Not-voting is not revolutionary

  

Elections are looming and the "don't vote" brigade are once again out in force. I don't actually have anything against the concept of not voting, the people who annoy me are the ones who go around actively propagandising for other people to not-vote, as if they're participating in some kind of heroic anti-establishment revolution.

Not-voting isn't wrong in itself

Back in 2013 a friend of mine received their local election postal ballot but found that the only two candidates were a Tory (part of the coalition government they despised) and a Lib-Dem (part of the coalition government that they despised). I think their choice to tear the ballot paper into little pieces and send them off in the return envelope was perfectly justifiable.

The problem I have is with people who utter sub-Brandian platitudes like "if only everyone stopped voting then ..." because the huge glaring fault with this kind of assertion is that it's an exercise in extremely juvenile wishful thinking.

It's profoundly annoying that so many people keep repeating this kind of ludicrous appeal for everyone to "stop voting" based on the idea that revolutionary political change can be achieved through a vague hope that the powers that be will suddenly take notice if we all begin protesting against them by ... err ... doing nothing.

The PCC elections

A look at the results of the utterly farcical 2012 PCC elections in England demonstrate why this idle wish for mass non-participation doesn't have a hope of succeeding.

The average turnout for these ludicrous elections across the whole of England was just 15%, yet not a single one of the "winning" candidates refused to take up their cushy £65-£95,000 per year salaries because of their appalling lack of a democratic mandate. Several of the PCCs actually took up their positions with the backing of less than 5% of the eligible electorate in their constituencies!

The 2012 PCC elections were absolute proof that a lack of mandate from over 95% of the electorate still wasn't enough to prevent politicians from taking up their jobs. This leaves us with the question of how anyone thinks that wishfully appealing for everyone to just stop voting could ever result in revolutionary social change?

Even in the extraordinarily unlikely even that 99% of people refused to vote, it's still certain that the politicians themselves and their inner-circles of supporters would just cast a few dozen votes to "win" the election for themselves.

Not-voting is not revolutionary

There's nothing clever, or contrarian, or heroic about telling other people not to vote as if it's a revolutionary thing to do. It's a stupid stance that is literally indistinguishable from outright apathy when the voting statistics are compiled. If you want to make yourself indistinguishable from the hopelessly apathetic lumpenproletariat in the electoral statistics that's fine by me, but don't think that there's anything clever or revolutionary about telling other people to do it. There isn't.

Revolutionary social change certainly doesn't come about by taking the exact same non-action as the hopelessly apathetic. It comes about through direct action.

Social progress has been achieved when people have come together in solidarity to demand change from the powerful, when people educate themselves and educate each other, and when they cause enough economic disruption to cause the powerful and wealthy to give in to some of their demands (one of the best ways to frighten the wealthy and powerful is by threatening to hit them in the pocket).

Demographics

A look at the voter demographics from the 2015 General Election reveals a lot of interesting information about those who did and didn't vote. Old people are an awful lot more likely to vote Tory than young people, and they're also an awful lot more likely to actually vote too. The very wealthy are an awful lot more likely to vote than the very poor, and an awful lot more likely to actually vote Tory too.

Given these demographic trends is it any wonder that we ended up getting stuck with a Tory government that endlessly panders to the very wealthy and shields pensioners from the most brutal austerity measures, while they deliberately load the burden of their economic attacks on the poor, the young and the disabled?

If just a small fraction of the 35% of people who didn't bother to vote at all (either through apathy or disillusionment with the system) had've voted for anyone but the Tories, this extremely malicious and desperately incompetent government would never have achieved a majority of MPs, and they would never have been able to continue their project of tearing up long-standing British values and turning the UK into one of the most right-wing authoritarian state in the developed world.

Voting obviously isn't the "be all and end all" of politics

I'm entirely sceptical that revolutionary political change can be achieved through voting alone. Politics is about far more than scrawling a mark on a piece of paper every few years and then sitting back and waiting for the next paper scrawling exercise. The best way to effect political change is undoubtedly to demand it outside of the ballot box. However I do believe that voting is important because votes do determine who the custodians of political power are while progressive change is being demanded from those who are determined to achieve it.

The system is a mess, but not-voting won't fix it

The current system in the UK is an absolute disgrace, I know that this is the case because I spend so much of my time trying to expose the appalling malice, incompetence and corruption that's going on. However typing platitudinous "if only everyone would stop voting ..." type comments on political threads is definitely not the way to resolve the appalling problems we face, because it's absolutely clear that under the system we have, not-voting simply transfers even more political power to those who do vote.

Under the ludicrously unrepresentative Westminster voting system we suffer from, the sheer number of non-voters meant that the Tory party only needed 24% of the registered electorate to vote for them in order to gain a majority government.

As far as I'm concerned, anyone who thinks that simply not-voting is the route to revolutionary political change is even more delusional than the person who thinks that sticking a bit of paper in a box every few years is an adequate level of political engagement. 

Conclusion

If we want serious political change we need to educate ourselves, articulate it, demand it, fight for it.

Sticking a bit of paper in a box every few years is extremely unlikely to lead to revolutionary change, but it can help to ensure that things aren't quite as bad as they could be, while we build solidarity and take the direct action that is needed to promote the actual changes that we want to see.

If anyone thinks I'm wrong about not-voting doing nothing more than transferring more political power to those who do vote, I'd really like to see someone attempt to explain the exact mechanism by which an individual not-voting supposedly leads to revolutionary political change.

Make sure you are registered to vote

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OR

So where do ideas come from?

I'm going to present another article to you in the form of a riposte to something someone said on my Facebook page. If this writing style annoys you I do apologise, but I do find that my ideas often flow much more freely when I'm replying to something, than if I'm building up something of my own from scratch.

I reckon that this reply contains some ideas (some of them my own, but most of them other people's) that might be worth sharing. I suppose it's up to you whether you consider them worth sharing or not. Anyhow, if you like any of them, you can share them, keep them, reuse them, even pass them off as your own for all I care.

The comment in question was one of the very many critical comments about Russell Brand that always appear whenever I mention him. Although it was, in my opinion, an unnecessarily harsh criticism, it was certainly a good deal more thought provoking that the "He's an utter cock who makes me so furious I can barely type a coherent sentence" type diatribes, that for some reason are written almost exclusively by men.

Whatever it is that makes so many people actually take the time and effort to type such vitriol about him, they come across as being so disproportionately angry that I can't help imagining that (for whatever reason) they have built some kind of totemic hate figure in their minds that has the face and mannerisms of Russell Brand.

This is the comment:

"When [Brand] stops pretending his ideas are actually his own I might give him a second thought."

This is my reply:

I wonder how many of your ideas are entirely your own? And how many you have taken from other sources such as your parents, your teachers when you were at school, books, television, magazines, right-wing propaganda sheets, or other people you've met? 

I know it takes me a lot of hard work to think of completely new ideas, and even then I often find that my 'brilliant new insight' has has actually been thought of and written down before (on many occasions by someone living on the other side of the planet!).

When I do have a really novel insight, that apparently nobody has thought of before, it almost always comes from the synthesis of two or more separate ideas that originated with other people. Are these synthetic ideas and concepts illegitimate? Can I claim them as my own, or would to do so be a fraud as heinous as the one for which you have mentally excommunicated Russell Brand?

If it is a sham for us to build our ideas upon the work of others, or to cumulatively develop new ideas through conversation and debate, where do we draw the line?

If the reuse or repetition of other people's ideas are excluded as being outrageously deceitful or dishonest, I reckon we'd have to row back quite far wouldn't we? I mean all of human knowledge is built upon the recycling of other people's ideas really isn't it?

If the reuse of other people's ideas is prohibited, I reckon we'd have to go back to something as fundamental as"I think therefore I am" in order to define our own existence without accepting other people's ideas and reusing them as our own. But then, if we're being proprietary about who ideas actually belong to, "I think therefore I am" must belong to Rene Descartes (unless someone else thought of it before him of course), so in order to avoid committing the deceitful and excommunicable offense of using ideas that originated with other people, we'd all each have to define our own unique philosophical foundation stone on which to build our wordviews from scratch upon, which sounds a tad time consuming and unrealistic to me.

I'm definitely not proprietary about my own ideas. That's why I give all my stuff away on the Pay as You Feel principle, and encourage others to share my work and quote me as freely as they like. The more people who see some use in my ideas and borrow them for themselves the better as far as I'm concerned. But I'm still not going to pretend that these ideas don't take time and effort to develop and refine into something that is actually worth sharing, or that all of them are uniquely my own.  

I know that I have to work really hard so that I can continue to provide alternative perspectives in my writing, but I'm never going to have the arrogance and lack of humility to pretend that all of these ideas are entirely my own work. My ideas are built upon a foundation of knowledge upon knowledge upon knowledge, all of which has been been acquired, modified, synthesised and shared by billions of other people throughout all of recorded history and backwards further through time into the depths of ancient pre-history, before it ever got to me.  

Maybe brilliant and unique insights flow like a never ending river through your mind? (I'm sure we'd all be very jealous, unlike you of course)

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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What can we learn from Russell Brand's dalliance with the Labour Party?

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What did we learn from Russell Brand's dalliance with mainstream party politics?

I'd like to begin this post by saying that I used to dislike Russell Brand rather intensely, but that he has gradually won me over into thinking that he's actually becoming a decent kind of bloke who wants to do the right things, but just isn't sure how to.

I warmed to him a bit when I noticed his early forays into talking about politics, power and other important issues because I thought it looked like he was trying to do some growing up, but the moment he fully won me over was when he sued the S*n for writing lies about his personal life, then gave his compensation to the Hillsborough Justice Campaign. 

Anyone who is going to expose Rupert Murdoch's minions as liars and then give their compensation money to the victims of one of the Murdoch Empire's most sickening hate campaigns can't be all bad can they?

Rejectionism

I'm not going to say much about Russell Brand's rejectionist views (that were blasted into mainstream public conscience as a result of his notorious 'no point in voting' interview with Jeremy Paxman) because I wrote an article about it at the time (you can read that here if you want).

While I agree with Russell Brand's basic premise that voting is a very very small party of civic engagement, and that direct action is a much more powerful tool for achieving progressive social reform, I feel that his early efforts to engage people in alternative politics have been severely counter-productive. 

I'm not saying that everything he says is wrong, far from it, he raises numerable interesting points and his analysis is sometimes exceptional. It's just that he's let himself down really badly by presenting a confused message to his audience, and worse than that, allowing himself to become enticed by party politics in the excitement of a General Election.

The real absurdity of his switch from rejectionism to the blanket endorsement of a political party stems from the fact that when he began deciding that certain politicians within the system were actually worth a vote, the deadline to register to vote for them had long since passed.

I'm not sure whether Brand himself had actually bothered to register to vote (which would have been an odd thing for someone who had advocated not voting to do), but I'm sure that he did nothing to encourage his audience to register as the voter registration deadline approached. I'm also sure that many of his fans would have been rendered incapable of actually doing as he was urging them, even if they'd wanted to, because they hadn't bothered to register to vote.

Caroline Lucas

I can fully understand why Russell Brand decided to ease his rejectionist stance to in order to endorse Caroline Lucas as the candidate for Brighton Pavillion, because she is amazing.

Caroline Lucas has achieved far more as a lone Green Party MP in a hostile Westminster environment in just five years than most of the career politicians from the three establishment parties will achieve in their whole taxpayer funded lives on the green benches. She is a brilliant champion of progressive politics and an inspirational hard worker to boot. I can fully understand making an exception to support one lone, tirelessly hard working, radical MP in a parliament rammed full of indolent, expenses fiddling, self-serving careerists.

Nobody is going to quibble if an exception is made for such a remarkable politician. The problem though is that once you've started making exceptions to your rules, more exceptions can be found, and more exceptions can be demanded of you.

Ed Miliband 

It is easy to understand that once Russell Brand made it clear that his rejectionist stance was flexible, the pressure was on him to endorse other party politicians too.

The outrages inflicted by the Tory Party over the last five years are far too innumerable to detail but I'll provide a non-exhaustive list of links to illustrate the sheer scale of it (Secret Courts, discrimination against British families, the Gagging Law, privatising the profits and nationalising the losses, supporting the TTIP corporate power grab, the 'bungled' investigation into the Westminster paedophilia ring, Fracking conflicts of interest, The Liam Fox-Adam Werritty scandal, "Bedroom Tax", the ideological vandalism of the education system, wage repression, aspiration tax, sanctions league tables, Eric Pickles spending half a million quid on luxury limos, David Cameron's repeated lies, the NHS carve-up, stuffing the unelected House of Lords with Tory party donors, letting wealthy Tory party donors actually write legislation for them, David Cameron hiring a criminal like Andy Coulson as his adviser, the unlawful treatment of the mentally ill, the introduction of huge charges to bring unfair dismissal cases, the Tory war on justice, unlawful forced labour schemes, shocking abuses of parliamentary process, the Peter Cruddas scandal, countless multi-million pound DWP fuckups, and the demonstrable failure of austerity economics). It's no wonder that Russell Brand wanted to see the back of them, because who on earth wouldn't if they actually knew anything about all of that?

The lesser of two evils

The whole problem with backing the Labour Party, as most progressives already know, is that the party has only been offering a slightly watered down version of the same Thatcherite agenda as the Tories since the 1990s. There's no grand vision, no inspirational progressive agenda, just a strategically inept political platform of austerity-lite, which commits the cardinal error of accepting the premise of the opposing party (that the austerity con is even necessary in the first place) and thus allows them complete freedom to frame the spectrum of debate.

Not only is the Labour Party the lesser of two evils in reality when compared to the Tory Party, but by adopting austerity-lite as their policy platform they actually used 'but we're the lesser of two evils' as their 2015 election strategy!

How on earth the Labour Party leadership concluded that 'but we're the lesser of two evils' would play better with the electorate than the presentation of a clearly explained and evidence based counter narrative is absolutely beyond me. If they are that extraordinarily inept at running an election campaign, what good could they possibly be at actually running the country?

All in all, I think that pretty much everyone can agree that people continually voting for 'the lesser of two evils' is what has allowed Labour and the Tories to hold a duopoly on power that has now lasted so long that both parties have become hopelessly complacent, riddled with self-serving career politicians and virtually impervious to public opinion.

A demonstration of exactly how not to do politics

In my view, deciding to engage with a mainstream political party just days before a General Election is a demonstration of exactly how not to engage in party politics.

Party politics isn't like a shop that you visit every five years in order to buy a product, only making your mind up about which of them to buy in the very moment before you make your purchase. Politics is all about engagement, not about picking a side at the last minute and hoping that it wins.

Perhaps things would have been very different if, instead of advising his followers to actively disengage from party politics, Russell Brand had advised his followers to join the Labour Party en masse in order to work from within to turn it into a more left-libertarian and more progressive party. Then perhaps he could have personally worked with their communication team to help them craft a progressive message of hope, rather than a dour and gut wrenchingly dispiriting platform of 'lesser of two evils' austerity-lite.

Who knows if such an audacious plan would have defeated the Tory plan to fearmonger and bamboozle the English public into supporting them? However what we can be sure of is that a plan to flood the Labour Party with tens, or even hundreds of thousands of mainly young, mainly progressive new members would surely have produced a very different, and very much more engaging election campaign from the Labour camp than the pathetic, hopelessly uninspiring drivel that the two Eds served up.

The unprecedented SNP landslide victory in Scotland is a shining example that it is possible to achieve seismic political change with a mass membership political party full of politically motivated people uniting behind a clearly articulated message of hope.

Anyone who thinks that the Labour Party can't rise again from the ashes to become a progressive mass membership party it just wrong. If course it's totally fair to assert that you think it won't happen (in all likelihood you're right, and it won't), but you can't say that the idea is completely impossible, because if enough people want it to happen, and they elect the right leader to allow it to happen, then it will happen.

More harm than good

Russell Brand has a public image problem. Not only has he styled himself as a champion of the kind of liberal progressive politics that drives fear into the hearts of billionaire right-wing authoritarian propaganda barons like Rupert Murdoch (S*n, Times, Sky) and Jonathan Harmsworth (Daily Mail, Metro), he's royally pissed one of them off by suing him and then making a big point of giving his winnings away to some of the other victims of the guy's powerful propaganda empire.

For all his talent at manufacturing a public image that has made him wealthier than most could ever imagine for themselves, he's utterly failed to see how the negative portrayal of himself in the right-wing propaganda sheets is another completely different public persona that is detrimental to any political campaign with which it is aligned.

Let's put it this way. Pretty much everyone who cares deeply about alleviating the suffering of others and stamping out political corruption would have been voting against the Tories anyway. We didn't need Russell Brand to spell it out for us that the Tories have been doing lots of unacceptable things, we damn well knew it already.

Now let's think about the average consumer of right-wing propaganda sheets (people who actually pay for their own indoctrination under the impression that they are 'just buying a newspaper'). Think about the fact that tabloids are written in very simple English, with very simple arguments for very simple people to rote learn and then mindlessly regurgitate in lieu of actually doing the hard work of doing the research and finding things out for themselves.

Think about the kind of person so hopelessly gullible that they still believe in the austerity con. The kind of person who believes that Liam Byrne's ridiculous 'no money left' letter was a serious admission that the UK was 'bankrupt'. The kind of person who thinks that an unflattering picture of a politician eating a sandwich constitutes some kind of magically decisive debate winning counter argument! The kind of person who believes that they've got to vote Tory in order to save themselves from the 'nasty Scottish woman' their propaganda sheet has taught them to fear (even though the very same propaganda sheet was actively endorsing her on the front page of their Scottish edition).

Now think of how this kind of person is going to react when confronted with the 'news' that a person they have been programmed to hate is endorsing the very same political party that their beloved daily propaganda sheet is constantly slagging off. They're quite obviously going to think "fuck that guy, I'm not letting him tell me how to think or what to do".

The idiocy of it is that they're unwilling to listen to one guy because their daily propaganda sheet has ridiculed him, but they're incapable of thinking about the wider picture, and the fact that by voting the other way they're simply doing the bidding of the much more powerful and much more skillfully manipulative guy (be that Rupert Murdoch or Jonathan Harmsworth).

I don't have the evidence to back it up, but I'm fairly convinced that Brand's blanket endorsement of the Labour Party will have cost them multiple times the votes they gained by it, simply because of the "fuck that guy" effect in people too lacking in awareness to think also think "fuck that guy" about Rupert Murdoch and Jonathan Harmsworth every time they see the blatantly biased coverage their daily propaganda sheets are trying to infect their minds with.

Get engaged properly

For me, the lesson from all of this is quite simple. If you're going to engage with the party political system at all, you need to choose a party early and invest some effort in making sure that it is set up to deliver what you want. Just leaving it until the last minute and then picking the 'lesser of two evils' options is completely the wrong way of doing it at the best of times, but when you've built a public reputation as a rejectionist, it comes across as hopeless confusion at best, and deliberate insincerity at worst - both of which can be used by your ideological enemies to ridicule your endorsement and convince people in droves to vote the other way.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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12 things you should know about that piteous open letter to Russell Brand

Have you seen the open letter from Jo (the disgruntled financial sector worker) to Russell Brand that has been described as "hilarious" and "scathing" by the mainstream press? I have, and I have a few points to make about it. 

TL;DR

The letter was far too long - and that's some criticism coming from me, given the length of most of my articles, including this one. I console myself with the fact that when I write my long articles I like to employ internal structure (such as subject headings) in order to break it down a bit into coherent and accessible pieces, rather than just jumbling together a long rambling diatribe.

The only reason that I bothered reading Jo's seemingly endless whining until the end was that after only the first dozen or so paragraphs I knew damn well that there would be plenty of ammunition for one of my "12 things ..." articles, otherwise I would almost certainly have dismissed it as TL;DR (too long; didn't read).

Hilarious? Piteous more like it?

The letter wasn't "hilarious" as claimed by the mainstream press, it wasn't even funny. If endless callbacks to Jo caring more about his cold lunch than society was meant to be a joke, it simply wasn't funny, and it remained unfunny despite the constant repetition.

I found Jo's letter about as hilarious as I found Russell Brand was when he and Jonathan Ross and made those abusive phone calls to an old man who used to be famous. Like 2008 vintage Brand, Jo's letter was was annoyingly self-centred and desperately unfunny.

How backwards can you get things?

In my view Jo got it completely the wrong way around when he said "much as I disagree with most of your politics, I've always rather liked you".

I used to find Russell's narcissism and puerile sense of humour really annoying. It's only since he started to grow up and engage with the political world that I've actually begun to warm to him.

It's incredible that someone could think that Russell Brand was better when he was an unfunny egotistical bully, and has begun resenting him since he started developing a bit of a social conscience.

Perhaps it's a reflection on how established the right-wing greed-is-a-virtue mentality has become that Jo actually liked Brand when he was an unfunny and egocentric money-grabber, but now that he's decided to listen to his social conscience and stand up for people who need a bit of help (like the Focus E15 mums), Jo reacts with fury.

Where does debt actually come from Jo?

The letter defended bankers' bonuses and complained about the concept of "debt" as a problem. It's almost as if our poor, hungry financial sector worker doesn't even understand that the reason that there is so much debt in our economy is that the private banks invent 97% of the currency that we use out of nothing, then rent out these debt backed wealth tokens as interest bearing loans. Hence all the debt - because if nearly all of the money in the economy is invented out of nothing by the banks and rented out to us, then destroyed by the same banks when it is repaid, where exactly does all of the money to pay the interest come from?

The institutions Jo works for and defends (despite claiming not to be a spokesman for them) are to blame for the fact that there is so much debt in the system, yet he's using "debt" as a stick to beat Brand with!

It's no wonder the banks collapsed if financial sector workers aren't even aware that the institutions that they work for are responsible for the ever increasing indebtedness of our economy.

At the person criticisms

Jo's letter is absolutely riddled with at the person criticisms (often refered to in latin as "Ad Hominem" attacks). Repeatedly slamming Brand for the fact that he is a millionaire is an extraordinary stance for someone who is so desperate to defend bankers' bonuses.

That Jo repeatedly resorts to personal attacks rather than developing coherent critiques of Brand's politics suggests that Jo doesn't care about actually winning the argument, he just wants to smear his opponent as much as possible, content in the assumption that most people don't have the critical thinking skills to differentiate between a blunderbuss barrage of personal attacks and a well structured counter-argument.

Rabid capitalists?

  
"You know what would have happened if a rabid capitalist had just turned up unannounced?"

Accusing Russell of being "rabid" by implication is a clear example of an ad hominem attack, but Jo's thought experiment is clearly a load of rubbish too. Lets say a Private Equity Fund billionaire who has made his fortune buying out and asset stripping countless viable businesses and outsourcing all of the jobs to China (someone I'd classify as a rabid capitalist) turns up unannounced in order to invest a few hundred million of his ill-gotten gains in RBS. Do you think he'd be turned away and physically forced out of the door by security for not having an appointment? If somehow he was, do you think the poor sod who decided to set security on such a wealthy potential investor would remain in his job for long?

Alternatively we could imagine our Private Equity Fund billionaire kicking up a stink in the lobby in front of a load of TV cameras, but it would be up to Jo to explain why such a ridiculously implausible thing might happen.

The issue clearly isn't that Brand had no appointment as Jo tries to pretend, it's that he was kicking up a fuss.

The "good deal for the taxpayer" argument!

Jo's letter makes the absurd argument that the RBS bailout was a good deal for the taxpayer. Since RBS was bailed out to the tune of £46 billion, the losses at the bank have reached, erm ... £46 billion.

It's almost as if all that public cash was poured into a black hole of debt never to be recovered. As all of this cash has been squandered RBS has continued handing out hundreds of millions per year in bonuses, because it apparently takes high calibre, hard-working people to squander £46 billion in free money from the taxpayer.

Jo spends most of his letter whining piteously, which is annoying but not necessarily dishonest, but this "good deal for the taxpayer" bit is either a display of being stunningly misinformed about the financial sector he works in, or it is derived from downright dishonesty.

Selectiveness

Defending bankers' bonuses at bailed out banks could be considered a brave stance considering the understandable amount of public anger, but cast alongside Jo's pitiful refusal to address stuff like the Libor and Forex rigging frauds and the PPI insurance fraud ("I do not speak for RBS, so cannot say anything about the recent FX trading scandal or PPI or any of that shit"), it's clearly spectacularly cowardly and self-interested stuff.

If he's going to use the "I cannot say anything" excuse in regards to several multi-billion pound frauds, it's bizarrely hypocritical to extensively defend other aspects of RBS business practices.

Jailing corrupt bankers makes more sense than just confiscating their bonuses

Claiming that bankers' not getting paid their bonuses for having committed crimes is sufficient punishment an absurd argument. It's like saying that muggers and armed robbers should be allowed to get off with their crimes, as long as they just pay back the money they stole. There should be an awful lot of bankers in jail in the UK and US after the global financial sector insolvency crisis, money laundering for Mexican drugs cartels, Libor, Forex and PPI, but the only big one who got locked up was Bernie Madoff, and we all know why ... he stole from the rich.

Tax-dodging

Jo makes a number of claims about the way the Mayfair film production company has benefited from tax-loopholes in order to raise funding for films with which Russell Brand is associated. There may be some legitimacy in these claims, but they're a bit bloody rich coming from someone who so desperately defends RBS, which is a company that has been caught instructing businesses not to pay their tax and avoided £500 million in tax, even after they were bailed out by the taxpayer.

"Return of the Fucking Jedi"
   
This is one of the most bizarre arguments I've ever seen: "Return Of The Jedi has never, on paper, made a profit. Return Of The fucking Jedi, Russell. As an actor, and even more so as the producer of a (officially) loss-making film, you've taken part in that, you've benefited from it.". The thing that makes this ridiculous argument so especially weak is that we all know that Jo would undoubtedly defend himself if we were to use the same ludicrous debating tactic with claims that HSBC (a bank he doesn't work for) made money from laundering money for Mexican drugs cartels and terrorist organisations, but because Jo is part of the financial sector, he's benefited from it, and that Jo must be a Mexican drug lord and Islamist terrorist by default.

Personal space

Of all of the issues in Jo's seemingly endless diatribe, the claim that Russell Brand aggressively invaded his personal body space seems to me to be by far the most serious.

Apparently this is the film footage of the incident. From what I can see Russell does get a bit close to the guy, but the fact that Russell smiles broadly at several points and the way that he touches him on the arm with his right hand imply an overly-friendly demeanor, not the spectacularly aggressive confrontation described in Jo's letter.

As someone who has suffered social anxiety and personal body space issues, I can see how it is potentially possible to misread situations as a lot more aggressive or critical than they actually are, but Jo's claim that Russell's nose was "two inches" from his face is clearly an under-estimate, the descriptions of the situation as "pretty fucking aggressive" and "an aggressive invasion of personal space" are clearly exaggerations, and the comparison to "primates squaring off for a fight" outright hyperbole.

Conclusion

The only reason that this ridiculous letter got all over the press at all is that Russell Brand is "clickbait". The newspapers know that by publishing this ridiculous letter they'll get a load of clicks on their websites, and a boost in their online advertising revenues.

Admittedly the reason I've published this riposte to the letter is that Russell Brand is "clickbait", however at least I can console myself with the facts that:

A. Unlike the mainstream press I've been honest enough to admit that I've used "clickbait" in order to get people to read this article.

B. I won't be making any revenue from ad clicks because I don't put any ads on my website. The only way this article could make any money whatever for me is if people have seen it as worthwhile enough to make a small donation after reading it (the "pay as you feel" principle).

C. Using "clickbait" probably isn't so bad if the readers are drawn into reading an article that is ostensibly about Russell Brand, but actually contains a lot of information on important issues such as financial sector corruption, debt backed fiat money creation and the spectacular failure of the RBS bailout, whilst also exposing some appalling debating tactics for the reader to try to avoid in future.

 Another Angry Voice  is a not-for-profit page which generates absolutely no revenue from advertising and accepts no money from corporate or political interests. The only sources of income for  Another Angry Voice  are small donations from people who see some value in my work. If you appreciate my efforts and you could afford to make a donation, it would be massively appreciated.

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Why you should vote

In the weeks before the 2014 European and Local elections I did a lot of coverage in order to explain why it is a good idea to vote alternative, and to examine the policies of certain political parties in greater detail than the mainstream media care to.

One of the most commonly recurring comments has been the "why bother, they're all the same" expositions of apathy. Some people even made outright appeals to voter apathy with "Everyone should just stop voting" type comments (possibly inspired by Russell Brand).

In this article I'll explain why voting is important (without any platitudinous "you owe it to your ancestors" moralistic appeals) and explain why apathy is such a poor way of expressing discontent with the political system.

OK, I admit it, the voting system is rubbish

I believe that marking a piece of paper every five years or so for some rosette wearing politician to supposedly represent your interests from then until the next paper marking ceremony is an appallingly unrepresentative system, and that proper democracy should involve a great deal more citizen participation. If politicians had to actually consult the electorate (via local or national referendums) on the major decisions they take, there's no way they could get away with doing so many things that the majority of the public strongly oppose.

The voting system used in Westminster elections is particularly outdated and unrepresentative, and the vast number of "safe seats" (created by the lack of proportionality) has led to ever increasing levels of tactical voting (voting for a party you don't even like in order to keep out an even worse party) and outright political apathy.

However, realising that the current political system is flawed, unrepresentative and apathy inducing is no excuse for not voting. The system may be rubbish, but it's the only system we've got right now, so the key is to vote intelligently in order to change it from within.

Your options

When it comes to voting, you've got three options.

You can vote for the political establishment and support parties that have a vested interest in keeping the system pretty much exactly the way it is, because it keeps returning them to political power. The three parties that have governed the UK for the last 35 years have used this power to relentlessly push the Thatcherite ideology of neoliberalism, and they've sold off the national silver at bargain basement prices, despite the fact that the majority of the public would rather their essential infrastructure and services were publicly owned and run on a not-for-profit basis.

Voting for the establishment parties is essentially saying "more of the same please" to the political classes.

Voting alternative is seen as risky, especially in Westminster elections, because you might end up "splitting the vote" and letting one of the establishment parties that you strongly dislike get into power. This "splitting the vote" excuse doesn't wash in the European elections because they are conducted on a more modern proportional representation system, meaning that every vote counts, and minor parties are in with a good shout of actually getting MEPs elected. If you want to see real change then it is best to vote for a minor party that a. has a realistic chance of getting enough of the vote to return some MEPs and b. has a manifesto commitment to enact reform the voting system. 

Voting for an alternative party is essentially saying "I'm sick of this, I want change" to the political classes.

Not voting at all simply means that you're handing more political power to those that do choose to vote. Some people seem to think that by not voting at all they are expressing dissent, but it's simply not the case. Look at the 2012 PCC election farce. The turnout for this ludicrous election was the lowest in British electoral history, with 85% of the public not bothering to vote. In 8 of the regions the winning candidate ended up with votes from less than 5% of the eligible public! Do you think that any of them cared that 95%+ didn't bother to vote for them and then refused to take up their lucrative taxpayer funded jobs out of principle? Of course they didn't. Even if we upped the level of apathy so that everyone stayed at home, these people would still just vote for themselves, and still take up their jobs, without giving the slightest damn about their lack of mandate.

Not voting at all is essentially saying "I don't even care, I'll let other people decide for me" to the political classes.

Voting alternativeIn my view the only sensible option for people who are dissatisfied with the system is to try to change the system from within.

Put it this way, in 2010 David Cameron's Tory party received 23.5% of the eligible vote, yet 35% of people didn't even vote at all! The votes of less than a quarter of the public resulted in a shiny faced proven liar with no real world experience and appalling leadership skills becoming our Prime Minister, yet more than a third of people stayed at home!

If staying at home and not voting actually changed anything, then that 35% would have been the winner and the Prime Minister would have been decided in the most apathetic manner possible - perhaps the Queen picks a random National Insurance number out of a gigantic velvet bag and appoints that person Prime Minister (probably a better system than the one we've got). But that's not the way the system works, so instead we get a Prime Minister that 76.5% of the public didn't even want.

There are an awful lot of political tribalists who relentlessly vote for the same political parties. Put a red rosette on a donkey and there are former industrial heartlands that will vote it into power with a stonking great majority, and even if David Cameron killed, dismembered and ate a baby live on television, there are millions of habitual Tory voters who would still continue voting Tory. It's impossible to say exactly how many political tribalists there are, but I'd estimate around 15% each for the Tory party and Labour.

If a significant proportion of people who didn't bother to vote last time around decided to vote alternative, and people stopped voting tactically and voted for a party that they actually endorse, the establishment parties would probably still win the majority of seats because of the way they have rigged the system in their favour for the last hundred years, but alternative parties would gain a lot of seats and send a powerful shockwave through the establishment.

Why you should vote alternative in the European election

As I mentioned before, the European elections are conducted on a more modern proportional voting system, meaning there are no "safe seats", no "wasted votes" and no sane reason for voting tactically. If enough people in a region vote for a party, that party will end up with an MEP.

Another very good reason to vote in the European election is the appallingly low turnouts which have never exceeded 50%. In 2009 the turnout was just 34%. The fact that around two thirds of people won't bother to vote in this election has the effect of doubling the voting power of those who do. Not only do you get to vote for the party you actually like, your voting power is doubled too.

It is worth noting that the people of Wales and Scotland have their own national assemblies, which are elected on a proportional basis, but the people of England don't. If you live in England, the European elections are your only chance to vote under a fair electoral system.

Conclusion

The outdated and unrepresentative voting system used in Westminster elections is hopelessly unfair. The vast majority of people end up being represented by a politician they didn't even vote for. There isn't a single constituency in the whole of the UK where more than 50% of the electorate actually voted for the MP that supposedly represents their interests. Under such an unrepresentative system it is understandable that many people vote tactically (for parties they don't even like), and millions just give up hope and don't even bother to even vote at all.

The Westminster system badly needs to be reformed. My suggestions would be:

• Larger constituences with proportionality - This would get rid of all the safe seats, wasted votes and tactical voting rubbish, and it would provide people with a selection of local MPs, so that they can contact them all and judge which ones actually listen to their views and represent their interests, and then vote accordingly the next time around.

• Positive and negative voting - This would allow people to vote for the parties they actually like, and against the parties they hate.

• None of the above - A "none of the above" option would allow people to actively express their discontent with all of the candidates, rather than simply staying at home and not voting, which is easily mistakable for pure apathy.

• Local and national referendums - This would give people the chance to vote on the issues that concern them, rather than having that power outsourced to the local MP that in all probability, they didn't even vote for.

The European elections are different, and as far as I'm concerned, you've got no excuse for not getting out to vote for the party that best represents your political views (unless they are a really tiny fringe element without a chance of even picking up a few thousand votes). If you live in England and you don't bother to vote in the European elections, you're wasting the best opportunity you've got to vote for a party that you actually approve of.

 Another Angry Voice  is a not-for-profit page which generates absolutely no revenue from advertising and accepts no money from corporate or political interests. The only source of revenue for  Another Angry Voice  is the  PayPal  donations box (which can be found in the right hand column, fairly near the top of the page). If you could afford to make a donation to help keep this site going, it would be massively appreciated.
  

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