russell brand - C or D?

amazing excerpt from writer & activist russell brand's new book Revolution

http://www.russellbrand.com/store/

Surprised no one brought up his recent legal threats too

https://vine.co/v/OOVeIFamDdJ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dAFbpk9_GM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmlZWYvXMUo

Fair enough. It's not like anyone's under any illusion that Brand can probably afford a decent sized house.

Haha "alright, let's do one."
Yeah; not a fan but Team Brand there.

guessing 10 downing street is fairly low rent actually

Fair play. That was a cheap shot.

so you've gotta be badly-off yourself before you care about the problems of others who are badly-off? stuff like this just puts more people in Brand's corner. who can blame em.

yeah it's one of the big informal fallacies in situations like this. it's like a bastardised version of privilege checking whereby you shouldn't be allowed to express solidarity or support for people outside your immediate societal group. And it's not really the same as the justified cynicism surrounding Bono/Geldof/Band Aid either.
I'd like to hear more arguments against his overall message beyond Brand = Brand ∴ his entire rhetoric is wrong. You've got the whole 'no vote' thing, which is understandable, but I don't believe that that's the central idea.

"you're rich so you're a hypocrite if you talk about inequality" accusations tend to come from the right - the same people who accuse poor or unprivileged people who talk about inequality of bitterness or envy.

important to distinguish this nonsense from the many other criticisms of brand of course.

I dont know anything about Brand but the woman in the clip played a good game there against the bbc moron and his tired accusations as Brand was struggling a bit under attack (but Im guessing being attacked in this way is kind of new for him). Rhetoric from the right of "well why dont you give them your house if you love them so much" is fundamental and wilful misunderstanding as its the right that love charity because they believe in hierarchy, natural order and paternalism, and of course power and self-importance, but really please, no crumbs from the table

def generate_token
self.token = loop do
random_token = SecureRandom.urlsafe_base64
break random_token unless Trail.where(token: random_token).exists?
end
end

oops

i hope that was a random cut/paste error. i just spent a fair amount of time trying to work out if you were trying to cleverly illustrate your point in code.

it was meant for a different window sorry

"you're rich so you're a hypocrite if you talk about inequality"

using this idea, white people shouldnt talk about racism, heteros shouldnt broach gay issues, etc etc.

self.token = loop do

otm.

There's a relatively blurry line between the idea that people with privilege shouldn't co-opt the movements of those without it and the idea that people with privilege who vocally support those without it are automatically drawing attention away from the people who should be listened to. From some sections of the left, active solidarity isn't necessarily a good thing.

the woman in the clip played a good game there against the bbc moron and his tired accusations

It was Channel 4 News, I don't know why I would expect better of them, I suspect their up and coming reporters thinks it's a good idea to try to out-Crick Michael Crick.

... good idea for their careers that is

xxpost Yeah, in many respects there's the 'support causes, but let people fight their own battles' sentiment which makes sense. but then all too often, it can turn into effete armchair activism or ineffectual charity (again, BandAid etc), whereas sometimes it's good to just muck in and help out - especially if one's status allows access for a cause to reach a bigger platform.

Well, unlike a lot of well-off media people who might wind up questioning his motives, I don't think Russell Brand's house was given to him or otherwise deposit-enabled by a parent.

I don't think Russell Brand's house was given to him or otherwise deposit-enabled by a parent.

― resting rich face (suzy),

exactly, or should i say, self.token = loop do?

Much though Brand gets my back up, I don't think he's co-opted this movement so much as used his celebrity leverage to get more press coverage. There's a difference between taking up space that could be filled by someone more deserving and expanding the space available. "automatically drawing attention away from the people who should be listened to"? No, it's not automatic.

it is more than slightly annoying. channel4 news, or any of the major news outlets in this country, have never in the time I can remember been interested in the struggles of decanted social tenants in London. Something has happened that has caused a change in this recently, but the Focus 15 mums and the New Era tenants have managed to garner more press attention and public scrutiny and pressure than large scale evacuations like the Heygate for eg. were able to muster. Even now that there is a public interest, news corporations can only tell the story through the language of hypocrisy and celebrity.

the collapse between journalism and publicity, the public sphere and the spectacle of celebrity. the failure of print journalism to keep power in check. half the stuff that comes up on my bbc news app everyday seems like an ad for something. recent data has been released by the government. consumer confidence is on the rise. think tanks, big pharma, international sports. there is no longer room for journalism to function in the old way exposing corruption and conflicts of interest. In the contemporary language government and business speak in the same language, with the same set of overlapping interests, in public private partnerships and private finance initiatives. corruption is a moral discourse now. I saw the focus e15 mums being told they were a front for the RCG, that they couldn't speak in good faith with the moral purity of evicted single mums because they were in cahoots with some political group. but when local government sells off masses of social housing way below market value to private speculators, this is merely policy.

it just annoys me when i see that channel 4 guy smugly telling russell brand he's part of the problem. i mean. yes russell brand is part of the problem, but channel 4 news is not really helping anyone either.

the destruction of public services in the uk is a scandal, and it is straightforwardly not necessitated by current economic constraints.

basically lex otm if that was clearer

great post ico

yes very great!

thirded!

Great post indeed Plax.

That's Channel 4 News nailed. By the way, in last night's C4 News, it was utterly repulsive that in a news story about refugees drowning one by one in the Mediterranean they felt it necessary to play "sad music" underneath the report.

That's Channel 4 News nailed.

You'd think so, right?

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/2346306/thumbs/r-RUSSELL-BRAND-huge.jpg

he's got a lot of snide (perfect phrasing from him) hacks spitting with rage and fury. he's pissed off murdoch to levels of desperation surprising even for him. Brilliant.

idgi are his landlords tax dodgers or is he trying to tax dodge his landlords - I mean it's nonsense either way but

He's doing nothing. Supposedly the property management company he rents from is registered in the British Virgin Islands.

lol at a tenant being responsible for the improprieties of a landlord

I think that, as a tenant, if your landlord/letting agent isn't based in the UK you have to pay the taxation element of the rent direct to HMRC, and the remainder of the rent to the landlord.

Yeah that is correct if your landlord lives outside the uk. Not sure about a corporation registered in a tax haven though.

I think that's a blind; the point which was made at the outset (and where the hypocrisy charge seems to start from) is that the protest is about low rents being raised to "market rate", whereas landlords set "market rates" at least in part on the basis of what they think the market will bear - which is considerably higher when people come into the area from other parts of the city and pay rents which some would consider excessive for the benefit of being in a trendy area.

why was bob mortimer now doing c4 news things?

sorry about the grammar

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a82/bobbysixer/segrin_zps6b1096c6.jpg

For clarification: Is this a 'shit eating grin' (which I've always taken to mean a kind of embarrassed grin in a dire situation)?

it's a "thank god the woman saved my ass" face i think

Not sure you're allowed to have "ass" and "face" that close together on the Internet under the new obscenity laws tbh.

Not immediately following a post with 'shit eating' in it I would have thought.

i do think its interesting that he's become involved in local grassroots politics in his area, and the timing is right because grassroots pushbacks in his area have learnt a lot of lessons in recent years it seems. what New Era are saying does appear to have real traction and in a way that pushes deeply into the meaning of the still-emerging post-welfare state.

again, i'm not particularly interested in russell brand per se. i suspect that he might be as dangerous as he is ludicrous. but his vapidness reveals something of the vapidness of 24hour news streams. and there is this residue of real anger, and a genuine attempt to articulate this rage in relation to empirical political events and the imbrication of global investment portfolios with local social housing stock. we're used, time and again, to seeing the ways in which the devastating despoiling effects of corporate greed operate in ways far too difficult to parse in headline news and so escape the pressure of public opinion. and so public opinion always seems parochial and smallminded and news coverage seems polarizing and puerile. its easy to scapegoat immigrants or the benefits claimants but its almost impossible to track the cunning ingenuity of financial products that reap mass havoc. and so its interesting that this becomes visible here, that this story appears that makes explicit the links between different social housing and the massive foreign investment in london property and offshore tax havens and local communities and gentrification and how boring it seems to focus on russell brand celebrity comedian or television presenter or prank phone call maker or whatever

WREAK mass havoc

we need more actor-activists like danny glover, who is incredibly smart, energetic, not in the least egotistical, and always willing to take a backseat to those at the center of the crisis.

sorry, that sounds idiotic when i read it back--as if what the world's direst need is for more celebrities with causes. i guess i'm just saying that brand isn't the only model of celebrity activist.