So our first at to day is from four Hey there, fellow caller.
What I'm going to share with you now is one of many four please keep
me anonymous but linked in messages that I've received since the world went mad in
March twenty twenty. This message is from a director of an energy services business
who went on to engage me in developing his team's strategic presentation capability thor.
He begins, I've watched and read your posts. I think you're about a
spot on for a non brainwashed dummy as a regular soul can be. We
are being hoaxed daily. I cannot often like comment because the world has indeed
been hoaxed, and I still need to work closely with guys who are absolutely
lost. End quote. If you or your business might benefit from an adviser
who's very much not brainwashed, someone who will help you create a positive mental
framework and then take useful action no matter how lost the world may be,
let's talk. The first step is to connect with me thor on LinkedIn dot
com, slash in, slash four halt or what's at me on plus four
four seven nine zero six three two one five nine three. That's plus four
four seven nine zero six three two one five nine three skull ps. Please
do connect even if you don't need my services, because I'd like to stay
in touch with you, my fellow London caller LinkedIn dot com slash in slash
four halt. This is London Calling, London Calling. We've made decisions,
and I've made decisions based on a real passion about what the BBC is.
And it's difficult. It's this balance between free speech and impartiality, and I
honestly do not believe, despite a lot of the commentary that this is about
left or right. Welcome London Calling with me, James deniall, and my
very good friend mister Toby Young. You've come back from lunch at the Old
Bailey late, obviously as usual, blaming, blaming the Tube. I reckon
you were just drinking with some barrister or something. What we do well Bailey?
It was so the Old Bailey have lunches from time to time to which
they invite various interesting guests so we can talk to the judges and take their
minds off the trials they've just been hearing, so they have to deal with
the worst of humanity. I think something like seventy five percent, if not
more, of the trials held at the Old Bailey, which is the most
senior criminal court I think in the United Kingdom, possibly in England and Wales,
seventy five are murder cases. So these poor judges are aiding through these
pretty appalling cases, confronting humanity at its worst. And the idea is,
at these lunches, you provide them with a bit of light relief. You
take their minds off the grizzly details that they've just heard in their court room.
That's that's a blow. So you've come off a grizzly murder trial and
suddenly your face with this bald geezer wittering on about wittering on cuckishly about his
half baked views. That's that's traumatizing, Toby. That's not that's not fair.
Who Yeah, I'm not. I'm not sure whether whether I personally served
the therapeutic role of the person who invited me head in mind, but it's
certainly very interesting. And we had a tour of the Bailey afterwards, and
we learned it a little bit of its history, and the judges are certainly
very interesting to talk to. And it's the second time i've done it actually,
and this time it was I took some people from the Free Speech Union
with me in some of our legal people on our Legal Advisory Council, and
we had a little sort of discussion beforehand about free speech and the law,
which was very interesting. Anyway, I got I was hoping I would be
back in time to start this podcast by three thirty, but I the Elizabeth
Line wasn't running properly. I mean. The problem with the Elizabeth Line,
which is the newest addition to transport for London's transportation network, is it's fantastic
when it's running, but because it's run by TfL, it encounters all the
usual problems delays, strikes, failure on the line, stations closed, I
mean, and so it just you just couldn't get the Elizabeth Line to act
And Mainline near where I live, which usually takes about you know, twenty
minutes from Liverpool Street at most. So instead I had to go this very
secuitous route and I got off the Central Line to East Acton and and then
jumped on a line bike, hoping I would make it by quarter to four.
But then the line bike actually stopped working. It was sort of cycling
along and suddenly it's sort of even though it looked fully charged, it wasn't
working properly. I decided being overtaken. I was trying to cycle up this
hill by all these ladies on sort of stepped through bicycles, and I realized
something must be wrong. Um, and and so I just had to abandon
the bike and and sort of jog home, which is why I'm so late.
So sorry about that, James, Yeah, you're not sounding like a
very good advertisement for London living in terms. So this is all by design,
by the way, this is all the evil Sadik Khan trying to immiserate
the entire populace of our great, formally great metropolis. This is this is
where everything is going. It's entropy, entropy by design. We can we
can talk about the I think it's in a moment, but I well,
since we since we're talking about sort of stick tragedies, let you check to
you about mine. I've since my day's hunting, I've just been feeling really,
really rotten. I've been paying the price for so you know, all
that adrenaline and an alcohol and I've got the LURGI and I think about the
middle of last week, I decided to make myself some chicken soup because you
know, I thought Jewish penicillin and all that, and so well, I
made myself this stock in the slow cooker and it was very good, by
the way, I felt fantastic afterwards. It was really it was really worth
it in that respect. But how did you make boiling up chicken burns?
No, you don't boil, never ever boil if it at the moment it
becomes to the boil, it immosifies, So you've always got to just simmer
it just so it's barely agitating the surface of the liquid. Otherwise you get
this nasty, claggy sort of um opaque liquid as opposed to the transparent liquid,
which is but you created the liquid using chicken bones that you or chicken.
Yeah, so you brand the chicken bones to the sort of a golden
color um and then you you cook it in the slow cooker for for about
I do it for about four hours. But the point is we didn't we
haven't found a suitable place in the house for where the slow cooker goes,
because it needs to sit on the surface somewhere, and all the surfaces in
the kitchen are used so as a as a compromise. We did it in
the laundry room and I blithely unplugged this this this thing from as from its
socket and shoved in the slow cooker thing anyway, thought nothing of it.
Yesterday I got a deputation from wife and daughter saying, you have totally messed
up. This is really bad. You have no idea, what what what
the ship you're in and it's all your fault. It's not our fault,
it's your faults. So get that. And it turned out I had unplugged
the freezer. So and the freezer had monk fish in it, which you
know is really expensive. It had it had sort of bees you chicken from
organic farms, and it had loads and loads of chicken livers. So I've
had I had to spend the weekend trying to find a recipe to put the
put the monk fish in so I can then refreeze it. So I did
that. Now I've got to find a way of dealing with the chicken livers
I've got to do. It's been a nightmare. Can you refreeze fish when
you can? You can refreeze the stuff once you've cooked it. But what
you can't do is freeze it and then let it four and then and then
put it back in the freezer. That's the no no. But I think
you can refreeze stuff that you've cooked. I'm I'm a complete fanatic when it
comes to ice cream having melted and refrozen, not just because it's quite bad
for you, but also because it tastes nothing like as good. So when
I went through an ice cream phase, I used to go into shops,
take a tub of haggendass out of the freezer, open it, use the
lid as a scoop, scoop out a bit of the ice cream, and
taste it first to make sure it hadn't crystallized, which is the sign that
it's melted and refrozen, which it quite often has in shops because their freezers
aren't that great, power cuts or you know, or they just let the
ice cream melt when it's been delivered, and often I would taste it slightly
crystalline and they say, sorry, mate, this is melted and refrozen.
It's a health hazard. It also tastes disgusting. You've got to take this
off sale. Have you got anything that hasn't melted and refrozen? But it's
supposed to be in the condition you're supposed to sell it. And when my
kids became so embarrassed about me doing this that they've now refused to go into
shops with me just in case I do it again. And quite often the
shopkeepers would become quite agitated happy after I'd imagine my health and Safety inspector routine.
But I think I was proud of myself. I think it's too many
shops sell ice cream in a condition which is not fit for sale. We
also can I say as a fellow dad that I'm proud of your embarrassing dad
performance. Then, because this is the kind of stuff we did, This
is how we roll. We would be failing in our duty as parents if
we did not really really embarrass our children with these James, You're gonna be
very very proud of pud of him. And I tell you this. I
got an invitation to Founder's Day at the West London Free School, the pre
school I helped set up where and it said we want we want to say
farewell to those students graduating at the end of year eleven and at the end
of year thirteen. And I have a child in year eleven and a child
in year thirteen. So I said to the head teacher, do you mind
if I say a few words, because I know they'll be there, and
I'll single them out, and I'll talk about their experience in the school.
I might even make a few jokes about how I hoped, you know,
it would be the kind of state equivalent of Eaton or Winchester, and I
expected to be discussing, you know, Jus Mills on liberty at the dinner
table and topvills democracy in America, and instead it's you know, Fortnight and
call of Duty, and really my vision hasn't been fulfilled anyone. Going to
do my best to really embarrass them, and they're already absolutely terrified and talking
about taking a sick day anyway, so that should be fun. Well done,
Well done. Um. Somebody somebody tweeted out what you and I are
going to be talking about and how the first part of this podcast is going
to pan out. Obviously that they couldn't have anticipated the freezer shock or the
incredibly exciting story of your cube journey, but I think they have made predictions
about where it's going to go next. Are we going to do an ad
before we before we go there or yeah, let's do that. Let's do
an ad. I think it's your turn. Oh. In the minute I've
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Need to high you need Indeed, So, James, I'm imagining that
this person predicted that we would discuss the lineca affair and may have even predicted
what our take would be on the prediction. Well, the prediction that you
were going to try and introduce this item as something of great moment, and
I was going to say, now, wasted time. And then you were
going to say, but no, it's about free speech, and I was
going to say, now it's not anyway, So tell us about God,
because yeah, I know it's been dominating your thoughts terms. So yeah,
So for the benefit of our American listeners, um, Gary Lineker is is
an ex soccer player like J Simpson, Yes, except his wife hasn't disappeared
in mysterious circumstances. But yes, he's as famous in Britain as a J.
Simpson is or was in the United States. And he played in the
England team which did pretty well in Italian ninety, which was a World Cup
held in Italy in nineteen ninety. Anyway, so he's a national treasure and
he presents this the kind of BBC's flagship football commentary football highlights program called Match
of the Day, and he's been doing it for a couple of decades and
he's a kind of he's he's he's sort of latterly become a member of the
kind of metropolitan liberal left and likes to advertise his lefty views on Twitter.
And I think about three years ago he got into a spot of difficulty because
he is the BBC's highest paid presenter. He's a sort of the face of
the BBC's associated indelibly in everyone's minds with the BBC because he is the most
well known football pundit commentator presenter on the BBC. And if three years ago
he got into a bit of difficulty for I think attacking Brexit, amongst other
things, and he agreed I think then when there was a bit of a
row about it, to reign in his tweeting because the BBC have a policy
whereby employees of the BBC are expected not to wade into matters of political controversy
on social media because they think it brings the reputation of the BBC into disrepute.
Because the BBC is supposed to be impartial, it's funded by the taxpayer,
it's not supposed to take sides. And the BBC has sort of understandably
worried that if its employees are constantly advertising their political views. People the penny
will drop that there is this kind of liberal left bias amongst the BBC's staff,
etc. Anyway, even though those rules don't apply to contractors and Dary
Lineker is a contractor not an employee. Nevertheless, he three years ago,
I think, agreed to be more mindful about what he was tweeting, lest
it in danger the BBC's reputation for impartiality. A week ago or so,
he tweeted something rather intemperate about the government's new I think what's it called Undocumented
Migrants Bill which or illegal Migrants Bill, which is going to try and make
it easier for the government to refuse asylum to asylum seekers who enter the country
illegally. And this bill is currently going through Parliament and it's a it's something
that Richie Sunak has kind of gone all in on. He needs to do
something about the small boats crisis. It's damaging the Conservative Party, particularly in
swing seats in the Red Wall constituencies and so forth. Anyway, Gary Lineker
compared this policy to the treatment of various minorities, including Jews in Germany in
the nineteen thirties. It was reductio ad Hitlarium. It was a case of
everything you don't like, everyone you don't like, you've been compared to Hitler.
It was an old left wing trope. Anyway, he indulged in it.
Lots of Tories and others got quite upset and Tory MPs were demanding the
BBC do something, and the BBC announced towards the end of last week that
he would be stepping back from presenting Match of the Day until a social media
policy that applied to him could be agreed. And there was a standoff and
the BBC i think hoped that various other people on their roster of football pundits
would step in for Gary Lineker while he was absent, but they immediately all
announced, in solidarity with him, or at least one after the other in
quite quick succession, that they would not do it. And so the BBC's
football coverage a sports coverage has been severely truncated this weekend because all of their
main commentators, pundits presenters have in solidarity with Gary refused to do their normal
jobs, and today the BBC effectively back down. I think that not only
did the BBC back down, but Tim Davey, the Director General of the
BBC, apologized to viewers for having disrupted the sports coverage over the weekend and
seemingly apologize for having mishandled this crisis. And Gary Lineker is going to be
back next Saturday and he hasn't had to apologize, and he actually when he
and now that he was back, he added some more stuff about even though
I've gone through a tough time in the past few days, it's nothing to
the tough time that these poor refugees from conflict zones are suffering from. So
even more or less double down on his political stance. No apology from him,
He's unapologetic. But I think the agreement is that the BBC is going
to review it's social media policy and is going to review in particular what the
policy should be with respect to freelance contributors and contractors like Gary Lineker. So
the BBC has effectively backed down, and lots of people, I mean,
what's interesting about it is that lots of people on Gary Lineker's side on this
issue about small boats the illegal migration bill have all kind of screamed free speech,
free speech. He made these remarks outside the workplace he's a sports commentator,
not a news and Current affairs presenter. Whis the BBC in any way
penalizing him for expressing his views outside the workplace on a matter which isn't related
to the job he does for the BBC? Free speech, free speech?
Where's the free speech Union? Why haven't they stood up for Gary? Gary
Lineker? And we did, indeed, you say that, we thought it
probably was a free speech issue. And if he wanted our assistance and he
did get into trouble, if he was sanctioned. He hasn't actually been sanctioned
by the BBC, and now the BBC had backed down, But if they
did punish him for saying something outside the workplace about something unrelated to his work,
you know, if it was just a question, if the BBC were
claiming you're being punished because you brought the BBC into disrepute, we would indeed
offer him all assistance because we think that's too weak a standard. And we
see all the time people not necessarily the same political views as Gary Lineker,
getting into trouble with their bosses because of something they've said on social media outside
the workplace which has supposedly brought the company into disrepute, and we think that's
too low, a standard, easily weaponized, a bit nebulous, and it
needs to be I think if companies are going to be able to legitimately interfere
with their employees or contractors speech outside the workplace, the standard has to be
much higher, the bar that test has to be much more rigorous. And
I think the company needs to show that what the person has said has actually
caused the company tangible harm i financial loss before they can legitimately interfere with what
an employee says outside the workplace. So that's the sort of that's our position.
Anyways, it's now over, but it's all everyone is talking about.
It's been dominating the front pages, dominating even the BBC's news headlines. So
it's been, you know, a real water cooler moment, which is quite
unusual these days, Is that right? I just I was listening to you
describe in lavish detail this what sounds to me the most incredibly parochial story.
Its storm and the tica. But I mean American listeners must be going,
well, why do you care about any of this stuff? This is this
is a guy, an ex sportsman, who does some kind of sports show.
None of this matters tops And I was horrified, horrified, completely unsurprised
to see this becoming the dominant story in the UK legacy and media for a
whole week. This nobody who who, by the way, always says stuff
like this. It's not like there was there was some special outrage that he
committed. This is this is how he rolls. Gary Lineker is like partly
he is like OJ Simpson because of his you know, his his his desire
to be black. Um partly or he's I think he claimed once he got
teased because of his olive colored skin at school. Yes, he knew what
it was like to be a victim of racial prejudice, even though he's a
white man. He was teased for having olive colored skin at school. Yeah,
so so so like like OJ Simpson's got this sort of coffee colored skin
apparently, and and but he he's like the lastard offspring of J Simpson,
and I would say somebody like Piers Morgan. He's always coming up with maddeningly
work stuff. So you've got to ask yourself, if you have any sense
of what's going on in the world, why is this complete non story Given
that It could have been written about any day of his life, ever in
the last in the last fifteen or twenty years, ever since he became uber
woke. Why is this dominating the news cycle now? And the answer is,
it's just more of the distraction. It's more distraction trying too. Don't
look. Don't look at the way that the government is taking away your freedoms
are at the behest of the World Economic Forum. Don't look at the imminent
imminent banking collapsed. Don't look at look at the government's insane green policies,
which again at the at the behest of the World Economic Forum. And beyond
that a sort of sinister globalist elite which wants to use the environment to take
away our freedoms, drive out energy prices, take control of our lives.
No, ignore all of that. Look at the Garry Limica character. Looks
this character that you all love to hate. He's like mister punch. Oh
no, maybe he's like the alligator that the sausages. It's just nonsense,
And I'm so disappointed to see anyone, anyone who understands the state of the
world, being distracted by this complete non story. It's just I supposed to
sort of help our American listeners understand why it's such it becomes such a lightning
rod, such a controversial story receives such an enormous amount of coverage. It's
partly because the BBC is funded by a license fee that anyone who receives live
television signals in the United Kingdom has to pay. So it's one hundred and
fifty seven pounds a year I think now, and if you receive live television
signals, even if you never watch the BBC, you have to shell out
three hundred and fifty seven pounds a year, which is described as a television
license. So effectively, you need a license to watch television in this country.
But ninety five percent of the revenue raised goes to fund the BBC.
So if you can imagine in America that you had to pay something close to
two hundred dollars a year in order to watch television, and that ninety five
percent of the revenue raised went to fund CNN. And if a CNN sports
pundit then said something very anti Trump or very pro Biden, you know,
on social media, I think some particularly on the right, would be incensed
because they're they're thinking, you know, My hard earned money is paying the
wages of this person. He wouldn't have this platform were it not for his
job at this organization that I'm being forced to fund, and if if I'm
being forced to fund it, I don't want this chap to express views which
which which I fundamentally disagree with. I want him to maintain a semblance of
impartiality. I think that's why it's become such a kind of you're doing you're
doing right wing talking points again, You're doing this is yeah, you're you're
following the narrative. This is the official reason, this is, this is
your designated role as a conservative commentator, which decade, Well, this is
this is disgraceful. The BBC is supposed to be impartial and here's this man
and look at look at Chris Packham, the the eco eco loon, eco
nazi guy who also gets gets unfettered rights to to to to sound complete eco
fascist nonsense up at the license payers expense. This is just This is not
the reason the stories dominated the newspapers, because it could have appeared any time
in the last fifteen years. As I say, the reason this is in
the papers right now is because the papers are owned by the same people who
are currently taking over the world, turning, you know, implementing the New
World Order. It's just the distraction. It's another look as squirrel story.
It has no validity to the lives of any real person at all. We've
just been we get told that it's a story because of the warped values of
the news editors who decided to put it on the front page at the behest
of their sinister overlords. That's what it's about. I think you're wrong,
James. I think there is. There is. There is a lot of
interest in this story, and it's a kind of and it's a kind of
because it's a very polarizing story. It cuts across two kind of very prominent
cultural war issues, which are you know, the ABC is it bars to
the left? Should it be funded by license payers? And also immigration?
What are we going to do to stop illegal immigration? Should we police our
borders or not? So those are two huge culture war polarizing issues. Okay,
on that note, Not on that point, I agree about the immigration
thing. It is why why why are there the legacy and media having the
store on the front page is partly it is to give cover to the government
the government has been absolutely bloody useless and doing anything at all about immigration.
So this enables the common mists who want to do their right wing talking points
to notice that the government is apparently finally doing something. I mean, you've
just given them cover there yourself. You've described how this is all to do
with the government's new policy on immigration. They're trying to tighten up. The
government is doing nothing of the kind. The government is. It's perfectly happy
for these boatloads of immigrants to come over here because ultimately they're being recruited as
a police force to to to to keep us crushed when when the rebellion finally
happens in a few years time, they're being put in hotels all all around
Britain to suppress the result and there and presumably they've been chosen because they're going
to have less lauded to the British people then than the army might. So
there are there are basically a mercenary army, and James you sort of you
know, you accuse me of just kind of trotting out, you know,
on que these right wing talking points and being a kind of patsy for yeah,
you are, you totally are come to that a bit more later on
as well, we talk about last episode. Are you slightly worried that you
sound a bit like a broken record? I mean, you say this week
in week out, and it's like, haven't you got anything else? I
think that's only the first time I've said that particular line about the look.
If something is true, it's worth restating, Toby. It's better than stead
of restating propaganda every week, which is what you do. Basically. I
don't think. I don't think you just repeat, repeat mainstream media talking points,
which I don't accept. I think there are a waste of everyone's time.
But it's it's sometimes I'm just trying to discuss the stories in the news,
and you know, yeah, but what is the news? What is
this thing the news that you talk about? The news is the creation of
sinister interests. It's not, it's not. It's not objective. It doesn't
exist objectively. It is, James, I remember that it used to be
people used to think on the left that newspapers were conspiring to instill false consciousness
in the masses in order to obscure from them that it was in their interests
to revolt or to vote labor or to strike or whatever it was, that
it was all part of a capitalist, right wing conspiracy to distract people with
bread and circles from their real interests as members of the proletariat. And the
standard response back then I remember, was well, you've clearly never worked in
the media, because if you did work in the media, you would realize
that the number one priority, which trumps everything else, is the news agenda.
What what newspaper editors and journalists are really interested in, and newspaper owners
who want to sell copies and attract advertisers, is publishing news breaking, news
breaking stories, coming up with an interesting new angle on a story that dominates
everything, that trumps everything else. They might in the deep background, can
if you have an interest in wanting to preserve capitalism and wanting to kind of
dissuade you know, activists from striking, But that's played very much second fiddle
to the dominant thing, which is the news AGENDERA doesn't the same counter argument
apply here? You think it's now all part of a vast left wing conspiracy
or progressive conspiracy to you know, immiserate us and force I don't believe in,
I don't believe in, don't believe in either left or right. You've
worked for newspapers, you know that that you know what, I've never ever
worked in newspapers in the in the shaming period, I'm happy to say,
when the government became the number one, number one funder of newspapers, the
amount of money that the government pumped or of our money that the government pumped
in on our behalf to this disgusting legacy media industry, so that it could
put out propaganda pro vaccine, propaganda, so it would pump the narrative that
children should get jabbed with these with these these clot shots. That that scared
us into thinking the pandemic was real. That that that put out nonsense stories
about some old bloke called Captain Tom wandering around the garden on a zimmer frame.
That pumped out stories, propaganda, stories about the NHS. This was
paid for by us. We were funding propaganda. It was also funded by
Bill Gates, who gave three to three and a half million dollars to the
Telegraph. There has never been the time in my life. I think the
media has always been corrupt, but there's never been a time in our lives
where the media has been quite so corrupt so everything everything it pushes, everything
gets pushed now in the media is actually not in the interests of the reader.
It is not It is not simply this this pure news agenda, where
that the papers cover whatever the most exciting story is it is. I think
it's always a hidden agenda. I think it maybe because you you yourself have
been sort of out of the newspaper business for some time, you may think
that, you know, if someone comes up with an interesting news story,
a scoop, the editor says, never mind that our job is to pump
out propaganda, because that's what That's certainly true in the case of vaccines,
isn't it. They're not reporting on that, for example. Well, you
always we had that argument, we've had I think we had that argument.
I know, when you come up with the phoebus of excuses, you that
they they have they have been you know, it's not that vaccine injuries have
been completely or there is some reporting of vaccine injuries. Um, and you
know, do you not think it's a big deal that more millennials in America,
for example, have been killed by by vaccines than died in the Vietnam
War. And the Vietnam War was that there was twelve years of deaths in
the Vietnam War. This happened in the space of what two quarters. You
certainly has a big, big, big source there, James, A doubt
has been been looking at this. I haven't seen that sixty thousand, sixty
thousand people, sixty thousand millennials have died from vaccine injuries. I mean,
you're to be on on top of this. Terms then it is, after
all, what your site does. Well, one of the things it does
it talks about about that are the alleged pandemic about COVID and stuff. Yeah,
well, I think we we we certainly have been um not skimping on
covering vaccine injuries. Um, and we you know, we've been doing it,
I think more vigorously last week. Last week you actually said that I'd
overstated I mean, a lot of people were very upset by this. They
said, why is Toby Toby actually retrenching it, actually taking a step back
from you seem to be moving to a state of enlightenment. And then you
were saying that I'd overstated vaccine injuries so they weren't such an issue. Well,
and I said about well, I pointed out that if you tried to
find a pattern between excess deaths in different countries and how many vaccines had been
rolled out per capita in those countries. It was actually quite it's quite difficult
to find a signal in the noise. For instance, you know, Sweden
had a pretty extensive vaccine rollout, it's a pretty well vaccinated population, yet
it has the lowest or among the lowest excess deaths of any European country over
the past three years or so. So it is ron Ants has written extensively.
Yeah, who you describe as a vaccine skeptic? Ron Ance was heavily
it is not a vaccine skeptic. You've gone and picked somebody. Actually,
who's you're you're a cherry picking now? Is getting is getting this data from
insurance companies in American This stuff is not beyond is beyond a reasonable doubt.
This is vaccine injuries and you're just you're just basically making excuses on behalf of
a big farmer. It seems to me, I'm not making excuses, but
I'm just I think we have to be very careful because we don't want to
be discredited by two. We haven't done that already. Well, you've also
discredited. I don't agree with you about everything anyway, So we hear from
another one of our sponsors, I think so yeah, So James, let's
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the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank? James? We should? We should?
Did you have any money in them? Did you have any money in
the Silicon Valley investment bank. Well, well sort of, yeah. I
mean inasmuch as my brother's company banks with them, and he went through some
very nasty moments, and I asked them about this. I said, why
did you bank with with this particular bank? And he said, What you
don't realize is that most of the big name banks, you know, Lloyds
or HSBC or whatever, will not will not lend money to startups. They're
not they've already got got enough money. Um, you know, they've already
got enough clients. They're not interested. Whereas Silicon Valley Bank was a specialist
in the tech sector. So loads and loads and loads of people in the
tech sector are going to have had a very frightening a few days as they've
wondered whether they're whether their cash flow is going to where they're going to be
able to pay their staff and staff. It's a bit frightening. Um,
what's odd about the or perhaps it isn't, oord I'm sure you've got an
explanation. But what's odd about the collapse of these financial services companies is that
the people running them, often the people using their services, the people on
the board are when it comes to things like the risk of not locking down
the risk of catastrophic climate change, the risk posed by allowing people to have
free and open discussions on university campuses. They are incredibly risk averse. They
are safety first. They catastrophize all the time and unnecessarily about risks that are
actually pretty slight materializing when it comes to social policy, climate policy, health
policy. But when it comes to actually managing risk within their own risk within
their own institution, they appear to be, you know, like cowboys in
the wild West, completely kind of oblivious to the kind of existential threats posed
by practices within their own company. I mean, it turns out that the
Silicon Valley Bank operated without a chief risk officer between April twenty twenty two in
January twenty three, and the chief risk officer in Europe, Africa and the
Middle East described herself as a queer person of color from a working class background,
and seem to be obsessed with organizing LGBTQ initiatives such as a month long
prede campaign and implemented a safe space catch up policy for staff, much more
obsessed with, you know, minimizing the risk to vulnerable members of staff,
the risk of being unconsciously discriminated against or whatever it might be, but completely
seemingly, you know, oblivious to the existential financial risks threatening the well being
of the Silicon Valley Bank. How do you explain this, James, Well,
what you're describing there is a is a symptom. It's it's it's not
it's not the cause that by a symptom. What I mean is that in
the last few years there has been, as you know, increasing pressure on
companies all across the world for esg. Government, environmental and social responsibility,
and so they have to embrace all these diversity causes because otherwise companies like Black
Rock, which have been been m chileading for this, people like Larry Fink
can barely stop talking about it, have been essentially imposing on companies these requirements
that that you know, we will not invest in you, We will not
we will not buy your stock. UM Institute investors will not own you unless
you have X number of black disabled um transvestites on your on your on your
on your workforce. And this, this has infected everything. So the fact
that this bank has various diversity officers is not indicative of the attitudes which led
to its collapse. That that's just the distraction. In fact that that,
if you like, is the conservative talking point about about this bank, Oh
look, get work, go broke, and that that would be be the
sort of the headline of the right wing talking point take on this. But
it's not about that. What it's really about is is that over over successive,
through successive crises, the people who should be dealing with these problems have
been kicking the cam down the road. So in the in the case of
Silicon Valley Bank, the reason that this was an accident waiting to happen was
that a few years ago, after the last financial crisis, the FED pumped
loads that the US government pumped loads of money into into the banks, which
they were then forced to I'm paraphrasing down tub By the way, he was
one of my financial expert advisors. He's done a very good hugod podcast about
this. Um that the banks had all this money, that they were hosed
down with money, but they had to do something with it. So what
they did was was was ended up buying buying um federal bond notes. And
the problem is that these these notes have dropped massively in in value recently because
of the ongoing financial crisis, which means that these these banks have been The
Silicon Valley Bank was trying to offload this this toxic debt and was was selling
for lower than it paid for this this stuff, and it got it got
called out. It's sort of triggered a triggered a panic which led to the
situation it's in now. And now it looks like the government, the US
government, or the or the Federal Reserve is is claiming that it's going to
going to solve the problem without the taxpair of being on the hook. But
this is just just continuation financial crisis. I mean, this is this is
the real stuff. There's going to be a run on the bank. So
you've seen that in the in the last twenty four hours, bank stocks have
dropped by sixteen percent, which doesn't suggest to me that the banking sector is
is is repaired or shored up in any way. I think we're going to
get cascading problems like this, whether it's whether it's the bank con sect or
whatever whatever next is going to be the victim. Um are you do do
you do you still? Are you still a bit of a gold bug?
Do you still have gold? Money and gold? Anyone who who has not
got at least five percent of their their wealth in physical gold and silver.
UM is is UM needs their head examined. Yeah, definitely. You don't
keep it in your home, presumably us you don't. Well, well,
you've got two options with with with with bullion. Either you have it for
trading when you know, buying chickens or whatever, or I don't know,
UM guns when when the finalist and collapses and and and it's I mean you
ought to have somebody. But but of course there a risk. You know,
where do you store it? And what happens when gangs come around your
house with and say, right, give us all your money. We know
you got gold, we know we know you've got silver. The other way
of storing it is because you don't you don't want paper gold and you don't
want paper silver. That's that's that's worthless. The other other ways is storing
it in a vault. But the problem with storage in the vaulters a you
get charged on a storage fee. But but being we know from the history
of FDR when he took America off off off gold, or rather when he
when he when when he confiscated individual gold holdings, UM was that any anyone
who had their money in a vault in the US would not be able to
get it out because they've they even had metal detectors making sure that people weren't
into their into their private vaults and tried to come out with their their their
their coins, and so their pockets stuck with gold coins. They were going
to get the nicked on the way out. So you've the added complication you've
got to store your gold in the country that you don't live in. Um
otherwise, Yeah, it's tricky, but these are tricky times. By the
way, crypto cryptos have done very well recently. Bitcoins up the last in
the last twenty four hours. Do you have it? Do you still have
some bitcoin as well? Yeah? I like cryptos, I like bitcoin.
Okay, So should we have one more AD and then go to culture corner?
Is there anything else we need to discuss in the kind of meat of
the program as it were, before we get onto more trivial stuff. One
thing I want to think, James, is that you probably missed this.
But Sweller Braveman, the Home Secretary, the beligued Home Secretary whom Gary Linka
dislikes so much. She published some new guidance this morning which will regulate how
the police record and retain non crime hate incident data, which is very important
and it's something the Free Speech Union has been campaigning for for something like three
years and it's a it's a huge step forward for free speech, a massive
victory, a big win. For those unfamiliar with non crime hate incidents,
it sounds like you know something out of nineteen eighty four, but they're real.
So in twenty fourteen, the College of Policing issued guidance to police forces
in England and Wales that if someone was if someone claimed someone else was guilty
of hateful conduct, the police would investigate it and if they concluded that no
crime had been committed, they would record it. And the College of Policing
said police forces have to record it as a non crime hate incident and noncrime
hate incidents can show that they're sort of attached to your record and if a
future employer doesn't enhanced criminal record check when you apply for a job, they
can show up and it can mean you're not getting a job, so effectively
you cannot get a job. You can be penalized because you committed a non
crime. According to the police and this info is attached to your record anyway,
so obviously has a very chilling effect on preest beech. It's a golden
bossed invitation to political activists and religious zealots to try and enlist the help of
the police in silencing their opponents, and they've done that very successfully. We
estimate that something close to a quarter of a million ncrs have been recorded in
England and Wales alone since twenty fourteen, which is an average of more than
sixty six per day. You wonder why, you know, if you get
burgled or if your car's broken into, the police won't bother to investigate.
They'll just give you a crime reference numbers because they're too busy following up complaints
by transactivists that they've been misgendered on Twitter by gender critical feminists. You know,
they're too busy policing our tweets to police our streets. It really is
shocking how much police time and resources are spent investigating non crimes and how few,
how little resources and time is spent investigating actual crimes. Anyway. So
we've been campaigning against this for a long time, and this new guidance published
today, it's actually a draft coded practice, which is going to be put
put before both houses of Parliament. But it will severely limit the circumstances in
which the police can record something as a noncrime incident. It'll stop the police
recording anything involving a school child as a non crime hate incident, which is
one of the problems with the kind of NHI protocol. Anyway, it's a
huge step forward and we were very pleased and if anyone wants to find out
more about it, they can. We've stuck a sort of something about it
on the front page of the Free Speech Union website www. Free Speech Union
dot org. Ce Ce James, it is possible to win these free speech
victories slowly, but surely you can occasionally if you really cist and you're methodical
about it, and you go about it in a fairly pragmatic politically unlike Yeah,
I don't like that about important changes. I really don't like that word
pragmatic and I I mean a world on this, but I don't I don't
agree with your your gradualist approach. I think that they're all over us.
But anyway, um shall we UM, which which sponsor from Dan Gaskin Ah
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on your mortgage, right Land James, So, can I quickly just take
this opportunity to advertise for someone to help out on the Daily Skeptics. So
we're looking for someone to cover for Will Jones, our editor, our editor
at the weekends and when he's on holiday, so it's quite an important job.
I think the title will be associate editor, and I think we're looking
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us is the Daily Skeptic at gmail dot com. That's the Daily Skeptic at
gmail dot com. So culture Corner, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Oh well, I'll tell you what I did watch the other day on
the Disney Channel. It's this thing called Finding Michael. Okay, it's called
finding Michael m And I don't whether you ever watch um, have you ever
seen Made in Chelsea? Oh? Um? I think I may have seen
a reality show where sort of commented reality, augmented reality. Okay, so
there's this this character on it called Spencer Matthews and his brother, his big
brother died on Everest, having become the youngest Englishman to summit Everest and he
made it to the top age twenty two, but didn't make it down.
And anyway, this is about Spencer. It starts off with somebody having given
Spencer Matthews this this grainy photograph of what might be his brother's body on Mount
Everest, and he thinks, well, this is my chance to get to
Disney plus to fund a major expedition, because I mean they're really expensive,
these expeditions to Everest, and and Bear Grills inevitably makes an appearance because it
turns out that he knew he knew this, this this this kid, Michael
Matthews, and was a great admirer of his because Bear did Everest as well,
don't when he was quite young. And it's it's really watchable, as
as things about Everest tending to be. I mean, I have no desire
to climb Mount Everest, but especially not after watching this thing, because I
think one in seven people who climb Everest die. Um of the one and
seven of the people who summit, presumably because they're so desperate to for the
last push, they don't really Yeah, they've got that far, and even
though they're advised by their supers not to go further to try again next year,
they think, so bad, I've come this far, I've made this
much effort, I've spent this much. I'm going to the final few yards
and then they end up dying of oxygen depth promotion exactly, which is why
I'm not going to climb Everest for that, for that very reason, because
I know I'd be one of the stupid gits who just goes like I don't
care. I don't care. The main thing is I've got to get the
best view in the world even if I die, and I would, you
would. But one of the things you realize watching this documentary is that Everest
is knittered with bodies, littered with unrecovered bodies, and you can't get them
down because although I google this to check, on one occasion in history,
a helicopter has actually gone to the top of Everest, but mostly the bit
above the above the death zone, which above eight thousand feet. It's just
it's not safe for helicopters to land because it does things to their engines and
stuff and their aerodynamics, etc. So the bodies are just left there and
they get so frozen with ice that they they end up three times heavier than
they would be in were they not frozen. So you've got this this frozen
heavy lump and people, you know, you need an oxygen tank at that
that that that that height to be able to just survive, let alone operate.
So you can see it's quite a big deal. Anyway, it was
interesting, interesting, I'd kind of recommend it. Okay, finding Michael so
i'm I've i've i'm I've got further along with Fleischmann is in trouble, which
i more New York sex, Yeah, New York our age. Yeah.
And it's it's it's it's kind of it's it's it's televisual sex, which is
acceptable to the woke because it's um. The women are all in their forties
and fifties, and they've got kind of unusual body shapes and they're certainly not
what you or I would describe as can mentionally attractive. So it's sort of
supposedly, you know, it broadens your mind, it promotes body positivity.
To actually have to watch this kind of woke sex anyway, so you have
to avert your eyes quite often, I find. But but it's pretty entertaining.
It's not bad. It's watchable. I think I'm going to make it
through to the end, which I can't always say about about the new new
series I embark on. But it's not bad. The best thing in it,
James, I think I said, was this. So it's about this
Jewish doctor in his forties who is divorced by his ambitious wife and they have
two kids, and the wife neglects the kids, dumps them with him,
and the best character in it is his kind of unbelievably unpleasant Prima donnash ten
year old daughter who just doesn't who's embarrassed by him because he's not nearly as
rich as her friend's parents at this kind of posh, elite Upper east Side
private school she's attending. But but she's disappeared. She's The kids have been
packed off to camp rather conveniently, so they haven't featured in the last couple
of episodes, so it was slightly slightly taken a dip. I think I
really like the ten year old girl. She's a very entertaining character, and
an interaction bete her and the father that's very good. So it's a shame
that she's she's she's dipped out of the last couple of episodes. I watched
another football thing. I don't want to know the result, but I bet
you know about this. I didn't know about this. That that Wrexham Yeah
football club was brought by American actor Yeah, Ryan Reynolds, Ryan Reynolds and
the one from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Um, there's a documentary about
it. Have you seen it? I've seen it. Yeah, well I've
seen I've seen most of that documentary. I don't want to know what happens.
I don't want to know what happens. Does it does it stay good?
Yeah? It's pretty entertaining, isn't it. I find I find the
kind of pandering to everything well slightly irritating. And they're sort of presenting the
Welsh as a kind of you know, indigenous persecuted minority, a kind of
colonized country. Which is the victim of English colonial oppression, just like the
United States. And there's a kind of that that that that dimension. I
don't know if you've picked up on that, but that kind of fetis fetishization
of Welsh culture and the Welsh language is you're talking to a descendant of De
la Pole, Prince of Poets. So obviously I'm going to be kind of
take a kind of pro Welsh line. Yeah you you English oppressors. Yeah,
well whatever, I think just playing out to the American audience, aren't
they. But it is quite entertaining and it's it's it's eye opening how much
the football club means to the kind of the townsfolk of Wrexham, isn't it.
Yeah? I think it's that all over Britain there are towns like Wrexham
which will once rate thriving, thriving towns with their own culture and stuff from
their own lauts, and then they've just been ruined by the well in that
case, by the closure of the mining industry. I supose there's lots like
that, aren't there. Lots in the North as well, and as as
kind of as all the institutions and traditions and customs which provided the local people
with a sense of community of belonging. As they've been hollowed out. The
only thing left is the football club, which is why football clubs means so
much to the residents of these towns and cities across the United Kingdom, even
though those two are a form of bread and circuses mind control. I mean,
we won't go there now, but I would argue that the industrial decline
was all created by the same people who are now running down that the world.
I can't I can't resist this opportunity, James to tell you about my
most recent trip to Queen's Park Rangers at the weekend. So QPR are going
through an incredibly bad streak. So before the game on Saturday, they had
only won once in the previous twenty games and we just one manager left.
About one third of the way through the season, we hired a new manager.
He won his first game, lost the next eleven, so he was
dismissed. We hired a third manager, Our third manager of the season,
Gareth Ainsworth, a former QPR player, done quite well with another team in
the league below, sort of untested in the Championship, and he's come in.
He lost his first two games. We conceded three goals in each of
those games. It didn't look like he was making much of an impact,
and we were heading towards the relegation zone, James circling the drain. Looked
like we'd end the season being relegated to League One, which is a disaster
for a football pub. League One is very hard to get out of once
you're in it, and it looked like everything was just going pear shape.
But on Saturday we actually won a game, the second game we've won in
what is now twenty one games, and we beat Watford, who were relegated
from the Premier League at the end of last season. So they've got this
big balloon payment, they've got some really good Premier League quality players. They
just got a new manager. When teams bringing a new manager, they usually
get what's called a new manager bounce. So we thought it was going to
be a nailed on victory for promotion, chasing Watford who are far above us
in the table. But through sheer, dogged determination and by playing our socks
off and by playing as a team and not as a bunch of pampered individuals,
we actually managed to beat them, which was in credible, and I
was particularly pleased because my son Ludo was celebrating his eighteenth birthday and he'd invited
his girlfriend and his three closest friends, So you know, it would have
been humiliating if we'd been beaten again conceded three goals again, but no in
front of his girlfriend and his friends. QPR for once actually performed and when
QPR win at loftus Row their home, their homeground, Jeff Beck's High Host
silver Lining is played on the kind of stadium pr PA system and to hear
that song again, James, I think for the first time. It's something
like one hundred and fifty plus days. We only play it when we went
at home to hear it again. I didn't think i'd hear it again this
season. The emotion I felt James on hearing High Host silver Lining ringing out
across the stadium again was overwhelming. So it was a fantastic day, set
me up for the whole of the weekend, and I just hope it's the
beginning of a turnaround and we can go on a little run now when our
next few games, we need to win two more games, I think to
secure our safety. It won't be guaranteed even if we do win two more
games. But I think if we win two more games, there'll be enough
points to see us through to the end of the season without being relegated.
It's always good to give the podcast a happy ending if that's what it is.
Now, what, um do I'm gonna do another advert? What about
the Yeah, after you've left us, James, I will read that so
you don't need to hang around to that. Okay, good, well then,
um that's it. All right, Okay, it's good to talk to
you. And yeah, you feel less congested fluid? Yeah, okay,
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