“The Death Issue” December 2015 1

- do you find that's where your politics lie, in a socialist politics?
JB: I find it hard to imagine anybody who's got three IQ not being socialist, a certain kind
of socialist. And I do find it funny when people I meet are really interesting and intelligent
and they turn around and say they are tory, or something. I think, how did that happen?
How did you end up being like that, because you're quite smart?
OV: you think those finer sensibilities should bring somebody to the left?
JB: yeah, but it depends on what you mean by it. The other thing is somebody will
probably listen to me [a car interrupts us, for a moment]. They'll look at me and say oh, I
thought he was okay but he's a nutter. The thing is, its proven, it's actually proven sort of
sociologically or scientifically that more flatter a society, the more effective it is. The, more,
the greater the distance between the gap between the rich and poor, the worse society
works. If you look at highly successful societies in terms of culture, trade, invention etc,
they're often societies where there's a very small gap between rich and poor. There's still a
gap, for some reason that happens in a lot of societies. But, the model we live in now is
probably the least effective because we have obscenely rich people who are contributing
nothing, nothing at all, to society at large, and we've got people living in the levels of
poverty that should shame everyone. So, we're also destroying the land, the birds, the
trees, the sea, the air, we're also doing those things.
OV: so interestingly, our government makes these very hollow poetic appeals to that
land, to the country, to the institutions
JB: oh yeah, there's something, there's no limits to the levels of obscenity when they do
that kind of thing. You know, when I'm going through an airport I'll stand there wanting
to cry, or laughing my socks off, at a piece of green washing on posters, you know. One big
oil company had a picture, I remember the first time I looked at it I thought oh my, that's
hilarious, I got like tears welling in my eyes, people just walking past this. Whether they
look at it or believe it or, you literally want to be crying out saying you shouldn't be
allowed to lie like that.
OV: I remember seeing a particular video from a large oil company, who had an oil spill
off the coast of America quite recently, and I saw one of their propaganda videos
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