TRIGGERnometry - Civil Servants Triggered by British Flag & Is Trump Getting Impeached - Off The Fence

00:00:00.000 hello everybody and welcome back to our weekly show breaking down the news with of course francis

00:00:05.200 foster winston marshall and tom slater editor of spiked welcome back guys great to have everybody

00:00:11.040 back uh i didn't say welcome back to a name because uh we do have a new name but i thought

00:00:17.840 we just uh you know we got a lot of good feedback on names last week uh i there was some there was

00:00:23.680 a full range all the way from you know just nice and and encouraging all the way through to outright

00:00:29.200 hateful and i i liked all of them so we we had like the awesome awesome that i thought was nice

00:00:34.960 uh the reality round table nice and neutral pretty good uh then sort of moving into the expendables

00:00:43.200 which i thought was interesting and of course my personal favorite the centrist containment

00:00:49.600 circle jerk it's got a ring to it isn't it that is of course from twitter if you hadn't guessed

00:00:58.560 um so uh but after much deliberation we have come up with the name which is of course

00:01:04.080 off the fence so welcome everybody to off the fence off the fence starring winston marshall i feel

00:01:10.480 like name in life featuring featuring winston marshall um indeed well look we've got lots to

00:01:18.960 to cover uh this week uh a lot has been going on in the news i just want to give everybody a brief

00:01:23.840 rundown of what we'll talk about so first of all civil servants in britain are triggered by the

00:01:28.720 england and now britain flat british flag uh we'll talk about trump america renaming lake ontario to

00:01:35.200 lake america and uh are the the republicans on course to get crushed in the midterms uh we'll

00:01:41.920 talk about Cambridge, that august institution that continues its media self-destruction.

00:01:48.880 We'll talk about various aspects of that and, of course, touch on our interview with Nathan

00:01:52.320 Kofnes. And we'll talk about social media, child safety, and in the wake of the fact that Meta,

00:01:59.020 the owner of Facebook, has just agreed to settle for $18 billion for harm done to children on their

00:02:06.480 platform so let's start with uh the civil servant story uh stephen edgington who's an independent

00:02:12.880 journalist and uh former guest on our show he broke a story with leaked um meeting audio i think

00:02:21.480 but he published it as a as a as an article which basically showed that when people around the

00:02:26.940 country were putting up england and british flags the union jacks or on lampposts uh the whole the

00:02:34.320 civil servants had a safe space meeting in which they were given 11 different mental health support

00:02:41.440 services which they could refer themselves to. They basically had a meeting in which they all

00:02:47.240 confessed to being extremely triggered by these flags. What do we think? It sounds like a story

00:02:53.040 that we made up to have something to talk about. It ticks all of the boxes. It's like the full

00:02:57.680 woke 2020 bingo card. They actually used the phrase triggering in this meeting themselves.

00:03:03.380 that's not something that Stephen Edgington has has put on them they did refer to it as a safe

00:03:08.120 space and they did offer no less than 11 forms of mental health support to various people who work

00:03:14.540 at the home office who would have been so terribly mentally injured by the presence of the flag of

00:03:21.000 the nation in which they live that they would need to avail themselves of those services um

00:03:26.700 it's uh become a bit of a cliche I suppose to suggest that there's a certain type of person

00:03:32.140 who runs the country who's sort of on the liberal left who lives in certain parts of North London

00:03:36.860 are so repelled by the England flag that kind of per Orwell they'd rather rip it down than sing

00:03:42.620 the national anthem but this is exactly what we've got here and it's that weird mix of it being

00:03:46.460 so painfully sort of unpatriotic also pathetic which I suppose makes this particular story sing

00:03:51.660 but yet you couldn't have asked for a better story to kick off this week's discussion if we'd

00:03:55.860 have asked chat GPT to make it up. Well, Tom, I actually live in North London and quite proudly

00:04:04.060 have a cross of St George flying above my home. And I have people, neighbours quietly coming up

00:04:11.680 to me going, well done with the flag. My postman, they absolutely love it. I think people actually

00:04:17.020 are quite proud when they see it. I certainly am. I think most people are. When I see the

00:04:21.740 St George, my heart flutters a little bit. It fills me with genuine pride and love of my country

00:04:27.680 because I love my country. So when this story came up, I was actually myself extremely triggered

00:04:33.340 because why are we being governed? Why are these people in the civil service in the home office

00:04:38.120 who when they see the flag, they should have the same reaction as me. Why are they having this kind

00:04:43.260 of reaction? And I think I was trying to think about what from their point of view. Yeah, right.

00:04:47.080 So they presumably think this is some sort of continuation of, let's say, far right stuff that may have happened decades ago.

00:04:55.300 And they think it's the same sort of thing that's motivating it. I don't think that's what it is.

00:04:59.240 I think the Raise the Colors movement that was started, I think his name is Ryan Bridges.

00:05:04.540 And it started last year, 2025. It was a reaction. It's not a continuation of what happened decades ago.

00:05:10.260 It's a reaction to years of the Palestine flag, the BLM flag, the trans flag, all of these other flags, except our flags being everywhere and us being exhausted by it and us actually wanting to say, and by us, I mean non-progressives, because those are the people who are putting it up and those who are actually patriotic and actually love their country, putting up their flag.

00:05:35.160 and it should be a unifying one we should be governed by people who see the flag and it fills

00:05:39.740 them with joy when they see it painted on roundabouts so they see it on lampposts up and down

00:05:43.980 the country they should feel pride i i that's who i want to be governed it's a very simple test for

00:05:50.440 me i think do you know number one was anybody surprised by this article as tom rightly pointed

00:05:59.320 out yes i was actually i i was surprised because there's a there we have this idea that's as tom

00:06:06.760 alluded to almost like a caricature of the sorts of people that work in the civil service but this

00:06:12.600 is outrageous i mean it it's genuinely outrageous you know these are people who run our country

00:06:21.960 that are triggered by its flag what the yeah look oh look on it when you apply

00:06:29.720 logic to it well of course absolutely but having met some of these people in in the person and

00:06:36.680 particularly some of these people who would then go and work in the comedy industry and do dreadful

00:06:41.640 five-minute sets night after night where they were complaining where they complained and bleated

00:06:46.680 about being oppressed and how london was the most racist city in the world despite the fact

00:06:52.280 that they lived in made of ale in a flat that their dad bought for them but i i think what's

00:06:58.680 really interesting about this is how the england flag is seen during a world cup or euro all of

00:07:05.660 those gimps i guarantee you would wear like an england shirt or go and watch the england football

00:07:11.900 team but the moment football stops becoming relevant that's when they all start pretending

00:07:17.780 to get offended and triggered by a flag and they've got no problem by the way with flags that are

00:07:24.500 actually quite divisive like if you showed them a flag i don't know exactly probably the isis flag

00:07:30.580 they'd be like why not let's stick it up in the category what's wrong with that

00:07:36.320 it's only the law around you come on this is it it's been an interesting concept creep as well

00:07:44.940 because look i think i remember when uh early in the days of trigonometry francis mentioning that

00:07:49.740 there was a national front pub down the road from him when he was growing up uh and he grew i remember

00:07:57.680 him repeatedly saying they would fly the england flag there was a time when the england flag

00:08:01.560 specifically was associated with far-right violence but now the union jack which was

00:08:08.760 supposed to be a very uniting flag uniting the four countries of the of the united kingdom etc

00:08:15.240 now that's also the far like i that that is an amazing transformation that seems to have

00:08:21.720 literally happened in the last couple of years i do wonder how much this is sort of class

00:08:26.600 coded as well because whilst it's clear that there's like a certain layer of society

00:08:31.080 have always had strange kind of connections about any expression of patriotism outside of the 90

00:08:36.120 minute patriotism that as francis says remains just about respectively yeah i think it's also

00:08:41.560 about who they assume are putting them up and what they assume their motives to be i mean if you had

00:08:46.600 one of these home office officials sort of driving past a stately home or a nice four million pound

00:08:53.240 mansion in the countryside and it happens to have a couple of flag poles up with across st george and

00:08:57.000 a union flag they might chortle to themselves a little bit they might um condescend under their

00:09:02.600 breath for a second but the supposed panic and fear that these home office workers claim to

00:09:07.680 feel the idea that they were terrified according to steven's story of bringing a mixed race child

00:09:12.840 into the world that they felt that they were imperiled whenever they saw the flag that's

00:09:16.760 precisely because they assume the people putting them up are white working class racists i mean

00:09:21.660 whenever you think about the arguments the kind of culture war over patriotism over migration

00:09:26.520 the implied villain of the piece is always white van man the sort of person who let's be frank

00:09:32.580 actually has access to the cherry pickers and the ladders in order to put these things up

00:09:36.300 and i think that's a big part of it you know it's fear and loathing of the the masses fear

00:09:41.060 and loathing of the working class the white working class in particular which is communicated

00:09:44.560 through this supposed like allergy to patriotism i think there's things like just completely bound

00:09:49.900 up with each other now yeah and and i think it goes it's it self-perpetuates so that's their

00:09:56.040 reaction and then that encourages in turn others who want to put up their flag it gives them more

00:10:00.920 motivation to do so because if they see that's the reaction from our ruling elites or from the

00:10:05.020 progressives they're like well actually i even more i want to put up my flag even more i want to

00:10:10.240 you know show my pride and patriotism and i also just think it speaks to a certain worldview where

00:10:19.400 these people are let's be frank utterly delusional if you think that you see an england flag and

00:10:26.600 someone's flying it and then your mixed race child is going to get beaten up it's quite literally a

00:10:32.940 fantasy in the vast vast vast vast vast majority of places in this country and the only reason

00:10:39.300 you'd get beaten up around here is because somebody wants to steal your phone not because

00:10:43.540 they hate your race yeah well and it's interesting we talk about people being delusional etc but as

00:10:52.120 some other stories this week have shown these people aren't just this isn't just a bunch of

00:10:57.420 oversensitive snowflakes having a safe space meeting somewhere in the bowels of the home

00:11:02.120 office or whatever of the department for work and pensions uh birmingham birmingham city council has

00:11:08.000 now uh followed oxfordshire county council in seeking an injunction from the high court uh to

00:11:14.540 ban activists putting up flags and according to some reports i haven't been able to verify this

00:11:18.840 uh potentially if this is granted uh the people who are putting up the flags could be jailed for

00:11:24.800 up to two years so this my point being this isn't just some woke millennial civil servants you know

00:11:33.100 having a cry somewhere this is people who are running not just the country but running major

00:11:38.140 cities in the country yeah exactly they dress it up in the language of health and safety of course

00:11:43.340 that that was their only concern that's the only reason they've looked to pursue this high court

00:11:48.460 injunction and yet you read between the lines or even if you just read to the third or fourth line

00:11:52.380 of the press release it's quite clear that our old friend kind of community cohesion is brought into

00:11:56.860 it which i think is such a fascinating point because of if you are supposed to believe as

00:12:02.380 many of these people claim to in a multicultural society you need something that you're going to

00:12:08.140 share you need something that you're going to rally under presumably and yet even the flag of

00:12:13.100 the nation in which all of us live if that's verboten then what do you possibly have to sort

00:12:18.060 of unite around and the other thing this sort of points to the as winston was talking about

00:12:23.180 where the operation race the colors movement came from it started in the south of birmingham as far

00:12:28.060 far as we can tell and it was in response depending on which report you read to two things one of

00:12:32.900 which was the library in Birmingham being lit up in the colours of the Pakistani flag to celebrate

00:12:39.080 Pakistan Independence Day and the other one being in not too far away in rugby that crazy story of

00:12:45.280 the school girl going to school in a Union Jack dress for a culture day and essentially being sent

00:12:50.540 home because that's not what they meant they said they wanted students to celebrate their culture

00:12:55.460 so there in aspect you have the kind of asymmetric multiculturalism that eric kaufman and others

00:13:01.540 have discussed there you have the sense in which all other national symbols are absolutely fine

00:13:05.220 even ones like the palestine flag which is genuinely divisive in this country at the

00:13:08.980 moment for obvious reasons and yet the symbols that could actually be a point of unity the

00:13:14.020 ones that we all share those are the ones that deem to be the most divisive so it's it's that

00:13:18.020 asymmetric multiculturalism and also yeah that it's so clear where this has come from and it's

00:13:22.500 not this sort of you know the national front are coming back this is marking territory this is

00:13:27.300 trying to intimidate people i think it's actually quite a kind of quiet almost quite resigned

00:13:32.420 muted form of protest and the fact that even that's not allowed i think it's like storing up

00:13:36.580 even more problems for the future if you're genuinely concerned about quote community cohesion

00:13:41.460 there's an amping up from what happened in oxford just to be precise here which is that

00:13:46.260 at oxford they said it was health and safety it was you know safety on the highway they

00:13:49.860 They didn't want the flag somehow sort of affecting lorries or something like that.

00:13:52.980 But this time it's explicit.

00:13:54.940 There's an injunction against the founders of Raise the Colors.

00:13:58.300 Yeah.

00:13:58.620 So that's the Rhyme Bridge and that group of people, there's 67 of them have been specifically called out.

00:14:05.560 So now they're unapologetically calling it what it is.

00:14:08.940 You know, by that, I mean, they're unapologetically saying it's about that specific movement.

00:14:14.480 It's about the England flags.

00:14:15.920 It's about the union flags.

00:14:16.960 and it's worth also noting Birmingham is a minority white British city now it's our second

00:14:24.520 biggest city and I think that's a component of it you know the conversation about being colonized

00:14:31.500 you remember Sir Jim Ratliff saying we've been colonized and that being a huge sort of

00:14:36.260 story at Birmingham actually you get a sense here that this that there's a there's a side to the

00:14:42.720 flags going up being like we're still English now I'm with Tom that the England flag should be

00:14:48.440 unifying for everyone who lives in England and is English and and a citizen of England or and

00:14:55.980 certainly the British flag should be certainly the union flag should be that so that they're

00:15:01.260 that they're offended by in our second largest city there's a there's a darker side to it as

00:15:07.280 well it's a sense of of a collision of civilizations happening within our country a little bit

00:15:13.340 well it's a logical conclusion of that asymmetric multiculturalism that tom talks about which is

00:15:20.080 that i am you guys know i've been talking about this for a long time which is if you the reason

00:15:26.320 multicultural multiculturalism is a problem and most people don't understand this because they

00:15:30.760 don't understand what these words mean multi they think when they hear multiculturalism they think

00:15:35.700 people of different races living in one place that's what they hear right that's not multiculturalism

00:15:41.360 multiculturalism is actually what we have at the moment which is every culture is deemed as being

00:15:47.520 valuable except the host culture in which these cultures exist instead of what we should have

00:15:53.780 which is monoculturalism which says you can retain aspects of your culture as long as they're

00:16:00.360 compatible with the host culture but your primary culture and the purpose of you being here and what

00:16:06.000 you should teach your children is to integrate into the host culture first and foremost and then

00:16:12.260 if you want to go back to pakistan twice a year or if you want to go back to russia or ukraine or

00:16:17.680 wherever and continue to speak your language with some of your relatives etc that's okay as long as

00:16:24.060 you're fully integrated and speak the language and adopt the values and support the nation etc

00:16:29.720 Right. But that's not what we have. What we have is effectively a culture of suppressing the host culture, saying the host culture either doesn't exist and also is evil, probably.

00:16:40.780 And at the same time, the celebration of others, i.e. celebrating Pakistan Independence Day. Go ahead, Francis.

00:16:47.420 No. So I actually think they've got a point. Right. When they say the England flag is deeply divisive to them, it is to them.

00:16:56.080 it actually is deeply divisive they hate this country they don't like what it represents they

00:17:02.820 think that this country is an evil colonialist white supremacist nation which used its empire

00:17:08.580 to go around the world to dominate their countries to drain resources is essentially a glorified

00:17:15.320 parasite and now what they want to do is they want to decolonize so to them it's completely

00:17:23.400 fair in some ways that they see this as divisive now i don't agree with that world view but the

00:17:30.920 question is is what are you going to do when it's so deeply embedded with these people who run our

00:17:37.820 councils i really have no idea and what it speaks to is a rot which lies at the heart of our society

00:17:46.620 where you have people in our culture, in our society who openly despise and hate the country and everything it stands for.

00:17:56.040 That's what we're really talking about here. That's the actual of the conversation.

00:18:02.160 I think you're right. I think it's actually worse. It's it's they don't there's no attempt.

00:18:06.520 So last week, Zekar Chowdhury, the Birmingham city, Lord Mayor, made a statement about how Kashmir will be ours again.

00:18:15.480 he's not referring of course to the british empire he means well i'm up for that if that's what he

00:18:20.260 meant they are patriotic pakistanis so they're not they're not even trying to play down where

00:18:37.680 they've come from they are they are still pakistanis culturally that's a really important

00:18:44.220 point also if you look at another place where the flag war's really kicked off in a big way it's

00:18:48.700 also tower hamlets in east london which everyone seems to have forgotten now because people forget

00:18:52.860 that birmingham's our second city there's a remarkable lack of interest amongst westminster

00:18:56.780 journalists about what's going on there politically how the place has changed so on and so forth

00:19:04.060 oh yeah actually quite a few times i've got a big soft spot for birmingham incidentally so it's um

00:19:07.980 and i'm trying to work on a project up there because i think it's fascinating politically

00:19:11.260 so that wasn't the gotcha you thought it'd be francis but where i have been slightly more

00:19:16.220 frequently um it's been run by for all intents and purposes a bangladeshi sectarian party since

00:19:21.260 2022 look for rahman who used to be in the labour party got kicked out because of all manner of

00:19:26.300 allegations which won't go into um sets up this party called aspire at various elections it was

00:19:31.340 criticized because all of its candidates were bangladeshi um there was revelations last year

00:19:36.380 that some of its councillors were actually standing for election in Bangladesh under the hilariously

00:19:43.740 named BNP party over there. So the extent to which this is, and that was also a place in which the

00:19:50.300 flag wars kicked off in a big way, because surprise, surprise, after October the 7th,

00:19:54.140 Palestine flags everywhere. I remember walking through much of Tower Hamlets and every single

00:19:59.100 lamppost very high up in the air, you saw a Palestine flag. It did feel a bit like you'd

00:20:02.860 been occupied to a certain extent and yet when operation raised the colors begins um of course

00:20:08.740 there was a really concerted effort to take those flags down in a way that there wasn't when the

00:20:14.000 palestine flags went up actually the the council in tower hamlets forced a pretty hard battle

00:20:19.800 against various groups who were trying to bring legal advice to get them to take the palestine

00:20:23.940 flags down as soon as it went when it came to the england flags it was totally different and one

00:20:28.260 final interesting thing is that when whether it was tower hamlets or birmingham what have you

00:20:32.880 when there were attempts to um when there was pushes to take down the palestine flag the

00:20:38.060 hesitancy came precisely because they were worried that taking them down would harm community

00:20:42.120 relations whereas when it comes to putting up the england flag that is the threat to community

00:20:46.760 relations so how we got ourselves in this model is anyone's guess but you see the seeds of it in

00:20:51.060 a place like birmingham certainly in a place like tower hamlet all right let's let's move on uh to

00:20:55.820 our next story uh which is a story about patriotism in a very different way which is of course

00:21:00.700 uh president trump and the united states uh i don't know if you saw yesterday the white house

00:21:05.660 announced that lake ontario would be renamed to lake america uh as part of the ongoing trade war

00:21:12.460 with canada um and it strikes me i mean there's a few different things going on here but one thing

00:21:18.220 that's probably worth highlighting is that partly due to the round war but partly due to other things

00:21:24.780 uh president trump's personal approval ratings uh are going down quite quickly and more importantly

00:21:32.140 in the interim uh the democrats look set to win the house uh in the midterms which are coming up

00:21:39.260 in november and the republicans uh may just hold on to the to the senate uh but what this would

00:21:46.220 mean uh dean if you could show us the the there's the calci uh calci have a great um election hub

00:21:53.420 Hub, which you can see all this stuff. You can see Democrats have an 84% chance to control the

00:21:57.100 House. And in President Trump's own words, if they win the House, they will impeach him.

00:22:06.420 I'm going to be impeached. They're going to impeach me. They have no idea why.

00:22:10.240 I saw it today. A congressman said on one of the shows,

00:22:14.060 we're going to impeach President Trump. We're going to impeach. Oh, really? Why?

00:22:17.660 The person was asking a neutral commentator for a change. I like neutral commentators.

00:22:23.420 oh i see you're gonna teach him why uh well i don't know i don't know

00:22:30.460 you know what aside from the story he's such a stand-up comedian he does that thing that

00:22:38.860 comedians do when they tell a joke and then walks away from the microphone for a bit

00:22:42.340 milks the reaction and it comes back but anyway the other thing i wanted to say and it's worth

00:22:47.460 including in this discussion is uh when we interviewed ted cruz francis when was it uh

00:22:53.400 was it it was earlier this year wasn't it yeah so we interviewed ted cruz and it would have been

00:22:59.500 late march early april right at that point he said if this war is and he was a big advocate

00:23:05.600 of the war big proponent of the war uh he said if this war is still ongoing uh by the time of

00:23:11.820 the midterms we've really messed up here basically well if you look at the uh the calci odds for the

00:23:17.900 war being wrapped up even by january it's third it's 30 and much more likely uh people are talking

00:23:25.520 about middle of next year that doesn't seem to be a way out and it's increasingly becoming very

00:23:29.340 unpopular because of its economic impact so do winston do we think the wheels are coming off the

00:23:35.160 trump bandwagon well in may he said he didn't care about the midterms so he's obviously come on quite

00:23:43.300 a journey in uh in those months and i know here on trigonometry it's very pro ayatollah and this

00:23:49.860 has been a part of private contention between me and the boys uh when we're off screen i'm always

00:23:57.460 trying to argue you know you know the iranian regime you know they're they're killing their

00:24:00.820 their people and you know we've got to get rid of them and you guys are saying no no no hear

00:24:04.100 hear them out you know there's two sides so i know you're not gonna like this what a grotesque

00:24:10.340 misrepresent listen how about right we actually argue the actual point what francis and i said

00:24:17.620 from the beginning is ayatollah not a great guy i think we said that in in more explicit terms

00:24:24.340 than that but this war would be a disaster which would trap america for a long time and would have

00:24:30.020 terrible economic consequences and your answer to that i'm going to quote you was well the ayatollah

00:24:35.860 did talk a lot of shit to which is not a good reason to bomb the shit out of a massive country

00:24:43.900 carry on with your grotesque misrepresentation please i i i still think the war is a just war

00:24:54.060 of several attempts to kill trump and various americans uh not just in america across the world

00:25:00.520 i still think that it's a legal war for a while i have conceded that it looks at best a stalemate

00:25:08.540 and now it doesn't it doesn't seem clear to me the the best way out of this i i we have to paint

00:25:18.480 the picture a little bit more so scott besson the treasury striketry has launched operation

00:25:24.580 it's called like economic choke or something like that what's the name of it i've forgotten

00:25:28.940 um but you know it's they he's identified 60 or 70 various assets and and um opponents across the

00:25:36.440 world and he's targeting them this include chinese opponents so it seems like a another sort of

00:25:41.200 attempt and when i see that i'm like oh so i sort of been hoping that the americans know stuff that

00:25:49.360 we don't know because of course in a war the that we don't know everything so it'd be foolish for

00:25:55.860 the belligerents to let the public know all of their potential and all the things they could do

00:26:02.100 so I had hoped off the back of Midnight Hammer off the back of operation in Venezuela that

00:26:10.300 there's parts of this American operation that we don't know and I they built my confidence up given

00:26:15.580 the successes there but it seems now that the midterm game has won and one other positive you

00:26:23.500 might argue against it is that there's the new Mecca Accord in the Middle East. So the Saudis,

00:26:30.520 the Turks and the Pakistanis have now got their sort of version of NATO to check Iran. Now,

00:26:36.200 at the surface of that, I was initially excited because that, you know, Iran is the circle of,

00:26:43.780 it's the head of the snake. It's running the circle of fire. It's just not just in the Middle

00:26:49.360 East that it's causing damage for all these terrorist organizations all over the world.

00:26:52.400 And the idea that these countries would, these nations would now organize around Iran and check Iran, I was hopeful for.

00:27:03.180 But the downside is, is there a new world order now where this Middle East NATO thing, it starts off about being a bit Iran and then it will turn about being against, you know, could it be against a Western alliance of some sort?

00:27:18.180 So what this might even be much worse than I had anticipated is what I'm trying to say.

00:27:24.740 Do you know what you remind me of, Winston?

00:27:27.100 You remind me of a bloke whose missus is just caught in receiving a text message from another woman.

00:27:32.980 And he's like, well, you know, this is the thing.

00:27:36.460 We've got to look at the big picture here.

00:27:38.460 There's no other small picture.

00:27:40.020 There's other things going on.

00:27:43.060 and look let me just lay something out that i think is is worth facilitating the rest of

00:27:47.700 our discussion the the francis and i were very on the fence ironically given the new name of

00:27:53.780 the show about this conflict we were like let's wait and see and try and understand it but when

00:27:58.820 we were in the us in the spring we talked to a lot of people and the the takeaway for us was

00:28:04.420 structurally very simple iran has every tool to leverage in this situation to make trump and the

00:28:11.860 the united states as a country also suffer and it is not vulnerable to the things that the u.s can

00:28:19.760 bring on the other side it's not vulnerable to uh them killing members of the regime because they

00:28:25.040 don't care because they have others and the others are even more extreme and winston is sort of

00:28:29.520 looking into the window at this point wistfully i don't know why

00:28:32.520 so that's so on the one hand on the other hand they have they are the ones that have the choke

00:28:40.760 hold on the global economy you got to understand for them this is like the soviet union in 1941

00:28:48.360 we are up against an overwhelmingly uh powerful enemy and it's about survival and we will throw

00:28:54.760 men economy everything at it and we will sacrifice everything we have to to win and they can hold out

00:29:02.200 the united states is operating on a completely different clock it's like that famous saying in

00:29:06.680 in the west you have all the watches in the east we have all the time they can hold out for as long

00:29:11.960 as they need to for trump to lose the midterms and then for the republicans to lose the presidency

00:29:17.240 if they have to hold out for two years because they have the levers of control and if the united

00:29:24.920 states escalates militarily they have other means of escalating too which is they will attack u.s

00:29:30.520 allies in the region, destroy Saudi and UAE desalination plants, etc. And so the point that

00:29:36.940 we came away with was that effectively kind of what you're saying is that the asymmetrical nature

00:29:44.260 of the levers of power in this situation favors Iran in such a way that there is only really one

00:29:49.820 way out. And that way out is for Trump to take the L while pretending it's a W. And that is

00:29:55.560 effectively why this war hasn't ended so far, because they haven't found a way to do that.

00:30:00.520 that's kind of the perspective that we came away with which is why we've always been rather

00:30:05.920 concerned about how this war would go and by the way in the meantime the entire world is suffering

00:30:10.920 the economic consequences however the ayatollah did talk a lot of shit as which is the other side

00:30:17.080 there's been all kinds of arguments against the iran war the nuclear capability kind of

00:30:23.300 civilizational argument i haven't quite heard articulate as well the kind of chat shit get

00:30:27.320 banged um argument as the kids were saying here yeah not to be up on not to be up on winston but

00:30:32.360 i which i fear i'm in um danger of doing but i think that was always the issue wasn't there there

00:30:37.240 was so clearly a case to be made that the islamic republic was a malign force not just in its near

00:30:44.440 abroad but the world over the way in which it's been targeting it's uh people in the diaspora the

00:30:50.760 way in which it's been targeting people in britain the way in which you know everything from the

00:30:54.920 the fatwa onwards you could say that this was not just a country that was going down its own

00:30:59.020 Islamist path it had these kind of bigger like imperial designs on the world and that needed to

00:31:03.040 be checked at some point the idea of ever getting its hands on a nuclear weapon given the apocalyptic

00:31:09.220 ideology that at least the very top tier of the kind of clerical regime they'd absolutely believe

00:31:13.880 in it's a horror story no one should want to see just whether or not this conflict was going to

00:31:17.880 actually deliver on those stated aims I mean there was a reason that even the neocons and

00:31:22.300 interventionists in the george w bush years and so on didn't go near this because it was always

00:31:28.160 bound to make iraq look like a tea party not least and also give pile on top of that the fact

00:31:32.980 that it's clear that because of the american weariness with foreign conflicts and so on

00:31:38.120 the hesitancy to kind of properly go to war as it were rather than just kind of focusing on

00:31:43.360 we've now flipped from an air war to kind of economic pressure and economic sanctions

00:31:48.440 meant that you were it just created a situation which was probably beneficial if not to the

00:31:55.260 Iranian people and certainly the IRGC which is that they just have to survive this war to win

00:31:59.560 it and they could emerge out of it as it seems to have been the case with the Strait of Hormuz

00:32:03.820 with that ability and proven track record of being able to menace the global economy menace

00:32:10.780 their near neighbors just by the threat of being able to lob weaponry and missiles and what have

00:32:15.760 you into the straight um so it's it's one of those things where this was always going to be hung

00:32:20.440 around trump's neck it was always going to be the most significant thing he did over his two terms

00:32:23.460 the question was whether or not it's an albatross or a medal at the moment it seems like it's more

00:32:27.100 going to be an albatross certainly when you look at those midterm polls and if i can just long term

00:32:31.800 can i just make this one point winston because i think it's if we look at the long term for this

00:32:37.740 conflict the longer it goes on the longer the straight of a mood does the hokey cokey opens

00:32:44.420 and it shuts and it opens and it shuts and it opens and it shuts. The further we go down this

00:32:49.900 path is the closer we get to a real economic catastrophe. This could be catastrophic to

00:32:56.640 numerous economies, potentially, potentially devastating, taking years and years and years

00:33:04.400 to recover from. And the fact that we haven't seemed to have had yet anybody proposing a solution

00:33:13.380 or potential solution to actually solving this, I find utterly terrifying, if I'm being honest.

00:33:20.840 Because we look at the depths of our economies, the UK is 2.9 trillion, the US is 40 trillion.

00:33:29.100 I mean, we are not healthy economies just by looking at our deficits. All we need is the

00:33:36.160 slightest push towards the precipice, and we're all going to be in desperate trouble. And my real

00:33:42.200 concern is is that the current crisis with iran and the straight-off war moves is the nudge that

00:33:48.680 our economies need into going into free fall uh before pushing back i'll just make paint the

00:33:57.080 picture the things that are actually even worse still which is that the iranians i thought you

00:34:02.600 were pro the war mate the iranians are even it looks like that they're going to be and the new

00:34:09.720 regime will be more hardline which i think you didn't predict uh the the viziers around the new

00:34:15.380 the the sort of younger gayer ayatollah apparently are are more hardline and it's also the case that

00:34:23.580 america's allies in the middle east uh have have lost confidence in america so the saudis their

00:34:28.860 bases were were were destroyed the american bases in saudi were destroyed the emiratis had these

00:34:34.320 deals with the americans and yet they still got it didn't it didn't act as a defense having

00:34:40.400 american alliance in fact it meant that they were subject of of the bombings from from iran

00:34:47.020 but to you the question's got to be what do you do with an iran with a death cult iran with

00:34:56.100 enriched uranium perfect try to make that was going to bring this up perfect i'm glad you bring

00:35:01.240 this up this is exactly the counter argument great you actually have to come up with a good

00:35:06.860 answer and and the situation no you don't actually for the reasons i'm happy to explain you don't

00:35:12.140 actually because may i the situation before the war was not tolerable the the terms of the jcpoa

00:35:21.300 were only good for iran iran was a menace and a threat to the world and it was not acceptable to

00:35:29.840 leave the situation as it was. We can't have ayatollahs with nuclear weapons. Agreed. The

00:35:37.860 problem with your argument, Winston, is that this war makes it far, far more likely that the ayatollahs

00:35:45.460 will get nuclear weapons. And the deal that Trump or whoever replaces him, if that's how long this

00:35:51.800 war goes does will actually be worse than the jcpoa necessarily so because by that point america

00:36:00.000 will have definitely lost the war well the mou is worse than the jcpoa as far as my my my point is

00:36:08.080 that well exactly you're making my point for me except that the longer this war goes the worse

00:36:14.380 the deal will be which is why i said trump's only way out of this is to get a take an l and sell it

00:36:20.780 as a w and that's the only outcome so you can't put this on us and say well you guys don't didn't

00:36:28.280 support this war so what would you have done about iran's nuclear threat well this war has only made

00:36:33.960 that worse and more likely so that's why for example i had not only no problem i was delighted

00:36:40.760 that the united states tried to take out iran's nuclear facilities in the 12 day war bombed the

00:36:46.460 shed out of their nuclear installations all day, every day, twice a week, you know, twice, twice a

00:36:52.180 day, whatever. I don't care. That's fine by me. The issue I have is once you escalate it in the

00:36:57.900 way that you have, we've actually now made it far more likely that the Iranians will develop

00:37:02.680 nuclear weapons. So do I have a solution sitting here in the podcast studio to the Iran nuclear

00:37:10.080 problem? No, I don't. I don't think anybody does. The only argument is, was this war something that

00:37:15.920 took us further away from that solution or closer to it and i think my argument would be that it's

00:37:21.280 actually taken us further away it's made iran's nuclear ambitions more real more likely to be

00:37:27.420 capitalized on and iran is more going to be if you if you put yourself in the position of the ayatollah

00:37:33.900 despite his alleged homosexuality winston then what you might say is uh what is the rationale

00:37:42.300 out for me now not to go for nuclear weapons we were sort of playing footsie with nuclear material

00:37:49.220 we weren't quite going for it we're just enriching a little bit we didn't put it into missiles

00:37:52.720 well you've just killed my dad you've killed all all my mates right you've shown that you will

00:37:58.580 keep killing us the what's the solution to all of this from my ayatollah perspective well my

00:38:04.900 ayatollah perspective is the only way for me to be safe is to do what north korea did there's a

00:38:09.780 reason we're not bombing the shit out of North Korea that's because they have nuclear weapons

00:38:13.380 there's a reason Ukraine was able to be invaded by Russia it's because they didn't have nuclear

00:38:18.500 weapons which we made them give up by the way it's one of the things Bill Clinton has actually

00:38:22.620 publicly conceded that forcing the Ukrainians to give up their nukes is one of the reasons Russia

00:38:28.240 was able to invade so if you're the Ayatollah you are now way more determined and way more

00:38:33.820 legitimized in the eyes of your own but also lots of people around the world who don't support this

00:38:38.840 war to go for nukes so you can't put that on the critics of the war because the war has not

00:38:44.600 advanced the cause that you think it has but i think it's perfectly reasonable to have a

00:38:51.400 conversation about how to deal with that problem which is of course you you i think you guys might

00:38:57.980 be an exception in the anti-iran war crowd in that you're prepared to have that conversation a lot of

00:39:03.640 people just say everything america does is wrong they would not have supported or admit that hammer

00:39:09.740 to be more specific they would not have supported they don't support what happened in venezuela

00:39:13.380 whereas you guys don't have a de facto position like that either america is bad or that war is

00:39:19.900 necessarily bad because there are worse things than war agree no exactly and that that is something

00:39:25.680 that definitely needs to be called out the desire for america or just the west to lose this conflict

00:39:30.180 is a really concerning tendency

00:39:32.940 that you see more and more across society now.

00:39:35.760 And it's one of those things where it's quite clear

00:39:37.880 that when a country like Iran funds proxies,

00:39:42.020 menaces its near abroad,

00:39:44.240 has an outsized role in the continuing kind of destabilization

00:39:47.500 of a country like Iraq or whatever,

00:39:49.100 that's just Iran doing its thing.

00:39:50.460 But when you've got the US or Israel, whoever,

00:39:53.200 actually trying to protect against their own interests

00:39:55.580 or trying to deal with a theocratic Islamist threat

00:39:58.580 that doesn't just kill its own people,

00:39:59.980 but also as designs on the world, that's just American imperialism

00:40:03.920 and something to be opposed to the hilt.

00:40:06.680 So there is that, of course, complete double standard

00:40:08.880 and the willingness for America to be given a bloody nose,

00:40:13.440 even at what consequence, has been pretty striking.

00:40:16.000 The thing that struck me about this whole conflict from the off, though,

00:40:18.360 was that even if you're a kind of paid-up supporter of the American empire,

00:40:22.320 even if you think on balance it's a better thing than not,

00:40:25.100 that it continues to be that hegemonic power.

00:40:27.320 I mean, even on the most basic level, forget nuclear proliferation, but keeping the shipping lanes open, that was like the least controversial aspect of the American empire.

00:40:36.560 And it was always based not just on kind of sheer military might, but kind of implicit threat.

00:40:40.520 There are limits to American power. It cannot, you know, just by sheer warfare, get certain miscreant countries into line, if you like.

00:40:50.300 The problem with this conflict, certainly the way it's panned out, is that it's demonstrated those limits and it's also given a country like Iran that boot on the neck of global hydrocarbons in a way that it wouldn't have had previously.

00:41:01.680 Because, again, the implicit threat has been sort of called out and it hasn't worked.

00:41:05.660 So there, of course, is the ridiculous sort of anti-Western, supposedly anti-imperious left opposition to any kind of conflict, it seems like, that might benefit the West in its interest.

00:41:15.340 But even amongst those people I think are in who would support, you know, America continuing to be the superpower riding high.

00:41:23.240 This is only weak in that position, certainly in the way it's been prosecuted.

00:41:28.420 And we also need to. So I was just going to say, look, America has a democracy every four years as an election.

00:41:36.720 If this drags on, what's the next government going to do?

00:41:40.840 I mean, if we have a democratic government, what are they going to do?

00:41:44.180 I can tell you right now, I mean, I wouldn't pretend to be an expert on U.S. politics, but I don't think that they're going to be as hard line as Trump has been.

00:41:54.040 And the real worry is that they're going to capitulate and they're going to give the Iranians a very, very soft, a very, very favorable deal, which then incentivizes these types of countries to do these types of behaviors.

00:42:08.060 It's a real worry.

00:42:09.620 And even if we get somebody in, we get, for instance, somebody from the Republican Party winning the election, what's their position going to be? Are they going to be a fundamentally anti-war, anti-interventionist party who are going to go, you know what, we don't want anything to do with this. It's nothing to do with us. Here, have it. And we're just going to go back and not get involved.

00:42:32.340 And there's plenty of people who share that view, but in America, on the left and on the right.

00:42:38.500 So this idea that this is a continuum that we can maintain, unfortunately, it's simply not going to happen.

00:42:47.400 And it's really worrying.

00:42:51.640 The other part of this story, just to bring it back to our home, is that this week we had a cyber attack from Iran of a power facility.

00:43:02.340 and it didn't affect the grid but we have been attacked and our response as far as as far unless

00:43:09.700 there's something happening behind the scenes that we don't know about is that there hasn't

00:43:12.740 been a response and i think zero response is also not acceptable what we have in our capabilities

00:43:20.180 given our military assets or whatever it might be it's not entirely clear to me because obviously

00:43:26.780 the government knows more than we know that it's not in the public domain but to do nothing is also

00:43:33.860 not an option as far as far as i'm concerned yeah i know i agree i i think tom made a very

00:43:40.100 good point which is you don't have to be anti-western to be against this conflict and in

00:43:45.400 fact i would argue you know my view has always been the same pax americana is the best pax

00:43:50.760 there's ever been it's wonderful i'd like it to continue i'm very pro-america very pro-west

00:43:56.000 And because of that, very against this conflict, because empires, and America is an empire, often achieve great success by conflict, by using their force, the threats that you alluded to, Tom.

00:44:10.000 But they can also get into bad wars that cause them to go bankrupt, that cause internal instability, and that cause a weakening of the image abroad.

00:44:17.300 And by the way, there's so many conflicts you can be party to in the world all at once and losing at the same time.

00:44:24.300 I mean, let's be honest, America is the chief backer of the Ukrainians. Ukraine is not winning that war, partly because the West failed to provide them the support they needed to be able to do that.

00:44:34.700 So you've got two conflicts going on at the same time, both of which America, you might say, is not winning, to put it gently. And on top of that, of course, you have China, which has its interests in Taiwan and elsewhere, and other countries around the world, which may be looking and going, well, this may be the time to challenge Western hegemony in our region, whatever region that may be.

00:44:58.320 So from that perspective, I think you can be incredibly pro-Western and pro-America and because of that oppose this conflict.

00:45:06.840 But it's great that we had this discussion.

00:45:08.760 Speaking of hating the West, Cambridge, that wonderful institution that's been rather in the news quite a bit lately.

00:45:14.780 And perhaps we'll touch on our interview with Nathan Kofnes, who, of course, helped to expose Jason Arde, who was formerly at Cambridge.

00:45:22.940 um cambridge has been in the news this week because they have hired uh let me just triple

00:45:29.820 check correctly yes there we go assistant research professor uh farah ahmed who used to be a member

00:45:36.840 of his but tarea which has now been banned as a terrorist organization uh who now to be fair to

00:45:43.060 her i will say this she did write all of this in 2002 so it was a very long time ago and look let's

00:45:50.620 be honest we were all a bit if you don't believe in holy war in your 20s are you really you know

00:45:55.180 but you have no heart you have no heart i mean if you don't but she did say in 2002 in the his

00:46:06.200 it was a good line it was a good line i'm pleased with it but anyway uh she was basically a member

00:46:14.340 of what is now a terrorist organization to be fair to her it was not at the time but she did talk

00:46:19.440 about the fact that basically muslims need to study engineering so they can further the jihad

00:46:24.160 and and allow islam to dominate um and they've just uh hired her do we know if she's really

00:46:33.900 radically changed her views or is this just the new policy at cambridge exactly maybe they hired

00:46:39.400 her for that reason uh yeah the current evidence would suggest so i mean she claims that she

00:46:44.040 she no longer agrees with everything that Hizbut Tahrir said which is uh not the biggest reassurance

00:46:51.820 is it not least because in that particular pamphlet which she co-authored where a lot of

00:46:57.040 these quotes have been drawn from from Andrew Gilligan's reporting in the Spectator over recent

00:47:01.620 weeks that line about jihad is fascinating because basically says and you know considering the fact

00:47:08.360 that education is her field that essentially the only reason to study something like engineering

00:47:12.500 or computer science is the furtherance of jihad and explicitly mentions weaponry so there's no

00:47:17.920 you know even attempt to deflect and suggest what she's talking about here is an inner spiritual

00:47:21.880 struggle this is the full-fat militaristic jihad which at one point at least in time

00:47:27.700 she absolutely endorsed um given the fact that hizbut tarir is now a prescribed extremist group

00:47:32.880 she couldn't legally express support for these for that organization anyway um at this point

00:47:39.040 certainly wouldn't be advised to or well advised to but um the things that she's done since kind

00:47:44.160 of holding conferences or being involved in projects at cambridge would suggest at the very

00:47:48.640 least there's some resonances with her old slightly more islamist adjacent self there was a project

00:47:53.680 she was involved with at cambridge recently which was promoting kind of school materials to 12 year

00:47:58.800 olds asking them to think about the israel palestine question describe the hostages as prisoners

00:48:04.800 of war and encourage the kids in some of the kind of sample questions to think about the martyrdom

00:48:11.040 of the children in gaza which i think would uh says a lot about where she's coming from

00:48:16.000 shall we say um this whole story i mean we've taken to calling elite universities like woke

00:48:20.400 madrassas i think cambridge have taken that far too literally in this case certainly with the

00:48:26.720 faculty of education uh i think we're actually being a little bit too uh lenient on her here

00:48:37.920 and by extension cambridge because yes huzbud tahrir has only was only prescribed a year or two

00:48:43.760 ago it was still an islamist organization it was still a jihadi organization 20 years ago when she

00:48:51.040 she was uh saying this stuff and she was a part of it and cambridge thought they can't have not

00:48:58.000 seen that i mean cambridge employed her and by the way she's in the same department as jason arday

00:49:03.520 so i mean think about that if you go to cambridge you've got morning with jason arday where you're

00:49:08.640 learning about uh i don't know what sort of uh woke nonsense and then jihadi lessons in the afternoon

00:49:14.960 that's a really crazy thing that's going on here that this is off the back of that literally the

00:49:22.160 same department it's it's it's the islamist green alliance i guess we're seeing it now in in deep in

00:49:29.420 our universities to be honest with you it sounds a lot better than some of the schools i taught in

00:49:35.100 but let's not focus on that um were you a teacher francis

00:49:39.280 but i i think what the fact that this was in the department of education makes this even more

00:49:48.580 sinister this is a department that trains teachers cambridge is the most prestigious place

00:49:56.420 in the country to go and do your teaching qualification and if you go to cambridge

00:50:01.920 and you get trained to be a teacher you are seen as the best of the best and then you look at these

00:50:10.040 professors who are actually teaching the teachers who are going to teach our children and then you

00:50:16.560 look at our schools and you look at what is happening then you think well no wonder we're

00:50:21.760 in the situation that we're in when this is what we've produced number one and number two here's

00:50:27.840 an interesting little thought experiment to play imagine somebody rocked up at cambridge as a

00:50:32.780 professor looking a bit like me sounding a bit like me and then going yeah you know what pro

00:50:38.220 reform everybody let's talk about let's talk about immigration let's talk about all of that

00:50:43.840 good stuff how long do you think i would last there i'd give it about 12 and a half minutes

00:50:49.300 mate if you turned up at cambridge looking and sounding the way you do they'd be oh thank god

00:50:55.160 the plumbers here but but you make a good a very good point actually and this is something that

00:51:03.020 particularly since i became a father and especially since i went to visit katherine

00:51:08.580 burblesing school michaela and and had the opportunity to see that and also talk to her

00:51:14.080 she really really showed me and kind of got me to really see what the importance of the point

00:51:19.940 francis just made people find education a very boring subject but these are literally the people

00:51:26.740 who are training the people who teach your children is it then a surprise that your children

00:51:33.080 become that there's that super famous meme of you know people before and after different drugs

00:51:38.340 before and after alcohol before and after heroin and the last one is college or university

00:51:42.420 and uh i think we we we obviously we joke about it because that's what we do but the education

00:51:49.520 system is absolutely riddled and rife with all of this crap and it needs to be stripped from it

00:51:56.380 uh there needs to be comprehensive reform and by the way you know we need more people like

00:52:02.160 nathan kofnas coming out and exposing this stuff and exposing and andrew gilligan and who covered

00:52:08.820 this story this stuff has to be exposed the attention has to be brought to it in order that

00:52:15.180 there is the rationale and the motivation to deal with it and should there ever be a government that

00:52:20.380 is actually actively hostile to it they need to come in and find a way to basically burn all the

00:52:26.300 out from the entire education system because you know like i said we joke and laugh and whatever

00:52:33.020 but this is literally the children of everyone watching this being taught by people who actively

00:52:40.700 hate everything about our society and want to destroy it and that's why they want to teach

00:52:45.900 engineering and look here i'm going to tell you right now as somebody who is bit who is who was

00:52:52.740 trained in one of these institutions i trained at the central school of speech and drama now

00:52:58.280 when you handed in essays i remember handing in an essay but i've always been a wind up and i've

00:53:05.080 always been a bit of a prick surprise surprise and that we had to do an essay and uh about

00:53:10.700 education systems or whatever else and i handed in an essay on the case for grammar schools

00:53:15.700 right they put a line through the paper with the and just put the word no wow

00:53:25.240 right a line through the paper and the word no because and very it's funny on one level of course

00:53:34.360 hilarious but on another level what does that what does that tell you what that tells you is

00:53:39.160 they will not accept any type of thought inquiry or argument that strays from their own ideology

00:53:48.360 and if you do do that they're not going to engage with it they're not going to push back they're

00:53:53.480 not going to say well how about this how about that you are going to get a literal pen through

00:53:57.960 the paper and the word no and and looking at what their ideology is is also even more terrifying

00:54:05.640 because in the kind of combination of your sort of jason our day style critical race theory

00:54:10.520 and your farah farrah ahmed islamist adjacent views on education you see a view on education

00:54:17.800 which is completely antithetical to our entire tradition of education i mean one of these

00:54:21.880 conferences that Ms Ahmed was um holding was about challenging science because it's colonial

00:54:29.560 and because it is making claims to objectivity that might not be the case it's so fascinating

00:54:35.240 that in the kind of Islamist politics as well as the woke politics you see this kind of shared

00:54:39.000 complete flat out rejection of kind of pursuit of truth of knowledge for its own sake everything is

00:54:44.680 just to the ends of either social justice or the caliphate presumably um and and how can you have

00:54:50.760 that at the heart of institutions which are supposedly devoted to precisely those old liberal

00:54:56.360 enlightenment values it's just i don't see how those things are going to mix so it's not even

00:54:59.960 just that they they reject certain political persuasions although they absolutely do like the

00:55:04.040 whole edifice is something that they just don't accept and yet they're going along doing that you

00:55:09.080 know teaching the next generations of not just teachers but people are going to lead the country

00:55:14.360 something that um as you say we're only really at the beginning of getting to grips with i guess

00:55:17.400 and trying to solve this problem sorry no no Winston go for it and I'll make the I'll make

00:55:23.440 a point at the end trying to solve this problem as Constantine lays out to me is not so clear so

00:55:29.700 gut it all out try and get rid of it and I have actually been thinking about this because someone

00:55:34.740 like Catherine Berbalsing who runs her school in uh North London she is actually hated by the

00:55:41.960 teachers across the country. She's hated by the National Teachers Union. She is enemy number one

00:55:47.180 and she's quite lonely I think in you know she's got people around her but it's not like there are

00:55:52.560 Michaela schools up and down the country and the problem you've got I think Constantine is that

00:55:58.080 if you've got all of these people out and they are actually the majority of teachers

00:56:02.660 you then have a situation where you don't have teachers and you've got an education system that

00:56:09.360 you've got to continue maintaining so yeah it trying to devise a way in which those teachers

00:56:17.440 are kept on board but deprogrammed somehow or shown the light or guided in a way that it's

00:56:25.380 taken away from this anti-british as you explored in some in some cases slightly pro-islamist and

00:56:32.680 by the way pro-islamist i mean it's you remember the batley grammar school teacher is still in

00:56:37.220 hiding the the um cartoon of mohammeda uh up in yorkshire it's not actually that islamism isn't

00:56:46.500 in the schools there's some suggestion it is but uh to actually gut this all out and maintain an

00:56:52.180 education system it's not a clear uh probe it's not a clear how we do that i don't know if you've

00:56:58.580 got ideas to that but yeah i'm going to sound very russian in answering this uh but i mean

00:57:04.740 the the way that the direction of societies is typically changed has very little to do with the

00:57:10.500 broad mass of the people it's about infighting within the elite circles and ultimately within

00:57:17.780 the education system the like within any system the overwhelming mass of people is rather bovine

00:57:23.860 these are people who will go along with whatever it is the herd is doing at the time so what we're

00:57:29.540 talking about is who is in charge what their agenda is and what the explicit do's and don'ts

00:57:35.620 and the implicit do's and don'ts of that society that structure that institution those uh that

00:57:41.540 community is so if you change the overall setting and posture of an institution most of the people

00:57:48.980 will fall in line and the ones that don't have to be the heads on spikes that you use as the

00:57:53.140 example of ever for everybody else if you want to teach jihadism in our university you get fired

00:57:59.540 simple right this is not compatible as tom was saying with the western uh liberal educational

00:58:04.740 tradition by the way we've got to you got to start with what is education for we've got to the point

00:58:10.180 i think in the west where we sort of think that education is about teaching science and maths

00:58:16.020 and whatever education is about that it's about teaching information it's about teaching ways

00:58:21.060 of thinking etc but it's also about passing down the cultural traditions of that society

00:58:27.380 that's what it's about and unless education does that then education will inevitably be taken

00:58:34.340 people over by people who will teach the cultural traditions of a different society

00:58:39.360 and so these indigenous ways of knowing and critical race theory and whatever that's not

00:58:45.520 just people coming in and taking over it's people filling a vacuum when people step back and say

00:58:52.000 we're no longer going to teach the western canon we're no longer going to teach the western liberal

00:58:56.660 values then of course other forms of thinking and being will be taught instead and so that's why i

00:59:02.720 say you have to restructure the whole thing up but that doesn't mean you have to fire every single

00:59:06.320 teacher who currently would respond in an anonymous survey saying actually i do support a bit of

00:59:12.740 critical race theory that's not how it works the majority of people as we have seen in the last 10

00:59:17.260 years will go along with almost anything as long as the social incentive structure is for them to

00:59:22.060 do that and look most people if you actually ask them and i include teachers in this and teaching

00:59:27.840 is a notoriously difficult job if you ask most teachers even very very bright ones what critical

00:59:34.200 race theory is most of them wouldn't even be able to tell you or explain to you because there's

00:59:38.960 simply not enough time in the day to plan your lessons teach the classes mark the books attend

00:59:44.660 all the pointless meetings do all the pointless paperwork and then dive into the critical race

00:59:49.980 theory and what it is and the tenants yeah but no no but but there's a point that i want to make

00:59:55.540 it which is really which is really important just let you i don't think we've spoken enough

01:00:01.000 about the fact that this is cambridge university this isn't london south bank university this

01:00:07.880 isn't you know whatever nottingham trent or whatever sorry dean you went to nottingham trent

01:00:13.080 i'll produce my apologies but this isn't a university of mid-ranking yeah dean's gonna

01:00:18.980 to quit now you see i can just hear him on the other end no no he's not gonna quit he went to

01:00:24.160 nottingham trend this is the best job he's ever gonna get mate you've got this job and you're

01:00:31.520 fucking grateful for it all right no but the point is is this is the premier academic institution of

01:00:41.060 this country when we were doing our a levels we all dreamt about going to this university

01:00:46.400 This is the academic equivalent of playing in the Premier League.

01:00:50.460 Now, just imagine if you're a footballer and you're looking at the Premier League and it's completely corrupt.

01:00:55.440 The matches don't mean anything. Everything's a farce and a sham and it's completely rotten from the inside.

01:01:01.560 What does that say about you? What does that say about your career, your dreams, your aspirations?

01:01:06.820 And what do you do in order to succeed?

01:01:08.980 Do you stand out and sacrifice everything that you've worked for in order to essentially get ahead?

01:01:15.380 Or do you basically take a stand and sacrifice your career and everything you've worked for?

01:01:21.620 I mean, what do you do? This is a tragedy.

01:01:26.860 Yeah, I just think as to your point about teachers not being able to spell out critical race theory,

01:01:31.880 I'm sure it's right. Most people can't spell out critical race theory who are woke,

01:01:35.620 but they are still woke and they still have that worldview.

01:01:39.220 and as for them uh sort of gutting them out if you were to change even not trying to sack everyone

01:01:47.780 but just try and change the the curriculum and try and change how education is done in our country

01:01:54.580 i think there'd be a revolt i think a lot of teachers would protest that as they have done

01:01:58.900 before so that that's why i just i don't i'm not convinced that it's as i mean we'll see what

01:02:04.340 happens if if there can be any change from the top but i'm not convinced there'll be an easy

01:02:09.460 process in no i don't i don't think no no i don't think anyone's saying it will be easy

01:02:13.860 and by the way the answer to all of this is politics right let's be honest the answer to

01:02:17.860 all of this is people being elected who actively a understand this problem and be opposed what's

01:02:24.660 been happening and there are lots of people within academia who would be prepared to facilitate the

01:02:29.700 changes that are necessary if there was the political will and the political cover to actually

01:02:35.300 go ahead with this so it starts with i mean this ultimately is about politics and unless we have

01:02:42.260 uh a change not just of government because a lot of this was happening under the tories but

01:02:47.700 a change of the world view of the people who run the country from the very top down

01:02:52.420 uh this won't change and that's why you have to have uh election results that deliver a sound

01:02:59.060 majority and a clear mandate for this to be reformed seeing as we've brought up the topic of

01:03:08.380 what ideas are compatible with western liberal ideas i just thought i might do a little plug for

01:03:15.840 my upcoming live event in london at the emmanuel center september 11th majid nawaz and raymond

01:03:22.720 ibrahim friends of trigonometry i think as much as my show is islam compatible with the west lads

01:03:30.160 i hope you'll join me i hope you'll see you there and if you want tickets it's winstonmarshall.eventbrite.co.uk

01:03:39.200 excellent well on that happy note let's move on to our final story of the week which is of course

01:03:44.960 meta the owner of facebook has get away with that mug you just did mate uh meta has agreed

01:03:52.800 meta has agreed to pay up to 18 billion dollars to settle claims uh that its platforms have harmed

01:04:00.240 children uh this of course is to do with uh a number of different uh claims against meta

01:04:06.880 up to and including children who have committed suicide as a result of the of the content that

01:04:11.360 they've watched and there are really well there are many sides to this story but it is

01:04:16.480 uh you know i don't even know why i said that there are so many sides to this story actually

01:04:21.040 it's a very complicated issue to to talk about um so let's get into it tom what are your thoughts

01:04:27.360 on this idea of social media companies now meta i think has admitted no fault but you don't pay

01:04:35.200 18 billion dollars if if there's no no fire to the smoke right um so i think there's an

01:04:42.160 acknowledgement that at least i don't know about now but at least in the past there has been this

01:04:47.600 uber wild wild west of social media the move fast and break things ideology of these companies where

01:04:55.040 they really i don't think understood the sorts of impact that their platforms would be having

01:05:00.960 on the world you know down from little kids being affected by it through to civil war and

01:05:06.240 in in the third world because people are getting ramped up over uh different things so what do we

01:05:12.800 think about this it's really complicated as you say i mean the fact that meta have admitted no

01:05:18.880 fault it's a bit like um you know prince andrew paying all that money to virginia jufrae out of

01:05:22.960 course somebody claimed to have never met but uh it's uh it's it's one it's a fascinating

01:05:31.280 development i suppose one of the things is that it's so clear that despite all the conversations

01:05:35.360 just by the buyer that we have in the uk about trying to regulate big tech trying to change the

01:05:39.600 behaviors of these enormous silicon valley giants that really it comes down to american regulation

01:05:45.200 and american litigation which will affect how these platforms operate not just in the us but

01:05:49.440 but across the world, basically, that was always going to be, you know, the censorship controls

01:05:53.660 got rolled back when these companies changed hands in America, or when the Trump went back

01:05:59.780 to the White House, and it was clear, and the message was sent to these companies that they

01:06:03.580 needed to play ball on, say, censorship, and roll that back. Otherwise, they weren't necessarily

01:06:07.900 going to be in as hospitable a climate. So it comes down, as ever, to what goes on in America.

01:06:14.660 I think the difficult thing with the whole social media, what impact is it having on society,

01:06:18.900 the youth and what have you is that there are clear ways in which it has affected that everyone

01:06:23.020 can see it in their lives the way in which it's encouraged the kind of unsociability screen time

01:06:28.680 just the way in which um people in their own social media usage let alone just talking about

01:06:33.780 kids regret the amount of time they spend on it attention spans what have you where i think the

01:06:39.620 ground is not actually as firm is the idea that it's having this drastic deleterious effect on

01:06:45.700 mental health for instance because even if you look at a lot of the research that is supposedly

01:06:50.900 there for that the the it's quite small and kind of not particularly well measurable there's a big

01:06:57.220 issue with trying to demonstrate um causation over correlation you know there are um quite um

01:07:03.780 struggling a lot of struggling teenagers shall we say out there who happen to use social media a lot

01:07:07.940 but that's not because the social media is the problem necessarily even if it might add to it

01:07:12.740 So I do think we need to be a little bit careful about having a kind of moral panic about technology in the same way that we might have had about television or whatever in eras previously.

01:07:23.180 But clearly it is having an impact. If it didn't, then it wouldn't be such a successful product.

01:07:27.940 And in the same way that when something like the printing press came along, we all think about the positives now in terms of literacy and the spreading of the written word and whatever.

01:07:36.540 But it was also genuinely destabilizing in a lot of ways, politically and otherwise.

01:07:40.560 So I guess we're just starting to get to grits with this. The one thing I worry about slightly is that the assumption that social media is just single handedly rotting everyone's brains.

01:07:49.780 I think there's probably a lot more blame to go around and it might not be quite as catastrophic as some people are making out.

01:07:57.380 I think it's very apt that you make the reference to the Andrew formerly known as Prince here, because I think Meta have pulled an absolute blinder in this case.

01:08:06.880 they the reason they settled is because there was a whistleblower who revealed that they had a

01:08:14.660 policy of don't ask don't tell when it came to harm done to children and so they got done and

01:08:21.920 this is really key i think for another sort of part of this story is this is a civil case not

01:08:28.200 a federal or criminal case and so uh they they've that that's important with regards to free speech

01:08:36.180 the first amendment which we can come to um but they have avoided what they metaphor could have

01:08:43.220 cost them 1.4 trillion dollars and that the states making the case against them could have cost 200

01:08:49.220 billion so they've settled for 17 billion but actually it's only about 12 billion the extra

01:08:55.460 5 billion comes if the states and this is the genius of whoever is representing meta

01:09:01.060 they have got it so that the states are now incentivized to go after TikTok YouTube and

01:09:07.920 Snap to get a similar deal and if they can get them they'll get more money those other companies

01:09:13.440 have to pay more money and the new regulations on social media use for miners will be even harder

01:09:22.100 than what Meta have agreed to but basically the story is that Meta have knowingly been

01:09:28.460 create using addictive methods knowing it was doing harm for for children for years and they're

01:09:37.260 not that that it's a light punishment but it's worse than that if you read the meta statement

01:09:44.100 that they put out which i've i've pinged over as an asset for us to read because it it's kind of

01:09:49.180 gross but they they've spun the whole thing to turn themselves into the good guys so they do

01:09:54.800 this open letter letter to tick tock and youtube to join us to join us in supporting teams we are

01:10:03.100 announcing an agreement we have reached with a bipartisan group of 52 attorney generals across

01:10:07.880 the states territories and building uh long-standing efforts to empower parents and support

01:10:14.060 teens i mean the whole thing they've turned they've spun the whole thing to so that they're

01:10:18.880 the good guys when they have very much been the villains in this story all along. And it's a big

01:10:27.860 deal about censorship. And we have to talk about what's going on in Britain, which is not only for

01:10:34.200 the Online Safety Act, which was also started, by the way, because of a young girl called Molly

01:10:38.800 Howard, who committed suicide and ended up being passed by the Tory government. And then Kaysama

01:10:44.440 added to it and banned social media use for under 16s but as with the case in

01:10:49.620 Meta and here in Britain what it actually means is that all of us not

01:10:56.480 just miners need some sort of digital ID some sort of verification to use the

01:11:02.080 internet to use YouTube to use all of these other social media platforms

01:11:06.280 YouTube by the way which is the number one search engine not just the social

01:11:10.240 media platform but categorized as a social media platform what that means is

01:11:13.960 they those companies now have the power if they want to shut individuals out so

01:11:21.120 what we saw revealed in the Twitter files that slack channels of the

01:11:27.560 government the American government the White House approaching Twitter as it

01:11:33.620 was called then saying can you can you push down hide this Hunter but close

01:11:37.620 down this hunter biden story it was everything we saw through covid about censoring individuals

01:11:44.280 now we're not just in britain where we're already there the americans that's exactly what's

01:11:50.100 happening now so the america the internet will no longer be a free place and maybe 10 years ago

01:11:56.600 it would have been taking quite a lot of imagination to think oh well i'm not going to get

01:12:01.300 banned or blocked from the internet but now after everything we've gone through over the last five

01:12:06.080 years. This is a serious threat and a serious blow, I think, to American freedoms.

01:12:14.620 We also have to take, and it's a great point you're making there, Winston, we also have to

01:12:18.620 take into consideration, you know, the effect that this is having on kids. I mean, I remember

01:12:23.700 when we interviewed Jonathan Haidt, I think it was around a year ago, and he said this is one of

01:12:28.580 the greatest acts of destruction of human capital that we have ever seen. What is

01:12:36.020 being done to attention spans what is being done to focus what is being done to children's ability

01:12:41.780 to learn look let's just ask very simply we can even go around the four people here today

01:12:47.860 how many of us still read books on a regular basis oh look winston i know you've your house

01:12:53.920 is basically one large book but for the vast majority of people i mean that joke is only

01:13:01.280 funny if you've ever been to winston's house but great great of you to play to your typical size

01:13:08.260 of audience maybe about 30 exactly mate listen it's boutique it's not anyway all right it's niche

01:13:16.720 anyway but my point is like we don't even read anymore most of us the how many people people

01:13:25.360 used to read the classics as a way of enjoyment i think that the amount of people who actually

01:13:30.800 read the classics has shrunk hugely you can you have you talk to university professors who say

01:13:38.060 that kids even in the most celebrated of institutions i know they're all corrupted now

01:13:42.360 and all cesspools or whatever else but in places like harvard etc you would you give them a copy

01:13:47.860 of the odyssey and you ask them to read it cover to cover and they look at you like you're you're

01:13:53.740 asking to do a pilgrimage to mecca i mean they'd probably be up for that knowing them but you know

01:13:57.600 what i mean well exactly i can i just say just uh say a few words in defense of the idea of

01:14:05.040 of responsibility and parental responsibility in these situations look there are all sorts of

01:14:11.440 things that are bad for your children that exist uh some of them are legal some of them are illegal

01:14:16.960 if your 13 year old is doing those things it's kind of your job as a parent to protect them

01:14:23.680 against it now i appreciate this is new technology parents haven't necessarily fully grasped a lot of

01:14:29.320 what's going on but nonetheless i mean i've talked about this a lot my wife is a complete screen

01:14:34.600 with our kids and i imagine that will continue for a long time and the reason is it's been very

01:14:39.800 clear for a long time even if you're not a researcher or someone who's paid much attention

01:14:44.180 the mere fact that most of the silicon valley people don't let their children use tablets and

01:14:50.960 smartphones etc until a certain age would tell you something about what your job is as a parent

01:14:56.580 so when we talk about oh you know meta has been really evil well look is mcdonald's really evil

01:15:03.600 in making food that people want to buy if 13 year olds become obese as a result of eating a

01:15:09.380 cheeseburger every day is that yes if mcdonald's if if we know if mcdonald's if it's found that

01:15:16.100 mcdonald's were intentionally putting poisonous substances in their food yes it is evil and

01:15:21.880 that's what the equivalent is here but they're not poisonous substance they're not poisonous

01:15:25.460 winston they are uh taste enhancing substances right you can't prove a direct link between the

01:15:32.560 shit mcdonald's put in the burgers and people having cancer but if you if you look i think

01:15:38.340 that's incorrect i think i think the reason why the meta the reason why meta have settled

01:15:45.260 is because they saw that it's going to be improved that what they were doing they did knowingly that

01:15:51.900 it was detrimental and and harmful to children scientifically harmful to children so i think it

01:15:59.700 is actually uh well we don't know that because they settled probably to confuse this line

01:16:05.300 somewhat right so we don't know if they really truly believe that or if they just thought we're

01:16:09.800 better off taking 18 billion as opposed to 180 billion down the line after lots of litigation

01:16:15.580 but my broader point that was the case brought against them by the states

01:16:18.800 i understand what i'm saying is ultimately protection of children is first and foremost

01:16:25.780 the responsibility of the parents and if you're giving your children a smartphone or a tablet an

01:16:31.180 unsupervised internet access at the age of 12 or 13 you're a fucking idiot with all respect and

01:16:37.540 it's your fault if anything happens to them at that point it's your job as a parent to look after

01:16:42.960 your kids and protect them from the overwhelmingly dangerous world in which we all live in which there

01:16:48.780 are lots and lots of harmful things that we can all engage in uh and if you're a child you have

01:16:54.500 to be protected by that from that by your family first and foremost as for meta uh yes of course

01:17:01.780 i think you know as as tom pointed out it's new technology new technology always has all these

01:17:07.620 massive uh unexpected unpredictable side effects and uh the social media companies do have to

01:17:15.220 improve the way that they they do this especially when it comes to children but as you said yourself

01:17:20.340 winston there's a massive flip side to this which is if you start regulating what children can do

01:17:26.500 on the internet necessarily you have to establish who is a child and who isn't and that means we

01:17:31.540 We have to verify everyone's IDs and then there's no anonymity on the Internet ever again.

01:17:36.440 And that's one thing which even if we park the social media issue, the sort of think of the children argument can often just have a knock on impact for adults in general.

01:17:45.800 I mean, we're in the process in this country of cracking down more and more on vaping because of the idea that it's been particularly picked up by young people.

01:17:55.540 But the net impact of that is then becoming more expensive, less available, ultimately probably banned for everyone, essentially.

01:18:02.520 And I think you're seeing that with social media and it's much more pronounced where social media is concerned because of the fact that the way in which our ability to access these apps just overlap so perfectly with our ability to meaningfully exercise freedom of speech in the 21st century.

01:18:17.140 um and whilst i think it's understandable that there are so many anxieties around social media

01:18:22.220 use i do kind of go back to that kind of blame the parents not having kids myself it's very easy

01:18:26.540 for me to do that but in this in the same way as you say constant that like it's it's not the

01:18:30.880 existence of mcdonald's per se that is the problem it's parents who would allow their children to eat

01:18:34.740 it every single day right see that seems to me a kind of much more straightforward to regulate

01:18:39.280 shall we say young people's access to social media rather than either getting the government involved

01:18:43.920 or via litigation forcing meta to change tack um i just worry that this is going to become a

01:18:50.420 kind of uh the beginning of just the increased regulation of social media which i think as we've

01:18:57.040 found um already from what we've experienced in this country with the online safety act doesn't

01:19:01.260 really end well even despite its stated intentions i suppose so i'm not even convinced that this is

01:19:08.760 going to work for the kids because i don't entirely believe social media is the only problem i had to

01:19:15.520 think the smartphones are the problem so if you don't have access to social media and you still

01:19:21.020 have a smartphone you'll end up on candy crush or some other thing that you'll you'll just be glued

01:19:27.520 to your phone because the screen is addictive having the stimulation everything you use on there

01:19:32.100 is is a stimulant and and designed to to keep you on there i actually think the problem is smartphones

01:19:38.020 So I would be more harsh and say that there should be some sort of regulation about selling smartphones to minors, just like we have.

01:19:46.740 You can't buy alcohol or tobacco, certain other things.

01:19:49.540 To your point about mothers and parents, rather, you know, having them having the responsibility.

01:19:55.680 I actually have some sympathy for parents here, which is that life is hard.

01:20:01.000 Raising kids is hard and you've got to work and you've got to take your kids all over to school, all over the place.

01:20:06.780 and actually sometimes giving them an ipad or an iphone to watch gives you a break and i i actually

01:20:15.160 i understand that the instinct to do that and maybe that should be overcome uh but i'm i'm

01:20:22.400 sympathetic for how how it's an easy solution so let's say the kid's crying all night and you

01:20:28.180 haven't slept for ages you need a break giving them an iphone or an ipad actually sorts that out

01:20:34.260 So expecting the parents to not do that, to change the culture around smartphones, I don't think it's going to happen organically.

01:20:43.020 Well, hold on a second. But that's also true. Sorry, Francis, as the only parent here, let me just answer this. Right.

01:20:49.000 Yeah, that's true of everything. You could say, well, you've got a busy life.

01:20:53.660 You've got bills to pay. You've got work to go to. You haven't got time to cook.

01:20:57.220 let's eat mcdonald's every day uh when i you know i had a neighbor in azbekistan where i grew up

01:21:02.560 uh who i later learned uh in order to keep her baby soothed she would chew poppy seeds and put

01:21:08.740 it into like in the mixer with the breast milk and basically heroin giving the baby heroin to

01:21:13.820 keep her calm parenting is always a trade-off between doing things that are convenient and

01:21:19.960 doing things that are good and so uh there are parents who for example will give their children

01:21:25.940 a tablet to solve fun mass problems, right? I'm not against that. I'm not saying giving your

01:21:32.020 children access to a screen-based device makes you an evil person. What I'm saying is there's

01:21:37.780 an age-appropriate thing, and then there's the unsupervised thing, and then there is what is it

01:21:43.580 that they're actually doing on their thing. And your job as a parent is to monitor across all

01:21:49.840 those three areas and to make sure that what you are doing to give yourself a break, quote-unquote.

01:21:54.920 by the way look i've got two children under four i could do with a break i know exactly

01:21:59.240 what you're talking about but the question is are you doing something that is harmful to your child

01:22:05.640 in order to make your life easier and where you sit on that spectrum as a parent is up to you

01:22:11.320 i'm just saying if you give your children unsupervised internet access unsupervised

01:22:16.680 access to a smartphone when they're young you are irresponsible and you can't then blame the

01:22:22.440 government and then people come in and say well we need government regulation well we've already

01:22:28.360 talked about how dangerous that is because the the unexpected consequences unpredictable side

01:22:33.880 effects of government regulation look at the online safety bill it was touted as this sort

01:22:38.200 of anti-noncing bill but that's not remotely what it what it what it became the the part of the

01:22:45.000 problem here as well is there's a class component to this conversation that we haven't addressed

01:22:49.720 And you can see it in the way everybody here is talking about parents, but nobody has mentioned

01:22:54.820 the word parent in that there is a significant portion of kids in this country who grew up in

01:23:00.320 single parent households, many of whom that I've taught. And if you're a single parent mom and

01:23:06.160 you've got three jobs on the go in order to keep a roof over your heads and you've got kids with

01:23:13.480 the best will in the world, look, you know, you would want them sitting down, you know, maybe once

01:23:18.280 hit 10, 11 years old, cracking open a copy of Jane Eyre and getting stuck in. But the reality

01:23:23.500 is that's not going to happen. So what do you do with that generation of children who don't have

01:23:31.280 access to parents all of the time, maybe just have one parent who for very good reasons aren't

01:23:39.200 available and they have unfettered access to a screen? I'm not pretending I know the answer,

01:23:45.080 but they are far more of those kids in this country than I am frankly I'm comfortable with

01:23:51.420 and I have seen the very real world effects in a classroom of those children who stare at screens

01:23:57.160 day in day out out for hours a day because mum simply isn't around to be able to parent them all

01:24:03.240 the time because she can't be well I've just depressed you haven't I anyway yeah

01:24:12.220 very good depressed and class shamed as well uh we have middle class snobs look well i am middle

01:24:19.740 class nob looking down on this on single mothers which actually is accurate anyway uh gentlemen uh

01:24:25.820 great great show this week absolutely fantastic uh i am can't wait for uh next week if you've

01:24:31.980 enjoyed this watching this listen to this make sure to subscribe to all three channels that's

01:24:36.780 trigonometry the winston marshall show and of course spiked uh like can i just say the francis

01:24:41.980 foster show as well please oh for sake anyone else got a plug go on subscribe to the reminder

01:24:53.980 wait are you doing a debate on whether islam is compatible with the west on september 11th

01:24:59.820 yes what what's wrong with that it just seems like a random random day just uh

01:25:05.420 plucked out of the air anyway i hope everyone enjoys it and it's uh uneventful uh gentlemen

01:25:11.980 we will see you next week uh at off the fence uh as well as of course you watching

01:25:17.020 and listening home take care and we'll see you in a week's time

TRIGGERnometry - August 28, 2026

Civil Servants Triggered by British Flag & Is Trump Getting Impeached - Off The Fence

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