TRIGGERnometry - Dominic Frisby: The Case for Less Government

Episode Date: April 5, 2020

Dominic Frisby is a comedian and author of Daylight Robbery: How Tax Shaped Our Past and Will Change Our Future. Support TRIGGERnometry: Paypal: https://bit.ly/2Tnz8yq https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@failinghuman) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. Constantin Kisson. And this is the show for you, if you want, honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest this week is a comedian, author and overall good egg. Dominic Frisbee, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you very much, Constantine. Thank you, Francis. Thank you. I love the way you paused after me as if you were considering whether to thank Francis or not. I tell you what the pause was because normally there's only one host. So I thought, thank you, Concent. Then I res. Ah, right. He's there as well.

was thought. I introduced you, you're a man of many skills, but one of the things is an author, and you are the author of a book that's doing very well right now, which is this book here, daylight robbery, which is all about tax. It is about tax. A riveting subject, which may be dry, but you have managed to make it interesting. And before you tell us all about that, just tell everybody who are you, how are you where you are, what has been your journey through life. Okay, and do I tell you or do I go straight down the camera? You tell us. Okay. So I have to, they don't matter, man. So I have a, I'm 50 years old, I'm a Londoner, I have quite an unusual background in that I started out, I went to drama school when I was, you know, after university. But the reason I went to drama school is I thought all the best writers started out as actors.

So I sort of deliberately went to drama school to almost train as a writer. And then for some bizarre reason, I was the best at radio in drama school. and I got a voiceover agent, like almost before I'd left drama school, and found myself straight away doing voiceovers. And voiceovers is a very nice life. It's quite well paid, and you're sort of treated like royalty wherever you go, and you're looked after, and you're not treated like muck in the same way if you're like a lowly comedian or a lowly actor or something like that.

And so I just sort of fell into doing voiceovers. And then in the late 90s, I'd written this song called The Upper Class Rap, which was the idea was it was going to be a novelty song that I want to do. was a release for Christmas and I phoned up this friend of mine who I knew was a music agent to old university friend and he said to me oh no he he represented the scissors sisters do you remember the scissors sisters and he's I can't be bothered with this but go and try it my brother's club and his brother was Malcolm Hardy and yeah and so um on and I remember it was a Sunday evening in 1997 and they used to do the that they'd have the open spots and they'd have two acts in the

first half then they had it'll have the open spots and the audience would always you know, be horrible to the open spots. But if you did well, you got a paid booking. And the guy before me was a guy called Nige, who was not Nige. Oh, fuck, I've got. Hovis Presley was his name. Hovus Presley is sadly no longer with us. But he was brilliant and he was so funny. And he used to do these sort of lyrical Lancastrian poems in this sort of lyrical Lancastrian voice. And the reason I said Nige is one of his lines was, my daughter. my mate's got a dog called Nigel

talk about giving a dog a bad name. So I always remember Nigel. Anyway, and they just were not having him in South East London and they were throwing things at him. But because he was very good and he knew what he was doing, he was determined, he just carried on and on and on. And by the time he'd finished, I mean, it was the first time, obviously,

I was ever performing, but I'd never seen a room in such total mayhem. And Malcolm just came on and said, right, our next actor is mate, me brothers, here he is, could be shit. this is his first time on stage and just introduced me on stage like that. And I borrowed my flatmate's pinstriped suit and I was going, hello, hello, I'm the upper class rapper and all this.

And the audience just went. They just started. It was like even more chaos than it was when Nige had been on. But it was a rap. So they played the music and I did the rap. And I had no, so I couldn't get involved in any banter because it was just an act. So I just did the act. And they just eventually just shut up and listened to it and found it very funny.

and Malcolm just honoured his promise and gave me a paid gig the following Friday and that went very well so I got another paid gig and I remember they said I think it's a little early to give you a paid 20 given that it's only your second gig but we will give you a paid 10

and they both went well and they just put Jane then phoned up some other comedy clubs around London East Dulwich Tavern and comedy CAF and a couple of others and said this guy's really fun and should give him to think and suddenly I was a stand-up comedian

I'll have times have changed There's young comedians listening to this now going. I've been a comedian for three years. I still haven't got a paper. Yeah, I know. There's no justice. But we were just like they were quite old school up the creek. And there were other clubs that would make you jump through the hoops like they do now.

But up the creek in those days were they honoured their promise. And that was. And yes, so I found myself as a comedian. And then in the right about the mid-noughties, a combination of whatever, I'd made a bit of money and I wanted to invest it. sensibly. And I met a couple of people who fund managers and so on. And I just didn't like them. It's something you know when you just don't like. And instinctively, they want to take their percentages. And I just instinctively didn't like them. And you start reading on the internet. Back then,

I was reading all about gold. And you think gold is just, you know, jewelry or whatever it is. But of course, gold until the 20th century was always money. And so it's a very political investment. And I became convinced that gold was a good investment for one thing and another. And there were these really interesting people talking about gold. And a bit like what you guys have done, I was thinking, how do I talk to these people? I don't have to pay them 200 pounds an hour or whatever their fee is to get investment advice.

But I'd really like to meet these people. So I actually started a podcast as a means to meet these people and talk to them. As you probably discovered, when you have a, do an interview with something, it's like that, it's a heightened conversation. So in one interview, you get to know somebody, quicker than you would if you just met them for a cup of coffee.

Not the way we'd dominate. But anyway, I started this podcast and I was interviewing all these, you know, people talking about gold and learning about the history of money and so on. And one of the people I interviewed was a lady called Merrin Somerset Webb, who was the managing editor of Money Week at the time. Oh, we spoke with her in Edinburgh together, didn't we? Yeah. We did her show in Edinburgh.

We since become great friends. But Mary said, oh, we need people like you to come and write for us. And by that, they meant people who can talk about finance without using finance. financial jargon and put it in a language that, you know, isn't alienating, but it's interesting to ordinary people. So suddenly I found myself with a column for Money Week. And then from there, this other guy called Ross Ashcroft got me to write this film for him called Four Horseman, which became a big hit. And then so suddenly I was like a financial writer as well as being a comedian. And then I've written now three books all about finance. I wrote the first book about

Bitcoin way back when in 2014. And I've always been very interested in the impact of our system. of money on the way society works. And, you know, people try and explain, how is it that governments are so big in our lives? How is it that government is 40, 50% of GDP? Why is, you know, why is government everywhere? And I used to, it was because once upon a time, gold used to be money.

And, you know, gold put a discipline on government. So they could only spend as much money as they had gold. It's a bit more complicated than that. And so that put a sort of restriction on how big government could grow. But of course, in the First World War to pay for the First World War, the British American and the British German and French governments took their countries off the gold standard in order to print the money to pay for the war. If they'd stayed on the gold standard, the war couldn't have gone on for as long as it did.

But they printed money. And we went into a system of what's called fiat money, where governments effectively issue money. And that has enabled governments to just grow and grow and grow. So this is the reason we have such large national debts and we're able to run such large deficits. Basically, it's the system of money. It's inherent.

It's what's called debt-based fiat money. That's really interesting. So if we were still on a gold standard, we would have to live within our means. Much more, yeah. Wow. Much more. And that includes governments.

And all they go bankrupt. But because they have control on money. Anyway, the bond market, it's a bit more complicated than, but basically. And so this was my big sort of theory. And then in about 2015, I sort of developed the thing. I was thinking, no, it's not just money. It's tax as well. taxes and so I started reading about tax and became slightly obsessed with it and did a show in

Edinburgh called Let's Talk About Tax 2016 and it went very well and I got my little laurel for selling it out and did you you got a laurel presumably for your I I'm I don't know what's the seller percentage that you have I don't know is it like 93% or something I don't know yeah anyway I'm not sure okay it's funny it's funny to me because you were very enthusiastic about my show being nominated for best newcomer sure it would be um and I'm not that I told Simon Evans, our mutual friend about this, and he went nominated. You're lucky you didn't get assassinated. So I'm not sure I was going to get any kind of laurels for anything.

Well, no, but I think the laurel is not based on whether you've got the right or wrong opinion. I think it's based on... I think everything in Edinburgh is based on whether you've got the right. Anyway. Oh, okay. But Simon's very terribly realistic about those kind of things. But actually, in terms of the money thing, one of the curious things about you is you're someone who's been very wealthy and you've also gone bankrupt or certainly lost

a lot of you. I'm not gone bankrupt. Sorry, I don't mean to smear you. Yeah, no, I've never gone bankrupt. I've made a lot of money twice and I've lost a lot of money twice. How did that happen? Well, I don't really want to talk about that. Basically, I made a lot of money in gold and gold shares. Let's not talk about it then. Well, it all collapsed in 2013. Mining

completely collapsed and so, you know, all the money I've made, I effectively gave back. And then I was very early into Bitcoin and so you know, that was an extraordinary opportunity, but unfortunately I got hacked. And so I had my Bitcoin stolen way, way back way. So you'd be like a super millionaire.

Yeah. By now. He could be fun of thing this podcast right now. Like I'm sort of, I come to terms of it now, but in 2016, 2017, when Bitcoin went to $20,000, I was like, every night, I was having sleep this night. It's going. Oh my God. You could like never have to work again.

Yeah. Retired. Yeah. Like, there's one thing I've always wanted to do. I've got this West End musical that I want to put on. And in order to put it on, I need like. probably five million pounds and and and you know so a lot of money and the but I could have just like I'm doing that fuck really yeah and without without it being an issue now I think you know that

this story with Bitcoin I bought half a Bitcoin yeah 200 pounds and then when it went up to 400 pounds I was like oh look I've doubled my money and I sold it half a Bitcoin now that's what like six grand? Well, actually, we're talking in the midst of the coronavirus. So yesterday, Bitcoin price had a pretty bad day. Oh, did it? So it's probably only worth maybe $3,000 now, something like that. Okay, all right. So. Wow, that's, the fluctuation is a huge. If I had a Bitcoin, for every person that's told me a story like that about how they sold too early, I'd probably own the entire global supply. Well, look, we've touched on Bitcoin. So, so why don't we talk about crypto, just very, very quickly? Because you're right.

You were triggered by an interview with Jim Rickard, do you know? Yeah. Yeah. You got very upset with Jim, but he basically... No, I haven't actually seen the interview he did with you. But Jim and I had a big debate at Kilkenomics. Yeah, right, right. So, you were in the audience?

Were you there? No, I wasn't there. But essentially, we were talking about it in the bar at Kilkenomics because Jim's position, and I hope I'm not misquoting, he basically says that it's a bit of a fraud. Yeah. Well, it's not a bit. It's a fraud, he thinks.

And it's a bubble. and it's the worst type of bubble. You disagree with that? Can you put the case forward for Bitcoin and crypto and why is it a good thing? Well, I would distinguish between Bitcoin and crypto because there are lots of like, okay, so let's just backtrack a bit.

Every time you have a new breakthrough technology, you almost always, it is accompanied with a speculative bubble. So if you think of the internet, you know, there was a huge bubble in dot-com, stocks and the story around the internet was, you know, the internet is going to change the world. And that story was right. It is going to change the world. It did change the world. But that didn't stop loads of stupid speculative money going in and, you know, how many dot com effectively scam

companies there were, people raising money for just ridiculous companies. And so, and you had it with the railways, for example, in the 1830s and the 1850s in America and the UK, there were huge bubbles around railway technology. And you just always happen. You get a new technology. And, you know, everyone gets very excited about it and it gets ahead of itself. But you need bubbles. Because bubbles accelerate the investment. So if we didn't have that bubble in tech in 2000, you know, all the, you know, the railway tracks wouldn't have been laid. The cables wouldn't have been laid. So it accelerates investment. So, you know, a lot of people say, oh, bubbles are terrible. Now, but what you have with Bitcoin, it's a new technology.

It's a breakthrough technology. But not only that, it's a new technology that is a new system of money. So if you were like a Marvel comic superhero designing like the ultimate bubble, it would be Bitcoin. And there's a finite supply of it. So that again drives up, it increases the speculative potential of it. And so it is inherently bubbly. And people go, Bitcoin's a bubble. There have been about maybe five booms and busts in Bitcoin in the 10 years that it's evolved.

It is inherently speculative. And if you think of all the, you know, they're known in the crypto community as shit coins. But if you think of all the shit coins that have sprung up, you know, on the back of Bitcoins, almost, there's about 95% of them are scams one way or the other. So there are loads of scams in the Bitcoin space. And then there's the story that Jamie Bartlett's thing did, he did on the radio about the Crypto Queen. You know, it was just a massive, massive scam.

And I believe the people that were involved in that scam believed in it when they were operating. But that was a sort of self-delusion thing. I think, you know, the best scammers actually almost they kid themselves when they're performing the scam. So when Jim says it is, you know, it is full of scams and frauds and all the rest of it. But Bitcoin itself is not a fraud.

And Jim has made a big mistake. Jim's, you know, he studies money and has been writing about it. Jim should have just bought some bitcoins. Because you just look at it and you go, it might not be, but it has the potential to be the default cash system of the internet. And remember, the internet is a borderless medium effectively. And why is that, Dominic? What makes Bitcoin so good for being the exchange medium of the internet?

Because I distinguish between cash and money. So if you go into a sweet shop and you'd get your card out and you buy whatever you buy in the sweet shop and you go bloop with your card, that is not a cash transaction because it involves a card company and a bank and all sorts of middlemen processing that transaction. And all these middlemen, they take their cut on the transaction and they all know there is a record of that transaction having taken place. If I go into the sweet shop and I buy a newspaper, whatever it is, and I give the newspaper man a pound or whatever the cost of the newspaper is, it is a direct transaction, cash transaction that involves no middlemen. And we're going into this kind of cashless society at the moment, but we need cash. You need cash for small transactions, for private transactions, for quick transactions, but especially illegal transactions. There are all reasons.

That's why you need it. And, you know, you can say, well, cash is illegal, but you can then make the argument, well, no, the law is immoral. It's not me that's buying weed as being immoral and using cash. It is the law making weed that it's immoral and it's forcing me into an illegal. You know, so it's all, it's not a cut and dry thing. But we need cash. And above all, we need cash for privacy and to protect privacy. And Bitcoin is cash for the internet. In other words, if I want to send money from me to you, I can send it directly from me to you with no middleman. And nobody else need no about that transaction. And it can happen privately. It can happen instantly. It can happen for tiny amounts of money, fractions of a penny.

And so that's how it is cash. But aren't all Bitcoin transactions traceable? They are. Every Bitcoin transaction is broadcast on the blockchain, which is effectively a huge. huge database. So you can see that money, this amount of money went from this wallet with this address to this wallet with this address. But what you can't see is who owns the two wallets. So if you want to keep your wallet address private, then you keep it private and then you can keep it private. There's also things called Bitcoin mixes and all sorts of little

technologies that have been added on, which basically obfuscate. They put loads of transactions into one thing, muddle them all up, and so it all gets obfuscated, so it makes it very hard to trace. And where do you stand on this argument that goes, hang on, aren't you just encouraging the wild west nature of the internet, you know, these nefarious people who want to, you know, trade anything from, you know, drugs to child pornography to whatever it is, and Bitcoin is essentially aiding that? It certainly facilitates an aid to illegal activity, but if you look at the, somebody's done a study on it and the amount of Bitcoins that are actually used for the kind of transactions you described,

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and you can try it completely free. That's right, guys. Go on to www.babel, and that is spelled B-A-W-B-E-L.com. Or download the app and make that time in isolation fly by. Well, let's move on to talk about your book and tax, because it's a fascinating angle of attack that you have, where you talk about the fact that almost all of the major events in history can be interpreted through the lens of tax in a way that gives you a different perspective on it.

So for our viewers and listeners to whom that may sound a bit of an alien concept, just give us some examples of what you're talking about. So when I started writing this book, I did the show in 2016, and then that led to a book deal. And the central thesis of the book is that taxation is as old as civilization itself. There has never been, in all recorded history, a civilization without taxation of some kind. And in fact, taxation probably predated civilization. In the hunter-gatherer societies before human being settled on the fertile plains between the Tigris and the Euphrates,

there was probably already existed this sense of duty to the greater collective. And that is the central principle of taxation. And, you know, the very first taxes we have were in ancient Mesopotamia. And in fact, the very first examples we have of ancient handwriting are. are tax records, tax documents. And you can look at this, you know, tax records are always, historians always look at tax records first because they're, for obvious reasons,

the best preserved records, because they're records of debts. And in all the time since then, there's never been a civilization without taxation. Now, taxation can take various different forms. So you pay taxes in cash, but in, you know, in ancient civilization, there wasn't necessarily money yet. You know, so you might pay your taxes with a share of your produce is given.

And in fact, the very first tithes were in ancient Mesopotamia or a share of your labour. So taxes are not just taken in cash. They're taken in the form of labour. And then you have these sort of two extremes where you might have a slave at one extreme, where 100% of that slave's labour is owned. In fact, the slave has no ownership of nothing. And at the other extent, if you have a completely, a complete anarchy with no government, no leaders whatsoever, then, and so total freedom, nothing is taken. And so those would be the two extremes.

But that society where nothing has taken has pretty much never existed. Although in ancient Greece, quite interestingly, in ancient Athens, before the Peloponnesian War, taxes were voluntary. Oh, really? Yeah. So it's like Greece now, then? Well, sort of. So they'll volunteer and how did it, did people pay them? Yeah.

It was, the taxes were only paid by the very rich. And it was expected that there was this sort of culture of social duty and benevolence in ancient Greek society. And there was this idea of that, so if you think of someone like Pericles, you know, King Pericles, they would, if it was deemed that the city needed a games or it needed a new bridge or it needed a new building built or needed a warship or whatever it is, it would be beholden to the rich to pay for the construction of that, for those games or for that building or for that bridge or for that ship. And not only would they were expected to pay for it, they would be expected to carry out that work as well. So rather than give your money to a bureaucrat who gives it to a company to do the thing, that person would carry it.

And they would then put their own name on it. So it would be, you know, Pericles' bridge or Pericles' building. And many of the greatest work buildings in ancient Greece were built in this way. It was called Liturgy, the Parthenon, its belief, was built. And, you know, they provided the warships that protected the Athenian shipping lanes from pirates and so on. Athens back then was a big trading empire. And because the rich person was putting his name on it, his reputation was at stake. So the actual result was he often carried out the piece of work to the highest possible standard

because his reputation is standing and would often spend more than the minimum. Whereas now we have this culture of paying the least possible tax. They would often spend more because they wanted to make sure it was done. It's the thing. And it was just sort of this, your kind of social duty. And funny enough, duty, we have this word duty. Duty is actually a tax. It's another word for tax. So you have all these different. But there has, in all that time, there has never existed a society without taxation of some kind. So that was the first kind of realization. You know, as Benjamin Franklin said, you know, taxes and death are the two inevitabilities. And actually that phrase, he wasn't the first person to say that. He's credited as being the first. person to say that, but the first person to say that was actually in a comedian in an early 18th century farce called the cobbler of Preston, this idea that these are the two inevitabilities. Anyway, but you can look back through history and you get this, you suddenly realize that tax is power. If a king or a government or an emperor, whoever the leader is, as long as they control,

as soon as they lose their tax revenue, they lose their power. Taxation is power. It is control. And when you start to look at things through that, you know, if governments today don't have the tax revenue, pretty quickly the whole thing falls apart. And you then think every war in history was funded by some kind of tax. Every single war. You taxed during the event and then afterwards, you know, the conquered territories would be plunded and then taxed. And often wars are funded through debt, but debt is just a taxation on the future. I regard debt as another form of taxation. Every revolution has been a rising up a revolt against some kind of injustice perpetrated by the tax system. The most famous ones being the French Revolution, the American Civil War, no taxation without representation. Even the Russian Revolution. The American Revolution, yeah. No, that was the U.S. American Revolution, but even the Russian revolution. No, so you said American Civil War, that's why.

Sorry, American Revolution. And sorry, I always get those two men. And the Russian Revolution, tell me about that one. Well, you're going to know more about it than I am. Highly unlikely me. Well, okay, but it was a, it was an overthrowing of serfdom, effectively. And serfdom was, again, a system of taxing and rules. Serfs paid, they didn't necessarily pay cash, but their labor was owned and they paid their labor and their labor was taken by their lords and so on. And And funnily enough, quite interesting, serfdom was overthrown in Western Europe. The feudal system was overthrown in Western Europe by the Black Death. Because it killed, wiped everyone out, and suddenly there was a shortage of labor.

And serfs were able to demand their freedom and payment for their labor. And so even though, you know, two-thirds of the population was wiped out, it gave Serfdom the freedom. Black Death never hit Russia in the same way that it did Western Europe. And so the culture, the system remained and it took, you know, the Russian Revolution to get rid of it. Well, there's a silver lining to the coronavirus. Yeah, yeah. If two-thirds of us are wiped out, the rest of us might have some better bargaining. Well, that is the, there is that argument, but it's not one I'd entirely agree with.

It was just a fucking joke about it. I know, I know, I know. But so, you know, so then you think every war, every revolution, every, you know, even things like the birth of Christ, Mary and Joseph were only in Bethlehem to pay taxes because Caesar Augustus had issued census and that's why Mayor in Joseph were in Bethlehem. If Augustus had an issue that census, and by the way, census, where we get the word censorship, the censor in ancient Rome was the guy who adjudicated public morality, but he was also the tax collector. Right. And there's often been this moral thing with taxes. As I said, we mentioned the word duty. And that moral argument

gets used in taxation today. It is your social duty to the greatest collective to pay your taxes so that we can have good health care and welfare and so on. But anyway, Mary and Joseph would not have been in Bethlehem, were it not to pay taxes effectively. And without that, we would have, Christianity would never have evolved in the way that it did. Moses led the Jews out of Egypt to escape the burden of taxation. That taxation, the persecution of the Jews in ancient Egypt began with taxation and that it eventually led to slavery. The reason the Jews were enslaved was non-payment of taxes. That was the prisoners of war and non-payment of taxes

were the ways that you could be enslaved in ancient Egypt. So effectively, Moses led the Jews out of Egypt and from there we have the Ten Commandments. So there's a tax story at the birth of Judaism. And by the way, the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany began with taxes as well. And in the medieval kingdoms, which frequently... Sure.

There were all sorts of Jewish ties were levied. And even Islam, there's a tax story. at the birth of Islam and it's people can't understand how in from between 660 and 690 in like the first four or five caliphs from Muhammad and then the first four caliphs Islam went from being nothing to basically owning most of the Middle East and most of North Africa and then you realize they had this policy of the countries they conquered were heavily conquered end of the Roman Empire Sasanian emperor Byzantine Empire and people so heavily taxed they have very little loyalty to their existing rulers and they were just grateful for relief from taxes. But there was a chap called Abu Bakir,

the first Caliph and some of his successes. And they pursued a policy of when they conquered people, they gave them exemption from taxation if they converted to Islam. And if you didn't convert to Islam, you would have to pay poll taxes. And if you didn't pay the poll taxes, you would kill. So it was death taxes or Islam. Which one are you going to pick? Absolutely. And then, The early calliffs were brilliant, brilliant people. So they had this policy, but they also had this idea that they shouldn't burden concordinations with heavy taxes. So if, for example, there was a bad weather, then they would say, lighten the tax load. Let these people be, you know, trade and get rich, because more money will, if the people are rich,

more money will eventually make its way to the exchequer. And this was an argument that was championed by economists like Arthur Laffer later on and in Hong Kong and, you know, this idea that tax people less and more money ends up making its way to the exchequer. So Islam, you know, so there's a tax story at the birth of Islam. Even something like, you know, 9-11, the Twin Towers were built largely with tax money. First Men on the Moon were paid, you know, NASA was a tax-funded operation. And you just look at any event in history and you'll suddenly realize that without this sort of untold tax story, things would have, unfolded in a very different way. So we were talking about power. Now, to me, it seems the government and any government has to strike a very fine balance. Like you said, they need tax revenue in order

to keep going. But if the taxes are deemed to be unacceptable or too high, they can lose their power. So the last time I remember something like that happening was the poll tax rights in the early 90s. Yeah. And in fact, the sort of golden rule is that governments find it very difficult to levy new taxes in times of peace. So the poll tax was what Thatcher was actually attempting to do with the poll tax. It's quite interesting. She was trying to bring more accountability to local

councils and make their out of control spending more transparent. But what ended up happening is that the out of control spending from local councils was so apparent because poll taxes became so high so quickly that everyone was utterly outraged, but rather than

having a go at the local council, Stature was blamed because she brought it in. But nevertheless, And the poll tax brought down Thatcher, you know, arguably the most successful, you know, post-war politician of the second half of the 20th century, maybe Tony Blair. But, you know, his poll tax brought her down. And, you know, even things, stupid things like, you know, George Osborne's pasty tax and Ed Miliband's mansion taxes, they just don't get through in times of peace. In order to get new taxes in, you need some kind of crisis, usually a war. And so, for example, 2008, the financial crisis gave us quantitative easing, which is another, it's taxation by

inflation. Milton Friedman called inflation taxation without legislation. But it, you know, you need, you know, the idea of printing money and quantitative easing and zero interest rates, if there wasn't a financial crisis and the global financial system wasn't about to implode, everyone would have gone, what? No. And so World War II, prior to World War II, ordinary Americans didn't pay income tax. It was only the richest Americans that paid income tax. 1942 Revenue Act brought income tax to ordinary Americans for the very first time. Similarly, in the First World War, the British income tax had just existed, but it was only the very rich that paid it.

And ordinary British people did not pay income tax until the First World War. And suddenly, with the First World War time of crisis funding, the soldiers are a good thing, women come into the workforce. And bizarrely, that's another one where people talk about women being given the vote. Now, one of the core arguments in the women being given the vote after the First World War was the fact that women had paid taxes during the First World War because they were all now working. And that was justification as to why women should be given the vote. So even at something unconnected like the suffragettes, there's a tax story there. But ordinary Americans did not pay income tax until 1942.

And there was a 1940-revenue Act. And in order to persuade Americans that it was their patriotic duty to pay, there was all sorts of, like Donald, there was a film commission from Walt Duck Disney that had Donald Duck paying his income tax really happily, showing him how to fill out the form. Irving Berlin was commissioned to write a song called, I paid my income tax today. And it contains the line, A thousand planes to bomb Berlin.

They'll all be paid for, and I chipped in. See those bombers in the sky. Rockefeller helped to build them, so did I. And was ever the tax, the link between tax and war more apparent? I don't think you could get away with that now, could you? Absolutely not. But I mean, you know, what played for the Iraq war? You know, like every...

The Battle of Fallujah was funded by me. It well. But they, you know, that was the mentality. And in fact, every conquest as well has been about taking control of the tax base, the land, the labour, the produce, the profit. So you need a crisis to introduce... new levels of tax. But what happens after the crisis passes is that taxation never goes back to the levels that it was before the crisis began. After the first world, after the second world

world, for example, you know, the wounded have got to be helped. We had the birth of the NHS. We had, so a land grab goes on in a time of crisis where government seizes some kind of control and then never gives it back afterwards. And the IFS causes the ratchet effect. And so if you, when you try and figure out how it is that government, you know, if you think in 1900, government was about 10, 15% of GDP in the UK. Now it's more like 45, 50%. Same and all across Western Europe, France is like government spending is like 56% of GDP. And the Gillesjeune, there's another example of another tax rebellion, oil taxes. And this uprising in Lebanon was about taxes on WhatsApp. They tried to levy a tax every time you,

make calls on WhatsApp and send taxes on WhatsApp. They try to levy your tax. It calls a rebellion. So you need a crisis. And coming back today, we've got this coronavirus crisis going on. I promise you, and the government has spent all this pledges bailing out and fiscal simulus and all the rest of it. It's a land grab going on. And you will see suddenly when the crisis passes, this bigger space in the economy that government occupies.

won't be seeded. The Tories are supposed to believe in limited government, but... No, they don't anymore. Yeah, whatever, yeah. They're just social Democrats by another name. And so that's what we'll see in this crisis now. That's very interesting, because under austerity, they put the VAT up to 20%, didn't they? And did they ever reverse it? Is it still at 20%? No. They've halted taxes now a little bit. There's no extra, we just had the budget this week, and there's very few extra taxes on things like alcohol, all the sin taxes have been flattened. there's little, but, but, but, you know, this is one of the big arguments that's going on in Europe is in order to get legislation through the EU, they have to have 100% agreement amongst the member

states. And they're trying to harmonise taxes. They want high levels of VAT. They want to introduce financial transactions tax. They want to introduce digital taxes, but they can't get it through because they need the agreement. So they're trying to change the European constitution to just a majority. And they use Juncker and various others, use all sorts of the most Orwellian language to describe, you know, for the common good, this, we don't need majorities anymore. And without a total majority, you know, the smaller EU member states will get shafted by greater taxes. So, you know, but as soon as the EU starts setting taxes rather than

individual nation states, then the whole power structure of Europe changes. You can see Dominic is the author of the song, 17 million fuck off. About the success of Brexit. That song did very well, didn't it? Yeah, it did. It was my hit. It got to number 43 in the charts. Oh, wow.

Not quite a hit. It needs to be top 40 to be a hit. But yeah, it was, I wrote it in March just before we were supposed to leave and didn't, March 2019. And then I did a new verse after the general election. election in December. Well, I remember actually on Brexit day, I turned on the TV to watch serious sky news coverage of the event. And it was just loads of people in the background go, fuck off, along to the music. I don't think I will ever have a better moment in my entire life. I performed that song on Brexit night in Parliament Square, somewhere between 50 and 100,000 people.

And just singing that song, I'll never, I'll just like, I'll never. I'll never. do such a big and memorable gig. But the really funny thing about that gig is the idea is, you know, you list all the things that they said would happen if you voted to leave. There'd be food shortages and riots and, you know, no sandwiches and there'd be an outbreak of super gonorrhea and all these stupid things they said would happen.

Funny enough, they are happening. But not quite for that reason. But anyway, all these things would happen. and the English told them to fuck off and that was the catchphrase but I was told if I sang the English if I said the word fuck in Parliament Square on this thing I'd be done for a public order offence

so I said to the audience I don't want to get arrested I don't want to get land the organisers of the event in trouble so I'm going to say fudge and so every time the thing comes I go the English told them to fudge off but you can all sing the lyrics

as they were originally written and I don't think they're going to, they can arrest 50,000 of you. So the audience all just sang it. And there's this, as you said, there's this hilarious interview with Nigel Farage, where he's trying to do an interview with Sky from the thing while I'm singing the song in the background. And all you can hear is, the English told you to fuck off. The English told you to fuck off. And Nigel Farage is going, it's very difficult to hear.

It's this wonderful thing. And he can't hear because all he can hear and everyone's trying not to laugh. Is there a tax dimension to Brexit? it? Well, yes, I very much think so. Firstly, that thing I described of the European, EU trying to harmonise taxes is one danger, you know, centralised power in effectively in Brussels and Brexit was a vote against that centralisation. But I hoped that, you know, I voted for Brexit mainly because I'm a libertarian and I believe in as little government as possible and it removed. moves a layer of government effectively.

But my hope, perhaps a little naively, was that it would lead to a sort of... Most libertarians voted for Brexit. Quite a few didn't, but I think the majority of libertarians were in favour of it. And we were hoping that it would lead to a much reduced government in the UK and a much freer, you know, sovereign society.

But that doesn't appear to be the case. So, Dominic, you say that you're a libertarian and that you would prefer smaller government, lower intervention, lower taxes. Can you make the case for libertarianism and why you believe in smaller government? Because if you look at all throughout history, the happiest, the most inventive, the most innovative, the most wealthy societies, the greatest societies in history, have always had very high levels of freedom. You know, whether it's the early Roman Republic or ancient Athens or the Greek,

greater societies, that freedom reduces as the society evolves. But even, you know, Britain in the second half of the 19th century, sort of Britain's golden era, was a very low tax society. Early America, you know, the great America of extremely low taxed society in the second half of the 19th and early 20th century. And so the central case for libertarianism, and then if you look at the opposite of that, and you look at the. societies that have had very high levels of government, high levels of taxes, low levels of freedom. And by the way, there is a relationship between taxation and freedom. The less tax you pay, the more free you are, because the more of your own labour you own.

And the more economic freedom. You can't have freedom without economic freedom, as a Thatcher line. And so the central core is, the less tax we pay, the freer we are, the more free we are to experiment with our money, ideas, with our thought, you know, all you guys are big free speech guys. It's all part of the same thing. Free speech, free movement, free trade. It's all part of the same. You get all these guys who are in favour of free speech, but not free trade. Come on, it's free everything. And you have the greatest level of freedom, but you also have the greatest levels of individual responsibility. Individuals are much more accountable for their own actions, for their own choices. And as a result, they tend to behave better. And they tend to act in a way that benefits themselves and also as a result benefits the greater good. And so the greatest societies in history have always been low tax libertarian type societies. What about Scandinavia? Because everyone always bangs on about how they've got this utopian society with high levels of tax and wealth redistribution. They do. And it's the

core argument that's always used to champion Scandinavia. But I don't think Scandinavia is a particularly happy place at the moment, particularly Sweden. And Sweden's had all sorts of problems. But what Scandinavia gets right? And I think there's a thing in Scandinavia. There's a, there's, well, let me just describe what Scandinavia gets right in its tax systems is a much higher percentage of taxes are levied locally where there is far greater accountability. So people can see that the taxes they pay, they can see the immediate consequences of it. And they can hold the people who are spending their money badly to a much greater account. So, whereas in the UK, for example, much higher percentage is levied centrally and there's much less accountability. So I think people are happier to pay

higher levels of taxes when there is greater accountability for the money and how it's spent. And there's a more clear, visible effect between me giving this money and being able to see how that money was used. And the bomber, the bombs that it was spent. bent on. But the other thing that I think exists in Scandinavian countries, and I think it's, is almost the weather that breeds this. And you get it, you probably get it in northern Russia. I'm not sure. I don't know enough about it, but you certainly get it in Canada, where there's this thing of, if you do not prepare for the winter, you die. Oh, yeah. So that breeds a sort of responsibility and a preparation and a collectiveness

that maybe doesn't exist so much in, say, southern Europe or where it's hotter, where there tend to be much more laissez-faire, and so it's sort of almost the weather creates a culture. And so this culture of social responsibility and individual responsibility exists in the Scandinavian countries

that maybe isn't as prevalent further south. And this is a question that I've always wanted to ask you, Dominique. So you're a libertarian, small government, intervention. What about the NHS? The NHS, a national health service, is not the best means, in my opinion, to provide the highest standard of care to the most possible people at the lowest possible cost. And nor is state education, the best means to provide the best possible education. There's so much waste in the NHS. It's just so big and bloated. It's so hard to run. And if you look at areas of the economy where it's pretty much a free market,

they're not provided by the state. You look at something like food, for example, the food revolution that's happened in the UK. Now food is as essential, as good healthcare is essential to our survival, but food is largely not provided by government. And you just see the market at work in the food industry, we've got the most incredible variety of food. now, the highest, the most wonderful quality, you can find fault with ink because I don't like supermarkets, I don't like this, you can find faults with stuff. But there is so much choice. And the cost of food on a relative basis, like food, clothing and accommodation made up over 50% of a worker's outlay. I think it was like 80% 100 years ago, something like that, food,

clothing and accommodation. Now food clothing and accommodation is a much lower portion of that 15 to 20% of somebody's outlays, something like that, maybe accommodation a bit higher. But they didn't have, the most expensive purchase you ever make is your government, of course, which is like over 50% of everything you ever earn will end up in the government over the course of your entire life. And so, anyway, you look at something that is provided largely by a free market, food, clothing. We've got incredible choice. And, you know, I know we have food banks and so on, but really nobody needs to go hungry.

You know, you can buy for a pound. You can buy an incredibly, the ingredients to make an incredibly healthy vegetable soup or whatever it is. That would have been a luxury 100 years ago. And the problem with the National Health Service is it is run not for the benefit of the consumer, i.e. the patient, it is run largely for the benefit of the supplier. And whereas if you think, you know, you go into a shop, you don't like the service you get in the shop, you don't have to go to that shop. You can go to another shop. or you can leave that shop a bad review, or you can not pay the restaurant.

You know, the shop is so desperate for your custom or the restaurant so different. They will try and give you the best possible service and so on. That dynamic doesn't exist in the National Health Service, and it should. In the 19th century, we had the friendly societies and much more insurance-based system of healthcare. And doctors were employed by local communities.

And if that doctors... They did, the doctors didn't like what the doctor was doing. Local communities, he was held accountable to the local communities and they could sack it and employ another one. That same dynamic just doesn't exist within the NHS. It's so rife with protectionism and special interest groups. It is an absolute mine of crony capitalism. There's so much corruption landing these contracts. And you get these stupid situations where I'm going to get the figures exactly wrong.

But, you know, some companies finding a way of charging the NHS. £10 per packet of paracetamol. Whereas you look at the, you know, paracetamol on the free market, you can buy it for 20p. It's absurd that the NHS is being billed these amounts and all these inefficiencies that just wouldn't happen if small companies were running individual businesses within the NHS on a profit and lost basis

where they had to take much greater account of waste. So it's just not the best way to provide the best possible healthcare at the lowest possible cost. Now people go, if we didn't have an NHS, then people would go untreated. And I just don't believe that. Because let's say healthcare wasn't provided by the state, and you'd go back to a 19th century,

you know, if the state wasn't providing healthcare, we would all have to take precautions to look after our own healthcare and provide for it, not just for ourselves, but for other people in the community as well. And so you'd have, you know, I envisage if there was no healthcare, this is idealistic chat, because the idea of getting rid of the NHS is just not realistic.

But, you know, people would have greater responsibility to look after their own lives, look after their own health, provide for their own healthcare and provide for their healthcare of others in their community as well. And, you know, it's, you'll never prove it because you can't prove something

that's not going to exist. But if, if government didn't provide healthcare, I believe that healthcare services and healthcare provision would see would be as advanced and as brilliant as food. This episode is brought to you by Ultima Replenisher. Health is all about balance, like a salad with fries. So why not have balance in your hydration? With six essential electrolytes and no junk, Ultima provides balanced hydration you can enjoy every day. That means no sugar, calories, or carbs, and it's not loaded with sodium.

Just delicious plant-based flavors you'll actually look forward. to drinking. Shop ultima on Amazon or in store at Target and Whole Foods Market. But the obvious counter example to that would be the United States where people do go and treat. No, it's not the obvious counter. The United States spends almost twice as much. The United States government spends almost twice as much on health care per capita as the UK government does. The United States government is this kind of mix, is this crony capitalist mixture of an insurance-based system mixed with, it's just horrendous. and it is the worst possible outcome.

And, you know, far better systems is, I think Switzerland, New Zealand, France, they all have insurance-based systems that work much better than ours do. And what is an insurance-based system for the people who don't know? Well, what the friendly societies did in the second half of the 19th century

is as, you know, there was a huge economic boom. It was the greatest, one of the greatest periods of wealth creation ever, ever known, saw the greatest wealth growth ever seen. And in local communities, workers would put in a portion of their money they would give to what was their friendly society, like the co-op was a friendly society. And they would put a portion of their earnings and they would have, there would be local communities, local friendly societies. And then that friendly society would then provide the health care, you know, would employ the doctors, employ the nurses and whatever else was needed.

And in times of emergency, you know, there would be, that five pounds that they'd put in, that five percent of their earnings or whatever they'd put in, would be their insurance in the case of, and the community would decide, you know, well, this is Francis, he's been putting money in this thing all this time, he's a good guy, you know, we need to help him. Oh, this is Constantine.

Constantine's lost his job, he's lost, And so welfare and healthcare was provided on a mutual basis locally. And it meant there was much greater flexibility. So, you know, if Constantine's a bum and he never does the work and he needs to kick up the bum, then that's one kind of welfare. And if Francis is a good guy and actually he needs to be, you know, have an arm round and then be stroked. We're into the hypothetical. But so there's just much more flexibility, whereas one now, our system of welfare is like a,

top-down one-size-fits-all. And that's how insurance worked. And it was so successful that Lloyd George and Winston Churchill in the National Insurance Act of 1911 tried to copy it on a national level. So they introduced national insurance and people would put in a portion of their earnings into the insurance system and as a result, if they needed emergency healthcare or anything else that came out of the national insurance. The problem was people couldn't afford or didn't choose not to pay national insurance and for their local thing. They were effectively buying it twice. National insurance was compulsory. The local one wasn't. And so they had to carry on paying the local one and the national one and the local ones all went out of business. So it was a free market

evolution that was so successful, the government copied it and then messed it up. And today, the money you pay international insurance should be there for you to call on in an emergency, but it isn't because the government spends it. Now, if a corporation did that, they, you know, it's what Robert Maxwell did. It's effectively free. but government's a different rule for them. Well, that's nicely some. Dominic. Our final question is always what's the one thing that we're not talking about that we ought to be talking about?

I think the one thing we're not talking about, slowly starting to talk about it, is race and racism. What is racism? Because we have had these, you know, accusations thrown about, so-and-so is racist. Now, what actually is, what actually is racism? You know, if, and I say this as, you know,

somebody who's, my kids are all mixed race. Not, actually two of them are mixed race. What defined, is racism actively going and persecuting somebody on account of their race? that's or the transformation of the last 10 years has been incredible or is it just accidentally using the wrong word right well the transformation of the last 10 years on that issue has been incredible racism used to mean prejudice against people on the basis of their skin killer now it means you said something that people can misinterpret if they so choose yeah I mean you're racist if you use the long words but the wrong words but I just think we're all prejudice we all the constant you know a discriminating gentleman used to be a good thing now you're you're discriminating, it's a bad thing. But, you know, I'm constantly making judgment all the way through having a conversation with somebody or having a relationship, whatever, you're constantly making judgments on whatever level the relationship works. Now, you make judgments based on how they

look, how they sound, all sorts of different things. And what are we just supposed to just ignore the fact that this guy is a different race to you? Are we just supposed to pretend that there aren't different races because there are and different races, different cultures, everyone has different characteristics. They just do. And I just think there's a dishonesty to the whole argument, whereas we're so scared of being called racist that we just airbrush the whole thing and pretend that nothing exists. That there's no, and so the sooner we can acknowledge that acknowledging that people are different

doesn't mean you are going to actively go out and persecute that person on account of their race. That's the sound of Dominic getting cancelled. Well, I guess, well, let's explore that because I think it's a really fascinating conversation. I guess the argument would be that we've decided to be hypersensitive about race because we went through periods in history where there was a lot of stereotyping of people based on their ethnicity or race, which was used to then discriminate against those people. So the idea would be, you know, as you say, we all have our biases, but the idea would have been in the past that a lot of people would have said, well, black people are all lazy,

right, which then would prevent a particular black person who was really hardworking, right, from being seen for who they actually are, as opposed to being seen through the prism of their race or their skin color, right? right? So, you know, that I think we would all agree is a positive that we moved away from judging people in this broad, broad categories, right? We agreed on that? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So what are you saying exactly?

Because I don't want people to take what you said out of context or to misunderstand. The crime of racism, the sin of racism, whatever you like, has been totally undermined by overuse of the term. Absolutely. And just dishing it out and just going, oh, well, so and so doesn't agree

with me, they're racist. Yeah. And they can smear somebody with that. And it's like the work, once you've got the racist label, like many people

just have never recovered. Doesn't wash off. It just, yeah, it does never. And, you know, lives have been written. And they've kind of been smeared with this thing. And it's a terrible thing to do to somebody.

Like, you get all these. And, but the whole, the problem now with racism is there's so much protection has gone on that it's just created so many special interest groups campaigning for, you know, it's not just a race thing, it's just any type of identity is demanding that it's got, whether it's trans or or Islamic group or a black group or a white or whatever. And now we've got this thing where there's almost like a white,

I've just written a song about this very thing called I am a white man and I'm sorry. And it's like there's loads of white people are just going, a complaining that they're victims of racism and they are because they're being overlooked in favour of jobs or whatever it is because somebody's got to tick this ethnic.

And so it's just this insane culture of special interest groups. And I just think like, I think there are, there might be people who go, you know, we always go, I don't know, I hate Scouse's. You go to Liverpool and, you know,

some scouse bloats horrible to you and you go, oh, fucking eight scouses. And it's one of those things that you might say. And I hear northern's coming down to and I'm going, I fucking hate cockneys. You just, you know, whatever. The old definition of the... Now, that is racist,

according to today's terminology. But just because, you know, I've gone off, you know, or I go to France and there's a huge queue in passport control or something. I'm a fucking French, whatever. That's effectively a racist thing to say. Now, but in saying that thing, I'm not advocating the persecution of scouses or northerers who come to London and moan about cockneys. They're not advocating the persecution of cocknors.

It's just one of those things that you say. So I think we just need to be more transparent and understand what is racism, which to me is the systematic persecution of people on account of their thing. And what is just normal human behaviour? We've got nothing to worry about us. We voted remain, we're as pure as driven snow. Plus, our producers are scouts, so we're fully in favour of oppressing scouses. I'm immune from all charges because of the racial makeup of my family. But, you know...

Mate, it doesn't get me off with my grandmother, Venezuelan mother. No, but he actually married a woman of a different colour. Yeah, I mean, I've got mixed-raced kids, yeah. There you go. You need to every time someone accuses you just bring out a photo. Yeah, I know. That's the way out of it. But Dommy, it was been...

I've been given immunity. Yeah, you have. It just makes sure you've always got one with you at all times. But she would... I mean, we're not married anymore, but she would have a go at me on account of my, you know, race, colour, background age,

and I would do the same to her. And I would no longer marry. So this is just you justify your past behaviour. But you take my point that it's just like... everyone is so uncomfortable with it that it just makes some freeze and that is just not healthy and it's because of this sort of culture

of special interest groups. I remember many years ago now and when I'm about to describe it it will feel like it was 50 years ago but I think it was only in the mid-Norties at the very latest. There was a conservative MP who'd been in the army

who made some comments about it. Do you remember this? He said that You know, there's a lot of banter that happens in armed forces. So if you were ginger, when people were making fun of you, they would call you a ginger bastard. And if you were black, they would call you a black bastard. And everybody accepted it as part of the culture. And he got instantly destroyed, had to resign, all this kind of stuff.

But it is. But I think that is what you're saying. I am. And like, I remember being in a pub. And this would have been probably early north. something like that. And being in a pub, and I was watching a football game in the pub.

And Andy Cole, it was Man United we're playing, and Andy Cole missed a really goal he should have scored. As he was prone to do, let's be honest. There's a bloke watching the telly in the pub, and he's saying, oh, you black cunt. He says that. Now, is that racist?

I think in 2020, that would be extremely racist. That's what he says. Yeah. Okay. Then Schmichael, the goalie, let's in a goal that he should have saved. And the same guy goes, you blonde bastard. Right?

Is that racist? Andy Cole, and, you know, they're both a cunt and a bastard because they've not done what the fan was hoping they would do on the football pitch. Okay. Smichael's not a bastard because he's blonde. He's a bastard because he's a bastard because he's a guy,

he's a bastard who happens to be blonde, he's a bastard because he's letting a goal and he happens to be blonde. Andy Cole is not a cump because he's black, he's a cunt because he's missed a goal and he happens to be a black guy. Right. Okay, now here's the clincher of this story.

It was a black guy who said it. It was a black guy who called Andy Cole a black cunt. Suddenly we can breathe again. And I was holding my breath. No, but like, just in having this conversation, And I sort of almost regret already having this conversation because I can see it dramatically backfiring.

But, you know, just in having that, we can't even talk about this shit. And this is a, you know, and so it's a black guy calling Andy Cole a black country. That's really interesting. Yeah, it is. And there's so many moral questions there. And it's, you know,

and even the guy, even if the guy who said it was a white guy and he called him a black guy, he's not advocating the persecution of black people. He's just going, are you black cun? I guess my sense of that situation, irrespective of Hussein, is how is their blondness or color relevant to the fact that they're a bastard? It was, you know, a defining characteristic to a characterist.

So this is what I'm saying is maybe some of the progress we have made that's been good is that we avoid judging people in these group categories when it's not relevant to the thing at hand. Like Andy Cole fucked up, Schmichael fucked up, do we need to bring their skin color or hair color into it? Maybe we just leave it out. Well, yeah, but then that's that sense, that's, well, that's a form of censorship. And it's a, and you can choose as an individual to go.

I'm not saying we censor that. I'm not saying, but you can self-censor, but that's just an individual using his judgment. No, all I'm saying is maybe in that situation, we, we learn not to make an issue of those things when it's not relevant. That's all. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah, but I just, like, Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I think a society in which everyone goes around calling each other black cunts,

or white cunts, or whatever, is probably not a good thing, but it's a football match. Yeah. It's in a pub. Yeah. That's when that's... I think the real lesson here is just never to watch Man United. Well done.

You got us out of that. There was the Man City player, Bernardo Silver. Yeah. Who got done earlier this season for calling the... Was it Mendi? Benjamin Mendi, the black left back. Portuguese guy joked that Mendi looked like some cartoon character. Yeah, but they were like mate, when they?

Yeah, yeah, Mendi found it very funny. Yeah, but it's like me going to you, you look like whoever. Yeah, or it's like France is saying, we're going to deport you back to Russia. I don't take it personally because it's a joke, right? But then FIFA decided to get involved and got all holier than now. And didn't he get... He got banned, didn't he? And it's just as stupid, like that is people seeing racism.

where it was not. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely with you on that. All right. Anyway, let's fucking end it now. Look at Francis. So, so uncomfortable. Sweating.

With this little white skin. Yeah. Guys, buy this book. It's great. Domink's going to need the proceeds when you get canceled. Pay my legal fees. Daylight robbery.

Brilliant book about taxation. Make sure you get it. And we will see you in a week from now with another brilliant episode if we're still here. Yeah, take it. Take care. See you next week, guys.