Ok, I guess I have a soft spot for the angry revolutionary. Bob Dylan made a lot of good points in his youth. Although one of my enduring memories was Dylan at the Live-Aid concert in the 80’s saying that maybe we could just take a million or so and give it to the American farmers. Yep, I thought, maybe you could just take a million or so and add it to the total to do just that. Or maybe you should have organised a concert for the farmers before we even began to help Africa.

Of course, relative deprivation is a real thing and farmers in the USA killing themselves because their farms are failing is just as tragic as people starving to death in Africa. It’s all to do with systems that fail to allow people to do what they can in order to survive.

I reposted the Russell Brand interview on my Facebook page – as did a lot of people. But I added this comment: “Don’t have a problem with Russell Brand. He is advocating a better system. But it worries me that too many people will watch this, say yeah, I won’t vote either. Then do absolutely nothing else.”

By the time several people had joined in my “condemnation” of Russell Brand, I started to feel that maybe I was a little too harsh. After all, I agreed with much of what he said.

And then, I suddenly realised that he just reminded me too much of the sixties. “Yeah, we’re not gonna listen to the man. The Establishment is so yesterday.”

Or as Joni Mitchell sang:

“We are stardust.
We are golden.
And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.

By the time we got to Woodstock,
We were half a million strong
And Everywhere there was song and celebration.

And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky,
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation”

We’re going to have a revolution says Russell. And we’re not going to vote, because voting offers us nothing. We’re an underclass.

Yep, I’ve become too old. Heard this before. The people of the 60’s – the half a million strong of Joni’s song – grew up and elected Thatcher and Reagan. Perhaps, there were a few passionate souls like Russell who didn’t vote for them. Who didn’t, in fact, vote at all in those elections. Good on them. By not voting against Thatcher and Reagan they created a whole underclass of people like Russell Brand who were prepared to tell everyone how little voting mattered. They sure showed all those people who sacrificed so much to get the vote that it just wasn’t worth it.

Better to wait for the “revolution”. You know the one that’s gonna change everything. Not getting involved in politics, coz politics sux.

Yeah, Dylan said it best when he said that he was just pointing out what was wrong – he didn’t have the answers. The trouble with the Russell Brand interview was that – in spite of all the “He really showed them” comments – I can’t picture any of the politicians he criticised will feel that it’s a problem if he discourages the people who agree with him from voting.

Or perhaps, The Skyhooks should have the last word.

Whatever happened to the revolution
We all got stoned and it drifted away
Whatever happened to the revolution
I think it died just yesterday