The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1422

00:00:00.000 Hi folks, welcome to the podcast of The Lotus Eats for Wednesday the 20th of May, 2026. I'm

00:00:04.760 joined by Stelios and Elizabeth Haverin. Thank you for joining us. And today we're going to

00:00:09.280 be talking about how the British public are wrong about everything. And I'm tired of this being a

00:00:14.900 kind of attack on us, because I'm not surprised, given the way things are, they don't really know 0.99

00:00:19.260 how things are working, why loneliness is rising in the UK, and the scouring of the shire, which

00:00:26.600 is uh something that desperately needs to happen um anyway right so let's begin so you may remember

00:00:33.520 this quite famous article from 2013 that's just titled british public wrong about nearly everything

00:00:40.060 survey shows and obviously with a title like that i mean that's that's pretty hilarious

00:00:45.300 but actually what it shows is how deceptive the world around us actually is when you walk out of

00:00:52.660 your house in real life you're like oh my god how has this happened and then when you look at the

00:00:56.420 media when you look at the statistics when you look at the things the government's concerned

00:00:59.960 about or the things you are and are not allowed to talk about uh you realize well no wonder they

00:01:05.120 would think that the world is actually different to how it actually is because they're essentially

00:01:10.500 being systematically deceived um so from this this is in 2013 a poll by ipsos mori of a phone

00:01:18.140 survey of a thousand people uh and the numbers are just remarkable actually just people just

00:01:24.280 really don't know how far away from them our own country and the government has gotten.

00:01:30.760 So for example, the public think the benefit fraud is 24 out of every 100 pounds, which is 10 times

00:01:39.480 more than it actually is about two every 100 pounds. Now that's obviously too high, according

00:01:44.320 to the government's own figures. But that's why do they think that? Well, it's because it's put

00:01:51.900 in the front of their faces with the media uh like the sun will constantly go on about benefit

00:01:56.540 fraud and so they oh yeah that's bad and don't get me wrong i'm very against benefit fraud but

00:02:01.820 most of the benefits claimed are not fraudulent and yet they shouldn't be being claimed anyway

00:02:06.460 for example we learned the other day that 1.5 million people born overseas are currently on

00:02:10.780 benefits that's not fraudulent but it is costing them a huge amount of money um then you've got

00:02:17.700 other subjects like immigration so you've got 31% of the population uh its thoughts consist of

00:02:22.640 recent immigrants when the figure is actually 13% and that's a very interesting thing because back

00:02:27.920 in 2013 actually there were far fewer immigrants in the country this is years before the Boris wave

00:02:34.520 we probably only had about five or six million foreigners in the country at that time it's

00:02:39.780 probably closer to about 15 million now uh so the fact that they were like yeah god this is a huge

00:02:45.500 well why because they're massively overrepresented in all of the media and everything you see around

00:02:50.880 them which absolutely and this reminds me of something right now that uh people right uh

00:02:55.300 think that the muslims are way more than 6.5 percent we will get to that okay it's also

00:03:00.400 because people are seeing the demographic change in their towns where it is like overwhelmingly

00:03:04.620 foreign so it makes sense why they would perceive the percentage to be far higher than it actually 0.88

00:03:10.500 is back in 2013 this was far less of an issue than it is now uh that is that is definitely true now

00:03:16.400 but i mean back in 2013 there were hardly any foreigners around outside of like a very few

00:03:22.120 sort of select areas you know london obviously uh you know manchester birmingham places like that

00:03:27.300 but otherwise it was just it wasn't it was it was still living in heaven uh teen pregnancy is

00:03:35.180 thought to be 25 times higher than the official estimate uh that people thought that 15 of girls

00:03:40.600 under 16 were thought to get pregnant every year when actually the real figure was 0.6 percent

00:03:45.000 again moral panic behind the uh misrepresentation it's also the representation from movies and tv

00:03:50.980 shows absolutely yeah absolutely um but that that in itself is not such a terrible thing because

00:03:57.000 what those are a sort of a moral lesson as in what you should do and what what the consequences if

00:04:02.600 you become pregnant when you're a teenager you're unmarried and you've got no support and it's like 0.96

00:04:06.280 yeah that's that's a bad thing so if that does you know reduce the amount of teenage pregnancies

00:04:10.860 all good uh another another surprising figure is that 26 percent of people think foreign aid

00:04:16.740 is in the top three items the government spends money on which is remarkable again it just shows

00:04:21.900 that people just do not know how the government spends money if you think foreign aid is one of

00:04:27.440 the top things uh people thought it was like i said in the top three it's actually only one percent

00:04:32.520 of government expenditure and that has actually gone down slightly uh we spent we for example in

00:04:38.840 2013 we were spending 15 times more on pensions uh so anyway this is a problem that we still have

00:04:46.140 to this day um this is in 2024 and the public were asked okay well how many people do you think

00:04:52.600 coming in each year and it turns out that when polled the public thought the average estimate of

00:04:58.260 income intake of immigrant immigrants into the country was only 70 000 gross intake of 70 000

00:05:06.980 a year that's wild considering at the time it was 1.2 million so i mean just they just had no idea

00:05:16.560 but if the the number was being presented to them regularly by the papers by the media

00:05:21.500 by the news then they would have been at least vaguely informed but as it stands you can see

00:05:26.300 how they've done uh their very best to obscure and conceal the true numbers so people like yeah

00:05:34.080 god there are people everywhere how many is it well it must be 70 000 or something like this

00:05:37.700 and of course uh at the time and this is only in 2024 uh three-fifths of 18 to 24 year olds and

00:05:43.660 two-thirds of degree holders remain voters and londoners thought that it was too high and needed

00:05:49.000 to be reduced so when they only thought it was 70 000 a year they're like this is too much it's

00:05:55.200 like yeah damn right it is and then you get into well what kind of uh immigration is it so i mean 0.98

00:06:00.360 you can see the polling done is like half people are just like yeah we need to stop new immigrants

00:06:04.680 coming in and we need to get loads of them out which is why we're going to win um but then you 1.00

00:06:09.180 get other ones uh well why can't i see there should be a there we go uh right there there is

00:06:18.300 a um bit in here that for some reason hasn't loaded but um people think that the immigration

00:06:24.500 into britain is primarily illegal rather than illegal uh you gov say that the research shows

00:06:29.840 that almost half of britain's 47 think there are more migrants staying in the uk illegally rather

00:06:34.540 than legally including fully a third of the public who think the illegal figure is much higher and

00:06:40.040 it's like right okay so people again the media focuses on are the small boats the illegal

00:06:46.380 immigrants not knowing that behind their backs is they're focused on what is actually a very very

00:06:51.680 small problem uh that over the the course of the entire illegal uh boat migrant crisis there have

00:06:57.760 been about 200 000 of them uh whereas the conservative government snuck in about five

00:07:04.000 million people legally so they just don't understand the scope of it um in fact we've

00:07:09.600 got a graph of the immigration over time in this uh which is just remarkable now labor have actually

00:07:15.880 done fairly well to get that quite down this is net immigration the problem is net immigration

00:07:21.700 of britain's is going up and but they are getting the net immigration down but that still means that

00:07:28.560 for this year it's about 200 000 that are coming in and people are panicking at 70 000 so it's like 0.92

00:07:33.720 no you you don't understand how bad this is but again look at this inflow here so people had no

00:07:40.220 idea and this this second graph is the salience of immigration in the national conversation so

00:07:46.340 leading up to brexit immigration was a very very salient topic and people were very concerned about

00:07:52.260 it we voted for brexit and people assumed immigration had been solved well no because

00:07:57.540 we had a tory government and we were massively backstabbed and the more is wave that's coming 0.82

00:08:02.900 in from from the universities not not just universities either it's um work visas and all

00:08:09.160 sorts of things family visas uh they boris and his government general consuela for some reason

00:08:15.500 just really needed to cram as many people into the country as possible um as you can see reaching

00:08:20.440 and this is net as well because the gross got to i think 1.5 million at the top but anyway it was 0.97

00:08:26.200 ridiculous and people just they they knew there was a problem because look at immigration salience

00:08:31.380 rising and suddenly it's like well hang on this this problem hasn't been solved you know i can 1.00

00:08:35.620 see as you said you know i can see it in the towns and cities all around me this is abominable what's

00:08:40.680 going on i thought we'd fix this and so now of course uh immigration and the economy are the two

00:08:45.620 top uh things of importance because of the media um a lot of people think oh this is this is illegal

00:08:51.900 and that's why you hear people make silly arguments saying i believe in control i believe

00:08:56.640 in stopping illegal migration but i totally support legal migration yes actually the main

00:09:01.480 problem is um legals coming here on visas by a huge amount yeah by a huge amount and you can see

00:09:08.560 exactly that here right two-thirds of uk voters uh think that immigration is rising wrongly which

00:09:13.660 it is incorrect that it's wrong um but look at what they've used as the image that goes with this

00:09:19.100 article a bunch of africans breaking into the country on a boat that's not how most immigration 0.99

00:09:25.460 in this country happens that's by far the the microscopic minority and so no wonder people are 0.84

00:09:32.480 like well i mean i just don't know what's going on and of course they're looking as you say looking 0.94

00:09:37.320 around them and going like yeah this looks like immigration is through the roof no immigration

00:09:40.980 has been through the roof and now just they're all here so anyway what this um and this was only

00:09:47.860 four months ago this uh these surveys were done um people were like okay what proportion of the

00:09:54.340 country do you think is black for example and people like oh i don't know about 20 percent

00:09:58.720 the actual figure is about three to four percent it's just in the media massively overrepresented

00:10:05.380 what percentage of people are trans people like oh five percent no it's not even one it's not even

00:10:11.120 one percent it's 0.3 to 0.7 percent depending on how you define it it's absolutely tiny uh they

00:10:17.480 thought about 15 of the population was muslim which is a lot smaller than i expected them to

00:10:22.380 estimate uh when the true figure for some reason the guardian says four percent but it's actually

00:10:27.860 probably between six and seven percent yeah and that was in 2020 during the census so it's probably

00:10:33.180 more than that but 15 is surprisingly low and what percentage of the country is jewish people

00:10:38.120 like 10 it's like no less than 1 um again people don't realize how diverse things are and this is

00:10:47.980 because um people of minority minorities are massively overrepresented uh in television uh

00:10:56.620 we've got here um some actual numbers here uh was a rakib esan uh informs us that in 2022

00:11:04.420 more than half of adverts on tv had black people in them yeah so more than 50 percent of adverts

00:11:11.580 had black people despite the fact there were four percent of the population that's crazy it's a

00:11:15.840 constant mix of a black man with white woman yes i think i heard as well that there's rules in

00:11:21.400 terms of adverts now where you have to have um a minority in the advert for it to be aired on

00:11:26.780 on television oh really yeah like netflix and hollywood yeah that's why a lot of adverts

00:11:31.720 started using cartoons or not having any people in the advert whatsoever to get around that um

00:11:37.880 but when sarah pochin was like well i'm just kind of sick of seeing misrepresentation on tv

00:11:44.560 my mp yeah everyone took her to task over it but to be honest with you

00:11:48.320 sure she's she's she's got a point and at the end of the day why are we being so underrepresented

00:11:55.640 in our own media and it's it's completely deforming what people think of their own country

00:12:00.340 anyway and that's only on the question of demographics i mean for example if we go to

00:12:06.800 like government spending right people have no idea how much the government spends right

00:12:12.360 one thing i really wanted to be in this that wasn't is a question which was what percentage

00:12:20.240 of the national uh gross domestic product do you think the government spends right because i bet

00:12:25.380 people say something like 20 or something like that when actually it's 45 that's the thing here

00:12:29.900 is where they're underestimating what is happening yeah uh people think that um government spending

00:12:36.280 on debt is uh the overwhelming majority but actually that's not correct i mean you can see

00:12:41.160 here that basically the only thing they got right was housing uh which was uh the sort of 10th most

00:12:47.060 uh expensive thing um but people i mean not too bad on the nhs and benefits um people vastly

00:12:54.820 underestimate the amount of spending on pensioners vastly underestimate i mean that they they think

00:13:00.800 they're missing 100 billion on the pensions budget there um transport we spend a lot more on again

00:13:08.160 people don't realize how much we're spending on all this sort of stuff social care not too bad

00:13:12.140 people are overestimating overseas aid as usual and i think that's because honestly the right

00:13:16.900 uh uses that as a fairly easy get out it's like look we can just stop sending foreign countries

00:13:21.460 money sorry sorry just what i want to say is that there is a pattern of under estimating pension

00:13:28.720 education and transport yes i wasn't aware about transport yeah and uh yeah education in particular

00:13:35.320 people do not realize how much we're spending i mean they they think we're spending less than

00:13:40.140 half as much on education than we're actually spending on these things which is quite mad

00:13:44.740 and we're not spending as much on debt interest but that's a lot and when it comes to transport

00:13:50.880 it's actually more than three times it's almost four times than what they think yeah and that

00:13:56.920 that probably doesn't even include the hs2 thing which i mean which is going to cost us what they

00:14:03.060 come out with the other day 100 billion like a billion pounds per mile it's like what are we

00:14:07.640 doing and apparently they were going to reduce the speed of it as well so it's like we can't

00:14:11.380 it's all about over regulation folks it's all about people sticking their beak in when they

00:14:16.720 don't belong um but they thought also look at look at the things they think we're spending a lot of

00:14:21.100 money on that we're not public order and safety is another one right uh like debt interest and

00:14:26.500 public order and safety of people things that people think we're spending a lot of money on

00:14:30.160 but we're actually really not i mean i'd love to spend 100 billion on the police

00:14:33.460 and you know actually have them solve crimes for once that would be wonderful

00:14:37.580 no we don't do any of these things so because the army is incredibly underfunded as well absolutely

00:14:42.680 everything is everything other than the pensions the nhs and the benefit system which are the three

00:14:47.540 top spends in this country it's interesting because it shows how disconnected from politics

00:14:53.280 the average person is as they should be you know they're they're working their jobs they're they're

00:14:57.640 living their lives um but it shows that a lot of their opinions are just based on propaganda from

00:15:03.460 the media but also what they can observe um in their towns particularly with um your point before

00:15:10.040 about um black people it's like of course you would think the percentage of black people is

00:15:14.960 higher um in in britain when there's so many schools where there's not even any white kids

00:15:20.660 yeah um where you go to places like manchester and you're a minority it's it it does make sense

00:15:26.920 how people come to these conclusions but also i think what they're reacting to as well is the

00:15:31.240 preoccupation with the minority communities with people like keir starmer for instance you know

00:15:37.080 the labor government constant preoccupation with minority communities and then if you see this uh

00:15:43.000 these communities represented in the media there's no reason you wouldn't start building a picture

00:15:47.120 and saying okay well there must be a fair amount of them in the country uh otherwise why would we

00:15:51.460 be hearing about them all the time um and um just just quickly another myth

00:15:56.920 I found that a lot of people believe, particularly of the older generation, so boomers, because of things like television, where minorities are over-up-centered and period dramas, is they believe that Britain's always been multicultural.

00:16:11.220 It's always been diverse.

00:16:12.600 You know, black people have been here since the Roman times. 1.00

00:16:15.540 A lie that they tell. 0.79

00:16:17.420 Yeah, I had someone tell me the other day that the Crusaders brought them back as slaves.

00:16:21.720 like people generally believe this because of propaganda um on british television but also

00:16:27.440 all the like slavery movies and the slave narrative that comes out of america for anyone

00:16:32.320 wondering in 1961 britain was 99.9 percent white british i mean there were a very very small number

00:16:41.800 of non-british people in enclaves in london as a result of uh global trade and the british empire

00:16:49.780 but overwhelmingly the country was indigenous native and homogenous to an extent that you

00:16:57.600 couldn't even imagine now it's interesting in statistic you pulled up about people saying 70

00:17:02.280 000 is too high of a number when um when immigration reached i think 100 000 in the 1960s

00:17:08.420 people were calling for the borders to be shut yeah and the government was putting um harsh

00:17:13.120 policies in place to make sure those numbers go down so it shows how bad we actually do have it

00:17:18.080 today i mean yeah yeah exactly just go show how unbelievably ludicrous it is i'm also calling for

00:17:24.320 borders to be shut by the way anyway so uh you've got some again this was the thing that sparked

00:17:30.800 this all off but this is just ridiculous right and brits have significantly overestimate profit

00:17:37.720 margins across the economy in particular utilities so i don't know whether you can see it but energy

00:17:42.080 companies there electricity and gas what's the profit margin well people like that's somewhere

00:17:46.240 between 40 and 50 percent no it's like you know five percent something like that is really low

00:17:52.500 uh water companies they're like it's 15 to 20 percent like sorry 51 percent it's like no it's

00:17:57.900 15 to 20 airports and airlines it's actually two to eight percent like supermarket supermarkets and

00:18:03.700 grocery retail two to four percent whereas people like it was a 50 profit margin on that stuff

00:18:08.360 isn't it it's like no my god you know a huge amount of its tax um home building and property

00:18:15.140 development 19 to 20 percent they think 50 but the funniest one on this is the nhs where people

00:18:21.780 think there's a 34 profit margin on the nhs there's zero profit margin on the nhs as you can

00:18:29.480 see like the nhs is not a business it doesn't make money it's like folks at home tell your

00:18:37.500 grandmother the nhs is a massive massive wealth sink like well how much was it again let's get

00:18:43.900 the uh where was the bloody number like it was unbelievable that's right there we go 226 billion 0.94

00:18:49.740 a year that's what it costs us through tax is not doesn't make money like what are you mad

00:18:57.340 just no no no guys we the nhs is a thing that we support and we prop up because we want health

00:19:07.900 care. We don't make money out of it. So it goes on to other things like, for example, benefit

00:19:13.720 fraud. Now, this was very recent. I can't remember just the last couple of years. But people thought

00:19:19.180 that something like 29 to 37% of benefit fraud claims were fraudulent. And so a third or a

00:19:26.660 quarter of benefit spending was fraudulent. Again, that's not true. It's 2% according to the

00:19:31.360 government's figures. But then the amount of taxes, right? People don't realize how much tax

00:19:36.760 we're paying um whereas yeah people think the business contributes 17 of the total tax pay when

00:19:42.100 in fact it's 29 so you don't realize how little the businesses are making on the margins and you

00:19:49.700 don't realize how much of what they make is sent straight to the government and that is just mad

00:19:55.300 absolutely mad that's also propaganda that is against the private sector yeah tries to portray

00:20:01.340 the private sector as the the origin of evil and zach polanski and all of that yeah and gary

00:20:07.140 stevenson the alleged yeah the alleged trader like this like talking point of tax um billionaires

00:20:14.220 like as as if they don't already get taxed oh yeah nearly most of their money i think is it

00:20:19.580 people around like over 50 000 are taxed half of what they earn yeah yeah it's around that it's

00:20:24.440 45 over a certain threshold which isn't even a very high threshold like if it was like five

00:20:30.320 million or something maybe like hey yeah maybe yeah whatever you know that's not gonna affect

00:20:34.280 me so maybe i can accept it but no it won't once you get over yeah i think it's about 50 50 grand

00:20:39.520 something like that um you're on a 45 tax bracket and then when you get to 100 grand you know it's

00:20:44.660 40 and then when you get to 100 grand it's 45 so there's this weird phenomenon where if you earn

00:20:49.740 90 grand you take home more money than someone on 100 grand and it's like oh and people wonder why

00:20:57.840 like people are just like fleeing this country like we lose how many 10 000 millionaires a year

00:21:03.040 leave the country something like that it's like why wouldn't you because we pay an unbelievable

00:21:07.920 amount of tax um and yeah and just to finish off um well i'm not gonna security verify myself

00:21:13.880 so financial times but um yeah people don't realize how much foreign aid is being sent abroad

00:21:18.940 um and it's ridiculous how over egged this is in the public imagination um so what what does this

00:21:26.920 tell us right what does this tell us the british public have no idea of the scale of the state

00:21:32.380 right they have no idea of the scale of business and what is being taken from business to feed

00:21:39.000 this giant parasitic state and they have also no extent therefore to the they don't know how much

00:21:45.960 things are out of control if you think that actually the one percent foreign benefits foreign

00:21:51.920 um aids budget is out of control and it's it's ruining us well i've got some bad news for you

00:21:58.640 it's not the thing that's ruining us it's all of the other things that we have as obligations that

00:22:02.920 we have to uphold and so you don't understand the the the demographics the nature of the country

00:22:08.000 you don't understand the nature of the relationship between the state and the people or the business

00:22:11.960 and this is all done on purpose it is on purpose that you are not let uh you are not given an

00:22:20.100 accurate read on what your own country is like and so when you're looking around going wow there

00:22:24.480 are a lot of immigrants around here and they're like yeah well immigration is down it's like okay

00:22:28.000 but that doesn't change the fact that things are as they are and you know things being

00:22:35.040 misrepresented as they are misrepresented it is also important for people to check

00:22:39.180 because what you are showing us here shows that there is a massive tendency for people

00:22:44.000 to jump from quantity of messaging to gravity of the situation.

00:22:50.140 Yes.

00:22:50.500 And it's important for people to check data.

00:22:53.180 And that's exactly right.

00:22:55.600 The quantity of messaging, for example, 0.67

00:22:58.380 illegal immigration is a deliberate canard

00:23:01.040 that the media loves to wheel out

00:23:02.540 because it changes the nature of the conversation

00:23:05.320 from what's happening to the security,

00:23:08.720 the demographic security of the English people in England

00:23:11.120 to what is happening with the legal system and whether it is being respected or not and it's

00:23:19.060 like well actually that's less important than are we being swamped out of our own towns and

00:23:24.380 villages right it's it's actually less important that the legal legality and legal status of the

00:23:30.580 border is upheld than actually preventing millions of people legally from coming in it changes the

00:23:37.100 nature of the conversation and the level of the conversation it's also because if people find out

00:23:42.340 that their towns are changing not because of illegal migration but because of legal migration

00:23:46.500 then there'll be an uproar but the thing that a lot of these um um the media doesn't realize is

00:23:52.860 you can't change what's already obvious in these towns is is people are are waking up in the last

00:23:59.540 the last council election um shows that that that people understand what's happening you can't hide

00:24:05.740 it anymore you can't say it's it's illegal people people can can see but it's also why like the

00:24:11.900 conservatives love to talk about illegal immigration well i'm sure you love to talk

00:24:16.040 about illegal immigration because you're responsible for this unbelievable legal immigration

00:24:20.460 which is a it's a moral point that the conservatives are being roasted on here about betrayal

00:24:27.640 how could you betray us like this well the conservatives are but we we were about controlling

00:24:32.620 the borders making sure the legal system was uh secure it's like okay i'm not not that bothered

00:24:37.780 about that actually you know i don't want to be legally demographically replaced in my own country

00:24:41.980 uh thank you very much boris johnson and robert jenrick and whoever else so um this is this is

00:24:48.560 why it's important to have a an important uh an accurate bead on these things is because they will

00:24:54.280 to protect themselves from what they have done to us try and obscure by saying oh but illegal 0.83

00:24:59.900 immigration look at this it's like this is by far the minimum problem that we have here you know

00:25:05.700 this is not the issue and the fact that you're trying to change the valence of the conversation

00:25:09.560 to one about legalism rather than moral claims is suspicious and slippery and makes me think

00:25:16.440 you're a snake that can't be trusted um okidol says uh do the foreign aid numbers include

00:25:23.480 government supports and migrants and remittances no they're included in the benefits bill 0.93

00:25:28.120 unfortunately so uh you are right that of course that this is way way higher where is i've got it

00:25:34.100 here somewhere yeah obviously uh that 160 billion uh billions of that is um at least probably about

00:25:42.440 at least 12 billion through the number of foreigners on benefits but also there's going

00:25:46.640 to be extra housing benefits and stuff in there um but yes that that does more than double the

00:25:52.920 overseas aid bill but because it's not going overseas and it's being claimed through a different

00:25:56.620 system there we go um they also don't know the sheer scale of the betrayal by their institutions

00:26:02.240 no they don't no they don't which is why i'm talking about this now anyway let's uh let's move

00:26:08.540 on samson can great thank you

00:26:13.000 hey don no hurry yep great okay so we are going to talk about uh loneliness in the uk data shows

00:26:27.600 that it is rising and i want to start a discussion because this is a subject that i in some respects

00:26:34.820 i don't get it but i also want people to tell me and i also want to hear your opinions about it

00:26:39.660 and it seems to trouble many people.

00:26:45.360 So this was published by the NHS,

00:26:48.840 this health survey for England, it's about 2024.

00:26:51.860 It was published about four months ago

00:26:54.740 and its key findings are the following.

00:26:58.360 In 2024, 22% of adults felt lonely at least some of the time,

00:27:03.900 including 6% who reported that they often or always felt lonely.

00:27:09.000 Younger adults were more likely than older adults to report feeling lonely at least some

00:27:15.000 of the time, with 29% of those 16 to 24 feeling lonely at least some of the time, compared

00:27:21.820 with 15% of those aged 65 to 74.

00:27:27.120 And they're saying that when it comes to young people, some of them are saying that they

00:27:31.980 occasionally feel lonely at a 70 percent. That is considered to be a big increase. So they're

00:27:38.900 saying here feeling lonely at least sometimes was more common among women 24 percent than men 20

00:27:45.560 percent. Adults who reported being in bad or very bad health were more likely than those who reported

00:27:52.120 being in good or very good health. To say they were lonely at least some of the time 49 percent

00:27:58.700 compared with 17 percent. In 2024, mean well-being scores based on some metrics were 50.5

00:28:07.420 among adults aged 16 and over. The mean well-being score increased with age from 48.8 for adults

00:28:16.480 to 52.6 for adults aged 65 and over. And essentially, they are defining loneliness

00:28:25.820 here and they're saying that loneliness is rising right there is discourse about the potential

00:28:32.780 causes about this now when it comes to loneliness i want to say get it i want to get it out of the

00:28:38.060 way i haven't felt lonely for for years so in some respects i have a tendency of saying right

00:28:45.220 there are so many opportunities for people to stop being lonely why are you not taking it but

00:28:52.080 i think that that's essentially something i it's good to curb it's not stelios the misanthrope

00:28:58.440 no no i don't feel lonely because i hate people it's it's not a question of hating people it's a

00:29:04.800 it's a question of no it's i want to understand this and i don't want to talk down to people and

00:29:10.340 i i occasionally find myself listening to people telling me that they do come across this problem

00:29:16.980 them. And I occasionally feel that they think that I can't sympathize with them. And I really

00:29:23.200 don't want this to be the case. So I try to understand this because in my mind, there are

00:29:27.920 so many opportunities to go out and get involved in your community, meet people outside and that,

00:29:36.020 why are you not taking it? But there is such a thing as people having comfort zones that they

00:29:41.600 feel incredibly um demotivated to burst so i'm not going to look at this through the prism of

00:29:50.480 criticizing i'm looking at this through the prism of trying to understand this well it reminds me

00:29:55.920 of a book i don't know if you've heard of this book it's called bowling alone by and he argues

00:30:01.740 that well when the population becomes more lonely it not only leads to higher crime and social

00:30:08.340 disorder one of the main reasons um this has come to be um isn't just because um there's less places

00:30:15.320 to gather it's because of the rise of television particularly in the 50s of people being this was

00:30:20.320 published in the 90s yeah yeah and being glued to to media um having entertainment there's no reason

00:30:26.640 to go to plays there's no reason to go to pubs it's it's it's white in your home um but i i'm

00:30:31.520 not surprised about the statistic um amongst younger people assume it's feeling lonely because

00:30:36.340 we are the termly online generation um who who are glued to our phones who've grown up on um

00:30:43.180 on video games um movies television um it's no wonder that people feel so isolated and

00:30:50.340 disconnected to their communities that they feel alone and they have nobody to interact with

00:30:55.220 okay so that's something i want to i want to um question a bit as a millennial i was born in 1990

00:31:02.540 so that's mid-millennial is this for some people the worst generation ever yeah for me

00:31:07.720 right so everything you you describe except for the for the social media and the quantity of it

00:31:16.840 characterized my growing up so for instance i was playing video games all the time i was playing

00:31:21.940 diablo lord of destruction as well i was taking the knock romancer slaying everyone and everything

00:31:27.020 right so it's not that there wasn't this but i do remember and i will say this is that

00:31:32.260 i entered social media very late and it's kind of i didn't want to enter it

00:31:38.460 it sort of happened yeah i'm reluctant to start automatically blaming social media and video

00:31:46.140 games for this because like you said i mean okay we didn't have social media when i was a kid

00:31:50.480 but we have video games and video games were a social activity actually you know you'd go around

00:31:58.040 to your friend's house and play on his playstation or the sega mega drive or snes or whatever it was

00:32:02.420 um or if you were really lucky you'd get a weekend where you have a LAN party yeah and you you kids

00:32:08.540 today don't remember LAN parties of course because you've had broadband your entire life so there's

00:32:12.680 no point what was LAN parties so a LAN party right is you had coaxial cables for connecting

00:32:17.420 lands together and it meant that you could all uh connect very very with a high speed connection

00:32:23.560 loads of computers but you had to all be basically in the same room so if you've got like half a

00:32:27.680 dozen of you bring your big crt monitors and your big cases around manage what eventually you'd

00:32:33.160 get everything connected and working then you'd have a massive multiplayer game of doom or quake

00:32:37.520 or something right or command and conquer or something amazing the best time because you're 0.97

00:32:41.760 all in the same room and you're screaming and shouting at each other for being a dick because 0.55

00:32:45.460 i remember split screens you know you'd have your friend over and you would play video games

00:32:49.400 together but um it's it's you're right it's not video games per se but it is like the introduction

00:32:55.500 of things like xbox live where you're interacting um with people online rather than being in the

00:33:02.380 same room and this is what i realized with social media you know talking to people online it's it's

00:33:07.720 surface level you really have to be um um face to face with someone to truly connect to them to

00:33:14.520 truly have you do good social interaction so i think it's the fact things playing video games

00:33:20.000 has become online social media has become online and most of these people they're just they're in

00:33:25.600 a room by themselves i'm not i'm not convinced it's that um so i i i think that there's something

00:33:33.940 about the nature of socialization in the institutions themselves for example in schools

00:33:39.260 in particular that i think is different to when it was when i was young and probably when you were

00:33:43.740 young right um so for example the teachers didn't tend to get very involved in altercations between

00:33:50.540 the students when i was at school uh as long as no one was bleeding uh then they basically

00:33:55.820 just told us to you know get on with it and get on with your day yeah exactly whatever it was just

00:34:02.200 get on with it and you got on with it and so you had to learn how to socialize with the people

00:34:06.880 around you without a huge amount of institutional interference in the nature of the relationship

00:34:12.400 that you had now it meant that you know you had to grow a thick skin a lot of the time or you know 0.97

00:34:17.740 you had to learn how to carry yourself and push back when uh someone was being a dick and you 0.90

00:34:23.200 didn't like them um but what it meant is that you personally became uh more socialized and more 0.52

00:34:30.680 confident in social settings and the fact if we can go back to that previous one so this um

00:34:36.340 maybe scroll up yeah yeah there we go right this these numbers i think are indicative of

00:34:43.160 institutions that are failing so i mean 15 of uh 65 to 74 year olds um feeling lonely well that's

00:34:51.140 really interesting because how much opportunity actually do old people have to socialize like

00:34:56.840 well i can understand the um people with severe illnesses not socializing as much just because of

00:35:02.240 you know you're ill so you're probably tired a lot of the time and it's more difficult to get

00:35:06.360 to a certain place and the number of activities you can engage in is dramatically restricted like

00:35:11.200 a bunch of us go rock climbing or something and you're disabled well unfortunately that's not on

00:35:15.860 the table for you right so i i i can i can understand okay that's fair but for the young

00:35:23.200 people i think it's being failed by the institutions and not allowed to socialize properly

00:35:28.040 because there's as you say there's literally nothing stopping young people from going out 0.99

00:35:31.960 socializing but they're i mean well zoomers drink less for example don't they well in response to 0.56

00:35:37.420 that as a zoomer and there's this song by the smashing pumpkins which is before my time it's 0.62

00:35:41.840 called 1979 oh yeah i know i was watching that when i was a teenager yeah i was watching um

00:35:46.420 an interview of of the lead singer billy and he said yeah it's strange um that this song is so

00:35:51.960 beloved um by zoomers because it's touching on nostalgia and leaving you know your childhood

00:35:56.680 but um from all the generations sumas really tend to like it the reason sumas love that song

00:36:02.900 is because we remember particularly like uh late sumas like um early sumas like me born in

00:36:09.500 like 2001 we remember playing outside in our childhood and then i would say early 2010s that

00:36:15.920 all of a sudden stopped with the wise social media and and people being um being more reserved

00:36:22.220 in their rooms and everyone just stopped playing out even as teenagers teenagers just stopped

00:36:26.640 hanging out with each other you know drinking at skate parks or um in the bench in the park

00:36:32.400 people just became more reserved and alone you could also say that the sense of rising crime

00:36:37.440 contributes to this because for instance i wouldn't let my kids play out in a neighborhood

00:36:42.000 unsupervised if i thought that chances are that they're going to get kidnapped i thought there

00:36:47.160 were a lot of immigrants around yeah but i want to go back to what you said before about institutions

00:36:52.100 While I was teaching, it seemed to me that there was definitely over-prescription.

00:36:58.580 There was a culture of over-diagnosis, trying to create conditions out of nowhere, over-psychoanalyze everything.

00:37:07.040 And everyone had a condition.

00:37:09.120 Everyone had social anxiety, like Pedro Pascal.

00:37:12.460 They weren't groping each other, by the way.

00:37:14.520 And they weren't, we were told to not ask students because it puts them on a tough spot.

00:37:20.080 I don't think that this would happen 10 years ago, 20 years ago, let alone 40 years ago.

00:37:25.960 You are supposed to be in a social setting and in a social setting, sometimes the attention

00:37:31.060 is on you and you have to be on your best behavior and to stand up to the situation.

00:37:37.660 But there is also one of the things is just, it seems to me when it comes to young people,

00:37:43.980 especially there is lots of demoralization and social media could function in that way

00:37:52.900 definitely could function to demoralize them and when it demoralizes them to tie it with the

00:37:58.820 previous segment the quantity of messaging can make them believe that a particular problem is

00:38:04.820 has a massive gravity so for instance if a young uh if a young teenager now goes online and looks 0.98

00:38:12.060 clavicular and all the stupid looks maxers then and they start smashing the the bones and that's 0.84

00:38:18.980 yeah that is completely artificial yeah but there is such a thing that where there are there is a 0.99

00:38:25.120 culture where there is a complete grind set that is dragging parents down and parents don't spend

00:38:33.220 as much time with their children as they used to they just say right okay i'll just put you this

00:38:38.240 movie i'll just give you hang on i'm i'm not see i'm not saying you do no no no i'm not saying i

00:38:44.640 do but i'm not i'm not persuaded by this because i i remember um even like my grandmother my mom's

00:38:52.880 a boomer my grandmother would have been like greatest generation or son in generation i don't

00:38:56.520 even know uh what generation she would have been uh but i remember her telling me stories about

00:39:02.840 when they lived in the welsh valleys and how the kids would just be out all day and that you know

00:39:08.420 she'd go to the window and yell up the mountain that dinner was ready and they'd all come running

00:39:12.940 down the mountain that's not them spending all day with their kids right that's actually them

00:39:17.400 having like free range kids and then i you know so and then i remember my teenage years which was

00:39:23.220 completely free range you know it's just like i'm going out i'll see you when i'm hungry yeah no i

00:39:29.080 i i agree i agree with what you're saying but i'm not saying that they should spend all the time

00:39:33.800 with them but spend more than they do but i don't even know if they do i i actually think that they

00:39:38.800 spend more time with kids now like this is what helicopter parenting in the early sort of 2010s

00:39:44.300 the rise of this helicopter parenting where the parents are like deeply involved in every part

00:39:47.920 i actually think they're spending more time with their kids now in an unhealthy way than was done

00:39:54.020 when i was young i guess the difference to that is kids were out there interacting with the world

00:39:59.040 and now parents just put um put like a screen in front of their kids face to keep them occupied

00:40:05.140 it's like no wonder they don't have the social skills to go out and make friends and interact

00:40:10.620 with people and put themselves in um anxious situations which would trigger their social

00:40:15.940 anxiety because the way to overcome social anxiety is through human interaction literally

00:40:20.160 only one way which is get on with it yeah exactly so it goes it goes to show um what you're saying

00:40:25.760 it's true when parents turn on movies tv shows or put a screen in front of their kid's face it is

00:40:31.640 actually harming them and making them more isolated i mean back to what you were saying

00:40:37.180 just about a minute ago it's like i think of it like losing weight and getting on shape

00:40:42.540 it's all about caloric deficit you can you can complain all you want about it if you don't get

00:40:48.760 that caloric deficit you're going nowhere yeah and in a in a sense that's also with social

00:40:54.300 interaction but also i do appreciate that people are saying that for instance when it comes to

00:40:58.740 older people um you don't have intergenerational homes to the extent that they did exist before

00:41:08.500 and when it comes to to younger people they do tend to say that um you know social media is sort

00:41:16.200 of radicalizing them a bit but also demoralizing them because from the perspective of an outsider

00:41:22.780 who doesn't have this problem it's it's just an issue of effort but from the perspective of someone

00:41:28.580 who does feel this way genuinely the effort looks like climbing up the mount of golgotha let's yeah

00:41:35.480 yeah i mean this is these are all skills um that should have been learned when you before you could

00:41:40.540 remember you know you should have always had to have spent time socializing as you say you know

00:41:46.140 if you can be sat in front of a screen or whatever well obviously you're not learning social skills

00:41:49.920 so this then when you're like 10 years old and you're not allowed on the screen you've got to

00:41:53.960 go to a party or something it's like i don't know what i'm doing here of course you don't you've had

00:41:57.620 literally no bloody experience and like that's terrible but also there wasn't the opportunity

00:42:04.120 to go out on me on media and complain about it oh sure i mean yeah maybe yeah maybe i'm too harsh 0.98

00:42:10.600 on this it's no wonder sumers are like the generation that has the most diagnosis of social 0.97

00:42:16.080 yeah and autism and social anxiety it's because they're poorly poorly socialized i agree and this 1.00

00:42:21.440 is this is why i've got no sympathy for zoomers go get out and no i'm joking uh you've got but you 1.00

00:42:26.300 do have to just go out for a drink with your mates and hang out you just have that's another thing 0.94

00:42:30.000 it's the closure of pubs it's the closure of these community centers another thing that putman talks

00:42:34.720 about is also urbanization cities expanding and becoming sort of these metropolitan hell holes

00:42:40.480 makes people incredibly lonely because they don't know who their neighbor is they can't really go

00:42:44.780 up and talk to people on the streets there's just so many people it's like when you when you're on

00:42:48.540 the london underground you try smiling at someone and they think you're like an utter weirdo

00:42:53.540 whilst if you go to like um rural towns or like scotland and wales if you don't smile at someone

00:43:00.400 you're incredibly weird yeah um if you don't talk to someone at a bus stop you're a weirdo

00:43:04.800 here it says who was more likely to experience loneliness and they're saying things that you 0.92

00:43:09.740 would expect there was some variation in the proportion of adults of different ages that

00:43:14.940 experienced loneliness. Adults aged 16 to 24 and 25 to 34 were more likely to report that they

00:43:24.460 felt lonely often or always than adults from all other age groups, 4 to 8 percent. Then they're

00:43:29.760 talking about disabled people, about migrants and about people of foreign ethnicities. They're

00:43:36.740 It's saying here that the English average is 7%.

00:43:40.240 They're saying that gypsies are to 19%,

00:43:43.600 mixed white, black, Caribbean, therine.

00:43:46.440 They're just overrepresented in that.

00:43:51.860 And they're also talking about sexual orientation,

00:43:55.160 about bisexual adults at 16. 1.00

00:43:58.800 You would expect this.

00:44:00.680 This isn't necessarily something that is new to us.

00:44:05.660 And they are talking about men's male loneliness epidemic and also female loneliness epidemic.

00:44:14.420 And they are saying that there is more loneliness in women.

00:44:20.120 And I want to share with you here this.

00:44:22.700 They say why women are lonely.

00:44:24.860 They say it's not what you think.

00:44:26.540 And they're drawing a distinction between loneliness and the feeling of isolation.

00:44:30.160 And they're saying that you can feel lonely even where you are with people.

00:44:34.140 Yeah. And it has to do with, it doesn't have to do with quantity of people around you. It has to do with quality. Here I want to say one thing is just, I don't know, maybe here I'm a bit cautiously optimistic and, or I'm more very realistic. It's just, I've always viewed life under the guise of true friends are very few.

00:44:56.660 so the quantity of people around you is isn't something i ever expected to to be a contributor

00:45:04.500 to lack of loneliness i don't know if there does seem to be a tendency especially in young people

00:45:12.220 to say well i have a hundred friends at uni yeah i've got 500 followers yeah yeah as if that means

00:45:17.860 anything so it says here the several forces are driving this and they're worth naming the

00:45:22.560 performance of having it together modern womanhood comes with an unspoken expectation manage the 0.98

00:45:28.080 house the career the children the relationships emotional labor and make it look effortless

00:45:33.100 i don't know if that's a technique yeah i mean true i i just don't know where this expectation

00:45:38.860 is coming from because i don't i don't see men being like right manage your career you know like

00:45:44.400 men don't care about that at all i mean they're trying that trying to say oh um if you're a woman

00:45:49.700 who has a family you're going to be lonely i mean this is essentially feminist propaganda i think 1.00

00:45:53.680 the main reason women actually feel lonely is because they don't women they adapt to what the 1.00

00:45:59.200 status quo is but they adapt to what this um what the status quo is in the friends group they'll go

00:46:04.560 along with the beliefs um they'll compare themselves um so when they actually don't feel

00:46:10.760 seen by their friends or heard or um they have different opinions you can you can have these

00:46:16.700 friends that you've been friends with since school but feel completely isolated and alone

00:46:21.240 so i think it's the fact women tend to adapt more um but they also compare themselves more

00:46:27.140 so i'm gonna speed up a bit due to time considerations but i will say to this for 0.80

00:46:32.120 instance i completely agree with you that's radical feminist propaganda i have a friend

00:46:36.360 and she has a four months old baby and right now they're traveling and also she has made many new

00:46:43.160 friends in the in the parents uh parent circle so there there are opportunities to socialize

00:46:50.940 and it says here erosion yeah that's exactly your erosion of third places yeah by the way

00:46:55.900 third places are really important in euromaxing just to add oh i bet yeah sociologists use the

00:47:01.480 term third places to describe the communal spaces between home and work where people naturally

00:47:06.640 gather it's like a social living room yeah extended the village square the church the

00:47:11.900 community whole these spaces have been disappearing for decades replaced by private homes commuter 0.99

00:47:17.240 lifestyles and screen-based socializing for women who historically relied on communal spaces for

00:47:22.800 connection and mutual support this loss has been particularly acute and it says they're the

00:47:28.360 motherhood gup which we already rebuked because this it looks like it's a it's a i mean take that

00:47:34.920 with a pinch of salt but for many women being a mom if their friends aren't mothers means their

00:47:40.120 relationship does wait yeah you know because you've got different priorities you have to be

00:47:45.300 involved in different things so that there is something to it i don't know i don't think there's

00:47:48.940 nothing but i must say at the end of the day that really looks uh seems to me to be like the caloric

00:47:55.600 deficit issue in getting in shape it's just if you don't go out and socialize yeah you won't

00:48:02.240 socialize it's as simple as that i understand that it may be easy for me to say and and it may look

00:48:08.240 appear rich rich on my behalf to say but i don't i think that's the truth yeah it's not socializing

00:48:16.040 it's um growing confident in being alone yes being by yourself absolutely yeah but that's that's a bit

00:48:23.260 of a sort of coping with the problem though isn't it like for for example um i i've always been that

00:48:29.740 that person in the friend group who's like hey guys shall we go and do this and hopefully it's

00:48:34.700 a good idea and people are like oh that sounds like fun and so you know everyone gets together

00:48:38.360 and does it well i realize that not everyone's like that but someone's got to be the person who

00:48:42.660 takes the initiative and says guys let's do a thing this is cool and regardless of what it is

00:48:48.160 you know i guess i can't help but to think of like tom bombadil and the lord of the rings you

00:48:52.620 know he's skipping through the forest and the only sort of person he has to keep him company is his

00:48:57.840 wife and but he's grown so content with with the forest and the nature around him is he's perfectly

00:49:03.580 happy in this own company that's great but a lot of people aren't yeah a lot of people are missing

00:49:08.460 uh company of others take a hike i think get themselves out there and you've just got to be

00:49:13.380 the person who um proposes to do things yes and also sometimes just go do them yourself i remember

00:49:19.180 for instance i there was a particular time where i was trying to get people to go to the cinema and

00:49:24.800 watch movies with me and then so i just went out and watched alone and last thing i want to say is

00:49:29.460 basically use time wisely because it's about quality it's not about quantity and being able

00:49:35.460 to be alone instead of being monophobic is a good way of forming the personality that will make it

00:49:44.700 easier for you to communicate in with people in quality relationships

00:49:50.580 all right um base tape says i haven't had a real life friend in over five years

00:49:56.460 i haven't had or sought a girlfriend in nine years and you got a dog a year ago i don't feel lonely

00:50:01.580 at all stay away from me losers uh well i mean good good for you but a lot of people don't feel

00:50:06.400 that a lot of people do not feel it's gone ham the rousseauian individual his base tape 0.94

00:50:11.560 well yeah i guess uh samson do you want to get the next segment up uh 40 and barber says brother

00:50:17.200 stelios once again the gold standard for these segments thank you bro and uh the flying crocodile

00:50:20.760 says uh you can be in a room full of people and still feel lonely it's about acceptance not so

00:50:25.000 much opportunity to be out there yeah i mean but you've got to you've got to make the effort that's

00:50:29.120 the thing anyway let's move on what a lovely picture yeah i don't know i don't know who's

00:50:35.660 drawn the hobbits yeah this so this is the last chapter of the lord of the rings the scouring of

00:50:40.140 the shire where frodo and um frodo and sam have gone to mordor they've destroyed the ring and

00:50:45.400 when they've come home they've realized that the shire has been industrialized and butchered 0.54

00:50:49.160 and well that's that's my segment um Britain is far more than just the people it's it's the very

00:50:56.220 soil we belong to um so when you skin the country alive with urbanization and you build upon it with

00:51:02.380 ugly horrendous buildings um such as like the entirety of Birmingham is a great example of that

00:51:08.340 and then you've you've butchered its very core um once the English countryside goes there there is

00:51:14.980 um there is no england we we as a people might reside there but there is no land that we are

00:51:20.720 protecting anymore and britain used to be covered with great forests back in the celtic times and

00:51:26.420 unfortunately a lot of those forests have been destroyed and so the fact that we want to keep

00:51:30.860 building and destroy sort of the last um the last couple of forests that we actually have

00:51:36.960 in the last couple of greens is horrendous.

00:51:45.080 That's all right, I'll do it.

00:51:47.340 Is this not the next one?

00:51:51.080 Sorry, I've got a mouse here.

00:51:53.380 I think it is, but I need to scroll down for the image.

00:51:58.220 Oh, here we go. 1.00

00:52:01.720 And this is exactly why green belts have come into place

00:52:04.980 to protect the countryside from cities inevitably expanding and consuming everything around them.

00:52:13.080 So it came into place really after the Second World War. And it's a good reason. If you look

00:52:18.920 at London, London's a huge city. And you go to places like Highgate, for example, these wee

00:52:23.860 villages that would have been once surrounded by countryside and forests, they're now consumed

00:52:28.640 um into the metropolitan city um whenever i go to london i always get upset seeing these

00:52:36.860 sort of massive motorways and these extremely um big shopping centers on on places that would

00:52:43.720 have been beautiful greens um there's a place in london it's northeast london i think it's called

00:52:48.800 waltenham forest and it's like an it's a concrete jungle and there is no forest there there's no

00:52:54.340 Yeah, you can tell this was once a beautiful place

00:52:59.180 where noblemen would go hunting

00:53:01.460 and there's nothing left whatsoever of it. 0.86

00:53:03.860 And it reminds me of the destruction of Middle Earth

00:53:07.660 when Saruman destroys Fangorn Forest 0.63

00:53:12.760 to fuel the war machines of his army.

00:53:18.420 Well, I mean, this is literally what Tolkien was talking about.

00:53:21.420 Yeah, exactly.

00:53:21.920 you can say oh i don't like analogy or metaphor it's like okay but it's very clearly the shire

00:53:28.180 being industrialized and eaten alive by saruman there is clearly an analogy going on here exactly

00:53:34.420 you can say you don't like it mr tolkien so a lot of people they say it's lord of the rings left

00:53:38.540 ring or white ring it doesn't matter what lord of the rings at its core was was anti-industrialization

00:53:44.120 anti-urbanization i mean a tolkien grew up um in in the countryside of what is now birmingham

00:53:51.720 and which has been completely eaten up and what he was warning against is exactly what Birmingham

00:53:57.880 became so but a lot of people they say the green belt isn't actually countryside it's just a bunch

00:54:08.980 of regulations that's put there to stop us from building it's industrial waste it's like car parks

00:54:14.980 and so on uh where i live i live in runcorn in cheshire all of this is beautiful greens some of

00:54:22.060 it's like um it's it's um like regional parks um um old oak forest um and and so on and if

00:54:30.900 these metropolitans had it their way all of this would be entirely butchered the whole of north

00:54:35.600 cheshire would be completely gone i remember um seeing a tom harwood tweet a couple of years ago

00:54:40.820 why was tom harwood the person on the front of my mind when you said that yeah why is that because

00:54:46.380 maybe because of this tree because he said why can't we just build a massive city here from

00:54:51.340 liverpool to manchester because then it would be the same size as london why would we want to do

00:54:56.140 that because it would literally butcher the whole of cheshire but why would we want that yeah like 0.86

00:55:00.960 that's horrible and also be filled with yeah and also because like scousers and manx hate each other 0.69

00:55:06.880 can you imagine making that into one city okay that's a good argument to do it but

00:55:10.560 that's a horrible idea they used to sell shirts in liverpool saying i'm not racist i just hate

00:55:17.720 manx um so that that would be a terrible idea but you used constantly see this myth coming out of

00:55:24.560 tory think tanks coming from metropolitans who are so disconnected from the rest of the country

00:55:30.640 who solely live in the urbanization of London, that they have no idea whatsoever that the rest

00:55:37.260 of the country is countryside. To debunk this myth, all you have to do is literally leave London.

00:55:41.960 All you have to do is literally leave Liverpool or Manchester. And then you will see this is

00:55:46.580 actually countryside. So I've got a tweet here from these metropolitans. And so this guy, 0.83

00:55:53.240 He works for Prosperity Institute, and this is in response to a video of Lala Cunningham saying the Greenbelt's industrial race learned it's not fields full of dandelions and rabbits.

00:56:10.160 And he's in response saying this is completely right. Much of the Greenbelt land isn't countryside, but this used car parks and neglected scrubland.

00:56:19.940 there was enough green belt land with greater london to build 1.6 million homes even using just

00:56:25.000 10 could provide 160 000 new homes um what are the bets this this person's ever like left london

00:56:33.200 at all why would i want that yeah i mean yeah it's stay in london but um it shows how disconnected

00:56:39.520 these people are this is a video i came across on twitter of this like propaganda that's spouted

00:56:44.580 out of these people who work for these think tanks um i'll play the video and

00:56:50.580 is our classified screen belt isn't it that doesn't look particularly uh environmentally

00:56:58.580 special to me no yeah it just it's just so many examples of this kind right it's lies

00:57:07.440 and to debunk that i've brought up a nice little um picture of where i live

00:57:12.980 uh fraudulent forest and all of this is greenland does that look like a car park down there there's

00:57:18.640 a car park you can see that someone has built like a a thing there yeah and there's a car park there

00:57:24.140 therefore all of that should be paved over yeah like no sorry that's a ridiculous argument it's

00:57:28.760 like okay there's there's obviously a a service or a farm shop or whatever it is there and there's

00:57:34.620 a car park there that's not obtrusive you know it's it's functional it's small and it hasn't

00:57:40.160 destroyed the fact that you can go for a nice walk there now it just it's it's an access yeah

00:57:45.440 so this this used to be this used to be a golf course so this used to be like the car park for

00:57:50.840 it and they've completely rewilded it they've planted loads and loads of new trees to make it

00:57:54.900 forest again here it's full of like ancient oaks there's north wales over there and all of this

00:58:00.080 you can't even build on this because it's marsh anyway because this is reclaimed land from the

00:58:03.840 river mersey uh but if they had it their way all of this would just be one metropolitan city yeah

00:58:09.640 stretch to to good of that yeah um so my question is why on earth are these people

00:58:18.160 lying saying that um the green belt is car parks and industrial wasteland is a complete lie

00:58:25.140 well they're lying because um i've got some paid to lie i i i think so this is what i fear wise

00:58:32.100 um because a fifth of the tory party's donations and these think tanks are linked to the tory

00:58:37.860 party a fifth of their donations came from residential from the residential property

00:58:43.720 sector so that's 20 percent um and between 2010 and 2020 when the toys were in power they received

00:58:52.080 60.8 million in donations from individuals and companies related to property interests

00:58:58.140 the thing is as well how much of that comes from government funding for the developments as well

00:59:03.220 so you know the government's like yeah we want you to build 160 000 council houses or something

00:59:07.660 like that well okay and then they spend money donating to the government in this cycle to make

00:59:14.340 sure that england just gets continually bricked up exactly because 80 percent of um well in in

00:59:20.620 this well this came out in 2021 so it might have changed now when you've got labor government in

00:59:25.580 power but at the time 80 percent of property related donations of all parties um 80 percent

00:59:32.680 went to the toys. And that's who they were targeting. Because, well, if they can buy up

00:59:37.780 a green belt land and build on it, they can make a lot of money. So they lie to these institutions.

00:59:44.580 I know people who work for think tanks, and they say that they can't actually write what they want.

00:59:49.520 They can't actually put their genuine research on paper. They have to write what their donors

00:59:54.840 want to say, what the people who pay for their salary want to say. So that's why they come out

01:00:02.240 with these myths and also because they have the metropolitan mine virus they also believe it

01:00:07.860 themselves because they've never left um london um so who is the green belt um actually um housing

01:00:19.460 who is it for why do we have to build all of these homes in britain well it's because of mass

01:00:24.180 migration um here's a i think this is this the right graph yeah here's a graph here about the

01:00:30.860 impact of net net migration on rent um so you can see um with the rise of net migration rent's gone

01:00:39.320 up in london uh to extortionate amounts i mean most english people can't even afford to live in

01:00:44.620 london and if they do they live in horrible house shares look at look at the cause of this problem

01:00:48.560 look at that though it's gone from 800 quid a month to a thousand three hundred plus a month 1.00

01:00:54.980 yeah and it's it's literally just because we are allowing infinite numbers of foreigners to come 0.98

01:01:00.140 live here exactly absolutely mad there's a statistic um um which i've got here that um

01:01:07.580 immigration to england at current levels will generate the need to build one home every six

01:01:13.620 minutes and night and day which is 240 every single day in order to to let immigrants reside 1.00

01:01:22.020 here and it makes sense if you open up your tiny island to the world you're going to have to destroy 1.00

01:01:26.160 your countryside you're going to have to skin it alive and butcher it um and make it into a

01:01:31.660 metropolitan hellhole like mordor you have essentially turn us into mega city one from 1.00

01:01:36.540 judge dread yeah um awful and i just can't even imagine anything worse a migrant home ownership 1.00

01:01:43.000 um has has increased massively in 2021 68 percent of foreign-born people who arrived in the uk 20 0.97

01:01:51.520 years earlier owned their own homes yeah um and of course we know that 48 percent of social

01:01:57.780 housing in london is all um foreign um is owned by foreign born people as well um apparently more

01:02:06.160 indians own property in london than english people yeah but it also makes sense because

01:02:10.940 when you see these um these houses coming up what i call sort of like gingerbread cutter houses you

01:02:20.100 you know, Steno builds, coming up in small villages and towns,

01:02:24.020 a lot of the locals are heavily against it.

01:02:27.660 And if the locals needed housing, why would they be against it?

01:02:31.600 It's because these...

01:02:32.580 It's happening in my... 1.00

01:02:33.700 Yeah, it's because these estates are for migrants. 0.99

01:02:38.040 They're not actually for native-born people whatsoever.

01:02:42.020 Liz, there is also a synergy between property development

01:02:46.320 and money that comes along with it,

01:02:48.200 And also the globalist tendency of viewing, let's say, the third world as the world that is being destroyed by climate change and has to be housed in the rest of the world, which by implication would require the destruction of the rest of the world's climate.

01:03:07.820 I love the term climate refugee. 0.71

01:03:10.500 Yeah. 0.50

01:03:10.980 Refugee from the climate, as if we don't have climate.

01:03:14.480 It's also strange because you see a lot of these climate change advocates asking for us to infest in rainforests in South America.

01:03:23.720 Why can't we infest in our own native forests in Europe, which are just as important, such as like Dartmoor in Devon? 1.00

01:03:31.780 We need to out Somalians there. 1.00

01:03:33.460 Yeah, well, exactly. So I do find it strange that we have to protect the environment of South America instead of... 1.00

01:03:40.460 So Nara was evil for wanting to chop a small part of the Amazon.

01:03:44.660 But now all this has to go for them.

01:03:46.660 Yeah, all of our beautiful countryside.

01:03:49.060 The essence of who we are.

01:03:50.760 I came across this.

01:03:52.040 I find this interesting.

01:03:53.200 So this is like a paper I found online.

01:03:57.340 Urbanist architecture.

01:03:58.700 Yeah, looking at loopholes in order to build on the green belt.

01:04:03.940 And now their founder is here.

01:04:05.740 A guy called, I can't even pronounce his name. 0.99

01:04:07.920 Ufuk Baha.

01:04:08.900 ah that's the sort of person i expect to really be concerned about stewardship of the land in this

01:04:14.300 country well that that's why i find this interesting because you have someone who's 1.00

01:04:18.320 foreign born advocating for the butchering of the english countryside because to him why should he

01:04:23.520 even care he's not from here he has no um blood connection to the land whatsoever to him it truly 0.89

01:04:29.740 is a material um a material to be built on also it's a frontier to him yeah he has come from

01:04:36.720 somewhere else this isn't his homeland yeah it's being built on no this is an open frontier that

01:04:41.200 can be colonized yeah but it's also looking at nature simply as resource yeah because you could

01:04:50.160 say for instance that yeah you could say that i mean i mean i'm not english that's not a secret

01:04:54.180 but i do love the english countryside and i do consider it enchanted so yeah there's actually

01:04:59.780 a policy paper by policy exchange i haven't i haven't got it up here um but they were advocating

01:05:05.260 for the building of the green belt because that's what their donors tell them to do but one of the

01:05:10.140 quotes in in the paper was really interesting it said the reality is that a child in london gets

01:05:15.380 no welfare from the fact that in barnet there is two uh two thousand and uh three hundred and eighty

01:05:21.160 um acres of green belt land but not my problem yeah but it shows that land land is just to be

01:05:28.300 built on i mean think i'm sorry that the child in london isn't gaining a benefit from the land

01:05:33.820 i live near and yeah yeah but that's not my problem that land is also for wildlife yeah it's

01:05:39.380 not you know it's for us yeah our country is not just us it's like the badgers the hedgehogs the

01:05:45.080 birds that need um need a countryside to live in and that's why you see badgers going extinct

01:05:51.540 hedgehogs going extinct because they have nowhere to roam anymore i haven't seen a hedgehog in years

01:05:56.460 yeah go down the bottom of the garden with my nan and look for hedgehogs that reminds me of a funny

01:06:00.460 story i remember i was trying to go to sleep one night and i had this like growling devilish noise

01:06:05.240 from a bush and i thought it was the devil who's come to take me or something i remember us poking

01:06:09.800 the bush with a stick which is probably not the best idea to do if you think it's the devil

01:06:13.820 and then this like really big fat hedgehog walks out and it's the cutest thing i've ever seen

01:06:18.820 um but it goes to show how sort of self-absorbed these people are how self-interested they are

01:06:26.540 that they can't comprehend, that Britain is not even just the people,

01:06:29.860 it's the wildlife that lives there, the native species.

01:06:33.600 And you see this with foxes as well.

01:06:35.320 Foxes have had to adapt to metropolitan environments

01:06:38.360 because their home has been taken from them.

01:06:41.980 Kind of like the ants in The Lord of the Rings,

01:06:44.420 where the people of Middle Earth have forgotten these old oak trees exist

01:06:49.620 because they've prioritized themselves.

01:06:52.580 Treebeard rising.

01:06:53.900 Yeah.

01:06:54.180 and on that point there's this really interesting article i found by um by the independent that

01:07:00.900 developers are clearing wildlife habitats without approval to win planning permission so what

01:07:07.060 they're doing is they're buying land then they're cutting down all the trees butchering it making it

01:07:11.020 industrial wasteland just like what they say the green belt is so then they can build their estates

01:07:16.280 and and it's it's really oh i didn't mean to click that um it's really upsetting there's some quotes

01:07:22.720 here um of um another corpse was cleared a couple of years ago back and the badger set destroyed

01:07:29.640 it seems that land owners will go in and chop down trees and hedges before putting in an application

01:07:34.960 and um they mass cleared a site down my road before putting in an application it had protected

01:07:41.380 species and red list beds in the area so they're just destroying wildlife habitats in order to

01:07:47.600 build, Dino builds, which are ugly and horrendous in general. It's really upsetting. But the

01:07:55.740 thing is, I've got a really nice sort of picture here of an arts and craft cottage. Even if

01:08:02.920 we deport them all and they all go home and we have to build houses for our native people

01:08:08.020 and we have to expand, we should be building houses that honor the land and are built around 0.90

01:08:15.360 the land, sort of like the Anglo-Saxon longhouse, where it was made out of natural materials and

01:08:22.120 it fitted the place it resided. And the Anglo-Saxon longhouse developed into the English cottage. It

01:08:28.040 never went away. It developed into our own national architecture. And what the arts and

01:08:34.160 crafts movement was with William Morris and the pre-Raphaelites was re-fiving that English

01:08:39.400 um architecture again and building suburbs um which is akin to our own design as a people

01:08:47.000 as you can see here it's a modern design but it's akin to that old fetch cottage very pretty um

01:08:53.320 and um and yeah so i must say because i love traveling the countryside and i've traveled a

01:09:02.680 lot in the globe receiving offerings you are one of the best uh for countryside architecture and

01:09:09.960 yeah you shouldn't lose it absolutely yeah but uh but i mean when when we've won and millions have

01:09:16.660 gone uh we're not going to have to worry about like overdevelopment i mean this is the the native

01:09:22.960 population just is not exploding in the way that would be necessary like it was doing in the 19th

01:09:27.360 century for example for this to become uh an immediate problem what we need to do is make

01:09:32.520 sure we preserve what we've got right um the hapsification says we must partition liverpool

01:09:37.760 and manchester like we did with indian and pakistan uh scouts and manx living together 0.75

01:09:41.800 there'll be death on the streets um well i don't know i think i think it's one of those um maybe

01:09:47.740 we aren't so different after all things yeah kind of like the irish catholic yeah right yeah exactly

01:09:53.020 as migration comes into northern ireland well we're both christian and we're both irish what

01:09:58.000 were we fighting about yeah this this wasn't quite as different as we thought um funny how

01:10:02.960 people say there's loads of room to build cities and homes for newcomers yet also say we must

01:10:06.340 lower emissions incredible yeah i know that the the carbon footprint thing is just ridiculous 0.86

01:10:10.820 uh it's taken centuries to manicure england into what it is and these bellens want to rip it all

01:10:15.880 up i like that phrase manicure england that's very that's very true you know it's been taken

01:10:21.340 care of uh very carefully over the centuries um let's do the video comments

01:10:31.020 to answer a question bo had a bit um to why pathogens inject like the shoulders almost

01:10:37.740 running off um it's one of the more ancient rites of mankind um we have records going back to like

01:10:45.340 ancient egypt like the first dynasties ancient egypt so like really really old like the earth

01:10:53.420 far back as we can go of like rulers running around in circles it shows strength and mentality

01:10:59.740 otherwise it shows weakness so i didn't catch any of that i'm afraid let's get to the next one

01:11:06.380 my name's abdul shukur i've been muslim for two months now alhamdulillah

01:11:14.540 my name's abdul rahim i've been muslim for three years alhamdulillah

01:11:17.940 my name's abdullah i'm british and i've been a muslim for 10 years alhamdulillah

01:11:22.980 mashallah mashallah whoa whoa whoa whoa come back you didn't think that was it brother turn the

01:11:27.160 camera alhamdulillah my name is dan i've been a muslim for two years alhamdulillah

01:11:32.180 My name is Mehdi

01:11:34.100 I've been Muslim for 25 years

01:11:35.800 Alhamdulillah

01:11:36.580 Allahu Akbar

01:11:37.780 Allahu Akbar

01:11:38.740 Allahu Akbar

01:11:39.640 Allahu Akbar 1.00

01:11:40.400 It's fucking disgusting 1.00

01:11:43.080 Future state of Britain 1.00

01:11:44.900 If we don't win

01:11:45.800 Yeah, I genuinely found that disgusting to watch

01:11:49.660 Is there another one?

01:11:52.500 I only really have three hopes for the next government

01:11:54.580 The PM treats the Labour Party

01:11:57.220 How Keir Starmer treats the Labour Party

01:11:58.980 The next right-wing leader

01:12:01.220 is as bad or worse at being right-wing

01:12:04.240 than the left-wing propaganda outlets

01:12:06.360 would have you believe.

01:12:08.260 Lastly, they delete more laws

01:12:10.680 and acts of parliament

01:12:12.000 than have been created in the last century.

01:12:16.200 Here's hoping.

01:12:18.420 Yeah.

01:12:20.400 Right, we've got loads of comments today.

01:12:23.700 I can find the beginning of them.

01:12:27.060 So, there was a great one by Omar here, right?

01:12:29.600 um well russian says yeah the british public is grossly misinformed about everything at least we

01:12:34.860 have gb news now but even then ofcom reigns them in yeah but i mean ofcom can't reign you in about

01:12:39.100 reporting the actual numbers of things um and this is one of those things where you you don't really

01:12:43.820 think about how important it is to actually have a correct assessment of your own country

01:12:48.280 especially when it comes to the government spending omar says even if you know the real

01:12:53.440 budget the waste is such a silly high number that it's hard to fathom anything involving

01:12:58.200 literal billions of our taxes not being a significant proportion of spending you hear

01:13:02.560 they spend a billion a month on hotels for illegals you'd think that should account for

01:13:06.200 at least a percentage point but there's another 999 billion being burned on hundreds or thousands

01:13:11.180 of other grifts well it's it's 1.4 trillion a year i think the government spends and the uh gdp is

01:13:18.700 something like 3.1 trillion so it's literally 45 of all spending uh in the country all the money

01:13:25.360 that we earn every year um which is just such ridiculous amounts of money you don't think about

01:13:32.180 it uh omar also says we don't make money off the nhs but even worse is that we often don't get

01:13:37.080 health care either we're burdened by the bill and have to pay for private service for reasonable

01:13:40.600 access yeah i know lots of people uh who are spending a few hundred quid a month um just to

01:13:45.360 make sure they have access to health care henry says uh oh correcting me on the taxes thank you

01:13:51.580 henry uh the 45 threshold is about 150k a year at 100k you start losing your personal allowance

01:13:57.020 so it becomes an effective 65 tax rate this is just theft it's just theft and then they're 0.91

01:14:07.380 shoveling into minority communities this even telling you you have to embrace low taxation 0.69

01:14:13.100 no i'm joking you already do yeah you don't need to persuade me no it's like every time you every 0.62

01:14:18.460 time taxation period comes everyone goes way more libertarian yeah the only time i'm ever in

01:14:25.900 ancap is when the government is asking me for money yeah 24 hours before 24 hours afterwards

01:14:30.920 that's it for me for weeks weeks afterwards i'm seething about it genuinely like i just

01:14:38.660 i can't stand it uh this is even when you factor in uh other council uh taxes like council tax

01:14:46.380 fuel duty vat uh which you also pay on the fuel duty stamp duty green levies capital gains tax

01:14:51.780 new tourist taxes and when you die what's left is subject to inheritance tax i know i know the

01:14:56.720 i mean i can't think of anything that is not taxed in some way in this country and i hate it

01:15:03.960 jimbo says sure i can look at government statistics but i can also just go out on my

01:15:08.600 lunch break my eyes suggest way over the estimation estimation of minority population

01:15:13.360 yeah this is the thing i think that there are a lot more illegals here than people realize as

01:15:17.360 well because i mean like in 2020 i think it was they were estimating oh there's a million to two

01:15:21.880 million illegals like no there are way more than that way way more than that but there are also

01:15:26.560 way more legals than people realize so you know i mean when people like oh yeah i reckon 30 percent

01:15:31.400 of the country is immigrant maybe you know and that was back in 2013 maybe like who knows you

01:15:37.900 know jimbo says i work with a millennial woman who wants her descendants to live in megacity one 0.69

01:15:43.380 why why why she has to be fired she doesn't understand why there should be countryside

01:15:50.520 when people want to come for a better life what do you even say to these people it's like well

01:15:55.460 i mean i've got no obligation to provide a bunch of foreigners with a better life and even then 0.95

01:16:01.980 there are so many billions of people on the earth that we couldn't even if we wanted to

01:16:07.660 it's weird though because there are some people who love nature and some others who really want

01:16:12.020 to be in urban settings yeah i think i just don't understand them we've got we've got to save

01:16:16.940 billions of trees not like climate refugees that should be a slogan that's a random name says the

01:16:24.320 reason people think that most immigrants are illegal is because they should never have been

01:16:26.940 here in the first place doesn't matter if they technically came here legally in a normal world 1.00

01:16:30.760 they would never have been allowed and everyone knows it yeah i know there's definitely something

01:16:34.400 to this is it's just assuming oh right there are you know millions of foreigners here well this 0.95

01:16:40.580 must be illegal it's like no it's all done legally i'm afraid you know even then um perhaps that extra

01:16:47.780 100 billion on the police budget actual justice could have been spencer connor's wife and children

01:16:52.460 following the disturbing threat they received and was shooed off by the met well yeah that would

01:16:56.800 require the met to have the will to do that though the average normie is misinformed and doesn't

01:17:02.080 actively look for the truth which is what those in power prefer the populace lacking awareness is

01:17:07.820 easily easier to manipulate well that's the point um if you don't know what the problem is you can't

01:17:14.280 do anything about it it's also you know the the meme of i just want to grill the normie just wants

01:17:19.200 to live his life sure he doesn't care about the political system yeah but i think we're getting

01:17:24.520 to the point now i think this is what restore britain is showing you know that you you just

01:17:29.000 can't grill now the economy is too bad immigration is too bad the political system has come for you

01:17:34.840 whether you like it or not there's no just being able to grill anymore and grilling is polluting 0.96

01:17:39.560 the environment which is bad but for some reason what you described isn't yeah yeah um zesty says

01:17:47.240 loneliness is a lot like the concept of a luxury belief in that the most likely people to have both

01:17:51.940 are first worlders with a high standard of living and few real problems both have been on the rise

01:17:56.420 in the uk um yeah i suppose there's something to that i mean i i personally have just got people

01:18:01.280 coming at me for things morning noon and night so i pray for my alone time it's just a bit just

01:18:07.680 a couple of hours where no one is asking me something that would be amazing um kevin says

01:18:12.460 after spending the last few months living with my daughter granddaughter and granddaughter's

01:18:15.320 boyfriend two neck ring ring neck parrots and a big black dog i long to get back to the loneliness

01:18:20.800 i had in thailand yeah kevin i totally get it i missed the peace and quiet uh when i wanted to go

01:18:28.180 uh to another town and meet people who knew me and have company but once a month was enough

01:18:32.040 um yeah but i mean you know but at the end of the day it won't always be that way will it

01:18:37.220 michael says uh i remember my favorite car game shop had a land gaming room that vanished some

01:18:41.700 time ago now it's a huge car gaming space then we'll paid land gaming room yeah i know man land

01:18:46.300 Land parties are the best.

01:18:50.140 Sophie says,

01:18:50.980 it's also a massive problem

01:18:51.920 that social media is incredibly addictive by design,

01:18:54.660 hitting the same neuron centers that gambling does.

01:18:56.500 So these kids who have grown up with an addiction

01:18:58.460 can't even socialize when out in the real world.

01:19:00.540 They must constantly check their phone

01:19:01.560 and suffer actual withdrawal symptoms

01:19:02.860 when they are denied their addiction.

01:19:04.360 It's very scary.

01:19:05.280 Yeah, and you are definitely right

01:19:07.360 to say that social media is definitely an aspect of it.

01:19:09.680 Yeah.

01:19:10.040 But I don't want to say,

01:19:11.640 oh, it's just social media that's the problem.

01:19:13.420 Because I don't think it's just social media.

01:19:14.800 Yeah, because it was on the Ys before.

01:19:16.300 social media exactly yeah i think there's this um you know weird intrusive um sort of helicopter

01:19:23.760 institution where it needs to be involved like you were saying in every single aspect of every

01:19:28.000 interaction because if you think of it the more people are on social media the more time they

01:19:32.740 spend on it the more they tend to think that they're they more they tend to act as if their

01:19:37.140 digital presence is more important than their physical presence yeah even if they they will

01:19:41.880 tell you that no obviously that's not the case but that's how they act yeah like they go to a

01:19:46.460 place to take photos they don't go to a place to actually visit it visit it yeah yeah yeah

01:19:51.580 uh i think what stelios is saying about parents not being with their kids enough nowadays is fine

01:19:58.180 when it's framed correctly i wouldn't consider handling handing kids electronics in the same

01:20:02.340 room as actually being with them kids and parents might be in each other's presence more but they

01:20:06.160 aren't actually interacting at all kids should be able to roam and have some freedom yes but

01:20:09.420 parental interaction quality also needs to be better i mean that's obviously true that's correct 1.00

01:20:13.380 anything stands to to be improved but i do think we need to um get past the oh the boomers and

01:20:21.840 the generations before like constantly doing things with the kids that's not necessarily true

01:20:27.960 um i'm not saying that you know they didn't do things with their kids or anything like that but

01:20:31.580 it's we had a lot more freedom than you would expect actually yeah but wouldn't you say that

01:20:36.420 back in older days in the before yeah um there was the sense that instead of having 200 people

01:20:46.440 to date instantly as you have this yeah that's the illusion but like four local girls yeah yeah

01:20:53.640 you had four local girls and you said right this is that that's where i'm i'm that's where i have

01:21:00.320 to play yeah that's why older people get married so early yeah well it's like sumas are are just 0.68

01:21:06.000 lonely in terms of their relationships because there's too many fish in the pond i tell you what

01:21:10.300 i don't do not envy young people with apps now like yeah finding a partner that is just awful

01:21:16.420 canis familiaris says i think the number one policy for increasing time spent together instead

01:21:21.180 of at home alone is completely removing alcohol duties for drinks sold at bars restaurants and

01:21:25.640 pubs slash other duties make it economically viable to go out more often yeah i mean that's

01:21:30.260 totally a fair thing to think as well yeah but one thing i want to say here because i do remember

01:21:35.760 i was doing this during um lock yeah during lockdown yeah we were allowed to go out weren't

01:21:42.180 we well they made us go out eat out to help out at one point yeah yeah and then it was like well

01:21:46.480 as long as you're sitting down you don't have to wear your mask but if you get up give myself away

01:21:50.020 stupid yeah well yeah but i remember that i was going walking a lot yeah yeah food paths and 0.98

01:21:56.720 stuff so that doesn't cost it doesn't have to cost and going out and and drinking a coffee or a cup 0.99

01:22:03.640 of tea and gate getting a scone or something it doesn't have doesn't have to be you know 22 pounds

01:22:08.760 fish and chips yeah that isn't also a big portion and it's absolutely a scam because you have to

01:22:14.620 have a big portion when you're paying for so much yeah i could do some fish and chips that was nice 0.85

01:22:18.240 uh jez says loneliness is a combination of being an introvert being surrounded by foreigners that

01:22:23.300 are not inclusive outsiders and being physically distanced from friends uh or friends having aged

01:22:27.820 out of frequent socializing that's where i am a friend group being foreign and a decade younger

01:22:32.340 yeah there are all sorts of issues there are all sorts of issues but the i think i think a lot of

01:22:37.100 it with young people is the the will and the effort to know they should be doing these things

01:22:41.820 i think a lot of them don't um and just don't think that they should be doing these things so

01:22:46.060 no you really should be it's like depression isn't it once you're in the woods it's hard to

01:22:49.840 to get out of the woods the same applies with loneliness

01:22:52.460 yes daniel says one thing that bugs me about the reforesting being done in the highlands it's all

01:22:57.020 pine forests they're not normally a single type of tree but they grow fast in a few years so it

01:23:01.440 looks like you've done a lot well in in relation to that actually so there's this policy that's

01:23:05.760 happening in the highlands now where they're cutting down all the pine forests because they're

01:23:09.560 not native to britain and they're replanting our native trees because when the highland clarences

01:23:14.220 happened and they butchered all the forests in the highlands in order to make sure that the highland

01:23:19.700 clans never went back right and that it was unusable even in terms of farmland um it's they

01:23:24.980 could they could they they destroyed all all of the ancient oaks all of the ancient trees

01:23:29.400 um so there's an initiative now from the scottish government of let's restore what the highlands

01:23:35.220 used to be like before those lowlanders came well yeah russian says i drive two or three hundred

01:23:42.420 miles a week and see constantly green belt developments all to house the imported savages 0.98

01:23:47.200 I keep seeing green belt developments everywhere yeah yeah particularly in London says Kevin if 0.83

01:23:53.220 they get the go-ahead to build on green belt land properties that what they build will either be out

01:23:58.560 of the price range of the local natives who need them and so be built by overseas companies on

01:24:02.600 behalf of migrants yeah HMOs and things like this the same the same happened in Wales there was like

01:24:07.600 a whole sort of terrorist organization dedicated to it where English people were buying second

01:24:12.680 homes in welsh towns and it made the local house prices go through the roof to the point where

01:24:17.640 they started firebombing these holiday cottages they were that they were that unhappy 0.98

01:24:23.020 that's the welsh i guess when we've won and millions have been deported we're going to have

01:24:32.860 to set up uh demolition crews to destroy these ghastly new builds and try and restore the

01:24:36.720 countryside to how it once was um i mean to be honest with you some of the new builds are not

01:24:41.060 that bad and i think we're probably over egging a little bit just how bad they all are because i

01:24:45.180 mean there are some awful there are some rather okay it's like they're not great when you look

01:24:50.100 at builds built in the 70s is there was the community shop the streets are all different

01:24:54.820 there's a lot of uh diversity to how it looks with these new builds it's very american suburbs

01:25:00.640 that's true it's it's rows and rows of streets just stacked next to each other with no room for

01:25:06.240 anything else yeah no local amenities because everyone's just driving it's quite hard to

01:25:11.440 identify where you are it's a complete maze because every the whole um development looks

01:25:16.480 the exact same and it sometimes gets even worse when what is being developed isn't paying tribute

01:25:22.640 to the environment because you could say that i mean yeah things have to be built occasionally

01:25:27.520 there's a reason why we have uh we're building buildings but you can actually build something

01:25:34.140 that doesn't destroy the environment and doesn't stand out as something incredibly bad for instance

01:25:39.720 i'm constantly traveling the cotswolds you very frequently look at new property being developed

01:25:46.300 but it definitely isn't something abnormal or something that destroys the environment there

01:25:52.340 it's actually really you could say yeah it fits right in yeah like um like king charles estate

01:25:59.700 um that he he worked on it fits into um that that english architecture and who we are

01:26:05.740 i can feel morey breathing down my neck about that because he hates it i mean i don't really

01:26:11.180 like it in terms of its architecture it's too georgian if it was an arts and craft village

01:26:15.440 of like thatch cottages that look look like this yeah so much better yeah i mean that would be

01:26:20.160 lovely um maria says the scouring of the shire is why the townies are so disliked by us shire folk

01:26:26.120 yeah yeah absolutely um and henry says there is something inherently beautiful about the

01:26:30.960 countryside buildings made with local materials yeah now that's that's a an important thing to me

01:26:35.100 um is the fact that whenever you travel across england and go through like

01:26:38.840 towns and villages that have been there for hundreds of years you realize that every single

01:26:43.260 one is different yeah like edinburgh in scotland and aberdeen with with the granite it's all made

01:26:48.480 of local stone that's one of my favorite things to notice when i'm traveling because it's like in

01:26:55.060 somerset in dorset in in wheelchair in gloucester there there are always some minor differences

01:27:03.480 yeah yeah that's why those new builds are just completely out of place because they don't fit

01:27:07.540 into the local environment whatsoever that's a good point um arizona desert route says i guess

01:27:13.760 people living in the uk have a hard time understanding how unique the forests there

01:27:16.880 really are most forests around the world are either jungle or conifer the deciduous temperate

01:27:21.520 are the exception not the norm around the world um yeah that's that's actually a really good point

01:27:27.120 because people forget that britain is a rainforest uh we're literally technically classed as a

01:27:34.100 temperate rainforest um and so all the moss and so yeah shouldn't we be more concerned about this

01:27:40.700 also nothing compares to the english oak oh yeah as well and also um like 50 of the world's blue

01:27:46.920 population um is in britain um and it's in in forests and so on so it grows where um ancient

01:27:53.680 forests used to be um so so our environment is is completely distinct and that's why it's worth

01:28:01.820 protecting richard says uh and this is something i've noticed and i find this just really weird

01:28:07.780 actually uh a lot of shops advertise um just online but also i've seen like you know whenever

01:28:13.720 you see like clothes advertising uh in the the you know the in the street and stuff like that

01:28:19.480 in the high street um i see 90 he said bame so like non-white people selling the clothes and you

01:28:26.220 see this absolutely everywhere where it's just like all of the models in these things are all

01:28:30.560 just non-white people it's like right okay who's this being sold to um you know i had to put the

01:28:36.320 uk in the box because i thought they were selling items in africa yeah yeah absolutely um

01:28:42.780 russian says excellent research and segment liz well done this is very thank you russian

01:28:47.340 um henry says a lot of the green belt in the old parks especially near large ancient cities

01:28:52.480 were kept and maintained so the kings lords and barons had countryside to go hunting

01:28:56.620 that's what richmond park is and that's what the new forest was

01:28:59.320 that's exactly correct but that's what i love about london compared to other parts of the world

01:29:07.460 um other cities in the world like new york and so on is london has the best parks and it's really

01:29:13.620 conserved it's natural um it's it's natural greenery as a city even if it has extended

01:29:19.700 and butchered a lot of places yeah i mean there are there are other problems in london to be honest

01:29:25.240 um so there's a comment by kevin i wanted to include but i've lost it now

01:29:30.280 from the ramble rant old chick door says where are the greens in all this

01:29:37.620 yeah well that's that's a great point and to be honest with you on the right we need to think

01:29:41.780 about how we're going to approach environmentalism yeah um i personally like the idea of conservationism

01:29:46.540 as in you know we want to conserve our countries and make sure they're beautiful um but the right

01:29:51.520 needs to have some kind of actual thought on this um so i guess that's something i'll uh i'll pitch

01:29:57.500 to the guys that restore um i think we're just scruden has written some good things about the

01:30:02.000 environment yeah he has yeah revisit them yeah and he says i know it's common for the right to

01:30:06.400 say that britain doesn't have magic soil but i'd argue it does but the magic comes from british

01:30:10.020 people who care for the land and put their love and a part of their soul into it if you take the

01:30:13.720 locals away and stop and people stop putting the magic into the soil then the magic will fade and

01:30:17.760 never come back exactly yeah i mean you know why don't they have magic soil in their own countries

01:30:22.060 well they don't put the love into it that's why they have the germanics and the anglo-saxons

01:30:26.480 invaded because our soil was more fertile than the mainland europe yeah britain's got some of

01:30:31.540 the best soil in the world yeah exactly well sadly no exactly i was gonna say i think i think um i

01:30:41.480 think britain is um what the greeks were talking about when they were speaking about hyperboea

01:30:46.200 i think that is our island um and uh there's something inherently beautiful about countryside

01:30:52.040 buildings oh no i read that one already sorry um anyway so uh thanks for joining us folks uh

01:30:56.980 elizabeth where can people find more from you um on my twitter elizabeth uh underscore you know too

01:31:01.280 okay um and also on sub stack uh elizabeth hevron um where i post articles on the history of the

01:31:08.020 britons and so on great okay well thanks so much for coming in thank you uh thanks for joining us

01:31:12.180 folks and we will see you tomorrow

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - May 20, 2026

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1422

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