TRASHFUTURE - Kebabulative Easing

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello, everyone, and welcome to this, what day is it? It's a Thursday. It's the free one. Thank you for answering the not implicit question, quite explicitly asked question. Yeah. Well, last time accidentally we said it was the free one and actually it was the bonus, which thank God we didn't do it the other way around because we cannot let people who aren't paying hear the bonus voice.

Starting point is 00:00:31 Oh, no, no, they would. They would die. They can't know that. There he is. It would explode. The average Victorian peasant child would be killed instantly by a single phoneme of bonus voice. That is correct.

Starting point is 00:00:44 Yeah. It's a lot like it's the trash future version of like you can you can pirate stuff from the Patreon. There are people who help you do that. But the bonus voice is kind of like those die packs they used to have in the labels on them on clothes in like River Island where if you took it outside the store and you tried to take it off, it would like explode die all over your news. So you're suggesting jumper to say New York on it or whatever.

Starting point is 00:01:04 This podcast is protected by smart water. Correct. So you're suggesting that if you're drinking it, you're sitting on the bus, right? If you see someone across from you, if their head explodes like that guy in Scanners, you know that you were sitting across from a fellow TF listener. Yeah, but a thief. A thief most. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:01:24 A damn dirty thief. Okay. So it's Riley Hussain, Milo and Alice. And speaking of thieves, I've decided apropos of nothing that were apropos of finding out some Dave Courtney related information. We're going to start with a Dave Courtney update. Okay. Great.

Starting point is 00:01:41 We love to update ourselves on Dave Courtney. Now, Milo, you know what it is because you've seen my computer screen. Alice, you have no idea what the Dave Courtney update is going on. Going in completely blind. It could be almost anything. Dave Courtney has deployed to the Taiwan Strait. I have no clue. Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 00:01:58 There was that time you went to the Donbass. He did. Whatever happened about that? Because I think he actually went. Like I don't think he was lying. I think he did go. Yeah. He went to like, I think give the Russians a clump or something.

Starting point is 00:02:08 Yeah. Handed out some cans to the lads out of the back of a van and yeah. The Atlantic Council's very own Dave Courtney handing out like cans of Stella to the Azov battalion. They're just like, what? These are these. They taste like peace. No.

Starting point is 00:02:23 Alice, I want you to do me a little favor and I want you to actually try to guess what the thing could possibly be that Dave Courtney did sort of just before he was married that has now had an article written about it. Just before he was married, it raises the horrifying specter of Dave Courtney's stag night, which is sort of a, I'm picturing sort of a six star GTA wanted level event. As a helicopter following him. Yeah. The army put on standby outside.

Starting point is 00:03:00 It's like the end of Goodfellas. Yeah. For my stag do, I've somehow gotten an Imperial guard, Lehman Russ, the healthy drive-in to the center of London. No, it is. It is. Check this out. Ahem.

Starting point is 00:03:15 This is the strap line of the article. It's from the Daily Star, which I think adds a lot of color to this. Dave Courtney was once a notorious figure on London streets, managing nightclubs and associating with the Kray twins. But alongside this work, the ex gangster even starred in one adult film. Incredible. I mean. Villains starred in porn film after 45 minute AIDS test, then shagged any bird he wanted.

Starting point is 00:03:40 They've starred out like the shagged part. Was he like a side character? In certain porn films where you have the attempt to do a lot of the story before, right? He was fucking. He was having sex in the porn. Oh, I see. That's good. It's funnier if actually he wasn't having sex on camera, but as a reward, that was like

Starting point is 00:04:01 his payment. Like you just, yeah, just fucking away. Like you needn't mind. Yeah. Yeah. As a reward for having a walk on role where you're a psychiatrist. It's like a story you would make up. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:04:12 No, I, I, I starred in a porn for the acting, but I was so good at it that all of the women just had sex with me after, not in a porn related context. They said, they said, sorry, mate. No professionals. I'm not a professional. Well, you should be. When I was in uni, there was a porn company that were looking for like, this was like around about the time.

Starting point is 00:04:33 I mean, I say around about the time as if like, I know a lot about porn, but they wanted to sort of do like cinematic or like at least sort of like more, you know, porn that you would sort of be willing to pay for. It's being directed by a Swedish woman. Well, it was actually like the company was run by a woman and like, so their thing was like, oh, we want to like make porn that people actually want. You know, it's not just like stuff to be off to, but it's more of like, you know, you get a little story before you jack up.

Starting point is 00:05:00 That shit has never, that's been tried infinity times. It's never once worked. And so they invited like, turns out people were just beating up. What? They invited like writers to sort of like write scripts for like porn, like, you know, just trial ones. And I just remember being, yeah, I tried to do it and I didn't obviously didn't get through, but definitely one of the challenges of what would, how, how would you sort of frame a

Starting point is 00:05:23 story and in terms of like your side characters, your NPCs and everything, what would they actually say? Like, what would they be doing? I mean, there's an obvious answer to that, which is shut the fuck up before I come back to say, you just said a phrase that I think is making every listener say to us collectively, don't you fucking dare get sidetracked. Finish that sentence. So that started with, in my one.

Starting point is 00:05:52 I've been trying to look for like my sample porn script for a really long time and I haven't been able to find it, but I definitely, so in my one, it took place in a restaurant. And the story was, was that a guy, a girl was going to give a guy a blow job in the restaurant bathroom and so far it's like the Stanley Tucci film, Big Night. I've never seen it, but why not? The same as Stanley Tucci. Yeah, I, yeah, fuck. And yeah, I spent, I wrote three pages of dialogue in which the guy who was about to

Starting point is 00:06:19 get sucked off by the, by the restaurant owner's dorset was having an argument over being given like the wrong type of burger. I'm being overcharged for it. Since there's no way to give you a refund, there's only, we have to settle this the old fashion way. The till literally is programmed that we can't give you a refund. But in this universe, there are such strong consumer protection. Kind of actually, the story was kind of like, I can't give you a refund, but I can give

Starting point is 00:06:57 you something else was a line that I literally wrote in this sample porn script, but did not make it and prevented me from having a career as a, as a writer for Vixen video in LA. I think it says a lot about like the alienation of labor in our society. The porn industry was robbed. You know, they didn't know what they were, what they were missing out on. One day, if I do find my porn script one day, maybe we can do it as like paywall content.

Starting point is 00:07:21 Alternate universe where Hussain is a guy wearing like a satin shirt that's like down to the belly button, like big medallion. He's smoking a cigar. He does have a podcast, but it's very different. Yeah, I'd be living in LA and yeah, I'd be like one of those sort. Yeah, it'd be like I'd have, I'd be best friend of Logan Paul. You'd have, you'd have a company that would be called something like intelligent digital limited or something like that.

Starting point is 00:07:44 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sure all of this, but you say a podcast. I wanted to add this though. All of this came out on a pop because like half of what British like a certain type of British media now is just looking for celebrities to do stuff or micro celebrities to do stuff or post stuff or go on podcasts and then report what they have said and done. And so they're just basically quoting Dave Courtney going on a podcast called The Eventful Entrepreneur. Sorry, that's a Riley's screen name.

Starting point is 00:08:15 The gangster set the scene by describing how he'd been working as a security guard for people starring in quote, a blue film when he became friendly with the man. He's a porn production company. I was going, sorry, could you do this in his voice, please? It's a picture of him posing next to a movie poster that says Dave Courtney in hell to pay coming soon. It's like him in a trench coat in front of a burned out car and he's posing in front of it in like a blue velvet jacket with like a bejeweled knuckle duster on

Starting point is 00:08:48 just kind of like doing kind of slanty smile. I was going, wow, man, I'd love to make a blue scene. He went, you want to make a blue film, man? It's the easiest fucking thing in the world. Go over there and get an A's test. And in 45 minutes, you can come back here and you'll be shagging whatever bird you want for the next hour and a half. I like the idea that there is some kind of time limit here.

Starting point is 00:09:12 But then an hour and a half, you'll turn back into regular old Dave Courtney and you'll have to go out. It says, and basically the premise was, I'm like, look, we're only going to show this on hotel room channels in America, so no one will know you've done a porn. So the thing is, it was later revealed to be on Best Western. And I think this is another example of like... Imagine, look, you've checked into the Best Western, you've paid you $80 or whatever for the night and you just want to have a non-stressful rank, right?

Starting point is 00:09:44 So, you know, it's the 90s. You know, you flip over to the porn channels on the TV. There's no internet porn. You know, you've not got that yet, right? You've got to pass the restaurant one, you know. Yeah, yeah, you do. And then you flip through. You think, oh, this porn seems fine.

Starting point is 00:10:02 And then what should loom into your view but a kind of cockney testicle? Yeah, attached to a much larger bed. Yeah, I mean, I wasn't expecting this sort of the like sex positive Dave Courtney here of the get tested Dave Courtney, which is the message this implicitly carries. So, you know, so when his partner Jenny spontaneously decided to get married in the US, it's soon dawned on Dave that he could be in for a shock when the couple retired to their hotel room suite. I mean, presumably you wouldn't be like, and now let's scroll the pornography.

Starting point is 00:10:37 Courtney might also this is another thing. I'm just going to throw this hand grenade into the discourse. This means that Dave Courtney is a sex worker. Oh, yeah, Dave Courtney only fans when so I think this is the mission now. Please do things actually. Number one, this just highlights the problem of media not being stored physically and then being sat on and controlled by chains like Netflix or Amazon or in this case, Best Western, that there is no access.

Starting point is 00:11:09 This is like a forgotten piece of culture. Yeah, it's an important important archival moment. That's an hour is spent the confidential to the best Western needs to launch their own streaming service. So you can watch the full Dave Courtney, poor, no trilogy. Best Western, I'm trying to get into your cinematic universe. Look, do we spend much more time on the Dave Courtney thing than I planned? Absolutely. The BWC.

Starting point is 00:11:33 Yeah. But you know what, I'm happy we touched on it because we love supporting sex workers as well as what it is. Best Western is that level? That's fine. Look, we have some stuff to talk about. We have some tech stuff, some new stuff and politics is finally a reason for us. Yeah, crazy. I love describing it as a reading. It makes it sound that we're going to do some songs.

Starting point is 00:11:54 Yeah. Yeah. This one's the Corinthians to 11. Look, look, look, look, legs, legs, legs. They're here. Ah, I was wondering why you were just shouting legs. Yeah, the same speaking for the listener as long last it truly is leg day because Mark Zuckerberg has invented a new thing this time. That would have been a better way of selling.

Starting point is 00:12:18 Yeah, I feel like that. Yeah, it feels instead of having, having invented a website to rate which of your Harvard classmates you thought were hot and sort of coasted on that for a while. To be honest, he has now invented a second thing. And that second thing is legs. That's right. Well, no one had legs until Mark Zuckerberg came along.

Starting point is 00:12:39 He's crawling around. That's how he got so rich because every time you walk around, you actually have to pay a small royalty to Mark Zuckerberg. It's collected through council. He looked at all the, I assume he looked at all the kind of like critiques of the metaverse and, you know, all the, all the stuff that we've spoken about on this show about where we called it like a jacked up Habbo hotel, PlayStation home, but worse, things of this nature.

Starting point is 00:13:03 Just like things that don't work. Like why Habbo hotel, but you can watch the day caught in morning. You can like just be in like a meeting where everyone is pastel and virtual. And his thing was like the way to make this better is to include legs. Yeah, people don't have enough pants. Well, because the thing is he's like curiously vulnerable psychologically on this metaverse thing because he's spent a lot of time and money on it and has announced each thing very grandly and clearly reads the tweets

Starting point is 00:13:32 that come out in response to it, which will say, you know, this is shit. Why don't you have any legs? What and why do you look like a PlayStation home character? Why do you look like an amiibo? I'll show them. Yeah, exactly. And he's just going through them one by one. So we've we've ticked legs off now. Now they have legs. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:13:49 Now he's got to make it look not fucked up. That's the key. I'm looking at the picture on Riley's laptop here and it looks like an incredibly shit version of Mortal Kombat. Just the way that they're stood opposite each other. Have you ever seen the video of Mark Zuckerberg throwing spears at a target? A thing which he's legitimately done. That's his move set, you know, for metaverse combat, combat, combat.

Starting point is 00:14:13 Yeah, combat, it's a combat setting. Change name of group chat to combat. As the metaverse as it is conceived by Mark Zuckerberg, even then, like what he's designed is just progressively better looking offices. But we're sort of at the early that we're at the the the Nintendo. Me, we stage this office has artwork on the wall in the metaverse again. How many can someone get Baudrillard? Tell me how many layers of simulation that is.

Starting point is 00:14:46 Well, I mean, he throws up his hands at this point, you know, we need to get one of the online lefty PhD people. We're not going to do that. Basically, yeah, we we have we have legs, which is but we it's there's the ideas got legs. Thank you very much. What's very funny also is that then is that they sort of quietly seem to have ditched one big element of the metaverse, which is that it's gone now.

Starting point is 00:15:15 Is it the compulsory AIDS test? No, it's it's it's crypto. Oh, it's the because like I don't know if you saw this, but Decentraland, a metaverse game that we've talked about before, that a lot of people did real estate speculation in for some reason. Is that what there's been a really putting the land into Decentraland? There's a report that's been released that they have a grand total of thirty two active users for a multi billion dollar.

Starting point is 00:15:41 That's a lot. That's that's about thirty two more than I would have expected. Well, these are how many people are on Quibi when they like thousands. OK, so some thousands I tell you what Hussain, I'd still be on there if they'd let me there was a lot of content on there that I wanted to watch in portrait mode on the toilet. Yeah, that's correct. Yeah, look, not enough not enough shows have an incentive to switch

Starting point is 00:16:03 your phone from portrait to landscape throughout. If they'd have put the Dave Courtney porno on could be it could have been a different story. Yeah, absolutely. You'd have like seven minute segments is the problem. Turn turns a landscape mode now to get a bit of you and me railing this brass. You'll get a wide angle shot in my ass. If you rotate your device now. To show him in the give and the hot tub.

Starting point is 00:16:36 Camelot castle. Beautiful. Anyway, so the metaverse is finally deliver what people have been crying out for legs, but also they've moved away from like the crypto thing of trying to have a sort of persistent economy, because it turns out that that whole feature of this low interest rate fueled speculation in a very stupid future was colliding with the other version of a very low interest rate fueled speculation, a very stupid future like they were trying to do both things

Starting point is 00:17:09 that have now collapsed is having an economic basis. It's giving me an idea for a podcast called stupid future. Yeah. Hey, you signed it. Oh, you didn't sign anything. Quickly sign something. Anything. But what's also very amusing, right? Is that if you look at meta, what they're talking about is, oh, yeah, we've sold, we've spent $2.8 billion developing this thing,

Starting point is 00:17:29 but we've already sold one and a half billion dollars worth of apps for like our quest heads along the maps. But the thing is, you ask yourself, who's actually buying these and it's large corporate client. Is it how much of that is meta itself? Like, yeah, well, it's it's that it's it's there. A lot of other big companies are doing it as well. But also like you can know that no one's actually using it

Starting point is 00:17:50 because meta has an internal metric, which is how much are people using the metaverse to meet? Like how many people are sitting around a meeting room, a meeting room desk with metaverse headsets on meeting, having their meeting in like, I don't know, like on the surface of the sun or on like a little island or in a conference room in a town around meeting or little islands anymore. They really ruin that one. Yeah. But it's so there there's a metric for that.

Starting point is 00:18:20 This is this is a memo, a leaked memo from meta. Employees were found to not be using the metaverse enough. Just Nick Clegg in there on his own. He's he's chained to a table in the meta, but he can't leave after his latest after his latest misadventure up possibly, which we'll go into. But then they said that there was a plan that was being made to, quote, hold managers accountable for ensuring their teams use Horizon at least once a week.

Starting point is 00:18:46 You have to use our chassis problem that you're developing at least once a week or else. This sounds a lot like, you know, when you're in like one of those like disaster video games and you pick up like a shredded page of a diary in the corner. And it's like direct employees to use the horizon at least once per week. That's like another audio log down the corridor. It's like a harried sounding scientist being like, I've got some concerns about the horizon project. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:19:17 It turns out it was it turns out that actually all of this like kind of blocky 2003 looking graphics, it turns out this is all the stuff that it takes to open the portal in Event Horizon. Yeah. And we're all going to be taken to hell by Lawrence Fish. Yeah. And then you pick up another audio log, which is a guy going, come here, you slag. The thing is having legs is a gateway to having way too many legs, which is, you know, it's a gateway to having eyes in your head. Yeah, things of this nature.

Starting point is 00:19:44 Oh, no, the gateway to the thing. I'll probably make it more popular though. I guess the thing is very much like if you made it modify your body and stuff, I imagine that it'd be like at least more fun to be around. Yeah, like I'm all legs. My constant question about like mess of us stuff is just like you could get people to use it if it just wasn't boring. And the problem is, is that like because people use VR and like VR like VR games

Starting point is 00:20:06 and stuff are popular and like, you know, you can build like dedicated communities on there and like do this. If you want to sort of make it popular, you can do that, right? What is very kind of like funny about the mess of us is really every announcement that it makes that I see is just very clearly that it lacks so much ambition and it's very much, it just sort of seems to be this digital product that's like, well, we still have like a lot of scale and we own a lot of like digital like real estate or whatever infrastructure.

Starting point is 00:20:39 So like we kind of have to do something with it. But like, I don't with Zuckerberg is like, I just don't know what it is because with the whole Facebook stuff, like, you know, the origin story of just like wanting to be misogynistic online and like be a creep online, like that sells, you know, like, you know, it was a very, you know, the obvious thing that work. But the pitch of the mess of us is what if those VR apps that are kind of niche as is had all the fun of going to work? Yeah. Well, that's the thing is it's American Protestantism being

Starting point is 00:21:11 hammed up by itself, right? Where it's kind of like this sort of like, well, we've developed this technology. Obviously, the only like correct application of it would be to have like a meeting about the stats or whatever. Whereas actually, you know, I would get people using this to circle back to what we're talking about earlier, fucking porn, right? You know, if you made a convincing porn version of this, thousands of perverts would be signing up every minute.

Starting point is 00:21:35 Well, this is the thing with like VR chat, but also just like gaming, like VR mods and stuff in general, like the reason why it's so popular is because there's like loads of porn and you can like give yourself a massive monster dick and like, you know, do like all the giant shit. And like, it's fun and it's like, I can understand why like people enjoy it so much. I should make my porn in VR. Just I'll make a note of that. I'll do like the Fed like the script.

Starting point is 00:21:57 By the way, copyright, by the way, if you're listening, you can't take Hussein's restaurant idea. It's that Zuckerberg fragility again. What he's done is he's read the top comment that's like, this is, you know, Shiasi, why do you not have any legs and go on or give them legs instead of I will give you the ability to fuck every character from Overwatch at once. And they do need legs, you know, you need, I mean, I need asses. That's true.

Starting point is 00:22:21 True. The ass kind of in many ways, the neck of the legs. It's true. But bring it back to this, right? Come on, censor the legs. What we have, right, is we have what I think of, it makes me think of Mark Fisher's term, market Stalinism, where it's like, you can't, where in this thing, that's that is the market, right? There is this, this, you are forced to participate and you have to love it. It is a command economy internally of being like, you must do this in order to

Starting point is 00:22:50 get the numbers up. So it says, everyone in this organization should make it their mission to fall in love with Horizon worlds. Love it. Love it. You can't do that without using it. So get in there, organize times to do it with your colleagues or more chillingly. I like that this could be about dogging friends, organize time to do it with your

Starting point is 00:23:10 colleagues. Hey, does everyone want to have a meeting about the numbers this quarter? I really love that actually deep down, this seems to sort of have the DNA of Facebook anyway, because like, if you, I mean, again, I'm basing this entirely on like the social network film, but if you like, understand Facebook is... What other sources do we have? Yeah, the documentary, the social network. With the, yeah, with the Trent Reznor music, what, like the DNA of it's a sort

Starting point is 00:23:35 of being like a bunch of losers who desperately just want to hang out with like the cool guys and girls and stuff. So they kind of build the misogynistic app, which like ends up allowing them to sort of do that in a weird way. And it feels like the metaverse sort of has that kind of like philosophy behind it of like, I desperately want people to hang out with me. But the problem is, is that that only goes as far as like the office. And I just love the idea of like schedule time with your colleagues and friends

Starting point is 00:24:04 to fall in love with our new product. And yeah, like business desperation of like wanting people to hang out with you. Because you wouldn't say that about a business park. Like you wouldn't say that about a normal room where people go to have like an email meeting. Yeah. You wouldn't say that about like video conferencing, really? Kind of, I don't know, I've been in a lot of offices where like they desperately try to make the admin stuff like fun, right?

Starting point is 00:24:32 If you want to talk about offices, because there's one more major feature that's being released on horizon worlds. Is it like disciplinary mode? No, no, no, much worse. You just go into the face with disciplinary and like, Mark isn't like a dungeon, like a virtual dungeon. Mark Zuckerberg's in like a full dominatrix kit. Oh, they are pretty important.

Starting point is 00:24:52 Well, I just wanted to do ever, it's like, harassment is like, so I hear that you hacked the metaverse and gave yourself a monster dick and used it to scare your boss. Give me a raise. No, so meta has also forgotten. He's right now outside. It's like, I forgot the world wasn't so blocky. Meta has announced a partnership with NBC.

Starting point is 00:25:16 And so you're going to be able to get like not just visit your office, but you're also going to be able to visit the office from the show, the office. The show ends like a decade ago. Well, my theory about this is that the last time like Mark was the last time any of these people felt joy. Well, it's the last time I think Mark Zuckerberg interacted with like, you know, like a normal human, you know, like someone who's not like having the adrenochrome cocktail.

Starting point is 00:25:42 And that normal human was like, what if Steve Carell was here and he had a monster dick and he was fucking all the characters from Overwatch? Yeah, that's right. So I, and he heard Michael Scott fucking all the characters. Yeah, what if Michael Scott was balls deep and bastion the robot from Overwatch? Yeah, he's fucking the like the cowboy guy. So you can, you can have a metaverse experience.

Starting point is 00:26:06 You can have an away day with your friends from the office in the office from the office. You could, you could sit at Pam's desk. I mean, this is the thing, like all of the, yeah, all of the politics that were just, it's time to go back to the office now. You have to go back to the office. We didn't realize that they were actually, they actually meant the office from the office, you know, Dunder Mifflin or whatever. Oh fuck, now I've just realized that we actually, we have some.

Starting point is 00:26:29 She comes around like Mifflin to like Scott. Yeah, we, there's actually some, there's a fun potential here, which is that. But as we've established, Mark Zuckerberg will add things to the metaverse when he gets owned on Twitter about things from the metaverse looking like shit. And then they'll be like, why aren't there any legs? We could start getting people to tweet at him. Are the, the metaverse needs monster dicks. Why are there no monster dicks?

Starting point is 00:26:52 We can gin this up. It's so lame that no one in the metaverse has like a huge bulge. We could cyber bully Mark Zuckerberg very easily into allowing you to have a monster dick in the metaverse. I mean, I actually do have an idea, right? Which is, which is a solve a problem that Mark Zuckerberg actually has, which is to say, Mark. I'm not having a monster dick in the metaverse. If you are listening, we see that your problem is that people don't love your terrible thing enough

Starting point is 00:27:24 and no one at your company is using it. In fact, a lot of companies seem to be spending enormous amount of money on this because they got, you know, a sort of buffaloed into doing it by this stupid firm. Which will damage your like long-term credibility for the next thing. Here is our offer as an organization to you. It's that Facebook buys out the podcast. You buy the IP of the podcast and then you bring us in to Facebook as our own department and we will agree to use the metaverse or at least have the headsets on

Starting point is 00:28:00 for not on ourselves, maybe, but activated and appearing signed in. We will agree to do that full-time. I support this. I've often thought that when I'm doing this podcast, when I'm recording with my friends, what would really enhance it is if I was getting sucked from the back by all of the characters from Overwatch. Yeah, yeah. Well, and crucially, you have to pay enough money for the podcast that none of us have to ever work again.

Starting point is 00:28:26 Yeah, that's true. We're talking tens of millions of dollars. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, so. Which is pocket change. And we've made this offer to other people. We've offered to live in the line on this basis. We'll go live in Neon.

Starting point is 00:28:39 We will become a harvest podcast for the right price. I'll tell you this, the one place I'm not willing to go is a C pod. I won't move to a C pod. It just seems dangerous. Yeah, I don't think it's safe. And that's saying something when you're willing to move to Neon. Yeah, absolutely. I have one more small piece of technology, or two more small pieces of technology news.

Starting point is 00:29:02 One is Rivian, an electric truck company that we've discussed many times before. That guy who was on the X Factor. No, it was one of the American Gladiators. What were they called in the UK? Just Gladiators? Yeah, just Gladiators. He's one of the Gladiators. In America, they called them American Gladiators.

Starting point is 00:29:18 Don't worry, they're from here. They're not foreign Gladiators. Yeah, no. So Rivian, an electric truck manufacturer, discussed previously on this show. Motors and the wheels, things of this. Yeah, as compared with, no, that's a different one. This is a yet different electric vehicle manufacturer that seems to have encountered something of a boondoggle.

Starting point is 00:29:40 Oh, no. Well, boondoggle in the electric vehicle industry. They've made... Actually adding boondoggles to the mass of us. They have made 13,000 trucks so far, mostly for Amazon, which announced a partnership with them after they went public via SPAC. Which is always the mark of a good company. Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 00:29:55 Mark of a great company. Well, they are being forced to recall a fraction of those vehicles. Just over 12,000. Oh, so it's quite a big fraction, but nevertheless a fraction. I'd say it is literally a fraction. It is a hefty fraction. It's 12 13ths, but that's, hey, you know what that is? It's a fraction.

Starting point is 00:30:15 I did mass GCSE. Yeah, it is a super majority, but it's not unanimous. There were some dissenters. There's like the one Rivian truck, thousand vehicles. So long as there is one Rivian truck that is not being recalled, the principle remains sound. So this is again, and also don't forget, right, that when this was announced, it was Amazon's big going green thing.

Starting point is 00:30:38 And this is what's allowing Amazon to say, hey, don't worry, if you're like an investor who cares about ESG or whatever, hey, look, our whole delivery fleet is electric vehicles. Well, we've spoken multiple times with a friend of the show, Paris Marks, about how an electric vehicle is not in itself a green choice necessarily, or certainly not as green as it's portrayed. One of the reasons that I think, this is sort of making Paris this point for them,

Starting point is 00:31:04 you might add to that, is that if they don't work and you have to recall them and then fix them or replace them and then send them all out again, you're kind of duplicating a lot of the emissions of that process. But also, it's a way just to market that you're doing something, and then you don't have to do it because you've already gotten the kudos for doing it. And then you were like, oh, whoops, it turns out that it was magic beans. Well, you're not going to get the same good press for like having a green fleet when you do a green fleet again.

Starting point is 00:31:35 Yeah, it's like double jeopardy. You can't be boosted on the same news twice. So, I just wanted to note that. And I want to note, and this is going to transition into... What are they being recalled for? That's what I want to know. Oh, it's an internal fault with the seatbelt. It's just one of these things where...

Starting point is 00:31:52 Weird that they got through all the technical issues of getting starting from scratch and manufacturing electric vehicles and making vehicles, which I presume, work perfectly. And the one bit they got wrong was the seatbelt, which is a bit of technology that's been pretty settled since the 70s. It's tricky though, I mean. I'd say it's got three points of attachment. It's Swedish in design, which I know is tricky.

Starting point is 00:32:12 You ever tried to use those Ikea instructions? Oh, what the fuck's going on? There's a guy scratching his head on the phone. It's difficult. Where's that guy? Yeah, where is that guy? I can never... But whenever I try to put together my like ektorp,

Starting point is 00:32:23 I can never find that guy. My ektorp. Which is Swedish for a phone. Yeah. No, it's just so fast. I love to buckle my seat boots. I feel like... I think I actually have the ektorp.

Starting point is 00:32:37 So, can we get... I'm so sorry. I'm saying I actually have the ektorp. I'm so sorry about your ektorp, dude. Are you funny? He's probably just given three months to live with his ektorp. You hit the phone, and you're like, I just developed my ektorp.

Starting point is 00:32:53 Cooling all your ex-girlfriends, and I'm sorry, I've recently been diagnosed with ektorp. You should probably get yourself tested. Yeah. I think I should have sat on that sofa. Took a 45-minute ektorp test. That's right. I think you can sit on any sofa you want,

Starting point is 00:33:07 but only for an hour and a half. So, this is the last bit of news, which is... Well, the last one, one more thing about meta. Nick Clegg appears to have been caught up in more hot water involved in a bribery scandal. Yeah, he's been a naughty boy. He has allegedly accepted a bribe from only fans.

Starting point is 00:33:27 That's so funny. Which is normally the opposite direction to the way that financial relationship works. They offered me some pussy. They said, if I took this 45-minute AIDS test, I could then shag any woman. Those were there exact words for an hour and a half. Do I still have the Clegg drop?

Starting point is 00:33:43 I do. This wretched headset. Yeah, so effectively, what are you... Can you crop that to this wretched head? So, effectively, right, Nick Clegg, who you may recall, has been like a lobbyist for meta. Yeah, they call me Mr. Two Damn Tuition Feeds, late of this passion.

Starting point is 00:34:02 Yeah, well, just essentially, just a guy whose entire life in British politics, yes, I'm aware he's made a lot of a good financial situation for himself, but a guy whose entire career has just consisted of being a bitch is once again put into a situation where he is clearly a gigantic bitch. Essentially, Nick Clegg's career is very much

Starting point is 00:34:25 the things that we say we would do for infinity money, except he's actually offered and takes them up on all of them. Yeah, I mean, you'd swap with him, right? I mean, he's richer than God. He's got a hot wife, you know. So rich only fans is paying me. It's like, Nick, just retire, write a bad book. Write a book that we can read on this podcast.

Starting point is 00:34:46 He wrote a book called Politics Between the Extremes, but it's not like a fiction book with a storyline, you know? Yeah, that's a white, but that's an overgrown white paper, that's not. It's just being like, yep, pretty boring politics. So, essentially, right, it's that what they seem to be doing is what they are accused of doing is taking a bribe from only fans to blacklist others of their competitors online. And so a lawsuit was brought by a number of adult online entertainers

Starting point is 00:35:20 who've alleged that meta-employees have basically like... Dave Courtney class action. Yeah, I was gonna say. Who have, and I'm quoting here, added their accounts and others linked to only fans' competitors to databases used by companies internationally to identify malware accounts and accounts linked to terrorism, which are like controlled by meta.

Starting point is 00:35:36 So... Yeah, you work on a competitor to only fans, you're on the no-fly list now because of Nick Clay. You're a state sponsor of terrorism. Yeah, you are about to get killed by the Raytheon knife missile. Yeah, you're going through security at the airport, you go through the metal detector and it goes off and then suddenly they're all drawing their guns,

Starting point is 00:35:55 and they're like, she's got a pussy! Yeah, this is me every time, this is my fear. So, but it's just... And you're like, do I? You know, it's... Wow. We talked about Nick Clay, right? And I can't imagine...

Starting point is 00:36:12 These hormones really do. I can't imagine... Why did they give me the open Wilson pussy? It's your pussy saying that, no you. I'm a trans woman, that's crazy. But I can't be here between your legs. You're newlyweds. I love this sequel to Me, Myself and Irene.

Starting point is 00:36:39 That was a Jim Carrey movie. Oh, Failure to Launch? No, that was Matthew McConaughey. You Me and Dupree. You Me and Dupree, everyone we know. No, You Me and Dupree, that's the one. I got it in the fourth try. Just striking out perfectly as well.

Starting point is 00:36:52 You Me and Dapoon. That's a great... That's a movie that could have been made in 2003. Owen Wilson is reincarnated as Kate Hudson's pussy. That's a port that I would try and write and then not go into the text and writers program. She's like a lonely woman looking for love and then he's like consoling her about her sex life.

Starting point is 00:37:13 And he's like, that guy wasn't so bad. He had a nice dick. You're being hard on yourself. The Owen Wilson thing. Trademark, you can't make it. Owen Wilson is a trash feature property. He's attached. We own the IP.

Starting point is 00:37:33 Don't try and remake it with like Vince Vaughn or something. It's not going to work. It's not going to work. Don't try and make this movie with Timothée Chalamet and think you won't be served with a cease and desist by the trash feature legal department. Nick the lawyer will be writing to you. Not Nick the accountant.

Starting point is 00:37:50 Nick the lawyer, who's a different guy also called Nick, real guy, he will be writing to you. Yes, our accountant, our lawyer, both called Nick. It's not a problem. He actually does look like a hard man as well. I remember seeing him on the Zoom screen. I was like, wow, that guy could like... The Union Jackmug.

Starting point is 00:38:06 No, that guy, I would see that guy at like outside a bad club in like Essex and he would like beat the shit out of me despite... Don't fuck with Nick the lawyer. He'll pursue you in the courts, but if that fails... Can we please not defame our lawyer? It's the last guy you want to defame. No, Nick the lawyer's great. We're not defaming it the lawyer.

Starting point is 00:38:30 Is this all in good fun? He smash your face with the Union Jackmug. He will behave in a professional way in accordance with the rules set down by the Law Society. That's what he'll do. Everything else was a joke. No, he doesn't look like a guy who would like say, I'm above the Law Society.

Starting point is 00:38:52 Looks like crucially, is it? I mean, I'm in the above the Law Society. Spicy lawyer. Yeah, I guess you could use the regular law. He's like stubbing out a cigarette. I've kind of moved beyond that. Once you've learned the rules, that's when you can break them, you know? Yeah, it's wearing like one diamond earring.

Starting point is 00:39:15 It's doing cross-examination. He's just like, you know, just fucking chalking a pool cue the whole time. Rhymes on a motorbike wearing a leather jacket. All right, all right, all right, all right. We're going to move forward. We're going to move forward. Insanely hard lawyer. Yeah, that's right.

Starting point is 00:39:33 Which is that, I'm going to leave the Nick Clegg stuff, right? Because that was worth going into a little more, maybe later, another time. But all I can say, right, is that- I think this is great, Nick, the lawyer. All I can say, right, is that Metta's defense at this point is once again to rely on the fact that Nick Clegg is a lifetime bitch, because they said, basically, look, these court documents show that we're protected because we're now going to claim

Starting point is 00:40:02 that our employees acted without our knowing, which- They're throwing Nick Clegg under the bus? That's what he would see. They're throwing Nick Clegg under the bang bus? Under the Metta bus. Yeah, that's what it would seem, right? Nick Clegg is being pushed in front of a fake taxi by Mark Zuckerberg. And you think this is funny?

Starting point is 00:40:24 Yeah, Mark Zuckerberg is using his legs. He's pushing from the legs. And that Metta's defense appears to be the following. If anything, the plaintiffs allege that these John Doe's, including Nick Clegg, went rogue by manipulating and corrupting automated processes and databases that Metta had established for the purposes of combating terrorism. Again, why does Facebook have that? Deploying these methods to attack competitors of an adult entertainment company

Starting point is 00:40:47 and then attempting to cover their tracks to ensure Metta did not learn of their aberrant behavior. And that's the motion that Metta has put forward. Suggesting that, as you have said, they are going to push Nick Clegg- Throw them under the bang bus. Yes, they're going to throw Nick Clegg under the bang bus. It's a legal fallback position, but it's sort of, it must be embarrassing to be Nick Clegg and to know how disposable you are by having it sort of like displayed to you in those terms. Again, very amusing.

Starting point is 00:41:17 Also, why does he not quit? This guy didn't- He doesn't need to do that. He has so much money. No, that's because that's the thing. To these people, they want to capital B, capital I be important. Yeah, plus it's an excuse to like leverage connections, which he has and like feel like he's operating in sort of the realm of governance and being an insider.

Starting point is 00:41:35 He wants the monster dick. He wants the monster dick. And he wants the monster dick. He wants to be the big monster swinging dick. I mean, he's tried to be capital B, capital I, but what he's got is capital B, capital I, capital T, capital C, capital H. That's right. Nick Clegg, you are a certified bitch.

Starting point is 00:41:53 That's right. Yeah, capital bitch. You are the donkey of the week. But Owen Wilson's whispering to him from his barthole going, Nick, don't be so hard on yourself. It's tough out there. It's hard in the metaverse. The Owen Wilson, the Owen Wilson experience.

Starting point is 00:42:07 You only just got legs. You only just got an ass. And that's why they gave you this Owen Wilson ass to motivate you. Yeah. Because you're being down on yourself, but you need to, you need to buck up. Okay. You need to believe in yourself. Sort of more of a Jordan Peterson.

Starting point is 00:42:25 You got me in your... No, Jordan Peterson is more, he has the kind of constant background drone like a bagpipe. He never truly stops emitting noise the entire time that he's talking, like an idling diesel engine. Okay. I want to move on to the UK stuff and then I want to do the reading. And the UK stuff is Clarna. Oh, well, Clarna.

Starting point is 00:42:49 Yeah, Clarna. You remember Clarna, right? That company is doing super well. Super well, Clarna is doing. Well, the situation in the UK overall, as a barometer of the UK's financial health, I think you can look at what is Clarna available to purchase. And what's... Anything, literally anything.

Starting point is 00:43:08 Once you get to a delivery, then you know that the UK has some intractable structural problems when you're being asked to finance a kebab. What wasn't at Liz Trust that was really like a few years ago, was valorizing the whole like delivery freedom fighter thing. I didn't think it included Clarna, but it was something else, wasn't it? Arabian being Ubering, delivering freedom fighters. Yeah. So she's getting the world that she wants, right?

Starting point is 00:43:35 We're all liberated and we are all... Yeah, we're all liberated from... Money. Yeah, from supermarkets by now being able to take out high interest loans to buy food. Now, I'm just a simple, controversial boy. It seems to me that the business model of a company such as Clarna was at least coherent when you were using it to pay off a pair of shoes, for example,

Starting point is 00:44:02 over a cost of three months on the assumption that a regular shoe consumer would only be purchasing shoes perhaps once every six months, such that every time one bought a pair of shoes, the previous pair of shoes had been duly paid off. However, if one applies this model of financing to something such as a donor kebab, it would seem to me that the regularity with which someone purchases such an item would perhaps not be cohesive with the terms of payment on that thing, such as one would surely become trapped in a cycle of debt, which would become inescapable in quite a short period of time. I presume there's some kind of safeguard in place to avoid this being visited on some of the most

Starting point is 00:44:49 impecunious members of society. Colonel Acaster, I'm so sorry to say this, but no, it's just more things can be... Because this isn't the first... There's no kebab rationing on this? This isn't the first time you've been able to buy Deliveroo on credit, right? You can attach Deliveroo to a PayPal or a credit card or whatever. It's just that all of this buy now pay later stuff is designed to entice you to start using it. It's designed to...

Starting point is 00:45:14 Yeah, you're not on Deliveroo having advertised to you like, hey, you could pay this kebab off with a low interest loan over the next six months. But to be clear, they don't charge an interest rate, right? It's not a high interest loan, but the problem is you can very much get sucked into depending on it. Just so you don't pay with money. Yeah. And I mean, this is, I think, a sort of... Boy, except you very much do pay with money.

Starting point is 00:45:34 Yeah, you very much do pay with money. Yeah, you very much do pay with money. You plan to charge the retailer, then they don't charge the consumer. Yeah, exactly. Because the thing about credit is that consumer credit exists for the same purpose everywhere, and most small forms of credit, regardless of whether you want to call it microlending or whatever, or we call it buy now pay later, it exists for the purpose of consumption smoothing, which means that people have a certain amount of things they need to consume,

Starting point is 00:45:56 and then a certain amount of income that they have, and those two don't always match up. And so the extension of things like consumer credit just basically bridges that gap so that you don't always have to be, let's say, be prepared for every expense that you'll face. And so any time credit seeps into, structurally, another part of the economy, that means, almost definitionally, that there are people who are unable to bear that expense right now, but the whole premise only works if they can then bear it later. Well, this goes back to our, I believe that's what the colonel was hinting at, in slightly more old-timey language. It goes back to the episode we did with Gary,

Starting point is 00:46:41 where we were talking about how, since 2008, basically, everyone apart from the rich has gotten poorer, but that that's been smoothed out by just throwing loads of debt into the equation, so the kind of people's living standards have been maintained, but they're now just in more debt. They have the same amount of stuff, but they owe more money to people, and now they're doing that, but for kibabs. Yeah, exactly. That's right. Personally, I would like Clara to package up and securitize the kebab obligations, and then we could, you know, into tranches of the really good meat at the top, and then you've got that triple B shit down the bottom, where it's like the stuff that it's supposed to be lamb,

Starting point is 00:47:17 but it looks kind of like dog food. It might have salmonella in it. Yeah, absolutely. Perfect. Yeah, that's what we're going to do. What if we did that? We could, we wanted to diversify. We could maybe offer. Yeah, collateralized kebab obligations. Yeah, okay. Don't worry about it. What I'm enjoying is that the British economy... It's feeling collateralized with the K there. Yeah, just routinely just looks... Sorry, would it be obligations? What's the third letter of the gate? We'll workshop it. Is it the British economy just routinely turns to you and goes like, you're eating a kebab, aren't you? What more do you want? The security that you'll be able to pay

Starting point is 00:47:56 for it later? Come on. What do you want? Another kebab later? Just eat your fucking kebab and shut up. Well, because this sort of brings us, I think, into the economy bit as well, right? Which is that the Bank of England has quite a bit to say about this as well, which is essentially... QE for kebabs. Well, that's just the thing. There's been too much QE for kebabs. Kebab-ulits and easing. There's been too much kebab-ulit of easing. And now, there's kebab-ulits and easing the economy with three kebabs. Cathy Wood's getting what she wanted. The Bank of England is writing her a blank check for as many chicken Donna boxes as she wants. So, what essentially the Bank of England is doing

Starting point is 00:48:38 is it's choosing to end the liquidity mechanism it has for pension funds. Oh, okay. And another market purchase. No, no. No, it's bad. Oh, no. I'm afraid. Remember, the liquidity mechanism was the only thing left. Oh, damn. We're down to one Jenga block. No, exactly. It's just one block sitting on a table that we're just pulling out. Just to catch everyone up as to what happened, right? After the mini-budget, there was this enormous gap between taxation and spending that was going to be plugged with sort of, you know, more and endless borrowing in a higher rate environment by the conservative party who were basically promising to never invest any of what they borrowed ever under any

Starting point is 00:49:22 circumstances, which is how you run a government like a business. Well, you just give it to big companies and then a lot of it trickle down economics. Yeah, exactly. Right. And so then, and this, if you recall, caused yields to go up, the prices of bonds to crash, and then a bunch of pension funds, which had been lending and borrowing against those bonds, to all of a sudden, need to sell a lot of them to make margin so that they could basically keep their loans up and that by selling them... Yeah, and sell them to private equity. But also by selling them at a low rate, they reduce the value of the rest of their book further, which means they need to make more margin, which means they need to sell more,

Starting point is 00:49:56 and it creates a spiral. And... As seen in every finance movie ever, because this is the only time these markets ever get interesting and the only time they get movies made of them. Correct. So, this is sort of where we were. And the Bank of England had stepped in and said, look, we're going to set a floor price for guilds. We're going to just... We have a liquidity facility that we're just going to buy a lot so we can... Yeah, we are going to be firefighters. This thing is on fire. We're going to show up in a big red truck. We're going to spray with fire. Here's the problem, however, which is that... No one can know that we're doing. We are undercover firefighters. They're firefighters, but they have to make it look like an accident.

Starting point is 00:50:39 You know? Yes. Wow, with the big fire truck that says BOE on the side and it's like, wow, we're the British overseas electricity company. I'm not spraying water on this fire. This is... No one would question the source of the firefighters who are putting out this here fire out of a sense of a communitarian goodwill. I more think it's just like they're firefighters, but they have to like all make it look like they arrived at the scene of the blaze, like by a coincidence, and then like they're watering the garden, but they keep missing, you know? Like, oh my God, we're putting out this fire by accident. Oh, crazy. It's a very improv group. Yeah, essentially. Yeah, I'm looking for an idea, a guilt prices.

Starting point is 00:51:23 The British government is doing a lot of improv right now. Yeah. Did we say that? No, that was an audience suggestion, I think. Actually, what we're going to do. Yeah, they were like, okay, okay, here's what I'm hearing is cut all the taxes, and then the audience went, no. And they were like, okay, give me a minute. And so essentially what has happened is that with Bank of England then realized, oh shit, everyone's rumbled us that we're fighting this fire, because what the bank cannot be seen to do is just... Sorry, we've been made. But in the sort of world of international finance, taking it like on its own terms,

Starting point is 00:52:03 what the bank cannot be seen to do is interact directly with government. It can't be seen to try and fix the government's problems. It can't respond to fiscal policy, basically. It has a very small number of mandates, which is ensuring that there is a functional financial system and ensuring that inflation is controlled. The actual things the central bank is supposed to do is pretty small. It's quite a lot like when your dad is a British newspaper columnist and you've got a British newspaper column, what you have to do is change your surname or something. So it's not obvious that that's how you got that job. You've got to keep it secret. But they have those two roles. And if they are seen to be responding to fiscal events,

Starting point is 00:52:43 then it reduces their credibility, which means that investors will be kind of cagey about investing in British bonds or investing in the British economy, because they're concerned that the currency will fluctuate wildly to accommodate the wishes of the government. So the idea is that by maintaining central bank independence, government spending is subservient to international capital markets. And again, this is also why as much as it's fun to crow about how much they have fucked up, the Bank of England fundamentally, it serves those interests. It's a technocratic institution serving those interests. It doesn't serve the interests of the British people really, not in any major way, unless you're a hedge fund owner, certain hedge fund owners.

Starting point is 00:53:26 And so basically, so essentially, because it was seen as being or it's concerned that it's being seen as not credible, meaning responding to fiscal events rather than just maintaining its mandate of low inflation, it has a price stability rather, and then causing recessions if anything ever gets a little bit too hot. The other thing that it does just pushes the big recession button is that it's saying, okay, pension funds that were nearly wiped out by this thing, other major institutions, you have three days to get your house in order, which was two business days after before rather, this podcast came out. So we'll see how it went, or if they, because what's happening at this point is the bank is now briefing against itself, which is the

Starting point is 00:54:10 funniest thing, like a couple of these guys with trench coats on over their firefighter uniforms are like, we're getting back in the truck and we're leaving. Also, we were never here. And then a couple more of them are like, don't listen to these fucking idiots, we're going to have to keep spraying this totally ethanol on this fire. So essentially, what's, well, they are spraying water on the fire to be fair. The ethanol came from the pension fund. They're lying that it is ethanol in order to preserve their covers, undercover fire. Understood. Yes. Why? We're actually undercover arsonists. We're overcover arsonists. Yeah, that's right. So it would be very funny to see a fire truck with arson on it instead of fire. Undercover fire truck. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:54:54 So that's the situation, right? ETF shirt, perhaps. I mean, look, if you recorded footage of a fire truck putting out a fire, say on the security camera system of the Saudi embassy in Washington, DC, it might very well look like it was actually starting a fire. So, but basically, right? The only functional arm of the British government left that isn't, when I don't say subsumed with politics, I mean like subsumed with party politics, right? That isn't completely subservient to the whims of the specifically one faction of the conservative party, or more specifically, completely subservient to the kind of manias of the telegraph and times and so on, right? Because international capital markets, they obviously have politics, but it's

Starting point is 00:55:38 kind of like irrational politics. Like it makes sense on its own terms. It's not like what this trust is doing. So in this case, so what's happening, right, is that one slice of capital, which is represented at this point now by the Bank of England, it was represented in party politics by like the Rishi Sunat camp of the Tory party. It's now best represented by Kier Starmer and the Bank of England are now essentially on playing a game of chicken, where they're each driving trucks at one another, the Bank of England and the sort of rest of the British government, which has been sort of, you know, hijacked in this way. And in the middle of that game of chicken is your pension, and if you have one, and your mortgage, if you have one,

Starting point is 00:56:22 or your landlord's mortgage, which means your rent. That's all in the middle of these two trucks, who are now basically playing a game of chicken over who gets to control the British economy. They've left the firefighting business. The house is still very much on fire, but maybe the leaving the firefighting business is just a fake out. Maybe the government will decide to stop the fire, but they've said that they're not going to stop the fire, even though Alice, as you said, quasi-quartangs has spent the last like 48 hours. They took, quasi has been to the IMF in Washington, where he has spent the last however many hours getting his dick and balls hit with a knotted rope by LaShiefer.

Starting point is 00:57:02 Yeah, they're remaking Salo at the IMF right now. Yeah. Munger. He's just going to check out this very nice restaurant called Comet Pizza. No, he's going to check out the restaurant from your, from your, yeah, Comet Pizza. I thought when the government today hinting that they might walk all of this stuff back, when quasi-quartang returns from being tortured. I think it's, I think at this point. They were, and then he came back and said that he wouldn't.

Starting point is 00:57:28 And that's why, like, I don't even care to, to speculate about any of this stuff, because all of these people are constantly backstabbing and betraying one. It's, it's, it's like a, sort of, it's like a reality TV situation at this point. And so they'll, there'll have been four different backstabs, reversals, U-turns, betrayals, and denunciations, and so on. By the time this comes out. Quasi, the situation-quartang-tino. Yeah. And it's getting faster every time, because a week ago,

Starting point is 00:57:54 people were saying, uh, you know, Liz Truss will be out by Christmas. Now they're saying out by next month. So, who's to say? And the thing is... Hancock Endgame, baby. Woo! The Tories, the Tories can't get rid of her, right? It's like too soon.

Starting point is 00:58:08 They can do whatever they want, because the 1922 committee can just change the rules. More like the 1984 committee, am I right? In my opinion, I would say that is right. Right. But if we, and the other thing, right, is all of this boils down to as well, that that's, that they continue to be in this impossible situation of promising more spending cuts when like, but not promising spending cuts to anything anyone cares about. So like, no, we're not going to cut the NHS, even though again,

Starting point is 00:58:34 they'll probably just like not operate it in line with inflation, which is in fact a huge cut. Or just even not funding it way more when there's greater demand on its services, is in effect a huge cut. There are lots of ways to cut it without cutting it. And they might just have to do that anyway. But they've all, they've promised no cuts, which is kind of insane, because they said there weren't going to be cuts. I don't know.

Starting point is 00:58:57 Yeah. And it's not just some weird situations. Like that 1922 committee meeting, which led to sort of a back bench revolt demanding a higher corporation tax, which... Yeah, we truly do live in topsy turvy world. There's a back bench Tory revolt about raising corporation tax. Like it is, it is a crazy, like it does feel as though everything is getting dumber and faster. Like every new Tory prime minister has to leave in disgrace,

Starting point is 00:59:22 but like an order of magnitude faster than the previous one. Like it's sooner or later, everyone will be a Tory prime minister, but for 15 minutes. I just, I just, I love the idea that like the sort of like right wing theory guys finally sort of like got what they wanted. And they like are just sort of losing their minds over the fact that like none of it is working. Like they've spent so long, like imagining like their libertarian utopias with like, you know, no age of consent rules, like probably all those nights,

Starting point is 00:59:49 all those like years spent at the Adam Smith Institute Boat Party, are imagining what like the sunlit uplands would look like. And now they've been sort of left with this. And I don't know, I just, I just, every time I look at like certain sort of like right wing theorists and how they're kind of responding to this moment, it does kind of look like they are melting down. And that is genuinely quite funny to me. Like in spite of everything that's happening, it is very funny,

Starting point is 01:00:14 like that they are sort of having massive meltdowns. Dusting my hands being like, well, we kept these dangerous extremists out. Now it's time for us to institute some well managed revolutionary policies. You know, and the boot is heading towards the rake on the ground. Well, their line is now either like, oh, we're not actually trying proper free marketeerism or true free market economics has never been tried. It's all state capitalism.

Starting point is 01:00:41 True, true, true, hirakism or things. I can only be fair. Or like, you know, things would be worse under Corbin. And it's just like, well, there's the third argument as well, which I think is worth talking about, which have we talked about how the US exports its inflation on this show? No, but it's one of the sort of fun perks of being. I see, that's all the sort of like American snacks being important to London.

Starting point is 01:01:06 Yeah, all the American candy stores that are all tax dodges on Oxford Street. No, so this is basically the US government is working in partnership with the Albanian mafia to sell a lot of cocaine in London and then laundered that money through candy shops. So basically one of the this and this is like the the the the government line currently, which is that none of the current minute none of the yeah, exact this as of this being recorded the government line as sort of espoused by Jacob Rhys-Marg and it might currently be the current government line again by the time you're listening to it.

Starting point is 01:01:38 But between now and then there will have been 15 other government lines. A little bit a few. Yeah, I think they'll have been 15 other government lines. And then they'll probably text the guy has the candy shop again. Yeah, this could probably be. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, this could be the the same government line, but it's now being said by a different guy who's like shirt collar is undone.

Starting point is 01:01:55 He looks like he hasn't slept. So basically how this works right is that the US and this is like there and they're saying that this this is accounting for more or less all of it, which is that look everywhere is in turmoil because the US is experiencing inflation. But when the US experience is inflation, what they do by putting up interest rates is they make US dollar denominated commodities more expensive to purchase, which means if you're buying oil, which is denominated in US dollars, for example, then what happens is you have to borrow more in US and US currency,

Starting point is 01:02:28 which creates current inflows from foreign currency into US dollars, which is one of the reasons the US dollar is so strong right now. Yeah, it's a great move. And it's something you can only do in sort of a unipolar world economy. It is taking out your enormous superpower monster. I'm really looking forward to Britain being like, so when we were in Zanzibar for a honeymoon, like there you can use Zanzibari currency in most places,

Starting point is 01:02:53 but they prefer having US dollars. So we found that we were spending more stuff. And this was just like to buy like groceries and everything in US dollars, then in like, yeah, then in Zanzibari money. And I am looking forward to being able to do that in the UK, like to buy a big, to buy a normal loaf of Kingsmill with like a big fat Benjamin. You think you'd be able to buy a loaf of Kingsman? You're going to have to find out.

Starting point is 01:03:16 The big fat Benjamin is a guy who owns the American candy store in Erith, where it sells eggs for some reason. Not a price to be seen. So essentially, right, but that's how, that's the fundamentals of the relationship, right? Is that the US experience is high inflation, it can raise interest rates and export that inflation out of the country, thereby deflating the currency.

Starting point is 01:03:39 Yeah, towing it out of the environment. Basically what it does is it sort of fucks everyone else in order to preserve price stability. The US is a big NOS canister. I don't know if I have a job. Suggestion that these contradictions of the imperial core can be sent to some kind of imperial periphery. In this case, I mean, everyone's the imperial periphery.

Starting point is 01:04:01 Yeah, well, that is basically how the US operates, yeah. So any case, so that's the argument, right, which is none of this is local. In fact, the markets are really pleased about what we're doing, but what we're experiencing is the US exporting inflation, which is this is a lie. Yeah, well, I would say it's not a lie in the sense that when I jump up and down,

Starting point is 01:04:24 like the rotation of the earth does alter a little bit. But that's not what's doing most. They're continually downgrading the British economic, Britain's economic future, but they're shaking my heads because they actually agree with that. Yeah, exactly. Like, oh, poor Britain. So that's why it's bullshit.

Starting point is 01:04:40 But one of the other sort of canars them seeing come out of this is something that we saw a lot in the Corbyn years, which is, oh, well, it looks like that no party should be able to choose its own leader. It should be MPs only. Because this would never have happened if we'd had Rishi Sunak. In fact, the Corbyn thing would never have happened

Starting point is 01:04:57 if we'd had Owen Smith chosen by MPs. Yeah, because if we'd have had Rishi Sunak, we'd have had managed decline. None of this unmanaged decline, unfettered. We want fettered decline. We want decline we can predict. Literally, yes, that is, yeah. And I think also it comes back to this,

Starting point is 01:05:18 I think extraordinarily anti-democratic impulse in the UK, which is because what think people like trust and the only thing that trust in Corbyn have in common with them is that they both were produced by a system that massively alienates people from it who have one very occasional way to influence how it goes, which is by voting. And so essentially by removing

Starting point is 01:05:46 the kind of management layer from democracy, you've allowed two very alienated groups, it alienated in different ways. Some might say the alienation of one is more productive than the other, if you get my meaning. One's alienation tends to sort of madness of fascism, the other's alienation tends to like... Volunteer border guards versus...

Starting point is 01:06:05 Yeah, things of that nature. But and so the solution, of course, the only solution that British political system can conceive of is, well, the problem comes from the fact that there's one little hole through which some amount of limited democracy can enter this extremely shitty alienation system. And it sounds like Owen Wilson.

Starting point is 01:06:27 Everyone's shoving all this democracy through me. I mean, this is... I've been unemployed for years. So this is... Wow. I can't handle all these votes. Owen Wilson isn't unemployed. No, no, he's character.

Starting point is 01:06:39 Oh, I see, I'm sorry. I haven't seen enough. I already lost the booty. Yeah, no, he's a shoe zone. Oh, so, sorry. So it's not Owen Wilson is, it's Owen Wilson as. Okay, so he's not playing himself. He's playing the democracy hole.

Starting point is 01:06:54 Okay, can we please call this episode kebabbulous of easing? Of course we can. He's still laughing about that. Of course we can. All right, anyway, look, that's all. Like, I don't want to talk too much about the specifics, because as we've said, they're going to change so much,

Starting point is 01:07:08 but just reflecting on... Yeah, I'll watch the movie instead. Like, when Jeremy Irons flies into the bank of England and starts reading Lolita. Yeah, that's right. Jeremy Irons flies a plane into the bank of England. Then starts reading Lolita. Starring Owen Wilson as quasi-quartain.

Starting point is 01:07:28 You know, I just wanted to lower the corporation. People said that was crazy, but I said guys. You gotta believe it can be done. And so one last thing before we go to the article, right, is that the argument put forth in the telegraph by like Alistair Heath, who's sort of very quickly becoming the main guy of Tresonomics,

Starting point is 01:07:55 is basically that we had this huge problem, which was low interest rates that created a zombie economy, and Liz Truss is basically doing shock therapy to sort of make that all go away. Liz Truss has shot that zombie in the head with the shotgun. She's put that big rubber gum shield in the mouth of the economy, and she's putting like two cattle stunners to its temples

Starting point is 01:08:15 and just hoping for the best. And she's, yeah, she's lobotomizing the country. And I support that. And the thing is, right, like, that's not, again, that's not wrong. Like, this was not a sustainable position, but the problem wasn't that there were like low interest rates. It's that we were set up in such a way

Starting point is 01:08:32 that those went to like massively inflate the value of a bunch of like stupid apps, right? If only that was something we'd discussed on this podcast. Yeah. So effectively, right, the argument from the Tresonomics boosters is that, is that, look, this needed to happen. And yeah, I think you could argue that, yeah, like this, one of the reasons

Starting point is 01:08:56 that like everything is so shitty and unaffordable. In fact, as we talked about with Gary, is that this low rate environment basically made stuff like housing unaffordable. Because the only way you could get housing was to get credit. The only way to get credit was to have money and so on and so on. But what, but, but the thing about a shock is that a shock benefits whoever's in power

Starting point is 01:09:14 at the time of the shock, because they get to rebuild after the shock. They get to, you know, they get to decide where the boat is going to go after it gets hit. And so even if like... And this trust has gone with the Mariana's trench. Yeah. So, so basically, right? Like the people who are saying, oh, this is necessary,

Starting point is 01:09:36 still have no way to account for the fact that, okay, well, it might have been, it might have been, let's say, creating a zombie economy, but they never contend with the way it was done. The problem wasn't just the interest rate, the problem was how it was all set up. And finally, they never contend with the fact that they want to create, make it sort of much worse.

Starting point is 01:09:57 So that's how you can dismiss that out of hand, should it become necessary. If you meet your British uncle at the Thanksgiving table in a couple of weeks. That's right. Yeah. If you're an American with a British uncle, we've got a toolkit for you. You can buy it from our website.

Starting point is 01:10:11 That's right. You show that uncle. Yeah. It contains a big cattle stunner. And one of those little rubber gum shield things. But how would you like some shock therapy, uncle? I'm going to read an article. Sign this waiver. I'm going to read an article now. Telegraph columnist Robert Taylor,

Starting point is 01:10:27 a man who looks like a haunted baby. He looks like someone who would work at Mark Corrigan's like loan company in like one of the middle seasons of Peepshire, and would be someone that Mark Corrigan would hate. Does he just say anything's like... Yeah. And that's what the mess of us is going to be. Did we cannot shake any birds?

Starting point is 01:10:47 Here is the beginning of the article. We need another war, an elderly relative used to insist in 1970s. Now, this is doing the thing. It's doing the conservative article thing. Well, watch this. Even as a child, I found this idea puzzling. Well, yes, a war would sort them out, I thought.

Starting point is 01:11:06 It would definitely do that, but it would also involve mass human slaughter. You mad old fool. Again, end of the article. Yeah. What? You know what? Short and sweet. Also, there is a war in Europe right now. It's like, well, if we all shoot ourselves in the head,

Starting point is 01:11:22 this economy stuff will no longer be a problem. Like, I guess, technically, you could say that. We could really reduce the pressures on consumption. I'd be good for the NHS. Yeah. Yet here I am. Wasting times write the fuck down. In any case, well, except for self-inflicted gunshot wounds, those would be quite the backlog.

Starting point is 01:11:44 I assume you'd triage those quite quickly. Yeah, the ambulance service would be pretty busy for a bit, but I think most of those people aren't making it to A&E. I think they're getting pronounced dead at the scene. Yeah. And for sure. And it's one of those situations where, you know, this is the shock doctrine. It gets worse before it gets better, right?

Starting point is 01:11:58 Anyway, remember the last line of that first paragraph. It would involve mass human slaughter. You mad old fool. Yet here I am thinking along similar lines, half a century later. Ah, you've become a mad old fool. Pretty easy bit of analysis of the syllogism there you can do. Not to be socrates about it,

Starting point is 01:12:15 but what do you notice about this situation, Robert? He says, it's not about war. I'm not that callous, but impending blackouts, maybe. But something nicer than war, like impending blackouts. It says first, to be clear, blackouts are an appalling prospect for the elderly and vulnerable and the article. Now, Skip, you know I am sensitive to the holocaust. But things of that nature.

Starting point is 01:12:42 The winter is going to be hard enough without your home power being cut with just a few hours notice, especially if it's a cold one like those. And then this is a strange adjective, sadistic long range forecast say. Sadistic forecasts. Are they sadistic, Robert, or are they accurate? That's why the government and national grid

Starting point is 01:13:00 will do everything to prevent such a calamity. I hope that they succeed. Well, the national grid will. I have a lot of doubt that the government will. But what if they don't? What if we get blackouts? Could there be a bright side to the darkness? Blitz spirit.

Starting point is 01:13:16 Are we going to do blitz spirit? Is that going to be the other way? Is that we're going to have like a secret orgy where you don't know it's just bodies touching each other. You've got no idea who else is even there. Yeah, could be anyone. Could be anyone. You don't even know that she's Iran.

Starting point is 01:13:29 But if it's a blackout technically, you're not legally culpable. So as it happens, some of my earliest memories are of the blackouts caused by the minor strike. Remember how the minor strike caused those blackouts? Yeah. Oh, yeah, famous for it. Because Arthur Scargo went on TV and said,

Starting point is 01:13:44 it's good that you don't have electricity, little child Robert Taylor, because one day you're going to grow up and you're going to like formulate a theory about this that's going to lead us to a better situation. It would be a character building experience for you, Robert. It's weird TV used to be really specific back then. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:14:01 Well, there were less people around. They could afford to like, you know, address. Arthur Scargo could address each child by name. I'm starting to think Arthur Scargo wasn't even Welsh. I made him Sam Welsh there. Right in. And the oil crisis in 73. Children like me found it fun to huddle around a family candle.

Starting point is 01:14:19 One family candle. You only had one candle in the 70s, didn't you? Because times were hard. Not now. These millennials got as many candles as it probably from Joe Malone or something. You know, one of these homosexual candles that smells like a beach vanilla or something.

Starting point is 01:14:36 No, back in the day, you had one candle and it smelled of beef tallow. And you'd sit around, wouldn't you? And you'd use that candle to read Tan Tan O Kong. Because it's kind of what used to have a real country. What the fuck is this? Filled your boar. You guys said to one candle is just like a seven liter

Starting point is 01:14:57 diptych candle? Yeah. So it's in a painting. That's why you can only have one. Yeah, still paying off my candle. So children like me found it fun to huddle around a family candle eating sandwiches when the cooker didn't work and to edge gingerly through the house in complete blackness

Starting point is 01:15:13 when the lights went. Okay. Oh, I love, I loved. He loves edging. That's what I'm getting from this article. I loved. Yeah. It's just like, oh, isn't it great when like things were awful

Starting point is 01:15:25 and you had to like steal yourself to get through. You've mistaken stealing yourself or more accurately, you've mistaken your parents stealing themselves to get through it and successfully making you feel better about a difficult situation with actually liking that situation. That's what you've done. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:15:42 Yeah. Well, because now because of woke, you know, he's feeling scared, you know, they were just out back in the day. But now because of woke, they have to be called blackouts through inclusivity. It was like an instant game of murder, which in those days, we were allowed to play without our parents fearing we'd end up in Broadmoor.

Starting point is 01:16:01 What? Sorry, that's a childhood game that's unfamiliar to me. And also this is so inscrutable to American listeners. It's like we actually kill one of your kids. There's a bunch of people listening to this in Pennsylvania right now going, what the fuck is Broadmoor? Oh God, I'm late for my job at the Secret Service. Murder.

Starting point is 01:16:16 Murder game. It's like one of these things where you're like in a dark room. They're all playing manhunt on PlayStation 2. It's like a form of tag, I think. Anyway. Is it like wink murder? Is that what he means? So, and it's certainly engendered a community spirit.

Starting point is 01:16:29 Different post codes lost power at different times on different days. You couldn't even play fucking Mr. President these days because of wokeness. Different post codes lost power at different times and different days. We used to head over to relatives in another bit of Birmingham to get a hot meal.

Starting point is 01:16:42 Then they'd come over to us. Oh, it's just like the war my elderly relative would enthuse, which you just said was bad. You just said that it was, it's not good, but everyone seemed to be liking it at the time. It also crucially wasn't like the war because no one was being killed from the sky by Germans. Like there were some of these elements did persist in the war,

Starting point is 01:17:04 like, you know, blackouts and things of that nature, but also stuff was exploding and on fire. That's a crucial difference. I can't help but feel like, like I feel as though the boomer desire to imagine that they were basically in World War Two because there was a week in the 70s where the bins didn't get collected is remarked as though, as though that was the point of World War Two Hitler was like,

Starting point is 01:17:28 the English will not have their bins collected for one walk and then they will come to my sinking. The people of Coventry will rule the day that they ignored Adolf Hitler when the bins are smelling quite bad. We looked after each other because we had to. Could that same sense of community togetherness be kindled today? No, it couldn't. After many decades of trying to deliberately destroy it,

Starting point is 01:18:03 I don't know, maybe, but like it was your lot who fucking did it in the first place. One of the best examples of that is just like during the lockdown, like how many, well, number one, like how many like mutual aid like networks has sort of collapsed within a few months, but also how like the kind of extent of social interactiveness was like your neighbor snitching on you for going for like a second walk. Yeah, their candle over there is too big. And I was saying my five, their candle's too big.

Starting point is 01:18:31 They're hoarding candles next door. Can you send, can you send on, preferably the parachute regiment, I think? Nothing, honestly, I know you haven't asked, but I think they should all be shot dead. No, I don't think you should even question them first. I think you should blow the door in and shoot them all in the head. That's just, I just think because they are violating,

Starting point is 01:18:54 you know, the camaraderie spirit. So here's the next paragraph. This works as on the phone to the speaking clock. And blackouts could be just the ticket to shake some of today's younger youngsters out of their sense of entitlement and self-righteousness. Entitlement to what, Robert? What the fuck do we have? Multiple candle.

Starting point is 01:19:18 Multiple candles. We haven't got anything. You have all the stuff. Wait, it's just like, oh, you know, you can go out and have toast, can't you, in a restaurant? Oh, you couldn't do that in the 70s. You know what you could do in the 70s, Robert? Buy it out for a fucking tenor.

Starting point is 01:19:37 You dickhead. Man, becomes so angry. He begins to sound a bit like Liz Truss. That is a disgrace. It's entirely, they live in an entirely imaginary, there is a metaverse that does exist and it does work. It's the conservative columnists have like a version of events in their head where like they are like these sort of like grubby bin men in flat caps who are there,

Starting point is 01:20:04 you know, toiling away in the authenticity mine or whatever. And then all of the children in the country are all like driving around in gold cars and like having orgies or whatever and then complaining about it. Like I just don't understand this reality that he thinks he lives in. He's got legs. Finally. Finally. Yeah, they've all got legs.

Starting point is 01:20:25 It says, well, they have legs in the 70s because it's a free day week. At a time when sensitive youngsters need counseling after watching Rod Little unquestioned time. Yeah. Yeah, this was me. I actually needed some counseling after that because I was so owned. I needed counseling because I thought he looked too good. Well, the form of counseling that we did was we made that pen and pixel album cover of Rod Little

Starting point is 01:20:47 with the Lexus and the Rottweiler. Just find that again. The horror of losing the means to power up their phones might jolt them back to reality. They're on their phone. Oh, damn. Rather than being... Because your phone, of course, is a fripperie, a bagatelle, not something that contains anything that you might use for work or your social life.

Starting point is 01:21:07 Rather than shivering and getting pneumonia and living in the moment next to your family candle, the youngsters, the woke youngsters are too busy on their phones. Trying to sign up for counseling after having seen Rod Little do a Florida question time. Yeah, they're texting their therapist. Also, if there's anyone who's on their phone 24 hours a day, it's fucking telegraph columnists. I mean, pull the other one. These are the most deeply online-brained people on Earth. They're doing it so they can save everyone else from it.

Starting point is 01:21:37 But I'm going to go on. Meanwhile, a blackout or two might demonstrate the naivety of the net zero agenda. Blah, blah, blah. No, it wouldn't. If anything, our excessive reliance on fossil fuels is one of the major reasons we have ended up in this precise situation. If any of you cunts had allowed this to be taken seriously 10 years ago, what it fucking should have done, we could have built nuclear power stations

Starting point is 01:22:04 and solar power and wind energy and we would have basically infinity-free electricity. It is honestly remarkable that a bunch of people who claim to be capitalists for reasons of nothing other than they think doing environment stuff is gay, manage to systematically prevent investment in arguably the most profitable venture since the dawn of the industrial revolution. What the fuck are you talking about? Well, you're so veiny in your forehead. It just doesn't make any sense.

Starting point is 01:22:40 Like there are other things which I can allow on the basis that at least someone benefited from it. But in a meaningful way, no one has really benefited from not investing in greed energy because other than a few oil companies, it's such a profitable investment. Even on purely capitalist terms, there's no reason not to invest in this. It's such a great investment. Oh, but what if the oil companies, what if those people are my friends and they're the ones in my office?

Starting point is 01:23:11 They could have invested in it. What if the solar panels block the road and it means that people can't see my land right now? This is my emotional support oil field. So this is the last two paragraphs. I couldn't skip any of this article. Oh, and there's a bonk for Britain push. If you haven't heard, a Tory minister reported a bonk for Brexit.

Starting point is 01:23:36 Reportedly told The Sun on Sunday last week that we must use tax cuts to encourage women to have babies instead of declining birth rates. Literal fascism, literal eugenics, but also we've just become Japan at this point. And I'm okay for real with you. 56th Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Liz Truss, this will not improve our declining birth rate. But also incredibly funny that they're trying to do this like quite overtly sort of fascistic thing,

Starting point is 01:24:02 but in a country about like just hates children. They hate their own children by the nature of this article. They hate parents. They hate other people's children. They hate immigrants' children. Like, you know, there's like a big push right now. There's like some sort of push to be like, yeah, foreign students who like pay like out of their arse to sort of go to British universities

Starting point is 01:24:22 and like sustain like loads of British towns. They also have to choose their favorite child to bring with them, but not all of them. Like it is very funny to me that the whole like bonk for Britain thing. I don't know how legit it is, but yeah, to me it's very funny. So it's a throwaway comment by a minister, which means that there's a 50-50 chance it's going to be either completely forgotten by the end of next week or a flagship policy. Yeah, bonk for Britain actually was the title of that film Dave Courtney was in.

Starting point is 01:24:49 Oh, I remember that. But that feels like weeks ago we discussed that. I know. Listen, if that's the case, I suggest blackouts for baby making could be the tonic and can get the Tories leaping back up in the polls. There's no way I'd have sex with my wife with the lights on. We're both repulsed by each other's naked form. That could actually be the only way to do it because it'd be like cold and miserable sex.

Starting point is 01:25:11 Probably does appeal to like quite a substantial percentage of British people. It's definitely going to be cold this winter. It says, so might power cuts actually be a positive experience? Of course not. They'll be inconvenient and uncomfortable and for some dangerous. But if my elderly relative could see- By the way, just quietly by stealth admitting the probability of them happening. In the first paragraph, we were like,

Starting point is 01:25:33 oh, I'm sure the government and the National Grid will do something about this. By the time we're into the last paragraph, we're like, when this happens, as it surely will. Well, because he's so motivated about owning the Libs and like owning all the children in the UK. But now he's just like, no, it must happen. It is a government, like it is imperative on the government to like make the blackouts as long and as long and uncomfortable as possible. That's right.

Starting point is 01:25:57 But if my elderly relative could see the bright side of two world wars, did he live through both? Surely not. Well, maybe because it could have been- My grandfather grew up a minor's son, kind of. He, as you know, he didn't live through the First World War, but he saw the bright side of it, which is an element of his personality is passed on. Then I'm ready to see one or two well hidden,

Starting point is 01:26:20 very well hidden benefits of otherwise horrible enforced cold darkness. Always look on the bright side. Yeah, for example, you know, the First World War, like look, did hundreds of thousands of people get horrifically killed and maimed in some of the most barbaric conditions that have arguably ever been seen before or since? Sure. But it also, you know, increased ultimately the availability of tinned corned beef. So it's quite hard to say if it was good or not.

Starting point is 01:26:46 Say what you will about the world wars. But none of the kids, none of the people that were, the young people that were sent to fight were on their phones. They were just there living in the moment. And I think that's kind of beautiful. One, I can't remember who it was. There was usually a guy, if you watch Band of Brothers, the documentary, there is a guy who is very frequently on the phone,

Starting point is 01:27:06 but it's like a whole backpack. So it's not in his pocket. He's going to carry it around. On his field telephone. Hello operator. Is that the speaking clock? Yes. Well, the trouble is here in the front line, they're too woke.

Starting point is 01:27:19 Everyone is, of course, they're talking about pronouns and such like. We wanted to do operation market garden properly, but they made us do our pronouns. We all got shot from that sniper. My commanding officer wants to be called man. And then that British officer wouldn't shoot that tank through the house because of woke orders about not destroying civilian property. Anyway, we've broken my cardinal rule of never really going for more than an hour.

Starting point is 01:27:44 We've gone for an hour and a half. We've Dave Courtneyed it. We've done a Dave Courtney. We had a 45 minute AIDS test before the start of the recording. So I want to just say thank you all for listening to the podcast. And hey, see you tonight. If you're some of the lucky people that bought tickets to the live show. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:28:02 Exciting. Exciting. Yeah. 25th of October, Cambridge. Still tickets available. That's see me. Yeah. Also Australia.

Starting point is 01:28:11 Still tickets in Brisbane for the 8th of November. Still tickets for Britainology on the 19th of November in Melbourne. Still tickets to see me in Melbourne on the 21st of November. And really hopefully by the time this comes out, the tickets will be up for my stand up in Brisbane and Sydney, which will be on the 23rd and 24th. Is our show in Sydney now sold out? Oh, actually, I know it isn't.

Starting point is 01:28:29 You're right. Yeah. There's tickets for Sydney, which is the 10th. At this point, I can't imagine there are many left. And for Canberra also. Oh, Canberra. Yeah. Canberra, I know that there's like 10 left.

Starting point is 01:28:38 Canberra is a big venue in a small town. So you can probably still get tickets to that. But it was selling actually surprisingly well. Yeah. Yeah. We were kind of doing it almost as a joke, but actually it's been very popular. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:28:47 I'll tell you really, the reason we're going to Canberra is to see Andrew Law. Yeah. Like that's mostly why we're going there. But you know. We want to have a very nice meal with our friend Andrew Law. We want to have a nice meal with our friend Andrew Law. And I guess we'll play a show. Good afternoon, Andrew, but in person.

Starting point is 01:29:00 Yeah. Absolutely. So anyway, that's a little bit of table talk for you. And we'll see you. Table talk with Riley. We'll see you. Yeah. That's what that's for the extra half hour was the extra half hour was table talk.

Starting point is 01:29:11 An episode of table talk. Yeah. A pilot of the new, the new like hard like hardball late night chat show we're doing kind of GB news type thing. Anyway, next week, our guest will be George Galloway. So what's like, what's our kind of like ban to exit the, and we're going to be played out by the mystery jets. Reaching into sort of the landfill, Andy, Ben.

Starting point is 01:29:32 All right. So we'll see you on the Patreon episode in a few days, or we'll see you at the live show, or we'll see you at any number of upcoming live shows. Bye round. Bye. Bye.

TRASHFUTURE - Kebabulative Easing

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