[mrconners]

Now I know he's an easy target but
http://blog.squandertwo.net/2014/12/an-open-letter-to-russell-brand.html
This bloke seemed genuinely upset, it's from the other channel (taken from the independent) so apologies if its a repost or you have already read it. To me hi appearances on question time are not intellectual arguments but just quick witted sharp comebacks delivered at massive VOLUME.

[cofe]

The guy was having paella. For lunch.

[Sloper]

Russell Brand is a self aggrandising unpleasant cvnt who needs to start a fight with someone tasty when there's no cameras or bouncers about.

[mrconners]

Aggrandising sums him up perfectly, what a great word.


I would love him to get his fucking face smashed in.

[masonwoods101]

Wow your angry....  If you don't like him don't subscribe to the trews. And don't talk to him if you see him in the street....

[psychomansam]

His views are  unacceptable since they are not within the limited permissible range of political views. He fails to engage properly in the approved party politics. He challenges accepted norms. He has weird hair.
Fuck that cunt.

[fatdoc]

Aggrandising sums him up perfectly, what a great word.


I would love him to get his fucking face smashed in.

Not read the rest of the thread yet... But yes.. Great word.. Perhaps the word of the year on UKB?

[masonwoods101]

+1 psychoman sam... How dare he poke faults In our political system, media and society as a whole.... I just don't understand mrconners venomous hatred...

[Joepicalli]

Brand is obviously a waste of space (a touch of the Lenny Bruce is beginning to emerge) but the this guy whining on about his lunch. the anti licence fee rant (only pure libertarianism can protect us from Big State Control).

Long story short its a case of the cunt calling the cunt a cunt.

[mrconners]

Nothing to do with his views.  Its just him and the way he behaves.
Stuart Lee described his interview on paxman as like " a monkey throwing faeces at a foghorn".

I feel he is more interested in self promotion than anything else,  but then I suppose that is his job.


 The cunt.

[petejh]

Well.. I heard Charlie Brooker describe Stewart Lee describing Russell Brand being interviewed by Jeremy Paxman as like watching one of those sage intelligent-looking orangutangs take a shit on a record-player...

But then that is his job. I think. So it must be true.

[Joepicalli]

I'd only read about two thirds of what the blogger had written before I posted. What he is gets really clear with the the "celebrity bike" bit. This guy operates somewhere to the libertarian of Sloper and is as sexist as Brand.
Its not great its a nasty little "ME ME ME" rant every bit as pathetic as Brand's.

[tomtom]

Blog and counter blog.. (I couldn't be arsed to read most of either)..

http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/russell-brand-jo-rbs-open-letter.html?m=1

[tomtom]

And from Russel Brands facecrack page that popped up on my timeline.


Hello Jo, thanks for your open letter, I do remember you from the melee outside RBS and firstly, I’d like to say sorry for your paella getting cold. It’s not nice to suffer because of actions that are nothing to do with you. I imagine the disabled people of our country who have been hit with £6bn of benefit cuts during the period that RBS received £46bn of public bail-out money feel similarly cheesed off.

I can’t apologise for the RBS lockdown though mate because, I don’t have the authority to close great big institutions – even ones found guilty of criminal activity.

The locking of the doors and your tarnished lunch came about as the result of orders from “the faceless bosses” upstairs after I wandered in on my own while we secretly filmed from across the street - then security swarmed, all the doors were locked and crowds gathered outside. I must say Jo; it felt like RBS had something terrible to hide. But more of that in a minute.

Neither was I there for publicity, although you could be forgiven for thinking that; for many years I have earned my money (and paid my taxes) by showing off. If I needed negative publicity (and, believe me, that’s all talking publicly about inequality can ever get you) I could get it by using the “N word” on telly, or putting a cat in a bin, or having a romantic liaison with the lad from TOWIE.

I was there with filmmaker Michael Winterbottom making a documentary about how the economic crises caused by the banking industry (RBS were found guilty of rigging Libor and the foreign exchange) has led to an economic attack on the most vulnerable people in society. I don’t want to undermine your personal inconvenience Jo, I’d be the first to admit that I’m often more vexed by little things; iPhone chargers continually changing makes me as angry as apartheid - so I can’t claim any personal moral high ground, but a chance to make a film that highlights how £80bn of austerity cuts were made, punishing society’s most vulnerable during the same period that bankers awarded themselves £81bn in bonuses was irresistible.

The mob upstairs at RBS who exiled you with your rapidly deteriorating lunch have had £4bn in bonuses since the crash. Do they deserve our money more than Britain’s disabled? Or Britain’s students who are now charged to learn? Is that fair?

They were some of the questions I was hoping to ask your boss – but we got no joy through the “proper channels” so we decided to just show up.

Not just to RBS, but also to Lloyds, HSBC and Barclays. I know that the regular folk on the floor aren’t guilty of this trick against ordinary people; they’re like anyone, trying to make ends meet. As you point out though, it’s hard to get to the men at the top so we were forced into door-stopping and inadvertent lunch spoiling. The good news is that this film and even this correspondence will reach hundreds of thousands of people and they’ll learn how they’re being conned by the financial industry and turned against one another - that’s got to be a good thing, even if it makes me look a bit of a twit in the process and the national dish of Spain is eaten sub-par.

Now I’ll be the first to admit your lunch has been an unwitting casualty in this well-intentioned quest but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to ask new RBS boss Ross McEwan if he thinks it’s right that he got a £3.2m “golden hello” when the RBS is sellotaped together with money that comes from everyone else’s taxes. I wonder what he would’ve said? Or whether it’s right that Fred “the shred” (he shredded evidence of impropriety) Goodwin gets to keep his £320k a year pension while disabled people have had their independent living fund scrapped.

And it’s not just RBS mate. Lloyds, Barclays, Citibank and HSBC have all been found guilty of market rigging and not one banker has been jailed.

Trillions of public money lost and stolen and no one prosecuted. Remember in the riots when disaffected youth nicked the odd bottle of water or a stray pair of trainers? Criminal, I agree. 1800 years worth of sentences were meted out in special courts, to make an example. Some crime doesn’t pay, but some crime definitely does. My school mate Leigh Pickett, a fireman is being told that he and his colleagues won’t be able to collect their pension until five years later than agreed, five more years of backbreaking, flame engulfed labour – why? Because of austerity.
Put simply Jo, the banks took the money, the people paid the price.

I was there to ask a few questions to the guilty parties, now I know that’s not you, you’re just a bloke trying to make a crust and evidently you like that crust warm - but again, it wasn’t me who locked the RBS, I just asked a few difficult questions and the place went nuts. The people that have inconvenienced homeowners, pensioners, the disabled and ordinary working Brits are the same ones who inconvenienced you that lunchtime. They’ve got a lot to hide, so they locked the doors. You said my “agro demeanor” reminded you of school. Your letter reminded me of school too, when the teacher would say, “because Russell’s been naughty, the whole class has to stay behind”.

I’d never knowingly keep a workingman from his dinner, it’s unacceptable and I do owe you an apology for being lairy.

So Jo, get in touch, I owe you an apology and I’d like to take you for a hot paella to make up for the one that went cold – though you could say that was actually the fault of the shady shysters who nicked the wedge and locked you out, I’d rather err on the side of caution. When I make a mistake I like to apolgise and put it right. Hopefully your bosses will do the same to the people of Britain.

[tomtom]

Ps - no views - just public service broadcasting.

[danm]

He's annoying as fuck, but what makes it worse is that he occasionally opens up the debate about things which literally never would make the airwaves. Like really important stuff. We need a celebrity arsehole to get us airtime on shit which is super important. We're fucked, basically.

[dave]

Surely the bloke could have eaten his paella outside - urban living etc.

[moose]

Perhaps I've got too mellow my old age (a mind so open it's leaking through my ears), but I find Russell Brand quite likeable these days, and definitely more a source of good than harm.  I used to view him as a more meretricious Nathan Barley but now I feel there is a substance behind the stylings.  Maybe his reach outweighs his worth, but I feel he genuinely cares and has good intentions.  There are people far more deserving of disapprobation anyway, they just have the sense to keep quiet.

[DaveC]

Brand is a bit of a twunt but as others have said, he is raising issues that most in the media won't raise. The open letter writer is just a pretentious twunt without the redeeming features. Brand's reply leaves his rather silly missive looking what it in fact is, rather silly.

[lagerstarfish]

Brand is a distraction paid for by the newts

as long as he gets media attention a big chunk of whiny people think that their views are being represented and so don't take any further steps themselves

cunning

[slackline]

Russell Brand : End the Drugs War

[Oldmanmatt]

Brand is a bit of a twunt but as others have said, he is raising issues that most in the media won't raise. The open letter writer is just a pretentious twunt without the redeeming features. Brand's reply leaves his rather silly missive looking what it in fact is, rather silly.

Yep.


Overall, he is at least bringing politics back into the lives of many, who were otherwise disinterested.

And, these TV/media debates are pointless if not confrontational. Can you imagine an hour of "Well, basically I agree with 90% of what the other party say, but I'm going to make a huge deal of the few minor points on which we differ"....
With the added rider that the existing bunch of clones, care little about the well being of anything other than their retirement plan.

[hstmoore]

as long as he gets media attention a big chunk of whiny people think that their views are being represented and so don't take any further steps themselves

cunning

and he promotes not voting...

[hamsforlegs]

Perhaps I've got too mellow my old age (a mind so open it's leaking through my ears), but I find Russell Brand quite likeable these days, and definitely more a source of good than harm.

I tend to agree with this. Is he a dick? Surely. He's a narcissistic, overpaid celebrity with a tendency to addiction, aggression and excess. In terms of his impact on the world, he's just a very gentle and silly satirist. The fact that so many people seem to be genuinely stirred by him (either fans or detractors) says more about the issues he's tackling than about him.

[Durbs]

Don't particularly like him - as people have said, on the plus side at least he's getting people talking about these issues.

Where it all falls down as both his encouraging people not to vote, which essentially is boycotting any hope of change, and he doesn't actually provide any possible answers. Complaining about the status quo, but not offering up a way of overturning it. Without that, it's just hot air really.

Which is a shame.

There was a Huff Post today I think saying basically "Russell, you're pretty much spouting the Green Party's policies - get behind them", which IMHO would actually be a massive plus. Not that i think they'd win, but if all his fans actually voted (and voted for a non-main, non-UKIP party), you would actually get some tangible change.