Video

Newsnight - 12 November 2011 (Paul Mason on the Economic Crisis)

Barack Obama's keynote address in Egypt
Thursday 4 June 2009

Watch the video here

Oscar Peterson:

Rory Bremner:

Lord Monckton:

Transcript starts at 2:59 on video:

"Even if you ain’t got no job, there’s some things that you could be doing, you know, cause there’s a lotta things that need to be done. So the last thing, the last thing that’s available to you is your right to complain. If you’re not gonna do nothing else, don’t say nothing. Just shut the fuck up, if you’re not gonna work, if you’re not gonna help, do not complain about what ain’t happenin - because you could be doing that.

"You can’t never tell nobody else you didn’t get no break cause you black. Get on there, you always gonna be black. Whatever excuse people carry around with them it’s generally sort of something like “I never had a chance”, alright well now you got one, you can’t say that no more.

"You know, what we want people to do is to accomplish something, as opposed to criticising the people who didn’t get to do that for you yet.  You just complained about what they didn’t do yet.  Okay, that’ll always give you a position to complain, because there will always be something you can find that has not been done yet. What we are saying is either contribute or shut up.

"If somebody comes to you and asks for help and you can help them, you are supposed to help them, why wouldn’t you? You have been put in a position somehow to be able to help this person, and there is something within there because it takes a lot for a person to come and ask you, anybody, to loan them something to help them because they need this, they have broken themselves all the way down to the point where they would come and do that. You are supposed to do that and you are supposed to do that as painlessly as possible.

"You will be helped in your soul by doing it. Your soul needs help.  And this is something you can do a little bit of something every day to help your insides, you see, like, like, like, like your insides are more important, if you can understand it, because they support everything that you radiate towards, everybody that you come in contact with can feel that. I’m saying that people who spend a lot of time looking in the mirror, they know how they look, sort of, but the way you know how you look really is in the expressions on other people’s faces when you say something and how you look is on the expressions of these other people’s faces, on the smile they give you when you play a song for them or you give them an idea that they can go and do something with…These are gifts, these are things that you’ve been given, and you’re not supposed to keep them to yourself. You’re supposed to share them".

Gil Scott Heron

The Guardian: 'Gil Scott-Heron saved my life'