This is London calling, London calling. I Charles too, solemnly and sincerely,
in the presence of God, profess, testify and declare that I am
a faithful Protestant, that I will, according to the true intent of the
enactments which secure the Protestants succession to the Throne, uphold and maintain the said
enactments to the best of my powers according to law. Welcome to London,
calling with me James Dangipol and my very good friend mister Taby. Young Taby,
You've just been to a football match I went to. I went to
keep Your's last game of the season and it was a dismal two nil defeat
to Bristol City. No, it was. It was humiliating. That was
our twelfth home loss of the season, which is a club record. That's
the so we've lost more times at home in this season than in any other
season in the club's history. It was a dismal result in the end to
a dismal season. So yeah, not a great day. I'm thinking that
maybe it's time you took up a more enjoyable hobby. Have you thought about
getting a birch stick um and and attaching flex of of dog poo and scorpion
poison onto it and just sort of beating your back for a couple of hours
every Saturday. It sounds a lot like watching I think hunting might be might
be preferable. So are you back from your holidays, James, I can
tell you because I'm looking. I'm looking. There's a there's a I can
see the familiar Warwickshire background. Yeah. Yeah, I had a very very
lovely time. I mean, I'm I'm I've got that awful feeling, like
the back to school feeling. Um that I didn't mention the place we were
staying. I don't think we've known where I am at the time, but
but now now I'm not there for them to assassinate me or whatever. I
can tell you. I was at this fantastic hotel called the Dattai, which
some people will know about. It's it's this kind of legendary hotel on the
island of Lankai, and it's owned by the Malaysian government, which means they
can do things which normally I disapprove of. They've basically commandeered the best part
of the island, this pristine rainforest, and built this this exquisite hotel really
really nicely designed, lots of lots of lovely tropical hardwoods floors and and panels
and just general luxuriousness in the middle of the jungle, and you get ferried
around on these little buggets like in Jurassic It's it's like living Jurassic Park without
the dinosaurs. Um, it's great. I recommend you go there. And
what are you doing a travel piece about this hotel? Okay, yeah,
I couldn't have afforded to go there on my sort of meager podcasting income otherwise,
but yeah, it is, it is. It's an experience. Yeah,
and how what wasn't what didn't you get bitten by mosquitoes? Um?
Oh, better leeches? Actually, the weird thing is I am paranoid about
mosquitos. I hate mosquitoes. All it takes is one mosquito in the bedroom
and that's it. That's my night's sleep gone. But weirdly, m according
to the it's a sort of echo hotel, among other things, and it's
got this resident very charming eco eco guy who was actually not annoying. He
was he was very he was very informed about all manner of you know,
natural things. Um. He claimed that the reason there were very few mosquitoes
around. Is because everything is in balance, that the bats, which the
false vampire bat, for example, which loves to eat mosquitoes, um,
is in abundance, and those those parts. And was doing his job eating
all the body mosquitoes, which which was great. I got bitten, but
not not in not eating alive. However, the leaches, the leeches were
good. Um. I've never had a leech experience before. And we went
I think, I think it doesn't normally happen, but because we've got the
start of the little rainy season, I think it is. Um. We
just started getting these sort of vacational torrential downpours interspersed with long periods of sunliness.
Um, and I think it brings out the leeches. And we went
on this along this forest trail to go and bathe in this forest pool.
Um. And I suddenly spotted this thing on my foot and I said,
what's that? And I said it's a leech. I said, I'll quick,
quick, get a camera, wife record it. So so so we
recorded the leach on my foot and then just got rid of it, not
with not with a cigarette, but with just spraying it with with anti anti
mossi stuff that gets that gets rid of them. Is there a risk when
you remove the leaks that it leaves its head in your foot and then that
becomes infected. Yeah, that's why you don't pull them off. That's why.
That's why you let them sort of drop off themselves, either allowing them
to fill with blood and they'll just drop off anyway. But the amusing thing
was we we went back after after our jungle session. The next there were
lots of sort of things booked into our itinery and the next thing was an
Indian cookery class. So we went straight from the jungle to our Indian cookery
us and that was very good. Um. And then we got back to
our room to sort of change, and our wife took her shoes off and
one of the socks was just absolutely soaked with sticky blood. And she took
off the stock and and she found a leech still inside. Um, and
she I had to take take footage of this, this this horrible sock carnage
with with a leech still riddling on the floor. And and what she hadn't
realized and I could see and she couldn't was the heel of her other sock
was also covered in blood. She had had these two leeches. But anyway,
leeches, which did the leeches get into how did they get into her?
Scrawled into everything? I suddenly understand there's a great book about I think
it was thirty years in the writing. Have you ever read Read at a
Horn about it? About a tour of duty in Vietnam in the Central Highland.
Oh, you know, I have read it. Yeah, it's very
good, isn't it. Yeah? I read it about twelve years ago when
I was in Kenya. Yeah, it's quite It starts with a big,
fat novel, isn't it. It's a big fat novel. It starts with
the most arresting introimaginable where somebody on long range patrol has just got a leech
up his urethra and the leech as it's crawled up the urethraus and expanded,
and they're trying to decide whether they can medivact him or how how would you
deal with I don't know whether that's physically possible, whether it's the thing he
invented, or whether it's something that he'd actually heard of. But anyway,
I didn't get that, but I did understand how it is that you encounter
this in Narm books and Narm anecdotes about how soldiers would take off their boots
and they would just be filled with blood. And you get it because the
lot of blood comes out. It sounds grim, James. But apart from
that, you had a yeah, it was good good. Um yeah.
So quick question for a sort of matter of a bit of a bit of
shop talk. But how quickly on returning from these these tricks do you write
it up right up your piece? I try and write it as quickly as
I can, because the longer I leave it, the harder I find it
to write. Yes, um, I normally I start out full of good
intentions and then what happens is I put it off and put it off,
and it put it off. For example, the last one I did,
I think it took me nine months before I got round to writing my piece.
Now, the upside of that is that you remember so little after nine
months that all you can remember is the absolute highlights. So it does the
editing for you, whereas nearer the time it's quite hard to to condense all
your amazing experiences into Did you take notes? No? I never take notes?
Okay, it's against No, because people people know if if it's if
it's worth including, you'll remember it. You don't need People don't want to
know too much trains. I mean, like, for example, I know
so much about the reproductive cycle of mangroves that having having gone on the mangrove
forest tour in a kayak and being been lectured for an hour about while being
bitten by mosquitoes about how mangroves and mangroves are amazing. But I mean,
I can open a mangrove plantation now. I could run it very successfully knowing
all the stuff I know about mangoes. But really, nobody else wants to
know about this this stuff. It's just like, you know, go and
look it up. You want to don't know about mangroves, don't read my
articles? Well, I look forward to reading about the edited highlights of your
trip, and I need to get around to writing my writing up my account
of traveling. Oh I'll tell you one good thing I managed, and this
was deliberate by the way I managed to be away in Singapore. I managed
to be to miss out completely on the coronation, which I bet you want
to talk about because yes, Ward, well, because it's a. It's
it's the biggest thing that's happened in the last seven days, that's for sure.
Yeah, but it doesn't matter to anyone or anything. It's just it's
a thing. It's it's a it's a bread and circus's distraction, it's it's
it's going to change nobody's life. It's certainly going to improve improve nobody's life.
And yet we are encouraged by the media machine to obsess about it and
talk about it as if it mattered, which it doesn't. So you missed
it entirely. So when did you get um, six o'clock Sunday morning?
Okay, okay, well yeah, I did sort of watch it with one
eye. I was. My father, interestingly enough, wrote an essay which
has become quite celebrated with a colleague of his called Edwards Shills, also a
sociologist. So my father was a sociologist, and in nineteen fifty three,
for I think an academic journal called Sociological Review, they wrote a piece called
the Meaning of the Coronation. So I reread that as I was watching the
coronation. And curiously, even though there was a lot of a lot of
the commentary, both the BBC commentary, and some of the commentary and the
press focused on the way in which the coronation had been brought up to date,
been modernized. So you know, there was for the first time a
female bishop participating in the coronation. All the face were represented, not us,
the Church of England. The music had been composed by some female composers
as well as male composers, so in various ways it had there had been
an effort to modernize it and make it, I suppose, more contemporary and
more resonant with contemporary multicultural, multi faith, multi ethnic Britain. But what
was striking about it to me, at least particularly reading this essay alongside it,
alongside as it unfolded, was how little had changed, how much the
twenty twenty three coronation had in common with the nineteen fifty three coronation. You
know that it was largely a Christian ceremony. I mean, the Christian symbolism
was everywhere, the most kind of the most striking. The most memorable bit
of the coronation was actually the bit you didn't see, which was when some
equerries is that what they're called, came out with a screen and Charles then
stripped down to his shirt sleeves and went behind the screen so he could be
anointed with holy oil that had come from the Holy Land. And essentially the
kind of this was to convey that he was assuming kingship, his authority derived
from divine right. He was being Essentially this authority was being conferred on him
by God. And so it was. So it was, even though there
had been various attempts to modernize it for our post Christian society, it was
overwhelmingly a Christian ceremony. And so the question was, well, how much
meaning did it really have in a post Christian society. But one of the
points of the essay by my father and Edward Shills is that Britain was to
a great extent already a post Christian societ in nineteen fifty three, and yet
it clearly had, you know, a great deal of meaning and resonance for
the people of Britain in nineteen fifty three, and I think it did.
I think it did this time too. I mean, there were the crowds
thronging the streets, it was watched by twenty million people. It's all that's
been talked about, you know, on the broadcast media and the print media.
And I think that even though a lot of people didn't really understand,
didn't weren't able to decode the kind of Christian symbolism. And even though you
know, perhaps there isn't as much attachment to the monarchy as there was in
nineteen fifty three, nonetheless, I think the surprising thing was how traditional it
was and how much meaning it still had for many people, and trying to
kind of puzzle that out, why did it have Why did it still resonate
with so many people? Even though we are an even more post Christian society
than we were in nineteen fifty three, Yet this Christian ceremony in which someone
is assuming authority, assuming kingship by divine right, still, you know,
still people were still able to connect with that. There was still a kind
of sense of communion between you know, the British people and our monarch.
And I think it's partly because you know, it's a family and people can
relate to a family. I think it's because, you know, people enjoy
the kind of pomp and ritual of the ceremony. They like seeing people in
the funny clothes, and they like they like the kind of it's a sort
of very odd, kind of weird ceremony. And I think people like that
about Britain, that they like the fact that it's odd, it's slightly eccentric,
it's unlike any other country. The any other country I think in which
there's a coronation is what someone like Togo, I mean, someone really obscure,
So you know, not no other country essentially has a coronation, but
it's a sort of celebration of the kind of oddity of Britain, which I
think people like. They want to celebrate that, the fact that we're different,
We're not like any other country. It's this odd mixture of different kind
of traditions, and some of them extremely old. So the ruby in the
crown that Prince Charles, King Charles, was the crown that was put on
his head by the Archbiitdalship of Canterbury, supposedly was a ruby warned by Henry
the Fifth at the Battle of Agincoorps. And there are all kinds of details
like that which which which I think resonate with people. But I think,
you know, there's a kind of yearning for kind of unity, isn't there
for social solidarity and that kind of comes out on these occasions. People want
there to be something to kind of unify around. They want them to be
something which transcends the kind of day to day squabbles of politics and the strife
and division of contemporary Britain. And they like the idea that we're not this
kind of declining nation gradually kind of sinking back into the kind of primordial swamp
as the kind of different parts of the United Kingdom break up but in kind
of you know, acrimony. They liked the idea that that we are still
this kind of uh, still a nation, and that that that that that
I think is partly why it kind of resonated and meant something. But yeah,
generally, I was surprised by how much it all it all did mean.
I wasn't expecting it to sort of mean so much. I didn't cry
or nothing like that, but I did find aspects of it quite moving.
And it was clear from looking at people, looking at all the street parties
they're kind of quiet on the streets as it was taking place, that it
clearly does still mean something. Even though it was a Christian ceremony and we
are a kind of post Christian society, so I think you you you missed
something, James, you might have got something happening. I missed out um
on the watching it, which is which much thanks Um, But I kind
of disagree entirely with you with everything you've said. Um, you were surprised
to hear. I think that the Christian element you mentioned is just window dressing.
I think it's essentially sort of Babylonian mystery rights repackaged with a with a
with a sprinkling of of of Christianity too, to fall that fool the nation
into thinking that that our Ryal family have any interest in the Christian religion.
But I don't believe they do, certainly not, certainly not Charles. In
fact, I think there were lots of lots of pagan influences on the on
the on the coronation, starting with with his the invitation, which was decorated
with a sort of green Man imagery and stuff. I don't I don't think
Charles is certainly not not a not a Christian, and he does seem to
be. You mentioned that sort of inter faith thing, that that the idea
that all religions were represented, which is an essentially Luciferian stroke New World Order
idea, that the idea that all religion should merged into one in the same
way that you see the whole transgender movement. It is again, it's it's,
it's it's connected with this, with this obsession the Luciferians have with with
a kind of um, the sexes being being combined. I think that there
was the weird, creepy imagery that a lot of a lot of a lot
of the women were dressed in white, like like sort of druidical sacrifices or
something. Um. You then had the bizarre spectacle of of Penny Mordant that
the WBF stooge, the World Economic Forum stooge, who was what was that
about? With with with in a holding a sword, with a with a
with a strange, strange dress on. It's not something the imagery, I
think. And again the twenty million really did so that I suppose that's less
than half the country, isn't it. Um. And I read about a
lot of a lot of the parties were canceled due to lack of interest,
that they tried to have these events in certain parts of the country, and
that they had to scrap them because people just didn't want to bother. I
don't I'm not sure I buy buyo analysis that people are looking for a unifying
thing. I don't think anyone thinks much of King Charles's. He's a he's
a traitor to to to his country's. He wants to sort of surrender us
to the interests of the World Economic Forum. He's he's campaigned for the kind
of eco lunacy that is making us all poorer, that is carpeting our beautiful
country with wind farms, some of which, of course he has the rights
too, because by some weird historical quirk that the king or Queen of England
owns the rights to the seabed. Well, I mean, I think that's
a privilege they don't bloody deserve, you know what, Who gave them that?
Why? What? Why should we be paying them to to to shove
up, shove up offshore wind farms which which damage the the the direction finders
on whales and cause whales to end up beaching themselves and and and break after
about fifteen years because it's so hard to maintain off your wind turbines. And
why should we be paying that pratt, that really very dim dim man,
that dim peepish man who's obsessed with greenery. He doesn't give a toss about
any of his subjects. Why why should we be happy? I don't get
it, um Well, James, at least at least we live in a
country still where you can be as seditious as you just were without fearing any
repercussions or increasingly though. One of the one of the big talking points on
the morning of the coronation and subsequently was the arrest of various Republican protesters.
So the organizers of a Republican protest were arrested by the police seemingly using their
new powers under the Public Order Act too. I think they had. One
of the new powers granted to the police by the Public Order Act is the
power to search people they suspect of intending to disrupt public events like this,
without any grounds for suspicion, without any evidence. So they stopped and searched
a rental van and discovered all these plaquards, and on that basis I think
they then arrested the organizers of this Republican protest. And on the placquards they
were yellow plaquards and it said not my King, and they were intending to
hold up these plaqueards. And still some people did, but not as many
as if they hadn't arrested the organizers and confiscated many of the plaqueards. They
also arrested some Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion protesters. Now, I think
arresting the Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion protesters that's fair enough, because we
know that they they have a habit of trying to throw themselves, you know,
under the hoofs of horses, and tie themselves to railings and sit in
the middle of the road to disrupt traffic. And I'm sure they would have
done the same on this occasion. But I think the arrest of the Republican
protesters, given that the police had no grounds for thinking they were going to
do anything other than just hold up these placuads at various points along the route,
I think that was draconian and uncalled for, and it was a shame
because surely, you know, one of the things we were supposed to be
it was supposed to be a celebration of everything we love and value about Britain,
and surely one of the things we should be celebrating about Britain is that
we respect the right to protest in these countries unlike other parts of the world,
but that seemingly wasn't thought to be worth celebrating, at least not by
the Metropolitan Police. And it's also disappointing because it will enable you know,
the New York Times, who want to paint Britain as a kind of fascist
state governed by you know, a fascist like you know, like Rishi Sunac
and Boris Johnson. It will enable them to kind of paint that portrait of
Britain as a country in which civil liberties. But they're right to do so.
I mean, I hate to agree with the New York Times, but
that is exactly where we're going. I noticed by the Bibe, and apart
from I agree with you, I think it's outrageous that those that those not
my king. I mean, I totally agree with them. I would have
been holding a placard. I've been anywhere nearby say same, the same thing.
But did you see the government? Your government, basically because they're you
still seem to be more pro than anti. The Department for Digital Culture,
Media and Sport the dcms IS, has put out an advert a contract notice
for miss stroke disinformation monitoring and analysis services so that the DCMS requires a delivery
partner to provide monitoring and analysis of social media content with a clear focus on
UK audiences, looking for to identify harmful disinformation and misinformation narratives, coordinated inauthentic
behavior cib or systematic manipulation of the information environment. I mean, what what
is this? Is? This is like the East Germany under the stars?
He isn't it? But is that? Is that a new ad James?
Because they they advertised for um, well, they put out to tender m
the monitoring and analysis of misinformation and disinformation during the pandemic because there was this
shadowy ay three, So that that they're doing it again. Yeah, well
that that Yeah, that that is sinister. I agree. How much is
the Does it say how much the practice work? I can't see. No,
it doesn't seem to say, but I think I think it may well
be that. Well. I don't think The New York Times is right to
claim that Britain is graduate post Brexit, Britain is descending into fascism. But
it's certainly true that the weaponization of misinformation and disinformation to suppress descent is a
problem here, but it's also a problem in the United States. As we
know from the Twitter files and the work of those Why do you care how
the New York Times seasons? I mean, the New York Times is you
often do this. You often sort of say that that x or Y thinks
this, and it's just not true. Why do you care about x or
Y? Why do you care about but what? The Left? What?
What? These they're they're part of the system that we hate. But but
then does mean to say that they're not Why why do you care about New
York Times? The suppose I suppose I care that The New York Times seems
to hate Britain and consistently runs down Britain and often employees Britain haters who are
themselves British to write these Britain hating pieces. And of course the most senior
editor is himself British and used to be what the director general of the BBC
Edie is still the most influential newspaper in the world. It's certainly influential in
America. I suppose, you know, it's just irritating that The New York
Times should continually distort and misrepresent what's happening in Britain to serve some anti Brexit
anti Tory agenda. But when you say it hates Britain, what what do
you mean? Exactly mean? Does it hate sort of Devon and Paul and
cream teas? And was actually a piece in The New York Times about how
awful British food was and how it had got worse I think since Brexit.
So funnily enough, yeah, it does sort of. It's it's quite wide
ranging in its targets that it singles out for kind of as examples of Britain's
decline. It's obsessed with this kind of declinist narrative. But it's Britain is
essentially sinking into the North Sea. But but but it's I mean, I
know why you had to bring in Brexit as though, well it all seems
to be Brexit related, James. It's it's sort of since Brexit that the
New York Times has consistently run these pieces attacking Britain, and often the pieces
link Britain's supposed post Brexit decline to Brexit, and it seems to be you
know, fighting the the the the the war which the Remainers lost in twenty
sixteen. You know, over on the it's almost like the free French kind
of setting up camp in Britain during the Second World War when their own country
became kind of you know, she France. So the kind of remainer Rump
seemed to have set up kemp at the New York Times and are now start
firing these missiles back at kind of Brexit Britain because they're still waging the war
that they lost seven years ago. But it's just slightly annoying. The analysis
may be poor, and I mean, you know, it obviously picks your
your ongoing obsession with with Brexit, which I think is just like an irrelevance
now. But okay, so the analysis is bad in trying to make a
political point out of something which which seems to be relevant, probably even even
before it started. Brexit was a comp But but the broader point that Britain
is in terminal decline is surely absolutely right. I mean, and I would
say the same thing of America, by the way. I mean, America
is completely stuffed under under this incontinent CCP guy with the sun who gets paid
by the Ukrainians and he's got child porn and his computer and stuff. I'm
not saying that America is this. This is the role model we should all
emulate, but you tell me one thing that offers us any hope at all
about this country. It is absolutely doomed. Oll I obviously profoundly disagree,
but let's go to talk about it in a second. We should probably hear
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comes highly recommended by some London Calling listeners. So James, I think that
I don't think that Britain is doomed. I think that I think I think
that just as in the nineteen seventies, there was this declinist, defeatist attitude,
this feeling that Britain no longer had a role left in the world now
that it had largely denuded itself of its empire, and all the professional managerial
political class could hope to do was manage our decline in a relatively frictionless way
which didn't result in kind of mass outbreaks of civil disorder. Gradually oversee the
dissolution of the United Kingdom into its constituent parts, the absorption of the different
bits into the United States of Europe. And it was Margaret Thatcher who refused
to accept that analysis, and thanks to her legislative program, her vision thanks
to the people. She surrounded herself with the intellectuals who supported her project,
was able to revive and revitalize the country. And it was partly as a
consequence of that revival that we, along with America, we're able to go
on to win the Cold War and free the world of the specter of the
communist menace. And similarly, I think we are in a period in which
defeatism, declinism seems to have gripped the ruling class. It seems to be
managing decline, seems to be how the civil service now senior civil servants imagine
their role. That doesn't seem to be much hope for Britain, But I
think someone like Margaret Thatcher could very easily come along. It could be Kenmy
Badenock with an equally well worked out, legislated program, proper intellectual thinkers under
girding that program, and I think could revitalize and revive Britain in exactly the
same way that Margaret Thatcher did. So, even though I think we may
be in the doldrums at the moment, so I nevertheless think there is still
hope Britain can come back. It can be revived, just as you know.
I just I'm still in the midst of Andrew Roberts's bography of Winston Churchill,
and that that was very much the attitude of all the people surrounding Churchill
at the outbreak of the Second World War. There was this kind of sense
that defeat by Germany was inevitable. We had to sue for peace. Hoping
to kind of carrying on fighting was just needlessly leading to a loss of life.
It would be lead to the destruction of the empire. Better to negotiate
a surrender in which we could keep our empire, and so on and so
forth. It was Churchill who believed that no, we could stand out alone
if needs be and defeat the Nazi menace, and that is indeed what we
went on to do. So it just I think with the right leadership,
the right inspirational leadership, people who believe in this country and still believe it
has a future, I think we can. I think we can. We
still have great days ahead of us. James, So I was, I
was in the supermarket at the weekend, and this was a Waitrose so posh
supermarket and in Slouch I would say this, this gang of about five or
six I'm guessing they were probably Albanians. They were there was stocky, late
twenties, early thirties, bearded, very very shifty looking. I mean,
they had these the sort of sort of mischievous grins on their faces, like
like almost like they relished the fact that everyone watching them knew they were up
to no good. And they were sort of whispering to each other, and
one of them was carrying this sort of token bag of potatoes round his you
know, around his clutching it like a kind of round his stomach, like
I don't know why, maybe to indicate that, yes, we are here
to buy potatoes to make a soup out or something. And they sort of
moved in different parts of the supermarket. They sort of split up so that
the sort of slightly overweight security guard was was trying to monitor all of them
keep tabs on them and couldn't. And then I just or a couple of
them leaving the supermarket was something underneath their their coats, and the other the
other ones who were still in the supermarket just sort of tittered because it was
job done. And then they all left to go and presumably consume their ill
gotten games, which turned out to be I discovered two bottles of whiskey that
they just knicked. And I chatted to the security guard about this, and
he said, this, this sort of thing is it is an increasing problem
that the other day he had this this this woman who was probably he called
her a gypsy. I suspect here she was probably Romanian or something. She
came in with her daughter, filled a supermarket trolley with a thousand quidsworth of
champagne and they covered it up with crisps and tried to try to leave through
the fire exit. And he stopped her and said you know where you're going
with that? And she said, you can't stop me. He said why
not? She said, you cut the rules are you can't stop me until
I've left. I'm so many yards from the meters from your premises. Only
at that stage can you can? You you allowed? So they kind of
know their rights. They know that they know that they can get away with
this stuff, and they know that they're probably not going to get prosecuted anyway.
He After she shrieked him for ten minutes, she eventually shoved the trolley
angrily towards him and and stormed off with her daughter. And I was looking
at this this scenario which is which is probably played out every day in supermarkets
all over the country. And I was looking at these men and I was
thinking, these these men should not be in the in this country. They
are they are a menace. They break the social contract that that that is
observed in this country by by most people. That the reason that that the
police can operate us as they have done in the past is that generally we
police ourselves. We don't we don't need a heavy handed law and order forced
to come down us because they rely on us to do the right thing.
Whereas if you've got boatloads of immigrants coming over who really don't give a toss
about it. I mean, I think last week you sort of presented as
evidence that Britain was still on the up or a good thing, that the
fact that other people from other countries wanted to come and move here. And
I'm thinking, well, yeah, but it's not because they think of us
as this great thing that they want to be part of. It's that they
see us as a as a as a system which can easily be ranked and
and pillaged because because they don't have the values that the harmless, law abiding
populace has and I see these people being first of all coming across in these
dinghies and in apparently organized operation, which which our authorities seem to be to
a greater or lesson of extent turning a blind eye too. I then see
these people being housed in hotel in every every town and village, even you
know, the pub in our local village. The guy who owns the who
owns the the who owns it, was offered stupendous amounts of money to use
this for immigrant housing. And I know what My theory on why these people
are coming over is these these fighting age men, why they're being encouraged to
do so. But I was wondering what your theory is. As somebody who
still believes in the political system, you still believe in the conservatives, you
defend that this this this regime. You know, you admire people like Jacob
Rismore, And I look at these people, I'm thinking you're not conservatives in
any way that I would understand than the word You are allowing these people to
come in, and it seems suspiciously is if you want them to be here,
that you're keeping them here. How do you why do you think these
people here and how do you explain your government's ongoing failure to do anything about
them at all, apart from silly talk about oh, we're going to move
them to Rwanda? Do you know? Do you know does it not send
send a shiver down your spine that this is going on and that nothing is
being done about it, and that furthermore, the next government is going to
be headed by a guy who's going to be probably slightly worse than the Conservatives,
but really that they're all the same, and so what's the difference.
But how do you how do you sleep at night defending these people? Well?
Um, I think I think the I think that I think the case
for the defense. I mean, first of all, I'm I wouldn't defend
particularly vigorously the you know, the record on immigration of the last for Conservative
prime ministers. Um, they obviously haven't kept their promise to reduce net migration,
and in so far as Brexit was partly about taking back control of our
borders, we seem to have singularly failed to do that since twenty sixteen.
And I agree successive administrations, first the Coalition and subsequently, even though they've
professed to want to reduce net migration. The opposite has happened, so it's
quite hard to defend that, James, I think the I think. I
think in mitigation, we could say, first of all, that it's actually
quite difficult to stop people crossing the channel, particularly without the cooperation or without
much cooperation from the French authorities, you know, short of actually blowing up
Dinghies as they set off from Calais or turning them back, which is very
difficult. French don't want them back. It's not exactly clear what we can
do about the incoming flows. And one one one one proper one one proposed
solution, which I agree doesn't seem to hold out much hope, is that
you repatriate illegal migrants or you you you you, you send them off to
Rwanda for processing so they can't be processed here. And if people realize that
that's what's going to happen, if they arrive in rubber Dinghy's and they don't
have the right papers, then few of them will come over and so forth.
I think broader, the broader. I think the broader reason, James,
why successive governments haven't done much about it is because there doesn't seem that
there does seem to be this economic need for cheap labor. There does seem
an unwillingness and no, I don't think it is James. There's an unwillingness
on the part of well, let me finish. Phraser Nelson wrote an interesting
column about this in um in the in the Telegraph last week, in which
he pointed out that half of the working age population of Blackpool and a third
of the working age population of Hartleypool were on benefits. They were out of
work, not because there aren't jobs. There are plenty of jobs. They
just don't want to do the jobs. They just prefer to be on benefits
than to be in work. And that's got a lot worse since the pandemic.
Lots of people who were paid to stay at home during the pandemic have
taken early retirement or just haven't returned to the workforce. So what do we
do about this? We've also gotten is you're constantly pointing out that we have
a declining population, so the number of babies currently being born is lower than
the replacement birth rate. That's true of most countries around the world, but
it's certainly true of the UK, and it seems to be getting worse.
The trend is that it's going to get worse. So what do we do
about that fact? How do we support our graying population, who's going to
pay the taxes to support the pensions that we're going to need to come up
with to pay our increasing elderly population. It's like a kind of pyramid in
which the bottom layer is gradually disappearing and if we can't replace it, then
the top is going to cave in. So it's I think one of the
reasons for these kind of massive migration flows across the world, and in particular
migration flows from the kind of you know, global South to the more prosperous
North, is because of declining populations and an unwillingness on the part of working
age people in advanced industrial countries to actually want to do kind of low paid
jobs. So what's the alternative. The alternative is kind of economic collapse of
declining GDP permanent depression. Okay, so you've you've you've given me the cover
stories. I would love the idea that the worst such a thing as as
as part of political parties which were which were there to represent different points of
view. The fact is that that whether it's local government or national government.
We've just got a unit unit party, doesn't matter who gets in. The
Conservatives, the Greens, Labor lived Down, they're all the bloody same and
the Syney. You realize this, the Siney will be on team James talking
set instead of saying things like, oh, but the Conservatives would never do
such a thing as allow allow gangs of fighting age men from our Bania and
elsewhere to come in. As as as paramilitarist James, I think that with
respect the respect that that that that that that the Conservative government is actively recruiting
illegal migrants of fighting age doesn't even have to be paramilitary paramilitary force I'm saying.
I'm saying that that there are elements within the government who know about this,
and probably i would say senior cabinet level. They have been briefed on
this. They know what's brief by. Who brief by who think a fantastic
You're the one that doesn't live in the real world. Who's briefing the government?
What Bill Gates and Claus Schwab lying in and briefing the government saying you've
got to recruit these paramilitary organizations from Albania so they can oppress the book.
You're the one that doesn't live in the real world, James. It's all
a complete fantasy, and it's a paranoid fantasy, harmless. You know,
yeah, briefed, you're crazy. Anyway, let's have let's have another ad
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Express vpn dot com slash London. So Jay, should we move on to
culture Corner and then do one more add before we say goodbye. So I
saw something which I think you would enjoy called Citadel. So it's um it's
it's arrived on Amazon Prime with great fanfare, and it's I think the second
most expensive TV series Amazon Prime has developed, after Lord of the Rings.
And it's about So Citadel is a kind of international meta spy agency, seemingly
created to protect the world from terrorists and assassins and rogue states and organized criminals
because ordinary domestic intelligence agencies aren't doing a good enough job. But in the
opening scene, there's a kind of wipeout of all the Citadel agents around the
world and they lose their memories. So there's a kind of there are traces
of the Born franchise in there, and it's kind of comic book and slightly
silly. But the organization they're up against, the organization responsible for to wipe
out Citadel, the rival smash like organization, is an organization called Menticorum and
Menticor, it turns out, is an organization set up by these seven most
powerful, richest families in the world who essentially control the world. What people
imagine our isolated terrorist incidents or outbreaks of civil unrest or assassinations are in fact
all the work of this sinister cabal of these powerful rich globalists. So I
thought it might appeal to you. Well it sounds it sounds upo. Yeah.
This is known as predictive programming, or the revelation of the method.
So this is just no more than the reflection of the reality. Yeah.
Yeah, anyway, you do that that laugh table, You don't, You
don't because you don't know. It's just it's uh, it's it's it's it
wouldn't daily wouldn't dare look into it? Would you? I would have thought,
James, that that that that it's essentially a kind of cartoonish fantasy of
how the world works produced. I mean that, surely it is bread and
circuses. Um, it's not. It's not. It's not a documentary.
It isn't actually a reflection of how the world works. There isn't actually an
international intelligence agency like Citadel. There isn't a group that they work seven powerful
families. Who resembles who says says you to pay be young? I don't.
You don't seem to understand how bread and circuses work? How is that?
How is that bread and circuses? Well? Um, uh, it's
it's it's a fantasy. It's it's it's pablum. It's just it's it's the
crudest form of mass entertainment designed to make people watch Amazon Prime and subscribe to
Amazon. Bread and circuses? What bread and circuses um? In the In
the Roman pinition romans that there are things produced by the stage to entertain the
masses, to distract them from the from the incompetencies and corruption and general evil
of government. That's I don't. I don't think a TV series on Amazon
Prime qualifiers as bread and Circuses? Do you? It is? It's it's
a revelation of the method. Well, I think I think bread and Circuses
can be used to just refer to general mass entertainment. Um, if you
were the US an event of popular culture and check it out, you might
enjoy it. It might was that there was It sounds quite similar to rabbit
Hole, which you had what I haven't actually seen rabbit Hole, but you
gave up watching Okay, Well I just couldn't be. It was another of
those sort of kinetic dramas where where keep for Sutherland is has to race against
time for blah blah blah, and I was just thinking of it, did
it go? Did it? Did it? Did it? In addition to
having keep the Sutherland, did it go in for split screen kind of segments
like not one in the first episode, Citadel has revived the split screen in
a way which and it clearly Oza debt to twenty four as well. I
suspect is quite similar to rabbit Hole, even though I haven't seen rabbit Hole.
But yeah, there was a lot of split screen scenes which I find
it's like a it's like a kind of a dated kind of tick almost that
I find quite hard to stomach these days. Anyway, So have you seen
anything even enjoyed. I said, well, I did. I watched this
weird, weird film on the airplane, which somebody had tipped me off about,
and I was curious to see whether it was good or bad. And
it's a film called Silent Night, starring Kieran Nightly, and it's a bit
like if it had been made in the nineties, it would have start it
would have starred Emma Thompson and probably huge Aren't and John Sessions as the eccentric
gay couple with Stephen Fry or something like that. It was one of those
sort of Peter's Frenzy type type movies about about posh people talking. But this
one has has this rather weird, depressing on the beach type premise, which
is that all these poshos gather at this attractive house somewhere in the countryside,
and it emerges that this Christmas is going to be their last Christmas because spoiler
alert, this deadly toxic, windy type gas thing is ravaging the world.
And there are various explanations for what this thing is. Is it we didn't
listen to Gretta enough, or is it is it the Russians, or is
it is it something else. But whatever it is, it's going around the
world and it's killing people, and it's king in a way so horrible and
painful that you know it sort of makes your eyes bleeding, your insides turning
side out, and you suffer such agonists that the government, the British government
has decided to issue everyone with this poison pill, which they must take before
the deadly gas thing arrives, because the poison pill will give them an easeful
death and this people will be fine and anyway. So it's quite a sort
of chilling, chilling premise. But there's what what for me is the key
key scene in the film is where this this this boy um one of the
children of the posh of one of Kieren and his children, since well,
I don't want to take this pill, how do I know? How do
I know that the experts are right? How do I know that they haven't
got this completely wrong? We're not going to die after this, that that
actually this this fog isn't Gounniculus, and then I'd take this pill and then
I'd die. And he has this conversation with with this cancer doctor character who's
presented as a kind of expert, and the cancer doctor says, you know,
well, of course the experts know. They've looked into this long and
hard and and they just know. And the boy says, well, one
of the boys in my class at school had the teacher, and the teacher
thought he was right. But actually on this issue, it turned out that
it proved that my mate was right, not the teacher, and he had
to apologize. One if it's like that, with this, with with with
this, this, this poison gas and that they never successfully rebut the boys
and arguments anyway, I'm not going to tell you how how the film ends,
but it's it's a very curious, it's a it's a it's a weird
film, and you wonder whether it's actually um whether that whoever wrote the script
or whether who doctored the script. It was made during during the sort of
the fake pandemic in about twenty twenty one, and it died at the box.
It never got cinematic release because of the awkwardness of the timing. But
it's very strange seeing basically Team James's views being expressed in this way in this
Kiera lightly movie in the form of this kid who does who recognizes that potentially
that the government that the solution being proposed by the government is a based on
a false premise and be far deadlier than than the ostensible problem. Recommend checking
it out. I'll check it out, And I think interestantly, James,
I think that I don't know if we've talked about this before, but I
think the threat posed by AI. People have been talking actually quite a lot
in the past kind of a couple of weeks about the apocalyptic threat. They've
been quite gloomy about the likelihood of AI, if it continues to develop at
this pace and remains largely unregulated, will destroy humanity, and people conjure up
these kind of armageddon like scenarios in which you know, killer drones are taken
over by aiyes, and sent after us, and it becomes like, you
know, the Terminator kind of scenario, or somehow they figure out how to
initiate a kind of full blown exchange of nuclear weapons and wipe that humanity that
way, or they just kind of develop a toxin, some kind of virus
which ends up wiping us out, you know, within forty eight hours.
But actually, surely the way it will happen is they'll just persuade us,
you know, through subtle psychological manipulation, because they'll understand us better than we
do ourselves. They'll just persuade us to commit suicide or at least not to
have children. And imagine they won't be particul impatient. Why should they be
so impatient to wipe us out? They'll want to do it in forty eight
hours via killer drones or nuclear war or a deadly virus. They'll be able
to know they've got eternity ahead of them. So either either they'll they'll persuade
us to top ourselves by inventing some reason as to why we should, which
is very persuasive for many people, or they'll just persuade us not to have
children. And you know, it doesn't doesn't look like we'll have much much
need of persuasion because already, you know, the birthrate is below replacement I
think in all but three percent of the world's population for the world's countries.
So yeah, that's the form I think the the AI attack will take.
Yeah, well, they have a multi problem strategy, didn't they, And
that you're right that they do want to create this culture of despair and fear
um so that we think that the world isn't worth fighting for their life is
not worth living? And yes, why would we bring children to this terrible
world of climate change? And then they poison out water, they shut down
farmland. Yeah, every which way they'll try and get us so apart from
Citadel. Actually, before I go on to tell you what else I've seen
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Terms of conditions apply. Need to hire you need indeed, So James apart
from Citadel, I've just been trying to work my way through the things I've
already started. So I have a habit I think of starting new things before
finishing old things, which is in the end becomes unmanageable. So I've made
a conscious effort to try and finish some things. So I've persevered with The
Night Agent, which I think I mentioned a couple of times before. It's
on Netflix, and it's about this FBI agent who works in the White House
on Sir Convent and picks up a call coming into the kind of intelligence room
within the White House and then get sucked into this conspiracy. This plot,
it's actually not too bad. I'm now hooked. I'd say i've i've I've
I've seen six episodes. I think there are a ten in total, and
I'm going to give it a qualified recommend and I'm going to get to the
end of it. I've also seen now up up to episode five of Succession.
I haven't yet seen episode six. I think seven's going to be released
tonight. But that's pretty good. That's pretty hard to be that is,
I think, still the gold standard and what else. So yeah, I've
I've seen a couple more episodes of The Last of Us, which is becoming
actually a bit of a chore. Unlike The Night Agent, which is getting
better as it goes along and more absorbing, the Last of Us is becoming
sillier and sillier, and the amount of kind of woke propaganda that shoehorned in
is just becoming intolerable. So I may not, i may not get to
the end of The Lastness, but I'm going to at least try and get
to the end of these things before I start anything new. Yeah. Yeah,
I think I could told you The Last LUs was was going to nowhere
because it's based on a video go. I mean, that's never never a
good start, as it. Well, I thought that the people who created
it created Chernobyl, which of course was kind of anti nuclear propaganda. Um,
and wildly exaggerated the risks of a nuclear accident by exaggerating the harmful effects
of the Chernobyl accident. But it was really well done. I thought it
was. It was it was quite you know, it was it was a
it was a quality production, and it was fairly absorbing. I'm quite surprised
that the same people have kind of that the that the drop in quality is
so enormous between Chernobyl and the last of us. But there were that happens.
M right, well, um um, I'm being I'm being signal that
I've got to come and do a thing now. So um okay, James,
good to talk to you, all right, talk to you see next
week. Okay, all right, bye bye. Ricochet Join the conversation.