This is London Calling, London Calling. What I think should have happened yesterday
should have been Nichola Sturgeon been suspended by the SMP because she is now under
police investigation. And of course Nicola Surgeon would have suspended Nichola Sturgeon because when
she was leader of the party she suspended a number of SMP politicians who were
under investigation by the police. And the fact that hums Yusuf has refused to
do this shows how weak he is in the role as SMP leader. Welcome
to London Calling with me James Dunning Part and my very good friend mister Tyby
Young. Now, lots of our listeners are going to be thinking there's going
to be a massive mummy and Daddy fight this week and they've been really looking
forward to are the ones who read Twitter anyway. But before we move on
to our fight, how's how's your week been? Not too bad? Quite
busy, so lots of events last week and climaxing on Saturday. Weird Do
you want to hear about that sort of thing? Tabs just keep partick your
events. Really, I was just talking about my event, Sir James.
But on Saturday night we had the first and one of only two performances of
The Lockdown Live in which I interviewed Isabelle Oak Shot in the Events space at
Unheard in Westminster about how she came to collaborate with Matt Hancock writing the Pandemic
Diaries, at what point he decided to turn over over one hundred thousand WhatsApp
messages that are on his phone from the pandemic, and at what point she
then decided to hand them over to the telegraph. And we also had a
cup of actors, someone playing Boris and someone playing Hancock, reading out some
of the more embarrassing amusing bits from the WhatsApp messages, and it was about
there. We sort of It was seven thirties and nine thirty with a fifteen
minute interval, lots of Q and and actually it went pretty well and people
did find the actors reading out the messages pretty in music mean, some of
them aren't pretty funny, but the format seemed to work quite well. And
we're doing it again at the Hippodrome on Tuesday, So tomorrow, if you're
listening to this, so how many how many how many seats at the Hippodrome
There are two hundred and eighty on sale, and we so far sold exactly
two hundred and fifty, so there are still some seats left, but not
many. And if people didn't buy one, hold on generally get to the
critical bit, James. If anyone is interested in buying a ticket for to
see Isabelle and I on stage and the actors on Tuesday night, there are
any twenty five quid pretty good value for a two hour show in the West
End, And they can do that by going to event bright dot com and
searching for lockdown files live okay, and did you did you go out drinking
with your crowd afterwards? How did it work? We did? We had
a kind of We had a drinks reception beforehand at Unheard and then a dinner
for fifty people afterwards, also at Unheard. And how did you because these
are also social issues, aren't they vital details? How do you keep everyone
happy? I mean fifty people that they all get to sit next to you
or isabel So how do you deal with hords of the people? Well,
the people on the outer limits cope. At the drinks reception, we made
sure we got round and talked to everybody who bought a drinks ticket. And
then at the dinner afterwards, we got round a bit and at the end,
before Isabel left, she got up and we answered a few more questions
at the sort of front of the restaurant. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah. Because the reason I'm curious is because I mean, I do
these these events occasionally as well. I totally love my the people who come,
and what I find is well because almost by definition that they are a
self selecting audience. So the people who are into me into the things that
I'm into, So one always has really great conversations, and I want to
meet them all. But the problem is that, I mean, like,
the last event was nine hundred people and you can't I mean, how long
would it take to talk to them all in a do some of them express
disappointment that they didn't get to well yeah, so for example, um,
we all repaired to the pub um, and some people hadn't got the word
about which which pub it was, and they felt lifted in one chap.
I think it had flown over from um ah oh um, the place where
where saw us tried to stage a color revolution M what's it called? Um
and failed? Ukraine? No no, no, no, no, he
succeeded there. You mean you mean Belarus, Belarus Belarus? Yeah, yeah,
um so so obviously I felt a very very very very very guilty guilty
about that. But I had I had a sort of mini mini event,
a mini taste of the thing I love, which is being with these people
at the weekend. It's the highlight of my week. I went to You
probably don't know Abby Roberts because because she's part of my world, and you
know, and your your kind of in normal world, but Abby Roberts is
a is a big thing in my world. She's a comedian and she's very
what we might call red pilled or awake whatever. And she had had a
party in a pub actually not far from you, not far from you,
um, the brook Green. Oh yeah, that isn't too far. Brook
Green is not far, is it? Um? And it was this pub,
this sort of anti lockdown pub. It was called the Keep. And
yeah, it was great and really good nosh and just it was really wonderful
going to a party where you you that whoever you spoke to was going to
be really really interesting and an on side and would not make you feel like
a weirdo, would make me feel like you know, I'm with my people
so pretty much, not everyone actually, because I did encounter one one person
who loved space and was very disappointed when I told her that space didn't it
probably didn't exist. But most people would be down with the idea that the
moon landings were a joke, didn't happen, stuff like that, So you
don't need to kind of explain your terms or set out to shock people like
like like you might if you were me at a normal party, right and
it was really lovely, a very very nice change to be among my people,
right right, Well, that sounds nice. Yeah, I guess yet
that that that there was a similar atmosphere at this event I helped organize at
Unheard. Most people there were pretty empathetic, some of them who were long
standing readers of first Lockdown Skeptics, another Daily Skeptic, quite a few London
Calling listeners there. One thing that slightly worries me about meeting people who are
who are sort of very appreciative of the fact that you know, I was
a lockdown skeptic from quite an early stage and set up Lockdown Skeptics is that
they might just be coming to say thank you for having you know, as
a one off, and actually it might be difficult to kind of fill an
auditorium again with another event, because a lot of the people there are people
who kind of you feel are coming because they want to express their thanks for
what you've done, not because they're particularly interested in the event you're staging on
that particular night. And my I mean great that they want to do that,
and you know, lovely of them, but my worry is that they
might they might not do it more than what either they might not want to
come back and do it again, so it might be that I wouldn't be
able to repeat the experience. I My my take on that, certainly for
me, is I hope that really people are not coming to see me mainly
although I am bloody great, I'm quite entertaining, but that they're really coming
to meet all the other people there because for the reasons I've just described.
With Abbes's party, you're among your people, and it's great and it's a
great draw because lots of there are lots of people around the country who feel
very lonely and because they're surrounded by people who don't understand the world and the
way that they do, and they need it's great being among their own.
So I think I've got that advantage over you, possibly that I can't imagine
that people who come to Toby events are going to be thinking nobody understands me,
only Toby's crowd. No, that is absolutely a very common theme,
James. It sounds almost exactly the same. Numerous people came up to me
on Saturday night and said what they really valued about lockdowns optics, as well
as listening to London Calling, was realizing they weren't alone, that they weren't
insane after all, that there were other people out there who were as skeptical
of the government's pandemic response as they were feeling. We had this couple from
that had come They hadn't come all the way from Melbourne, but they had
lived in Melbourne during the lockdown and got out as soon as they were able
and have been in London ever since. But they said they stumbled across lockdown
skeptics while imprisoned in their homes in Melbourne and it was you know, it
was a sanity Saber And people do say that to me over and over again.
But are they not a bit I would say that that team, James,
people which I would I would suggest it probably the majority of the world,
I mean of our world would say, yeah, we loved Toby's position
against lockdown, but we now realize that he's kind of well, shit the
bed is that maybe too strong a phrase, but but you've let the side
down on. You haven't gone in hard enough on vaccines, which are just
evil. You haven't gone in. You know, you're you're completely wrong on
the Ukraine's hue And they're probably thinking, well, he was a bit of
a bit of a tease. He sort of he gave us what we wanted
on the lockdown. But we now realized that people who bang on about lockdown
like Dan Hammond does, for example, he makes a big deal doesn't need
lords handon as he now is on how still verte a few people in the
country who who resisted lockdown, who spoke against lockdown. I was all on
my own and fighting this battle. Um, but I was reading I was
reading his column in the in the Sunday Telegraphs this weekend, and he was
listening Boris Johnson's achievements, and among the achievements was was rolling out the vaccines
faster than any country in the West. And I'm thinking, you could maybe
have written that piece two years ago, but now it looks really rather tasteless.
I mean like tasteless propaganda on behalf of a really quite monstrously corrupt and
misguided the very least government when you're when you're speaking out about what is now
known to be a dangerously rushed program of an experimental genes therapy, which is
which is killed or injured lots of people. So the point I'm making,
sorry I've made it and sidetracked by well, yeah, but but he is.
He is emblematic of the For me, I think I've said this before,
I've faced my point, then you can say what you want that I
see people who may make a big deal about their opposition to lockdown m I
put them in the same category as people who bang on about how much they
hate LBGT nonsense and and and unwoke. These seems to be distractions from the
much greater evils in the world right now, which are the fact that big
big farmer, with the collusion of governments, has been poisoning us and they're
not admitting it. I mean, that's a much much bigger deal, and
people who won't admit that seems to me part of the problem, however good
they were on Lockdown Well, I mean, I think Dan Hannan in good
faith was a lockdown skeptic. But it's not a COVID vaccine skeptic, and
that's not a particularly uncommon position. I think that you may be overestimating the
number of people who've gone with you on this journey. I mean, much
more often than I had people coming up to me and not saying, Tobes,
I think you've shot the bead. Why haven't you gone with James on
the same journey? Much more often people come to me and say, a
big fan of lockdown skeptic, I'm a big fan of lockdown skeptic. Became
the Daily Skeptic, love one and calling. But is James okay? Is
he all right? I'm a bit worried about it. I must they care.
People say, why why don't you agree with James when he you know?
But there are self selecting audience tapes, they are other people. That's
true. It may well be. I expect I expect people come up to
you and go, it's Toby all right? Is he has he become a
complete cut Who who's paying who's paying his wages? Or something? Like that.
That's pretty Yeah, there's few that do talk about here wou would would
say that, Yeah. Yeah. Many of the people come up to me
that clearly agree with me more than they agree with you. They often say,
I'm somewhere in the middle, but but I'm closer to you than I
am to James, And they worry that you sometimes sound quite sensible, and
I think you do take people who were originally just lockdown skeptics with you,
particularly talking about vaccine harms. But they worry when you talk about, you
know, dinosaurs being a hoax and the moon landings being faked and Paul McCartney
having been replaced by Do you think do you think? Ask you? Do
you think the moon landings were not faked? Do you think they actually happened?
I think they actually happened. Yeah, as as right, okay,
and not because you know, receive the normally status or being excluded from mainstream
publications. Have you looked into I genuinely do think that they actually happened.
We won't. We won't going to Now when are we going to have?
When am I going to put you on the naughty steps? Shud we do
it in the next section, Okay, should we hear from? Should we
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was really well time terms because while you were doing that ad that some lightning
briefly took out or interfered with. Is it raining where you are, No,
but it's quite overcast, looks like it might rain it in any moment.
We're very grateful. I've been. It's been driving me nuts. This
dry weather. You try riding on ground this hard, The horse is bloody
hate it. You can't you can't counter or jump or anything, and it
upsets there that hurts their knees. And anyway, Um, I'm using starlink,
and I I've got my doubts about starlink. I mean even though even
that which it comes to the north step but in the moment, but um,
it's the good thing about starlink is if you live in the sticks where
I do, and there's no there's no what's that special wire line that you
get where where you get yeah, where there's no fiber optic and so satellites
really are any option. But I think it is part of a I don't
trust in a musk. I think it is part of an evil master plan
to make us rely on to this system. Then it's going to use it
to two it does? Does it work? Does it work well? Does
it work better than it does normally work? Well? I mean it's quite
unusual, I'd say, to lose them. It could be me. I
mean, I've had to switch to my phone. My Internet's really not as
good as it was. I don't know what's going on with it, but
I'm now Anyway, what I was asking was, do you know why you're
on the naughty step? Well, I'm not sure is it is? It?
Is it because of something I said in my other podcast the week get
Having seen your comments, I wasn't sure whether you were where you actually listened
to it, or whether you were just reacting to someone else's no no.
So I looked, that's right, um my snitches. You know obviously obviously
I have a gang of snitches, and they they watched your podcast and they
said, look what Tobia said about you. So I said, right,
well, I take a very dim view of this. And my view is
I don't mind you dissing me behind my bat because obviously I do that with
you all the time. But if you're going to diss me. I think
it's very important that you represent what I say and rather than what I don't
say, because if you, if you, if you misquote me and misrepresent
my position, it makes me worry that you don't really understand the word I'm
saying to you, and you don't really listen to me. You just kind
of make up stuff that I said and your head in faith. What was
it I said that you thought was a misrepresentation? Okay, So, very
very briefly you told the sad story about how you'd raise the subject to Philip
Scofield, the children's entertainer Come Breakfast TV presenter, and you'd raise this subject
in order to find some common ground, which I thought was very touching,
and you you thought that we would be able to agree on this subject,
which was isn't far too much media space being given to Philip Scofield, And
had you said that straight away, I've gone too right, Toby. It
is absolutely it is a distraction. It's bread and circuses, it's smoke and
mirrors. The fact that we are being encouraged to talk about the celebrity tittle
tattle about this this perv is is really a sign that you know, it's
how it's how they operate. They try and distract us from much more important
things with with this this stuff. But unfortunately we got bogged down in the
debate about what exactly Schofield had done, and I and I was brating you
for um for under underplaying what the gravity of what he'd done. But that
wasn't My point was not that actually this was a serious story which we should
pay more attention to. It was more if you're going to raise this subject
terms, at least get it, get your get your your your facts right,
rather than so do you see do you see the difference? I do
too, think it's a sip. Yeah, that's why I suppose, Yeah,
I suppose it wasn't just a straightforward misunderstanding. Well, but that is
quite a subtle distinction. It was more me trying to kind of turn our
exchange into a funny story. So the story I told was that I had
introduced this subject in order to agree with you for why that he was a
news story that everyone was talking about but which was receiving far too much attention.
Because that's often what you say when I bring up something I'm interested in,
but your yes, and I sort of presented this as an olive branch.
I was extending to you something we were going to agree shouldn't be shouldn't
be receiving the columnches it is in the national media. But I'd misjudged it
because it turned out that you actually were quite interested in the story because because
of the implication that Philips go Field had behaved inappropriately with a minor and that
But I wasn't fed into your kind of general suspicion of this kind of diabolical
halt kind of Christopher. No, that's why we're probably exaggerating that bit,
that bit, yes, in order to just in order to just make it,
to turn it into a funny story, to make to make it seem
like I just misjudged for once I'd landed on a story which you thought at
actually walls worth discussing because it did reveal something diabolical and sinister and evil about
the kind of you know, elite media class. But I accept that that
that that you're not a subscriber to this kind of English version of Q and
On. Well, no, I don't. That's because the key thing I'm
not a I'm not a subscriber to I do have a totally think that that
Hollywood is riddled with with pedophilio and satanism. That's but that's a that's a
separate issue. Um. I just that I don't think the Phillips go Field
story is is a good example of it. And I share your view that
it's it's total technical. It's just it's just like not anyway, um our
bet that there are further stories this week you are dying to discuss, and
I will not give a flying Yes, I rather fear that. But I
fear that why didn't you? Why didn't you try them out? You know?
Cast you get your little bit of your fly, your favorite fly,
and cast it out and seeing whether the James the trout is remotely interested or
what he's going to light at the bottle. When I was thinking that some
of our listeners, including listeners in the United States, would be interested in
our views about the reversals of fortune that have befallen three of the most prominent
politicians in our world. So there's the indictment of Trump, which has jeopardized
his bid to become the Republican nominee in twenty twenty four. There's Boris effectively
being hounded out of Parliament by the Privileges Committee. So he's now on Friday
he resigned his seat in Uxbridge, and it doesn't look like he's now going
to find a way back into the House of Commons. So it looks as
though I don't want to write him off, but it looks as though his
conventional political career maybe over all, though there's a possibility he may form a
new party with Farage or somebody else. And then there was also, perhaps
most dramatically, the arrest of Nicholas Durgeon, the Scottish Tyrant. I mean,
the rise and fall of Nicholas Durgeon is almost more dramatic than the rise
and fall of Boris Johnson. Yes, Boris one an eighty seat majority in
twenty nineteen, got Brexit done, and you know, has proved to be
at least four years ago a very effective leader of the Conservative Party, at
least on the campaign trail, and has now had to resign because he effectively
run a foul of parliamentary rules, or at least that's the view of the
Privileges Committee. So that's quite a dramatic rice and fall. But Nicholas Sturgeon,
I mean, you know, as recently a six months ago, was
being held up as a kind of paragon of virtue, which people connected with
the fact that she was a woman. Here was a woman with more integrity,
you know, a more moral fiber, simply in virtue of being a
woman who should who had modeled for the rest of the world, like just
Sinda Arden how to respond this life threatening pandemic because she's so caring and compassionate
and so morally upright. You know, she was a kind of held up,
you know, as this exemplar of female leadership. And on was it
yesterday she was arrested by police Scotland in the course of their inquiries into a
financial fraud whereby hundreds of thousands of pounds have disappeared from the Scottish National Party's
coffers, and her husband and she are currently under investigation. I mean,
it is an extraordinary and dramatic fall from grace for one of the leading female
politicians in the worst So, yeah, those are the three stories I thought
you might want to talk about, but maybe you don't. I don't.
I think it's all pantomime and it's all meanless that I think the problem is.
And I know this really Annoys Team tob people and they say, why
won't James address these things? I think it's been a very very long time,
if ever, actually since our political systems were we're about representing us the
people, or about the rule of law, or about this thing they call
democracy or anything else. It's all staged. It's all it's all pantomime.
You know, the fact that Nicholas Sturgeon is now being in I doubt anything
will come of it. I don't shoot, she'll she'll do deal jail time.
It's it's all the stuff about Boris. Boris is a is a sort
of self created character out of a Punch and Judy show. He's not he's
not real. He's just a kind of buffoon who appears on the stage and
prances a while and entertains us and delights us, and then then we go
boo his and and then he disappears, and then he comes back, maybe
as he's been touted as maybe the next editor of the Spectator if if Yeah,
that's another that's another drum attic thing that's happened in our world since the
last episode, which is the Telegraph Media Group, which includes the Daily Telegraph
for Sunday Telegraph and the Spectator, which we both still work for, has
gone into receivership and is now we think, up for sale. Seemingly,
yes, and seemingly the Spectator could be sold off separately from the rest of
the group, and so there are supposedly some buyers interested in the Spectator as
well as buyers interested in the entire group. And that's all quite dramatic too.
I thought you were going to perhaps suggest that the reason the Telegraph had
suddenly suffered this setback was because it had suddenly become full it had gone full
lockdown skeptics. But I think that would be a conspiracy theory that even you
wouldn't entertain. I think it is just a coincidence. Yeah. No,
I think the whole of the mainstream media, that the legacy media is owned
by the powers that be, the cabal, the predator classes I call them,
and not to be trusted in any way, and they're all in engineering
are down for um. Yeah No, I don't know if they're owned how
I mean, But what's your understanding then, of why the Telegraph has gone
into receivership. I mean, seemingly the owners who did own it ran up
some significant debts which they were then unable to repay. Well, yeah,
I think I think rich rich people buy these things as that as their sort
of toys, don't they? And then then they decided that they realized that
the joy it's like buying a grass mall. You suddenly realized that that actually
these things are expensive to run. And I owned by a cabal of like
minded billionaires. It's look, I don't understand the nice work. I haven't
looked into media ownership and how it works, but I'm a great believer in
by their fruits, you shall know them. It's it's very obvious looking at
the telegraphs that it is no better than any of the other publications out there
that I utterly deplore. They're all part of the line machine. But the
stories that I want to before we get onto those, let me just tell
you. Let me just make a brief observation about the three big political stories
I mentioned. You don't need to comment, and they can go on to
discuss the things you want to talk about. I mean, the thing that
struck me about all three stories is that Trump, Boris and Nicholas Sturgeon have
all got into difficulty because they either have broken the law or been accused of
breaking the law, or they haven't followed the rules. So Boris was accused
of being in contempt of deceiving Parliament when he said that he hadn't broken any
of the rules or ignored any of the guidance. And that's what the committee
has decided, and that's why he stepped down. And then Sturgeon again accused
of breaking the law. And it's as though in politics now the way to
undo your opponents is to find rules, laws that you can kind of credibly
accuse them of breaking or not complying with. And it's as though, almost
as though, you know, the political class is being hoist on its own
petard. It introduces all these laws, all this guidance, it expects everyone
else to follow these petty rules. And then of course it immediately that the
political players immediately get caught out for not obeying these laws or following these rules
they expect everyone else to do. But it does seem to represent and and
and because of the way in which politics has become so rule bound, because
lawfare has become so important, bureaucrats have been empowered, because the bureaucrats understand
bureaucrats and lawyers understand what the rules allow and don't allow. They understand the
law, and politicians, particularly if they're slightly inattentive or a bit lay say
fair like Boris and don't bother to master the minutiae of all the laws and
rules they're supposed to be following, inevitably end up getting caught out. It's
just as though we're moving to a new period in politics in which it's the
enforced. The enforces of the rules, whether bureaucrats or their legal allies,
are becoming far more powerful than elected politicians or politicians seeking reelection. And it
does seem to me to be a depressing development and of a peace with everything
else we've seen in the past three years. And I thought you were going
to almost for the bet on it you were going to tell me about the
time you went to one of Berlascon's Bunga bunga parties. That's right, Berlisconi,
another eminently politician who's who's something has happened to in the past week.
So yeah, he's died, hasn't he. Did you ever go to one
of his bunglebow I never did. Did you do you have any amusing,
So you can tell us about nothing about Berlisconi. Okay, so we'll move
on. Another person who's died is Ted Kachinsky, Yes, the unibomber.
Now I was, I was really quite taken aback reading his obituary in the
Telegraph. It I hastened to add, It's not me who buys the Telegraph,
it's my wife. Um. But she she made me read it before
we go on the show, so that we could say, so that I'd
be apt to speed with what normis think. And a line brought me up
short where it pointed out that, having described how he was one of the
cleverest kids of his generation, he went up to somewhere like Harvard or somewhere
similar when he was sixteen. He was really bright. But then it mentioned
that he spent two hundred hours under some kind of MK Ultra program. Now
I imagine that you're halfway to thinking that MK Ultra is a conspiracy theory?
Would I be right? No? I remember, I remember. I think
I was vaguely aware of this because I think it comes up in man Hunt
Unibomber, that rather good Netflix series about the man Hunt unim So so often
things things like MK Ultra, which is you know, probably is a CIA
brainwashing program which changes the personalities of the victims of it. And it's got
a sort of more modern incarnation which is called Monarch and the Monarch program the
symbol of it is that butterfly, you know, that very familiar butterfly which
you'll you'll often see and in unlikely places like pop videos and stuff. A
lot of a lot of the damage that's done in the world by by people
that are sold to us has kind of lone wolf killers and you know,
liked head Kachinsky. These these people are actually the victims of MK ultra programs.
And and you'd ask yourself, what are the three letter agencies like the
CIA doing experimenting on members of the of the public and turning them into psychopaths.
Do you not think it's a bit weird that you could? You could?
You not that I didn't think that was going to be your constantly trying
to second guess each other's takes. But I thought I thought you were going
to be quite the fan of the Uni bomber and not ascribe his um apocalyptic
theories about the direction in which the West is heading to. You know,
mental instability or to the sky. Oh no, I think I think he
said. He said he wrote a lot of cool stuff as well. But
but he did he did, you know, he did. He didn't send
letter bombs to people. He did killer injure a few a few people,
which I'm not sure I'm a massive fan of, you know, just bite.
You know. Some of his writings are pretty interesting, you know,
and actually some of his writings are Remember that game where you had to compare
which passage was from Ted Kachinsky from the UNI Bomber and which was written by
Al Gore in his book about the about the Planet, and that they're often
indistinguishable. Um, yeah, yeah, but yeah, I mean there is
a lot of This is where I think you normal is, if I may
call you one, need to kind of take the theories of people like me
a bit more seriously, and that the clearly is a thing called m k
Ultra, that clearly is an organization called the CIA. It clearly does damage
people like Ted Kachinsky and actually most of the most of the worst serial killers
of the last you know, well since forever. If you look into their
their background, you find that they have been involved in some manner with these
kinds of programs or they've been part of the three letter agency black ops things.
It's and it's very very handy to dismiss these things, as is your
is that the CIA wanted to deliberately create kind of homicidal maniacs in order to
kind of destabilize Western society and I don't know, rather than it's just an
accidental byproduct, yeah, No, My My contention is that it did create
these people. I can't pretend I can deliberate or not. I can to
deal with the facts of the matter. I would say that that what it
comes down to is this that we who have been brought up on. You
and I were about the same age. Um, we watched James Bond movies
and there was James Bond who worked for presumably am I six rather than MY
five because he's sort of foreign intelligence, isn't he? And then we had
his buddy in America is great guy Slighter. We love Felix Lighted, We
love that, we love the CIA. When when when when they appeared because
they're the good guys. They're fighting for freedom in America. And it seems
to me that we've been sold apart that I don't where are you on the
CIA, for example, do you think it's basically a good thing or or
a fundamentally bad thing. I don't. I don't have a well I think
it, Um, I think it it in periods of its history, Um,
not good. But well, I think I think I'm obviously suspicious about
collusion within the security services to discredit Trump that seems to have taken place,
and also the involvement of you know, Security Service personnel and X personnel and
trying to suppress misinformation and disinformation, which is the name that that's more the
FBI, wasn't it that was involved in the I mean, I mean not
not that I think that we're talking about last fleet. I think, well,
I think I think there are there are allegations that there is some CIA
or x CIA personnel involvement in the kind of censorship industrial complex, right,
But that what you think? That's that's as far as it goes. You
don't think they're responsible for drug running, child child trafficking. I think I
think they may. They may have been responsible for jobs some drug running certainly
during the you know, the the eighties. Um, but not now.
I thought I thought that there's a there's that film American made, I thought
was very good. Do you see that with Tom Cruise, Well, that's
yeah, that's I haven't seen that one, but but that is basically revelation
of the method that these films occasionally give us clues about what these organizations are
up to, and then they're up to no good. Um yeah, no,
I'm just just just curious anyway. Um, that's Ted Kaginski. Um.
The other thing I wanted to talk to you about. Sorry, because
I'm I'm conscious we haven't got that much time, but we should just break
for a second to give it an opportunity for another sponsor to say something to
our listeners. Hey, folks, James Wild you're ricochet dot com. The
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I know everybody on the Internet wants you to give them money streaming services
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I mean, we talk about a radio and jazz and old music and sports
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the community that you have been looking for, ricochet dot com. I'm not
AOTU. You go there right now. The shark Yes, did you did?
Did you? I hope you didn't, But did you? Or did
you? Didn't you watch it? I didn't watch it. No, this
is the shark attack in Egypt. Don't yeah, don't do it. I
normally don't look at horrible, horrible videos because I'm quite much more screen wished
his days than I used to be. But having had a lifetime's obsession with
sharks, I even read a book about my Fear of shar novel based on
my fear of sharks, and I've dived in cages with great white sharks.
You know, I've sort of confronted my fear when a video went up on
the Internet of a man being attacked off a beach in Sharm or Shake in
Egypt, where I've been. I've been on diving holidays, so so it's
all pretty much. It's quite near the knuckle for me. Saw him being
killed in front of his dad on the beach, you know, a few
a few feet away from the beach, and people just going, oh my
god, oh my god, oh my god. It was horrible. It's
really horrible. Don't I urge everyone not to watch it. It's something you
should never see a man's last moments. And yeah, but the thing that
really upset me about it, apart from the obvious, was that it turned
out that this young man, he was twenty three, he was Russian.
And I don't know whether these were actual real accounts or whether they were kind
of fake accounts designed to raise tension and upset and stuff, but there were
various accounts purporting to be from Ukraine pro Ukraine supporters sort of celebrating this attack
as a kind of victory for them. You know that the Tiger shark was
doing their bidding by killing a Russian and I thought this was really upsettingly emblematic
of what horrible times we're living in, where where people was him to have
no regard for human life, They don't care about you know, that guy
had a you know, he was had a life ahead of him and had
his dad there, and that no one wants anyone to be eaten by sharks.
I wonder whether you had a view on that. And I didn't see
any of that, James. But couldn't you say the same thing about,
you know, people effectively making excuses for Putin even though he's killing tens of
thousands of people, including lots of innocent women and children. I don't.
I'm very surprised to him making that bizarrely irrelevant point. What what are you
saying? Um? Well, but what are you saying? Actually? The
disregard for human life surely characterizes both sides in an armed conflict like the war
in Ukraine. People genuinely don't. I think lots of people are gonna be
watching this and going, how a second, what's Tobyon about? Why would
you say that? Why did you say that? Well? Well, I
suppose are you kind of saying they're kind of sort of justified in floating at
this guy over this guy's death. That's the only point. No, no,
no, I'm not saying that I'm saying is even mentioned at them.
Well, because you less people come away with the impression that we think it
is just people on one side in that conflict who are displaying a disregard for
human life, for aren't being as compassionate as we'd like them to be.
You're weird. The other thing that annoyed me or upset me was that there
was another faction. And again, I don't know how real these people are.
When the shark, this horrible, vicious killer preacher man eater, was
hunted down and dragged ashore by the Egyptians, there were other other green people
of a greeny persuasion saying we should we should we deserve it, or we
shouldn't presume to judge this creature. It was only acting according to its instincts.
We shouldn't have ent and entered its domain. And again this is this
is a way of thinking which really only in the last i'd say a hundred
years would this have been considered tenable, except on the most lunatic fringe.
Of the lunatic fringe, the idea that somehow man was just one creature among
anywhere, among many, and really no better than the bacteria or any of
the other other creatures on the planet, and certainly no better than a shark,
which really I find again emblematic of just how warped our thinking has become.
Yeah, but that kind of what would you call that? That kind
of worship? I mean, usually the form that takes is to place man
not on a par with other creatures, with no greater claim to life than
them, but to place man below them. Yeah, kind of hierarchy of
moral worth. Yes, if it's on a part of that improvement. No,
well, I think you're you're you're probably right. I mean, the
Earth has a cancer. A cancer is man? I mean that was that
was the phrase of these Marthusians who are currently informing the green movement and the
whole ecological movement is has that as its basis, that man is just one
creature among any and worse than that, he's kind of detrimental to the planet,
rather than, as I understand it, God's creation, made in the
image of God, and who has been given dominion over all the other animals,
as it makes clear in Psalm eight, which was written at least a
thousand years before before before Christ. And that's that's that's where I'm where I
stand. And in a way, the fact that so many young people have
been educated, if that's the right word to believe, the contrary that we
are just one among any any, is indicative of the degree to which our
minds have been poisoned by this kind of satanic stroke, lucifery and agenda.
Should we move on to culture corner? We haven't, don't. We haven't
got much time left. But I want you to tell you about something I've
done, which is I went and saw a play called Patriots. I did
Friday, as we did. When did you go? What day? What
a weird that is such a weird coincidence. I went to see it on
the matinee on Wednesday, Thursday, Thursday, I saw the day before you,
day before me, and was Tom imagine same cast, So Tom Hollander
as Boris, Josh bish Bronowsky and Will Keen Berezovsky and Will Keen as putin
exactly exactly. I thought it was very good, but uh, did you
find it too? Unsympathetic to put it. I went expecting it to be
the purest, proper, proper and um you know, almost like a sort
of extended blue and yellow flag on stage. I thought it, well,
I was, I was very pleasantly surprised. I thought you could go in
being Toby clearly and and and think it's great. But you could also go
in being me and thinking it thinking it's great. I mean, my my
my position on on Putin, by the way, is I think he is
as much cabal, as much wf UM, as much New World Order as
any of the other people I deplore, you know, I think a player
played on all that, all their houses. I just think that we are,
we in the West are as evil as if that's the right world,
Yes, it is, it's the right word. As as Putin that that
he's not, he's not some kind of putler, as as as as you
find him in the Western media, is actually no worse than Biden or Obama
or any of the other utters are not come back. Definitely, we definitely,
yeah, I know, I know we do. I thought, yeah,
as you say, it wasn't, I mean it was, it wasn't
really. I mean, in some ways I suppose it did anticipate the war
in Ukraine, in that the Borachevsky character did warn towards the end, when
he was in exile and he was Putin's mortal enemy, that he would start
behaving like dictators Russian emperors of old, and so that was intended clearly,
you know, that resonated and was intended to foreshadow what actually happened. But
it was all set before the war in Ukraine. So I don't think it
didn't. It wasn't. It wasn't, as you say, obviously partisan in
that conflict. And it's quite a nuanced portrait both of Borachevski and Putin.
I mean, neither of them are portrayed particularly sympathetically, but neither are portrayed
completely well unsympathetically either, I mean, and I think they actually did have
to whitewash some aspects of Putin's early life. I mean Peter Morgan, the
writer, so he was portrayed when he was the deputy mayor of Saint Petersburg
as a fairly upright, honest, hard working politician and patriot who then became
corrupted as he solicited Borachevsky's help and then eventually became Prime Minister and then president
and then started behaving, you know, in this authoritarian manner. But he
started in order to kind of get that arc, in order to kind of
to have the drama, you needed some sort of transformation. So I think
Morgan had to exaggerate, you know, what a paragon he was when he
was Deputy Maryson Petersburg, when I think he was probably pretty villainous and on
the take back. Although equally you could argue that his treatment with Berezovsky,
I mean the very fact that they've given the role to one of our most
lovable actors. I mean, there's there's there's a scene where there's one scene
where where Berezovsky shows his steel when when there's a woman playing the piano in
the background, and he suddenly puts the little piano on her fingers, and
you see that this guy. But otherwise you'd think that Barjovsky really was,
as he likes to betray himself, a genuine patriot, and that he's basically
sort of a vuncular, lovable guy who happens to have just made bazillions doing
doing whatever, And he was clearly a very nasty, nasty crook but but
I thought that it the balance was pretty good. You didn't although some of
the lighting on Putin was you know, there were some moments where you were
the audience were invited to have a kind of boohs moment. Yeah, when
he was looking at himself in the mirror, and you're supposed to think narcissist.
Yeah, but generally no, I thought it was that. I definitely
recommend the play. Yeah, I'd recommend it too. It's very entertaining and
as you say, naughty partis and I think it can be enjoyed by by
people. Do you think we should talk about before we go the final episode
of the Succession? And yeah, let's do that, which I guess.
I warn people, if you haven't seen it, tune out now. Tune
out now, because it's really annoying. Because I tell you what. I
watched it with wife and sons, and they both knew or guessed what had
happened. Because in the telegraphs reporting that you know, there's no spoilers reporting
or whatever, they run a picture of Tom Warren's gams at the top,
so they kind of knew. Yeah. I didn't, Yeah, and I
didn't predict that he would be the unlikely winner. I thought it would be
Rome, but actually Roam over the last two or three episodes, experiences a
huge meltdown and is reduced to a kind of gibbering wreck, a self harming
gibbering wreck, yes, which was pretty disturbing. Actually, I found his
transformation. I'd expect it. I mean, I have of the you know,
of the four siblings, he is probably the most sympathetic over the course
of the series, um and the least evil and and sort of the most
relatable. Wouldn't you want it? Come on, wouldn't it have been a
master stroke to have Connor takeover the honor takeover? That would have been Yeah,
I suppose it kind of such a holy fool It would have been a
bit implausible. But I was expecting something. I was expecting a better fate
for Roman. I thought he thought that, you know, the writers,
the creators kind of were a little cruel in the do you think so that?
I mean, I thought what he did behave pretty and he did,
but I mean, in order to justify, you know, his come upance,
they had him behaved very badly as soon as he became as soon as
his father died, he sort of went off the rails, didn't he And
he did some things which seemed out of character, like um, you know,
sacking people and turning on his kind of former lover um And at the
time you thought a bit out of character, and he wouldn't quite behave it's
a bit odd, but he's behaving quite so badly. Has power gone to
his head? Was he anchored by you know, by his father? But
then I suppose they had to do that and also then justify the appalling come
upance that was meted out to him in sort of the final section of the
drama. I thought that that, like the ending of the Sopranos, it
was one of the few endings that you really felt It wasn't a Game of
Thrones ending. It really did justice too, Yeah, I thought, Jesse,
Jesse Armstrong, I think did himself proud because when you think about it,
it achieved two things simultaneously, which is very hard to pull off.
It felt interesting and unexpected, and at the same time it was consistent with
everything we'd been we'd learned before you think about this, you you'd seen that
Kendall was you know, I mean as as as um um ship pointed out
completely unfit to running a company because he killed somebody inter Rallier. And then
you had you had Roman who who was sending dick pics and sort of masturbating
and things over what who was that the older woman boss? Yeah, I
can't remember her name now, and he did sack as well. Yeah and
okay, so so really he's okay, he's got a good line in one
liners, but really should he be running a media emper And you've got Shiv
who, Yeah, she's nice to look at and she's a liberal, he's
sort of generic liberal, but what what does what can she actually do?
And then obviously Connor completely away with the ferry. So which of these sports
kids could ever have been suitable for running? That's true? But was was
Tom more suitable than any of them? End up as the CEO? I
mean, he's seemed as unlikely a winner as any of them would have been.
That was the other master stroke. You see. It's what um Jesse
Elmstrong telling us about the nature of the world that it is. It is
browns who will inherit. People who are round noosing chameleons were prepared to change
their colors at the drop of a hat depending on who who's biggest dick in
the room. I think it was a phrase that they he's such the biggest
dick in the room. I think was yeah, um that the um that
he's completely cynical, completely, he's a complete hollow man. He's absolutely he
has no no moral core at all, and he's the kind of guy who
is running operations like wait, what's it called waist eat? Yeah? Yeah,
I see this is how the world works. Yeah maybe maybe yeah,
yeah, I can see that. What just want just one thing that I
didn't quite believe when you know, Roman has volunteered himself to give the eulogy,
yeah, at the funeral, and he gets up and he becomes tongue
tied. He's too upset, he's too frightened. He has a complete meltdown,
and Kendall then steps up and gives the oration. Um, And it
didn't feel as though you weren't You weren't. You weren't, so you weren't
informed that Kendall knew this might happen, and so it prepared something. I
think he was supposed to believe that he was speaking off the cuff, but
he was unbelievably eloquent and fluent. Yes, and articulate and presented a really
made a decent fist of defending his pretty monstrous father. I thought that was
slightly out of characters as though, and I thought, are they Is this
a foreshadowing of Kendall's eventual victory, because you know, we see and also
his presentation and when he gave the presentation when he wanted to kind of it
was actually it was quite a success. You know, he managed to kind
of talk for investors around and to share his vision static cruises. Yeah,
yeah, total nonsense, But he made a decent fist a back too,
and he thought, arm is Kendall emerging as a player in this environment.
So his come upance was sort of a little bit unexpected. I thought,
I didn't expect him to do to do to be quite so humiliated. I
think you make a very good point there, and I think it's for the
same reason that that you talked about how patriots. Um Is it patriots or
patriots? I thought patriots is the American Maybe it is. I don't know
that There's some words I'm mispronounced, like Malaysia. I said Malaysia um the
other day, and I feel ashamed of it. Um the um I think
it's analogous to what you said about about Patriots the early life, of of
putting him him being presented as a paragon in order to reflect so you've got
you've got a dramatic arc. And in the same way, I think those
two episodes you mentioned were were designed to seed in our heads the notion that
Kendall's obviously the guy to take over the company. You know he's going to
do it, and so and so. When you had that scene in the
Barbados house, I'm so glad the mother was Harriet Water. She's just a
mother's brilliant. She's brilliant. Yeah, when you had because I was feared
that the whole of the Fine episode would be set in a boardroom, and
I was wondering how they're going to get around that, because it would have
been achingly tedious. But luckily they invented this interlude in in Barbados where we
get to see see the children interacting as they must have done in their youth
and sort of being brothers and sisters and teasing each other and the crowning candle,
and again that was a that was the deception, wasn't it designed to
lure us into thinking that it's going to be a coronation. And then suddenly
Tom warms gams inherits the earth and his evil psychic there's even the place for
his evening. Even though his evil psychics try to betray him, having misread
the room, he then forgives him, doesn't he, which is quite surprising.
Well, so well done, Jesse Armstrong. You have the tobes and
they get a double thumbs up from and yeah, yeah, that's four thumbs
in total world done, Jesse. M just one last thing before we go.
I did check out a new series yesterday which the trailer for which looked
quite good on Netflix called Bloodhounds. So it's a Korean series and it's about
these two amateur boxers who take on an evil money lender um and in the
fight scenes in the trailer looked quite good, slightly less good in the in
the I don't know whether I'm going to watch anymore or I spent sixty minutes
or so watching it all, you know, watching the first episode, everything
being set up, it was okay, but a bit too long drawn out
of it could have been reduced to thirty minutes. I'd never get away with
it anything like that. I look, I still haven't seen Train to Busan.
That's how bad things are in my household. Right, There are certain
things I'm not allowed to watch, all right, can't you watch them secretly?
Yeah? But I didn't want to spend time, you know, I
watched enough TV in the evening with the wife that to have to do it
in my spare time as well, like going off to have a quit one
off the risk few notes. It was not pretty sordid, okay, all
right, m right on that lovely note. Um okaka James next week,
all right, But this ricochet joined the conversation