Russell Brand triumphs over Jeremy Paxman

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Russell Brand of all people makes a scathing attack on the political status quo and makes Paxman look like a petulant child in the process.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YR4CseY9pk[/youtube]

He continues to surprise and delight me, whilst at the same time do really stupid things. Thank you for posting Thomas else I would have missed that.

I like Brand, against all odds. He makes me smile.

I don't think Paxman came out of that too badly. Initially he might have been pushing the "you don't vote" stuff a bit much, but later he was being a fairly friendly interviewer.

I find Brand's mannerisms irritating, but I think the issues he identifies- inequality and climate change- are important. I don't see any future in overthrowing democracy. If a revolution has popular support, then a political party can be elected that would enact the goals of the revolution.

You obviously don't get the format of the show, or much about Paxman.

He did exactly what he supposed to do which is play devil's advocate, as it is not a program where you can get away without being questioned.

I think calling Paxman a petulant child is a tad ironic given Brand's history.

I really dislike this false dichotomy. Brand missed a trick by not pointing out that it is one.

Parliamentarianism isn't the be all and end all of democracy. When you have a situation that fewer and fewer people are voting (nearly always less than half) the case of the advocates of the parliamentary democratic monopoly is looking ever more precarious. There is more than one form of democracy. The other, direct democracy, which i suspect Brand is advocating, is where all citizens have a actual influence in the decision making process. Arguably it is more democratic than the conventional election system.

In UK, Voter turnout has actually risen since 2001, it was at 60% and 2010 was at 65%. 2001 was big dip though and this was June before 9/11. In 1997 it was at 71% and had been in the 70-80s since 1945.

That shows where there are issues to vote on people turn out to vote.

Having said that I don't think it will increase too much next time.

Generally speaking there lukewarm feeling about all the main parties.

Sometimes abstaining can be tactical. I deliberately didn't vote in the London Mayoral. I was OK with Boris coming back in for one more term (it keeps him out of parliament), given the alternatives, but didn't want to vote for anyone.

Wow, thanks for posting that. I was impressed by Brand and what he is saying. He seems like a younger, more energetic and passionate Michael Moore.

He is right in the reasons for not voting. I have never voted in a general election because I don't feel doing so is going to make a difference.

Direct democracy has obvious practical issues. Getting 45 million people to vote on every issue? Most of whom will not have the foggiest? Many of whom couldn't actually care? Most people don't have time to research issues. Employing a small number of people to actually understand what is going on seems like a better idea. Now admittedly lots of MPs don't actually understand issues (most notably: drugs policy- hello Jacqui Smith), but think how much worse it would be if people in full time employment were asked to understand delicate foreign policy matters.

Then we have the tyranny of the majority. Imagine if a vote was done on, for example, whether all Muslims should be deported to Pakistan. If this vote was following a terrorist attack, it's possible a majority would pass it. A majority might also pass cutting disability welfare payments and increasing the wages of soliders, for example.

There's good reason why we don't have direct democracy.

the key is decentralisation and an emphasis on community politics.

I support half-direct democracy as is the case in Switzerland. Might need a bit of tweaking.

I don't think you'd like the results of direct democracy very much. Remember 6 December 1992 and especially 4 March 2001.

I think if we stopped encouraging the general population to focus on media trivia issues, celebrity crap and such, they might have time to investigate the issues that really make a difference in their lives. We could encourage communal discussions about politics instead of maintaining this underlying tendency to treat politics as taboo and something ordinary people don't understand.

If we took the time debate more, we would probably find ordinary people do understand delicate issues, and that there often isn't a simple solution. I think the mainstream public would not be reactionary in the face of sudden events and vote according to a knee jerk mentality.

The tail does not wag the dog.

But who is the dog and who is the tail? The media has more influence that you think.

It has less than you think.

If we encouraged people to start voting on things rather than reading about celebrities, they would immediately vote to return to the status quo.

For the most part, the media publishes what people want to read. If it didn't, they'd go out of business as they lost customers and ad revenue.

I think theres a neurological component at work here.

Perhaps its difficult for us to understand because we autistics have a certain immunity to the banality of the celebrity circuit.