TRASHFUTURE - A Blair for All Seasons

Episode Date: April 24, 2019

Every now and again, Tony Blair pops up to tell us that we’re doing too much social justice and that maybe Tommy Robinson has a point. This week, the gang of Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and Alice (@AliceAvizandum) discuss a report from the Tony Blair Institute for Social Change about—and this is not hyperbole—why populism is apparently immigrants’ fault? It’s bad, of course, but chances are good that no one will read it except for irony podcasters. Vote for us to win an award! https://www.britishpodcastawards.com/vote If you like this show, sign up to the Patreon and get a second free episode each week! You’ll also get access to our Discord server, where good opinions abound. https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture *LIVE SHOW ALERT* We’ll be performing once again at the Star of Kings in Kings Cross (126 York Way, Kings Cross, London N1 0AX) on Thursday, May 30 at 7:30 pm. Get your tickets here and return to the podcasting basement! https://www.tickettext.co.uk/trashfuture-podcast/trashfuture-live-30052019/ *COMEDY KLAXON*: Come to Milo’s regular comedy night on April 24 at The Sekforde (34 Sekforde Street London EC1R 0HA), This show also starts at 8 pm and features Mickey Overman among many others, to include TF’s own Charlie Palmer. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/smoke-comedy-featuring-micky-overman-tickets-59543070928?aff=ebdssbdestsearch Also: you can commodify your dissent with a t-shirt from http://www.lilcomrade.com/, and what’s more, it’s mandatory if you want to be taken seriously. Do you want a mug to hold your soup? Perhaps you want one with the Trashfuture logo, which is available here: https://teespring.com/what-if-phone-cops#pid=659&cid=102968&sid=front

Okay, I'm number one. I need to stop smacking the table when I talk really do because it does make the microphones reverberate. Number two, welcome to TF. It's time. It's time for TF now. Yeah. You know what else you were listening to before? Put it away. Put it down, open your ears and listen to this shit. If you're still listening to what you were listening to, if you're doing a sort of DJ mix, fading one podcast into another, isn't that sort of what the Daily Brexit cast guy was doing? It was like a weird British invasion style music mixed with him is yelling.

Yeah, I've always known, but podcasts are horrifying. I was doing like sub jam, but for podcast, I've been thinking about Andrew. I've been thinking about the Daily Brexit since we did the episode, since before we did the episode with Tom Cavasse and I found it. The guy's energy was so incredibly manic. It was great. Yeah, but it was just like the music was basically weird jazz fusion and then like an angry guy. He had spent enough money to know how to mix and use like an impeller or whatever to like mix between his voice and the music, but he hadn't spent enough money to like get a microphone that wouldn't blow out when he screamed into it. He was wearing like a gaming headset.

Yeah. I think gaming headsets would be really prepared for people screaming into them. Well, no, those headsets are designed that they might clip, but they'll never clip when you use a swear. I was going to say the word slur, but yeah, just fucked up. You went, I've got that dang bank holiday brain, you know, you have American Midwest. We're like, Oh, when you say a swear, you crack open a pop, you know, to punish yourself for it on the subject of weird energy. I realized how broken my brain was this morning.

Just now, just this morning. Yeah. Well, no, I just realized the extent of it this morning, because my girlfriend, who's a family barrister, took a work phone call and she was like, well, it seems like the client doesn't even understand family court. And then I just realized I couldn't hear the phrase family court without like pissing myself laughing. A family law final tomorrow morning. So I am in hell with you. Alice, if you have a family law final tomorrow morning, you know, you really just have to bone up by reading all of the opinion writing in the express.

Absolutely. That's the main source of it is due to absolutely furious about alimony. And another thing, those extinction rebellion brats are stopping me from seeing my kids, which I, by the way, due to my ex-wife, I only get to see once a month. I mean, look, we're fighting it. But still, I mean, if they come, if they get all their own money, they'll never have to see me again. No, it's horrible. Shut it all down. Nuk, Britain, because my wife, my wife cheated on me, of course, with my associate, Kevin. I'm going to cut in some weird jazz music into that and maybe see if I can add in like a clipping effect to just get the energy right. It's the daily Brexit.

It's a weird horseshoe theory between family court guys and Maoist third worldists. Well, the West is totally fucked. The dudes who lost their parental rights become full pesadists. They're just like, hell no, the dolphins are going to lead us to victory in the Nuka world. Yeah, exactly. The old chairman Mao already wants it, which is just father freedom of information request with his ex-wife to find out if she still loved him. Jesus Christ. Oh, there are columnists who would do that. So, so, folks, folks, folks, Tony Blair is at it again. Haven't we taught you this lesson enough times already, old man?

Tony Blair was cursed by that witch to just keep doing it every time, every year. He just comes back and does it again, baby. So, the, and I'm going to get, I'm going to get this exactly right because it's, it's great. The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. And kids who can't read good. Yeah. The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. I mean, the guys changed a lot about the globe. He's changed a lot of Iraqis from being alive into being dead. He's changed a lot of countries from being countries into being anarchy. And he's changed Britain from being at least minimally prosperous to to being this sort of hollowed out reactionary

wreck we live with today. Yeah, change the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. And perhaps his greatest crime, he employs Yasha Monk for some reason at his institute. Oh man. I mean, no, we don't know, to be fair. We don't, he and Bill Clinton have the same like zombie look. We don't know what their greatest crime was. I think it's something to do. It's going to be something to do with eating pinnial glands or something. Oh no. This is what happens when you have too much Adrenochrone. Like the man is like, look, all I'm saying is the man spent a lot of time in international waters and he looks like weirdly immortal, but like, like he did a deal with the devil.

Hmm. Look, anyway, the worst trade deals in the history of maybe ever. It's PFI, but where the devil gets to take control of your body. It's contracted out to the devil and here's like a call center or something that he's open to like shuffle the costs of it. So it's investment. Somewhere there's like a portrait of Tony Blair and an attic that's slowly turning into Saddam Hussein. I don't even know why that's funny to be fair. The beret. I feel like a better comparison might be to Augusto Pinochet because even after he left power, he constantly threatened that he might come back if people didn't behave.

And that's basically what Tony Blair does all day long. Oh my God. Also both friends with Margaret Thatcher. Very true. Yeah. And I think that really what would have happened is that Tony is Tony Blair is a lot like Dr. Faustus. It's just he made a deal with the devil to run Britain's hospitals and primary schools. Mmm. Well, yeah.

He's at it again. Wait, the devil is Richard Branson. The devil has also been privatized. Welcome to Virgin Hell. Just in hell and you're thinking this runs a lot less efficiently than I was expecting. It's like regular hell, but there are large queues, but you get a free hot cross button. Which is ironic when you think about it. Hot things aren't really what you expected on the menu.

No, not at all. So Tony Blair and his in his Institute for Global. Tony Blair and his terrible Institute for Global Change has published yet another sort of widely reviled and sort of birdbrained report entitled The Glue That Binds Integration in a Time of Populism. Love to be balanced by glue. Yeah, that's a trauma glue video. Yeah.

Also, number one. Okay. Glue adheres. It doesn't bind. Well, chemics. Well, no. Does it? I mean, it kind of does.

It's a bad metaphor. I feel like, though, that's not where I'd go first in critiquing that metaphor. Like, well, can glue really be said to bind? More like, why are you using glue? Who's gluing people together? Why are we doing this? That's the idea of society is a society that's all glued together. And obviously those things that are like that function perfectly well.

What he actually sounds like is, Hi, I'm Bam Margera and this is The Glue That Binds. I've glued my ass to Wee Man's head. We should get a Bam Margera cameo. You can just pay him very little money. Well, he went, I mean, look, this is a little bit of a peek into the research. He did go crazy for a while. I don't know if he's ungone crazy.

Apparently, I don't know. On ComeTown, they said he was fine again. Like, that's my main source for all things Bam Margera. My gauge of whether or not somebody is in their best mental health is whether or not their ComeTown performance is tolerable, you know, if it seems well together. Well, it's that thing where Chapo Trap House is like Al Jazeera English and then ComeTown is like Al Jazeera Arabic.

So like on the one hand, it's quite polished. And then the other hand is just a bunch of guys saying slurs. ComeTown is memory TV. So look, if you're Bam Margera, please call. Secondly, I feel like really what this is, is The Glue That Binds is Tony Blair's idea. And that's the thing. That's not really like, this is an exaggeration of course, but like it's sort of in the same league as what he's proposing in the report,

which is like, he's like, look, we're going to solve the problem of like racism in Britain by gluing Tommy Robinson to a Muslim person. Whoa, they're going to make them do like a three-legged egg and spoon race until they learn to get along. The most British way of solving this issue ever. It's close, but did you see that last year, Channel 4 had a white racist woman in blackface and hijab to like go undercover and learn not to be racist? That was like, that was a real compromise.

It's like, you can wear a blackface, but you have to wear it to cops and no one knows. You have to wear blackface, but it's, you get to wear blackface, but it's for an anti-racist reason. They put the gollywags back on the jam, but the jam is halal. So here's, here's what Blair has written in the introduction to his report. This is Blair himself. Now, here's the great thing. This is like, this is, this takes a long report.

It's quite meaty. It's probably like 60 or so pages of A4. Tony Blair has contributed a grand total of four paragraphs to it. Amazing. The guys are like, you got to respect the grift if nothing else. To be fair, he's learned a lot about what happens when he contributes a little bit too much creativity to documents. So Blair writes, over a significant period of time,

including when we were last in government, politics has failed to find- The royal fucking way. Politics has failed to find the right balance between diversity and integration. On the one hand, failures around integration have led to attacks on diversity and are partly responsible for a reaction against migration. I hate an attack on diversity. Yeah, I hate it when diversity just gets attacked by this incuit foe that no one can put their finger on.

This is, in fact, honestly, this is the first and last thing wrong with this report, which is that Tony Blair, the whole thing is like, look, when Tommy Robinson says, we're only marching against Muslims because they refuse to integrate. There's nothing else we're doing here. Tony Blair is like, okay, so they're marching against Muslims because they refuse to integrate. He's just taking Tommy Robinson at face value. Like Tommy Robinson might as well have been the only source consulted for this report. It's mind-blowingly stupid.

Well, I mean, the good news is, every time Tony Blair opens his mouth, it's just this cataclysmic eruption of people screaming a rack at him, which is good. I mean, if he only did four paragraphs on this, maybe those will get fewer and fewer and he'll stop writing dumb guardian op-eds. He's going to be doing this forever. He's not going to die. He's going to be like Kissinger. He's going to be 130-something and we're going to be like all

huddling behind one seawall to survive and he'll have put out a new report and when he should be fucking in the same place as Ratko and Bladich, it's wonderful. He's going to use the Cube Sats. He's going to use the Russian Cube Sats to write his new guardian column. Perhaps the sewer mutants are right about how about you, pure skins. It's Ozymandias, but the epitaph is just those four paragraphs and just kind of trails off. Yeah. Also, we should clarify when we say that Tony Blair should be in the same place as Ratko and Bladich.

What we mean is ruling the glorious empire of Greater Serbia. From his throne in the Hague. Dramatically does shot in the dock. Everyone's staring at him. He stares back. Well, that was just racket. Over a significant turn to my war crimes tribunal. Why not?

Getting pre-drunk for my war crimes tribunal. Very cool. I mean, what is a war crimes tribunal but one really big family cord? Dang, damn. Okay. When there is increasing evidence of far right bigotry on the rise, it is important to establish the correct social contracts are on the rights and duties of citizens, including those who migrated to this country. Having set your house on fire.

I'm concerned that you're not being very responsible in managing your household. Wicked. Love it. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, again, very much Tommy Robinson has a point. So, in this report, and here's where he both sides it. In this report, we make it clear that there is a duty to integrate to accept the rules, laws and norms of our society that all British people holding common and share. Well, at the same time, preserving the right to practice diversity, which is fully consistent with such a duty.

The right to practice diversity. Oh, I love to go down to the diversity church and be really diverse for a couple of hours. The rules and values that all British people share is that's interesting too. What do you suppose those are to Tony Blair? Oh, because John Major at least had like old ladies cycling past the village green, but I'm not sure what the new labor sort of unifying vision is. Also, John Major was famously horny and I could never imagine Tony Blair being horny in his life. Like he's sublimated that into something else and it involves hedge fund,

hedge fund dollars and invading third world countries. And I don't know what it is, but it doesn't involve sex. With John Major, at least you knew what you were getting. Yeah, you know what this is? The unifying vision is that everyone will be able to own a small business, which sells false bomb detectors that don't work to the Iraqi military and police. Jesus Christ. Weirdly, I think probably the opinion that most unifies as many people in the British

proper list as possible is that they all hate Tony Blair. Whatever your political persuasion, just yeah. So without the right to, for example, practice one's faith, diversity would have no content, but without the duty to integrate culture or faith, and he puts quotes around those, can be used as a way of upsetting that basic social contract that binds us all together. So what he's clearly saying is the Muslims are too Muslim. Stop being so Muslim. Also, I'm weirded out by the idea of practicing diversity because diversity really,

when you get down to it, is trying to make the point that people belong regardless of whether or not they look like the majority or they have the majority of religion or whatever, like diversity being the idea that in political parlance that everyone is equal even if, maybe the phrase is like it's sort of like disarming a nativist argument. Does that make sense? Yeah. And so the idea that you practice diversity is just somebody's like, you know what, I feel like being diversity as opposed to the idea that,

no, what you're really doing is you're granting these people the right to live and the right to be in a country and the right to be citizens and to have the same rights, which the British government has already shown it really doesn't give a fuck about. And at every migrant, every descendant of immigrants, anybody who's not a white English person, their citizenship is contingent. Yeah, but that's the we though, is the Blairite ideas that it's always going to be people like him and his like cronies and wonks and spads and stuff who will like bestow diversity upon us. Yeah. And to them, the idea of diversity is,

ah, I'm going down to the Bangladeshi food festival. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. They love the food that immigrants bring, but they're absolutely, they're not particularly bothered when people who look like them say, we should put them on a boat back to Pakistan or whatever the fuck they say. Yes. But that is the practicing diversity as they're going down to the food market and complimenting the curry or whatever. And not being mad that there's a Bangladeshi restaurant, which is the norm.

Yeah. That's normal Britain and then diverse Britain is, you still want to deport everyone, but the food is good. Oh, yeah. I mean, so. Practicing diversity makes perfect diversity. Realistically, we could read this entire report as a manifesto entitled, but I can't be racist. I like curry. Yeah.

I also think something that you pointed out earlier, we talked about this, that this treats the right wing argument as though it's completely good faith. Yeah. As though it's based on a legitimate grievance and that once it's solved, that grievance goes away because it's like fixing a broken water main as opposed to this insane epistemology that basically pits one group in an endless war against the other. This is kind of the way Quebec sort of does this where,

and they do the good faith version of this in Quebec, which is that they are really intent on preserving the French language in Quebec, because if they didn't proactively do it, then it would get overwhelmed by just the fact that Canada is an overwhelmingly Anglo country. And so there are specific rules around what language science have to be in, what language government documents have to be in, etc. Because they're like, look, if we didn't proactively preserve Quebec, Quebec, French, it would be gone.

If the bus driver doesn't say, you can't wear this hijab on this bus in French, then really civilization is lost. And so what's happening is that, Tony Blair and his genius spads or whoever works for him now are basically thinking that Tommy Robinson is making that same argument. Well, you know, if we don't make sure that diversity isn't handled correctly, then they'll make it illegal to speak English in England. And if you speak English, they'll lock you up and throw you in jail these days.

Wait, but they do that now. Well, they do what they do as these days. I did wonder though that whether or not Tony Blair is actually that stupid, because I know that when he was still allowed to do proper politics, when he was doing legitimate concerns about immigration, you'd either have to be very, very stupid to think, oh, people actually do have legitimate concerns, instead of just doing the sort of George Wallace thing of being like,

well, I'm going to say that and use it as a dog whistle. And I genuinely don't know which one it is. Something that I'm also wondering to, and Riley, we might cut this, but I just ask as an aside, is something that always gets pinned on, whenever there's a discussion about labor and about Brexit and about EU migrants, there seems to be this narrative that sort of kicked out there by the Andrew Mars of the world and everyone to his right, that labor just opened up the firehouse and said, immigrants from the EU, come live here.

Well, Britain is the only country. Like, we're not going to compare ourselves to anywhere else in Europe. All other countries are fake. There were particularly high rates of EU migration for a short time. Then they basically equalled out to normal. Part of the reason of that was like, there's just a very large economy. It's a large, high wage economy that had sort of higher paying jobs

than many of the other places. And English is a standard second language to learn. Like a lot of people speak a bit of it. It's quite reasonable. And it used to be quite a nice place to live. And if you get paid in pounds, that goes pretty far. And the thing is, and we'll actually get to this, is that the problem is, is that we had a period of high immigration

that was paired with a period of austerity under new labor. And then new labor was basically able to do a cup and ball trick where they were able to, well, early, early austerity. Early austerity. Yeah, I was going to say. Because I mean, like the real shit kind of happened most of the Tories. Yeah, it happened when the Tories came in,

but like the ball on the private, on privatization, of targeting, of funding public services in terms of funding quangos to make them more efficient rather than just funding them was started under new labor. And also the idea I think they seeded ground to was the idea that like the economy collapsed because labor spent too much damn money on social sphere. So what happened was, was that when this period of higher immigration

from Eastern Europe was starting, is that politicians who are committed to the idea of not spending, investing anything in civil society were able to play a cup and ball game where they were able to say, no, it's actually the immigrants. It's we, we need to, the immigrants are making, are making it so that your kid can't get in school, not the fact that we're system systematically underfunding all the public services.

We will get to that. So there are five key findings that are so five broad trends that are hampering integration efforts across the West, according to the Blair Institute for Global Change. Is one of them the Blair Institute for Global Change? I mean, Damn, I hope none of them are the endless forever wars in the Middle East. That would be awkward.

Sorry, turn around the numbers. Yeah, I'm sure it won't turn out to be one of those. Don't worry. Those, and I emphasize this, I'm saying this in bold face. Don't worry. Those never come up. Okay. Nothing.

Immigrate. The fact that there are massively disrupted nations around the world that Tony Blair and his like uni friends have spent the last several decades disrupting doesn't come up. It's just, it's just- They were trying to make them more efficient. It's not politics. That's just facts.

And you're not against facts. Did you learn nothing from the independent group? That's true. And there's all these like weird things that we never fully got to the bottom of, like why like two million people in Syria just one day randomly decided they all wanted to move to Germany. Like no one's really sure, like, you know. Oh, it's because Germany had a tech hub.

Oh, that'll be it. Yeah. It's because of the famously welcoming German environment. They're great food and they're really friendly people. Okay. It's because Muslims really, really like beer. And so- Number one, you're being sarcastic, but Germany fucking rules.

Germany rules, but German people are icy as shit. Their bureaucracy is insane. And also like if you aren't in Berlin, it can be a very, very drab place to live. Can you just, can you splice in a song here? Oh, Jesus Christ. 99 Lift Balloons, maybe? Yeah.

No, no, no. I want you to splice in P8 by Zadik. Okay. You just send me the link. We're not, we're not playing any techno on this podcast. Oh, we will. I'm sorry. How is techno in any way evocative?

It doesn't have lyrics. Just do Isoc send the novel. Riley thinks that Germany is all techno when in truth, Germany is basically people listening to Schlager, which I don't know if you know what Schlager is. Oh, I know. Yeah. It's fucking bad.

And its songs go on forever and they love that shit. Five broad trends that are hampering integration efforts across the West. Let's see if we can spot the ones that are missing. Okay. Number one, anxiety in host communities is being driven by the rapid pace of change. It's being driven by something,

but I'm not sure it's the rapid pace of change. No, but the right wing press? No, that couldn't be right. No, it can't be them. Couldn't be that. It couldn't be a giant thing that says breaking point. No, it couldn't be that. Because what that's doing, they're the press.

They're reporting on what's already there. Exactly. So they couldn't be influencing it anyway. Not too far, I found the breaking point. If Rupert Murdoch was a bad guy, would Tony Blair have had lunch with him so many times? No. No, obviously.

No, definitely not. So, number two. Who is a bad guy? Would he look like a giant testicle wearing a wig? Also no. Would a bad guy look so evil? No, of course, he'd try to look good. Truly the Michael Jackson of journalism.

Number two. Number two. Fear of segregated communities. No, I don't say. So in those 99.9% white communities in Gloucestershire or whatever, is there a fear of segregation there that necessitates moving people out of Tower Hamlets? Oh, no, sorry.

You must be mistaken. A segregated community is like Rotherham or Tower Hamlets, or certain bits of like Edge Hill and Birmingham. Those are segregated communities. Windsor and Eaton is not a segregated community. It just happens to be white because it's where the successful people go. And well, it just so happens

that white people are more successful and there's no history behind that. That's just perfectly, seems perfectly natural to me. Yeah, absolutely. No, so segregated communities are non-white ones and then white communities are successful communities. And our goal as new labor is to make the segregated communities

into successful communities. This is very Matt Hancock, actually. This has like, there should be an app involved kind of vibe to it. This also reminds me of a lot of the kind of discourse that goes on in the U.S. that happened right after Trump with regard to like, everyone needs liberals are just in their bubbles and you get out of their liberal bubble.

And it's like, somehow you never tell the people who run into church on fucking Christmas Eve and scream about pizza gate and QAnon, they need to get out of their liberal bubbles. It's everybody else. If you, you know what I mean? It's the other natural assumption about, it's the other assumption about

who the natural citizens of the country are. Well, exactly. I think you do get some, you do get some tanky points for calling QAnon a liberal bubble, though, I think. So get out of your liberal bubble, but don't get out of your jet ski dealership bubble, which is basically what Trump voters live in.

Well, it's because there is this belief and there's the belief in this report, which is that Windsor and Eaton or like Highgate or whatever, these are the natural communities of Britain. These are the natural and Tower Hamlets before it became like primarily Bangladeshi. That was a natural community of Britain. Yeah, well, if you just entrepreneur hard enough,

you could move to these places. But just like, just like in, like every time there is a sort of soft focused New York Times portrait of a fascist, they're like, we went to real America because they somehow believe that by leaving, you know, fascism, Burg, Illinois, that they have left real America and they have this guilt over like

abandoning their family, leaving them behind and becoming diversity. It was named after famed pioneer Edwin fascism. It's worse when they don't have that guilt. Like they write books like Hillbilly Elegy about how to fix racism, Burg. I also love with like the getting out of your liberal bubble thing. They basically like concede all of the grounds to the Libs

where they're like, well, like, yeah, I mean, obviously you guys are right. And like, obviously, like you're the reasonable people who would be capable of getting out of your bubble because all of these insane people who believe things that we all know to be wrong are incapable of getting out of their bubble. But that's why we need to appease them.

We couldn't just oppose them and stop them from doing what they want. No, that's impossible. We, who know we're right, but are reasonable, have to go, well, let's find a compromise. This also comes back to the same problem that you notice with the whole Trump phenomenon that Trump won because of technicality

and because of the very undemocratic electoral system in the United States. But we're made to think that, I remember reading, I think I want to say it was, it might even be in the Wall Street Journal or the Economist, but someone literally after Trump, like the week after Trump won was like, they're just focusing too much on boutique sexualities.

I said people, literally they said that. They said boutique sexualities. I said people were like, you know what? I'm going to go down to High Street. I'm going to fucking pick a gender. But you know that kind of shit. It's the same thing, this idea that they're fixated on, that liberals did too much tolerance

and now the natural state of things is a pendulum swing towards fascism. You walk into a little shop with all like red curtains and stuff and everything's behind the counter and a man called Francois says, ah, we keep the special pronouns in the back. I don't know why you wouldn't bother just waiting for the end of the season

and just going to an outlet for your sexuality. TK Max. No, you can get a gender wrong. I know these tits don't fit very well, but I got them at TK Max. You can get a gender run layaway. Okay. Here's the third thing that people

use as a trend that are hampering integration efforts across the west. Jesus, we're only up to three. This might kill me. This might literally finish me off. We've already had rent to own your gender. Competition for scarce resources. Couldn't understand why they're scarce. No, we're just doing the resource wars from Fallout now.

Wonderful. Looking forward to that problem only getting worse. Yeah, we don't use the word war in a Tony Blair document. That never comes up. Well, it's that we need to, it's like, look, we have to run all the councils like a business, which means we need to fire most of the teachers and try to have every student in like one gymnasium

getting lectured to by Jordan Peterson YouTube video. And the real is that the gymnasium is being leased back from a private company that we sold it to a loss for some reason. Anyway, that's why your kids can't get into school because of immigrants. The council is sold off all of its schools, but actually it's the family that's moved in next door from like Bangladesh or Poland or whatever.

There while your kids can't get into school. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, the bad faith argument it always comes back to scarcity is this thing that exists. Like there's perfect entropy in society. And like there's zero way that you can change the like the amount of resources available

because like that's just all there is. And it's like, never mind, never mind those islands in the Caribbean with banks. Okay, that has nothing to do with it. That's completely out of the picture. Those are naturally occurring banks. They're volcanic. Exactly, like the civilization that owns those banks

just got gifted them because of the fucking the way that civilization six has played. Okay, like sometimes you start your civilization with fucking uranium and sometimes you start with banks in the Cayman Islands. So then we're going to hit the last two really quick and do both at once fears over non shared values and fears about crime.

Let's fucking go. Yeah, my rap album fears about crime. Yeah, that's great. It's it's you know, because there this is again, might as well have been like someone who wrote the Rutherham grooming gang all Pakistani. Won't someone say the word Pakistani? It's like this guy might as well have written this report.

I'm put it into very fancy Oxbridge language. I'm more worried about getting glass in the face by somebody who looks like Phil Campion than I am about anybody from the Middle East or South Asia. Well, that's definitely like that. And that it's full of insane white people. Who yeah, yeah. That's the thing.

Isn't Glasgow like the place where they have worse knife crime than London? But it's all white people. Yes, it used to be the murder capital of Europe for a couple of years as immigration went up. It's like fucking immigrants kicking Francis Begbie out of his natural home. Now we can't slash people in the pub anymore.

I have to. I am obliged to say that Begbie is Edinburgh. I was going to say is Edinburgh, isn't it? We're transporting a set yet. He's in spirit at Glaswegian. Yeah. So he said so that's the thing. Crime that's right wing, right wing,

white, primarily white fascist groups, the largest growing driver of criminal behavior in the U.S. and U.K. Yeah. But they don't have non shared values because we share our values with them. Just like supporting the football team, except when they're gay. But this report shows is that really a lot of liberals are ready

to make sure that they do look at what the fascist gangs are saying and then saying, no, we're going to change our values to share them with you. It's just what we're going to do is ask politely. I don't like it when people practice different face and have different skin color when they move to the United Kingdom. However, the people that slap, that burn down mosques

and commit racist acts of violence, it's like, those aren't, I mean, I share their values, but they are related to me because they're my nephews. So, you know, in the grand scheme of things, I can't really bring my proposal. My large adult nephews. So I'm going to dive into then sort of what Blair believed and Blair and co, realistically, Blair's ghost writers

believe this report. Blair and co, purveyors of fine, fine documents to justify anything for any occasion. While progressive integration policies have strong public support, mainstream political parties have found it difficult to proactively drive and sustain progress. They haven't tried. They've been trying for years to do just the opposite.

Ed Miliband literally wrote controls and immigration on some stones. On a big stone. They think like they carved it into a god named obelisk. I want to remake 2001 a space, honestly, but with the new labor fucking obelisk thing. The guerrillas just worshipping at the end. It's done, done, done, done, done, done. It's in South Thanet.

The guerrillas are just the people of South Thanet. Wait, so the progressive immigration policies have broad support in spite of all of this bullshit that's been foisted on people about legitimate concerns for immigration and whatever. They still command this huge majority. Shouldn't you fucking take a cue from that, maybe? No, because actually it used to be one person, one vote.

Now it's one skinhead, street gang, one vote. Ah, I see. Yeah, so they, it's first past the post is really weird. We had a joker before we started recording about another Civilization VI reference that like having people like Tommy Robinson, they treat it like it's a naturally occurring thing, that it's just instead of having great people

appearing in your civilization, it's just terrible people appear. It's like Tommy Robinson appears, and instead of like helping you speed up a wonder, he just helps you fucking like start a race riot. This is just a Civ VI podcast now. Yeah, I got Civ VI, I've been playing the shit out of it. Oh, so fucking good, isn't it?

Yeah, Jesus. I still haven't worked out the tech tree yet, but you know, I'll figure it. You're good there, yeah. So he carries on. This is partly because the term integration itself is contested, and partly because of reluctance by policy makers to engage in difficult conversations

at a national level. New Labour loved having difficult conversations, and it was always exactly as tortured as that implies. Difficult conversations like, well, I actually only had a starter, so I don't really, I'm not really sure about it. A lot of these Bangladeshi guys, they had... They had some pretty big mains.

The Grenada, Jeremy, are you mad? Very weird, much more so than I remember. Okay, but I also want to dive into this, what he says about competition for scarce resources, because it's... Wow, I've never seen Rodney say like, so financially energized by something. I mean, me too, when I read anything Tony Blair writes,

I just get extremely hot. I get, you know, I start laughing like a Frenchman. So here's what Tony Blair says. Here's what's fun. The recent growth in global movement of people has come hot on the heels of the most severe economic downturn in decades. Again, I wonder why any of those happened.

A thing happened, and then another thing happened. Those things, don't ask about them. Don't ask about them. What was I doing? No, I was away. The Tony Blair report is like really lazy Adam Curtis. It's the opposite of Adam Curtis. A very strange thing happened.

Meanwhile, something unrelated happened, which I'm sure was completely unrelated. D-Reams things can only get better as playing in the background, but like slightly key distorted. So the recent growth of global movement of people, which happened for no reason, has come hot on the heels

of the most severe economic downturn in decades. Also it's very, it's very Trump, isn't it? Like just like the recent growth in the global movement of people. Look, it's been one of the most people moving decades of all time. People have been saying this. People are moving everywhere. I went to Arizona.

People moving there. I've been across the whole country. People moving from place to place, to and fro. Look, some of those people, very successful people. It's beautiful folks. Making national citizens, so as opposed to, you know. International citizens of nowhere.

Fruitless cause for colons. Yes, indeed. Making national citizens. The only real people in the world, of course. That's just somewhere people, right? Like, oh yeah. David Goodheart might as well. Thank you for David Goodheart for writing this report.

What if David Goodheart was Blair? National citizens, soon to be PFI citizens. Virgin citizens. As some countries cope with painfully slow economic recovery, job insecurity, stagnant wages, and youth unemployment, many national citizens see their prospects for upward mobility constrained. Against this backdrop,

immigrants are often perceived as a fiscal burden on the receiving society, contributing to the underemployment or wage stagnation of native born workers with similar skillsets. They're not mad about, it's not like they draw the line and they're like, oh, I'm really, really mad about these fucking immigrants, but people who were born and raised here, they're cool.

It's like they see anyone who's not white and Christian as an invader. And if you try to argue with that, and try to work your way around that argument, you're constantly going to find these weird ideological inconsistencies that because it's not made in good faith. Yeah.

These people, when they're like, oh, Britain's being invaded, it's like the way that they add up their numbers, and this is not bullshit, is they literally use stats that, A, include everyone who's British born but isn't white, and B, they don't include the Irish. They don't include people who are both born here, born in Ireland and moved here,

or people who are of recent Irish extraction but have lived in Britain. Because intentionally, that number would be fucked up, that their number wouldn't be as scary if it included Irish. Well, like speak of non-shared values, right? Like, I'm a white Muslim, and it's always very funny to me

when somebody tries to explain that their problem is with Islam, not with race, and that's why they're acting as if I'm some kind of traitor to race. It's very strange. It's a real head-scratchery doodle here. And I guess that's the thing that just blows my mind about it, is that the idea that they always frame it as immigrants,

because when they frame it as immigrants, they're basically trying to approach the argument being made by Tommy Robinson. But Tommy Robinson's problem isn't with immigrants. It's with people who aren't white. Yes. And it's like, and the only way is, if the only way that somebody as fucking Ponzi,

as Tony Blair can even come to terms with the argument, is like, oh, they must be mad about the difference between these immigrants versus native-born citizens, like that doesn't even enter into the argument. Because most of the people that these guys are complaining about, most of the people that they're mad at, even the people, the very rare cases where there is something where somebody,

like a Muslim person who's parents are immigrants or his grandparents are immigrants, commits a crime in Britain, like they always say, it's always framed in such a way that like this person is Pakistani or they're Bangladeshi, even if they were born here, even if their grandparents were born here. Well, Jimmy Savile suggests that there's a real problem

with people from Leeds. I did see an interesting article once that suggested that Yorkshire was the heart of all darkness in England. Also too, it just makes me laugh, because whenever they're like, wow, these damn immigrant grooming gangs, as if the entire history of Britain isn't one big fucking grooming gang.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm just living for Nate saying the phrase fucking Ponzi. That's when you know, that's when you know it's getting serious. Here's the other thing, right? Like this is, I said way unironically before the start of recording. I know, I've somehow gotten absorbed into this fucking toilet island.

We're still all thinking about it. The Benzin Lou, Nate's calling Tony over there, fucking Ponzi, let's fucking go. Did I use it correctly though? Yeah, you did. Yeah, you did. Congratulations. So here's the other thing.

This is a slightly more serious point, which is like, if you are trying to take the smarter, the smarter than you, I'm neutral and floating above all kinds of politics. Tony Blair point of view. I'm on my cloud ship. Then you are always, every single time, you're going to fall for Tommy Robinson's trick.

Yes. Are you saying that he's not going to end up practicing diversity? What I'm saying is that Tommy Robin, is because Tony Blair and his goons are so concerned with being smart and being neutral and taking all viewpoints into consideration, assuming that the answer must be somewhere in the middle

and that we have to look at the data and compromise and that reporting on it and writing about it and all of this stuff doesn't also continue to create and change the issue. Wow. You know what's funny is that this isn't going to be enough either. Like, because they're wonks, they're kind of tinkering

at the margins and massaging numbers to be like, well, we can make our society more cruel and more inhumane to immigrants by like doing, like having slightly different requirements here and so on and so on and so on. And they're missing the sort of revolutionary aspect of fascism, which is just going to sort of sweep them all into line with genocide.

So that's fun. Well, it's because it's this thing where if you aren't a dialectician, if you don't have a dialectic view of history and politics and so on, you're going to keep falling into this trap because you keep thinking that revolution is not really possible, that things just evolve based on the patterns of evidence that have come before.

And so what they're going to do is they're going to look like, okay, well, when did immigrants make the highest fiscal net positive fiscal contribution to society and how can we replicate those policies to make that happen again? It was a slave trade. We actually, we have to go back to the slave trade in the name of diversity.

Sorry, guys. We ran the numbers. Because they're saying go to Bristol once. I didn't go. I should clarify. I did not go. Because then they'll say, well, Tommy Robinson wasn't sort of making problems back then.

In fact, the EDL was embarrassed back in 2013. So we have to do what we were doing then. And what they're not understanding is what they're doing is they're slowly creating the revolution that the EDL and BNP want because they're like, well, if you just give a little bit of ground, we give them what they want, they'll go away. This is why I think that like,

this is what happens when you study so much and get so smart, your IQ flips back around, you become a moron. Again, not that they were ever really smart. They just became so self-regarding that like, that the emperors new closed themselves. But also Tommy Robinson has painted a big black dot on the side of a cliff and Tony Blair

is just walking away as an accordion. I also feel like it bears mention to say that your point that he's floating above everyone, I think is really valid in the sense that these people really do think that you can reduce all of the issues behind the Tommy Robinson style figure and EDL style movement and say, well, actually, when X percentage of people see their wages go down,

whatever, then like a fascism occurs. But what that doesn't take into account- You generate a terrible person. Exactly, it's like, exactly. The society is starting to build and build. It's terrible person points and eventually you're just going to get awarded one. But it's more that it seems that they don't see,

they don't understand the emotional appeal. It's everything about how they break this down wants to be as logical and lacking in emotion as possible. Well, you know what it is. They've all convinced themselves that the architect from the matrix. Yeah, they think, well, if I've spent like my years at Oxford, like turning myself into an automaton with like,

with like ketamine and tutorials and just go on- Convincing myself. Professional podcast of Riley. No, I'm not saying I did that. Well, for one thing, you didn't go to any tutorials. I was saying that these people have done that and that they have turned and that they're thinking now, well, everyone else just must be this homo economicus

and we can just keep pulling the levers on them and putting in the inputs and then they'll apprehend the facts and they'll change their behaviors thusly. Yeah, and another thing, wow, these economicus got to be homo now. I mean, but I do think that it completely, maybe the word misapprehends, it fails to take into consideration the emotional appeal

behind someone who's basically saying, I know there's been an uninterrupted half century of national decline in this country. It's immigrants fault as opposed to people like Tony Blair and policies they are espousing and the weird consensus that exists between the Tories and the labor. Because all nationalism is wounded nationalism and they're kind of right when they say that like,

oh, the mainstream media or whatever is just going to tell you that everything's fine. Yeah, basically Tony Blair, the only credence or the only credibility that I'll assign to that argument for when it comes to people like they're the far right is that they are correct when they're saying that the establishment, whether it's the media or government, are telling you to disbelieve your own eyes.

Yeah. That's true. They're telling you, hey, everything's fine and things are getting better and the economy grew by 0.5%, whatever, thus things are fine and people can see the shitness all around. Well, it's not for the same reason. It's a society where everything's fine

but the worst thing you can be is a racist. They don't, absolutely don't want you to be a racist. Why would that not be an appealing form of rebellion if you just hate everything else that they've led you to believe? Yeah, I think that's basically right. And the fact is something like the rather than resisting that, which is the correct and obvious thing to do, something like the Blair report is basically trying to say,

okay, how can we compromise between the point of view of everything's fine and it's time to get racist. It's they have to get 25% more racist. It's that one meme with that I'm going to give you $100 to fuck off. I'm going to give you some like tweaks around the edges of like ID cards or like databases of all migrants if you just shut up here. And here's the thing, Nate, this is going to be, I know you have, we haven't gone through the notes carefully

and because I'm pretty sure you didn't see this because Tony Blair actually kind of wrote something you said satirically. Oh no. I was about to say that Tony Blair is basically deciding he's going to be the Zordon the face on the screen from Power Rangers is time to get racist. That's actually what he said on Ironically. Slurring time.

Case of the reality bending powers we've yet seen. Slaps roof of 60 page report. You can fit so much racism in this bad boy. I mean, Tommy Robinson landed here after 10,000 years in space and a crash came with a cherry on top. I wouldn't be surprised. Well, the evidence is clear on immigrants net positive fiscal contribution. The economic benefits are sometimes more complicated

and take longer to quantify than the cost, which are often immediate. If only we could quantify these things better. Moreover, the benefits generally accrue to the broader economy through the gross domestic product and tax revenues, whereas the costs are typically born locally in terms of pressures on local services. Through magic. There's no form of like anyone extracting that value.

Yeah, that is funny. It's like, wow, damn, people have human needs in the communities they live in, but we do appreciate all the fucking money we extract from them by virtue of their work. This number saying how rich I am has gone up. So if you think that's a bad thing, then I don't know what to tell you. It's like the number of how rich I am has gone up and the amount of public services per person

in your local community has gone down. Mostly because we've just taken all the money away. However, on average, we're both richer. Exactly. Between the two of us, we both own 0.5 Lamborghinis. Just a decimalization Andrew tights. Moreover, everyone gets half a Lamborghini would be a great posting. The benefits generally accrue to the broader economy

through gross domestic product. Now that just means the conversion of stuff into money, which is just what capital does. So the benefits of the monetary, the fiscal benefits of integration, the Blair report says accrue to capital. It's weird if only there was some way of like predicting or explaining how getting turned into money and that money not recirculating within a small community.

No, I don't think anyone's ever, I don't think there's a model of keeping that there. Well, the problem is, is that Britain built one of the, in the earlier era, they built a world wonder that's called banks in the Cayman Islands. Actually, the first world wonder that we conquered was basically slavery. And as a result, now we have these weird Caribbean offshore banks, you know, nothing, it just, it kind of changes the calculus.

There's no way to stop it. It's just the natural order. And why did all these Caribbean come over here only to get deported when they could have stayed there and worked in those excellent banks? And I also love the, whereas the costs are typically borne locally in terms of pressure on local, again, just typically,

that's just, that's how it is, you know, it can't be any other way. I, I, I'm struggling to come up with like a sardonic response. And that's when the best thing I can think of is like, man, I hate it when I build a sewer system for 100 people and then 150 people move in and I was like, yep, can't build any more pipes. Doesn't exist, doesn't exist. In fact, what we're going to do is take away half the sewer system

because then, then that, you all get the prize to figure out how to figure out to make this your sewer more efficient. We need to say Polish people shit too much. We accidentally sold the sewer to a Saudi venture capital fund and they're going to find you for not getting your toilets clogged often enough. So what Blair says is that the problem is that actually a lot is that politicians on the left, progressives have gotten too politically correct and wishing to deny oxygen to the extremists,

progressives have often gone too far in the opposite direction by refusing to broach the issue altogether. Their silence on these issues have less space for topless on the right to frame the debate in them and us terms. Was that a literal Brandon O'Neill, your silence speaks volumes in there? Who is leaving space for fascists on the right? Oh, it's not question time by giving them an actual space on the question time panel or whatever, or like the right-ring press.

No, it must be people who are refusing to debate. It was the Labour Party for not having controls on immigration on the plinth bigger. Instead of talking about how we should make libraries just for white people, Jeremy Corbyn keeps trying to be like, we should stop supporting all these bombing campaigns creating refugees. Interesting. I'm just wondering, okay, when they say, how has political correctness gone too far? Like, what about the political?

That was my praisy to summarizing what Blair said. Sure, sure, sure. But what I'm saying, though, is that you're quoting from him, right? When you're saying, yet in wishing to deny oxygen. Everything from yet in wishing to deny oxygen is a quote. All right. I'm just wondering, because to me, as someone who just moved here, it seems like you can't go anywhere in political dialogue in this country

without there being this constant reminder of us versus them at every level. And so the idea that they refuse to address the issue, it's like, no, they're creating lots of... They carved it on a fucking stone, like they're all about it. Here's what I think Blair is really saying, which is that Blair has spent this entire 60-page report basically saying, Tommy Robinson has a point. And he's saying that what progressives aren't doing, except like Paul Embry,

is progressives won't... And Paul Embry is not progressive, obviously. But no one on the left will say, Tommy Robinson's got a point. And that's what he means. Actually, Stonehenge is a relic of a previous Neolithic civilization, which collapsed because their liberal politicians failed to have enough concerns about immigration. And they carved so many stones, but it didn't stop Neolithic caveman, Tommy Robinson, who is incidentally exactly the same as modern day

Tommy Robinson from destroying their society. What's that thing like? Do you think he's going to stop leading anti-Sharia marches? If all Muslims across the country... You could snap your fingers and make every Muslim immigrant in the country snap your fingers. They all speak perfect Queen's English. Does Tommy Robinson stop leading marches?

No. And I think the idea that the immigrants should have to be model citizens above and beyond, that's fucking ridiculous. And for one thing, you know what's weird? I may have told this before, but I lived in Korea for a while when I was in the military when I got out. And the Korean language is fucking challenging as shit. Like, it's not easy for English speakers to learn. And I could probably spend the rest of my life in that country,

and I would never speak Korean fluently. And I'm pretty decent at learning languages. And it gave me this moment, I was like, you know what? It's fucking hard, and people should just not be assholes about this. And the idea that this is something that's given any space whatsoever in polite discourse, in like center right, centrist liberal discourse, the way that it works in British establishment media, it's insane.

If people don't speak English, I don't know, maybe fucking make it easy for adults to learn English at work. Maybe have free classes for people to learn both based on their ability that they can access in their community without having to take a bus to fucking Uxbridge and back when they work in South London. Well, again, that's the interesting thing about this report, which we'll get into quite shortly, is that like, this report actually does contain several...

Look, it contains a lot of dog shit policy proposals, let's be honest. However, it contains several good ones, but that are ruined by their subclasses. But we'll get to those in a moment. There's last sort of paragraph before we get into the policy proposal I want to talk about. The evidence suggests that in many countries, anxious reactions to immigrants, so that's what a fascist street march is. It's an anxious reaction.

I hate it when I can see the anxiety coming off. Anxiously see kiling everywhere. I'm just a small bean whom has anxiety. My mask might have a skull on it, but deep down, I'm just thinking... Inside, I'm an anxious bean. Anxious reactions to immigration tend to be the strongest in regions or localities that have not historically experienced much immigration. A real head scratcher, where an increase in the pace of immigration

upends public preparedness for it. Damn, we had one guy called Irish Jim, and then suddenly there was another guy called Irish Dave, and I'm not sure I like this. We had Irish Jim just him for 50 years. When change is rapid, pressure on local services and differences between culture and social norms can lead to tension, and in some cases, hate crime.

I love when differences just naturally lead to hate crime. There's no fascist doing it. It's just poof. No, it just happens because it's a number of... Which is certainly something you might say if you look at that crime. That there's these tectonic plates that move under these... Sorry, sorry, sorry, that's plate crime. Yes!

Yes, roasted. Riley gets a gold star for the day. Eruptions of racism magma through the escrow. If you were to argue that the plates underneath Britain have a liquid core of racism, I would believe it. That was why Pompeii was destroyed, because all those people like Pliny the Elder and what have you.

They were refusing to acknowledge the importance of concerns about immigration, all these gulls coming over, and then eventually all of the racism just erupted through Mount Vesuvius and buried them all under volcanic ash. Well, it's also the reason why the North's industrial base collapsed was we stopped mining the racism out of this country. So, I mean, I'm not going to do all of them because we don't have time and I want to eat dinner.

But here are some of the recommendations of what we can do to avoid a Mount Vesuvius like racism eruption. Policy makers should introduce a system of digital identity verification that would not only make it easier to identify illegal migration, but also potentially give greater people access to personal data. There we go, let's go. Who gives a fuck about illegal immigrants? My partner is a, I guess, like permanently sexual immigrant

with indefinite leave to remain, and therefore has to carry around at all times a biometric residence permit with his like picturing fingerprints on it. My wife is the same. Yeah, how is that not an ID card in this sense? Or is it just like the Blairite mania for having mandatory ID cards? I think it's a hold over a Blairite mania. Maybe this one might get a blockchain element.

Ooh, love a blockchain. It's like, there isn't a lot of ID in this country, but like very few instances ask for it, except for when they pass laws that say like, you have to show your passport before you can rent a flat, which happens now. Also, those laws, those laws were also naturally occurring. They didn't happen again because of like extreme pressure

from the right-wing press. They just came straight out of the racism mines. Yeah, just came right out. So number two, develop a differentiated approach to economic migration, including by adopting a human capital points-based system to increase the flow of skilled migrants into the country, aka exactly what Nigel Farage said.

Yeah, points-based migration level. That's so good. I mean, it works in Australia, a country where everything is fine. Yeah, absolutely. And all that Australia had to do to make that system work was to build a massive concentration camp on a Pacific Island.

And you know what, if we can't do that, we've simply packed all of the human beings on like one, on a scale of numbers from like worst to best. And if you think that's political or like unobjective. So here's the third one. And remember, this is what I said earlier, where occasionally he'll like trip over his own dick and like propose a decent policy,

but then trip over his own dick again and ruin it. I didn't know Tony Blazdick was so long, but... His legs are very short. Oh, okay. Enact domestic labor market reforms, through example, tougher enforcement of minimum wage laws. Now Tony, you could have stopped writing there. And that would have been the first good thing

that has come out of this report. Yes, we should do that. Here's the second clause. To avoid cheap migrant labor being used to undercut workers' wages and conditions. I hate it when the only true workers are people born in Britain. I also hate it when just the conditions get undercut.

Just naturally. He's so close to a point there. He's like 99% of the way to realizing that the problem isn't immigrants. It's like capitalism. They're just like, immigrants are like a convenient way of like pushing down wages when you could just regulate and stop that from happening.

But of course we can't do that because that is a naturally occurring phenomenon and regulation is impossible. No one has ever regulated anything. It can't be done. Laws cannot be passed famously. What, you want to just worship an idol that makes you think you can block up this racism volcano?

It just can't be done, all right? So here's another couple, another matched pair. This is on education. The following is actually probably a pretty good idea. Combat the shift towards social segregation in schools by reforming admissions policies. By abolishing all private schools, got it. Yeah, exactly.

You could abolish the most important kind of social segregation in schools if you say turned eaten into a state school. That would probably abolish the most important barrier. So what is it that he's trying to like secretly undercut here? He's saying that schools should match local diversity. So if you've got like a primarily Muslim school that's in a non primarily Muslim area,

you have to stop having a Muslim school. Damn, I hate it when they have to bust Muslims from Tower Hamels up to Carlisle to make the school as fucking equal. So that's it. It's like, again, the problem, the upper class. The question is who would speak worse English? The first generation was the migrants or the people of Carlisle.

Truly an alien versus predator scenario. The only POCs I recognize, people of Carlisle. People of Carlisle. Yeah, so that's just it. Combat the shift towards social segregation in schools, which means race, which it's not referring to social class at all. No, that those are fine, those are set. That's not a problem.

That's those are two different problems actually, according to Blair, and he's very smart. So here's the second one. Introduce training programs for teachers on integration and civic nationalism. Well, that doesn't sound macro fascist at all. Isn't this what's already happening too? Sorry, isn't civic national identity?

Prevent is already a thing. It's because we prevent, but also like the British value shit. Like, aren't they hammering that like non stop in state schools? Oh, sure. PSHE or whatever it is. Is like totally about like liberal British values and stuff. And same with immigration, with the life in the UK test is very parochial sort of life in the UK test. It's like, how much shame should you feel at any given moment?

Is it normal to have one, two or three sausage rules before the big shop? So two more, two more on education, further education ones. Spread the social and economic benefits of universities. How would we like to finish that sentence here? Spread the social and economic benefits of universities by... Is it with guaranteed Oxbridge admissions? Guaranteed Oxbridge. Universal basic Oxbridge.

No, no, none of that. We're not eliminating tuition. What we're doing is building yet another wave of universities in areas that have experienced significant economic decline, but we're not doing anything about tuition fees again. And not funding them or anything, right? God, no, no, no, no. It'll all be like the University of the West of Scotland,

which even not charging fees. Sorry, Alice, you're almost there, but you're not quite. It's not going to be the University of the West of Scotland. It's going to be Capita presents the University of the West of Scotland. That's provided by G4F. What does the private prison resemble the private university? Yeah, because what Britain desperately needs is more fucking universities, not like better opportunities for people.

Not cheaper universities, not lower tuition fees, not more funding, no, more. No, we just need more of like Anglia Ruskin and London Metropolitan University. There's universities that famously give people amazing lives. Is it creates opportunities in the student lending sector? Because then those students can graduate and get jobs giving student loans to other students. And this, though, this was a really cool.

It's definitely not a Ponzi scheme. I was also wondering, because isn't it, I remember somebody saying that Tony Blair, it was under his first term that they introduced tuition fees. They went into effect in 03. But like, I think they passed the legislation in 98. Like, what the fuck were they reacting to? Why did they do that other than just to do it?

Goose the economy a little bit. Yeah, they want to give it a goose. You don't, you understand that like, maybe maybe you'll know this when you've lived here a little more. Maybe like when you go to Oxbridge. The essential stage in a life cycle. Economy is what happens when you wake up sweating that Margaret Thatcher might come back from the dead and embarrass you.

She wasn't dead at the time. Well, that was basically the same thing. Yeah, where you're worried that Margaret Thatcher is just going to embarrass you again. And so what you have to do is you have to beat her by doing everything she wants to do before she can do it. And then she has no policies. Well, I guess I'm just a failure to assimilate

ass immigrant in this country because I just don't get it. I don't get it. And I mean, just go to Oxbridge. All right. All right. That's what they teach you there. Don't go to class, but take ketamine. Yeah, that's PPE.

PPE is basically that. He also says, yeah, we have to introduce a three year tenancy term for private renters. Again, good, good in areas with poor rates of social mixing. Why couldn't you just do that? I also, I don't understand how that would help. He's talking about creating community and rootedness. And yeah, that's true.

We can't all be shit talking community all the time because one of the things capitalism does is it annihilates community by atomizing itself from one another. Well, it's the same thing again. This is his fault. How did this did renting get so precarious? Incidentally, let me just brag about my eighth consecutive year of house prices going up.

Yeah. I mean, I understand the argument, but I don't understand. I mean, for one, is there really that big of a problem, or maybe you should say it, is the problem of people moving from lease to lease and constantly moving around? What's evictions, which is why? A problem. But I realize a problem is specifically in immigrant communities.

Well, it seems so weird to single them out for that. I think A, it's not, it's a problem for every renter, but I think there is a higher degree of renting in immigrant communities. But it's a problem for every renter because the person who owns your house can put the rent up by literally however much they want every year. I was once in a flat where the rent was put up by 100%

one year to one year. That was just it. And you can do that. And the fact is, and the way I was saying earlier, these are the things that annihilate community. It's not the fact that everyone who lives near me doesn't look like me, because to be honest, I have a lot more in common with the people

living near me who don't look like me than I do with the people who live in Chelsea who own everything. Also a similar level of beardedness. Anyway, but I think really, fortunately, I don't think anyone's going to take the Tony Blair report seriously because the conservatives have their book of, they have their necronomicon that they're trying to use to turn Britain into a bloodbath to someone Cthulhu,

and labor doesn't give a shit what he says. So who's he going to influence? The Cox or the Lib Dems? Fuck it. The biggest political importance of this report has been to generate content for irony podcasts. It will serve no greater political purpose because Tony Blair is a spent force,

and all he has left to do is harvest the pineal glands of unsuspecting children. Tony Blair is just a trash boy, and you really wanted to shout out. Anyway, thank you all so much for listening to us yet again. Of course, what you should do is you should vote for us for a British podcasting award, listeners choice award. The link for vote for that will be in the description.

Just type in the name and hit vote, hit yes, do whatever you have to do, put us on stage so we can finally make them listen to what we have to say. The Mike Gravel podcast choice. Yeah, the Mike Gravel podcasting. Secondly, we're going to have a live show May 30th. You should come to it. It's going to be at the Star of Kings, like it was before.

Tickets are on sale in the link. And we're also going to have a live show. I figure we might as well start promoting this now in Cambridge at June 15th and Wolfson College. So you should also come to that if you are in Cambridge or somehow in the area north of London. Yeah, we don't have an event for that yet, but yeah, we'll sort it out.

Also, the smoke comedy this week are Wednesday the 24th, featuring Mickey Overman and also... Will it be up by then? I don't know if it will be up. It'll be at the morning of the 24th. Okay. Yeah, so tonight. So there'll be smoke comedy tonight,

which is Wednesday the 24th. No, it's coming out Thursday the 25th. Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Well, that point is then moot. Start it again, sort the smoke out again. Fine. There will be smoke comedy on the 8th of May, which is a Wednesday.

And the headliner will be Radu Izak. So get a ticket to that. I'll be there. All the lads will be there. People, comedy, a basement. What more can you want? Wow, Mr. Fritzel. He lured them in with like a new material

like for broke comedians. What? Oh, yeah. And then of course we got shirts, we got mugs. We got jugs and we got chugs. We got all sorts of things. You should buy. There'll be links in the show notes and description. And more importantly,

thank you for being a Patreon subscriber because you wouldn't have this episode. Or maybe you would. Maybe you would. Depends on whether it was your laugh. No, we don't know if this is a bonus or a free one. Well, we don't know how this is going to go, folks. If this is free, you should subscribe to the Patreon.

And if it's bonus, thank you for subscribing. If you're listening to this, we have been kidnapped. If you're listening to this and it is a Patreon one, here's my favorite slurs. Number one. You