TRASHFUTURE - Matt HanTok feat. Becca Wilks

Starting point is 00:00:00 I did everything right and they recorded me. They recorded me folks. Me and my disgusting felt mouth, that's right I was on the dole meo adverts. I was there eating pasta with my felt puppet mouth and no one stopped me. Then you it was wrong but nobody stopped me because it was profitable to the dole meo corporation that's why. Well let's just keep that as the... let's just keep that as the cold open. All right, all right, enough about the cans and the peaches and the box and the

Starting point is 00:00:44 fox. I don't care for it. I find it, uh, fucks box cans and the peaches and the box and the fox. I don't care for it. I find it, uh, puk-box-box. I find it repugnant. Uh, I- Instead. We'd like to introduce all of you listeners to our this week's free episode. Hi everyone.

Starting point is 00:00:57 It's the free one. It's the free one. And we are joined for, I believe, the second or possibly third time by Welsh journalist Becca Wilkes for the third time. Becca, how's it going? Hello, it's going good, it's very hot. Too hot. Have you guys noticed this? It's hot.

Starting point is 00:01:13 Yeah. I had heat madness for our last bonus book. Like in that famous book, How Hot Is My Valley. Because I was in a recording box and I nearly felt like I was going to die. You climbed into a recording sauna that we have. Hello, you're listening to Swedish trash, you're coming at you live from the recording sauna. That's right.

Starting point is 00:01:37 I've got a lot of those. I've got a lot of those. The Tally. I can only hear with the dry heat. I know. I know. The Bunga Bunga party and the Italian trashy just to horn it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Hally and Escort website that sent a wreath of flowers to his fucking funeral. Incredible.

Starting point is 00:02:05 That was an incredible piece of like marketing. I will say that. Yeah, but, but we've got, it's RIP to a lot of politicians actually recently. So, the end of the story, take Kazewski. Yeah. A man who had a political ideology and he'd campaigned for it. But, we're still a lot of letters.'d campaigned for it. But we're still going to talk of lettuce.

Starting point is 00:02:26 Yeah. Very impactful writing. Had a manifesto. But we are going to talk about some of that. We've got a startup. And then one of the last times we talked to Becca was all about the Welsh government's efforts to reform renting. And given that the entire real estate market appears to be melting down again. And at the same time, the Welsh government has issued the next step in its promise to

Starting point is 00:02:51 hold a meeting to determine the committee that would choose the color on the binder of the report that would make the recommendation of whether or not to do further research into controlling rents, we thought it would be great to have you back on. Yeah, exciting, exciting stuff. It's certainly, I think it's certainly of import if you're trying to live inside in Wales. Yeah, it's impactful. Maybe not in like a unibominable way, but in a sort of like a way you have someone's in a lift way. Yeah, that's right. Sure. I mean the Unibomba here somewhere to live A little cabin Yeah, yeah, $3,000 a month that cost you now

Starting point is 00:03:31 I have to rent out the the Unibomas cabin this fucking sucks Yeah, I had a bunch of loose cash in the night. He saw bought a Unibomas cabin. It. It's got it on Airbnb now. It's hard to get an investment. All right. So, as I was saying, hopefully monana, RIP to all the politicians. Boris has now taken the fake job that you take for half a day when you quit as an MP. Oh, before taking the fake job that you then have for the rest of your life, which is kind of a consultant after dinner speaking. Yeah, usually the what you get in return for all the craft. Well, you just have like absorb money. You like run around and it sort of like zoops up under your feet, like you're sort of like playing a video game.

Starting point is 00:04:15 I'm going to go live in the uniform, a captain, fantastic. Out of the woods. Great place to raise the kids. You've got a wonderful time. You can go down to the post office, mail out all your bombs. Library nearby. You can choose your kid. Maths. Fantastic. So I don't want to talk too much about Boris. If only because most of the commentary, it seems

Starting point is 00:04:40 to be engaged in a kind of like the Ewoks at the end of Star Wars, like fantastic. The thing is gone. The thing that was causing all the problems. Oh, thank God there's no one who describes the exact same ideology, all worse in power right now. I'm relieved about that. What I actually want to talk about before we get to the others who are out is his former press secretary for like 10 minutes or whatever, Gito Hari has revealed, like, oh yeah,

Starting point is 00:05:07 by the way, on allegations of sexual harassment by MPs, quote, as he put it in the heat of the moment, if we took away the whip from everyone here who pinched someone's bum, we'll lose our majority. And then he just said that kind of a year after he heard it and no one really knew if follow up question, not sort of like interested in that. There's no space for journalism to ask questions like, oh cool.

Starting point is 00:05:30 So like everybody just heard the prime minister say like our working majority is comprised of sex pests and thought that was noticeable in any way. Well, it was, if you remember, he wasn't, he was still useful when he said that. It was just as he was becoming non-useful, you know, and that everyone decided to start noticing all of the stuff, which previously it had been impolite or not expeditious to notice. Yeah, well, you know, in Britain, there are a lot of sex pests and, you know, they deserve parliamentary representation.

Starting point is 00:06:02 Come on, damn. and you know, they deserve parliamentary representation. Goddamn. But also this is not the only political, political obituary now, right, with Johnson out. Nicholas sturgeon has spent the night in a police station because of him. That's probably painting an RV. That's not quite try again. You have to be quite specific about this stuff because the contempt of course acts in Scotland is much more rigorously and for she spent seven hours being arrested in the day at the police station. I, you know, I hope someone was there doing like arrest support for when she got out. She's being dragged out there going, what is the charm? We need to make a list of like, like, writing this solicitous name on her arm and marker

Starting point is 00:06:45 before going out the morning. Yeah, no, but so essentially this is the culmination of a long-running police investigation into what has happened to 600 grand worth of donations that were meant to fund independence. We currently know not where they are, except for the fact that they are. They're not under Nicholas Durge's front lawn. That's what the police excavation offer.

Starting point is 00:07:11 Yes, yes. Yes, we've we've we've had the police dig up her lawn. We've had the police go into SNP headquarters with those little like cameras that you poke through drains to look inside drains. We've had the police seize a frankly not very nice looking hundred thousand pound RV. And as a consequence of this, her husband, who is the secretary of the S&P, she and the S&P's former treasurer have all now been arrested and then released without charge. And the main thing that comes from this is, first of all, this is like shocking that all of the finances went through three people, two of whom were married,

Starting point is 00:07:51 but second of all, the way that this looks, the sort of like the stench of corruption that's come off of this, justified or not, really, really is an impediment to doing nice moderate Nordic social democracy, because when you doing nice moderate Nordic social democracy, because when you do nice moderate Nordic social democracy, one thing you're not supposed to do is get arrested. Yeah, that's for Southern European Christian democracy.

Starting point is 00:08:15 Exactly. Exactly. Like, she didn't have the burlaskoni sauce to do this. And the other thing about this is. Imagine if she'd been having a Bunga Bunga party. Now, that's what exactly, yeah. And the thing about this, though, is that so much of the S&Ps electoral success has been unprecedented, like they have been Scottish politics for the last 10 years, right?

Starting point is 00:08:39 They achieve like consecutive majorities and a parliament specifically designed from the ground up to prevent that from happening. And then they traded that in for a van, for a motorhome. I mean, I'm sure this is something you can relate to, Alice. The temptation in every woman's heart to own a van. Yes, the Scottish woman lusts in her heart for a really expensive kind of idiosyncratic van. So, this is an article by Hugo Rifkin. I'm not going to read the whole article. It's

Starting point is 00:09:12 just, I think, illustrative, illustrative of a certain way of thinking about this. The tagline goes, sturgeon, Corbin, Johnson, and their destabilizing politics have gone in the blink of an eye and were better off for it. So I think Becca, what's your view on sort of the idea that somehow this represents any kind of change? Well, it just doesn't, it just doesn't, I think the conceit of the article you're referring to is just that these people made me a little upset and woke me a little bit, and now they're gone. And I like that. And now I don't have to think about them anymore.

Starting point is 00:09:50 It's basically what's going on there. But you know, yeah, so undignified to have Hugo Rifkin do the sort of like end zone dance here. So I have him do like to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, hear the lamentations of their women, right? Because, you know, what is he done to advance that other than sort of like inertia? He has just sat on a column and just all loud.

Starting point is 00:10:15 He's complaining. Yes. And he says in his article, the real question then is not how did all these people manage to fall during the short time frame. It's how are they all able to come together in the first place, which I agree. That's a good question. Yeah, and I kind of like that we're openly acknowledging that like what has happened here is any alternatives to this big prevailing gray ideology that we've come to call

Starting point is 00:10:40 productivity on the show is being like systematically shut down for one reason or another, right? You think you can get out of it with Corbinism? No, you can't, that's been forced all. You think you can get out of it with Scottish nationalism? No, that's forced all too. If the Greens ever did anything interesting, electrically, I'm sure that would be, they, you know, there would be something, right?

Starting point is 00:10:59 If there is no escape, you are here forever. No more populism, just this. Yeah. And I think the, they've, I think it's also important to note what did Boris represent and all that is that you can't beat someone exciting, offering, because the old was dying, right? That's where all of the populism of the last 10 years

Starting point is 00:11:17 on every side did come from. The old was dying and the new was struggling to be born. And the sort of like the sexual dynamism of like Theresa May was not enough to carry this forward into the future, right? We needed British, Berlusconi. Yeah. Britishconi. We don't have it.

Starting point is 00:11:33 Genuinely. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that is true. But the thing is, right, is you can't beat someone exciting, or that someone else exciting, they needed someone who was, they needed someone who was a wartime concigliary exciting they needed someone who was they needed they needed someone who was a wartime Concigliary they needed someone who would actually fight and not manage really really that gene conciliator huh yeah that's right and all these people represented different vision different responses to the crumbling of neoliberalism and ultimately Boris is extremely

Starting point is 00:12:00 conservative vision one because he was personally a weapon used by one faction of capital. We talk about the previous decade, B, and the fucking weapon. Not a fight between some kind of... He was like, he was created in a lab for this. He was like, Ethan's fucking Wolverine. He was their weapon X, right?

Starting point is 00:12:17 They built him with the Adamantium skeleton of absolute shamelessness. And now... He said his name is the Adamantium cock, that she said. But I've his name is the Adamantium cock that she said. I've built up with the Adamantium cock that like fucks around enough that no one is willing to write a negative word about him. And now that he's outlived his usefulness, they have found the embarrassment again. The big electromagnet has swung over Downing Street. He's been pulled out

Starting point is 00:12:42 by the cock. Yeah. And you, and the new consensus is in place. It's a political podcast with deep analysis. We are up there with BBC sounds, okay? Yeah, that's right. We are actually genuinely liked by a lot of people who do a lot of real stuff, which is very funny. Oh, absolutely. Now you have to hear about Boris's ad of Antium Cox.

Starting point is 00:13:01 Sorry, FT reporters. But, you know, I think that's, let's talk like that's who's out and who's like representing some, I'd say, foreclosure on the possibility of change, whether sort of good or bad now that the new has sort of been born. Let's talk about who's fun because boy is Matt Hancock's TikTok presence being noticed by us. Matt Hancock, we're all on Matt Hancock.

Starting point is 00:13:26 I'm big on, yeah, go ahead. We finally pivoted now that Matt Hancock MP, the app is no more, we're all on Matt Hancock. We're all watching him like Skull WKD. Cruising for Kim Secks on Matt Hancock. So I wanna start with Matt Hancock. Starting with Becca. Starting with the second. What was your favorite of the Matt hand talks that we've all watched?

Starting point is 00:13:49 Oh, now that's, now that's a hard question because I did watch these immediately before the recording and I got stuck in a bit of a hole. I think my favorite one was his post-part walk in in Transylvania, simply for the fact that he made the soundtrack on it. He cut up the little sound that plays during the video himself. It's a nice little slide show of him and his Mrs. walking around in Transylvania and he made a mash-up of Katy Perry's firework work with a song that I can't remember the name of because anyway um yeah I had a lot of thoughts about his favorite chocolate bars one it's psychotic to me that is his final two were kicker and Mars that's yeah yeah that's a weird fight to the death yeah kicker one also which again, even kick out barely even a chocolate bar. No, it's like chocolate bar adjacent.

Starting point is 00:14:48 It's a cookie. It's a cookie that's been marketed brilliantly. It's like something to do with, yeah, it's just like an activity more than a treat. It's like chocolate and roved, drival. An activity more than a tree. The other thing that I noticed, he's got this one big jump buttery ways in a lot of that's quite a nerve in. It looks like the sniffing accountant jumper off

Starting point is 00:15:18 sign fell, the one that makes his is a accountant look like he's doing cork, big gray thing, and sometimes the camera sort of fakes up a little bit. So the jumper seems to be sort of like a magic eye kind of thing, so it's like moving around as he's talking normally. It's very strange. But yeah. I think my favorite is definitely where you get to see him

Starting point is 00:15:42 do a kind of version of, you know how sometimes, you know, in attempting to prove they're on a baby, like 12 year olds would be like, by the way, I fucking hate Barney. You know that kind of thing? Or whatever. He does that with WKD, where he does a drink rating, just in my favorite.

Starting point is 00:15:57 This is my favorite. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This one is great. Alice, tell us, tell us. No, no, no, no. So, he, he, he ends up, he's tried to do like a top five drinks, right? He's, he's like locked himself into the thing with the, the kit cats again, right? Uh, but yeah, so the thing is that the drinks come, he doesn't know what drinks are going

Starting point is 00:16:17 to be in this rating. And so he's having to go through these drinks, which come up randomly. And then he has to put them in positions one, two, three, four, and five without knowing what the other drinks are gonna be. So he gets into position where he's kind of Sannou could himself. Okay, so I'll let you take back.

Starting point is 00:16:33 No, no, no, it's fine because he ends up with like, what is it like a Guinness wine cocktail? Like a poline of some sort? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Guinness is like number two, and then it's like red wine, three maybe. Yeah, and then he has to like shift the entire paradigm up to make Guinness his number one.

Starting point is 00:16:53 And it's just like, you're watching it. Like, sorry, you ran the health service during the pandemic. Like you were, you were like the great slayer of nands. Yeah, you killed everyone's NAND. And now you're doing this like to see the NANDs driven before you. To hear the lamentation of the grandchildren. That's the other thing I actually liked was that on his post about his audio book of his like if I did it, um, COVID book, um, he selects, uh, the, the track, uh, inspirational tropical house to soundtrack. There's post-op.

Starting point is 00:17:32 You know what he is? He's a frustrated, like, sound engineer. He really wants to be picking out little, like, soundtracks things to him. So I've always been a big fan of Kaui-ga. He wants, he wants to be doing Mark Ronson stuff, like, I'd in like, Jazzy, Trumpet to be doing Mark Ronson stuff like I didn't like Jazzy Trumpet. Mark Ronson's spectator garden passie set. Mark Ronson featuring that Hancock album, great. It is such a strange career trajectory to just remember, remember how he has, from being Liz Truss' mortal enemy to accidentally making Grime legal after it had been racistly banned. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:18:08 To then like, to do in part introducing parkour to Britain. Yeah. Make us all feel better about our diets with the Caramel waffle thing. Getting a visible erection on TV and standing way too close to a BBC reporter. Getting one of his stuff like lightly brushed against which was then immediately reported as a jihado-corbonist, as a assassinated man, so many things. He's like forest-gumped his way through so much British political history and then was like in a genuinely influential position in time to kill your man Get immediately thrown out of power again and is is is now

Starting point is 00:18:52 For falling in love and then still like they're happy together Yeah, not before making his landlord pub landlord very rich in the Transylvania walk into a thing We made his own little kitty Perry mashup but Gina but Gina's very much there on the walk into it. Yeah, love is real. True love is real is the thing. Well, what in the favela, she's on the back of the body. What you have to understand is that Matt Hancock's entire political career has fundamentally been motivated by malice against the CEO of Oliver bonus. He once received a poor customer service in Oliver bonus 15 years ago and he sat out on

Starting point is 00:19:31 a journey of vengeance against that man and he's been successful and that's why he's so happy. See, right and left, not so different because Angela Rainer's politics are that bit for the place that makes the really fucked up high heels, like the high heels for worse than the scene. Yeah, the style was shoes. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Starting point is 00:19:49 So that's the worst thing I've ever found out about Angel Rainer by distance that she wanted the horrible style wall shoes. I want to move on a little bit, but just to recognize that it's there before I move on about mad handcock, it is so funny to me that well, now the telegraph has reopened their like ritual humiliation of him by making what appears to be like a kind of new production of his, of a new podcast production, all about every single way in which he fucked up, got the lockdown file. But like he's giving his notes to his about Oakshop for no reason. And like not even getting her to say that she wouldn't leak them.

Starting point is 00:20:31 Just he's like so smart. God's perfect idiot. And you know what? He's the happiest person in British politics. That was just true. But can we go out of British politics for a person? Yeah. Can we segue to the unhappiest person in British politics right now, speaking of true love

Starting point is 00:20:47 being real, right? Because Nadine Dorees, many jobs, but chiefly being Boris Johnson's best friend in Parliament, quit her job. She resigned as an MP for midbed for chair. Before he did, like that morning having clearly been promised a peerage and then Boris being Boris. I guess just called Rishi up after she resigned to ask if Rishi would put like put her on the honors list. Rishi said no and so she quit for nothing and was left with nothing and has now unresigned in a series of tweets

Starting point is 00:21:26 where she's like, I demand an investigation into why I'm not getting a peerage. These are the most compelling characters left is just like people who are clearly driven by actual blind, fanatical devotion or who are just like, like, has the brain of a golden retriever. And sometimes both. Sometimes both. I feel very bad for her. You know, like, I think you do have to have sympathy for someone in that situation where, you know, they're not going to get a free job for life doing fuck all, wearing a lot of urban. I think that she should try and convince more of the British public to sympathize with her. I think it's going to go very well. Anyway, I want to move on because we are, we do have a start up

Starting point is 00:22:15 to get through and the, and also I want to talk a little bit about our, our renting situation. But before we get to the start up, I want to one more very quick thing, which is to note, remember we talked about the green prosperity Plan last week on the free episode? Yeah. Already it is being pushed back by two years, so that 28 billion pounds a year is going to start a year three. They've already negotiated themselves out of it before they're even in fucking office. I think it's maybe right.

Starting point is 00:22:40 We were right. That's the we were right update. Yeah. Look, I've spoken to the Sun newspaper and they think it's too early to be doing the Green Prosperity Plan. So then I've gone and spoken to the actual Sun and we've agreed to delay climate change by two years.

Starting point is 00:22:55 Yeah, like also, cutting the climate change investment program at a period where there is another unsensained heat wave that's gonna fucking claim some lives Great awesome. Let's cut it. Not as many as my hangover. He remains the goat. Yeah, that's not why does debt need to fall We're boring for ourselves We are borrowing from our cells. There's something to do all the Trump understood like when he was like You make the money you print the money you can't they when he was like, you make the money, you print the money, you can't, they can't get you.

Starting point is 00:23:27 If you print the money, he was right. He did everything right and they indicted him. They indicted him. How are you going to go to a, if you borrow money from someone and they lend you money, what they're doing is expressing confidence that somewhere in the future, you're gonna have more money than you do now.

Starting point is 00:23:44 That's the whole point of borrowing money. And if you lend yourself money, which if you're a fucking state you can, then what you're doing is saying, I believe things will be better in the future. And so, just, I didn't know one believes that, which is why we can't do it.

Starting point is 00:23:58 Yeah, and so if you're going to try and retool the economy away from neoliberalism towards like wartime neoliberalism. You won't do it if you just don't make the wartime economy and you can't make it with wishing. Anyway, I want to talk about this startup. What we need to do is get bombed by the Germans. We all need to be sat in a little hole in the ground with some car get a tin over it in our back gardens, eating bully beef and singing the national anthem and then, and, the green economy will come to bet.

Starting point is 00:24:26 I wanna talk about senior talk. It's a startup sent to me by a listener. Send your talk, yeah. Yes. Send your talk. Oh, I love it. It's like, great gentil, Latin American TikTok. The startup is called Senior Talk.

Starting point is 00:24:39 It was sent in by a listener, Becca, senior talk, what do you think it is? From the way that it's named, sounds like a chat show exclusively for old people, which I know it won't be because that's a thing that you could see in here and it's tangible. Every other chat show, I feel like. If you changed one word in that sentence, you would be correct. What is the word that we're going to change and what are we going to change it to? You're going to change old to young people.

Starting point is 00:25:10 Yeah, it's for high school seniors. It's a youth parliament. Yeah. Well, how about I was hearing senior talk like it's on TikTok. No, TALK. Oh, okay. Is it actually for high school seniors? No, no.

Starting point is 00:25:22 It's for the elderly. That's right. It is the elderly. Is it like a like in some kind of AI Platform that talks to your nan so that she doesn't kill herself. That's literally what it is. Yes Okay, good. Yeah, I'm a Day this I'll cast for too long We've done these before I swear we've done these people with with the they was like the robot baby seals Was a thing yeah, that makes me sound like a netter, but yeah, it was like the robot baby seals was a thing.

Starting point is 00:25:45 That makes me sound like a netter, but yeah, it's fluffy little cuddly toys that have been replacing seals with robots. Yeah. Yeah. This one, this one, there's a lot to it though. It's, it's called senior talk. It's an AI chatbot to keep your parents in touch. And I don't know how they get this next phrase.

Starting point is 00:26:03 Empowering seniors to live their best life with the help of our AI chat buddy. I don't know how it empowers seniors by like putting them in a kind of confusing prison where they don't really know who they're talking to or why. We put your nan in the cube from cube. Yeah, yeah, we're putting her in the cube from that game show, the cube that was hosted by Philip Scofield. Also like, you know, Philip Scofield from that game show, the cube that was hosted by Philip Skowfield. Also, Philip Skowfield hosted a game show called The Cube. What?

Starting point is 00:26:29 Yeah, wait, do you guys not remember this? I'm pretty sure. Oh, the cube. Yeah, yeah. Yes. I'm glad Becker also remembers this. This isn't like a dimension, at least. This is the classic type of thing that you are exposed to on TV

Starting point is 00:26:42 and you've got to visit your mom back home and this on in the living room and you've exposed to on TV and you go to visit your mom back home and this on in the living room and you got to watch. And that's what we're disrupting with senior chat with senior talk. But now your Nana won't think that she's friends with Phillips Gofield. She'll think that she's friends with the little robot baby seal. Phillips Gofield can be trusted with Nans. He plays a nice threat to Nans whatsoever.

Starting point is 00:27:02 So also by the way, an AI chatbot that's there to talk to like seniors and keep them. I'll go through it and I'll talk about it a little more. Always in touch, our chat AI buddy service is designed specifically to provide, and this is a depressing sentence, companionship and support for grandparents who may be feeling lonely or isolated. Why are they lonely and isolated? You may ask, who could say, let's apply some technology to it and forget about the whole thing. Yeah, I think it might have something to do with the whole sort of crisis of alienation

Starting point is 00:27:31 and like ripping the hearts out of different communities and seeing what happens. But, you know, we got a crisis of alienation. Yeah, what it turns, yeah. You've had some right cowboys for a break, you got here, be a real shame of something happened to it. You've had some right cowboys through here, You got here, the real shame of something happened to it. You've had some right cowboys through here. They ripped the heart out of all these communities. This is a problem. I was doing like work from home and then like struggling

Starting point is 00:27:52 with the lack of camaraderie. Tony doesn't want to sound the pork store no more. We're doing everything non-focusing. So with our service, seniors are matched with a friendly engaging AI chat buddy who was available 24-7. They provide personalized conversation to tailor to each senior's interest and preferences. And you can't wonder what are those interest and preferences. I want the racist chatbot.

Starting point is 00:28:15 This chatbot is not the right. The Italians are like that. This chatbot is not going to talk about Frank Sinatra. We're not going to be googling Frank Sinatra with this chatbot. Only QAnon. I want the QAnon chatbot is not going to talk about Frank Sinatra. We're not going to be Googling Frank Sinatra with this chatbot. Only QAnon. I want the QAnon chatbot, you know? Because that's what it's going to be, right?

Starting point is 00:28:31 It's going to be just like, oh, yeah, you know, that all the celebrities are all like, are all pedos. They're going to radicalize the chatbot to make it into a Q person. Yeah. Apart from in Britain where I'll be like, you're right, your neighbor is interfering with your bins. Like it will just be much more quotidian.

Starting point is 00:28:49 Yeah, Jeanette from up the street, I saw her going through your garden waste. You should confront her about it. I think she stole a box of tonics tea cakes out of your lauders as well. So topics range from current events to personal stories from the past. She again is so, I imagine like the life that you live collecting?

Starting point is 00:29:08 Oh, it's telling you like Korean war trauma to like a chatbot. Mm. Just fucking wretched. Absolutely. This, like there are some startups, right? Show some episode of what, 1950, you ran out of ammunition, you were throwing mess tins at people. Everybody was dying of frostbite and it goes, damn, that's crazy. How do you feel about that?

Starting point is 00:29:31 Yeah, you just get getting a liser. Did it make you feel bad to throw the mess tins at people? But like, there are some... No, it's the most alive I've ever felt. If I could throw a mess tin in a Korean now, I would. No, I'll add now, I'll get a joke. There are startups that we do that are just clearly naked money-making scams or just massive overhyped investment nonsense or just utopian or misguided utopianism.

Starting point is 00:30:02 Like we work, misguided utopianism. This one's in the other column, the genuinely evil column. Correct. So understanding that seniors may have concerns, the team is dedicated to providing the first-guys, the board, and guidance. Get useful insights from an optimized conversation history. So the chatbot's not just distracting your nann

Starting point is 00:30:21 so you don't have to go and talk to her because either you your alienated from her for whatever reason you're working for jobs maybe or you know you maybe you just can't or whatever but they're gonna throw throwing mess tins at Koreans. They're at the AI chat part will act like a madman therapist for wives and tell you I'll give you updates on your on your man's condition. No she's a nightmare every time I go around there she thinks I'm Jeanette come to steal her tonics T-Cakes. I'm like, first of all, Jeanette's dead.

Starting point is 00:30:47 She's not stealing your tonics T-Cakes and third of all, I'm not Jeanette, I'm your son, Gary. And then she says, that's what Jeanette would say to get at the tonics T-Cakes. You can't reason with a woman. She says, we use cutting edge technology. You can always depend on it when it says we use cutting edge technology.

Starting point is 00:31:03 Oh, absolutely. To analyze a person's messages and reveal early signs of dementia. By analyzing. I never, never reply that to Twitter. Never ever reply that technology to Twitter because the day that an AI sort of like sits you down and goes, listen, bestie, dementia post detected, that's not good for anyone. All right. And like I have some real reservations. Either that or everyone on our segment of Twitter

Starting point is 00:31:30 is like going, like falling over themselves to try and get the dementia diagnosis. That'll be like the new frontier. Like everyone's doing the online self-diagnosis dementia test. But I also have a question for what was question one. I also read their blog, right? Because all these companies all have blogs. And the articles were also very clearly written by an AI.

Starting point is 00:31:55 All these companies have blogs. And crucially, you are the only person that's ever read any of those blog posts. I am the only person who has ever read this stuff that they churn out for SEO purposes, that's right. And so it says, a safe and comfortable environment is crucial for the well-being of the elderly. There are several reasons why safe and comfortable environment is essential for seniors. As we age, our reflexes and balance decline. Secondly, a comfortable environment is crucial for the mental well-being of the elderly as we

Starting point is 00:32:22 age. This stinks of AI, like genuinely, like as much as it's supposed to be indistinguishable, you can't read three sentences without me going, that's a fucking robot. Yeah, lightening. Like, although to be fair, I think SEO was like this before, because the whole point of SEO is to constantly repeat yourself so that the search engine thinks, wow, he sure knows a lot

Starting point is 00:32:41 about a safe and comfortable environment for the elderly. Has that it 400? Weirdly, weirdly SEO like used to be either a lot less coherent or a lot more. Because like if you hired someone to do it or you got a robot to do it was like somewhat less adept it would either just dump all of the terms in like time after time or it would like form it into a paragraph that was like clearly written by a human, but that used those terms a lot. And this one kind of like is neither. It's in between, it's uncanny. And the thing to remember as well, right, is that other AI chat

Starting point is 00:33:16 bots will now train off this information created by AI chat bots. And it Yes. Yes. This is my favorite thing about this, right? Is that like, we had one opportunity to sample, like, the internet, the whole breadth of human knowledge, whatever, four large language models. After that, everything we can possibly take from it is now poisoned with some percentage of large language model. As soon as we started putting that stuff back onto the internet, we were feeding the cows their own brains again. And it's like, we're just gonna have the same effect. We have folded the language the wrong way,

Starting point is 00:33:52 and it's just gonna propagate. We made cognito has a drill, but only for AI. I really, that's really compelling to me. My cow disease, oh yeah, Nance probably got that as well. Yeah, no, she was eating a lot, a lot of beef in the 90s. Yeah, because even after they told her to stop, she'd go out, she'd find the cows. She'd grind it up. I say, yeah, they wouldn't sell it to her in the shop. She didn't care. She's annoying in any of that French mark. She just loved the way the prior test.

Starting point is 00:34:18 That's right. That's how we live in the world. It's a shame during for a mouth. She's, she's subsisted mostly on hooves. Purely to spite Tony Blair. That's how we live in the world. It is a shame during fur and mouth. She's subsisted mostly on hooves. That's fun. Purely to spiked Tony Blair. So still a woman she is. What a woman. But you can only make large language models trained on the entire summary, some of human knowledge contained within just a scrape

Starting point is 00:34:38 of the entire internet. As you say, Alice, once ever. Yeah. And then after that, they've all got like that kind of Habsburg inbreeding, whether or feeding off of each other. And the AI jewel. And you know, we, like labor talks over and over and over about, oh, we're going to use AI everywhere as much as we can to like avoid having to invest in the health service

Starting point is 00:34:59 while maintaining a kind of a standard of service, right? They always say, oh, we're going to, we're going to close the, the non-dom tax loop. while maintaining a kind of a standard of service, right? They always say, oh, we're gonna close the non-dom tax loop. Well, it's like, yeah, sure, great, fine, but you're not gonna actually do any of this stuff. And that's what you want to get to have. You're gonna have a large language model that is insane if they say, great, perfect.

Starting point is 00:35:18 We're gonna partner with an LLM to say, hey, we don't need half of social care because a large language model can take care of a lot of it if you hook it up to an Alexa. And then seniors are gonna not have to have as many home visits or maybe the LLM hooked up to the Alexa will alert when you need a home visit so you can have like half as many staff, right?

Starting point is 00:35:36 They'd be like, oh, that's the staff are being augmented by the AI. They're working with it. There are half as many of them though. And at the same time though, that large language model, unless it's going to be trained on private data, created a new every time by human actual labor, it is going to be fucking insane.

Starting point is 00:35:55 Yeah, we actually, we lose large language models on the internet before we have the ability to authenticate what is large language model text and what's written by a human other than by eye. And so great. Now it's just like this forever, is like every, every large language model we build has like a chance of just being wrong in a very sinister way. And may I say corporate social responsibility black lives matter.

Starting point is 00:36:23 So Becca, I want to turn to you for your impressions on senior talk. Oh wow, okay. I'm deeply sad. I'm very sad thinking about an old lady telling a chat about her rich and storied life. And it also makes me think as well, if you're talking about it, a large language model is needing this constant stream

Starting point is 00:36:44 of actual human labor and actual sort of organic human input to still make sense. It seems like the perfect way to gather that data also, which is, which is even sadder. What does, I think? Well, you don't want to be training an AI on how to make sense by having it talk to my nan. Yeah. That really, that would be one in the eye for a AI. I need that because she's long dead.

Starting point is 00:37:06 Oh, wege of all day. My long dead man was racist against French Canadians. Oh, crazy. Oh, it's sottic. Yeah. Sending this, sending the fucking French Canadian sort team. In for your nan. What are you gonna send her?

Starting point is 00:37:23 Like, Saint Mark Cemetery in Ackermale, like, what are they gonna do? You're gonna send some things Saint Mark Cemetery in the lake. What are they gonna do? You're gonna set some things about the maple syrup, which we disagree with. You're gonna shoot her grave. What was that you said about Joan Christian? Oh, she fucking hated Jacques. Anyway, sorry.

Starting point is 00:37:39 But, Becca, you bring up a good point really, right? Right, like every AI will be like, it'll have a perfectly normal application, right? We'll be using it as like, the thing we talked about last time, right? The AI tutor or whatever, it's gonna like teach your kids, but when it gets to anything about Canadian history,

Starting point is 00:37:54 it's gonna be like, by the way, Jean-Cretienne was a fucking dog. And just leave that there. And that's the thing that like, then becomes like a folk belief. Like every child believes this until Jean-Cretian is kind of like a world historical anti Christ. Thank you. All my homies hate Jean-Cretian.

Starting point is 00:38:13 Yeah, it's, but you had something earlier right back at which is these kinds of places are good sources for that human-made data. Well, I think that a lot of people talk about introductions of AI to the NHS in terms of replacing stuff with large language models. And I think for that's less the risk, really. Well, what's the risk for administrative stuff? It's the risk for things like this even, of non-diagnostic stuff, just work-a-day commodity activities, which again are not actually commodity activities. They're very important and a lot of people

Starting point is 00:38:47 will get poor treatment if they're shoddy. But nevertheless, it's a lot of the actual AI that's gonna go into the diagnostics. It might work, but a lot of what those companies are gonna get in return is a constant stream of human-made data. That's the big fucking goal. It's an image of the history of big. It's an, it's an extreme of big nan data.

Starting point is 00:39:08 Yeah, that's right. And so it's like the private providers of the AI just are gonna get to use the NHS as a huge data like that they're going to privatize under the watchful eye of a labor government. AI is gonna suddenly be saying a lot of stuff like, Joe Kapate, are you giving me more shrinking? Oh, now I never being comes to say me now.

Starting point is 00:39:27 The AI has a big fucking box of biscuits. They're all stale as absolute fuck. It's going to offer you a sandwich 60 times until you say yes. The AI's got those little like wrapped like strawberry hard sweets and and it's just gonna offer you like one of those a lot. Yeah, it got a lot scumpy fries in there. Yeah. My girlfriend's a while ago, went around to see my nan,

Starting point is 00:39:53 and we took lunch round there because she doesn't eat food. I see we went around there. We had like, yeah, that's right. We've got all those like rotisserie chickens and like French bread for the supermarket. So we're like making ourselves the same way. And she's like, she's right, we've got all those like, rotisserie chickens and like, French bread for the supermarket. So we're like making ourself a sandwich. And she's like, she's like, Oh, why are you, why are you doing it?

Starting point is 00:40:09 After Brad had made your sandwich, then you're like, well, no, you wouldn't, because you don't have any food in the house. And then, and then after a while, she then starts implying that we've brought lunch and then not made her any lunch. We're like, again, you don't eat solid food. And then by the end of this visit, she convinced

Starting point is 00:40:25 herself that she had made us lunch. And she said, well, I enjoyed your lunch anyway. I didn't have much in the aspect. It was what I had. It was just that good. Yeah. And we love the AI. Yeah. Anyway, anyway. So I just think that this is senior talk to me and represent it might be just a billion of these companies are all popping up and they're all popping up very speculatively. One was created in France recently that got a 350 million Euro valuation without a product or anything, no product.

Starting point is 00:40:56 That's not that unusual in the space because so much of what this industry is based on is like the 25 people in the world who understand it completely fully and if you hire three of them, you're just likely to get something good. Oh, cool, because we've like walled enough enough. We've dug enough of a trench around AI at this point, like, you know, the large language models at this point,

Starting point is 00:41:16 that we're like, you can just say, oh, we're building God in the basement, give me 100,000 million quid, please. Yeah, we're building God in the shed, and I'm one of the 25 people that you all think is credible to build God, and they'll be like, give me a hundred thousand million quid, please. Yeah, we're building God in the shed. And I'm one of the 25 people that you all think is credible to build God. And they'll be like, yep, you are.

Starting point is 00:41:30 Go build God. The God built us. The God built us hooked up to a super computer, like the end of Deus X, human revolution. And they're going to fucking like revolutionize social care down there. We're going to build a super computer that can need to a jumper.

Starting point is 00:41:44 But unfortunately, it is saying some very unpleasant things about Jean-Cretier. We're going to build a super computer that can need to a jumper. But unfortunately, it is saying some very unpleasant things about Jean-Cretier. So wait, the French Canadian AI doesn't also like Jean-Cretier. I mean, he wasn't popular. No, I love that. It just got regular nants. Okay. So the French Canadian AI company had torn between finishing the AI,

Starting point is 00:42:03 but also the fact that it's being trained on this nan data, which is very racist against French Canadians. That was just like, it's a kind of like, it's a general like torture, right? Where the AI that hates French Canadians is forced to speak in a French Canadian accent. Yeah. You say, I keep talking about the blasted aims that would eat the gems and clams the curtains. Okay, I want to move on. I keep talking about the blasted aves that would eat the gems and clams and cartoons. Okay, I want to move off of the ape. No, we don't have time for the ape.

Starting point is 00:42:32 I want to move off of senior talk. And I want to talk about something much more tangible. Questions as, for example. Yeah, if you live in Wales, can you have a roof or walls or a door, or are you going to die of exposure? Or are you going to disrupt the market by living outside? Yeah, by sleeping in the elbow. Having only a roof and no walls. Yeah, so, we're spending from a crane.

Starting point is 00:42:58 Can you catch up the good audience on the conditions that gave rise to this, I'd say opportunity for the Welsh government, nominally, a left-wing one, to change the way housing works in Wales and how we have come to where we are. Oh, now I've got to sound like I know what I'm talking about, right? Yeah, so when was it? It was late 2021, it's when I first came on and that was to talk about the co-op agreement. The Welsh government had recently won an election and as sort of a show of good faith, they went into a cooperation agreement with Plaid Cymru. In Wales, Plaid Cymru is more of our

Starting point is 00:43:40 left-wing party. People do support Welsh Labour would probably disagree with that, but they brought both broadly sit on the left to centre left. So they made this cooperation agreement and it was, I can't remember the exact algorithm, it was all to do with radical new ideas. And as part of that, there was a promise to consider the possibility of rank controls. The promise was originally for a white paper, a white paper being a concrete thing that signals an intention to bring a policy about. That was very swiftly thrown back to be a green paper, which is just asking for people to answer a consultation if there are opinions on the policy. And so two years later, they've now released a screen paper

Starting point is 00:44:32 with the aim of producing a white paper sometime next year, which will also be coming up on the next election, which will be the following year. Very exciting things happening in Wales. They're talking about changing the color of the paper Coming up on the next election, which will be the following year Very exciting things happening in Wales. They're talking about changing the color of the paper Yeah, you know what this you know what this actually reminds me of this reminds me of and please do not use this as an excuse To talk about the lagoon. Okay, but it does remind me a little bit of how Venetian The Venetian Doge was selected. Okay.

Starting point is 00:45:07 Show, which is that. There would be. They would all buy the paper of Revener. I'll say that. Yeah. But it would be these long processes of different groups of citizens frequently like appearing in several of these different committees,

Starting point is 00:45:22 who would convene and choose other committees, who would convene to choose other committees, who would convene and choose other committees who would convene to choose other committees who would convene to choose other committees who would be reduced by lot who would then convene to choose other committees who would be randomly three of whom would be randomly selected to convene to choose another committee and so on and so on and this would happen like thirty or so times it does feel like the process of the more fair and equitable society that's all the convening.

Starting point is 00:45:45 That's why they went to the good. But it does seem to me, right? Like, there is just this, if you want to be seen to be doing something, but don't want to do something, you can use this kind of, we are convening to discuss and select who will choose and they're convening to figure out what the question's going to be, to sort of hopefully push back ever having to do anything until your help landing

Starting point is 00:46:04 kicked out of office. Yes, standing on the the road seeing this can get kicks past me. So please go on. I'm also just I'm also just take it back because I I'd realize I'm about to say fair and equitable in the center in the same sentence a couple of times. Because it's in the fucking policy paper, of course. But yeah. So the green paper, I've gone through it a little bit.

Starting point is 00:46:34 It has two focuses, both of which are quite oddly worded. I don't know who's responsible for it. The first one is, what factors influence landlord behavior in setting rents and taking on tenants? That is a huge mystery to everyone I'm sure. And the second one is what do tenants consider is an affordable and adequate property? Strangely. Those are two questions with simple answers if you just consider the material factors. I like the mesophysical tactics,

Starting point is 00:47:09 if you like who can know the heart of a landlord? Yeah. You only have to see the object from one side, you know? Doing some of the stand point of epistemology on the landlord. Landlords are like a mysterious ethnic group, like Vulcans that no one fully understands, you know? Like no, they're their way of the landlord. Landlords are like a mysterious ethnic group like Vulcans that no one fully understands, you know?

Starting point is 00:47:27 Like no, they're their ways, they're secret. They're secret meaning. They're right. And even from Ravenna to make a less equitable size. They're basically like, they're basks. They're like a language isolate. Like no one really, they're not related to anything else. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:47:41 And they do, they do a lot of Surprisingly organized terrorism. Yeah Well, it's what factors influence landlord behavior and set it also behavior and setting rent because rents do have They do go one way and it's so weird how it's like oh, what's the behavior which indicates as to whether they go up or down It's like well, no, it's that it's pretty easy Yeah, a lot of the word in the green paper document and it's a company in sort of announcement is a cuelier in this way. They don't, well, Shlabah, despite being a lot more comfortable

Starting point is 00:48:17 using words like socialism and sort of embracing that kind of romantic nostalgic sort of left-wing politics that a lot of us feel very affectionate was, they are also completely unconvinced of the efficacy of the politics that sort of on the outside they're very happy to kind of sell themselves as being embodying. So looking at the language in the green paper, in the consultation document, fair rent, they define it as follows. We propose that the definition should be broader and be taken

Starting point is 00:49:06 to mean fair in the wider context of equitable in that it needs to be fair and affordable to all parties involved. In this case, both tenants and landlords, this is in order to ensure supply and quality are not compromised and this would undermine two of the factors necessary to realising how housing adequacy. Now, if I was to say to you, what does that imply? It implies to me that this was written by an AI, as well, that I'm not as smart. If you do a control F for the phrase, as a large language model, will you find it in the green paper I wonder? No, but I did do some of the very childish and do a control F to find how many times

Starting point is 00:49:44 the word landlord was mentioned and how many times the word landlord was mentioned and how many times the word tenant was mentioned. Landlord comes up 84 times tenants come up something like 32 times. That's a choice. It's wonderful. Yeah, but as that little quote, you know, we think rent needs to be fair and affordable to both tenants

Starting point is 00:50:04 and landlords. And I wonder if this is a tension between those two things. Who's going to be the landlord kind of for the rent? Yeah, you're really fucked. Well, that's, you know, that is that's we work. The landlord gets for the friends. That was like the co-working space we used to be. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:50:19 But I think what they're, what they're really articulating here is a politics bereft of enemies that somewhere out there is a perfect approach to rent setting that everyone is going to be happy with, including right now, at a time where interest rates are now about to go to like what, like five, five and a half percent, now projected to top out there, like the release of this paper at this era,

Starting point is 00:50:47 at right now is laughable. It is fucking laughable to imagine that there is a kind of politics without enemies between tenants and landlords, and that Welsh labor is decided to sort of hang their coat on this particular issue. Oh yeah, I mean the House and Minister, I think when they were discussing switching it from being a white pit to a green paper, the housing minister and the sanith,

Starting point is 00:51:09 I've got a quarter of this year because again, just, willfully naive, she says, I've met with a large number of interested private sector investors who really like the approach that we have here in Wales. They want of course, because they are decent human beings to make sure that they contribute to have here in Wales. They want of course, because they are decent human beings to make sure that they contribute to ensuring everyone in Wales has access to a decent, affordable and safe home, because they're very well aware that housing is not just about profit.

Starting point is 00:51:35 Cool. They're happy to do this, as I said, we're nice. Yeah, they said they're nice and good actually, and we should listen to them, because they only have tenants' best interests at heart. They're happy to do business here, and also they said that they feel good about it. That's a win-win as far as we're concerned. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:51:57 Pretty good stuff. This is the context in that we're in. We had this big housing crisis. We were going to address it. It's any way to address it has gotten rolled back. Now to the point, right, where we have a green paper that is setting out to try to find the magic rent that makes landlords' intents have identical interests.

Starting point is 00:52:17 And we know that it's right because a bunch of corporate landlords have said that they feel good about what they're doing. Is that about the size of it? About so, yeah. And the framing of it, again, in the document, it's very much speaking. It's symptomatic of a government that

Starting point is 00:52:33 is not confident about its power to affect change in the PRS. And it's not ideologically committed to doing that. And it's also, you can sort of feel them speaking directly to the NRA in this document. They're framing it not as sort of protecting tenants from the rising cost of living. No, no, they're not appealing to voters here. They're saying, and this is a court again, I'm committed to using all the levers we have to ensure we maintain a viable private rented sector here in Wales, offering high quality and choice of accommodation where landlords have lots of confidence to invest in making improvements and tenants have greater certainty that long

Starting point is 00:53:08 term costs of moving in. So it's word salad, but you get the kind of the flavor. There is going to be for everyone. You can, on the one hand, you, a normal person can get to live somewhere, right? And on the other hand, you as a blood-sucking parasite can extract their surplus value. It's going to be great. It's going to stay great forever. And there's certainly no contradictions that might heighten that. By the way, how hot is it right now?

Starting point is 00:53:35 It's hot. Well, they're also committed to using all of the levers that they have access to, which as far as I can tell from what they've said so far, is not no levers. Well, they can look into stuff, the driving of cars, nothing. The fucking Westminster has snapped off the steering wheel, you have the indicators, and you're like, man, I'm going to indicate fucking left. We're going to change the color of the paper, and I think that's going to, I mean, to be fair, I shall assure you, alluding to this, that climate change, obviously,

Starting point is 00:54:03 is going to be non-going factor, but I actually like, really do this that you know like climate change obviously is gonna is gonna be non-go factor But actually like where are people gonna move in climate change whales pretty good candidate? Yeah pretty cold pretty wet Actually for the first year okay climate refugees are going to be in Wales. There's a town in northwest Wales Where the councils already basically said they're going to evacuate the entire town by 2040, I believe, because it's just not worth keeping the flood barriers up because the whole town's going to get submerged. It's a probably not a great choice. That feels like a bad news for landlords in that town.

Starting point is 00:54:38 That's why I'm immediately hearing. What that is, what that is, is a lack is an attack on the certainty of landlords to be able to invest. And I think that's very, very unfair and very unproductive of the sea to do that in a time of like uncertainty, you know? Also, I feel like that might be kind of cynic-dark-ic of a lot of larger situations. Yeah. Well, I mean, obviously the solution here, we all know is the, you know, Soviet

Starting point is 00:55:06 socialist, tropical, well-trapp public, right? But until then, I think there's a lot of colors, right? We can change the hue of this paper any number of times. We can just keep going. A lavender paper? A nice lavender paper? Maybe a midge. Maybe a midge.

Starting point is 00:55:22 Oh, smells like those lavender drawliners that your nan would have. What about like a tomato colored red paper? You know, you can enjoy the smell of a Caprazi salad. That's the sort of thing that you would get in a restaurant. They've served Riley a rolled up piece of paper, but the smells of it. That did. Never mind. We'll talk about it another time.

Starting point is 00:55:43 Oh. I want it, but I want it. So what I about it another time. I want to ask you, I want to ask you, what does the Welsh government actually, let's say, right, they shed their love of papers, right? What would they actually have the power to do? That's a good question, isn't it, because housing is devolved. So theoretically, they are able to do a great deal in this area, but as we've seen in Scotland, with the yep, yep, yep, yep. It all turns into smock and mirrors a past a certain point, but again, with... Who turns into RVs past a certain point?

Starting point is 00:56:20 They could live in a big van. Sorry, go on, that could be. But yeah, basically... Never lived on a big van. Sorry, go on, Becca, please. But yeah, basic. Never lived on a big van. Imagine what made me great and convenient. Please, Becca, go on. Ignore these brain hooligans. Basically, it will take test in the limit.

Starting point is 00:56:40 You don't know what Westminster are going to prohibit you or allow you to do without test and The limits of your power another Scottish vibe. I in our case it was it was trans rights in your case It might be housing impossible to say it will be housing Yeah, it's more likely to be trans rights because for whatever reason the Welsh Welsh government is is Normal about trans rights, which is good. Chris, of course, support to Welsh Labour. So, Welsh Labour, yeah. So, basically what we're saying is they could theoretically do quite a bit,

Starting point is 00:57:15 in terms of like they can't like, they could build an enormous amount of social housing, for example. Yeah, and that's been on the docket for a while. They could choose to do that. They do have the power to put rent controls in. That's within their remit housing is devolved. But again, they've got the power to raise income tax and they haven't done that. So it's like, you have to be willing to play with what you've got. And yeah, it's just.

Starting point is 00:57:42 If you play those cards and you do start activating play with what you've got. And yeah, it's just, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it in the number of vans you own and how attributable those vans are to like a legitimate trail of like purchasing Which I mean the it that is not it's not surprising to anyone that that's the way the SNP goes down It was surprising to me. I was surprised. I mean, I felt like they were always giving off a strong vibe of People who will be brought down by silly elements of their own hubris. That's true. I just wasn't expecting it to be corruption allegedly. I will say it's been

Starting point is 00:58:31 weird having two consecutive first ministers get fucking arrested. So I also want to say, right, this is something else you've written in your notes, Becca, is we talk about the delivery of social homes, it says increasing housing availability is critical to addressing rising rent increases. Rising rent increases pretty good, which is why we have committed to delivering 20,000 low carbon social homes for rent over the next five years. A, that's not very much, but B,

Starting point is 00:58:57 I like the next sentence starts with however. Yep, yep. I am keen that all 10 years work more cohesively together in the future. And therefore, we are keen to look at how the supply of new build, affordable, private rental properties could be delivered. I feel like they got a little bit of whatever Kamala Harris does for that one. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of the documents, again, sounds like they've been written by an AI train on Kamala's speeches.

Starting point is 00:59:26 But yeah, that's an interesting one, isn't it? And it also sort of explains why private investors might look favorably at farm Wales, as we mentioned earlier. So yeah, one of those things where I'm just like, don't know what that means, not looking forward to finding out what that means, but we'll see. And, you know, we talk also about like, this is the policy, right? We are going to be investigating these very high level, poorly specified elements of the market. But, you know, you have done some, you've done some research, especially in Wales as to

Starting point is 01:00:03 like how the market is actually operating, how landlords are actually behaving. Some of the cases that you cite, they will show just how fucking poultry even these questions are when we say, what is going to set landlord behavior and how can they be brought together? Can you give a couple examples? Yeah, there's a couple of things here. When we were talking about it before, you mentioned something about what happens when you sort of half-ass these solutions.

Starting point is 01:00:28 And we've just had the Renton Homes Wales Act that's come in that took six years between it passing to it being implemented, which is a whole other kind of... Well, the payback has changed color a number of times. It was exactly. Yeah, exactly. It's a big job. Wait, for the payback has changed color a number of times. It was exactly, yeah, exactly. A big job. Wait, for the ink to be delivered is a cool thing.

Starting point is 01:00:48 Um, uh, that part of that was allowing tenants to, uh, with hold rent, if they believe that their home isn't fit for human habitation, fitness for human habitation is a standard for rented homes that it's coming in. It's very basic things like, and fire safety, things like that. But that part of the contract, that bit that says that tenants, according to the Tennessee or their occupation contractors, they're now called, can withhold rent if the house that they rent in this folder part. That supplementary landlord can take that out as long as they can enter it. That's good. Again, I do stuff with ACON and part of the renters union.

Starting point is 01:01:33 We've already got people asking us about this because landlords are just taking it out. We know that CPS, one of the biggest landlords, such Latin agents in Cardiff, are advising as part of their service. Landlords have to take clauses out of this new model occupation contract. Well, it's right. What you're describing is basically a kind of coordinated action on behalf of other folks. The vast majority of landlords are incredibly well organized.

Starting point is 01:01:59 They are the NRAA. They're very well represented at kind of all levels. And they do operate strangely like an advocacy group or sort of a quasi-union type thing. But the other thing is we have we have legislation coming in across the border in Westminster, one of the things that that brings in is an increased penalty for breaches of the protection from a Viction Act, which is one of the many things I want to talk about. It's an act that was passed basically to protect tenants from harassment and illegal eviction, but unlawful like forced eviction by their landlords. That happens say like a landlord wants to raise rent, but they've got a tenant in place

Starting point is 01:02:54 for the next six months, they want to get them out. So they cut their water supply to transform them out. They refuse to carry out essential repairs, things like that. They go into the house from the tenants out and take their belongings and check them out on the street, things like that. So that is all of those activities, obviously, are a criminal offense into the act. You cite something here, if I can just jump in.

Starting point is 01:03:18 This gives some good color to it, which is that landlords will send, this is a quote from the founder of Safer Renting, that landlords will send, this is a quote from the founder of safer renting, that landlords will send heavies to throw tenants out, but then you'll see fake bailiffs kidded out with stab-vast radios and handcuffs, with vans, with police like livery on the side. Oh, an interesting piece of sort of like crumbling of state legitimacy and like centralization of authority there. I'm feeling the Wyman lobe become inflamed at this point.

Starting point is 01:03:47 And I'm like, I speak to Patrick Wyman about this very, very soon. So, Alice, why did you drive your van down to Coddard? I'm trying to understand. Listen, I was doing a favor from me. It's going to take like 10 minutes, you know? Yeah. Like, hey, it's weird. These Germans that we've been working with these auxiliaries on

Starting point is 01:04:05 the border, they seem to be just dressing like Roman legionaries and they've started living in my camp. Crazy. Yeah, one thing I will say is if you are getting evicted by people who appear to be Czechoslovak Air Force officers officers from the late 1970s. I'm sorry, I didn't know that when I put all of those uniforms in the donation bin, they would be used for evil. Sorry, I just, I please carry on. Yeah, yeah. So the protection from a Viction Act passed in the 70s.

Starting point is 01:04:38 So in theory, you should be protected from these behaviors, but the thing is that none of it gets enforced. And that's a broad statement, but I recently did an article for Voice Wales. I was contacted by the Public Law Project, a tenant in Cardiff, had been staying with a friend for, I think it was two weeks, it was a period of illness, you stay with a friend because you went to some company while it was unwell. Came home and his landlord had changed the locks and they were strangers, standing in his flat. He'd been living there since

Starting point is 01:05:13 2017, I believe this was, it was last year. He'd been living there since 2017 by himself, sees people standing in his flat, explanation. He calls his landlord no explanation that he doesn't get doesn't get an answer from his landlord goes to The council they tell him to go to the police or to shelter Camry or so housing charity calls the police The police says a civil matter. They can't help. I mean like I think there are things like impersonating a police officer Those aren't crimes, you know. They're real stuff to be doing, like, you know, lying about where our vans are and what they're doing.

Starting point is 01:05:51 Oh, I mean, you better hope neither of those things are crimes, Alice. Otherwise. Yeah. So the, the, the end of that story, unfortunately, is he, the, the tenant in question, never got back into his house. He's currently living abroad, caring for an ill relative. And you know, some of his stuff is still in that flat and this happens shockingly often. People will just come home and the the locks are changed and their who life is in in that flat and they have nowhere to turn. What happened in

Starting point is 01:06:22 the Cardiff case was there's there's a role usually at the council called a tenant liaison officer. They are the person that's got the expertise and the authority to enforce the protection from a Viction Act, so when these things happen to initiate an investigation and hopefully prosecute the land loading in question. They got rid of, Cardiff council got rid of their tenant liaison officer back in 2012 during a reorganization. They wanted to, what I was told was they wanted to like standardize, generalize the expertise across their housing team. And obviously you've got this one

Starting point is 01:06:58 person that's got this kind of specialist role. They got rid of that person because there was a specialist role and then they just never rehired them. There was nobody in place at the council that was was able to initiate this investigation. As a one-and-a-one is my, I can't even figure it out. Investigation. For years in one of the largest cities in the UK. Yeah, capital city of Wales. We wanted to standardise knowledge across our housing team by making sure that no one had any. Yeah, exactly There was an outlier where one guy had a lot more knowledge than everyone else that we've resolved that problem now

Starting point is 01:07:30 And now everyone has exactly the same. No, let me know what a house is And yeah, you know another gaulling example last summer in Marge a landlord was convicted for using in Marge, a landlord was convicted for using violence theft and vandalism to illegally a victim tenant. It took ten years for this landlord and a various large sends to be prosecuted for this. They changed the locks of their tenants, they smashed up toilets, they removed the flooring of a tenant's bathroom to transform smoke. They had...

Starting point is 01:08:04 It's sort of like a sorority style prank, you know, like you come back and the floor's gone. The wild changer tone at the end of this list of things that they did is good. Oh, okay, fine. They sabotaged the electricity of people's houses and in one occasion masked men entered and a duster tenant in petrol and smashed his teeth in. We talk about 10 years for them to investigate and prosecute this landlord. I think it was 26 tenants at like 10 different properties. So this is quite a significant landlord in the area and it took a decade to, yeah.

Starting point is 01:08:42 We talk about crime being legal because shoplifting, like, there's this constant like refrain in the right wing press, right? Crime is legal because the police aren't prosecuting shoplifters anymore. Just society's gone to the dogs. It's like, yeah, this is who crime is legal for. Mm-hmm. And to put this back in the context of the Welsh green, of the Welsh green paper and sort of this thing that we've been following with you is it

Starting point is 01:09:03 develops over the years, right? It's just in the context of that, not just the context of the well-screen paper and sort of this thing that we've been following with you as it develops over the years, right? It's just in the context of that, not just the context of the fact that the whole economic environment that created the bi-to-let landlord is evaporated, it's gone, right? It is gone again. And there is this huge opportunity to reimagine what housing is and how it's provided

Starting point is 01:09:23 that is just being squandered at the same time being it's being reimagined by the people taking the flaws out yeah it is being reimagined by the same sort of political tendency that looks at you know the um the sort of the the margate criminal gang basically and refuses to really see it as anything other than an administrative dispute so it's it's like you're without an event, I'm without an afflul. So say you lost longest. So the economic space is there for genuinely radical reforms because the old way has died.

Starting point is 01:09:54 It is already died. It's no longer dying. It is dead. It gets like Drakeford and all the way down to individual labor counselors and whales and all the way up to Starrmer and Co. They're like, the new world is they see being born, but you have to keep the PRS going. The old world has to live on the constant blood transfusions from the young

Starting point is 01:10:11 informant in the form of rent. Oh, we are all our landlords blood boys. Yeah, yeah, amazing. Yeah, that's right. It's everyone, it's this is Britain, you're strapped to the hood of a car and Nicholas Holt is throwing at exploding spearpasture. It's being driven by the guy who burnt an effigy of Grenfell Tower. Yeah. Oh, God. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:10:32 Anyway, anyway, I think that's a good sort of nice circular place to end it. Back at, have we missed anything? Is there anything else you want to add? No, I mean, I guess the thing to underline, as if it needs underline, and it's obviously a lot of the extreme examples I was talking about in my piece and across the border in Margett and stuff. A lot of this does go back again to austerity politics, again, these tenants, layers and officers, in the safer, renting piece about the stab vests on the fake security guards. It's all because we just don't have anyone to enforce this.

Starting point is 01:11:09 It's just, it's just been stripped back. And then you've got the police shelter, the homeless nurse charity on its website, advises tenants who are legally evicted to educate the police about their role in enforcing the protection from a Viction Act, because they know that they don't understand their role. It just, yeah, I got a quote from it somewhere. But yeah, yeah, it's just kind of accepted that this stuff doesn't get enforced. There's no will to enforce it.

Starting point is 01:11:43 And yeah, and the last thing to add is maybe join a, maybe join a rent as union, maybe join a tenant union, get involved in that. We've said before, join Acorn. We are now saying again, join Acorn. It is among the best and easiest things you can do. Yeah, it's nice. Educating the police and just having to start

Starting point is 01:12:04 from the very bottom with just like object permanence. All right, here's what a house is. Can you point to the house? It's like, yeah, you should have a floor in it. Now it doesn't. So you have to imagine that there's a floor. Go, a painstakingly going through one of the shapes, the shapes sort of bucket lid things with the police over and over again. He works out that the, the cylindrical one can fit through the square hole and you're like, no, go that one goes through the circle one. We've been over this. Anyway,

Starting point is 01:12:37 look, it is this one, then like to five years later, you're still sat there with the cops, but now you're making them read little women. You're slowly getting that. Like, crying and hugging. No, the thing is we replaced all the cops with AI trained on your name. Yes. Oh, the cops are just like, do you want to say I'm with you? Yeah. You're on a cup of tea.

Starting point is 01:13:00 You are illegally evicted. The police show up solemnly off for you a word as original. As your sister, she's still dating that time, Reg. What? Explain that to me later. Becca, I want to thank you very much for coming on today and talking to us. And where can people find you and your work? I'm a freelancer at the moment. So you can find me in various places. I do a lot of stuff for voice whales, which is a very good, I'm going to plug them, because it's a very good space for radical journalism in Wales. And you can find me on Twitter at Wilkes Becker, W-I-L-K-S-B-E-W-C-A.

Starting point is 01:13:43 And to our many listeners at the financial times, cough, cough. Anyway. And if you like this episode, we have a Patreon. It's a $5 every month. You get a second mainline TF episode every week. And then, and all of that $5 goes towards educating the police about the themes of mice and mice. So we are going to the police station.

Starting point is 01:14:06 We've got a stack of paperbacks and we are going to get them reading. Thank you for your support. Thank you for your support. Thank you for your support. Thank you for your support. Thank you for your support. Thank you for your support.

Starting point is 01:14:16 Thank you for your support. Thank you for your support. Thank you for your support. Thank you for your support. Thank you for your support. Thank you for your support. Thank you for your support. Thank you for your support.

Starting point is 01:14:24 Thank you for your support. Thank you for your support. Thank you for your support. Thank you for in and talks to you about the law. And it's just like very confused. So that's the, that's, that's, that gives you Habsburg cops, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you just get, it's, it's, it's, try to get driven into it. They're all just saying the gentleman to each other over and again, they can't like the glitching. But they start like clipping through the textures in the police station. What is your favorite guy, Richie movie?

Starting point is 01:14:41 The gentleman. Uh, the gentleman, the lady, an altercationcation with the gentleman we interlock you in with a gentleman All right, all right. I'm doing the plugs goddamn gentleman There is also a stream it is from 9 to 11 on Mondays and Thursdays There is also Britonology There is the soon to be renamed again writtenology because all of a better name. That's right We're trailing we're trailing that will announce the new name when we do the next episode. Not hard to do a better name than that. It's a bit derivative, I'll grind you.

Starting point is 01:15:13 Nate and I did kind of assume that name was a joke, because then we were just like, okay. We could have done a better one, and now we have. So it took us a minute. Right, there we go. And we're going to erase it from history. Yeah, not to get a memorial. Forget what he a minute. Great, there we go. And we're going to erase it from history. Yeah, do not forget your memorial. Forget what he just said. Yeah, that's right. It's just going to be a cool name.

Starting point is 01:15:30 Yeah, it's going to be a cool new one. Yeah, two dates. Are you, do you live in Bristol? June 23rd, I'm going to be in Bristol to get to that on my website. But June 27th, Berlin, Berlin. Do you live in Berlin? Got common z alf Berlin. What day of the week is June 27th? Oh, that's a Friday. No, no, it's not. It's a Tuesday. It's definitely a Tuesday. I'm pretty sure it's the 27th.

Starting point is 01:15:56 That is when I will be in Berlin, mids and you'll show. Doings a show. You should be there on a Sunday. No, I'm going on the Monday. Oh, it's a mistake, my friend. Well, I, I, I'm going to, look, it, we'll deal with this later. There's a good reason why I'm not going clubbing in Berlin. Anyway, um, also, the, uh, the second of July,

Starting point is 01:16:16 I will be in Lester. Do you live in Lester? I'm sorry about that, but you can cheer yourselves up by coming to my show. That's right. All right. All right. Alright, alright. That's the end of the plugs. We will see you on the bonus episode in a couple of short days.

Starting point is 01:16:31 Bye everyone. Bye. Bye. you

TRASHFUTURE - Matt HanTok feat. Becca Wilks

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