To actually love Russell Brand after his performance on Newsnight tonight..?

[Scarletohello]

My God I only caught it by chance and I literally couldn't believe what he was saying to Paxman. He was calling for a revolution in society, for wealth to be distributed and he was so articulate and passionate about it. NO ONE is saying this stuff although there is so much anger in British society about how inequitable society has become but everyone has become so demoralised about it ( or blaming immigrants, asylum seekers etc)

I hope you guys get a chance to see it and tell me what you think of it, I am in shock right now.

( also pissed off about AF being banned too...)

[claig]

'What we have is capitalism for the poor and socialism for massive corporations.'

DoctorTwo, you are exactly right. But it's not about right versus left, because they are "all in it together".

It is about the 1% versus us, the 99%.

[DoctorTwo]

ringaringarosy Sat 02-Nov-13 11:34:46

i don't understand about redistribution of wealth?

Anybody calling for a 'redistribution of wealth' is wrong. There should be a redistribution of risk. Look at the privatisation of student loans: the government are guaranteeing profits for whoever takes the list on. We, as taxpayers, are underwriting private enterprise. What we have is capitalism for the poor and socialism for massive corporations.

[claig]

Brand said in his interview with Paxman

"I'm against the Daily Mail"

Of course he is, because he is with the 1% and the Daily Mail is with the people.

Bring it on!

[claig]

Yes, Paxman and Brand are right that there is huge voter disillusionment and disengagement. Millions of people think that the parties are all the same - all promoting the same policies such as climate change and their green taxes.

But we have already seen the "hug a husky" policy of the elite have to change and the elite's policy of green taxes and windfarms come under pressure. Why?

Because now instead of parties of the 1%, we now have a party for the 99% - UKIP. UKIP has flushed out all the lies and the elite have had to change their poicies and stop ignoring the 99% because there is finally a party that speaks for them.

Look at the results in the Scottish by-election in Fife.

www.fifedirect.org.uk/news/index.cfm?fuseaction=news.display&objectid=EAEC88B6-AD7A-EAE9-EC7BFE43E600252A

UKIP beat the Scottish Green Party and this is in Scotland, not the South East of England!


So Brand and his "the planet is being destroyed" progressives and the Left who promote him in the Guardian, the New Statesman and BBC Newsnight know that they are on to a loser. They're worried about the 99%. That's why they are wheeling out celebs and funny men to spin for them. But elections aren't a circus, the people aren't fools and they have no time for clowns who prop up the lies of the 1% in order to drown out the views of the 99%.

One day a party will really listen to the 99%, to the millions who no longer bother to vote, and then all the liars, pseuds and progressives will lose their deposits.

There will be a democratic revolution and Brand and the progressives and the 1% will no longer hold sway over the people.

[YesterdayI]

Sorry, should have proof read my post.... But you get the drift

[YesterdayI]

Paxman actually said he disagreed with most of what RB said but did agree that he agreed with RB that there is a lot of voter disillusionment and disengagement

(I might not have exactly the right words but its close enough)


I thought the applause was for Paxmand 'raised eyebrows' look when he mentioned RB - rather than RB himself but I am not sure.

[posheroo]

I never doubted russell brand was a brainy bloke. His judgment is faulty at times

[ringaringarosy]

i don't understand about redistribution of wealth?do people mean that people who have earned lots of money to give it to those who haven't?Is that literally what it means?

[Spidermama]

Jeremy Paxman got a big cheer from the audience on Graham Norton last night when he said Russell Brand was right.

[claig]

Brand's article in the New Statesman is here

www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/10/russell-brand-on-revolution

[claig]

Just read Brand's 4500 word manifesto for revolution in the New Statesman.

I don't often read the New Statesman so I am not used to reading the puerile, phoney philosophy of pseuds.

"Perhaps this is why there is currently no genuinely popular left-wing movement to counter Ukip, the EDL and the Tea Party; for an ideology that is defined by inclusiveness, socialism has become in practice quite exclusive. Plus a bit too serious, too much up its own fundament and not enough fun."

This is really what the left are worried about. They know that populism is a phenomenon of the right and of papers like the Daily Mail and will never be the province of the pseud and progressive. The reason is that people want something serious, not someting fun and up its fundament like Brand.

"When Ali G, who had joined protesters attempting to prevent a forest being felled to make way for a road, shouted across the barricade, “You may take our trees, but you’ll never take our freedom,” I identified more with Baron Cohen’s amoral trickster than the stern activist who aggressively admonished him: “This is serious, you cunt.”"

This is where Brand's shortcomings become evident. He isn't serious, he is a clown, and populist parties and papers appeal to the people because they aren't clowns and address serious issues that concern people.

"The right has all the advantages, just as the devil has all the best tunes. Conservatism appeals to our selfishness and fear, our desire and self-interest; they neatly nurture and then harvest the inherent and incubating individualism."

The right has the advantages because it is closer to human nature and accepts the way people are rather than trying to change them into an idealised view of humanity that is fundamentally unreal and up its fundament.

"The reality is we have a spherical ecosystem, suspended in, as far as we know, infinite space upon which there are billions of carbon-based life forms, of which we presume ourselves to be the most important, and a limited amount of resources."

The only systems we can afford to employ are those that rationally serve the planet first, then all humanity.

....

"We are mammals on a planet, who now face a struggle for survival if our species is to avoid expiry."

There is the old elitist lie of the billionaires, plutocrats and puppet politicians who want to curb human population by using the lie and scare that each human being's "carbon footprint" is harming "the planet". Brand, the naive poseur, follows in the steps of the elite's carbon footprint lie.

He wants a revolution based on spiritual values. Maybe this type of thing

"If like the Celtic people we revered the rivers we would prioritise this sacred knowledge and curtail the attempts of any that sought to pollute the rivers. If like the Nordic people we believed the souls of our ancestors lived in the trees, this connection would make mass deforestation anathema. If like the native people of America we believed God was in the soil what would our intuitive response be to the implementation of fracking?"

But we have moved on, we no longer believe that "the soul of our ancestors lived in trees".

The left are desperate to put this clown upfront and they take him seriously and give him space in the New Statesman and on Newsnight in the hope that he can convince the naive. It shows how out of touch and irrelevant they are. They hope he can lead a populist movement of the left to counter the real and growing populist movements of the right.

But just like their phoney scare and scam of "catastrophic climate change", they are heading towards catastrophic doom because the people don't believe the climate scam and they don't believe that the Left are serious.

Human beings are not heading towards extinction, but the Left's discredited philosophy and phoney funny men's ideas are redundant and heading for extinction.

[flatpackhamster]

Spidermama

Jeez! I'm with whoever said the stuff in italics.

The Tories always have and always will be a political elite out to protect the interests of their mates. Their mates are particularly greedy and their greed can only be fed by the suffering of many more.

Are you actually Russell Brand?

[FraidyCat]

" I want to let society organise itself. I'm sorry but how exactly does that work? "

There is a story I vaguely remember, quite possibly made up, about a communist leader visiting the west. He is amazed to see freshly braked bread available at bakeries everywhere early each morning. He tells his host to congratulate whoever is in charge of bread planning and distribution.

Even in Britain in 2013, I would guess that the vast majority of people cannot get their heads around the idea that a market can routinely and effortlessly produce more accurate resource allocation than any person or organisation. I routinely hear "market" used as a pejorative term, when in my head it is a synonym for "awesome computing device that out-performs any human brain."

A man saves up his roubles and is finally able to buy a car in Soviet Russia. After he pays his money the he is told he will have his car in three years. "Three years!" He asks "What month?" "August." "August? What day in August?" he asks. "The Second of August" is the reply. "Morning or Afternoon?" "Afternoon. Why do you need to know?" "The plumber is coming in the morning."

[claig]

Fascinating analysis in the Daily Mail about Brand and Newsnight and Newsnight and the Guardian. Worth reading for the insight.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2475991/ROSS-CLARK-Russell-Brand-Newsnights-Guardians-TV-lapdog.html

[Spidermama]

Jeez! I'm with whoever said the stuff in italics.

The Tories always have and always will be a political elite out to protect the interests of their mates. Their mates are particularly greedy and their greed can only be fed by the suffering of many more.

[flatpackhamster]

SoniaGluck

flatpack You can run rings me on these issues, I know. I really should have learned by now.

Yes.

I don't think that I actually suggested that that was the case, did I?

There was a pretty weighty hint of 'boo hiss tories = genocide'.

My point was that, in order to reduce spending this government has, in the main, hammered those people who are most vulnerable and need the most help. These are often the people whose support the government doesn't have, so it doesn't matter to them how much they are suffering.

I understood your point (which I disagree with since welfare spending has still not fallen, even in real terms, since 2010). And since spending continues to rise and will continue to rise for the next few years, I wonder where all the money is going.

I'm sorry but how exactly does that work?

How does letting people make their own society work? Rather better than insisting that everyone does what they're told. Who makes social mores? Who decides that we in the UK have a sweet course at the end of dinner? Did government decide?

Unlike you, as you shower contempt on anyone who sees things differently?

I'm not pretending I know how to order society or how people should live. But I do hold socialists in contempt, in the same way that they hold humanity in contempt.

But there are countries in which the health care provision is inadequate and/or too expensive for the poorest citizens.

There are. And that is never going to change until scarce healthcare resources become infinite. You can not, with the best will in the world, make 21st century healthcare free for everyone. That news will come as a shock to a whole swathe of people who think they're "entitled". But that is going to be the big shock that follows the big shock that working for 40 years doesn't give you the right to draw a pension for 40 years. The current system is unsustainable unless costs fall drastically.

So basically, freeing up the market doesn't work because profit is all and business practice dictates that 'bigger is better'; economies of scale come in to play and you get takeovers to gain a larger slice of the market and then, once the majority of the market is divided by a small group of companies, they can work together to fix prices and other chicanery.

It does work, so long as you keep it free. That (IMO) is the job of government.

Well, you know, taking years to get employers/governments to put certain measures in place in order that someone is safe at work or can't be dismissed on a whim, does seem to me to be something that shouldn't be trivialised because it doesn't make a profit.

Do you think PAT testing keeps people safe? I think it's a single (good) example of bureaucratic idiocy and meddling.

I was actually trivialising the lazy cliches widely used by politicians and the media, not the worthwhile elements of employment legislation.

[Spidermama]

I would bed him in the blink of an eye and I think he utterly ran rings round the Pax and not for the first time.

[alexandrafarrow]

*wouldn't touch him, even!!!

[alexandrafarrow]

I like that he is intelligent, articulate, and is not afraid to express himself.

However, he gives me the squits, and I won't touch hi with the back end of a 50ft bargepole.

[Coupon]

So he'd like to see socialism left of the Labour party. He could vote green.

[utreas]

YABU if he is all socialism has left then it truly is dead.

[Pinkpinot]

FFS
I wish people would watch the fucking thing and not report bits and pieces
He was not telling people not to vote
He was not telling people that he will lead a revolution
He was not asking people to listen to him, in fact he specifically said no-one has to listen to him
He certainly didnt blame society for his drugs, he mentioned his drug habit to say why he didnt vote when he was 18.
When asked why he was on the program he joked about being asked by an attractive woman, having dodgy hair and knowing nothing about politics, comparing himself to Boris!

All he was doing was talking about the huge divide and distribution of wealth and something's gotta give
Which no-one can deny
He's most definitely not stupid, he doesn't do himself any favours cos he sometimes comes across as completely crazy! I'm not his biggest fan, but I do wish people would get their facts straight

[claig]

'Bull(shit)ingdon boy Gidiot are fine with state ownership of our utilities. Check out which states own ours'

very good

[caroldecker]

My point was that, in order to reduce spending this government has, in the main, hammered those people who are most vulnerable and need the most help. These are often the people whose support the government doesn't have, so it doesn't matter to them how much they are suffering.

The point is most spending is on the poor, so they will suffer most if you reduce spending. The alternative is increasing taxation.
Unfortunately you cannot increase taxes indefiniately else total tax take actaully reduces (Laffer curve). The labour govt of the 70's tried tax ratesof 60-97% and bankrupted the country, Thatcher reduced tax rates and got more money in
So, no extra tax, no reduction in spending, no extra borrowing? an impossible postion - so what is your solution?

[DoctorTwo]

Socialist command economies don't maintain the environment better.

Well flatpack, what is our economy if it isn't a command economy? It isn't a free market. It's more a kleptocracy.

Here's another thing: that shiny headed fuckwit and his fellow Bull(shit)ingdon boy Gidiot are fine with state ownership of our utilities. Check out which states own ours. Our utility bills are going to pay French, Qatari, German and Chinese pensions, to name but a few.