TRASHFUTURE - *PREVIEW* The Half Lives of Others

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

We continue to follow the election with stony faced horror, as the decision is put to the country: “which group of sociopathic bigots do you want to be in charge of pushing the nuclear button, which they have promised to push”? Then, a reading from the Tony Blair Institute on their plan to circumvent the need for democracy by creating a new, digital England entirely under their control. Get the full episode on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/105715569 *EDINBURGH LIVE SHOW ALERT* We're going to be live at Monkey Barrel comedy at the Edinburgh Fringe on August 14, and you can get tickets here:  https://www.wegottickets.com/event/621432 *MILO ALERT* Buy Milo’s special ‘Voicemail’ here! https://pensight.com/x/miloedwards/digital-item-5a616491-a89c-4ed2-a257-0adc30eedd6d *STREAM ALERT* Check out our Twitch stream, which airs 9-11 pm UK time every Monday and Thursday, at the following link: https://www.twitch.tv/trashfuturepodcast *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and November (@postoctobrist)

So, what we're talking about here specifically is a couple of things, right? Number one is Badenoch being interviewed saying, essentially, we intend to, from day one, allow people to just disregard the Equality Act when they want to exclude transgender people from things. And second, that we're going to rewrite the Equality Act to mean that sex means sex at birth, essentially, if we are re-elected. ALICE And this isn't gonna happen because they won't be re-elected, but I worry about what the Labour Party's going to do when it says

that it's going to, for instance, modernize the Equality Act. Because that may well end up being the same thing. ZACH Well, they're gonna triple lock the Equality Act. ALICE Yeah, they're gonna triple lock the women's bathroom to keep me out of it. ZACH Yeah, they're gonna keep everyone out of there, it's not safe. We're gonna have to have everyone in the men's bathroom until we figure out what the fuck is going on. We're gonna have to expand the men's bathrooms, make them much bigger.

And I guess they're just- We're gonna have to put a sauna in there. Yeah. It's gonna be- it's gonna be- you gotta be naked but wearing a towel. That's gonna be the rule for the men's bathroom. The Labour Party accidentally inventing cruising. I guess all we can do is we've got to put a hole in each cubicle so you can check the genitals of anyone pissing in there at any time.

It's gonna be a genital level, obviously. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you can see them. Where else would you want to put it? Duh. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah.

And then you've got to ask them to put it through the hole so you can see. Uh-huh. Well, sometimes visual inspection won't be enough. How will they know to put it through the hole? I guess what if you put your foot on the other side of the cubicle, then it can be like, hey, present for inspection. I don't trust that you are who you say you are. Yeah.

That's right. And you got a hinge at the waist. Also, you know what else you could do? You could use a helpful system to identify yourself to other people by using different colored handkerchiefs and just be like, hey... ALICE That's true. Let me pitch this to you.

If you're really concerned about the existence of trans people in gender-segregated spaces like this, what about a dark room area, where there's no light so that way you don't have to see if there are trans people there? RILEY That's really smart. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Okay, alright, Labour Party, this is... we've rewritten the Equality Act for you. We have modernized the Equality Act. We have successfully, on this podcast, live, modernized the Equality Act.

What if every toilet was really dark and had pounding techno? Yeah, just like really muscly men, you know? Just kissing. So I need to bring this back. In this riff, are we reinventing gay culture from first principles or Burgheim from first principles? That's kind of both. I know, it's quite a lot of overlap.

Kind of both. Burgheim's a gay venue, right? The Burgheim darkroom especially is, uh, yeah. Anyway, anyway, look. So she does this, right, and then, again, because the Times sort of now knows that the Tories are embarrassing and should be exposed to actual questions and follow-up questions, as opposed to just tilting your head like a dog, have said, well, hang on a second. Isn't this just stoking culture wars?

This is something that's very small. It doesn't happen often. Why do you care? And Badenock says, I take issue with you calling this culture wars. Four years ago I was alerting people to the dangers of puberty blockers, and a lot of the issues we had in clinics, people like you were accusing me of fighting culture wars." And- ALICE Yeah, cause it still is.

It has been one the whole time. It's an incredible kind of deflection to be like, well, interesting that you accuse me of fighting a culture war now, but have you considered that I was also fighting it, like, have you considered that I am the Japanese island holdout of this culture war? ALICE Yeah. Or sort of the reverse, they're like a Japanese World War II officer who's somehow gone back in time and is fighting World War II during World War I. But they're actually on the opposite side. But, in this case, right, it's...

To imagine Times Radio noticing, hey, that's just some culture war nonsense, why are you wasting everyone's time with it? And that's Times Radio. Yeah. It's finally cutting through, the useful answer to the question of, whatever stupid goshit, what is a woman, or who gets to use this bathroom, is, why is there shit in all of the rivers? Why is my rent, like, £15,000 a second? Yeah.

And, y'know, it's also not to say that Times Radio has suddenly discovered, let's say, moving beyond culture wars to deal with substantive issues, it's that they've all decided between themselves that Kemi Badnok is faintly embarrassing. Basically. And now she- ALICE Boats poorly for her bid for leader of whatever rump Conservative party is left, I suppose. NICOLAS Why have they decided that? How interesting.

ALICE Probably in some kind of open, democratic process. It's very accountable. NICOLAS Of course. Look, this was election update, it went a little longer than planned. ALICE Yeah, because everything is terrible. RILEY And more- but moreover, this is, the very hard work seems to be being undertaken at the very highest levels in this country to ensure that there is no reason for anybody to vote in this election except out of spite.

But I always have to remind you, you can also not vote in it out of spite. Which is what I intend to do. ALICE Yeah, absolutely. Like, as a trans woman, specifically, if we're gonna, like, litigate on this issue, I would never vote for the Tories anyway, but I wouldn't vote for them off of the back of this culture war shit. I also wouldn't vote for the Labour Party off of their participation in this culture war shit. I wouldn't vote... RILEY Because, here's the thing, what's West Streeting saying that's different from what Kamie Badenok is saying? Nothing. I also wouldn't vote for the Labour Party, or for their participation in this culture war shit. I wouldn't vote... RILEY Because, here's the thing, what's West Reading

saying that's different from what Kenny Badenock is saying? Nothing. ALICE Yeah, he's saying it in a slightly more, like, restrained way, I suppose. RILEY West Reading is saying, I'm a hot dog that's been pressed into this suit. ALICE That's right. RILEY But, if we want to know the future of how

this country is to be governed, you don't have to look at what people are saying in the run-ups to elections because most of that now is either lies or irrelevant or we just know won't work because they have to obey the rituals and they can't touch the third rails. Instead, if you want to know what's going to happen in the future, you have to read the think tank documents. Oh yeah. I have. The ideas lying around. I have read another of the think tank documents, another hit from the Tony Tank documents. I have. The ideas lying around. I have read another of the Think Tank documents, another hit from the Tony Blair Institute,

they keep em coming, they are batting a thousand in terms of crazy ideas. All bangers, no skips, I loved their previous singles, ID cards, ID cards now, can we do ID cards now, is it time for ID cards finally? So I present to you their new paper, How AI Can Transform the State, a document that is itself full of AI images of civil servants working in what appear to be start-up offices. Awesome. Cool. And like, the civil- well, say one thing, maybe we can even make this the episode art.

The office that we're looking at on the document that I've captured here, you can tell it's generated from AI because they have one thousand houseplants in the office. Like, every civil servant will be made to work in like a regional garden center. Essentially. Under the Blair Institute's plan. That would be fun if that was our way of like, you know, making the civil service most cost-efficient, is turning them all into illegal cannabis grow houses. And they're just full of weed plants and heat lamps. And the civil servants have to work in tropical temperatures because we're selling weed on

the black market in order to fund DEFRA. I was thinking wellness, Blair. Just be like, yeah you have to implement ID cards, but when you do it you can be surrounded by like 50 firms. Yeah. Yeah. Milo, I've also seen the gentleman. So this is, this is the proposal, right? They say in the foreword, the private sector is already making historic investments in

its future. By the way, days after this came out, several software companies that had heavily invested into AI had their annual reports come out, and their stock prices crashed by like a fifth. ALICE Yeah, because it turns out nobody knows what AI is, nobody uses it, no one likes it. Which is kind of what we call the, like, triple threat of, uh... RILEY The triple lock! ALICE Yeah, the triple lock.

No one knows what it is, no one likes what it is, if they do know, and then if they do know what it is and they do like it, they don't want it. RILEY Yeah. And no one seems to want to pay for it. It's very unclear how to make anyone pay for it, still. But undeterred, undeterred, but not wanting to do what we did with crypto and buy into the hype cycle late, we want to buy into the hype cycle early, again, I crucially add, as a government.

The private sector, they say, is already making historic investments in its future, with chips and data centers leading tech companies rebuilding infrastructure that surpasses 20th century mega projects such as railroads, dams, and even space programs. Oh, which is good because we won't be doing any of those projects again. Oh, railroad. No, no, no. We're going to be slowly running down the railroads and we won't be building any dams. We won't be cleaning the rivers or building any power lines. We will be doing some obscure de-risking, but we do have the god that we made in the computer.

Yeah, when we say historic investments in the public sector, what we actually mean is historical investments in the public sector because we haven't done any since the 1970s. For governments, the choice feels less stark. Political leadership may change, but the state still exists. Like all well-established organizations, the state has a bias towards caution. But this is an illusion. A fail to modernize is a perilous course for a nation and those who govern it, and this is particularly true in the case of AI, which if gripped properly, there needs to be a history

of the use of the word grip in British politics. It is very strange that people have been telling one another to grip problems for a very long time and I do not know what it means." We're cranking the AI. We gripping it. been telling one another to grip problems for a very long time and I do not know what it means. We're cranking that AI. We gripping it. Should make today the most exciting and creative time to govern. In government, straight up gripping it, by it, let's just say my artificial intelligence.

Call me Marcus Agrippa, the way I'm gripping this shit. Of course, this foreword is written by Tony Blair. Acripepping the shit. So, of course, this forward is written by Tony Blair. Agrippina. It's the eldest. Just cause I'm gripping that penis. Uh huh. An elder one though. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

What a news agrippina the younger. In the new Equality Act mandated sauna bathroom. Yeah, that's right. I'm gripping it to see if it's there to check the gender. Yeah, I'm tugging it gently.