TRIGGERnometry - Rupert Lowe: "Our Leaders Have No Idea What They're Doing"

Episode Date: March 14, 2022

SPONSORED by Fortune and Freedom:  It’s time to take control of your money… Sign up for free here: https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/h1HxCxkNXZcG1yokU8hkVn?domain=subscribe.fortuneandfreedom.com SPONSORED by: Ripples in Reality - The Series by JS Powell - buy the books here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3AJS+Powell&s=relevancerank&text=JS+Powell&ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1 Rupert Lowe is a British businessman, farmer and politician and former chairman of Southampton Football Club. He served as a Brexit Party Member of the European Parliament in the West Midlands constituency from 2019 to 2020. Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/​​​ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/​​​ 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 (@francisjfoster) 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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That's fortune and freedom.com and sign up for a free newsletter that will help your money work for you. The link is in the description. So we've got a situation now, I think, where the hardworking core of the countries, which I love and respect, is being let down by this unaccountable pool of Westminster reverse Darwinist sort of creatures who are supposed to be holding the civil service to account. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry.

I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissin. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. We are delighted to say that our guest today is a businessman and a former chairman of Southampton Football Club.

Rupert Lowe, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you for having me. It's great to have you on. Listen, our UK viewers, I'm sure, particularly the football fans, among them will be very familiar. with you. But we have a big international audience who may be less familiar. So tell everybody, first of all, who are you, how are you where you are and what has brought you to be sitting in this

chair talking to us? Well, my name is Rupert Lowe. I was born in Oxford in the Ragcliffe Hospital. I'm a provincial lad. I basically was brought up on a farm where my father was a farmer. I'm a passionate farmer. I love farming. It's the one thing I think is keeps everybody honest. you can't cheat nature. She keeps us all humble. So then I was educated at the Dragon School, which is a fantastic school. It's less fantastic now.

They used to crush my school at Rugby. Like a lot of these schools, it's become woke. Then I went to Radley College, which is again in local to Oxford. And then I went to Reading University. After which I went into the city, because my father has been married many times and I didn't get onto one of my stepmothers

so I found my way into the city as I say I had very little contact to call on I just went into the city, found my own way ended up commodity broken then stopped broken then I went to Japan to work for bearing securities so as Phillips and Drew

bearing securities Morgan Grenfell and then I left Morgan Grumfell in 96 and took over as chairman of a company which I'd rescued, which I was an investor in, called Secure Retirement, and we did a reverse takeover of Southampton Football Club. I was going to build the stadium, which I did, but I ended up getting involved in the football as well because I'm a reasonably competitive tennis player, hockey player. I carried on playing hockey until I was 56, played football at the Dragon School,

even though most of the football pundits claim I'm a hockey and rugby supporting, or I was rugby sporting chairman. But during my time with Southampton, I've continued with other businesses. So I've got a wide experience of insurance. I've got businesses in contracting, so data and mechanical and electrical contracting. I've got a business which does air-source heat pumps. I basically, I'm an entrepreneur, I like to think. And what I love is I love the British people who are creative, entrepreneurial,

hardworking and left to their own devices, they will deliver a fantastic outcome. So the thing I've become frustrated with is that we've got far too much stateism, far too much oppression, far too much regulation, far too much state. So, you know, I'm keen now at the age of 64 to try and use my experience to change that, to get the people of this country to realize how talented they are, gain self-confidence. we're obviously now free of this post-war experiment with a sort of global Europe, which I thought brought with it a great deal of injustice and unfairness. And I think the people of Europe will suffer long term,

and we will benefit from Brexit as a result of being a free sovereign nation. So pretty much that's me. I still work reasonably hard. I still play a bit. and I still enjoy life, which is the most important thing. That is a very important thing. And one of the thing that strikes me about you is you have experience of managing big things. You have experience of working on big projects.

And this is something that in the time Francis and I've been doing the show, I've noticed how my thinking has changed and my attitude has changed, just running this small business. You know, there's six or seven of us or however many of us there are. And that already changes the mindset. So, and one of the things that strikes me particularly about our politicians, as very few of them actually have experience of running big things. I mean, look at the current Prime Minister.

By the time this goes out, he may no longer be Prime Minister. But let's say he still is. This isn't someone who has experience of running a huge institutional organization, and they're suddenly in a position to run the whole country. What do you make of the way that we are administered and governed in this country? Well, I think, again, people, the worst thing had ever happened was televising parliament, and it's turned some very average people into sort of media. I wouldn't say stars, but they're full of media attention.

Every word they say is listened to. And I think the misapprehension of the public is they assume that because they are part of this Westminster elite, that they're able people and that when they're in number 10, they know what they're doing. Well, don't assume they know any more than you do because they don't. Many of them, as you say, have had no experience of running a company, no experience of navigating the vagaries of public company, you know, limited liability,

of credit risk, of collecting VAT, national insurance, pensions, gift wrapping it, delivering it to the state. All of the risk that comes with being a director, you know, people assume being a director is all upside. It's actually in modern Britain there's a hell of a lot of downside to it. So I think people in Westminster State become a bubble. selection processes that were followed by Blair and Cameron have meant that we've got less able people. So the gene pool is weak. It's almost like we've got reverse Darwinism. That would certainly make sense when you look at Boris Johnson. And you know, you look at the decisions they've been making, which, you know, and sometimes now, in the past one, that it's all, all seem to

make sense. Now, I sometimes, I don't know about you, but I sort of wake up in the morning and I think, Why does nothing make sense anymore? And the answer is because we've got people who don't know what they're doing leading us. You've got Westminster, that's the gene pool for our leaders, supported by a civil service, which, let's face it, over Brexit, was at complete odds with the electorate who voted to leave. And it took to leave Europe. And effectively it took four years before we managed to get ourselves out of Europe,

thanks to the Brexit Party, Nigel Farage, and people who basically accuse the state of not respecting their masters, who are the voters. So I honestly think we've got this disjoint between those people who are leading us and those people who are working very hard in the economy. And for me, this was exemplified on Monday when Lord Agnew of Olton resigned, who's government minister,

over the bounce-back loan fraud that's happening. So again, the state has been pursuing, thanks to QE, buying its getting harm its own suppliers, I call it, quantitative easing, basically printing money in taxpayers' name and buying their own bonds, and then effectively liquefying the economy by giving this money to people in bounce-back loans, Sibyls, loans and other centrally planned state support, which I, again, Can I just interrupt you there, Rupert, because there's a lot of people, including a lot of economists, who go, what's the problem? We can just print money and there's going to be no problems whatsoever. Monetary theory, Rupert.

What's wrong with it? Where does water flow? Downhill. And this is going to flow downhill. We have not yet seen the effects of quantitative easing. And they are coming and they will come. And everybody will regret the fact that we've done it. If you look at, if you look at, so just finishing off on that, you saw Theodore Agnew resigned, and he resigned for a very good reason, a very honest, straight guy.

And what you saw is you've got this, I have this image of these bounce back loans which were given, no checks were made or not enough checks. You know, they don't really understand. A lot of these people are dishing these out, the concept of limited liability companies that, you know, if you trade with a company that's insolvent, you can lose everything. Well, if you give money to companies that are insolvent or haven't been trading or people who aren't honest, you won't get it back. And under the limited liability situation, they just walk away and you end up with a debt, which is, again, a taxpayer debt. Meanwhile, on the other side of that, you put all these hardworking people, you know, my old constituents in the West Midlands, people up north. All the people who run businesses still collect the taxes, pay the taxes. They have HMRC on their back all the time, chasing them to pay. pay every little penny using often technicalities to collect this money off them,

which takes possible investment from them, which could be directed into better use. And meanwhile, they're handing this money out to fraudsters. And there's no accountability. I think they've already written off about $4.5 billion. I think the total bounceback loans are more like $45 billion. And goodness knows how much they're going to write off in the end. That's before we get to the Sibyl's loans,

which are slightly more secure because you've actually got the banks responsible for 20% of those. So I think we've got a situation where anything, and you've only got to look at, you know, the Soviet Russia, you know, you get state central planning. It never works. You need the entrepreneur. You need people to be making decisions that make sense.

You need it to be bottom up, not top down. You actually need long-term investment rather than just short-term sort of money printing to cover up cracks. And I think everybody, the extraordinary thing is I don't think a lot of people fully understand it. So they're so busy with their own lives. But actually, quantitative easing is, if you or I did it, we'd be in prison. But it's being done in our name by an unaccountable Bank of England and Andrew Bailey, who presided over, let's face it, when he was at the FCA's some pretty big disasters like LCF.

and another bureaucrat who's definitely been over-promoted, Andrew Bailey. So we've got a situation now, I think, where the hard-working core of the countries, which I love and respect, is being let down by this unaccountable pool of Westminster, reverse Darwinist sort of creatures, who are supposed to be holding the civil service to account. And that, to me, is the most extraordinary,

It's extraordinary people aren't more angry about it. Do you think part of the problem, Rupert, is, and we touched on it, which is they've never run anything, these politicians. But most of them, they don't even have experience of ordinary life. What they do is they go to schools, then they go to university, normally Oxford and Cambridge where they do PPE, then they do some type of masters, then they go in to become a political researcher.

You've never experienced the real world. You don't know how the real world works. And if that being the case, how are you then going to go into a position of power where you're running the real world? Well, absolutely. You can't. So the whole political structure is based on, if you like, snakes and ladders in a little sort of false world where, as you say, you clamber up the Tory party or the Labour ladder.

You hope you don't upset anybody. So very often the people who thrive are people who learn not to tell the truth. So you end up, actually, as I say, with this. reverse Darwinist situation. And most of them, I honestly don't think they, a bit like Boris, I don't think they're that bothered about long term, because as far as they're concerned, life is a game. And it's not a game for a lot of people. You know, a lot of people, long term, if you look at Britain, what do we owe our success to? I'll tell you what I think, I mean, I think we owe it to the Victorians who were hardworking. If they said they were going to do

something, they did it. They actually delivered an economy that probably for a population that we had then, whatever it was, 50, 60 million, was probably arguably the most successful economy that's ever been. And off the back of that, we were able to do quite a lot of things with friendly societies with, you know, ultimately that's the genesis of the NHS, I think, you know, the fact we had all this wealth. But if we don't invest long term and create proper businesses and actually proper structures that make sense. You know, printing money, in the end, we'll just be overrun by the Asian workhouses,

which basically become far more productive than us. And it'll happen a bit like the world doing a 360-degree flip. So everybody here is very complacent, I think, because suddenly we could see this whole thing change. And instead of accepting our currencies, these people are going to go say, well, hang on, these guys are just printing it. got nothing behind it. And you know, the war was a big issue. We won the war. We've basically

won the peace. But sooner or later, this lack of long-term planning and lack of leadership by a proper elite is going to affect everybody's lives. And it's time people started talking about it, I think. Well, one of the things that I think when you talk about quantitative easing that I've been saying for quite some time. And I think it was compounded obviously by the reaction to COVID and the amount of money that was spent on dealing with that or the perceived threat or whatever you want to describe it is inflation. And, you know, we've had people on the show endlessly to say it's coming. It's coming. And now, and then suddenly I was like, oh, there's inflation coming. And we're like, yeah, we told you. I think it's here. I think it's here, constantly. That's what I'm saying.

It's here. In contracting businesses, cop has gone up massively over the last. I mean, not 7%. You're talking 50, 60, 70%, you know, steel, conduits gone up the same. You've got, you know, Labor hasn't gone up yet, but if heating costs keep going up, people are going to start demanding more money for their wages correctly. And then you start to get strikes and you start to get all the malaise that we got in the 70s. It's all happening. What were we told?

We were told it's transitory. This is not transitory. This is now embedded in the economy. And it's partly to do with the fact that we aren't productive. as we used to be, and you can't just create money out of nothing and expect it to hold value. It's not linked to anything. Now, there's no gold standard, there's no convertibility to anything. It's all on trust.

And I've always been brought up to believe that credit is suspicion asleep. And that's ultimately what, you know, as soon as people, our trading partners become suspicious of us, the game's over. Rupert, don't you think it's quite weird? because if we were having this conversation, and let's say Jeremy Corbyn won the 2019 general election, it would make sense. We're having this conversation under a Conservative Party. Doesn't that strike you as weird?

It is bizarre. And I think, you know, Boris Johnson's instincts are actually, on the whole, libertarian. I think he respects the individual. But it seems that he wants to build the state up. And I think he was even heard to say that if the private sector sheds labor, don't worry, the state will employ it. Which sort of, to me, was shocking because the last thing we want,

we've already got far too much of a state. We've got far too much ineffective, you know, government departments in, whether it's HGV licenses, whether it's the passport office, whether it's planning. You know, I come across all this stuff. You know, you can't get any answers out of the planners. you can't get your passport, you can't get an HGV license, you can't get a shotgun license renewed. You know, the whole, if you're going to force regulation on people,

you've got to deliver an efficient service. Otherwise, get rid of the state, get it out of people's lives, and let people interface freely and make their own call. And that's a bit, I feel a bit like that with regard to COVID. I mean, I think, you know, I'm not a non-vaxxer or an anti-vaxxer, but I am a believer in personal choice, I think, to have the state telling you've got to have an injection is against every sort of libertarian code that you could have.

That does make you an anti-vaccine. I know, I know, but I have no problem with people opting to have the vaccine. If that's what they want. Of course, of course. And by the way, I always joke about it being, on the whole, not vaccination, it's gene therapy, because Moderna and Pfizer are gene therapy, whereas actually, Astrozenica is the only true vaccine. So again, it's very experimental, but it's up to people.

If people want it, that's up to them. If people don't want it, it should be up to them. But what I think is terrible is divisiveness within our society as a result of that. And the historical parallels to that are pretty frightening. And I think it shouldn't be happening here. But on Boris, is he capable of really having any long-term view or any principal view, probably not. Quite.

Well, this is one of the things I think you keep referring to, which is long-term versus short-term. And I think, I mean, I think democracy is great, but I think it's inevitable that one of the flaws of democracy is a force is very short-term thinking because the people who are in charge are thinking on a 24-hour planning horizon. They're not thinking ahead.

So with all that doom and gloom out of the way, Rupert, what do we do about this? What would you do about this? Well, one's got to hope that the people the Britain and I think relative to the rest of Europe we are in a good position now because we actually are not saying much is it no no relative to the rest of Europe we are we are now a free sovereign nation and we are capable of determining our own future so we have actually now got the power back in our own hands so I even if the civil service is reluctant to accept the will of the British people

so having been given a vote they voted to leave then then I think we are now going to see the country relative to Europe prosper, and if the right leadership's in place and the right long-term planning, we still have the opportunity to do what I think we should be doing, and I think there's a lot to be optimistic about. But that involves doing radical conservative things, which is what a conservative government should be doing. Like what, Ruth?

Not the Corbyn conservative government that we've got. Well, we should be cutting regulation. We should be encouraging entrepreneurs. How? How do you encourage entrepreneurs? You give people tax breaks for investment. You give people, you cut taxes. You allow people to keep the product of their gains. You allow people to make investment against, you know.

How are we going to pay for all this social care and the NHS and all of that while we're cutting taxes? But the interesting parallel with that. Because that takes care of itself. If you have a vibrant economy where everybody's making money, they're all paying tax. And, you know, we know tax. the more you put tax up, the less tax you collect. So why do we keep putting tax up then? Because that's the only way they can even hope to balance the books

if you haven't got long-term investment. You have to keep doing that. Actually, the only thing that's kept us going to QE. And I keep coming back to QE without QE, reality would have been blowing through the corridors of power. But it doesn't happen because they don't let it happen. So the answer to your question, cut regulation, release the individual, basically become an offshore trading country, which we used to be, offshore Europe.

We were always the balance of power in Europe against either, you know, Germany or France, who always had these continental conquests. We've never wanted to conquer people. We want to trade with them. So what we should do is do what we're best at, trade. And we should be having, if you had a government and its apparatus that believed in that, you actually could structure it so that you release the innate ability of. the British people. But we're not going to do that by increasing national insurance and pumping

it into the NHS with no reformed the NHS, which like it, and again, it's a wonderful thing for a lot of people, but it's got to be efficient, it's got to be reformed. It's an inefficient organ, but no politician is ever going to touch the NHS at the moment. It's become, you know, half a cut above itself, and somebody's got to take it in under control and sort it out. or it's going to bleed us all dry. It's going to kill off this entrepreneurial spirit that we should be able to release, which would then allow us to fund the NHS and other good causes for the majority of the people in the country.

But Rupert isn't the problem that we have a whole generation of politicians who don't want to make difficult decisions. They don't want to be seen as unpopular. Now, let's look at Thatcher. you may like her, you may dislike her, you may not like her vision for the country. Number one, she had a vision unlike this lot. And number two, she was very, very willing to make herself absolutely despised by a certain section of society. I don't think any of this lot would want that.

And also, likewise, just for balance, I think I disagree with him on a lot of things, but Tony Blair, the same. Now, there's a lot to criticise, but he was willing to make difficult decisions at certain points. Well, if we talk about Thatcher, first as you've raised Thatcher, she asked. I was an admirer of Thatcher. She's, you know, her upbringing... I guess that room. That wasn't the surprise, wasn't it? Not for any other reason than I think she...

If you look at Britain, and I'm probably older than you guys, so you probably weren't around. I can remember the 70s where petrol was going up every day, inflation was flying, you know, there was no investment. We had, you know, Callahan in office having sandwiches with the trade unions who were running the country. The whole thing was... We were a laughing stock.

So Thatcher took control of it. And you should read a book if you haven't read it called Here Today Gone Tomorrow by John Not. And she would have definitely lost the election because she tried to make sense of everything. And I think, you know, this short-term view that prevails, and you're quite right, it does prevail. She would have had a head cut off if it hadn't been for the Falklands War. And so the Falklands were invaded. She went in, again, took a dangerous decision, won the war. And as a result of that, she was untouchable after that.

that gave her the length of time to be able to make change. And I think you've got to give other people around her credit. Lawson, you've got to give other people who actually, if you like, empowered Britain. And I remember going to Singapore to meet the government of Singapore Investment Corporation, just as all this was happening. And they said, this is the first time in 50 years that we've seen light at the end of the tunnel in Britain. We're investing in Britain because we can see it's a vibrant place where, opportunities abounds and people are going to do well.

So we've now, if you like, almost gone full circle. And isn't it depressing, we've now got a conservative government that's running the country like Corbyn would have done. Which, look, I agree with you, because I look at this government, I don't know what they are anymore. I look at the Labour Party. I don't know what they are anymore.

They're the only two realistic options. Doesn't that mean we're in a political crisis? How do we get out of this? We've got a political crisis. We've got Richard Tyson reform. Well done, forget the plug-in. So they're there. He's blocked us on Twitter for no reason whatsoever.

You're not, you're banned from discussing Richard Tice. I have no idea. I'm just joking. Has he? He has blocked us on Twitter. I have no idea why. That's not wise, is it? Fellow libertarians, like you guys, he should be, he should be helping.

I agree with you. But, but look, it's an interesting thing. You know, we don't meet many people with your sort of attitude in this country. And as an outsider, I've always wondered about this, because as you say, during the Victorian era, this was the engine of innovation and drive and creativity in that way. But the values you're talking about, I associate much more with America. In this country, in my experience, most people aren't driven to achieve, aren't driven to create. And I hope I'm not slandering the British public, because, of course, people like that exist too.

But why have we not got quite as much of that sort of thing that you're talking about, which is starting businesses, creating things, building things. I don't know, but I do think there's a lot more underlying wealth. I think the English aren't like the more British aren't like the Americans. Wealth, you know, to show wealth is a thoroughly bad thing, and everybody's been brought up to think that. But there's a lot more wealth and historical wealth as well still residing here. And, you know, I think America, a lot of the wokeery and the sort of,

I think, terrible things. we do import from America, you know, a lot of political correctness and all the other stuff. I mean, when are people going to get back to interfacing with each other and respecting each other and debating things, even if it's difficult to debate them? As we, you know, as I think we said earlier, the old Labor attitude, the Wedgie Ben, the Peter Shaw, all these people, they were true, if you like, British patriots. They had a different view, and I respect it. I love listening to the Wedgie Ben tapes.

It's absolutely fantastic listening. For those people who haven't listened to him, it's great. You know, he was an honest guy. Okay, he came from rich family, but he had a socialist view. That's fine. Why can't we all debate these things and have a difference of opinion? And then we get at the truth. But that's not the way people operate today.

It seems that nobody's prepared to listen to a point of view that they don't like. Again, I think partly that comes back to another of my favorite beefs, which is the BBC. I can't wait to see the back of the BBC. I think the BBC is a cancer at the heart of Britain. Well done for putting that mildly. It actually, it's a centrally planned, sort of self-important organisation, which doesn't represent the views of certainly mild constituency in the West Midlands, most of Yorkshire and a lot of other parts of the country.

And it certainly didn't reflect that over Brexit. It was completely partisan, which, as you know, Reith, his original founding. Doctrine was it should be completely impartial, and it should inform, entertain and educate. Does it inform, no. Does it educate, no? Does it entertain? Very definitely not. So it doesn't do any of those things now. And if it's such a national treasure, it should be defunded, and it should then stand on its own two feet like everybody else. And then if they want to spout their woke views on life and they want to distort, the way in which everybody lives their lives.

If people don't want to listen to it, they can turn it off. But why should we all have to pay 157 pounds, 50 or 159 quid, whatever it is, to fund this monster, which gives everybody the wrong impression? So in answer to your question, cut free of the BBC, cut free of a lot of this sort of dogma that gets pushed down people's throats every day, I actually think you've got an innately productive people here, who could actually make a major contribution, not only to the success and wealth of this country,

but also it could help Europe and the rest of the world. Look at it, look at what we invent. Most of the good things that have been invented in the world come from the UK. So does Marmite, so it's a bit of a bad. Yeah, I love Marmite as well. You're both wrong. Rupert, the one aspect of the BBC

that I will push back on, is this. I worry about the polarisation of society. I look at American media. You've got MSNBC on one hand, Fox News on the other, never the twain shall meet. There's people who go on MSNBC, they have a conversation with themselves, same with Fox News. Do you not think that the BBC has this power to be this unifying force in the centre where we can get people on from libertarian rights, you know, the woke left, and try and bring together so we can have a discussion? Not just those people, centre and everybody. I don't think you can rely on a sort of broadcaster who has lost its way because it isn't impartial. I think everybody would accept that. So if it's deficient and the head

of the beast is wrong, as they always say fish rots from the head, if it's wrong up there, it's never going to be this unifying agent, which again is desirable if you could achieve it. And I think when the BBC was founded, I think it was genuinely a principled organisation which did try to achieve that. I think it's become, it's lost its way and is the right way to achieve what you're hoping to achieve to have a license fee which everybody has to pay regardless of whether they want to or not. And most of the young people, if you talk to, do a survey of young people, my children, I've got four children under 30 years old, none of them watch the BBC. They all object to the TV license.

Why should they have to pay it? They don't use it to get their news. I mean, the only justification possible for the BBC would be a completely impartial news service, which gave the British people a news which is completely unaffected or un- if you like... Unbiased. Completely unbiased. Completely unbiased and it hasn't had any PR spin or anybody sort of spinning it. So it's just pure news so they can make their minds up about like, like,

But I don't see there's a justification for the BBC. I actually think they create more division now. I think their main role in life is to create division between the rich and the poor. And as Lincoln said, you don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. So what we've got to do is try and make the poor richer by playing a part in a vibrant society that believes in itself. And bringing them up that way. You can't do it by creating this sort of division and envy. And the problem we've got now is in the past,

you didn't have as much envy because people didn't know how other people lived. So they lived their lives in however they found their lives to be. Now you can become a voyeur and you can, let's face it, all the media people are trying to show how these Russian oligarchs live or how the billionaires live and the life they live. and people are envious. So it's already, the envy is already there. So we don't want divided society.

We want a society that works together. So I don't think the BBC achieves that now. I think they're an agent for bad, not for good. And personally, if people want to watch it again, I'm a great believer in free choice. If you want to charge 160 quid, fine. Do it by subscription? And those people who want it can pay for it.

Do you think it's inevitable that it's going to get defunded? I hope so. I think it's outlived its useful life. So I'm totally in favour. And I make no bones about it on Twitter. It's one of my favorite subjects. And I think it should go. I think the sooner it goes, the better.

The sooner we've got a chance of then releasing this innate entrepreneurialism of the British people. Well, you know what? Francis and I are both originally coming from a position that he articulated, which is the BBC has the potential to be unifying force. But I don't see them making any attempt to do that. And the sort of Soviet-style state control thing that you're talking about is true. I mean, we look at, so we're in the podcasting world or making a YouTube show world, and we see what they do when they want to create some podcasts.

And it is literally like, let's tick some boxes, let's pick people who look the right way or whatever. And that's not how you create a new business or a new podcast or whatever. It has to be on merit. It has to be, there has to be a market. for it. This has to be lots of people. And the BBC isn't constrained by those things. Any organisation that can spend a hundred million on diversity and inclusion has got to have got it badly wrong. They'll probably get diversity and inclusion right, but then the content won't be very good.

Those are the trade-offs. It's interesting the point that you made about envy because I see a lot of it. And I think maybe part of it is that there is a feeling that social mobility has declined. I don't mind you being a billionaire if I feel that if I work hard and make the right choices and do the right things and start a business and that business does well, then I'm going to get to a place in my life

where I have what I want and et cetera, et cetera, right? But I think for a lot of people, particularly with the lack of innovative spirit, as you talk about, there is a feeling in this country where like if you're born at the bottom, you're kind of stuck there. And there's going to be people, the woke people that you mentioned coming and telling you

You know, you're stuck there because society is evil and it's oppressive and it's, you're disenfranchised. And, by the way, that's true. It is true that society disadvantages certain people more than others. Some people are born with more opportunities than others. They have a father who has more contacts or they have money in the bank. Those things will help. That's true. But nature differentiates by giving somebody a better brain, somebody a better eye, somebody, whatever.

So we're not born. Equal. We're not. And I actually think, relative to other countries, I've never thought this is a racist country. I think, you know, I, and if you talk to the cab drivers and that, most of them say, well, maybe 30 years ago. Yeah. As an Indian taxi driver, you might have got some people who were racist, which is horrific. But at the end of the day, now, I'm quite proud of this country.

I think to beat ourselves up, we are probably the most fair-minded people in the world. That's always been mighty. And I think to beat ourselves up is completely wrong. So, you know, I just. I just think we just need a bit more confidence that actually we're fine. And with regard to your people who say they don't get opportunity, there's plenty of opportunity here. And, you know, if you look at businesses now, look at these really successful businesses. Most of them were founded in 2000, 2003, 2005.

And, you know, they're founded from nothing, and they've been founded by people who've got brain power. So in a way, what's happening is, and this is what we're going to make sure that happens, is your brain power is becoming the currency. Yes, it's true. And what brain power is doing is, with the help of the QE merchants, it's this piece of paper that's banked by nothing is going to be destroyed by the ability of the individual to out-think and out-design and out-entrepreneur, a flat-footed state that's run by, as we say, the reverse Darwinists. I mean, I'm playing devil's advocate to you, Rupert, but I can't, but I can't disagree because here's the truth. If you want to start something, a creative business, a podcast, a YouTube show, design a new widget or whatever, there's never been a better time. The capital you need to do that, it's not like you've got to build a factory. No, no.

It's not like you've got to make billions of capital investment to do it. In fact, with 3D printing, digital printing, you can almost now print stuff that you used to have to have a factory to make. Yeah. So, you know, there's huge innovation. taking place. The digital revolution is massive. And I think, again, it gives people individual opportunity. You don't need to be, I mean, if I've had any benefit over other people, it's my education. Okay, so I am lucky that I've been well educated, but I didn't choose my parents and I didn't choose where I went to school. They did. But other than that, I've had to get off my

backside and go and do it myself completely. And that's quite right. I think everybody should do that. Now, maybe that's a bit of an advantage, but I'll tell you what, there's a lot more people who are a lot more clever than I am. So, and, you know, they're brilliant a lot of people, but what you mustn't do is hold those back. Yeah. But equally, you can't clog up the pores for them to succeed by looking after all the people who aren't that able. They have to accept their position. And again, working in Japan, which is a fascinating country, you've got a very pyramidal structure. So everybody in Japan sort of accepts where they are. In a way, they're held back far more than we are, because if you're born into a certain part of that triangle, that's where you aspire to be. Here we don't. We should

all be aspirational. We should all want to do well. We have to respect other people. We have to say, well, he's successful. I should respect him. I'd like to emulate him. And I'm going to get off my backside and do it. And I think there's huge opportunity here, not least because of the digital revolution. If anything's holding us back, it's overcomplicated tax laws, which means you have to employ hugely expensive tax lawyers and hugely expensive lawyers. There's far too many lawyers and professionals that they need to be trimmed back. They're the vast amounts. I think it's going to say executed. Fast amounts, vast amounts of them who are holding back all these people. Because actually, if you simplified, and that wouldn't be difficult to get rid of them,

we need to have a flat rate tax, which actually, you know, has been proved to work better than all this very complicated tax law. I don't know about you, but I used to be to do my own tax return. I now have to rely on an extremely expensive accountant to do it because it's so complicated. Yeah, that's literally what we've had to do. And what the state's done is it's positioned itself against the individual, so it's trying to rob you without knowing it's robbed you.

And then what's it doing, wasting all the money that it takes off you? It was supposed to be spending that to make your life easier and administer everything correctly, you know, whatever it was, your water, your gas, your electricity. And the Victorians never privatized all their utilities. Because otherwise they've got disease and, you know, things broke down and people didn't invest enough. So I think, you know, there's so much that could be changed so easily.

But as you say, we've got this establishment, which is just not fit for purpose. Yeah. And it's time for people to start calling them out. You know, people, the voter, the taxpayer, should be complaining. you can't get through to HMRC. It's so complicated. Why do we need all that complication?

The FCA, they regulate the city of London out of existence. They worry about a little insider trader and then they miss the huge fraud. They're never going to challenge that. So it's all fiddling around at the lower level. Again, a lot of lawyers and professionals who are looking at the small print, not the big picture. So I, you know, that's oppressive.

You've got, you know, as I say, the planners, now are shocking. You can't get an answer to them. They're supposed to respond within a certain time, but they don't. What's the sanction if they don't? Well, that doesn't appear to be one. So, you know, if you, the more you centralise everything, and you saw this in the USSR, you know, nothing works, and in the end nobody takes responsibility. And it's always somebody else's fault. A bit like a bad to run football club. It wasn't my fault. It was him. Anyway, that's enough about Everton. So. I'm going to have to protect you from Anton for the rest of the day.

Hey Francis, do you like books? I tried one once. Wasn't for me, Mike. Not enough pictures of fit brown birds. Never working with you again. But if you like fantasy, check out the Ripples in Reality series by J.S. Powell. They're absolutely brilliant and they have a five gold star rating on Amazon. I've heard of them.

They're beautifully written and completely original. If you want a book that allows you to delve into different worlds and helps you escape the insanity of real life, then ripples in reality is for you. See, I know the word delve, so I do read books. Amazing. Just imagine books written in the style of Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, Forgottened Rems, with an added pinch of Stargate. It's catnip for people like me.

Virgins. Uh-huh. She started a publishing company named Poppyfield Publishing, and her novels are a massive hit with fans who want to read books that are a great read and are not woke. Book one is Shadow Step. And book two, Gave Shadows.

She's currently writing book number three. I can't wait. I don't read books because I can talk to girls. Your mum doesn't count, mate. And by the way, J.S. Powell is a big supporter of Trigonometry. She is a moderator on our channel and we really appreciate all her help. You can find her books online at Amazon,

lulu.com and other bookseller websites. If you enjoy the books, please leave a review. The links are in the description. The one thing that I wanted to talk to you about, Rupert, which I think is very interesting, and we've touched on it briefly, is the future of Europe, because we voted to leave, and that was a right thing to do. That was what the public wanted. I voted Remain, I believe that we should have left, right? That was the right choice. But you look at the future of Europe, and I'm looking at it. I don't live there, but as somebody, who just takes a very sort of cursory look at the place in the countries,

it seems to be descending into chaos. You look at what's happening in Italy. You look at what's happening in France. You're looking at, you know, locked down to Austria, Germany. There's civil rights. The economics is in the toilet. It looks like the end of something. Well, I think it's in deep trouble.

And, you know, the way I explain to most people who, you know, don't want to get into the detail is the difference between us and the Europeans is quite straightforward. So we are libertarian free traders and we have laws and our laws are structured in such a way that, you know, if the law, unless the law says you can't do something, you assume you can. That's the sort of, to use a politically incorrect phrase, the Anglo-Saxon view of life. In Europe, it's the other way around. Yes. The Europeans, and this is how I explain it to people simply,

the Europeans are of the view that unless the law says you can do it, you assume you can't do it. That's the difference between us, the essential difference in us than them. And the European Parliament, I think, and I said this to Nigel Farage after a day there, I said the only reason I can see this place exists. And look, being there was fun. You know, you had lots of debating, you had lots of interesting people, you had, and the concept was fine.

But actually, what was it there for? It was there to stop Germany starting another war with France, and France stopping another war with Germany, and roping everybody together. That's what it's there for. And the European people, I think, are suffering. I mean, I don't understand, I mean, Varifakis is a man I like. I love reading his books.

I think he's a very smart, clever, again, socialist. He doesn't necessarily agree with my view of life, but I respect him as a clever man. you know, he would have taken Greece out of the Euro. I would have taken Greece out of the Euro. I'd have gone back to the Drakma. I'd have devalued and I'd have made Greece the primary holiday destination of the rest of Europe,

and it would have rebuilt itself in no time. But no, they got bullied into staying. Italy. I mean, I love Italy. My wife and I go walking the Via Francigena in Italy, and it's the most fantastic country, and the people are fantastic. I love it.

They've got style. They're great with children. They're kind. they're fantastic food, but they're dying on their feet in the euro. So the key, a bit like here, the BBC, the key cancer in Europe is the euro. So the euro was, when they realized

that the political experiment was failing, they thought to themselves, we've got to get the currency together. So without having, if you like, the sort of governments together, they rammed the currency through. And that's why I stood for the referendum party, 1997, funded by James Goldsmith, he really saved the pound, and 50 million pounds he invested.

And I kept my deposit in the Cotswolds. I got 6.7% of the vote and returned the deposit to Sir James. So he saved the pound, and the reason we did that was because our establishment, shock horror, thought the euro was the best thing since sliced bread. Blair famously campaign. All three. Blair, Major, and Paddy Ashdown. All wanted it.

So, you know, but then we got this promise of a referendum, which in the end, and again, everybody says, oh, it was Gordon Brown. It had nothing to do with Gordon Brown. The referendum party came before Gordon Brown. We'd have been in the euro if we, if Jimmy hadn't got, I think he got 820,000 votes or something. I know because I had a bet with somebody with the foreign officer, which he never honoured of a case of champagne. He said we wouldn't get half a million votes.

So that put enough pressure on them to promise all three parties, promised the referendum, which is why Cameron had a referendum in the end. Didn't need to have it when he did, but he did because he was arrogant enough, think he was going to win it. So I think, you know, Europe's been killed by the euro, and the euro must fail. But it's a bit like the USSR. You know, once you've got this elite that's all in, it's never going to admit defeat until, and again, the communist bloc was so rotten when it fell. there was nothing there. Everybody thought, I remember the wall coming down, everybody thought it would take 10 years, took a nanosecond because there was nothing left. It was rotten. And you're going to see that, I think, in Europe. So it'll last longer than you think, but when it fails, it'll fail spectacularly. And that's when the real truth about this post-war protectionist block, which is what they are, you know, from the common agricultural policy right the way through. It's completely protectionist. It's totally.

I'm anti everything that really we stand for as a trading nation. But we lost our confidence. We went in, you know, we had Ted Heath and a bunch of really quite weak leaders then. I mean, it's not new this weak leader business. And they took us in because they lost confidence. And we then had Maggie, as you know, Maggie was very Euro-sceptic. But I think there's a real shock coming in Europe at some stage. But how long can Italy go on, I liken it to withering on the vine.

on the vine. I mean, they're literally, the blood supply is being cut off and they're sort of withering. And they can't thrive until they're out of the euro. But this is what I don't understand. I've never been in business, right? But I look, how can you have the same currency for economies as diverse as Germany, Italy, Greece? They're completely different economies with different needs. Look, there's only one solution, which is the counterintuitive solution, and you may know the Germans never wanted to join the euro. They got bullied. by the French into joining.

In fact, in fact, the Germans, yeah, the Germans wanted to keep the Deutsche market. In fact, they've, I used to work for Deutsche Bank. So they, ultimately, they were bullied into joining. They've been the main beneficiary of it. So the counterintuitive resolution to this is for Germany to leave the Euro and leave all the weak nations and let the Euro float down. That'll net that, again, this elite that's sort of holding it all together won't let that happen. That's what they should be doing if they want to protect the living,

standards of the majority of the people in Europe. But I mean, I'm amazed at how servile, most of the European electorate is. They are incredibly servile. And again, look at their history. You know, they tend to be far less questioning than us, far less individualistic, far less libertarian. And that's ultimately, I think, the root cause of the problem between us and France has always been a problem and I think there always will be.

And of course, that difference in attitude you see reflected in the COVID restrictions, the way that, you know, even though I think all three of us have complained pretty hard about the things that have happened here, and I think a lot of them have been very wrong. The vaccine passports, for example, just outrageous, as far as I'm concerned. Outrageous. Outrageous. But how far they've gone on the continent is a different scale. Well, Macron's behaving like a dictator.

Right. And look at Austria. And yet the cases in France are going through the roof. And, funny enough, in the most jabbed country in the world, Israel, the stats don't bear looking at. I mean, they're still jabbing away. And Sajit Jabbit, as I like to call him, he's trying to emulate them or he was at one time. I might pinch that from you if you don't mind with Sajit Jabbit. But look, there's one thing that we've got about 10 minutes left,

and there's one thing that we haven't talked about yet, which is interesting to me and I think it's interesting to a lot of people. What is it like to be involved in football? What is it like to run a football club? Well, as I said earlier, I got into football by default. So I was going to build the football stadium, St. Mary's, which we did build in the end. Again, we had huge trouble with local councils.

So just to give you a quick example of how inefficient the local politics of these various places is, originally we were going to build the stadium right next to the airport. So it would have been a fantastic site. So you had Hampshire County Council was a Tory council.

Southampton City Council was Labor and Eastly Borough Council was liberal. So none of them could agree that water was wet. and the site should have been the site where we developed the stadium and we would have built it and developed it and project managed it for nothing just to have the stadium. But no, they couldn't agree. So in the end, Southampton City Council, for their credit, helped us.

It was the old Transcoast sites, so we had to spend a fortune cleaning up all the oil residue. And then we had to do the archaeology, which was interesting because it's on the ancient settlement of Hamwick, so we did find some quite interesting trading relics, because we've always been traders with Northern Europe. So it's very interesting we found lots of stuff there, which we put on show in the stadium.

So we built St. Mary's. But I had no idea when we did the reverse takeover and I became chairman of the holding company and Guy Ascom, who's a fantastic man, my previous chairman, he remained chairman of the football club. And then we were going to be relegated. We had, I think, 27 points from 31 games. we were bottom

and the guy asked him said to me you need to be chairman of both companies to bring some sense and rationalisation when we go down and we lose a lot of the Premier League income so I thought well I'm not going to do that without having a bit of a bit of a fight so shock horror unlike any chairman

before I started going to the dressing room because as I said I used to play reasonably competitive hockey and I'm not frightened of a dressing room and to cut a long story short in those final seven games we got I think 13 points because we ended up, I think, with 41 points from memory. And if you remember, I think Middlesville went down that year.

And we stayed up. And that's when Sue Ness then resigned. And I was then, then Laurie McMenemy resigned, having stitched me up. So first of all, Sue Ness, I said, well, if you're going to go, Laurie, you resign together. But no, we wrote the press release together. Laurie Mennamie says this. And then 24 hours later, Lorry resigned. And then there's me on virtually every back page.

of most tabloids looking like a child molester with a border running around it saying Southampton crisis so I just shut the phones off and in the end you know I hired Dave Jones and we didn't do very well to start with I had the whole stadium I think the joke at Southampton after the first 10 games of that season I think we had one point and the joke going around was what's the difference between Southampton and a cocktail stick the answer to which is a cocktail sticks got two points.

So, and the crowd with Chants and Rupert Loza, W-A-N-K-E-R, and, you know, I mean, I thought, what am I doing? Right. Anyway, then it all came right with... Rupert, sorry to interrupt, because it's fascinating. What is that like? Stressful. No one in very few people, even we, we get a lot of hate online from everybody, right? But that's different.

That's different. When it's online, I can go to this person sitting. in the mother's basement. They haven't... But you've got 50,000 people... 15 and a half thousand at the Dell. Yeah, but let's say. I told my wife it wasn't true.

And I had to pretend I wasn't affected by it, which you have to show outwardly no sign of... But there's 15,000 people who paid 25 quid or whatever to see a game to chant Rupert low as a wanker, and you're there. In your own stadium. In your own stadium.

I think we lost 2-0 to Leeds that. It was an evening game. Anyway, we then... I remember Christopher Bland was at the next game. We were playing West Ham. And the punters were lobbing, you know, their programs at us. And Christopher Blan got hit on the shoulder by a projectile. This is West Ham.

And we beat West Ham 3-0. And then we didn't look back. We beat Liverpool, Landfield. And by Christmas, I think we were 11th in the league or something. So it all calmed down. The best I ever got being, as they called me, a Toff and a public school boy, was being left alone. if we were doing well, which on the whole we did.

So what do I think of football? I loved it because I'm competitive. I love sport. I now play reasonably good tennis because I'm getting too old to, you know, charge around a hockey pitch or football pitch. But I loved it. I mean, it's the best thing. And probably the best day of my life was going to the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff

when we got to the cut final. And we lost 1-0 to Arsenal, but you'd think from our fans that we'd won. We should have won. I mean, you know, little Brett Ormore hit the post, I think, and had we got, Arsenal actually weren't on form that day, but they won one, them. But so we built it, I built the Youth Academy because we were never going to be able to compete. Because football's like war, you have to have a big economy. So the stadium gave us a bigger economy.

You know, we got, we now, we used to fill St. Mary's, which is 32,000 seats, 32,5. We had to, because of health and safety, we had to separate and lost a few seats. So, and we got stronger and stronger, you know, got to the cut final. I hired Clive Woodward, which I thought was a stroke of genius, but I got butchered in the media. And then, bizarrely, the fans didn't hold, they don't tend to hold there. I never like to call them managers. I like to call them head coaches, because that's, ultimately, that's the correct.

That's what they do. So I built the academy up. I loved the academy and we got some great young players like Walcott and Baylon and and Shaw and Oxley Chamberlain and Lallana and you know it goes on and on so we we trained these people I brought the coach in from France for the academy I bought in procurement we went around finding people from all the best people from clubs so I rather than buying success we were trying to train success but that's not what the industry wants because it's quite corrupt and lots of people make lots of money

out of it so you know the big clubs like to dominate it they don't mind the odd Cup victory of a little club. It's quite romantic, but they don't like it if the little clubs start to do too well. And that model wouldn't work for them because actually you've only got 11 people on the pitch. And if they're trained properly and they're mentally prepared properly, there's no reason why they can't roll over people who spend a lot more money. But they control it because if your little kids go out onto the pitch at Old Trafford and the previous week it's been about, you know, wonderful Manchester United and struggling Southampton. A lot of footballers won off the pitch. These guys go out on the pitch. They don't believe they're going to win. So they don't win. And, you know, so the dominance of the big clubs is, it's almost a tribal thing, you know,

and you go, your children go to a football school. So my little kids were the only two in Saints outfits. So maybe six or seven man, Manu, five Arsenal, some Liverpool. and they'd all, you know, take the Michael out of the little Southampton lads. So that's how it's all sort of, again, it's collectivism. It's, that's what it's become. So I loved it, and it's in terribly corrupt industry. Why is it?

Let's go into it. So how is it corrupt? It's corrupt because it's dominated by the agents. I always wanted the Premier League to make it illegal for a, agent to collect a fee from both a club and a player. And if the player retained the agent, he should pay the agent. But no, the big clubs didn't want that because they could pay the agents far more than the little clubs.

So they ended up getting the players they wanted. So there's all sorts of stuff that goes on in there. And it's, it is, trust me, it's terribly corrupt. And it's disappointing because it's such an important game for so many people in the country. And you sort of hope it might be honest and you sort of hope it might be structured properly. But then you look at the Premier League now. I mean, it's gone woke. I don't understand why, you know, all this business of taking the knee.

That shouldn't be for the Premier League to push that stuff. That should be, that should actually be for the individual, not the Premier League. Why not, Rupert? But some people might say, and again, play devil's advocate, they might say, well, look, a lot of young people... Quite a part of the fact that BLM is a thoroughly bad organization. No, there's no disagreement here about that, but that's not my point. My point is that's your personal view, and it's my personal view, and it's probably France's personal view.

But forgetting about the organization, a lot of people might say, this is the argument that people I think often put forward, is that the footballers are hugely respected by young people in particular, and what they do and how they conduct themselves as role models for others is important. and this is a huge opportunity to address this important social issue. I think you can address it in a much better way. I mean, the truth is that a lot of young footballers, the biggest problem they have is when they start to earn money

and they go off the rails a bit. And far more important to put a structure around them and try and protect them from that if you can. Again, I think the BLM taking the knee, as you know, a lot of the black players didn't want to do that because they thought it wasn't right that they should do it. So, you know, there were some people, who took objection to it.

I really, I personally think it's not, I think they devalued their brand by doing it. I don't think it's up to them. I think quite apart from the fact that BLM is a bad organisation anyway. And I don't think this country is racist. I don't think we need that to be underlined. So therefore, you know,

I don't think that should be shoved down people's throats. It's a bit like being told you've got to wear a mask or you've got to have a vaccine passport. It's all part of this prescriptive society that has its roots in health and safety and all the other stuff. I mean, look, obviously one needs to take care to protect people,

but to treat them like numpters and, you know, legislate. A lot of this stuff comes from the sort of the health and safety. And in the end, you and I are responsible for our own health and safety. That's how it always used to be. And if you aren't clever enough, if you're too stupid to look after yourself,

in the end, you're going to get hurt. So it's all about individual empowerment and it's about individual decision-making. That's what we've got to release here. We've got great business. people. But if you cow them and they all behave like, you know, as I say, the sort of reverse Darwinist plan, then you'll destroy this innate creativity and entrepreneurship. We've got to allow the libertarian agenda to remain here.

Well, Rupert Lowe... Collectiveism mustn't be allowed to succeed. On that happy note, our time is up. Thank you so much for coming in. We have, as always, just one more question for you. before we do our special questions for our locals only support us. So here we go. And the last question is always, what's the one thing we're not talking about, but we really should be?

Farming. Tell us more. Well, farming is an incredibly important part of the country. We have a great farming industry. There aren't enough young people going into it. There's not enough encouragement to produce our own food here. Food security is incredibly important. We're an island, as we've seen with gas.

If you don't make the use of your own innate reserves and resources, you end up relying on Mr Putin and Russia for your gas. So again, a bit like the supply of gas, farming needs more attention, more planning, more support. And British farming is one of our most successful industries, which is often overlooked. That is very, very interesting. In fact, we're currently looking at a few guests to come on to talk to us about farming. So thank you, Rupert.

If people want to find you online, where is the best place to do that? I'm at Rupert Lowe 10 on Twitter, and I'm at Rupert Lowe 10 because when I went on to Twitter at Nigel Farage's insistence when I stood for the Brexit Party, I found there were nine Saints fans

who plagiarized my Twitter at Twitter. Very good. All right, well, thank you so much for coming on. And thank you all for watching and listening. We'll see you very soon with another brilliant episode like this one or a show. All of them go out at 7pm UK time. And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go, it's also available as a podcast. Take care and see you soon, guys.

So Mandrick had sent me a rotting duck, a bit like the mafia. Because I wouldn't let Rednapp go. It arrived in a...