(not satire?)
Here’s part of my interview with comedian Jolyon Rubinstein (The Revolution Will Be Televised), who has just completed a documentary to be shown tomorrow on BBC 3 – An Idiot’s Guide To Politics – about why the Facebook generation is so disengaged from politics:
Tom Pride: Is it true that David Cameron refused to meet you during the making of your documentary? If so, what reason did he give? Did any other MPs refuse to meet you?
Jolyon Rubinstien: All three leaders of the main political parties declined our invitations to sit down for interviews. Cameron’s office flirted with us for a while, there was some back and forth. I thought he was just playing hard to get, but then he finally said no. Even when I said I had a £50K cheque for him (which would have bounced) he wasn’t having it. I think our agenda scares the main political parties, we are not interested in following their narrative you see. We have real questions about why the Facebook generation doesn’t trust politicians and they don’t like it. I think personally all three of them would have preferred to be interviewed by Steph & Dom from Googlebox. Maybe I’ll pretend to be them next time and see what happens.
TP: On a scale of 1 to 10 – where 1 is completely and utterly out-of-touch and 10 is incredibly and unbelievably out-of-touch – how out-of-touch with young people would you say UK politicians are?
JR: The thing I think we need to be careful of is lumping them all together. People like Zac Goldsmith (Con), Caroline Lucas (Green), Paul Flynn (Lab) and Tim Farron (Lib Dem) are very in tune with what the younger generations make of the Westminster and more than that they are actively engaged in challenging the perception. However, I think the party leaderships of all the big 3 are on a 14 or 15. They don’t give a toss. They recognise they don’t need young people to vote for them to maintain the status quo. In a way it’s better for them that young people aren’t engaged. They are analogue leaders in a digital age and are about as exciting as a Commodore 64 for kids who are used to playing Playstation 3’s.
TP: Tory MP Zac Goldsmith told you that “lying in parliament is staple”. How can you be sure he wasn’t lying?
JR: I can’t I suppose but I reckon I’m a pretty good judge of character. Zac wanted to address the concerns he has raised in a recall bill that would give more power to voters if an MP is seen by them to have misbehaved or to have let them down. More than anything I think Zac is just thoroughly pissed off with the state of play in Westminster and saw me as a good person to vent to. Like a shrink, or an agony aunt, just with with a camera and a dodgy hair cut.
TP: Young people (and older too) often say that their vote doesn’t count because big money dominates politics. After talking to disillusioned young people, do you think restricting the funding of political parties in some way would make young people more likely to vote?
JR: It would help yeah, but honestly there needs to be a movement that demands a completely new political culture. I still think we are a way off a time where young people really can feel, in a tangible way, that politicians are screwing with their lives directly. It’s ironic really because with tuition fee increases, cuts in benefits for the under 25’s, rising rents, rising house prices, the end of the EMA and the closures of youth centres (and a certain BBC channel which made programs for them) that’s exactly what’s happening. My film tries to draw a lot of the threads together and tries to say voting takes 5 minutes, if we all did it they’d pay far more bloody attention to what we actually want.
Jolyon’s documentary – An Idiot’s Guide To Politics – goes out
on Wednesday 11th February at 9pm on BBC Three
an idiot’s guide to politics
.
Please feel free to comment. And share. Thanks:
Pride's Purge 
Reblogged this on markcatlin3695's Blog.
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It’s always sad to see a leftwinger think Goldsmith is okay actually..
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Zac G is also supporting the survivors of historic child sex abuse as well as myself
I am one of ” the vocal minority ” as it was called
Oddly enough he is also a patron of a SW London organisation who help disabled poor folks of which I am a client of as well
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Reblogged this on sdbast.
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Leatherbackebook – it’s always sad when someone like Zac Goldsmith (from wealth, privilege and power) find himself in the wrong party and hasn’t the common sense to cross the floor.
I hate liking ZC for some of his policies. I think he needs to be accorded support from those of us who are in natural opposition to the Tories to encourage him to do his thing. Like supporting Dennis Skinner and any other pain the a**e in Westminster, who in fact are the main purveyors of decency and common sense.
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@Leatherbackebook – It’s not so much that I think he’s ok, it’s rather that he comes across as being genuinely out to make people’s lives better, rather than just to feather his own nest. I might not agree with his methods but I can appreciate his motives. Many of the current crop of conservatives in comparison come across as spivs and shysters out only to line their own nests and those of their cronies.
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Reblogged this on Britain Isn't Eating.
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well im very engaged with young people.
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My question at the moment is who is running the Home Office is it Terry May or her establishment toadies who regard the FOI requesters as no more than a bloody nuisance.. I can’t how many times I have been fobbed off with lame excuses for not responding. One was a flat refusals with no explanation and marked as Hidden and removed also who is advising May
on.HCSA. panel members and heads?
Despite all helps and suggestions they are all ignored maybe ‘ not one of us’ is the answer
Also DWP who runs that? A4e or serco.or any corporate. A senior at A4e once boasted that they pretty much ran that department
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…Young people (and older too) often say that their vote doesn’t count because big money dominates politics. …
There just may be a way to get round this, and is an idea that has come out of many different forum blogs.
See how on:
http://www.anastasia-england.me.uk
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chewie
Zac G is also supporting the survivors of historic child sex abuse…survivors of historic CSA/CA don’t need support…
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http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/feb/11/hsbc-files-show-tories-raised-over-5m-from-hsbc-swiss-account-holders
Do you still think Zac Goldsmith isn’t out to line his own pockets… just like the rest of them?
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Administrator – Why is my comment being moderated? I didn’t use any bad language or break any rules.
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ps 2nd part should read; survivors of csa/ca don’t need support…
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Still nothing about plastic hat wearers
Typical!
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chewie
well i’m sick to death of VICTIMS of csa/ca being labelled survivors, when they clearly haven’t..
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@donkey I will explain for you
1 it’s a title they chose
2 victims are the ones who did not survive ie they ended up dead as result of being murdered by paedos
Also take into account of living relatives of those who were murders in some senses they are also victims
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@donkey addendum in case you are not aware the csa survivors are only too aware of being accused of ‘victim hood”
where sadly the word ‘victim’ is used negatively
The word survivor is less easily played around with
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chewie
so now you admit the true reasons people are called survivors is not because it’s true but because of so called linguistic negative connotations…of the words ‘victim hood’…(nothing to do with being physically murdered, murdered soul, yes), which now puts treatment of ‘survivors’ into the PRESENT AND FUTURE and BLAMES THE SO CALLED SURVIVOR FOR CONTINUING TO SUFFER IT’S AFFECTS…ie it burdens the (occulted victims), now deemed survivors, with managing (behaviourisms) their sufferings…’see look you’ve survived, all is well’..(or in other words shut up and stop whinging on about being a victim)…when it clearly IS NOT..coz now the past doesn’t have to be looked @ and healed….the past (historic) has to be healed 1st…unbottling sufferings, mental pain 1st, or no e-motional recovery can take place…when that is done, it is all over..all csa/ca is historic…see works of dr alice miller, dr bob johnson etc…
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@donkey I ‘admit” nothing it’s what I read up on.. You could have replied briefly not written that much.. It’s what I have learnt and what I speculated…
You seem to be the only person who has a problem with this.
Why bring Dr bob again into everything
They can title themselves whatever they wish
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I don’t know ZG is pretty loaded already I would have thought. Btw he is no fan of scameron not one tiny bit
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chewie
no! millions have a problem with being called survivors, when they aren’t…those words are put into the mouths of victims, by others such as yourself who have no idea what they are talking about…had YOU not mentioned on this open forum something as misleading as this… ‘Zac G is also supporting the survivors of historic child sex abuse…’…then i would have not needed to respond and correct you with this; ‘survivors of historic CSA/CA don’t need support’….
and dr bob offers the pathway to full RECOVERY…
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@Donkey I just got off a blog with posts from people calling themselves ‘survivor of
…..”
So I tell you what you go on there and give them a bollocking for using words you don’t like and see how that goes
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@donkey – I’m afraid you’re wrong. Everybody who is still alive is a survivor. We’ve all survived something, first and foremost we survived being born.
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Administrator – Is there a fault? My comments keep going into moderation.
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chewie
i don’t dislike the word survivor (nor victim hood)….it is yours and many others incorrect and very misleading use of this word, that i object to….this is very clearly stated in my posts to you…and i’m actually addressing you….and i do not support any ‘survivors’ groups nor for that matter victim’s groups….only healing, ie the work of dr bob….
humbrol
surviving birth is totally different it’s all over done with…years of abuse and years after abuse and then years healing from abuse, and then becoming a true survivor of abuse….can’t skip the stages of recovery in between, by calling oneself a survivor, as nothing has happened to make this true…csa/ca is not all over until abuse(s) frozen trauma’s are healed…
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Reblogged this on Beastrabban’s Weblog and commented:
Rubinstein had a petition going on one of the internet petitioning organisations to make lying to parliament illegal as a way of tackling public cynicism. I think he’s right, though it actually means confronting the fact that not only do MPs lie in parliament, they need to be called out on it. At the moment, I think, it is one of the 200 or so prohibited ‘unparliamentary’ terms of phrase for one MP to accuse another of lying.
Well, they have. They do. Blair lied, people died, and Cameron, IDS, Clegg, Osbo and McLie are so crooked they have to screw themselves into their clothing in the morning. Unless radical action is taken, nobody is going to trust a word any politician says.
As for reaching out to youth, when politicos try it all sounds very false and patronising. Some of us can still remember when Tory MPs appeared to have had a three-line whip to tell the world what their favour pop stars were. As a way of appealing to da yoof. So you had the spectacle of Tory peer Lord Onslow describing the Spice Girls as ‘perfectly delicious’, while one of the first open gay Tory MPs said that the Scissor Sisters were his favourite band. That particular MP, you suspect, either listened to very 60s-80s stuff, if he listened to pop music at all, or else was far more at home with works of Elgar and Vaughn Williams. There isn’t anything wrong with liking either of those types of music. And he may have genuinely been a fan of the Scissor Sisters. But as it stood, it looked highly false, very patronising, and rather embarrassing, like Dads dancing at parties.
There’s a very interesting bit over on Youtube where Charlie Brooker attacks Yoof TV for being patronising. It’s worth looking at, but be warned: there’s an act there that’s so vulgar there was an entire South Park episode devoted to how revolting it is. At least to certain delicate sensibilities. He shows the various efforts at Yoof TV to an audience of Young People, who really aren’t impressed with it. When asked what programmes they like and would like to see more of, instead of stuff that made The Word look like a disquisition between A.J.P. Taylor and Sir Isaiah Berlin on the Two Treatises of Government, they wanted programmes like Inspector Morse. They enjoyed pretty much what their parents and older relatives enjoyed.
Instead, they get really vulgar, patronising bilge.
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@donkey. Enough… Please.. And Dr bob stuff too..
I have respect what the ppl who have had wrong done to them
Don’t play semantics this is about people’s lives. Anyway that’s it
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chewie
how dare you tell me what to write and what to do…i will always speak out for healing truth…
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‘@donkey. Enough… Please.. And Dr bob stuff too’..what’s wrong with dr bob stuff?
‘I have respect what the ppl who have had wrong done to them’..what does that mean? i take it, it means; i have respect for victims of abuse? when you so obviously don’t…
‘Don’t play semantics this is about people’s lives. Anyway that’s it..’
it’s not about semantics as i have clearly explained above….pedophiles are victim’s of abuse as well…their appalling behaviours are a symptom’s of the abuse that they have suffered as children…why aren’t you campaigning for the cure to be made widely available, instead of scapegoating others…?
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@Donkey. I will repeat this till it gets into your thick stubborn head
I have respect for victims of csa
Why? because on occasions I have been asked to assist them of which I have been thanked by them
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@donkey speak out but for crying out loud
You don’t have to bring your previous saviour into bloody everything
Does he cure common Cold and cancer and control the weather
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cheiwe
i do not have a thick stubborn head…truth is truth…and you obviously don’t respect victims of abuse…as pedos are also victims of abuse….and yes i do need to bring dr bob into what is appropriate, as it is in truth… http://www.soteria.freeuk.com/176_16-18.pdf ‘“Psychiatry today is a dismal medical failure”. This is the conclusion I reached when writing my book on the scientifically proven impact of psychiatric drugs. I eventually titled the book “Unsafe at any dose”, because that is what the published evidence proves beyond a peradventure.’
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@donkey how dare you say I have no.respect for csa victims. Go check a newspaper called express with headline
SICK TRADE IN YOUR FAMILY PHOTOS
and as for paedos they are total scum
And you wanna stick up for them
I’ve seen their handiwork
first hand and the damage
they cause and they don’t give a fuck
about their victims
Not one tiny bit
I can’t believe you stick up for that shit
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chewie
i have never said pedos don’t do damage, in fact as i strongly advocate the work of dr bob et al…i clearly know the damage abusers do…i stick up for all abuse victims, even when some do horrible things, it’s not the crime that needs healing but the cause of the crime…pedophilia is a symptom, not a cause, only causes of symptoms are/need treatment…you think victims of abuse are scum…the mistake is in treating the perversion it’s self, this can never work…it’s not that nothing works, but nothing is allowed to work, as is proven in the great work of dr bob…
http://www.nickdavies.net/1994/03/01/the-mad-world-of-parkhurst-prison/
‘Now, here he was, four and a half years later, in the Spring of 1991, walking into Parkhurst top security prison on the Isle of Wight, into this red-brick submarine called C Wing, where the Prison Department kept a hand-picked dozen of the most dangerous men in their custody – all of them violent, many of them multiple killers, all of them diagnosed mentally ill, all of them deemed to be beyond the control of a normal prison regime. If Johnson’s theory was right, this finally was his chance to prove it. It was a horrible place. It was exactly what he wanted.’
and it worked, he proved beyond doubt that he had discovered the cure of emotional injuries caused by abuse(s)…..
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@overburdenddonkey – “he proved beyond doubt that he had discovered the cure of emotional injuries caused by abuse(s)”
That’s a remarkably bold claim! Where can one read the documented case evidence and description of the ‘cure’ which Johnson supposedly discovered?
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coker
read his work…and what has been written about his work…see his vids…
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@overburdenddonkey – I already searched after reading your somewhat ‘ambitious’ 😉 claim. There are no scientific case histories or descriptions of this ‘cure’ anywhere in the literature. Johnson is just another weirdo who claims to cure everything, but very conveniently can’t say how! We all know that there’s no shortage of nutters like that on the internet. Alien lizards curing all mental illness is equally likely.
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coker
‘coker
read his work…and what has been written about his work…see his vids…’
proved beyond doubt…is not the same as empirical case studies that i never claimed that there was….it has been shown to work 100% of the time…and there is plenty of evidence of that if you care to look, but obviously you won’t…’or descriptions of this ‘cure’ anywhere in the literature.’ that is plainly not true…+ i also said see his vids and he has 700hrs of vids of his work @ parkhurst prison that @ some point he will upload onto his web site…
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“@ some point he will upload onto his web site…” Yes of course he will, and then the whole world will have to sit up and take notice of his 100% cure, and all mental illness will be banished from the world forever. All praise to Dr Bob – Hallelujah!
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coker
anyone who does read his work etc,(‘read his work…and what has been written about his work…see his vids’)…will plainly see that the evidence for his successful work is irrefutable…and that all the info one needs to embark on one’s pathway to healing is contained within it….proved beyond doubt…is not the same as empirical case studies that i never claimed that there was….it has been shown to work 100% of the time…there is plenty of evidence of that if you care to look, but obviously you won’t…’or descriptions of this ‘cure’ anywhere in the literature.’ that is plainly not true…+ i also said see his vids and he has 700hrs of vids of his work @ parkhurst prison that @ some point he will upload onto his web site…
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@overburdenddonkey – You admit that there is no empirical evidence, so therefore it has NOT been proved beyond doubt. If you want to blindly believe in something as ridiculous as this then that’s your problem, but please don’t tell lies about proof which doesn’t exist. There are people with mental health problems reading these comments, and they need real help, not silly fake cures.
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coker
the proof plainly exists, and is plain for anyone to see, as i have already pointed out….you’re the one telling lies and the man is a quaker…quakers never tell lies…
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@overburdenddonkey – I said you are telling lies. Are you a Quaker? I might say the same to Johnson, but he’s not here, you are.
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http://www.truthtrustconsent.com/public_html/about-me
Dr Bob Johnson has developed a high profile as an expert in the management and treatment of Personality Disorders through his work from 1991 to 1996 as consultant psychiatrist in the Special Unit in Parkhurst Prison for exceptionally dangerous and disturbed Personality Disordered prisoners, who were generally considered too violent for Broadmoor. While there he devised techniques to motivate and assist violent, severe Personality Disorders – reducing the level of violence there (including the number of alarm bells rung) by over 90%.
He trained at Cambridge University, the London Hospital, and at Claybury Hospital, Essex, where he obtained a grounding in group work and therapeutic community techniques. In 1964/65 he was a Senior Psychiatrist in Middletown State Hospital, New York, working in the Drug Addiction Unit and the acute wards and underwent further training at the prestigious New York Psychiatric Institute, leading to the Diploma In Psychotherapy, Neurology & Psychiatry.
From August 1995 – January 1997, he worked alongside Dr de Zulueta a leading expert in the field, in the Trauma Clinic, at Charing Cross Hospital, London. Working together, they developed innovative group and individual psychotherapies for borderline and other severe Personality Disorders.
In 1997, he was consultant psychiatrist to the Retreat, a private Quaker Psychiatric Hospital, York, England, treating anorexics and other life–threatening Personality Disorders.
In 1998 he was invited to become Head of Therapy in the Personality Disorder Unit at Ashworth Special Hospital, Maghull, Liverpool. The post of Head of Therapy there was especially created for him, to accommodate his experience and expertise.
He was one of 14 national experts invited to submit evidence, twice, and indeed to testify before the Fallon Inquiry into the Personality Disorder Unit at Ashworth Hospital, which reported in 1999 – a transcript of his evidence and testimony under cross examination by 4 barristers has been made available on the internet – http://www.doh.gov.uk/fallon.htm.
His work has been widely reported in the press, and formed the basis of a documentary investigation by the BBC’s flagship programme Panorama (3rd March 1997). He has described his approach in a regular series of articles in the national newspaper, The Guardian, 1994-6, which raised a lot of interest among professionals in the field, as a consequence of which his lectures are in great demand.
In 1988, he took a sabbatical year funded by the Department of Health to study the effects of child abuse and the provision of child care in the United States. He presented a paper at the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Annual Conference, on The Psychiatry of violence, in 1994, which was very well received.
In 1999 he worked in a medium secure unit treating severe cases of anorexia and self-harm, devising techniques for both these challenging and potentially lethal diseases which led to their cure.
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@overburdenddonkey – You only copied and pasted stuff Johnson wrote about himself. Where’s the proof?
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