TRIGGERnometry - Civil Servants Triggered by British Flag & Is Trump Getting Impeached - Off The Fence

Episode Date: August 28, 2026

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Hello, everybody and welcome back to our weekly show, breaking down the news with, of course, Francis Foster, Winston Marshall and Tom Slater, editor of Spiked. Welcome back, guys. Great to have everybody back. I didn't say welcome back to a name because we do have a new name, but I thought we just, you know, we got a lot of good feedback on names last week. There was some, there was a full range all the way from, you know, just nice and encouraging all the way through to outright hateful.

and I liked all of them. So we had like the awesome, awesome that was nice. The reality roundtable, nice and neutral, pretty good. Then sort of moving into the expendables, which I thought was interesting. And of course, my personal favorite, the centrist containment cuck circle jerk, the C. It's got rig to it, is it?

That is, of course, from Twitter, if you hadn't guessed. So but after much deliberation we have come up with the name which is of course off the fence So welcome everybody to off the fence off the fence Off the fence starring Winston Marshall I feel like Name in life featuring featuring Winston Marshall Indeed well look we've got lots to cover this week a lot has been going on in the news I just want to give everybody a brief rundown of what we'll talk about so first of all civil servants in Britain are triggered by the England and now Britain, British flag.

We'll talk about Trump, America, renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America and are the Republicans on course to get crushed in the midterms. We'll talk about Cambridge, that Auguste institution that continues its media self-destruction, we'll talk about various aspects of that. And, of course, touch on our interview with Nathan Koffner.

And we'll talk about social media, child safety, and in the wake of the fact that Meta, the owner of Facebook, has just agreed to settle for $18 billion for harm done to children on their platform. So let's start with the civil servant story. Stephen Edgington, who's an independent journalist and former guest on our show, he broke a story with leaked meeting audio, I think, but he published it as an article, which basically showed that when people around the country were putting up England and British flags, the Union Jacks, on Lampos, the civil servants had a safe space meeting in which they were given 11 different mental health support services, which they could refer themselves to. They basically had a meeting in which they all confessed to being extremely triggered by these flags.

What do we think? It sounds like a story that we made up to have something to talk about. It ticks all of the boxes. It's like the full woke 2020 bingo card. They actually used the phrase triggering in this meeting themselves. That's not something that Stephen Edginton has put on them. They did refer to it as a safe space. And they did offer no less than 11 forms of mental health support

to various people who work at the home office who would have been so terribly mentally injured by the presence of the flag of the nation in which they live that they would need to avail themselves of those services. It's become a bit of a cliche, I suppose, to suggest that there's a certain type of person who runs the country who's on the liberal left, who lives in certain parts of North London, are so repelled by the England flag that kind of per Orwell, they'd rather rip it down than sing the national anthem. But this is exactly what we've got here. And it's that weird mix of it being so painfully, sort of unpatriotic, also pathetic, which I suppose makes this particular

sing but yet you couldn't have asked for a better story to kick off this week's discussion if we'd have asked chat GPT to make it up with one of the initial response well tom i actually live in north london and quite proudly have across of st george flying above my home and i have people neighbors quietly coming up to me going well done with the flag my postman they absolutely love it i think people actually are quite proud when they say i certainly am i think most people are when i'm when i see the cross of George, my heart flutters a little bit. It fills me with genuine pride and love of my country because I love my country. So when this story came up, I was actually myself extremely triggered. Because why are we being governed? Why are these people in the civil service in the home office who,

when they see the flag, they should have the same reaction as me. Why are they having this kind of reaction? And I think to, I was trying to think about what from their point of view, yeah, right? So they presumably think this is some sort of continuation of, let's say, far right stuff that may have happened decades ago and they think it's the same sort of thing that's motivating it. I don't think that's what it is. I think the Raise the Colors movement that was started, I think his name is Ryan Bridges, and it started last year, 2025, it was a reaction, it's not a continuation of what happened decades ago. It's a reaction to years of the Palestine flag, the BLM flag, the trans flag, all of these other flags except our flags being everywhere and us being exhausted by it and us actually

wanting to say and by us i mean non-progressives because those are the people who are putting it up and those those who are actually patriotic and actually love their country putting up their flag and it should be a unifying one we should be governed by people who see the flag and it fills them with joy when they see it painted on roundabouts so they see it on lamp post up and down the country they should feel pride i i i i i should be governed by people That's who I want to be governed. It's a very simple test for me. I think, do you know, number one, was anybody surprised by this article, as Tom rightly pointed out?

Yes, I was. Actually, I was surprised because there's a, we have this idea that's as Tom alluded to, almost like a caricature of the sorts of people that work in the civil service. But this is fucking outrageous. I mean, it's genuinely outrageous. Let's be honest. These are people to run our country that are triggered by its flag. What the fuck?

Yeah. Look, when you apply logic to it, well, of course, absolutely. But having met some of these people in the person, and particularly some of these people who would then go and work in the comedy industry and do dreadful five-minute sets night after night where they were complained, where they complained and bleated about being oppressed and how London was the most racist city in the world, despite the fact that they lived in Maidavail in a flat that their dad bought for them.

But I think what's really interesting about this is how the England flag is seen. During a World Cup or Euro, all of those gymps, I guarantee you, would wear like an England shirt or go and watch the England football team. But the moment football stops becoming relevant, that's when they all start pretending

to get offended and triggered by a flag. And they've got no problem, by the way, with flags that are actually quite divisive. Like, if you showed them a flag, I don't know, if it was probably the ISIS flag, they'd be like, why not? Let's stick it up in the category. What's wrong with that?

Exciting the law. Stop in the baddina. Come on. This is it. We're pro-Pal-Palistine. There's been an interesting concept creep as well, because look, I think I remember when early in the days trigonometry Francis mentioning that there was a national front pub down the road from him

when he was growing up and he grew I remember him repeatedly saying they would fly the England flag there was a time when the England flag specifically was associated with far right violence but now the Union Jack which was supposed to be a very uniting flag uniting the four countries of the of the United Kingdom etc now that's also the far like I that that is an amazing transformation that seems to have literally happened in the last couple of years. I do wonder how much this is sort of class coded as well because whilst it's clear that there's like a certain layer of society have always had strange kind of connections about any expression of patriotism outside of the 90 minute patriotism that as Francis says remains just about respect to. Yeah. I think it's also about who they assume are putting them up and what they assume their motives to be. I mean if you had one of these home office a few, officials driving past a stately home or a nice four million pound mansion in the countryside. It happens to have a couple of flagpoles up with across St George and a union flag.

They might chortles to themselves a little bit. They might condescend under their breath for a second. But the supposed panic and fear that these home office workers claim to feel, the idea that they were terrified, according to Stephen's story, of bringing a mixed-race child into the world, that they felt that they were imperiled whenever they saw the flag. That's precisely because they assumed. the people putting them up are white working class racists. I mean, whenever you think about

the arguments, the kind of cultural war over patriotism, over migration, the implied villain of the piece is always white van man, the sort of person who, let's be frank, actually has access to the cherry pickers and the ladders in order to put these things up. And I think that's a big part of it. You know, it's fear and loving of the masses, fear and loving of the working class, the white working class in particular, which is communicated through this supposed allergy to patriots. I think. There's things that like just completely bound up with each other now. Yeah. And I think it goes, it's self-perpetuate. So that's their reaction. And then that encourages in turn others who want to put up their flag. It gives them more motivation to do so.

Because if they see that's the reaction from our ruling elites or from the progressives, they're like, well, actually, I, even more I want to put up my flag, even more I want to, you know, show my pride and patriotism. And I also just think it speaks to a certain worldview. where these people are, let's be frank, utterly delusional. If you think that you see an England flag and someone's flying it and then your mixed race child is going to get beaten up, it's quite literally a fantasy and the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of places in this country.

And the only region you'd get beaten up round here is because somebody wants to steal your phone, not because they hate your race. Yeah. Well, and it's interesting. we talk about people being delusional etc but as some other stories this week have shown these people aren't just this isn't just a bunch of oversensitive snowflakes having a safe space meeting somewhere in the bowels of the home office or whatever of the department for work and pensions birmingham birmingham city council is now followed oxfordshire county council in seeking an

injunction from the high court to ban activists putting up flags and according to some reports i haven't been able to verify this potentially if this is granted the people who are putting up the flags could be jailed for up to two years so this my point being this isn't just some woke millennial civil servants you know having a cry somewhere this is people who are running not just the country but running major cities in the country yeah exactly they dress it up in the language of health and safety of course that that was their only concern that's the only reason they've looked to pursue this high court injunction and yet you read between the lines or even if you just read to the third or fourth line of the press release it's quite clear that our

offering kind of community cohesion is brought into it which I think is such a fascinating point because of if you are supposed to believe as many of these people claim to in a multicultural society you need something that you're going to share you need something that you're going to rally under presumably and yet even the flag of the nation in which all of us live if that's verboten then what do you possibly have to sort of unite around and the other thing this sort points to the as Winston was talking about where the operation race the colors movement came from it started in the south of Birmingham as far as we can tell and it was in response depending on which report you read to two things one of which was the library in Birmingham being

lit up in the colors of the Pakistani flag to celebrate Pakistan independence day. And the other one being in not too far away in rugby, that crazy story of the schoolgirl going to school in a Union Jack dress for a culture day and essentially being sent home because that's not what they meant when they said they wanted students to celebrate their culture. So there in aspect you have the kind of asymmetric multiculturalism that Eric Kaufman and others have discussed. There you have the sense in which all other national symbols are absolutely fine, even ones like the Palestine flag, which is genuinely divisive in this country at the moment for obvious reasons. And yet the symbols that could actually be a point of unity, the ones that we all

share, those are the ones that deemps that deemetric multiculturalism. And also, yeah, that it's so clear where this has come from. And it's not this sort of, you know, the national front are coming back. This is marking territory. This is trying to intimidate people. I think it's actually quite a kind of quiet, almost quite resigned, muted form of protest. And the fact that even that's not allowed, I think it's like storing up even more problems with the future if you're genuinely concerned about quote community cohesion there's an amping up from what happened in oxford just to be precise here which is that at oxford they said it was health and safety it was you know safety on the highway they didn't want the flags somehow sort of affecting

lorries or something like that but this time it's explicit there's an injunction against the founders of raise the colours yeah so that's the ryan bridge uh and that group of people there's six or seven of them have been specifically called out so now they're unapologetically calling it what it is You know, by that, I mean, they're unapologetically saying it's about that specific movement. It's about the England flags. It's about the Union flags. And it's worth also noting Birmingham is a minority white British city now. It's our second biggest city.

And I think that's a component of it. You know, the conversation about being colonized, you remember Sir Jim Ratliff saying we've been colonized and that being a huge sort of Thoreau story. At Birmingham, actually, you get a sense here that this, there's a side to the flags going up being like, we're still English. Now, I'm with Tom, that the England flag should be unifying for everyone who lives in England and is English and a citizen of England. And certainly the British flag should be. Certainly the Union flag should be that. So that they're offended by it in our second largest city, there's a darker side to it as well. it's a sense of a collision of civilizations happening within our country a little bit. Well, it's a logical conclusion of that asymmetric multiculturalism that Tom talks about,

which is that I am, you guys know I've been talking about this for a long time, which is if you, the reason multicultural, multiculturalism is a problem. And most people don't understand this because they don't understand what these words mean. When they hear multiculturalism, they think people of different races live. living in one place. That's what they hear, right? That's not multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is actually what we have at the moment, which is every culture is deemed as being valuable, except the host culture in which these cultures exist. Instead of what we should have, which is monoculturalism, which says you can retain aspects of your culture as long as they're compatible with the host culture,

but your primary culture and the purpose of you being here and what you should teach your children, is to integrate into the host culture first and foremost. And then if you want to go back to Pakistan twice a year, or if you want to go back to Russia or Ukraine or wherever, and continue to speak your language with some of your relatives, et cetera, that's okay, as long as you're fully integrated and speak the language and adopt the values and support the nation, et cetera, right? But that's not what we have.

What we have is effectively a culture of suppressing the host culture, saying the host culture either doesn't exist and also is evil, probably. And at the same time, the celebration of others, i.e., celebrating Pakistan Independence Day. Go ahead, Francis. No, so I actually think they've got a point, right, when they say the England flag is deeply divisive. To them it is. To them, it actually is deeply divisive. They hate this country.

They don't like what it represents. They think that this country is an evil colonialist, white, supremacist nation which use its empire to go around the world to dominate their countries to drain resources is essentially a glorified parasite and now what they want to do is they want to decolonize so to them it's completely fair in some ways that they see this as divisive now i don't agree with that worldview, but the question is, is what are you going to do when it's so deeply embedded with these people who run our councils? I really have no idea. And what it speaks to is a rot which lies at the heart of our society, where you have people in our culture, in our society,

who openly despise and hate the country and everything it stands for. That's what we're really talking about here. That's the actual of the culture. conversation. I think you're right. I think it's actually worse. It's, it's, they don't, there's no attempt. So last week, Zika Chowdhry's the Birmingham city, uh, Lord Mayor, made a statement about how Kashmir will be ours again. He's not referring, of course, to the British Empire. He means, well, I'm up for that if that's what he meant. Yeah, exactly. bring back the empire they are patriotic pakistani so they're not even trying to play down where they've come from they are they are still pakistani's culturally that's a really important point also if you

look at another place where the flag war's really kicked off in a big way it's also tower hamlets in in East London, which everyone seems to have forgotten now, because people forget that Birmingham's our second city. There's a remarkable lack of interest amongst Westminster journalists about what's going on there politically, how the place has changed, so on and so forth. I mean, have you been to Birmingham from? Oh yeah, actually quite a few times. I've got a big soft spot for Birmingham, incidentally. So it's, and I'm trying to work on a project out there because I think it's fascinating politically. So that wasn't the gotcha you thought it would be, Francis. But Tara Hamlet's run, where I have been slightly more frequently, it's been run by,

for all intents and purposes, a Bangladeshi sectarian party since 2022. Look for Rahman, who used to be in the Labour Party, you got kicked out because of all manner of allegations, which you won't go into, sets up this party called Aspire at various elections. It was criticised because all of its candidates were Bangladeshi. There was revelations last year that some of its councillors were actually standing for election in Bangladesh

under the hilariously named BNP party over there. So the extent of which this is, is, and that was also a place in which the flag wars kicked off in a big way, because surprise, surprise, after October the 7th, Palestine flags everywhere. I remember walking through much of Tower Hamlets and every single lamp post, very high up in the air, you saw a Palestine flag. It did feel a bit like you've been occupied to a certain extent. And yet when Operation Race the Colors begins, of course, there was a really concerted effort to take those flags down in a way that there wasn't when the Palestine flags went up. Actually, the council in

Tower Hamlets fought a pretty hard battle against various groups who were trying to bring legal advice to get and to take the Palestine flags down, as soon as it when it came to the England flags, it was totally different. And one final interesting thing is that when, whether it was Tower Hamlets or Birmingham, what have you, when there were attempts to, when there was pushes to take down the Palestine flag, the hesitancy came precisely because they were worried that taking them down would harm community relations, whereas when it comes to putting up the England flag, that is the threat to community. So how we've got ourselves in this model is anyone's guess, but you see the seeds of it in a place like Birmingham, certainly in a place like Tower Hamlet.

All right, let's move on to our next story, which is a story about patriotism in a very different way, which is, of course, President Trump and the United States. I don't know if you saw yesterday the White House announced that Lake Ontario would be renamed to Lake America as part of the ongoing trade war with Canada. And it strikes me. I mean, there's a few different. different things going on here. But one thing that's probably worth highlighting is that partly due to the Iran war, but partly due to other things, President Trump's personal approval ratings are going down quite quickly. And more importantly, in the interim, the Democrats look set to win the House in the midterms, which are coming up in November. And the Republicans may just hold on to the Senate. But what this would mean,

Dean, if you could show us that there's the Kalshi have a great election hub, which you can see all this stuff. You can see Democrats have an 84% chance to control the House. And in President Trump's own words, if they were in the House, they will impeach him. I'm going to be impeached. They're going to impeach me. They have no idea why. I saw it today a congressman said on one of the shows, we're going to impeach President Trump.

We're going to impeach. Oh, really? Why? person was asking a neutral commentator for a change. I like neutral commentator. Oh, I see. You're going to peach him why. Well, I don't know. I don't know. You know what? Aside from the story, he's such a stand-up comedian. He does that thing that comedians do when they tell a joke and then walks away from the microphone for a bit, milks the reaction and then it comes back. But anyway, the other thing I wanted to say, and it's worth including in this discussion, is when we interviewed Ted Cruz,

Francis, when was it? Was it, it was earlier this year, wasn't it? Yeah, so we interviewed Ted Cruz and it would have been late March, early April. Right. At that point, he said if this was, and he was a big advocate of the war, big proponent of the war, he said if this war is still ongoing by the time of the midterms, we've really messed up here, basically. Well, if you look at the calcium odds for the war being wrapped up, even by January, it's third, it's, it's, it's, 30% and much more likely people are talking about middle than next year. That doesn't seem to be a way out and it's increasingly becoming very unpopular because of its

economic impact. So Winston, do we think the wheels are coming off the Trump bandwagon? Well, in May he said he didn't care about the midterms. So he's probably come on quite a journey in those months. And I know here on trigonometry, it's very pro-Iatoller and this has been a bit of Right, the tension between me and the boys when we're off screen. I'm always trying to argue, you know, the Iranian regime, you know, they're killing their people. You know, we've got to get rid of them.

And you guys are saying, no, no, no, hear him out. You know, there's two sides. So I know you're like this. What a grotesque misrepresent. Listen, how about, right, we actually argue the actual point. What Francis and I said from the beginning is Ayatollah, not a great guy. I think we said that in more explicit terms than that. But this war would be a disaster, which would trap America for a long time and would have terrible economic consequences.

And your answer to that, I'm going to quote you, was, well, the Ayatollah did talk a lot of shit. To which that is my first out laughing. Fair point. It's not a good reason to bomb the shit out of a massive country of 90 million people. Carry on with your grotesqueness representation, please. I still think the war is a just war, several attempts to kill Trump and various Americans, not just America, across the world. I still think that it's a legal war. For a while, I have conceded that it looks at best a stalemate. And now it doesn't seem clear to me the best way out of this. We have to paint. We have to paint

the picture a little bit more. So Scott Besson, the Treasury Straitry, has launched operation. It's called like economic choke or something like that. What's the name of it? I've forgotten. But they've identified 60 or 70 various assets and opponents across the world, and he's targeting them, this includes Chinese opponents. So it seems like another sort of attempt. And when I see that, I'm like, ooh, so I'd sort of have been hoping that the Americans know stuff that we don't know. Because of course, in a war, we don't know everything. So it would be foolish for the belligerents

to let the public know all of their potential and all the things they could do. So I had hoped off the back of Midnight Hammer, off the back of operation in Venezuela, that there's part of this American operation that we don't know. And they built my confidence up, given the success is there. but it seems now that the midterm game has won.

And one other positive you might argue against it is that there's the new Mecca Accord in the Middle East. So the Saudis, the Turks and the Pakistanis have now got their sort of version of NATO to check Iran. Now, at the surface of that, I was initially excited because that, you know, Iran is the circle of, it's the head of the snake. It's running the circle of fire. It's just not just in the Middle East that it's causing damage, but all these terrorist organizations all over the world. And the idea that these countries would, these nations would now organize around Iran and check Iran,

I was hopeful for, but the downside is, is there a new world order now where this Middle East NATO thing, it starts off about being a bit Iran, and it will turn about being against, could it be against a Western alliance of some sort? So what this might even be much worse than I had anticipated is what I'm trying to say. Do you know what you remind me of Winston? You remind me of a bloke whose missus is just caught in receiving a text message from another woman.

And he's like, what's this? And he's like, well, you know, this is a thing. We've got to look at the big picture here. It's not another small picture. There's other things going on. And look, let me just make something out. that I think is worth facilitating the rest of our discussion the the Francis and I were very on the fence ironically given the new name of the show about this conflict we were like let's wait

and see and try and understand it but when we were in the US in the spring we talked to a lot of people and the takeaway for us was structurally very simple Iran has every tool to leverage in this situation to make Trump and the United States as a country also suffer and it is not vulnerable to the things that the US can bring on the other side. It's not vulnerable to them killing members of the regime because they don't care because they have others and the others are even more extreme. Winston is sort of looking into the window at this point. I don't know why.

So that's so on the one hand, on the other hand, they have they are the ones that have the choke hold on the global economy. You got to understand for them. This is like the Soviet Union in 1941. We are up against an overwhelmingly powerful enemy and it's about survival. And we will throw men, economy, everything at it and we will sacrifice everything we have to to win. And they can hold out. The United States is operating on a completely different clock.

It's like that famous saying in the in the West you have all the watches in the east we have all the time. They can hold out for as long as they need to for Trump to lose. the midterms and then for the Republicans to lose the presidency, if they have to hold out for two years because they have the levers of control. And if the United States escalates militarily, they have other means of escalating too, which is they will attack U.S. allies in the region, destroy Saudi and UAE desalination plants, et cetera. And so the point that we came away with was that effectively kind of what you're saying is

that the asymmetrical nature of the levers of power in this situation favors a run in such a way, that there is only really one way out. And that way out is for Trump to take the L while pretending it's a W. And that is effectively why this war hasn't ended so far because they haven't found a way to do that. That's kind of the perspective that we came away with, which is why we've always been rather concerned about how this war would go. And by the way, in the meantime, the entire world is suffering, the economic, consequences. However, the Ayatollah did talk a lot of shit, which is the opposite side of

legend. There's been all kinds of arguments against the Iran war, the nuclear capability, kind of civilizational argument. I haven't quite heard articulate as well the kind of chat shit get banged argument, as the kids were saying here. Not to be up on, not to be up on Winston, which I fear I'm in danger of doing. But I think that was always the issue, wasn't there? There was so clearly a case to be made that the Islamic Republic, was a malign force, not just in its near abroad, but the world over, the way in which it's been targeting, people in the diaspora, the way in which it's been targeting people in Britain,

the way in which, you know, everything from the fatwa onwards, you could say that this was not just a country that was going down its own Islamist path. It had these kind of bigger, like, imperial designs on the world, and that needed to be checked at some point. The idea of it ever getting its hands on a nuclear weapon, given the apocalyptic ideology that at least the very top tier, of the kind of clerical regime they'd absolutely believe in. It's a horror story.

No, I just want to see. Just whether or not this conflict was going to actually deliver on those stated aims. I mean, there was a reason that even the neocons and the interventionists in the George W. Bush years and so on didn't go near this because it was always bound to make Iraq look like a tea party. Not least, and also pile on top of that, the fact that it's clear that because of the American weariness with foreign conflicts and so on, the hesitancy to kind of properly go war as it were rather than just kind of focusing on we've now flipped from an air war to kind of economic

pressure and economic sanctions meant that you were it just created a situation which was probably beneficial if not to the Iranian people and certainly the IRGC which is that they just have to survive this war to win it and they could emerge out of it as it seems to have been the case with the straight up or moose with that ability and proven track record of being able to menace the global economy menace their near neighbours just by the threat of being able to lob weaponry and missiles and what have you into the strait um so it's one of those things where this was always going to be hung around trump's neck there was always going to be the most significant thing you did over his two terms the question was whether or not it was an albatross or a medal at the moment it seems like it's more

to be an albatross certainly when you look at those midterm bombs and look at long term can i just make this one point winson because i think it's if we look at the long term for this conflict. The longer it goes on, the longer the straight of a mood, does the hokey-cocke-cocke, opens and it opens and it shuts, and it opens in its shuts,

the further we go down this path is the closer we get to a real economic catastrophe. This could be catastrophic to numerous economies, potentially, potentially devastating, taking years and years

and years to recover from. And the fact that we haven't seem to have had yet anybody proposing a solution or potential solution to actually solving this, I find utterly terrifying if I'm being honest. Because we look at the debts of our economies. The UK is 2.9 trillion. The US is 40 trillion. I mean, we are not healthy economies just by looking at our deficits. all we need is the slightest push towards the precipice and we're all going to be in desperate trouble. And my real concern is, is that the current crisis with Iran and the straitles will moves is the nudge that our economies need into going into freefall. Before pushing back, I'll just paint the picture of the things that are actually even worse still, which is that the Iranians... I thought you were pro the war, mate.

The Iranians are even, it looks like that they're going to be, the new regime will be more hardline, which I think you did predict. The visiers around the new, the sort of younger Geyer Ayatollah apparently are more hardline. And it's also the case that America's allies in the Middle East have lost confidence in America. So the Saudis, their bases were destroyed, the America bases in Saudi were destroyed. The Emirates had these deals with the Americans, and yet they still got, it didn't act as a defense having American alliance. In fact, it meant that they were subject of the bombings from Iran. But to you, the question's got to be, what do you do with an Iran, with a death cold Iran, with enriched uranium? Perfect.

I was going to bring this up. Perfect. I'm glad you bring this up. This is exactly the counter argument. Great. You actually have to come up with a good answer. And the situation before the war... For the reason that I'm happy to explain.

You don't actually. But can't, may I? The situation before the war was not tolerable. The terms of the JCPOA were only good for Iran. Iran was a menace and a threat to the world. And it was not acceptable to leave the situation as it was. We can't have Ayatollahs with nuclear weapons. Agreed.

The problem with your argument, Winston, is that this war makes it far, far more likely that the Ayatollahs will get nuclear weapons. And the deal that Trump or whoever replaces him, if that's how long this war goes, does, will actually be worse than the JCPOA. Necessarily so, because by that point America will have definitely lost the war. Well, the NOU is worse than the JCPOA. As far as I can say.

My point is that, well, exactly, you're making my point for me, except that the longer this war goes, the worse the deal will be, which is why I said Trump's only way out of this is to get a take an L and sell it as a W. And that's the only outcome. So you can't put this on us and say, well, you guys didn't support this war. So what would you have done about Iran's new? nuclear threat. Well, this war has only made that worse and more likely. So that's why, for example, I had not only no problem. I was delighted that the United States tried to take out Iran's nuclear facilities in the 12-day war, bomb the shed out of their nuclear installations all day, every day, twice a week, you know, twice, twice a day, whatever. I don't care. That's fine by me. The issue I have is, once you escalate it in the way that you have, we've actually now made it far more likely that the Iranians will develop nuclear weapons. So do I have a solution sitting here in the podcast studio to the Iran nuclear problem?

No, I don't. I don't think anybody does. The only argument is, was this war something that took us further away from that solution or closer to it? And I think my argument would be that it's actually taken us further away. It's made Iran's nuclear ambitions more real, more likely to be capitalized on. And Iran is more going to be, if you put yourself in the position of the Ayatollah, despite his alleged homosexuality, Winston, then what you might say is, what is the rationale for me now not to go for nuclear weapons? We were sort of playing footsie with nuclear material.

We weren't quite going for it. We were just enriching a little bit. We didn't put it into missiles. No, no, no, no. Well, you've just killed my dad. You've killed all my mates, right? You've shown that you will keep killing us. What's the solution to all of this from my Ayatollah perspective?

Well, my Ayatollah perspective is the only way for me to be safe is to do what North Korea did. There's a reason we're not bombing the shit out of North Korea. That's because they have nuclear weapons. There's a reason Ukraine was able to be invaded by Russia. It's because they didn't have nuclear weapons, which we made them give up, by the way. It's one of the things Bill Clinton is actually publicly conceded that forcing the Ukrainians to give up their nukes. one of the reasons Russia was able to invade. So if you're the Ayatollah, you are now way more determined and way more legitimized in the eyes of your own,

but also lots of people around the world who don't support this war to go for nukes. So you can't put that on the critics of the war because the war has not advanced the cause that you think it has. But I think it's perfectly reasonable to have a conversation about how to deal with that problem, which is. Of course, absolutely. I think you guys might be an exception in the anti-Iran war crowd in that you're prepared to have that conversation. A lot of people just say everything America does is wrong. They would not have supported it to be more specific. They would not have supported.

They don't support what happened in Venezuela, whereas you guys don't have a de facto position like that either America is bad or that war is necessarily bad because there are worse things in war. Agreed. Exactly. And that is something that definitely needs to be called up. The desire for America or just the West to lose this conflict is a really concerning tendency that you see more and more across society now. And it's one of those things where it's quite clear that when a country like Iran funds proxies, menaces its near abroad, has a outsized role in the continuing kind of destabilization of a country like Iraq or whatever, that's just Iran doing its thing. But when you've got the US or Israel or whoever actually trying to protect against their own interests or trying to deal with a theocratic Islamist threat that doesn't just kill its own people, but also as designs on the world, that's just American imperialism and something to be opposed to the hill. So there is that, of course, complete double standard.

And the willingness for Americans to be given a bloody nose, even at what consequence has been pretty striking. The thing that struck me about this whole conflict from the off, though, was that even if you're kind of like paid up supporter of like the American Empire, even if you think on balance, it's a better thing than not that it continues to be that hegemonic power. I mean, even on the most basic level, forget nuclear proliferation, but keeping the shipping lanes open, that was like the least controversial aspect of the American Empire. And it was always based not just on kind of sheer military might, but kind of implicit threat. There are limits to American power. It cannot, you know, just via sheer warfare, get certain miscreant countries into line, if you like.

The problem with this conflict, certainly the way it's panned out, is that it's demonstrated those limits, and it's also given a country like Iran that boot on the neck of global hydrocarbons in a way that it wouldn't have had previously. Because, again, the implicit threat has been sort of called out, and it hasn't worked. So there, of course, is the ridiculous sort of anti-Western, supposedly anti-imperious left opposition to any kind of conflict, it seems like, that might benefit the Western its interest. But even amongst those people, I think, are in, who would support you know America continuing to be the superpower riding high this is only weak in that position certainly in the way it's been prosecutors i mean and we also need to so i was just

going to say look america has a democracy every four years as an election if this drags on what's the next government going to do i mean if we have a democratic government what are they going to do i i can tell you right now i mean i wouldn't pretend to be an excellent to be an excellent on US politics, but I don't think that they're going to be as hard line as Trump has been. And the real worry is that they're going to capitulate and they're going to give the Iranians a very, very soft, a very, very favorable deal, which then incentivizes these types of countries to do these types of behaviors. It's a real worry. And even if we get somebody in, we get, for instance, somebody from the Republican Party winning the election. What's their

position going to be. Are they going to be a fundamentally anti-war, anti-interventionist party who are going to go, you know what? We don't want anything to do with this. It's nothing to do with us. Here, have it. And we're just going to go back and not get involved. And there's plenty of people who share that view, but in America, on the left and on the right. So this idea that this is a continuum that can, you know, that we can maintain. Unfortunately, it's simply not going to have. happen and it's really worrying the other part of this story just to bring it back to our home is that this week we had a cyber attack from Iran of a power facility and it didn't affect the grid but we have been attacked and our response as far as unless there's something happening behind the scenes that we

don't know about is that there hasn't been a response and I think zero response is also not acceptable. What we have in our capabilities, given our military assets or whatever it might be, it's not entirely clear to me, because obviously the government knows more than we know that it's not in the public domain. But to do nothing is also not an option as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, no, I agree. I think Tom made a very good point, which is you don't have to be anti-Western to be against this conflict. And in fact, I would ask, argue you know my view has always been the same packs americana is the best packs there's ever been it's wonderful i'd like it to continue i'm very pro america very pro west and because of that

very against this conflict because empires and america is an empire often achieve great success by conflict by using their force the the threats that you alluded to tom but they can also get into bad wars that cause them to go bankrupt that cause internal instability and the cause a weak was a weakening of the image abroad. And by the way, there's so many conflict you can be party to in the world all at once and losing at the same time. I mean, let's be honest, America is the chief backer of the Ukrainians. Ukraine is not winning that war, partly because the West failed to provide them the support they needed to be able to do that. So you've got two conflicts going on at the same time, both of which America, you might say,

is not winning, to put it gently. And on top of that, of course, you have China, which has its interests in Taiwan and elsewhere. And other countries around the world, which may be looking and going, well, this may be the time to challenge Western hegemony in our region, whatever region that may be. So from that perspective, I think you can be incredibly pro-Western

and pro-America and because of that oppose this conflict. But it's great that we had this discussion. Speaking of hating the West, Cambridge, that wonderful institution that's been rather in the news quite a bit lately, and perhaps we'll touch on our interview with Nathan Kofness who of course helped to expose Jason Arde who was formerly at Cambridge Cambridge has been in the news this week because they have

hired I let me just triple check correctly as yes there we go assistant research professor Farah Ahmed who used to be a member of his but Theria which is now been banned as a terrorist organization who now to be fair to her I will say this She did write all of this in 2002. So it was a very long time ago. And look, let's be honest, we were all a bit, if you don't believe in Holy War in the 20s, are you really?

You know, it's that famous Churchill saying, isn't it? But you have no heart, yes. You have no heart. I mean, if you don't, but she did say in 2002 in the Hizbert, it was a good line. It was a good line. I'm pleased with it. But anyway, she was basically a member of,

what is now a terrorist organization. To be fair to her, it was not at the time, but she did talk about the fact that basically Muslims need to study engineering so they can further the jihad and allow Islam to dominate. And they've just hired her. Do we know if she's really radically changed her views or is this just the new policy at Cambridge? Exactly. Maybe they hired her for that reason. The current evidence would suggest so, I mean, she claims that she no longer agrees with everything that his book to rear said, which is not the biggest reassurance, is it not least because in that particular pamphlet which she co-authored where a lot of these quotes have been drawn from,

from Andrew Gilligan's reporting in the spectator over recent weeks, that line about jihad is fascinating because basically says, and considering the fact that education is her field, that essentially the only reason to study something like engineering, or computer science is the furtherance of jihad and explicitly mentions weaponry so there's no you know even attempt to deflects and suggest what she's talking about here is an inner spiritual struggle this is the full fat militaristic jihad which at one point at least in time she absolutely endorsed given the fact that is but terrier is now a prescribed extremist group she couldn't

legally express support for these for that organization anyway at this point certainly wouldn't be advised to or well advised to but um the things that she's done since kind of holding conferences or being involved in projects at Cambridge would suggest at the very least there's some resonances with her old, slightly more Islamist adjacent self. There was a project she was involved with at Cambridge recently, which was promoting kind of school materials to 12 year olds, asking them to think about the Israel, Palestine question, described the hostages as prisoners of war, and encourage the kids in some of the kind of sample questions to think about the martyrdom of the children in Gaza,

would uh says a lot about where she's coming from shall we say um this whole story i mean we've taken to calling elite universities like woke madrasas i think Cambridge have taken that far too literally in this case certainly with the faculty of education uh i think we actually being a little bit too uh lenient on her here and by extension Cambridge because yes husband terrier has only was only prescribed a year or two ago it was still an is Islamist organization. It was still a jihadi organization 20 years ago when she was saying this stuff and she was a part of it. And Cambridge thought they can't have not seen that. I mean, Cambridge employed her. And by the way, she's in the same department as Jason Arde. So I mean,

think about that. You've got to Cambridge. You're mourning with Jason Arde way you're learning about I don't know what sort of woke nonsense. And then jihadi lessons in the afternoon. That's the really crazy thing that's going on here, that this is off the back of that, literally the same department. It's the Islamist Green Alliance, I guess. We're seeing it now deep in our universities. To be honest with you, it sounds a lot better than some of the schools I taught him, but let's not focus on that. Were you a teacher, Francis? But I think the fact that this was in the department of,

education makes this even more sinister. This is a department that trains teachers. Cambridge is the most prestigious place in the country to go and do your teaching qualification. And if you go to Cambridge and you get trained to be a teacher, you are seen as the best of the best. And then you look at these professors who are actually teaching the teachers who are going to teach our children. And then you look at these professors who are actually teaching the teachers who are going to teach our children. And then you look at our schools and you look at what is happening, then you think, well, no wonder we're in the situation that we're in when this is what we've produced, number one. And number two, here's an interesting little thought experiment to play. Imagine somebody rocked up at Cambridge as a professor looking a bit like me, sounding a bit like me, and then going, yeah, you know what, pro-reform everybody.

Let's talk about immigration. Let's talk about all of that good stuff. How long do you think I would last there? I give it about 12 and a half minutes. Mate, if you turned up at Cambridge looking and sounding the way you do, they'd be, oh, thank God the plumbers here. But you make a very good point, actually. And this is something that particularly since I became a father, and especially since I went to visit Catherine Burbill Singh's school, Michaela,

and had the opportunity to see that and also talk to her. really showed me and kind of got me to really see what the importance of the point Francis just made. People find education a very boring subject, but these are literally the people who are training the people who teach your children. Is it then a surprise that your children become, there's that super famous meme of, you know, people before and after different drugs, before and after alcohol, before and after heroin, and then the last one is college or university. And I think we obviously we joke about it because that's what we do. But the education system is absolutely riddled and rife with all of this crap.

And it needs to be stripped from it. There needs to be comprehensive reform. And by the way, you know, we need more people like Nathan Koffner coming out and exposing this stuff and exposing and Andrew Gilligan, who covered this story. This stuff has to be exposed. the attention has to be brought to it in order that there is the rationale and the motivation to deal with it. And should there ever be a government that is actually actively hostile to it, they need to come in and find a way to basically burn all the shit out from the entire education system. Because, you know, like I say, we joke and laugh and whatever.

But this is literally the children of everyone watching this being taught by people who actively hate everything about our society and want to destroy it. And that's why they want to teach engineering. And look, I'm going to tell you right now, as somebody who is trained in one of these institutions, I trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama. Now, when you handed in essays, I remember handing in an essay, but I've always been a wind up and I've always been a bit of a prick, surprise, surprise. And that we had to do an essay and about education. education systems or whatever else. And I handed in an essay on the case for grammar schools, right? They put a line through the paper with the and just put the word no.

Wow. Right? A line through the paper and the word no. Because and very, it's funny on one level, of course, it's hilarious. But on another level, what does that tell you? What that tells you is, They will not accept any type of thought, inquiry or argument that strays from their own ideology. And if you do do that, they're not going to engage with it. They're not going to push back. They're not going to say, well, how about this? How about that? You're going to get a literal pen through the paper and the word no.

And look at what their ideology is is also even more terrifying. because in the kind of combination of your sort of Jason Ardeh style, critical race theory and your Farah, Farah, Ahmed, Islamist, Jason, views on education, you see a view on education, which is completely antithetical to our entire tradition of education. I mean, one of these conferences that Ms. Ahmed was holding was about challenging science because it's colonial and because it is making claims to objectivity that might not be the case.

It's so fascinating that in the case. kind of Islamist politics as well as the woke politics you see this kind of shared complete flat out rejection of kind of pursuit of truth of knowledge for its own sake everything is just to the ends of either social justice or the caliphate presumably and how can you have that at the heart of institutions which are supposedly devoted to precisely those old liberal enlightenment values it just i don't see how those things are going to mix it's not even just that they reject certain political persuasions although they absolutely do but the whole edifice is something that they just don't accept and yet they're going along doing that you

know teaching the next generations of not just teachers but people are going to lead the country something that as you say we're only really at the beginning of getting to grips with i guess and trying to solve this problem sorry no no winston go for it and i'll make the i'll make a point at the end trying to solve this problem as constantin lays out to me is not so clear so got it all out try and get rid of it and i have actually been thinking about this because someone like Catherine Berbosing who runs her school in North London, she is actually hated by the teachers across the country. She's hated by the National Teachers Union.

She is enemy number one. And she's quite lonely, I think, in, you know, she's got people around her, but it's not like there are Michaela schools up and down the country. And the problem you've got, I think, Constantine, is that if you got all of these people out and they are actually the majority of teachers, you then have a situation where you don't have teachers and you've got an education system that you've got to continue maintaining.

So trying to devise a way in which those teachers are kept on board but deprogrammed somehow or shown the light or guided in a way that it's taken away from this anti-British, as you explored, in some cases, slightly pro-hismist. And by the way, pro-Isdomism, I mean, it's, you remember the Batley grammar school teacher who's still in hiding, the cartoon of Mohammeda up in Yorkshire. It's not actually that Islamism isn't in the schools. There's some suggestion it is. But to actually gut this all out and maintain an education system, it's not a clear, it's not a clear how we do that. I don't know if you've got ideas to that. but yeah i'm going to sound very russian in answering this uh but i mean the the way that the direction of societies has typically changed has very little to do with the broad mass of the people it's about infighting within the elite circles and ultimately within the education system the like within any system the overwhelming mass of people is rather bovine these are people who will go along with whatever

it is the herd is doing at the time so what we're talking about is who is in charge what their agenda is and what the explicit do's and don'ts and the implicit do's and don'ts of that society that structure that institution those that community is so if you change the overall setting and posture of an institution most of the people will fall in line and the ones that don't have to be the heads on spikes that you use as the example of every for everybody else if you want to teach jihadism in our university you get fired Simple, right? This is not compatible, as Tom was saying, with the Western liberal educational tradition.

By the way, we've got to start with what is education for? We've got to the point, I think, in the West, where we sort of think that education is about teaching science and maths and whatever. Education is about that. It's about teaching information. It's about teaching ways of thinking, et cetera. But it's also about passing down the cultural traditions of that society. That's what it's about. And unless education does that, then education will inevitably be taken people over by people who will teach the cultural traditions of a different society. And so these indigenous ways of knowing and critical race theory and whatever, that's not just people coming in and taking over, it's people filling a vacuum. When people step back and say, we're no longer going to teach the Western canon, we're not longer going to teach the Western liberal values, then of course other forms of thinking. and being will be taught instead. And so that's why I say you have to restructure the whole thing up.

But that doesn't mean you have to fire every single teacher who currently would respond in an anonymous survey saying, actually, I do support a bit of critical race theory. That's not how it works. The majority of people, as we have seen in the last 10 years, will go along with almost anything as long as the social incentive structure is for them to do that. And look, most people, if you actually ask, I mean, I include teachers in this. And teaching is a notoriously difficult. job. If you ask most teachers, even the very, very bright ones, what critical race theory is,

most of them wouldn't even be able to tell you or explain to you, because there's simply not enough time in the day to plan your lessons, teacher classes, mark the books, attend all the pointless meetings, do all the pointless paperwork, and then dive into critical race theory and what it is and the tenants of it. Yeah, but, no, but there's a point that I want to make it, which is really, which is really important. Just let you know, I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't, don't think we've spoken enough about the fact that this is Cambridge University. This isn't London South Bank University. This isn't, you know, whatever, Nottingham Trent or whatever, sorry, Dean, you went to Nottingham Trent. I'll produce,

and my apologies. But this isn't a university of mid-ranking, yeah, Dean's going to quit now. I can just hear him on the other end. No, no, he's not going to quit. He went to Nottingham Trent. This is the best job he's ever going to get, mate. Dean, you've got this job and you're fucking grateful for it, all right, mate. No. But the point is, is this is the premier academic institution of this country. When we were doing our A levels, we all dreamt about going to this university. This is the academic equivalent of playing in the Premier League.

Now, just imagine if you're a footballer and you're looking at the Premier League and it's completely corrupt, the matches don't mean anything. Everything's a farce and a sham. completely rotten from the inside. What does that say about you? What does that say about your career, your dreams, your aspirations? And what do you do in order to succeed? Do you stand out and sacrifice everything that you've worked for in order to essentially get ahead?

Or do you basically take a stand and sacrifice your career and everything you've worked for? I mean, what do you do? This is a tragedy. Yeah, I just think, as to your point about teachers not being able to spell out critical, race theory. I'm sure it's right. Most people can't spell out critical race theory who are woke, but they are still woke and they still have that worldview. And as for them sort of gutting them out, if you were to change, even not trying to sack everyone, but just try and change the curriculum and try and change how education is done in our country, I think there'd be a revolt. I think a lot

of teachers would protest that as they have done before. So that's why I just still. I don't I'm not convinced that it's as I mean we'll see what happens if if there can be any change from the top but I'm not convinced there'll be an easy process in no I don't I don't I don't think no I don't think anyone's saying it will be easy and by the way the answer to all of this is politics right let's be honest the answer to all of this is people being elected who actively a understand this problem and be opposed what's been happening and there are lots of people within academia who would be prepared to facilitate the changes that are necessary if there was the political will and the political cover to actually go ahead with this.

So it starts with, I mean, this ultimately is about politics. And unless we have a change, not just of government, because a lot of this was happening under the Tories, but a change of the worldview of the people who run the country from the very top down, this won't change. And that's why you have to have election results that deliver a sound majority and a climate. a mandate for this to be reformed.

Seeing as we've brought up the topic of what ideas are compatible with Western liberal ideas, I just thought I might do a little plug for my upcoming live event in London at the Emanuel Center, September 11th, Magid Nawaz and Raymond Ibrahim, friends of trigonometry, I think as much as my show, is Islam compatible with the West. Lads, I hope you'll join me.

I hope you'll see you there. And if you want tickets, it's Winston Marshall. Dot eventbright.co.uk. Excellent. Well, on that happy note, let's move on to our final story of the week, which is, of course, Meta, the owner of Facebook has... So I get away with that plug? You just did, mate. Meta has agreed to pay up to $18 billion to settle claims that its platforms have harmed children.

this of course is to do with a number of different claims against meta up to and including children who have committed suicide as a result of the of the content that they watched and there are really well there are many sides to the story but it is you know I don't even know why I said that there are so many sides to the story actually is a very complicated issue to talk about so let's get into it Tom what are your thoughts on this idea of social media companies companies now, Meta, I think, has admitted no fault, but you don't pay $18 billion if there's no fire to the smoke, right? So I think there's an acknowledgement that at least, I don't know about now, but at least in the past, there has been this Uber wild, wild west of social media, the move fast and break things, ideology of these companies where they really, I don't think understood the sorts of impact that their platforms would be having on the world, you know, down from little kids being affected by it through to civil war in the third world because people are getting ramped up over

different things. So what do we think about this? It's really complicated, as you say. I mean, the fact that META have admitted no fault is a bit like, you know, Prince Andrew paying all that money to Virginia Dufray out of court. Somebody claimed to have no met. It raises more questions and it answers to you. But it's a fascinating development. I suppose one of the things is that it's so clear that despite all the conversations, just by the by that we have in the UK, about trying to regulate big tech,

trying to change the behaviours of these enormous Silicon Valley giants, that really it comes down to American regulation and American litigation, which will affect how these platforms operate, not just in the US, but across the world, basically. That was always going to be, you know, the censorship controls got rolled back, these companies changed hands in America or when the Trump went back to the White House and it was clear and the message was sent to these companies that they needed to play ball on say censorship and roll that back otherwise they weren't necessarily going to be an as

hospitable a climate so it comes down as ever to what goes on in America I think the difficult thing with the whole social media what impact is it having on society the youth and what have you is that there are clear ways in which it has affected that everyone can see it in their lives, the way in which it's encouraged the kind of unsociability, screen time, just the way in which people in their own social media usage, let alone just talking about kids, regret the amount of time that they spend on it, attention spans, what have you. Where I think the ground is not actually as firm is the idea that it's having this drastic, dilaterious effect on mental health, for instance.

Because even if you look at a lot of the research that is supposedly there for that, it's quite small and kind of not particularly well measurable. There's a big issue with trying to demonstrate causation over correlation. You know, there are quite struggling. There are a lot of struggling teenagers, shall we say, out there who happen to use social media a lot. But that's not because the social media is the problem necessarily, even if it might add to it. So I do think we need to be a little bit careful about having a kind of moral panic about technology in the same way that we might have had about television or whatever in.

eras previously. But clearly it is having an impact if it didn't and it wouldn't be such a successful product. And in the same way that when something like the printing price came along, we all think about the positives now in terms of literacy and the spreading of the written word and whatever. But it was also genuinely destabilising in a lot of ways politically and otherwise. So I guess we're just starting to get to grits with this. The one thing I worry about slightly is that the assumption that social media is just single-handedly rotting everyone's brains. where I think there's probably a lot more Blaine to go around and it might not be quite as catastrophic

as some people are making out. I think it's very apt that you make the reference to the Andrew formerly known as Prince here because I think META have pulled an absolute blinder in this case. They, the reason they settled is because there was a whistleblower who revealed that they had a policy of don't ask, don't tell

when it came to harm done to children. And so they got done And this is really key, I think, for another sort of part of this story is this is a civil case, not a federal or criminal case. And so they've, that's important with regards to free speech in the First Amendment, which we can come to. But they have avoided what they metaphor could have cost them $1.4 trillion. And that the states making the case against them could have cost $200 billion. So they've settled for 17 billion, but actually it's only about 12 billion. The extra five billion comes if the states, and this is the genius of whoever is representing meta,

they have got it so that the states are now incentivized to go after TikTok, YouTube, and Snap to get a similar deal. And if they can get them, they'll get more money. Those are the companies who have to pay more money. And the new regulations on social media use for me. minors will be even harder than what meta have agreed to. But basically, the story is that meta have knowingly been creating, using addictive methods, knowing it was doing harm for children for years. And they're not that, that it's a light punishment, but it's worse than that.

If you read the meta statement that they put out, which I've, I've pinged over as an asset for us to read because it is kind of gross. but they've spun the whole thing to turn themselves into the good guy. So they do this open letter to TikTok and YouTube to join us, to join us in supporting teams. We are announcing an agreement. We have reached with a bipartisan group of 52 attorney generals across the states, territories and building our longstanding efforts to empower parents and support teens.

I mean, the whole thing, they've spun the whole thing to, so that they're the good guy. when they have very much been the villains in this story all along and it's a big deal about censorship and we have to talk about what's going on in Britain which is that not only for the online safety act which was also started by the way because of young girl called molly hoh howard who committed suicide and ended up being passed by the Tory government and then kisama added to it and banned social media use for under 16s but as with the case in Meta and here in Britain, what it actually means is that all of us, not just miners,

need some sort of digital ID, some sort of verification to use the internet, to use YouTube, to use all of these other social media platforms. YouTube, by the way, which is the number one search engine, not just the social media platform, but categorizes a social media platform. What that means is they, those companies now have the power if they want to show, individuals out so what we saw revealed in the Twitter files that slack channels of the government the American government the the White House approaching Twitter as it was called then saying can you can you push down hide this hunter but close down this Hunter Biden story it was everything we saw through COVID about censoring

individuals now we're all not just in Britain where we're already there the Americans that's exactly what's happening now so the America is the internet will no longer be a free place and maybe 10 years ago it would have been taking quite a lot of imagination think oh I'm not going to get banned or blocked from the internet but now after everything we've gone for over the last five years this is a serious a serious threat and a serious blow I think to American freedoms we also have to take and it's a great point you're making there Winston we also have to take into consideration, you know, the effect that this is having on kids. I mean, I remember when we

interviewed Jonathan Haidt, I think it was around a year ago. And he said, this is one of the greatest destruction, acts of destruction of human capital that we have ever seen. What is being done to attention spans? What is being done to focus? What is being done to children's ability to learn? Look, let's just ask very simply. We can even go around the four people here today. How many of us still read books on a regular basis. Oh, look, Winston, I know your house is basically one large book, but for the vast majority of people, I mean, that joke is only funny if you've ever

been to Winston's house. But for the vast majority, great to you, great of you to play to your typical size of audience, maybe, about 30 people. Yeah, exactly, mate. Listen, it's boutique, it's not small. Anyway. All right?

It's niche. Anyway. But my point is, we don't even read anymore, most of us. How many people, people used to read the classics as a way of enjoyment. I think that the amount of people who actually read the classics has shrunk hugely. You talk to university professors who say that kids, even in the most celebrated of institutions, I know they're all corrupted now and all cesspools or whatever else, but in places like Harvard, etc.

You give them a copy of the Odyssey and you ask them to read it cover to cover and they look at you like you're asking to do a pilgrimage to Mecca. I mean, they'd probably be up for that knowing them, but you know what I mean? Well, exactly. Can I just say just say a few words in defense of the idea of responsibility and parental responsibility in these situations. Look, there are all sorts of things that are bad for your children that exist. some of them are legal, some of them are illegal. If your 13-year-old is doing those things, it's kind of your job as a parent to protect them against it. Now, I appreciate this is new technology.

Parents haven't necessarily fully grasped a lot of what's going on. But nonetheless, I mean, I've talked about this a lot. My wife is a complete screen Nazi with our kids, and I imagine that will continue for a long time. And the reason is, it's been very clear for a long time, even if you're not a researcher or someone who's paid much attention, the mere fact that most of the Silicon Valley people don't let their children use tablets and smartphones, et cetera, until a certain age, would tell you something about what your job is

as a parent. So when we talk about, oh, you know, Mehta's been really evil, well, look, is McDonald's really evil in making food that people want to buy? If 13-year-olds become obese as a result of eating a cheeseburger every day, is that the fault of McDonald's? If we know, if McDonald's, if it's found that McDonald's were intentionally putting poisonous substances in their food, yes, it is evil. And that's what the equivalent is here with. But they're not poisonous substance. They're not poisonous, Winston. They are taste enhancing substances, right? You can't prove a direct link between the shit McDonald's put in the burgers and people having cancer. But if you, if you look objectively.

I think that's incorrect. I think, I think the reason why the meta, the reason why meta have settled is because they saw that it's going to be improved that what they were doing they did knowingly that it was detrimental and harmful to digital scientifically harmful to children so I think it is actually well we don't know that because they settled probably to confuse this line somewhat right so we don't know if they really truly believe that or if they just thought we're better off taking 18 billion as opposed to a hundred and and 80 billion down the line after lots of litigation. But that was the case brought against them by the States. I understand. What I'm saying is ultimately, protection of children is first and foremost the responsibility of the parents. And if you're giving your children a smartphone or a tablet and unsupervised internet access at the age of 12 or 13,

you're a fucking idiot with all respect. And it's your fault if anything happens to them at that point. It's your job as a parent to look after your kids and protect them from the overwhelmingly dangerous world in which we all live, in which there are lots and lots of harmful things that we can all engage in. And if you're a child, you have to be protected by that, from that, by your family first and foremost. As for meta, yes, of course, I think, you know, as Tom pointed out, it's new technology, new technology always has all these massive, unexpected, unpredictable side effects. And the social media companies do have to improve the way that they do this,

especially when it comes to children. But as you said yourself, Winston, there's a massive flip side to this, which is if you start regulating what children can do on the internet, necessarily you have to establish who is a child and who isn't. And that means we have to verify everyone's IDs, and then there's no anonymity on the internet ever again. And that's one thing which even if we park the social media issues, the sort of think of the children argument

can often just have a knock on impact for adults in general. I mean, we're in the process in this country of kind of cracking down more and more on vaping because of the idea that it's been particularly picked up by young people. But the net impact of that is then becoming more expensive, less available, ultimately probably banned for everyone, essentially.

And I think you're seeing that with social media, and it's much more pronounced where social media is concerned because of the fact that the way in which our ability to access these apps just overlap so perfectly over our ability to meaningfully exercise freedom of speech in the 21st century. And whilst I think it's understandable that there are so many anxieties around social media use,

I do kind of go back to that kind of blame the parents, not having kids of myself, it's very easy for me to do that. But in the same way, as you say, Constantine, that it's not the existence of McDonald's per se that is the problem. It's parents who would allow their children to eat it every single day. That seems to me a much more straightforward to regulate, show. we say young people's access to social media rather than either getting the government involved

or via litigation forcing meta to change tack. I just worry that this is going to become a kind of the beginning of just the increased regulation of social media, which I think as we've found already from what we've experienced in this country with the Online Safety Act doesn't really end well, even despite its stated intentions, I suppose. So I'm not even convinced that this is going to work for the kids because I don't entirely believe social media is the only problem. I actually think the smartphones are the problem. So if you don't have access to social media and you still have a smartphone, you'll end up on Candy Crush or some other thing that you'll just be glued to your phone

because the screen is addictive, having the stimulation. Everything you use on there is stimulant and designed to keep you on there. I actually think the problem is smartphones. So I would be more harsh and say that there should be some sort of regulation about selling smartphones to minors, just like we have, you can't buy alcohol or tobacco, certain other things. To your point about mothers and parents, rather, you know, having them having the responsibility. I actually have some sympathy for parents here, which is that life is hard, raising kids is hard, and you've got to work, and you've got to take your kids all over, to school, all over the place. And actually sometimes giving them an iPad or an iPhone to watch gives you a break. And I actually understand that the instinct to do that.

And maybe that should be overcome. But I'm sympathetic for how it's an easy solution. So let's say the kid's crying all night and you haven't stepped for ages. You need a break. Giving them an iPhone or an iPad actually sorts that out. So expecting the parents to not do that to change the culture around smartphones, I don't think it's going to happen organically. Well, hold on a second, but that's also true. Sorry, Francis, as the only parent here, let me just answer this, right?

That's true of everything. You could say, well, you've got a busy life. You've got bills to pay. You've got work to go to. You haven't got time to cook. Let's eat McDonald's every day. When I, you know, I had a neighbor in Uzbekistan where I grew up, who I later learned. in order to keep her baby sooth, she would chew poppy seeds and put it into like in the mix

it with the breast milk and basically heroin, giving the baby heroin to keep her calm. Parenting is always a trade-off between doing things that are convenient and doing things that are good. And so there are parents who, for example, will give their children a tablet to solve fun mass problems, right? I'm not against that. I'm not saying giving your children access to a screen-based device. makes you an evil person.

What I'm saying is there's an age appropriate thing, and then there's the unsupervised thing, and then there is what is it that they're actually doing on their thing. And your job as a parent is to monitor across all those three areas and to make sure that what you are doing to give yourself a break, by the way, look, I've got two children under four. I could do with a fucking break. I know exactly what you're talking about.

But the question is, are you doing something that is harm, to your child in order to make your life easier. And where you sit on that spectrum as a parent is up to you. I'm just saying if you give your children unsupervised internet access, unsupervised access to a smartphone, when they're young, you are irresponsible and you can't then blame the government. And then people come in and say, well, we need government regulation. Well, we've already talked about how dangerous that is because the unexpected

consequences, unpredictable side effects. of government regulation. Look at the online safety bill. He was touted as this sort of anti-nancing bill, but that's not remotely what it, what it became. The part of the problem here as well is there's a class component to this conversation that we haven't addressed. And you can see it in the way everybody here is talking about parents, but nobody has mentioned the word parent in that there is a significant portion of kids in this country who grew up in single parent households, many of whom that I've taught, and if you're a single parent mom and you've got three jobs on the go in order to keep a roof over

your heads and you've got kids with the best will in the world look you know you would want them sitting down you know maybe once they hit 10 11 years old cracking open a copy of Jane air and getting stuck in but the reality is that's not going to happen so what do you do with that generation of children who don't have a who don't have access to parents all of the time maybe just have one parent who for very good reasons aren't available, and they have unfettered access to a screen. I'm not pretending I know the answer, but they are far more of those kids in this country

than I am frankly I'm comfortable with, and I have seen the very real world effects in a classroom of those children who stare at screens day in, day out, out for hours at a day, because mum simply isn't around to be able to parent them all the time because she can't be. Well, just depressed you, haven't I? Anyway.

Depressed and class shamed as well. We are middle class snobs. Well, I am middle class knob looking down on single mothers, which actually is accurate. Anyway, gentlemen, great show this week. Absolutely fantastic. I can't wait for next week. If you've enjoyed this, watching this, listen to this.

Make sure to subscribe to all three channels. That's Trigonometry, the Winston Marshall. show and of course spiked uh like can i just say the francis foster show as well please oh for fuck sake anyone else got a plug go on subscribe to the constant just to remind us that pember 11th wait are you doing a debate on whether is compatible with the west on september 11th yes what what's wrong with that constant i don't know it just seems like a random random day just that plucked out of the air anyway i hope Everyone enjoys it and it's unavailable.

Gentlemen, we will see you next week at Off the Fence, as well as, of course, you watching and listening to home. Take care and we'll see you in a week's time.