The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Brokenomics： UK Election - Dan's Manifesto, the Lib Dems & Tories

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Brokonomics. Now it is my severe misfortune to inform you that there is

00:00:05.080 an election coming up in this country where the pantomime is going to continue to pretend to

00:00:10.220 give us the impression that anything that we say actually has any bearing on the elites whatsoever.

00:00:16.200 But we do have election manifestos. Now I'm one of those slightly odd people who actually reads

00:00:22.800 them and I always have since the first general election that I ever sort of took you know even

00:00:27.180 vaguely seriously which was 1997. I got involved in that one and I got all of the manifestos and

00:00:32.080 actually read them and I've done that ever since. So I thought for this Brokonomics what we do is we

00:00:36.660 take a look at the manifestos. I don't think we're going to get through all of them in one go

00:00:42.140 especially since the Labour one I don't think comes out until the end of this week. I mean you're going

00:00:47.420 to be watching this a week in delay. And on that actually I hope that Rishi Sunak hasn't just

00:00:52.520 disappeared into a black hole by then because all of my gags will be out the window. Whatever

00:00:57.100 whatever I'm going to say about him I'm sure be hilariously witty. But obviously Rishi Sunak is

00:01:02.400 cruising towards zero seats. Labour is cruising towards a massive majority and Lib Dems could

00:01:09.820 actually be the official opposition so we should have a look at them as well. And Reform are of course

00:01:15.840 the big upset who might replace the Tories as a centre-right party. So I think that these things

00:01:20.260 deserve a little bit of looking at. So I'm going to get through the Conservatives one, hopefully get

00:01:24.680 through the Lib Dem one as well. And then next week I'll come back and do the Labour one and the

00:01:29.780 Reform one next week so we know where we are with these people. Because of course you know elections

00:01:34.500 these days they tend to run on gaffes and memes and you know funny commentary and videos of people

00:01:41.380 sort of fouling up or Ed Davey falling in the water or at a theme park or whatever it is. But there is

00:01:46.960 actually the notion of some serious policy going on here. So we will take a look at those and see

00:01:53.600 what we'll make of it. So right let's start. I've got on my screen here the Conservative Party

00:01:58.640 2024 manifesto in full. Now obviously the big issue in this election has to be immigration.

00:02:09.220 That's the thing that people are saying in the polling that for them immigration is the big issue.

00:02:12.960 So let's find out what the Conservatives have to say on the matter of immigration.

00:02:17.860 So I'm reading from it here. We would extend the visa fee waivers introduced to cover Commonwealth

00:02:24.140 personnel to include their direct dependents. Good. Okay. Right. So by Commonwealth,

00:02:32.440 I mean what we're really talking about here of course is it has always been the case that it is

00:02:39.680 relatively easy for people from the Anglosphere, Australia, New Zealand and Canada to come here

00:02:46.760 and vice versa because they're part of the Anglosphere. So I mean really what does he mean

00:02:51.240 by Commonwealth? India I think basically is what he's driving at. We're going to make it easier 1.00

00:02:58.460 for them to come here and they're dependents. So they're, you know, the mother-in-law, the children,

00:03:04.120 maybe aunts and uncles, whoever knows. So more Indians is their claim. Could be a vote winner. 0.89

00:03:13.100 Let's find out on the day. And there's another section on this.

00:03:17.680 Our United Kingdom is a multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-faith success story.

00:03:25.000 Our inclusive Britain planned advances opportunity while tackling unfair ethnic disparity across

00:03:32.440 education, employment, health and justice system. We are seeing some of the most entrenched disparities

00:03:38.460 in our society narrowing. For example, in our justice system and our police force, we now have

00:03:44.820 the highest proportion of ethnic minority officers, judges, magistrates since record began. By God,

00:03:52.560 it makes you proud, doesn't it? Isn't that wonderful? I mean, I don't know about you,

00:03:57.700 dear listener, but I mean, I wake up every morning thinking, if only this was the day that I could be

00:04:03.620 arrested by a man from the Punjab and then hauled up in front of a judge from, you know, Jakarta or

00:04:15.560 something. You're aware, that's an Indianese, isn't it? But, you know, you get my point.

00:04:19.620 Why do the Conservatives think that the ability to be arrested by people born in India and then

00:04:29.620 hauled up in front of judges of people born in India or maybe, you know, second generation,

00:04:38.980 why do they think that's a vote winner?

00:04:43.900 Answers in the comments, maybe you know. Not immediately obvious to me why people are going

00:04:48.440 to be rushing down on July the 4th to put a cross in the Conservative ballot for that. So you can be

00:04:55.160 woken up at 3 a.m. by the police kicking your door down because you've said something on Twitter that

00:05:01.820 they find disagreeable. Sir, your bloody bloody said on Twitter, we arrest you. You know, maybe that 0.99

00:05:08.000 will be a vote winner. We will find out. OK, what else have they got on immigration?

00:05:12.080 Work with other countries to rewrite asylum treaties. Yeah. So basically what they're

00:05:19.740 saying there is that they can't find any. We've taken so many people and we kind of want other

00:05:27.020 people to take them, but they don't want to. So we're going to beg them to rewrite their

00:05:31.780 treaties. Look, the way it's supposed to work with asylum is that you stop at the first safe 0.96

00:05:37.640 country you come to. Britain is an island in Northern Europe. We are surrounded by safe countries.

00:05:48.460 I mean, even technically France is a safe country. I mean, it's taken so many immigrants that it's 1.00

00:05:52.580 not really a safe country anymore, but you get the gist of it. Why do we have any asylum seekers, 1.00

00:06:02.060 any at all? I mean, if there's a major natural disaster in Ireland, fair enough. OK, I'll give

00:06:12.980 you that one. But there isn't. Why do we have any asylum seekers at all? Just say no. But the problem

00:06:26.520 with immigration, right, is it is not actually asylum seekers or illegal immigration. It is the 1.4

00:06:33.000 million legal immigration that we have that they just gave visas to. So anyway, fine. OK, well, we

00:06:39.240 come back to that. I'm sure we'll come up. Right. What else do they say? A regular rhythm of flights

00:06:43.260 to Rwanda every month to remove illegal migrants. Just don't let them in in the first place. We have a 1.00

00:06:49.620 Royal Navy that can patrol the Channel just to stop it. And if they turn up at an airport,

00:06:55.840 turn them away. They turn up at any port, just turn them away. If they somehow sneak in in the

00:07:01.060 back of a lorry or something, you know, take them to Ascension Island or something or put them in a

00:07:07.060 camp somewhere, not a hotel. OK, stop illegal migrants challenging their removal in the courts. 0.82

00:07:16.280 Well, look, you've had an 80 seat majority for the last five years. You could have passed whatever

00:07:20.500 legislation you wanted. Clear the asylum backlog and end the use of hotels housing asylum seekers. 0.99

00:07:28.900 You just take a tough line on all of it, obviously. Introduce a legal cap on migration that will be

00:07:35.540 reduced every year. Yes, I remember those. I remember David Cameron being prime minister and saying that

00:07:40.680 he was going to limit immigration to the tens of thousands. So, yes, I have complete faith in any 1.00

00:07:45.600 Tory promises on immigration. Right. Let parliament control how many places are offered to asylum

00:07:51.760 seekers. It should be zero. And OK, fine. So they're trying to make that, that's their immigration 1.00

00:07:59.420 section. They're trying to make it all about illegal migration and asylum seekers. Right. But what about

00:08:06.660 the 4.6 million people that you gave a visa to for legal migration since COVID? Right.

00:08:12.960 60% of London housing is going to people who were first-generation immigrants. So people who were 0.99

00:08:18.780 born abroad, 60% of the social housing in London is now for people born abroad who just came here. It's

00:08:24.820 like, OK, well, you can have a house then. What are you going to do about that? Your manifesto doesn't

00:08:31.240 even mention legal migration. The ghettoisation of large parts of the country. So basically, what you're

00:08:40.380 promising me here with your manifesto is we're going to make it easier for Indians to come here

00:08:48.040 and be police officers and judges. And we're going to do some meaningless caps on the tiny bits of

00:08:58.000 migration, such as the illegal migration and the asylum seekers, but not really looking at

00:09:04.900 the massive legal migration problem. So how do I rate this first section? I'm going to go with zero

00:09:13.380 votes, zero seats for that. OK, fine. Let's move on to economy because Tories have done an impressively

00:09:20.300 awful job with the economy. So let's have a look at that. Right. Take another 2% of national insurance

00:09:25.620 for employees, taking it down to 6%. OK, right. So national insurance, originally, well, originally,

00:09:35.400 originally, it was for the transfer programmes. So things like pensions and NHS and all that kind

00:09:42.800 of stuff, that was supposed to be funded by national insurance. These days, the big three line

00:09:47.920 items being NHS, pensions and welfare, all of the taxes, and I mean all of them, not just national

00:09:57.920 insurance, income tax, corporation tax, VA, all of the taxes, right, do not touch the sides when it

00:10:03.980 comes to those big three line items. So not only does all taxation go on those three transfer programmes,

00:10:10.380 we then have to borrow on top of it to make up the difference. And then we have to borrow more to do

00:10:14.800 everything else that the government wants to do. So the original reason for having national

00:10:23.380 insurance as opposed to general taxation no longer exists. And what I meant to say when I said

00:10:28.400 original, back in the 80s, the reason why we ramped up the whole national insurance thing is because

00:10:33.960 back in the 80s, old people were poor. So the greatest generation, the GI generation, 1.00

00:10:40.920 the people who actually fought in the war, right, that generation, they were very poor.

00:10:48.660 And the boomers, when they were in their ascendancy in the 80s and 90s, when they were,

00:10:52.740 you know, well, I say when they were controlling everything, I mean, they still do control everything.

00:10:57.980 When they first started controlling everything, old people were synonymous with poor people. 1.00

00:11:03.460 You know, if you were old, you were almost certainly poor. And that's why we started raising

00:11:08.700 national insurance because national insurance is people who paid by people who work, not people

00:11:15.280 who just earn money, i.e. from a pension. Now, now that the old people are baby boomers and not 1.00

00:11:23.900 the greatest generation anymore, or there's increasingly fewer of the silent generation,

00:11:29.880 the ones who came between the greatest generation who've fought in the war and the boomers.

00:11:35.980 Now that the boomers are old, they are richer than everybody else at every income level. 0.98

00:11:44.680 So every cohort of boomer at every income strata level is richer than the equivalent strata level

00:11:53.280 of any working age population. So the poorest 10% are richer than the poorest 10% working.

00:12:00.580 The richest 10% not working are richer than the richest 10% working.

00:12:08.840 So why do we still have a tax system that is working off the assumption that old people 0.96

00:12:17.160 need special protection because they're poor? Doesn't make any sense. So why, you know,

00:12:22.580 don't dick around with national insurance, just get rid of all of it. Just bin it.

00:12:25.760 Abolish the rate of class four national insurance for their self-employed. As I said, just bin it.

00:12:32.360 Guarantee the state pension will not face income tax and the triple lock plus.

00:12:38.900 OK, again,

00:12:40.460 see my earlier comments. All of this is gold plating boomers. 0.96

00:12:46.860 They don't need it. For the reasons I've just explained, they do not need it.

00:12:54.600 I mean, the Tories might need to do this because the only

00:12:58.120 age demographic that is still majority voting Tories, the over 65s.

00:13:05.780 So I get why they're putting this in their manifesto,

00:13:08.920 but this is not the right thing. This should not be their economic policy.

00:13:13.380 OK, maintain national living wage.

00:13:18.360 OK, what they mean by national living wage is basically a minimum wage.

00:13:25.500 And the way that works is not that it makes employers pay people more.

00:13:34.060 What a minimum wage does is it makes it illegal to have a job if your labour is only worth

00:13:40.640 less than whatever the minimum wage is. And if you push minimum wage legislation,

00:13:46.780 which was a Blair era policy, which the Tories at the time opposed, but now they're all for it,

00:13:52.080 all you are doing is making it harder for people with low value

00:13:55.840 wages, you know, what they can contribute from having a job.

00:14:01.960 So you're stopping young people. So, I mean, I started work, you know, when I, I think I got a job 0.98

00:14:11.840 at Burger King, you know, I got a job at Burger King when I was, what was I, I think you had to be

00:14:17.740 16 to get a job. And I just lied about my age and said I was 15, when I was 15 and got a job

00:14:23.780 and started working. And it was on a low wage, but it was fine because I was a little kid and

00:14:29.340 therefore, you know, I was happy to get something rather than nothing. And it was, it was fine.

00:14:34.080 And I learned more about the workplace dynamic than I did there, than I did at university,

00:14:39.100 which I then went off and did. So, yeah, no bad idea. Don't like that.

00:14:43.940 Not raise income tax or VAT. Well, yeah, but it doesn't stop you from inventing a whole bunch

00:14:49.740 of other taxes, nor does it stop you from dicking around with the income bans or printing money,

00:14:54.760 which means that you move into higher income bans. So that is completely meaningless. You know,

00:15:00.280 you've been doing this all the time. You haven't, you haven't raised income tax. You've just raised

00:15:04.680 more people into the bans of which they pay income tax by devaluing their money so that people are

00:15:09.540 worse off. If you're earning, if you're earning 50 grand a year before the pandemic, you now have the

00:15:18.200 spending power of somebody who was earning 40K back then. Inflation is a tax. Oh, right. Okay.

00:15:29.260 Economy. Anyway, I'll just, I'll just come in. Economy. I'm going to reward this, the, um,

00:15:33.920 the ranking of zero seats. Okay. Young people. What's their policy on young people? Uh, ban mobile

00:15:41.120 phones for children in schools. I mean, uh, I mean, why, why, why can't we just give schools

00:15:52.040 more autonomy to, to set their own policies on stuff? Uh, mandate two hours of PE in every primary

00:15:58.380 and secondary. Yeah. Again, why, why can't, why can't, why does this need to be government policy?

00:16:03.320 Why can't schools determine this for themselves? What, why does everything need to be centralised

00:16:07.380 at Whitehall? Okay. Introduce advanced British standards to replace A-levels. Right. So we

00:16:17.040 have persistently devalued the grading system in A-levels, which, and a large part of that

00:16:26.400 was COVID, wasn't it? Because they didn't, they didn't let anybody into schools. So they

00:16:31.040 had to let the teachers choose the grades that the students were going to get. And I mean,

00:16:40.040 I remember a teacher explained this to me at the time, he was saying, well, when it comes

00:16:45.180 to the exams, I might have 10 students who can get an A, but on the day, the way they perform

00:16:53.540 in that exam is actually only four of them get an A. And I don't know in advance, which

00:17:00.440 of the ones are going to choke when it comes to the exams and which ones are going to keep

00:17:03.880 a cool head and get the A. So what do I do when, when it's COVID and I just have to guess

00:17:12.000 who's going to get the A? Well, I had, well, do I, do I just randomly select four of the

00:17:16.420 10 or do I just give all 10? So, and that's what they did. They gave all 10. So there's been

00:17:20.340 persistent grade inflation and, and, and with COVID, there was a massive grade inflation

00:17:24.200 because of that. So now you're just going to scrap it and bring something else in. You

00:17:28.560 know, here's a better idea. Just stop doing it and let the free market pop up and offer

00:17:34.140 something and adopt whatever you want to adopt. And if universities or employers can't be satisfied

00:17:41.740 by that, and clearly they're not satisfied by the A level stuff, well, fine, you just, you

00:17:45.940 just have your own entrance exams. Because I mean, what does this tell you? Okay. Expand

00:17:53.060 academy trusts. Yeah. Okay. So, so that's going against, so my, my point is they're centralising

00:17:59.320 everything. So academies does give this visage of independence, but everything they do is

00:18:06.740 still dictated from Whitehall. So look, just don't do that. Create a register of children,

00:18:12.260 not in school. Right. Presumably because you then want to move to the Canadian system of

00:18:18.340 banning homeschooling. I mean, what, why would you need that register? I mean, they're either

00:18:23.440 in households where they're going to fail no matter what, because they're extreme low effort.

00:18:29.860 You know, maybe they come from a culture where school doesn't matter or they're homeschooled.

00:18:35.500 Why are you creating a register? Very suspicious of that. Parents have a right to know what their

00:18:42.380 children are being taught. No. No, no, no. No, no. Parents have a right to say what their

00:18:49.960 children are taught. Not that they have a right to know. Oh, for God's sakes. Right. Clear age

00:18:56.800 limit on what children can be taught in sex and relationships. Yeah. The clear limit is what

00:19:06.300 the parents say. Obviously. I mean, all of this so far is we are going to centralise the bejesus

00:19:14.360 out of everything and then tell you about some of it. Or we're going to give you a little bit

00:19:19.440 of say on it. No, just, just, just stop centralising. Let some schools succeed. In fact, better than

00:19:30.120 that, better than that, just stop taxing people so much and just have private education. It won't

00:19:36.800 be that expensive. Or if you, if you must have a provision for education, you just, you just give

00:19:41.720 the child the budget and the parents can allocate that budget whenever they want. And if some people

00:19:46.300 want to go to big successful schools and they can do that, if somebody wants to set up a micro school

00:19:51.100 that has 15 students or, or maybe 10 students and one good teacher, if you're getting the,

00:19:58.640 if you're getting the, the allowance for 10 students, that could be enough for a good living

00:20:03.760 and it would be motivating for one good teacher to take on a relatively small bunch of children.

00:20:08.780 That would be great. Just, just, just free it up. Don't, don't do this top down Whitehall bollocks. 0.66

00:20:13.420 I mean, you're supposed to be Conservatives. I mean, what? Well, I mean, I, I, I remember,

00:20:18.220 um, you know, there, there was rumours of sort of doing stuff like that and with Thatcher years,

00:20:22.600 but it just never went anywhere because they just, they just centralise everything. Okay. All right.

00:20:26.200 Okay. What else have they got? Introduce national service.

00:20:33.000 Either 12 months in the military or weekend every month.

00:20:36.360 What a complete load of bollocks this policy is. So we have run down the military. Nobody wants to join

00:20:55.600 the military anymore because of the woke bullshit. Only a year ago, the British army was sort of 0.99

00:21:02.400 proudly saying that they were on the, they were on the watch, um, to, to make sure people who,

00:21:07.640 who said things like that they're a Patriot couldn't join. Um, the RAF was saying that they,

00:21:13.580 that what are they supposed to do with these, um, useless white men who keep applying because 0.97

00:21:18.620 they've got diversity targets. They have made it so that nobody wants to join the military anymore. 0.98

00:21:22.920 So they're going to try and get through it by national service, by compulsion of getting people

00:21:30.700 onto a national service. And then hopefully a good proportion of them will then go on to become,

00:21:34.800 um, military full time. And then on top of that, for everybody else, we're going to use their slave 0.55

00:21:41.700 labour to prop up the NHS. Now this is a policy, again, look, if, if, if you're one of those boomers 0.96

00:21:50.400 who comments under my videos and say, I don't believe in that, I, yeah, I get it. I get it. I

00:21:54.060 get it. Not, not all. Hashtag not all. But this is a policy that only pose, polls well with boomers, 0.88

00:22:00.480 right? Two thirds of people are against this policy. And the one third that is in favour of this policy

00:22:09.980 are heavily, heavily weighted towards the boomers. And I've said this before, don't, if, if you want to 0.97

00:22:17.960 do national service and it's only popular with the boomers, then don't bring in a new national 0.60

00:22:22.060 service scheme, reinstate the old one, the one that disappeared in 1960. And you just, you just

00:22:28.540 say, okay, yeah, um, we had a bit of a lull, but we're picking up the old policy and, um, we're going

00:22:34.720 to call up all the people that should have been called up in 1960 that never got called up. So

00:22:39.100 basically the boomers. Yeah. So, so, so start, if you, if you want to conscript anyone, conscript the 0.99

00:22:44.200 boomers, uh, by bringing back the original conscription policy and, you know, they're in 0.60

00:22:50.420 favour of it. It polls very well with them. So, so they can do it. But you don't, this is, this is

00:22:55.460 just, this is just awful. You can't be conscripting people into slave labour. Oh, you have to work,

00:23:03.840 you have to work for the NHS. Um, what are we going to be doing? Are you going to be delivering

00:23:06.920 medicines to old people? What a crock of shit this is. Goodness sakes. Okay. I better move on. 1.00

00:23:16.420 Otherwise I'm going to get hung up on this one. 18 new free Senn schools and 60,000 more places for

00:23:22.860 Senn students. Okay. So, so that's, um, special, uh, special educational needs. Um, okay, fine. I mean,

00:23:32.480 I, I think that, you know, like I say that, um, each child should just get a budget and you can,

00:23:39.240 the parent can do that as they wish. They can go to a micro school. They can go to a good school.

00:23:43.040 They can pick the school basically they want to go to. And yes, it is. If, if a child has special

00:23:49.100 educational needs, um, it is more demanding, it's more difficult. So maybe that, that payment should

00:23:55.120 be higher. Uh, and again, you can do this through the free market, but if you are going to have a school

00:24:00.020 system like we have, um, yeah, you need, you need provisions for special educational needs, I get.

00:24:06.200 So I don't, I don't particularly hate this bit, but I just think the whole model is wrong. Um,

00:24:10.180 a hundred thousand more apprenticeships. Yeah. Okay. So the issue with apprenticeships and years ago,

00:24:17.920 my, my younger brother tried to go on one. Well, he did go on one. He was on this apprenticeship with

00:24:22.280 this plumber guy. Um, now the issue was if this guy was a plumber, he wasn't a bureaucrat and the

00:24:29.360 apprenticeship scheme just kept on shoving paperwork at him. Oh, you need to fill in this

00:24:33.180 report. You need to do this. You need to do that. And it didn't take him long before it was like,

00:24:37.200 yeah, screw this. I'm not doing it. Yeah. I won't do the apprenticeship then because he,

00:24:40.780 because he's not a bureaucrat. He's not a form filler. So again, this is, this is, this is not

00:24:48.640 the right approach. If you're going to do an apprenticeship, um, you know, just, just,

00:24:54.840 just let them hire somebody on their own terms and, and, and give them some sort of tax break

00:25:01.320 for doing that. If you must do it, this system, as opposed to having free market solutions.

00:25:05.100 So yeah, don't agree with that. So, so what, what was that? That was, that was young people. Um,

00:25:08.960 I'm going to award this section zero seats again. Right. Families. Right. What have,

00:25:16.020 what have we got for families? Okay. Give working parents 30 hours of free childcare a week

00:25:21.340 between when their child is nine months old and when they start school. Okay. So introduce a whole

00:25:30.000 load of legislation, raising the cost of childcare, um, and then, and then subsidize the demand for

00:25:37.940 childcare. Okay. Um, what, what, what about this? Reduce the tax burden, reduce the size of the state

00:25:44.560 so that more people can have stay at home mums or, or can make similar arrangements, you know,

00:25:50.820 maybe, maybe your kid is looked after during the day by, um, one of the neighborhood women who

00:25:55.360 is staying home and pays a small fee and that, that subsidizes her to do it. I mean, why, you 0.91

00:25:59.740 know, what, why does it always need to be, um, strangers? Because we're just trying to shoehorn

00:26:06.600 everyone and work. We're going to take that young mum and we're going to shoehorn her into the 1.00

00:26:10.340 workplace. And then we're going to take that young mum and make her a childcare person who looks 1.00

00:26:15.520 after everybody else. I mean, just, just, just leave people alone and shrink the size of the state

00:26:19.900 and the spending so that people can, can sort this out for themselves. We're in the weird situation

00:26:24.640 now where every aspect of being old is, is subsidized through, through pensions and NHS, uh, you know,

00:26:32.700 bloody bus passes and all the rest of it. But every aspect of raising a family is taxed.

00:26:38.740 Um, and then our politicians scratch their head and say, why are birth rates so low?

00:26:47.880 Well, I mean, yeah, it's obvious, isn't it? Right. So, um, move household income system for child

00:26:54.300 benefits. Okay. So that's, um, yeah, we had this when my kids were little, um, I was earning a lot and

00:27:03.000 the wife wasn't earning much because she was staying home looking after the children, but we couldn't get 0.82

00:27:06.820 child benefit because I was learning a lot. So, um, they're going to move it to the household system,

00:27:12.820 which I wouldn't have got then because the household would still be too high, but there will

00:27:17.420 be people where, you know, the mum is doing a part-time job earning 12,000 and the husband is

00:27:23.200 earning 40,000 and that's probably over the limit. And then the household thing will smooth it out. 0.86

00:27:27.840 So, um, again, again, we shouldn't, we shouldn't, we shouldn't be doing this whole big tax and

00:27:34.140 spend government, but, but fine. Okay. Don't mind that. Um, deliver a family hub in every local

00:27:40.900 authority. Okay. So what they must be talking about there is pulling together a whole bunch

00:27:48.800 of child services and then having that in one place at your local authority that you can

00:27:54.540 access. And the reason you need that is because there are so many, so many families having kids

00:28:06.560 who, who struggle with it, um, because they are the type of people that struggle with it as

00:28:14.020 opposed to making it easy for middle-class families to have stay at home mums who look 1.00

00:28:20.380 after their children, who can figure out a lot of this themselves, or at least know how

00:28:23.800 to use the internet or form, you know, go to NCT groups where they can rely on each other

00:28:28.300 and stuff like that. So, um, yeah, um, more, more herd management there. Okay. Titan, how

00:28:34.960 benefit, uh, benefits assesses capability for work? Um, yeah, you just, you just take benefits

00:28:43.120 away from people if they don't work. When I, I, I prefer a system where benefits are actually

00:28:49.480 more generous than they are now, but for a much more limited time. So if you, if you lose

00:28:55.120 your job and it's a shock, the benefits are actually fairly good, but then they start to

00:28:59.080 tail down quite quickly. And after, I don't know, nine months, there's nothing instead of

00:29:04.920 this multi-generational people unemployed, you know, we have in this country families where 1.00

00:29:11.700 you've got three, three generations of people who've never worked. So, um, oh, no, that,

00:29:19.480 that was, that was the, the disability benefit system. Oh, don't get me started. Right.

00:29:24.200 Actually, I bet they've got more on that in the, um, in, in the healthcare bit, because

00:29:30.280 I do have something to say about that. Uh, benefits in general. Yeah. Yeah. You just, you

00:29:36.440 just get for people who can work, you just get rid of them. Okay. Overhaul the sick note 1.00

00:29:40.700 process, taking about power from GPs to write sick notes. No, no, no, you, you scrap the

00:29:47.820 concept entirely. Well, you shouldn't have this at all. What it should be is, um, people

00:29:55.280 go to the employer and they say, I'm sick. And if the employer believes them, then they

00:29:59.540 give them time off. And if the employer doesn't believe them, um, then they don't. And then

00:30:04.360 you should deal that another way. But this, this, this whole thing of, oh, we've got, we've

00:30:08.160 got to bureaucratise it so that people get a sick note from their bloody, from their

00:30:13.980 doctor. And then, and then the employers can't say anything about it. But even though the doctors

00:30:18.360 just hand them out willy nilly as soon as you ask for them. Okay. Um, increased rollout

00:30:24.640 of universal credit. No, get rid of, get, get, get rid of benefits. We can't afford

00:30:30.920 them. We literally can't afford them. We are borrowing money to give people welfare. Stop

00:30:36.400 it. But continue to clamp down on fraud. Yes. You always say that and you never do. And

00:30:42.220 there's always an interesting article in the daily mail about how somebody from Albania

00:30:45.880 got 3.4 million. The reason they're able to do that is because we have a benefit system.

00:30:54.720 Get rid of it and stop importing people who like to take advantage of it. Okay. Um, introduce 1.00

00:31:02.000 tougher sanctions for those who refuse to take up jobs after 12 months of benefits. Yes.

00:31:07.380 By getting rid of benefits. So, um, that was, that was their families section. Um, how do

00:31:13.820 I rate this one? I, I, I think I'm going to go zero seats for, for this one. Okay. Defense.

00:31:20.720 What have we got for defense? Increased defense spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030. Right. Okay.

00:31:31.940 So, um, defense spending at the moment is about 80 billion. Um, 2.5% of GDP. Uh, how much

00:31:40.700 is that going to be? So I think we're spending 2.3, 2.3% at the moment. So that's going to

00:31:45.240 be another 7 billion. So they want to spend another 7 billion on defense. Okay. Don't

00:31:52.560 hate it. I mean, yeah, fine. Um, yeah, have a few more ships, a few more smart boys and

00:32:00.780 girls in uniform. Sounds great. Why not? Do a bit of marching. Um, hopefully don't ever

00:32:06.240 use them, you know, in foreign wars, just, just use them to defend Britain, which you're

00:32:12.580 not doing at the moment. You know, put them along the Kent coast with machine guns, um,

00:32:18.840 have the boats go up and down the English Channel. Um, see off the fishermen fishing in our waters

00:32:25.440 who, who aren't British. Um, you know, there's, there's actual defense that you could be doing.

00:32:31.240 Um, not just, you know, going off and backing up in America in whatever war they want to

00:32:38.840 fight now. So, um, I mean, I don't hate it. So, okay, fine. Uh, increase R and D funding

00:32:45.000 to a minimum of 5% of the defense budget. I mean, okay, fine. Um, don't have a particular

00:32:50.560 problem with that. I mean, most of the, um, defense breakthroughs are not going to come

00:32:56.580 from within the military. They're going to come from private corporations outside, but okay.

00:33:00.620 Yeah, fine. Don't hate that one. Um, guaranteed military support for Ukraine in their war

00:33:06.660 against Russia. How to phrase my response to this one? I'm not a fan, not a fan of, of

00:33:17.920 this policy. So for 10 years before the current conflict, Kiev was, was, was randomly bombing

00:33:30.240 the Donbass. Um, they put in place, you know, ridiculous rules about how, um, you know, the

00:33:37.360 Russian speaking population, um, which is predominant in that part of, that part of Ukraine, um,

00:33:44.220 you know, couldn't go to the cinema and watch stuff in Russian, you know, people who only 1.00

00:33:49.240 spoke Russian. Um, there was a ridiculous antagonism towards, um, ethnically Russian Ukrainians and

00:34:01.580 it is not surprising that those people rose up against it. Um, the only surprising thing

00:34:09.460 is how long it took Russia to decide to, to back them up, which it did. And actually most

00:34:15.580 of the, I mean, you hear about Russian soldiers fighting in, um, Ukraine. Most of them are actually

00:34:23.620 Ukrainian, ethnically Russian Ukrainians. Um, I know some people push back on this one because

00:34:31.460 they have the, the TV version of, of that war. But as far as I'm concerned, this is a, a NATO

00:34:42.660 provoked war. And, and actually there's a, there's a really good clip from, um, Lindsay Graham,

00:34:50.520 you know, Lady Graham of, what was it? South Carolina. And, um, you know, in, in that he's saying,

00:34:58.520 um, that this is a really great war because loads of Russians are dying and we can get our hands on 1.00

00:35:04.900 the mineral resources in Ukraine. I mean, ultimately that's what I think this is all about. Um, there are

00:35:11.880 significant amounts of mineral resources, um, metals, commodities in Ukraine, that part of Ukraine

00:35:21.860 and Russia. And the West wants them and the West does not want to pay 0.78

00:35:27.600 full market price for them, especially with all its net zero goals, which means it's going to need

00:35:33.880 a lot more of the commodities that are in these places. That's what I think is driving all of this.

00:35:38.540 I think it's utterly, utterly unconscionable that we have stirred up a war and that whatever it is now,

00:35:49.240 over a hundred thousand Ukrainians, and God knows how many Russians as well on top of that,

00:35:53.360 have been killed and many hundreds of thousands or more have, um, been injured in some way,

00:36:01.080 some quite severely.

00:36:05.520 It's just unconscionable that we are doing this. We should not be doing this.

00:36:09.380 I hate this bit of their manifesto. I am not pleased with it.

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - June 18, 2024

PREVIEW： Brokenomics： UK Election - Dan's Manifesto, the Lib Dems & Tories

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