my name is David lofts David loves and
what days is Wednesday it's the 14th of
January it's my birthday who knew only
me um so I first of all I think I have
to extend a huge huge thank you to mr.
George Galloway who I contacted not that
long ago a few months ago three months
ago or something to say look I have
really had enough of the way that this
country is being run and I have had
enough of the exploitation of large
business and I would like mr. Galloway
to work for you and he came back and
said all right you seem to have what it
takes give it a go and so here we are
now getting into politics in the first
place I I have a background in business
particularly advertising marketing more
recently in the health care industry but
I'm also a musician hence this bit of
wood and strings and being a musician
brings with it a number of challenges
one of which is the musicians artists
and creative people generally and I know
Hastings is rich with all of these have
one way or another a propensity for
mental health issues I myself although
I'm much better now thank you and have
have had similar issues and thankfully
my wife is a therapist so I'm I get
therapy every day and I you know having
a therapist is something that I can
heartily recommend everybody should have
one unfortunately access to mental
health support to treatment and to the
help that people sometimes need to get
over what is very often a bump is simply
not there and I had my personal
experience with was very much I had a
bad year or a couple of eight years and
came through the end of my two bad years
my Anna's horribly feeling kind of flat
and empty and you know with with really
no impetus and I seemed to be spending
far more time ranting about things on
Facebook and Twitter and doing nothing
about it and I'm sure we all know that
feeling you know the frustration you
feel when you read something or see
something and you need to get that out
and we do it when they're with our
thumbs we don't talk we don't we just
rant on facebook twitter social media
and that's what I was doing and I was
just kind of driving myself down into a
deeper hole and it was actually my GP
who said to me David you know and you
keep telling me this you keep telling me
that you're frustrated and you're but
you why don't you do something about it
instead of just talking about it and as
I go through and I'm not going to take
as long as George did I have not quite
as much to say I think George has many
many more years experience at this than
I do but I I was waiting for somebody
else to do it
and we can't do that it if we want
things to change the only people who are
going to do that for us is us no
government no no politician or very few
politicians George is an exception will
do it for us we have to do it for
ourselves and this is why I am standing
here tonight I never thought I would be
I i will probably now alienate everybody
in the room by saying that in 1979 i was
living in jeddah in saudi arabia and by
proxy I voted for Margaret Thatcher so
you can blame me and however having
learned the error of my ways and
that's noisy
having learned the error of my ways I
would know like to sing you a little
song about that very subject not one
that I've written but one one that I
wish I had maggie may not certainly not
in this bar no this is a John Mayer song
and it kind of encapsulate seeeeee why
I'm here and hopefully will allow me to
communicate to you why we collectively
need to do something to change things
and change is inevitable but progress is
optional
me and all of my friend these were all
misunderstood
the ship would stem for nothing there's
no way we ever could we see everything
that's going wrong with the world knows
who needed we don't believe we have the
means to rise above me that so I went
waiting waiting on the world to change
we keep on waiting waiting on the world
gee it's hard to beat the system
standing at a distance waiting waiting
if we had the power to bring our
neighbors home from war never miss a
Christmas no more ribbons on the dog
when you trust your television what you
get is watching God when the only
information or they commended all they
want while we're waiting waiting on the
world to change we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change not do we
don't care we know that the prodding fan
waiting waiting on the world
we keep on waiting when on the world to
change we keep on waiting when I'm the
one to change wedding on the world to
change waiting on the world thank you so
much one that one that I wish I had
written I'm like to see Norman Baker do
that one so politics and hastings and
rye I in my business background before I
became a hippie I know I don't have hair
but you know what I mean I studied and I
read a lot of books and actually I made
a lot of money for a lot of other people
working in marketing advertising and
part of this part of this learning
process gave me the opportunity to read
quite a lot of stuff that I wouldn't
otherwise probably have read and among
the you know Sunzu and the art of war
and the 80s was a big thing where
everybody went into the the Oriental way
of doing business and it was a Japanese
book called miamor by miyamoto musashi
called the book of five rings gorinna
show which was all about combat and all
about how business could take the
principles of the martial arts
effectively and turn them into a way of
doing business and one of the most
important
things I learned from this was that the
way to defeat your enemy is to use the
same tools as your enemy but to use them
better there is a Japanese phrase which
which encapsulates this I can't remember
it but this taking the tools of your
enemy or of your competitor if you like
and in in terms of enemy I mean the
Tories and possibly the Labour Party but
certainly Mr Farage taking the tools of
big business the way that big business
works and turning them against big
business and I'm talking about something
called non the profit imagine if you
would the idea of Facebook or JP Morgan
the bank or Google operating as a
non-profit now Mark Zuckerberg
personally took eight billion dollars
personally out of Facebook last year and
he's not alone there are there are many
many many people who take this kind of
money out of businesses but they also
leave an awful lot of money in
businesses facebook I think made 34
billion dollars altogether and imagine
that 34 billion dollars being used not
to pay for Learjets and apartments and
whatever but to pay for people to bring
them up to a level where they have a
sustainable enjoyable life not slaves
which we currently are not downtrodden
workers but people who can have
self-respect people who can enjoy their
daily life without worrying about a
knock on the door from a bailiff or from
a policeman for not paying your TV
and I know George's is a protest
George's is a protest but there are
people who can't bloody afford a TV
licence and when they get the knock on
the door the 178 quid or whatever it is
that the television licence costs
suddenly becomes a thousand pounds and
then they have a bailiff coming to get
the thousand pounds and it becomes 6,000
pounds and they're on benefits this is
wrong and there is enough business in
this country to sustain a large number
of nonprofit organizations and this is
what i plan to do here in this town in
this region in hastings and rye i have
so far secured investment for the first
of these or the first two of these
operations because they're quite closely
linked once these are running smoothly
they will be businesses which employ
local people doing local jobs producing
goods services those people will be paid
not the minimum wage and not the living
wage because the business model allows
for everybody in that organization to
earn the living wage plus ten percent so
10 pounds 20 an hour this is perfectly
achievable in absolutely every business
in this country and it's achievable by
reducing the level of profits that get
taken out of business if you have a
number of imagine JP Morgan is a
nonprofit
no just really imagine imagine jpmorgan
the investment bank as a nonprofit
organization what could you do with 46
billion dollars you could change the
world according to Oxfam it will take 20
9.1 million a billion to bring every
person in the world out of poverty that
that's an annual figure now if you
imagine somebody who lives in no rural
Lahore they live on a dollar a day a
dollar a day and that is the minimum
wage for that area here we have whatever
it is six pounds 20 or something that is
our subsistence level minimum wage
introduced strangely enough by Tony
Blair the man who merged capitalism with
socialism to produce more rich left
wings champagne socialists I the only
socialist thing that he did was to
introduce a minimum minimum wage but he
made it so low that it's untenable for
anybody to live on what I want to do
here is to build a series of nonprofit
organizations covering services which
people can use locally providing jobs
for people locally with sustainable
incomes no zero hour contracts because
they suck zero-hour contract is is worth
nothing not even worth the paper it's
not written on the whole purpose of what
I'm trying to do is to take the
principles of capitalism if you like and
turn them back on capitalism to say okay
we may never have a competitor for
Google in Hastings because they are a
monstrous worldwide global conglomerate
and now
own pretty much everything but what we
can have here is smaller sustainable
organizations which provide jobs which
provide incomes which allow people to
have the self-respect from going to work
you apparently get self-respect from
going to work on earning five pounds an
hour I'm not sure how that's possible
where is the self-respect in being paid
five pounds an hour it you don't want to
go to work you don't want to get up in
the morning let alone go to work people
need everybody needs an opportunity to
be able to lift themselves out of the
situation that they are in and to
improve things and as I said change is
inevitable but if you look for that
change within the Tory party the Labour
Party or any major party you won't get
it because they want business as usual
that's all they want they want business
as usual a return to traditional values
yes so let's open some bloody work
houses and go back to Victorian times
because that's where we're going and if
we as a group of people do not stand up
and say okay we're not having this you
might do it in Westminster but you're
not doing it in my bloody town keep it
in Westminster go and argue about who's
got the biggest nose or whose thi is the
nicest or who messed up the National
Health Service they spend so much time
talking about who messed up the National
Health Service they don't have any time
left do anything about sorting out the
National Health Service all they're
doing is pointing fingers and blaming
each other so I want to take a
capitalist approach making money yeah
nothing wrong with making money but
making money not to go in my pocket and
not to go in shareholders pockets
because the shareholders of the
nonprofit
other people work for the nonprofit and
my intention with certainly with the
first organization that I will be
launching and it's a music-related
organization my intention is that no
employee where the director or otherwise
will earn more than the national average
wage which is currently twenty-six and a
half thousand pounds and everybody even
the cleaner will learn ten pounds 20 now
this is my vision not just for one
organization but for many organizations
and and you are the people that can help
to make this happen you really really
are I am amazed three months ago there
was one of me or actually know there
were two of me because Andy Andy hives
and the Ives was was already was already
a respect member i think and so three
months ago there were two of us look
where we've come in three months there
must be a hundred people here and you've
come to listen and you've come maybe to
learn to contribute because ideas
Hastings is is certainly may be beside
brighton the most creative place i have
ever been as just as a single entity in
its own right the creativity here is
amazing our music sculpture everything
is here these people people who produce
this stuff also generate ideas and what
I'm saying to you is bring me the ideas
and I will find you the money this I
can't promise I will find you the money
but I will work my bloody nuts off to
find you the money for your idea and I
know quite a few rich people but not
Nigel Farage
Bravo over my next song we have recorded
this
and you can download a version of it
strangely enough but we would be
recording this shortly with it a cast of
thousands and a chair must speak to you
about this because like one of the
things i want to do with this song it
has a nice chorus and you might want to
sing along i wrote this on the way to a
session a recording session I had the
lyrics for the song and I walked past a
complete both cheeks of the
at Liverpool Street Station
having his shoes gleaned and he just
kind of got up from the chair and just
threw the money really he just threw the
money at the guy who'd just cleaned his
shoes so I wished him a good day I
basically said have a good day mate and
by the time I got to the studio I'd
rewritten the lyrics and here they are
and if you feel like singing along the
chorus is have a good day
oh god you window I won't show you
something there's a revolution going
down on the street the morning this
weekend in the city is jumping let I
like a wonderland right there at you
feed Yuki trip downstairs to the
basement that's an old man on the way
will you stop this mine and say i really
hope you have a good day
would be far up your engine
you read you there's an old BAM playin
for dead in Ohio Larabee the history in
a different location ever it's just
geography it's the same situation shine
up your shoes back and in your pocket
throat change walk away in sit down snap
your fingers out a waitress caviar on
you can i play hey well here's a tip if
you can smile and say I really hope you
have a good day
you have a good day
have a good day
a good day
how y'all have a good day
I hope you have a good day
all right I have a good day
I hope y'all have a good day
ra come up on the roof I wanna show you
something it's nearly 30 stories down to
the street look we Bob answer cuz the
bankers I jumping me go on down enjoy
them you never know who you sue you
leave your keys on the kitchen table
there's a half the end this way step off
ledge fuel will flow and she need is on
the way you can smile and wave and say I
really hope you have a good day out you
have a good day have a good day have a
good day have a good
thank you so does anybody have the time
it's 20 bars 90 we've got 10 minutes
we've got 10 minutes before the man come
on and they are really good and they're
worth sticking around for so please do
George and I will also be around I think
I'm right in saying just i'll be around
George has to drive to Bradford or
somewhere London maybe but I will be
here to talk and to answer any questions
that you might have I'm very very very
pleased to have made the acquaintance of
all of you either bought via Facebook or
in person and I'm sure I'll have the
chance to chat to people later and I
think in a change to my original plan
where I throw a curveball at the bass
player because we're gonna sing a song
that he doesn't know
so you d CNG so I I will leave you I'm
I'm not going to stand here and
pontificate I'm I'm about action I talk
I like to talk but I'm far far far more
interested in action and doing things
and getting stuff done you can you can
have a look and read if you haven't
already my website which is David loves
dog there is more stuff coming up there
every day you can register their your
interest if you'd like to come and help
with any of the campaign activity that
we're doing you can also even buy some
songs I think there if you if you'd like
to make a small contribution to the
campaign phone but this is the socialist
way you see you see I had I had a
personal email from mark reckless asking
me for money asking me for money to pay
for the 3,000 pounds worth of Tory
leaflets that he'd had printed that he
then didn't need when he defected to you
Kip and he sent me an email asking for
bloody money ok if you want to give me
some money please feel free to give me
some money the campaign and the respect
party need your help but you'll get
something for it we're not asking you to
do anything for nothing so there is
there will be some music for you if
you'd like to download you can buy it
you can donate or just pay 99p for the
track as you would on itunes or you can
add to that if you would like
so finally another protest song would
there be anything else
I am a backseat driver from America
nothin on balls Rhodes and the man
Louise name is Ashley and there's a
child on the corner he knows i could
says what chances that kid got safe from
the back I don't know he says this
barbed wire at all of these exits and
there is no place in Gaza for that kid
to go and it's hard life it's our life
it's a very hard life I'll a Virgo but
if we poison our children with hatred
then the hard life is all that they'll
know
cafeteria line in chicago at man in
front of me he's calling black people
trash to his children he's the only
Trish he received I'm thinking this man
wears a white hood in the night with his
children should sleep now sit through
their windows and LCM nothing that white
hoods all we need and it's a hard life
with our Labor's a very hard life our
life wherever you go up and if we poison
our children with he treated hard life
is all we don't know
I was child in the sixties dreams could
be held through TV with Disney and
Cronkite and Martin Luther and I believe
the Lord I believed now I'm a backseat
driver from America I'm not at the wheel
of control I am guilty I am Don I'm the
root of all evil and I can drive on the
rift side of the road and it's our life
it's our life it's a very hard life a
hard life wherever you go and if we
poison our children with heat rigor in
our life is all that they'll know and
it's a hard life wherever you go
thank you very much remember the name
David LOX LOX equals respect mr. George
Galloway ladies and gentlemen mr. George
Galloway thank you for coming all the
way here man