers other road users.
It’s not illegal to “undertake” stationary traffic.

A risk-taking seven in ten drivers admitted to speeding regularly – in fact the average respondent had exceeded the limit four times in the last week alone.

One in five people have driven knowing they are over the limit and would fail a breathalyzer test.

All this and more at:
http://www.slatergordon.co.uk/media-centre/press-releases/2013/09/bad-driving-epidemic-on-uk-roads-a-new-study-reveals/

I think when cyclists start worrying too much about the inadequacies of cyclists, when compared to motorists, cyclists as a group are paragons of virtue, it’s a fine example of Stockholm Syndrome.

It’s about £10. Average mileage per car is about 8500 (government travel survey stats). So if you take average MPG to be 40mpg ish, the average car is filled with something in the order of 900-1000 litres a year.

Which makes it weird how much focus there is on this particular “cost of living” measure.

Sorry, meant to put this in the chat forum

He was 9 th in a grand tour riding for some else

Which rider was it he was riding for? Oh.

You could argue Nicholas Roche has used the genetic advantage thing all his career. 🙂

Would recommend the lightweight Vulpine cotton harrington. (Edit, just re-read your post and realise it’s above the price range)

He’s previously insisted he never saw any doping in his time on Bruyneel teams.

*scratches chin*

Testing is pointless if it’s not properly done.

This tweet was only yesterday:

Helen Wyman ?@CXHelen 22h

Try that again! After nearly 30 races finally had a dope control test on american soil, glad to see USA anti doping doing a good job

aracer / ormondroyd – So how do you propose to find a doper? Maybe if someone is trending on Google or Twitter with a hashtag of #doper we ban them?

There are many things that can be done to improve things from where they are now. e.g.:

Decouple testing from bodies with a conflict of interest.
Fund the bio passport programme properly, on a global basis, across multiple sports.

…to name but two.

he will have had a LOT of tests

Which means nothing if a rider is EPO’d to the gills before the race and nobody catches it.

Bring back no tests, would be a superb smashfest!

It’d be rubbish. The EPO free-for-all era just entrenched the best time triallers in the top positions. Armstrong, fortunately, had an aggressive attacking instinct, but a certain Spanish multiple-time-winner of Le Tour showed just what doping enabled. Boredom.

Any time up to the last 10k

This is based on Manhattan, but I’m sure a similar study could be done for big British cities and yield results in the same order of magnitude:

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2009/07/03/how-driving-a-car-into-manhattan-costs-160/%5B/url%5D

Gives an interesting illustration of the cost of congestion alone. Almost $160 extra economic burden, *per car* in the Manhattan rush hour.

Cycling with kids and dogs, eh? They have a word for that in Holland: “Cycling”

I think it’s daft when cyclists and motorcyclists take pot shots at each other. We’re both basically in the same boat – i.e. invisible to crap motorists.

Imagine how many of their injuries could have been negated if they’d all been wearing helmets. It should be mandatory.

I’m sure people like the Bicycle Helmet Initiative Trust will be all over this. Oh, wait.

Bloody cyclists: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/sheppey-crossing-crash-kent-pileup–involving-up-to-100-vehicles–leaves-more-than-200-hurt-8799266.html

I agree that the HC text is ambiguous, especially as the supporting picture is quite clear. It seems almost to be written to give drivers a defence.

The sign should simply say “you’re about to hit a dull grey pole”

Stats on people killed on pavements by motor vehicles are particularly horrible. For every (vanishingly rare) pedestrian killed by a cyclist on a pavement, there are over *150* pavement deaths caused by motorists.