TRASHFUTURE - Christmas Has Fallen ft. Josh Boerman

Episode Date: November 13, 2023

Josh Boerman from the Worst of All Possible Worlds joins the gang in studio to discuss the ongoing weird-ification of the Anglo American right, seen through the lens of a number of state-level elections in the US and the doubling down on anti-Palestinian solidarity in the UK. Additionally, we discuss a strange superyacht based charity and finish on a sternly worded letter to the National Department Store on its insufficiently bouyant Christmas advert. If you want access to our Patreon bonus episodes, early releases of free episodes, and powerful Discord server, sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture Medical Aid for Palestinians: www.map.org.uk *STREAM ALERT* Check out our Twitch stream, which airs 9-11 pm UK time every Monday and Thursday, at the following link: https://www.twitch.tv/trashfuturepodcast *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here: https://www.tomallen.media/ *MILO ALERT* Check out Milo’s upcoming live shows here: https://www.miloedwards.co.uk/live-shows Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and Alice (@AliceAvizandum)

Hello everyone and welcome to this free episode of TF. It's the free wall. God dammit. I was gonna try to snipe you. As you can hear from the additional sort of the hooding monster making my life difficult, we have a guest today. Wow, wait, am I the hooding monster making your life difficult, Riley?

Jesus Christ. I hate you, I know, I'm on streets lovely. Welcome back to number one London Metz fan. Let's go Metz, baby. Love to Metz. It is Josh Bourman. Josh, how's it going? Hey, it's gone Metz, baby. Love to Metz. It is Josh Bourman. Josh, how's it going? Hey, it's going all right, man.

Thanks for having me on. This is sort of completing my tour of the TF podcast adjacent and now podcast sphere. Been recording with Milo, been recording with Hussein, and now we're here to have some fun and talk about the Metz, I guess. That's right. I did four tours of the London podcast in scene. I've seen shit over there, man. I've seen shit you won't fucking believe pal. No, we have a show for you today as we often do.

We are going to be talking about a few, a few sell off. One of our typical trash feature activities, producing a podcast for you to enjoy. We're going to be talking about a couple of news items. I have a startup we may or may not do if we want to. It's not actually a startup. It's a charity, but the concept is so bananas that I just had to possibly include it. The Captain Tom Foundation. It's a different one.

I saw an amazing charity the other day. This is a bit of a sidebar, but Annabelle and I went to this thing called The Spirit of Christmas in Kensington, Olympia, because so one of her flatmates friends is like a fancy chocolate ear. She's part of the Lint Regiment of Chocolate Tears. And then she... Vendee Regiment? Yeah, they sort of bravely.

Yeah, they stormed the beaches. It's a long, long bit we invented on the Twitch stream about how the Lindmaster Chocolate era is a kind of like member of an elite force. Mm-hmm. Yeah, they're like the Navy Seals of Chocolate. Yeah. Her Majesty's Royal Chocolate It.

I like her. We were going to do a shirt with that one then. All right, I'm caught up. Like the cross, the cross, whisk and bayonet. Anyway. And so this friend of her flatmates exhibits at this thing. So she gets like free tickets.

And it's just like, it's not really that Christmas. It's just things posh people would buy. Like ugly antiques, like expensive ugly clothes, like food stuff, whatever. We'd like wandered around it for a bit. And there was this jewelry company that was also a charity. And they were like, yeah, 100% of the profits go to charity. And it's like incredibly posh girl in like custom made

overalls with the name of the company on. And she's like, okay, so like what happens is you buy, you buy a charm to go on your bracelet. And then like you, you buy a charm depending on like which one of these like charitable causes speaks to you. And was like do any of them leap out of you to Anabel and then like she starts looking at the categories and the categories were one of them was cancer pretty normal charity. Another one was motherhood okay which I was just like is that traditionally a charity? Well I was just saying, moms, they fall in on hard times these days.

So nobody can, nobody can be a mother anymore. I mean, like, mental health, of course. Of course. Yeah. And I can't remember what the fourth one was. But I was, I'm so pleased to see Posh go flourishing in their natural environment. Yeah, yeah.

You can get a motherhood bracelet. So look, we're gonna, we're gonna delay the news. We're gonna delay the talk of the Captain Tom Send and its fate. We're gonna delay all of that because I'm just gonna come right out with the fun charity. I think I can top yours, Milo. Okay. The charity is called

Yacht Aid. Yes! Yes! Surely not! For just two pounds a month, you can help free an imprisoned super yacht. You start trash-shoot your resolvable, we fucking beg me. Yeah. I am a little, little yacht aid. That can be something. I'll tell you the story of how I came to find yacht aid. Try, look at news heads. Try to fund your yacht. Yeah.

I came to find yacht charity that's been spent so long. Do your regular weekly googling of yacht, basically. I want to tell the story of how I found yacht aid. I don't worry news heads, the news is coming. It's going to come after this. We're going to talk about Suella Braverman, but I want to talk about yacht aid first. I was researching a startup that is trying to bring back

lighter than air, Zeppelin transportation headed by Sergey Brinn. Fuck yes. It is the one good thing maybe a tech company has possibly ever done. These steampunk burning man motherfuckers, if they bring back the airship, like if I get to be like a fucking air pirate, often do my crimson sky shit off of these guys, fantastic. So no, no, it's let them have the yacht. People at Hindenburg research losing their shit about this.

So, right, and I saw Sergei Brynn, like, had some idea when he was doing his, doing something with his super yacht, with yacht aid, which made me say, what the fuck is yacht aid? And now I can tell you that yacht aid is all about, and this is their tagline, it's printed all over everything they do. Changing the world without changing course. Great. Fantastic. But do you think what does it mean if you have a get charity that is comprised of super yacht owners?

But if you want to have a slogan that will reassure them, it would be don't worry. We're not changing course. Things will be much the same. Do they rescue very picky drowning people? Or is this like bandaid where it's like, you know, Bob Galdoff obviously like we can use our music to sort of save the world and here it's like we can use our yachts to escort people? Yeah.

Josh that's pretty much. Yeah? That's like about 70% of what they're doing. Okay. They say it is incumbent upon the yachting community. I feel like they should have like a fancier name that a community at that point. It'll at least be a regatta, right?

The yachting flitilla. Well, and Armada. Yeah. There you go. To care for the people in the environments of the coastal communities around the globe who share with us their land, sea, and spirit. Since our founding in 2006,

yacht aid global has been the recognized leader in facilitating yacht industry wide engagement and collaboration for disaster relief and recovery. So basically, That's so insulting. If you're in like a natural disaster and some fucking super yacht shows up to like throw a bottle of water at you. This is like, yeah, Trump throwing out the fucking, you know, to paper towels in Puerto Rico.

It's that. But with yachts, yes. Am I hearing this correctly? We've sent Jeremy Fragrance on a sunsseeker down to help out with the tsunami relief. So, um, Captain Mark Druelo, uh, how are we spelling that? D-R-E-E-L-E-O-W. Um, that's a hell. That has not clarified anything for me. If anything, I'm full of views.

Jason Druelo, as I said, the name, the name that's spelling it, like Doc's the point of your Glasgow coma scale. Who's vision 15 years ago to enlist his super yacht clients as first responders for disaster relief humanitarian aid and conservation efforts around the world. It's a Michelin web sketch. This is a real. Has grown into a UN recognized force for good. Well, if the UN't fucking recognize anything. Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, so basically now what happens is, is you've got, let's say you have a big yacht and you're, and you sort of watch TV and feel bad about it. Yacht aid will, yeah, I've seen Mrs. Brown's books. Allow you to compel your crew to go help out. Oh great, more unpaid labor in the yachting sector. Yeah, right? So it's, it, now you probably still have to pay them, right? You do have to pay them, but like, you will just

more, more involuntary. Can I like, no, you've been conscripted as UNN Aval officers. Yeah, my, my yacht galley slaves involuntary labor in the yachting sector has been, has been an issue since the Napoleonic Wars. At least. At least. You've been listening to the tri-ream service now, baby.

I can't believe I was falling asleep, drunk on the beach, and when I woke up, I was in Eric Schmidt's yacht, handing out bottle water. It's handed the kings NFT, you know. Expertise coupled with trust. Yacht Aids Global Expertise in consultation logistics and program management, coupled with our confidentiality and trust enable members of the yacht and community to execute altruistic activities effectively seamlessly

and discreetly. Okay, so I'm really curious about the confidentiality and trust piece of this. What specifically does that look like? Does that mean like, if I send my yacht out, I no longer, I'm not worried about people leaking photos of my yacht to the fucking New York Post or what, what does that mean? You can use my yacht to rescue children,

but you cannot rescue the children of my yacht. I wanna be completely clear about that. The yacht stays 12 miles from the coast. Right, exactly. So what the idea is, right, is let's say there's a hurricane. Let's say I'm a rich guy, and I like sailing my super yacht to an island that gets hit by a hurricane. I will then feel bad about that, and I might feel

a momentary panning of guilt that I've been in sort of actively participating in their emiseration by like keeping that going. So what you will do, and I also don't want it known, right, that I'm going to send my, you know, for deck yacht to St. Martin or whatever. And so yacht aid won't say,

we helped Jeff Bezos, you know, how they caught through some paper towels to his favorite beach when it got hit by a tidal wave. Yeah, so it's like, it's like Mackenzie, you just don't talk about your client list, basically.

They also want to establish global philanthropic footprints to engage the Yacht Aid communities generosity and, quote, unique assets already in place. But the Yacht, surely. The Yacht Aid, the Yacht, right? That's it. community's generosity and quote unique assets already in place. But the yachts surely. The yachts say the yachts, right?

That's it. It's the yachts. Norma Trees, the president of the International Super Yacht Society, and one of the founders of the Super Yacht Aid Coalition. If your name is Norma Trees, you cannot be the fucking president of the International super yachts. But you've got to pick one weird thing. You can't have everything.

I'm very into the Super yacht aid coalition. I think that was part of like, that was part of the invasion of Iraq. You know, it was like Latvia, a couple of guys from Finland, all of the super yacht guys, they were just doing donuts on the bars. I was out of Korean army for some reason.

Providing critical support in the Gulf. We needed to be able to harness the power of yarding to do good. We realized how serious so seldom harness the power of yawcing to do anything. Our boys out there in the Gulf, when they've been fighting the Iraq, they're gonna need some downtown,

they're gonna need some air and art. They're gonna need to, they're gonna need to jet ski. Okay. You're gonna need to go out to your yachts. You need to have a nice time. They're gonna need some air in our. They're gonna need to, they're gonna need to jet ski. Okay. You just gonna need to go out to your yachts. You need to have a nice time. They're gonna need to eat some grapes. I barely harness the power of yachting to do yachting. Let alone to do good, you know.

I don't think I've ever harnessed the power of yachting. If I'm being honest. Let's go around the table and talk about how often we've harnessed the power of yachting here. Zero times, zero times. Conspicuous silence from Riley. We realized how serious the impact of these hurricanes was, not just to our yarding playground,

but also from the point of view of our clients. If islands can't recover, then we're out of business. So this is like... This is the Teddy Rosevelt conservation thing. If we like, bulldoze your sanity, where am I gonna go to like hunt moose or whatever. Exactly.

Or the, you know, the ski resorts contribute into climate change matters, right? It's like, it's purely a rational, economic, self-interest thing. They have no interest in the planet. So you gotta keep it cold. So I was reading Dark Walk magazine, which is a trade magazine for Yacht Crew.

Yacht Crew? Hey, is the Darker the Walk, baby? It was originally called Docking Magazine. They had a lot of drop problems. The first quote, by the way, came from a magazine for a super Yacht owner as an executive's called Boat. But do you subscribe to Boat?

It was previously called Motorboat magazine, but I have the same as she was docking magazine. This is them talking about Operation Swimway, which was a conservation activity they did. Every fucking name in this thing. Operation Swimway. Oh my God, is that the new bilge? Here's another conservation project, which is, which they talk about in Doc Walk, which is that they're working to get more conservation projects on the ground. I already made that. Oh, I'm sorry. Including with this company called Tahiti Private Expeditions, where they're doing a big shark identification activity.

Excuse me. Pointing a shark. Yeah. They resulted in 10 sharks being tagged in the water surrounding French Polynesia with the help of an unnamed super yacht in the area. I'd say, well, we take the yacht down to our beer, though I've been identified, shocking a few times. Also, come on. You're helping an unidentified super yacht tag rare sharks. You're helping a supervillain.

Yeah, you are a bond hench right at that point. You have been employed, you are his vaga. Yeah, well, you get a job in henchman magazine. Exactly. I was really hoping for a job as like boat magazine society correspondent, you know, to do a column like, you know, at some point, well, though they all have bylines in boat magazine, you can look.

But what I want to see is I want to see trade, the magazine for unusual trade magazines. Yeah, yeah. Well, that trade magazine has a different, hmm. It's a meta magazine. I think like the vertical for the culture or the society on both should be called like four deck. Mm, yeah. Society at sea without a school well Kelly.

So, so let me let me carry on with operations, Wimley. The idea is to provide a quote, immersive and educational experience for yacht owners and guests as they focus on the conservation of critical migration corridors. Guests on vessels participating are able to work alongside scientists. See, it's some like some drunk billionaires idiot nephew. It's like, you fucking imagine, like seriously, being some sort of like an actual, what the fuck do they call those people who work in the ocean?

Marine biologist, a marine biologist. Like imagine being an actual like credentialed marine biologist, right? And you know exactly what you're looking for and you know exactly what you're looking for you know exactly how you're looking for it instead of headed your life to the marine biology cool yes in some fucking asshole like drunk off you know three beers like hey is that a shark like that would be the most fucking annoying thing imaginable? Sergey Brinn is floating above us in his zeppelin, twirling his moustache that he's grown hurling bundles of dynamite down into the ocean, getting splatter of shark guts.

I think it's nice to show how some yacht I think we're unanimous on that one. That's a nice, nice, big. Crystal, holla. Crystal, holla. Sorry, continue. Ha, ha, ha. Some of them want to really want to use what they have to make a difference.

And just one yacht owner can make a huge difference. That is true. And the difference is, the difference is, again, to identifying sharks. I am just trying to figure out in the whole post of listening to this. It was like, what are they saying they can change? Or like, how can they positively,

what is their sort of understanding of how they can positively impact society? Because it feels like there's a lot of like the yachting community should be respected, but it's like, what are you doing? I'm confused. It's classic rich people activism, right? Because what they're doing is they're raising awareness.

But what they're raising awareness of is, that is a shock. We have respect for them. If they were like, yeah, we're stopping naming boats, like women's names, and we're gonna give them gender neutral, like they've been, they've been designated. Well, this is, boat is already pretty, they've been. So this is another set is already pretty a, they, them, so this is another, this is another set of things that they do is like anything you might need a boat for, yacht aid, we'll

try and find that boat. So like lots of like drop, dropping off supplies into the asterisans stuff, which itself is a good thing to do. It's just why do those places have so few supplies? Why do they need to drop off? No, no, no, I'm sorry. I'm not even gonna allow us to whitewash it that much. If you go to a disaster zone, like an actual disaster on a super yacht and you try and deliver supplies, they should do you captain cook style.

It should be over for you. You should not make it out of the surf. Maybe this is what this is. Maybe it's the conspiracy to actually get super your own as mud. Sure. By people who are very angry about the fact that this tsunami just destroyed their, you know, South Pacific village or whatever. Well, I have one more, this is a selection from Boat.

In Boat is like, sorry, it is or is not like the economist in that there are bylines. Boat is like byline. It's not like the economist there are bylines. Boat is like bylaw, is not like the economist, there are bylines. Boat is like the FT of the Yachting Community, Doc Wong is like, other mirror. Excellent. That's nice. All of this stuff maps one to one. This one, K Wiggins in boat magazine.

So here's a funny one. And I think some of our audience is gonna laugh out loud at this sentence, which definitely was not run by a particularly diverse panel. Yachts and cruising grounds, and the, excuse me, Yachts and the cruising grounds they call home have a symbiotic relationship. Okay, hold on.

What I hear cruising grounds, I'm just like, oh yeah, that's Belboa Park. Like, there are many famous cruising grounds, and many of them happen to be in the cities of San Francisco and San Diego. Your aid can lend you a boat for cruising. There you go. There you go.

It's something that came up a lot in Docking magazine. Just like sailing the more thieves. I'm like, why does it smell like pop? And that's what I was's my asshole dilating. I'm so off and off skin myself. I just got done got eating and boy is my asshole tired. So here's some more that you're going to enjoy. Captain Tom Forderer previously sailing the yacht vivid on the following to say Tom Forder

Captain Forderer. Captain Forderer. Tom Ford. Yeah. Captain, Captain Tom. Yeah. Captain Tom Ford or a previously of browsers said, this isn't Johnny say. He's a mashup of Captain Tom and Tom Ford and Roger Federer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he does it all. He designs, he does cocaine, he plays tennis and, and... And whatever Roger Federer does.

Yeah. This is a movement, he said. We want to make giving back part of Yarding's culture. It's common sense that Yacht's act as a force for good in these areas. People see big Yacht's, they think decadence and bling, but we have to change the culture and image of Yachting to a caring industry that provides stewardship

for the world's coastal cruising communities that we rely on. So I mean, the salty sea gaze. Are they like trying to sort of like rebrand your owners as like pirates? Or like woke pirates? Or just like humanitarians that sail the sea. Because that feels like a different thing to yachts. Like, I feel like when it comes to doing a rebrand because you want to appear to be less out of touch,

the yachting community is probably not the sort of demographic that you need to do that for. I feel like if there's one group that is allowed to kind of be decadent, it is probably people who own yachts. Like we all sort of expect that, that's gonna be the case. I don't understand why they wanna rebrand. Well, they feel bad. Is why they wanna pre-read the, they feel bad.

Well, Hussein, I've got this from our magazine. That's formerly hard on our magazine, but they had to change that as well. That's what I'm saying. It says, when you're involved as an owner, you can connect with and contribute to the places you're cruising and your cruising experience will improve. Come on.

Yeah, you got to like look off to the bushes or whatever. Or the bathroom. It's like a bathroom stool. I made like, I don't know, $800 million selling, you know, gunch to Sergei Brin. And instead of trying to make my soul feel mortal, I want to like cruise on my super yacht, and I'm going to be, my soul is going to be eaten away at by seeing the sort of grueling poverty people are left in. So I need an organization whose job is to make me feel better,

but also while doing so from the comfort of my life. Right, because the alternative is just getting rid of the yachts, right? There's no world in which we can have private ownership of 300 foot yachts and be able to genuinely provide for everyone. It's just too much of an extreme symbol of wealth and quality. Okay, hang on, I've just invented a guy, right? Rich guy who really wants to look after

the local gay cruising ground, because he's a big supporter of the LGBT community. And he's like, I went into one of these toilets that the local gay cruising ground. Because he's a big supporter of the LGBT community. And he's like, I went into one of these toilets that the local gay men used to cruising. And I was disgusted to see that many of the toilet stalls they're using have holes in the walls. So I've had all of those filled in by my personal maintenance team. This is basically the one Tory MP who stopped them

from making poppers illegal, which, yeah, yeah, there'd be someone called Quentin for sure. It might even have been Crispin Blunt, who has now camped. Crispin Blunt has in the spark up there. Anyway, anyway, I almost wasn't going to do yacht aid today, because I was like, I don't know, I'm very happy that we did, because my your charity, it brought it out of me. However, we have a little bit of news, of

course. Play the Captain Tom Senn sting because the saga is finally, at least this part of the saga, is finally at an end. The Planning Enforcement Officer, Richard Proctor, from Central Bedfordshire Council, that's a great name for a planning enforcement officer, Dick Proctor. It said that while the original Captain Tom Memorial greeting card storage facility was approved because the balance of public benefit outweighed the harm that the scheme was strictly for storing greeting cards and no information to be given to the council about the use of a spa.

So that the family of Captain Tom has now been ordered to tear down their spa. Oh, this fucking country. It's in gentlemen. Britain has officially fallen. Captain Tom, tear down this spa. It's gone woke. It's gone woke.

It's classic Nimbias and They don't want anything built. Not in keeping with the character of the neighborhood. It's very ugly. The spa that they've built. This type of like walkable mixed use urbanism is actually illegal to build in many British suburbs. Yeah. Hanna, like try to convince them about community onsen would be would be a welcome, a welcome addition to addition to the town, but they said no.

Yeah, they offered the entire nation a new room massage, but they turned it down. Are into all of our nation's veterans are going to be filthy now. They're nowhere to bathe in a sort of like ritual style. Yeah, That's right. So that's ready. The speaking of cruising grounds. Can I just say they did release some photos of the interior of the captain's home spa. And one of them was a jacuzzi, which is already highly like sex people coded, but with the couch facing that jacuz, like an ordinary fabric couch. And we'll show the floor around it was carpeted. That's very important. Yes. That's not right. Yes. That's the most uncomfortable implication or inference I've drawn for a photo.

Well, and I feel like you could forgive it if it was built in like the 90s, the 80s or the 90s, because that was the style at the time. But like the fact that exactly, but the fact that this is brand new construction and it looks like that is just deeply upsetting on just a primal level. I hate it when I turn up accidentally at gay hour at the captain Tom Spar. So here's the thing. More information about what they intended it to be has now also come up. Because we've talked about how they wanted it to be a community center.

They wanted it to be a pool that could rehabilitate Captain Tom after his death. Maybe they thought they'd build the faculty of youth. Rehabilitation, like they'd put him in the pool. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. He was going to do laps of the pool. OK.

Then we're going to turn him into like a pre-cog from Minorazere. Yeah. Yeah. Great. They also said that they would use the rest of the cool cat. Then we're gonna turn him into like a pre-cog from Minority. Yeah, yeah, great. They also said that they would use the rest of the building, which is outside their house, for coffee mornings and charity meetings to combat elderly loneliness.

But why is the couch facing the jacuzzi to combat the elderly loneliness? The elderly swingers parties. Right, everyone, pill boxes in the bowl. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, maybe it's because in a meeting, some people want to be in the jacuzzi and some people want. Pill boxes in the bowl. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, maybe it's because like in a meeting, some people want to be in the Jacuzzi and some people would want to not be in the business meeting. Like, so it'd be like a normal business meeting. Yeah, for sure.

We're actually, we're actually sitting in the Jacuzzi right now, me and Milo. And I'm sitting on the couch. Right. Well, the Jacuzzi on the four deck of the trashy, she y'all. Which by the way, we got to get this recording done in time so that we can go and, you know, do yacht eight. We're about to make land in Bangladesh. So, also in the news, of course, is we've had, it appears that there may be another yogurt geyser situation. A yogurt geyser.

Yep, and Scotland this time. Do you remember John McNaughton, the guy, the Brexit party canvasser who was photographed because some antifa had thrown cherry yogurt on him? Oh, we see the one who was like a parachute regiment. So yeah. So the context of this, because I forget it until the story is told to be, so during the cause, like in the weeks running up to this moment, there was a thing called,

there was like a milkshaking thing, right? So there was like the sphere that people, that right wing people would be attacked by Antifa with milkshakes. The concrete milkshake, I'm going over this. And then that evolved to the milkshaking is dangerous because there might be concrete in that milkshake.

Someone might be lactose intolerant. In some way, she. That's an important thing. That's why I avoid milkshakes. What if it's not? It's not a milk milkshake. Well, actually, then that should be fine. I don't know.

Well, maybe. I don't know. But yeah, the milkshaking context is important in this because it makes the story even funnier. But so we had a Scottish version of this because in the midst of the protests, there have been a couple of attempts to force this narrative that woke Hamas supporters are physically attacking the people who distribute like a poppy's paper of red poppy's poppy appeal.

And so in Waverly Station in Edinburgh, which is, I think, like per square foot, the most surveillance cameras anywhere in Scotland. This guy for the Scottish poppy appeal, his veteran was like, I was punched and kicked by woke amass. And so, you know, the police investigated this. And despite all of this kind of like CCTV, despite thousands of potential witnesses, after what, two days, that was then closed for lack of evidence. So, you know, critical support to the extremely stealthy

woke-a-mass agent who was able to sort of like punch and kick this guy and get away with it. There's no surprise to me that the woke cowards would attempt this kind of attack in Edinburgh, because I tell you what, they would have gotten very short shrifter that attempted to attack someone selling poppy products and derivatives in Glasgow. No, the other thing I think it's important to say about this, which sort of brings us on to what I wanted to talk about the new right in the States versus here comparing sort of like suella braverman and what she's doing to looking at some of the campaigns, the state, the gubernatorial campaigns in Ohio, Arkansas and Kentucky.

Yeah. I mean, braverman, braverman might be out in the next couple of days, which is a real, to do this half an hour into an episode that's primarily been about yawcing as in real sort of like in other news, the president of the session. Yeah. So what I wanted to say is like, this is bringing us in there, which is that of course, immediately, right, Rishi Sunak responds, as though again, this thing actually happened, right?

He says it is disgusting that there was an attack on a poppy seller because it is of crucial importance to the ongoing, like right wing project poppy seller, because it is of crucial importance to the ongoing, like, right wing project in this country, that it believes it is constantly under attack and that the stakes are constantly rising and that you are always a little bit less safe every day and closer to needing to take, quote unquote, decisive action with yo-yo.

It's also interesting that the, the row British Legion has now sort of you know it's become this kind of like untouchable thing despite the fact that it is you know it's a charity that does politics I stopped wearing a poppy in 2014 after they put kids in future soldier t-shirts which is political as well also they invented that disease which is pretty nasty yeah but it has the same legal standing as yachtate. Right. But this is now like a sort of a sacrosanct thing that work, work

has been assorting. And despite the total lack of evidence of it. And you know, this is all, this is sort of at a very low level, something that's been happening here, I think now for it has come and gone, but that has been in a's been happening here, I think now for, that has come and gone, but that has been in a wave in the UK, I think since about 2015, this belief that there is, that like about half the country, or now it's gotten to half the country, it was never, wasn't half the country back then, but this, the group has grown bigger and bigger and bigger

as the government gets more and more unpopular. And they do things that are more and more unpopular. bigger and bigger and bigger is the government gets more and more unpopular. And they do things that are more and more unpopular. It's about to get the goddamn rage virus and start just hacking apart patriotic, right thinking Brits. And anyone would be on edge after last week when 500,000 people joined Hamas. True. Yeah, yeah. It was the biggest influx to Hamas since Jeremy Corbin became leader of the Labour Party. It's good to mass put it down the minimum membership for contribution to three pounds. You know, and this is this is the low level version of that. Sick of when I have to go through a station, I always put a blight like give the Hamas guy a couple of quid to get a Hamas headband, you know.

Reupping my subscription to patreon.com slash Hamas. The Royal Hamas Legion. Now, this is the sort of like low level micro version, right? This is a guy responding to the news who I will bet you anything, if you strapped into a lie detector test, we'll fully believe that he was attacked by like, the characters from that Israeli sketch show basically.

Yeah. Right. You know, he will fully believe that whatever. And that this is, this is connected to you. Yeah, but he's got a fucking like TBI in Northern Ireland when the batten gun he was using is like blind a child re-coiled into his head. Like I don't, mm-hmm. No.

This is, but this is the same time, right, where, again, you alluded to this earlier right, Alice, like, like, so little braverman is currently picking a fight with the Metropolitan Police because the new right in the UK knows only how to do this thing, this, this ratcheting up of tension that we've been talking about for a few weeks now, really, right, where she says, I do not believe that these marches are a cry for help for Gaza. They are an assertion of an assertion of primacy by certain groups, particularly Islamist, of the kind that we're more used to seeing in Northern Ireland, disturbingly reminiscent

of... Yeah, you're a masterful invocation of like orange walks there in a way that absolutely fucks her politically, because all of those people are essential to the conservative party, at that kind of remove. And also, it's really strange, the mention of marching there, because I think that you have this theory, that Swella Braveman like the way that she is because she's a true believer.

I think she's just like, she performs true believer better. Um, and I think, I think the way to understand the mention of marches in Northern Ireland there is as a lapse where she's like accidentally revealed the sort of consensus Westminster opinion, which is that, yes, the orange order are obviously that shit. Um, and of course, you know, all of their marches are provocative. And she's just kind of worked that in unintentionally

and trying to ban a call for a ceasefire. Yeah, so that's possibly true, but she also says that this is a complaint about the police that she is concerned, right, that the police are not doing exactly what she says. And she says that they're not even handedly policing, because if they were even handedly policing, obviously, they wouldn't let Hamas demonstrate in the streets saying there's a deal. Do you remember when they killed Ian Thomas?

Because that to me struck me as an example of like heavy handed policing. But no, her examples for this are all like, oh, then they're not nice to the EDL, which it's not down- It's not down- It's during COVID, why was it the lockdown objectives were given no quarter by public police, yet Black Lives Matter demonstrators were enabled

allowed to break rules and even greeted with officers taking the- Again, do we not remember the Sarah Afro-Official or have we just memory hold that apparently. I mean, the thing is here, the real sort of political thing is that she's sort of like unwisely gone against the Met as an institution. And we've talked about the Met before and we've talked about the sort of the poll that it has and how much sort of dirty laundry it has collected on politicians. If this does prove fatal to her, it's don't let anyone bullshit you that this

is like, you know, in order to protect police like operational independence or some like civil liberties thing because, well, that might incidentally do those and it'll be good if it does. You know, the, the, the mark here is not that, you know, a home secretary is trying to organize a far right, sort of like riot. It's, it's not even that she's trying like, like, micromanage the police. It's that she's making the cops look bad. That's not a degree of interference that they can talk about. There was a lady adjacent to the position of our own secretary who was engaged in an attempt to portray the constructions in a somewhat unfavorable manner. We weren't accost with the lady,

and we were able to come to a reasonable conclusion without placing around a caution. Yeah, here's where I sort of begin to connect this up to something broader, which is that what this has done is this has disturbed some of the people who have always wanted to stir up fear and hatred of the left minorities or other groups, but wanted that fear and hatred to go this far and no further.

Because what Braverman is saying is that it always requires more action, not just hinting at action, not just moving towards the direction and momentum of right-wing politics, but actually finally doing it. Finally, taking in hand and changing the institutions that they don't like, finally, criminalizing huge amounts of the population and so on and so on. And what I was thinking of, and one of the reasons I think we wanted to also talk about

the states in this example is that we are seeing some of those same tendencies in the American new right with its own dealing with having caught the car in this sense, right? And the car, of course, being the Dobbs decision. Now sort of flailing and beginning to actually alienate some of its erstwhile allies in Ohio, Kentucky and Arkansas, where recent elections and, you know, we don't really talk about American politics on this show unless we can generalize it to something that's comparable to British politics, and I think it's worthwhile doing here, because what we've seen in the last couple of days is significant wins for democratic governors or ballot measures for enshrining

abortion in the Constitution by like bath party margins. Now, the American people, uh, woken soy, and you can see the numbers here too, right? I looked some of this up before recording just because I was like, what exactly do the numbers look like right now? And you can take a state like Michigan, for instance, which is the state I grew up and it's sort of a bell weather, right? Um, right now in the current polls, uh, Trump is up 5% in Michigan, according to an NYTCN, a poll that came out this week. But when you pull those exact same Michigan voters on the issue of abortion, 62% of them

rather say that abortion should be mostly or always legal. So like the thing about, I guess, and I don't know if this is sort of the same way that the body politic or, or, I guess, approach to the law works here in the UK, but at least in the United States, it's this thing where we have this idea of the rule of law and by and large, people are like, yes, you should follow the law. But what those laws actually are, we tend to just go off of vibes. And then, and so that allows the right to push things pretty hard in terms of what they think the law of the land ought to actually be.

However, when you get to the point of something like the Dobs decision, then people are immediately like, wait, I thought the law said that you could have an abortion, which it never really totally did. And so you then have the parallel but equally, or I guess more like perpendicular really approaches to it, where it's like, are we going to try to make it illegal? Or are we going to try to roll it back slowly, but surely? The frog and water approach tends to work better, but many of these states saw the Dobbs decision as their opportunity to really jump in and double back down, and most voters aren't having

it, which I think is interesting because for a very long time, the conservative right were able to just sort of push things a little bit, a little bit, a little bit, a little bit, and it was with these fetal heartbeat laws that started passing states mostly in like 2019, where people started to be like, wait, no, hold the fuck on. Like, something is happening here and we need to fight it. I think part of it is also just, is, is comes down to weirdness. And I think that's, yes. I want to talk about trans people, because this is the thing. This has been one of the biggest pushes on a culture war, one of the most sudden ones

that I've seen in American political history of the last couple of election cycles, really going like full-bore and trans people. Grumas are mutilating children and every single time as best I can tell. And I mean that, I cannot think of an exception. It just has not gone over, like, truly. Like, I cannot point to a single election in the US where it has made the difference.

And I can point to a lot where it has actually turned people off because it's so weird. Like, it's so strange and alienating to have a guy like Matt Walsh with his spray painted on beard. Just sort of talk at you for a half hour about this shit. Yeah, I think about his guy, Dick and Bals. He's so weird. It's so weird to get like a woman who came like seventh and like a college swim meet whining on TV about like fairness and women sports, something which Americans

have never ever cared about. And it just, it doesn't work. Like Trump's polling ahead of them because he has charisma. And you know, he seems like when people have this vague idea that he's gonna fix the economy or whatever. But in terms of like any of the actual like social policies that they want to do, people hate them.

They've always hated them. And the only thing that's new about abortion is that they're noticing that it applies to them. Exactly. Exactly. And I think that the same thing is true with those state laws regarding like trans kids participating in sports, right? Where it's the difference between somebody else's kid

versus my kid. And the vast majority of people who have kids who are doing sports, this is not an issue. In one part, because in many states, you just don't really have trans kids wanting to compete. But to the extent that they do, it's not a problem. Like these are kids playing sports. It's not a big deal.

And when you see that happen with your kid, it's like, oh yeah, you know, this is is, they got a friend on the team. Cool. And that's where it begins and ends, you know. And then we have a bunch of like sinister guys from out of state trying to like write laws about how, you know, they should get to inspect all of the kids' genitals. Right. Yeah. I was, I was sort of thinking like, is, is one of the sort of the pullbacks from this, a slow realization, but oh, if like this becomes a law, like, you know, I, it's one thing to sort of fantasize about like bullying someone that I don't like, or I have personal grievances against. It's another to sort of realize, oh, this becoming law means that my child has to be genital and spected as well.

Right. Yes, yes, exactly. Like if you've got a a if you've got a kid who in in this happened not too long ago in uh... i think it was in british columbia so can it a technically uh... but uh... there was that in colona there was like a track meet and there was like this insane dad who was so convinced that one of the girls running was trans

and and he was just like yelling just bellowing about it. And I think like another parent got into the fight with this guy and hit it. But like this is, that's the only thing that can come about if this is how you're doing policy. Is you're just going to have just a whole bunch of like horrible little self-appointed Martinets who's the only thing that they can do

is keep the law for everyone around them because they and only they can be the arbiters of What kid ought to be able to place for it's fucking where is Trump understands how the working man thinks is like people want to talk about trans women I'll talk about it. They're making more women folks. I heard about this. I heard about it up and down the country. They're making more women Okay, I'm not gay. I'm not against that. down the country. They're making more women. Okay. I'm not gay. I'm not against. I say you want to make more of them. We'll make more.

Listen, Donald Trump, property developer, rich in Manhattan in the 80s. 100% the first, if not the only president to have fucked the Trumps. Yeah. I'm telling the same of them. Quite beautiful. Quite beautiful. I wouldn't know. Do you know the Trump, like Trump specifically

and personally, like overrode the decision that trans women couldn't compete in Miss Universe to the London? Really? That is true. That's wild. Awesome. Yeah.

So I think the thing that we have in common between these two approaches, the weirdening of both, and isolating and, and strangening of the UK and US rights is that they have both become so isolated. The US right is less isolated than the British right. We talked about that actually with Patrick Weim and why they're more able to respond to the concerns that Petit Borshoi than the British right, which is completely unable to, right? But in both cases, you know, they have been overtaken

by the ideology of them and their friends mostly from the internet, whether that's like Facebook groups and the sort of local level or Twitter and the sort of party political level. Yeah, your matte wall, just in the world. Yeah, the matte wall, just but also they are. I've been only I remember when the milkman had an Excel bully Facebook group. And it's fascinating.

But for example, the Suella Braverman, it's not saying that her strategy isn't necessarily a good one for probably becoming Tory leader, right? But she is playing to a very small base. She's playing to the Tory party membership that just is a Tory party members because they are paranoid and strange. And so she is reflecting their paranoid strange style of politics back at them. And you can see how people find it off putting. Like 76% of

the population she would basically see as more or less in Hamas. Like that is the activity of someone who is fundamentally detached. The Tory policy wants to do everyone who is in the parliamentary Tory policy. And then yeah. What's so wild to me about that though, is that they will turn right back around and say that populist policies

as espoused by politicians like Bernie and Jeremy Corbyn or whatever, that these are the policies that are so out of touch with what it is that people want. But then when you take those policies and you put them in front of the voters, it always wins. It always wins. The British system is specifically designed to forestall that from happening, which is why

I actually think weirdness is less electoral poison in the UK than it is in the US. Quite simply because you've got to vote for one of them. Well, yeah, you never get to disaggregate. You have very little choice in choosing your candidate. And it's not like at the same time as you vote for like your MP. You also vote for the dog catcher and the school supervisor and all this other stuff. Our next election is it's storm or all soon act. It's two Mayer peets running against one another.

Oh, no, no. The old mayor's peet is the mayor's peet. But it's two mayor peets running against one another, both of whom are basically responding to Suella Braverman at this point. Both of whom are responding to what they think the right of the Tory party is, because ultimately, right, like, that I was talking to Nate about this earlier, actually, and he says like, fundamentally,

birch-arism was invented in America and then perfected in the United Kingdom by Australia. Oh, for sure. For sure, yeah. You know, that it is, that we have mainstream birch-arism here, right? That the beliefs of political beliefs that are considered to be relatively mainstream in the UK

are considered baffling and strange to the American voter. And I think that's a function of how isolated and deeply protected the political media class is in this country. How protected our elites are from circulation. It's strange too, because it doesn't, the two sort of, I don't know, call them sides or whatever, labor versus Tory, Democrat versus Republican. They don't really overlap each other exactly.

It's more of like an orthogonal thing, like it's been rotated almost, where, you know, in both cases obviously, you have parties that are primarily Interested in the well-being of of the bourgeois and you know the petty bourgeois But whereas with the American political system you have this sort of I don't know Democrats At least have an interest in advancing Actual progressive social policy as is the case with obviously these abortion laws, and you have somebody like Andy Beshear and Kentucky who can actually defend the right to an abortion and win in a state like Kentucky, which is impressive.

There is a willingness to at least on the social issues double down and be steadfast. I don't really see that with labor right now. It seems like there is just this sort of fear, like you were saying, Riley, of like, well, if Suella Braverman says this, then we need to like somehow get a counter argument to her. When the reality is you don't need to acknowledge

that arc at all. You just need to set up what it is that you want to do. And even if they might run ads, me like, oh, Rishi is just responding to what up what it is that you want to do. And even if they might run ads, be like, oh, Rishi is just responding to what Braveryman is saying, fundamentally, the politics that everybody is responding to are her politics. It the agenda that they're responding to is her agenda because in this, and I think the reason,

one of the reasons for that difference between sort of the way that works here and how that agenda, that weirdness agenda can be so powerful is that ultimately it is cloistered and that all of these people know one another. And so the loudest person in a very small room ends up defining the whole conversation. And that also, very, very few people in the UK

have any opportunity to affect that because most of the newspapers they read, most of the chat shows they watch, all of that is in London and it's the same 500 freaks who are all doing it. Whether regardless of party or whether or whether or not they're technically a politician or think tanker or a journalist, it's all the same 500 freaks who are all weird in the same way. There's no one who isn't weird. I was going to say that like the ecosystem that the politician like that kissed on a, and I guess Rishi Sienek as well sort of react to, is like, it almost feels like independent of them, right? And so I think right, Riley sort of echoed it in the sense of you have this very small group of newspaper reporters, very small group of think tankers who like, and there's this like one straight pipeline, right? There is like lots of demonstrable examples of people

who went from like CCHQ to like the Civil Tories like you know, research center to like a big newspaper to a fink tank and bend like as like there are several people who are operating at high end of British politics right now who have literally gone down that pipeline. So they get to really decide like what the contours are for like what is acceptable

discussion. I think a lot of the stuff around heavy gaslighting stuff around Gaza really stems from these people trying to basically get to tell you or try to tell people this is what you are allowed to talk about, this is how you can talk about it and if you don't do that, then we're going to try and cast you as like an enemy of the state or like if we have, you know, in the case of like, two other brothers and men and her like, the thing that she is seemingly doing is like, well, we will use the instruments of the state to render you to be like not only an opponent, but like a fifth column, right? And it's like one of the reasons why I've noticed about like among some of the right wing

columnists, like they've really, I don't want say like, is mask off because there's always been there, but they've been like a lot more open about it, right? In open and saying that, you know, these people who are at the Palestine protest, it's not just like, you know, the UCB time was like, oh, these are just like left wing cranks, all this sort of like, you know, naive Corbinistas, but now they're sort of going on TV and being like,

no, these people are terrorists, like these people are the ones who actually chid on, like, you know, the attacks and all that stuff. And we should be deporting them, right? We should be using the strength of the state to deport them, which I find like amusing in the sense that this is very much just like a very sort of genocidal fancies finally coming out. But it is very telling about like how easy these guys can sort of get to or how much license has been given for them to sort of define the realms of acceptability. now being pushed to it, pushed to it, pushed to it, extremes. And I think you have a parallel environment to that in the United States, right?

Where you've got, you know, the Harvard to AEI, to Congress pipeline. That's a real thing. However, I don't think that it stateside the media culture is quite as in bed with the politicians in the same way, which isn't to say that there aren't journalists who are paid off. There absolutely are, but there is at least this idea maybe that they're ought to be the fifth estate or whatever. And so you don't get quite as much of that. Although it's been interesting also seeing various American commentators, politicians, et cetera,

doing that exact same line of rhetoric and having it not land very effectively with average Americans in a way that I have never seen in the inner country. Yeah. Well, in Britain you have to understand that like there are all these pipes of media influence. And you know, they're running into like, you know, conservative policy, labor policy, the newspapers, whatever.

But they're all linked up to the same big vat back in a factory somewhere. Sure. It's labeled Julia Hartley Brewer. Julia Hartley Brewer's Heady Brewer, a very weak military. Yeah, it's like British politicians and media people do believe they've found the swing voter. And who, wow, it's them. Wow, it's Julia Hartley-Brew, that's crazy.

This is the same, this is the same woman who said that Owen Jones was in ISIS. I'm discovering, that's good shit. I'd like to move on though, to our last room. Julia Hartley-Brew, bro. I was once shown by someone who works in radio, a picture of the cups of tea that Julia Hartley Brewer drinks, and it just looks like a glass of skimmed milk. Oh, God.

He said people call her Julia Hartley Brewer. He was like, I think, great. He said, honestly, it's real inside baseball. He was like, if this got out, he's like, honestly, I think this would be the thing that brought her down.

Is it people could see the kind of cursed cups of tea that this woman is drinking? Brewer, I heartly knew her. That's right. Julie, I hope you move on to our final bit of fun. Because people have been asking, Riley, are you going to talk about Catherine Burble Singh's letter to Mark Sin Spencer about their Christmas advertisement

on the podcast? And I would like to tell them in the dying minutes of this show, yes, yes, we are going to do that. So if you're in America and you want to come back to the comfortable British conversations, just know that the closest thing that we have in this country to a Super Bowl advert

are the big department stores making sort of minute long advertisements before Christmas. Like the John Lewis ad, the MNS ad, that always Indigo voice acoustic cover of a song that you already know. So this is like kind of the Budweiser with the Clyde style sort of thing. Yeah, they'll be like a little girl who makes friends with like a pedophile who lives on the moon.

Whatever. You know, they'll be like a warming British story. And you'll give her like a box of milk tray or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'll be like, you stay away from that man now. Don't you jump, Chris. I think the idea of non-susages in space is a very funny thing.

What has happened is that in the last eight or so years, the Christmas adverts from the department stores, as the department stores have decided that, you know, paranoid 80 year old Facebook people are not their core demographic, have increasingly become the annual targets for outrage that happens to come at the same time as the poppy outrage season. The November is a mad month in Britain.

Yeah, yeah. Why is that I poppy in the Marxist fence is that? So Marxist Spencers have gone woke basically. Yeah, Marxist Spencer, and you don't need to know too much about the ad. It's basically just like people who are going to do some big bombastic thing for Christmas. Like, I don't know, use a blowtorch to, you know, toast my marshmallows on the outside of a gingerbread house or put like some decorate like it's just them being like, you know what? Fuck it. I'm going to take some time for myself. And the music is Sigrid's cover of Mr.

Bombastate by Shaggy, which is interesting. They call me Mr. Bombast. Anna Wadingham shows up and she sets some Christmas cards on fire with her crème de la tour. Really? Fantastic. Yeah. Anyway. Now what I have said is true. That is the ad, right? It's it's simple as that. It's just, you know, various like mothers just being like, you know what? I'm not going to spend 17 hours making a turkey this time. They can deal with it. Feminism win, you know, make your own fucking Christmas. I still can't understand why she set her Christmas cards on fire. What was that? I didn't for the wine mums. They're like,

Yeah, you can, you fucking make it. You're not still fucking useless for the make it. It doesn't even fuck me anymore. My mum, Julie Burtch. I can't make it because I can't reach the kitchen counter. I've lost my stamp, they took it away. Now, I would like to read you, Catherine Burble saying Britain's strictest headmistress,

who gave a speech to the national conservator in the conference about how she's gonna put them all in detention. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Odd woman. Of course, love that shit. Yeah. Very odd woman. I should now read from the best Christmas card I think of the year. Dear marks and Spencer. Damn, Mr. Monks and Spencer. This so cool to Mr. Spenser. Dear Spencer, I've got some words for you. I feel compelled to write to you to express my deep disappointment and outrage at your

Christmas advert for 2023. You have it. Sorry, hold on. Just one question. Just, I just have one question. Does this woman do any fucking t-shirt? Or is it just posts? I'm currently imagining her writing it in the wave of Eminem right at the standlesser

and the unit we know. I'm currently imagining her writing it in the way that Eminem wrote the Stan Lesser and the unit we know Stan. Dear Martin Spencer, I drank a tenth of vodka, dear redrive. Sorry, kids. I would have done the lesson plan for this week, but I had to confront workism in all its forms. You have a duty as I... That's every major conservative in charge of a thing.

Like, imagine working for this woman. Imagine you have to implement all of her insane teaching ideas. And then you like, you're like, hey, help. Can you do any of the head teacher shit and she's like, can't Christmas ads work? Yeah, I'm gonna be on this for the next five to six hours.

Five to six days actually. Cool. So, also, you can have Jim Ratcliffe, at least he runs a chemical company and starts his, and had tried to start his knockoff land rover business. Like, she's just writing posts. She says, you have a duty as our national department store to keep the spirit of Christmas alive

for the sake of our children. Our national sacred bond. The national department store is surely John Lewis, which Emma and Esther knocking off the concept of a Christmas ad from John Lewis anyway. She's yelling at the second tier national departments. Yeah, no, this is like getting mad at Miller rather than getting mad at Budweiser, right?

Yeah, she's yelling at Pepsi. Yeah, yes, yes. Is it, dear Miller Lager, you're disgraceful. Shames this country. When our nation is on its knees, trying to keep our spirits high for what we can all achieve together, this is not the time for you to encourage people

to ignore the inspirational spirit of Christmas of self-sacrifice gratitude, giving one's time and finances to help one's fellow man, children's laughter, magical tales of father Christmas, of kindness and beauty, and instead to tell us to do whatever we want for ourselves. Yes. What, sorry, sorry, hold on.

When was the spirit of self sacrifice, the thing in Christmas, the giant festival of indulgence? What, when? No. It's gone work ever since I got rid of satan alia. At least, on Christmas, you know, the slaves were kings for the day. And you, you had to cook everything for the slaves. And I think it's all everyone. And important lesson.

But kids these days that I would never make dinner for a slide that you kids these days I can't even play the nose flute. They're beautiful. So I'm sat in there. They've been how good. Also it's like when our nation is on its knees trying to keep our spirits high for what we can all achieve together. That's like that's your your mask takes power and balance. Right. Right, right. You're angry at a poster. Yeah. Our nation is on its knees trying to desperately

to suck some life back into the economy economy. And it's like, what I like about this though, is it's classic, this is actually something that you observed, Josh. It's classic war on Christmas stuff, but, but it's secular. Yes, yes, yes, the shape of it is completely different. Like, on our show, we talk a lot about even

juggle Christian culture and the way that it influences political narratives and stuff like that. And every year around this time, you get groups like Focus on the Family, who put out their checklist of like which catalogs that got sent out for the holidays mentioned Christmas by name, right out for the holidays mentioned Christmas by name, right? Because if they mention Christmas by name, then it's okay to shop there because they respect

our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. However, if it says happy holidays or, you know, seasons, greetings, or whatever, then that is bad. They are fighting as foot soldiers in the war on Christmas and they must be disavowed by us. But it's all religious as opposed to this, which is like a cultural order for a holiday that here in the UK has become completely secularized. Well, this is the thing, this is the reason why I love Berbal Singh, right?

Is everybody else's eggs, she's eggs. You know, everyone else is like, you know, woke her mass and she's on the Christmas. Christmas is about alcoholism. It's about arguing with your man about Brexit. That's right, that's right. But what I also like about this next paragraph is that it sort of ties the Christmas letter

into what we were talking about, about why weirdness works in the UK. Anyway, it doesn't work in America. She says, we have a lot little beef in the 90s. I run an inner city school in London where we try hard to instill values of decency daily in our children. When Markson Spencer puts two fingers up to these values,

it makes our lives as teachers much more difficult and stifles social mobility and happiness for our children, in particular for the disadvantage. How? How? Just some poor little kid who is in the like based epic trad class learning to read out of a solter,

just going like, please, miss a look. Because it catches a glimpse of like an M&S ad in a TV in like a store window. And it really wraps it up in the next paragraph too. And Riley, may I read this next paragraph in the spirit of problem, Carol? I just want to say, I want to say one quick thing before you do, but you may, which is that why this factors into the sort of general weirdness, effectiveness index in the UK is that Catherine

Berbal saying is in and of that tiny room, right, where like the one where soelabraverman is shouting the loudest, and when you are in that room, and you can only see and hear what everyone else sees and hears, who are the people like you, who are the people who are going on TV and talking at the conferences, whatever, is that things stop mattering different amounts. Everything matters in the same way for the same reason,

which is that anything, anything you can imagine that goes against like the kind of imaginary traditional nostalgia that Catherine Berbel saying is all about, you know, bringing back through discipline and education or, you know, the soelah Braverman is talking about getting people off the streets, whatever, whatever. It's the same problem and the same solution. It's just, we know who we're mad at and we're mad at the people out there and we're mad at them for their own good, basically.

Right. Because the internal world that she's creating here is not particularly specific. Like you can fill in the details with whatever you want to fill it in on based on what Christmas means to you. It doesn't really even explicitly, I don't think it says Jesus at all at any point in this.

Yeah, the bit where I says delete as appropriate was a bit weird. I mean, the next paragraph here, of course, references a Christmas Carol, which I just wanted to read this paragraph because I was tiny Tim in a production of a Christmas Carol and I was six years old, true story. Ebenezer Scrooge says, I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year. So should we all. Scrooge teaches us the value of charity and generosity of spirit. On that fateful night, he learns that selfishness is not what Christmas is about. Rather than teach our children to build a chain to weigh them down for eternity, you should be showing the way with heartening adverts celebrating the values which scrooge comes to embody. How can you do this to our country at a time such as this. Shame on you.

You, that boy. What is this? Why is what Christmas? What? That's what makes most excited to get their new pronouns from parent Christmas. We've all bought a big turkey to celebrate a mess. No, there's no sausages anymore, sir. No, there's Creepin Sharia now. Which is the most work Christmas of all. don't know what day is I believe at one point this day had a special meaning I don't know what it is anymore

It's so good Tiny Tim's family who are so poor they have to share a single Proper traditional Christmas right you get visited by four ghosts have to share a single prize. Yeah, and it proper traditional question was right. You get visited by four ghosts. And then you come to realize that your apprentice on the job was actually all right. And you'd say, you know what, I don't actually need to strike pain.

Why don't you sit down with me and have a glass of penance? The BBC adaptation, where screwsrooge is a brick like that. I said, look, you put that plumbline down. You should go and see. Shake your mind, Marley rattling his heart. Ah, ah, ah, ah. I think I think there's like something really. I'm in builders.

Hell, sir. I think that's what man comes every day and he checks. You've declared all a cash. He makes you file that returns. I think there's something like Mike telling about, because referencing some of the earlier chat that we had about conservative governance and everything, I think, and Catherine Berbelsing I think is a really special person in the sense of that. She really sort of like has gone down the post as whole and like can't get out.

And I would give anything to just like shadow her for a day and see how she like navigates posting on a school day. Like I'm just wondering whether like she calls in students for detention and gets them to draft her posts or like that. Or whoever she likes. It's lines on the blackboard, but it's drafts of her tweets.

I like that. How they think of her posts. But like, by the side, I think, the point I wanted to get at is when we're sort of thinking about why, electorally, these sorts of conservative fixations don't really work out. And one of the sort of telling points is that, well, these are fixations that they have.

And they sort of like, the problem to do, like, strategically is that they imagine a constituency that doesn't really exist for whom this resonates, right? And so, you know, so if we go on their podcast, and they sort of like, you know, talk to their right media people, and they sort of, and to their right media people. And they sort of create and it all reinforces this thing about like, oh, yeah, the public want, like they want this type of reactionary politics, whether it be a mass doodish deportations,

a kind of full ban on abortion, a deaf penalty for like petty crime, inventory Christmas celebration. Yeah. And if you reinforce that enough, like it's if you reinforce that enough, like when you reinforce that enough, but you also have enough people who have gone down that online hall, that it can kind of become believable. And so it's really interesting to look at Katherine Burble singing, be like,

oh, this is someone for whom, like this is how she sees the world now, right? For her, this is a very normal thing. Yes. And there will be people and she posts it online and there will be people who will say, oh yeah, you did the right thing. You're saying the things that, like,

the public actually do agree with, but they are too scared to say it because it's work Christmas and like, Hamas might like execute them, you know, on Boxing Day or something like that, right? She will be someone who genuinely believes that. And I think it's just a very interesting and very telling way of trying to understand

this type of like politics and also why Despite it being insane Like I feel like it's best placed actually in a in sort of a territory of opposition Like this will this will absolutely increase when these guys lose elections But that's actually kind of where they want to go because that's where it's much easier to do this when you're out of power Because rather than having to articulate any sort of a positive agenda You can just be like well, like what's wrong? Rather than doing anything which is what you kind of have to do in government, right?

You're opposite. I know I'm not a Britain. You're well, that's true. Yeah, even then like you sort of have to feign but you are going to do something that's partly the problem that we're facing at the moment But when they're in opposition they can sort of imagine as many constituencies or like this type of demographic as they want to, right? And they can keep reinforcing that this stuff exists. And again, as we mentioned, because media and fintanks and policy making is so small and so cloistered, they can create that world for these people, regardless of how materially grounded it is or not.

So I think that this is also true, that they think that they're in opposition right now like she doesn't think that her Her tendency is in government. She thinks it's in opposition But and I think that that is also quite telling and talking about like the social mobility thing of just being like Well, if we don't have enough discipline that there won't be social mobility And that's just a thing that you can apply anywhere And you just keep doing it until it sticks and then that's just like what the beliefs are now. But I want to finish up because we're running long.

She says, may God, Allah or Vishnu take pity on you? Down to God or Allah? Bars. Dileee is appropriate. I look to the heavens and ask that you be visited by the three ghosts. Slap the cow exhaust bumper sticker on the bottom. I look to the heavens and ask that you be visited by the three ghosts. So good to have, try to like on your duty.

Oh, God. Oh, God. To help pave the way for our children to learn how to live a life filled with more with giving rather than taking, please, take the advert down, try again, you can do better. We want our children to do more. Same you have to class, same old.

Our children to do more than exist as the old Ebenezer did building his chain. We want our children to live. Please do not undermine us in this endeavor. You're sincerely Catherine Burble Singh. Jacob Marley has the chain. It's different. That's the fourth ghost that she forgot.

Yes, she didn't pay enough attention in class. I guess someone was a ghost. but she was on her phone. What was happening a little bit lazy in the classroom. Perhaps a little bit too busy vaping while you're a customer. Mm-hmm. Anyway, I think that's all we have time for today. Josh, from the worst of all possible world podcasts. That's me.

Thank you so much for coming in. Hey, thank you so much for having me. If you have enjoyed listening to me rant on about even Jehovah Cole Christianity and how it fucks various things up or just have a more broad interest in media in the way that pieces of pop culture shape our narratives, you might like our show. It's called the Worst of all possible worlds

and we just do a case study in a different piece in media every week. We have now had four of the five hosts of this illustrious podcast on our show talking about various things. That's right and and completing the five pack this coming week. We will have one Riley Quinn appearing. So if you are interested in that, definitely check us out. Worsepossible.world is our website. We've got a Patreon as well, which is patreon.com slash worst of all. And I'm excited. See, we'll be talking about my mastermind specialist subject, and I'm very excited. Yes.

Did you talk about Wilhelm? No. Why? You talk about Neom. We've mocked up a up a cover image for this that I am very excited about. So fantastic. All right.

Thank you very much for listening. And don't forget, we also have a Patreon. It's $5 a month. You can get more episodes. Yeah, you can join the war on Christmas of the Traction. Yeah. And we will see you on the bonus episode

in a couple short days. Oh, yeah, also dates. By the time this comes out, you can still see me in Oxford, which will be, if you're listening to this on Tuesday the 14th, which when it comes out tonight, or in Barcelona on the 24th of November, also London on the 22nd November is now sold out. Thank you, everybody, for watching us do that. Cheers, out. Thank you to everyone who brought you this to that Cheers last. Thank you at this time. Okay. Bye you