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London Calling, London Calling. New American intelligence is suggesting an accidental laboratory league
in China was most likely the cause of the coronavirus pandemic. This is according
to the Wall Street Journal. The Energy Department revised its earlier position to now
agree with the FBI, but other American spy agencies remain divided. Welcome to
London Calling with me James Delipot and my very good friend mister Toby Young.
Do you want to know what the highlight of my week has been? Yeah,
well I think I can guess, but tell me now you can't.
The highlight of my week was listening to your dog voice, your dog communication
voice, which sounds like Mickey Mouse on Crystal meth. I mean, I
suppose everyone's gone a dog voice, haven't they? For some reason? Why
is it that we just automatically become much more high pitched when we're calling our
dogs? Do we assume that that's the pitch that kind of lands and anything
lower and they just won't hear it. I don't know, but yeah,
the dog voice. And then there's the cat. If I can only dream
of being addressed like my wife's dresses, the cat. The cat gets talked
to the such affection, and I think, oh, one day, maybe
I'll get to be a cat. James, I'm so play second fiddle to
our dog as far as Caroline's concerned. I mean, I just got used
to being, you know, deprioritized. Since Mally arrived in our household.
My wife is more or less transferred all her love and affection to this mutt.
Yeah, it's what happens. It is what happens. Yeah. And
also do you do you find that in the hierarchy um your children, which
ones they love? This, this this kind of mummy is at the top.
Then then there were the pets and right at the bottom, you know.
And if you doubt, if you die, it would be quite sad,
but not nearly as sad as if one of the pets died. That's
right, Yeah, that was yeah, Yeah, that's depressing usn't it,
James. But apart from your dog voice, yes, there was another thing
that's weak, which is quite good, which was my my event, Yes,
tell us about that, which, well, do you know what,
I didn't want to talk about it before because I was son vinced it was
going to get canceled. Um that I just I was sort of writing it
off in my head. I was thinking, oh, you know, there's
there's no point getting your hopes up because you realize that you're going to get
to London and you're you're going to discover that they've had a threat and the
police have advised them that for health and safety reasons, they can't possibly do
anything other than call the event off. And so you have all these sort
of desperate people, some of you. Some people came from as far as
Chicago to see me and are they would all be milling around sadly wondering what
to do, and but there'd be no recourse because the police, you know,
couldn't be asked. But anyway, it was at the Emmanuel Center,
right and that and that is owned by what the Baptist Church, So there,
I think, so they're less like they've got texts from the psalms on
the ceiling. I can't remember which which denomination, but was I was kind
of flattered that when I arrived the woman who manages the venue, sort of
greeted me like I was a bit like I imagine it must feel if if
you're a regular at the Ritz and the doorman greets you. Because this is
like the third right, I had a big one last year and then I
was I sort of compared the the TCW formally conservative woman is that in the
same venue? Was that in church and the same venue? Same venue?
And so they kind of love me now right. It was good and so
this this was just to set the scene for our listeners. This was a
live recording of the Denning Pod. Yeah, and it was at the Emmanuel
Center in Westminster in central London and it's a nine hundred seater venue and you
sold out within within like a fortnight or something. Is that right? Yeah?
I know it's weird. It's weird. So people, I mean,
obviously it wasn't just me. It was people come to see Neil Oliver,
who had presence because he was he was a he was a BBC star at
one point. He was on a series called Coast, which I never used
to watch, but lots of people did, and he was one of their
go to characters when they wanted somebody to go to a remote island in Australia
and look at I don't know, um sort of micro so that the species
that that have lived there. Yeah, but he's not a he's not a
climate scientist, is he. He's an archaeologist. I think he's an archaeologist.
Yeah, yeah, no, no, but but they like they like
people with attractive regional accents. And you know, he's he's a good looking
chap with his with his long black hair and his and his beard and his
his gleaming eyes and so so he did well on Coast for a time and
then he he's now got this this this place on GB News where he does
these brilliant monologus railing against the gbg abs or whatever. He's he's probably the
last great freedom fighter. I mean, now that Stein has gone from GB
News, he's probably he's probably that he's probably the ripist for cancelation. Let's
put it that way. Well, if Lawrence Fox is still a regular on
GB, um, would you not put him in that bracket? Um?
Yeah? Yeah, Well obviously I don't want to call loss or a cut
or anything like that, but I just I just think that that that his
monologues are quite well occasionally, I have to school. I have to school
loss, as I did on Twitter the other day where he was tweeting.
He was tweeting out the latest that it now seems to be the case that
that that COVID really was leaped by a lab and I'm thinking, oh,
this is just such a kind of distraction. No one cares, it doesn't
matter. We can get we can get onto that. That's what's it's what
they want you to think. It's just like, no, it's it's it's
it's not in the it's it. That's a very it's a very normally take
o. It's funny, you know. It's funny now that that you and
you know, Fauci have now sort of met in the middle and you both
think the lab leak as a conspiracy theory, but for completely different reasons.
But anyway, we'll get onto that in a minute. But tell me more
about the event. Oh, well, it was good. Um. I
decided that I wouldn't do any preparation, um, because I think it's it's
more on brand not to do any any preparation. And so Wheat and I
hadn't even met Neil before we'd exchanged a few messages but I'd just like to
keep it fresh, because what I'm aiming for is to have a conversation with
an intelligent stranger, and I'm trying to get I'm trying to find out in
the course of the conversation the most interesting things that they have to say say
about stuff. So we talked a bit about his early his early career,
and then about his about about where he is now. And it was it
was painfully short. It was only an hour. You don't have much time
for time for to to really get anything in depth. But it was Yeah,
it was John, and then there was and there was a Q and
a after that was it. There was sort of I insisted that there would
know there be no questions from the floor because what people do, always,
always, but always what they do some sod who likes the sound of his
his his own voice or her own voice, grabs the mic and they ramble
on for about five minutes and you're thinking, well, where's the question,
and you as there was no question. They just wanted to make their tasks
often task some point. So this time when we did it, we did
it v iPad. People could text their questions and I would then scan them,
so I could right just vet them and stuff. So that was fine,
um, and then we went to the pub. But if but if
people are paying you know, I mean, I think the ticket price was
something like twenty three pounds, unless they were paying for VIP tickets, in
which case it was what was it like sixty five or something. I can't
remember, I'm sure you know. But but if they've paid that much,
and some of them have traveled from Chicago, why not you know, give
them because you are that you are privileging I hate that word, but you
are privileging the tossa who wants to hear the sound of his own voice and
grabs the mic over the hundred innocence who actually, frankly don't want to hear
this chap or chaps rambling on. So it's quite a good way to avoid
the situation by having people text in their questions. Then I can ask them
succinctly, and then we can get the answers or not. And and to
how long did the event last in total? I'm not sure it was.
It was a bit like when you're doing these things. It's a bit like
an acid trip. It's it's just slightly unreal. I can I can see.
I can see now why performers have all these these people to organize things
for them and to keep to keep, you know, to sort of protect
them and bring them little cups of glasses of water and things like that,
because actually you need to be you need to you need to be concentrating on
the on the event, you know, on on on the speaky bit,
because it's quite you need to be on your game. Um. I mean,
even though I said I didn't do any um research beforehand, you've I'm
I'm always looking for the for the the amusing rejoinder and the one liner and
things which which which necessarily are our spur of the moment things. Although having
said that, I did want to see I did want to do a Q
and A with an author. Um I'm not going to mention his name,
but we sort of met beforehand and hung out for about an hour and he
said some amusing thing and he said, oh, oh, I think I'm
going to incorporate that into my into my my chat, and he then joined
the chat pretended that this this had occurred to him spontaneously, which I thought
was cheating. I just thought, well, well, it wasn't spontaneous so
why are you pretending it was You're not You're not a sort of you know,
you're not Oscar while do it just an actor? And people who'd paid
for VIP tickets they got what did they get extra for that? All sorts
of exciting things which I can't remember because I didn't organize it. Um um
I could because I find that kind of thing quite boring. There was there
was a sort of special session um afterwards. Um. But and did it
include a photo? Yes? It did of that like of them? And
did they take was it a selfie? We had we had a professional photographer
that That was the point where I that some people, some people had come
to hear Neil to see Neil, and they asked him questions and he answered
them, and I just couldn't be asked at that point to give any answers
to questions. So I wandered around the room having chats with people and giving
them hugs and things. But there was a slight issue because some people who'd
come to hear Neil complained that I was making too much noise and they said,
can't you hear he's trying to speak? And I was thinking, yeah,
yeah, but what about the people who want hugs from me, So
that this was in the kind of ante chamber, not in the main it
was main hall. Okay. So did people who bought VIP tickets then hang
around? How did you kind of like that was suit? How did you
shoo away that? I think that, Um, some people didn't realize what
pub we were all going to, which is a shame because some of them
were were a bit lost at the end. But quite a lot of people
repaired to that pub, the Marquess of Granby, and that was good.
Oh yeah, that was nice. Isn't there a bar at the Emmanual Center?
Yeah, there is there a bar, but they have but you get
cleared out of the venue at a certain time. Okay, Okay. Now
the reason I'm asking so many questions change is because, um, you know,
I do this other podcast called The Whisky Skeptic with Nick Dixon, and
you want to do one we are, Well, we want to do and
we've we've I think we've provisionally booked the Emmanual Center for the first of April,
right, and significant tickets. I know. Yeah. I think people
may think it's all of all of hoax and not turn up, but it's
not a hoax. It is happening, even though there's I've just discovered a
train strike on that day. But our tickets are a little bit cheaper than
yours. There's seventeen pounds fifty and I don't think we're setting aside any VIP
tickets. We're just selling tickets for seventeen pounds fifty and we will do a
Q and A afterwards, and if people want to make a point rather than
ask a question, I think we're going to let them do that. We're
being a bit more relaxed than you because it's the first time we've done it.
We want to try and attract as many people as we can, and
also we don't have you know, Neil Oliver to add to the attraction.
And I'm just I'm terribly nervous, James that I think we provisionally booked the
two hundred and fifty seater because there's a smaller of any that as well as
the nine hundred seater the big auditorium, so we can switch if we sell
enough tickets, but if we don't, we'll just keep to the smaller auditorium.
But I'm terrified James that you know, you know, when we next
to London. Calling after the first of April, You're going to ask me
how many tickets I sold, And it's going to be a fraction of the
number you sold, and it's going to be it's going to be clear,
you know where the team Toby, Team James divide falls. But I just
don't consider it a competition tabs. I mean, it's like, yeah,
you never heard Mozart, are salts Alieria as the latest composition? Going?
Mate, Nate, I am Beethoven to your most side anyway, we'll see.
But yeah, well exciting times and yeah, it's it's it's incredible.
How many people are you know, want to want to see podcasts recorded live?
I mean, who would have guessed that this would be a kind of
a live event, a popular live event that would kind of fill auditoriums the
length and breadth of the country. You know, the guys who do the
kind of world's most popular podcasts. What's it called The Rest is History?
Or I think it is The Rest is History? Tom Holland and Dominic Sambrook
to BBC produced I'm sure you know, a BBC produced weekly history podcast amazingly
popular and when I listened to the show a few weeks ago. The first
time, I was like, there are no ads on this show. You
know, how on earth are they making any money? And then I looked
on the website that they direct you to at the end of the show,
and it's they're just out there on tour doing live recordings of this podcast.
You know, almost every week of the year. There must be coin but
they are. Yeah. I mean, it's probably killed his literary career,
isn't it. Why would you? Why would you write books? Well,
I think Dominic Sandbruck has has got a new book out about the kind of
Thatcher's pomp um and he's you that he's he's conservative. I think Tom Holland's
more of a centrist Um. But it's it's it's a it's a non woke
history podcast. I quite like the one I listened to, which was all
about the British love affair with beef. Um. Maybe maybe they're not not
so good on other less sound subjects, but that one was very good.
I thought, anyway, should we want to should we hear from our second
sponsor, James? I think it's you to go first, good old though
yes Um. In nineteen forty eight, Winston Churchill said, paraphrasing Santayana,
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Thorholt dot substack dot com. That copy, by the way, was written
by by Thorholt guest No No really love so um staying with podcast James.
I don't know if you saw this story. I came across it in the
brown on the Brownstone Institute blog, which is a great blog, and it
highlighted a new report from the Brookings Institute which has flagged up the danger of
podcasts and apparently, according to this report, podcasts are now one of the
most prolific sources of misinformation. And it's published this report called Audible Reckoning how
top political podcast has spread unsubstantiated and false claims. And it begins due in
large part to the say whatever you want perceptions of the medium podcasting off as
a critical avenue through which unsubstantiated and false claims proliferate. So it used aiyes
to analyze a kind of supposedly representative sample of political podcasts and then identified certain
keywords and phrases such as vaccine and lockdown and net zero, and then commissioned
PolitiFact and Snopes to determine the truth or falsity of the statements the AI had
pulled out as being slightly suspect, and it discovered It concluded that conservative podcast
was were eleven times more likely than liberal podcasters to share claims fact checked as
false or unsubstantiated. And one of the podcasts Brookings pulled out as an example
of one of these conservative podcasts spreading misinformation was the dark Horse science podcast Hotels,
hosted by Brett Weinstein and Heather Haying, and it claimed that thirteen point
eight percent of their shows contained false information. Though why they call those two
liberals conservative is a bit of a head scratcher, But it made me think,
James, that we get away with quite a lot on London calling well,
I think you know, well you calling the vaccine the clock shot,
for instance, or the depth both numerous things true. I'm waiting for you
to tell me something I've said that isn't true. Oh no, I'm not
suggesting that that I'm not suggesting in this case. So the point isn't that
you're able to say false or misleading things on this podcast. Rather, you
and I both say things that fact checking organizations like Snopes would wrongly claim our
false or misleading, but it would be enough to get us removed, posts
removed from Facebook or Twitter. Probably not Twitter anymore, but in the past
LinkedIn on the grounds that we were trafficking misinformation or disinformation. But to a
great extent, podcasts have been free of the kind of scourge of fact checkers.
It is a relatively unsensored medium. But this made me think, probably
not for much longer. I imagine, you know, the vast, the
metastasizing anti disinformation industry, which is growing like topsy, is constantly looking for
new fields to plow, and it won't be long before it turns the eye
of sauron onto podcasters and we'll be kicked off platforms like pod Bean and Spotify
and you know the rest of it. Um. So it did make it
did make me slightly nervous that you know, the wild West is about to
become you know, Stamford Campus or something. Well, yeah, I mean
obviously that that's the plan, that's that's what um. But I mean I
don't know. I don't know why you're you're you're so cheerful about it.
I mean, it's one of those things that we can we've just got to
learn to live with it, because hey, it's a funny old world,
and well, hey, James, hang on a second. I'm usually the
one proposing various pragmat it ways to fight back and not regarding the gradual rolling
back of our liberties is inevitable. You're the one to say that. I
think it's the other way. I think that's a misrepresentation of of of my
position. I'm always The thing that really shocks and worries me about you is
that you seem to just accept that that them's the rules, and therefore we've
got to obey them, whereas I'm the one who's saying this is absolutely outrageous.
We might as well be in the Soviet Union for all the difference it
makes. Why you're not more outraged, And that's that's what I That's the
thing I don't get about you terms. I mean, I find it genuinely
mystifying. It's like it's like, well, I think I don't know,
I don't understand why you accept what it does that it is clearly um it
is against all the principles of freedoms. Off comes a good off comes,
off comes a good example. James, this is what I've done to challenge
off cooms what I regard as censorious coronavirus guidance issued at the on the same
day that the UK announced the first lockdown March twenty, twenty twenty. I
took enormous time and trouble to challenge off COM's coronavirus guidance in the High Court,
and there was an oral hearing. There was a hearing on paper.
The cost to the Free Speech Union was around about ten thousand pounds. I
went to great lengths to compile witness statements from expert witnesses. What have you
done to challenge Well? What was the result activities of that? Did the
court find in your favor? Well? No, the court did not find
enough. It refused to let the judicial review progress any further than an oral
hearing. But it may well be that because we challenged the coronavirus guide,
OFFCOM didn't go further in producing subsequent iterations of that guidance, and it wasn't
as zealous as it might have been when it came to enforcement. Yes,
they knew that there was a watchdog on their case, watching them like hawks
to make sure they didn't breach any of our legally protected speech. One.
So there's the difference. If they hadn't been aware of that, they might
have gone a lot. You see, I don't see how you can accuse
me of I of not doing anything about it or obligely accepting it. I
tried to do something about that. But you see that there's there's the fundament
mental difference between you and me. You still believe that the system is honest
and functional. I believe it is broken beyond repair. That's the difference.
Well, that's a council of despair though, wasn't it. That's why there's
no council and acknowledgement of the reality. And I think it's I think it's
deluded to imagine, given that the welter of evidence which which proves that I'm
ride, it's it's simply deluded to go on acting as though this corrupt system
if you only just have it, you know, if you're only polite and
give off common fair hearing that somehow they will not behave like like totalitarian enforces,
which they won't because it's in their nature. Well, you're wrong,
I think when you say the system is broken, if you mean that legal,
I very much mean the legal system restrictions of our liberties and anything else.
Yes. Well, but some legal challenges during the lockdown, admittedly not
many or during the period of the pandemic, were successful. So, for
instance, churches were reopened in Scotland. When was it the several vicars and
churches challenged the Scottish government's instruction to close churches. That was challenged in the
Scottish courts, and the Scottish courts overturned that instruction and churches are reopened as
a consequence, So that such challenges are not always doomed to fail, and
they don't necessary really suggest that anyone going that route is a kind of naive
innocent who hasn't hasn't realize what's really going on. Sometimes they can say,
we'll say, so, you give the example of the of the church,
so so let me use that one. The problem is that whatever the Scottish
courts may have decided about this particular issue, the bigger problem is that the
established churches are both a Catholic church and the and the Anarican church and whatever
else. They all have been so captured already by the forces that I deplore
that they were more than happier to to close their churches and to enforce mask
wearing and all the all the other nonsense. So it's it's not that i'm
I'm I'm saying. It's not just that the legal system is broken. It's
also that every institution has been infiltrated by the forces that are determined to destroy
us. So I I think until you you can accept this, you're you're
living in in dreamland. Well my, my, my argument, I think
is that the problem with assuming that every institution has been captured um that there
isn't any genuine accountability in the system. And there is, you can't use
the ballot box, the courts, the fourth estate now to hold you don't
believe in the fourth of state. I think, well, I think I
think I'm not I'm not going to write off. I'm not going to write
off every single mainstream media will name one that name one that that is reporting
was going on vaccine injuries, don't know I was, I was going to
give Well, I think gb News is reporting honest. Is that the only
one the vaccine injuries. I think there's been well. I was quite pleased
to see. I'm not going to single out the New York Time Times as
a bastion of impartial reporting, but did you see that the New York Times
is op ed columnist Brett Stevens actually wrote a column last week, I think,
saying that masking we now know was completely ineffective, and there was even
an editorial in The New York Times to that effect. And the New York
Times actually pushed back against some of the kind of wider excesses of the trans
rights activists as well. So you know, when you when you're about to
write off a mainstream media institution and think it's never gonna it's never gonna kind
of given airing to the other side in any of these debates, whether it's
wokery pokery, climate way, suddenly they pleasantly surprise you. But James,
the example I was going to give was, you know this this organization,
it's actually a British company called the Global Disinformation Index, and I think we
talked about it last week. But one of the things, one of the
more shocking things it was to produce a list of the ten most risky news
publishing websites and the ten least risky news publishing websites, And by risky it
meant most likely to publish disinformation very broadly defined, and on the ten most
risky were all right of center publications like The Federalist, the New York Post,
Real Clear Politics, even Reason, which isn't even right wing, was
on there anyway, And The Washington Examiner and the Washington Examiner ran this three
part series in part to expose the political bias of this anti disinformation organization,
which was not only funded by the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office by the UK
government, but also by the State Department in the US via the National Endowment
for Democracy. And there was a bit of pushback, and I think probably
the Washington Examina, I don't know the full story, reached out to this
Republican congresswoman who's on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy and they have
defunded the GDI. So I think that's an example of how the system can
still work to curb some of the excesses of you know, the sensors in
this case. So I don't think. I think, I think, more
broadly, your belief that the system is broken, and the usual mechanisms for
holding bodies like the State Department to account are broken and ineffective and won't work.
That to me sounds like a council of despair. No doubt there are
other equally effective methods, but I don't think we should write off the more
conventional traditional methods as well. And I think you know, if you do,
that can be a kind of a reason for inaction, just throwing up
your hands and saying there's nothing we can do. Everything's been captured. We
live in a broken system. Until you know there's a revolution, nothing nothing
can change. I think that that is overly pessimistic, but I think it's
one of the reasons I'm more more of an activist than you are when it
comes to trying to put some of these things where a much bigger activists you
really are. You're a huge activist, if that's what you I am.
I'm a human right sacist. I started, I'm going I'm going to ignore
the extraordinary. I mean, because I'm going to dismiss it as an hallucination.
The bit where you actually defended New York Times and gave it offered it
as an example of of kind of the media doing its job and and and
representing good causes. But I just wanted to ask you again. Look,
you're you gave the example of GB News as as somewhere in the mainstream media
which has been speaking out against vaccine injury. Well, we're only really talking
about what the now counseled Mark Stein. Um, we're talking the occasional monologue
from Neil Oliver, and GB News has a tiny audience. So I mean
you are effectively admitting to me that a lot of that. I know it's
difficult for you because you write for these publications, but the Sun, the
Mail, the Telegraph, the Spectator, that I mean, you name it,
that every other public, mainstream publication out there is not reporting on vaccine
injuries. And yet it is probably the single issue of most concern to the
well being of not just people in our country but all the other countries which
which have forced people to take this job. And you don't think that's a
serious, serious problem that I mean, how can you may call this accounts
of despair? I would say that things have reached a pretty poor pass.
When the entirety of the mainstream media, apart from one tiny show, what
will rather one segment of a tiny show heavily regulated by Offcom, that that
is the only place in the entirety of the media which is speaking about this
issue of pressing interest to everyone. You don't think that's a problem. Well,
I think you're first of all, exaggerating how few gb news presenters actually
discuss vaccine injuries. It isn't okay, say it's the whole of okay,
except the whole of gbinus has been brilliant on vaccine injuries, but we can
agree it hasn't got a very big audience. And you you are just blithely
accepting as was one of those things that the rest of the media, because
it's been funded by the government to the directors it's propaganda machine, is in
denial about this, this key problem of our time. And you think that's
okay. Well, I'm not gonna I'm not going to claim that vaccine injuries
haven't been underreported in the vast majority of mainstream broadcasters and newspapers. But I
don't think it's quite as black and white as you're suggesting. I mean,
there have been discussions of the safety and then they've blamed it on climate chair
vaccines in more or long COVID that they've they've raised the question in order to
then kill it with lies. Well, they've they've, they haven't. They
haven't completely ignored it, though they may have. They may have, for
the most part when covering it, downplayed it and accepted too readily the reasons
for dismissing those concerns. But I don't think it's I don't think it's it's
it's correct to say there's been a kind of news blackout on the coverage of
vaccine injuries on every you know, by every media company apart from GB News.
I mean that's an exaggeration, um and offcom for all its faults,
I don't think has actually prevented vaccine injuries being discussed by any of its licensees.
I mean, it hasn't prevented them being discussed on GB News, and
it's not investigating shows in which they have been discussed and which we're complained about.
So I think it's the picture is a little bit more nuanced than than
than you've painted a ject not for the first time. Well, um,
maybe we should have that ad from that person where I get to scoff in
the background. Okay, let's do that. Yeah, this is a new
sponsor, so we're quite excited. Um and um yeah, I think you
are required to scoff a bit in the background. This this is this,
this is our new sponsor who's called sald Her is Team Turble. Anyway,
James, it's time for us to introduce our new sponsor. Sal to her
CFA who listens avidly to London Calling from Cambridge, Massachusetts, Sal is decidedly
team Turble and backs the doughty Fs, though not the tragic QPR. Sal
has also been known to enjoy the Delling Pod, particularly when brother Dick or
Sal's fellow Catholic Laura him more okay. Sal invites listeners of London Calling to
check out his own weekly podcast, which is professionally produced and in its seventh
season. It's called Angel Invest Boston and indulges Sal's interest in building technology startups.
But it's not all about business. Sal is also interested in other aspects
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for listeners might be the episode titled Love, Shopping and Cocaine with Sal's friend
and neighbor Jacqueline Olds, MD, Jackie, a shrink on the faculty of
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follow Angel invest Boston on your podcast app and leave a rating and a written
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and at angel invest bos. That's at angel invest Bos on Twitter. Okay,
James, yeah, good bit of scoffing. Guilty when I want?
I just aund he ran around. Yeah he doesn't like the really weirder episodes,
but yeah it probably not. No, um so um, I wanted
to ask you. I noticed in the papers this morning lots of pictures of
the Northern Lights visible in northern parts of England, and I wondered if you
were far enough up north to have witnessed any of the Northern lights yesterday the
light show. That would be good. That would be good because because when
I went to foul barred. Oh no, I know why I went in
when when it's twenty three hours of daylight and that's the wrong time of year
to see the northern light, doesn't it You want to go when it's twenty
three hours of darkness? So no, I would like to see them,
but I'm afraid I'm in the Midlands, Tobes. I'm really not so far
from you. I mean, look, I'm only three quarters of an hour
from Oxford, so it's not like I'm all. Londoners have an exaggerated sense
of where the morpears, don't they. They think, they think go beyond
the Watford Gap and they're be dragons and it's all just one place. It's
beyond the then beyond the wall, and yeah it's it's it's kind a very
dangerous, dicey area and yeah, best avoided. I think that that is
the general view of our soft southern exactly. Um, well it's it's it's
not quite as you portrait. We don't we do anyway, Let's um,
let's get onto um what is it? The is it? The The US
Department of Energy has concluded that in all likelihood, um sarskov to leaked from
the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And this has been, Um, it's been,
it's been. It's got quite a bit more coverage than I thought,
because I thought that that was more or less the consensus now um, and
that that you know, when a US when a when a department of the
US government kind of officially says, we now think it was probably a lableek,
why is that news? You know? But but but anyway, it
has been treated like quite big news. It's made the front pages. Because
the media is in bed with the Deep States. There doesn't surprise me at
all. Whenever a story like this breaks, you have to ask you I
mean, you were right to be suspicious. You have to ask yourself what
are they using it to conceal? Because it's like a conjurer's trick while they're
doing clever things with their hand meanwhile and behind the handkerchief or whatever other stuff
is going on. So that the whole business with that, Oh, finally
we can talk about lab leak theory. This enables all those supposedly conservative journalists
who raised this issue early on, they can now go see I told you
so. Finally people are taking seriously this issue which I mentioned two years ago,
blah blah blah. And actually my theory on why they are saying this
stuff is that they want to promote the idea that yes, this is a
deadly virus rather than rebadge wu. Yes it has been genetically engineered. So
it's got a bit of it's got a bit of AIDS in it, and
a bit of kind of monkey death and a bit of a bit of I
don't know, some special thing that enables ables it to reach parts that other
viruses can. And everyone's going, oh, well, maybe the government overreaction
was was was justified after all, because they were they were protecting us from
this this thing that the like of which had never been seen before because it
was man made. And actually, no, that is not the story about
about about the planneddamic. The planned em was was planned. The vaccines were
what were planned, and they were they were that they were planned to to
make a sick to to to sterilize us, even as they as even as
they enriched these the farmer companies responsible. So I think the story is a
completely silly distraction and it's meaningless. So this is just another way of trying
to distract people from what's really going on, which is that it was all
planned. Yes, it's part of a kind of depopulation general and other things.
Yeah, Okay, well I think I think it's probably to be welcomed.
And the reason I think that is because just as the seeming change of
heart about the effectiveness of masks is to be welcomed. I mean, if
if until quite recently, but certainly during the height of the pandemic, if
you said on a social media platform that you thought that the virus had probably
leaked from a lab and was man made, you were accused of being a
racist, conspiracy theorist trying to blame the Chinese for something that had clearly started
in the wild and the Chinese authorities had no responsibility for. And if you
said that you thought masks were ineffective, you were accused of, you know,
endangering the public by being a science denier. So you know the fact
that those sorts of arguments were used to suppress descent from the kind of prevailing
orthodoxes about those two things for about eighteen months, particularly on YouTube and Facebook.
Now for people to accept that actually the skeptics were probably right, I
hope means that in future the big social media providers will think twice before writing
off descent as misinformation or disinformation, and be a little bit more tolerant of
it and accept that, you know, there isn't really such a thing as
the science capital s, and you know, we should be allowed to discuss
it and challenge it and discent from whatever the prevailing orthodoxy is, because that's
how we eventually arrive at the truth. So I would have thought that generally
speaking, even if you are skeptical about the recent changes of heart about masks
and about the origins of the virus, nonetheless it will have the effect of
contributing to a more open discussion and debate about, you know, our response
to these supposed crises, potential catastrophes that governments are trying to avert, policymakers
are trying to do something about that. That's my optimist But that would that
would presuppose that the big tech was remotely interested in the marketplace of freely expressed
ideas, let alone the truth. And it's it's neither of those things.
It's the big tech is it is a censorship industry. A little little more
than that. It certainly doesn't want to create parity of freedom of speech between
people who are pushing the death jab and people who are are queering it that
was that was never the that was never the deal and it never will be
the deal. So um, they're not going to suddenly have a change of
heart because that was never, never the plan. Do you remember a while
back there was the Danish mask Survey, which which which which was the biggest,
the biggest report ever done on you know, the sample of the most
people, um, and and it was a proper it was a proper RCT
and and it demonstrates clearly that that masks made bugger or difference. And people
like you and me and a few others we reported on this and it got
completely ignored in the mainstream media. Now, this was not because the mainstream
media had reporters who were unaware of this stuff. It's because it had reporters
who were not allowed to report on this stuff. And the fact that it's
being reported on now is not because new evidence has emerged to show that,
oh wait, how into the second the masks that we thought were really effective
actually made no difference at all. It's not that it's not that that suddenly
new evidence has emerged. It's simply that the narrative has moved on to the
point now the powers that be, the people who control the media, and
the media does not represent the people who read it. It represents vested interests.
They've now decided that the time has come for the controlled release of information,
whereby suddenly mask revealed to be useless and the world moves in lockstep.
Here you so so China is um is now? I think come March,
you're you're no longer going to be required to wear a mask in Hong Kong.
It's just that's the way the narrative has moved. It's not that people
have suddenly seen the light. It's it's it's naive to imagine that the newspapers
are represented by people who are just trying to find out the truth. It's
not their propaganda machines. But then, but there's a sort of gap in
your hypothesis about why the narrative has changed. I mean, if if,
as you maintain, the media is controlled, big tech is just an engine
of censorship and social control, and that it was always in the interests of
the authorities to get us to wear masks as a kind of symbol of compliance,
as a way of crushing our spirit, and so forth, why has
anything changed, How did the narrative change? If if if the narrative is
completely controlled by these dark forces that want us to wear masks from malignified.
I'm not one of the psychopaths. I often say two terms. It's very
hard to get into the head of a psychopath. These people are not like
us. I'm not I'm not privy to their to their meetings in in in
dark and darkened rooms. I don't know exactly what the strategy is. I
think that that possibly there's a sort of a sort of safety val things that
go on where they recognize I mean, it's a bit like limited hangout where
they accept that they've lost this this stage in the in the information war,
and enough people have woken up to realize that X is so therefore they are
going to relinquish that territory to to prepare their next line of defense. That's
how it works. I mean, I think I've got a simpler explanation,
James, which is that people embraced masking partly because intuitively it seemed to make
sense. Surgeons wear masks to protect patients when they're operating on them. If
you're going to, you know, interrupt people's breathing, create a barrier between
people, you'd think it might do something to curb the spread of a respiratory
virus. And the reason and the reason the dam has broken is partly because
the Cochrane Review published this pretty definitive meta analysis a couple of weeks ago which
concluded that masks do more or less nothing well to rupt transmission. No,
very highly regardless that that's neither here nor there. Of course, the Cochrane
Review is was helpful in saying the things we wanted said, but so was
the Danish mask study. It's not that this is what I mean that the
newspapers had it within their power to report on the Danish mass study openly and
honestly, and they didn't because their controllers did not want it to happen at
that time. Now it's become convenient for themselves for them for them to report
on a different report which says much the same thing. It's it was a
choice they made, and you haven't really answered that. You haven't really explained
to me, well why it was that they send to the Danish mask thing,
which they pretty much did. I acquit that was that was a terrible
instance of suppression of inconvenient facts and pretending they were misinformation, and indeed,
Facebook I think labeled the Spectator post a bad an article by Karl Hennigan and
Tom Jefferson about the Danish mass study as false, when plainly it wasn't false.
But I think the reason it wasn't It didn't break the dam at the
time was partly because it seemed to be contradicted by all these other studies admittedly
not randomized control trials, but other kinds of study are much less reliable kind
of scientific study. But there did seem to be a preponderance of evidence among
those less reliable studies that masking was effective. And it's only now that we
can really point to, you know, all those countries which introduce mask mandates
or areas within countries, and we can see that they were completely ineffective.
They did almost nothing to interrupt, you know, the rise and fall of
infections. So I think it's harder now for the kind of defenders of masking
to kind of make the case, whereas it was easier in twenty twenty one
when the Dam mask study was published. Right, okay, anyway, okay,
shall we should we should we hear from our third Oh no, our
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do not keep up with repayments on your mortgage. Okay, culture corner,
there was one interesting sort of mini controversy. I don't know if you caught
this, James, but Jessica Barden, who is a British actress from good
working class Northern stock, complained because Emma Corrin, who is an upper middle
class, privately educated actress who's in the Crown, recently said she wanted to
play a gritty, working class woman, and Jessica Barden says, no,
this is cultural tourism. Privately educated, upper middle class actresses should not be
allowed to play working class roles. Those roles should be reserved for people like
me who are genuinely working class. And I wonder I thought of you when
I heard this argument, because in the same way, you don't like,
you know, actors of color playing roles that should be played by white people
for historical or cultural reasons. In the same way, do you think it's
kind of a sort of rule breaking crossing of the divide for posh actresses to
play working class characters? How do these girls? I think they're both in
their probably in the early thirties, there could be a melo. I think
they're younger than that. I think they're about my children's age. I really
don't care what these stupid children say. It's stupid worked children. It's just
entirely relevant. I mean, who are there, They're just they're just people
who appear on screen and occasionally go on the stage. I really genuinely don't
care. It's just drivel. Just doesn't matter a toss. Seriously, you
don't know. I just think. I just think there's there's silly girls trying
to get and you know, the only reason the paper papers run this,
this absolute bullshit is because they're pretty girls and they want an excuse to run
a picture of a pretty actress while pretending that this story has news value,
and it doesn't. It's just it's just nonsense. Well, there's a there's
a there's a quite an irascible commudgeonly take what about the censorship at the bomb
novels? You do you have feelings? I think that was a very nasty
piece of work. He was, He was a drunk, he was ex
Security Services. He created James Bond basically for on behalf of the Intelligence Services
to promote a particular kind of narrative. I mean, obviously they also became
quite entertaining. But actually when you read that, read the novels, you
realize that Ian Fleming was not a very nice character. And I think that
the book should be kept as they are to show what an unpleasant piece of
work he was, rather than be sanitized for modern audiences. I mean,
I think if you're going to read James Bond books anyway, you're reading them
as a kind of a period piece curiosity rather than anything else, and I
think they should be kept intact, with all their their naughty band words.
Yeah, I mean, I don't agree with you about Ian Fleming being a
particularly nasty character, and I don't think it was any It was certainly no
angel, but obviously I shared commitment to preserving the West and fighting our side
in the Cold War, and celebrating the daring deer the British Secret Service.
I'm sure it would have disliked me. That's another here nor there. But
I thought I read a good thing, a good a good pithy summation of
the argument against updating classic books, whether the Bond novels or roth Dahl's children's
stories, which is that rather than try and update the texts so they're suitable
for modern readers, shouldn't we be aiming to educate modern readers so they can
appreciate the texts in their original form. It seems to be tendering to the
kind of woke sensibilities of modern readers, or the supposed woke sensibilities and modern
readers, to say, we need to adjust what these people wrote so you
can appreciate them and understand them and aren't going to be distracted by whatever your
bugbears at the moment happened to be sure, it would be better to try
and educate people in a little bit and say, yeah, you may find
certain things by today's lights in these books offensive, but you know they were
in the period in which they were written that was considered completely acceptable and sometimes
transcending the obsessions of your particular period in history is actually healthy and helps you
gain some perspective. But no, it's it's all about pandering to the modern
sensibilities, by which I think they mean the kind of twenty twenty three faddish,
fashionable current thing, rather than broadening the minds of these little woke snowflakes.
Anyway, So that's that's. I thought that was quite a good quite
a good text, Yes, quite a good argument. More importantly, I
finished oblomof Well did You, which I strongly recommend, and it's it's it's
it's a great novel, hugely admired by by Chekhov and Tolstoy, who both
wished they'd written it. And did you ever see the BBC adaptation? No?
Do you know what? I really really wouldn't like to see it,
because it's actually quite a sad book. It's about a man so indolent that
he completely destroys himself. That well, I mean, you'd find it particularly
frustrating, Toby, because you're you're such a kind of um, You've got
such an incredible work ethic. You'd be like the character Stults, his childhood
friend, who's who's a German? Who who just is always always doing stuff.
Um and Oblom suppose, well, oblimorf is more is worryingly more like
me. Um And yeah, it's it's, it's sad, it's it's disappointing,
but it's but it's but it's brilliant. I highly recommend that. I'm
now reading Dead, but I can't. I can't comment on it yet.
I don't, I haven't, I'm not far enough in I just think one
should spend much more time. Well, in fact, one should not waste
any time reading any legacy media and instead just devote oneself to literature really pre
pre okay, well, in which case you'll probably disapprove of the book I've
just read. I've just read Riding the Rap, or rather I've just listened
to Riding the Rap by Elmore Leonard, which is the second in his Raylan
Givens Quartet. Did you ever watch Justified? So? Justified was a television
adaptation of some of these books, and the central character, Raylan Gibbons was
the same character as appears in these books. I thought it was quite good
Justified, and I noticed also that the guy who was the kind of exact
producer, the guy who was the kind of chief Haunt show on Justified.
The show runner was also the same guy who was the chief Haunt show on
Slow Horses, so he's obviously a talented maker of entertaining television series. But
anyway, so I just finished Riding the Rap, which I thought was pretty
good. I thought the first one prompto in which the character of Raylan is
first introduced, he's this kind of cowboy Marshall kind of imagines he's like this
wild West Marshall, but operating in you know, Florida, in Miami in
particular, in the kind of eighties and nineties. Anyway, it's pretty entertaining
stuff, and I gave myself a break in between Sharp novels. I've just
My last one was Sharp's Revenge, which was number nineteen in the Sharp sequence,
and I'm about to get onto Sharp's Waterloo, which I've been looking forward
to for some time. It's about the Battle of Waterloo. It's not the
last one in the series, interestingly, but it feels like the kind of
climax I'm not sure i'll read anymore after about it. Probably will anyway,
So that's where I'm on my next I'm on can forgive her the first of
the Palliser series as recommended by you Have you read audio book that one already?
I've audiobook that one already. I'm up to the only one in the
Palace. The series I haven't read is The Prime Minister's Children. I'm saving
him that up. But the others i've I've listened to all of them.
Yeah, and that the audio is so good, isn't it by what's he
called? Tim m West? He's so good at it's so good. He's
just masterful. Couldn't be imparted. I'm trying to work out, well,
the first one isn't read by Timothy Rest, but the subsequent ones are.
I'm just trying to work out whether I can get any um any any inkling
of of of how the plot works out by my memories of of the pet
Shop Boys song can You Forgive Her? Which which apparently was inspired by Neil
Tennant reading the book when he was on holiday and then he wrote a sailing
about it. But I didn't realize that. Yeah, I don't know.
I just remember that line, remember when you were more easily led behind the
cricket pavilion and the bicycle shed, which obviously is not a reference to eighteen
to eighteen seventies England. I don't think, um, well, but they
actually the central character m the sheet of the title, if I recall,
don't spoil no spoilers is a little bit no no spoilers, absolutely not.
And before we go, I see what I've been watching, Yeah, the
fifth season of Drive to Survive F one Drive to Survive, which I even
though I find F one racing achingly dull, I find the TV series really
quite interesting. I've never watched it, but my wife and fourteen year old
son, well, you know, how have you ever been to a motor
race? No, I don't think. It's really noisy and really boring,
and it's full of I imagine it's boring because you're watching these cars sparks a
lot of downtime, and then they come loads of people in hats in you
know, with with with peaked baseball caps or something like that, and just
that's it. I mean, they're really fanatical and they think it's really exciting
and it's boring. But the TV series, which has access to all the
manufacturers and the heads of the manufacturers, the race teams, you know,
and the racing drivers and their girlfriends and stuff, and you get to know
them, and you get involved in the drama of it all, and you
actually care about the differences in the in the in the design of the cars
which affect that whether they win or lose. I mean, for example,
the last season Um of what's his face the Formula one, the British guy
what's he called? The world champion Um Lewis Hamilton. Lewis Hamilton, who
was unbeatable, has had a really had a really really crap season because because
his car are just wasn't wasn't working the Mercedes Petronas team which was just like
it was before that it was an absolute winning machine um. And and meanwhile
Ferrari, who haven't had who hadn't won the Constructor's Championship for like fifteen years,
they came back this this season. So you get involved by the way
they've started doing it for tennis now and golf as well, the same formula.
Yes, so you make these characters and and then and you get to
know them and care about them, and then in the second half they show
them doing things you wouldn't expect them to do that they sort of it's a
trick. They deceive you into thinking that there's no way, this guy that
you want to win is going to win, and then low at the end
he's won. Whatever it is, it's it's great, right right, sounds
entertaining. So I've been watching season three of Happy Valley? Are you have
and if you're a Happy Valley fan? But I watched season one and two
and there was then a big gap between two and three. But three,
I guess was came out a few months ago and I missed the whole kind
There was a kind of thing. It seemed like the finale of season three
was almost a kind of national water cooler moment. It was sort of suddenly
we were all watching the same thing again. Well, I missed that communal
occasion, but I'm now catching up with it, and I have to say
it's pretty good. I enjoyed seasons one and two, and it's taken a
little bit to kind of pull me back in, but I now feel myself
pulled back in and I'm enjoying it. Are you not a fan? You've
grown? Well, it's it's not that these dramas are designed to manipulate you.
I mean that they give a completely false impression of what Britain is like.
I think that I'm very suspicious now in my new awake mode of police
procedural dramas, because I think one, they promote the illusion that the police
actually care about you or in any way into the dissolving crime. Two,
they promote this image that the killers, serial killers are everywhere, and that
they've got to be on your guarden. They make women frightened about being kidnapped
or raped or whatever. I think what their job is, given that all
TV is designed to brainwash us, to ramp up us up into the appropriate
level of fear. That's what they're designed for. So I feel that one's
being manipulated, and I don't like it. Yeah, I mean that's all
true, but nonetheless, you know, it makes a pretty good drama.
But yeah, I was thinking, after watching Season two, episode two yesterday
that the portrayal of this kind of I guess it's what a fictional town in
the Calder Valley in West Yorkshire is so unremittingly bleak, as you say,
kind of you know every other man is a serial killer, and you know
the guy standing next to him is a rapist or a molester um and there
are almost no benign characters there are kind of there there are. There's only
one kind of strong, powerful, kind of moral exemplar, and that is
the policeman played by Sarah Lancashire. Um and everyone else is kind of good
but weak, or bad but strong, or bad but weak. But it's
kind of like you think, kind of is it? Can it really be
that bad? In the colder value? Is this an act? Everyone sees
so many drug addicts and alcoholics and everyone is You know that the local counselors
are corrupt, and you know the pharmacists are corrupt. And it's like any
any any opportunity to kind of griff or perpetuate a scam of sun kind,
or to break the laura, to exploit the poor and the vulnerable, any
opportunity is taken by these kind of wolves, and only Sarah Lancashire is there
to protect them. It's but anyway, it makes it quite complete. I've
got to I've got to have my porridge that I now have before the largest
class, otherwise I'll be, I'll be I'll be hungry. Okay, good,
okay, James, good to talk to you. And we should think
about organizing a live recording of London Calling before we're kicked off the air by
these ais recommended by the Brookings Institute. I think I think we get a
big crowd, James. We should talk about okay, right, have fun,
all right, okay bye. This is London calling Ricochet. Join the conversation.