We both know Thor. He's provided pro bono council to Free Speech Union victims
of cancel culture since the FSU launched, and he would love to connect with
fellow London Calling listeners for encouragement, laughs and community. Connect with Thor on
LinkedIn dot com, slash in slash Thor Halt or via his substack at Thorholt
dot substack dot com. When Thor isn't supporting FSU members in the eye of
a cancelation storm, he helps others in a tight spot. For example,
an sme facing twenty percent redundancies worked with Thor and within four months landed twenty
point four million pounds worth of new contracts, avoided redundancies and secured a ten
year project pipeline. Thor is a trusted executive, coach and adviser for those
looking to bring in investment or even exit their businesses, and he has a
strong track record of transforming professionals in multiple sectors into confidence strategic deal winning presenters.
Thor wo'd love to hear from you, even if you don't require his
services at the moment, and do please mention London Calling. You can find
him on LinkedIn dot com slash in slash thor halt or Thorholt dot substat dot
com. This is London calling, London Calling. That fictional account was intended
to make him look good, but now it can be cross checked against the
source material is messages. It's going to be used against it. It's going
to backfire. This This has come out while I was in the jungle.
It had been updated out in the first day. Oh yeah, god BlimE.
You welcome to London calling with me James Delibole and my very good friend
mister Toby Young. Um, how you doing. I'm good, James.
I'm a bit hungover but other good. Yeah, this is this is weird
seeing your face because we're doing this on on zoom this time. Yeah.
Why are we doing it on zoom? James? Well, because because I
failed yesterday. Well I tell you why I failed at a moment, But
you tell me about your hangover for us. What what was your hangover from?
Okay, So the Free Speech Union had a dinner yesterday for conservative MPs
that we're hoping to assemble in a propery speech WhatsApp group too, for legislative
lobbying purposes. So yeah, we had a dinner at a club and it
went on quite late, and because they were vote they didn't get there and
sit down to wheat until eight thirty, and I got there at six thirty,
so I don't know. I had a fair amount to drink before they
arrived. You are such a toper. And as you as you probably know,
there's only one occasion where I really drink, and that's when I'm when
I'm hunting, of course, and I am feeling so rotten today. I've
I've got I've got this, I've got this cold um, which which I
think was was not helped by this incredible day's hunting I had on Friday.
It was just I mean, I've had a few amazing days out hunting,
but this was definitely one of the best. It was. It was hallucinogenic
um. And that there's a there's a poem, Bye Bye Bye the eighteenth
century poet called Thompson called the Four Seasons, and there's a line in it
where he describes hunting as image of war without the danger, but that the
guy clearly never been hunting, because hunting is is not safe at all.
And the stuff we were doing that that day, we we we, I
mean we galloped for for four miles, which is very exciting. But what
was more intense were some of the obstacles we were going over. And it's
it's a it's how I emergine. I have no desire to go to war.
I used to when I was a young member. It's how I emergine
in combat is and that you find yourself separated from the from the body of
the of the troops as it were, the field, as their care were.
In these little groups, you get you get split up. Some people
were trying to get through some wire and I thought, I don't like the
look at this wire, and my horse is not I don't want to get
tangled up. So I took a different road and ended up going down this
incredibly steep bank onto the road and then and then through a gap in a
hedge where you had to the horse had to jump onto a concrete block,
and and I ended up with the hard core of the hunt, the people
who go right at the front, that the really crazy riders. And they
said to me, you're part of the gang now, And it was like
it was like I'd passed some some invisible initiation ceremony. And then we reached
this It feels like an acid trip even describing it now, and it keeps
coming back at me that there was this chasm ahead of us. It was
apparently it was part of something called the Braunston Brook his legendary in hunting circles.
You have to yeah, I mean you you're supposed to leap over it.
But there's no way you can leap over this thing. And I looked
at it and under any normal circumstances, you get there's absolutely no way I'm
doing that on a horse. It is completely unsafe. It is just stupid.
Nowhere you turn around, but you can't because you're with the gang,
you know, with the with the hardcore. So you've got to do this
crazy thing. So the guy in front of me, he was an experienced
like he was a master of a hunter I think or something. He went
down there and his force kind of fell on him, um, sort of
collapse in this in this this gully. And then before you he ride in
front of me, and so you think having to go over the trenches when
the guy that's just gone before you has just been shot in the head exactly
like that. But but it's also um, it's also intense. You sort
of just like go with it because you've got no option. So I picked
what I thought would be the ideal root for my horse, and thank goodness,
because she's much cleverer than me, he completely ignored me and picked his
own route down this thing and just did it perfectly. It's what you want
when you're hunting a horse corn. They're known as schoolmasters, horses that know
better than you do how to survive. But yeah, I've been I've been
flying ever since. I've been having flashbacks. And the reason we're recording this
via zoom and looking at each other is because we recorded this podcast yesterday,
but you recorded it in a different room because Tiffany, your wife doesn't like
hearing you talking about hunting, because she's very worried that you know, you're
going to fall off a horse and die. All yeah, all all spouses
You often get this with hunting that often there's one spouse that doesn't hunt,
maybe they don't like speed, or they don't like horses or whatever, and
the other spouse does hunt, and non hunting spouse worries themselves what was themselves
sick about what happens. But the problem is that when you get back from
the hunt like that. All you want to do is talk about how insane
it was, And of course you can't really because the worried spouse doesn't want
to listen. So I think it would be a bit cruel kind of talking
about it when she's in the office. So I went upstairs. But unfortunately
my dodgy equipment upstairs, and Brian said it was unusable. And Brian is
very kindly, and Toby, I made you know, people give you,
give you stick sometimes, but I have to respect you. You are a
late night person. You've got to hangover. I get up at seven every
day. You get up at ten because you go to bed about three or
four. Yeah. No, this is tricky for me. I mean I
had been getting up early for the last couple of weeks because my wife has
been in Barbados. She went on this kind of fabulous freebie. I think
I talked about it last week and left me looking after three of our children.
The fourth gaves you big I'm at the top while I was anyway,
James at the top of Brownie Point Mountain. But I came home quite late
yesterday drunk, and I think I may have woken her up. So now
I'm right back at the bottom of that man, all my credit has been
used up. Now. You didn't beat her up or anything. I woke
her up. That was That was the extent of my sin. But your
your story about being welcome to the kind of elite group of hunters at the
very front, reminds me of a slightly different story in which I went skiing
a few years ago. As last time I went skiing actually with a rich
friend of mine, and he'd invited a few people and we met up with
a few people out there was in Austria, in zers and my friend said,
who wants to go skiing with a guide? We're going off piece.
It's going to be quite challenging. There's going to be some powder, it'll
be huge fun. And I said, well, me definitely put my hand
up. And so we broke up into these two groups and the plan was
to meet at lunchtime, and this rather kind of a severe Austrian guide made
us all to do a couple of runs so he could sort of see whether
we were strong enough to be to take on this challenging skiing we were going
to do with him. And at the end of it, everyone was apart
from me, turned to me and said said, don't be I don't think
you were strong enough for the skiing we're gone to do. You must join
the Vica group. So I was sent in front of all my my friends.
I was I was dispatched. I was excommunicated, sent to join the
weaker group, which was deeply Humilio James. Team James at this point nodding
their heads and saying, of course is in the Vico group. But can
I say that as as the head of Team James, I have great sympathy
for that. I too would have wanted to be with the strong. The
strong group, we two would have been rejected. But it's the story of
my life. I think that I'm an alpha male. But when when any
any in truth, I ain't When when would one have time to acquire the
skill set to be a good off piece scier, to be a good horseman,
a good tennis player, a good you know, can you say or
anything like that? No. I did try and learn how to sail,
but as you say, I never really found the time to do it.
There are all these things that we ought to be able to do. If
if we play golf, I'd love to be able to play golf. We
need another life, don't we. We do with a private income this time.
Yeah, yeah, if I think if I could live my life all
over again, I would definitely spend the time to become proficient at in particular
sport. I mean, you've got your hunting. I've got no equivalent.
I'm just so busy. I don't have time to and I've tried, you
know, sort of halfheartedly to learn how to play tennis, to learn how
to play golf, to sail, and never manage to kind of devote myself
to it. So I don't have that kind of really fun hobby in my
life. Anyway, we should have an ad we should definitely. Ah,
spring is in the air, Yes it is. I saw my first primroses
only two days ago. It's almost the end of the financial year. But
did you know that the spring budget is coming on the fifteenth and the sun
might say controversial help to buy scheme ends on thirty first of March. If
you didn't, you need to meet Dan Gaskin, fellow skeptic, freethinker,
father of six, husband of one, and owner of Crest Mortgages. Dan
is an ex Royal Navy warfare officer who has driven ships, buys companies and
helps people with financial conundrums because he genuinely enjoys looking after people. Nothing Motor
debates Dan more than bringing fellow skeptics financial good cheer, whether you're Team Toby
or Team James. For help with your house move, commercial mortgage, equity
release, life assurance, or simply to talk through a financial issue that is
vexing you in complete confidence, call zero one five zero two three zero zero
zero vakrest Mortgages dot co dot uk and connect with Dan LinkedIn dot com forward
slash in forward slash mortgages and protection. We have to say this bit to
be FCA compliant. Chress Mortgages is a trade trading style of Epiphany Investments Limited,
which is an appointed representative of the Open Work Partnership, a trading style
of Openwork Limited which is authorized and regulated by the Financial con Doctor Authority.
Your house may be repossessed if you do not keep up with repent on your
mortgage. Okay, so I tell you about my week, James. Not
nearly as exciting as yours. But I had a pretty busy week last week.
I probably the highlight. Well, I'll tell you about two bits of
it. I won't bore you with the whole of it. But last Monday
I was on Jacob Riesmog's debut show on gb News. So he's got this
new show from eight to nine Monday to Thursday. And for our American listeners,
Jacob Riesmog is a Conservative MP former cabinet minister. Is distinctive because he
wears three piece suits and speaks in a kind of undisguisedly posh voice. Even
referred to sometimes to his nanny that he had as a child, and I
think has become a nanny to his children. Anyway, he's and he's very
sound on lots of issues, Brexit and so forth. And he's now got
this show on gb News and it was his debut show and he never actually
hosted, I don't think a television show before. We've done a bit of
posting on LBC. And he's, of course, you know, quite an
experienced broadcaster because he's been a prominent parliamentarian for you know, for a long
time. But I think everyone involved in the show was a little bit worried
would he be able to do it, would he kind of take to this
new medium, And his wife came along to watch him sort of on his
debut, and he had he had a kind of but actually he did incredibly
well. It was amazingly impressive to see him. It was as though he
was a veteran who'd been doing it for twenty five years. It was incredibly
slick, didn't put a foot wrong. At one point he was kind of
reading off the auto queue and add libbing at the same time, which is
a really difficult skill, which you know, even some very experienced broadcasters can't
do because has this rolling script and it rolled and they kind of they kind
of practice beforehand, so it rolls at exactly the speed you read, so
to add lib whilst reading the rolling script is actually really difficult. But he
managed to do it incredibly well. And he had a fantastic roster of guests.
He had David Davis, Lee Anderson, David Starkey, X Labor and
peopled Stephen Pound and yours truly um and it was great and and the but
the really memorable thing, the truly outstanding thing, is that the following day,
James I got to thank you text from from from Jacob for appearing on
his first show. And I've been I've been doing TV, I think since
probably I think my first TV appearance was was in nineteen eighty five, and
in all that time, in all the hundreds, possibly thousands of television appearances
I've made in all that time, the first time I've ever got a thank
you from our presenter was from Jacob the following morning, so I was really
impressed by that. I'm still I'm still waiting for the thank you letter,
but the text was good enough. Well, Nanny obviously obviously brought him up.
Wow. Probably I never had one of those, so I think that
you know, I'm rubbish thank you letters. Yeah, I remember there's a
There was a good joker I once heard, which is why don't Sloane Rangers
going for Gang Banks? Because they they just they can't face having to write
all the thank you ladder as the following day. But my other highlight was
the Free Speech Union third anniversary, So it was our third birthday last week.
We've actually been going for three years, if you can believe it.
We've now got eleven thousand members, sixteen employees, including eight full time employees.
We've dealt with over two thousand cases, and we celebrated at the Inn
and Out Club in Saint James's and I made a speech and it was a
great occasion. We invited members of our advisory Council, our founder members.
Did you get drunk again? It actually helped and he got drunk again?
James. Yeah. Anyway, that that that was. It was nice to
celebrate some of our successes. Well, well, well, well done.
I'm not going to the last time I recorded this, I had had to
go at Jacob just because I'm really disappointed in him. He was my great
white hope for what I believed at the time to be conservative values, but
I think are just a kind of part of the part of the style.
But I was glancing at Twitter yesterday and somebody pointed out something that was pretty
inexcusable, one of the many inexcusable things that the Jacob has done, and
that was he was supportive of Do you remember Neil O'Brien, that rather weird,
sort of fascistic conservative. He's still he's still a conservative MP. Is
he who who led this sort of this sort of witch hunt group designed to
spy out incorrect thinking on the disinformation as I think it was called, But
actually it was actually factual information which which didn't suit the government narrative and he
headed this group, and I think, did you run foul of this group?
They singled out various traffickers in misinformation about the pandemic, and I was
I was in very distinguished company. I think the other journalists were I think
Alison Pearson and Julia Hartley Brewer, but it also included Carl Hennaghan. He
was another person smeared as a kind of misinformation trapper. He's the professor of
evidence based Medicine at Oxford and got almost everything about the pandemic exactly right.
It also included Shanetra Gupta, who is the I think professor of theoretical epidemiology
at Oxford and one of the original three signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration,
and again I think has been retrospectively vindicated and it's extraordinary anyway. So yeah,
this this website that Neil O'Brien and others set up to try and discredit
critics of the government's pandemic response, and it's still where it's I think it's
called COVID nineteen faques or something. And Alison Pearson is so cross about it
that she's thinking of standing as an independent in Neil O'Brien's constituents. Oh,
I think she should. I think I think she should too. Yeah,
and he was, I mean it was it was between government jobs, so
I think he was before setting up this website. He was a parliamentary private
secretary to someone or other and then he became a minister shortly afterwards. But
it's I mean, it just does seem improper for a conservative MP who is
sort of in and out of the government to set up a website to discredit
critics of government policy. And we don't know how the website was funded.
Maybe it wasn't funded by taxpayers money. It probably wasn't. But disappointingly in
the Lockdown Files, which will come to in a minute, which is the
series of stories in the Telegraph based on Matt Hancock former Health secretaries WhatsApp messages
which were handed over to the Telegraph by Isabel oak Shot and had proved to
be huge goldmine of stories about the incompetence and stupidity of the government and particularly
of Matt Hancock during the pandemic. I was hoping that there would be something
about you know, some some some some messages traded with Neil O'Brien in which
they're talking about creating this website, but unfortunately there aren't, which is disappointing.
But in due course, I think he will be held to account.
Yeah so just very briefly because it's a kind of trivial point. But but
Jacob Resmore, who you would have expected to have deplored this kind of thing,
actually actually expressed his approval of the marvelous work that Neil Lebron had done.
Well. Yeah, yeah, you can talk the talk, but then
you reveal the true, your true nature. And I'm not afraid that he
is part of the system. Jacob is just another He's not one of us,
if it is such a thing anyway, But I think I think I
think you're I think you're too much of a purist, as you know,
James, when it comes to these things. And you have to take your
allies where you find them, and you might not agree with them about everything,
but if they agree with you about certain issues and those issues are important,
then you have to turn a blind eye if they don't agree with you
about other things which you consider equally important. That's how politics work, that's
how we get things done. Yeah, well, obviously we're going to we're
going to disagree more about this when we talk about tell us about this thing.
We're going to have an AD that first. Okay, let's have an
AD. We both know Thor. He's provided pro bono council to Free Speech
Union victims of cancel culture since the FSU launched, and he would love to
connect with fellow London calling listeners for encouragement, laughs and community. Connect with
Thor on LinkedIn dot com, slash in slash Thor Halt or via his substack
at Thorholt dot substack dot com. When Thor isn't supporting FSU members and the
i of a cancelation storm, he helps others in a tight spot. For
example, an smme facing twenty percent redundancies worked with Thor and within four months
landed twenty point four million pounds worth of new contracts, avoided redundancies, and
secured a ten year project pipeline. Thor is a trusted executive coach and advisor
for those looking to bring in investment or even exit their businesses, and he
has a strong track record of transforming professionals in multiple sectors into confidence strategic deal
winning presenters. Thor wou'd love to hear from you even if you don't require
his services at the moment, and do please mention London calling. You can
find him on LinkedIn dot com, slash in slash, thor Halt or Thorholt
dot substack dot com. Yes, well, when we recorded this podcast yesterday,
we did have a fairly bad tempered exchange. We didn't. We didn't.
It really wasn't that. I was actually disappointed by how I'm bad tempered.
It was. It was very mild. I thought it was quite heated.
No, no, we we just disagree. But I mean, obviously
as we're going to. But anyway, tell us, tell us what the
thing is? So um so um okay. So Isabel oak Shot is a
fairly well known journalist. She's written several books. She's worked for different papers.
Um, she's she, but she's she's a brexiteer, she was a
lockdown is a lockdown skeptic. And Matt Hancock ex Health Secretary. So Matt
Hancock what isn't was an ambitious conservative politician who ran for leader in twenty nineteen,
didn't do terribly well, but became the Health secretary in Boris Johnson's government
and was the Health Secretary for the duration of the pandemic and almost the duration
anywhere, and had to stand down when he was caught out in a sex
scandal. So he was photographed snogging for our American listeners. That's making out
with an aid of his called Gina, who was an old university friend of
his, dating back to their time together at Oxford. And he's married,
was married to quite young children, so this was a bit of a scandal
and he had to stand down and then in an effort to rehabilitate himself.
Some of our listeners will remember because we discussed it at the time, he
appeared on I'm a Celebrity, Get Me out of Here, which everyone thought
was a terrible mistake because it's so humiliating and undignified. But actually he did
reasonably well after doing a number of Bushtucker Trials, better than some of the
other contestants anyway, and he came I think third, and did actually succeed
in sort of rehabilitating himself and is now doing another reality show I think it's
the can for Channel four him which he does the sas initiation course. But
just as just as he seemed to be reinventing himself as a kind of professional
reality show contestant and possibly you know, a chat show on gb News in
his future. Isabelle, who'd been given by him over a hundred thousand text
messages WhatsApp messages on his phone as an aid memoir when she was employed by
him to ghost write a memoir called the I Think the Pandemic Diaries, which
was published shortly after his appearance on I'm a Celeb. She has now given
these WhatsApp messages to the Telegraph and they are just a kind of Teuton Carmen's
tomb of embarrassing stories, not just embarrassing to Matt Hancock, but to lots
of people he exchanged messages with. And we can go on actually to talk
about one of the reactions interesting interest by rival newspapers and broadcasters like the BBC
to this sensational story, which I think is the scoop of the decade.
The reaction is not to what the story reveals, which is the staggering incompetence
and stupidity of the government and the vanity of Matt Hancock. Not to say,
crikey, we got this wrong the government. We were criticizing the government
at the time for not doing enough turns out they were doing far more than
they needed to, and all of these decisions which the government claimed were based
on the science, such as the decision to extend the mask mandate in schools
to classrooms, weren't based on the science as we claimed at the time,
but actually in that case, we were just bounced into it by Nicholas Urgent
who announced it, and we didn't want to have a fight with us,
so we decided to do it too. And all sorts of revelations along similar
lines about the decision making process which led to this grotesque interference in our liberty,
and lots of messages between Matt Hancock and people like Simon Case, the
Cabinet Secretary cackling seemingly gleefully about the misery they were inflicting on people. At
one point, I think there's an exchange between Matt Hancock and Simon Case about
how they've people people coming off flights from countries which aren't in the Green Zone
but in the Amber or Red Zone because of the prevalence of infection in the
countries they've come from, have to quarantine for fourteen days in these ghastly shoebox
hotel rooms, and they were cackling about the fact that people would be coming
off planes having sat in first class and then have to be forced to endure
an appalling fourteen days eating terrible food in these tiny rooms, often with their
families, you know. Often they'd flown back to kind of meet with loved
ones, you know, who were dying, and or come to a wedding,
if they were allowed to go to a wedding. But they were,
they were glee fully celebrating the fact that these poor folks were having to quarantine
for fourteen days. It was just a horrible insight into the kind of the
officials and senior politicians who were drunk on power as Britain descended into authoritarianism for
a kind of eighteen month period between what March twenty twenty and July twenty twenty
one, in the course of which there were three lockdowns. Anyway, I
think it's a great story, and the Telegraph have been kind of running with
it on an almost on a daily basis, if not an hourly basis.
The Telegraph news hacks have this wonderful term to describe you probably know this jenes
Us to work for the Telegraph, to describe a scoop They describe a good
story as a marmalade dropper, the idea being that the typical telegraph reader is
eating his toast with marmalade on it, reads this story in his morning paper
and it's so shocking, so startling that he drops his toast and it falls
marmalade side down, and I think, you know, there's just this.
There's just been one marmalade dropper after another in the Telegraph as a result of
this trove of WhatsApp messages that Isabelle has handed over to them. M Well,
obviously we're going to disagree on this because what you describe as the scoop
of the decade I would call a big fat, nothing burger of a story.
And in fact, I think it's it's worse than that. I think
it's a form of disinformation. It's it's it's a massive distraction. Um.
For example, there was I remember the first day that the first day's headline
story was that Matt Hancock had disregarded the advice of the Chief Medical Officer,
Chris Witty regarding the need to test people going into te care homes, and
this was presented as as a kind of an irresponsible minister not listening to the
experts. Now, I would dispute that analysis that this was of any significance
because actually, you know, and I know because we've written about this a
lot, the PCR tests were next to useless. I mean that certainly they
would have made had suppose Matt Hancock had tested every single person who had gone
into a care home with you know, ten times with a PCR tests,
it would have made no difference to the death stats. The real reason that
so many people died in care homes was the over overprescription of Medazzo Lamb,
the death the death pathway drug which eases your your final moments by restricting your
breeding, but also effectively finishes you off, which was massively overprescribed, brought
in quantity under under Matt Hancock's aegis. I don't see Medazzo Lamb being mentioned
in these these these dodgy exchanges, which which leads me to question whether we
are being given the whole picture. We've also got Isabelle Oakshot, who was
denied that there any issue surrounding Medazzo Lamb. She's actually so she is party
pre in this particular story. Let's not forget that she ghost wrote Matt Matt
Hancock's book and presumably profited by it before then deciding on this kind of It
strikes me that more likely this has all been been been pre arranged to distract
from the truth about what happened in the last three years, which is essentially
that the reason that people were forced to have miserable times in their in quarantine
centers after their first class flights or whatever, their flights from abroad to come
and see dying relatives, the reason that you see in these emails Matt Hancock
conspiring with his extremely spivy, dubious aids and with sinister people like Simon Case,
the head of the cabinet officer, which is a very very dodgy deetcht
manifesting of the deep state. You can why these people are talking about how
to hype up the supposed pandemic, how to scare people more, is because
they knew all alone that this was not a real pandemic, that the people
were not dying in any greater numbers than they had been in an average bad
flu year, that this was a confection designed to force people to take this
experimental mr NA therapy, these vaccines which hadn't been tested, which hadn't gone
through their trial phase. That is the real scandal, the fact that people
have been been dying and injured as a result of this, this this alleged
vaccine which wasn't a vaccine which they were coerced into taking. And you take
a step back, and you look at why this happened, and you look
at the event I keep mentioning in twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen event two oh
one, which was sponsored by the John's Hopkins which received a billion dollars in
funding, a billion dollars in funding from the Bill and melind Against Foundation.
It planned out the alleged pandemic which wasn't a pandemic. The purpose all this,
by the way, was co founded by the World Economic Forum. It
I'm getting a lot of this from a sub stack by somebody called Ego Ego
Should off I G O R C h U d O V. Very good
piece which writes in language kind of team toe you can understand, which is
why I I sort of know this stuff, but it's nice to see it
laid out clearly and undramatically by Ego Should. A recent piece by him in
response to Egypius's pieces. Yes, yeah it is. Yeah, we ran
that piece by Egypius in the Daily Skeptic, and we've run Egypius's response to
we ran it yesterday. Yeah. No, it's an interesting bait. So
Egypius, like me, is a cock up guy. And yeah, I
think he shit bed on that particular because because he had been barely found up
to that point. But yeah, so should have points points out that,
I mean, you're aware of this stuff. It's not like I'm telling you
stuff you don't know. You know about Event two one, which which which
war game the pandemic, which was then rolled out from twenty twenty onwards when
the Patrick Valance, the then head of Chief Scientists now has been given his
special reward from the World Health Organization is now their chief scientific officer. I
think something like that that they change the definition of pandemic to scare people.
They conducted this, this media blitz, this this kind of military grained syop
on the British people to persuade them that that this pandemic was more serious than
it was. It terrified people out of their wits. It's suppressed with the
help of big tech. Any story written by by skeptics questioning that the narrative.
So the government and the populace were railroad roaded in this particular direction by
this bill Gates funded WWF funded machine, a big farmer funded machine which steered
people in a particular direction. The MP's like Matt Hancock were just helpless stooges.
We didn't need to read these emails to know that Matt Hancock is a
dick, that MP's are venal incompetent bullying power craze. We knew all this
already. I've been saying this from ages. This Alison Isabelic shop league reveals
absolutely nothing. It distracts people from the real stories, which are Medazzela murders
coordinated because it wasn't just written by the way did this. It was every
country in the world apart from Sweden, this coordinated campaign to lock countries down
and to bull lead them into taking this vaccine that isn't a vaccine they didn't
need and ended up killing them. That's the scandal. This is just Matt
Hancock is neither him nor there. We knew that already. Well. Obviously
I disagree about almost everything you've just said, James, but starting with your
first point about how why should we be in any way outraged that Matt Hancock
ignored Chris Witty, the Chief Medical Officers advice that patients being discharged from hospitals
into care homes should be tested to make sure they're negative before being discharged.
The reason that scandalous isn't because that might have actually prevented deaths in care homes,
though I don't know. The PCR test is wholly unreliable, so it
might actually have prevented some deaths in care homes. But the reason that scandalous,
I don't think you need to have faith in the efficacy of the PCR
test in order to be scandalized by that. It's scandalous because Matt Hancock claimed
at the time, as did every other government minister, that they were following
the science, that they were just following the advice of their scientific and medical
advisors. That was their shield, that was their condom. And it turns
out he wasn't doing that. And he talked about putting this protective ring,
this ring of steel around care homes, and it turns out it wasn't actually
a ring of steel. It was a rubber ring with a hole in it
anyway, Medazzolan I actually have looked into that. James I spoke to Pelliative
care nurse about that. I said, it is the fact that medazzo lan
was prescribed used more often during the pandemic, evidence that people, particularly people
in care homes, were put on a kind of pathway that led eventually to
death. And this drug was used because it eases the path sage to death
form of euthanasia. And this nurse anywhere, this Pelliative Canners said, no,
it's actually a standard drug we use when elderly people are having breathing difficulties.
We're not using it to euthanize people. That was overprescribed because more people
than usual had breathing difficulties because of the prevalence of COVID nineteen. Anyway,
she didn't think that you believe that, well, I trust, I trust
that particular source she's party pre anyway, I think I think I don't think
there can be any doubt about the authenticity of these WhatsApp messages. I don't
think they were created as part of a cover up to conceal the fact that
there was this kind of dark conspiracy unfolding. They certainly seem completely authentic,
not least because they're so embarrassing for everyone concerned. I mean, if Matt
Hancock was still in the cabinet, he'd have to resign. As you know,
almost every story that the Telegraph publishes based on this cash of documents would
be enough to force Matt Hancock to resign from the cabinet. He may even
face criminal prosecutions as a result of some of what's been revealed. I mean,
I don't know, but I think it would certainly wouldn't rule out the
possibility that he may face a criminal prosecution for some of the malfeasance revealed in
these WhatsApp messages, so that I don't think there can be any doubt about
their authenticity. And the impression you get from reading these messages, reading the
stories in the Telegraph is that there wasn't a conspiracy, There wasn't a plan.
It was just the usual political clown show ministers and officials trying to exploit
a crisis in order to advance their careers, in order to attract favorable press
coverage, in order to discredit their political enemies. And it sort of it
shows how you know the re and all all these ministers in different countries around
the world reacted in a similar way. Was largely because they all saw it
as an opportunity not just to indulge their kind of fantasies of power, but
also to advance themselves in various ways, to promote themselves, to to to
to to to outdo their rivals in the kind of jockeying for position and status
and power within their kind of counting. It sort of it to me.
It absolutely confirms that the whole thing was just a clown show, the usual
political cock up idiots and incompetence, lurching from one crisis to the next,
seeing seizing on opportunities where they arose, being overwhelmed by events to the next
moment. It's just it seems to me. It confirms, absolutely confirms the
cock up explanation for what happened. They must have been responding to some explanation.
I mean you presumably, except they were responding to something. Is it
your case that this was a genuine pandemic and you and you're going to ignore
event to a one. You're going to ignore the role of the World World
Health Organization funded by China and Bill Gates, and you're going to ignore all
the evidence of the World Economic Forum in all this, and you're just to
say, it's just just all these all these government ministers seizing the opportunity to
see to make their mark and be authoritarians, and and that's it. It's
just just kind of yeah, I think you're you know, you're, you're,
you're seizing on all these things. And you know, adding two and
two and getting five, I think I think that that that for there to
have been a conspiracy to explain the events of the last three years would require
a degree of coordination and planning and world foresight, which they know it's they
cannot possibly have possessed. And we ever been if you've ever been close to
power, James, if you've ever if you've ever kind of someone someone said
to me who who'd been to Davos. They said, I met this person
a couple of weeks ago. They said they'd been in the room with the
kind of key decision makers at the at a World Economic Forum event, ministers
and CEOs and billionaires from around the world, discussing a particular issue. And
he said, the staggering thing, the shocking thing wasn't that they were these
kind of super intelligent masterminds who were planning how to control the world for their
own benefit. He said, the shocking thing was how unbelievably stupid and ill
informed and generally incompetent they all were. He said, if anyone could actually
be in that room, they would be they would be absolutely astonished by how
stupid and idiotic all these supposedly brilliant, successful people are. And I completely
believe that. And it's a fantasy to imagine that there were these kind of
diabolical masterminds dictating events like puppet masters behind the scenes. You're you're imagine it.
You're attributing far too much ability to people like Klaushfarb who were just vainglorious
idiots. I think I think I've explained pretty well, and I don't think
you need to be a particularly insane conspiracy theorist to look to know that there
is an organization called the World Health Organization, and to look at the details
of event to a one I think I think the other it actually it actually
happened. But look in front of me, I just just re your medazolam.
I've got this other amazing substact by the Daily Beagle, and I've gone
in front of me. The prescription figures for meddazo LAMB ten milligram stroke two
Emerald solution for injection amples by all regional teams across the UK, and there
is a massive spike in round between January and July twenty twenty where it spikes
from from below four k to well above six K. Of these of these
medazolan doses, which are which are essentially that would finish you off and coincidentally
or maybe not, the number of deaths of people in this is from a
Office of National Statistics. Seventeen thousand, three hundred and sixteen patients died in
England with dementia and Alzheimer's disease, nearly three times more than expected. Now,
you can argue that that something needed to be done to to finish off
people in you know, that's not the argument. The argument is that correlation
is not causation. And the reason more medazzy land was prescribed during that period
is because there were more people experiencing breathing difficulties because of you are you We're
actually buying into the narrative that this this was that do you do you let
me ask you? Well, I've actually I've spoken to you believe the pandemic
was real. I do believe the pandemic was real. Yeah do you?
I do. You don't believe it was. It was a fabrication, despite
despite by the data demonstrates that it was no more, no, no worse
than a you know, I think, I think, I think form for
large sways of the population, it was the infection fatality rate was comparable to
a bad flu. But for people who were vulnerable, who had underlying medical
conditions, who who were quite elderly, Um, I think there was a
genuine vulnerability, and I think the way we should have responded to that was
the response set out in the Great Barrington Declaration focused protection. I think it
was a real pandemic. There were people who were genuinely vulnerable, and we
should have done more to protect them. And we shouldn't have wasted enormous resources
and time at great cost to people's mental health, to the economy, and
so forth, by trying to protect everyone, including those who weren't remotely vulnerable
to this particular virus. But I mean, I think, I think,
I think it was in competence. It was cock up. It wasn't conspiracy.
There was a genuine threat, and it was just completely mismanaged. Just
one more, one more thing you picked me up on. The really bad
thing that that Matt Hancock did was that he ignored the science. And you
know I'm not saying that. No, no, no, no, no,
you're misunderstanding. He claimed he claimed to be following the side. Turned
out that he wasn't whether the science. Whether I agree with you, there
was no such thing as the science. Sciences in a constant flux, and
it's developing all the time, and there was no overwhelming consensus about the best
way to mitigate Your point is the trivial one that he ignored this this he
claimed to be following this imaginary thing, but he wasn't follow the imaginary thing,
which doesn't matter any makers. You and I know it wasn't the science
at all. There's no such thing as the science. Yeah, I think,
I think. I think the government, the government's the government the government's
excuse their protective shield, not just man Hancock, but but Boris Johnson to
everyone and all of them. They all claim that the reason they had to
interfere in our liberty on an unprecedented scale, to lock us in our homes,
to prevent us seeing our loved ones, prevent us going to weddings and
funerals, to quarantine us when we return from traveling, and so on and
so forth. Their excuse for doing all of these things was that they were
following the science. Now, at the time I challenged whether the science actually
did dictate that response and could justify what they were doing and were too.
But the point is that that it turns out we now know from these WhatsApp
messages and other sources that they weren't following the science. But we knew them
making it up. We knew then two years ago. We knew there were
lines. Well, we think that's what'm saying. It's a big thing.
We thought we knew it. But this is documentary evidence that they were misleading
us when they claimed that they were always following the science. And that's what's
important, not because there was such a thing as the science which they could
have followed and they didn't know. Because their excuse for this unprecedented authoritarianism was
that it was just they were just faithfully doing the bidding of their scientific ad
vices. It turns out they weren't, But they knew that they weren't.
They knew that they weren't yees, so so okay, and you think that
that but they did it because it just like fed into their authoritarian instincts and
that they just they went with it. Yeah, well, I think I
think, I think, I think to be fair to them, James,
I think in some cases fair to them, they've just gone and they've just
gone destroyed. Because I think we have to be quite forendics. They've destroyed
killed people, they've they've killed children. They come on, they injected children
with stuff that killed children that children did not need to take. They bled
them. They they destroyed children's education. And you think we should be sympathetic
towards bastards. I think, I think. I think that if we're going
to hold them to account, we need to be very careful that the crimes
we accuse them of, our crimes they actually committed. We can't inflate the
crimes they committed, because then they'll be able to prove their innocence. They'll
say, you've accused me of these three things. I'm innocent to two of
them, and in that way escape responsibility for the third thing, which they
aren't innocent of. I think we have to be forensic and careful about about
about what we accuse them of. I think when it comes to the vaccines,
I know you think that you called it the death jab, the clock
shot, whatever, and you think that it's absolutely transparently clear that the vaccines
are harmful and so forth. But I genuinely think that at the time.
Well, first of all, I think you're exaggerating how harmful the vaccines are.
I mean, you know, I've always would take that no, but
that's because I'm under sixty five. I don't have any underlying medical conditions.
I think if I did it for a million, I might I might take
one, because I do think they do provide you with some protection if you
are in a vulnerable group. But I'm not in a vulnerable group, and
that's why. But I think, Jake, But the point is, people
like Matt Hancock, actually I think, genuinely believed that the vaccines were beneficial,
would prevent people from getting the disease, was our way out of the
pandemic. I mean throughout the kind of that period. If you look at
the WhatsApp messages, he wants to be associated with the vaccine. He wants
to be he calls himself mister vaccine. He's kind of very jealous so everyone
else taking credit for it. He's he's annoyed with the head of the Vaccine
Task Force for kind of not moving faster and for being too cautious, and
he actually oversaw I think the use of vaccines was for destined for India in
the UK, depriving people in the developing world of the supposed benefits of the
vaccines. But he clearly believed that they were, you know, a miracle
cube to this disease. He wasn't. He wasn't, he wasn't enlisted in
some kind of horrid conspiracy by big Farmer titles. I've got to go riding.
So we're just going to do a very quick culture corner, So let's
have another ad. I really like the sound of this book. The Jasmine
Sarry is a terrorism thriller by Flip Tucker. Listen to these reviews. A
real humdinger of a thriller. I can't recommend it highly enough, timely,
topical with the current state of the world we live in, comprehensively and movingly
inverts the whole sterile establishment frame debate on terrorism. The Jasmin Sari by Philip
Tucker is available on Amazon now. This is what people are saying about.
It proves that outstanding fiction can speak about the bigger truths more eloquently than can
factual reporting. You can taste the dust and smell the air of Bangladesh.
A stunning finale that left me virtually breathless. An entertaining and explosive race against
time which kept my eyes glued to the pages. Great stuff by The Jasmine
Sari by Philip Tucker on Amazon. As one newspaper put it, this is
a startlingly adroit, angry and astute political thriller. The Jasmin Sari gets it
and you should get it too. Yes, quickly, very quick quick,
as I have a culture corner, What do you been watching? Um?
Well, I watched UM. I watched the first episode of season three of
The Mandalorian, which is on Disney plast. It's a Star Wars spin off
TV show and it's pretty poor. The central character recommendation, I'm not recommending
it. You just ask me what I watched, not what I'm recommending.
And the central character, the Mandalorian, he's this kind of samurai, kind
of kind of lone gun slinger Clint Eastwood man with no name type character,
and it's clearly inspired by westerns. He has a mask on which it's almost
like kabuki, so you know, there's not much acting involved. He just
kind of lumbers around with this kind of mask, completely helmet, completely concealing
his face. It's like watching a kind of drama in which all the characters
are wearing motorcycle helmets with the visors down. But the reason I watched it
is because my fourteen year old son is a fan of The Mandalorian. He's
a big star Wars freak, and he wants to watch the rest of the
series with me. So he said, look, Dad, I've watched episode
one. Watch episode one, and we can watch the rest of it together.
And I think that's probably the last time James, a child of mine,
will want to watch something on television with me. I don't get that
from the fifteen year old, the seventeen year old, certainly not from the
nineteen year old. So I think, well, I have to take this
opportunity. This is my last opportunity to watch something with one of my children.
So I'm going to endure the rest of season three of The Mandalorian.
Yeah, you have to grab those moments while you can, and there's absolutely
there's almost nothing that my children will watch for me now, I mean,
especially if it's got sex in it. When I agree with him, I
hate and I think with sex in it, that's really embarrassing. I'm increasingly
averse to any form of extreme violence. The only thing that we can agree
on watching is that Formula one Drive to Survive series, which is which is
weird because I think the Formula one is about the most boring sport the world.
I went. I once went to a I'm sure I've mentioned this before.
I got flown in the helicopter to Silverston and sat in you know,
the posh enclosure where you drink champagne and you eat lobster. But the problem
is you're eating lobster and drinking champagne to the sound of yo yo. There's
no escape. And there are people in hats everywhere with peaked hats who love
this kind of stuff and they don't mind the sort of twenty hour traffic jams
to get in and out and stuff, and they think it's great and they
call themselves petrol heads. It's really, really, really boring. It's getting
real. But F one Drive to Survive makes it interesting because you care about
the people behind the wheel and the people in the teams and stuff. So
that's my okay drive to survive. My fourteen year old also watches that is
also encouraging me to watch that so we can watch it together, so I
may watch that, James. I also watched episode one of a new series
on Disney Plus called Fleischmann Is in Trouble, which I'm going to give a
cautiously recommend, And so it's about this Jewish doctor in his early forties.
He's just been divorced by his wife. He has two young children. He's
had to move out of their fabulous penthouse Upper east Side apartment into a shoebox
apartment, and he's initially extremely depressed about the turn his life has taken.
And then he discovers dating apps and you know, as a as a college
student, he never got a second glance from an attractive woman. He's never
thought of himself as in any way sexually desirable. But now he's a divorced,
forty something senior medic living on the Upper east Side, He's suddenly got
a corner copia of sexual opportunities before him via these dating apps with you know,
mostly divorced women either his age or older. And on the subject of
flesh creepingly embarrassing sex, Oh my god, this is kind of woke sex
on Telly James. It's not sex with gonna supermodels, attractive kind of girls,
you know, age sort of thirty and under. It sex with much
older women with different body shapes. It's sort of you're sort of it's you're
encouraged to watch it to become more body positive and to broaden your mind about
what constitutes an attractive body. So there's an awful lot of unwatchable sex in
Fleishman is in Trouble, So that part I don't like. But but actually
the kind of satirical observations about kind of life on the Upper East Side in
New York for the kind of well off it is very good, very accurate.
He has this the best thing in it. He has this absolutely ghastly
ten year old daughter. So when he picks her up from school, she
refuses to get on the bus because she doesn't want her any of her friends
to see her getting on the bus. She kind of screams at him to
get an uber to the kind of you know, half mile journey to their
apartment, and when she's at a friend's house, they have to go back
to his place with her friend. She's too embarrassed because his apartment is so
small compared to her friend. She's kind of this status obsessed, kind of
socially ambitious ten year old monster, and she's by far the best thing in
it. And I think I'm going to carry on watching it just because it's
it's kind of that you get My impression is I don't know that world terribly
well, but I had a little bit of exposure to it and I lived
in New York. Is that it's it's satirical skewering of Upper East Side,
upper middle class Jewish New York life is very accurate. It's like Seinfeldt,
but the characters are about ten years older and without the jokes. Right,
Okay, um, yes, I'm not sure that I care what happens in
New York anymore. I used to think New York was an interesting thing.
But but but by the way, my kids used to do that to me
when when they're at their fancy, fancy boarding schools. I used to have
to park the car like because I got a crappy, beaten up car and
I used to have to park it like up the hill so that so that
their their friends would not see what kind of crap car that drove. So
that's the terrible price you have to pay for sending one. One final recommendation,
which is that the thing on Netflix about the invention of Spotify, um
is good. Yeah. No, I when you mentioned this in our aborted
podcast called Playlist, the Playlist, Playlist the Playlist, I looked it up
and it's got a hundred on Rotten Tamatas and it's everyone absolutely raves about it.
It's a Swedish right. Yeah, it's definitely not worth a hundred,
but it's definitely good enough to watch. It shows the invention of Spotify from
different perspectives. So in they of Daniel Eck, the kind of trained spotter
ish that techi programmer guy who thought out the idea, and then the lawyer
who who worked out the business model, and the and the head of Swedish
Sony who was initially repelled by the idea that you should be giving music out
free on the internet when they that wasn't their business model, and you know,
the exploitation of of of hard, hard working rock stars and anyway,
it's it's a good story. Yeah no. Um. I think probably one
of the one of the kind of most entertaining genres on tv UM is a
miniseries about founders of these kind of very successful companies, often which often kind
of then kind of went went, went, kind of belly up. So
there was the there was one about Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theronos.
I thought that was very good. There was one about Uber, the creator
of Uber. There was another one about the guy who set up We Work.
So this is this is I think a very very it's a really good
genre and they're often very good, and I'm really looking forward now to watching
the playlists. That sounds, of course, but there's probably it is probably
part of the the programming to brainwashers into thinking that these these tech companies are
good. Well no, because they often in the case of Theanos, I
mean it completely discredited Elizabeth Hermes, it was all just a massive com and
ditto with We Work, it all went completely belly up, lost Hugh billions
of dollars to the gulls. That that's quite good. Up the disaster like
far up, what's called disastrous? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
right, I'm want to go and get on a horse. Now, okay,
thank you for re doing this and okay, sorry, let me introduce
again. Let me reintroduce our new sponsor, sal da Her sal da Her,
CFA who listens to us in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Sal is Team Toby
and backs the Doughty FSU They're not the Tragic QPR. Sal also enjoys the
delling pod listeners check out Sal's podcast Angel in Boston. It's mostly on building
technology startups, but it's not all about business. Sal also delves into other
aspects of human flourishing, such as creativity, good relationships, and healthy aging.
Those of an entrepreneurial bent might profit from the podcasts with Professor Ed Roberts
of MIT or with his doctoral student, Professor Chuck Easley of Stanford, titled
respectively, start Up Prof and Stanford Startup Prof. They're loaded with advice,
including the most robustly supported finding on the success of tech startups. Do follow
Angel Invest Boston on your podcast app and leave a rating and a written review
to help it get found. So that Angel Invest Boston just search for that
on your podcast app. Who won't be disappointed? Then Ricochet joined the conversation