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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Got any change, guv?

George Monbiot is as mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore. Narcolepsy-inducing speeches, plaintive whining and bogus statistics are no longer enough to bring about revolution. And George should know because he has tried all three.

The time for mere words has passed and the time for action has begun:

The formula for making things happen is simple and has never changed. If you wish to alter a policy or depose a prime minister between elections, you must take to the streets.

I think George is making yet another big mistake if he thinks that sleeping in shop doorways and begging strangers for money is going to change the world. But who am I to argue?

17 comments to Got any change, guv?

  • some random person

    ‘democracy is in the streets’ is the best answer to the question of why private individuals should be allowed to own machine guns.

  • A Person

    Monbiot is a deranged lunatic. I don’t know why the Guardian publishes him.

  • Dave

    For comedic value?

  • Patrick W

    I saw the Monbiot rant too. He seems to be suggesting that since most sane, rational human beings don’t seem to want to buy into his bitter little world view then the only just solution is to stir up some anarchy. In a truly Monbiot style libertarian world, I wonder if that also would give me the right to go round to George’s house for a little personal fun and anarchy.

  • Edward Turner

    George Monbiot is as mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore.

    Sounds good to me.

  • some random person:

    Should you happen to be a female individual in her thirty-something, please allow me to apply for dating.

    And, err, more if affinities.

    Besides the answer to the machine guns question that is.

  • ernest young

    All sounds very Marxian to me. He too advocated civil disobedience and ‘taking to the streets’, and had his own ‘personalised’ definition of democracy, – something about a gun barrel, as I recall.

    OK, mock him, (Monbiot), but keep an eye on him, he has a large following among ‘class warriors’. the perfect alliance between intellectual and thug, a.k.a. ‘Communism redefined’

  • Mike Morris

    Hi,

    If anyone wants to have a bit of a laugh, at the
    expense of poor old George; I suggest they
    write him an email, at his profoundly named
    himself website. I did this once and commented
    that perhaps, he was a tad egotistical. His email
    reply flew into a rage, calling me a “very nasty
    person”. It should come as no surprise that I
    could not sleep for months.

    In relation to his call to arms of the highly volatile
    British public; is he just after the PMs job?

    Regards,

    M Morris

  • Mike Morris

    Hi,

    If anyone wants to have a bit of a laugh, at the
    expense of poor old George; I suggest they
    write him an email, at his profoundly named
    himself website. I did this once and commented
    that perhaps, he was a tad egotistical. His email
    reply flew into a rage, calling me a “very nasty
    person”. It should come as no surprise that I
    could not sleep for months.

    In relation to his call to arms of the highly volatile
    British public; is he just after the PMs job?

    Regards,

    M Morris

  • Would that make him a Hobiot?

  • JuliaM

    Didn’t know he had a website but I love his columns in the Guardian, they usually make my day start with a laugh.

    Went over to his site to take a look – his biography is, well, strange… it states “During seven years of investigative journeys in Indonesia, Brazil and East Africa, he was shot at, beaten up by military police, shipwrecked and stung into a poisoned coma by hornets. He came back to work in Britain after being pronounced clinically dead in Lodwar General Hospital in north-western Kenya, having contracted cerebral malaria. In Britain, he joined the roads protest movement. He was hospitalised by security guards, who drove a metal spike through his foot, smashing the middle bone.”

    Good grief – you’d think he’d have got the message by now, wouldn’t you………?

  • Susan

    I emailed Moonbat once, to point out an easily checkable factual error in one of his rants. He never replied and did not change the factual error either, of course.

  • Personal ownership of machines guns is a poor substitute for direct fire field artillery.

    A whiff of grapeshot, guv’nor?

    But it’ll do.

    I do so like those wide avenues.

  • Verity

    Oh, god, Julia M, that was funny! Thank you!

  • Rob Read

    How about the other comment By Jeremy Rifkin?

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1159776,00.html

    He says because of increasing efficiency we have made more steel using less people at lower costs!

    He says that if everyone was put out of work by efficiency increases then no-one would have any money to payfor things and calls it a contradiction. He just cannot see that this is a self correcting mechanism!

    He doesn’t see the increasing affordability.

    He even says that people working less is a problem! Wot a Numbskull!

    Jezza must be harking back to the good old days of commie steel mills, big, polluting, inneficient with thousands of people not doing very much and making a bad product! Sounds like a civil service.

  • Susan

    Julia M: Socialists are dumb. Look how they keep coming back to the pursuit of their Holy Grail after 150 years of proven failure. Moonbat is incapable of “getting the message.” If he were, he wouldn’t be a socialist!

  • M Morris

    In relation to why are socialists still banging the drum,
    or dum, as it happens:

    This may be too simplistic a view, of which I am
    prone to suffer at times; but I think they remain
    socialists because it gets them laid, once in a
    while from some flower child with the clap.

    It’s like being an aging rock wannabe, predominantly
    to get laid by the groupees.

    And it follows, of course, that George thinks he’ll get
    laid even more if he becomes PM.