TRIGGERnometry - 8 Times TRIGGERnometry Predicted the Future

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00:00:30.000 I never trust people in power to give the keys back.

00:00:47.040 They really don't like giving it back.

00:00:49.480 My biggest fear is the civil liberties implication of what will come after this.

00:01:00.000 Down the road, when I say down the road, I mean a year, two years from now, there is a risk of very serious inflation.

00:01:08.600 And I think we will look back on this if we ever have a chance to do so with an impartial inquiry and say, how on earth did we go mad to this extent?

00:01:16.980 It simply wasn't justified. And I think there will be, when this is examined, a fair number of excess deaths.

00:01:24.420 This is political belief and ideology over rational, scientific argument.

00:01:38.860 I still don't think people understand what's about to happen.

00:01:42.460 I really don't think they understand that we leave ourselves vulnerable

00:01:45.780 at some point of a not-too-distant future to blackouts.

00:01:49.340 It's about to blow up this year. It's about to blow up.

00:01:53.740 Hey Francis, do you like Scottish wildlife?

00:02:05.260 Yeah, I love Glasgow on a Friday night. 1.00

00:02:08.180 No, you idiot, I mean Scottish birds and... 1.00

00:02:10.300 Oh, you mean Morag! 1.00

00:02:11.700 Nah, we're not seeing each other anymore.

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00:03:38.260 Hello? Stavros? This is Lord Foster of Croydon, mate.

00:03:41.960 Yes, what I want, kebab, salt and pepper, extra, chilli sauce, salt and vinegar on the chips.

00:03:49.080 What do you mean you're shut? I'm a lord. You should always be open for me.

00:04:00.080 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster.

00:04:04.800 I'm Constantine Kissin.

00:04:06.020 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:04:11.460 We have a collection of guests for you today.

00:04:13.800 But before that, we should explain why we're sitting in front of a black curtain again.

00:04:17.380 And the reason is our new studio is being built literally as we speak.

00:04:21.980 So this is what we're doing with it at the moment.

00:04:25.460 But rest assured, it will be back very, very shortly.

00:04:29.040 And as those of you who are on Locals know, it's going to be absolutely awesome.

00:04:32.360 We've posted a bunch of backstage footage of it so you can see what is going on.

00:04:37.220 But in the meantime, one of the things we've always focused on the show is attempting to give you information about some of the economic trends that are coming and some of the other things that are going on in the world that are likely to happen in the future.

00:04:49.760 So what we've done for you today is we've collected a bunch of times when our former guests have predicted what was about to happen in a way that we think was going to be very useful to you.

00:04:58.880 So enjoy.

00:05:02.520 Our brilliant and returning guest this week is Mike Driver.

00:05:06.340 you may remember we did an interview with him some time ago he's a serial

00:05:09.720 entrepreneur all-around good guy and someone who has a lot of very

00:05:12.940 counterintuitive ideas so Mike driver welcome back to trigonometry I'm

00:05:17.140 delighted to be back thanks for having me again Mike what is it that we're not

00:05:22.000 seeing what is it that we're not talking about what do you with a kind of totally

00:05:27.220 different mindset to most people that I know what what is out of our field of

00:05:33.020 vision that's coming well I think one of the consequences I mean I think people

00:05:38.000 are talking about this but that my my biggest fear and it's not my biggest

00:05:42.780 fear for the economy or the country maybe the biggest fear of the country

00:05:47.880 is the civil liberties implication of what will come after this rushing a

00:05:56.820 vaccine through that's a frightening prospect in many ways vaccinate

00:06:01.660 vaccinating many young people who don't necessarily need a vaccine is

00:06:07.020 concerning. Thinking about how you're going to be monitored, how you're going

00:06:12.980 to be tagged, how your movements are going to be big brothered. I think all of

00:06:20.740 these things, I think is it Jeremy Bentham and the concept of the people's

00:06:26.460 behavior changed, the panopticon if they're watched all the time, the

00:06:30.940 behavior changes, and I think that's quite dynamic

00:06:33.940 amongst populations as well.

00:06:35.740 I think for some people, for many people,

00:06:38.120 and it kind of goes back to the Huxley

00:06:40.500 and the Brave New World view of where we are,

00:06:43.500 is they may embrace that.

00:06:45.760 They may embrace that sort of monitoring,

00:06:51.280 that herding, to use the phrase in a different way.

00:06:54.980 But there's many, many other people,

00:06:56.420 and they're the people that affect change,

00:06:58.340 who are going to find that intolerable.

00:07:01.160 So it took breaking the law to change many of the things

00:07:06.440 that we now take for granted,

00:07:07.780 be it the suffragettes or homosexuality 0.98

00:07:11.480 or many of those things.

00:07:13.380 It took people who are prepared

00:07:16.880 to step outside the boundaries.

00:07:19.360 And similarly, the way most entrepreneurial people think

00:07:23.220 is to be outside of the mainstream.

00:07:28.340 And I think if we limit that,

00:07:30.580 and I think that is perhaps the thing that worries me most,

00:07:34.040 we will limit the ability of those people

00:07:37.080 who affect change to do so.

00:07:39.140 And so where will that leave us in a very homogenous world?

00:07:44.960 That's not a world I particularly want to live in.

00:07:47.000 Mike, well, let me push back on that a little bit

00:07:48.700 because as you know, if there was anyone

00:07:51.060 who was concerned about the erosion of our civil liberties,

00:07:54.120 restrictions of free speech, that's me.

00:07:56.060 I've been pretty outspoken about this for a long time.

00:07:58.580 But I've got to be honest with you, I look around.

00:08:01.820 I mean, yes, in Australia, they're talking about

00:08:03.660 some kind of app to track your immunity status,

00:08:07.060 and that would be a hill that I'm prepared to die on. 0.99

00:08:09.960 I'm not signing up to any fucking app 0.99

00:08:11.420 that tracks me around the country, no way. 0.95

00:08:14.080 But apart from-

00:08:14.920 But if you can't travel, would you?

00:08:16.880 Right, but this is, yeah, I mean, yeah, it's a good point.

00:08:20.580 This is exactly my point, if someone said to you,

00:08:24.100 your passport is dependent on you

00:08:26.000 carrying your contact tracing app.

00:08:28.060 Yeah.

00:08:28.900 Then most of us would, and it erodes, doesn't it?

00:08:31.940 So it starts with a contract tracing app.

00:08:35.480 Where does it go after that?

00:08:36.540 Right.

00:08:37.380 But my broader point, I mean, I take your point on that,

00:08:39.620 and that is a step way too far in my opinion.

00:08:42.460 But more broadly speaking, I do see the, you know,

00:08:45.700 a lot of the people we've had on the show

00:08:47.260 who we like and respect kind of, in my opinion,

00:08:50.320 going way off the deep end on this stuff

00:08:52.460 and talking about how we're all under house arrest

00:08:54.840 and all this, which I think is a massive exaggeration.

00:08:58.000 I think a temporary and necessary lockdown

00:09:01.080 is not the same as house arrest.

00:09:02.840 I personally don't feel like Western governments

00:09:05.660 have been overly restrictive about this

00:09:08.860 in proportion to the threat that we're facing.

00:09:11.980 It is a war-like time.

00:09:13.820 You accept a little bit more imposition

00:09:16.640 on your freedoms during that time,

00:09:18.300 provided they're time limited, provided they're specific,

00:09:20.960 provided we can go back to having a free society afterwards.

00:09:26.900 Do you see signs that that's not going to happen?

00:09:29.780 What's the reason for your concern?

00:09:33.260 I never trust people in power to give the keys back.

00:09:37.640 Once they get, similar to the MMT conversation

00:09:45.340 that we had earlier, once you give people in power,

00:09:50.340 power and consider that their reasons for living are to obtain power. They really don't

00:09:59.740 like giving it back. So while I might not be at the further end of the spectrum of the

00:10:10.460 previous guests you've had. We as a country, as a species, have fought and lost

00:10:21.080 millions of lives to maintain freedoms and I don't think that should be lost.

00:10:26.700 There are consequences, there are serious consequences to giving up the

00:10:33.020 things that enable us to change and I think that's what scares me

00:10:38.720 most is when you have a contact tracing app that you need to have you have you've given

00:10:51.200 the political order a lever in with which to dictate or with which to demand your your obedience

00:10:59.120 and anything that does that anything that does that more i think that that's that would be very

00:11:03.760 very worrying and you say you die on a hill for it but the reality is most people won't

00:11:08.960 and then when most people won't you'll be you'll be in the minority and then your wife will want 1.00

00:11:14.800 to take a nice holiday somewhere and and your kids will be saying dad's an idiot what difference does 0.99

00:11:19.760 it make and and compliance will become the norm and that that worries me broadway's smash hit the 0.99

00:11:27.360 neil diamond musical a beautiful noise is coming to toronto the true story of a kid from brooklyn

00:11:33.600 Destined for something more, featuring all the songs you love, including America, Forever in Blue Jeans, and Sweet Caroline.

00:11:40.920 Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical mega hit is here.

00:11:45.000 The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise.

00:11:47.760 Now through June 7th, 2026 at the Princess of Wales Theatre.

00:11:51.960 Get tickets at Mirbish.com.

00:11:58.720 And fascinating people we have for you today.

00:12:01.620 two brilliant returning guests to Trigonometry.

00:12:04.940 Here they are, Jim Rickards and Pippa Malgram,

00:12:07.220 two expert economists, people who understand finance,

00:12:09.980 people who understand what is going to happen,

00:12:12.400 tech as well, all of those things that we're going to get into.

00:12:15.200 Jim, Pippa, welcome back.

00:12:17.080 Thank you.

00:12:17.380 Thank you.

00:12:18.720 Is there going to be hell to pay for the money

00:12:21.420 that we are now using to save people's jobs

00:12:24.420 and protect businesses?

00:12:26.340 No, there's no chance of inflation.

00:12:28.840 In fact, the real policy concern is and will be deflation.

00:12:34.420 Now, down the road, when I say down the road, I mean a year, two years from now, there is

00:12:39.740 a risk of very serious inflation bordering on hyperinflation, but not now and not for

00:12:47.000 at least a year.

00:12:48.000 And here's why.

00:12:49.000 Inflation has nothing to do with money supply.

00:12:51.340 This is sort of a, I'll call it a myth or a misunderstanding that's been propagated by

00:12:56.640 everyone from the New York Keynesians to the monetarists to the Austrians, you know,

00:13:01.600 increase the money supply, too much money chasing too few goods. Inflation is right around the

00:13:07.240 corner. It's not true. Money supply has nothing to do with inflation. What does drive inflation

00:13:12.560 is psychology, which shows up in the form of velocity. So let's say I'm feeling good. I go

00:13:21.200 out to dinner you know i tip the waiter um he takes a taxi home and tips the taxi driver and

00:13:28.080 the taxi driver takes the tip and puts gas in her taxi uh well that that example my dollar has

00:13:34.920 velocity of three there was a tip uh a taxi tip and gasoline so velocity of three instead imagine

00:13:41.580 i stay home and watch television uh my money has velocity of zero right and i remind people that

00:13:47.160 five trillion dollars times zero is zero if you don't have velocity you don't have an economy

00:13:53.320 period so the task is and a pivot touched on this she's exactly right the task is to change the

00:14:00.240 psychology change the expectations uh you can print all the money you want the fed can stick

00:14:04.580 the landing on base money m0 and m1 m2 is a a different matter but m0 they can print that to

00:14:12.400 like two decimal places. Not a problem. But they can't get people to lend it. They can't get people

00:14:17.160 to spend it. They can't get people to just save. In other words, what are people doing with the

00:14:22.440 money? They are either going to, well, if you have a high marginal propensity to consume, meaning

00:14:27.840 you're living paycheck to paycheck and you need to pay the rent. Yes, you'll pay the rent. Fair

00:14:32.580 enough. But for many people, they will save it for the reason Pippa mentioned, which is they're

00:14:38.780 worried about how long is this going to last? Even if you're not laid off, if your neighbor

00:14:43.360 was laid off, you're probably worried about your own job. So you'll save it on a precautionary

00:14:47.720 basis, or you'll pay off a credit card, pay down another loan, which is economically the same thing.

00:14:53.120 It's just another form of saving. So that's what people are going to do with the money.

00:14:56.440 You won't see the velocity from it.

00:14:59.080 Pippa, before Francis jumps in, let me ask you this, because you're a former advisor to two

00:15:03.660 U.S. presidents. If you're sitting in the Oval Office right now, and you're looking at the fact

00:15:07.840 And this I come back to the issue of globalization here. You're looking at the fact that 97% of your antibiotics are made in China. You know, a huge quantity and percentage of your essential supplies are made in China. A lot of particularly right leaning commentators have been banging away at this point.

00:15:24.800 You know, we've become reliant on China for essential supplies in a world where, you know, I mean, we don't know exactly what's happened with this virus, but there's some evidence to suggest that, you know, it's not without China's at best incompetence that this has spread the way that it has. 0.79

00:15:42.640 So if you can't trust them, and when the proverbial hits the fan, countries tend to lock down and go, I need this, and you're not having that.

00:15:53.540 Are we, as a president of the United States or the prime minister of Britain, are you going to go, we need to onshore not just manufacturing of widgets and iPhones, we need to onshore manufacturing of medical supplies, syringes, vent, everything?

00:16:08.500 Yes. And it's not only because, you know, China didn't handle it well.

00:16:13.280 I think probably most countries wouldn't have handled it well.

00:16:17.180 I'm not sure that the British did so much better and they were loaded with a lot more information and they were still slow.

00:16:23.580 But the main thing is what you're talking about is a tradeoff between efficiency and resilience.

00:16:29.960 and for many years we have gone after efficiency and cheaper prices ever cheaper prices that that

00:16:37.640 was our driver now we're faced with this reality that resilience is is interfered with by that and

00:16:44.760 i'll come i'd like to use the example in formula one racing it's a constant race between resilience

00:16:51.840 and efficiency and what you're doing is you rip that car apart every single day and you try to

00:16:57.300 shave one gram of weight off of the thing so that you improve its chances of winning. But that one

00:17:04.440 gram may be the thing that breaks the piece you're working on. So it's either correct or

00:17:10.420 catastrophe, right? You're on the borderline all the time. Well, this is where we are with the

00:17:15.240 economy. We chose efficiency, efficiency, efficiency, and we shaved off that extra gram of cost by

00:17:21.480 outsourcing it to China. And now we see a break. And therefore, now we're going to have an emphasis

00:17:26.500 on resilience. Now, what does that mean? That means inflation. That means higher prices. It

00:17:31.860 means you say, I'm willing to pay more for a British sourced product or an American sourced

00:17:37.820 product so that I'm sure to get it. Then I care about its reduced costs. And that's another

00:17:44.000 channel through which higher prices begin to worm their way forward. Now, this in the light of the

00:17:50.060 current president, let's just keep in mind who the current president is. The current president

00:17:54.240 the United States is a property guy. Property guys make all their money on inflation. They love

00:18:01.460 inflation. And so what is his inclination going to be? He's always going to be, we should just

00:18:09.860 have more debt. And the way you deal with the debt is you basically inflate and that's okay.

00:18:16.980 And by the way, inflations, they do tend to make asset markets go up, which means stock markets.

00:18:22.640 And I would argue we've had that inflation has shown up in recent years as higher asset prices, and everybody loved that part about it.

00:18:31.200 And they ignored the fact that a consumer had to go from 1% inflation at the time of the financial crisis to, say, 2.5% at the time of the COVID crisis.

00:18:40.520 And that just sounds like nothing.

00:18:41.800 But to Jim's point, that's a ton of inflation that lets you completely erode the debt you owe the world.

00:18:49.220 and the U.S. is particularly privileged in that

00:18:51.820 because everybody's still willing to buy dollars

00:18:53.880 from the states, even though we behave this way.

00:18:56.260 And by the way, we have behaved this way

00:18:57.860 throughout history because how do we pay

00:18:59.620 for the American Revolution?

00:19:01.440 Uninflation.

00:19:02.620 How do we pay for the Civil War?

00:19:04.600 Much bigger inflation.

00:19:06.140 How do we pay for Vietnam? 0.94

00:19:07.560 Another inflation.

00:19:08.860 And how are we going to pay for this mess?

00:19:10.980 Uninflation.

00:19:12.120 And so that's why I said at the opening,

00:19:14.440 I think that we're heading into inflation.

00:19:16.460 So then the question becomes,

00:19:17.700 what's the speed and magnitude of that thing and and i agree with jim usually great inflations are

00:19:24.040 preceded by a puff of deflation and whether that lasts a year 18 months two years i don't know

00:19:31.520 but we have seemingly set the stage for prices to begin creeping up and for people to say again

00:19:38.980 it's a psychological phenomenon to say you know like in my world i have people companies are

00:19:44.000 saying, you know, the Chinese drones may be cheaper, but I'd rather buy British. Or the 0.94

00:19:49.640 Chinese drones, you know, maybe I can buy them, the supply chain's there, but I'd rather work 1.00

00:19:55.040 with someone who's closer and speaks English and can work with me to produce what I really require

00:20:00.520 for my business. That means they're telling me they're willing to pay more for this. And I think

00:20:06.180 they'll pay more for these things now that they go, I need to be digital, and I need to not travel,

00:20:11.200 I need to be more localized, not globalized. So in this sense, it all comes together to form

00:20:17.560 a full circle that what Jim and I have written about inflation, which everybody says is a dead

00:20:26.220 duck and never coming back to life is distinctly quacking in the background.

00:20:35.200 Hello, and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissin.

00:20:41.200 And this is Peter Hitchens. Peter has ruined our introduction. But this is the show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. And our brilliant returning guest is Peter Hitchens, the author and journalist. Peter, welcome back to the show.

00:20:57.360 Well, so far, it's okay. Yeah, I have to say, we've never had a guest interrupt us mid intro, but you've managed. So let's get straight into it.

00:21:06.100 one of the reasons that we were really keen to have you back on the show is that you have done

00:21:11.560 a lot of alternative coverage, shall we say, of the lockdown and the coronavirus situation. So for

00:21:17.620 anyone who has not been following your writing and opinions on this issue, just give us a brief

00:21:23.500 overview of what is your opinion of what's happened and the lockdown measures that have

00:21:27.700 been implemented. Okay, right from the start, I said that the response to the government was

00:21:32.260 completely out of proportion to the size of the menace. I didn't say there was no disease. I didn't

00:21:37.060 say nobody would die and say it wasn't horrible for a lot of people if they got it. But I said

00:21:42.400 that as an event, it simply didn't justify the measures being taken either to suppress liberty

00:21:47.980 or to suppress the economy. I think that the damage to both human liberty and to the economy

00:21:54.280 have been huge and probably permanent. And I think we will look back on this if we ever have

00:21:59.360 the chance to do so with an impartial inquiry and say, how on earth did we go mad to this

00:22:05.120 extent? It simply wasn't justified. How many people have died or otherwise suffered or

00:22:11.820 will die or otherwise suffer as a result of these methods? The healthy old have suffered

00:22:18.200 hugely in terms of being deprived of normal life. And as a brilliant man, Professor Sutrid

00:22:24.520 Bakhti of the University of Mainz in Germany, warned at the beginning of this, and I did

00:22:28.440 what I could to publicize this morning. It is precisely those people, the healthy, old, and

00:22:33.520 active in society, who've suffered very, very greatly from this by being cut off from social

00:22:38.000 contact. And the amount of misery, which of course brings on death. That of course is the effect which

00:22:42.700 I think everybody acknowledges on the rest of the health service. While the health service is

00:22:46.540 concentrating entirely on COVID, all kinds of other things, particularly the detection and

00:22:52.260 treatment of the major cancers, is put to one side. And I think there will be, when this is

00:22:57.740 examined a fair number of excess deaths which have resulted from this this this policy which

00:23:06.200 have not been covid deaths or not even been remotely related to covid which are among people

00:23:10.400 who who were deprived of treatments and checks they otherwise would have got because of the panic

00:23:15.180 so sure we're all concerned i i completely concede that my opponents in this argument are concerned

00:23:22.020 with saving human life and their motives are good well actually so am i but i think not really are

00:23:26.980 my motive is good, but I think my assessment of the situation is better than theirs. And I think

00:23:31.260 if my policy is much more closely aligned to what Sweden has done and had been followed,

00:23:36.900 fewer people would have died. Do you think the health consequences of

00:23:40.940 the way we've reacted are going to run for years and years?

00:23:45.200 Well, you can't tell exactly how bad the damage is. The enormous load in which Maynard Keynes

00:23:52.760 negotiated for this country from the United States at the end of the Second World War when

00:23:56.380 Lend-Lease stopped, was negotiated in, I think, July of 1945 and wasn't paid off until December

00:24:04.560 2006. My entire childhood was spent in a country which was constantly weighed down by the paying

00:24:12.800 off of and the paying of interest on that enormous level. Our lives were greyer and more pinched and

00:24:18.400 our public services worse. You look at things like council house building in the early 50s, 1.00

00:24:23.920 look at the low standards of the architecture and the building. The country was poor, and it was

00:24:29.280 poor because it was in debt, but that was a debt honorably contracted as a result of war.

00:24:36.180 On this occasion, it's going to be poor because of a debt contracted because of a government mistake.

00:24:42.780 Rishi Sunak has no choice. It is really a question of how soon he has to announce the

00:24:49.600 emergency budget the first I think of many emergency budgets which you will have to introduce

00:24:54.480 which I will be one of the few people who will not be shocked by and the these budgets will be

00:25:01.100 very serious and people who think that it can all be loaded on the well-off very much mistaken

00:25:06.900 the things VAT the duties on all kinds of things due to particularly on travel I wonder how many

00:25:15.180 people who long to go back on holiday are going to feel about how much more expensive it's going

00:25:19.320 to beat it. Quite possibly, there's going to be something called the capital levy, a raid on the

00:25:24.860 savings. That means, amongst other things, quite possibly on the value of houses which people have

00:25:30.020 bought. It's unprecedented in a free country such as this, which people will find, particularly since

00:25:36.140 it's levied on the savings they've made from already taxed money, they'll find very oppressive.

00:25:40.540 But the government will probably call it something like an NHS surcharge. It'll be very hard to

00:25:45.320 resist politically. And I doubt very much whether the Labour opposition will resist it, because

00:25:49.040 they will know, their own economists know, that there is no choice. The government is going to

00:25:54.340 have to increase tax. The other thing that's going to happen is, as a country, we are going to be so

00:25:58.560 much in debt that the levels of interest which we are going to be willing to pay to the pension

00:26:09.240 funds and the insurance companies, which loan so much of the money to the government, are going to

00:26:13.100 be fantastically low. That means a raid on the pensions and savings of millions of people whose

00:26:19.820 old ages will be under threat. That also happens. And the other thing is the world will look at us

00:26:24.480 and see an economy much weaker than most. And it may be less and less willing to lend us money

00:26:30.020 on the terms which we've been willing to do so. And one of the results of this will certainly

00:26:34.560 be a decline in the international value of the pound sterling. So again, that has many,

00:26:39.940 many effects, particularly on the cost of imported goods, and on our ability to travel

00:26:44.500 abroad, which people will feel there's going to be a lot of things going on. And all of

00:26:50.120 them are going to hurt. Part of the problem is that people are living in this kind of

00:26:53.640 dream time at the moment, the beautiful weather, the furloughing, which means people get paid

00:26:58.760 for not working, the huge numbers of professionals in the southeast who are spared from the daily

00:27:03.300 ground of commuting and so far have continued to be able to work from home. There will come

00:27:07.740 a moment of awakening

00:27:08.800 where many of those people

00:27:09.940 find they don't have

00:27:10.620 any jobs

00:27:11.180 or if they do

00:27:12.200 they're much worse

00:27:13.200 paid than they were before

00:27:14.360 and that an economy

00:27:15.820 based incredibly heavily

00:27:17.480 on services

00:27:18.340 particularly shops

00:27:20.020 and restaurants

00:27:20.760 and bars

00:27:21.340 will have suffered

00:27:22.480 enormously

00:27:23.020 for months

00:27:24.100 and months

00:27:24.560 during which people

00:27:25.340 couldn't actually

00:27:26.420 make a living

00:27:26.960 and they can't

00:27:28.460 and the

00:27:29.640 key feature

00:27:31.000 of economics

00:27:31.720 is not just

00:27:32.340 the existence of money

00:27:33.240 but the speed

00:27:33.820 in which it circulates

00:27:34.880 and if your salary

00:27:36.460 isn't paid

00:27:37.740 or if the rent that you're owed isn't paid

00:27:40.080 for a quarter of the year,

00:27:41.060 then the damage it does to your personal economy

00:27:43.320 and to the national economy is huge.

00:27:45.500 And people say it'll be a V-shaped recession

00:27:47.980 and we'll leap out of it.

00:27:48.820 Well, I hope they're right.

00:27:50.500 But I have a strong feeling

00:27:51.740 that they may be over-optimistic about that.

00:27:54.860 As I say, this is a dream time, isn't it?

00:27:57.020 This long, long period of sunny weather

00:27:59.040 during which the shattering glasses

00:28:00.300 have lazed in their gardens,

00:28:01.600 drinking misted glasses of Waitrose Chablis,

00:28:05.020 thinking it's all gonna be great.

00:28:07.540 it isn't, they'll be

00:28:09.520 lucky to be able to afford the Chablis

00:28:11.500 when this is over, by my guess.

00:28:13.340 It's going to be really hard. It can't be

00:28:15.320 anything else. No one, no government

00:28:17.400 has ever spent this much money in peacetime.

00:28:19.920 Horrifying prophecy there from

00:28:21.380 Peter Hitchens. The middle classes will 1.00

00:28:23.480 have to go without Chablis. Indeed,

00:28:25.500 it's a terrifying prospect, is it not?

00:28:27.520 But there you are.

00:28:28.920 It may go home in a way that other warnings don't.

00:28:33.320 Hey, KK, do you like mattresses?

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00:28:43.560 After that, we say prayer

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00:28:46.860 god of hunting.

00:28:48.180 What if the bear kills you?

00:28:49.720 That's how you know you're not Russian. 0.88

00:28:51.560 Only when a man fights bear

00:28:53.140 do you realize he's from weak country 0.72

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00:30:03.900 slash trigger for an additional 5% off on top of whatever discount is on the website.

00:30:09.840 So if there's deal for 50% off, Trigonometry fans get 55% off. I will never look at Yogi

00:30:17.300 Bearskin that generations of Kissins have slept on in the same way again. I'm delighted to say 1.00

00:30:23.900 that our brilliant guest today is a psychoanalyst and a Tavistock whistleblower. Marcus Evans,

00:30:28.460 welcome to Trigonometry. Thanks for having me. Okay, so I'm a psychoanalyst,

00:30:33.540 originally trained as a psychiatric nurse worked in psychiatry for over 40 years

00:30:38.540 and for the last 20 of those in the NHS I worked in the Tavistock as a senior member of staff

00:30:46.740 part of the management and then I retired from the NHS 18 months ago and I took up a post as

00:30:54.820 a governor which is a voluntary post on the Tavistock board of governors and I resigned

00:31:01.020 over one of the issues that was being discussed at the time.

00:31:06.840 And it has been embroiled in a, well, a scandal is probably the one wrong word to put it,

00:31:13.420 but it is a scandal of sorts around the gender transitioning,

00:31:19.340 gender transitioning of young children.

00:31:21.160 Could you dive into that and explain to us what is happening at the moment?

00:31:25.520 Yeah, so if you can picture the sort of history of the Tavistock

00:31:29.280 is in psychological work it's not in medication or genetics that all goes on at the institute of

00:31:35.880 psychiatry and the maudsley so this is the the sort of you know it's psychotherapeutics looking

00:31:41.940 into the psychological functioning of the mind but um about 20 years ago a service was set up

00:31:50.800 called jids which was an experimental service is basically seeing kids who are gender dysphoric

00:31:58.540 and the thing that set it apart from the rest of the trust was that there was a sort of

00:32:04.900 recourse to sort of treating their problems hormonally and this was a sort of experimental

00:32:12.160 and controversial treatment at the time so in a way it sort of it moved away from the

00:32:18.220 Tavistock's traditions if you like I've been part of the man I was part of the management for about

00:32:23.780 20 years I was called the head of nursing and then I was in charge of the adult and adolescent

00:32:28.240 department for about five years but my wife worked in in the JID service in about 2005

00:32:35.620 and she went into the service because she was interested in working at the Tavistock she got

00:32:43.020 another bit of her job was doing training and she quickly became quite uncomfortable with the fact

00:32:51.060 that a lot of kids were sort of they come very determined they're very fixed in their view that

00:32:56.380 they're in the wrong gender and that they want to transition 1.00

00:33:02.300 and they want to be given pills to transition.

00:33:05.520 And the Tavistock was the sort of psychological gatekeeper.

00:33:08.540 So you go to the Tavistock, you're seen by the Tavistock,

00:33:11.260 you're assessed there, and then you're moved on to UCL

00:33:14.900 where the hormones are given.

00:33:18.700 My wife became very unhappy with what was going on back then.

00:33:23.660 Marcus, sorry to interrupt.

00:33:25.140 You keep interrupting, because I'll carry on.

00:33:27.640 No, no, but it's all great.

00:33:29.900 I just want to clarify for the viewers and listeners,

00:33:32.140 when you say kids, how old are these children?

00:33:35.700 Well, this whole area has changed exponentially.

00:33:39.580 So if we went back to the first 30 years of my time in psychiatry,

00:33:44.980 there were small numbers of people that would transition,

00:33:47.960 post-18, mainly male to female, sort of 85%.

00:33:55.140 In the last 15, 20 years, there's been this exponential rise and a completely different cohort.

00:34:04.380 And these are 85% female to male, and they're getting younger and younger.

00:34:11.380 So I think in her day, there were a lot of 15, 14, 15, 16-year-olds.

00:34:17.500 Now you're getting kids of 10, 11, 12.

00:34:20.760 so the age at which kids are wanting to transition is getting pushed lower and the age at which

00:34:28.260 people are prepared to give hormones has got lower and lower that's kind of gone on and you mentioned

00:34:34.480 that your wife was becoming increasingly unhappy at this trend what was it that she was concerned

00:34:40.960 about well basically our usual approach would be to do a thorough psychological investigation of

00:34:48.100 what was going on with the kid, what's going on with the family.

00:34:50.920 Lots of these kids are on the autistic spectrum.

00:34:53.880 They have all sorts of secondary comorbid issues.

00:34:59.140 They're sort of socially phobic.

00:35:02.240 They've got eating disorders.

00:35:03.720 They may be depressed.

00:35:05.620 And what she felt, there should be a thorough psychological investigation,

00:35:09.700 as was the Tavistock's tradition, into family dynamics, individual psychology.

00:35:16.340 and she felt that there was too much of a willingness to sort of go along with the kid

00:35:22.180 in terms of the kid's idea they've got there's one problem with one solution and they basically

00:35:29.020 want to get through past the gate gatekeepers onto ucl that's a generalized picture but it was

00:35:36.820 it was a sort of predominant um picture that was being presented so i'd say i was a part of the

00:35:44.460 senior management I said well what we would usually do it's very multidisciplinary it's not

00:35:49.480 like a traditionally medically hierarchical service you've got lots of different disciplines

00:35:56.740 and you're used to sort of discussing and debating approaches and I said well you've got to go back

00:36:03.020 and challenge the culture and she felt and she was quite a senior person by the time she'd arrived

00:36:09.300 in this service this was was not welcome it was a sort of shutting down of any dissent or wish to

00:36:17.380 examine what was going on beneath the surface for the kid etc etc and she felt she got nowhere

00:36:23.980 it rapidly became apparent there was a politicization of this whole area so again

00:36:29.840 unusually there was a very close relationship with mermaids and with gender intelligence the

00:36:38.780 the uh the trap charities and they had an unusual sort of influence over the sort of culture

00:36:46.060 um now i when i was in charge of the adult and adolescent department i would have

00:36:51.400 relationships with mind and some of the charities but they but they wouldn't sort of insist on

00:36:57.960 the culture or look ask me to run them by the protocols for treatment etc etc there's been a

00:37:05.860 sort of enormous policy capture into this area where you've got the affirmation model which was

00:37:12.000 adopted with virtually no evidence and jettison in what used to be in place was what's called

00:37:20.260 watchful waiting which is that gender dysphoric kids you know most of them would desist if 1.00

00:37:28.540 supported and left to their own devices um there's a sort of huge capture of of the clinical

00:37:37.220 environment i think that once you're sort of um your decision making is based on a sort of belief

00:37:44.860 pre-existing belief structure may be embedded within the clinicians may be met by the parents

00:37:51.640 and some of the parents and some of the kids you you're not in a clinical environment you see

00:37:57.700 Lots of people, you know, will come into psychiatry and they, when people are in a sort of chaotic state of mind and they feel that their minds are falling apart, they often focus down narrowly on there's one problem with one solution.

00:38:13.460 now psychological health is usually based on the opposite it's based on sort of opening things out

00:38:20.760 thinking that we're complicated we've got many different moving parts as a personality and that

00:38:27.060 usually our problems are made up of all sorts of things coming together so we're trying to sort of

00:38:32.860 open things out for in for the kids for example you're saying okay that's what you believe let's

00:38:39.920 have a look at what's who you are what's going on beneath the surface what might be troubling you

00:38:45.760 let's open this dialogue out so we think about things in the round um and you you're you're not

00:38:53.820 going along with um fixed beliefs there's one problem and one solution so just one more thing

00:39:02.960 So one thing that's often talked about is that the kid's completely certain.

00:39:09.300 Well, for me, that's a red flag.

00:39:12.200 You know, if you're making very serious decisions, you would expect to have doubts, questions, anxieties, conflicts.

00:39:19.580 The absence of those is a problem.

00:39:23.140 You know, and we believe and we know as psychoanalysts, you know, that beliefs can be driven by all sorts of forces.

00:39:31.100 not all of them healthy or rational you know so a person comes to me and says i'm absolutely sure

00:39:38.300 i'm x and my job isn't to butt heads with them but it is to say well hang on i wonder why you

00:39:45.800 you're so fixated on this belief and why you have to drum that into me that i can't challenge it

00:39:54.660 because sort of tyrannical states of mind again as psychoanalysts you're sort of wary of you sort

00:40:01.260 of think well hang on a minute what's driving this and why can't you why can't we examine this area

00:40:08.300 because you know most most of the time we know that sort of when we're in a healthy state

00:40:13.480 you know you're not so defensive you can have things examined and looked at from different

00:40:18.520 points of view but when you become fanatical it's usually being driven by something else

00:40:23.760 and that's my job as a psychoanalyst is trying to understand what that is

00:40:27.620 what happened was when I took up this voluntary position as governor

00:40:32.160 two things landed on the governor's desk and as a governor my job was to sort of oversee

00:40:38.760 is the trust doing what it's supposed to be doing um we're not part of management we're just a sort

00:40:46.640 of watchdog if you like and two things came on the desk one was a letter written by 10 parents

00:40:53.680 whose kids were being treated by JIDS, basically what they sent,

00:40:58.500 it was a very detailed letter saying we had hoped our kids all got comorbid problems.

00:41:03.880 We'd hoped there'd be a thorough psychological investigation, et cetera, et cetera.

00:41:07.180 That didn't happen. We're not happy.

00:41:11.120 We feel like our kids have been fast tracked through to the medication.

00:41:15.180 So that was one thing.

00:41:17.080 Then a colleague of mine, Dave Bell, who's probably the best known clinician in Tavistock,

00:41:22.120 um who was the staff governor previously previous um and we didn't overlap i i started as governor

00:41:32.300 he'd left and basically he'd been approached by 10 members of staff from jids with very similar 0.96

00:41:41.140 concerns to the parents so he'd done a report the trust knew about it and then the report was

00:41:50.000 presented to the trust board I think that's right I think that's right and of course it was saying

00:41:56.480 a lot of similar things staff felt the relationship with mermaids was too close a lot of these kids

00:42:02.580 that were being transitioned had got secondary and so comorbid problems um that there wasn't 0.67

00:42:08.980 enough interest in sort of debate and discussion within the culture of the service etc etc

00:42:15.940 what the trust did was they were very unhappy about the report they wouldn't let me see the

00:42:22.380 report if I despite the fact I said look I want to see this report if I'm going to adjudicate

00:42:28.520 whether the trust is doing its job I've got to see all the materials that was withheld so I thought

00:42:34.140 that's odd why would you withhold that report from a governor and there were other governors

00:42:41.700 that requested it as well the second thing was that was right so then they set up um

00:42:48.300 the medical director was going to do the trust report so several of us said that's fine

00:42:56.440 but we'd like dave bell to be at the final hearing of the report so he can hear whether

00:43:04.480 the medical director's report is addressing the concerns raised in by the staff broadway's

00:43:11.520 smash hit the neil diamond musical a beautiful noise is coming to toronto the true story of a

00:43:17.780 kid from brooklyn destined for something more featuring all the songs you love including

00:43:22.360 america forever in blue jeans and sweet caroline like jersey boys and beautiful the next musical

00:43:28.740 mega hit is here the neil diamond musical a beautiful noise april 28th through june 7th

00:43:34.780 2026 the princess of wales theater get tickets at mirvish.com

00:43:39.660 no you can't so a sort of i don't know um there was quite a few emails went backwards and forwards

00:43:51.840 over a sort of six-month period contesting this and and it was contested when we met

00:43:58.100 and it appeared to me that the trust wanted to use the medical director's report to bury

00:44:05.760 the concerns about the service and and i could see then the extent to which the trust

00:44:13.080 and its management of the service was politicized it's quite extraordinary what's gone on and

00:44:20.180 sometimes when you when you talk to people they go it can't be as bad as you say this

00:44:25.680 You must be, I don't know, you've lost the plot,

00:44:28.720 you've hit a midlife crisis, you're angry with a Tavistock.

00:44:33.240 No, it really is quite extraordinary.

00:44:36.080 You know, as a mental health practitioner,

00:44:38.900 someone who's proud to be in the business that I'm in,

00:44:41.320 I'm really quite ashamed by, you know, the lack of...

00:44:45.240 This is political belief and ideology over rational, scientific argument.

00:44:55.060 our brilliant and returning guest needs very little introduction nigel farage welcome back 1.00

00:45:06.720 to trigonometry it's good to be here and not doing it via blooming zoom i couldn't agree

00:45:11.200 with you more it's a real pleasure on the fuel bill side of things which is just i still don't

00:45:18.920 think people understand what's about to happen i really don't think they understand the first

00:45:23.480 week of April when those bills hit the mat for their Q1 gas and electricity bills. There's going

00:45:30.700 to be absolute shock and outrage. Number one, massive mistake, the Conservatives adopted price

00:45:36.180 caps. Can you believe it? Can you believe that a Conservative government, I mean, why not set a

00:45:43.020 price for a loaf of bread? I miss what the Marxists did. Nuts policy. It never works. It's nearly

00:45:50.840 always counterproductive. But it leads to a much bigger question. Net zero is, in economic

00:45:59.880 terms, I think the most self-destructive policy that has ever been put forward by a British 1.00

00:46:06.120 government in the history of the nation. That doesn't mean that I'm against finding ways

00:46:12.740 of producing energy that emit less CO2 and cause less environmental damage, but I'm a

00:46:19.580 pragmatist you know we still burn four and a half million tons of coal a year in this country we have

00:46:24.880 to to make steel you know what we import it all we're importing 50 percent of our natural gas

00:46:31.500 when we've got vast reserves possibly as much as a trillion pounds worth of natural gas in

00:46:39.060 lancashire and cumbria alone hey that's half the national debt it's quite interesting when you look

00:46:44.180 and a lot of jobs too tens of thousands of well-paid jobs and if you're going to if you're

00:46:49.680 going to use the blooming stuff anyway you might as well make it here the americans

00:46:54.260 rethought their energy policy you know five six years ago and the price of natural gas in america

00:47:02.580 is half the price that it is here we then have whopped onto people's bills

00:47:08.420 incredibly 25 percent of your electricity bill is green subsidies money that goes to rich land

00:47:17.060 owners money that goes to large foreign companies building wind farms we've put so much faith in

00:47:23.620 wind energy or if truth be told so much money has been made out of wind energy by those in the

00:47:30.000 elites that we leave ourselves vulnerable at some point of a not too distant future to blackouts 0.98

00:47:35.540 So, yes, commodity prices globally have gone up, but we've left ourselves absolutely exposed, not just to world markets, but left ourselves exposed.

00:47:46.980 You know, 9% of our electricity comes from France through an interconnector.

00:47:53.000 So I think we should be self-sufficient in energy.

00:47:55.760 We should be aiming with areas like gas to get people's bills down. 0.69

00:48:00.300 I don't think a penny piece should go to massive global industries in the form of green subsidy.

00:48:08.840 So I think this, I've got a feeling actually that the energy debate and the net zero debate is going to be huge.

00:48:17.180 And Boris stands up and says, isn't it marvellous?

00:48:19.680 We've cut our CO2 output by 44% since 1990.

00:48:23.040 Well, if you close down nearly all of your chemical plants, your aluminium smelters, your refiners, and you move steel plants from Redcar to India, and then import the products back, you yourself may be producing less CO2, but globally, the net game is even more CO2 is being produced.

00:48:45.400 So I think we've got this hopelessly, catastrophically wrong. And I think it's a function of, and by the way, Labour are just as bad on this, if not worse. And I think it's a function of career politicians, a function of people living inside metropolitan bubbles in London,

00:49:04.660 prey to the lobbying influences

00:49:08.460 of some people who are rather good at this

00:49:11.940 and utterly disconnected from the real world.

00:49:15.540 And it's about to blow up this year.

00:49:17.180 It's about to blow up.

00:49:34.660 You 0.88

TRIGGERnometry - November 14, 2022

8 Times TRIGGERnometry Predicted the Future

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