"It was the money-lenders that Christ threw out of the temple, not the gays..." a truly classic line.

Top man Bill, respect from Ireland 🇮🇪

Billy Bragg is a smart man,very well spoken and understands politics more than the average guy.

If you ever get the chance to see Billy in concert then take it. He's a terrific performer. And a wonderful singer, his voice is beautiful.

Billy Brag, what a wonderful human being, deepest respect to him.

An illuminating interview with thoughtful and intelligent questions from the presenter bringing out the best from BB.

Billy bragg is a love songwriter, its a love of the undervalued in society.

He's so damn right, and deeply human, it is so good to listen, especially the thoughts about cynism strike! C'mon people it's more important than ever to unite and not let us divide. It's sad to read these badass comments here, for what?!

What a good bloke.

Keep pushing on, keep at it. GBY Billy

Thanks for that reflection about your Mum Billy. Lost my Da in 2016 and am struggling to hold on to the purpose I always thought I inherited from him.

from barcelona..thank you studio "q"& sir william!

This is an extraordinary interview. You have a great way with your subject - very calm, very thoughtful questions. Thank you for your work.

The gig he did after thatcher quit was Belfast. He walked on stage holding the belfast telegraph at head height. He was a very happy man and did a great set

His songs hit home_"Between the wars" "There is power in a union", "Sexuality", "A New England". Try listening to them

Ding dong the witch is dead? Works for me 👽

"Telling it like it is!!"

Thought he handled the question about how he felt the moment he heard of Thatcher's death very well. No triumphalism unlike the rest of us ! Thank god the witch is dead !

My grandfather lost his job because of Thatcher.

very smart, articulate man.

It's a long time since I've seen such an articulate interview. Billy is, of course, fantastic, but kudos too to Jian G for giving his subject the space to talk openly and for leading the interview so well.

Very inspirational. "The antidote to cynicism is activism" and he talks about how it IS a struggle, no one said it wouldn't be. I know after running in three elections as the Green Party candidate, I got cynical and I figured the party is better off in the hands of young hopefuls rather than me. LOVED Billy then and I love him now.

NICE T-SHIRT! The pride of my home town :) Seeing Billy Bragg live today here in Amsterdam. Bless

The last 5 minutes of this is worth watching by anyone

Holy shit! This dude looks exactly like Matt Berninger (who was also in Qtv with The National) o.o

Wow hes talking about UKIP in 2013, predicting the threat of Brexit. Very smart man

Can you please retile this video"Billy Bragg on changing the world"? It deserves so much more than a Marget Thatcher reference.

Why does the interviewer keep cutting Billy off? Too busy wanting to hear his own "enhanced" voice?

With hindsight there is a very curious parrallel between the rise of thatcherism and punk rock in the late 1970s. Both were a reaction to a very dysfunctional society that people were sick of.

go on billy boy,bet you had a large smile and a drink,most of the country did

Ding dong the witch is dead. That's really what I expected him to say if not sing!

No Comment is the best comment for Thatcher

This comparison might be a leap, but I put Billy with my other great hero - Stompin' Tom. Listen to any of their interviews or albums, and you will be struck by the their humanity. Not their politics, not their music, but their plain, straight-forward honesty. (And before you dish Tom as a hick, listen a bit beyond the country manners and speech, he was a sharp guy that could hold his own in any circumstance.)

Correction his birth name is Stephen William Bragg.

Hear he has a nice gaff down Devon somewhere, I guess we are not in Dagenham anymore Toto.

awsome

Thatcher? That thing was complete piece of schitt

Collectivism, absolutely agree👍

I like this interviewer. I've seen a few of his interviews and he's really very good at what he does.

Science is a process of finding the truth. But I love me some Billy.

I never thought I'd say this but damn, Billy is actually pretty hot. And as a separate issue to this interviewer, its a bit daft to be saying Margaret Thatcher's death was like a celebrity dying as if that is a strange thing: what is the reaction in America when a former President dies? I remember there being a media scrum around John McCain dying and he wasn't even President. Say what you want about Maggie (I didn't live in England when she was PM so I don't have strong feelings about her) but she was the country's first female Prime Minister and stood eye to eye with Reagan and the various Russian presidents. She's an icon of the 1980s. So yes, of course it is like a celebrity dying.

On polititics we are obsessed with leaders and not who put them there.' Maggie was put in three times by the public. She didn't lead a coup, she was a mandated leader. I don't like or approve of her but remember why she was there.

thanks for the extra pint

So fuckn right, ORGANISE

The average person being made to pay for the mistakes of the global banking conglomerate. Most insightful.

His words around organization being so important echo the words that Obama uses so often - the frustration is evident in both of them.

"This dude." But he knows the name of the guy from The National. Sigh. People under 30 depress the shit out of me.

If William Stephen Bragg,lived in Australia, he would be an ALP supporter,and definitely not a Liberal Party supporter!.

Mando Diao. Heck yeah, Jian!

"KBO" - "Keep Buggering On"

He beats around the bush a lot but if you are willing to parse all the yammering out, the relevant exchange is: "What was your first reaction to news of Thatcher's death?" "...celebration..." "What was your first, emotional, reaction?" "...joy..." xD ROTFLMFAO

80;s Dr Robert song/songwriter from UK , have song from the about Margert T, ie Digging your scene. is famous one ,check it out on youtube.

Some man

Woody Guthrie and Joe Hill would turn in their graves at Bragg's betrayal of the working class in his condemnation of their reaction to Thatcherism, Thatcher and her polices in the wake of her death. Romany Blythe

M A N D O D I A O

This video made me realise that Billy did not really understand anything he was talking about.

Being dismissive about scientific endeavours whilst being recorded for worldwide video recall on devices that would have been Star Trek even in his own childhood? He's able to check his emails in a coffee shop and he's criticising the truth of science? Stick to other topics, Billy. Science, or rather the philosophy of empiricism, testing and peer-review through which hypotheses become working theories capable of impacting the world, gets it done. It IS important. Christ, listening to him talk is like listening to Russell Brand.

Jian Ghomeshi?

abolish religion, monetary and secret societies. >unite the people of earth and create abundance

Why did Ghomeshi turn out to be... questionable. He was such a damn good interviewer.

Love his music, like him as a person, dislike his politics. Two out of three isn't bad.

Musicians should stop trying to change the world, they can't ...play your music and move along

Why pick on the Higgs Boson? Surely there are a million things to be concerned about than some scientists at Cern doing their jobs? Yes I understand he's pissed off at the media but still...

He is forgetting that the reason we ended up as we did in the 70's and 80's was because the unions kept calling strikes. I lived through it. The end result was that the UK went from being an industrial powerhouse up the the late 60's to becoming the sick man of Europe by the time the Tories took office. Manufacturing went abroad where it was cheaper and people would rather have work than not. Blaming Thatcher is disingenuous at best and a lie at worst. We are reaping the results of Labour giving in to force, the Unions, instead of doing what was best for the country. We recently had another 12 years of it during which New Labour kissed American ass at the expense of our servicemen and involved us in an illegal war which was none of our business. Billy Bragg wrote some good, heartfelt songs, but he has bought into the left's propaganda and now he is stuck with it. If socialism was so good, why did Stalin kill over 30 million good communists? People also tend to forget that the Nazis were National Socialists and as far from the right as you can get. Socialism is all about the state knowing what's best even when it obviously isn't. Everyone prospers under a low tax regime but only the poor suffer under high taxation. The rich hire accountants to make sure they pay less tax, poor people can't. For some reason the left bellieve you can spend your way out of debt but when bankers do the same thing it's somehow morally wrong. Not everything Thatcher's government did was good but neither was it all bad. If you believe otherwise you either weren't there or are willfully ignorant of what really happened.

There not Law's they are act's and what's an act ,it's a song & dance ... !!!

Watching this on the day the Tories won the 2019 election...

I watch Gomer Meshi now and everything i felt about this fraud / misogynist is contained in the image he could never really cover up with his stuttering dopey savant persona. P.S. i Love Billy Braag

really?

I continually disagree with everything in his increasing detached rambling, despite loving him back in 2005.. but he's bang on the money about the Thatcher reaction.

Doesnt mean he meant anything about the thatcher govetnment,

You know she actually won the vote of no confidence but chose to resign.......just FYI......

Did'ya hear that, hyper-individualism, from the perspective of social edification, is a sin...crap, that is gonna be a tough habit to break.

Fantastic to read how so many people here go for the stereotypes. Grow up. And no; I do not expect an answer and I reserve the right to not respond to stupid uninformed people.

Errr.........this is Billy(-I-Love-multi-cultural-London) Bragg who has moved to Dorset (hideously white) "for the Kids"?

All the information desperately needs to be DIRECTLY ACTED UPON! Wake up? GTFU and do something!

so

Why the fuck does Billy Bragg like Churchill so much?

Give up the songs and become a politician as John Lydon should do also.Leave the songs to those of us who know how to do it without being overwhelmingly boring.

Check my original song out on you tube. Foodbank on the corner...

Champagne socialist

Someone who supports Billy below says he lives in a BIG HOUSE in an Affluent Area..........that right?..well... I loved Billy’s music and was listening to Back to Basics today as it happens and was fawning over The Saturday Boy ....and I think he’s a nice bloke but if he lives in a big house in an affluent area then he can no longer with any credit speak about “the ordinary working man”...a phrase itself which is massively outdated

Great guy who made some good music.... Politics wise, he has not matured that much.

lol

Just like Reagan, I like Thatcher for her foreign policy and don’t like her for her domestic.

although i fully and totally disagree with Bragg's points (over the years) I am respectful with his handling of MT's death. He could have been a knucklehead and go for cheap celebrational mob approach and com out with comical hard left nastiness but he didn't while explaining that there was still an opposition either in life or death. Totally 'grown up' and diplomatic. I suspect that behind it all there were some people who have had to go through the death of 'nan'/'grandma' etc. He used politics with a sense of respect. Thanks BB - I really dislike your point of view but fair play you do have a human(e) brain on those shoulders. Might be time to buy a shaver though :-)

i hate mt for what she did to the miners but then love her for standing up to ira child killers and doing what needed doing when fellow brits got invaded by the argys

Well, excuse me (sarcasm) for not knowing who Billy Bragg is. In fact, I didn't watch the video because of him but his resemblance to Matt Berninger, does it bother you? Well, that's your problem. >People under 30 depress the shit out of me. Is that an opinion or a pathetic attempt at making someone feel bad for not sharing the same knowledge/taste like you? Oh wait, I do know! You were trying to sound like a superior person, of course! it's the Internet after all.

the communist must be so proud of Billy.

Love him but celebrating a death... Really?

Ha-ha-ha ! Billy " Lord of the Manor " Bragg. 🤣 What a fraud he is.

The tiger calling for vegetarianism. All those years down the mine in the dark must have puddled his brain, oh no wait.

he may live in a Dorset "mansion" , pity he can't spend some money on his teeth .

Thatcher was needed for the benefit of the U.K. (hegemony, U.S.'s junior partner), as much as Reagan was needed for the U.S.. This benefit came at a much greater sacrifice of the developing world than it did at the lose of the U.K. It just didn't seem like it because China was at the beginning of the creation of the China Dream and was starting at an extremely low bar, whereas, the U.S., and Britain were at their pinnacle of power, and knew that the most they could do was to maximize the benefits of globalization for as long as humanly possible.

Funny, he lives out in the arse end of nowhere in Kent as he moved away from central London yet expects the rest of us just to accept the city filling up with more and more people. How many is enough Bill, and if you feel so passionate let some live with you!

Thatcher was evil. Endlessly. And yeah it's typecast Billy as a political singer. But it introduces them to him... and then....

Just play music!! stay out of Debates!!

Thatcher was the best leader we ever had. Party for law and order. Won the Falklands war and Iranian embassy seige. Takes guts to do those things. Sorted out the unions who were holding our country to random. Bragg has some good songs but just another left wing guy who has ideas to change the world. Stick to your singing abd not politics young man. Which side are you on. The tory party everytime. Enough said

Billy is wrong about Jesus. yes he does welcome gays, but he forbids sexual immortality, but to dismiss us Christians as "cynical" if we don't agree with him is childish.

UKIP are what Thatcher stood for hahaha do you even know politics?

All parrot answers and buzz words. From Marx to King Billie their all brief little answers of bettor men and women. He is not even good at his job he can not sing and can not even play.