Vivienne Westwood again

Looking fab and wearing a necklace made of conkers "by a student"

The marvellous Viv was on Woman's Hour, facing very lightweight questions from Jeni Murray. I do love Jenni but on this occasion she seemed to be harking back to the punk era all the time instead of asking Vivienne about her activism and about her philosophy of fashion. Vivienne is clearly keen to give others credit for their ideas and input; I see what Andreas means about her honesty. She is generous about Maclaren who was never generous about sharing credit with her, but her relationship with him seems to have been horribly abusive, in that his need of her made him very cruel.

She wants people to know that capitalism is the enemy and that we should go and protest about it on Guy Fawkes night, wearing Guy Fawkes masks (V for Vendetta by Alan Moore: it's a classic graphic novel but I don't like it: have only got halfway through.) we should go and march on the Houses of Parliament.

I went to the website and I found it somewhat disturbing in that the participants are clearly expecting a punch up with the police. Well, overthrowing the capitalist system has got to start somewhere I suppose but this is really very feeble. Russell Brand is also active in anti-capitalism and his daily Trews is brilliant, but although he wants to protest against everything I have no idea what he does want.

He wants to write off consumer debt which is quite good in a way - people in poverty should not have been allowed to borrow in the first place. However, as someone who has been trained to be very careful with money for nearly 30 years, and as a result has come very close to paying off a large mortgage, I feel people need to change their attitude to buying things. That would be far more revolutionary than encouraging them by writing off their debt. And Vivienne W. agrees with me. She says we need to reduce what we use - including clothing - as part of a programme to change the world.

Hoorah for Viv, who wears no knickers!

here is a link to Woman's hour