00:00:49.100A riveting subject, which may be dry, but you have managed to make it interesting.
00:00:54.660And before you tell us all about that, just tell everybody who are you, how are you, where you are, what has been your journey through life?
00:01:01.920Okay. And do I tell you or do I go straight down the camera?
00:11:58.920Can you put the case forward for Bitcoin and crypto and why is it a good thing?
00:12:03.120Well, I would distinguish between Bitcoin and crypto because there are there are lots of like.
00:12:09.920OK, so let's just backtrack a bit. Every time you have a new breakthrough technology, you almost always it is accompanied with a speculative bubble.
00:12:21.800So if you think of the Internet, you know, there was a huge bubble in dot-com stocks.
00:12:26.520And the story around the Internet was, you know, the Internet is going to change the world.
00:12:30.520And that story was right. It is going to change the world. It did change the world.
00:12:34.980But that didn't stop loads of stupid speculative money going in.
00:12:39.500And, you know, how many dot-com effectively scammed companies there were, people raising money for just ridiculous companies.
00:12:47.000And so and you had it with the railways, for example, in the 1830s and the 1850s in America, in the UK, there were huge bubbles around railway technology.
00:12:56.000And you just always happens. You get a new technology and, you know, everyone gets very excited about it and it gets ahead of itself.
00:13:03.580But you need bubbles because bubbles accelerate the investment.
00:13:07.960So if we didn't have that bubble in tech in 2000, you know, the all the, you know, the railway tracks wouldn't have been laid that the cables wouldn't have been laid.
00:13:19.080So it accelerates investment. So, you know, a lot of people say, oh, bubbles are terrible now.
00:13:25.120But what you have with Bitcoin, it's a new technology. It's a breakthrough technology.
00:13:28.680But not only that, it's a new technology that is a new system of money.
00:13:32.980So if you were like a Marvel comic superhero designing like the ultimate bubble, it would be Bitcoin. And there's a finite supply of it. So that, again, increases the speculative potential of it.
00:15:14.780What makes Bitcoin so good for being the exchange medium of the Internet?
00:15:18.820Because I distinguish between cash and money. So if you if you go into a sweet shop and you'd get your card out and you buy whatever you buy in the sweet shop and you go with your card, that is not a cash transaction because it involves a card company and a bank and all sorts of middlemen processing that transaction.
00:15:41.240and all these middlemen, they take their cut on the transaction
00:15:45.560and they all know there is a record of that transaction having taken place.
00:15:49.580If I go into the sweet shop and I buy a newspaper, whatever it is,
00:15:52.660and I give the newspaper man a pound or whatever the cost of the newspaper is,
00:15:57.480it is a direct transaction, cash transaction that involves no middlemen.
00:16:02.360And we're going into this kind of cashless society at the moment,
00:17:50.980And where do you stand on this argument that goes, hang on, aren't you just encouraging the Wild West nature of the Internet?
00:17:56.660You know, these nefarious people who want to trade anything from drugs to child pornography to whatever it is.
00:18:04.040And Bitcoin is essentially aiding that.
00:18:06.760It certainly facilitates and aids illegal activity.
00:18:11.040But if you look at the somebody's done a study on it and the amount of Bitcoins that are actually used for the kind of transactions you described, it's like fewer than two percent or something.
00:18:23.320is like an incredibly small percentage.
00:18:30.700We're delighted to have a brand new sponsor
00:19:19.920Go on to www.babel, and that is spelt B-A-B-B-E-L.co.uk, or download the app and make that time in isolation fly by.
00:19:33.380Well, let's move on to talk about your book and tax, because it's a fascinating angle of attack that you have,
00:19:39.800where you talk about the fact that almost all of the major events in history can be interpreted through the lens of tax
00:19:48.500in a way that gives you a different perspective on it.
00:19:50.940So for our viewers and listeners to whom that may sound a bit of an alien concept,
00:19:55.820just give us some examples of what you're talking about.
00:19:58.100So when I started writing this book, I did the show in 2016 and then that led to a book deal.
00:20:05.580And the central thesis of the book is that taxation is as old as civilization itself.
00:20:12.560There has never been in all recorded history a civilization without taxation of some kind.
00:20:18.500And in fact, taxation probably predated civilization.
00:20:22.080In the hunter-gatherer societies before human beings settled on the fertile plains between the Tigris and the Euphrates,
00:20:28.860there was probably already existed this sense of duty to the greater collective.
00:20:34.060And that is the central principle of taxation.
00:20:38.140And, you know, the very first taxes we have were in ancient Mesopotamia.
00:20:41.600And in fact, the very first examples we have of ancient handwriting are tax records, tax documents.
00:20:51.580And you can look at this, you know, tax records are always, historians always look at tax records first because they're, for obvious reasons, the best preserved records because they're records of debts.
00:21:02.340And in all the time since then, there's never been a civilization without taxation.
00:21:06.680Now, taxation can take various different forms.
00:21:09.180So you pay taxes in cash. But in, you know, in ancient civilization, there wasn't necessarily money yet.
00:21:18.280You know, so you might pay your taxes with a share of your produce is given.
00:21:23.420And in fact, the very first tithes were in ancient Mesopotamia or a share of your labor.
00:21:29.500Or so taxes not just taken in in cash are taken in the form of labor.
00:21:34.080And then you have these sort of two extremes where you might have a slave at one extreme where 100% of that slave's labor is owned.
00:21:44.740In fact, the slave has no ownership of nothing.
00:21:48.160And at the other extent, if you have a complete anarchy with no government, no leaders whatsoever, and so total freedom, nothing is taken.
00:21:59.900And so those would be the two extremes. But that society where nothing has taken has pretty much never existed.
00:22:05.740Although in ancient Greece, quite interestingly, in ancient Athens before the Peloponnesian War, taxes were voluntary.
00:22:12.400Oh, really? Yeah. So it's like Greece now then?
00:22:19.580So they were voluntary. And how did people pay them?
00:22:23.520Yeah. The taxes were only paid by the very rich. And it was expected that there was this sort of culture of social duty and benevolence in ancient Greek society.
00:22:36.260And there was this idea of that. So if you think of someone like Pericles, you know, King Pericles, they would if the if it was deemed that the city needed a games or it needed a new bridge or it needed a new building built or needed a warship or whatever it is, it would be beholden to the rich to pay for the construction of that for the for those games or for that building or for that bridge or for that ship.
00:23:03.360and not only would they were expected to pay for it they would be expected to carry out
00:23:08.500the that work as well so rather than give your money to a bureaucrat who gives it to a you know
00:23:15.600a company that to do the thing that person would carry and then they would then put their own name
00:23:20.220on it so it would be you know pericles's bridge or pericles's building and many of you know the
00:23:26.580greatest work buildings in ancient greece were built in this way it was called liturgy the
00:23:30.620Parthenon, it's believed, was built. And they provided the warships that protected the Athenian
00:23:37.960shipping lanes from pirates and so on. Athens back then was a big trading empire. And because
00:23:44.020the rich person was putting his name on it, his reputation was at stake. So the actual result was
00:23:51.220he often carried out the piece of work to the highest possible standard, because his reputation
00:23:57.240is standing and would often spend more than the minimum whereas now we have this culture of you
00:24:03.800know paying the least possible tax they would often spend more because they wanted to make
00:24:07.580sure it was done to think and it was just sort of this your kind of social duty and funnily enough
00:24:12.500duty we have this word duty duty is actually a tax it's another word for tax right so so you have
00:24:18.720all these different but but there has in all that time there has never existed a society without
00:24:23.560taxation of some kind. So that was the first kind of realisation. You know, as Benjamin Franklin
00:24:29.580said, you know, taxes and death are the two inevitabilities. And actually that phrase,
00:24:35.580he wasn't the first person to say that. He's credited as being the first person to say that.
00:24:39.180But the first person to say that was actually a comedian in an early 18th century farce called
00:24:45.440The Cobbler of Preston, this idea that these are the two inevitabilities. Anyway, but you can
00:24:52.220look back through history and you you get this you suddenly realize that tax is power if a king
00:24:59.580or a government or an emperor whoever the leader is as as long as they control that as soon as they
00:25:04.940lose their tax revenue they lose their power taxation is power it is control and you you when
00:25:13.840you when you start to look at things through that you know imagine if governments today don't have
00:25:17.260the tax revenue, pretty quickly the whole thing falls apart. And you then think every war in
00:25:25.440history was funded by some kind of tax. Every single war. You tax during the event and then
00:25:32.320afterwards, you know, the conquered territories would be plundered and then taxed. And often wars
00:25:38.180are funded through debt, but debt is just a taxation on the future. I regard debt as another
00:25:43.640form of taxation. Every revolution has been a rising up, a revolt against some kind of injustice
00:25:50.820perpetrated by the tax system. The most famous ones being the French Revolution, the American
00:25:56.840Civil War, no taxation without representation. Even the Russian Revolution. The American Revolution,
00:26:02.000yeah. No, that was the US American Revolution, but even the Russian Revolution. No, sorry,
00:26:07.760you said American Civil War, that's why. Oh, sorry, the American Revolution. And, sorry,
00:33:39.760And that was justification as to why women should be given the vote.
00:33:42.660So even at something unconnected like the suffragettes, there's a tax story there.
00:33:45.900but ordinary Americans did not pay income tax until 1942 and there was a the 1942 Revenue Act
00:33:52.380and in order to like persuade Americans that it was their patriotic duty to pay there was all
00:33:58.300sorts of like Donald there was a film commission from Walt Disney that had Donald Duck paying his
00:34:02.620income tax really happily showing him how to fill out the form Irving Berlin was commissioned to
00:34:07.660write a song called I Paid My Income Tax Today and it contains the line a thousand planes to
00:34:15.880bomb Berlin they'll all be paid for and I chipped in see those bombers in the sky Rockefeller helped
00:34:23.500to build them so did I and was ever the tax the link between tax and war more apparent I don't
00:34:29.240think you could get away with that now could you absolutely not but I mean you know what played
00:34:33.520for the Iraq war you know like every battle of Fallujah was funded by me but they they you know
00:34:40.440that was that was the mentality yeah and and in fact every conquest as well has been about taking
00:34:45.300control of the tax base, the land, the labor, the produce, the profit. So you need a crisis to
00:34:51.560introduce new levels of tax. But what happens after the crisis passes is that taxation never
00:34:57.500goes back to the levels that it was before the crisis began. After the Second World War, for
00:35:04.080example, the wounded have got to be helped. We had the birth of the NHS. So a land grab goes on
00:35:11.240in a time of crisis where government seizes some kind of control and then never gives it back
00:35:16.640afterwards. And the IFS calls this the ratchet effect. And so if you, when you try and figure
00:35:22.060out how it is that government, you know, if you think in 1900, government was about 10, 15% of
00:35:28.900GDP in the UK. Now it's more like 45, 50%. Same and all across Western Europe, France is like
00:35:35.780Government spending is like 56 percent of GDP. And the Gilets Jaunes, there's another example of another tax rebellion, oil taxes.
00:35:44.880And this this this uprising in Lebanon was about taxes on WhatsApp.
00:35:49.920They tried to levy a tax. Every time you make calls on WhatsApp and send taxes on WhatsApp, they tried to levy a tax and it caused a rebellion.
00:35:56.180So so you need a crisis. And coming back today, we've got this coronavirus crisis going on.
00:36:02.460I promise you, and the government has spent all these pledges bailing out and fiscal stimulus and all the rest of it, it's a land grab going on.
00:36:13.040And you will see suddenly when the crisis passes, this bigger space in the economy that government occupies won't be ceded.
00:36:23.480The Tories are supposed to believe in limited government, but...
00:40:18.800Firstly, that thing I described of the EU trying to harmonise taxes
00:40:25.820is one danger, you know, centralised power effectively in Brussels
00:40:30.420and Brexit was a vote against that centralisation.
00:40:35.380um but i hoped that you know i voted for brexit mainly because i'm a libertarian and i believe in
00:40:44.300as little government as possible and it removes a layer of government effectively but my hope
00:40:49.520perhaps a little naively was that it would lead to a sort of most libertarians voted for brexit
00:40:56.420quite a few didn't but i think the majority of libertarians were in favor of it and we were
00:41:01.080hoping that it would lead to a much reduced government in the UK and a much freer sovereign
00:41:07.400society. But that doesn't appear to be the case. So Dominic, you say that you're a libertarian and
00:41:14.640that you would prefer smaller government, lower intervention, lower taxes. Can you make the case
00:41:20.120for libertarianism and why you believe in smaller government? Because if you look at all throughout
00:41:25.360history, the happiest, the most inventive, the most innovative, the most wealthy societies,
00:41:32.660the greatest societies in history, have always had very high levels of freedom.
00:41:40.840Whether it's the early Roman Republic or ancient Athens or the greater societies,
00:41:45.980that freedom reduces as the society evolves. But even Britain in the second half of the 19th
00:41:53.520century, sort of Britain's golden era, was a very low tax society. Early America, you know,
00:42:00.420the great America of extremely low tax society in the second half, the 19th and early 20th century.
00:42:06.740And so the central case for libertarianism. And then if you look at the opposite of that,
00:42:13.720and you look at the societies that have had very high levels of government, high levels of taxes,
00:42:18.560low levels of freedom. And by the way, there is a relationship between taxation and freedom.
00:42:23.520The less tax you pay, the more free you are, because the more of your own labour you own and the more economic freedom.
00:42:31.560You can't have freedom without economic freedom, is a Thatcher line.
00:42:35.640And so the central core is the less tax we pay, the freer we are, the more free we are to experiment with our money, with our ideas, with our thought.
00:42:46.340You know, all you guys are big free speech guys. It's all part of the same thing.
00:42:50.040free speech free movement free trade it's all part of the same you get all these guys are in
00:42:56.300favor of free speech but not free trade you know come on it's free everything and um you have the
00:43:03.480you have the greatest level of freedom but you also have the greatest levels of individual
00:43:07.020responsibility individuals are much more accountable for their own actions for their own choices
00:43:11.680and as a result they tend to behave better and they tend to act in a way that benefits themselves
00:43:18.420and also as a result benefits the greater good.
00:43:21.280And so the greatest societies in history
00:43:23.380have always been low-tax, libertarian-type societies.
00:43:46.140And Sweden's had all sorts of problems.
00:43:47.860But what's Scandinavia gets right? And I think there's a thing in Scandinavia. There's a there's well, let me just describe what Scandinavia gets right in its tax systems is tax.
00:44:00.520A much higher percentage of taxes are levied locally where there is far greater accountability.
00:44:05.860So people can see that the taxes they pay, they can see the immediate consequences of it and they can hold the people who are spending their money badly to a much greater account.
00:44:14.040so whereas in the UK for example much higher percentages are levied centrally and there's
00:44:23.180much less accountability so I think people are happier to pay higher levels of taxes when there
00:44:29.140is greater accountability for the money and how it's spent and there's a more clear visible effect
00:44:34.220between me giving this money and being able to see how that money was used and the the bomber
00:44:39.500the bombs that it was spent on um but the other thing that i i think exists in scandinavian
00:44:46.740countries and i think it's is almost the weather that breeds this and you you get it you probably
00:44:54.400get it in northern russia i'm not sure i don't know enough about it but you certainly get it in
00:44:57.520canada where there's this thing of if you do not prepare for the winter oh yeah you die oh yeah
00:45:05.060So that breeds a sort of responsibility and a preparation and a collectiveness that maybe doesn't exist so much in, say, southern Europe or where it's hotter, where there tend to be much more laissez-faire.
00:45:18.740And so it's sort of almost the weather creates a culture.
00:45:23.920And so this culture of social responsibility and individual responsibility exists in the Scandinavian countries that maybe isn't as prevalent further south.
00:45:32.820And this is a question I've always wanted to ask you, Dominic. So you're a libertarian, small government, low intervention. What about the NHS?
00:45:41.280The NHS, a national health service, is not the best means, in my opinion, to provide the highest standard of care to the most possible people at the lowest possible cost.
00:45:53.060And nor is state education the best means to provide the best possible education.
00:46:06.700And if you look at areas of the economy where it's pretty much a free market, they're not provided by the state.
00:46:16.200You look at something like food, for example, the food revolution that's happened in the UK.
00:46:20.500now food is as essential as good health care is essential to our survival but food is largely not
00:46:27.280provided by government and you just see the market at work in the food industry we've got
00:46:32.600the most incredible variety of food now the highest the most wonderful qualities you can
00:46:38.660find fault within because i don't like supermarkets i don't like this you can find faults with stuff
00:46:42.140but there is so much choice and the cost of food on a relative basis like food clothing and
00:46:48.260accommodation made up over 50 percent of um a worker's outlay or i think it was like 80 percent
00:46:56.080100 years ago something like that food clothing and accommodation now food clothing food clothing
00:47:01.660and accommodations are much lower portion like 15 to 20 percent of somebody's outlay something like
00:47:05.940that maybe accommodation a bit higher um but they didn't have the the most expensive purchase you
00:47:12.940ever make is your government of course which is like over 50 percent of everything you ever earn
00:47:17.240will end up in the government over the course of your entire life and so anyway you look at
00:47:24.020something that that is provided largely by a free market food clothing we've got incredible choice
00:47:28.680and you know i know we have food banks and so on but really nobody needs to go hungry you know you
00:47:34.360can buy for a pound you can buy an incredibly the ingredients to make an incredibly healthy
00:47:39.520vegetable soup or whatever it is that would have been a luxury 100 years ago and the problem with
00:47:45.700the National Health Service is it is run not for the benefit of the consumer, i.e. the patient,
00:47:51.640it is run largely for the benefit of the supplier. And whereas if you think, you know, you go into a
00:47:56.980shop, you don't like the service you get in the shop, you don't have to go to that shop, you can
00:48:00.860go to another shop, or you can leave that shop a bad review, or you can not pay the restaurant,
00:48:06.840you know, the shop is so desperate for your customer, the restaurant is so desperate, they
00:48:11.040will try and give you the best possible service and so on. That dynamic doesn't exist in the
00:48:14.800National Health Service and it should. In the 19th century we had the friendly societies and
00:48:19.440much more insurance-based system of health care and doctors were employed by local communities
00:48:27.680and if the doctors didn't like what the doctor was doing, local communities, he was held
00:48:36.340accountable to the local communities and they could sack him and employ another one. That same
00:48:40.740dynamic just doesn't exist within the NHS. It's so rife with protectionism and special interest
00:48:46.480groups. It is an absolute mine of crony capitalism. There's so much corruption landing
00:48:53.640these contracts. And you get these stupid situations where, I'm going to get the figures
00:48:57.620exactly wrong, but some companies finding a way of charging the NHS £10 per packet of paracetamol.
00:49:03.940Whereas you look at paracetamol on the free market, you can buy it for 20p. It's absurd that
00:49:08.400the NHS is being billed these amounts and all these inefficiencies that just wouldn't happen
00:49:12.680if small companies were running individual businesses within the NHS on a profit and
00:49:18.460loss basis where they had to take much greater account of waste. So it's just not the best way
00:49:23.780to provide the best possible health care at the lowest possible cost. Now people go, if we didn't
00:49:28.660have an NHS, then people would go untreated. And I just don't believe that. Because let's say
00:49:35.260health care wasn't provided by the state. And you go back to a 19th century, you know,
00:49:40.840if the state wasn't providing health care, we would all have to take precautions to look after
00:49:47.720our own health care and provide for it, not just for ourselves, but for other people in the
00:49:52.560community as well. And so you'd have, you know, I envisaged if there was no health care, and this
00:49:56.980is idealistic chat, because the idea of getting away, getting rid of the NHS is just not realistic.
00:50:01.640But, you know, people would have greater responsibility to look after their own lives, look after their own health, provide for their own health care and provide for the health care of others in their community as well.
00:50:14.360And, you know, you'll never prove it because you can't prove something that's not going to exist.
00:50:22.960But if government didn't provide health care, I believe that health care services and health care provision would be as advanced and as brilliant as food and clothing is.
00:50:35.540But the obvious counter example to that would be the United States where people do go and treat.
00:50:40.320The United States spends almost twice as much. The United States government spends almost twice as much on health care per capita as the UK government does.
00:50:51.200The United States government is this kind of mix, is this crony capitalist mixture of an insurance based system mixed with.
00:50:58.600It's just horrendous and it is the worst possible outcome.
00:51:03.040And, you know, far better systems, I think Switzerland, New Zealand, France, they all have insurance-based systems that work much better than ours do.
00:51:12.560And what is an insurance-based system for the people who don't know?
00:51:16.780Well, what the friendly societies did in the second half of the 19th century is as, you know, there was this huge economic boom.
00:51:26.300It was the greatest, one of the greatest periods of wealth creation ever, ever known, saw the greatest wealth growth ever seen.
00:51:34.580And in local communities, workers would put in a portion of their money they would give to what was their friendly society.
00:51:43.160Like the co-op was a friendly society and they would put a portion of their earnings and they would have there would be local communities, local friendly societies.
00:51:53.220And then that friendly society would then provide the health care, you know, would employ the doctors, employ the nurses and whatever else was needed.
00:52:05.680And and in times of emergency, you know, there would be that five pounds that they'd put in of that five percent of their earnings or whatever they put in would be their insurance in the case of and the community would decide, you know, well, that's this is Francis.
00:52:20.560He's been putting money in this thing all this time. He's a good guy. You know, we need to help him. Oh, this is Constantine. Constantine has lost his job. He's lost.
00:52:27.700And so welfare was was and health care was provided on a mutual basis locally.
00:52:33.900and it meant there was much greater flexibility so you know if constantine's a bum and he never
00:52:40.600does the work and and and he needs to kick up the bum then that's one kind of welfare and if if
00:52:46.180francis is a good guy and actually he needs to be you know have an arm around him and be stroked
00:52:50.220and you know it's much more but so there's just much more flexibility whereas one now our system
00:52:56.860of welfare is like a top-down one-size-fits-all so and that's that's how insurance worked and it
00:53:02.840was so successful that Lloyd George and Winston Churchill in the National Insurance Act of 1911
00:53:09.220tried to copy it on a national level. So they introduced national insurance and people would
00:53:14.480put in a portion of their earnings into the insurance system and as a result if they needed
00:53:19.060emergency health care or anything else that came out of the national insurance. The problem was
00:53:23.240people couldn't afford or didn't chose not to pay national insurance and for their local thing.
00:53:29.180They were effectively buying it twice. National insurance was compulsory. The local one wasn't.
00:53:34.020And so they had to carry on paying the local one and the national one and the local ones all went out of business.
00:53:38.940So it was a free market evolution that was so successful, the government copied it and then messed it up.
00:53:44.980And today, the money you pay international insurance should be there for you to call on in an emergency.
00:53:50.620But it isn't because the government spends it. Now, if a corporation did that, they, you know, it's what Robert Maxwell did.
00:53:56.440It's effectively fraud. But governments, it's a different rule for them.
00:54:02.680Well, that's nicely summed, Dominic. Our final question is always, what's the one thing that we're not talking about that we ought to be talking about?
00:54:11.180I think the one thing we're not talking about, slowly starting to talk about it, is race and racism.
00:54:17.220what is racism because we have had these you know accusations thrown about so and so is racist
00:54:28.360now what actually is what actually is racism uh you know if and i say this as you know somebody
00:54:36.760was my kids are all mixed race not all actually two of them are mixed race um what uh define
00:54:47.040I mean, is racism actively going and persecuting somebody on account of their race?
00:54:54.240Or is it just accidentally using the wrong word?
00:54:58.360Right. Well, the transformation of the last 10 years on that issue has been incredible.
00:55:01.700Racism used to mean prejudice against people on the basis of their skin color.
00:55:05.960Now it means you said something that people can misinterpret if they so choose.
00:55:09.820Yeah. I mean, you're racist if you use the wrong words.
00:55:16.120we all the constant you know a discriminating gentleman used to be a good thing now if you're
00:55:23.260discriminating it's it's a bad thing but you know i'm constantly making judgment all the way through
00:55:28.600having a conversation with somebody or having a relationship whatever you're constantly making
00:55:33.440judgments on whatever level the operate the relationship works now you make judgments based
00:55:39.280on how they look how they sound uh all how all sorts of different things and what are we just
00:55:45.300supposed to just ignore the fact that this guy is a different race to you? Are we just supposed to
00:55:50.760pretend that there aren't different races? Because there are. And different races, different
00:55:55.600characters, everyone has different characteristics. They just do. And I just think there's a dishonesty
00:56:01.260to the whole argument, whereas we're so scared of being called racist that we just airbrush the
00:56:08.440whole thing and pretend that nothing exists that there's no and so the sooner we can um acknowledge
00:56:16.580that make that acknowledging that people are different doesn't mean you are going to actively
00:56:22.800go out and persecute their that person on account of their race that's the sound of dominic getting
00:56:28.220cancelled well i i guess that well let's explore that because i think it's a really fascinating
00:56:33.100conversation. I guess the argument would be that we've decided to be hypersensitive about race
00:56:40.300because we went through periods in history where there was a lot of stereotyping of people based
00:56:47.740on their ethnicity or race, which was used to then discriminate against those people.
00:56:53.920So the idea would be, as you say, we all have our biases, but the idea would have been in the past
00:57:00.460that a lot of people would have said, well, black people are all lazy, right, which then would
00:57:04.680prevent a particular black person who was really hardworking, right, from being seen for who they
00:57:10.480actually are, as opposed to being seen through the prism of their race or their skin color,
00:57:17.240right? So, you know, that I think we would all agree is a positive that we moved away from
00:57:22.200judging people in this broad categories, right? We agreed on that? Yeah, yeah.
00:57:29.660Yeah. So what are you saying exactly? Because I don't want people to take what you said out of context or to misunderstand.
00:57:38.020The the the crime of racism, the sin of racism, whatever you like, has been totally undermined by overuse of the term.
00:57:47.760Absolutely. And just dishing it out and just going, oh, well, so and so doesn't agree with me.
00:57:52.860they're racist and they can smear somebody with that and it's like the work once you've got the
00:57:58.360racist label like many people just have never recovered it doesn't wash off it just yeah it
00:58:06.700does never and and you know lives have been ruined and they've kind of been smeared with this thing
00:58:11.140and it's a terrible thing to do to somebody like you get all these and but the the whole
00:58:16.280the the problem now with racism is there's so much protection has gone on that it's just created
00:58:22.340It's so many special interest groups campaigning for, you know, it's not just a race thing.
00:58:28.240It's just any type of identity is demanding that it's got whether it's trans or or or Islamic group or a black group or a white or whatever.
00:58:37.460And now we've got this thing where there's almost like a white, white.
00:58:42.100I've just written a song about this very thing called I am a white man and I'm sorry.
00:58:47.020and and it's like there's loads of white people are just going uh complaining that they're victims
00:58:52.860of racism and they are because they're being overlooked in favor of jobs or whatever it is
00:58:57.440because somebody's got to tick this ethnic and so it's just this insane culture of special interest
00:59:01.820groups and i just think like i i think there are there might you know be people who go you know
00:59:10.220we always go i don't know i hate scousers you go to liverpool and you know some scouse bloke's
00:59:16.220horrible to you and you go I fucking hate Scousers and it's one of those things that you might say
00:59:21.500or you know and I hear Northerns coming down to London I fucking hate Cockneys you just you know
00:59:26.400whatever the old definition now that is racist according to today's terminology but just because
00:59:35.400you know I've gone off you know or I go to France and there's a huge queue in passport control or
00:59:42.280something and I'm fucking French whatever that's effectively a racist thing to say now but in
00:59:49.180saying that thing I'm not advocating the persecution of scousers or nor those who come to London and
00:59:54.920moan about cockneys they're not advocating the persecution of cockneys they're just one of those
00:59:58.280things that you say so I think we just need to be more transparent and understand what is racism
01:00:05.260which to me is is the systematic persecution of people on account of their thing and what is just
01:02:32.320Now is that, is that racist? I think in 2020 that would be extremely racist.
01:02:41.260That's what he said. Yeah. Okay. Then Schmeichel, the goalie, lets in a goal that he should have saved, and the same guy goes, you blonde bastard. Right? Is that racist?
01:04:14.580I guess my sense of that situation, irrespective of who's saying,
01:04:17.860is how is their blondness or colour relevant to the fact that they're a bastard?
01:04:22.800It was, you know, a defining characteristic.
01:04:26.580Right. So this is what I'm saying is maybe some of the progress we have made that's been good is that we avoid judging people in these group categories when it's not relevant to the thing at hand.
01:04:38.940Like Andy Cole fucked up, Schmeichel fucked up. Do we need to bring their skin color or hair color into it? Maybe we just leave it out.
01:04:47.000do well yeah but then that's that sense that's well that's a form of censorship and it's a it's
01:04:53.340a and you can choose as an individual i'm not saying we censor that i'm not saying you but
01:04:57.660you can self-censor but that's just an individual using his judgment no all i'm saying is maybe
01:05:01.480in that situation we we learn not to make an issue of those things when it's not relevant
01:05:06.300that's all do you see what i'm saying yeah but i just like yeah i guess so i mean uh i don't i
01:05:15.620I think a society in which everyone goes around calling each other black cunts
01:05:19.180or white cunts or whatever is probably not a good thing,