The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

00:00:00.320 Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters for the 2nd of May 2025.

00:00:05.300 I am Josh, I'm joined by Beau and I'm very pleased to have Tim Davies here today.

00:00:10.060 Good, thank you.

00:00:11.240 I don't know what else to say, yeah it's brilliant.

00:00:13.940 Yes, you've got your own channel haven't you?

00:00:15.960 I have yeah, absolutely Fast Hit Performance, yes.

00:00:18.240 And I believe I'm presenting something here today at some point.

00:00:20.660 Yes you are.

00:00:21.900 We're living the dream every day, every day.

00:00:24.040 I do also have an announcement to make and that is that I'm going to be leaving Lotus Eaters full time.

00:00:29.480 I will be back as a guest so you'll still be seeing me but less frequently.

00:00:34.880 And there should be a video release seeing at about half one on social media explaining it and reassuring you that I'm still going to be about.

00:00:44.080 So don't worry too much, okay.

00:00:45.720 I know I've been here for four and a half years and I suppose what I will say is thank you very much to Carl.

00:00:52.640 Thank you very much to everyone I work with at Lotus Eaters.

00:00:54.840 It has been a pleasure.

00:00:56.600 Made some very good friends here.

00:00:57.760 And thank you very much to you, the audience.

00:01:01.300 You've been, even though I was very nervous, I know what the internet was like when I started.

00:01:06.080 You've been a bunch of sweethearts.

00:01:07.600 You're all really nice deep down.

00:01:10.060 Some people show it less than others but you've been really, really nice and supportive and I very much appreciate it.

00:01:15.740 And, you know, I've had the experience of people approaching me in the street and shaking my hand and telling me how much my work means to them which is wonderful and I'm always happy for that.

00:01:26.580 And thank you very much, I suppose, for the opportunity.

00:01:29.700 And with that out of the way, I suppose, let's talk about what we're actually going to be talking about.

00:01:35.960 You've just started a new channel.

00:01:37.200 Show your new channel.

00:01:38.000 Yeah, that's true.

00:01:39.700 I have a new channel.

00:01:40.600 It's just under my name, Joshua Firm, and you can check it out.

00:01:46.080 Nice spelling there.

00:01:47.880 Oh, there's my Twitter.

00:01:49.140 It'll be my main post, I think.

00:01:51.120 Oh, no, I've been tweeting about Germans with their family in their basements. 1.00

00:01:56.060 Oh, TV's messed up.

00:01:57.300 There I am.

00:01:58.020 There's me with a pint on Dartmoor in a nice pub.

00:02:01.960 But, yes, please check it out.

00:02:03.520 Get into 10,000 ASAP.

00:02:05.200 Well, you are, because I checked yesterday, you're like 200, so your rate of growth is far, far higher.

00:02:09.500 Yeah, I uploaded my first video 17 hours ago.

00:02:12.600 Look at that.

00:02:13.160 Already broken 1K.

00:02:14.800 That's excellent.

00:02:15.360 So thank you very much if you've done that.

00:02:17.740 And, yeah, I'm going to be doing this alongside.

00:02:20.020 I'll be finding another job, probably in politics, I imagine, at some point.

00:02:26.340 I'll wait and see what happens.

00:02:27.460 But I'll be doing that in the meantime whilst I'm on the Huntford work, I suppose.

00:02:31.940 But, yes, we're going to be talking about today Reforms Night of Victory, because there

00:02:36.140 were local elections, and Beau's going to be walking us through it.

00:02:39.360 You stayed up all night, so you must be very tired.

00:02:42.100 A little bit.

00:02:42.560 I am a little bit tired, yeah.

00:02:43.980 Nearly all night.

00:02:44.380 Just a little bit.

00:02:45.000 Nearly all night.

00:02:45.740 I had a couple of hours, Kit, but, yeah.

00:02:47.840 Show off.

00:02:48.920 No.

00:02:49.640 I don't know how you're doing it.

00:02:51.200 If I don't have a full seven hours, I feel miserable.

00:02:54.760 I'll be talking about...

00:02:56.500 Oh, no, I won't.

00:02:57.840 You'll be talking about DEI and the military, but I think we'll all have a thing or two

00:03:03.480 to say about that.

00:03:04.400 I've thrown in a graph that is very confusing there.

00:03:07.260 And then I'm going to be talking about how, actually, Putin is a liberal boomer.

00:03:14.080 I imagine this is probably a bit left of field to most people, but it was just something

00:03:18.200 that I saw, a recent statement, which I thought was unusual, and then I did some digging and

00:03:23.660 realised, actually, Russia is not quite what people say it is, and I'm going to give you

00:03:28.840 another side to it that you probably wouldn't have heard, and it's just a bit of fun for

00:03:34.560 the last segment on a Friday.

00:03:36.160 And my last segment is a full-time employee at Lotus Eaters.

00:03:39.580 So, with all of that out of the way, I've gone on for far too long.

00:03:43.140 Take us away, Beau.

00:03:43.940 Right, so, it was a big night for Reform UK.

00:03:48.280 Oh, what a night.

00:03:50.000 Massive.

00:03:50.760 Massive.

00:03:51.220 Like, a game-changer.

00:03:52.800 Paradigm-changing thing.

00:03:54.160 Possibly.

00:03:54.700 Let's not, first of all, let's not go over the top because local elections aren't really,

00:04:00.060 or sometimes are, but usually aren't actually a bellwether for what's going to happen at

00:04:03.260 the next general election.

00:04:04.440 However, having said that, this is such a change, I think, that we can, it is sort of getting

00:04:10.760 into that territory.

00:04:11.500 It's almost like a landslide, really, there, isn't it?

00:04:15.000 Like, Reform gained 120, the Conservatives are down 94, Lib Dems up 11, which, you know,

00:04:21.380 they're just the beige party of nothingness, and Labour down 30, Independents down 9, Greens

00:04:28.020 up 2.

00:04:28.760 So, basically, all the major parties except the Lib Dems are down, and Reform are the

00:04:36.240 main victors.

00:04:37.120 They've basically hoovered up, haven't they?

00:04:38.700 Well, one thing to say, obviously, Reform haven't had any councillors before, so anything

00:04:43.280 they get is going to be that amount up.

00:04:46.060 Yeah.

00:04:46.240 But nonetheless, even despite that, yeah, they've taken stuff off of everybody, really.

00:04:51.860 Even the Lib Dems were expected to do better than that.

00:04:54.660 So, it looks like Reform, well, it is the case that Reform are taking local councillor seats,

00:05:02.480 council seats, off of everyone, more or less.

00:05:05.840 Because that was one of the things that Reform's critics would always say, is that you're just

00:05:11.660 a replacement for the Tories, and you'll never actually buy into Labour's vote.

00:05:17.680 Well, that doesn't look like that's true.

00:05:19.980 Yeah, they've done.

00:05:20.340 That was one thing Nigel said straight after, and it's true. 0.95

00:05:22.920 Yeah, they have done very well, to their credit.

00:05:24.960 I have been critical of Reform in the past, but you've got to acknowledge when they've

00:05:28.940 done a very good job here, and they clearly have.

00:05:30.720 Sure, sure.

00:05:31.580 I think Matt Goodwin, you see what he said this morning, I think it was on Twitter,

00:05:34.020 he was saying, he was basically throwing out his line saying, you know, we are the second

00:05:37.800 party in the UK, you know, he's quite combative now, isn't he?

00:05:40.560 Real opposition.

00:05:41.300 I don't think really that people are, and what he was saying is, you know, the real world

00:05:44.280 is not Twitter, the real world is, you know, the people out there that are voting.

00:05:47.480 And I get that, and I fully, you know, I've sort of not hit Reform as such, but I've most 0.94

00:05:51.420 definitely been against what Nigel did with Rupert on the exit of the party and things like

00:05:55.640 that, I think, and I think that's kind of characterised, I think, him, really, as a

00:06:01.100 bit of a spiteful sort of character.

00:06:03.320 But then, you know, you're right, they've done absolutely very well.

00:06:05.440 I just worry sometimes that they're sort of believing their own, you know, hype.

00:06:10.420 Yeah.

00:06:11.300 You know, what can we do, though, all right?

00:06:12.820 You know, fair play, they're taking votes of other parties.

00:06:15.400 Is it a uni party, though?

00:06:16.360 I don't know.

00:06:17.300 Well, yeah, I mean, so just to be clear, if anyone doesn't know, we've been fairly

00:06:21.900 critical of Reform.

00:06:22.860 They treated me and Dan quite badly.

00:06:24.440 Carl's been very vocal, we've all been pretty vocal about Reform and that they're

00:06:28.480 not up to, they're not based enough for us, or we're too based for them, put it

00:06:32.360 another way.

00:06:34.200 However, despite all of that, despite all of that, I still wish them well on some

00:06:39.520 level.

00:06:39.920 I've said it, I said it just earlier in the week, I think they're a containment

00:06:42.360 project.

00:06:43.180 However.

00:06:43.800 I agree.

00:06:44.320 However, I still wish them well on another level, because the normal councillor people

00:06:49.400 and the normal grassroots people, they're the salt of the earth.

00:06:52.360 Um, I just feel a bit sorry if maybe they're being duped, but maybe they're not, maybe

00:06:56.820 they're not being, um, but I'm still behind them because at this stage where there's no

00:07:01.720 other real credible alternative, if they're doing damage to the uni party, then I'll take

00:07:07.980 that.

00:07:08.240 But for now, right where we are in April 2025, I'll take that.

00:07:13.100 Happy with that.

00:07:14.080 It's moving the Overton window.

00:07:15.200 It's damaging both Tories and Labour.

00:07:18.860 Good stuff, right?

00:07:20.300 It is.

00:07:20.800 You're absolutely right.

00:07:21.340 But isn't the main thing that the country's talking about is about immigration and

00:07:24.280 remigration?

00:07:25.060 Yeah.

00:07:25.160 And he's already said, he's not, you know, I think who got them out of him, um, was it

00:07:28.940 Stephen Edgerton?

00:07:29.660 It was, yeah.

00:07:30.300 Yeah.

00:07:30.860 He got out of him and he said, I'm not, I'm not going to do it.

00:07:32.720 He said, it's impossible to do.

00:07:34.120 I don't want a man that says it's impossible to do.

00:07:36.000 I want a man that's actually thinking about doing it.

00:07:38.040 And I don't want someone that's sitting there and saying, no, we can't do it because it's

00:07:40.300 not possible.

00:07:41.180 If that's the case, then there's someone there.

00:07:43.160 Farage is someone there that's going to leave the country in the condition it's in.

00:07:45.580 I don't want that.

00:07:46.720 Even if it, if the issue of immigration was to the side, hearing from a potential leader

00:07:50.680 of the country that something is impossible, he specifically said politically impossible.

00:07:55.640 I want, you know, a leader that is willing to move mountains for the good of the British

00:08:00.080 people.

00:08:01.220 And that's simply not it, is it?

00:08:03.240 Well, we're going to vote in the same thing we've got now.

00:08:05.540 It's like when you hear Suella Braveman was talking this morning, and I think I read,

00:08:08.900 wrote back to her, like she said something.

00:08:10.380 I remember saying, if only you'd been in power, you could have done something about this.

00:08:12.880 You know, again, it's like, it's no good now.

00:08:14.780 Are we not just voting in the same thing, but what you're saying, people on the ground

00:08:18.560 that desperately need, you know, sort of representation, that they're disaffected by

00:08:22.820 Conservatives and Labour especially, absolutely vote for change.

00:08:26.460 But what change are they going to get?

00:08:28.120 Is it change?

00:08:29.020 To what end?

00:08:30.240 Yeah.

00:08:30.600 To what end?

00:08:31.380 If you, if we still, like, so their, their policy is still net zero migration.

00:08:37.280 So effectively one in, one out.

00:08:38.980 Yeah.

00:08:39.220 For me, that's no, for a lot of us, that's no good at all.

00:08:41.620 We need net, sorry, gross zero, i.e. not one more person, for starters.

00:08:47.020 They said from when they get in, haven't they?

00:08:48.420 They said they're going to stop coming in.

00:08:49.780 So, but still, at the moment, that's the best, the thing that's on the table.

00:08:54.380 I know that's a weak argument.

00:08:55.680 I, myself, have railed against people for making that argument.

00:08:58.260 But, I mean, they, they have gone a little bit harder line in just the last few weeks.

00:09:04.740 But do you know why that is, though?

00:09:05.620 Because they can see the way people are.

00:09:07.180 Yeah.

00:09:07.400 They want to win the votes.

00:09:08.260 Yeah.

00:09:08.560 So we're all going to do it, aren't we?

00:09:09.760 They're just, Farage, we'll wait to see what's happening and then he'll fall on.

00:09:12.780 Have you seen him do this?

00:09:13.600 He's a follower, isn't he?

00:09:14.600 Of course.

00:09:14.860 He's not a leader.

00:09:15.620 So he'll wait to see, where's the, where's the country going?

00:09:17.400 Right, now I'm going to make a statement on this.

00:09:19.300 And he does it every single time.

00:09:20.940 And I just, I just don't, I think he's, I think he's more of a globalist than we realise.

00:09:25.420 And I think we're going to vote another party in that's, that's going to just be in the,

00:09:28.760 in the pay of the, of the, the big people up top, really.

00:09:32.280 I think actually Farage could learn a thing or two from Tony Blair, not in his policies,

00:09:36.940 but in terms of how he approaches the press in that you can do things in a much more tactful way

00:09:43.980 while still maintaining a sort of neutral position.

00:09:48.620 And I'm sort of more frustrated about him not thinking in terms of tactics more than anything,

00:09:54.260 in that he's alienating his own base.

00:09:56.280 He's not saying, listen, I understand, but this is the best we can do right now.

00:10:01.040 That would have been a much more acceptable answer.

00:10:02.760 I think you're absolutely right.

00:10:03.320 I would have said exactly that.

00:10:04.640 So we haven't worked it out.

00:10:06.100 It's heavily complex and nuanced.

00:10:07.700 This is the best we can do, but we're working on it.

00:10:09.940 We'd all, the British people would fall behind that.

00:10:12.060 You know what I mean?

00:10:12.380 They really would.

00:10:12.980 They say, yeah, we understand it's complex because it is really complicated.

00:10:15.560 I mean, look at the rape gangs and everything else.

00:10:17.300 And it's not all Muslim, it's not all Pakistani, sorry, is it? 0.99

00:10:20.320 You know what I mean?

00:10:20.680 It's only, how do you, how do you sort of put that out to the rest of the country

00:10:24.220 that we're trying to do something about it?

00:10:25.660 And it is really, really nuanced.

00:10:27.560 I think the message isn't entirely wrong.

00:10:29.060 I think with Richard Tice, when he was talking about Rupert Lowe having dementia,

00:10:32.220 that was childish.

00:10:33.320 It was embarrassing.

00:10:34.620 They don't want people like that anywhere.

00:10:36.260 The whole Rupert Lowe debacle was beyond disappointing.

00:10:39.640 It really was.

00:10:40.140 It was, it was terrible from our point of view, from people to the right of reform,

00:10:44.940 the reform leadership, it was, it was terrible.

00:10:47.840 Well, I don't know why I'm playing defense for a Nigerian reform, but I'm going to do

00:10:51.900 it one more time real quick.

00:10:52.980 I think it's good to balance though and try and, you know, put forward the counter arguments.

00:10:57.620 I saw Tice talking, it must've been overnight.

00:11:00.900 I saw a clip of him and he actually mentioned very quickly in passing, he did mention the word

00:11:05.520 legal migration.

00:11:07.000 Right.

00:11:07.800 I never, I don't, they don't usually go that far and I have seen Nigel be fairly strong

00:11:12.160 about, he's completely taken the, the, the, the policy, the, the policies that people like

00:11:18.160 myself and Douglas Carlswell have talked about of having a whole new re-migration or immigration

00:11:25.800 department, like a whole new thing, restaff it from the bottom up.

00:11:30.620 Again, that's a, we're not going to have a home office now.

00:11:33.200 He said you'll keep it within the home office, but as a separate entity, but under the home

00:11:37.760 office and restaff it from the ground up with sort of true believers, all that sort of thing.

00:11:44.260 So shifting like just a couple of degrees.

00:11:48.340 Not enough.

00:11:48.840 I know, I know it's not enough.

00:11:49.940 It's not enough.

00:11:50.640 It's not enough.

00:11:51.400 I mean, my thinking is, my hope is that, to explain myself, why I'm sort of kind of happy

00:11:56.740 to take this at the moment, is I'm hoping by the time we get to a general election, that's

00:12:00.880 still three years away or whatever, all sorts of things are going to change and hopefully we'll

00:12:05.720 have more options at that point.

00:12:09.600 So the argument of, well, it's the best we've got and don't worry about if they're actually

00:12:13.800 globalists at the end of it all.

00:12:15.480 Hopefully, that won't, we won't be in that place in three and a half years time.

00:12:20.300 But anyway, anyway, we're always in a moment in time, aren't we?

00:12:23.300 I can understand what he's doing, because I don't want to drag us out, by the way, but

00:12:25.660 the AFD being called extremists, I think it was this morning, isn't it?

00:12:29.380 I think largely because of the youth wing or whatever, but they're being called extremists 0.88

00:12:32.280 when you've got the leader who's a lesbian married to a minority woman.

00:12:36.520 I mean, it's most, but that's not just it, of course.

00:12:38.640 I think maybe Nigel, he's worried a bit about that and how he's seen and how that could turn

00:12:44.160 on the party if he's not careful.

00:12:45.600 Because the power of the state, as we're going to see through the piece I'm going to do in

00:12:48.960 a minute to discredit someone or just, you know, it's huge.

00:12:52.020 It's very well done.

00:12:53.360 They do it very, very well.

00:12:55.140 And if they were going to do that to Nigel or his party, of course, I think that's what

00:12:59.080 he's worried about.

00:12:59.700 And that's probably why he's playing a calmer hand than the rest of us would want.

00:13:02.920 It's very easy, isn't it, to say he should do this when it's not our party.

00:13:05.840 That's true.

00:13:06.500 It's not our reputation.

00:13:07.200 I do feel like he's falling into some of the same mistakes that some of the conservatives

00:13:11.620 did in that he's playing by rules set by Labour and the left.

00:13:14.980 And the idea is that you're each competing to set the rules of politics.

00:13:20.580 You're not meant to play by your opponent's rules because you will always lose because

00:13:24.540 they set the rules.

00:13:26.340 And I think that one thing that Nigel could learn from people across the other side of

00:13:32.280 the Atlantic is that you can drag discourse in your direction if you choose to.

00:13:37.120 And I think that that's what many of the people in reform want, isn't it?

00:13:41.220 I think actually reform's base is more radical than their leader.

00:13:46.820 Oh, definitely, yeah.

00:13:47.760 And so a lot of people in reform would actually be delighted if he did that.

00:13:53.760 And I don't think it's happening yet.

00:13:55.400 But, you know, never say never.

00:13:57.200 It's possible.

00:13:57.920 But I'm very lukewarm on the whole thing.

00:14:00.680 Yeah, the amount of shade I've thrown at them.

00:14:04.640 Yeah, I would love it if they were.

00:14:07.900 I mean, personally, if Ed Davies suddenly became super-based and I believed that he meant it,

00:14:13.780 he's got my vote.

00:14:14.680 I don't care if it's Nigel.

00:14:15.980 The amount of shade I've thrown at him, I don't care.

00:14:18.140 I don't care.

00:14:18.660 I'll recant on all of that if I get my country back.

00:14:20.780 In politics, you have to look at the policy.

00:14:21.920 I just don't believe he will.

00:14:23.660 It's got to be about the policy and not about the individuals unless you believe the individual

00:14:27.560 in question isn't being honest about their policies.

00:14:30.820 But also, you've got to look at the fact, and the reason I say this is the Office of Budget

00:14:34.320 Responsibility have said that we need 350,000 people coming into the country every year

00:14:38.980 in order to increase his GDP and keep it going up.

00:14:41.880 I know, as ludicrous as that sounds, but if he's playing on that, if he knows that's a

00:14:45.820 factor, if he gets in and he stops this coming in, because, of course, whether it's nets

00:14:50.700 or how many are coming in, how many are going out, it's not, I mean, I think we're losing

00:14:53.580 some pretty talented people from the UK, from what I can read, especially in the high earners.

00:14:57.320 Lots of doctors at the minute as well.

00:14:58.820 Is that right?

00:14:59.820 Is that it?

00:15:00.820 Yeah.

00:15:01.820 US and Australia.

00:15:02.820 Is that right?

00:15:03.820 I know Australia.

00:15:04.820 I didn't realize the US as well.

00:15:05.820 That's interesting.

00:15:06.820 I didn't know that.

00:15:07.820 So, of course, you know, we are hemorrhaging the talent, as it says.

00:15:08.820 And I don't really think we're bringing it in necessarily, arguably.

00:15:10.820 I did see, I think it was looking at, I looked at Hindus and Sikhs and Jews and Muslims.

00:15:16.820 I think there's 6.5% Muslims in the country.

00:15:18.820 I think it's probably a lot more.

00:15:19.820 But I think one of the Muslim councils was celebrating the fact that they were bringing

00:15:22.820 in 2.5% of GDP.

00:15:23.820 It's like the maths, mate, doesn't work out.

00:15:25.820 Yeah, that's not good.

00:15:26.820 That's bad.

00:15:27.820 Yeah, if we're a fully Muslim country, we're two thirds less well off. 1.00

00:15:30.820 It doesn't make sense.

00:15:31.820 You can't celebrate that.

00:15:32.820 Whereas when we look at the figures for Jews are 0.7, Hindus, I think Hindus were about 1.00

00:15:36.820 0.5 and they were bringing in over 2% or something.

00:15:38.820 You know, I read that.

00:15:39.820 That came from the Hindu figures themselves, you know what I mean?

00:15:41.820 But let's just be honest.

00:15:42.820 What do we want?

00:15:43.820 Do we want to bring in people that are going to lower our financial sustainability within

00:15:48.820 the world or we want to bring in like the best only?

00:15:50.820 And we're not doing that right now.

00:15:51.820 So I can understand if he thinks, you know what, we need to increase this at all costs.

00:15:56.820 He's never going to go and say that we need to stop immigration into the UK in the way

00:16:00.820 that we think he should.

00:16:01.820 And I understand that.

00:16:02.820 I might not necessarily like him too much.

00:16:04.820 He's a likable chap.

00:16:05.820 But you know what I mean?

00:16:06.820 When we look longer term and of course what he did with people that he doesn't really

00:16:10.820 sort of get on with in the part and how he discredits them and smears them, I think

00:16:13.820 is very unprofessional.

00:16:14.820 But you know, you can't be everything to everyone, can you?

00:16:16.820 Yeah.

00:16:17.820 No, you're sure.

00:16:18.820 If I can flip back quickly into my more comfortable caning Nige mode. 1.00

00:16:23.820 Yeah.

00:16:24.820 I don't trust him to actually do these things if and when.

00:16:29.820 But so anyway, let's talk about what happened overnight because the big story actually,

00:16:33.820 the big show is, was the by-election, the Runcorn by-election for an MP, which they won.

00:16:38.820 Hmm.

00:16:39.820 Now, I've already said and I said earlier in the week that one by, the old cliche, the old

00:16:45.820 adage that one by-election does not a general election make, does not a government make on

00:16:49.820 and on and on.

00:16:50.820 And you, but you sort of can't help yourself but read into it.

00:16:53.820 But this is, it was such a big majority.

00:16:56.820 It's a super safe Labour seat.

00:16:58.820 Super safe.

00:16:59.820 It's like Labour heartland.

00:17:01.820 The guy I had, you know, the guy Mike Amesbury, is it, who punched a dude in the street?

00:17:05.820 Yeah.

00:17:06.820 Should have been an archer, really. 1.00

00:17:07.820 Crazy shit. 1.00

00:17:08.820 Absolutely. 1.00

00:17:09.820 Is that a reference to the Amesbury archer?

00:17:10.820 It is, yeah.

00:17:11.820 Very good, very good.

00:17:12.820 We're in Wiltshire.

00:17:13.820 It's perfect.

00:17:14.820 No, so, it was ridiculous that there was even a by-election in the first place.

00:17:19.820 He had a majority of well over 14,000, I believe.

00:17:22.820 Super safe seat, like top 50 Labour safe seats in the country.

00:17:25.820 He was really connecting with the electorate, wasn't he?

00:17:28.820 Sorry.

00:17:29.820 Had to.

00:17:31.820 So, for reform to even get close is sort of a very good achievement, but they won it,

00:17:39.820 but they won it by the smallest margin ever, in fact.

00:17:42.820 Yeah.

00:17:43.820 I was watching it overnight, and when the first result came in, they were saying that they'd

00:17:47.820 won it by four votes.

00:17:49.820 Of course, Labour demanded a recount.

00:17:51.820 The recount came back that reform would actually won it by six votes.

00:17:55.820 However, that is the tightest margin ever.

00:17:57.820 I think back in the 60s, I sort of read somewhere, I saw somewhere.

00:18:00.820 Back in the 60s, there was one that was down to like 57 votes or something.

00:18:04.820 There's another one in the 70s where it was like 100 votes.

00:18:07.820 So, for it to come down to six votes, that's historically tight.

00:18:12.820 Right.

00:18:13.820 If you're outside of the UK, our constituencies for each MP are between about 70,000 and 100,000-ish.

00:18:20.820 You know, the boundaries are a bit porous on either side.

00:18:24.820 But that's roughly the order of magnitude we're talking about.

00:18:27.820 And with a, you know, a 60% election turnout, I imagine it would probably be much lower for

00:18:32.820 local elections.

00:18:33.820 But even half of that, that's still, what, 35,000 at least?

00:18:37.820 So, just say we are talking about the MP seat, not the local election.

00:18:41.820 That's true, yes.

00:18:42.820 But it still suffers the same thing, isn't it?

00:18:45.820 That by-elections tend not to have the same turnout as a general election because people

00:18:50.820 aren't as aware that it's going on.

00:18:52.820 Quite often, yeah, yeah.

00:18:53.820 I mean, so one of the things I want, so there's various ways of looking at this, break it down.

00:18:57.820 One is just the swing from Labour to whoever beat them, obviously reform in this case.

00:19:02.820 And the swing is massive.

00:19:04.820 Like I say, overturning a 14,600-odd majority, that's big.

00:19:11.820 That sort of, you can't just say that was lucky or anything like that.

00:19:14.820 It was on the back of a scandal, though.

00:19:16.820 He stepped down because he punched a constituent that he was meant to represent.

00:19:20.820 And I think the constituent was being annoying, but that's still not good enough, unfortunately.

00:19:25.820 Yeah, yeah.

00:19:26.820 So I think that would probably affect the popularity of Labour in the area if their elected representatives

00:19:32.820 are punching them.

00:19:34.820 Sure, yeah. 0.65

00:19:35.820 Just a little bit, I reckon.

00:19:36.820 It was a crazy thing to do, really.

00:19:39.820 I think the guy was just being rude.

00:19:41.820 I think he was being rude and belligerent, but he wasn't being physically aggressive.

00:19:45.820 No.

00:19:46.820 His body language was that he wasn't even looking at him as he was punched.

00:19:53.820 So it was a sucker punch.

00:19:54.820 It was sort of, yeah.

00:19:56.820 I have seen the footage, but I can't really remember that.

00:19:58.820 I remember covering it when it happened, yeah.

00:19:59.820 So one thing is the swing.

00:20:01.820 So the swing is substantial or remarkable, really.

00:20:05.820 And Nigel said afterwards, which also is very true, whether they won it or lost it,

00:20:10.820 even if he lost it by six votes, that swing is still there.

00:20:14.820 Yeah.

00:20:15.820 The other thing to mention, though, which is something you mentioned about turnout.

00:20:18.820 The turnout for this, I think, was something like 46%.

00:20:21.820 Blimey, that's...

00:20:22.820 Was it?

00:20:23.820 So that's low.

00:20:24.820 Yeah.

00:20:25.820 That's really, like, sort of pathetically low, really.

00:20:27.820 Now that does speak of that even Nigel and Reform, despite the swing,

00:20:33.820 they're not galvanising...

00:20:36.820 They didn't galvanise a big, big chunk of the electorate.

00:20:39.820 People weren't dying.

00:20:40.820 They weren't falling over themselves to vote reform.

00:20:43.820 Sure, they were prepared to turn up enough to overturn that big majority.

00:20:48.820 Remarkable, as I keep saying.

00:20:50.820 But it's not like 60, 70, 80% of people were queuing up round the block

00:20:56.820 to put their cross next to that Sarah woman.

00:20:59.820 It's not so much that there's massive enthusiasm.

00:21:01.820 It's just that there's no enthusiasm for the other parties, really.

00:21:04.820 Right.

00:21:05.820 That's what I'm going to say.

00:21:06.820 The votes were taken from the other parties and generated by new voters for reform.

00:21:08.820 I think that's been established already, isn't it?

00:21:10.820 Yeah.

00:21:11.820 So it's like maybe reform will do very well in the next general election,

00:21:16.820 but will it be just out of pure apathy and spite for the other ones?

00:21:20.820 I mean, that's not a great foundation.

00:21:24.820 No, it's not.

00:21:25.820 So it's also worth mentioning the candidate herself,

00:21:28.820 because I believe she was in her capacity as a mayor or something. 0.86

00:21:34.820 I can't remember.

00:21:35.820 But she attended a refugee's welcome for Syrians and Afghans.

00:21:39.820 And that's an interesting turn of events from going from that only a few years ago to running for reform.

00:21:46.820 And it's one of those things that makes people like myself worry about how authentic reform are in tackling immigration.

00:21:55.820 If people like that are seen to be representative of the party, quite literally.

00:22:00.820 So she's Radio 4 friendly.

00:22:03.820 Yeah, that's a good way.

00:22:04.820 And that's what Nigel was looking for.

00:22:05.820 She's been accused of that before.

00:22:06.820 She's never really answered it.

00:22:07.820 She says, well, actually, the policies I'm interested in.

00:22:09.820 And she goes into the whole kind of politician spiel. 1.00

00:22:10.820 But you're absolutely right.

00:22:11.820 This is why I think we have to have a healthy concern about reform.

00:22:15.820 You're absolutely right, though.

00:22:16.820 You know, you need to support something that's going to make a positive change.

00:22:19.820 But I don't believe any of these.

00:22:22.820 See, I'm a political guy.

00:22:23.820 So my stance on my channel is about the individual and about the community.

00:22:27.820 It's not about politics isn't going to save us.

00:22:29.820 But who you are and who you are within your community and how you hold yourself is going to save us as a country.

00:22:36.820 It's about reestablishing the values of what made England so great.

00:22:39.820 But, you know, to be honest with you, I just don't think anything is going to save us.

00:22:42.820 I think you're going to go in.

00:22:43.820 You're going to have the civil service behind you.

00:22:44.820 It doesn't matter who's at the head.

00:22:45.820 They can't make change anyway.

00:22:46.820 It's going to be the ministers beneath them.

00:22:48.820 And those people, well, the ministers can't change.

00:22:50.820 It's going to be the civil heads beneath them. 0.64

00:22:52.820 And those are the same people that have come in through Common Purpose, which you know about Common Purpose.

00:22:56.820 It educates these new leaders, doesn't it?

00:22:58.820 The new, the whole kind of.

00:22:59.820 So it educates them with this progressive, diverse narrative that we install within our civil service.

00:23:05.820 And it doesn't matter who's ahead of them.

00:23:06.820 And in a way, you understand that because then we continue a consistent sort of policy as the United Kingdom,

00:23:12.820 a consistent policy.

00:23:13.820 We don't get these jarring changes.

00:23:15.820 That's what a conservative sort of civil service does.

00:23:18.820 But I don't think reform coming in is going to make much of a difference at all.

00:23:21.820 Yeah.

00:23:22.820 I mean, they talk about leaving the ECHR and repealing.

00:23:24.820 But they talk about it.

00:23:25.820 I know, I know, I know.

00:23:26.820 I don't believe they will.

00:23:27.820 No, I'm with you.

00:23:28.820 I'm with you.

00:23:29.820 It has huge ramifications if we do.

00:23:31.820 And also, if you listen, I think it was Matt Goodwin saying, it might be David Starkey was saying, in fact, on one of his ones.

00:23:36.820 In order to do this, you've got to install people like Trump did, have a team ready to go that have built up this over five years

00:23:41.820 and know exactly what they're going to do when they walk in the door and how they're going to do it.

00:23:43.820 And they've got people in there that are going to help them do it.

00:23:46.820 None of that's happening.

00:23:47.820 Like zero of that's happening.

00:23:48.820 They're going to go in.

00:23:49.820 They're going to celebrate themselves because it's all about the leadership, all about the top people.

00:23:52.820 It's a big problem in this country that we celebrate.

00:23:54.820 It's what happened with the Conservatives at the very end.

00:23:56.820 The Conservatives were all trying to jostle individually for positions.

00:23:59.820 And they were neglecting what they really should be doing.

00:24:02.820 And that's why the Conservatives are there now saying, you see Suella Braverman or you see Robert Jenrick,

00:24:07.820 or you see all these people saying, we need to do this.

00:24:09.820 Yeah, you had the opportunity, mate.

00:24:11.820 You need to do it.

00:24:12.820 It's no good saying it now.

00:24:13.820 You were literally there, but they were too wrapped up in their profiles and what people were saying.

00:24:17.820 about them and their ratings.

00:24:19.820 It really grinds my gears when someone like Suella Braverman or Preeti Patel or whoever,

00:24:24.820 James Cleverley or Reece Mogg or anyone like that says, tries to pour scorn on other people for not being based enough.

00:24:34.820 It's like you had your shot, bro, and you did jack.

00:24:39.820 So I don't want to hear it now.

00:24:41.820 Oh, suddenly you're really based.

00:24:43.820 That's the most American turn of phrase I've ever heard you say.

00:24:46.820 In a Cockney accent.

00:24:47.820 Yeah, it was good.

00:24:48.820 I don't want to hear jack, bro.

00:24:51.820 Okay, so they got the run-con thing.

00:24:53.820 So they're now back to five MPs.

00:24:55.820 So that is significant, although let's not get carried away because anything could happen in three years and one constituency doesn't the government make.

00:25:05.820 But so in the local elections then, as you can see there, this is the total at the moment.

00:25:09.820 And there's still lots more to come in.

00:25:11.820 Also, they won one of the big mayors up in Lincolnshire.

00:25:16.820 I did see that.

00:25:17.820 Yeah.

00:25:18.820 Yeah.

00:25:19.820 I think they're set to win another one up in Huddersfield or somewhere as well.

00:25:23.820 I know Aaron Banks lost, but he came second.

00:25:26.820 And a lot of the places where Reform didn't actually win, they came close.

00:25:31.820 It seems to suggest that they're doing quite well.

00:25:35.820 They're in the ascendancy.

00:25:37.820 You can't deny that they're in the ascendancy, for better or worse.

00:25:40.820 I mean, the momentum seems to be with them.

00:25:43.820 It does.

00:25:44.820 And also Labour are not in the ascendancy, I think, is what we need to look at really as well.

00:25:49.820 They're wildly unpopular.

00:25:50.820 I was looking at some of their figures and at the minute even Tony Blair is much more popular than Keir Starmer.

00:25:57.820 That's weird, isn't it?

00:25:58.820 It's strange.

00:25:59.820 He was the most popular Labour Party member amongst millennials, which is slightly worrying.

00:26:04.820 Well, he was, you mean.

00:26:06.820 I apologise for my generation.

00:26:07.820 No, he is now.

00:26:08.820 He is now.

00:26:09.820 That's incredible, isn't it?

00:26:10.820 Because I think he's carrying the baggage of what he's done over his career in his face.

00:26:14.820 You know what I mean?

00:26:15.820 I think people do that when they hit 50.

00:26:16.820 All of a sudden you see people and you look at them and you think, you know what you've done.

00:26:20.820 You know what I mean?

00:26:21.820 And you're carrying that on you.

00:26:22.820 I think we can see it.

00:26:23.820 But it's interesting.

00:26:24.820 I look at Blair and I'm thinking, geez, dude, you know what I mean?

00:26:26.820 That's a lot of weight to carry on your shoulders there.

00:26:28.820 You can sort of see the evilness manifesting in his pictures.

00:26:31.820 I wasn't going to say that.

00:26:32.820 I was going to let you say that.

00:26:33.820 But no, it's also a thing quite often, not always, not always, but quite often when someone's an elder statesman, people, you can't help but look back on their career a bit more favourably than you did at the time.

00:26:45.820 They do, yeah.

00:26:46.820 But often that is the case.

00:26:47.820 I mean, you look at how much people, well, there's so many examples of it.

00:26:51.820 But okay.

00:26:52.820 So just to mention that, it was just a big night for reform, whether you like them or loathe them, that's what happened.

00:26:58.820 So, well, we'll see where it goes from there.

00:27:01.820 I think that's my time up.

00:27:02.820 Good.

00:27:03.820 Okay.

00:27:04.820 I imagine I've got a bunch of messages here.

00:27:07.820 Dragon Lady Chris says, Josh, we'll miss you here.

00:27:09.820 Not only is your insight delightfully intelligent, you are just so darn cute.

00:27:14.820 Oh, well, thank you very much.

00:27:15.820 You are to Ellie what Paul McCartney was to the Beatles.

00:27:18.820 Be well.

00:27:19.820 I'm very flattered by that comparison as well.

00:27:20.820 He was probably the most talented Beatle.

00:27:22.820 That's a random name says, Josh, I just wanted to say that I'll miss seeing you on Lotus Eaters.

00:27:27.820 I know the economy has been rough lately and I hope your new endeavour on OnlyFans works out for you.

00:27:33.820 Much love.

00:27:34.820 I was meant to keep that one on the down low.

00:27:36.820 Oh, you should have told everyone.

00:27:37.820 Some people have got non-sexualised OnlyFans accounts.

00:27:40.820 Just use it as another platform.

00:27:41.820 I'm going to use it to teach you statistics.

00:27:44.820 I could do that, couldn't I?

00:27:45.820 I mean, there are actually people who like sell their courses on there, apparently.

00:27:51.820 That's what it was originally intended for, yeah.

00:27:53.820 Oh, is that right?

00:27:54.820 Yeah, we knew that.

00:27:55.820 Yeah.

00:27:56.820 There's me being all naked.

00:27:57.820 Yeah, I didn't even need to.

00:27:58.820 Yeah, exactly.

00:28:00.820 Josie's Angel says, Joshua, son of Nun, Moses sent 10 spies into enemy lands and only Joshua

00:28:05.820 came back with a positive report.

00:28:07.820 Then he knocked down strong walls.

00:28:09.820 I see great things for you.

00:28:10.820 My first son's named too.

00:28:12.820 Oh, that's really nice of you.

00:28:13.820 Well, thank you.

00:28:14.820 Name the first son after you.

00:28:15.820 I'm sure it's not.

00:28:16.820 Exactly.

00:28:17.820 Didn't do that, yeah.

00:28:18.820 You can't really claim that with a biblical name, can you?

00:28:20.820 Okay.

00:28:21.820 I suppose we may as well start talking about DEI in the military.

00:28:27.820 Yes, we should, because it's still going on.

00:28:30.820 And I thought we stopped this when we spoke about the Air Force.

00:28:32.820 They had to apologise for bringing DEI in when they stopped young white men joining by prioritising

00:28:38.820 minorities and women.

00:28:39.820 And by the way, what people don't realise when the Air Force did that, they actually put minorities 0.90

00:28:43.820 and women onto training courses that hadn't started yet in order to get the figures in. 1.00

00:28:48.820 So they could say, look how many minorities were getting into the service.

00:28:50.820 Look how many women were getting into the service. 1.00

00:28:52.820 Those people were held for a couple of months before they even started training just to

00:28:55.820 make it look as if they were satisfying the figures.

00:28:58.820 And let's be honest with you.

00:28:59.820 It's not the Air Force that did this.

00:29:00.820 It's the Ministry of Defence that demanded it.

00:29:02.820 And it was the cabin office that directed the ministry.

00:29:05.820 And I had a bit of an argument on here with Ben Wallace, actually, on Twitter.

00:29:09.820 Only because someone said it was Ben Wallace.

00:29:10.820 And I said, well, it was Ben Wallace.

00:29:12.820 And I met Ben's PA once at a meeting, sorry, at a party of a friend of mine.

00:29:17.820 The Ex-Secretary of Defence, Fenway, doesn't he?

00:29:18.820 Sorry.

00:29:19.820 Yeah.

00:29:20.820 My apologies.

00:29:21.820 Ex-Secretary of Defence.

00:29:22.820 And Ben obfuscated and went off on a tangent about, do you think we just make up policy every

00:29:26.820 day?

00:29:27.820 And I'm like, well, you bloody should, mate.

00:29:28.820 If you'd stopped this, if you said, no, we're not doing this, it would have stopped.

00:29:31.820 End X.

00:29:32.820 It would have stopped.

00:29:33.820 And then a young Royal Marine has gone out on a limb, really.

00:29:37.820 And he said, hang on a second, he put a petition out.

00:29:40.820 And a thousand Marines started signing that petition overnight within 24 hours.

00:29:44.820 Now, I've never seen the petition.

00:29:46.820 No one has.

00:29:47.820 We've seen clips of the petition.

00:29:48.820 And the argument against, the petition basically said that we shouldn't be lowering standards

00:29:50.820 in the Corps, the Royal Marines.

00:29:52.820 The Royal Marines was formed in 1664.

00:29:54.820 The Duke of York and Albany's Regiment of Foot, it was called, 28th of October, I believe it was.

00:29:58.820 My father was a Royal Marine.

00:30:00.820 So I have a bit of an attachment, my family of attachment to the Corps.

00:30:03.820 And I keep following what happens at Commanded Training Center, Royal Marines, and a lot of

00:30:07.820 Marines write to me.

00:30:08.820 And I've did a lot of airborne stuff over Marines when I was on Tornado and Hawke for

00:30:12.820 training.

00:30:13.820 So, you know what I mean?

00:30:14.820 A good bunch of dudes.

00:30:15.820 Notice my language.

00:30:16.820 A good bunch of dudes.

00:30:17.820 All right.

00:30:18.820 Let's be honest with you.

00:30:19.820 These are men.

00:30:20.820 Now, if you want to know, it's about basically that the standards are being lowered to accept

00:30:24.820 women into the Corps.

00:30:26.820 And I think the petition probably lent on an individual who was a woman in training. 1.00

00:30:30.820 And that's why maybe the Corps got upset with this guy putting a petition, but we've

00:30:34.820 never seen a petition.

00:30:35.820 But what he says, this young man says, we shouldn't be lowering standards to accommodate,

00:30:40.820 he says women in the Corps, but he could have said anyone, couldn't he?

00:30:43.820 Let's not lower standards to accommodate just anyone in the Corps.

00:30:46.820 Let's keep it.

00:30:47.820 What you've got then, you've got a guy, Alistair Karnes, who's a Labour MP, I believe

00:30:50.820 it is, was a colonel within the Marines.

00:30:53.820 He's come out on Twitter and he said, hang on, we're not lowering standards.

00:30:55.820 He used to run, I believe, the Commanded Training Center, but they do all the training

00:30:59.820 down in Devon.

00:31:00.820 He said, we're not lowering standards.

00:31:01.820 And now what you've got is this classic case of a young Marine saying we are, all the

00:31:06.820 Marines saying we are, and senior officers saying we're not.

00:31:09.820 Now this happened in the Air Force as well, because what happens in the Air Force,

00:31:12.820 his boss comes in, he looks at the statistics and he goes, right, I need to improve those

00:31:15.820 statistics in order to get promoted.

00:31:16.820 That's what I need to do.

00:31:17.820 So statistics say flying rate, how many people will qualify, I need to make that better.

00:31:21.820 So what they'll do is they'll downplay these statistics and they will overplay theirs,

00:31:24.820 creating a bigger delta.

00:31:25.820 That makes sense?

00:31:26.820 So what this Marine Colonel is saying, we're not changing standards.

00:31:29.820 Well, he's not necessarily wrong because the tests and everything are kind of like the

00:31:33.820 same.

00:31:34.820 They've still got to drag someone 200 metres whilst they're wearing 32 pounds of kit wet.

00:31:39.820 You know what I mean?

00:31:40.820 They've got to do that.

00:31:41.820 The difference being when the male Marines do it, they've been on a four mile hike,

00:31:45.820 you know what I mean, in the morning, and they're absolutely, you know, bull bagged,

00:31:48.820 they're threaders. 0.65

00:31:49.820 Now they've got to do this drag.

00:31:50.820 And the girl's been nursing an ankle injury, so she's been given the day off before.

00:31:54.820 And it's that kind of thing.

00:31:55.820 So she still has to do it to the same standards, but everything you're surrounding it is different.

00:32:00.820 And that's what the Marines are saying.

00:32:01.820 It's like, hang on.

00:32:02.820 Now, one of the things says, and this is quite an interesting point to make as well,

00:32:05.820 when it comes to talking about the military.

00:32:07.820 Yes, women are finding it difficult to get into the Corps. 1.00

00:32:10.820 Men find it difficult to get into the Corps.

00:32:12.820 A lot of men don't make it in there.

00:32:14.820 A lot of men are sacked off.

00:32:15.820 A lot of men get injured and have to go back to 100 troops and never get through commando training.

00:32:18.820 It's 32 weeks long.

00:32:19.820 You know, the main commando training is 32 weeks long.

00:32:22.820 It's no joke, right?

00:32:23.820 Well, the All Arms is 13 weeks.

00:32:25.820 Can I ask you a thing?

00:32:26.820 Because they're special forces, right?

00:32:28.820 They're considered special forces.

00:32:29.820 Well, they're considered up there with the Tier 1 shock troop special.

00:32:31.820 So that's what I wanted to ask.

00:32:32.820 So you've got full blown, just out and out, undeniable special forces for us,

00:32:36.820 the SAS or the SBS, something like that.

00:32:38.820 Yeah, yeah.

00:32:39.820 In America, it might be like Delta or something like that.

00:32:42.820 But then you've got, it's more than just your standard,

00:32:45.820 for us, the Royal Marines, they're commandos.

00:32:48.820 So it's more than just your standard infantry infantry.

00:32:51.820 They are considered to be like a parachute regiment.

00:32:54.820 If you're in an infantry regiment, you can apply to go into the parachute.

00:32:57.820 Well, you know, you can look to go into the parachute regiment.

00:32:59.820 The training is harder.

00:33:00.820 Fewer people actually succeed.

00:33:02.820 We know how it is.

00:33:03.820 So in other words, you've got to be, if not that,

00:33:06.820 you've got to be very close to being the best of the best.

00:33:09.820 This is a very good.

00:33:10.820 Like the top 0.0 whatever percent of human beings.

00:33:13.820 On entry.

00:33:14.820 So this is a great point to introduce this graph.

00:33:17.820 You've probably seen graphs like this before.

00:33:18.820 This is just a normal distribution.

00:33:20.820 And what we, I'm going to explain some statistics and data,

00:33:25.820 because this is my bread and butter.

00:33:27.820 But basically, what you want is ideally,

00:33:30.820 you want to be recruiting people from that upper,

00:33:33.820 you know, the third standard deviation from the median there.

00:33:37.820 So you want the best.

00:33:38.820 And I would argue that for the Marines,

00:33:40.820 you don't want the top 2.35%.

00:33:42.820 You want even more.

00:33:45.820 Selective than that.

00:33:46.820 Yeah.

00:33:47.820 Because the vast majority of men are going to fail.

00:33:49.820 Oh, yeah.

00:33:50.820 They're going to.

00:33:51.820 So this is something that people have explained before,

00:33:53.820 but I'll do so as well.

00:33:55.820 That, you know, men have a biological difference

00:33:58.820 when compared with women. 0.71

00:33:59.820 Like our upper body strength is 30% higher.

00:34:02.820 Yeah.

00:34:03.820 And lots of other things to do with that.

00:34:05.820 It's very obvious that we have evolved to fulfill a role far more related to protection and violence.

00:34:14.820 And therefore, we are more likely to excel at it.

00:34:17.820 So that is why you find in the military that the vast majority of the best soldiers are men.

00:34:24.820 In fact, almost all of them.

00:34:26.820 And if it gets to the point where you're dealing with the top 0.5% or the top 1% or whatever it might be,

00:34:34.820 if you already have this biological predisposition, you must have that to be able to reach that percentage.

00:34:41.820 As a matter of mathematics, it's not a matter of, you know, well, we have the standard and maybe we'll see if someone can meet it.

00:34:49.820 We know for certain with the information we already have that it's impossible for women to reach that right. 1.00

00:34:58.820 And it's the same with lots of other things to flip it around the other way and to make it clear that I'm not having a go at women 0.99

00:35:04.820 because I have no reason to.

00:35:07.820 The top 1% of people in Britain who are the most caring and empathetic and, you know, best in that respect will all be women as well.

00:35:18.820 And I think it's just how this normal distribution actually works, right, is that certain people, certain types of people excel at certain things.

00:35:26.820 And the higher up you go, the more important that everything aligns for you to be the best.

00:35:33.820 I saw, you're absolutely right. I saw a great clip.

00:35:35.820 And you actually know some Navy SEALs in your past, haven't you?

00:35:39.820 Yeah, yeah.

00:35:40.820 I mean, the Navy SEALs and the Royal Marines aren't an exact equivalency, but it's not.

00:35:46.820 Anyway, I saw a very good clip of a Navy SEAL instructor bloke and he was being interviewed by a wokest mainstream media person.

00:35:55.820 And he said, he just said, look, if you take like £100 or £90 pack and you ask a woman, pretty much any woman to march nonstop overnight, like 20, 30, 40 miles, whatever it is, she's going to collapse.

00:36:12.820 She's going to crumple up. She's not going to get close.

00:36:15.820 The vast majority of men aren't going to get close. Extremely fit, young men that most of them will utterly fail.

00:36:21.820 So it's not me having a go as well, because I think I probably would too, in my current state of fitness, almost certainly.

00:36:28.820 So, you know, I'm down there with you.

00:36:31.820 When I was at my fittest, there'd be, yeah, when I was at my fittest, there'd be no way.

00:36:34.820 It's not really a debate though, is it?

00:36:35.820 Yeah, you're right.

00:36:36.820 Let's have a look.

00:36:37.820 The Israeli Defence Force have two battalions, I believe it is, or two regiments with women in it, the mixed gender regiments.

00:36:43.820 It doesn't have all of them.

00:36:44.820 It's actually, the conversation in Israel continues about women as frontline troops.

00:36:48.820 It continues.

00:36:49.820 The thing is, they can put these women in because they're not specialist troops. 0.99

00:36:52.820 So you can have a 50-50 regiments, absolutely fine.

00:36:54.820 The Marines only will ever have one or two women. 1.00

00:36:57.820 I know some fit women. 1.00

00:36:58.820 I've got a firefighter friend I rode with, and she's walked to the Antarctic.

00:37:01.820 She's, you know, this girl is a beast. 1.00

00:37:03.820 She's ripped up. 0.99

00:37:04.820 You know what I mean?

00:37:05.820 She possibly, she's getting better on. 0.99

00:37:06.820 She's like 50 like me now.

00:37:07.820 You know what I mean?

00:37:08.820 She probably couldn't do it.

00:37:09.820 But that's the kind of woman that possibly could when they're going to have kids. 0.98

00:37:12.820 We're not talking about the problems that women have, hip issues, ankle issues. 0.77

00:37:16.820 Women do not sustain that kind of level of punishment as most top-tier men.

00:37:20.820 And most men don't sustain that level of punishment as top-tier men.

00:37:24.820 So we're concentrating on the wrong side here.

00:37:26.820 And I think it's completely disingenuous.

00:37:28.820 And this is why I get a little bit miffed at the senior officers out there,

00:37:30.820 who have got it in there from people like Ben Wallace to push diversity in that. 0.83

00:37:34.820 And what the young Marine is saying is it's going to get people killed.

00:37:36.820 And he's absolutely right.

00:37:37.820 On operations, go and see that warfare film.

00:37:39.820 If you look at me in the eyes now.

00:37:40.820 I saw a couple of days ago, Warfare, that film at the cinema.

00:37:43.820 15 quid though.

00:37:44.820 But fair play.

00:37:45.820 It's all Dolby, isn't it?

00:37:46.820 All right.

00:37:47.820 Calm down.

00:37:48.820 There was three men in there, by the way.

00:37:49.820 It went like a Wednesday afternoon.

00:37:50.820 I was like, all right, mate.

00:37:51.820 You all right?

00:37:52.820 All right?

00:37:53.820 All right.

00:37:54.820 Just us there watching this film.

00:37:55.820 You know what I mean?

00:37:56.820 Spread around the cinema as we do.

00:37:57.820 But then go and ask yourself if there was a woman in that building having a drag. 1.00

00:38:00.820 I'm not going to ruin the story, but having to drag a man in that. 1.00

00:38:03.820 One thing I noticed was the amount of kits these guys carry.

00:38:06.820 Not only their armor, they've got radio packs.

00:38:08.820 There is zero way that the majority of women that I know, and I train heavily with women 1.00

00:38:13.820 in the rowing clubs and stuff.

00:38:15.820 Most men couldn't drag those men in. 0.88

00:38:17.820 It's not possible.

00:38:18.820 Unless you're a 21-year-old, almost like you're an athlete.

00:38:21.820 You could have been an athlete, but instead you went into the Marines.

00:38:23.820 You know what I mean?

00:38:24.820 That's the kind of level we're looking at.

00:38:25.820 And we're trying to force women into it. 1.00

00:38:27.820 It's an absolute joke.

00:38:28.820 And the young man there who's put his whole career on the line, a young man called John.

00:38:32.820 I haven't got to go through his surname.

00:38:33.820 That's bravery.

00:38:34.820 Yeah.

00:38:35.820 It's courage.

00:38:36.820 And that's exactly what they should be celebrating.

00:38:38.820 But they're not.

00:38:39.820 They're trying to defame him.

00:38:40.820 Basically, the Ministry of Defence have arrested him.

00:38:42.820 I won't use that word, actually.

00:38:44.820 There's been a lot trying to reveal him.

00:38:46.820 But no, he's gone on TV news now, I think.

00:38:48.820 And he's gone on Talk TV.

00:38:50.820 They took him.

00:38:51.820 He works out in Scotland.

00:38:53.820 He's a Marine serving in Scotland.

00:38:54.820 I believe he's protecting the...

00:38:56.820 Faslana might be the nuclear. 0.59

00:38:57.820 That's right, yeah.

00:38:58.820 They flew him down to the MOD to question him.

00:39:01.820 He said, who are you questioning me?

00:39:03.820 They said, you don't need to know who we are.

00:39:04.820 You know what I mean?

00:39:05.820 We're just questioning on your motives. 0.99

00:39:06.820 And then he went, right, this is all rubbish. 0.99

00:39:08.820 Him and his wife went on holiday. 0.99

00:39:09.820 They came back.

00:39:10.820 They stopped him at the airport.

00:39:11.820 I think he went back in, say, through Aberdeen or whatever.

00:39:13.820 Again, there's people there.

00:39:14.820 He didn't know who they were.

00:39:15.820 They were questioning him under the Terrorism Act.

00:39:18.820 Because...

00:39:19.820 And then they said, well, it's to do with your political views.

00:39:21.820 Do you know what party he belongs to?

00:39:22.820 Have a guess.

00:39:23.820 Go on.

00:39:24.820 He belongs to...

00:39:25.820 He's a Homeland guy.

00:39:27.820 Now, as much as I'm not a massive fan of any political party.

00:39:30.820 But, you know, Homeland, I mean, fair enough.

00:39:32.820 A lot of people are getting behind them.

00:39:33.820 And I understand why.

00:39:34.820 You know, they're trying to drive some kind of change in the country.

00:39:36.820 It's a good positive message.

00:39:38.820 They're a registered party.

00:39:39.820 I was about to say.

00:39:40.820 They are absolutely there.

00:39:41.820 They're questioning about his motive.

00:39:43.820 In fact, he says this.

00:39:45.820 He gets asked about this in an interview.

00:39:47.820 And his answers are basically exactly what we would say here,

00:39:50.820 which is relieving to see.

00:39:52.820 And also, credit where credit is due to talk TV here.

00:39:55.820 They actually did a pretty good job.

00:39:56.820 Yeah.

00:39:57.820 Which I don't say too often, to be honest.

00:39:59.820 Kev's a good guy.

00:40:00.820 Yeah, Kev's a good guy.

00:40:01.820 Would it be alright to play this ever so briefly,

00:40:02.820 just so we can hear him in his own words?

00:40:06.820 Let me ask you then, about the stories in the paper today.

00:40:09.820 Great questions.

00:40:11.820 Are you a neo-Nazi, John?

00:40:14.820 No.

00:40:15.820 Are we not hearing it?

00:40:16.820 We can't hear it very well.

00:40:17.820 That's his brother on the right, by the way.

00:40:19.820 It is, yeah.

00:40:20.820 He's got a YouTube channel that builds Lego or something.

00:40:23.820 Builds Lego?

00:40:24.820 Yeah, yeah.

00:40:25.820 I'll start again.

00:40:26.820 Sorry in the audience.

00:40:27.820 Let me ask you then, about the stories in the paper today.

00:40:30.820 Straight questions.

00:40:32.820 Are you a neo-Nazi, John?

00:40:35.820 No, I'm not.

00:40:36.820 No, I'm not a neo-Nazi.

00:40:38.820 Sorry.

00:40:39.820 I'm surprised that he's just laughing about that, actually.

00:40:42.820 Are you a member of the Homeland Party?

00:40:45.820 Yeah, I'm a member of the Homeland Party.

00:40:47.820 It's on the Electoral Commission.

00:40:49.820 It's a party that's, yeah, it's a party that is in no way affiliated with anything Nazi at all.

00:40:56.820 It wouldn't be allowed to be a party if it was.

00:40:59.820 And you wouldn't be part of it if it was.

00:41:02.820 Yeah, and I wouldn't be part of it if it wasn't.

00:41:04.820 And if it was all the things that it was reported to be, Kevin, I wouldn't be a part of it.

00:41:08.820 But I've spoken to a lot of these people in the party individually and in person, and they are not what they're reported to be.

00:41:15.820 So, he's saying exactly the right thing there and just not backing down.

00:41:20.820 He's not saying, oh, I'm sorry, I had no idea, as people used to in the past.

00:41:24.820 And also, it's interesting as well that people are actually able to clear their name in public now, which is very refreshing.

00:41:31.820 It's the only option he had now as well.

00:41:33.820 They've come after him so much.

00:41:34.820 And his brother says, we know what's going to happen.

00:41:36.820 They're going to go after him.

00:41:37.820 They're going to call me a Nazi.

00:41:38.820 They're going to discredit him.

00:41:39.820 They're going to blah, blah.

00:41:40.820 Stopping talking to the press.

00:41:41.820 He's gone, well, give it a go then.

00:41:42.820 My career is pretty much ruined, isn't it?

00:41:43.820 I may as well.

00:41:44.820 He's on some administrative leave now, apparently.

00:41:46.820 Okay.

00:41:47.820 And he's gone, right, I'll go and talk TV.

00:41:48.820 I'll go on TV news.

00:41:49.820 And I hate to say it, but rightly so, every Marine I've ever spoken to is supporting this guy.

00:41:55.820 There are a few that are going, well, hang on a second.

00:41:57.820 The petition kind of lent on this one particular woman going through training. 0.98

00:42:00.820 I haven't seen the petition.

00:42:01.820 I can't comment on that.

00:42:02.820 But either way, that woman that he's looked at or the women he's looked at, he's seeing in real time what's happening down at CTCRM.

00:42:09.820 And it is an absolute lowering of standards.

00:42:11.820 There's no two ways about it.

00:42:12.820 Do you want that?

00:42:13.820 It's the same thing, isn't it?

00:42:14.820 If you've got someone that's been put into, let's say he's a brain surgeon or she's a brain surgeon, put in there because of diversity.

00:42:19.820 You need an operation with that person.

00:42:21.820 It's a common argument.

00:42:22.820 You're going to select that person?

00:42:23.820 No, you want the best brain surgeon.

00:42:24.820 You want the best troops here.

00:42:25.820 There's troops here.

00:42:26.820 And the thing that people don't realize about troops, and I'll stop talking about this now, is if you get troops who are weak, like there's a weakness within the Corps.

00:42:33.820 Let's say you've got a Corps full of, say, four and a half thousand men.

00:42:35.820 And all of a sudden you've got some women are being forced into this thing or some weaker Marines are being forced into that thing.

00:42:41.820 And arguably they are because they cannot get enough Marines in to sustain the Corps strength, which means that they could be disbanded.

00:42:48.820 So the Corps is kind of struggling for its own survival, if you see what I mean.

00:42:51.820 Then all of a sudden you fragment the efficacy, the combat effectiveness, the unit cohesion.

00:42:57.820 It's fragmented completely.

00:42:59.820 And when you see like, you know, your films like Lone Survival, you realize how important that kind of stuff is.

00:43:03.820 It's not a joke.

00:43:04.820 Like I've been on squadrons where, you know, we know to retain this and the bosses said, I'll pass that student.

00:43:09.820 No boss, because they're going to get us killed.

00:43:11.820 Not now, but on the front line.

00:43:13.820 And I remember having an argument with an airline pilot once when we failed a student.

00:43:16.820 We failed a female student because she was failing the course. 0.98

00:43:19.820 We put her back nine trips, redid it.

00:43:21.820 She's on Typhoon now.

00:43:22.820 She's doing really well.

00:43:23.820 But we failed her.

00:43:24.820 Well, basically we just said, you're not continuing.

00:43:26.820 We're going to start you again.

00:43:27.820 He said, but she never actually failed the trip.

00:43:29.820 No, she didn't.

00:43:30.820 But there wasn't.

00:43:31.820 She didn't fail the trip.

00:43:32.820 We start her again because if we hadn't have done that, she doesn't fail now.

00:43:35.820 She fails whilst trying to get into a tanker over North Syria, whilst trying to support troops on the ground who are fighting ISIS.

00:43:40.820 So this is why we stop her now in training. 1.00

00:43:43.820 We recalibrate her and we retrain her.

00:43:45.820 Because if we just let her go for diversity sake, for statistics sake, down the line. 0.88

00:43:50.820 That's not my boss's responsibility, by the way, because he's got his training stats up.

00:43:53.820 He looked good, didn't he?

00:43:54.820 He's got his training.

00:43:55.820 He's got the girls out.

00:43:56.820 But later on, someone else suffers.

00:43:58.820 And it's the Marines or it's the infantry that's going to suffer because she wasn't good enough. 0.99

00:44:01.820 And that's why you don't.

00:44:02.820 That takes courage.

00:44:03.820 That's what you should be doing as the commander of CTCRM is saying, look, it might not be your immediate responsibility now, but you have a massive detrimental knock on effect.

00:44:11.820 And I think what young John here is showing this boy here is a massive amount of courage that is lacking in the senior leaders, not just in the Marine Corps, by the way, which is disgraceful to see because I never thought I'd see it with the Corps.

00:44:22.820 I never thought I'd see it with the Air Force to be fair.

00:44:23.820 And I was fundamentally wrong when I said that diversity would bounce off the military, I said.

00:44:27.820 And it didn't.

00:44:28.820 The military absorbed it in a way that education and health could only have dreamed of.

00:44:32.820 You know what I mean?

00:44:33.820 But the military, oh, no, because they can do.

00:44:35.820 You tell them to do something, we'll do that.

00:44:36.820 And we'll not just do it.

00:44:37.820 We'll do it in sparkles and rainbows and colors.

00:44:40.820 And they did.

00:44:41.820 They painted things, didn't they?

00:44:42.820 They painted rainbow crossings at Bryce Norton and stuff.

00:44:44.820 It was disgraceful what happened in our military.

00:44:46.820 And this guy here has gone, yeah, enough's enough.

00:44:49.820 You know, Marines courage.

00:44:50.820 And that's what we're looking at there.

00:44:51.820 And that's why we need to celebrate these young people.

00:44:53.820 Absolutely.

00:44:54.820 It is certainly brave.

00:44:56.820 I think I might have mentioned this before somewhere, but in Andy McNabb's Bravo 2-0, he mentions there were other, there was a Bravo 1-0 and a Bravo 3-0.

00:45:07.820 And one of them, they landed in Iraq and the gang boss took one look around and said, no, no, we're not doing this.

00:45:15.820 Straight back on the Chinook. 0.86

00:45:16.820 Straight back.

00:45:17.820 And they said, that's courage.

00:45:19.820 That's leadership.

00:45:20.820 That's bravery to say no.

00:45:23.820 We need to celebrate.

00:45:24.820 Say no, there's a line in the sand. 0.86

00:45:25.820 I'm going to get it in the neck.

00:45:26.820 This might be the end of my career. 0.86

00:45:28.820 But it's the right thing. 0.98

00:45:30.820 That takes balls. 1.00

00:45:33.820 I think it's lacking. 0.89

00:45:34.820 I think what we're seeing now within the military, if I'm honest, I'm not saying this about the Commandant General of the Royal Marines, because he was probably pre this era.

00:45:41.820 But he's being led by people who are completely driven by the common purpose, the world economic, whatever you want to call it.

00:45:48.820 I don't care.

00:45:49.820 They've driven up into the Ministry of Defence, which is, no one ever knows the people's names, by the way.

00:45:55.820 You know this guy's name.

00:45:56.820 You know senior Marine commanders names.

00:45:58.820 You never know the Ministry of Defence officials that are directing this policy.

00:46:01.820 The same with the Border Force, things like this.

00:46:02.820 You never know these people.

00:46:03.820 They operate behind, don't they? 1.00

00:46:04.820 Because they're absolute cowards. 1.00

00:46:06.820 Absolutely. 1.00

00:46:07.820 I don't even look at them in the same.

00:46:08.820 I wouldn't even, I don't even consider them to be Englishmen.

00:46:11.820 I wouldn't even say they were from the same stock that we come from.

00:46:14.820 You know what I mean?

00:46:15.820 But that's just me anyway.

00:46:16.820 And I'll get on a rant.

00:46:17.820 You know what I mean?

00:46:18.820 But the thing is, we've got these people in government now, in our ministries that are driving this.

00:46:22.820 And I don't think we can necessarily stop it.

00:46:23.820 I think it's going to be there.

00:46:25.820 That's what we're seeing.

00:46:26.820 I don't think this is going to change it either.

00:46:27.820 It's going to be marginalised, sidelined, and they're going to get a woman into the Marines and they're going to celebrate it with rainbow colours.

00:46:32.820 There's also the fact that people are aware of this sort of thing.

00:46:35.820 And there's this YouGov poll from February that found that lots of Britons won't serve in the armed forces.

00:46:42.820 And of course, we know for a fact that it's mainly native-born people that serve in the military.

00:46:48.820 More Muslims joined ISIS than the military. 1.00

00:46:51.820 Things like that, right?

00:46:53.820 And so we know that normally it's patriotic young lads that have a family history in Britain that will join up in the forces.

00:47:02.820 Certainly, my experience with some of my friends, they've joined the forces for that reason.

00:47:06.820 And family too.

00:47:08.820 A sense of public service.

00:47:09.820 Exactly, yeah.

00:47:10.820 And I think that that is why people join in this day and age, isn't it?

00:47:15.820 And, yeah, people look at the way people in the military are treated.

00:47:21.820 They look at what they're actually fighting to protect.

00:47:24.820 And they say, well, it's not worth it then, which is a tragedy, I think, because we do need a military.

00:47:30.820 It's not, you know, nice to have it.

00:47:32.820 It's necessary for the existence of our people.

00:47:35.820 Do you know how many people, how many Muslims are in our military?

00:47:37.820 About two.

00:47:39.820 Yeah, about two Muslims, yeah.

00:47:40.820 In the British Army, there's about 450 Muslims.

00:47:42.820 The entire military is about 600.

00:47:44.820 What did I thought, actually?

00:47:45.820 So there are people, yeah, there are people, about 0.5%, I think it is something like that.

00:47:48.820 There are people that would join.

00:47:50.820 I think Hindus, Sikhs, you know, there are obviously Jews, there's all sorts of people in the military.

00:47:54.820 They come from military backgrounds.

00:47:55.820 Yeah, kids are certainly, yeah.

00:47:56.820 Absolutely.

00:47:57.820 They're down for it.

00:47:58.820 Of course they do.

00:47:59.820 And so we should be celebrating that.

00:48:00.820 And what we should be doing in the military is, we don't do it anymore, do we?

00:48:03.820 I'll tell you what, you see adverts full of white men when you want them to go to war. 0.91

00:48:07.820 That's what you see.

00:48:08.820 All other times, and I think I sent a picture down here as well of an advert the Royal Navy's just put out,

00:48:13.820 where it's got people, there's just no white man in the advert.

00:48:17.820 And at the front of it, you've got two, I think, you've got some black girls on one side, 1.00

00:48:22.820 you've got two women in the front of it, one who's a commissioned officer. 1.00

00:48:25.820 So what we're saying, you know, we're putting minorities, putting women first.

00:48:28.820 No wonder guys aren't joining when we're in a country overwhelmingly of young white men.

00:48:33.820 It just needs to be said, like, who do you want in this?

00:48:36.820 And it's family tradition as well.

00:48:37.820 A lot of these young guys, I get written to all the time, like, my son's not joining anymore.

00:48:41.820 And I spent, you know, 30 years in the army and I'm a proud, you know, whatever regiment the guy came from.

00:48:45.820 We're losing history, we're losing people going into these regiments. 0.65

00:48:49.820 These regiments with an absolute place in the world that's steeped in honours.

00:48:54.820 We're not seeing it.

00:48:55.820 And it's almost, if you wanted to destroy a country, you'd start with a police force,

00:48:58.820 you'd attack the military, and it's how it's happening now.

00:49:01.820 And that's why I talk about these people in the ministry not being English.

00:49:04.820 There's also a cultural aspect to it.

00:49:06.820 I traced my family history recently, and I was surprised that on both sides I've got, you know,

00:49:12.820 martial men, both in Scotland and down in Devon, both in the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force.

00:49:18.820 That's amazing. Really, have you? Yeah.

00:49:19.820 Yeah, and it makes you realise, wow, this country's really been defined by our military.

00:49:24.820 And of course...

00:49:25.820 So small now, though.

00:49:26.820 It's a great career, I'd say. 0.96

00:49:27.820 I'd join back up now and I'd just go and smash people up because, you know what I mean, it's ridiculous.

00:49:31.820 But unfortunately I can't, I'm 50, you know what I mean?

00:49:33.820 But I still recommend it as a career for a young person, man or woman.

00:49:38.820 Just get yourself in there and have a great adventure.

00:49:40.820 It's absolutely solid.

00:49:41.820 I do recommend it still. 1.00

00:49:42.820 You've just got to suck up a lot of idiots, unfortunately, that are going to be above you. 1.00

00:49:46.820 A couple of points I'd like to make. 1.00

00:49:47.820 I'll build on, I think, a really salient point you made where you made the connection between a brain surgeon.

00:49:54.820 Yeah, because lives are on the line.

00:49:56.820 This is not just, this is not just like a bin collectors.

00:50:00.820 And we're worried about maybe the efficiency of bin collecting might go down a little bit because there's women. 1.00

00:50:04.820 You should worry about bin collecting.

00:50:05.820 Well, maybe.

00:50:06.820 Sure.

00:50:07.820 But in a very real sense.

00:50:08.820 I know what you mean.

00:50:09.820 In a very, very real, direct sense, there's lives on the line.

00:50:13.820 I think, I think that's important.

00:50:15.820 Like it's really, it's really important.

00:50:17.820 Luxury beliefs just can't be entered into the system here.

00:50:20.820 It's got to be as efficient as humanly possible because that's how you guarantee that people live.

00:50:26.820 But the secret, this is what we're not talking about.

00:50:28.820 The secret is there are some countries we're never going to go and be involved in a war with.

00:50:31.820 India, Pakistan, if they come together, we're never sending anyone. 1.00

00:50:35.820 Why?

00:50:36.820 Because we're about to have that civil war in the UK.

00:50:38.820 Because our populations of Indians and Pakistanis are so massive.

00:50:40.820 They're kicking off over cricket matches.

00:50:41.820 They're definitely going to kick off over this terrorist attack if there's a conflict.

00:50:44.820 So we know we're never going to go and invest our military into that.

00:50:47.820 What does it mean?

00:50:48.820 Well, just reduce the military then.

00:50:50.820 It's a huge burden on personnel and pensions and things like this.

00:50:52.820 Let's just make it smaller.

00:50:53.820 Let's just cut the military down and we can invest in what?

00:50:56.820 What's the next thing we can invest in everyone?

00:50:57.820 I mean, pensions or whatever we're trying to, you know what I mean?

00:51:00.820 So we can really erode the military as much as we can.

00:51:02.820 And then you'll have, you know, I mean, how do we, what's, what do we see where we think we need a bigger military?

00:51:08.820 We don't because we just commit fewer troops to the battlefield and they'll be alongside the Americans.

00:51:12.820 When I was an Afghan, we couldn't field more than, it was supposed to be 10,000, I think, troops into Afghanistan at one time.

00:51:18.820 Out of an army that at the time was 100,000.

00:51:20.820 And I think the, I think the Air Force was 40 at the time.

00:51:22.820 The Navy was about the same.

00:51:23.820 And now all those are reduced.

00:51:24.820 I think we've got 30,000 in the Air Force.

00:51:26.820 I don't think we've tipped that.

00:51:27.820 The army is 70,000.

00:51:28.820 I think the Navy is about the same size as the Air Force now, but we couldn't put 10,000 people in Afghanistan.

00:51:33.820 We couldn't field 10,000 troops in Afghanistan.

00:51:36.820 When I was there, it was about 8,700 and we were pretending it was 10,000.

00:51:39.820 And this is the problem.

00:51:41.820 We just can't do it.

00:51:42.820 So there's inefficiencies as well.

00:51:44.820 Literally.

00:51:45.820 I mean, if you're only put one out of 10 people in your army overseas, there's something fundamentally wrong with what you're doing.

00:51:50.820 There's logistics problems there first and foremost, but that's more severe than the recruitment.

00:51:54.820 If you can't field your soldiers, then there's no point having them.

00:51:57.820 Was you at Bagram or Camp Bastion?

00:51:59.820 I was at a place called Camp Eggers in Kabul, near ISAF.

00:52:02.820 Near ISAF, yeah.

00:52:03.820 That's in Afghanistan.

00:52:04.820 That's when I was there, yeah.

00:52:05.820 The other point I just wanted to make is just building on the idea that lives are on the line.

00:52:11.820 It's like going for the jugular with the Royal Marines.

00:52:14.820 Yeah.

00:52:15.820 It's a bit like lowering the standards for the parachute regiment or the SAS or something.

00:52:19.820 It's like, if you really insist on having women in the military, there's a number of roles they can do. 0.95

00:52:24.820 Like women in the police. 1.00

00:52:26.820 Yeah.

00:52:27.820 Or Bobby's on the beat.

00:52:28.820 No, there's a number of jobs women can do in the police. 1.00

00:52:30.820 It's not front line.

00:52:31.820 Just don't put a five foot nothing, 90 pound woman on the beat. 1.00

00:52:34.820 She can do a number of jobs in the police.

00:52:36.820 I'm going to attest that a little bit.

00:52:37.820 You know, I've got family who are police, but that police woman is more of a mental health worker, that woman on the street there. 1.00

00:52:42.820 Well, fair enough.

00:52:43.820 There's a lot of big lads out there that would smash into a male police officer that are not going to smash into a young girl.

00:52:47.820 That's why they have them there.

00:52:48.820 And as much as we disagree with response policing being, you know, young, small women or whatever, five foot nothing. 0.96

00:52:54.820 My sister's a five foot nothing police officer. 1.00

00:52:56.820 I mean, she's been beaten up in her time. 0.82

00:52:58.820 But, you know, you do need a smattering of these female police officers. 1.00

00:53:02.820 There used to be a height limit, didn't there?

00:53:04.820 You know what I mean?

00:53:05.820 And my argument is we can do it and we know it's necessary and we can put women into policing. 0.99

00:53:09.820 We understand it.

00:53:10.820 Women is going to suffer as well because now men come in and they're like, well, where's the men? 1.00

00:53:14.820 I'm coming.

00:53:15.820 Where am I joining my tribe?

00:53:16.820 That's the problem I think we see with the Corps as well.

00:53:18.820 I think still, although you're right, it's a valid point.

00:53:21.820 There's a valid point that the woman isn't necessarily there to be tackling anyone. 0.96

00:53:25.820 But still, my point was that that doesn't apply to the Royal Marines.

00:53:30.820 No, no. 0.99

00:53:31.820 The Royal Marines are their killers. 1.00

00:53:33.820 They're killers. 1.00

00:53:34.820 Say what it is. 1.00

00:53:35.820 Commandos.

00:53:36.820 Like the SAS or the parachute regiment. 0.99

00:53:38.820 They go there because they need to demolish things and kill people.

00:53:41.820 Don't send them unless you want that.

00:53:42.820 Right.

00:53:43.820 Don't send them.

00:53:44.820 Right.

00:53:45.820 Yeah.

00:53:46.820 So it's...

00:53:47.820 Don't lower the standards.

00:53:48.820 It's not difficult.

00:53:49.820 It's madness.

00:53:50.820 This is why I'm saying, and we'll leave it now.

00:53:51.820 This is why I'm saying there is an agenda there.

00:53:53.820 And it's driven internally by, you know, whatever this thing is, this diversity, neo-Marxism,

00:53:58.820 post-Second World War thing, isn't it?

00:54:00.820 And it's just there.

00:54:02.820 I don't think we can change it.

00:54:03.820 All we can do is ridicule.

00:54:04.820 That's the biggest thing we can do.

00:54:06.820 Like what reform are doing in the polls there.

00:54:08.820 We can ridicule those people.

00:54:09.820 They're going to be faceless.

00:54:10.820 We don't know who they are.

00:54:12.820 It's going to frustrate us.

00:54:13.820 But again, I come back to it and I'm not going to talk about it too much now, but we

00:54:17.820 can build ourselves up and our communities up and be more protective and more, you know,

00:54:21.820 looking after each other, as opposed to trying to challenge face of entities and bureaucracies

00:54:24.820 that are hidden away in these ministries that we're never going to know who they are. 0.97

00:54:28.820 Cowards. 1.00

00:54:29.820 Absolute cowards. 1.00

00:54:30.820 Like literally, they're making the country weaker so that they can benefit from it. 0.99

00:54:33.820 That's what we're doing.

00:54:34.820 That's all they're doing.

00:54:35.820 So they can get the little diversity stats up.

00:54:36.820 Look what I've done.

00:54:37.820 Brilliant.

00:54:38.820 Well, it's also going on in the police as well, isn't it?

00:54:40.820 It is.

00:54:41.820 This is a recent story from West Yorkshire Police.

00:54:43.820 I believe you know a thing or two about it.

00:54:45.820 Yeah, I do.

00:54:46.820 This is West Yorkshire, a bit of a disgraceful force, to be fair.

00:54:48.820 They've had run-ins with this before.

00:54:49.820 And what they've said here, they're allowing black and Asian candidates to apply early

00:54:53.820 for positions before the positions open.

00:54:54.820 So they've got, and I can understand why it is, they've actually got a release they put

00:54:57.820 out to this Telegraph article and it said why they were doing this.

00:55:01.820 But again, the same with the Royal Air Force.

00:55:03.820 It's the statements there.

00:55:04.820 They're basically saying, look, we're allowing them to apply earlier because of diversity,

00:55:08.820 inclusion, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:55:09.820 And they're saying, look, 23% of people in West Yorkshire identify as being from an ethnic

00:55:13.820 minority background.

00:55:14.820 We'd like, policing by consent, we'd like to have 23% of people in West Yorkshire police

00:55:19.820 as minorities to identify.

00:55:21.820 That's a valid, we can all kind of go, yeah, it kind of makes sense.

00:55:23.820 Of course, in London, what are we going to get all of a sudden?

00:55:25.820 We're going to get a police force that's 37% white, aren't we?

00:55:27.820 You know what I mean?

00:55:28.820 And the rest of it.

00:55:29.820 So there is that.

00:55:30.820 But what we're doing is a lot of people don't want to join the police.

00:55:33.820 So again, it's standards.

00:55:34.820 OK, so let's say we've got 23% of minorities in our latest application, the rest of the 0.99

00:55:40.820 white.

00:55:41.820 But let's say 23% of those, maybe only 5% of them are good enough to pass all the tests.

00:55:45.820 Are we going to turn them down?

00:55:46.820 No, we're not.

00:55:47.820 And what's happened is they're recruiting them.

00:55:48.820 So what they're doing actively in West Yorkshire police, again, is lowering the standards

00:55:52.820 actively.

00:55:53.820 So they can say, we're not, we're not, we're just being, they are, we know they are.

00:55:56.820 A positive action.

00:55:57.820 We know it's actually discrimination.

00:55:58.820 It's an absolute lie.

00:55:59.820 We did exactly the same thing with the Air Force.

00:56:01.820 It's repeating itself.

00:56:02.820 And the reason it's repeating itself is because they genuinely don't care.

00:56:05.820 Nothing happens.

00:56:06.820 There's no one held to account over it.

00:56:07.820 Mike Wigston left, massive pension.

00:56:09.820 He was the boss of the Air Force, sorry, when this happened.

00:56:12.820 Nothing happened to him.

00:56:13.820 There was no one reprimanded.

00:56:14.820 No senior Royal Marines can be reprimanded for what's happening in the Corps.

00:56:17.820 This person here running the police is never going to be reprimanded.

00:56:20.820 So what they do is they collect up all the applications before the time.

00:56:23.820 When the application window opens, of course, these minority applications are there. 1.00

00:56:28.820 These, these female applications are there first. 1.00

00:56:29.820 They're the ones.

00:56:30.820 And then every other white guy gets a look in if, if you put an application in and you

00:56:34.820 see the window opening, you're like, oh, there's a window I'll put.

00:56:37.820 So again, it's unjustifiable.

00:56:39.820 You know, I just, it's so frustrating.

00:56:42.820 You can't stop it.

00:56:43.820 You can't stop it.

00:56:44.820 And I think the only thing we can do, as I said, is look after our communities and our

00:56:46.820 people and our families.

00:56:47.820 Just, you know, I'll keep going on about it.

00:56:49.820 I'll keep going on about that, but sorry to.

00:56:51.820 Good place to end it, actually.

00:56:52.820 There we go.

00:56:53.820 I think.

00:56:54.820 Got a few more Rumble chats here.

00:56:56.820 Where's the mouse?

00:56:57.820 We're on Rumble, are we?

00:56:58.820 We are indeed.

00:56:59.820 Rumble.

00:57:00.820 Live on there.

00:57:01.820 Rumble lads.

00:57:02.820 Hello everyone there.

00:57:03.820 Let's get ready, ready, let's get ready.

00:57:04.820 Sigil Stone says.

00:57:06.820 Sorry.

00:57:07.820 I want leadership decided by moistened bints lobbing scimitars at people. 1.00

00:57:12.820 Ballad.

00:57:13.820 Good.

00:57:14.820 Monty Python reference there.

00:57:16.820 Dragon Lady Chris says. 0.96

00:57:18.820 Picture women in combat. 1.00

00:57:19.820 Enemy holds up babies.

00:57:20.820 All the women are. 1.00

00:57:21.820 They're so cute.

00:57:22.820 Men only in combat, please.

00:57:24.820 Yeah.

00:57:25.820 It's amazing how many women actually agree with this.

00:57:27.820 Yeah, no.

00:57:28.820 It's not necessarily.

00:57:29.820 Yeah.

00:57:30.820 You know, I've sort of got this view that men and women have very complementary roles

00:57:34.820 and we, you know, work best together.

00:57:37.820 Playing to our strengths is not that I'm trying to tear anyone down.

00:57:40.820 Talk to you out later if you want.

00:57:41.820 Based women are the best, the best women. 1.00

00:57:43.820 I agree.

00:57:44.820 See the men's sheds where the women went to the men's sheds. 0.88

00:57:46.820 Yeah.

00:57:47.820 On that on my YouTube.

00:57:48.820 Yeah.

00:57:49.820 So now it's a, there's a men's shed, which was men, men only building stuff.

00:57:51.820 And now there's a shed up in Yorkshire somewhere that's 50, 50.

00:57:54.820 Because the women wanted to come in and the men went, so the men have given themselves 0.99

00:57:57.820 their own little room with a train set.

00:57:58.820 They'll get bored eventually.

00:57:59.820 Yeah.

00:58:00.820 Well, now they've gone into that space.

00:58:01.820 They will.

00:58:02.820 Yeah.

00:58:03.820 Bold Eagle 1787 says, Bo, that was an interview with Marine Corps commander, commandant of

00:58:09.820 the time.

00:58:10.820 His saying was, you can't put a hundred pounds back on a woman because she'd crumble like 1.00

00:58:16.820 an effing crouton.

00:58:17.820 60 kilograms, 50, 60 kilograms.

00:58:19.820 Is it 40 kilograms?

00:58:20.820 That's a lot.

00:58:21.820 I'm not sure of the conversions.

00:58:23.820 And then yomp it for mile after mile after mile.

00:58:26.820 I couldn't do it now.

00:58:27.820 I couldn't do it now.

00:58:28.820 You guys should get this Marine on load seaters. 0.98

00:58:29.820 Every time someone is maligned by the system, we should lift them up and bring them into

00:58:34.820 the fold.

00:58:35.820 I mean, I would say I'd be happy to do it, but I can't now.

00:58:38.820 I can't now.

00:58:39.820 Yeah.

00:58:40.820 We'll have that conversation.

00:58:41.820 I can say that.

00:58:42.820 Yeah.

00:58:43.820 If he was on talk, why not?

00:58:44.820 Yeah, you can.

00:58:45.820 We'll see.

00:58:46.820 You have to call.

00:58:47.820 His brother is on my Twitter, so you can contact his brother.

00:58:49.820 Sigil Stone says, I encourage England to make all their soldiers and cops five foot

00:58:53.820 nothing, 90 pound women. 1.00

00:58:54.820 It'll make it less messy when Emperor Vance makes the UK a new state.

00:58:59.820 Emperor Vance.

00:59:00.820 Oh, you don't know.

00:59:01.820 That's great.

00:59:02.820 That's great.

00:59:03.820 And Bebo Pin 2 says, hopefully when the UK reform, the DEI hires not competent people

00:59:09.820 or whatever group will self-report like the commander who didn't put up Trump's picture,

00:59:14.820 not the New Zealand ship's sinker.

00:59:16.820 Yeah.

00:59:17.820 Very interesting.

00:59:19.820 Right.

00:59:20.820 Now, you might be wondering what on earth you've just clicked on, because I don't think

00:59:28.820 many people have argued what I'm about to argue here, that Vladimir Putin is actually,

00:59:34.820 secretly, a liberal boomer.

00:59:36.820 And why do I mean that?

00:59:38.820 Actually, he said quite a few things, and the state of Russia is not quite the same

00:59:45.820 as some people might have you believe.

00:59:46.820 And now I'm not picking on Tucker Carlson here, although it's just an example of some

00:59:52.820 people going to Russia and saying, hey, maybe they're doing things right compared to the

00:59:57.820 rest of the world.

00:59:58.820 And I feel like, perhaps, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater a little bit.

01:00:03.820 And I'm not hating on Russia for any particular reason, it's just that I find people saying

01:00:09.820 these sorts of things annoying.

01:00:10.820 So it's more out of personal inconvenience to me than I'm saying this, more than anything.

01:00:15.820 I want you to be truthful and accurate in your views of the world.

01:00:18.820 So, you know...

01:00:19.820 You're saying that some people in the dissident right, some people on the right,

01:00:22.820 people like us or Tucker or whoever, paint Russia out as being...

01:00:26.820 This traditional utopia or something like that.

01:00:28.820 Right, yeah.

01:00:29.820 And it's not necessarily...

01:00:30.820 And you want to emigrate air and stuff.

01:00:31.820 Yeah, people are emigrate. 0.96

01:00:32.820 It's a little bit silly.

01:00:34.820 Because, as we all see, actually, a lot of the problems that we use to complain about

01:00:40.820 the West and how we're doing things wrong are just as present in Russia, if not worse. 0.79

01:00:45.820 So, obviously, Tucker went out to there and was saying how cheap the groceries were, because,

01:00:50.820 of course, he was paying with US dollars in mind.

01:00:54.820 And, as the community note says here, to understand the international price differences,

01:01:01.820 the average wage in Russia is 73,383 rubles per month, which equates to $791 with today's

01:01:10.820 exchange rate, so whenever this was posted.

01:01:12.820 15th of February.

01:01:13.820 So, food's way cheaper, but you're going to be earning loads less, basically.

01:01:17.820 So, over 60% of Russians spend half of their salary on food, according to Russia's state-owned

01:01:21.820 news agency, which, in Britain, if you were spending over half of your money in food,

01:01:26.820 you would be very poor.

01:01:27.820 Some people do, of course.

01:01:28.820 Yeah, absolutely.

01:01:29.820 They do, yes.

01:01:30.820 That's a pretty bad ratio.

01:01:31.820 You don't really want to be spending half your money on food, do you?

01:01:33.820 No, you're too busy spending half of it on rent, aren't you?

01:01:35.820 There's a lot of seasonal, remember, in Russia as well.

01:01:37.820 They do really go via the seasons a lot of the time.

01:01:39.820 So, there are some things that aren't available.

01:01:41.820 We have everything available all the time, don't we?

01:01:43.820 In Russia, they just don't.

01:01:44.820 So, you know what I mean?

01:01:46.820 Your staples can be, you know, your potatoes, your chicken breasts.

01:01:49.820 Chicken breasts are quite expensive, I think, actually.

01:01:50.820 I looked at that.

01:01:51.820 We had Roreg Nationalist on a few weeks ago, and he was talking about how loads of

01:01:54.820 people in Russia got allotments or grow their own stuff in their garden.

01:01:57.820 Loads of people.

01:01:58.820 It's a massive thing.

01:01:59.820 It is a big thing, yeah.

01:02:00.820 That's a good idea, just for its own sake.

01:02:01.820 Right, yeah.

01:02:02.820 I think it's just good for you psychologically to do that.

01:02:05.820 And I think that, actually, a lot of people are deifying something that they don't necessarily

01:02:11.820 understand fully.

01:02:12.820 For example, Vladimir Putin, who has sort of been the figurehead of Russia.

01:02:17.820 He's not always been the leader in the past 25 years, but he's at least played a significant

01:02:22.820 role.

01:02:23.820 I mean, is it Medvedev?

01:02:24.820 Medvedev.

01:02:25.820 He was always Putin's puppet.

01:02:27.820 Exactly.

01:02:28.820 He was always still Vladimir Putin at the bottom of it all.

01:02:32.820 And so he's been the leader for quite some time.

01:02:34.820 And so I think it's fair to look at how the country is doing and how this reflects on

01:02:39.820 his leadership, because I think that he's been in office far, far long enough to say

01:02:45.820 that he is responsible for the way the country is today.

01:02:48.820 And this is an interesting comment.

01:02:50.820 This is the reason I've decided to cover this.

01:02:53.820 He says, nationalism is the first stage towards Nazism, the first step, because nationalism

01:02:57.820 is not just based on the love of your own ethnicity, but also hatred of others.

01:03:03.820 And I don't think that's the case at all.

01:03:05.820 Or patriotism or nationalism?

01:03:06.820 Nationalism.

01:03:07.820 What is the definition here?

01:03:08.820 Because I always get them confused between patriotism and nationalism.

01:03:10.820 So which one's which?

01:03:11.820 There's not really much difference between the two, is there?

01:03:14.820 I think nationalism is a bit more ideological.

01:03:17.820 Maybe, yeah.

01:03:18.820 Let's sort of see what he's saying there.

01:03:20.820 Because I think a lot of leaders, of course, have to try and...

01:03:24.820 I'm just saying that there's a lot of people that are listening to these leaders.

01:03:27.820 They're not all intellectual.

01:03:28.820 They haven't got an IQ of over 120 of them.

01:03:30.820 You know what I mean?

01:03:31.820 You've got to cater for the people that are... 1.00

01:03:32.820 So I kind of see what he's saying there.

01:03:34.820 He's trying to accommodate everyone's interpretation.

01:03:37.820 By saying, you know what?

01:03:38.820 If we push nationalism, then of course it's also...

01:03:41.820 You've got to be careful about hating on other people.

01:03:43.820 So I get what he's kind of saying.

01:03:45.820 I'm known as a Putin apologist, by the way.

01:03:46.820 Just so you know.

01:03:47.820 Yeah, we've been accused of being...

01:03:49.820 I'm not surprised.

01:03:50.820 Everyone is.

01:03:51.820 Not after this segment, though.

01:03:53.820 Yeah, hopefully not after this segment.

01:03:54.820 My parting gift.

01:03:55.820 I'll take it with you.

01:03:57.820 People, all sorts of people define both patriotism and nationalism

01:04:00.820 in all sorts of different ways.

01:04:01.820 Sure.

01:04:02.820 It's just messy, isn't it?

01:04:03.820 But nonetheless, I think there's a few things, a couple of quick things to say

01:04:07.820 about Putin saying this.

01:04:09.820 It will be absolutely calculated.

01:04:11.820 If there's anything we know about Putin for sure,

01:04:13.820 he's a calculated political player.

01:04:16.820 And, I mean, Alex Esteemguy had a good tweet.

01:04:20.820 He said, well, nationalism is the enemy of empire in various ways.

01:04:24.820 I was going to touch on exactly that.

01:04:26.820 And he's sort of...

01:04:27.820 I don't necessarily believe that narrative particularly,

01:04:29.820 but he's sort of in the empire building business

01:04:31.820 on some very small limited level.

01:04:33.820 Well, Russia is a country of lots and lots of different ethnicities, isn't it?

01:04:38.820 Because of its vast size.

01:04:39.820 Huge.

01:04:40.820 And so what he's probably thinking of is that I'm ruling over these disparate ethnic groups.

01:04:46.820 And it's not just, you know, they flooded the country with diversity.

01:04:50.820 They were, you know, indigenous to these specific areas, many of them,

01:04:54.820 many of these ethnic groups.

01:04:55.820 And so it's not like they don't have a legitimate claim to their area or anything like that.

01:05:00.820 It's just by merit of having to rule over such a large area,

01:05:05.820 which encompasses lots of peoples and lots of disparate peoples,

01:05:08.820 that I think he's had to approach this in a way where he's trying to give everyone a national ethos

01:05:16.820 that doesn't put them against each other.

01:05:18.820 Sure. Absolutely.

01:05:19.820 And that's exactly what's going on here.

01:05:21.820 And it's interesting as well that...

01:05:23.820 It just so happens that it could have been a line straight out of a Guardian article.

01:05:26.820 Exactly.

01:05:27.820 Yeah, it could.

01:05:28.820 But they're coming at it from very different world views.

01:05:32.820 Yeah, exactly.

01:05:33.820 And that's why I thought it was interesting to talk about this.

01:05:36.820 And another thing he said before, here he is, this was a little while ago now, May of 23.

01:05:42.820 Our adversary is people with neo-colonial mindsets, halfwits, in fact, are unable to realise that diversity makes us stronger.

01:05:51.820 So Vladimir Putin openly coming out and saying diversity is our strength.

01:05:55.820 Interesting, isn't it?

01:05:56.820 But is he addressing the sort of Inuit of Siberia?

01:06:00.820 Well...

01:06:01.820 Right, I mean, or whatever, the Chechens, whatever.

01:06:03.820 There's a difference, isn't there, between the way Putin rules, you may like it or may not like it,

01:06:08.820 and the way that someone like Rishi Sunak rules, where when he was voted in, I think, was it the Prime Minister of India gave him a call

01:06:14.820 and said, congratulations, there's an Indian man now running the, you know what I mean?

01:06:18.820 Yeah.

01:06:19.820 So we've got to be realistic about that.

01:06:20.820 What he's saying is, this is Russia first, and he celebrates that, he's got the Russian flag everywhere.

01:06:26.820 We don't do that, do we?

01:06:27.820 We don't go, this is England, or this is...

01:06:29.820 Because we have this thing about England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

01:06:32.820 We have this thing about the UK, are we Great Britain?

01:06:34.820 Are we British?

01:06:35.820 Because if we call us English, and all of a sudden I'm a nationalist, but then if I call us, you know what I mean?

01:06:39.820 If I call us Great Britain, then all of a sudden the Scots hates me.

01:06:41.820 And if I say, okay, it's UK then, the Irish are going, hang on a second, we don't want to be... 1.00

01:06:45.820 You can't win.

01:06:46.820 And that's the problem with the fragmenting of our identity.

01:06:48.820 And he's not doing that, he's bringing everyone together.

01:06:50.820 And that's why he's saying diversity makes us stronger.

01:06:52.820 Because he's saying, look, everyone, we're collecting everyone under one unified banner.

01:06:55.820 We don't do this here.

01:06:56.820 We celebrate, we celebrate the Pakistani population, and we call them communities.

01:07:01.820 Don't we?

01:07:02.820 We say the Jewish community.

01:07:03.820 We've heard it, the Pakistani community.

01:07:05.820 We celebrate...

01:07:06.820 It's like, well, if you're going to do that, if you're going to celebrate communities, then you're never going to get any national pride.

01:07:10.820 It is also worth mentioning as well that Putin is saying this after some pretty intense Russification policies in these ethnic communities in the 19th and 20th centuries.

01:07:22.820 This is, you know, both under Tsarism as well as under the Bolsheviks.

01:07:26.820 So that has already gone on and somewhat homogenized the culture to some degree already.

01:07:32.820 And so he's able to say this because they've been part of this, this empire, if you will, for quite some time.

01:07:39.820 And the project of the Muscovites controlling a vast swathe of the globe surface is always going to be a sort of a coalition building, multi-ethnic building project. 0.52

01:07:52.820 Right. So again, that could have been said by someone on Radio 4 or in The Guardian.

01:07:58.820 Yeah.

01:07:59.820 I think he's actually talking about some...

01:08:01.820 Well, he is talking about something very different, isn't he?

01:08:03.820 Oh, absolutely very different.

01:08:04.820 And that's what we need to look at.

01:08:05.820 You cannot say that right now we're a better country for the amount of diversity we have in it.

01:08:08.820 No, certainly not.

01:08:09.820 It's not possible.

01:08:10.820 We're about to have a war internally between Indians and Pakistanis.

01:08:13.820 I mean, how is that?

01:08:14.820 How is that?

01:08:15.820 Like, it doesn't make sense.

01:08:17.820 What he's saying makes sense because he's got people from all over his country fighting in Ukraine right now.

01:08:21.820 On the same side.

01:08:23.820 That's what he means by diversity making us stronger.

01:08:25.820 We can come again.

01:08:26.820 You know, national pride.

01:08:27.820 We can actually go and try and...

01:08:28.820 I mean, we're going to bring up Ukraine now.

01:08:30.820 I mean, it's going to destroy, you know, what we're doing.

01:08:33.820 I hate to say it, but you know what I mean?

01:08:34.820 There's a book, by the way.

01:08:35.820 I just recommend a book to people called Putin by Philip Short.

01:08:38.820 And there's another book called Putin's Wars.

01:08:39.820 I can't remember who he did it, but, you know, have a...

01:08:41.820 The Putin's War is quite analytical, but Putin is about the man himself.

01:08:44.820 It's a great book.

01:08:46.820 It's quite big.

01:08:47.820 Have it as an audio book.

01:08:48.820 Play it in the car.

01:08:49.820 It's not that nice about him, but it's very, you know, factual.

01:08:53.820 Have a read of it.

01:08:54.820 Putin by Philip Short.

01:08:55.820 It's a great book.

01:08:56.820 A lot of people are commenting, by the way, without knowledge.

01:08:59.820 And that's what I find so dangerous on social media.

01:09:02.820 They haven't educated themselves about it.

01:09:04.820 They haven't watched a documentary.

01:09:05.820 You know what I mean?

01:09:06.820 They just comment, Putin, bad man.

01:09:08.820 You know what I mean?

01:09:09.820 It's basic, isn't it?

01:09:10.820 It's elementary.

01:09:11.820 It's an IQ level of four.

01:09:12.820 But also moral judgments are pretty easy to make.

01:09:15.820 Well, of course you can make it.

01:09:16.820 Yeah.

01:09:17.820 Putin, he's been the bad man forever, hasn't he?

01:09:18.820 You know what I mean?

01:09:19.820 Of course he has.

01:09:20.820 And by the way, I am going to say that I don't approve of him.

01:09:22.820 I do think he's a bad man.

01:09:23.820 I'm just going to throw that one out there.

01:09:25.820 Just in case someone is saying, oh, you're doing apologia.

01:09:29.820 How are you?

01:09:30.820 I always say that.

01:09:31.820 Whenever I'm throwing shade at Zelensky, I always have to go. 0.99

01:09:34.820 But I do think Putin is a killer. 0.98

01:09:36.820 This is weakness, Bo. 0.99

01:09:37.820 This is weakness is what this is. 1.00

01:09:38.820 I do think he's a killer. 0.96

01:09:39.820 You know what I mean? 0.97

01:09:40.820 He has murdered lots of his political opponents.

01:09:41.820 Absolutely.

01:09:42.820 Absolutely.

01:09:43.820 Has he stopped the country from being fragmented, though,

01:09:44.820 by the gangs internally?

01:09:45.820 Now, what do you want out of a leader?

01:09:46.820 And this is why I'm called a Putin apologist.

01:09:47.820 I'm like, it works in Russia.

01:09:49.820 For us, abhorrent, in our luxury belief Western world in which we live,

01:09:54.820 you know, let's be a bit courageous here and go, yeah, Russia's working under that guy.

01:09:58.820 Most guys couldn't hold Russia together. 0.53

01:10:00.820 If you think it's bad now, wait till he's not in power and see who comes in and replaces him.

01:10:04.820 I do think he's one of the better leaders Russia's had in the past 200 years.

01:10:08.820 And that's not really saying very much because they've had a rough time of it.

01:10:11.820 And being a sort of student of Russian history, I do feel very sorry for the Russian people. 1.00

01:10:15.820 They've suffered more hardship than I thought possible.

01:10:20.820 And, yeah, it's a history that I think they look back on and makes them very cynical about their politics.

01:10:28.820 I think Gorbachev, when he broke up, he actually was allowing the investment into Russia, wasn't he?

01:10:33.820 And I don't think we took that.

01:10:35.820 I think we've shunned Russia to maintain an enemy.

01:10:37.820 That's true.

01:10:38.820 Well, the incentives were just too strong.

01:10:40.820 Of course.

01:10:41.820 I mean, can you imagine if all of a sudden we weren't building up?

01:10:44.820 The Americans didn't have to build their military up.

01:10:46.820 How are they going to employ the vast amount of peoples they do?

01:10:49.820 How are they going to go and take the resources that, you know, we need to take?

01:10:52.820 I say we as a collective.

01:10:53.820 But by having a unified enemy, you can always you can always lobby that, can't you?

01:10:57.820 We need more regiments because of Russia. 0.97

01:10:59.820 And unfortunately, he's given that.

01:11:01.820 I think he said that before, actually.

01:11:02.820 So one of the things that Putin said as well is that he's in favour of mixed ethnicity marriages, as long as it's, you know, Russians internally doing so.

01:11:13.820 And that's one thing that I've seen people just factually get wrong about.

01:11:18.820 Oh, right.

01:11:19.820 Okay.

01:11:20.820 And I wanted to include that.

01:11:21.820 But one thing that supposedly traditional Russia has is a problem with divorce rates,

01:11:27.820 because this is something that I think has its origin in the Soviet Union.

01:11:31.820 They've got one of the.

01:11:32.820 Yeah.

01:11:33.820 Russia has among the highest divorce rates in the world, although they've slightly declined in recent years.

01:11:38.820 And it was the highest apparently in the 1960s.

01:11:41.820 So it is a sort of relic of the Soviet era.

01:11:44.820 But once it sort of takes hold of the public consciousness, it becomes a problem afterwards.

01:11:50.820 You can still see this in some of the westernized former Soviet satellite states.

01:11:55.820 They still have comparable levels of corruption that they had under the Soviet Union because it's created a culture after the fact, even though they're not living under the Soviet system.

01:12:06.820 It seems to be just something that if you have communism, you will have corruption, even if you give up that communism.

01:12:15.820 I definitely know that under the Stalinist period and during the worst excesses of the Maoist period in China, suicide was through the roof.

01:12:24.820 Abortion was through the roof. 0.57

01:12:25.820 Divorce or just not getting married in the first place was through the roof.

01:12:28.820 Yes, because it really, really, really horrible, unhealthy, unnatural way to live.

01:12:34.820 Well, it's a sign of fundamental problems.

01:12:36.820 Right. Yeah. I'm surprised that they still mildly surprised.

01:12:39.820 Well, what do I know? I just would have thought where they've got sort of Russia, Russian Orthodox Christianity.

01:12:43.820 I would have thought they they might be exempt a bit from high divorce rates, but I guess not.

01:12:48.820 There's a study, though, from the National Library of Medicine. Can we just recognise that's probably one of the greatest titles ever?

01:12:52.820 The Longitudinal Prediction of Divorce in Russia. The Role of Individual and Couple Drinking Patterns.

01:12:59.820 I want to read that. Is that why divorce is so high? Because they're not drinking at the same time. 0.98

01:13:03.820 It's going to give you advice. Yeah, exactly.

01:13:05.820 The takeaway is vodka good.

01:13:07.820 Yeah, it must be.

01:13:08.820 Couples that drink together stay together. That's what I want to have the conclusion.

01:13:12.820 So, another thing that's worth mentioning as well, the fertility rate in Russia is very similar to the European contemporaries here.

01:13:20.820 If I pull this up a little bit, you can see that the Russian line sort of gets caught along with lots of Europeans.

01:13:26.820 What colour is Russia, sorry?

01:13:27.820 It's dark red, isn't it?

01:13:28.820 It's like a, yeah, like a sort of maroon-y colour there.

01:13:31.820 Same, isn't it?

01:13:32.820 Yeah.

01:13:33.820 It's all in the same ballpark.

01:13:34.820 Yeah, it's very comparable.

01:13:35.820 This is why I try and argue that Russia is still a European country, at least part of it.

01:13:41.820 Well, it is in Europe, yeah.

01:13:42.820 The Western side of Russia.

01:13:44.820 Yeah, but it's culturally European as well, isn't it?

01:13:46.820 And in many ways.

01:13:47.820 Sure, yeah, the Western.

01:13:48.820 Russia is largely Western, isn't it?

01:13:50.820 When you think of the cities and everything, it's predominantly Western, isn't it?

01:13:53.820 As in geographically, most population lives in the West, isn't it? Am I right?

01:13:56.820 Oh yeah, the vast majority, yeah.

01:13:58.820 There are still, you know, what is it, like Vladivostok?

01:14:00.820 Yeah.

01:14:01.820 There are some cities way out east, but yeah, the vast majority of it is, yeah, of course,

01:14:06.820 when you, yeah, their heritage, when you look at like, I don't know, like Dostoevsky

01:14:09.820 or whatever.

01:14:10.820 Some of my favourite classical music composers are Russians.

01:14:14.820 I think they've got a culture to be proud of, as with many.

01:14:18.820 You'll be counseled for that.

01:14:19.820 I know.

01:14:20.820 You'll be counseled.

01:14:21.820 The annoying thing is as well, my favourite composers are either German or Russian,

01:14:24.820 so.

01:14:25.820 Yeah, you're in trouble.

01:14:26.820 There we go.

01:14:27.820 You can tell the difference between someone from St. Petersburg or Moscow from someone

01:14:32.820 that's from Central Asia.

01:14:34.820 Mm-hmm.

01:14:35.820 They're not Central Asian, ethnically speaking, right?

01:14:37.820 Of course, yeah.

01:14:38.820 Yeah.

01:14:39.820 It's a very big country, isn't it?

01:14:40.820 And it's also, this is a list of countries by abortion rate.

01:14:46.820 Interesting.

01:14:47.820 So, this is something that lots of people who are concerned with traditional living.

01:14:51.820 So, I'm starting from the bottom here, Algeria. 0.91

01:14:54.820 This is the per capita rate here, I think.

01:14:56.820 Okay, yeah.

01:14:57.820 That's the one you really want to look at, so it's a fair comparison.

01:15:00.820 What's that?

01:15:01.820 The raw numbers, you know, Albania is a much smaller population, therefore they've got fewer

01:15:04.820 numbers, but per capita it's higher.

01:15:06.820 But you see lots of European countries here, Austria, Croatia, Lithuania, Turkey, depending

01:15:13.820 on who you ask, maybe not Stelios.

01:15:15.820 Slovakia, Serbia, Italy.

01:15:17.820 These are some of the lowest in the whole world.

01:15:19.820 Yeah, Japan, Luxembourg, Germany, Portugal, Montenegro, Ukraine.

01:15:23.820 Religion must play a big part. 0.90

01:15:24.820 Latvia, Czech Republic, you know, the Netherlands.

01:15:28.820 And then, you're going up, there's Poland, Hungary, Israel, there's New Zealand.

01:15:34.820 Where's...

01:15:35.820 Russia's here somewhere. 0.89

01:15:36.820 Where is it?

01:15:37.820 Is it in the middle?

01:15:38.820 You haven't hit Russia, I haven't seen it.

01:15:39.820 I haven't seen it.

01:15:40.820 It is 100 and...

01:15:41.820 Where is it?

01:15:42.820 I've got...

01:15:43.820 112.

01:15:44.820 Sorry, there we go.

01:15:45.820 Ah, there we go.

01:15:46.820 There's Russia, almost right next to the United States there.

01:15:49.820 You know, it's next to Iceland, there's Canada, New Zealand.

01:15:53.820 We're actually...

01:15:54.820 We're worse than that?

01:15:55.820 Yeah, we're worse.

01:15:56.820 I did not know that.

01:15:57.820 20?

01:15:58.820 There's France, yeah.

01:15:59.820 There we go.

01:16:00.820 Only about mid-table, though.

01:16:01.820 Yeah.

01:16:02.820 Only about mid-table.

01:16:03.820 We're still at 92.

01:16:04.820 Not good.

01:16:05.820 Yeah, we've still got all of these...

01:16:06.820 Who tops the tables, haven't we?

01:16:08.820 Greenland.

01:16:09.820 Greenland.

01:16:10.820 Yeah, you can tell them all.

01:16:11.820 It's just a small population.

01:16:12.820 Yeah, but that per capita wouldn't matter, though, would it?

01:16:14.820 Mm-hmm.

01:16:15.820 So, it doesn't matter about...

01:16:16.820 In sheer numbers, as well, India, China, Pakistan, Nigeria.

01:16:19.820 So, it's just countries with very large populations.

01:16:21.820 So, what's that mean in Greenland, though?

01:16:22.820 I don't know.

01:16:23.820 It's per capita, it's per capita.

01:16:24.820 It doesn't matter how many people are there.

01:16:25.820 I know, yeah.

01:16:26.820 It's only eight people there.

01:16:27.820 They had two abortions.

01:16:28.820 Yeah, exactly.

01:16:29.820 Boom! 0.99

01:16:30.820 I know their population is tiny.

01:16:31.820 Isn't their population like 50,000, 60,000, or whatever?

01:16:33.820 Does it even say what it is?

01:16:34.820 About to take over America, isn't it?

01:16:35.820 America's...

01:16:36.820 In our Madagascar, Guinea-Bissau, Cuba...

01:16:37.820 I would never have guessed those countries.

01:16:39.820 No.

01:16:40.820 India's still there for per capita, as well.

01:16:41.820 No, I would never.

01:16:42.820 You never would have guessed, either.

01:16:43.820 It's not a religious issue, then, is it?

01:16:44.820 No.

01:16:45.820 It's for Italy.

01:16:46.820 Italy's a very religious country.

01:16:47.820 They're right down the bottom, aren't they?

01:16:48.820 Yeah.

01:16:49.820 So, it's Hinduism... 0.92

01:16:50.820 Has Hinduism not got any problem with... 1.00

01:16:53.820 I don't know much about Hinduism, really.

01:16:55.820 You can make it up.

01:16:56.820 I only know the basics.

01:16:57.820 Yeah, let's just make it up.

01:16:58.820 Yeah, Hinduism. 0.91

01:16:59.820 Oh, yeah, those Hindus. 1.00

01:17:00.820 Oh.

01:17:01.820 Another thing, as well.

01:17:02.820 Russia has the largest Muslim population in Europe.

01:17:05.820 Yep.

01:17:06.820 It is 14 million, officially, or 10% of the total population.

01:17:10.820 Of course, you can see it's heavily weighted in certain areas.

01:17:13.820 They've got their Middle Eastern areas.

01:17:15.820 Exactly.

01:17:16.820 Chechnya and stuff like that.

01:17:17.820 Those rookie numbers, give us five years.

01:17:18.820 Yeah.

01:17:21.820 It's not funny, but...

01:17:22.820 It's not funny, is it?

01:17:23.820 It's morbid, yeah.

01:17:24.820 I can't help but laugh.

01:17:25.820 Jeez.

01:17:26.820 So, obviously, they've not always got along.

01:17:29.820 I know in the 90s, the Chechens, I know it was a little bit before I was born, but I

01:17:33.820 know about it.

01:17:34.820 I know it happened.

01:17:35.820 Feel old yet, Tim?

01:17:36.820 Well, Chechens are fighting in Ukraine now.

01:17:38.820 That's true, yeah.

01:17:39.820 Chechens are fighting with Russia in Ukraine, yeah.

01:17:40.820 So, I mean, it's...

01:17:41.820 Again, it's faction will break away, you know, people within these groups, isn't it?

01:17:45.820 Warlords and stuff.

01:17:46.820 But, yeah.

01:17:47.820 I mean...

01:17:48.820 Oh, yeah.

01:17:49.820 I'll tell you, that's a good thing about Putin's wars.

01:17:50.820 I don't need to say about Putin's wars.

01:17:51.820 One of the things Putin's wars goes into quite heavily is the reactionary nature of Putin's

01:17:56.820 conflicts.

01:17:57.820 Unlike America's, where they go in and they change a country and then they resource, come 0.99

01:18:02.820 out.

01:18:03.820 Putin, things will flare up.

01:18:05.820 He'll go, like Georgia, he'll go in, suppress, maybe leave a little force in there and then come

01:18:09.820 back out again.

01:18:10.820 I can't really describe it that well because I'm not clever enough.

01:18:12.820 But if people want to read about the way Putin or the way Russia deals with conflict.

01:18:16.820 I mean, I could tell you right now.

01:18:17.820 I mean, America's got 3,000 overseas bases.

01:18:20.820 So, 3,000 bases outside the United States.

01:18:22.820 Russia is 21. 0.90

01:18:23.820 This is why I get called a Putin apologist for something called facts.

01:18:26.820 But it is a fact though, isn't it?

01:18:27.820 So, when we're looking at Russia expanding, being the aggressor, trying to improve its empire. 0.84

01:18:32.820 Is it with 21 bases?

01:18:33.820 It's not, is it?

01:18:34.820 We're smoking a crack pipe, right?

01:18:35.820 It's not true.

01:18:36.820 But who is?

01:18:37.820 Well, America's got 3,000.

01:18:38.820 You know, let's be realistic now.

01:18:40.820 It's just, you know, figures, isn't it?

01:18:41.820 But again, that's quite a good book to read if you want.

01:18:44.820 Perhaps aircraft carries the ability to project your power abroad.

01:18:47.820 America's got 20 or something or 10.

01:18:49.820 That's it.

01:18:50.820 Russia's got one old dilapidated steamer.

01:18:52.820 Well, we're not even letting them have that, are we?

01:18:53.820 We're not letting them have Sevastopol, even in Crimea.

01:18:55.820 We could talk about this all day if you want.

01:18:56.820 They were leasing Crimea from Ukraine on 99 million dollars a year until 2042.

01:19:00.820 That's why they put the little green men in because once Yanukovic was ousted in the coup 0.98

01:19:05.820 and Perushenko, was it Perushenko came in, I believe it was, and looked to EU and looked

01:19:10.820 basically, I want to join Europe.

01:19:11.820 They realized they were going to lose Crimea.

01:19:12.820 So they went in and took it.

01:19:13.820 Crimea's got a huge water problem.

01:19:15.820 People don't know this stuff.

01:19:16.820 Sevastopol is the only base they've really got, which isn't freeze over the whole of

01:19:20.820 northern Russia.

01:19:21.820 It's been a problem since Tsarist times.

01:19:23.820 Absolutely right.

01:19:24.820 Yeah.

01:19:25.820 Crimean, I mean, all that kind of stuff.

01:19:26.820 So yeah, that's why they took Crimea to give themselves some access to the Mediterranean Sea.

01:19:29.820 But knowledge, education, we don't need that, do we?

01:19:32.820 No, not too.

01:19:33.820 A little bitter now.

01:19:34.820 So another thing they have is hate crime legislation.

01:19:36.820 Because of course, if you are ruling over a large swathe of multiple ethnicities, what

01:19:42.820 you need is the law to persecute people who target them.

01:19:45.820 So anyone commits an offence by anything motivated by political, ideological, racial,

01:19:51.820 ethnic or religious hatred.

01:19:53.820 So this can lead to a harsher sentence for something that's already an offence.

01:19:58.820 And I don't need to tell people that, you know, you don't have freedom of speech in Russia.

01:20:04.820 I think we all know that one, don't we?

01:20:06.820 Let's be honest.

01:20:07.820 For me, one of the worst sort of black marks on Putin's record is the number of journalists

01:20:11.820 who have disappeared or just been murdered because they're too dissident.

01:20:16.820 Or number of opposition politicians that have an accident.

01:20:21.820 I mean, you don't want to live in that country.

01:20:25.820 Most dangerous place in Russia is near a balcony because they're just really, really dangerous

01:20:31.820 for whatever reason.

01:20:32.820 No railings.

01:20:33.820 That's it.

01:20:34.820 But also remember, he does clamp down on speech against him.

01:20:37.820 Yeah.

01:20:38.820 Right.

01:20:39.820 If you want to talk about other stuff, they don't really care.

01:20:41.820 You're not going to get in for a tweet against whatever the lady, I can't remember her name 1.00

01:20:46.820 now, Lucy Connolly.

01:20:47.820 Her tweet, he wouldn't care about that.

01:20:48.820 It doesn't matter, does it?

01:20:49.820 You know what I mean? 0.99

01:20:50.820 Go, let's go and burn down a hotel. 1.00

01:20:51.820 He doesn't care about that. 1.00

01:20:52.820 Let's go and burn down a hotel. 0.98

01:20:53.820 Anything to do with him and his position, anything that might unstable him, come down 0.99

01:20:58.820 like a ton of bricks. 0.97

01:20:59.820 If you accuse him of being a pedo, you get polonium poisoned. 0.97

01:21:02.820 Twice.

01:21:03.820 But anything other than that, they just don't care.

01:21:05.820 I mean, I've got, I think they put like 4,000 people.

01:21:08.820 I mean, I don't know what the figures are, but significantly fewer people have gone to

01:21:11.820 prison for speech on their internet, whatever, than have gone over in the UK.

01:21:15.820 It's much bigger here.

01:21:16.820 Orders of magnitude.

01:21:17.820 What a remarkable thing.

01:21:18.820 I know.

01:21:19.820 It's weird.

01:21:20.820 But again, it's about him.

01:21:21.820 He cares about him and his position of stability.

01:21:23.820 That's what he cares about.

01:21:24.820 The rest of it.

01:21:25.820 He couldn't care less.

01:21:26.820 One final thing before I go is just the number of state-owned industries.

01:21:31.820 I've just got this up on screen to show there's a Wikipedia page, but I'm just going to power

01:21:33.820 through and read them really quickly.

01:21:36.820 So in the energy sector, they've got Gazprom, which is a gas company.

01:21:40.820 Rosneft, which is oil.

01:21:42.820 Transneft, which is the oil pipeline transportation company.

01:21:45.820 In defense, almost all arms manufacturers are state-owned.

01:21:48.820 In the banking sector, they've got multiple different banks.

01:21:52.820 Transport infrastructure, they've got railways, airlines, also their ports and airports.

01:21:58.820 All of the strategic ones are state-owned.

01:22:01.820 There are large agriholdings that often receive state support.

01:22:05.820 And then media and telecommunications, obviously they've got their own state-controlled broadcasters

01:22:10.820 and telecommunications.

01:22:12.820 And so it's almost like the Soviet Union hasn't ended to a certain degree.

01:22:17.820 People forget this.

01:22:18.820 People forget that actually Russia is very, very different in this respect still

01:22:23.820 than, say, Europe or North America.

01:22:26.820 A significant portion of their industry is still fairly communistically run.

01:22:31.820 And one final thing, just for the sake of transparency, is they're not always this way.

01:22:38.820 They're not always quite liberal and boomerish.

01:22:40.820 As we can see here, they passed a bill outlawing gender reassignment just in general,

01:22:46.820 which no Western country has done yet.

01:22:49.820 And also there's lots of legislation in place to prevent people basically promoting this as a lifestyle as well.

01:22:58.820 So no gender reassignment surgery whatsoever?

01:23:00.820 As far as I understand it, yeah, just outlawing the procedures more generally.

01:23:06.820 It doesn't necessarily specify.

01:23:08.820 And they explicitly say it's promoting the country's traditional values.

01:23:12.820 And yeah, it's passed unanimously.

01:23:14.820 I wouldn't have thought that was going to damage traditional values by having gender reassignment. 0.98

01:23:17.820 There are people that really, really see themselves in different gender,

01:23:20.820 in gender dysphoria or whatever.

01:23:22.820 I don't know why you wouldn't allow that to be done.

01:23:24.820 Not gender dysphoria, is it? 0.86

01:23:25.820 But if you honestly felt you wanted to be in a different body.

01:23:27.820 Mm-hmm.

01:23:28.820 They've got to go outside the country to get it done now though.

01:23:30.820 I guess so.

01:23:31.820 So yeah, that's one thing that perhaps it differs, but it was just introducing a bit of perspective there.

01:23:37.820 Yeah.

01:23:38.820 Because I think that people tend to find it easier to promote things that they don't necessarily understand.

01:23:45.820 But when you look into Russia, actually they're not that different from Western liberals who you would otherwise criticize.

01:23:52.820 So we've got this weird dynamic where people on the right are saying actually, you know, some things in Russia they're doing correctly.

01:23:58.820 Well, actually a lot less than you think.

01:24:01.820 You'd be surprised.

01:24:02.820 Okay, we've got some rumble chats here.

01:24:05.820 Rumble chats.

01:24:06.820 Some more.

01:24:07.820 Lots today. 0.60

01:24:08.820 Putin, some time ago, the West is so preposterous.

01:24:11.820 I wish Russia was more like the West. 1.00

01:24:13.820 The monkey paw curls.

01:24:15.820 Oh, nyet.

01:24:16.820 I see what you're doing.

01:24:17.820 That's a reference to the Simpsons episode, isn't it?

01:24:20.820 Where the monkey paw has a backhanded wish.

01:24:23.820 To Josh, regarding Putin, I wonder how he protected Russia from the Indian scourge while holding a welcome attitude to diversity. 0.99

01:24:30.820 I don't know what you're referring to there.

01:24:33.820 It's an influx of immigration, isn't it, or something?

01:24:35.820 Have they had an influx of Indians?

01:24:37.820 I didn't even know that.

01:24:38.820 Well, that's something for me to look at.

01:24:40.820 And Bold Eagle says, you may not like what Putin does to reporters and political opposition, but it's tame compared to what several premiers of the USSR did.

01:24:47.820 That kind of thing is just a normal day for Russians.

01:24:50.820 That is true, but also just because it's common doesn't mean it's right.

01:24:55.820 Well, it's not right by our standards, is it?

01:24:57.820 Yes.

01:24:58.820 By Western standards.

01:24:59.820 Yeah.

01:25:00.820 I mean, America, sorry, the Russian psyche is very different to, I mean, I don't understand.

01:25:03.820 I've read loads of books on it.

01:25:05.820 You don't understand.

01:25:06.820 Even when you speak to a Russian, it's very hard to understand the way they think about things, especially about being invaded. 1.00

01:25:11.820 Especially across somewhere like Ukraine, shall we say, that they have a massive fear, historical fear.

01:25:16.820 It's almost like embedded historically within them.

01:25:19.820 It's very difficult to understand.

01:25:20.820 It's a classical thing, even for a couple of hundred years.

01:25:22.820 You can't understand the Russian worldview unless you're Russian. 1.00

01:25:25.820 Well, Keevan Rus, I mean, the birthplace was Kiev.

01:25:27.820 You want to get someone on who does understand that.

01:25:28.820 You want to put a Russian in. 1.00

01:25:29.820 Yeah.

01:25:30.820 Just really speak to them and really get, that'd be fascinating to listen to that.

01:25:32.820 You know?

01:25:33.820 And Bald Eagle does make an interesting point.

01:25:34.820 But yeah, just because Putin doesn't have as many political prisoners as Stalin, doesn't mean this.

01:25:39.820 I know that it's not really what they're saying.

01:25:42.820 But it doesn't make it right.

01:25:43.820 But yeah, he's not saying that.

01:25:44.820 Right.

01:25:45.820 I'll do a few comments.

01:25:46.820 I can see loads of comments talking about me leaving.

01:25:49.820 We've only got two minutes until the end.

01:25:51.820 So I'm going to read.

01:25:52.820 You can go a few minutes.

01:25:53.820 We love your last one.

01:25:54.820 You're amazing.

01:25:55.820 You're our favourite.

01:25:56.820 You're the Paul McCartney of the latest years.

01:25:58.820 Don't tease the audience for being nice to me.

01:26:01.820 Sorry.

01:26:02.820 You're deserving.

01:26:03.820 Thank you.

01:26:04.820 White Rider says, Bo, we planned for this, get the net.

01:26:06.820 He's not allowed to leave.

01:26:07.820 Yeah, we've got the net outside.

01:26:09.820 Not going anywhere.

01:26:10.820 Back into the mines, the content mines.

01:26:13.820 Gabriel says, I'll miss you, Josh.

01:26:15.820 Make sure to visit sometimes.

01:26:16.820 And wherever you go, keep fighting to protect our little ones.

01:26:19.820 I certainly will do that.

01:26:20.820 Don't you worry.

01:26:22.820 Michael says, Josh is leaving.

01:26:25.820 Well, a word I have never said on air in my four and a half years since being here.

01:26:31.820 Best of luck to you, Josh.

01:26:32.820 You'll be missed.

01:26:33.820 Thank you very much.

01:26:35.820 And Dirty Belter says, it will be sad to see you go, Josh.

01:26:40.820 I wish you well in your future endeavours.

01:26:42.820 Like with Callum, Connor and John, the show will not be the same without you.

01:26:45.820 Well, I will be back eventually, you know, as a guest.

01:26:48.820 Less frequently.

01:26:49.820 It's a treat for you, really.

01:26:50.820 The market's been oversaturated.

01:26:52.820 Four and a half years of me.

01:26:54.820 Russian Garbage Human says, actually annoyed.

01:26:58.820 Callum, John, and now Josh too.

01:27:00.820 Absolute heartbreak.

01:27:01.820 Well, I'm not going anywhere.

01:27:03.820 Fine.

01:27:04.820 I'm still alive.

01:27:05.820 Still going to be making stuff.

01:27:06.820 Maybe even more stuff than usual.

01:27:07.820 I'm going to read a couple of comments relating to our actual news coverage.

01:27:12.820 One for the reform.

01:27:13.820 Omar Awad says, the silver lining to a chameleon politician is that you only need to change the environment and their colours will blend to match.

01:27:21.820 The problem is, as you've said, without removing our own deep state.

01:27:24.820 That is true.

01:27:25.820 For the DEI in the military, Richard says, military officers go to uni.

01:27:31.820 The types of lads that join the Marines are not highly educated.

01:27:34.820 For that reason, they are more discerning.

01:27:36.820 Well, yeah, he's got a point there, actually.

01:27:39.820 It's not, I don't think what he means is that you're sort of brainwashed if you go to university.

01:27:43.820 But that young guy tells it like it is.

01:27:46.820 And for him, it really matters.

01:27:47.820 Like, because if his guys next to him aren't switched on and if they're not as strong as he is, he's just going to die.

01:27:52.820 Whereas an officer tends to be more remote, I suppose.

01:27:55.820 You know what I mean?

01:27:56.820 That's the point he's making.

01:27:57.820 Yeah, yeah.

01:27:58.820 And then, finally, Russian Garbage Human says, Tim Davies is back.

01:28:01.820 Nice. 0.97

01:28:02.820 Yeah, mad lad, innit?

01:28:03.820 We're getting mad lads later, aren't we? 0.61

01:28:04.820 Mad lad crew.

01:28:05.820 Yeah, yeah.

01:28:06.820 That's right.

01:28:07.820 Well, thank you very much for watching.

01:28:09.820 Have a good weekend.

01:28:10.820 Make sure to tune in for lads hour.

01:28:12.820 It's going to be my last one.

01:28:13.820 I think we're going to do a bit of geo-guesser, nice and chilled out.

01:28:17.820 I've got some whiskey to sit back and just have a nice time.

01:28:20.820 And hopefully I'll see you then.

01:28:22.820 If not, hopefully I'll be back soon. 0.98

01:28:25.820 I've just seen someone send in a rumble chat saying, Josh, you're gay, good riddance. 0.99

01:28:30.820 That's great. 0.97

01:28:31.820 And on that note, thank you for everything, audience.

01:28:35.820 Bye-bye.

01:28:55.820 Bye-bye.

01:28:58.820 Bye-bye.

01:29:01.820 Bye-bye.

01:29:02.820 Bye-bye.

01:29:03.820 Bye-bye.

01:29:04.820 Bye-bye.

01:29:05.820 Bye-bye.

01:29:06.820 Bye-bye.

01:29:07.820 Bye-bye.

01:29:08.820 Bye-bye.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1156

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