TRASHFUTURE - PFIdiocy ft. Alan White

Episode Date: March 15, 2018

Alan White (@aljwhite) is the News Editor at Buzzfeed, and also the author of "Who Really Runs Britain?", an investigation of the private companies taking control of benefits, prisons, asylum, deportation, security, social care and the NHS. He joins Hussein (@HKesvani) and Riley (@raaleh) to talk about the toxicity of media culture and the conservative outrage factory first, before plunging into the pernicious nonsense that is PFI and Outsourcing. Riley gets mad about avocados again. Follow us on twitter @trashfuturepod

Yeah, Gammon is a slur. But what do we call the delicious treat? You know, I sort of wonder whether they're angry because they assume that like, we don't kind of take as the de facto principle that you can have more than one type of gammon. But there is a wide diversity in like types of gammon tones. I think the difference is there's smoked gammon. And the smoked gammon wants Britain to nuke everyone now. And an unsmoked gammon is voicing some serious concerns that Britain might not preemptively nuke everyone.

It's a subtle difference. Is there like, so I don't eat ham or gammon because you know, sharia law and everything. Here of course, broadcasting from the Nogo zone of Tower Hamlets. I had to, I had to like, racistly brown up just to get in here. I had to call everyone I met in the street and now I have a sore throat. I'm getting cancer from the hookah and all of my wives are really bothering me. It's like an everybody loves Raymond situation, but he's got like 30 debs. I've spent the last 30 seconds wondering what honey smoked gammon would vote for.

Vince Cable. Right. Yeah, it's the right color. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's just, it's just sweet enough, but it's got a little bite, you know. It's like you're in the book of gammon. Yeah, okay. I'm happy now. Yeah, it's that's, and then we have the only, of course, the only people in, in the UK politics, obviously, which is a section of the Labour Party.

They're the only ones who aren't gammon. Oh God, before we get into the shit, like a nice kind of medium cooked steak. Speaking of like comparing people to food, there's something I want to get into before we start, which is I found this video on Twitter the other day and I'm going to pull the audio. And I'm going to play it. But it's, it's of just, it's a close up shot of a woman talking about specific plans for dealing with mixed-raised parents once the US becomes an ethno state while just eating a giant fork full of plain chicken. Oh yes, I saw this, but I wasn't sure whether it was like, because I wasn't sure whether she was messing around or whether it was kind of Gaelic Cosmos brain. Like she's eating chicken tartare. This is basically like if you've got like a raw chicken, right?

And you boiled it. Oh, Sue's boiled chicken. This used to be a meme like four years ago. I remember this. It was just this picture of a can of chicken, like a whole chicken in a can. And just the caption on the tweet was Jesus Christ Sue because it was called Sue's chicken. And this thing went everywhere. I didn't know who eats this stuff.

No, it's, yeah. It's white culture. Like white culture has to be proud of its food traditions and also, you know, has to be proud of its food traditions. You can't be mixing. It's sort of like, it's sort of like the bodybuilders, like the really purest bodybuilders who refuse to marinate their chicken. So they will, because so they only eat for macros. They only eat to kind of, you know, bulk up or like cut down. So they don't fuck with like marinates.

They don't fuck with, you know, the only thing they go with is salt and maybe a bit of pepper. If like it's a weekend and you're feeling a bit edgy. I'm going to start a version of CrossFit where actually instead of having macros, you have races. And you need to have all the right mix of races in your ethno-state in order to get truly hench. I mean, you joking. That's probably, I mean, you could probably put that on like bodybuilders.com and like, yeah. Oh, have you ever been on bodybuilding.com? Oh, yeah, yeah.

Oh, it's incredible. Like so many guys, it alternates between guys asking about their squat form. And then guys asking like where these random little hairs are coming from. And then asking if it's like, if it's gay to like help your friend bust in the shower. It's not. It's no, of course not. That's, that's mindset. You're just helping out, Bray.

I'm going to search for the most amazing thing that ever happened on bodybuilding.com, which I've kind of forgotten. And I might get back to you in about 10 minutes with this. Okay. The basic, there was an argument that went on for five days. And I think the thing was, it was about why the clock starts at 12. I'm not making this up. Yeah. And two people got an argument for, I mean, actually we'll return to this theme, I guess, a bit later.

But they argued for like, like linear time didn't exist to these people. It just went on and on. They've got married and have children and carried on arguing about the shape of the, of the clock. It was great. That's time cube at this point. That's the, that's the text of a Dr. Bronner soap bottle. There was another like internet argument. I was sort of like this, but it was about like football.

Oh, yeah. I can't remember what it is. It's like rocking. Like, yeah, but it's like one of those really stupid arguments. It's just like so dumb to everyone, but it goes on for like a stupid amount of time. And it's basically set kind of the precedent for like our current media climate. We're columnists. And podcasting.

And podcasting. Everyone fucking loves podcasting. But podcasting is an art form. And I would like to say that I really hope that in 2021, the British press awards will recognize podcasting as not only a form of news and media, but also as the highest form of capitalism of, yeah. So when our, when our fans stage a dirty protest to force the British press awards and Nick Ferrari, who at this point will just like be a brain inside a machine. Yeah, of course. You know, so when he finally kind of announces the awards for best British podcast and it somehow goes to there's no such thing as a fish again. Go to the fun porn podcast.

You know, the one where they say all the dirty words. Oh, yes. I found the argument. Oh, hell yeah. You sound like one of my tutors. Positively arsenal. If arsenal pay 25 million for a 29 year old striker from the Portuguese league, I will be available to be knocked down by a feather all summer. It's not a controversial tweet.

A reply comes from black woman George. He's 28. That's a reply to this. He's a lot nearer 29 than he is 28. That is a fact. He's 28. Now that is a fact. What?

I'm not surprised that fractions are beyond you the day after his birthday. He is no longer 28. He's 28 until he becomes 29. That's how it works. Perhaps if you've paid more attention in mass lessons, you might remember round up or down to the nearest whole number. He is 28. That is a fact. No.

It is not one pound 75 equals one pound. You don't even understand what a fact is now. Until he's 29. He's 28. This continues on Twitter for days. This guy basically sounds like... I love the internet. This wouldn't have been possible.

Every day I wake up and I think I'm going to have a really productive day. I'm not going to go online. And then I turn on Twitter and I'm just like, oh, someone's being stupid again. And that's my whole day just gone. Oh, duty calls. I just put on my posting cap. I put on my posting cap and I get my tool belt, which consists of a gift of a pig shitting on its own balls. I got to work.

A coin wallet chain. Hold on. I don't work for the spectator. I'm not Brendan O'Neill here, guys. My theme song is Sunshine Lollipops and shit. It's not, of course. Tuck-a-tuck-a-tuck-a-tuck-a-tuck-a-tuck-a-tuck-a-tuck-a-tuck-a-tuck-a-tuck-a-tuck-a-tuck-a-tuck-a-tuck-a-tuck-a-tuck-a-tuck-a-tuck-a-tuck. Oh, shit.

I yearn for the day when the floating brain of Nick Karari at the time presents you with the podcast of the year. You stride up with your coin wallet chain dangling on stage. Thank you, Nick. It's been a long ride. I had some issues, you might say. The crowd goes wild. I got really, really good at doing an impression of the Down with the Sickness song by Disturbed

because of the amount that we talk about Brendan O'Neill. Speaking of, guys, do you want to talk about some of the shit? Yeah, but we should intro ourselves. Oh, fuck. We've done dozens of episodes of this show now. I have never once gotten the opening right. On the last episode, we didn't intro ourselves. Oh, shit.

Yeah. Fuck. Okay. All right, guys, mindset. What do you need to do if you want a successful business? You want investors to the tune of $700 million with like a sort of fakey blood test thing and have a really deep voice like Elizabeth Holmes, or you've got to introduce yourself. You've got to get your name out there.

So I hear that's always good. So welcome to Trash Future. Fuck you. It's my union gig. This is now my podcast and it's the number one Volcel podcast in all of iTunes. So all the other Navarra shit can just back the fuck up. My name's Hussain Kizvani. I am the main host of this show.

I'm conked. I'm Riley. I rarely know what's going on, but I sometimes make references to anime. I came on this show partway through. Milo is, of course, missing. He called Putin a Volcel and is now one of the UK diplomats being detained in Russia. So our hearts go out to him. We're going to pour one out for our boy.

My name is Alan Woods. I'm a journalist. I'm really Hussain's mentor in a lot of ways. I remember when... Well, you're my mentor now. Well, okay. I just remember when he left the place. We were both working and I said to him, Hussain, you have to understand that British journalism

is a burning trash pile and if you want to survive in this game, your tweets are going to have to get so much worse than they are. In fairness, the guy took that to heart. I could scarcely have expected. I'm pretty surprised by how bad my tweets have gotten since I left. So am I. It's way beyond my expectations. It's partly the influence of this show, I think.

It's like we've given... Because I think one of the reasons that you started, here's a peek behind the curtain, is I think you were looking for an excuse to be stupid or online. Yes. And now it's actually a part of your brand. Yeah. I mean, it's very difficult now. I got screened for a very serious BBC show the other month and they said no to me because

genuinely, they weren't sure whether, like, if they put me on camera, whether I was actually going to be serious. It's like I feel like me being on this podcast. I was saying this to you, it's like, you know, the episode of MTV unplugged when corn... And they just randomly wheel out Robert E. Smith towards the end and all these millennials go, who the hell is this fat old guy? Actually, he's surprisingly enjoyable to listen to. This is really... Yeah.

I think that's what this is. Well, look, we're like... I feel like podcasting is like the new metal of music. Right. That would really want it to be back. We're the rapper in Limp Bizkit. What we are is what we do is we do a Greek chorus style version of all of the rap lyrics so that the audience knows what's going on.

Now, I'm just going to... I'm going to do the thing where I sort of yank us back into subjects and stuff. Alan, we've got you on because you know a thing or two about a thing or two. In addition to just sort of journalism shenanigans in Skalduggery, which we sort of interact with quite a bit on this show because the world is good. You also know a bit about outsourcing and PFI and stuff. I read the book on this. I mean, I literally read the book.

No one read the book or bought the book. If someone wanted to find the book, what would they search? They could buy it. Shadow Sto, thank you so much. It's called The Shadow Sto. It basically explains that these outsourcing companies are getting too large to fail. I wrote it in like 2014. I said, look, the government's found itself kind of in hot to these giant corporations.

And then like earlier this year, Carillion happened and the updated book, I fucking told you so, will be out. Simon was just... No, it's one word. Yeah, I will talk about that stuff. Nice. First, we have to do the traditional segment that we do all the time, the Trash Future Grievance Corner.

What's the biggest grievance, the biggest stupidest grievance that's happened in the British media in the last month, do you think? I mean, we've pre-arranged what it's going to be. I mean, we've already talked about this. I mean, it could just be like everything on Telegraph Premium. Just everything. I mean, can I say it? Oh, you can say it.

Okay. What day was it? I forget the date, but it's her pinned Tweet. You know, she pinned this Tweet. Like a dunce bad. I'm gonna find it. Okay. It's like a super niche Tweet.

I mean, I shouldn't... I don't know why I'm so angry still. This is like a grievance, fans grievance. She's not even sticking by our words. Okay. I'll find it. This year, the rowing journalist, Isabella Oaksott, got on the train at Oxford Parkway Station.

And on her way to the train, she took a photo of the car park. As you do. She... A picture can be manipulated. We all know this. And her picture was just of a row of disabled parking spaces. And she captioned it with something like, what did she say? I'm in character now as Isabella Oaksott.

A triumph of political correctness over common sense. Correct. Right. So what you see is a picture of empty disabled parking spaces. And it is a triumph of political correctness over common sense because evidently there are too many disabled parking spaces for the number of disabled people ready to use those spaces at that time.

And this is bad. Agreed. We all know that. Calling them out. Look, here's the thing. It didn't take very long for people to do research on this. They found that there are, I think, 800 parking spaces at Oxford Parkway of which 40 are disabled parking spaces.

And that is the average sort of proportions given the number of disabled bad donors. There are literally the correct number of disabled parking spaces. Like for the number of people who have disabled badges if the entire car park was full at that time. I appreciate that this is game boring, but trust me, I'm incredibly angry still. So look, this is pointed out to Isabella.

And I kind of think at that point, when it's pointed out to you, you go, you know what, that's kind of that makes sense, right? No. The average number of disabled spaces for the average number of people. But she just goes in. She just carries on. Yeah. And she just plows on because this is what we do in 2018.

We don't just go, yeah, okay, I kind of fucked that up. We just motor on, right? And I want to know how committed Isabella Oakshot is to this. Is she going to be going round to Oxford Parkway and the dead of night, repainting these spaces, scratching them out so that we've just got, I don't know, five. What's the right number? Someone tell me the right number.

She never gives the number. Oakshot's response was, I think you know the answer to that question, referring to someone who is asking if it's the right number. Unless the Paralympics are coming to Oxford. Pretty obvious. This is disproportionate. Okay. Well, number one, and having to work briefly in the civil service,

let's not rule that out. You contingency plan, right? But number two, what is the right number? Please help. It's the Isabella Oakshots, you know, here. She's representing, I think this weird kind of like, sort of almost Calvinist version of conservatism that's been imported into the UK from the U.S.

Where the world is just sort of relentlessly sorted into winners and losers by God or the market or genes or whatever. And it's up to society to make sure we reward the winners as much as possible and punish and humiliate the losers as much as possible. And Isabella Oakshots, you know, here saying, why do I have to, and that's the thing. It's not even a full parking lot. It's an empty parking lot.

There are 850 empty spaces and she's zoned in on 40 empty ones and got angry. My thing is like, I just don't understand any of it anymore. It's extremely 2018 in the sense that like, you basically find stuff to get outraged at and you post it. So you get your engagements, right? You get your hearts and your reach. You end up with this weird, weird like kind of vision

of a hand wringing local council employee who for reasons of political correctness is kind of, you know, overruling the common sense of car park designers who only have like, you know, five disabled parking spaces because that's how many disabled people there are in the world and going, no, no, no, no. We must cock a snook at the establishment and put in 40. And I just, you know, I'm furious.

I'm still furious. She's Michael Oakshots relative, correct? Lord Oakshots, which I believe, yeah, he's a Lib Dem. I mean, obviously she's most famous for a certain book that involved a certain prime minister and a certain porcelain anecdote. That was her work. Well, so really she's, so of course,

she's a centrist journalist, you know, on the one sense, she's, you know, being a horrifying melt who is trying to like, you know, limit the rights of the disabled to just access basic services in the country. But on the other hand, she's reporting the truth, the hard truth. Right, well, actually, you know the weirdest thing. The two-mesant, turgid truth.

The weirdest thing is that tweet followed on from one before that was about the poor plight of disabled people in Britain. I'm not making this up. Like, and that is a very classic sort of centrist commentator trope. Like, you give with one hand, now here comes the stick. Wallop, too many disabled spaces. No, it's, it's, it's like, the rest of the reason they call it the personal independence payment

is so you can be independent of government funding. Right, right. I mean, I could keep going on about this. I could talk about the fact that actually it's more, it's more, you should actually, I think you should have more disabled spaces because more disabled people need to drive to train stations. Is that, is that a...

That's controversial. That's cosmic thinking. You should, you should leave your job and join this magazine called Living Marxism. Well, I mean, that's, that's, no, that's a spike to take. Crazy, crazy liberals. Bourgeoisie want to enable the disabled to park places, but the disabled don't want your pity.

You know what? I do know, like, so I kind of grew up in Kent and I still like live in Kent and there are lots of kind of Isabelle Oakshock types who are there and they kind of frequent the ASDA. And I've often... I'm sure they have a fucking name for it too. Like an ironic faux fancy name, like the ASDA.

Yeah, you know, you see, you know, you put like the little accent at the end because it's fancy like that. And I, you know, I've heard, you know, on several occasions about how, like, you know, these people are really frustrated that they couldn't get parking in the ASDA, but, you know, anyone with a blue badge can just park wherever they want, right?

You know, I think it comes... That is political correctness, which means literally anything right now. In 2018, it means literally something I don't like. Yeah. This is political correctness. I have been run over. This is political correctness gone mad. Yeah.

But look, all I'm saying is that, like, when I was banned from entering a Stephanie Green tube station because my wallet chain was too long, that was political correctness gone mad. Yeah, I mean, it was literally correct. Yeah, it was wrong. It was too long. It was a political statement.

It was. And, ironically, it was against political correctness. But what... I mean, I kind of wonder, like, right, what's... It's... I think it just should have... The fact that, sort of, there is someone who's going there who's just walking around, like,

trying to get mad at the apportionment of spaces in an empty parking lot just speaks to just how stupid the concept of discourse is and reminds us that we just shouldn't respect anybody. And it's what it says, Law, right? It's that thing of the proportion of outrage is always... It's always indirectly proportional relationship to the significance of the issue at hand.

So you zone in on something like car parking. That's brilliant. That's going to get people bubbling, right? That's how most commentators operate. Richard Littlejohn's the classic for this. He will zone in on some poor local council official in Skegness who's done something that may or may not have happened. And, you know,

thousands and thousands of male readers will fulminate because it's precisely because it's a small thing. You tell them that the global banking system has collapsed and people just don't really know what to make of it. But everyone can get mad about, you know... Yeah, it's accessible outrage. Everyone can get mad that, like, some university somewhere is providing vegetarian options

on Mondays. You know, that's... I think it's honestly, I think it's because, like, so many of these people are just basically just the anhedonic balls of rage who are just... These sort of, like, quite knuckling, they're fucking steering wheels.

They drive from this, like, weird suburban house they hate to, like, an IT job in Luton that they also hate to have a weird pret sandwich that they also hate and their kids don't respect them and they're getting a divorce and, like, for some reason, one of their parents has moved to a Spanish island. This is going to be you.

Oh, God, I hope not. But what I... Back to Garmin remark. But what I'm getting at here is, like, these are people who are just... Who are furious and just ready to pop at the slightest idea that, once again, something in their life

could conceivably get worse. Because these are people who are locked in, like, a plush cage that they can't rip or pine. Yeah, I mean, you know, there is, like, a various logic to that, right? Which is that when you've kind of got this life that's, like, set and it's really monotonous. And even though, like, in all objective terms,

like, you're doing fine, you know... You know, you're still human at the end of the day. And when you, you know, there's minor disruptions are the ones that really get to you. It's kind of why, like, road rage is such, you know... Can I talk about another beef I have? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, look, I am now...

We were getting too smart, so... I'm really sorry to say this, but I'm now blocked by Peter Hitchens. Same. Pouring one out from a man. So... And the thing is, here's the thing. I searched my tweets to Peter Hitchens, and it is just four years of me...

Halfer listeners are American. Who is Peter Hitchens? He's the brother of Christopher Hitchens, and of course you'll all know. He is a writer for the Mail on Sunday. Not the Daily Mail. He's very, very keen to make it clear that it is the Mail on Sunday and not the Daily Mail. And not the Mail online, despite that being the website,

where his pieces are hosted, which in one... It's a subtle sum. I said routinely sexualized young people, and was he happy with that? Didn't get a reply. Anyway, he... We've had beef for a very long time, and basically...

It really kicked off over cycle helmets. So... A significant issue facing us today that's worth getting infuriated about. So, Peter Hitchens is a weird... He's a weird intellectual... The horseshoe theory is incredible with Hitchens. So, Hitchens is actually a Corbyn supporter,

or the closest thing to a support he has for a politician is Corbyn. And his thinking on this, from what I can discern from reading his posts, is that that's because no one else is right-wing enough. Therefore... I have to support Jeremy Corbyn. So, reading him is an experience, right?

I'm putting it that way. And the beef was... He has an unerring belief that cycle helmets make things less safe. If you wear a cycle helmet, you're more likely to crash. And I, you know, kind of snarkly said to him, so what, if I put a cycle helmet on, I'm more inclined to just plow into a pantechnic

for, like, rolls, am I, Peter? And it just... This argument with him went on for, I think, five days. And the thing that was, like, pointed out to me was that Peter Hitchens doesn't believe in linear time, so he's able to sustain this argument for days on end. When I say he doesn't believe in linear time, he literally is on record on Twitter saying

that the New Year is a Soviet plot. So, like... What, it's actually still 89? Yeah, yeah. So, this went on for a very long time. And then he... He kind of announced that anyone who tweeted a gif would be blocked. This was a new policy he'd inculcated.

The thing is Peter Hitchens follows zero people on Twitter. Galaxy Brain. It appears to use the app to search his name and have fights with people, which I also thought was... I mean, this is incredible for free. I can just fight with Peter Hitchens at any time. Yeah. And so I then tweeted a gif,

which showed his triggering, intensifying at the sign of societal decay. Someone made a gif to embody this, and within seconds I was blocked. And that was the end of really quite a journey. I can't remember why Peter Hitchens blocked me, but I think it was for, like, I know why he blocked me,

because I actually invited him to come on Trash Future. Right, that's fair enough. I would have blocked anyone who would invite me on this garbage show. And I think the... I suppose the thing I'm driving at with all this stuff is that I find columnists generally a weird thing in 2018. They are a weird institution. I don't quite get...

You know, there are certain columnists who have insight, deep insight into certain issues, and okay, fine, you can't... That's fine. But you have this other weird subset of person who seems to zone in on increasingly kind of trivial things and just exist to stir up outrage. And I don't know that the newspapers have, like,

done market research that shows that these people need to be paid the huge salaries they are. Yeah. I don't know what societal benefit it offers. I think it may be very little. I've done some amateur research, and I have almost pure conclusive proof that they definitely do because they provide

podcast content. Right. That's what it is, is feeding the podcast industry. This is almost sort of quite telling. One of Peter Hitchens' most recent column titles for the Mail of the Sunday, which is just on the bail-on line, of course, because these two newspapers are not that different.

Peter Hitchens, the transgender zealots are destroying truth itself. Here we go. I didn't know that Paris Lise and Sean Fay actually had set up like C4 charges along the admittedly philosophically contentious concept of truth, but apparently they have. Well, I'm going to go,

I'm going to start with this really pretty quickly because we've got some stuff to go for. The picture is of a kid who definitely has like a double-barreled name. Oh yeah, and he's wearing a sweet crown. Wearing a tiara. Most of these politically correct fads are just designed to wind us up and provoke us,

unlike any of these crazy, insane, right-wing journalists. So I now regret having wasted so much time trying to argue rationally about same-search marriage. All this extra revolutionary is wanted was an excuse to call me a bigot. Yes, Peter, that's all they wanted. They didn't want to, I don't know, get married. No, they wanted to piss you off.

I actually kind of think these people are solipsists. I don't think Isabel Oakshott thinks there really are any disabled people because I don't think Isabel Oakshott actually thinks anyone else exists. It's so weird. But these people, they just, they see the world in relation to themselves and anything they disagree with,

they think it must be irrational. And so, you know, they, they, they, they, they, they, they write, you know, headlines, like people saying, like, you know, expressing the gender you feel as opposed to the sex you were born is actually, like, making it so that we, I can't know

if I've just taken off my glasses demonstratively because all truth is completely up for question. I mean, amazingly, actually, along those lines, I did, this is so incredible. I did see Peter Hitchens at a train station. No. Which one? Ridley Park, Ridley Park, Ridley Park. It was Vox for Parkway, I can tell you that.

But like I saw him and I was so, I wish, I wish that I had staged a cycle accident in front of him in which I was saved by my helmet. I mean, I'm petty enough to have done that. I would have, I would have gone on the train with him, like wherever he went to, even if it was a miles away from, like, where I lived. Just say, just say that I could just ask him,

like, really benign questions. I mean, Hitchens' Russia take is really interesting as well. Okay. Because it's, it's, he gets accused of being a Putin apologist, right? As we all do. Yeah. Once in a while.

And he, but he actually has moved, like, away from the initial take. So the initial take was, actually, it's the west of the aggressor, and obviously that's like a strain of thought that's, you know, not uncommon. But it's now moved to, it doesn't matter whether Russia's the aggressor or not,

they're just better than us. So we should pick a fight, which is, which is like, again, it's that kind of weird cosmic brain thinking. It's like, I'm just going to step things up a notch. No, he's, what he's doing is, is, he's basically like telling Russia, respectfully and consensually,

that he is interested in a Dom. You know, he, he is a sub slot pay pig. And he wants someone to step on his balls with a matryoshka doll. The amazing thing is that if you were to tweet that and include his name, he'd pick a fight with you over it. I got, I got shit to do. He doesn't really, he's going to like,

he's going to post it like on his way after the show. Well, on, on the, on, on the Russia takes, I mean, I'm just going to, I'm going to make my opinion known on Chris Leslie, friend of the show and John Woodcock, friend of the show to labor MPs that should probably just join the Tories at this point. Essentially, labor MPs are,

are writing in like the telegraph in the Daily Mail at this point, saying that like in time, and this is John Woodcock, who's now like doing a no confidence motion in Jeremy Corbyn, because I guess he wants Anna Subri to be prime minister. He doesn't, you know, go. He doesn't want woke Soobs in times of threat. Britain is strong. Britain is strongest when it's people stand shoulder to shoulder

against adversity. That's what drove Clement, Antly, Ernest Bevin and others joined Winston Churchill's war cabinet to defeat Hitler. So what he basically wants is because, you know, basically he's decided that we have this army and we have Trident and he's just desperate to use it so that he can then have the electoral power of saluting shipment after shipment of flag

draped coffins as they come back in and he'll never lose to another UKIP candidate again. I mean, like, I'm, you know, for the most part, you know, I'm anti-war, but like I saw Pacific Rim this weekend. Um, you know, again, again. Like every weekend, obviously. And now, you know, I'm kind of thinking to myself, you know, if you could build some cool robots, why not?

You know, it's weird. I was like gearing up for war. I had to equip myself with basically. Have you got like a bunker in like underneath Oxford Parkway? What I was gearing up for was another labor rebellion. Do you remember like the last one when I'm resigning? Yeah. And I don't think it's going to happen because I feel like those

guys have made the same noise as they always made. And then you've not, but you've already got like these moderate labor voices going, no, not this one. No, we can't pick. We're not going to win. It's not going to work. Don't do it. So Theo Bertram, he's like, you know, such a sad royalty.

Yeah. He came out and went, actually, I have a point. Well, no, we've never gone to an ill advised war on flimsy premises before. And even if we did, I'm sure it will work out great. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, it'd be good.

No. And that's the other thing right now, especially like we, the electorate knows that now that George Osborne said we've hit our budgetary targets, we have money to burn. We got to like, we got to do a war. Got to build those Yeagers, man. Yeah. We got to build Yeagers and we got to go to war in Russia for no

reason because of norms, I think. I think it's norms. I'm so saying we Yeagers. Yeah. I'd be like, I'd be pro war if they were like, we're going to go to war, but we're only going to do it for giant robots. Muscle would be up for that. I think that's why he's hired all the onion writers personally

pro giant robots, irrespective of war. You're pro what? Giant robots, irrespective. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think we have way too many disabled parking spaces for giant robots. I personally, yeah. Have you ever thought about like what will happen if like all

this AI shit comes and like what these columnists will be outraged about? Like, will they be, will they be outraged? I swear to God, it will be the same bullshit. It will be, it will be like, the nukes will be landing and Isabel will still be standing in a car park scratching at the floor. No, you know what it's going to be?

It's going to be someone being like, sorry liberals, but I don't worship the technology of the before time. I worship wastelands mutant or like or like hot takes in the spectator about why like giving your day, giving all your data to Elon Musk's like new comedy startup is actually very, very good. And if only liberals would let it happen. Elon Musk is definitely going to like, you know what it is?

It's that he's, he's tired of everyone dunking on him for his corny, rockabilly ass ideas. It's like, oh, people's right. Yeah. He's getting other people to like script out his life. It won't be just some like epic bacon, Reddit, John, Ron Swanson gift posting guy. So basically so excited for Brendan O'Neill's hot take on the

snowflake millennials can't stand the nuclear wasteland. It's going to be in my day. When I was young, I did the real working class thing of walking up uphill to school both ways where we were taught actually that boys were boys and girls were girls in the middle of nuclear winter. Brendan O'Neill will write a whole like hot take about this. We have to play his theme song about this sensitive snowflake

called Shinji Akari who just won't stop crying and get into the damn, get into the damn Eva, whatever. I found that show to be frustrating for the second half. I'm sorry guys. I have nothing to bring to this conversation. It's a obligatory like anime reference. It has to happen. All I can bring to any anime conversation is three times three

eyes, which no one watched even in 1996 crying Freeman, the live action. And Akira. Yeah, Akira. Every white middle class, every white middle class. I've seen that film. Oh yeah. That's Normie.

I used to like turn, when I was cycling as a chubby kid and I used to like cycle to swim practice in Canada, I would turn, I would actually during the day would turn on the backlight of my bike hoping it would create like a streak like Canada. I was fucking getting late as a teen. I was so cool. I was, I was fucking sweet. No.

Okay. So British journalism, it's folks, folks, folks, it's, it's petty and stupid out of 10. How would you write it? British journalism. 2018. So just anything. I mean, as a medium, as an art form of life as a, as a, as an

elaborate prank. I think. Like, you know, cause some good stuff happens in between the absolute shit. So I'm going to give it a seven. Okay. I give it, I give it three and a half chefs kissing fingers out of five.

Discourse rating. It's weird. It's the, it's that, that feral animals quite, you know, the Tony Blair thing is quite true in that you just have this pack of rabid dogs chasing cars and sometimes it's quite right for them to chase that car. There's something quite bad going on inside that car. Other times the car is just going to a disabled parking spot.

Exactly. You can drop the mic. Well, actually what I might want to do is I might want to drop the mic into our more informative session on a PFI and outsourcing. Smart. Smart. This is Rick and smarty.

How we indicate that we're getting to the spot section now is we, we tell everyone to turn off the podcast and watch Rick and Morty, the genius show. Obviously the genius show about the, about the sauce that's actually very good. If you guys thought the last half I was tedious, just wait for this. Okay. So, so, okay.

So isn't a fried chicken joint. You, you mentioned your book at the very beginning. When, when did you publish your first book about PFI and outsourcing? In 20, I can't even remember. I think it came out in 2015, the first edition. And yeah, like I said earlier, I called it basically. Fucking switch. I went, look, here's what's happened.

The government has started to rely increasingly on some very, very, very big companies that you've never really heard of, or you, they kind of drift into your consciousness as an average member of the public. They will drift into your consciousness every so often. That'll be a big scandal. Like you remember that one time when we had to call the army in during the Olympics?

I never went, what the fuck is that all about? And well, that was an outsourcing scandal. And then everyone just sort of forgets about this stuff. So let's go, let's go back to the beginning. Cause what we're, what are we looking at sort of with PFI and outsourcing and what's the difference? So PFI is, so PFI is basically a way of funding the building of schools, hospitals, places like that.

The way it normally works is that a council will basically borrow the money from bond markets. They will, you know, they borrow the money. They build the building. It's made of the standard way. The PFI way is that the, is that the companies will take. Whoa. Hello.

I've let my mic slip. The companies will take the loans. And the government will pay the companies back over a very long period of time and they'll pay them a very large amount of money. And basically the, it sounds like a great deal. And in all things that involve the government dealing with the private sector, it often isn't. Is it all just like the monorail scene from the Simpsons?

The Simpsons episode of the monorail is literally all that needs to be said on the PFI scandal. That's it. There is nothing else to be said. This was a Tony Blair thing, right? I think there was some John Major stuff, but basically it was Blair. Yeah. I mean, it's really Blair.

It's really third way. It's really like you can have your classic hard leftism. It's like it's muscular centrism. Oh, you're choking on the cake. Oh, the cake is the cake. It's up all over the floor. Unfortunately we, I used to waver onto the cake. So you can't sue us.

It's, it's swole centrists. It's soul-scent centrism. It's veiny centrism. I mean, what it actually is is generational warfare. I think it is fair to talk about it as another massive load of debt that is passed on to later generations because these contracts are so big. Like they're going on. So what are some of the contracts for?

We have no building, but also there are other ones, right? Yeah. There's road building. It's infrastructure stuff, right? So, I mean, that's kind of the PFI thing. And, and link to that is outsourcing because Karellian, for example, is an outsourcing firm that would have been building these firms. Every one of our listeners and whatever one of our British listeners

would have seen that this firm went into administration recently and was followed by another one, Capita, which was doing similar things. Our American listeners might not know who these are, but basically these are companies that just went completely tits up all well, basically taking money from the government. Kind of like a really, really fat vampire that can no longer support its own weight. Exactly. You know, like actually, so in the Karellian thing,

it's quite difficult to work out, like quantify exactly what the cost to the taxpayer is going to be from all this because it's kind of, I mean, theoretically, most of these contracts can just be given, can be brought in-house or like given to other companies, but it never runs that smoothly. It's never that simple. And also the companies that are then bidding are, you know, like you are really like a captive consumer as the government.

So taxpayers are going to lose money from all this. But there's a much bigger issue behind all of this stuff, which is that no one's noticed that we're totally in hot to these companies as they've grown and grown and grown over the last like 25, 30 years. There's no, I did a load of research on the history of this, right? I went through all the papers that I blaze people, that they're sort of books on how they formulate their policy and stuff, like outsourcing and the growth of it just seemed to kind of happen by accident.

Like as a kind of like, it was like, oh shit, suddenly like we're spending billions on these four companies. What the hell is going on? And it brings that just a whole bunch of problems when you bring the private sector in to, it's like, look, you can't do everything as the state, right? So you need a company that will provide your office stationery or your bin collection or whatever.

But once you start bringing them into like test disabled people, to do like probation services with people who probably have mental health and drink and drug addictions, like these, these are not exact like that. It's very hard to kind of quantify that kind of work. And so what happens is there's already been fraud, like, you know, with people just gaming the system because they all have a profit incentive in the way that the state doesn't. But additionally, what the state does is,

and this was another transformation that happened at a Blair, is the state initially saw the running of government as a matter of kind of targets and numbers. So they don't say, if they're outsourcing testing sort of disabled people for really having disabilities, which they shouldn't do already, onto a private firm, then, and you're saying to the firm, by the way, we're expecting you to use inventive measures to cut the number of people on these payments down,

just because either they assume that they're fraudulent or they're just allowing the company to do what they will, then, well, of course, then the government can say, well, we didn't kick the disabled people off the rolls. It's a huge thing where basically if you look at with the disabled people stuff, right, you have these companies going, look, yeah, we just basically passed someone who's fit for work who was about to die two days later, but it's not our fault.

It's the test that they set, which we got from the government. And then the government will go, no, no, it's the way they implemented our test. I think you'll find. And by that point, by the time that argument is played out, no one knows who to blame. And that stretches across a whole bunch of different things, like how you deal with asylum seekers,

like the guy Jimmy Babengo, who died quite a few years ago now, who was like asphyxiated on a flight by two guards. Now, they swear blind that they were just enacting what the Home Office told them to do. And the Home Office said, oh, no, no, no, G4S, which is the company are culpable. They went through every tier of the legal system, right? There were appeals and inquest and still at the end of all that,

no one really knows whose fault it is. Like someone is definitely to blame, but it's never really been established who. It's the same with the treatment of kids in youth detention centers. It's like the most vulnerable people in society. All of these people who come into contact with outsourcing companies, I don't think there are really more vulnerable people outside of hospital patients.

So it matters this stuff. If you care about social justice, you need to care about outsourcing. But even in hospital patients, quite often we'll come into contact with outsourcing companies through stuff like food, right? And Carillion once served me the worst food I've ever eaten, but that's good. So it's not like this stuff doesn't happen in the state sector.

It's not even like the target-driven culture doesn't cause problems in the state sector. Like look at what happened in mid-staff, which was a big hospital in the UK where a lot of bad shit went down. But the issue is that once you bring in a profit incentive, you automatically, you know, there's always going to be an incentive to try and gain the system. There's always going to be questions over the accountability

and the transparency. Like I as a journalist can't find out how they're saving money in a way that I could with statutory sector contracts. Because you can't like FOI and stuff. Do you think they are saving money even? Or are they just siphoning? So like on the surface of it, totally. But you don't say, I mean, one thing you can say with confidence

is you don't save the money when you have to bring the fucking army into place, the Olympics. You definitely use money there. That's the thing, isn't it? It's kind of like, you know, they'll reap the rewards of it still, but all the risk and all the kind of shit that happens when you enter risk territory is then picked up by the government. That's definitely the thing.

And yeah, the companies themselves have said like, this has all changed in the last few years. And actually now the risk is too much on us. So we have this really like unaccountable message system. I mean, they all say this themselves, the companies. But the risk is too far on us. And actually, if you look at the last few headlines, maybe they have a point like they're going under.

They're not making big profits. That's the weirdest thing about this whole game. They're big companies and these contracts are just like really low margin, most of them. And just go on and on for years. And they exist so that the companies can kind of exist and make money from other stuff, right? It's a really weird thing where it's not quite as simple

as just like shameless profiteering. I mean, it basically is once you get to the overall picture, but within the context of those contracts, it's not. So what happened then with Carillion? So they basically just overstretched. So they went into that they were different to like the G4S is and the circles and all that. And they were just doing building contracts.

They got involved in like road building and a couple of other things. And they just and those things basically they run. We know this like they run over budget and they're huge margin. You get a big payoff if you pull it off. But if it goes to its up, which it did, you're in trouble. So they got in big trouble. And I mean, what's cut? There's a whole bunch of stuff like coming out of the select committee.

Cause the weird thing is when this shit goes down, like parliament really does go into action in a way you wouldn't believe. Like they really do dig into it. And the stuff that's coming out of this select committees is amazing about mismanagement and all the rest of it. And like, like, I think it's true of it feels to me like sort of 75% of businesses are like largely like a confidence trick. So as long as like everything's going well,

then there's loads of money sloshing around. But the minute like the whole house of cards collapses, then suddenly all these like horrific arrows are revealed. And that was so brilliant. Basically, I mean, they were brought down by like three or four contracts. Ultimately. And that's not a thing that you want like a hot, you know, your kids school meals in stoke to be like relying on a company

that could go under any second. That's not a great model for society. That freedom baby. I may be going out on a limb. Fucking love freedom. You know, like when, you know, and I mean, I was going to ask, how do you think when this whole like Brexit thing kind of whatever in whatever form it comes out to be in the next kind of 12, 13 months?

Yeah. What, you know, do you think that like successive governments, like will they kind of continue to use outsourcing? Because it feels like it's such a large, it's such a large and embedded system. This is the thing. Like, so McDonald's makes a lot of noise. He says, I'm going to bring all these contracts in half.

The thing is, it's much harder to do that than you might think because they're all like the commercial law around them is really arcane. Like you will be hit with loads and loads of, of sexual fines if you just pull them in. Yeah. Like Brexit is interesting because I think our whole economy, it's kind of like, I feel like our economy after Brexit could be largely bottled air to China and cattle prods to the Middle East to suppress protests.

That's really the model. Let's not, let's not forget planes with training wheels sold to like, you know, inbred princes in Saudi so that they can like make sure that like, you know, the free market stays happening in Yemen because they're clearing host like busy hospitals. Yeah. So what this means for the outsourcing companies? I don't really know.

I think from what I gather, like some of them have like these kind of big international models and actually Britain is not such a huge deal to them, but others. So like, there was a weird thing where Britain not being a huge deal talking down Brexit again. Can you believe this? There was a weird thing where like Serco, the head of Serco, like got involved in an exchange of letters with David Cameron going like, Brexit is going to be a nightmare.

It's going to destroy everything. I know they're like from the top, like really anti-Brexit. There's one thing that sort of, I think gets talked about quite a bit. And one thing I'll confess, I'm a little worried about is largely that sort of after Brexit, this kind of thing might get applied to the NHS. So there was this new thing, what are they called? Accountable care organizations. Anything with a name like that, you know, is euthanizing people low key.

So this is apparently like, it's really, really like nascent, but it's one of those things that I think campaigners like are very quick to pick up on and have realized that actually it's going to be another tool for more privatization. I mean, the thing with outsourcing in the NHS is that they tried it once with Circle Healthcare, where they basically did a giant outsourcing project, and it went so badly wrong that they've kind of had their fingers burn a bit. So outsourcing is happening with health, but it's happening really slowly. Well, like Virgin Care, for example.

Yeah, they are the big players. There's been problems. And again, as with the other stuff, there's been situations where the system has clearly like been gamed a bit. That happened with Circle and like out of hours GPs. And there's been a couple of like Virgin Care stories. They are remarkably punchy when you try and report on them as well, which is kind of interesting because you kind of have this thing, right? There is a journalist. If you report on government, government will kind of go, look, we're trying to correct you here.

We're trying to help you, but they won't like go after you, right? And that's just, that's like... Unless you're at as easy as... And you kind of as a journalist go, well, that's cool because my tax is paid for you. So don't like try and attack me. But like Virgin, definitely, I know we've done stuff in the past and it's like, whoa, this is like writing about, you know, Goldman Sachs or, you know, Max Mosley or something.

Richard Branson will come after you in your sleep. Well, he came out of the corpse. He'll make sure you never get a seat on one of his trains. Richard Branson. Well, he's done that. Oh, and the... Can we talk about the... By the way, can we talk about the fucking millennial railcar for a second? This just brings this up to me.

I couldn't get a railcar. I'm so like... I don't even have a joke about this. I'm just so fucking furious. Because you didn't get a railcar. A, yes. B, like the extent to... This is such a cop out from Hammond, right? Like, oh, we're going to give you a millennial railcard to some of you.

Now, do a fucking Hunger Games to get your cheaper tickets to your fucking stag do. But then the fucking response out from Virgin of, oh, we know millennials have no money. Bring an avocado. And we'll give you a third off of a rail fare somewhere within a week. It's making the joke of like, oh, you're economically disenfranchised forever. Isn't that funny?

A third off a trip to Hull. Lucky me. I mean, it was like... It was easily the fifth worst thing a brand did on Twitter this week. Personally, I can't wait. I can't wait. This was the week when we had Colonel Saunders' wife. So, you know...

How better to celebrate International Women's Day than like, you know, changing the brand name on Colonel Saunders, flipping the M in McDonald's upside down and appointing a known torturer to the head of the CIA? Great. Thanks. Wonderful. I'm glad that, you know, everyone's so fucking empowered.

All I'm saying is that Wimpy is the most woke fast food chain. No, because Wimpy is... He's a pay-pick. No, he is Wendy's pay-pick. And he's like... The reason he always says, I'm glad you pay you tomorrow for a hamburger today, is because he's actually, like, wearing a fucking...

a fucking chastity belt to pop in a huge boner, because, like, you know, all of his paychecks are going to Wendy, and he just, like, gets webcam videos of her, like, putting his money through her head, like, yeah, you like that, Wimpy? You like watching me spend your fucking money? That's the kind of... Wimpy did the bender in a bun, right?

Large bent sausage. That looks like a signature dish. I don't know what it is. How better fucking it is? This is the kind of future of a liberal spawn, and I'm all here for it. Also, you know, international working Wednesday, but that was a few days ago,

and we're on an all-male podcast right now, so we shouldn't talk too much about that. Yeah, we're only male feminists when it suits us. Oh, Christ. Yeah, I mean, no, I was just going to say, like, I was just thinking about, like, the whole Virgin branding thing, and just, like, brands in, you know,

brands in general, and how they sort of offset these types of big discussions. Because I think, like, there was... There was remarkably, like, little attention paid to that really bad Virgin Tweet about the avocado, and I sort of wonder whether, like, we're now sort of accepting that Richard Branson,

you know, is here to stay, and what that means in terms of, like, the whole outsourcing thing, right? We're, like, we're just not paying attention. Are you so, like, have emojis from G4S detention centres, like, Yarlswood's high-quality viral content? Yeah, well, I mean...

Actually, there's been weird things where they kind of try to do it. I mean, at what point will, like, you know... At what point will, like, Circo come to us and be like, can you make us a podcast? Because we really want to be accessible. I mean, it's just... It is just sort of more woke brands, right?

Like, there's... At some point, like, Carillion's gonna say, you know, actually, we're helping you fast and be more healthy with Instagram inspiration. So loads of, like, rail companies do this, right? So, like, Southern Rail and South Eastern Rail, like, you know, they... Awful franchises, which, like,

I don't know how much you know about trains. Not as much as Jim Morrison. Yeah, but Jim won't come on. It's the first choice. Jim's too smart for us. Yeah. But... We laid out a bear trap with a yellow beanie

and it wouldn't come in. But, like, I've noticed with, like, train companies that they sort of do that. So they have, like, their social media kids who are basically... And a couple of weeks ago when... I think it was just after the big... The beast from the East, as they say.

Which is, you know, to a Canadian, like, he probably means very little. After seven years, I don't know what fucking snow looks like anymore. But they were basically trying to, like... You were seeing the social media intern at South Eastern Rail basically go into this gradual, like, breakdown

as, you know, all the trains just, like, stop working because of one particular fault and then there were, like, passengers going on the tracks and everything. So this kind of brand that's trying to, like, make an effort to be more woke and, like, use emojis and be really fun and accessible, all of a sudden is kind of, like, acting really authoritarian.

It was, like, it was really funny to, like, just watch a whole thing. D4S once made a Twitter joke and made it about a full-body cavity search. No! It was the new gift of, like, someone slapping on rubber gloves because I was, like, tweeting, wow, loads of D4S at this...

Sorry, conference. And they made a joke about it, right? And so Twitter just lights up. And within seconds, this tweet was deleted. But not before it was screen-shotted. You just... Yeah. But the thing is, maybe that is the future.

You know? Maybe that's where we're going, where any brand... Any brand can do Branta. So that's why our podcast is named How It Is. I mean, that's why, like, my next job, once I get fired from the one that I currently have, is going to be for...

Shit, what's this called? The Blood Company. Theranos. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're going to do the Branta for Theranos Prison Edition. Yeah. So it's about that time again. But do you have any concluding thoughts on outsourcing? What can we do?

Or is the answer as our sort of friend podcast RealPolitik likes to say, nationalization without compensation? I mean, I just think that one of the most shocking things is that they make designer clothes

in outsourced prisons. I find that amazing. They make Annihine March handbags. And this is a charitable initiative, right? So you have an outsourced prison and people can buy designer stuff and like, brawer and Annihine March when they say, you know, this is

this is fine. This is like helping people get on the right path and stuff. I would be okay with it if they made corn. Chains. That would at least be, you know... They'd at least get more extreme. Exactly.

So if outsourcing companies were responsible for like the return of new metal, then they'd be good. Could they be good? I think they could be good. Yeah. I feel like it's the only circumstance where like they could be good if they somehow like brought back. Yeah.

If they, you know, cut my handbag into pieces. This is right outsourcing contract. Oh my god. It was a play out with that song. Nationalization. No compensation. Yeah. That's, I think that's, that's my

final word. Nationalization without compensation. We're a smart chair. We're so smart. Alan, thank you. Alan, I'm gonna say thank you so much for coming on today. Thank you. Our song has been JinSang by nope, that's not it. Our song has been

Here We Go by JinSang. You can find it on Spotify and hey, if any of you noticed that you're sort of persistently pointless, we may have an answer for you soon. Oh, I was, I just like why Oh, no, no, it's not why.

All right. Oh, no. Oh. Oh.