This is London calling, London calling. No crystal Ball is perfect, but
yes, I think the banking system is very stable. All of the Act
deposits outlaws because of quite a fit of tightening. It wasn't because of these
people are having runs. There are only so many banks off side this way,
and I think this is There may be another smaller one, but there's
pretty much resolves them all. But this is part of the crisis. Is
over. Welcome to London calling with me, James, Denny pol and my
very good friend mister Toby Young umb So are you back from from Canada?
I am. I'm back from Canada. I'm in fact, between when I
last spoke to you and now, James, not only have I got back
from Canada, but I've been on a weekend trip to Stoke, which I'll
tell you all about in a minute. But you're still in Asia. I
am, yeah. I'm now in Malaysia. Um in the in the the
tropical heat, and I'm a bit slow. Actually it's it's it's very humid
and it's hot, and there are ants. There are ants crawling all over
me. I don't know. I'm in this sort of rainforest, you know
place, and for some reason, there are lots of ants everywhere. Um
and the type of ants of the bite these ones are. They're not like
those those soldier ants that people get choose to get bitten by on those extreme
extreme programs where where you try and test your how much pain you could enjoy.
They look like English ants there. I'm sure there are some nasty ants
out there. I was a bit disappointed to learn that there are no piller
sharks and apparently no salt water crocodiles in the vicinity. And I was thinking
I was in jungle hell. But but it don't seem to be that many
top predators here. I remember, I think, in what twenty eleven,
being on safari on New Year's Eve in Kenya with my family and my kids
rule obviously much younger then, and on New Year's Eve, we were kind
of standing around, you know, this kind of food area, when suddenly
these red ants started crawling up our legs, and we initially kind of pretended
to panic, thinking it was quite funny because all these people around us were
panicking. We were like, they're being pathetic. We're not going to be
killed by a couple of these tiny creatures. Why are you freaking out,
and then they started biting our balls and we all started jumping around and shrieking
and taking our trousers off to try and get rid of these bloody things.
It was just unbelievable. Yeah, I wouldn't be messing with ants, and
now I was just I was just observing. I'm not feeling threatened by these
ants. Are these are friendly ants? Okay? Good? So so how
much longer are you in Asia? Four? Well, ideally forever. I
mean, I'm going to have to come back, I think at the end
of the week, but I don't want to. I'm I'm just thinking that
this is going to be The West is dead. Um, not that I'm
sort of necessarily saying I want you to big up communist China, but it
is going to be. The East is the future. The West is absolutely
stuffed. And if you don't know that terms, you're the only person in
the UK set I thought. I thought China was also heading for a fall
m It's suffering from a declining population um most of it's most most Chinese people
are hugely overextended. A lot of their wealth is wrapped up in property.
The property. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not trying to present the
CCP run China with some kind of paradise. I'm just saying that the West
is more stuffed and I it kind of makes me want to puke every time
I read an article by normals, sort of conservative talking point, normals pretending
that we still live in this thing called the free West and that and that
that it's all it's all kind of fine, and everything we've been through in
the last year is just three years as a kind of blip, and that
and that it's all going to be great, and what we've got the coronation
coming and and God bless the rural family. And I will think, I
think you want to talk about the coronation, but you must be one of
the few people that's actually spent any time recently in Hong Kong um and concluded
not that the Chinese Communist Party is this appalling authoritarian, anti dramatic you've concluded,
You've your your conclusion from being in Hong Kong is to be become even
more jaundiced about democracy. Yeah, that's it. You see this this word
you bandy about democracy. You don't even know what it means that you've got
three elections every five years. Yeah, communist China, those elections me and
anything. And you've also got this notion that I'm trying to say that that
that communist China is some kind of great thing. I'm just saying that at
least, at least the communist Chinese completely upfront about who they are and and
and how evil they are, whereas we have to live in this this bizarre
world where we have to pretend that we that we're free and and and that
we have these things called electric electric representatives whose job is to serve our interests
and respond to the you know this thing you called democraty, it's absolutely rubbish,
that's all. I remember. My um, my son was last summer
went on this um like was was. It was in this sort of residential
summer school, UM run by an organization called the John Locke Institute. It's
very good, um and Um. One of the people on the course was
Um, a Chinese national. And when Ludo showed him various anti Boris things
he'd been putting on his Instagram, this boy was absolutely shocked. He was
like, won't you get arrested for saying these things? How? How could
you? How could you take such incredible risks, and Luda had to explain
to him that that, unlike in China, you can criticize your leaders in
the West without risking arrest. It seem I mean, there do seem to
be some pretty fundamental differences, even if in you know, in some respects
people are exactinate them. But and you feel good about this character that this
this this this construct called Boris because you know that that that that's the level,
that's the level you're you're working on. There's this sort of lovable,
lovable buffoon called Boris, and we call him by his first name. I
mean, it's it's a joke. Well, I wasn't necessarily praising Boris.
I was just pointing out that if you criticize I'm saying leaders in China,
you can get into an awful difficulty. As the Chinese Democracy campaign has discovered,
some of them are still imprisoned on it. These are these are just
straw men you're you're erecting in front of me. It's kind of embarrassing terms,
James, I don't think it's it's it's not it's not a legitimate argument
to say, you know, instead of responding and saying, well, well,
you may be right that it's harder to criticize political leaders in rest in
China than in the West. You're just saying that's an embarrassing point of it.
Why is it embarrassing not even trying to to to to pick up China.
I'm saying that the way I'm saying that. The problem is that the
way you're saying there's no difference. But I'm pointing out that there is a
difference, which is that you can't criticize. You can't criticize your political masters
in China, whereas you can here. I mean, that's one of many
different Surely, to answer the question, I go back to the original question.
I would much rather be be out of the UK forever if I possibly
could. And I think I think a lot of Americans feel the same way.
I'm a lot of Canadians feel the same way. A lot of Australians
feel the same way. I think a lot of New Zealanders probably feel the
same way. Now, now why is that, do you think? Why?
Why does so many of us feel completely jaundiced? And it's not even
whether we belong on the left or the right, in so far as those
terms have any meaning, It's that we've all recognized that the systems that we've
been brought up indoctrinated at our schools to believe a kind of sort of bastions
of freedom and and fine traditions are just just a lie. Well, it's
all we should say. Most people, I mean, migration flows are largely
in the other direction, James. I mean, I think something close to
five million people a year on average, either legally or illegally try and into
the United States, and I think up to a million people are awaiting um
judgment about whether they can become citizens in the United Kingdom. At present,
net migration into the UK and into the US has never been higher. Well,
they're coming from I mean the replaced, like Malaysia, Hong Kong,
Malaysia, Hong Kong. They're coming from l holes, They're coming from a
lot of them are coming from Albania. It seems rather rather too many are
coming from Albania and being housed in every hotel in in in the land.
It seems hotels are being given over to house these people who are this this
fighting agent. There was there was an interesting stat actually, James, recently
which showed that Albanian migration into the UK has actually declined recently, and I
think Indians now are the largest single nationals to enter the UK in the most
recent migration words, which isn't not a million miles from Malaysia anyway. So
let me tell you about my weekend adventures, James. So, yeah,
I got back on the Red Eye from Calgary. So I flew, took
off on Thursday night, got back on Friday. Didn't sleep. It's a
pretty long flight. And not only that, but there was like a four
hour coach journey to get from Lake Louise to Calgary, and then I had
to because that was the only coach I could get to make my connection or
to make my flight. I then had to wait at Calgary Airport for like
four hours plus, then got on a plane, on the plane for nine
hours, then had to get the train from Heathrow back to Acton. I
mean, I've been up for a long time and been traveling for a long
time. Managed to get a little bit of sleep on Friday night, and
then had to get up crack of dawn on Saturday to dry my three sons
to Stoke because QPR were playing Stoke on Trent in the last away game of
the season. We've got one more game that's at home next week, and
it was a must win game for us because if we won the game,
it would mean we were safe and wouldn't be relegated to League One. We
would stay in the Championship. So there was quite a lot at stake.
And then on Sunday I was planning to take my three sons to Alton Towers.
It's like a birthday treat for my fourteen year old Charlie who will shortly
be fifteen. Anyway, we did manage to get to Stoke. We met
some friends in a pub and wonder was actually from Rugby, not far from
where you are, and were actually what we had for lunch days. I
promised I would mention them on the podcast because this chap who I met and
his mother are both fans of London Calling and he said I had to try
Staffordshire oatcakes and there was this particular outlet on London Road in Stoke on Trent
that makes the best North Staffordshire oat cakes in the country. And he'd been
raving about this particular hole in the wall for a while. And this was
on a street called London Road which used to be the main Thoroughfare, the
most glamorous shopping high street in Stoke on Trent now looks pretty run down,
and in fact, as my friend Tom pointed out to me, was actually
used in a party political broadcast a couple of years ago by Macron to illustrate
what would happen if you voted for La Penn. He said, vote for
La Pen We'll leave the European Union. This is what can happen. This
is post Brexit Britain. And they showed a shot of London Road in Stoke
on Trent as a warning to the French people. And anyway, so he
produced these North Staffordshire oat cakes. You could get different fillings in like all
day breakfast, bacon and cheese, cheese and tomato, etc. And I
might have to say my hopes were not particularly high, you know, I
sort of we have to take all this kind of praising of local delicacies with
a pinch of salt. But actually North Stavage oatcakes, at least from this
particular place on London Road, they were fantastic. They were absolutely delicious.
Me and my son's just devoured them and we even got some to take home.
And my wife has subsequently become a North staffageer oatcake convert so anyway,
so I was very glad to try this local delicacy. And then QPR went
on to beat Stoke one nill, which means QPR and how safe. We
were not going to be relegated. We're going to stay in the championship,
which which didn't look like a very likely prospect a couple of weeks ago.
But two wins on the bounce very rare for QPR, very rare, particularly
in this season. We beat Burnley top of the league. Burnley already been
promoted at the Premier League, beat them last week, beat Stoke this week,
so now we are safe. So that was great lot of celebrating in
the stands with the QPR fans, the traveling faithful. And then on Sunday
less good day, so we got to Alton Towers. Alton Towers is probably
Britain's premiere roller coaster park for those who haven't heard of. It has ten
roller coasters, seven of which are premium roller coasters. And we got there
at quarter to ten so we wouldn't have to queue. Park opens at ten.
We were in the queue for a roller coaster called Rita. By ten
past ten, twenty minutes later, after we've been queuing for twenty minutes,
we were told that there was a technical fault and RITA wasn't going to be
operational. And I asked one of the members of staff, well, you
know, is it worth staying in the queue. We've been in the queue
now for twenty minutes. Is it going to reopen soon? And he said,
could be ten minutes, might not open for the rest of the day,
up to you whether you take that gamble. So we left that queue,
and of course it reopened about ten minutes after we'd left the queue.
But it turned out that four of the seven roller coasters that my son was
very keen to do, and he'd worked out the order in which he wanted
to do them at four of the seven were closed. They sort of due
to technical difficulties or maybe because it was raining bloody typical of Britain to design
a theme park in which the best rides don't work in the rain, you
know, given that it's in Stafford, that did seem an extraordinary oversight.
Anyway, it was. It was quite disappointing. It was it was a
weird kind of almost a sort of similar arcrum of Brexit Britain James Alton Towers,
like everybody was dutifully queuing and following these kind of road markings and being
very obedient and compliant, all for the sake of getting some little tiny injection
of pleasure. Though needless to say, the machines that was supposed to produce
this kind of little rush, this little dopamin hit, for the most part,
weren't working. There were even signs, you know, as you were
queuing in an orderly way to wait to get on these machines, saying,
you know, report any troublemakers you see. And there was this kind of
awful kind of music kind of pumping out everywhere, and it did seem almost
like a kind of dystopian vision of the future and quite reminiscent of the whole
kind of lockdown experience. Anyway, a pretty ghastly day at Alton Towers.
And i've i've i've i've, I've submitted a complaint to Customer Services and I'm
hoping that I'll be refunded. But anyway, good to get out of London.
I was hoping that you're very long outdate about GPR was going to have
a happy ending at least I was going to. I was gonna let's have
a good laugh at the end, but it didn't even have that type you.
So you haven't been relegated? No, No, that would have been
a very unhappy ending. I don't think you would have. Genuinely, surely
not. Surely you're happy for me that my team has survived and we'll go
on to fight another championship season later this year. M Yeah, are you
a fan of of of? Have you been following the Wrexham series on Disney
Plus in which about Ryan Reynolds and Rob mcilvenny's purchase of Wrexham FC. I
started watching it and I thought it was good to begin with, and then
I realized that the problem is that so those two fairly famous people buy up
an obscure football club, and you kind of wanted to be like it would
be in Hollywood, where fairly quickly, after a few a few pratfalls and
mishaps, the team suddenly enters the next league and they all they win the
FA Cup whatever. Um. But it just went on, didn't it did?
There was there was there was so much boring stuff that you just kind
of thought they've actually they've actually bought this club to remake lost about a football
team, and it just goes on and on and on, and you were
never going to get out of here, So I'm trying to stop watching.
Did did Rexam ever get promoted? Um? Well, it's a bit of
a spoiler if if you haven't been following the news and you're only getting your
news about Wrexham from watching the TV show, because I think there's going to
be another season of it. But yes, at the end of this football
season, I mean it hasn't quite ended yet, but they've secured enough points
to secure promotions, so they've now they're now going to be in League Two
what we used to call the fourth division in the English Football League next year.
I did find quite interesting, just mildly interesting about that football series was
that even with lots of money, you can't really buy your way, because
I remember that they paid lots of money for this striker from several at least
two divisions above where Rexhall were. Yeah. But but but you're only as
good as the team, the whole team, aren't you. They can't feed
him the balls whatever it is you do as strikers. That then if it
didn't work out, terribly well in you know, during the first season in
which I mean they got into the playoffs, so they did. They were
in contention to be promoted out of you know, the National League back into
League one, League two, but they didn't make it. So it had
it had but in in in In in the most recent season, I think
he's the highest goal scorer in the season. So it has made a difference
ultimately, that has been for them, the difference between remainers in the National
League and getting promoted, and they have got promoted, I guess for me,
the slightly odd thing about the series is that, you know, Rob
mcilvenny and Ryan Reynolds kind of present themselves as being kind of almost philanthropists.
That's why they bought the club. They care about football a bit, you
know mcailveny seemingly a bit more than Ryan Reynolds. They didn't know much about
it, They didn't know much about Rexham, didn't have any connection really to
Wales as far as I could determine. But they sort of became invested in
the community. They realized how much the club meant to the community, and
investing in the club and hoping the club would succeed became important to them because
they valued Wrexham and they realized that, you know, this was God's work
they were doing. Any sort of They very much sell themselves as these kind
of you know, altruistic, caring individuals who who've got invested in this community
and want to kind of revitalize it. But you're sort of thinking in the
back of your mind all the time, hang on, this was always a
commercial project. Surely you knew going in that you were going to sell the
television rights to Disney Plus to a series about trying to you know, take
this failing club from the National League back up the divisions and it's it.
It may not have been entirely you know, commercial exercise, but that's that's
surely the kind of you know, they've talked to their managers, and they've
talked to their you know, investment advisors, and they've talked to executives at
Disney Plus. They probably set up a production company to make the series,
and it's done very, very well. It's a big hit for Disney Plus.
You have you run the numbers, have you have you looked into the
Has it been profitable for them? I think I think it must have been.
I haven't actually looked at the numbers. No, I'm just assuming it
has. But it's sort of slightly odd. You was thinking, well,
the reason they're making this, the reason everything's happening on screen and they're seemingly
making this effort and everyone's kind of celebrating them, is because it's happening on
screen. And you know, it's sort of like Schrodinger's cat if if if
there wasn't a TV series being made, there would be nothing to make the
TV series about, because that's really what it's there for. That that's the
whole purpose of the exercise. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, But
I hope with some diligent journalist much to do that. Yeah. Absolutely,
Yeah. Let's break for an ad. This is Stephen Hayward of the power
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Janks, We're back. UM. Did you spot that? I don't
know if you you you've been following the news whilst out in Malaysia. But
Uh, First Republic UM, a big American bank, was taken over UM
over the weekend and is now going to be sold to m JP Morgan.
And it's the second biggest US bank to fail I think in history UM.
And it's the third US bank to fail UM since what in the past couple
of months, the first being Silicon Valley Bank. And I've just been writing
a piece about it for the Daily Skeptic, sort of examining the question of
whether it's another example of get woke, go broke because one of one of
one of First First Republics great claim to fames is that in two and twenty
one it became the first bank to achieve carbon neutrality, so it disinvested in
fossil fuels, said it wasn't going to invest in fossil fuels again, achieved
carbon neutrality, and it's put great importance on doing what it can to tackle
the climate emergency. ESG is high on its list of priorities. The chief
security officer talks about addressing climate risk as one of the risks that she's addressing
in her capacity as chief chief risk officer. And yeah, it looks like
it may not be the major reason for the banks collapse, but certainly they
appear to have prioritized climate risk over other more substantial existential risks to a banking
company. Yeah, with respectives, I'm just not buying that argument that all
it's not just that particular bank, it's all banks, it's all businesses,
they're all, they're all that they all count out to ESG because companies like
black Rock have such a significant shareholding in all of them that and Larry Fink
of black Rock is obsessed with ESG um so as Vanguard. So all these
these requirements are imposed upon them. If if if, if they don't,
if they don't pay the line they get, they get that, they lose
money essentially. So it's it's it's I think the whole work thing is is
is a complete distraction. It's it. I mean, everyone is worke and
and and yes, the banks, the smaller banks are going to go broke
because all what we're seeing around the world is this this consolidation of the financial
sector where where soon the world will will will consist of about what five banks
or something. It's this is going to happen continuously in the next two or
three years. It's not as it's not a product of people being silly about
pronouns or or climate change or anything else. Well, I think you're right
up to a point in that I'm sure that one of the reasons First Republic
embraced ESG and makes a big song and dance about diversity, equity and inclusion
and virtue signals and the rest of it is in order to attract investment from
large investment funds like black Rock, as well as attract millionaire customers on the
East and West coast of America. It was largely a kind of millionaire bank
First Republic. But that doesn't mean that it's not the embrace of these particular
policies and prioritizing things like ESG which have contributed to the bank's collapse. And
it may be that stakeholder capitalism as defined by the WEF and promoted by big
funds like black Rock and Vanguard, if it's identified if ESG, the broader
stakeholder capitalism agenda is thought to be actually partly responsible for the claps of these
financial institutions, then surely that will undermine that agenda. But I think it's
still a case of you know, get woke, go broke being a contributory
factor, regardless of why the banks in question got work. Well, you
know, my beyond the culture wars, they're just this this kind of made
up, silly thing designed to give give conservative commentators something to get their teeth
into and feel angry about. And while they're getting angry about this and writing
endless screeds about how palling it is that all these pronouns are everywhere and how
ghastly esg is, meanwhile, the world is being taken over by all Our
freedoms are being taken away, Farms are being farming landed. Farmland is being
destroyed. Farmers, farmers are having their livelihoods destroyed. We're heading towards food
shortages, we're heading towards financial collapse. And and meanwhile, people in the
in the mainstream media, you know, who've got their job to be edgy
right wing commentators are saying, isn't it isn't it infuriating? Here's somebody saying
something really stupid about about how how men and women are the same, or
how how women, how men should have babies, you know, men should
have wombs. It's just like it's distraction, it's not it's not real,
it's silly. I would I would have thought that that stakeholder capitalism, which
was until fairly recently, until really twelve months ago, thought to be the
best way to save capitalism, and that was a sort of basis on which
it was promoted by the WF and on which people got behind it. Um,
it's now, it's not a lot of the luster has gone from stakeholder
capitalism fancial philosophy thani by the w EF. I mean the reason that Tony
Blair started partings the word stakeholder. You realize this sty stakeholders is just this
kind of weft word. I just said, yeah, you're not that,
That's what I said. I said, it's it is very much a WEF
initiative. This concept of stakeholder capitalism is kind of claud Schwarb's big contribution to
the kind of debate about the future of capitalism. And he's gone all in
on it, and I said, certainly encouraged others to do so, and
it's it was until about twelve months ago kind of the trendy orthodox he certainly
within the financial services sector. But it looks as though that that that that
that that that that maybe that bubble may be about to burst, and that
will I don't think that you know that that following this particular agenda is inevitable
because there are these all powerful forces that won't let banks diverge from it.
I think that, you know, they believed that it actually would be good
for the bottom line and would make large financial institutions more sustainable, and would
be good for the world, and turns out it's not. It's actually contributed
to a global financial crisis and the collapse now of three banks. So it
maybe the death now I'm saying for this particular w e F inspired agenda,
which is a good thing, surely, I don't think that's going to happen.
I mean, I think you have this this um romantic, archaic notion
about about the idea that that there is this thing called the free market,
and and and that people try out, try out things, and if they
don't work, then they'll try something else, and that they constantly on admission
to provide value and to create a system that works. It's that's that's not
the deal. These the people who run these banks are parachuted in from institutions
like like the w w EF. And if if it seems like the wheels
are coming off stakeholder so called stakeholder capitalism, it's not because it has been
proved to be unworkable. It's just because they've found a different way of executing
their their their plan. It's not it's not that it's not that they've they've
learned lessons. I would have thought, James, that actually your world view,
your analysis of what's going on, what's going wrong, is ultimately more
rooted in romanticism than mine, a kind of gloomy Wagnerian romanticism. You think
it's essentially a tragedy, a tragic loop that we're stuck in and which is
going to inevitably end in collapse, and it's fate. There's very little we
can do about. The wheels are turning, the whole the whole machine has
been set in motion and it will end in tragedy. That's surely a more
ultimately a more romantic or a view, more more rooted in kind of nineteenth
century romanticism than mine or whatever. I mean, I don't I don't really
really care to quibble about about who who's the most who's the romantic one and
who's not. I just know that I'm right that that that that this is
that if if, if it seems as those stakeholder capitalism is failing, it
probably means that that was always part of the plan. Yeah, it's not
that. It's not that they've learned their lessons and things are suddenly going to
get better and maybe there's going to be some kind of remarket so called right
wing backlash where where suddenly sense is going to be restored. It ain't going
to happen. Terms where where where? Where at the final stages of the
collapse of the system. Well, James, I I think the system's in
trouble, as we've discussed before. But I don't think. I don't think.
I don't think the future is set. I'm not. I'm not fatalistic
like you. I think it's up to us to save the future. And
if we organize and energize and galvanize, then we can don't. You can't.
You can't save the future until you wake up and see what the problem
is. If you're if if you're cropping up a paradigm that was always always
a fake narrative created by these people, then as long as you go and
playing their game, you're never going to be able to fight back because you're
playing by their rules, not our rules. Yeah, I'm never quite sure
what what fighting back looks like for you. I'm clear what it looks like
for me, and I'm clear, but fighting back just what a fighting back
consists of for you, apart from carping on the sidelines about how the collapse
is inevitable if you're if you'll allow me, I you know, rather than
rabbiting on and accusing me of things that I'm not doing, I would say
that our first duty is not to participate, is to really not vote,
for example, not not participating the electoral system. To use cash. I've
mentioned this before, use cash wherever possible, and I think they try and
make us do. Don't do it. So, don't take the vaccine so
called vaccine, um, don't don't don't call this a vaccine, We call
it what it is, a death jab or clot shot whatever. Don't wear
masks, don't do whatever they tell you to do, because that's the only
way we are going to be able to stop them doing what they want to
do, which is turned us into into slaves basically. But that sounds like
a kind of grassroots movement which depends upon mass participation. If it's going to
sue a few people refusing to take more refusing to get vaccinated, that's not
going to make much impact, is it. I'm not, I'm not.
I'm not sure what your point is here. What because because most people were
persuaded by this military level um psychological operation whereby we had all our PB channels,
all our newspapers bought and paid for by the government, entertainment industry.
I mean, you name it, pretty much every institution pushing the same the
same story. We had. We had nurses, nurses in hospitals which were
supposed to be uh, you know, almost unworkable. They were so they
were so overrun with dying patients, you know, who badly needed ventilators,
and yet somehow they had time to make TikTok videos. We had, we
had, we had. You know, it goes back to my original point
about you think you think that we're so different communist China? What what?
What? What? What? Is one of the things we really associate with
with with with with countries like North Career and and China. It's these massive,
massive sort of public displays of of of coordinated action of of of of
sort of dancing and stuff. And we had, we had, we had
the na forming these these dance routines, just as you might have might have
performed for the glorious Leader on on on on May Day. We had we
had the people who sort of pride themselves and having defeated the Armada and having
beat the French at Waterloo, turning out of their houses on a Thursday evening
I believe, to bang pots and pans in celebration of a stylist institution and
in celebration of this character that had been presented to us, a bit like
stacking off the tractor. We were stacking off the coal miner way and the
Soviet Union. We had a character called an invented character almost called Captain Tom
who who who Who'd written a on motorbikes in the war, but we somehow
presented to us as a war hero and that we should suddenly we should suddenly
um celebrate this man, celebrate this institution. I don't I don't know tapes.
I worry about what's happened to our country or right, most people have
been brainwashed by this, this this cynical, ugly machine. But that's what
I'm saying. We need to wake up, and until we do wake up,
collectively, there is no hope. That does sound like a prescription for
kind of despair and fatalism and just waiting for things to waiting for things to
get worse and collapse before before anything can get better. I'm not saying we
should. I'm saying that everyone should be more like me, unless like you.
That's the solution if you're in a nutshell, so we might stand a
chance. Well, there is the recipe for disaster. Well I'm sorry here,
I'm sort of do you think about James? Um? I like to
think I was making a difference. Um, but um, anyway? Should
we should? We cut for another commercial and then come back at a second.
Hey, happy spring everybody. Technically it's spring here, it's cold.
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forward into a new way of looking at the Internet and a new way of
listening at ricochet dot com. So tell me about your travels, Chames.
What have you been up to in U in Asia? Have you done?
Have you been on any kind of long bus journeys and eating food? I've
discovered my my new favorite thing um, which is called hey. Which is
this? So I we're looking at when whenever I travel in somewhere like Malaysia,
What you're always trying to do, well, what I'm always trying to
do is get away from what they wanted to give you is Western food or
a sort of what what they think is what Western Westerners want to eat.
And of course we don't want to eat Western food or or sort of or
um versions of the local cuisine which have been which have been toned down because
they're worried that the spices might be too too aggressive for our palettes. What
you want is the real thing. So I eventually persuaded my hotel to tom
send us off to this restaurant where no tourists went and we went to this
this this restaurant in the middle of nowhere were are indeed the only people who
there who were not not Malaysian. And it was it had a kind of
strange vibe. I mean that Malaysians are generally very very friendly and welcoming and
and and sweet, and this was there was a sort of slightly standoffish air
in this place. Um. And we couldn't read the menu because it because
there was no English translation, and tried to get a beer and we're told
we couldn't because it was a Muslim You know that there were Muslims. I
mean Malaysia, Malaysia is sixty two percent Muslim. But but but the sort
of Islam is is that that slightly the dominant religion. Um. Even though
they have freedom of religious you know, you can, you can, you
can belong to whatever religion you want here, but Islam is the dominant ideology.
Um. Anyway, Um, because I couldn't have beer were we ordered
tea instead and the tea was brought to us. It was it was like
a really good strong cup. The color was like a cup of Builder's tea
which had been brewed for a long time, and I tasted it and it
was just about the best cup of tea I've ever had. It was just
amazing. Um. I mean, I'm a big fan of Massala chai,
which is what you get in India, you know that were flavored with cardamom
and stuff. But this Malaysian take on it, the tea is really good.
It's grown in the Camera and Highlands. It's got a particularly robust flavor.
It's dark, and they make it with condensed milk and they pour it
from a great height so that it's sort of bubbles, I suppose. As
anyway, tear tarik ifever you can't come to Malaysia. That's that's really good.
So the tea in this restaurant was good. What was the what were
the spicy dishes like? Um, well, because we're right next to door
to Thailand, actually I'd accidentally chanced on a Malaysian restaurant doing Thai food,
and yeah, it was nice. It was. In fact, In fact,
I had a fish dis which had I would say, probably the best
broth I've ever ever had in a in a time in a time meal.
It was. It was the lemon grass and the and the ginger and everything
were just absolutely and and the spices were absolutely perfect. Many qualm was that
I wasn't totally convinced that the fish was actually landed by fishermen in a traditional
fishing boat that they had. They have fish farms, and I really don't
like fish farms at all. I think they're horrible things. I got.
I got very upset. The night before we went to this Japanese restaurant and
in the in the in the Japanese in the in the in the area outside
was a was a tank with these unhappy looking fish in it, and some
of them only had one eye. And I said to the woman, I
don't this. This makes me sad seeing this fish with it with one eye.
So they packed each other's eyes out and the tank. She says,
Nana, it happens at the fish farm. You know, either they get
they attack each other in these these these whatever fish fish living in fish farms,
or or it happens when they're being removed. And I was thinking,
this is really no life that I don't I don't want fish being treated like
this. I'd rather not eat a fish than I have a fish and at
fish farm, or I'd rather pay twice or even three times the price.
And I think if fish farms is another consequence of this horrible environmental agenda where
we have to feel guilty about eating food stuffs and you know, meat products,
and we're told that we have to find new ways of creative ways of
of of feeding the world and saving the environment. And I'm thinking, if
if fish farms are the answer, then then I don't like that solution.
I think it's actually worse than the problem. Um, didn't you tweet midweek
that you'd you had a stomach up set? No, it was actually somebody
else. I know I hadn't got dysentrue, and I know I wish I
hadn't tweeted it. Now I had dysentry since you ask. I had it
when I was traveling through Africa on my gap here in in nineteen eighty four,
and I came out of I've been traveling through Zaire and you know other
other difficult countries. You know I've been in. I've been in the rainforest.
I'd caught I'd got jiggers in my feet, these things that bury themselves
into your into your skin and lay eggs. Um, I got Jardier,
I got amy bit dysentery. And when you've got amer bit dysentery, you
really know it. You get the worst stomach cramps imaginable you get. I
mean, I won't tell you what I did to the downstairs lou of this
this this, this calapless couple that were friends of my fathers, that had
agreed to look after to Nairobi. It was just ideous. But anyway,
so so so, No, I haven't had dysentery, but somebody I know
had thought they might have, and I when I quizzed them on the phone,
it was clear to me that they hadn't got it. So no,
don't answer your questions. This is this is the equivalent of you being disappointed
that my story about going to see QPR against Stop didn't end the QPR being
relegated to League one. It's like I was hoping this story about you being
in would be pursuing these kind of not trying to go off the beaten track
at a non touristy place, this genuinely spicy local food had ended with you
getting dysentery. But you're all right. I acquired any really really juicy travelers
anecdotes other than the Tarrick that's far as I can go, and I sorry
about them. I had a te I have a tea story as well from
my Canadian trips. So at this resort called Lake Louise, where I discover,
because I'm reading churchill biography that Churchill actually visited Lake Louise in the nineteen
thirties and did some paintings of the local mountains. Anyway, instead of lunch,
we were offered at one stage afternoon tea. And this was at noon.
And I bridled in a kind of typically British way, thinking, why
are you calling it afternoon tea but serving it at noon? Surely you know
you can't serve afternoon tea any time before four pm at the very earliest.
But nonetheless, and they had these kind of very different types of tea,
and I was immediately consulted by the other journal I was the only brit one
of two Brits in our in our group of journalists, so the other people
present immediately consulted me, thinking, well, you're British, you must know
which teased to choose. And of course I know very little about tea,
much much more about coffee. And in addition to you know, a cup
of earl gray creamy earl gray, which takes did a bit oddly perfume to
me. Not the best couple of people ever had. Then we would get
then brought a kind of you know, one of those towers with kind of
scoms at the top, with what they called Devonshire cream, which I thought
might be clotted cream, but was in fact just whipped cream. That the
jam it came with was very good. And then beneath that what were build
as finger sandwiches, but weren't in fact finger sandwiches at all. So one
of the finger sandwiches was a slice of cucumber, was something on the cucumber,
It wasn't like a cucumber sandwich cut into fingers, and that all the
sandwiches were odd in different ways, but none of them were finger sandwiches.
And then at the bottom there were kind of sort of about half a dozen
different cakes. But it was it was a rather odd experience and like no
afternoon tea I've ever had. And yeah, it sounds like your cup of
tea was was more of a success than mine in other respects. Late Lewis
was very nice. I have to say, um, do you think we'll
doing other the ad breaks. I want you because I'm dying, dying about
this what I've been reading. Sure, yeah, let's do it. I
break and come back in your culture corner. Hello, I'm Dennis Neal,
and here's what's bugging me. The media are burying some of the biggest scandals
of our lifetime, and I'm here to call them out on it and make
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Gate hoax, China spy balloons and toxic chemical burnoffs. Join me to hear
things no other journalist will dare tell you. All that and more on what's
bugging Me? Available for download and streaming every Thursday right here on the Ricochet
Audio Network and wherever you get your podcasts Ricochet. Join the conversation. So
what have you been reading? As you didn't? Haven't finished any but now
I haven't. Now I'm on them on the other about page two hundred and
twenty or something. It's really good. It's really good. There's a very
very good Do you remember it? Have you read it? And I haven't
read it? Okay, there is a very good steeple chase seen in it.
I mean it's quite it's quite traumatic, but it's but it's but it's
really it's it's it's really good. He obviously understands horses, Um told straight.
But the other book I was reading was it's called something like Seventeen Years
among the Dyak, and it was published in nineteen eleven by somebody called Gomez
who despite well I'm presuming that's how he pronounces his name. Maybe it's Gomes.
It's spelled g O M E. S unt. He was the son
of a missionary, and he's a missionary himself, an English missionary who spent
seventeen years living among the Dyak, the sea dias of Sumatra. Bornea,
I forget m one of one or the other Sumatra. I think Sumatra.
Yeah, Sarah Waka Sarah and Um it's supposed to well, it's suddenly in
its time it was considered the definitive text on the Dyak people and the diets
is you probably know work were these these headhunters and um they lived lived in
in the jungle in their long houses. And he goes into detail of all
the kind of weird things they do, like filing down their teeth and they
dye their teeth black because it's it's considered to be more more more attractive,
and their their courtship rituals. So when they're courting each other, they because
there's no privacy in the long houses, the only the only time they get
any privacy for courting is it in the middle of the night when everyone's asleep,
and the man goes up, climbs up into the women the area where
the young female virgins sleep, and he carries a beetle nut wrapped in a
leaf, and um, he wakes her up. If she if she's interested,
then she'll let him to stay, let him stay, and they'll they'll
live side by side, chewing beetle nuts and leaves until until the morning.
And if not, she says, hadn't you better go and light the fire
or light the light or something like that. There's some sort of code phrase.
Um. And it goes into it goes into all these details about every
aspect of diact life, including head hunting, which was which was banned by
the White Rajah of Sarawak Jay James Brooke. Um and um uh, I
mean, I mean you know it took years for for head hunting to be
completely got rid of out of their culture because because getting heads was was the
mark of a man in their culture. If you wanted to get a really
good wife, or if you wanted to be head of the tribe, you
really needed to go out of and and go to another tribe and chop,
chop one one or two of their heads off and bring it back home,
and then they'd be a great feast. But my favorite section of the book
is the one on their superstitions UM, because obviously they have many, many
superstitions. They're constantly look looking for omens in things. And there are seven
types of bird of omen bird in their culture. And UM say they're going
to say they're going to plant a field. They they go up and they
have to listen to the foot of a specific omen bird calling from their left,
and if it calls from their right, this's the first omen bird,
the particular variety of omen bird. Then the day is absolutely ruined. They've
just got they've just got to give up because there's no point going on because
the omen bird is called from the wrong side. But suppose that the omen
bird, the right omen bird is called from the left side. So they
collect a twig, and then they have to get the next variety of omen
bird to call from maybe from maybe from the right, and they have to
hear the calls the seven omen birds and collect a twig, but each each
open bird buried in the Yeah, that's elate. I was thinking. I
mean, I thought I had obsessive compulsive disorder because I used to do things
like I used to get told off by the wife. She catches me touching
walls with my hands. You know, like when you're walking down the corridor
and you have to touch both walls evenly with even pressure. Do you ever
do that? No, whatever, I've never heard of it. Well,
I sort of wards off evil, you know, I mean, what one
invents these rituals that that one does or I used to do. I salute,
I salute magpies. Yeah, I suppose magpies are an omen bird,
and in order in order to kind of neutralize any negative effect seeing the magpie
might have, I'll salute the magpie. But beyond that, I don't really
have any superstitions they are that that that would be our Roman bird. Yeah
exactly. Yeah, But anyway, if you can get a hold of a
copy, I strongly recommend seventeen years among the diac Okay, I remember I
remember getting a great deal of pleasure from Into the Heart of Borneo by the
poet James Fenton and if you've read that, But it's about this kind of
trip that he and I think Ian Hamilton and possibly Christopher Hitchens made to Borneo
in sort of nineteen eighty three or maybe a bit before that. And he
had James Fentin in particularly, had the most terrible time, what what disasters
could befall him, what infections he could contract, he got and and it's
it's a sort of amusing kind of disaster story about this trip they made to
Borneo, totally unprepared but quite entertaining. I really want to go there,
um so um. I've I've been continuing to read Andrew Roberts's magisterial biography of
Churchill. I'm up to nineteen thirty seven and greatly looking forward to his comeback.
He's still in the wilderness years at the moment, but over the next
three years he's going to he's going to gradually reascend the Greasy Pole. So
I'm looking forward. I read it. I can tell you he just he
surrenders in thirty nine and he's really crap. Okay, well that's disappointing.
I'd understood it to have a different ending, but so anyway, I'm looking
forward to reading the next section. But I've also I haven't really watched it.
I've been so busy traveling around, whether to um the Rocky Mountains in
Canada or to Stoke on Trent, that I haven't had a chance to really
watch anything new recently. James. I'm still working my way through The Playlist,
which I'm still enjoying, and The Night Manager, though I'm plodding through
that rather slowly, but I expect to get to the end of it.
I'm hoping to see air the new Ben Affleck Matt Damon film about out the
Nike's decision to sponsor a basketball shoe UM and It's partnership with Michael Jordan,
which which is apparently, I mean, quite entertaining, quite surprisingly, even
though it's really just about you know, a corporation becoming successful, so he
wouldn't have thought would be entertaining, but apparently it is. Um. So
I'm going to go and see that. But beyond that, I haven't really
seen anything or read anything since since the last talking Jemraframe. Oh, I
did watch the second half of that. You remember I've mentioned on the on
the flight I started watching this thing about this morbidly obese man, the whale
whale played by that actor the year that I don't know. Brendan's umber other
Brendan Fraser. Yeah, he was in the Mummy film. You watch films?
Who is he? What is he was? Originally he was his his
his his um. He was made famous by the Mummy films, which I
guess you know. There was a series of films about action comedies about Laura
Oh and the Curse of the Mummy. They were kind of yeah, mildly
entertaining popcorn movies. Yeah, that's the worst genre of all, isn't it.
It was like kind of it was like like a kind of a b
tech version of Raiders. Yeah, exactly exactly. But you wouldn't call Raiders
action comedies, would you. They're they're like action No, I think you
call them. I think you call them action comedies. I think you wouldn't.
You wouldn't, absolutely not. This is going to be another another division
of that. It's going to really code I would suggest that most people would
not describe Raiders as an action comedy. What would you what genre do you
think it fits into? Just action? I mean, what do I don't
know? Just not action comedy is what I'd say. Okay, okay,
But anyway, as I watched on the whale, I mean, it's quite
interesting watching him play this morbidly abased man. You know that the grizzly detail.
Um. But it's it's clearly but clearly based on a play, and
the play was clearly written by by somebody who has a sort of a set
of standard woke values. For example, homosexuality is clearly, in his mind
the highest form of love um. Christianity is essentially um stifling um. And
for example, there's a there's a sort of there's a there's a there's a
plot detail whereby one of the characters mentioned in the play has committed suicide because
he used to be he used to belong to this kind of Christian family,
and then when the Christian family discovered that he was gay, they chucked him
out of the house and he starved himself to death or something other. Id
I think this is the sort of scenario that only exists in the mind of
a liberal American playwright. It's not. It's not it's not a kind of
it's not most of us encounter in real life. And it's just the kind
of thing you would work into a player that was probably a big hit off
Broadway or something and then got made into a film by Darren Aronofsky. I'm
just guessing. But a lot of a lot of that stuff prepped in a
bit and left a bit of a natas in my mouth and what was otherwise
quite a good art house film, and and and I guess it's odd that
that I didn't realize. But it's funny that the film should pander to kind
of you know, white liberal Upper east Side wokeys, when actually it's been
quite criticized for, um, the kind of fat equivalent of cultural appropriation of
Yea from the action movie. Yeah, this is like, this is fat
face. It's equivalent of Blackfoot's. You know, I think he was a
good fatman. I only wanted see him in a fat suit from now on.
Actually, I think we can make as of fat comedies that I mean.
It's it seemed like, I mean, Brendan Fraser has been sort of
almost universally praised, apart from by the kind of fattists for um for kind
of being so brave as to kind of put on a fat suit and play
a fat man. But yeah, back in the day, I remember Robert
de Niro was enraging bull. When you know the central character has to get
fat. Towards the end, Robert Robert DeNiro actually gained the weight. That
was what really good actors were supposed to do then. That was the method.
If you were playing a fat person, you had to get fat.
If you're playing a thin person, you had to lose the weight. Um.
So it does seem a bit, a bit it's slightly cheating, even
from a kind of purist acting point of view. So he kind of you
lose at both ends, whether whether you're someone who doesn't think acting is real
and you have to actually be the per and you're playing, whether it's gay
trends or fat or white or black or whatever. To even the purest actors
a year, you have to transform yourself into the person you're playing. He
hasn't really done either, has he. But yeah, so, but it
didn't stop him winning the Oscars. You won the Oscar the Best Actor.
Yeah, Oh I see, Oh right, Okay, so I've actually watched
a film which is won an oscar. Right, okay, yes, there
you go. Right, it's my bedtime now, so I'm gonna have to
go, okay, James, Well, look good to talk to you.
Thanks for staying up. What it's like take eleven pm there, right,
whatever. You have to get up early too, because otherwise it gets too
hot, right right, don't be out of ten really? Okay? All
right, well, look good to talk to you. Don't get don't get
dysentery. Go easy on those exotic exotic local cuisine full of spices. I
don't want to lose you Jones anyway, so talk to you next week,
okay. Right by its unfold, Ricochet joined the conversation