TRASHFUTURE - The Talented Mr Drakeford feat. Becca Wilks

Episode Date: November 30, 2021

This week, we're joined by Becca Wilks (@WilksBecca) of The National Wales to discuss a confidence and supply arrangement between Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru, and how it relates to the history of Welsh Labour in general. Of course we also discuss a Wales-centric startup that plans to heat homes in the most annoying way possible. And yes, we also discuss The Peppa Pig Incident. Hope you enjoy! If you want access to our Patreon bonus episodes, early releases of free episodes, and powerful Discord server, sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture If you’re in the UK and want to help Afghan refugees and internally displaced people, consider donating to Afghanaid: https://www.afghanaid.org.uk/ *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 Alice (@AliceAvizandum)

Hello, and welcome to this free episode of TF. It is myself, Riley, and I am joined by Hussain and Alice. How's it going, guys? I've been really wondering whether I should try to do the Milo voice, but I'm not going to because I don't like doing voices and I don't want to do voices. Yeah, this is a Milo-less episode because we've locked Milo in the studio toilet so that he can't make any sort of like anti-whales remarks. Yeah. Oh, yeah. This was he was going to come up with a whole new character that we would really love for five minutes and then spend 10 months hating. So he has been

sequestered well away from the recording. And instead, we're very pleased to be joined by National Whales' Becca Wilkes. Becca, how's it going? Hello, I'm good. Yeah, I'm here to be pro-whales. Absolutely. Well, I think we are we're going to be talking about it through this about about whales, because things are things are going on in Welsh politics and doings are occurring. Things are transpiring. That's right. Are they really? Yeah. Well, a lot of white papers are being called for.

If I know anything from English politics, that means changes are coming. We love a white paper. We love a call for responses because when people need urgent social and public services that have spent the last sort of four years getting residualized into nothing, the important thing to do is to make sure you spend two years before you give them anything so you can make sure a voice a range of voices are heard. No, but so we will be talking a little bit about about what's going on in Wales politically. And then I think in a wider sense, I think it's worth it's worth

talking a little bit just about how how Welsh politics works. Maybe misconceptions of it that might be abiding over here on this side of the border. I hate when a misconception abides, especially on this side of the border. That's the worst side of the border. That's my side of the border. I live here. But look, there are a few things to talk about first, right? Number one, and this is this is sort of again, I think a moment where I think the only when you think about this, the only sort of appropriate emotion to feel is cold fury.

But it is it is now being the deadliest day in the channel with several dozen refugees. People aiming to come here and claiming asylum, being killed when their inflatable boat capsized. And if only we'd listened to the signal call of the show years and years about this, then maybe we could have had policy solutions. Yeah. Well, it's what I think is most infuriating, right, is the the crocodile tears coming from people, from everyone from the home secretary to the leader of the opposition, people who oppose the only policy that will work,

which is buy these people ferry tickets so they can come over here safely. Because if you don't do that, anything short of that, literally anything policy that isn't that, right, you are saying that you condone what's happening and you just don't want to feel bad about it. Yeah. And it is the classic preeminent case of crying because you got what you wanted. Like this is the sort of like desirable or at least expected outcome of anything that you try to do that involves, you know, more border guards, pushbacks or whatever. Like because you'll never be able to control that stretch of the French coastline

effectively enough to prevent these boats from launching. And so they do. And this is the result. And it's just it's so so galling. And even if you can, you obviously shouldn't. If you want to build the Atlantic wall too, but with all of the bunkers facing inwards to stop people from having to live in France, a horrible fate to bestow on anyone, least of all people who have to flee their own countries. Then, you know, and people who are so desperate that coming to Britain

and even worse place seems better than like, I don't know, like at what point do you just sort of give this up as an unwinnable thing? At what point is it just like the war on drugs, you know, where the drugs win? Well, I think at this point, the way I see it is I actually kind of see it less. And by the way, this is something that we're absolutely going to talk about. I think at this is going to be a whole we're going to do another migration episode. We're going to have to. Yeah, absolutely. But just I mean, the way that what it puts me in mind of actually is less

the sort of war on drugs and more of like, you know, nuclear proliferation for peace in the 1950s, right, where we say we must have a safe world cut there. We must have a safer world. The only way to do that is to have more world ending weapons. We have to have more of them and be more ready to use them. Yeah, the only way to like decrease migration is to kill migrants accidentally. Well, it's not even what they're talking about is the rhetoric always used, right, especially by like, like Patel and her

to people around her is we must make this route unviable. So nobody takes it, which means putting more pressure on it, which means that say worse boats will be launched more hastily, for example. We have to make it more precarious, but like it's a it's a deliberate failure because no one's stupid enough, apart from like maybe some conservative voters to believe that there's any sort of precarity you can expose these people to that isn't worse than what they're leaving, you know, for one reason or another. But it's the same thing, I think, with the the Rand Corporation people in 1950s.

I don't think many of them actually thought they were maybe some of the stupider ones did, but they knew what side their bread was buttered on. They know that, you know, that Northrop Grumman's paying the bills and that what you want to do is you want to get as many of those nukes made as possible, because that's how you're taking home your lightly glowing Turkey to your family. And like, and it doesn't matter that it doesn't make the world. It actually made the world a much, much more dangerous place to be alive, right? It doesn't matter that any of that any of that's not true.

It's that all that is politically possible is the impossible. And all we can do are things that won't work. And it's just crackpot realism again. And it's that but it's this very, I think, sort of morally depraved and even more morally depraved and personally sickening version of that belief system. But on the good news is there's a bipartisan consensus. So even if you're like the Labour government, nothing will change. Oh, well, I mean, the speeches that Starmer and Boris gave in front of the CBI.

That's that now we're back into the comedy zone. Now we can change gear out of a horrible tragedy has occurred. And into we're back in the three ring circus. Yeah, our goofy, our goofy political leaders. The goofs are back on. Yeah. Now, I know this just by way of sort of introducing this, right, especially to American listeners, this is something that will have happened in Britain at this point a couple of weeks ago.

But anything that happens on a Monday really sucks for us because that's like that's far away from our recording schedule as it gets. Yeah. And obviously, they do this deliberately. I hate them. So both Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer gave speeches in front of the CBI, which is basically like a it's like a not-for-profit membership organization. Yeah, it's the Confederation of British Industry. It's the it's the fucking like a market rate builder group.

It's like fucking. Yeah, no, absolutely. If you have a medium sized spark plug testing facility that has never the left made you a sort of millionaire in, say, Gloss Disher, right? You are a member of this organization. Yes. Yeah. I'm going to read some of what some of the different remarks. And then I'm going to sort of throw the floor.

So look, Boris gave his speech first and it very quickly descended into rambling specifically about Peppa Pig and how much he likes Peppa Pig world. And then he was kind of guided off the stage by his handlers. He lost his place in his notes and just kind of stood there shuffling papers for 20 seconds. He quoted Lenin to them, which I do appreciate. He also quoted a car to them. Yeah, he made car noises.

I wish I had had the foresight to get the drop of this, but yeah, he made of like a Vroom Vroom noise. So cool. And then this he was immediately followed off stage by the BBC news headlines about how he had fucked this up and how, like genuinely, one of the first questions the reporter asked him was, seriously, are you okay? Which you never want to hear.

After you make a big speech. Are you okay after making such a good speech and you leave it all out there? You don't want to get that sort of like teacher voice. Is everything okay at home, Boris? He was just checking on a mate, you know, and their mental health. Yeah, that's right. He was checking in with his blokes. And it's important to check in on your blokes at every possible location.

So it was completely unrelated. Yeah, so what's happened here is that this is far from the first shambolic thing Boris has ever done. We know this. It's just that because he's doing it to business and he's appearing vulnerable, this is the perfect time for Rishi Sunak to try and knife him in the back by texting every compliant journalist or having someone text every compliant journalist and say, hey, Boris is kind of looking like shit.

Boris looking straight choo-gee because he's using Instagram memes from a couple of years ago. Now, I mean, you've sort of been seeing like all this stuff develop, but you know where this is going next, of course. But I want to know, like, how have you sort of, how have you interpreted this as it sort of carried on? Well, I didn't actually watch the Boris speech and I'm really, really regretting it now because, yeah, I did see bits and pieces of this drama when I don't know whether I'm supposed to speak about that yet.

Oh, no, please go off. Oh, please do what you want to do. Yeah, I know the f-words that he's actually comfortable saying. That's so cool. But yeah, no, for you to describe the CBI really reminded me of like Wales Tech, you get sort of the assembled business leaders in the world of like small parts manufacturing and stuff. Yeah, it's not the guys who like do a coup d'etat on you.

It's the guys who like own factories that make hairdryers. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Yeah, those hairdryer magnets. But yeah, watching Astonished as always. What was really funny to me was like, there's this specimen of guy on the left, which is the guy who every time Boris like shits himself on stage or whatever, will then say, ah, no, he's playing you. It's a cunning Tory act because-

Alice, stop talking about me as though I'm not here. Every time he gets off the stage after having like thrown up on a guy, he starts walking like Kaiser Soze and he like straightens his tie and he like perfectly combs his hair down and he's just normal. And it's like, no, the bluster is absolutely like a tactical thing. Like talking about Peppa Pig or whatever, that's totally a thing that he does on purpose. But he doesn't fuck up speeches on purpose. And he especially doesn't get like briefed against by the rest of the conservative party

because they're worried that he's alienating fucking hairdryer people. I'll tell you what that is. That's just people whose main core organizing belief is that the Tories are completely invulnerable and they've done that as a part of sort of learned helplessness. Yeah. And I mean, that is only 90% true. Yes, that's right. Because I mean, like, look, it's- We talked about this, right? Where it's- Labour is never going to win against the conservatives.

What happens is the conservatives are going to lose themselves like they did with Major. And then Labour is just going to be like standing there, trying to look identical to them to a more professional version of them. I'm just a Kia standing in front of a country asking them to invest in me. And it's like, yeah, no. Because next up was Kia Stammer giving his speech to the CBI. And who, boy, this is the point in the episode where we truly are missing Milo's absence. Because we had perhaps some of the most Kia lines we've ever had out of him.

Alice, you want to do the first one? Oh, I'll do the F words. My favourite one was he said, Labour is back in business. The dual meaning is entirely intentional. The dual meaning is entirely intentional, Lin. It's kind of Sean Connery there. What was that? The dual meaning is intentional.

Labour is back in business. Labour is back in business. No, I'm just every time. Yeah, if Milo isn't here, I'm just doing Kia Stammer and Sean Connery now. Maybe Kia Stammer should do his speeches out of Sean Connery. Maybe, maybe. But I genuinely thought they put the quotes in the wrong place. I thought they had just added this is entirely intentional.

No, he said that with his human seeming mouth parts. He said, ah, this pun, it's actually a pun. It's entirely, I'm being humorous. It's a dual meaning. Yeah, well, I mean, look, he knows that British journalists and business leaders all have, like, I don't know, the IQs of four-year-olds. Well, that is true. Yeah.

Yeah, so he doesn't want to frighten them. Speaking of frighten, he also said, relations between politics and business have not always been warm. The Prime Minister himself has not always been complimentary, which again, that's just what Matt Hancock said. Yeah, you can't say fuck business. Yeah, I would never say that about business. That's just what Matt Hancock said.

He's running the Matt Hancock campaign, that dynamo of charisma. But if you, if you read his, like, the road ahead thing, that was a very Matt Hancock document in itself. Oh, it absolutely was. Yeah, yeah, business doesn't mean to do bad. You've got to be nice to business and hold business's hand. That's correct. Yeah, check in on your local business and see whether their mental health is okay.

Yeah, absolutely. Because I can promise you that the only F words I will be using are foreign investment, fair trade, fiscal policy, and fiduciary duty. Fiduciary, juicy, Jesus Christ. Those are, that is not, that number one, those are short phrases, not words. I think it was inappropriate here to wear the Castro GCX jacket to the CPI. But go off, I guess. I think he's just doing it on purpose at this point.

I think it's an off. I think, you know, after the special K remark, I just simply don't know. Yeah, he's doing it specifically to agree with us, knowing what our recording schedule is like. He's doing a kind of like extended piece of performance art. We're going to see Keir Starmer tear off his latex mask to reveal Marina Abramovich. I was going to say Andy Kaufman. Well, possibly.

They wanted it, it's that he's, I think someone in his team must have said like, sir, the British public are at risk of seeing you with something of a partridge and then he's just leaned very heavily into it. But like, here's the thing, right? Look, you can't, it's number, it's funny how fucking corny he is. But it's like, not even Corbin went to the CPI when he made the same speech, because everyone always makes this speech. He didn't tell them to go fuck themselves.

He said something that was like content wise was broadly similar. Yeah, he said, essentially, what if we did business, but nice because he's a social Democrat. And so like, and of course, for this, he was like driven out of public life at any cost. But like even sucking them off doesn't give you anything because the response to both Starmer and Johnson speeches was sort of bewildered frustration. Yeah, because the thing is, the one thing about one thing that is true about business, I think neither, especially these types of businesses that neither party is grasped,

is that both of them do need investment. And labor is now, they're promising more investment than the Tories who, again, are sort of just at this point showing themselves to be illiterate dunces. But again, that's fine, right? Labor is being slightly more serious, but they still are unwilling to break out of this, of the orthodoxy of being slightly investment phobic. And even now, when like another too big to fail energy company has folded, everybody who actually has to do things materially, even like beyond just people who want

sort of to transform ideology, to transform material conditions, socialists, activists, like big people like this. Even now, it's even anyone who is asking, the people who have been basically what like, I don't know, trained, like given, made into like Pavlov's dogs for just operantly conditioned to get, let the state get out of the way and let business get on with it, right? They're either, there's the party that says that while drooling, or the party that says that while saying, please take us seriously, but no one's actually willing to do anything outside of these narrowly defined orthodoxies.

What is funny to me is that this is sort of a rod that the CBI has made for its own back, right? It's like, oh, we spent 40 years installing the kind of politician who can, who like, whose job is to get out of the way and make, let us make money as sort of like buccaneers of the free market, right? And that's their only political instinct because we've made absolutely certain that that's the only viable course left. And now, when we suddenly need massive government investment, all of the politicians that we have have been trained from birth by us to not do anything. I mean, look, I mean, if it didn't, if there weren't sort of, I don't know, negative short run impacts on everyone else, it would be very, very funny

to watch them all squaring. And it's still actually kind of- One thing that I was just thinking about what Alice was saying, and one thing I just remember is something that Dan Hodges posted this week or something about how he had done something along the lines of just like, no one's going to take Kirsten, this was after the CBI speech, but no one's going to take Kirsten seriously because Labour still think that there's a magic money tree, just like all that. That really sort of like outdated stuff, which was very much just like, Dan, are you just kind of like advocating for more austerity to which he just never kind of clearly answered, but there was very much just like, expecting Kirsten to kind of like

talk to this imagined working class that exists entirely in his own brain. But also, I think it's very reflective of what Alice was saying about this type of, not even just politicians, but also just a generation that understood what politicians and what politics was supposed to be in relation to commerce and the idea that any kind of material intervention or even any kind of legislative intervention was one that was not encouraged. So even as these sort of centrist Labour people celebrate that the left no longer want to be part of the party, they're still kind of frustrated with this, with like facing a reality that getting rid of Jeremy Crumbin wasn't going to eradicate any of the kind of very pressing material conditions

that like credit to the Conservatives in a very minimal way have at least recognised. Yeah, they just hate it, which is very fulfilling. Every time they do these sort of like big interventions, it's always the minute, we've talked about this, about kicking the can down the road, it's always the minimum possible thing. And they always talk so loudly about how much they hate doing it. Right. So it opens this question about like, you know, so like, would you prefer, would you prefer it in a minimal way that like they obviously resent or do you prefer politics where like you just pretend like these problems like don't exist at all and like those are your two choices, by the way. And also it's delivered by Sean Connery.

That's right. I mean, look, it's unfair, it's unfair to say that they're not that they're saying, you know, we are not going to invest in things. They have said they are going to invest. It's just a lot of the investment is sort of same old, same old talking about how, oh, we're going to co-invest in making gigafactories for electric cars. We're going to invest in climate and so on. But I think the promises of sort of anything transformative in terms of say infrastructure or whatever are just very thin on the ground. And it is both of these people are, they are clearly yesterday's man. And they are being asked to react to things that appear to be just outside the purview of what they can conceive. The best thing is tomorrow's man

also not going to be able to fucking do anything. Like at best, you'll get from the Tories, like I say, Rishi Sunak, who is going to do some like more... Oh, that guy's got a Milton Friedman back tattoo, I swear to God. Yeah, exactly. His like Milton Friedman full back piece, Chicago school full sleeve. No, he's going to do the minimum possible thing in a more pragmatic way and not talk about Peppa Pig on stage and it still won't solve any of the underlying problems. Before we move on to sort of talking about sort of our core subject today. Yeah, it's that, look, this is, I think the whole sort of experience with Boris should

always be a rejoinder to the people who say he's British Trump. That's absolutely not true because Trump never said way funny any of that lame shit. Remember, this guy's talking about, he's talking about Peppa Pig, he's making truck noises, but he would never talk about Stan Chara. He would never talk about fucking on a yacht in front of a bunch of Boy Scouts. He would never host the football boys. Well, the thing is, Boris Johnson has long COVID, right? Well, for sure. It's just like eating his brain. And so compared to Trump, right, when Trump got COVID,

as he memorably said, they took my DNA and it came back and it wasn't DNA, it was USA. First of all, a great thing to say. But second of all, Boris doesn't have that protection. They took his DNA and it came back GB. So no fucking wonder that he's sort of turned into this drooling monstrosity on stage. Yeah, Boris has been mentally enfeebled by COVID. And Trump was just made stronger by it. Honestly, honestly, Boris Johnson right now is acting like he has like, like he's exceeded his incumbrance limit in Skyrim. He's just sort of stumbling around.

He's, he drank 40 Meads. He's constantly drinking 40 Meads. He is, he is glitching. It's carrying about 50 copper pots at the same time. Every time he's about to walk, you just see like a bunch of copper pots flow out from his chest. All right. I want to talk about whales. I have a Welsh startup. Rebecca, you sent this Welsh startup to me. So unfortunately, you can judge the answers, but you can't play the game. I'm sorry about that. And unless you, unless you use the like device that we all use to erase our memories at the end of every episode's recording to forget what the startup was.

So my colleagues, the startup is called Thermify. Thermify. It is, I'll say this, it says, no compromise, no downside, smart green energy used twice. It's recycling the fucking heat of your own biomass from your shit. Oh God. You were starlingly close then. You gave the game away to it. You said, you said the wood energy. Thermify is like already like, well, it's, it's obviously not going to be something like

heat pumps because those are useful. So what's the most stupid thing you could do? And it's, well, it's biomass, right? So it's gotta be, gotta be. You're close with the heat pump thing, Alice. Who's saying, what do you think? I mean, I remember Phi. I mean, all I was going to say was, I think it's like some sort of like indoor, like human composting system. No, no, no.

They bore deep into the earth's mantle beneath your house to use geothermal energy to heat it. Wait, that would be good. Yeah, they do the plus of the movie, the core underneath your house. Okay. I'm going to say, I'll do another one. From helping the environment to offering relief for low income families to companies looking for environmentally friendly alternatives, everyone benefits from joining this green revolution. Oh, do you know what? I didn't remember that part of the, the, the spiel.

And now I'm, I'm a little bit wounded. I've removed some key words from there. They, they, they use, they use once again, your, your human shit to like heat businesses. You're getting really like preoccupied with the human shit. Yeah. I'm, hmm. What do businesses need that generates a lot of heat? Fucking, I don't know, dude. Do not say human shit.

Why would you need to heat that? Yeah. Exactly. So it's already warm. Yeah. All right. All right. It turns office small talk into like renewable energy. I don't clap my hands. You have a big wheel of the CBI thanks to my, thanks to my multimillion pound

heated trough of human shit company. Just walking through their thumb and your suspenders. No, no. Thermify says. That's why, that's why they want, that's why they want people to come back to the offices. They need people to be small talk to have a small talk generated into energy. Yeah. That's right. Thermify asks, what if there was a new kind of data center that could warm homes? Oh, they're putting the, they're warming your house with the fucking Bitcoin mine.

That's right. Yes. All right. I'm here for this. See, I was going to think that maybe is it kind of like a rental system where like tech companies would be like, can we use your house to store servers? And in exchange that service is exactly what it is. No, no. Fuck off, really? That's exactly where it is.

Yeah. Yeah. We want to put servers in people's houses. So we turn people's homes into data centers and their thing is like, well, the boxes get really hot, which means that you'll have heat all the time. Yeah. That's literally the logic. Don't you have to keep a server for the farm very cold? Well, partially for this reason, but also for like operational reasons. Don't worry about it.

So I personally love when I get up in the morning, you know, I put some toast in the toaster, I pour myself a glass of orange juice and then the fire suppression system for the server that lives in my basement floods my entire house with oxygen displacing gas. So look, I'll tell you how it works, right? They say basically you have a thermify boiler in your house and basically you and a bunch of Macedonian teenagers are mining Bitcoin on it. That's correct. So the thermify boiler, you buy it as the homeowner and it processes cloud computing

requests and the energy consumed is transformed into heat. You save huge money in your energy bills because it's subsidized by the company that sells the compute capacity to companies and you use the same energy twice. Now, the cycles on which you need to use heat in your home, they have to be different from the cycles of like data use, right? It's like hooking up your fucking home electricity to the flashing hard drive indicator on your computer. It's just going to be like...

Yeah, and I actually, because I'm not a particularly bright bulb with, you know, renewable energy is concerned. So I spoke to someone who knew more about it and they were very like nice and sweet about this and sort of said, oh, you know, it's an admiral, admiral? Yeah, it's an admiral. It's an admirable ambition. But, you know, if you put it into someone's house, they may not be able to like turn the heat on and off when they want to.

That's my concern. You're not able to like... Oh, you can't take a shower right now because nobody's mining enough Bitcoin. Yeah, well, then what you have to do is you have to get out there, maybe start your own cryptocurrency and encourage people to mine it using your server as a no. Your house is 50 degrees in summer because you get like a popular server in your fucking boiler. Oh, yeah. Well, you can't turn your...

I mean, you can't turn it off. No, of course not. Of course not. Because the thing is you pay a flat rate a month, which is much, much lower than your energy bill. But the key is the people deciding whether or not you have heat are people mining Bitcoin or like, I don't know, like downloading a YouTube kids video or whatever. Yeah. Torrenting movies. Great. Fantastic.

Ordering sex dildos. Ordering sex dildos. Yeah. Yeah. And what I also... What I fucking hate about this, what just absolutely makes me just... Just the thing that I think is the fucking worst about Thermify is they're like, Oh, it's a solution for low income people.

And it's like fucking great. It's because the low income people should have like dignity or whatever. Like they should have the basic services that you need to live a comfortable and dignified life as a byproduct of someone having a sex dildo website. Yeah. No, it's like actually less predatory and more comically ensoucing than like the old things we had to put like a coin in, right? Like genuinely. Yeah. Because it's doing...

It's the same thing, but it's a less predictable because your house is heated on the basis of compute cycles or at least they haven't disabused me of that idea on their website. I feel like that would be something you front and center. Wouldn't the house be heated on the basis of consumer demand? What if it's hot out? What if it's cold out? They don't really tangle with that in any obvious way. You have to do a shitload more Bitcoin mining in winter to keep up with demand.

And there's also this thing about... And again, I'm not an expert on this stuff. For me, the thing that jumped out was on their website, they kind of hint to the fact that they want to sell this service to Amazon Web Services and all the rest of it. But surely those companies will want to attend to sort out their servers now and again. And the time is when they want to visit to do repairs or to fiddle about with something or to track something, it's not necessarily going to be convenient to you. You as the person who lives in that home, are you going to have to put up with

sort of random Amazon Web Service guys showing up? Yeah, absolutely. You can have an exciting new career and door-to-door server maintenance. Yeah, it's also the fact that it makes you reliant on the continued existence of companies like this to heat your home, which is another thing in itself that strikes me. Yeah, you're reliant on the continued existence of Amazon and the fortunes of Jeff Bezos. But conversely, right, there's an opposite to this, which is your data transfer is now reliant on somebody else's house, which means that what if you can't order your basket of

sex dildos or download the model to 3D-free your sex dildos? It's Steve's house. Yeah, because Steve and Steve's house has just taken an axe to his boiler, you know? What happens if your business and your livelihood is all based on a server box with some random person's house? Yeah, my boiler breaks once a year, more or less. If anything you're doing on the internet depends on the continued maintenance status of my boiler, you're fucked.

The other thing, right, is I think, Becca, what you were saying is this depends on Amazon existing. Imagine that life, right, where you go to work in the Amazon warehouse, then you come back in your house that's been heated by an Amazon boiler. It's this idea that I think a lot of startup idiots have, which is just that we need to find more ways for this to intrude on people's lives so that it can solve one problem while creating 40 more. Yeah, it kind of fits into that whole thing of, you know, like when they talk about sort of platforms and these big companies as operating kind of less like companies or platforms and

more like states. And there's really something to that because if you think suddenly like Amazon is providing your employment, they're heating your home and it's like, you know, they're delivering your shopping for you, you know, as they take on grocery deliveries. It's like we keep thinking of different ways to invite these companies into our lives. And yeah, it's very strange instinct. And the Welsh government seems to like Thermify, right? Oh, yeah, they do. Tell me about that.

Well, to be fair and to be, you know, like with credible journalist hat on, I can't say for sure what the relationship between the Welsh government and I went to say Spotify then, but it's Thermify. I mean, they wish they had a relationship with Spotify. They both changed their relationship status to it's complicated, but we can't really draw any conclusions. But yeah, basically, they made a big announcement about this where they sort of said they attracted them to the, I think it was in Swansea, but I should know this off the top of my head.

But yeah, they've attracted them to the, to start up operations here. Usually what attracted means is this, as we probably will talk about a little bit later, usually what attracted me is some kind of grant involved or some kind of support. Again, not saying that's absolutely the case here. I'm just saying that's what the language suggests. Can you see what I mean? Yeah. And based on, based on recent history, you know, there's nothing that the Welsh

government's done to disprove me of that idea. Because the Welsh government is very interesting. It's sort of called, it's been called a kind of one party state with Welsh labor just enjoying sort of hegemony there for, you know, the decades since devolution. And it's, Welsh labor also I think occupies a space in the mind, I think especially of the English as somewhat more radical, somewhat more serious, which the, with the Welsh First Minister often being the highest, the most senior labor politician in the country, senior elected labor politician.

And I think like, but it's, it's what it really is, or at least in history, it seems to be, it seems to be an organization that historically actually under delivers for the people that vote for it and depend on it. And that is absolutely gaggingly desperate to have a Silicon Valley guy just like, take a shit in their toilet. Just pondering my big orb that just contains the past of Scottish labor to see if this contains any clues. Yeah. Yeah. It was interesting what you said earlier actually about the, the idea of like

Stammer and Johnson sort of being like men of the past and kind of not having any way to go. And I think that's kind of true for a lot of Welsh labor as well. But the thing that they, and again, we probably will go into this a little bit more, but the thing that they rely on is this, the rhetoric is always very radical. The, the action, not necessarily the case, you know, there's, we're very comfortable talking about socialism in Wales. We're very comfortable about saying, you know, like freezes, like clear red water and the Welsh way and stuff.

But yeah, the, in practice, the, the rhetoric doesn't kind of bear itself out. Because Wales is, Wales politics sort of has, has been shaken up a little bit, right? Because what's happened is Welsh labor and played Cymru, the Jesus Christ. We gave you the fucking briefing beforehand. Yeah. We did. We did. Plied. Plied. Plied. Think pride with an L. I can't, I can't get my dumb Canadian mouth around the words.

Labor and plied Cymru, excuse me, are going to be entering into a confidence and supply arrangement, um, which essentially is a, aiming to lay out a raft of policies to tackle a number of crises that have been sort of building up in Wales, housing crises, uh, child poverty crises, dealing with greening the economy and so on. Things that you'd expect a one party state with more or less unlimited authority over the, um, elements of government that have been devolved to it would have been able to at least begin tackling. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I mean, to be, to be like super diplomatic, um, you know, it's,

I wouldn't say like radical, obviously, but it's, it's a good thing that they've done this. It's good that they are willing to, I mean, like in the land, the wider landscape of UK politics, like it is radical to enter into a cooperation deal with a party like, uh, Plied Cymru. But yeah, as you say, um, it's, it's pretty wild that the Labour Party of Wales, you know, historically sort of slightly more radical-ish country has not thought to, to broach these. Well, me looking into my, my Scottish Labour orb, the one thing that I can say is that like, Can I see the orb? No, this is my orb.

I would also like to see the orb because I don't know very much about the Scottish Labour Party. Well, the one thing about Scottish Labour, right, is that like, if you have a sort of a captive audience, if you will, a sort of a captive electorate who you can talk to socialism, or you can talk to about socialism, uh, and who you can sort of promise things, and they're going to keep voting for you regardless, cradle to grave, uh, is that that works forever. And you can just keep siphoning off all of the best talent and sending it to London. You can keep not doing anything in the actual area. And you can keep just kind of, um, you know, making fun of nationalists because nothing

bad will ever happen. Yeah. Like Richard Leonard is one of the most powerful men in the country now. That's right. That's right. But like to, to, to, to, to my mind, this is, this is kind of, um, a more politic way of like coming to terms with nationalism than what Scottish Labour ever did because Scottish Labour's response was to, to laugh at it and then get owned.

Whereas here, trying to sort of like bring it inside the tent and trying to like maybe almost co-opt it a little bit seems to me that much more, um, alternately, depending on how cynical or optimistic you are, uh, sort of devious or diplomatic. Yeah. It's, it's, we're a weird country to the headline of this, this is going to be, um, because yeah, I think again, I know bugger all about, um, about sort of the history of Scottish politics, but I get the, the sense that Welsh Labour, at least in the, the sort of the recent past, isn't, isn't quite sort of as, um, hostile towards, I mean, there's that.

Yeah. I mean, that's even that's debatable. Um, yeah. Then there's certainly not as sort of, um, yeah, the relationship isn't as opposite, oppositional, is that right? Is that a word? Opposition. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, uh, with, with Plyde as, as maybe it was between the SMP and Scottish Labour, like, you know, we had the one Wales government, um, a little while ago, which was in a formal coalition government between Plyde and, and Labour. So they are capable of working together. Um, and I think that is the probably one of, um, Welsh Labour sort of saving grace. Is it, is it, is it, they willing to pilfer ideas, um, or, you know, willing to sort of

pay lip service to Plyde, um, in a way that probably you wouldn't see, um, between sort of Scottish Labour and SMP and, and you know, most sort of similarly politically inclined parties in England and parties like the Greens and stuff. My question is, what does, what does Plyde, uh, if there's even a single answer, sort of want from this opportunity? Like what, what's the price of this confidence and supply for them? Oh, um, probably for them, um, the second home stuff. So in Wales, um, we've got a bit of our housing crisis that it's an interest in housing crisis

because it's, um, similar in the, in the way you see this stuff manifest sort of over the border where you have like rising house prices and cities and rising rent prices that, that, you know, don't chime with sort of like stagnant wages and stuff. But you also have the, the added aggravation of, um, holiday homes. So we've got a few nice little like beauty spots in Wales. You've got the guy where you got, um, North Wales and Snowdonia and Pembrokeshire and Westfields, you know, the popular staycation spots for, um, you lot on the other side of Arthur's Dyke. Um, uh, yeah.

And, and particularly with the pandemic, you know, people aren't traveling abroad quite as much. So people look to staycations, they look to ABMB's, um, which means that more people are starting to convert homes into, um, into holiday homes. And then, you know, that in turn has a, as an effect on rent prices in the area. You get locals kind of, um, being purged from, from the areas, um, uh, because they're priced out. And of course, like places like, um, particularly in North Wales, they Welsh speaking areas, you know, they're the most, they're the strongholds of, of the Welsh language to be fair. And as those people get priced out, you have less and less people speak in the language,

you have less and less emotion of communities in, in the Welsh language. And as the Welsh government tries to, um, I think it was like a million Welsh speakers, their, their goal is they're trying to resuscitate, um, what is, or what was sort of a fading ish language. Um, you know, quite rightly, they are trying to, to, to revive it and, and expand the, uh, the, the population of Welsh speakers. Um, that housing crisis interacts with that crisis of language. Um, so I think tackling that for Plaid Cymru is high on the agenda because obviously they're a Welsh nationalist party. They're, they're very big on, on the Welsh language and,

and that's historically, um, what they've sort of been formed to protect. These days you'll be arrested and thrown in jail just for owning a massive home in Wales and saying your English. That's right. You know what, I, I, I could get behind that. Get arrested, get arrested further for resisting arrest because I don't know how to pronounce Hethli. Hethli. Oh, Jesus Christ. I've got some more quotes from your article here, right?

Uh, on this confidence and supply arrangement. And I think it's, it's quite instructive. And when we want to think about the, the history of Welsh labor, the limits of what it sought out to accomplish and what, um, Plaid is able to ring from them. You've also said that, um, they are wanting to, that there, it includes lots of plans, this confidence and supply agreement, lots of plans to solve child poverty, plans to solve, uh, the housing crisis. Exploring options. Yeah. Exploring options to reduce things that have been within their gift to do, like get rid of zero hours contracts. And one of the things, right, is that you've, you've, you've quoted several

campaign groups as well, right? So the child poverty action group found that more than half of Improvised Children in Wales are unable to access free school meals, more than half of Welsh children living in poverty are living in, uh, in work poverty. Um, and, you know, well, well, uh, the, the, the previous attempts to expand the, that provision, which is unusually narrow in Wales versus the rest of the UK has been voted down by Welsh, Welsh labor in Senneth, uh, on the basis of concerns about costs, or you also talked about rent as well, right? Uh, there, are we bringing, having rent controls to solve these sort of second housing home crisis, especially sort of as prices spiral up in Cardiff and Swansea? Well, no, we're having

another white paper where we kind of know what the solution is. We're kicking the can down the road. And so it seems like what they've been able to extract are a lot of, um, consultation papers and plans to make plans, looking into things that are quite worthy. But again, that sort of bring back that last question. Why haven't you done this already? Yeah. And that's, and that's pretty much crux of it. I mean, to be fair, there are bits in this, um, in this deal that sort of do seem like they have a more, um, tangible quality to them. Like I'm thinking of, um, social care. So, um, in the last sign of the election, Clyde ran on, on the idea of having a, a unified, um, national care service that's free at the point of use. Um, whereas the Welsh, uh, whereas Welsh

Labour, they, they would look in more towards the sort of UK government-led solution. And if, and if the UK government didn't provide sort of adequate funding, um, by the end of the Senate's term, they'd look into doing something else. It was, it was very much sort of, to my mind, anyway, kicking the can down the road, um, in much the same way as the language around rank controls is now. Um, so with the social care, the nationals, the national care service, they're looking at implementation, I think by the end of 2023, having sort of a plan in place to implement that. So there are things that seem like they go in somewhere. I think as well, they're looking at, um, a nationalized, uh, or publicly owned, um, energy company by 2022. So there's bits

and pieces that's in there. Um, but like the rank controls is the classic example because they, they floated that, um, it was floated a couple of days before the full announcement, and it was sort of like, um, develop, um, I think the language was something like develop a way to implement rank controls. And then when the actual full announcement came out, it was, we'll do a white paper that will talk about the role that rank controls might play. So not even a white paper on, you know, an actual plan for implementation, it's talking about the role. And it's similarly that that same white paper is going to talk about the role, having a right to adequate housing could, um, could play. And it's just like that in itself. It's just like, why do we need a white paper on

that? Um, I don't know. We're doing a six month study to find out whether people like it or not when they have someone to live. Pretty much. Yeah. And I think this, this is sort of quite instructive, right? Where anything, a lot of the good things that are happening, they seem to be sort of dragged to, um, and this is interesting, right? Especially because Drakeford loves to talk about this phrase that you bring up, clear red water, right? Where he says, yeah. Please continue. Yeah. He kind that phrase when he was, um, uh, an advisor, I believe to, um, to one of the first Senate to, God, I should know this, but yeah, an early Welsh government sort of shortly after its formation in the late nineties. Um, and he talked about clear red water. It's supposed to

refer to, um, the comparative radicalism of Welsh labor as opposed to UK labor. But it was, it was during, um, the blaze sort of new labor years. First refers to the blood of his enemies. Yeah. The blood of Mark Drakeford's enemies. Bless him. Um, yeah. No. Um, so yeah, it was, it was, it was during the time of like PFI, I think we were slightly shielded from the worst acceptors of PFI because of this sort of clear red water policy. That's not me saying that, like, it was amazing, but there was, there was, there were some bits where they tried to differentiate themselves from, from, uh, Blair and Westminster. But yeah, it's, it's very much up to debate whether there was ever, um, whether that sort of idea was ever, uh, approached with any particular

urgency or seriousness. You know, it's, some people call it sort of like murky brown water instead of clear red water. Um, I mean, this sort of, I think leads into another thing that you can see, right? Which is, um, that Welsh labor will campaign sometimes individually, and you know, where else I see this is in fucking Canada is campaigning against the policies of your own government trying to act as though you're insurgent. Um, and as a kind of, and if you position yourself in this way, right, where we're always a little bit to the left of whatever English labor is doing, um, minus one sort of brief interregnum in the late 20 teens. Um, if you position yourself roughly to the slightly to the left of whatever English labor is doing,

but, or the national labor party is doing, uh, but you are able to sort of then triangulate, you know where, what is as right as possible, you know, the furthest right you can go is just left of wherever you're in. Over some window cleaner. And so you're able to so as the party is shuts hospitals because it knows sort of what it can do, how far right it can go. Uh, a, a Welsh labor, um, um, a Welsh labor politician may protest against that closure, you know, as, as you, they campaign against evictions, but will sort of vote them through anyway. And it seems like this is, this is what happens. I think Alex is going back to what you were saying, Alice, like when you just sort of take for granted that

you're going to get voted in regardless that you have a sort of job for life. Yeah. And that always works. Yeah, especially it's big. I do genuinely believe that like laborism in the way that it has been applied, uh, in as much as all political action must flow through the parliamentary labor party and it's, uh, uh, sort of colleague, uh, organizations is truly being a something of a brain disease, uh, for a lot of it is disastrous, uh, to, yeah, to insist on labor's sort of progressive credentials. Um, and I think, I think that died pretty much with Robin Cook, to be honest. Um, but we, we had, we had a little rally towards it with Corbyn and we saw what happened there. So yeah. Generally speaking, right. I think most British, uh, history of the

latter 20th century can be understood in a pretty similar way, which is that, uh, all up and down the country, political communities are reacting to it can only be considered a slow world collapse in the legitimacy of the British state, uh, because well, it just doesn't do anything for you. In fact, mostly it puts you into decline, not even a regular collapse. Nobody's like, uh, putting heads on pikes and becoming like warlord of Swansea, right? Not instead. You just get these sort of like the same thing we always talk about with Patrick Wyman about like local and, uh, regional elites, right? We're going to have like, uh, a god king of Swansea is probably going to be Ryan Reynolds at this point. Like they're doing something up there. I don't know what they're

doing, but they're doing something. Yeah. I, I, I do have a lot of questions about this. Also, one thing I am thinking about is that like while we may not have like regional warlords, uh, we, we do, we do, we do have, uh, YouTubers, uh, with, uh, names like Sargon of the Cad who runs Swindon. Um, and then you also have like, you have your series of like local legends as well, right? So like the conditions are very much, the conditions are very much there. I'm talking, I'm talking about something different. I'm talking about how these different areas reacted to the collapse of legitimacy in, in the idea of the British state. This, um, this, this, this loss of, because that's why devolution had one of the main reasons devolution happened, right? Was there is this,

there's this loss of legitimacy that the British state is able to provide services in the labor government, uh, by led by Blair. I mean, that's not the only, obviously this is not the only reason, but I see it as kind of approximate cause sort of says, okay, fine. We will, we will sort of, we will hand back some of this power to you. And I wanted to know like, how did Wales and Welsh labor in the history of them being a sort of party and a distinct party within a party and so on react to this transformation? Yeah, it's weird because, um, you sort of had the, the winter discontent in 1979 and then the, the first referendum to even form a, uh, a Senate, you know, a distinct government from, from the UK was pretty overwhelmingly defeated. Um, but sort of,

yeah, when you're talking about sort of following play, I mean, there's definitely, I mean, we had the, the second referendum that, which sort of narrowly won in the late 90s, formed the first, first Welsh government. Um, and from there, there has been kind of an accelerating, um, tendency towards devolution and towards, uh, uh, further powers, um, being held in Wales. Um, um, particularly you see like, I think it was like 2011, we had a referendum to sort of devolve full lawmaking powers, um, to us. I mean, I'm talking more here about like the Welsh public and stuff, but I think it's kind of all, um, tied up in the same thing, you know, labor initially wasn't very pro, um, pro devolution itself. It had sort of pro devolution pockets

within, within the party that then sort of flourished after that initial defeat in, uh, the 70s. Um, but you know, devolution sort of in the, in the first instance, it was very much driven by, by plight and then kind of, uh, sort of labor kind of limped after, after, you know, in a sense. Um, but yeah, though the difficult thing with, with Welsh politics, um, it's less so recently is that people kind of are aware of the existence of Welsh labor and applied and things, but people are really sort of quite unengaged with Welsh specific politics. And I think, um, the, the recent election we had here, and this was kind of what was frustrated in even sort of the English left, um, you know, on the more progressive side, their reaction to

our election recently was this idea that, um, Drakeford got back in because he was sort of this uniquely radical politician. Um, and I don't, just don't think that's the case. I think part of it, part of it, I think was, was, I mean, I say part of it, most of it, I think was to do with the fact that people were sort of newly away of, um, the distinction between the Welsh and, and Westminster government, you know, through the, um, pandemic restrictions. You had a couple of moments where Mark Drakeford was able to kind of distinguish himself by making like marginally different or marginally more sort of, um, logical choices with respect to COVID. Um, the sudden low bar, but yet a very, a very low bar, but yeah, it is very much, uh, it was just, I think people were just

kind of astonished that he existed and the Welsh government could do things because I don't think people really, whatever that switched onto it. And that's not me saying like, oh, the Welsh public are ignorant. It's me saying that there's never been much of, there's never been much to draw your tension to the power that Wales holds because as, as, as we've been talking about, I think people don't want to read 60 white papers about whether or not they want a house. I mean, incredibly no. I know. I think we can kind of like, since all national politics has been about beating people into apathy, like, yeah, no, I don't blame anyone for not giving a shit. Yeah. No, it can, Welsh politics as well can be sort of astoundingly boring. We haven't got carrot.

You know, I hate to be like one of those people that like, say what you like about so and so, but you know, you, you do have sort of, um, no. You're Welsh Nicola Sturgeon. Yeah. I mean, Mark Drakeford, like he's, he is, I, you know, I will be honest, like he is, he is well liked here, but he's Mark Drakeford. Like you've, you've seen and heard what the guy looks and sounds like. Yeah. It's, it's, it's not sort of a chairman Mark situation. You wouldn't have like a big portrait of him. I'll speak for yourself. We don't have to go for the studio now. Yeah. Well, also, right. Like we have this, I think that there is this, it's, it's the long, sort of the long, I'd say the sort of six decades of sort of British history of is all about,

if it's all about distinguishing yourself from the center of the state, which basically wants you to hurry up and die, right? It's about offering an alternative to that. And this is where I think that the problem, one of the things that Welsh Labour is a bit stuck in. And I mean, this is one of the, and whenever a political party is stuck, you know, they're stuck because they will start doing things like declaring it the year of smart towns, for example, which they have done. Yeah. I thought you'd like that little addition. I can say that you definitely know what to get me. They're trying to say have more, again, like usual, right? The, and again, you'll, you'll see this. I mean, you've shown me a lot of examples of this in the Welsh government. You do see it

quite often. You saw, I see it also in the Toronto government, lots of places that feel like they don't have room to maneuver, announce some pie in the sky technology enabled plan. They're going to be like, well, we're going to put sensors all over everything in this town, and then that's going to improve bin collection because we know that bin collection doesn't work. But maybe we can make it work with magic. This guy said he's got some magic beans, and they're all sensor beans, and they're going to help us to tell when to take out the bins. Also, places with lots of ideas don't sort of spend enormous amounts of time and money courting sort of guys with fanciful car companies. We love to court. We love to court in Wales. You'll love to court. Yeah. Jim Ratcliffe,

who is the petrochemical hedge fund billionaire, big Brexit guy. He, this is, this is quoting from article in The Times. It started with a pub, the Grenadier in Belgravia, London, where petrochemicals billionaire, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, told his friends over a pint that he was going to, quote, build a proper four by four. This is me. This is me. This is me. This is me. This is just like, he has a lot more money than I do, so he can actually do it. Like, guy drinks too much and says, oh, I hate the new defender so much. It's not like a story unless it's one of this sort of like, elect class of multi millionaires. In which case, you can get the entire government of a country to like bow to their whim, right? Yeah. Yeah. The Welsh government, because all of these guys like

are treated by, and we see it in the Scottish government as well, the way that they treated Sanjeev Gupta and Lex Greensill when that was all happening, right? It's that of these. Oh, hang on. I'm pretty sure when I formed my first minister, Caroline Johns, had a job, something to do with Sanjeev Gupta. Anyway, sorry. I'm sure. But like, this is the thing about, especially like small governments and especially devolved governments, they're such star fuckers. Because like, essentially, because they have to be because they're sort of fighting for distinctiveness and they don't have those kind of like central banking or central like resources that like a UK government might have,

the best or the worst, they're cloud chasers. And this actually gets, this is sort of like backed up by the fact that they think, well, we need to increase the prosperity in this area. And we only have five million pounds. So what we're going to do is we're going to try to like spend five million pounds supporting some guy doing a make-a-wish that hopefully is going to like, you know, bring prosperity back because the money has to come from somewhere. And like, if it comes from central government, then you don't get that much credit for it. And it doesn't make you that distinct because nobody sees your face in relation to it. But crucially, like, can we come back to the fact that this guy was a billionaire?

Why does he need five million from the Welsh government? He's a billionaire. Sorry. The Scottish government is going to give him five. Low trade. Low, you know, Moose Bush. Well, these guys, these guys are basically like, yeah, they say they're make-a-wish guys. This everyone has to do everything they can to make their dreams come true. And also it's like the Welsh, but the Welsh government has an equally fanciful dream, which is it knows the capitalism it wants to manage, which is Fordist capitalism, right? It knows that it's so cold because of car plants.

And it's able to deal with things like this. It is very, very easily, let's say, bamboozled and impressed by someone making a claim about a smart city or that we're going to heat everyone's houses with server racks. All the whole idea of almost desperately chasing the future because you feel constrained or you feel like that your role politically is to still manage decline, but to do so in a managed decline, but to do so in a different brand from central government. It's inevitable that you will end up chasing these fanciful dreams because these are the magic beans that square the circle.

These are the magic beans that square the circle is an incredible sentence. And I'm going to be thinking about it for the rest of the week. Yeah, they're magic circle squaring beans. I see. You also mentioned to me as well, like they'll spend millions of pounds trying to give grants to Aston Martin. Yeah, they did do that. It was nearly 20 million in grants, I believe, for job creation. We love job creation as well. That's the other thing.

We love cars. We love to create jobs. Any jobs not sort of bothered about what kind of jobs because obviously, as I've put in there as well, Amazon also received £12 million in support when it opened its warehouse in Swansea during the time of Carwin Jobs, I believe it was. And it's made people's lives worse. Yeah, that's what I mean. It's creating jobs, but it doesn't really matter what kinds of jobs you're creating. And we have this sort of repeating pattern of courting foreign companies who come in and open a big factory to a lot of fanfare

for a couple of years and then they slowly start to, once they find a better option elsewhere, they start to withdraw, which is what we saw with Aston Martin. They've received the 19 million grants and stuff for a factory that opened in 2019. And then earlier this year, they announced they were cutting 200 jobs. So it's like, did the investment really pay off the actual people that this stuff affects? It's debatable. It's gambling. It's gambling. And it's also the same thing that we always talk about on the show happening in Illinois

or Indiana or any other post-industrial landscape. It's just this sort of inevitable wave of disappointment. You promise these things to people who are desperate for one reason or another. And you get a factory that is open for a while and then just isn't. Yeah. And was it like Lordstown? You guys did an episode on that. And it just really made me think of this Ford factory, ironically enough or fittingly enough, an actual Ford factory in Bridgend, South Wales, closed recently. And they kind of desperately trying to fill that void that that company's left. I believe part of that was you actually got sort of a member of Plyde, who's normally our left wing party writing a letter to Elon Musk,

kind of begging him to open a factory up in Bridgend. This letter, man, it is the most fawning thing. It's just a thorough bootlicking. Yeah, it's kind of hot. I have the text in front of me that says, this is from Luke Fletcher. Dear Mr. Musk, I write to you today regarding the location of the new Tesla factory in the United Kingdom and the potential that it could be located at the old Ford factory in Bridgend, Wales. When Ford shut down its operation in Bridgend, 1700 jobs were lost, our community was devastated and the impact was felt across the supply chain throughout the south of Wales.

Again, the only solution is let's bring in another more memeable, crazier version of Ford that where there's like very little safety oversight. This will never happen again. We just we have to keep relying on these people because it will always work. It's probably a pretty good site for like an old car factory. It's probably a pretty good site for a new car factory. But like going about it in this sort of like fan-ish way really sort of betrays something of the desperation at work here, I think. And there is desperation because there are jobs that have been lost and Wales is the poorest country in the Union. It's just, again, it's about when you're creating jobs.

What kind of jobs are you creating? Who's going to be responsible for the people that live in the constituency that you're kind of, because he talks about sort of, he can testify to the committed work ethic of the community that he represents. And there's almost a weird like salesman like thing of it. Like I've got good people that you can feed into your factory. It's just... I promise they will unionise. Well, yeah, well, that's the other thing. And then you've got on the sort of, I mean, it's obviously a different party in Welsh Labour, but you have this sort of this tension between trying to court these companies to attract them to Wales to

create sort of questionable jobs with questionable conditions. But then you have this ongoing fight in the Senate over NHS pay. And you have, you know, our Health Minister, Lee Ned Morgan, actually like literally trotting out the magic money tree line from Theresa May to talk about. Yeah. And sort of saying that, you know, increasing pay for NHS is, you know, it's about the language of priorities. You know, what would you cut? And, you know, fair enough, we don't have the same kind of magic money machine as the UK government does at its disposal. But it is, it grates, doesn't it? Because, you know, at the same time they're saying things like that, they're also, you know, giving out these

sort of very lucrative grants to court the likes of Aston Martin. And, you know, if Mr Musk liked Luke Fletcher's letter, then potentially him as well, if you see what I mean. Yeah. It's like, I feel like we're all, we're kind of heading towards a strategy where ultimately it's going to be very much can Ryan Reynolds like save Wales? Yeah, that's the sad thing. It's like, that's why you're like, yeah, or like how, like, can, can, can, can you like, you rely on this on these like, sort of like, you know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be surprised. I wouldn't, I wouldn't be surprised if like, we kind of see a renaissance of like, with like, kind of really coursing like tech guys again, you know, and just like that sort of being

a that that sort of being like a feasible, like blueprint for like investment and something like stuff like that, especially with like things like blockchain technology and everything. And again, it's very much like, it speaks to like the thing that we've been speaking about forever the episode, which is just this kind of real sad sense of like desperation when confronted with like, like a political apparatus, which is both like so stimmy that it can't really do anything, but also doesn't really have any willingness to do it. And it's just like, it is like really sad also to hear that like, Welsh Labour are kind of like using effectively like Rachel Reeves lines as a way of sort of like saying that, you know, don't expect things to get better.

I mean, not even Rachel Reeves lines literally Theresa May lines. And that's the heart breaking thing here is that like, God, sorry. Yeah, that's the heart breaking thing. It's just that you can have you can't have it both ways, you can't be considered the sort of the most successful Labour Party in the UK and the most radical and you know, have the likes of John McDonnell praising you and stuff, and also be stood in the Senate telling NHS workers that they're not doing serious politics by asking for more money to help with recruitment. Just stood knee deep in a big lake of clear red piss and that's right. So, noting that we're sort of coming to the end of time, I want to say,

Becca, thank you so much for coming and sharing all of your knowledge of this today. It has been a blast. Oh, thank you. Thanks. It's been nice. Nice to be here. Thank you. And Riley has learned how to pronounce Clyde Comrie. I sure have. I was really impressed that you managed to mispronounce Bridgend, which, which I didn't think you'd have trouble with because you kept saying Bridgend, like in it. This is because I'm Canadian. I'm just pronouncing Bridgend. I had the same problems with pronouncing various English stuff. So I'm, I'm, I'm putting, I'm hitting the big button on my desk that says Canadian. Yeah, sorry, don't mean to shame you then. No, that's fine. That's all right. Also, I want to say to everybody out listening. Thank you again

for listening. And don't forget, we have a Patreon. It's $5 a month. You get a second episode every week. And this week, our bonus episode is going to feature us talking to Joey Durso from The Athletic talking about how various interesting, let's say, cryptocurrencies sort of made their way into the world of football. So that is going to be very interesting. Do make sure to check that out. Otherwise, we will see you in a few days. Bye, everyone. Bye. Bye.