Thread: Dont worry wankers...

That is sad, getting aggressive with the reporter when his millionaire status is put under the spotlight.

Why shouldn't he get mad as the reporter wants to talk about him rather than about the issue. It's only recently that the press have started giving his 'crusade' any attention as even when he was organising marches getting tens of thousands of people turning up in London there seemed to be a mainstream media news blackout, must mean the establishment are getting a bit scared as the hatchet jobs increase. I just wish he'd change his stance on voting as in stop trying to get people not to vote and instead form his own party and stand in elections.

Originally Posted by cyrille

But of course it suits the establishment to insist that anyone who is on the side of the poor and powerless is a hypocrite if they are doing well and have a voice.

Wise words.

Originally Posted by buriramboy

Why shouldn't he get mad as the reporter wants to talk about him rather than about the issue.

Reporters are free to angle and write the story about the meeting however they see fit, no?

Originally Posted by runner

Originally Posted by buriramboy

Why shouldn't he get mad as the reporter wants to talk about him rather than about the issue.

Reporters are free to angle and write the story about the meeting however they see fit, no?

And people are free to react how they like, if someone agrees to an interview to talk about a certain issue then that is what the interview should be about and what people want to hear about, not a hatchet job. But as with UKIP the more the establishment attack the more popular they get, same applies with Brand that's why I'm disappointed in him telling everyone not to vote instead of forming a party as with his following he'd garner a lot of votes.

I've been out the UK for too long.

I thought Russell Brand was that fat, ugly lesbian who claims to be a comedienne

Originally Posted by buriramboy

must mean the establishment are getting a bit scared

right.....

^^ That'll be Joe Brand.

Originally Posted by buriramboy

Originally Posted by runner

Originally Posted by buriramboy

Why shouldn't he get mad as the reporter wants to talk about him rather than about the issue.

Reporters are free to angle and write the story about the meeting however they see fit, no?

And people are free to react how they like, if someone agrees to an interview to talk about a certain issue then that is what the interview should be about and what people want to hear about, not a hatchet job.

The reporter was asking questions about the issue. He was asking Brand why he is being a hypocrite i.e. sitting pretty with £9 million sat in the bank and no financial worries for the rest of his life whilst criticising the system that gave it to him. That is why he got angry, because his hypocrisy was publicised.

I'd take him more seriously if he gave it all away to the homeless.

^^ That'll be Joe Brand.

Oh right.

So she's not in the running to be PM then?

Originally Posted by runner

I'd take him more seriously if he gave it all away to the homeless.

You're completely missing the point . . . come on, smeg, a bit of effort

The Sun is about the level of journalism I'd expect runner to be reading. Thanks for not disappointing.

^^^^ Thanks Runner. Another good video by Russell Brand. I like the aquarium analogy.

For all his faults, Russell Brand has identified the failings of British politics

The problem with politics is not Brand or Farage, it’s a political class which serves only a small percentage of our population, says Alex Proud.


As someone who regularly rants about the iniquitous, corrupted state of modern Britain, I’m often asked, “What do you think of Russell Brand?”


In theory, I should really like Brand. When I look back at my columns which have really struck a chord, they’re all the kind of themes Russell likes to tussle with - how the under 30s are screwed, how London is pricing a whole generation out, how politics offers the young nothing, and so on. Heck, we’ve both managed to fall out with GQ.


It’s true that the comparison doesn’t go that much further. Russell Brand does have nearly nine million Twitter followers (or around 1,500 times more than me) so I doubt he ever asks himself, “What does Alex Proud think of me?” But nonetheless, here goes: I half like him. However, I despair of the other half. The other half is a real problem for me, and seeing him on Question Time last week cemented this view. Still, best foot forward: let’s start with the good stuff.


This is pretty easy. Brand’s funny. He can half act. He’s good looking, in a kind of Che-Guevara-meets-Jesus sort of way. Back in the day he slept with lots of girls and took lots of drugs, making him seem more rock roll than us. His first Booky Wook was pretty good. He speaks his mind, doesn’t give a toss about sacred cows and, at least at first, he seemed like a breath of fresh air.


There’s also his own particular brand of cleverness. He’s extremely quick off the mark. But it’s a strange sort of quick. It can be very good. He probably managed the best quote of QT when he called Nigel Farage a “Poundshop Enoch Powell.” But more often, his quips leave the other person (and his audience) wondering “What the f--- was that about?” Sometimes this can be endearing and interesting and take you down unexpected roads. But it also points to his Achilles heel: often he sounds like someone who’s coming up on some high quality acid.

I suppose the other thing I really like about him is that he has clearly identified the problem with British politics. That these days it speaks only to a comfortable, middle-aged demographic. He’s absolutely right when we says politicians are out of touch and that the system has very little to offer someone who is currently 25 and not on the staff of a merchant bank. If I was in my 20s and on my third unpaid internship, Brand would certainly be a more appealing prospect than Miliband (and Cameron wouldn’t be a prospect at all).

OK, so on to the bad stuff. He can be totally full of s---. When he’s asked to articulate some of his positions, I close my eyes and I’m reminded of the Beatles when it all started to go bad. It’s been a while since we’ve had a celebrity of Brand’s stature go full hippy and start babbling on how we need to live in co-operative communities, growing organic food. Still, perhaps, it makes a refreshing change to the good little capitalists that most entertainers today are... No, actually it doesn’t. It’s really annoying seeing someone who has clearly identified a problem and has a great platform and buckets of charisma and charm come out with the kind of stuff that reminds you of those lingering casualties of the Sixties that you still saw in the early Eighties.

One reason it’s annoying now is that it was annoying back then. But the main reason is that the problems we face today aren’t the problems of the Sixties and Seventies. They’re more like the problems we had in the Robber Baron era and the gilded age, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They’re problems like galloping inequality, government by the rich for the rich, giant corporations bending nation states to their will, banks rigging the system and so on. Haight-Ashberry babble just doesn’t cut it.

It was great having Brand on QT against Farage as, in some ways, they’re flip sides of the same coin. UKIP attracts the forgotten older Right, the people to whom Cameron’s Tories have nothing to say. Brand is the diametric opposite: he attracts the ignored younger Left, the people who Ed will never connect with. Brand and UKIP are both non-mainstream and both have pretty garbled, nonsensical policy platforms. For both, this means that followers can see whatever they want in their leader. Both have lasted for much longer than we might have expected if it was politics as usual - and both are starting to seriously unnerve the establishment.

This last point is perhaps the most important one. For ages, the Tory press treated Farage as a loveable clown, only belatedly waking up to the threat that he posed. Now, something similar is happening to Brand. The establishment has finally realised he’s been around for ages and people still like him and not them. True, his manifesto for change, Revolution was a bit of stinker. But that’s the establishment view isn’t it? They would say that.

Unfortunately, although the establishment may have finally got the threat that Brand poses, they’ve continued to not get it by attacking the messenger, not the message, which plays right into Brand’s hands. Here, we’ve also had an entertaining sideshow - Brand’s falling out with The Sun. The latter seemed to get some its old vindictiveness back when it got YouGov to go round asking the punters if Brand was a hypocrite or not.

To me this felt pretty desperate – getting a respected polling organisation to do one of the stupidest surveys ever – as the basis for a very shaky front page attack piece. For what it’s worth, the hypocrisy charge is weak. Brand may be rich and live in a cool flat but that doesn’t make him a fraud. You can be wealthy and still dislike the system - and you don’t solve the world’s problems by living like a monk. The other much touted piece of hypocrisy – that Brand rents his flat off a company in the British Virgin Islands (a tax haven) - is ridiculous. The ethical problem here is with the company, not Brand. As one wag joked on Twitter, “My mum pays her taxes but she bought a Take That album. Hypocrite #TheSunLogic.”

Anyway, as I say, all this is a sideshow. The real problem is not Brand (or Farage) it’s a political class which serves only a small percentage of our population. It’s spineless, useless leaders. It’s a huge chunk of the electorate which has become disengaged and angry and started to look for leaders outside the establishment. It’s the kind of worrying political atmosphere we had in the 1930s. And unless our leaders grow a pair and get a clue, they’re going to see more Brands, not less.

Farage, obviously, runs a real political party. But UKIP is an ill-disciplined mess and riven with real hypocrisy and contradiction from top to bottom. Its pose is anti-establishment, but its backers are establishment to the core – and many of its policies such as tax cuts for higher earners are what the rich want. The comparisons to the US Tea party are pretty accurate.

Whatever The Sun says, Brand doesn’t really have these problems. His problems are more of the “What do I do next?” variety. When asked on QT why he didn’t stand for Parliament his response was, “I’d stand for Parliament but I’m scared that I’d become one of them.” That was pretty weak sauce and the audience knew it. The trouble is Brand has been around a while now and you can only lob stink bombs from the sidelines of politics for so long before you need to put up or shut up. You don’t have to become an MP, but you do have to do more than prattle on like you’re sermonising in the mud at Woodstock.

I suppose that’s why I find him so frustrating. “Russell,” I want to say, “Button up your shirt and come and have lunch with me. Let’s talk about real solutions and changing the system from within, rather than smashing it to pieces.” I appreciate that, in social media terms, I’m a minnow to Brand’s whale, so, if he didn’t want to talk to me, I’d happily introduce him to people with a bit more clout who spend their lives doing nothing but thinking about solutions to the mess we’re in.

This is why I have a sliver of hope for Brand. If he could stop babbling. If he could use his huge reach and star power (he has 15 times as many Twitter followers as The Sun) to drive forward some radical, but real solutions. If he could do these things, he might actually get some of the change he wants – and so many of us want. But first he needs to think as seriously about the answers as he does about the problems. Because right now, we need a New Deal and he’s offering us the Age of Aquarius.

For all his faults, Russell Brand has identified the failings of British politics - Telegraph