I can't believe I am about to say this, but Donald Trump is right. The Donald has been in a Twitter spat with Russell Brand. A Twitter spat is something that no self respecting person over school age should be engaging in, so you have a measure of the combatants from the start.
Donald Trump is the pinched faced purveyor of gilded towers of spectacular tastelessness and the original host of the "You're fired" TV show that is presented by that sweet Alan Sugar in this country. Trump is primarily known for placing his name on his most priapic buildings and sporting a cantilevered hairstyle that looks like Zaha Hadid went mad with candy floss.
Russell Brand is also known for his hair, which he styles in the manner of a 19th century New Romantic, and for the unromantic exploits he makes sure we all know about. He squeezes himself into teenagers' clothing and talks about sex and drugs a lot to appear youthful and edgy. He does it in the effortful manner of a dictionary throwing up on you.
This gruesome twosome have been at it because Russell Brand has experienced a reinvigoration of his profile due to his pronouncements on voting. He doesn't think we should, as there is nothing worth voting for. It never changes anything. It's all a conspiracy. That sort of thing.
His views were given the prominence they did not deserve by first being aired, on an otherwise serious news programme on the BBC, to Jeremy Paxman. How they managed to fit those two egos into the same room confounds explanation.
The interview is now the chief thing that a great many young people know Paxman for. It will trail him around like a bad smell, just as the Emu and the free-pen-just-for-enquiring that will forever dog Michael Parkinson.
Russell Brand went on the David Letterman late night talk show in America to expound on his theory that: money is not spread around equally; rich people have more power; it's not fair. The sort of ideas that teenagers embrace when they stop playing with childish things and start reading the internet. It is tin foil hat stuff, the sort of conspiracy guff that excites those who still claim that George Bush ordered the planes into the World Trade Centre.
In a nutshell, Brand is affecting to believe that voting never changes anything, it is all rigged and we should call for a revolution of the people and an overthrow of the system. Whatever that means.
Donald Trump who was at one of his homes, watching way past his bedtime, could not believe what he was seeing and, in the way that has mystifyingly endeared him to millions of Americans, shot his mouth off and the Twittersphere went nuts, increasing both of their profiles and so further enriching the two of them. The capitalist and the anarchist joined in mutual publicity and good fortune.
John Lydon out of the Sex Pistols got involved and declared Brand to be "a bum hole" and that voting may be a choice of lousy options but it is always better than not voting at all. Donald Trump and Johnny Rotten are right. That is the first time that sentence has ever been written.
As though that was not enough of a horror show, fellow attention hound Piers Morgan jumped aboard the row and claimed that he would rather be stranded on a desert island with "doer" Trump rather than "talker" Brand.
Morgan claimed that Brand is (to paraphrase) a ranting, self deluded, sanctimonious hog wash disseminator. He also said that Trump has better hair. Now I am agreeing with Piers Morgan, but not about the hair. "Better" is relative - they're differently awful, let's leave it at that.
This was all briefly amusing except that the problem with the young thinking that there is no one worth voting for, is that the old do not. The old will brave storm force gales and sub zero temperatures to vote and that is why they are paid such heed by the lawmakers.
The old in this country are the single best off generation that has ever lived here. Their pensions are protected like an oligarch's mansion, they get free travel and pills, have mostly bought their houses when they were being given away, retired at an earlier age than any group will ever be allowed to from now on and are sucking the country dry of the resources it needs for everyone else.
The reason that the young are staring into an abyss of hurt is that the generation that grew up in the baby boom era have raided the cupboard and left it bare.
The recession and its associated austerity did not affect pensioners as it has everyone else for one very good reason: they vote, and politicians of all parties are scared to death of them because they do so in such numbers.
Young people, on the other hand, do not and so they are largely ignored. They are sleepwalking into a future that will have been decided for the benefit of people that will be long dead when they too become pensioners. They will watch documentaries about how aged people used to live the life of Riley in the old days and question how they came to be so poor.
Answer: listening to Russell Brand.