Russell Brand wins well-deserved Foot in Mouth award

[claig]

"Yesterday the comedian and self-styled revolutionary was honoured with an award – for speaking gobbledygook.

He won the annual Foot in Mouth prize from the Plain English campiagn, joining the likes of John Prescott and George W Bush."
...

"The group’s website said that Brand’s ‘seemingly endless stream of gibberish, both written and verbal’ had clinched the award."
...
"Organisers said Brand – who has carved a career out of using many, often inflammatory, words when one would do – was ‘out on his own’ in the competition."

Surely that can't be right? He must have faced stiff competition from the Labour front bench

"The Plain English judges singled out this rant from The Guardian: ‘I felt very connected to activism – particularly activism that feels loaded with potential. Not the oppositional activism that seems like there’s a stasis around it – earnestly sincere, but a monolith.’

How they managed to single this rant out from the rest of the rants in the Guardian beats me. But they are professionals. To me it just seems like New Labour speak without the polar bears.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2858403/Brand-wins-award-gobbledygook.html

But what about the urban elite spreading machinations of despondency? Even MN is an agency of diSSent!, promting THRIFT and SENSIBILNATIVITY.. when we need SPENDIng . Brand is a NICE CHAP but We cant spend sprituality of the MIND it needs to be of the WALLET. Without saving the Economy we cant save the mind and vicy versa. Thought s??

'But what about the urban elite spreading machinations of despondency?'

That is the metropolitan elite's only game. Vote for us or the economy will collapse, vote for us or we won't be able to "save the planet" for you. Don't vote for the "fruitcakes", they'll ruin everything the Establishment believe in. But no one believes them any more. They have cried wolf too many times. People want change, they don't believe the tales of doom and destruction any more.

The message from constituencies to Oxbridge top brass is "Help us, please, they're here, they're on our lawns"

"Their tanks are digging up my lawn," Sarah Champion, Labour's MP for Rotherham, told the Today programme this morning.

And the people just laugh even louder.

Sadly none of this if a laugh to me.

is

'Sadly none of this is a laugh to me.'

Everybody is different. It's not a laugh for Cameron, Miliband and the metropolitan elite either. But that is what is happening in our country and there is a reason why it is happening and why a party of "fruitcakes" has shaken the entire Establishment to its roots in just over two short years.

UKIP was founded in 1992, just over 2 years ago

Of course things need shaking up, that is one thing we can agree on.
And I rather detest how this country is led by a rather narrow privileged elite, but that does not mean that I shake my pompoms to cheer on a far right, homophobic, xenophobic, misogynistic party which attracts the disenfranchised with cheap slogans led by somebody who is a Established as it gets.

You enjoy your laugh, claig.

Ever done any research in to what happened in the Weimar Republic?
No 'PPEs' involved there.

'UKIP was founded in 1992, just over 2 years ago '

Yes, but they never broke through to millions of people, they never won a national election or never won a landslide. Everything changed in the May local council elections one year before the Euro elections, when mainly former Tory voters, like myself, took the risk of allowing Labour in by switching from Tory to UKIP. We did it because we had had enough. The Tories abandoned millions of us and we no longer cared if Labour did actually get in.

Amazingly enough, millions of us did exactly the same thing and voted UKIP and UKIP came top in many councils and counties such as Essex. That was the start, the rest is history.

UKIP have members, and candidates, from all races. They are not the Nazi party whatever the elite try to say. And the more over the top the elite go in their scare tactics against UKIP, the stronger UKIP grow because the people won't fall for it.

"It is widely accepted by political strategists that the over-the-top press campaign against UKIP during the European elections in May was so transparently biased that it had no negative effect and probably counter-productively bolstered UKIP’s vote.

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time…"

order-order.com/2014/12/05/public-think-liberal-elite-media-biased-against-ukip-54-believe-politico-media-class-trying-to-stop-ukip/

You have to wonder how clever the elite really are. Russell Brand is actually cleverer than them. That is why he is now their last hope.

But for the love of fuck they don't even have a proper manifesto.

If people are actually stupid enough to think UKIP are the answer then they really don't understand the question.

It's not funny, it's embarrassing that these people are representing our country abroad.

Vote for the the greens or the NHA party in the westminster elections if you are in England.

'But for the love of fuck they don't even have a proper manifesto. '

FannyFifer, don't you see that it doesn't matter? The people are beyond manifestos which are not worth the paper they are written on and whose promises can be torn up as soon as a party gets into power. But they will have a manifesto just like everyone else.

The rise of UKIP is telling us something very important about Britain. It is of monumental significance and it is bound to lead to huge changes because there is nothing the Establishment can do to stop it because it is real and meets a real need. The people have lost trust in the system, they have had enough of the spinners, and they have had enough of being disrespected. You think it is embarrassing that millions of people prefer UKIP to the Greens, but that is how many people feel and their choices should be respected.

The Telegraph commentator is spot on when he explains what is really signified by UKIP's rise and why it will be difficult for the Establishment to stop. It's not about policy, it's not about manifestos, it's about something more profound than that, it's about trust and that has been destroyed. That's why UKIP are "tearing up their lawns" and that's why UKIP voters are laughing.

"Will it work? Bluntly, Ukip's rise is not about policy. As James Kirkup wrote after Douglas Carswell's defection, "it's about trust, and it's absence". It's about the fact that, with the sound turned down, it's difficult to tell the difference between the attendees at Labour's gathering in Manchester and the Conservatives' get-together in Birmingham. It's about a political and a media class that is no longer trusted, liked, or respected. While that endures, no amount of movement towards Nigel Farage's party on Europe or immigration or attacks on that party's left flank will leave a mark on the People's Army."

blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/stephenkb/100287806/morning-briefing-its-not-eu-its-me/

"Everything changed in the May local council elections one year before the Euro elections, when mainly former Tory voters, like myself, took the risk of allowing Labour in by switching from Tory to UKIP. We did it because we had had enough."

That is when everything changed. We lost trust in the Tories. We couldn't vote for them any more, they had taken us for fools long enough. We put UKIP on the map and then Labour voters joined us because they saw what they thought was hope, something different, a party that didn't lecture them, but finally listened to them.

The Establishment and its media will do everything they can in the next 5 months before the election to win those people back, but so far it looks like they will fail. Once trust is gone, once faith is gone, once people have had enough of being taken for granted and being played for fools, there is little that the Establishment can do.

FannyFifer, you must understand it because you are seeing a similar thing in Scotland. Labour, the Red Tories, are being laughed at, being mocked because their true Establishment side has been revealed. The SNP are tearing up their lawns and I am sure lots of former Labour voters are laughing up in Scotland too. It is about trust, faith and principle. Once they have gone, very little can be done.

It was Cameron that let UKIP in and led to their rise. He destroyed the trust of many Tory voters in their party. Membership has halved under his leadership and many ordinary Tory voters have had enough. He ruined the Tory Party. It is still going but I think it will be a shadow of its former self within 20 years' time.

He took Tory voters for granted and many of them have had enough and moved on to UKIP. They won't go back because of the issue of trust. They no longer trust the Tories to hold the values they believe in.

Oh no! What if we become whingeing small-minded euro haters! That is subservience to the great power! We can't be whipped by two masters! ( unless it IS like the Internet). Is there a voctorian steampunk future? I think so.. just as there is a distopian bleakness or intelligent robots. I wonder where UKIP will be when we lose against Europe or the people's army? How can either shovel dollars into petticoats? !

' is a distopian bleakness or intelligent robots'

One academic I read said there was and it was the Labour Party, but I am not qualified to pronounce on that.

Excellent article by Owen Jones in the Guardian about laughter and fun in politics. By having a laugh at them, we can bring them down and engage many more people in politics.

"Laugh if you like. But we need satire more than ever

There’s nothing the establishment hates more than ridicule – that’s why it’s vital for a healthy democracy
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Take the now flourishing Twitter-land of Trumpton. In a dig at Ukip’s desire to take Britain back to something approximating the iconic 1960s children’s programme, a Trumpton Ukip account was founded. It proved not to be to the taste of the party’s Scottish MEP, David Coburn, who attempted to have the account shut down and even apparently threatened legal action. Big mistake: the powerful attempting to menace those who poke fun at them is the ultimate provocation, and is particularly self-defeating. All Coburn has achieved is to make a relatively small-fry account the Twitter trend of the moment.

Political satire is booming online, where taking the mighty and the powerful down a peg or two is a sport.
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Satire is so subversive – and often politically fatal for those who rule – because it exposes the absurdities of power. Authority attempts to assert itself partly through a veneer of respectability and seriousness. When that is stripped away, its legitimacy can be lost, along with our subservience.
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The humorous ridiculing of the powerful has a proud pedigree in Britain. Back in the mid-19th century, it was Punch magazine that championed satire, being sympathetic to the rising demands of democracy against the country’s oligarchic, unaccountable elite.
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There is a counter-argument too: for if there’s one thing we don’t lack in modern Britain, it’s cynicism about our political elite. Our politicians have never been loved, and now they are even less popular than most tropical diseases. But that’s not altogether healthy.

Anger at our political elite seldom fuels action to do anything about it, engendering instead an enraged passivity: people scream at the television set rather than taking to the streets. That actually suits the political elite rather well, because it makes them less accountable. It also undermines those of us who want radical change: if you believe all politicians are liars and charlatans, then you are less likely to see politics as a realistic vehicle to transform society.

But quality satire does not just scrutinise and ridicule the great and the good. It helps engage those who otherwise find politics tedious. Politics can be made fun, raucous and appealing (at least for those not on the receiving end of it).
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Satire can be brilliantly effective at encouraging us to challenge the way our society is run. It is a more crucial element of our democracy than we perhaps think, and we should fight to bring it back to the prime-time slots it deserves."

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/07/laugh-satire-establishment-ridicule-democracy?CMP=share_btn_tw

We laughed at them then and we laugh at them now. That is how we are going to win. And good luck to Russell Brand, he is doing us all a favour, taking them on and laughing at them. The Sun is going after him, but his Trews videos are hitting them back and having a laugh.

Good luck to him against Farage, but of course, I want Farage to win, because I want the revolution to be televised and PR to be brought in.

I see NF missed some meeting in Wales and blamed it on immigration. Apparently immigrants are clogging the M4.

'in many ways Ukip is simply a splinter from the patriotic but essentially non-ideological Conservative right'
(BNP website)

Discuss.

UKIP does come from a Conservative right background that is libertarian rather than ideological. But UKIP is changing as it grows and is incorporating leftwing populist policies as well. It is basically a populist party that believes in public referenda and direct democracy where people are given a greater voice than is usual in politics.

Farage has said that he will be gone as leader by 2020. I think that is a shame because Farage is unique and willnot bow to political correctness. If Farage goes, there is a danger that UKIP will become politically correct just like all the rest and bow to BBC pressure etc.

"But he [Farage] was unrepentanat, telling the BBC: 'I look at politics. I look at the incredibly bland people that are now in politics who dare not give an opinion on any issue for fear of criticism.

'Is it any wonder the public don't know their names, don't know what they stand for.

'You know we have finished up with vanilla politics, right across the United Kingdom.

'I am going on, saying it as I see it. It's just me. But I am not going to be brow beaten by you and everybody else into becoming like the rest of them.'

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2864413/Now-Farage-blames-immigrants-TRAFFIC-JAMS-M4-late-25-head-Meet-Nigel-Ukip-event.html

Farage is not a politician in the conventional sense, he is more like one of us and that is why I think he will be gone and leave UKIP to it by about 2020. Very sad for teh country but that is how it will probably be.

The BNP think that UKIP is an establishment plot to get rid of the BNP and believe that UKIP was given airtime by the BBC to help finish the BNP. The BNP's socialist policies are very different to the libertarian UKIP ones. The BNP thinks that UKIP is basically an establishment City backed group.

There was a time when Norman Tebbit, if I remember rightly, thought that UKIP was part of an establishment type of plot to harm the Tories and thereby keep us in the EU.

But they are all wrong. UKIP is a populist movement that challenges the Establishment on every one of its core principles.

The challenge for UKIP will be can they keep it non-politically coirrect and populist under huge Establishment and BBC pressure to conform to politically correct establishment consenus. If Farage does not choose to fight for re-election as leader, then UKIP may become just like all the rest. We will have to wait and see. But by that time, UKIP will probably have changed politics forever and will have busted up the two-party cosy consensus clique and will have introduced proportional representation. If they achieve that, then new parties will be formed and populist parties will continue to survive.

If anyone has any doubt that UKIP is not anti-establishment, then all they have to look at is UKIP's policies on climate change. No other major party would dare contemplate what UKIP intends to do, no puppet would be allowed to even consider it. The climate policies come right from the top, right from the EU and even above that. By looking at what UKIP will do over green issues and climate change, it is apparent that they are not puppets and are the real deal.

"– UKIP will abolish the Department of Energy and Climate Change and scrap green subsidies.

– UKIP will repeal the Climate Change Act 2008 which costs the economy £18bn a year.

– There will be no new subsidies for wind farms and solar arrays.

– UKIP will abolish green taxes and charges in order to reduce fuel bills."

www.ukip.org/policies_for_people

Or they could just be a bunch of total fannies considering renewables are currently the top source of power in Scotland.

www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/27/renewable-energy-overtakes-nuclear-as-scotlands-top-power-source

I don't see how libertarianism isn't an ideology.

I also think if UKIP is adding policies as it grows it is bound to eventually look like exactly the strange bird the BNP says it is -- a little bit of the left and a chunk from the right, and a lot of whatever flavour of the month outrageous knee jerk statement Nigel Farage thinks will appeal to the professionally aggrieved and garner their votes.

UKIP aren't that much different from the others IMO. It's all rich white men, just trying a different tack by echoing the more unpleasant undertones of our society with their more overtly racist and sexist language. It's hardly some sort of revolution when one bunch of privileged white men just gets replaced with another (and in the case of the recent by-elections, literally the same man)

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 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.

sparklecrates, I can see the gist of the argumenet there. But now everything has changed because we have a real choice, Farage and the People's Army, and they are tearing up their lawns.

Farage is more concerned about "tearing up" his own policies. lol

It is one thing for a UKIP Party leader of your cult to DISOWN every policy as leader he signed off on;

“UKIP leader Nigel Farage has disowned the party's entire (2010) general election manifesto - which he helped launch - branding it "drivel”.
news.sky.com/story/1200525/nigel-farage-disowns-ukip-manifesto-as-drivel

It is another thing to try and wipe that UKIP policy “modernizing”, and previous inflammatory immigration speeches, right off the face of this Earth.

“UKIP spokesman Michael Heaver confirmed that the party’s 2010 election manifesto had been removed. While the party now opposes the planned high-speed north-south rail line, the 2010 document advocated building three new routes. “We’re in the process of updating everything,” Heaver said by telephone. “We’re going through a policy review.”
www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-15/u-k-parties-prepare-for-2015-by-erasing-web-histories.html

“Both these are outdone by the U.K. Independence Party, which has no record of any speeches made before March this year. The earliest news item is leader Nigel Farage’s New Year 2013 message.