TRASHFUTURE - The Grafter’s Baccalaureate feat. Devon

Episode Date: August 4, 2026

Prayers up for our beloved Nova who remains unwell, but Devon is in the hot seat today filling in as we discuss how you can’t trust maps anymore, a report on the state of reports, and the future of education in a certain grafting market trader’s utopia. But first, we look at the outstanding white boys who are ushering in a new era of vibes in Britain. Get more TF episodes each week by subscribing to our Patreon here!   RILEY ALERT Check out No Gods, No Mayors here! HUSSEIN ALERT Check out 10k Posts here! MILO ALERT Check out Milo's tour dates here: https://www.miloedwards.co.uk/liveshows NATE ALERT Nate's band Second Homes has just released their debut album and you can stream it for free here! Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and November (@postoctobrist)

All right, prayer warriors. Look, everybody get out your glorify prayer ring because it should be buzzing right now. We need intercessory prayers on behalf of our beloved, unwell, comrade collie, your friend in mine, November Kelly, who is out of action still feeling unwell. So I need to hear those prayers echoing throughout the goddess fear. However, we are still bringing you an episode. and that is going to be with me and Hussein, joined ably by Devin. Devon, thank you so much for coming in and filling in today.

Waguana, Lekum, boys. I mean, I've been saying that. No, no, I give him the password. I've been saying it at home and, like, my wife has sort of banned me from saying it anymore because, number one, she was like, you don't have the voice to do that convincingly, which is fair enough. But the second is also just like, it's a very sacred term and I shouldn't be not giving it justice. So I've been banned from that

But also I've been banned from saying There's another clip that I've sort of been obsessed with I don't know whether you've seen it. These two like South Asian guys They're doing like one of those bro podcasts Like just kind of like guy shooting the ship And like they released like one episode And it went like super viral only because of this segment

Where they're like oh like you know What what's like they're talking about like your favorite sides Like at Nando's and I really can't give it Can we can we add a clip? Can we add a clip? Can we add a clip? Yeah. We can do whatever we want. Right.

Because I'm not going to do the voice because I can't do the voice. and people just yell at me if I do. Yeah, your chips, you know, chips is generally the best side you can ever have in your life. Yeah. I've been on MASH recently. MASH? Mm. Yeah. Snake.

You know, a bit of a MASH. I've been banned from saying the phrase, I've been on MASH recently. Those of the two, I've, you know, I'm just not allowed to say those two phrases in my house, so. All right, well, I find, I guess, are we saying that Waguana-Lakem is actually like a traditional, white boy expression combining two non-white boy expressions. I think it's an expression of the beautiful melting pot. That's all. In a scouse accent.

There's something going on on like InstaReels and TikTok and stuff where like you've got like a certain kind of white boy with like a bit of a juice. Right now, the sort of 22 year olds that Andy Burnham's employing and like the people who used to work who would have otherwise worked for social chain. They're cooking up white boys with motion now. They're all in Liverpool looking for that white boy. So that he can become, like, so Andy Burnham could harness a British Rizzler.

I mean, effectively, that's, I feel like what we're going to. And there's, like, this other, like, British white guy, white kid who, like, whose name I can't remember. But his whole thing is that he does versions of, like, you know, Sean Paul, like, when he, like, just before he does the thing. And I'm not going to just, I'm not going to do that either. But he does, like, he does, like, the Sean Paul, like, pre-rap, like, pre-patois, like, yeah, thing.

And it's like, I don't know how to describe it. but it's just, I think there are these moments where I often think to myself, but we're sort of at the end of social media. Like, we've said everything that we can say, we've done everything we can do. We're just sort of repeating. And then a white boy with a bit of juice will show up and he'll start doing Sean Paul Patwa. And I'm just like, no, it's still there.

We've got the energy. Andy Burnham needs to like harness this energy. If we're going to like get our country back, I feel like, yes. You know, and I'm teasing like a lot of the episode like content here. But like what we're really talking about in this episode is about like where the energy in Britain is and where it, like, and where it should be and where people think it is. And I feel like the energy is actually in the sort of white tracksuit laden boys of Liverpool, Manchester, Doncaster, who can do a perfect Sean Paul pre-patouar rap. It's like, oh, how are we going to beat Farage? How are

going to beat Farage? And like, honestly, the press has been taking him off to Toriel Island by asking him follow-up questions. And it's been beautiful to watch. I love this. And this is the power. whether it is like a British light side Chet Hanks or like a homegrown sovereign British Rizzler this is going to be the Andy Burnham's trap look because he's not going to change the fundamentals of the economy

obviously no one could why would anybody do that but at least he could make some good TikToks yeah it's gonna be vibes but if the vibes are a small scouse kid going Waguana Laksham and Biala that's spicy while eating like a spicy pot noodle thing I think the vibes are there I think we fucking got it

Yeah, like, we've nailed. Like, if that's going to be the vibes, then you know what? Yeah, they're nailed. Everything else not nailed. Those nailed. So I've got a few things to talk about today. One of the big ones is Burnham and what he said he's going to do, what has most worked out. I don't just want to talk about all the stuff that he's speculating about or that's not very well worked out like the national care strategy or things like this. That's all going to come. Like, we'll deal with it when it comes up. But there are a few things that. are discussable that I think are worth thinking about because they're going to give an insight into, okay, well, how is he going to try to become the mayor of an entire country? I wish we had a name for someone who's the mayor of an entire country, but I can't think of one. No, I don't think so. But there are a couple of things I did want to discuss news items. Number one, news item, this is a quick one, quick hit.

Have you used Google Maps? I do. Do you like Google Maps? I love tooling around on Google Maps. Oh, yeah. I used it the other day. it was a right experience.

So Google loves to invent 1,000 products, have two of them be vaguely usable and then cement them into everybody's digital infrastructure

basically forever while slowly making them worse. Google Maps is one such like search, Gmail and Maps are three such examples. And recently,

because no one really wants to use AI voluntarily, most of the companies that are behind AI that are like, you and so on, are trying to trick you

into using it. I tried to make a table on Google Sheets and they have hidden, like for episode planning because I'm going to be taking a vacation soon. And so I'm trying to like give the rest of TF. Like here's what, here's the schedule for when I'm gone. It was, I was one click. I accidentally clicked on the thing that was like turn on Gemini features and sheets like, no, make me a fucking table. I don't want to, I don't want to talk to my table. Whatever problems Google has with like it's Gemini AI, Adobe is so much worse. I feel like anyone who's used Adobe products. Try open a PDF and see how difficult.

That now is. It looks like you were trying to rotate the PDF. I'm so sorry. I misunderstood. And I'm afraid your credit card information is now been published online. It's like there's no button to rotate the PDF anymore. There's just a text box where you have to describe to the AI. You want the PDF rotated.

And it's like, I don't know what the fuck you are talking about. I've never heard of this in my entire life. Google Earth now has an AI feature that lets anybody have a little bit of fun with it. You know, say, hey, like, what if you could customize the Earth with a conversational? interface using nanobanana to say, I don't know, make it look like there is a huge violent protest in the middle of a city that you might like to fearmonger about. How about, and then it has the Google Earth watermark on it that is definitely not going to be a kind of cosine of anything that you do. How about that?

Sorry, let me get this fucking straight. Are you telling me that random people now from the town can just generate satellite imagery with the Google Earth watermark on it? Yeah, yeah. It's in. incorporated into Google Earth. Now, they enabled this feature. I don't like that. And then immediately, you be like, well, wait, couldn't you just use this to, like I say,

generate a violent protest in a city that you, that you're like to fearmonger about, for example. Race of protesters. When am I going to make the race of the protesters? Can we add some blue hair to some of the protesters, like just a little blue specks? And you'd also, like, say, make it look as though, like, a missile has hit somewhere.

Say, could you add some destruction to here? you know, just to really make reliable asynchronous communication between people and having a shared reality, utterly fucking impossible. I love the assault on reality that we're living through. It's so cool, man. There's no consensus anymore. This is back to like the AI is the reverse printing press thing. Right? Who didn't need it? We'll see. Hey, you know what? If the consensus reality got you here of what use was the consensus reality, don't worry about what attacked it. Anyway, Google has since been pointing out that this could be really bad, removed this feature. But they really, everybody who has an AI product to push wants to just sort of trick you into using it in some way, especially Google. I have another thing.

So I'm starting another file. It's like the, by the way, if you're wondering, oh, am I checking on the Charlie Kirk Fund weekly? I am checking on the Charlie Kirk Fund weekly. You will have updates when I find them. This is a new file that I'm calling it the Sloppies, which is a new award for, let's say, corporate, well, you'll find out. So this is, there have several investigations recently that have been conducted by an organization called GPT Zero, which is investigating essentially the use of AI in big companies. They've been looking specifically at consulting firms. So this is all sort of from GPT0.

But there was a KPMG released a report in October 2025 called, I quote, total experience, redefining excellence in the age of agentic AI, which summarizes an annual global customer experience study. Like, consulting firms do this all the time. They'll have like, they'll do a survey and then they'll say, okay, well, insight from this surveys, this, this, this and this, call us if you want to talk about it more. It's like a standard marketing tactic they've done forever. But writing those surveys and doing them and writing the reports costs money and it creates marketing tools that are then used to make money. It doesn't directly make money itself. So there's a huge incentive to make them as cheap as possible.

And so GPT Zero found that in the redefining excellence in an age of agentic AI report that KPMG put out, 40 of the 45 sources were basically hallucinated by chat GPT. Oh my God. Cool. Yeah. Good. Yeah.

Just in a room discussing things that don't have any impact on reality. Well, actually, that's not true. They have impacts on reality. They just have no bearing on it. Yeah. Huge impact on reality. It's like sort of just magicing an asteroid into existence and then just allowing it to smash into Earth. But half the factual claims, this is quoting from them, supported by the 45 citations, appear to be false or at least misattributed.

For example, its initial report cited examples such as a 2019 East Japan railway press release as evidence of agentic AI usage, despite agentic AI only entering the public discourse in 2024. Honestly, doesn't surprise me. Japanese railways are years ahead of us. Like, they had aigentic AI back when we only had GPT2. So, the other one, they also found that KPMG's LLM persistently mistakes article subjects for its authors. A blog post about TFL, written by a blogger based in Surrey, is credited to TFL, or a retail news piece about Uniclo is credited as written by Uniclo.

And then you talk about impact, right, Dev? Yeah. The AI checkers, the KPMG reports claims have already been recycled by. industry publications in one check newspaper and are now because AIs know what to look for as authoritative sources such as PDFs published by big companies, those claims are now being cited by other LOMs. Right. I'd love it if we could just stop doing this and like get off and maybe like just take a

fucking breath and think about this. This is how you would talk about like Habsburg AI. This is a perfect example in microcosm of that process actually. happening. Just auriborous, just eating itself, puking up, this slop, and we all have to just wade through it. I worry, I can't be, I worry I'm not funny at all when we talk about AI, because I just get too legitimately angry. I'm just like, this makes me feel sick. I do sort of feel like, there's sort of the point where AI stuff was funny, like, finished really quickly. And now it's just like, and I don't know how much of it is, it's because it's like, oh, no, like, the way that most

AI stuff works is that like companies will sort of build things or they will sort of like make stuff it doesn't work and hallucinates all the time and sort of presents missing like bad information misinformation stuff it doesn't exist and it sort of become characteristic of like pretty much every AI company is sort of producing a product anyway but you're sort of being told that like no this is the future you have to accept it but also if it goes wrong that's on you and so if your AI enabled Google Maps kind of like keeps taking you to a dead end and tells you that you need to drive through the wall to get to the next place. And once you drive through the wall,

you realize that it's actually someone's garden. That's your fault. That's not the AI's file. That's yours. That's on you, yeah. Exactly. And like, you know, research, like, to sort of, like, suggest that this is a bad thing,

kind of like operates at a slower pace and also so much about research is kind of imbued with AI because of, like, the demands that universities now placed on researchers and institutes place on researchers. And so you're right, just in the sense of, like, we're using bad information to generate bad information. and in doing so, like, the bad information can't even be called as such because you have nothing to kind of compare it to.

Think about what a great step forward for just like the advancement of humanity in general the possibility of asynchronous communication was, right? Before you have the printing press, that's basically not possible, or at least not at scale. And to systematically undermine the thing that every, that like not just consensus reality, but the concept that there's such a thing as consensus reality is quite alarming.

Of course, a spokesperson for KPMG was contacted by GPT0. That said, KPMG International takes the accuracy and integrity of its published content very seriously. This report has been removed and we are reviewing the circumstances surrounding its publication. We expect all our people to follow our guidelines and the responsible use of AI, including Cuban oversight to validate content and verify independent sources. And again, it's like, no, you don't. No, you're not.

No, you're not. No one's looking at this. No one's looking at this because it's an ad, but it's an ad that other things will cite because then maybe a story in there or something. It's a very, very pernicious form of communication. And that all these companies, their guidelines than responsible use of AI until about 10 minutes ago when it became like charged what it was worth was, you should use this for everything, leave no stone unturned when you could automate the turning of it. Yeah, responsible use of AI was just as much as humanly possible. Maximal usage of AI. And then another one, EY had to withdraw.

Ernst Young had to withdraw study and loyalty programs that contained AI hallucinations and fake footnotes, but it's not just those two because according to them, there was, they rate an 84% chance. And even then like AI writing checkers are not entirely reliable. But when I look at this, it's like, okay, well, it's probably true. That 84% chance that PWC's 2025 report transforming governance was entirely AI generated. This report promoted a PWC data-driven framework. This is just about like how fake a lot of this stuff is. Even without the AI element, this is the fakesest thing that's ever been.

The report, which to promote a PwC data-driven framework called Citizen Pulse, claimed it was being used by the governments of Denmark, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Australia. However, GPT's hero found no public evidence that this product was used, nor that these government deals ever took place. And so, like, it appears that what they've done is they have invented a PWC consulting service, or like some kind of framework that they used to sell to government. and they claim that they sold it to the United States federal government. And then it's sort of unclear what it is.

But we're all living in, or at least many of our listeners, because I don't think it's in the UK yet. I mean, citizen pulse is sweeping the world. I'm here to be living in living in the world of citizen pulse. They say. Additionally, the report seems unsure of Citizen Pulse is an existing PDABC product, a vague exercise and thought leadership, or cycling between describing the potential benefits of the Citizen Pulse framework and concrete claims of its current use.

So like, that's, yeah, that's it. We live in Citizen Pulse. It's over now. Every single person in the world has used Citizen Pulse. You know what? We're all better for it. I'm using it right now. Hey, everybody, just pause the podcast in a second and just like turn to someone next to you

and just whoever's next to you right now. It doesn't matter on the bus, in the gym, maybe you're like with your family and just say, are you on Citizen Pulse? Or more accurately, what are you doing on Citizen Pulse? And what has Citizen Pulse done for you lately? Hey, brother. Let's start a Citizen Pulse right now. So the other three PWC Middle East reports covered by the investigation also contain multiple fabricated claims, including invented statistics, unrelated sources, and confidently false correlations.

One of the reports, quote, building a cyber resilient e-mobility ecosystem even includes URLs that just are chat GPT. In response to the findings, a spokesperson for PWC Middle East was contacted. PWC Middle East, they said, takes the accuracy of our published research seriously. Motherfucker. It's the same line. It's the same statement. It's whack-a-mole shit. It's just like that one's AI and they're like, all right, we'll take this one out.

Meanwhile, they're publishing like 20 more. Yeah. If you want to see zone flooding, professional services firms are engaged in the single largest act of zone flooding possibly ever. PWC Middle East takes the accuracy of our published research seriously and is updating a limited number of supporting citations in the reports mentioned. So Citizen Pulse. That was the least AI generated part of the thing was the citation. So consistent with our approach to responsible AI, we have quality control processes for research and content development we expect all our people to adhere to. That's good.

I was worried that they didn't because of all that stuff they published. I keep astral projecting to like watching myself in 2022 on Dali or something generating like a three by three grid of tiny. like thumbnail images of like pencil drawing of an ape smoking reefer. I'd be like, no! Like slamming on the wall like interstellar. Stop! You don't know what you're unleashing. It's not that funny.

So Citizen Pulse has not been taken down. It's still up on PWC Middle East. That's fair enough. I mean, we're all using it, so that makes sense. Yeah, of course. I mean, look. I'd know if it was down. Oh, yeah.

Like, if Citizen Pulse came down, then like, I know my neighbors would be crawling over the fence to tear me. limb from limb. It'd be bedlam. Citizen Paul is the only thing holding this damn society together. Well, it's that governments today face a critical challenge. You know that? I didn't know that. This is the first time I've heard it. M-Dash. Stuff, stuff, stuff that you don't realize until you read a copy of the economist, I guess.

Meeting the ever-growing expectations of their citizens, people demand faster, more personalized services along with greater transparency, responsiveness, and efficiency in governance. However, traditional decision-making processes are often slow, and rely on an outdated data. They create a gap between what citizens expect and what governments can deliver. Citizen Pulse transforms governance. I mean, we all know about this. This is for, I guess, like the two or three people all who are listening who aren't in the warm embrace of Citizen Pulse. By using AI-driven insights, real-time feedback and predictive analytics to shape policies that truly reflect citizen needs, this enables governments to enhance transparency and trust through continuous engagement,

optimize public services with real-time data, and deliver personalized, inclusive policies tailored to diverse communities. Could you falsify any of that? Could you, this is, this is the most, I have just nothing. I, I, it feels, I don't know if like hearing that, I don't know if like you, again, I'm talking a lot to the listener directly, but you too and you're the listener, if you could just like hear an almost painful high-pitched whirring in the back of your skull, a moment I started saying, deliver personalized, inclusive politics tailored to diverse communities. Could you hear that, that was, that was a part of your, of your brainstem, literally. really burning out

because what you're doing is processing like floating signifier after floating contentless nothing Sarah Vellum trying to escape like a cornered animal

biting off its own and a half tearing itself a butt what is what is citizen pulse what is citizen pulse what does one use it well I don't think it is anything I think they invented a service okay

but what is it well I suppose what does it claim to be it claims to unite diversify groups together. Is it a survey tool? Is it like a digital twin of your electorate, which would require, like the only thing, way that works, by the way, the only way you can use AI to gather information on a whole population to make tailored policies for diverse communities is if you have like a digital ID level, like a Blair digital ID level of like connected government databases and you know fucking everything

about everyone. That's the only. And even then it would hallucin. constantly. So that's the only way that works. So basically what they're saying is, hey, do you already have like a kind of encyclopedic spot, like spy level database on everybody who lives in your country? What if you used AI on it? I think that they invented a product, PWC cells. What if you fed that shit into our AI? Our AI, which by the way is just a re-skin of clot. Perfect. All right, all right, right. Look, I want to talk about our main event today. Yes.

I know that the, I believe, shadow policing minister was recently shelled by the French Coast Guard. At Nova's request, I'm waiting until she gets back to talk about that. However, we're going to get to our new also recurring segment. Andy Burnham is not the guy, part one million. We specifically not talked a lot about it because there's very little is certain yet, other than just he appears to actually be better on social media than Keir Starmer and has been able to feel better until we saw one thing we're going to talk about later on in the segment. which was a real, a real misstep.

But that fundamentally, even though there's been this flurry of announcements that are aimed at the cost of living, like capping bus fares at two pounds nationally, which is good, cutting Vought on energy bills, which is fine. And like this new educational pathway, which is kind of what we're going to focus on for a few reasons today, which unless they're accompanied by actual structural change, meaning like we change the way investment works in the economy, we change the way that ownership works of like business or housing stock or whatever

are ultimately going to be more tinkering around the market, margins that won't do much. It might be much better tinkering around the margins than Starmer, but that's like asking if you want to die by drowning now because you're struggling, or if you want to competently and calmly tread water and die by drowning in five minutes. Yeah. It's like we said earlier, it's only ever going to be vibes. Like, all he has to offer is a vibe shift. And it, it seems like the vibe shift he's doing has been more successful than the vibe shift, Keir Stama tried to do at the start of his premiership. But that's, all that we can really say.

Yeah. And like, look, if the National Care Service comes in and it's like the National Health Service, I will eat my hat. But we have a lot to see. Any case, firstly, right, it's looking like Burnham's first couple of weeks are actually returning political momentum to labor. They are now beating reform in the polls, in a couple polls for the first time in like a year and a half.

But that's also largely because the press started noticing Nigel Farage. It's like, hey, how come you're like a house pet to this family of aristocratic criminals? that's weird that you're that it's so good it's Nova's line but fuck when the state defends itself

against the right doesn't that hit it's not hit like nothing else I love seeing that guy like weaseling out of things or attempting to weasel yeah he hasn't had to weasel

since like 2010 he's been wheezel free he's been on top he's been on tutorial island he has been with he has had a Mario star and that Mario star

just turned off and suddenly he is taking damage and it's very satisfying to watch. It's also partly easy to think that, and I say it's easy to think. I don't mean us. I mean like the broader political press

that was loved Starmer and then was disillusioned by Starmer. It's easy for them to trick themselves into thinking this is going to be better because it is also true. The previous team was a gaggle of idiots and amateurs who had no idea what they were doing. Starmer became an MP in 2015

and the only political theory that that entire political project had and that we've been hammering for years about it was that dad. Agonym in 2013 could be generalized to the whole country forever and that a sufficiently ruthless operation for its own sake would project seriousness which people would like. That was genuinely probably the worst idea in human history and it was received by the electorate as such. The simple fact that Burnham hasn't yet forced a friend of Jeffrey onto the country

out of spite yet is doing also a huge amount of heavy lifting to differentiate him from a political landscape that was either, yeah, panicked amateurs like Starmer, obvious charlatans like Farage or internet poisoned esoteric fascists like whoever's like writing Badenawks, beaches or Ed Davy going down a log flume holding a placard that says new North Sea oil licenses. So instead I want to look at the one concrete thing Burnham has proposed, which is this education reform that he wants to do. So let's go into it. The Manchester Baccalaureate is now going to be a thing.

We're doing it a little differently. We recommend two or three smaller courses and then maybe one big one. But Burnham said, for too long in this country, students have been told that you must take an academic path to do well and be respected, but that under him, the country would, quote, value the hard hat every bit as much as the graduation cap, which on its face sounds fine. There should be a parity of prestige between these two jobs, these two types of career paths, obviously. But you're not going to do that by just saying, hey, we've invented a new career path that is, we actually checked. It's as prestigious as going to like a top university.

Yeah, the thing is, this is all great, but it is ultimately, like, the rest of the Burnham Project, a vibes one. Because it says, we're going to change the education that we're giving kids. And it says, this scheme enables these students who are choosing to go into a vocational path rather than an academic one, a chance to pick from seven gateways developed in collaboration with local employers, including construction, technology, education, health, culture, and sport. Again, where the, I think the tell in that sentence, right, is developed in collaboration with local employers. Because what it's saying is, people who are living in this, whatever economy you happen to be dropped into, that's the one that you're going to have to live with.

And what we're going to do is we're going to try to fix the economy of your local area. We're going to try to fix your life by changing you around the needs of whatever capital happens to want in your area. We're not going to identify that maybe these vocations are less prestigious because we live in a super financialized economy where the only way that all the wealth accumulation happens where people are. close to the fire industries and that because the economy is highly financialized, which rewards speculation and ownership and activities that support speculation and ownership, and apprentices already earn a fraction of the national living wage, you're not going to be able to fix that by saying, we've created a course that we think is the equal of going to basically train for one

of those professions that's more proximate to capital. And we think that's going to fix the vibes problem. That we're going to think it's going to fix the vibes. to me, this is completely backwards. Prestige doesn't determine the economic outcome. The economy determines what's prestigious, not the other way around. My real concern with this also as well is that when you're thinking about industries that have a vice grip over a local area, there are not that many industries that do that

anymore. Like there's really like one steel plant left in the country. There aren't these great big things. You're only really looking at like arms factories and like data centers and things like that. like the big local, the big local ecosystem is, I don't know. I don't know what you're looking at?

Universities. I don't think we had those anymore. Oh yeah, no, they were soy. Yeah, yeah, I think that they were talking about women

briefly in like the 2010s. Yeah. So we got rid of them. In the 2010, some of them mentioned women, some of them even mentioned non-white women, and that couldn't have that.

So had to get rid of those. I mean, realistically, right, this is back to trying to do re-industrialization. Like, and again, the sheet.

magnitude of what you have to do to reindustrialize a country that has become a service-based economy is comparable to like post-World War II mobilization. It has to be a whole of society effort to for some reason start doing manufacturing jobs again because things were generally better when that's what we were doing by some metrics. And again, the reason for that mostly is the fact that those are unionizable because the factory is there and the guy owns the factory can't like go in dismantle it and move it to another town. The factory is there. And you can use that over the guy. Like, there's a reason that people remember those jobs is better because they were present and physically tied to where you were and you could unionize around them. Whereas the idea that you're going to

be able to reindustrialize by trying to shift people's attitudes about what kinds of jobs are prestigious is like, again, a completely laudable that these things should be seen as equal. but if you're not going to address the actual economic realities around why they're not, it's not going to work. You can't just be like, this has prestige now. We've decided this is prestige and like you put a bunch of like banners on it and stuff or like medals. This is like,

you're like, you can't just spend prestige to change a cultural policy. The prestige of these institutions is because of their like, like they've accumulated it over a very, very long time. Like if you're changing an educational outcome, You're thinking kids haven't started school yet are going to be affected by this. And then it takes like 15 to 20 years of education for them to come out and start having an

effect on the world. And only after they come out and start having like a solid positive effect on the world, does any amount of prestige accrue to the institution that like sallied them fucking forth? It doesn't, you cannot do it the other way around. And even them, it would have to be something people would choose because of its like proximity to capital. If you're going to want to live in this hyper neoliberalized. system. You have to make money to live. That's one of the main things.

As much as Burnham likes to declare 40 years of neoliberalism over, what it looks like with this education policy is trying to alter economic outcomes by changing the people rather than intervening in the economy. I'm just putting it out there. That doesn't seem like ending neoliberalism to me. That seems like putting a flat cap on neoliberalism. I don't know. Maybe I'm missing something. And also, right, like there are apprentices that could accumulate the same kinds of wealth as professionals and their later career. I'm thinking of Rolls-Royce, Google, these places, all employ apprentices, which doesn't solve anything for most of the country because that's not a question of, are vocations prestigious? That's a question of,

where's the investment in the value chain in the country? And it's in the Rolls-Royce factory. And there aren't those in every fucking postcode, as far as I'm aware. Yeah, also, like, the apprenticeships have their own sort of like status imbued in them, right? Because there was so few of them from what I sort of, like, the last time I sort of looked into it. Like, this isn't, the apprenticeship thing is sort of seen as like the model of where sort of secondary and post-secondary education should go. But like my understanding of like why it's like a failure is because like it was kind of done for performative. Like lots of places kind of said, oh, we're taking on like five apprentices. We're taking on 10 apprentices. That's like,

that's not a big number. You're allowed to legally underpay. Don't forget you can it was a minimum wage thing. But you know, but you're also kind of allowed to frame it as like, oh, this is so prestigious that you get to be an apprentice at Google or you get to be apprentice at like, you know, my my sort of industry, like some newspapers kind of like brought on apprentices and it was just like the Times had like free apprentices and the evening standard had like maybe five and it's like that's not like a huge

number and so but like you know you can sort of like position yourself as kind of like saying that oh we support like you know non-university sort of related education and training but it's like well no you've just kind of given a couple of kids like a pathway to earning a bit of money

without sort of taking on the debt but at the same time like again as you mentioned, like, none of the structural things sort of really change. And like, once those apprentice, once you're sort of done of those apprenticeships and like, there's no guarantee of a job after you sort of thrown these kids into a job market where they're competing against, like, lots of different people with like various forms of experience and everything. And so, like, the apprenticeship model sort of seems to kind of be, you know, even, even if you wanted to be charitable, it's like, okay, good intentions, but like not particularly good outcome. But I think

the fundamental problem is very much like a sort of structural and economic one in the sense of like, well, unless you sort of build the infrastructure that can sort of, like, absorb all these kind of trainees and apprenticeships and everything and can do it without using the university as like a means of sort of like, you know, doing training, then, you know, what are you going to, because I think that's also another part. Like, I know this isn't like universities is not something that we're sort of focusing on entirely today, but it's just like, well, no, these institutions were designed to train people, right? To like train people in disciplines and in trades and like, you know, various sort of structures. And if you want to make the argument sort of say that, okay, the university,

system is not working at like producing people that are sort of ready for the job market and everything. That's like one thing. But you're not really replacing it with anything else. You're just kind of, you know, at best you're sort of saying that, oh, you know, we should kind of give training to people younger. And that's fine. But it's, but you're not really solving the problem. Because like, well, once those, once those kids are out, like, okay, they've sort of done like a kind of, you know, something akin to an engineering degree from the ages of, say, like 15 to 18. But once they're out, it's like, well, okay, they're still facing the same fucking problem. I mean, like they're just younger.

Worse problems too, because again, we're talking about preparing them for the job market that they will enter into at the end of this process. And that's like decade hence. If you want to really call time on 40 years of neoliberalism, improve their life chances by intervening in the job market. Improve their life chances

by investing in, say, like state construction projects. You can't just change the people and hope that by, that like the demand will create itself. You can't. You just can't. And also, another thing, I feel a bit rantey here, but honestly, again, this comes from an article I read earlier this morning. If you wanted to fix education in the UK, you could do a lot worse than by making excessive discipline enforced at academized schools a criminal offense.

Like this scandal today emerged, they have recording on the Athena Trust in Devon and Cornwall where like, again, the extreme disciplinary measures that are pretty common across these like semi-privatized schools where it's a bit like a sort of, um, Texas school choice activist wet dream where like if a state school slips below a certain level in performance, then it will just get like taken over by a private company that will then build the state, but be accountable to no one in the local community and just deliver, deliver education the way it wants. And then just basically all it has to do is keep test, test scores high by any means necessary, including by like using the fucking like nail coffin from Matilda. Right. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. Your outcomes aren't good enough. We've, uh, you've been taken over by a multinational, but I've got.

going to start hitting you. Yeah. If you're not in the UK, you think that sounds far-fetched. That's actually what the policy is. And we've talked before about Catherine Burbill-Sing, who was touted as this huge hero for being the most strictest, most disciplinary and headmistress in all of the UK, and all of England. And now it's like scandal after scandal after scandals emerging in academies as it's like,

students are being suspended for looking out the window or coughing, right? And so like, if you're Andy Burnham and you want to genuinely fix something in the education system. Private schools aren't being academized, by the way. Eaton's not getting academized. No, nowhere is no, nowhere like that is. Grammar schools and wealthy neighborhoods aren't getting academized. But state school, like, like, comprehensives are, especially in like rural or like more working class areas. They're getting academized and especially like less white areas. And those kids are being subjected to like the fucking child catcher. So why not fix that today? And again, you could do it a bunch of ways. You could just say, okay, they're under control of

local authority again. You could say, okay, if you're like actually we're introducing excessive discipline as a criminal offense, anything, anything to get this pernicious shit out of our education system. That's how you can actually fix it to make things better for people. Anyway, there's another thing I want to talk about here, which is, of course, Tom Skinner has decided that with reform dropping in the polls, this is literally a change in the last few weeks. He's done saying, you know, oh, not racist, just wondering about cultural assimilation, Bosch. And now essentially uses his Twitter to, text policy ideas to Andy Burnham every day. This is really cool.

This is a good thing to be doing. This is healthy. It looks like he's like really surrounded by family and well loved. I also like that it took about four of them before he got any kind of acknowledgement from Burnham. Yeah. Should have taken a lot more. It should have just let him scream into the void, man. Yeah.

Burnham. We alluded to something social media missteps that indicates early, early washness. I'm afraid, I'm afraid responding to Tom Skinner. not advisable. I'm sorry, Burnham. That's the wrong Boschman. You've made a categorical error. You've made a massive...

You've fucked up, brother? And so one of these ideas that Skinner has is also an idea to fix education. Before we get into that one, I'll say I've summarized a couple of his others. Hit me. Hit me. Open up allotments for everybody

so people can grow their own food and give the surplus to food banks, which Skinner says, it ain't a handout. It's just a way to be healthy and help out. Burnham replied to Skinner on this one. The back Britain Bosch card. So he wants the state to brand things using his catchphrase.

Nice. That's a good idea. His catch automotopia. Honestly, what he really wants is, and I think the Starmer administration would have been more vulnerable to this than the Burnham one, is he wants to be made like the Bosch minister whose remit is sort of like a Duchy of the Tancel of the Duchy of Lancaster, but for like just common sense. The back Britain Bosch card, which is 25 pounds to spend every week at, uh, The good old fashioned butchers and market traders, no multinationals. Oh my God. Yeah, yeah. The kinds of stores just don't exist anymore for huge swaths of the country.

Like, what, would do a 25 pounds what to spend on like the vape shop, the sort of dead high street. He doesn't believe this. Every actual butcher that exists is a halal butcher. Yeah. Like there aren't, there's no Tom Skinner type bloke's doing this. Yeah. Exactly. He's like, he's like, everything within walk, every single butcher in walking distance of me, he would be too scared to go into.

or my favorite of them which is a scheme where you can earn back your council tax by like picking up litter or crucially holding a community mental health walk which he does yeah he's got is he the one he's the one who has like

there's like a magician or like a hypnotist as part of his like crew I remember talking about this on another podcast he runs with a hypnotist he's crewed he's crew deep of the hypnotist he's so dangerous

he's forming a gang like the craze of like mental health guys I'm so sure sure that he has a hypnotist, like, as part of his group, and, like, the hypnotist, like, does, like, bespoke mental health sessions are for, like, people who go on his walks. That's really good. You're feeling very supported. You can talk to your bloke. When I snap my fingers, you will check in on your bloke. Yeah, but there's a guy, it's like Robert Robert Hissy. Uh-huh. But UK's number one unconscious mind therapist. Oh, my God. That's awesome. Yeah. Tom Skinner's, like, neck. idea. They're all probably campaigning on the mental health walks to Tom Skinner.

Like, hey, can you make my thing like council tax exempt next if Andy Burden makes you the Bosch minister? This guy's got a website. The hypnotistman.com. Okay. I had other things to talk about, but we are to, okay, we include a picture of Robert Hissy in

the episode art, because I am fucking loving the shade on this man. He's a beautiful color. You know what? This really does look like if Thomas Skinner was a magician. I can't believe it. Yeah, but he's not a magician. He's a hypnotist. He is a hypnotist. Oh my God. I'm looking to make clear. I'm looking at some of the copy on Robert Hissy, the hypnotist website. Can I tell you what kind of dashes I'm seeing a lot of and it's not

M? When you work with me, you don't just get short-term results, M-Dash. You gain the foundation for continuous growth in every area of your life. I can't stop seeing it. Oh, he's got a podcast. Oh, he's got a podcast. He's got a podcast. He's got a podcast. He's got a podcast.

He's got a podcast. He has spent over a decade transforming lives to his pioneering blend of hypnotherapy and ground-taking method, the unconscious mind therapy. Oh, I love Tom Skinner's whole world. His whole universe of just like, and again, if you live in the UK,

this won't make sense to you, but guys who hang out at pubs that you have to drive to get to that have picnic benches out front and behind. Do you know what I mean? I know exactly. I live around a lot of them, so yeah, I do know what you mean.

Like, if you are British... There's a lot of guys there, and I'm just like, one of them, one of these guys has to be a hypnotist. He's got an as-seon on at the bottom of his thing, and it's like, it's all, like, rags. It's like, as seen on reveal, closer, hello, now, okay. Has seen on hello? What is he...

What is he doing, like, distance hypnotherapy with the fucking, like, royals? What the fuck? Well, this is actually a good point, because like the point about like, I feel like so much of the England that tends to be ignored are full of like eccentrics like this guy who once had like a very peculiar niche

which would be to feature in like the middle pages of like take a break and hello and all these sort of like TV lifestyle magazines where they would kind of be like, well they would be a hypnotist slash relationship coach or you know someone like tarot readers who also will give you like advice on whether to get a mortgage or not. Like, just like these very strange eccentric and they kind of appear in like tabloid press

and like daytime TV, talk radio. Like that was their whole thing. And like some of them become like really, really beloved figures, right? They become like your sort of mainstays on Jeremy Vine and everything. And I think this country has been very good at producing this kind of peculiar eccentric. And it's another thing that like no one really wants to admit and confront. Because once you do that, you're kind of like, well, okay, we can't really be a nation of like plumbers and electricians because actually what we're good at are like producing weird sickos.

And so like, you know, you end is like it all just ends up feeling really, really absurd and you end up having like both the Big John's, well, both the Boschman, Big John and also Tom Skinner. Who actually said like I just remember like big John did put out like a video, I think last week, which was basically just saying about like, you know, it was it was like one of his very rare political messages. But it was one where he was like encouraging Andy Burnham to get more kids into trade schools and stuff. not in a sense of like oh universities are a waste of time

not least because like he can't say universities are a waste of time because so much of like Big John's money comes from doing freshest weeks God, yes Yeah like he's done he's on so many from like my cousin goes to Southampton Union and I think Big John did his freshest week and he had no idea who Big John was and I got really angry of him because I was just like how the fuck did you not like go meet Big John?

How did you pass up that opportunity? Right and he was just like I don't even know who this guy is It's like yeah but he eats try like he and I just felt like he he was looking my cousin was looking at me like I had gone insane as I was trying to explain to him Big John's entire Chinese order but it's just like this is like this is so much of his income

relies on like going to the University of Hull and eating a bunch of Chinese food and then doing leads for next day and doing exactly the same thing right but he was like made that point about oh yeah like you know young boy they go like go to trade schools I started off doing like trades and you know

really sort of benefited me it was like Big John you like a few years ago you were about to go bro So I'm not necessarily sure whether that's like the right analysis but nevertheless I think there is this sort of sense of like there are all the like the actual things that this country does well in terms of the people it produces

are also people that are like so distinctively embarrassed to like the ruling class we just don't really want to admit that it's fair. So what we're saying is Andy Burnham should don't introduce the M back nationwide. Introduce the weird back. We're going to teach you how to be an internet eccentric because until we actually transform the economy

with actual investment in actual projects and not just like tinkering, then all we're going to produce is weirdos. Also, can I ask everybody to please open the link I shared for the picture of Robert Hissy and Conscious to Unconscious? I've taken a look at the image of... Can we... It looks like he's on the verge of tears

transforming into a star god. I'm on the hypnotist man.com for slash gallery where what there is, there's only like five pictures here and one of them is just like a snapshot of him like he's sucking in off his teeth in the street. It's like of what looks like a creep shot of him at a party. Perfect, absolutely phenomenal. I've also noticed that he offers sleep hypnotherapy courses

to make you better at golf. Yeah, I'm going to be signing up. I'm going to be signing up for that once we're done. Perfect. Hit the ball long and straight when it really matters. Oh, perfect. This is the parallel. economy. As you say, like, this is the only way to make money in this country is like grifts.

It also, but I didn't even talk about Tom Skinner's idea for the schools. We got so distracted. We got so distracted by the hypnotist man, Robert Hissy. I promise I will close the hypnotist man's websites now. Because Tom Skinner's idea, and we're just going to get into another guy, I'm afraid, but Tom Skinner's idea essentially is actually not originally his idea. it's an idea from about 10 years ago. I'm going to read Tom Skinner's idea and one of you two buzz in

when you realize who he's copying. So it's about our kids, Skinner says. I honestly think we can do better for them. The classroom ain't changed for over 100 years but kids have. By the way, he didn't used to write like that. He didn't use to write with like an affected cockney accent.

Like that's relatively new. The world has changed, but jobs have changed. Technology has changed. But we're still teaching nearly every child exactly the same way and expecting exactly the same results. Imagine a class. classroom where the lesson is climbing trees. So are you imagining that? Yes. And you've got 29 monkeys and

one shark in the classroom. Okay. Okay. So imagine a classroom that's got a big tree in it, populate that classroom with 29 monkeys and one shark. The monkeys are going to fly up the tree and everyone claps for them. But shark is going to be sitting there thinking he is thick and thinking he's failed and that he'll never be good enough. But the shark ain't stupid. He's just in the wrong place. And again, I want to remind everybody also, Tom Skinner, I think, is very cynical. And this is why I making fun of him. In this world, in this world, the shark has like imposter syndrome. Yeah, the shark has an imposter syndrome among the monkeys. Okay, all right. Maybe the shark needs a hypnotherapist to a, to a, uh, Robert Hissy, hypnotophist to the shark. But if you put that

shark in the sea, not one monkey will be able to keep up with him. I think I know that parable. From 12 years old, I worked setting up market stalls before school, and from 16, I was working on them full time. That was probably the best education I got. It taught me how to work hard, how to talk to people, how to buy and sell, how to get back up when things go wrong, how to graphed, how to build something from nothing. I never got taught that from a textbook. I'm not saying we stop teaching English math and science. We need them.

But why aren't we teaching kids how to open a bank account or how mortgages work? How to save money. How to speak with confidence. How to cook a meal. All right. Now I'm here. Now I'm here. And I'd love to ask if we could put the outro music to this episode, the disgraced YouTuber boy

in a band. Don't stay at school. What are the laws even? Isn't it crazy how they don't teach? how to do taxes. It's like you're supposed to do that as the parent, man. Yeah. I also love that the full first paragraph of this is just that apocryphal Einstein quote

about like judging a fish by its ability to climate tree stretched out over a painfully long paragraph. Chat GPD, stretch this into a paragraph. Make no mistake. Shark ain't stupid. How to build something. How to change a tire. How to deal with failure. How to spot an opportunity.

How to get on with life. Spot an opportunity. Yeah. Welcome to Opportunity. class and just like there's a little ping pong ball that just says perfect grade but it's hidden in the corner. I've seen so many versions of this and like

one of my favorites was just like they don't teach kids how to like get a mortgage or do their taxes or do content creation. I was like I don't, I think they kind of know how to do that. Contact creation. Yeah. But it's I I sort of don't know what to say because it was because I guess whenever I've even sort of taken this

point seriously in terms of like okay you want teachers to teach their kids how to do taxes right. Once they start sort of under explaining how the British tax system works or like basically the economy in general. I feel like it might lead to outcomes that you made not necessarily want. I did economics in school. I wasn't a particularly good student, but it took me not very many lessons to basically realize that everything I was being taught was fake in the sense of just like the way that economics

is taught is the first lesson is very much like, look, for the next two years you're going to study this and it's not going to make any sense because we talk about perfect markets and basically like it does not reflect the world that you live in at all. Bearing in mind that I was studying economics for the first time in the aftermath of the financial crash. And so like there's also this real kind of like people trying to sort of actually understand for the first time about like, oh, how does the British economy work when like you realize that everything, the illusion of value has largely been proliferated by like property values. Yeah, I don't necessarily think it's going to go the way that you would like it to go. I feel like if anything, once you have young,

kind of young smart kids realizing how the British economy works, it may like actually be counterintuitive to what you would like them to do next. I feel like there are very few outcomes where like people learn how an economy works and they think, yeah, okay, this is like a great place to start a business. Or maybe a super financialized one at least. Yeah, well, this is a great place to go and become an electrician. Yeah. It's almost like whether it's the Tom Skinner plan of we should teach like grafting in school or the Andy Burden plan of we need to equalize prestige between all these different kinds of opportunities. You're all sort of swimming around the core central thing, which is that if you're not going to change the incentives at the core of the actual

economy, then you can teach as many like opportunity spotting classes as you want. Yeah, walking into my class of year sevens and teaching them, okay, lesson one, here's how you steal a bunch of mattresses. Yeah, lesson one, here's where the catalytic converter is on the car. Here's an angle grinder. This is going to be your main source of income. This is a flock camera. It's got about 10 pounds of copper in there, about 2 grams of gold. Opportunity spotted.

I love the next paragraph, by the way, of Skinner's Post. I've just pulled this up because he starts talking about, like, instead of like, let kids get their hands dirty, let them find what they're actually good at, instead of thinking they ain't no good because they fail an English exam. Not every kid's meant to sit behind a desk. Some are meant to build houses. Some are meant to invent things. Some are meant to run businesses that employ hundreds of people.

Some are meant to become the next generation of market traders. Every single one of them matter. It's like, I used to slid that last one in there. Yeah. Hey, hey, I caught you. I caught you through market trading things. And of course, market traders. And of course, also game show contestants who are mostly social media influencers now.

Yes. Some are meant to be from Essex. Yeah. What he's saying is obviously true in some ways, right? which is forcing everybody down an academic path. Also, that was also a version of trying to change the British economy by trying to change the people who were being entered into it, right? That was a Blair idea to make everybody go to university. So everybody is ready for all of the professional services jobs that are going to spring up all up and down the country.

And instead, what you get is a huge amount of like elite overproduction basically because that kind of didn't happen or not nearly enough for it to absorb all those. university graduates. And so now they're just trying to do the opposite and they're flipping back and forth between how can we make the perfect like education lever as a like lead like lead person leaving education. Not lever isn't like leverage. But how can we make the perfect like version of a person leaving education in order to make society better as opposed to thinking, well, maybe, maybe it's not on them. So this Tom Skinner finishes. What do you think? Let's change the educational system to support our kids because of course there are our future.

Hosh. Anyway, look, I think that's probably all the time we have for today. But, Devin, thank you very much for your able substitute teaching. No problem at all. I love hearing about the new developments in the technology space. They made me feel so good. I'm just excited I was able to tell you about Citizen Pulse.

Well, you don't need to tell me about this. Of course. I logged on to it just this morning. I logged onto my account. Well, to give continuous feedback on policy. As the member You're a member of a diverse group. To be fair, I am actually giving continuous feedback on policy. That is one of the main things that I do.

Maybe not in the way that's sort of a consulting firm might envision as being particularly productive. I find it productive. So, thank you very much. Of course, you know all about Kill James Bond. You can find Devin on Kill James Bond. You'll be able to find me on Kill James Bond shortly for one episode of what a movie some are calling the best ever made. I'm looking forward to immensely. An episode of Summer Calling cursed.

So, anyway, thank you very much to Devin. Don't forget also, we've got a bonus episode. You can subscribe via Patreon. It's five bucks a month. You know the deal. And we'll see you on that in a few days. Bye, everyone. Bye.

I wasn't taught how to get a job, but I can remember dissecting a frog. I wasn't taught how to pay tax. But I know loads about Shakespeare's classics. I was never taught how to vote. They devoted that. time to defining isotopes I wasn't taught how did the calf to my health but mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell never spent a lesson on current events instead i studied the old

american west i was never taught what laws there are i was never taught what laws there are let me repeat i was not taught the laws for the country i live in but i know how henry the eighth killed is women divorce beheaded died divorce beheaded survived glad that's in my head instead of financial advice