Surprised there's not been any mention of this already (although if there is, sorry! - did a search of the forum and nothing turned up :ph34r:).

 

So, did anybody else watch this, or has heard about it? Anybody feeling the same way as Russell Brand?

 

Personally, I completely agree with everything Russell's put forward and said to Jeremy. He's completely right about today's government just switching back and forth when the next election arrives and not actually dealing with the real problems that exist in this world, and instead focusing on things like whether bankers should keep their bonuses or not (while that's a big issue, there are other problems that have spanned over years and still haven't been addressed). I completely respect Russell 100% for what he said about David Cameron and co. not paying any attention at all to those from unprivileged backgrounds and instead only focusing on making the problems that exist in the corporate sector better. He put all of his points across rather eloquently too.

 

Surprised there's not been any mention of this already (although if there is, sorry! - did a search of the forum and nothing turned up :ph34r:).

 

So, did anybody else watch this, or has heard about it? Anybody feeling the same way as Russell Brand?

 

Personally, I completely agree with everything Russell's put forward and said to Jeremy. He's completely right about today's government just switching back and forth when the next election arrives and not actually dealing with the real problems that exist in this world, and instead focusing on things like whether bankers should keep their bonuses or not (while that's a big issue, there are other problems that have spanned over years and still haven't been addressed). I completely respect Russell 100% for what he said about David Cameron and co. not paying any attention at all to those from unprivileged backgrounds and instead only focusing on making the problems that exist in the corporate sector better. He put all of his points across rather eloquently too.

 

The same Russell Brand that spends his time residing in LA to avoid taxes in the UK?

 

At least bankers pay tax on their bonuses

 

He raised some valid points but a tax exile has no serious right to lecture anyone

The same Russell Brand that spends his time residing in LA to avoid taxes in the UK?

 

At least bankers pay tax on their bonuses

 

He raised some valid points but a tax exile has no serious right to lecture anyone

An exile because of further or previous indifferences with the lying, scheming and horrendous political system that he has talked about in that interview, maybe? It wouldn't surprise me; and it wouldn't anger me that he's 'lecturing' about the country's problems while not living there because it could be the exact reason he left the country.

Yeah I saw this live on Newsnight the other week. Russell has been banging on about this revolution since 2006 (if you ever heard his radio shows on Radio 2, you'll know he has long since called for one).

 

The trouble is I agree with a lot of what he says, but it just across a bit of rant to most people because he hasn't provided any proper proposed solutions. Profit does not always mean deficit, although most of the financial sector is clearly about ripping off people.

 

I do like the idea of renaming the government, the 'admin bods' tho. :D

I love Russell and I like Jeremy, but Paxman did actually come across better here. While Russell was making some valid points and Jeremy was trying to get him to talk about subjects that he couldn't do justice throughout the period of the interview, Russell was coming up with some really random and idealistic views. His view that a revolution was going to happen seems flawed to say the least.

An exile because of further or previous indifferences with the lying, scheming and horrendous political system that he has talked about in that interview, maybe? It wouldn't surprise me; and it wouldn't anger me that he's 'lecturing' about the country's problems while not living there because it could be the exact reason he left the country.

 

I would like to think that that is the reason but the cynic/realist in me makes me think he is just trying to protect his money from the taxman

 

If he cares so much about the system and services then he should come back to UK and pay into the system

 

Until he does then he is a hypocrite

I would like to think that that is the reason but the cynic/realist in me makes me think he is just trying to protect his money from the taxman

 

If he cares so much about the system and services then he should come back to UK and pay into the system

 

Until he does then he is a hypocrite

But why should he come back to a country where he believes the political system is flawed in more ways than one and satisfy them with the taxes that they want to continue as they are, not providing for under-privileged classes? I think he covers that when he says: "why are we going to continue to contribute to this façade?". I think the only way he's going to come back to the country (and possibly change his viewpoint), live here, and actually pay his taxes is if he sees a dramatic change in the way that the government operates and actually sees somebody brave enough and somebody who is actually capable of doing their job correctly prove to him why he should do so.

Robert Webb's take on it:

 

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 bast*rds! 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 f***ing Orwell.

 

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

 

Rob

 

http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/10/russel...evolution-there

 

The other thing I really don't like, is that he doesn't seem to care? He only edited the magazine because "a fit bird asked him" or whatever, and then he says he only wants the revolution for a laugh? Meh, whatever.

But why should he come back to a country where he believes the political system is flawed in more ways than one and satisfy them with the taxes that they want to continue as they are, not providing for under-privileged classes? I think he covers that when he says: "why are we going to continue to contribute to this façade?". I think the only way he's going to come back to the country (and possibly change his viewpoint), live here, and actually pay his taxes is if he sees a dramatic change in the way that the government operates and actually sees somebody brave enough and somebody who is actually capable of doing their job correctly prove to him why he should do so.

 

Yet he lives in a country where the society is even more f***ed up than ours

 

He lives in a country where the poor are denied access to proper health treatment, a country where out of work benefits stop after 2 years and you are left to starve, a country that the gap between rich and poor is by far the biggest on the planet

 

Our society has problems but it is way less f***ed up and unequal as Americas

Tom- I do believe that he does sincerely care about the issues he has raised, though the jokes throughout are merely a bit of light relief to the seriousness of the situation. Sometimes when something really bad happens, it is quite cathartic to actually make light of it + he is a comedian after all, it is his 'default mode'.

Well, that's fair enough. I guess I am just being cynical about the whole thing because he is being so idealistic in what he is saying. But, as you say, I think he just hasn't worked out any solutions for the problems.

Yet he lives in a country where the society is even more f***ed up than ours

 

He lives in a country where the poor are denied access to proper health treatment, a country where out of work benefits stop after 2 years and you are left to starve, a country that the gap between rich and poor is by far the biggest on the planet

 

Our society has problems but it is way less f***ed up and unequal as Americas

There's probably no doubt that he may have issues with the way that America's political system is operated, but that's not really a concern for a television programme that intrigues those interested in British politics. At the end of the day, it's his own assessment of the many flaws with the UK government, and to live in America because of the problems that have continued to inflate in this country, he must believe that it has some advantage(s) over the UK - and is run more efficiently.

Robert Webb just put the entire argument to bed.

 

http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/10/russel...evolution-there

A bit late there my friend!

Brand lives in the US because he thinks it'll further his career, it's nothing to do with tax reasons or disillusionment with British politics.

Anyway, if you've never seen his (mostly forgotten) RE:Brand series on UK Play, it's worth watching him take down Mark Collett (of Youth BNP fame).

 

Tom- I do believe that he does sincerely care about the issues he has raised, though the jokes throughout are merely a bit of light relief to the seriousness of the situation. Sometimes when something really bad happens, it is quite cathartic to actually make light of it + he is a comedian after all, it is his 'default mode'.

 

Yeah, I do think generally he's an intelligent guy who cares about the issues. His articles a couple of years ago about Amy Winehouse (and generally about addiction) and on the riots were more insightful than atleast 80% of the stuff that comes out of politicians' mouths.

 

I don't agree with him here though. Robert Webb hits the nail on the head when he says that young people deciding not to vote only means politicians will pay even LESS attention to them. Tuition fees would never have come in (or been increased) if as many under-30s voted in elections as pensioners did. The reason the old haven't been hit by the cuts at all is because the politicians know they can't afford to piss them off because they will vote against them en masse, whereas they feel perfectly able to screw over young people because they know they don't have to fear them voting them out.

The New Statesman headline article Russell wrote was one of the most depressingly shallow things I've ever read, and what was even more depressing was how well dressed up it was in lovely language and pseudo-intellectual 'look how clever I am!' quotes to make people think it actually had any intellectual heft to it. And it was all the more annoying because he's actually written REALLY good stuff in the past (like Danny said, on addiction etc).

 

And don't get me started on the 'they're all the same and they never make any real change to normal people's lives!' bollocks, let alone the proposed solution being revolution which...he never actually details any precise end to other than 'let's save the planet and be nice'. Well done Russell, nobody's ever thought of that as an aim before.

Edited October 31, 201311 yr by Cassandra

And as if Russell moved to America because he doesn't like the British political system! Like Charlie said, it's entirely to do with that being where his career is now.

I have as much respect for brands opinions as he does the women he shags and publicly humiliates. Still he's great as the old geezer in despicable me. How ironic...:-)