Russell Brand - In Plain Sight?

It got plastered all over the tabloids and other media too though. When you say John Leslie to people most will think he is dodgy due to that stuff hanging over peoples names when they have done nothing wrong.

 

Its a shame so much time is spent on talking about so call celebs doing wrong, when you look at the Horizon scandal and the hundreds of innocent postmasters sent to prison some of who took their own lives not being able to hide the shame of being found guilty for a crime they didn't commit, others lost their homes, marriages, future livelihoods and the respect in the neighbourhood they had built up over many years. Apart from the above I have always wondered how come the people that knew the system wasn't for for purpose stood by and let innocent people be found guilty and their lives ruined, these are the people that should be on the front of the papers (as well as Brand), unfortunately the people responsible names don't sell papers like Russel Brand's

NB I and no one I have known was ever a postmaster!

 

To be fair, that scandal was uncovered by some fantastic and relentless investigative journalism by Private Eye and others. I too am surprised it never really got a higher profile until very late in the day. I guess, as you say, it reflects on our society that elevates celebrity halfwits above holding the real powerbrokers to account.

 

Why?

I’m happy to say I was never a fan, but I don’t want to think worse about someone who suffered from what amounted to such an unwarranted public humiliation. I felt for the guy at the time. Like Andrew Sachs being hurled into the spotlight when he didn’t ask for it, he was not young when it happened, which makes it hard to bounce back, either privately or publicly.

So, no I wouldn’t say he’s a wrong’un.

 

I've never seen Brand but I like watching comedy shows and he's never been on anything I've seen, so I assume that like James Corden his level of comedy is shouting loudest and saying f*** a lot and just about appeals to 15 year-olds.

Unlike Brand, I think Corden at least cuts his hair and looks like he has a shower now and again.

 

But it became a big deal in the press even though he was innocent. All the media do is put a small apology on page 9 somewhere and move on with their lives while the accused have it hanging over their names forever.

 

Not really.

 

I see YouTube have demonetised his no doubt fairly lucrative account, not much evidence of innocent until proven guilty on display there.

 

Not lazy at all just paying attention to the detail. The BBC sending a car to pick up a 16 year old from school for example.

 

Well not quite. Brand using the car provided by the BBC to collect her, which is a subtle detail and deflects the responsibility for the action away from Brand.

But you’re right, plenty of people must’ve turned a blind eye to (at best) dubious behaviour.

Anyway, my original point was that it’s inconsistent for you to hold two points of view which clash with one another. If you want to observe innocent until proven guilty (and that is a perfectly valid viewpoint if you wish) you can’t simultaneously point fingers at your chosen target (in this case the BBC). It doesn’t hold water.

 

Fair cop maybe I should have emphasised the "appears" in my original post a bit more. It was a rather ineloquent attempt to bring the BBC's culpability into the debate rather than me trying to convict them or him.

 

I haven't seen the Channel 4 programme or read any of the stuff in the papers, but it is crystal clear to me that Brand is a monster. I hope he gets life on nonce row. I'm amazed that he along with that other chump Jonathan Ross was ever allowed out in public again after the grubby Andrew Sachs business.
I notice he's using the 'Trump defence' - the whole thing has been cooked up by the 'mainstream media' because he represents a threat to the 'establishment'. Can anyone explain how the Government, monarchy, banking system, armed forces etc etc are in any way being undermined by this bloke, whose main claim to fame appears to be the number times he's managed to get his end away? The growth in the number of online conspiracy theory nutcases who are only too willing to believe that the world is run by Hilary Clinton, 'Big Pharma', lizard-men and child eating paedos and give credit to the idea that Brand is the victim of some high level smear campaign because 'he knows too much' is the most alarming thing to come out of this tawdry affair.

 

Be very careful @SkylaRose of equating an artist's (and I'm using the word in loosest possible sense in the case of Brand because that's an act that literally passed me by) output with the artist. My case in point has always been Eric Gill - literally a monster who created art of great beauty and importance.

 

I think the smear is more that he is a conspiracy theorist in the first place (which you’ve predictably fallen hook, like and sinker for) most of his stuff is calling out governments for profiting from things like covid, or big companies like Amazon etc. His suggestion seems to be the media have an agenda against him, not the government or the err, army.

 

Yeah, I unfortunately have had the misfortune of watching his YouTube channel and this is pretty much exactly it in a nutshell. I'm just surprised he also doesn't believe the Earth is flat or that King Charles is a vampire.

He basically is one step away from David Icke level fruitloop-ness.

 

The difference with him and the other similar YouTube types is that he is more mainstream and has a more diverse (and numerous) audience.

The timing is suspicious in my eyes and it wouldn't surprise me if he's upset some powerful person and they've released the floodgates on this, probably by gifting a journalist a titbit of lawyer-proof evidence against him which has just snowballed to the current position.

This doesn't mean the BBC are part of a conspiracy against him, it means they got involved when finally they can pin all this stuff on him.

Case closed.

 

What's suspicious about the timing of the publication, considering the investigation started years ago, before Covid and well before Brand had become a darling of the tinfoil hatters?

You reckon C4 and The Sunday Times started investigating him on the basis that he might become a thorn in the side of tHe EsTAbLiSHmeNt at some point, then released the story on a not-especially-significant Saturday having given Brand's team eight days to respond to the allegations?

Now I know people like to see significance in everything but from what I know of how these things go, there'll be literally nothing significant about the timing other than they had dotted the I's and crossed the T's and were finally ready to publish.

 

I've always found Russell Brand about as funny and entertaining as Mrs Brown's Boys.

 

Not sure, I haven't paid much attention to that side of the story tbh so my post was pure speculation.

I'm too busy relishing his downfall and don't much care about the reasons why!

 

Leave @Moosegasm out of this….

 

I am just baffled as to how this system could not perform the functions of a basic, Cassio calculator from the early 80s. How does software lose money?

 

Either senior people in the Post Office couldn’t put 2 and 2 together and realise that there were problems with the system, or they didn’t want to admit it!

 

Would be interested in the view of @Clive_ofthe_Kremlin considering he views the verdict of a 10 month legal trial unsafe…

 

Private Eye's coverage of this over years has been absolutely fascinating. There was an almost total refusal to accept that the software might be flawed, that the *only* explanation was that the post office staff were stealing.

Everyone in the chain was looking out for themselves and their own job and the easiest thing to do was just to stick to the line that the post office staff must've been on the fiddle, even when it was illogical not to look deeper. Some post office franchisees put thousands of their own money in to cover for the losses only for the same thing to happen again.

It's the template for the shocking failure of privatisation, the bullying nature of corporations and in this case one protected by the sense that this was a state institution so therefore it couldn't possibly be a shoddy software system designed and implemented by idiots who didn't care whether it worked correctly or not.

(Only here could a thread about Russell Brand morph into one about the Post Office! Back on topic...)

 

Perhaps we could explore how predatory males with patience are using the mail to abuse women via letters and packages.

 

Not really followed this so far- not particularly interested in 'celebs' in general. But as someone else said: hardly a surprise from what I've seen if brand. An utter clown.

 

I didn’t know he was Irish!

 

Rank bad management. Unrealistic deadlines. Cheap developers or outsourced.
Up to date examples:
I give you the EE app. As horrific as it gets from the country's leading provider.
Then there is the Virgin Media connect app, do scratch your eyes waiting.

Those are simple apps, the Post Office system was horribly complicated and patched up worse than that boat in Dunkirk.

 

I have never found anybody who like Mrs Browns Boys yet there is a new series. Equally don't know anybody who likes Russell Brand either apart from Skyla apparently

 

This is what I find baffling. I’m Brand agnostic, I don’t really like him or dislike him, but apparently they all turned a blind eye back in the day because he made them money and was an incredibly popular, he ended up getting cast in several, very popular Hollywood films as well, he’s also apparently now got 23m followers across all his SM platforms.

So someone must like him, yet the universal response seems to be ‘never liked him, always thought he was a wrongun’ but somebody must like him?

I reckon it’s either a case of people did actually like him back in the day, but are now trying to distance themselves from it, or, it’s a bit like when people get surveyed about what newspapers they read and food they eat and they say the Guardian and Waitrose, yet they go through their bins and it’s The Sun and fast food, and they do actually secretly like him.

Not aiming that at you by the way, I’ve just yet to hear anybody say anything other than they hate him.

 

So he’s guilty, then? Without a legal trial, no actual evidence, hand written confession note, etc?

 

in this case, clown doesn’t quite do it. Even for those who suffer coulrophobia, based on fear more than actual events.

 

Outrageous accusations there.

Clowns are funny.

 

Discuss.