The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1142

00:00:00.000 good afternoon ladies and gentlemen welcome to the podcast of the lotus eaters for monday the

00:00:04.240 14th of april 2025 worst day of the week i know but we are here to brighten it up i am with bo

00:00:09.960 and steven and today we're going to be talking about what's going on in scunthorpe and then

00:00:14.420 what's going on in birmingham and why that's terrible and then of course what's going on

00:00:18.120 down at the coast very britain heavy uh episode this week uh today but we you know we covered

00:00:24.160 a lot of american stuff and foreign stuff last week so uh i think i think we can uh no particular

00:00:29.220 announcements day so let's uh let's just get on because i don't know anything about scunthorpe

00:00:34.480 steelworks anything about the subject so please enlighten me i will i'll try and do my best and

00:00:39.740 hello everybody it's um it is british heavy it's very important scumthorpe is a specific uh factory

00:00:47.000 that's been churning out steel for 100 years and 100 odd years and it was really one of the most

00:00:52.300 important parts of british history in terms of building our empire and particularly in

00:00:58.500 providing the right levels of steel for our military the navy but of course go beyond that

00:01:03.620 just a central infrastructure if you think of like indians uh railway systems a lot of that was coming

00:01:09.420 from steel mills in britain and in particular it was coming from scumthorpe the importance about

00:01:17.020 scumthorpe is the last of our major steel manufacturers we had our welsh steel factory was closed

00:01:25.340 effectively last year whilst they're trying to build some kind of net zero best improved

00:01:32.300 recycling centered factory with hardly anybody probably going to be used by ai to actually

00:01:38.620 deliver the process but what we had here it was owned by the chinese and they bought it they say for

00:01:45.180 about 55 million uh in 2020 2019 2020 it was unbelievable sorry we just we we sold britain's

00:01:54.020 historic empire building steelworks to the chinese for only 50 million yeah about 50 55 million and

00:02:01.820 they're alleging they put in about 1.2 billion in terms of funding since then but we sold it literally

00:02:08.180 for about 55 million in terms of the debt and i think in paper they actually paid for the equity a pound

00:02:15.180 so any one of us could have bought that for a pound provided you got the debt to pay off the

00:02:21.260 the initial conservative government yes a conservative government who did this and the irony of that is

00:02:27.500 crazy isn't it i've said it before i think i think i've said it before it might be in between segments but

00:02:31.980 the the historical um rivalry between china and britain specifically over steel like mao was obsessed

00:02:41.340 with steel quotas and it was always to try and uh get on par with britain absolutely and that's

00:02:47.500 obviously much earlier in the 20th century but still now we're in a position where well where the

00:02:53.260 last big steelworks is owned by a chinese company i mean talk about tables turned or we just completely 0.81

00:02:59.180 lost that competition right yeah and i'm sure a lot of it bowed out of it yeah i'm sure a lot of it is

00:03:04.540 due to cheap chinese steel which allow it to be easily accessible on the market as our own steel

00:03:09.740 well unsurprisingly our own steel fair i i believe it goes back further than that it goes to our

00:03:14.940 membership of the european union in parts of the way that we divvied up the continent and our deals and

00:03:20.140 the way that we said like the uk you're going to be safe because you have financial services uh we'll

00:03:25.180 give french the farming and a little bit of insurance and some of our aspects you can keep your military

00:03:30.780 britain you can keep your nuclear weapons but germany you can keep most you and italy in particular

00:03:36.460 can keep the steel and and all the manufacturing things and that's the point about these deals that

00:03:42.220 were done at the same time we've got this new country called the european union and we'll be

00:03:46.380 able to trade across each other but of course that doesn't work when you start seeing the changes

00:03:52.380 of our economies and our economies were changing dramatically because the european union started to

00:03:58.060 take on board net zero across the spectrum and one of the aspects about net zero as they said that

00:04:04.220 britain needed to reduce co2 like everybody else and in doing so we were heavy on co2 because we had

00:04:11.740 coal mines coal uh fired um power stations and we had places like this that relied upon coke

00:04:19.980 a specific type of coke to actually be able to run the factory we need electricity for these

00:04:25.100 and coke as well to keep them both going keep the furnaces going and we of course started to close

00:04:30.380 them down in 20 december 2023 we had issy frond was the last of our coke uh kind of mines that could

00:04:39.100 have fed this particular factory and i'll come to a different point i'm probably edging on on on on

00:04:44.300 it now so we could have had that and in yorkshire in 2015 in a kind of apocryphal period of october to

00:04:51.580 december we actually destroyed two other coal mines by closing them from being able to and

00:04:57.500 that's the same sort of coke that's used now just as a quick thing here i actually looked this up

00:05:01.900 yesterday britain has something like 185 billion tons of coal absolutely we are an island of coal

00:05:08.300 and for some reason we've decided we're not going to use it because otherwise china won't get to 0.90

00:05:13.340 destroy the earth before we do i don't know like i can't remember exactly what the labor government's

00:05:18.140 reasons were sorry we've got a we've got we've got a coal a particular coal farm yes it's in cumbria

00:05:23.580 and i love the lake district i love the whole area that isn't that far away from scunthorpe so in

00:05:28.460 terms of travel actually we we could be able to transport coal to this with a very minimal amount

00:05:35.740 of co2 on road and transport and i'll come back to what we're going to do with japan when i

00:05:40.220 talk about this point later by canal boat like it's actually the 19th century could have done something

00:05:44.860 like that literally bringing the tons of coal to this particular factory at a very low cost

00:05:51.260 and also environmentally a lot better very low impact so we closed our coal fire factories down

00:05:57.500 first of all obviously thatcher decided we didn't need as much anyway but if we remember we banked up

00:06:03.980 a lot of our coal to be able to take out the miners by buying it from china and other parts of the world

00:06:08.940 so we had a supply of coal from these countries to be able to destroy our miners in order to close our

00:06:13.980 minds that's stage one then we have the conservatives and labor coming along saying reports of the

00:06:18.780 membership of the european union is ideal we've got to close down some of our factories based on

00:06:24.780 net zero i feel like we're being smothered to death yeah you know i feel like we're just like oh no

00:06:30.620 someone's got your arm okay i can't move that arm oh they've got that arm and i've just got the the

00:06:34.380 chloroform of your face and now you're just going to go i feel like we're just being smothered like a

00:06:38.620 tourniquet around your neck yeah slowly tightening it up yeah i'm on the tightening up the tightening

00:06:45.020 up now is about the 2 000 odd people at a 2 800 i think we're working here in 2000 odd that were

00:06:50.860 working in wales who are about to potentially lose their jobs because it's still not clear that we can

00:06:56.300 save this and i will say that there is a good chance but what the japanese uh firms you sing thou uh

00:07:03.100 was saying is that they're losing 700 000 pounds a day right huge amount of money 700 000 pounds a

00:07:09.580 day and they'd also had were deciding to cancel the last contract of of the coke that was going to

00:07:16.700 come in that would have if it didn't come in why not why not if you didn't we're going to close this

00:07:22.140 down because we can't afford it the tory party went into some sort of deal and then it's alleged

00:07:27.340 that the chinese wanted more money the labor party said that they weren't going to agree with

00:07:31.580 the deal so the chinese said right we're going to close close the factory we can't afford it 1.00

00:07:35.740 well who can afford 700 000 pounds a day now we have mps who are arguing it's the chinese deliberately

00:07:43.180 did this to close this down but actually they've come in and one of the reasons why they've decided

00:07:48.860 it's too expensive is because we've closed down our factories and our energy costs have shot through

00:07:54.060 the roof yeah we've got the highest energy costs in the world and i have a map on that but and

00:07:59.100 so we now have kirstarmer coming in and saying trust me i have just saved sconform like some sort

00:08:05.980 of superman with coal around his neck and steel on his arms you know it's just a joke to say that we

00:08:12.060 have saved this and and by the way i just love the fact that he's got we've stepped in to save british

00:08:16.940 steel just to show how much of a joke they are if you look in the third paragraph they talk about

00:08:20.860 building the biggest theme park in europe in bedford yeah maybe they'll dig some kind of steel or coal

00:08:26.380 theme park i mean for the northeast for the jobs that they'll lose eventually i just but like if we

00:08:32.060 ever intend to build anything in this country again surely we're going to need a supply of steel

00:08:36.380 yes and becoming dependent on foreign steel as probably one of the most core building materials

00:08:41.900 in the world just seems really short-sighted yeah and i'm i'm going to come across but i'm just going

00:08:47.260 to quick quickly go to the next one now he's gone out and said we we have saved scum thought and then

00:08:52.460 you had a whole load of preening actually it's quite funny preening preet cowageet gill here in mp 0.94

00:08:59.660 who was one of many many labor mps who on the day say i'm on a train coming to saturday to save scum

00:09:06.300 thorpe so we can secure britain steel industry steel industry you mean steel factory you've already let

00:09:13.740 all the rest of the industry go love and it was part of your net zero policy that did this because you've

00:09:19.580 driven up costs but there they are preening we've done it and then we go to the next next one and we

00:09:24.780 have uh the man who said he was a solicitor but not a solicitor uh just like the economist he said

00:09:31.020 she was an economist exactly it's kind of like generally the sort of theme or what we are the

00:09:35.820 government and i like this is acting in the national interest that's finally that's true to secure the

00:09:41.420 future of uk steel making can't argue with that secure thousands of jobs and protect the uk's national

00:09:46.780 security and supply chains if it's just one steel factory that doesn't have coke uh supplies coming

00:09:53.740 to it from in britain that's hardly securing the future of anything and actually makes it more look

00:09:58.300 like a museum piece and i think you've picked up the point the point is that when we come across on

00:10:04.140 this and we go on to this they're saying we're securing it and i get it we do need to have steel to

00:10:09.180 secure it for our industry three key areas military and our own infrastructure are the two main points

00:10:14.860 and the rest is just how are you going to build all the houses in britain yeah you're going to have

00:10:18.940 to import steel and what's one of the biggest steel places that's manufacturing it in the world china

00:10:25.260 if you want to have your wind farms where are they coming from china so and whereas ed milliband

00:10:32.300 recently been begging to get his steel from for the wind farms and this china so you're not really

00:10:38.700 securing it if you're still doing all these deals see quick things if we were in some sort of total 0.96

00:10:44.060 war situation the enemy knows where that scum they're where scunthorpe is but one strike on 0.99

00:10:49.900 scunthorpe and now and now yeah and our steel industry is wiped out um yeah china has the front 1.00

00:10:57.340 kind of has the front foot and so now we've got all these various mp's in duncan smith saying

00:11:02.060 is the chinese deliberately want to do it actually the reality is if you go into the next one this is

00:11:07.260 where the the issue of security comes in and the cost millions on coal from japan to save our steel

00:11:13.580 why do we have to buy japanese coal from the entire other side of the world and it's not just a cheap

00:11:19.580 amount 700 million pounds is what they're going to give the japanese for the coal that we could be

00:11:28.300 digging in lots of places all over i would take 700 million and open up one of our own coal mines

00:11:35.180 and have it delivered i mean i can accept that britain not a giant island doesn't have huge amounts of

00:11:39.660 natural resources but the one natural resource we have aside from grass is coal we've had alex the

00:11:48.220 steam guy on once i like him and i talked to because he knows about this sort of thing yeah

00:11:53.100 and uh yeah i said so wait there was famously massive uh seams of coal sort of in the northeast and in

00:11:59.820 wales yeah are they still there and he looked at me like yes of course they're still there of course

00:12:06.940 we didn't we chinese haven't actually dug under the ground like like we did in in the iran-irac war

00:12:12.220 where you know kuwait was actually digging into iraq's oil and stealing they haven't taken it away

00:12:18.380 it's still there you know bob the builder could probably pick it up and get it out did we exhaust all

00:12:23.020 our coal in the victorian era no no there's tons still so we're not taking millions of sorry yeah

00:12:29.740 i looked it up it was 180 million tons so we've got hundreds of millions of tons of coal most of it is

00:12:35.740 actually very close to where this steel factory is it would save us on net zero costs in terms of

00:12:41.100 transport but we will pay 700 million pounds to put japanese coal which has to be dug at a great

00:12:47.340 environmental cost then transported at great environmental cost to us and we're still not

00:12:53.740 secure because if it doesn't get here in time the furnace goes down and it doesn't work it's only

00:12:58.780 going from literally the other side of the world could it be further away yeah exactly it what what

00:13:04.780 possible risk of interception could it have when it's sailing past china like i know someone in the

00:13:10.380 comments of the marshall islands oh yeah yeah brilliant still the other side of the world how absurd

00:13:15.500 it is and then i look at this so we're 700 million to japan where would 700 million be invested in the

00:13:21.500 uk you know that's actually pretty good i'll be in the north of england where they need it where we

00:13:25.580 need jobs there were 350 000 jobs in steel you know right up to like the 70s and 80s what sort of

00:13:32.780 jobs were that good paying jobs with a nice salary for people instead of having the decline that we've

00:13:39.100 got up there but we go into the next one we see that you've got this is uh i don't know we could show

00:13:44.460 a clip of it just briefly but not too long because it's watching a train go on with coal on the back

00:13:48.940 is actually quick but but look at this this chinese longest coal transport route and it's transporting

00:13:56.940 200 you know 1.87 3 7 000 miles of railway links of inner mongolia bringing chinese coal to their

00:14:06.700 factories for their steel we're talking coming over cumbria yeah they've got 1800 kilometers to bring

00:14:15.740 coal to their factories we've we've got what 180 miles yeah if that and it's the longest train bringing

00:14:23.660 200 million tons we would we'd be okay it's more than what we've got in our country but bloody hell

00:14:31.020 why can they do it and we can't and then they get asked why they've got cheaper coal cheaper energy

00:14:38.060 and i think we come on to the next one i mean why can they do it we can't well their government

00:14:42.780 is acting in the interests of their nation yes our government is trying to kill us through

00:14:47.580 now i know it's rhetorical but um like i wanted to show you this this the next couple of clips is

00:14:52.620 this this is ravenscraig in scotland so they're saying why are you protecting scunthorpe you didn't

00:14:57.980 protect ravenscraig well actually they wouldn't protect scumthorpe if it wasn't for other reasons

00:15:03.260 i'm going to talk about in a minute in in a moment but you didn't get to protect ravenscraig and you

00:15:09.020 see them just blowing up our blast furnaces you're blowing them up now we now you say it's national

00:15:14.300 security we need them why weren't you doing that when you were thinking about ravenscraig and we have

00:15:20.460 scumthorpe coming up here and at double standards because in wales exactly the same issue

00:15:25.980 you know let that go to to rack and ruin and i come to it and i think i look at what nick timothy

00:15:31.980 says in in the next next clip linking along here richard steel ought to be a turning point it should

00:15:38.540 be no more to net zero unilateralism i agree no more to self-indulgence and coke and coal let's dig

00:15:45.100 it ourselves no more naivety on chinese trade no more critical infrastructure in chinese hands but

00:15:52.140 labor wants to let chinese firm control our wind farms thing is is this kind of a conservative

00:15:56.380 yeah he is yeah yeah elected this this time round absolutely no sympathy the the conservatives were

00:16:01.740 just as guilty of this selling off the national infrastructure as the labor party are well under

00:16:07.580 cameron under major they were doing exactly this i admit nick timothy has always been one of those

00:16:13.260 who's who's been anti net zero you know he's on the right this is his first time round right he can

00:16:18.380 sit in the cuck chair when the rest of his party sells off the country and instead of criticizing and

00:16:22.940 said we made those the mistakes in the first place and i want to criticize my party for doing so

00:16:29.340 and now i can legitimately having done that now criticize the labor party for doing it but i also have

00:16:35.180 this interesting point no more critical infrastructure in chinese hands is it only chinese hands that we're not

00:16:40.300 allowed critical infrastructure what about america why is it only critical infrastructure why is any of

00:16:45.100 our infrastructure owned by a single foreigner most of our banks 60 of financial services are owned by us

00:16:51.020 banks or effectively we're owned on the internet and the web by america if they decide to turn it off

00:16:57.340 tomorrow because we no longer support their ideology or particular way that they want to control our

00:17:02.300 country they can do so now they might say that's fine what about the european union they own our water

00:17:08.300 and our electricity companies train criticals our trains is that not critical so i trained fares

00:17:14.940 in the world because we are subsidizing european trains i just just drives me mad so i asking the

00:17:21.740 question why is it suddenly that the chinese and the inf why is the infrastructure issue coming up now

00:17:27.580 which is important and i agree but why is it only the chinese and i think it's because as we're moving

00:17:33.660 along then um so we we look at this so i'm moving it the answer to china wasn't willing to lose uh energy 0.87

00:17:41.340 prices look where we are in energy prices yeah i know it's uk ridiculous above taiwan and canada even

00:17:47.260 russia you know all the way down there that's another reason why we are costing us more but i think it's

00:17:54.780 because we're hitting the chinese because of this china is waging a silent war and it's time to act who is 0.98

00:18:01.900 saying that that is suela braverman she is putting out this picture that we're already at war with

00:18:08.780 china and they're doing this deliberately as ian duncan smith has said and i think this is because

00:18:16.460 we're trying to build up towards a war with china we're all we got a silent war going on with them 1.00

00:18:23.340 now and infrastructure america clearly has an issue because china's become successful incredibly

00:18:29.500 successful products everywhere in the world owns infrastructure but if you've got money you own

00:18:35.260 the bonds in the us if you've got cash as we once did you went and bought assets all over the world to

00:18:40.940 protect yourself it's because of our own weaknesses in our own economy because we fall and fell to net

00:18:48.380 zero the european union masses of regulations in increased costs on salaries that we're not

00:18:53.980 competitive anymore we now have to go and start a silent war with a country that is now that might

00:18:59.900 be an important thing to do for the future it's not just us that are saying it they're saying that

00:19:07.660 it's about being scared of nigel farage because he's doing well in in the northeast it might be 0.60

00:19:14.780 it might be is that why they're protecting scumthorpe do you think that's really the major reason why

00:19:19.740 they're going to put 700 million up there i think it might be an ancillary reason yeah i think that's

00:19:24.380 probably true and the thing is like you've shown it won't matter like scumthorpe's industrial

00:19:30.220 production is it's going to be a relic it's not going to be an essential part of a booming industry

00:19:36.300 you know what it struck me as that um over the weekend keir starmer's intervention and that statement

00:19:41.580 we had up earlier it struck me as obviously too little too late yeah sort of uh to a crazy degree

00:19:47.980 too little too late what it strikes me as is uh government by reaction is that somewhere in his

00:19:55.100 team they said oh we need to be seen to be doing something about this we need to be seen to be

00:20:00.300 drawing a line and so they cook up a little statement and i mean it's not a small thing to

00:20:07.900 nationalize that but nonetheless it's too far too little far too late uh they've just decided it's just

00:20:13.340 by reaction they'll just know they'll get really bad headlines and things if they do absolutely

00:20:17.820 nothing so they've done this and it's nonsense i think the labor party are in trouble because

00:20:24.700 the foreign office have been running the show on this for a long time the foreign office have said

00:20:30.780 that we've got to stick with the european union and if they're saying net zero reduce our kind of

00:20:35.580 energy and therefore it leads to loss of businesses so be it but we have to replace that by working

00:20:41.820 more globally with china and they've reached out to china and china have taken over things and now 0.95

00:20:46.460 they don't like that and the foreign office is trying to back off and go hey at the same time

00:20:51.100 politically the labor party have got in a in stuck because they're part of the net zero they've been

00:20:57.020 backing this for a long time they've even put miliband in in in a big way of saying he should do it

00:21:02.460 and they're seeing an opportunity to get at farage so i think this is minor the main thing is when

00:21:08.380 this is last year the army chief this was general soroli walker came out and said we've got an axis

00:21:14.700 of upheaval he actually said went on to say an axis of evil of russia china and iran and we must double

00:21:20.300 our lethality to prepare for war in 2027. we can't go for war as you said with china if we've only got 0.97

00:21:28.300 we've got no factories we need that steel we need that steel so we're going to try and shoot chinese 1.00

00:21:33.980 with steel in bullets that we've had from their steel and and i think it's not just us in this 0.92

00:21:40.460 the obviously the guardian i think i've got one other up there there might be one one left on a

00:21:46.140 clip that says that it's the the left at the far left are also saying not sure it's up there is it

00:21:52.380 um they too uh yeah so i think it's uh no i must have missed it but i also came across uh the communist

00:22:02.700 party of great britain and and they had had a link saying that we're preparing for war in china

00:22:07.980 so we have suela braverman we have the army we have the guardian we have lots of people saying we're in

00:22:13.420 this silent war with china and now we have ian duncan smith and we've got trump i think that this is

00:22:21.260 one of the major reasons behind this the foreign office collapsing on its own strategy that it's been

00:22:26.620 working on since the early 70s with the eu it's now coming back on them and they're turning around

00:22:32.700 and going up we're in major problems and now we've got to try and prepare ourselves and what's one of

00:22:38.060 the most best ways for a government to try and put money into the economy military and what's what is

00:22:44.220 keir starmer doing with the so-called hard right of of the labour party they're starting to put more

00:22:49.980 money into the military and the idea will be that they can do that in the in the eastern and

00:22:54.860 northeastern parts of the country we've completely done this to ourselves yes there's absolutely no

00:23:00.140 reason that we should have exported any industries to china at all i think is i'd say a hot war with 0.97

00:23:05.340 china i mean we've both we're both nuclear powers yes so what we're going to have a nuclear exchange

00:23:10.060 they're going to nuke london and we're going to nuke beijing are we that's i mean and i mean 0.74

00:23:15.100 calm down i mean don't sell it

00:23:16.460 it'd be one in the eye for the nothing ever happens crew yeah it would yeah but um short of

00:23:23.580 that even even if it didn't go uh to full-blown exchange uh their army is famously giant isn't it

00:23:32.060 and ours is famously terrible well yeah but like we're not going to be invading mainland china

00:23:38.140 anytime this is this is part of long-term strategy what some would say is that we needed to destroy

00:23:43.580 syria so we could get through in iran we needed iraq to give ourselves a surrounding iran we needed

00:23:49.100 to get through ukraine so that we can smash russia very quickly which you can if ukraine's in our 1.00

00:23:54.940 hands it's easy to get across there napoleon showed that and once we've weakened all the friends with

00:24:00.540 china we then hit them economically both on the financials and on the trade and now trump's trying to

00:24:06.380 do the trade now with massive trade tariffs and and what we've seen is china are removing billions

00:24:13.980 of dollars at the moment from from the global financial economy because they're aware of this

00:24:19.740 they're preparing this and they're building up their military they're building up their army but

00:24:22.700 they've also got friends they've actually built a lot of friends across asia as well who don't like

00:24:28.140 this haggamani so it won't just be us going up against china we um are we economically or even 0.79

00:24:35.900 structurally morally or culturally in a position where we've got many kids in this country so i won't

00:24:42.300 fight for this country yeah we we will absolutely not be able to fight a long hot war it reminds me

00:24:49.740 very clearly of the early portion of the cold war where pretty much the whole world

00:24:57.420 uh started to fall into two camps of influence yes the soviets or the americans and it's sort of

00:25:03.900 that now it's sort of china versus almost everyone who isn't china kind of um but yeah they've china

00:25:11.260 have got the upper hand certainly in all sorts of ways i think we're going to see various leadership

00:25:16.700 contests across the country being uh developed and devoured of particular politicians who arrive on

00:25:22.780 one side of the camp or the other and i think argentina was one of the first

00:25:26.300 because of course argentina was moving to accept a lot of chinese goods and chinese deals

00:25:31.020 over their their infrastructure and also over their minerals and then in comes somebody from

00:25:37.420 out of the blue who wins massively who's now a massive trump supporter and has cancelled everything

00:25:44.060 to do with china we're seeing these battles and wars starting in across africa we have more live

00:25:50.620 conflicts now than any part of our modern history going on and i think all of this is about that

00:25:57.500 kind of secret war that we're having along the lines you've just identified in the cold war it would

00:26:03.900 it would devolved into relatively small places i mean it's a place like french indo china or vietnam

00:26:09.900 yes like the battle between it's set in the end the soviets or the leftist communist bloc

00:26:16.220 and the americans and the free world whatever you want to call it you know in in indochina

00:26:23.100 of all places or um you know we're ready to have a nuclear exchange over cuba and things like that you

00:26:29.180 see china doing all sorts of stuff in in africa in sub-saharan africa and uh the counter measures against

00:26:34.460 them yeah i think there is uh at least economically uh cold war not even all that cold uh between

00:26:41.500 china and and its adversaries or between the united states and its adversaries i mean we just put it 0.96

00:26:45.820 we just decided that we'd find a hostile creature and feed it until it was giant yeah and then we're

00:26:51.500 surprised oh this thing actually hates us like we knew that to begin with we knew it's the party of

00:26:55.420 mao that controls china there's never been a secret i don't know why we've done this but hey what can we

00:27:00.140 do anyway uh scanline says have you considered that the british coal miners would end up

00:27:04.380 with a black face from working and that's racist i'm sure that's the the labor party's primary 0.65

00:27:08.780 concern and the hapsification says cover 19 in the ukraine war showed so many of the points of

00:27:13.740 failure in this country uh well i mean we're just we're not what we used to be and i'm very tired

00:27:19.500 of us pretending like we're some sort of world power we're not a world power i'm surprised in a way

00:27:24.780 china views us as some sort of yeah strategic rival well it must be a historical holdover right it must be 0.98

00:27:30.780 that because mao used to bang on about british steel production i mean we're still like in the

00:27:35.020 top 10 economies in the world and we've still we've got nukes yeah and and we've got uh aircraft carriers

00:27:41.100 so and nuclear submarines and that sort of thing so that's great okay that's really in one way we can

00:27:47.180 sit at the top table okay we've got permanent uh seat on the security council and the second anything

00:27:52.300 but the reality is if yeah china could wipe us off the map and we couldn't do that to them that's 0.51

00:27:59.580 the bottom line yeah nuclear weapons would would take us out would take out europe wouldn't necessarily

00:28:03.740 take out america and as you say you've got the five eyes principle you've got certain nukes and 0.52

00:28:09.420 the submarines and financial services is probably our only really major significance we're not going to

00:28:15.100 supply the supply the kind of populace to be able to fight a war that's why they want you uh why they want

00:28:20.860 the poles and that's why they want um turkey because they've got the massive armies to be part

00:28:25.820 of our armed forces because they've got the manpower there but we have a very small but they still think

00:28:31.580 significant influence to be able to deal with and i we're a poor country now we can see this on our

00:28:37.420 streets every day we're not as wealthy to be able to compete we could have been if we had not done

00:28:42.380 things such as net zero canceling out and allowing others to buy our infrastructure we used to rule the

00:28:47.420 world you know anyway let's let's move on to the next uh i swear to god it's real though it's

00:28:54.540 genuinely real uh so let's let's move on to the next terrible thing about the united kingdom again

00:29:00.220 england particularly uh let's talk about birmingham i'm sure you're familiar with this clip i'm not

00:29:05.020 going to play it because he swears a lot but basically he's just a man who wakes up realizes in

00:29:09.900 birmingham and then he's angry very angry and starts raging on the internet about it and there are

00:29:14.700 lots of good reasons for this and we usually focus on demographic issues in birmingham because

00:29:18.700 of course they're a massive issue but there are also other massive issues that come along with being

00:29:23.500 run by the labor government for decades and decades and decades uh wasting money is basically a

00:29:30.060 professional accomplishment of the birmingham city council right and it's genuinely difficult to find

00:29:37.180 examples of where money has been so effectively pissed away into nothing right so i i'm not an

00:29:45.020 expert on birmingham right so i sat down to to talk about this because i was like look this is all in

00:29:49.100 the news i have to figure out what's going on and so you're gonna you're gonna get a an overview

00:29:54.700 from someone who's on the outside so if you are in birmingham you are doubtless going oh you don't

00:29:59.420 even know how bad it is right you're only touching the surface the the the waste and corruption

00:30:05.020 goes so much deeper um but you get examples like this from 2017 right where they decided that they

00:30:10.940 were going to uh stop using after something like only three years out of a five-year con or three

00:30:16.220 years earlier in the contract uh with this contracting company called capita uh and it's because it was

00:30:22.700 just costing them an unbelievable amount of money i mean for example they say in the first six years

00:30:27.420 this firm was paid a billion pounds a year to do whatever it is they were doing provide whatever

00:30:33.340 services right then in 2011 they attempted to offshore a bunch of it services to india which

00:30:39.340 cost them which they had to reserve reverse and cost them a million pounds a year for the privilege

00:30:43.900 in 2013 they were providing one single computer to birmingham offices for seven thousand pounds

00:30:52.860 i mean that's a hell of a gaming machine right that is like it's a sweet rig yeah they've got a rig

00:30:59.260 chief executive with big big screens in front of them yeah it's one of those things like the us

00:31:06.140 military pay like hundreds and hundreds of dollars for a spanner yes something well because somebody

00:31:11.740 somewhere down the line is siphoning off this money it's not sort of by accident yeah and i'm with the

00:31:17.180 independence day thesis on this it's actually going to black ops to keep aliens underground

00:31:21.340 um but the the council also faced a bill of 1.2 million pounds to develop a website from the

00:31:28.220 library of birmingham 1.2 million for the library yeah and then an annual running cost of 190 000

00:31:33.980 pounds a year that's nonsense of course it is it's all complete nonsense but that's the point right

00:31:38.860 like this is this is a genuine impressive example of how to just keep effing things up and just oh whose

00:31:47.980 money is it well it's not their money you know it's not their money it's people living birmingham

00:31:51.740 for their sins their money uh for example in 2023 they were like right birmingham city council needs

00:31:58.620 an entirely new it department how much is that going to cost 19 million 19 million that's quite a

00:32:05.580 lot right but if it's the entire council's it now it turns out it's gonna be 100 million

00:32:10.460 the estimate was 19 million it's five times more than that uh and the guy uh the guy in this

00:32:15.980 interview is like look i i i just i just want to be transparent over costs transparent yeah i mean

00:32:22.060 that is transparent yeah 19 million 100 million sorry he he looks as though someone's just found out

00:32:26.460 that you know maybe he's sitting on the rest of the 100 million uh in in his defense i don't think

00:32:32.940 it's his fault that's the thing because he was the new leader who came in that sort of money though

00:32:37.020 the numbers just don't seem to add up no really like yeah hang on no no no no put a pin in that

00:32:44.140 we're going to come back to numbers not adding up very shortly okay i just say for that amount of

00:32:48.060 money you can design and build a lunar lander yeah for that amount of money i'd be able to found an

00:32:54.300 entirely new city full of these things uh anyway right so we carry on because in 2023 birmingham

00:33:02.620 city council were sued by women and these women said you know what we're not being paid equally 1.00

00:33:09.420 it's like right so what's the difference well there are a bunch of bin men who are being paid to 0.98

00:33:13.500 clear out rubbish and there are a bunch of women who are sat in air-conditioned offices 1.00

00:33:17.900 and these pay uh brackets are not the same and somehow the courts were like yeah good point

00:33:25.020 you've got to pay up do you want to know how much they had to end up paying

00:33:30.060 for equal pay claims again this is very just feminist nonsense money they don't have whatever 1.00

00:33:34.860 this number is whatever it is yeah they don't have right but it's also total feminist nonsense 1.00

00:33:39.580 that's based on the idea that working in an air-conditioned office and getting in you know

00:33:43.260 on flexi time or whatever is the equivalent of doing actual labor right 750 million pounds

00:33:51.500 that's how much but it's got to have that interest and backdated and all of this exactly right and

00:33:57.180 they're complaining well birmingham when this was written birmingham hasn't paid out any of this money

00:34:01.100 yet and i'm like yeah they probably don't have any of that money what the hell are you talking about

00:34:04.220 that's nearly a billion pounds that's an obscene amount it's disgusting because when you it's

00:34:09.580 looting when you uh pay attention to the news uh hundreds of millions get thrown around all the

00:34:14.620 time when you're talking about films like a big disney production be hundreds of millions or whatever

00:34:18.780 and you talk about elon the world of elon and space stuff i do a fair bit you're talking the

00:34:23.180 billions all the time but remember that something like 100 million let alone 700 million is an obscene

00:34:29.580 amount of money it's just it's so inconceivable yeah if your bank account had a hundred million in

00:34:35.260 it like you'd you'd be like okay what now you know i can buy anything i want there's literally

00:34:40.620 nothing i can't buy but then you'll never run out of money but anyway so this this was the gmb

00:34:45.580 union which was supporting more than 3 000 pay claims against not only birmingham but coventry

00:34:49.820 westmoreland cumberland glasgow dundee and fife uh they they say well look it's the they've

00:34:54.940 handled equal pay issues in the past poorly it's like yes because it's because it's nonsense right 0.99

00:35:00.140 because you may remember in 2023 it was all uh very feminist we're like well i mean women are 0.99

00:35:04.940 being paid less for being women it's like no they're being paid less they do easier work and

00:35:08.220 they do fewer hours and that's literally where it all comes from but anyway so after this birmingham

00:35:12.940 of course went bankrupt right the birmingham council just went bankrupt and uh these are the

00:35:17.980 people demanding pay justice by the way including someone who obviously was working really hard

00:35:22.620 that look yeah yeah she's been busy she's been there for a long long time yeah uh but but look

00:35:27.340 look at look at the look at the the propaganda fair and full compensation for the discrimination 0.76

00:35:33.260 faced by birmingham's working women it's just feminist nonsense it's just feminist nonsense none 1.00

00:35:37.740 of these people produce anything and yet they are now looting the treasury of birmingham 0.95

00:35:42.620 they are now rendering the county uh the the city bankrupt uh and so this is just crazy absolutely

00:35:49.580 crazy and it's gotta be sad it's the gmb who are behind most of the big issues that we face there

00:35:55.020 the gmb are the ones who support a lot of the ngos funding on immigration cases they're the ones who

00:36:01.420 were funding lots of cases to take the government conservative government to court over brexit and

00:36:05.980 lots of other issues they're using their money all the time to act like a political party in in the

00:36:11.420 background controlling our country no no that's exactly right and this is entirely woke uh stuff this is

00:36:18.060 nonsense that shouldn't be possible but is because we live in a madhouse and so there's a great timeline

00:36:23.020 here but as you can see in february and march 2024 uh the government uh the birmingham council got bailed

00:36:29.980 out by the central government to the tune of 1.25 billion so you are financing these woke unions suing 0.65

00:36:37.980 birmingham council over nonsense claims so woke people can get money from the council you're financing it

00:36:44.940 just fyi uh i'm sure that it's going to be something that's cleared up but then obviously

00:36:50.780 there were some strings attached where you see the council has got to start passing budget cuts

00:36:55.020 well that's a problem because i mean they're obviously going to be massively over their own

00:36:59.900 budget but that means that some people are going to lose their jobs yeah how do the unions feel about

00:37:05.260 this can't have it that's exactly it they can't have it can't sack people to pay for the people we've

00:37:11.820 asked you to pay for extra money for people who are no longer working for them yep and so we'll put

00:37:17.500 a pin in that uh and we'll come back to that as well one quick thing i don't know if you're getting

00:37:21.740 onto it or not but has anyone been held accountable any individuals in the in the council what does that

00:37:28.780 mean they're doing exactly as they're supposed to piss your money down the drain but like a job if

00:37:35.340 it's a private company that goes into uh receivership or something um usually they'll come in they'll get

00:37:42.460 rid of they'll get rid of the people that made all the decisions and it would be like the the banks

00:37:48.300 that start saying well you've you have to sell all your assets and you have to do xyz and we can get

00:37:53.820 some of our uh badass relentless uh accountants to come in and actually balance the books regardless of

00:38:01.180 how destructive that is that's what's happening to you now oh this is they're not private companies

00:38:05.260 i know it's not i know i can guarantee that you'll never get anyone who's the chief executive

00:38:10.940 of birmingham and all his back office staff and all those members being losing their jobs when they're

00:38:16.540 the ones who are actually part of the major because they're running councils it's not really the

00:38:20.860 the councillors it's these people at the back end and they're the ones who all should be fired so as

00:38:24.860 far as i can tell nobody has been fired over it i would say not even fired but maybe even

00:38:28.780 investigated and prosecuted for sort of malfeasance or just yeah yeah you you would think but no i've

00:38:34.060 seen absolutely i mean gross incompetence i don't know what you'd call it feel free to check me in

00:38:38.140 the comments but i couldn't find it uh when i was researching the segment so if if it has happened

00:38:43.340 i wasn't aware of it and as far as i can tell it just hasn't happened anyway so uh the birmingham

00:38:48.780 were audited in 2022 before the bankruptcy and auditors grant thornton uh put out what they called a

00:38:55.420 quote jaw-droppingly bad report uh councillors at an audit committee said they were shocked and

00:39:00.700 ashamed by the report's contents oh well if they're shocked and ashamed then that's all right let's

00:39:05.900 move on yeah and that's it's literally it that's literally it that's you can just see the councillors

00:39:11.260 going to their nice dinner and going i'm shocked and shamed i'm shocked and shamed it's not going to

00:39:16.700 affect their pensions this year yeah five and a half six yes i'm that shocked and that shamed that's

00:39:21.660 exactly it it's not going to affect the pensions right they the the council has had to start

00:39:26.620 cutting things but not the 283 million pound gold-plated pensions for their staff so don't

00:39:32.300 worry about that it's you know actually services they're going to get cut not the pensions of the 0.99

00:39:37.500 councillors who have done such a good job on this and they're just there are some just really stupid 0.92

00:39:43.660 examples right so how about if birmingham council uh bring in uh regulation that say look you have to have 0.93

00:39:50.700 clean vehicles in birmingham streets on in birmingham streets and then we spend two and

00:39:55.820 two million on vehicles that just don't even comply with that and then hand them out as council vehicles

00:40:00.780 or whatever they were doing with them and it's like okay but what are you doing you know what are

00:40:04.860 you doing the entire thing is as uh the housing ombudsman called it mal administration severe mal

00:40:12.220 administration uh again as far as i can tell no one's actually been punished for any of this

00:40:18.140 uh they say we found severe maladministration of birmingham city council's response to disrepair

00:40:22.460 it left works incomplete they'll carry out further inspections that they promised to do

00:40:26.140 and the finding comes as the ombudsman is conducting a wider investigation into this

00:40:30.300 uh that found that the uh the annual review of complaints is higher than average for birmingham

00:40:35.180 city 54 percent higher more complaints than an average town so birmingham is particularly bad

00:40:43.580 for the way that it is being administered and in fact it's taking on the aspect of a kind of

00:40:48.700 like feeding frenzy you know it's like this this giant whale corpse yeah that's bloated

00:40:54.460 and it's fish just coming out and buying a lot i need to get a bigger mouthful of this as i can

00:40:58.620 no sue sue sue union sue sue like we'll just get as much as we can have it before the entire thing just

00:41:03.740 pancakes and explodes like so and that's genuinely what birmingham makes me think i'm reading through and

00:41:09.260 it's talking about birmingham being the council that actually carries out its own inspections and

00:41:14.860 does it's got its contractors and it's one of the worst councils for for being able to look after

00:41:20.940 its own tenants as a landlord yes on that and so we know that when you're dealing with contractors

00:41:27.420 and building things always go slightly askew i'm glad you used the word contractor as well because

00:41:33.580 one of the things in this we'll get into this in a minute uh one of the things that they've obviously

00:41:37.260 done as we saw in the first link is pissed away billions and billions of pounds on contractors

00:41:42.620 when they could have just hired people to do those jobs at half the price right but instead they

00:41:47.180 decided oh we'll just pay contractors and i assume these contractors got like familial relationships with

00:41:51.980 the councillors or something you know i haven't looked into it i'm not making any specific allegations

00:41:56.540 but i suspect there's going to be a lot of that going on there right and so we come to the bin

00:42:01.260 strikes right because after all of this the thing that has really brought birmingham into the

00:42:05.500 public consciousness at the moment is bin strikes now bin strikes are not a new thing for birmingham

00:42:09.740 uh as you can see um i'm just going to this one so uh seven years ago in 2017 uh birmingham had a

00:42:17.900 massive amount of bin strikes uh this went on for seven weeks uh and you can uh this was the night

00:42:24.780 union uh so a different union that is plaguing birmingham uh over just looting the town for money uh

00:42:33.340 huge amounts of problems with the rubbish piling up in the streets as you can see from the photos

00:42:37.820 because of spending cuts the council was trying to make now the cuts didn't affect the rubbish bin

00:42:45.420 collection services they specifically carved them out of these cuts said no we need uh to be able to

00:42:52.220 but they do give us an interesting thing here in this article that is 80 of the council's budget

00:42:59.340 is spent on 20 of the population which is really interesting because what it is the same thing they

00:43:04.460 do in swindon 80 of our council tax bills are redistributive so it's about providing health

00:43:10.460 care and services and like quality of life privileges to people who are disabled or you know in some other

00:43:17.180 way disadvantaged which means that essentially the people who are normal and who are just working hard

00:43:24.540 are kind of getting looted and what is what ought to be fulfilled by charities is being done

00:43:30.940 specifically by the government you don't seem happy about this no no i was just thinking unions it's

00:43:37.580 funny for me to say who's one of the least left-wing people you might meet but i'm not actually against

00:43:43.980 no unions a good idea unions uh in sort of the platonic perfect sense of unionization but once

00:43:50.220 they're overtaken by ideologues or people that don't care about the host organism or the country

00:43:57.420 then they're terrible they're terribly destructive they just put me in mind when you said that

00:44:02.380 back in the 2017 version they'd already ring-fenced the bin people yeah but yet the bin people still

00:44:07.900 kicked up a fuss anyway they're like a modern poster actor where they would they just want to eat

00:44:12.460 everything else that's around them that's edible and once they've eaten it they'll turn around and say

00:44:15.820 what else can we eat yes and when i look at one of the points you've raised it's just something

00:44:20.140 that i've i've wanted to do through the center that i look at with migration is look at how many

00:44:25.900 charities are receiving funding from local authorities because we now know that charities

00:44:30.780 across the whole spectrum are no longer charities most of the money that they get you talk about 80

00:44:35.740 which is probably about right for them as well is that they're getting that from local government

00:44:40.380 and central government funding so if we removed all that money from the charities as well you have to go

00:44:45.980 back to who they actually are then are the charities that we've got in existence ones that are really

00:44:51.500 looking after that 20 or they're really looking after themselves yeah and that that is a that is

00:44:57.340 a perennial problem uh that we have so um excuse me so yeah this uh this strike had been going on

00:45:05.340 since the summer uh the union was complaining that quote 120 jobs were at risk under birmingham

00:45:10.940 city council's restructuring plans and that low paid workers could lose up to five thousand pounds

00:45:15.740 a year so this is a perennial thing that the united union is saying so look you're thinking about

00:45:20.300 restructuring and the council like yeah well we've got to modernize to save five million a year

00:45:25.260 from our budget and they're like no no watch uh no bins and of course this was disgusting uh

00:45:31.340 apparently it was a buffet for rats 12 000 people signed a petition about it and the council leader

00:45:37.420 ended up quitting over it this is the closest i've seen to accountability and uh john clancy was

00:45:45.740 just like you know what it's just gross and i can't bother to deal with it and there's too much media

00:45:49.900 speculation and so i'm out and so anyway that eventually petered out and then in 2019 there

00:45:55.180 was another bin strike uh because why not um this was because in the previous bin strike they say that

00:46:02.940 that uh this this industrial action was because uh unite members have been denied council payments

00:46:08.460 made to gmb members who did not go on strike in 2017. so there's a strike because of an impropriety

00:46:15.340 because of the last strike so we're striking again because we didn't get exactly what we wanted

00:46:20.300 it's not right okay but this is your town this is your city that you're living in that you're turning into

00:46:24.780 a disgusting dump i can't believe you want to live like this but we'll get on to why exactly it's

00:46:29.740 not a problem for them to live like that soon anyway so this comes to the latest strike which 0.94

00:46:36.140 has been six years later and so members of the unite union once again went on strike uh over the fact

00:46:42.540 that they claim that the way that things are being done is being restructured and this will leave 150

00:46:49.020 members 8 000 pounds worth worse off which gives you an indication of how much inflation we've suffered

00:46:54.860 right it was five thousand pounds six years ago before covid now it's eight thousand pounds you know

00:46:59.340 know but i imagine the job hasn't changed that much and the wages haven't changed that much so

00:47:02.860 how many people was that 150 oh well it's not 120 now it's 150 that's not five thousand it's eight

00:47:09.500 house a giant city of millions of people can can live in filth there yes okay that makes sense sure

00:47:16.380 so 350 workers actually earning the eight thousand pounds is you know what i didn't look it up actually

00:47:21.420 yeah i'd be fascinated to find because i know that our hampshire area they're all on 40 to 45 yeah yeah and

00:47:28.700 that's not a bad whack anyway i don't know why i didn't know that uh so apparently the estimated

00:47:34.860 salary is only 21 000 but i find that difficult to believe again like i've got sympathy for underpaid

00:47:43.980 people doing a horrible job that are being squeezed even harder i've got sympathy for them yep but then

00:47:50.860 when it comes down to you know your your union is sort of forced you you'll be accused of being a scab

00:47:56.380 or whatever if you don't if you don't go along with it and meanwhile your own city turns into a public

00:48:03.260 health issue turns into an embarrassment the world over which which it absolutely is and it's been

00:48:09.500 caused for the sake of another one of your another one of your unions taking the council to court for

00:48:16.220 people who are not doing your job which is hard a hard a graph because they're sitting in an office

00:48:20.140 to get an extra lot of money which has now bankrupt them so they can't pay you the additional sums of

00:48:24.780 money yeah no one's putting that logic to the men themselves who's saying trade union in gmb you're

00:48:30.780 at fault for this where is unite attacking gmb they're not because the one thing that we do know

00:48:36.380 about all unions is the guys and the girls at the top are doing very well for themselves hold on to that

00:48:42.140 thought as well we'll we will come back to that very shortly uh anyway so one of the complaints that

00:48:47.820 they have which is fair to be honest uh they they say that uh the council were employing nearly 500

00:48:55.340 temporary workers uh which cost the council 18.9 million pounds a year and if they had just employed

00:49:02.860 them at salaries of 25 000 pounds a year that would win 12.3 million so they're obviously and this is

00:49:07.740 completely true they are obviously wasting huge amounts of money on agency workers and so the general

00:49:12.540 secretary sharon graham says well birmingham council has been wasting million upon millions

00:49:16.780 upon millions boosting agency profits that's true rather than going through the hassle of recruiting

00:49:21.420 you know finding a good person recruiting that person getting them on board and then having them

00:49:25.180 as a permanent member of staff which would have saved the council and therefore taxpayers loads of

00:49:29.820 money they said so we don't care it's not our money we don't care and we're just going to pay

00:49:34.620 50 percent more than we ought to pay just to get this thing done and so they're they're furious about this

00:49:41.500 maladministration is kind yeah it's very soft right yeah and so they're right rightfully and

00:49:48.060 understandably annoyed about all this but i think the whole thing has just become a very toxic

00:49:52.540 environment where it's just about getting yours while the getting is good because it seems

00:49:57.740 understandable that this this town is going down man this is not going to go on forever uh anyway so

00:50:04.060 that fair fair point by them but they're refusing to negotiate obviously and uh and then just just

00:50:09.100 finally yeah let's let's talk about the uh the people behind it um you you'd be surprised to

00:50:15.020 learn that uh the union bosses uh they've got the uh left-wing firebrand here uh anne-marie kilkline

00:50:23.580 uh lives 50 miles away from birmingham uh and she lives in a leafy suburb in a 600 000 pound

00:50:29.500 detached house uh yeah that gets its rubbish collected there's a husband putting these bins

00:50:34.220 out how did how did they get a get a mortgage on a 600 000 on her salary well you know they're like

00:50:40.620 doing pretty well for them yeah but it pays pretty good yeah pays pretty good so that's how

00:50:45.660 they can afford to live uh with an absolute s-hole uh because they don't live in birmingham 1.00

00:50:52.460 lives in nottingham not her problem bro yeah isn't that the classic thing the world over

00:50:59.580 every single time is that you end up with uh a party there's been in a party in the party whether

00:51:06.460 it's actually the soviet union or maoist china or in a george orwell novel whatever it is or in most

00:51:13.340 unions in the end there's an inner party that do well for themselves out of it all at the expense of

00:51:20.700 everyone else because all of the actual binmen doubtless live in birmingham so they have to live 1.00

00:51:26.140 amongst the refuse and the rats on 21 grand on 21 grand houses they can't afford and then she's

00:51:32.060 going to be on six figures a year and she lives in nottingham that's right in a nice detached house

00:51:36.700 in a leafy suburb that has none of these problems just incredible and they won't face the consequences

00:51:42.540 about this at all no no of course all these people are in the council who are bringing out the

00:51:47.100 contracts the ones who have got maladministration can that they'll still still do very well they've

00:51:51.980 got the nice pensions they're causing the strikes their union members they they are doing very well

00:51:57.660 and they'll have good pensions but the actual workers who rely on them to do the job and the

00:52:02.060 people who are paying the bills are the ones that are suffering and then remember these are just basic

00:52:07.020 communism for these people so yeah no if i speak the words then i can live like a prince

00:52:12.780 uh but i'm i'm supporting the people anyway he's got a dacca in nottingham yeah yeah right yeah

00:52:19.420 and in the end i don't want to be too alarmist about this because i did a segment about this a

00:52:22.380 couple weeks back in the end if you're not careful you end up with cholera oh yeah or typhus or the

00:52:28.220 plague yeah or something yeah but uh anyway we'll leave it there um bronco says the heritage railways

00:52:35.100 can't even run on coal anymore no more flying scotsman true uh mark arabic says uh there are about

00:52:40.140 three to five councils in the uk which are not looking at bankruptcy in the next few years all

00:52:43.260 from mismanagement yeah the the only ones are basically a bunch of conservative councils in

00:52:47.740 hyper um sort of um uh homogenous areas or rural areas yeah rural homogenous areas yeah

00:52:56.780 uh diverse cities tend to go bankrupt weirdly um and uh mark says as for not uh as for outside

00:53:04.700 intervention in councils bow it does not happen at best they hire contractors from the same budget

00:53:08.940 uh no one got fired and pilloried in birmingham they stepped down voluntarily and as far as i

00:53:12.780 can tell the one guy stepped down uh the engaged few says if shocked and ashamed isn't a prelude to

00:53:17.740 flogged it in prison then nothing will change we totally agree bring back the pillory yeah i i'm 0.65

00:53:24.220 i'm totally for corporal punishment these days and the hapsification says farming of food industrial

00:53:29.500 manufacturing energy and stem these policies and industries are vital for economic and national

00:53:33.740 security we are not prepared we are screwed yeah but at least the country is decaying in front of our

00:53:37.500 very eyes uh at least at least we're literally going to be able to feed on the largest rats known to 0.80

00:53:42.780 man uh so you know it's not all bad yeah and if you've ever seen a rat they're not particularly nice

00:53:47.260 i got one of my garden the other day they're great big brown at least mine's brown not a black one but

00:53:51.500 it's great big things to be honest and if there's one they're producing lots don't worry you're going to

00:53:56.300 be glad that's there sunday roast gavin bobe called a lot of this he said that where there's uh inner

00:54:05.900 cities that have been completely colonized uh they run themselves into the ground um to the point of

00:54:13.580 essentially annihilation almost yeah we're going to make this worse aren't we because we're now

00:54:18.940 like in terms of hampshire they're saying we're going to bring hampshire portsmouth southampton isle of

00:54:23.420 white into one large conglomerate yeah so that you the wealthy areas that are doing very well and

00:54:29.180 doing councils that okay can pay for profligate southampton and profligate portsmouth why not

00:54:35.340 that's what we're doing and we can segregate the the wealthy at the top who are running these

00:54:39.740 councils the same sort of that trade union person and they'll never get into trouble as we start your

00:54:44.460 decline just quickly fleet lord atvar bloody hell carl seeing your hometown video on youtube is 0.92

00:54:49.740 depressing now what are you talking about like swindon not great but it's not rubbish piling up

00:54:54.700 in the streets we're not bankrupt like you know swindon's bad but there are so many more levels

00:55:00.140 through which we are eventually going to collapse okay just fyi but anyway let's let's carry on

00:55:06.860 all right today we need to talk about the small boats again uh i'd like to actually rather than just

00:55:12.940 just pointing at it sorry did starman not smash the boats i heard something about smashing the

00:55:17.900 boats uh we have a good conference rishi rishi promised he was good smashing the gangs

00:55:24.540 no nothing has been done it's it's got worse if anything uh but i did want to actually try and um

00:55:30.380 drill down into this a little bit rather than just sort of pointing at it and tutting we've done that

00:55:34.540 enough i've even criticized some people in reform for doing that it's like yeah we know everyone knows

00:55:39.020 yeah we're being invaded yeah uh but i thought because we've got you on today steven we could uh

00:55:43.500 try because i know you know loads about this and being an ex-mep one of the best people to talk about

00:55:48.460 it um so just quickly say why it's in the news is that on saturday there was a record number uh 656

00:55:57.580 boat people came over on it on 11 boats a few were turned back record uh yeah it's not an overall one

00:56:04.460 day record was one day in 2022 which was obviously during the tory government must have been 800 and

00:56:11.020 1300 one day in early september 2022 1300 in one day i can't remember if it was pretty or suella

00:56:18.300 or james was the home secretary at the time i can't remember but one of them were um but yeah so far

00:56:24.060 this year it was a record uh and so far this year uh that is a that is an actual record year today

00:56:31.100 8 000 64 have come over projected something in the ballpark of 47 000 are likely to cross the

00:56:37.340 channel that's right that's i think we put this up on on the center for migration we've done an

00:56:41.100 estimate it's 27 higher than last year so that would put us on about 47 000 but if i take us back

00:56:47.500 to the time you talked about 2022 which i'm being conservative at that this stage that was a similar

00:56:54.220 sort of number and we're bigger than that in the early stages and that would lead us to go

00:56:58.220 actually more towards the 70 000 but at the moment i'm sticking on the kind of more conservative 45 47

00:57:06.060 to 50 000. but i think that i haven't got the numbers on there i think you might be having them

00:57:09.900 later but you look on average on the first year it's about 50 000 pounds per individual just in

00:57:17.020 their first year that's before they their claims are even dealt with that's in terms of cost food and

00:57:22.140 energy dealing medicine border force and that's why we've come to around eight billion is my was

00:57:28.060 my estimate last year a year that we're doing dealing with immigration and asylum i think it's

00:57:33.020 going to go up and of course the financial cost at least to my mind is sort of the least of the

00:57:37.420 problems but but nonetheless that is completely unsustainable and insane i just got a letter from

00:57:42.700 the tax man saying i need to pay my tax so it's actually very much in the front of my mind right

00:57:46.140 yeah but i mean those numbers are giant so like for example people some people our enemies quite

00:57:52.300 often like to talk about oh you're all the nation of immigrants anyway well oh we're not absolutely

00:57:56.860 not and anyway if you look at something like um the huguenot invasions it's hard to get invasion

00:58:02.620 yeah it's not even an invasion what 50 000 over 80 years or something yeah if you look at the numbers

00:58:07.020 compared to what protestants yeah compared to what's happening here yeah dutch process like still the

00:58:11.820 numbers if you're just looking at strap numbers it's tiny tiny like william the conqueror came

00:58:17.020 over with what 10 000 less yeah yeah probably 100 000 normans in total something like that at most i mean

00:58:24.780 okay so so that's happening um so one of the things i wanted to sort of ask you about steven or drill down

00:58:31.580 a bit on is okay let's just imagine we've got a government um that was prepared to truly act on it

00:58:41.020 so the first thing i wanted to ask you about is the echr yes because some people say uh we don't

00:58:46.860 even need to leave the echr we still we've already got if the government just had balls we've already

00:58:52.460 got things let me finish we've already got things in place where a government if it was prepared to 0.68

00:58:57.260 just act it's got everything they would need to do it others say no no you have to leave the echr

00:59:03.740 because everything else is sort of downstream from that okay um i would have to go back a little bit

00:59:08.780 further than that you actually have to go on to the un convention on human rights which is and and

00:59:14.620 and on the refugee convention both of those set in formality the principles that a nation has to

00:59:21.900 undertake when they're dealing with someone who claims asylum let's just take for example the goodness

00:59:27.020 of our own hearts that all of these people are genuine asylum seekers none of them are coming over for 1.00

00:59:32.060 economic reasons we have to put into our legislation which we have done for our immigration acts the

00:59:39.260 fact that when someone claims asylum we have to give them a lawyer we have to house them we have to feed

00:59:44.220 them we have to clothe them we have to prepare medicine for them and we have to educate them it's

00:59:48.700 like adopting a puppy that's great you know i've i've adopted this puppy brilliant it's a rather expensive

00:59:54.460 puppy yeah an extremely pampered puppy yeah 50 000 years so that's the first principle then what

01:00:00.700 happens is the european court on human rights gives a variety of rights to people to come in the most

01:00:05.820 important one is a right to family life and a right to not being imprisoned and not to have certain

01:00:11.500 removals and this is the but this is the one that the judges keep getting us on yes so what happens is

01:00:17.820 the the un convention on refugees says that you can actually remove people it actually gives you

01:00:23.420 provisions if they're not part of safety of our country if they are a danger to the public all of

01:00:29.580 those can go so someone's got to interpret that and we had our common law and our common law was

01:00:35.020 perfectly fine but we did sign the european convention on human rights and that gives lawyers the opportunity

01:00:41.020 to go to one of their asylum seekers and say okay why have you come here well i'm running away because 0.95

01:00:47.500 i'm gay actually because i'm dead at the moment at the moment we don't have that in our law you can't

01:00:54.620 we we can get rid of you so they make a claim under the european courts of human rights that that person

01:01:00.620 can stay because when they are out in sudan they're being abused and therefore they have to leave because

01:01:05.980 they're gay and then we have the international provisions so you get that in place then the courts

01:01:11.980 start extending it and that's why we get the ridiculous scenario where people are now being 0.90

01:01:17.020 told well my chicken mac nuggets actually taste different in albania than they do here it will

01:01:23.580 breach my son's rights so the courts have extended it but what's happened to us is all of that now is

01:01:30.700 embedded in our common law we have legislation ech or and common law so if you want to get rid of the

01:01:37.500 legal decisions defining what is family life and what are the provisions of uh of life privileges

01:01:45.340 and all the rest of it that we've got in international law are you a danger or not then you need to remove

01:01:51.260 the ech or because that gives no background for them to be able to go back look the judges in strasburg

01:01:56.700 have said chicken magnum nuggets is enough so that goes but then we have to remove the human rights act

01:02:03.340 because that's embedded it into our common law and then you have to go back and get judges to actually

01:02:08.300 overrule the human rights out elements that are now embedded in our common law because all the judges

01:02:13.740 will do go okay echor's gone hr's gone it's still there look judge friendly of mine of twice removed

01:02:22.300 made that decision in 2023 and the one of the really frustrating things that if you read article 8 of

01:02:28.940 the echr which is what they always get the person on it's the right to the family life and the thing

01:02:33.660 is it doesn't actually say any of these things like the the entire text is article 8 states that

01:02:38.860 everyone has the respect uh the right to respect for their private and family life home and correspondence

01:02:43.180 this this right includes protection against interference by public authorities except when

01:02:46.860 such interference is lawful and necessary for democratic society for reasons such as national

01:02:50.700 security or public safety additionally article 8 encompasses rights related to personal identity

01:02:54.780 and privacy including protection against unauthorized surveillance and data collection

01:02:58.780 and somehow that arrives at i can't be deported back to albania because my nuggets yeah and what's

01:03:05.740 fascinating about it is the us is not a member of the echr they are a member of the refugee convention

01:03:12.460 so in the refugee convention when they claim asylum they can do that but when they're making the

01:03:16.940 assessments they can turn around on exactly the rules within the un convention that says you're no

01:03:22.620 longer you are a security threat you're a danger to the public and that's why they're putting loads

01:03:28.140 of them on planes and getting getting rid so you have a situation where america had 200 to 350 000

01:03:34.620 a month coming across during biden under trump 8 200 and odd came across every one of them was arrested

01:03:43.020 and deported instantly the border crisis in the united states is over because they're not in the echr and

01:03:49.580 they're using convention provisions plus their own rules on on visas to say you're not welcome here

01:03:55.740 we can get rid of you it just telegraphs to the lot of them don't bother coming yes we will literally

01:03:59.900 remove you and so the border encounters dropped off which is one of the arguably the most important

01:04:05.180 thing is saying that something will happen to you so my question is this then um again let's just

01:04:11.020 imagine you've got a government and a leader who's prepared to actually work in our interests and have

01:04:16.460 so let's enter into the realm of fantasy yeah pure fantasy of course pretend if we were um then so

01:04:22.220 you're saying that we need to can the government can the prime minister sort of unilaterally just

01:04:28.940 leave the echr or does does even that need to go through parliament it has to go through parliament

01:04:34.140 but what you would need to do is a number of things i would say any any any prime minister who's

01:04:38.940 preparing this would have to have someone like stephen miller did for president trump over five years

01:04:44.380 prepare every strategic element in government both at a federal level and also a state game

01:04:50.220 plan a road they have to have a game plan and that game plan would be they have to have the legislation

01:04:55.020 for removing ourselves from the ech already because you've got a parliament that will vote for it the

01:05:00.540 same for the hr and then you would have to turn around and find a way of removing those in the house

01:05:06.620 the supreme court who would actually support those and get your own people in we can't do that they can

01:05:12.140 in the u.s just abolish the supreme court well that's that's the point what i would do then is

01:05:17.340 i would end the supreme court and bring it back to the house of lords and the house of lords then can

01:05:22.940 be filled with political decision makers as well as lawyers who would make those decisions for you

01:05:28.300 secondly you need to completely revamp the immigration rules procedures and courts to be

01:05:34.380 able to take into consideration what goes on you may have to use privy council rules and the ability to

01:05:40.460 be able to force people in the privy council i saw douglas carswell wrote some seriously good stuff

01:05:45.740 about that but his big issue on that would be in my my issue that if you look at who are the members

01:05:50.780 of the privy council most of them are blairites we're not replacing them how do they go again is

01:05:56.140 that not prime ministerial privilege so you've got whoever he wants in you can pack that in a way so

01:06:01.820 you'd have to have that as all part of your preparation to do so and once you've done that you're going you

01:06:07.340 you need to be in a position where you've got to instruct your own lawyers government lawyers and

01:06:12.780 many of those government lawyers are the ones who turned around and said oh we can't use the law of

01:06:17.340 the sea to return people back to france because the royal navy will get sued under the human rights act

01:06:23.500 so even within your own lawyers in the in in the kind of judicial system that you've got employed by

01:06:29.260 the government actually people you might need to remove as well just as the way that you're doing in

01:06:35.260 the fed the fbi the doj in the united states because it's embedded across all parts of the

01:06:41.260 system now that's a political element that we don't have the advantage to the united states 0.63

01:06:46.780 do we can get rid of legislation but all those other parts would need to be thought about

01:06:51.660 incredibly carefully get it ready and you'd have to do it quickly yeah okay so let's try and get this

01:06:57.660 clear um whether everything i'm about to say could be done with one sort of great repeal act where with

01:07:05.980 one with one david starkey approach yeah scrap it all what one great sort of act of parliament which

01:07:11.980 sort of start or at least starts this this roadmap the strategy to get it all done uh but so leave the

01:07:19.180 echr uh leave anything that the un has put in place to hamstring us well if you can do that that that

01:07:26.540 that would include it if you want to remove yourself from the un convention the same sort of

01:07:30.140 thing if you want to remove yourself and i think trump is actually looking at that at the moment

01:07:33.980 i know that in what stephen miller and various other people are tweeting about at the moment is that

01:07:38.380 they're considering whether they should even leave the un refugees convention if you did that that

01:07:43.420 removes all the rights that's where they're talking about abolishing asylum and kakori and i think it's

01:07:48.780 mark mark kakorian has written a really persuasive argument recently and i'll put it up on cmep

01:07:55.980 over the end of the day or something and we'll retweet it out to yourselves that's a really useful

01:08:00.780 piece of where they're thinking about it so a great repeal act yes if you wanted to go u.n convention

01:08:06.620 get rid of that echr hr get rid of that there were various ancillary pieces of legislation related to

01:08:13.980 the immigration act the supreme court uh the supreme court would need to go as well and we

01:08:20.060 bring back into the house of lords so you could have a packing the house of lords you could get a

01:08:24.220 great repeal bill the packing of the house of lords the packing of the uh privy council wouldn't be

01:08:29.980 part of the legislative process that would that be an executive thing that that would be a type of

01:08:36.780 executive prime ministerial roles so and that's where you get douglas carswell's ideas coming into place

01:08:41.980 utilizing privy council so there's legislation like a department of the prime minister

01:08:46.780 yes to bypass the cabinet office or the home office exactly that that would be one of the

01:08:51.340 things that he'd need to consider so you've got legislation you'd have changes structures of the

01:08:56.940 civil service as well as the cabinet and stroke prime ministerial offices and then you've also got

01:09:02.460 to be able to use executive provisions across a variety of areas and one of the things that i think

01:09:07.340 would could be and could be done very cleverly over a period of time is the preparation for the

01:09:14.140 secondary legislation that would remove say uh home office asylum rules immigration rules a procedure

01:09:22.300 all of that can be done as well because they're secondary legislation but they that as long as they're

01:09:27.500 prepared they could be attached to the back of the great repeal act and then they could go through on

01:09:33.500 a secondary legislation overnight and be done as well so really all it takes is 350 barbarians and

01:09:40.060 a very well prepared uh prime minister to do this yes and i think that's what you're looking at in in

01:09:46.220 in trump is that he's took one individual and i i mentioned stephen miller but there are obviously

01:09:51.420 kakori and there are others around this but if you look at miller as the the figurehead he didn't do that

01:09:56.380 on his own no he prepared that with lawyers across the across the various states he would have talked to

01:10:01.900 various uh governors who were supporting him to build that package and then they would have took

01:10:06.780 it to trump and we worked out how it was done and then their team sort of said this is what we're

01:10:11.020 going to do on day one the speed that they did that in the us shows how planning can work if you

01:10:18.460 want to change things rapidly what do you think about the idea we already mentioned that of douglas

01:10:25.020 mentioned the idea of the department of the prime minister in order to sort of wield prime ministerial

01:10:30.700 fiat with uh real power what do you think david starkey's voice saying this would be

01:10:36.060 uh a centralization of executive power and the prime minister and this will have knock-on effects

01:10:41.260 well i was gonna say what about what do you think of the idea the concept of that you create a new

01:10:46.380 department and you call it whatever you want the department for re-migration or department for

01:10:51.580 for whatever you want to call it a new border department or something um and you take all the

01:10:56.140 powers away from the home office and the rnli and everyone that's involved in getting us flooded

01:11:05.020 by foreign criminals and you put it all in this new department and you make sure that that's staffed by 0.77

01:11:11.020 uh people that are acting in in our interests is that

01:11:16.300 is that just pie in the sky nonsense to you or is that something oh i i think it's not pie in the sky

01:11:21.100 nonsense one if you deal with that and i think uh it was very well put by by carswell you recognize

01:11:26.460 that you also have to change the civil service rules as well in order to do that because you're

01:11:32.460 going to have to employ people from the civil service we don't have a situation where we've got

01:11:36.780 in the united states where once biden went literally apartment blocks were being emptied by people who

01:11:43.500 were leaving over what is it over 10 000 people just leave washington overnight because they're

01:11:49.180 all bidenites and democrats and they're replaced by 10 000 people who are now employed by the republicans

01:11:55.500 to do their jobs we don't have that so you need to get that particular department to be able to have

01:12:02.300 the rules change too i think it's feasible but i do uh worry about exactly the point you've raised and

01:12:08.780 what starkey has raised is once you do that we start to move towards the united states and labor

01:12:14.780 will just inherit and if if labor comes in they have the same thing so then we'd have to completely

01:12:20.220 change in my view the the way that we look at our supreme court it would have to become

01:12:26.780 nominated just like the us and in many ways what i would prefer is a client of our own homegrown

01:12:34.780 bill of rights but as i've thought about this so many times and i've talked about it i'm deeply

01:12:40.060 concerned that we had a common law that created our own bill of rights and that's been overruled and

01:12:45.260 destroyed by the executive employing eu sort of regulations in that's enabled people like blair

01:12:53.900 to bring in think tanks sorry not think tanks i guess wangos to take those aspects of our lives in

01:13:01.180 over and they run it without any political interference or democracy really controlling

01:13:07.740 them my worry is if we do that with the prime minister whether they will be able to have that as

01:13:12.220 well so i in principle i like it i like to have the idea that someone can come in ready and willing to do

01:13:19.500 it we've preferred we prepared we've got a department ready to go but will that then have the enduring

01:13:27.180 power to ensure that the democratic values that we have as a nation sustain itself when it comes under

01:13:33.420 attack as it will do by the next and we saw what happens with the trade units they'll come in but we

01:13:38.780 can remove their money one of the most powerful things that we have when you're in government

01:13:43.260 is removing their cash all right remove the funding once the money goes as you've seen with doge

01:13:49.740 as the cash goes they implode i have this concept and it's very very straightforward but i don't see a

01:13:55.500 problem with it that it wasn't that long ago we had a country without all these quangos and without 1.00

01:14:01.180 the uh out at the supreme court if we just literally just swept away that entire edifice

01:14:08.380 uh yeah one criticism of that would be well that makes the prime minister extremely powerful

01:14:12.940 presidential level powerful and what happens when it falls into the hands of the next party but i feel

01:14:18.300 like that's the lesser of two evils though i would much prefer us to have a cabinet that is strong

01:14:23.180 enough with proper departments being run under a democratic mandate in which they can be chastised

01:14:28.700 by the prime minister and yes i'd much prefer to have a period where you'd have thatcher going up

01:14:34.700 against her enemies within the cabinet yes they were briefing each other against each other but

01:14:39.340 it still it wasn't a fault they were still under our control to an extent layer changed it all and

01:14:45.740 that was that's part of the downfall of this nation so one of the last things i wanted to ask you

01:14:50.140 about pick your brain about is again i think it was something starkey had said uh not too long ago

01:14:55.180 um he said that again imagine this fictional government uh acting in our interest uh with

01:15:01.260 with a spine imagine they came in and the prime minister says i'm just declaring a state of emergency

01:15:08.700 uh they're sitting around the cabinet table in number 10 okay it's an emergency

01:15:11.740 uh because we're being invaded by by 40 to 70 000 people a year um i'm taking uh this entire question

01:15:20.540 away from uh border force the rnli the home office and i'm putting and i'm giving it to my defense

01:15:28.140 minister do what you've got to do go and put uh a frigate or something in the channel go and put sbs

01:15:35.660 sas dudes in speed boats stop it today if they did that starkey said i think he said i don't want

01:15:43.260 to get him wrong but paraphrasing he said that well you get a knock on the door from the police

01:15:47.180 then the police will come around and want to interview the prime minister and the cabinet

01:15:52.140 because you're breaking laws is that right is that true i mean i think starkey would have looked at

01:15:57.900 that more particular than me i hope i haven't got him wrong on that if that's the case it's

01:16:02.620 it's entirely a possibility i'd have to look through that but my understanding of it is of course that

01:16:07.900 the prime minister can re change any part of the government to go with any particular department

01:16:14.220 so he could move the aspects of border force and control out of the home office into the the defense

01:16:21.660 department and and of course if you're in such a big scenario where you've got a large majority

01:16:26.060 that too could be part of your great repeal act the question i think where he's got the issue

01:16:30.860 that i i see is that one of the reasons one of the departments that have stopped us from being

01:16:36.940 able to use legislation and international law which is the law of the sea solace solace enables us to

01:16:42.700 return the boats to france today the home affairs select committee heard from experts both barristerial

01:16:48.540 and professors that said that we could do that so the royal marines literally just tow these dinghies

01:16:53.660 straight back to the beach on calais drop them off there and france can't say oh you're invading our

01:16:58.780 beaches and this is where we came into two particular issues one is political which is the

01:17:03.260 foreign office say we can't do that because we're upsetting our french friends and this would cause

01:17:07.180 an international you know dispute and maybe if i go on holiday back to the dordogne they might not

01:17:11.740 allow me to be there and they'd actually tell me off over dinner so the prime minister you can't really

01:17:16.060 do that and i'm sure that's sort of the real aspects of the foreign office that that's one of the

01:17:21.500 reasons they do and i've actually spoken to foreigners really didn't like that suggestion at senior

01:17:26.460 level to me they said it was an internet we can't do that it came against the grain of who we are as

01:17:31.180 a nation actually no you can do it the law says we can do it and then the second part was legal this

01:17:37.100 is where the lawyers for the defense defense for the department yeah so the defense ministry lawyers

01:17:43.900 said that we would be putting any soldier at risk or naval officer at risk of charges for potential

01:17:52.140 manslaughter at the at sea if anyone died or was injured so therefore they can't do it and that's

01:17:58.780 why they backed off from doing that or we is that true though or is that just oh again there is true

01:18:05.740 it's an argument that could be put forward in the course just as we've done with soldiers

01:18:09.900 look how many soldiers that we've tried to challenge across the country for what they've done in ireland and

01:18:15.340 in iraq in iraq afghanistan they've done all of those so again a great repeal act would remove

01:18:22.780 those particular points and make it clear that they're safe to do so so we might not be able to

01:18:29.100 do it on day one as trump did we've got day two but we've got a few days in which we can do it so is

01:18:34.540 in the power is within the purview of parliament to pass new legislation uh preventing members of the

01:18:42.540 royal navy or the ss or whatever it is from being prosecuted if anyone was injured when they were

01:18:47.740 towed back to the calais they can change the legislation to change any criminal it's within

01:18:52.220 our power to yeah all they were then all that would leave the law lawyers then is arguing the

01:18:56.860 international law and we would say okay we remove ourselves from that too yeah right we remove ourselves

01:19:03.180 from that aspects of the law of the sea that doesn't apply to us if i recall correctly the entire

01:19:07.420 point of the english civil war is to establish the absolute supremacy of parliament and that's exactly

01:19:12.460 so okay let's use it right but if you want a clear clear example of why they can do it and how

01:19:18.700 quickly they can do it just look what we were talking about early on over everybody getting on

01:19:24.300 trains down to on a saturday to vote for a piece of legislation to try and protect scunthorpe

01:19:30.460 if they can do it to protect scunthorpe they can do it to protect our borders so i hate to interrupt us

01:19:35.660 there but we're gonna have to move on for time just like to finish just saying so there is a strategy

01:19:41.340 or a roadmap possible to stop the boats it's not impossible individuals who can be funded

01:19:48.300 over a period of time to create that scenario legislation and practicalities in preparation

01:19:54.940 in the hope that we get a government of the those who support that particular view hewitt says abolish

01:20:02.700 democracy for a decade with a fixed date on which series of reparendums take place to decide the

01:20:06.620 future of the country in the meantime the entire blur out infrastructure has moved okay mr cromwell

01:20:11.340 calm down uh i was thinking more cincinnatus of sulla there is

01:20:19.100 i think cincinnatus may be more than solar um yeah yeah we never go full solar

01:20:24.780 no no no never say anything yeah yeah never t-shirts never go full solar yeah uh have we got

01:20:31.980 any video comments today samson all right okay uh russian says steven is a quality returning guest

01:20:38.060 keep him coming back thank you appreciate it and what's the time mr wolf says uh all right now yeah

01:20:45.740 labor wolf is such a cool surname i wish i had a cool surname i've got a really boring surname uh

01:20:51.340 labor celebrating saving british steel is just a classic case of government fixing a problem that

01:20:55.420 they themselves caused it was the government that let chinese company purchase the plant and it was

01:20:59.660 the government that was gonna let die but i'm just baffled how we allow foreign countries and 0.98

01:21:04.860 companies to buy things we own it should be just forbidden it's machiavelli the prince 101 isn't it

01:21:10.700 we've said it a number of times i know you have i'm pretty sure i have it's literally 101 don't let

01:21:15.820 foreign enemies control your army your infrastructure be the leaders it just obviously

01:21:22.140 do not rely on foreign mercenaries is basically machiavelli's entire strategy yeah just do anything

01:21:28.540 other than that you only have to look what the britons did when they brought in the angles and

01:21:32.460 the danes protect ourselves from those danes coming over but they're our mates from the village next 1.00

01:21:36.700 door listen in the your week will take them over in the defense of the anglos they did refuse to pay

01:21:42.860 them so you know go over defeat the picks and they're like can we get paid and apparently not

01:21:47.820 like according to the legends or the romans packing their own legions with the suabian franks and

01:21:52.940 lombards oh yeah that's and then wondering why they don't fight very hard anymore at least not for 0.98

01:21:58.620 the romans anyway or just flip or just flip yeah maybe that's why they don't want to do national

01:22:03.100 service just being a bit controversial at the last minute yeah the bonsall bomber says well as long

01:22:07.340 as we're not creating emissions in our own country then it's all right and that's literally ed

01:22:10.940 miliband's position on this like no i want china to incur the moral debt of producing things

01:22:18.860 like god i hate this country uh thomas says uh another view of the scunthorpe election labor 15k

01:22:25.580 conservative 12k reform 8k saying that basically reform has split the vote there um possibly but

01:22:31.580 the conservatives are the ones who sold it so yeah what good would it be electing more conservatives

01:22:36.140 uh they're honestly right i've i've genuinely come to the point where labor are essentially the

01:22:41.660 sort of dreamy wing of the left they're like yeah maybe we should do ridiculous communist stuff

01:22:47.100 and the conservatives are the executive wing of the left like no yeah good point we are going to do 0.82

01:22:51.900 that ridiculous communist stuff for example the labor party have never had a non-white non-man 0.93

01:22:57.580 in charge of their party right tories are on second female pro to perform on premises indian premise 0.96

01:23:03.020 and now they have an african immigrant in charge of the in charge of the party that's what the labor

01:23:07.340 party have been demanding this whole time so the labor party dreams up nonsense the conservative

01:23:11.820 party puts it into practice that's how this works do you know i feel like something profoundly broke

01:23:17.500 uh in in in the conservative movement with blair where blair sure well yeah it goes back the rock

01:23:28.060 the rock goes back further than that but certainly that 10 years of of blair actual blair himself in

01:23:33.500 number 10 i think they saw that not just cameron but all sorts of people to this everyone apart from

01:23:38.860 peter hitchens yeah they saw that and they said that's that's he's a winner he wins that's a winning

01:23:46.220 strategy what he's doing there so we'll do that and if anything we'll dial it up a bit and it's just

01:23:52.220 as simple as that it's just as simple as that i mean i think the conservative party probably died when

01:23:57.100 they decided to flip away from enoch powell he seems to be the last authentic conservative voice

01:24:03.500 in the conservative party and i never understand i know i shouldn't go on about it but never underestimate

01:24:08.860 the power of the philosophy of the eu to all those leaders at that time and the control of the

01:24:15.500 foreign office and the treasury in respect of that particular aspect and all our political leaders

01:24:21.340 well i mean at the time it just seemed like the future right like the the brextears were barbarians 0.99

01:24:27.100 who were just luddites like what are you doing you know i would still argue that the case today but i

01:24:31.740 think we're we're now proving them with situations like sconthorpe that we were ahead of the game you

01:24:36.700 know what's really annoying though is that britain now okay so we've we're thrown off the shackles

01:24:40.780 we can do anything we want so what do we do nothing nothing at all you know i remember the

01:24:45.420 euphoria in 1997 yeah yeah yeah it was like the obama like obama thing or um or when nelson mandela

01:24:55.340 you're just not gonna vote against obama first time around or mandela or tony blair in 1997 there's

01:25:01.420 something wrong with you you're against you're against civilization almost if you do that wasn't he a

01:25:07.180 handsome young man yeah handsome mr blair yes cool britannia don't you trust a lawyer

01:25:15.500 fleet lord adfair by the way said get mobilized get everyone on board take over well we'll see what

01:25:19.580 we can do uh jm denson said uh since mcchiavelli was brought up the italian people's desire for

01:25:24.140 justice and revenge against foreign invaders creates powerful motivation for their military

01:25:27.900 to succeed yeah but that didn't happen did it anyway let's go on um 0.75

01:25:33.980 um so uh lancelot says imagine treating your elite fighting force as garbage men uh someone

01:25:40.140 should tell starmer he sent them after the wrong kind of amendment oh yeah i forgot that i forgot in

01:25:43.740 that entire seminar i forgot to say by the way they're going to call in the army to clean it up

01:25:47.740 i forgot to mention that's what inspired the whole thing say that they're sending the navy to collect

01:25:51.660 a whole load of coal yeah what did you sign up to do i collect coal for the royal navy

01:25:57.900 from japan all right it'd be good though if we ran coal down from newcastle like they used to yeah

01:26:04.380 from newcastle all the way down the you're right about canals like they're really cheap energy

01:26:09.580 efficient ways the best way to transport anything is just by the water so it's just like okay well

01:26:15.900 let's do that we've got canals why can't we do that but using the army to clear up rubbish in

01:26:20.140 birmingham i mean that's such a fail isn't it on a fundamental level that you've got to call in the

01:26:25.900 army to do it yeah maybe they'll have a whole set of like really well-trained snipers to take

01:26:31.500 out the rats and what part of the division are you i'm rat division yeah on rat detail it's not

01:26:38.540 that absurd is it it's literally what they're using their ammunition for these days uh lord 0.89

01:26:44.140 naravar says i work in central birmingham in a rare setting where there are a lot of white brummies 1.00

01:26:50.140 so just as a quick thing here right the first time i went to birmingham i'd never been there before

01:26:54.460 and there was some asian guy at the uh ticket booth um i was probably about 20 years old right

01:27:00.380 some amazing guy at the ticket booth in uh in the train station and i was like hi can i have a

01:27:05.420 teeth here he's like all right mate and i was it was i was just taken aback by how jarring the accent

01:27:09.580 was i mean but obviously you know at the time i was just young i had no idea what birmingham was like

01:27:15.020 and i just didn't really expect it but this was before this was like it must have literally been the

01:27:19.580 first couple of years of tony blair's labor so like it wasn't normal but anyway he says um it

01:27:25.180 did used to be weird when someone with a turban's got a very strong brummie yeah it was really i always 1.00

01:27:29.820 find it odd when you see people with a very very strong scottish accent like an almost 0.52

01:27:34.300 indecipherable glasgow accent but they're sub-saharan african yeah it is it is it's still odd it is unusual

01:27:42.220 but anyway uh he says they are absolutely incensed with what's become of their city they remember times when

01:27:47.660 birmingham wasn't like this this and they all fervently desire to return to them uh they also

01:27:52.460 know who's responsible for it yeah well this is the thing i say about swindon swindon needs to be

01:27:56.300 quite nice actually not that long ago not even that long ago it was really quite nice uh you don't

01:28:02.940 realize how bad things can become that's the problem uh henger says uh we had a bin strike six weeks

01:28:09.740 last year nobody noticed all the people just took the rubbish to the tip yeah and that's another thing as

01:28:14.060 well isn't it if if it was my town that had a rubbish strike i wouldn't just throw it into the

01:28:18.540 street no not at all i'd take it myself exactly you take it yourself like a cup of quid or whatever

01:28:24.060 you need to pay to dump it like it's crazy how is it but again you can feel the sense of

01:28:29.820 possession and ownership that people have over the town right they don't no i don't care

01:28:33.820 the street that's that's my rubbish outside that window i'm really proud of that large pile of

01:28:38.540 dirt that i've thrown out there for my neighbors in the south in the place it's not their city i'd

01:28:43.180 go one step further it's not even their country yeah often yeah if you're first generation yeah i

01:28:49.100 think i think a lot of them just have no attachment to this area the world um john says uh i meant to

01:28:55.260 be visiting the uk for a few days next month london and manchester i'm having second thoughts well

01:28:59.660 yeah the problem is london and manchester right go to somewhere like durham durham's lovely

01:29:04.300 right go somewhere like bath bath is lovely i went to bath the other day actually absolutely

01:29:08.620 lovely still lovely although you do see the odd vape shop and the odd barber spring up salisbury

01:29:13.820 the odd vape shop the old barber they're still lovely places come to winchester and we're starting

01:29:17.580 to see that six barber shops three vape shops in one of the most expensive towns in the country

01:29:22.860 it's like the creeping corruption uh in a video game like in starcraft or something the zerg

01:29:27.820 it exists and it will continue the zerg menace if i could say one quick one in defense of london 1.00

01:29:36.060 of being a london if you have is that um in central central london

01:29:40.780 it it's not as bad you know like round uh westminster abbey or in bloomsbury and you go to the british

01:29:47.180 museum or something it's not uh it's not a dystopian hellhole it's it's in the suburb very affluent

01:29:54.060 places it's when you go like i did on sunday and you sit in hammersmith right because you park there

01:29:58.700 to get into london you've come back out in the tube and you sat there for a cup of coffee and

01:30:01.900 you've gone how quickly can we drink this yeah let's get the hell out of dodge yeah uh kevin says

01:30:08.620 the argentinians took the falklands with three thousand in one day and we call it an invasion 1.00

01:30:12.140 the uk is looking at three thousand a month and that's not an invasion no no we're looking at three

01:30:15.340 thousand a week kevin uh and it and it definitely is an invasion by the way i mean it's literally invading i

01:30:21.340 i don't know how to there's no other way of accurately uh characterizing it frankly uh

01:30:27.660 how would you i mean they're literally getting on boats and breaking into the country

01:30:32.620 we go back to denmark and daniel and anglo-saxons we we have more in a year than they did come over

01:30:37.660 in a hundred years exactly the great heathen army nothing compared to what we've got shame i didn't

01:30:42.860 get around to asking you the question about building a detention center in dover or a bigger one i think

01:30:47.740 there's one already there but they're not indefinitely detained building a massive detention

01:30:52.860 facility and boat people never leaved over i've got one better when he was prince charles rather than

01:31:01.100 king charles he he complained that we really weren't very kind towards those people coming across and

01:31:05.900 refugees should be welcome he's got an estate in in in scotland that's the size of liverpool i said okay

01:31:11.580 let's use that yeah yeah put them there it does two things the scots want it and he wants it so 0.52

01:31:17.100 we've got a bunch of empty islands off the north of scotland there's literally no one there just

01:31:21.260 dump them there and give them triple perimeter barbed wire fences throw them in well another

01:31:25.820 thing is someone suggested is as as the coals coming in from japan we empty that and we take them

01:31:30.700 pat diego garcia and just i hate to i hate to do this but we're out of time um so uh thank you all so

01:31:37.180 much for joining us thank you for your generous donations and go and sign up for the website if

01:31:41.260 you want to support us help keep the lights on and we will be back tomorrow have a great evening

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - April 14, 2025

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1142

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