1 00:00:07,120 --> 00:00:11,840 Hello, welcome to UK column. I'm Ben Rubin and I am very 2 00:00:11,840 --> 00:00:16,320 excited today to be joined by someone who I think is one of 3 00:00:16,320 --> 00:00:21,600 our most important writers and commentators on contemporary 4 00:00:21,680 --> 00:00:25,000 British society. Morgoth, welcome to the show. 5 00:00:25,720 --> 00:00:26,760 Thank you very much for having me. 6 00:00:26,760 --> 00:00:29,720 I've been, I've been a fan of UK column for a long time actually. 7 00:00:29,720 --> 00:00:33,160 So it's nice to, I think I've been mentioned on the site a few 8 00:00:33,160 --> 00:00:36,360 times. So it's it's nice to be like 9 00:00:36,360 --> 00:00:39,280 formally on here. Fantastic. 10 00:00:39,280 --> 00:00:44,400 Well, it's great to have you. So we have got a lot to talk 11 00:00:44,400 --> 00:00:46,160 about. There's quite a bit going on in 12 00:00:46,160 --> 00:00:50,240 the country at the moment, but we set ourselves a little bit of 13 00:00:50,240 --> 00:00:54,440 homework to provide some context, which I think hopefully 14 00:00:54,440 --> 00:00:58,480 should be quite, quite useful. And we've been away and we've 15 00:00:58,480 --> 00:01:05,840 read an essay by George Orwell written in 1942 called England 16 00:01:05,880 --> 00:01:09,680 Your England. And this was, as I'm sure pretty 17 00:01:09,680 --> 00:01:13,040 much everyone listening to this will know, slap bang in the 18 00:01:13,040 --> 00:01:15,200 middle of the Second World War. And it starts with the most 19 00:01:15,200 --> 00:01:18,440 incredible opening line, which says, as I write, highly 20 00:01:18,440 --> 00:01:21,320 civilised human beings are flying overhead trying to kill 21 00:01:21,320 --> 00:01:26,160 me, which is quite, quite a good way to start an essay. 22 00:01:27,280 --> 00:01:31,320 And he talks about England, the English and the British more 23 00:01:31,320 --> 00:01:33,960 broadly. And one of the lines that I love 24 00:01:33,960 --> 00:01:38,160 in it is that he says England is continuous. 25 00:01:38,600 --> 00:01:42,400 It stretches into the future and into the past. 26 00:01:42,880 --> 00:01:45,440 And I suppose my first question is more golf. 27 00:01:45,520 --> 00:01:50,360 Is England in 2025 continuous with the England All Well wrote 28 00:01:50,360 --> 00:01:54,440 about 83 years ago? No, I don't think it is. 29 00:01:54,440 --> 00:01:56,320 I think it's something entirely different. 30 00:01:56,720 --> 00:02:01,360 And, and I think the it's, it's, it's all it's becoming. 31 00:02:01,360 --> 00:02:06,560 It's all it's all is or is in the process of becoming a break. 32 00:02:06,920 --> 00:02:09,400 And we could get into this because all we'll see is of 33 00:02:09,400 --> 00:02:11,880 course, change happens over time. 34 00:02:12,360 --> 00:02:16,080 But I think what, what people refer to, I don't know if you've 35 00:02:16,080 --> 00:02:23,240 seen this, but they call it the UK and it's like, YO, OK, AY. 36 00:02:23,960 --> 00:02:28,320 And it's, it's kind of a funny sort of meme on the Internet. 37 00:02:28,320 --> 00:02:30,720 There's people been writing about it, people have done some 38 00:02:30,720 --> 00:02:34,360 surprisingly kind of deep esoteric takes on it. 39 00:02:35,000 --> 00:02:38,400 But I think it, it describes something, which is the reason 40 00:02:38,400 --> 00:02:41,920 why it's called that reason why it resonates with people is 41 00:02:41,920 --> 00:02:45,960 because it's, it's a fundamental break with what Orwell was 42 00:02:45,960 --> 00:02:49,720 describing. And it's, it's this new place, 43 00:02:49,720 --> 00:02:55,520 It's a non place, like a kind of squalid airport, which doesn't 44 00:02:55,520 --> 00:02:59,720 have the kind of characteristics, uh, it doesn't 45 00:02:59,720 --> 00:03:04,280 have the feel of the, of the things that all was describing. 46 00:03:04,520 --> 00:03:09,200 And funny enough, I, I actually think in Orwell's essay, the 47 00:03:09,200 --> 00:03:14,440 reasons that we ended up at the UK are actually dotted in there 48 00:03:14,440 --> 00:03:17,960 in, in what he's saying as a kind of warning. 49 00:03:19,640 --> 00:03:24,360 You know, it's kind of strange. It's almost like a subplot which 50 00:03:24,360 --> 00:03:28,440 came to overwhelm the entire saga, which which he alludes to 51 00:03:28,440 --> 00:03:33,960 then passing a few a few times, which I'll be so that that's how 52 00:03:33,960 --> 00:03:36,040 old that's that. I could expand on that quite a 53 00:03:36,040 --> 00:03:40,360 bit with Orwell and and it what, 1984 and all of that. 54 00:03:40,360 --> 00:03:43,040 But yeah, that's well, we can come back to that. 55 00:03:43,640 --> 00:03:46,720 Yes. Now I, I, I would tend to agree 56 00:03:46,720 --> 00:03:50,600 with you actually. I, I, I think that the old world 57 00:03:50,600 --> 00:03:53,920 is still there, bubbling away beneath the surface, but there's 58 00:03:53,920 --> 00:03:57,640 definitely this kind of facade that's been placed on top of it. 59 00:03:57,640 --> 00:04:02,600 I like that idea of a non place and you talked about a squalid 60 00:04:02,600 --> 00:04:07,600 airport and I remember going into Luton airport once a few 61 00:04:07,600 --> 00:04:09,920 years ago and it just looked horrific. 62 00:04:10,280 --> 00:04:13,120 It was basically like going into a set of Rd. works. 63 00:04:13,120 --> 00:04:15,720 And actually on the news yesterday, Brian Garish was 64 00:04:15,720 --> 00:04:18,320 talking about a trip he took to A&E last week. 65 00:04:18,839 --> 00:04:25,120 And it it was this horrific, brutalist 60s building that's 66 00:04:25,120 --> 00:04:27,520 being extended. I think he's Derriford Hospital. 67 00:04:27,920 --> 00:04:31,320 And basically he was stuck in A&E in this kind of in between 68 00:04:31,320 --> 00:04:35,400 place with junk food in the vending machines and BBC 69 00:04:35,400 --> 00:04:39,920 propaganda on, on, on the the TV screen, keeping people sort of 70 00:04:39,920 --> 00:04:42,720 semi comatose while they're sitting there for 10 hours. 71 00:04:43,080 --> 00:04:46,600 And that to me, that sounds like the kind of UK place that you're 72 00:04:46,600 --> 00:04:49,280 talking about. Yeah, it's, it's kind of like 73 00:04:50,080 --> 00:04:53,840 there's, I mean, just demographically it's so foreign 74 00:04:53,960 --> 00:04:57,080 now. And in many places where you 75 00:04:57,080 --> 00:05:00,240 don't even have one of the things that I've noticed is that 76 00:05:00,760 --> 00:05:04,840 people don't even really care where people come from anymore. 77 00:05:05,040 --> 00:05:08,680 Where it used to be, well, this person's from India or this 78 00:05:08,680 --> 00:05:11,880 person's from Jamaica and they had their own sort of 79 00:05:11,880 --> 00:05:15,800 distinctness and their own sort of heritage which they come 80 00:05:15,920 --> 00:05:18,600 could come with them. And whether it was for good or 81 00:05:18,600 --> 00:05:21,360 bad was kind of like, OK, whatever. 82 00:05:21,760 --> 00:05:27,920 But now the difference with the UK, the UK non place is that 83 00:05:27,920 --> 00:05:30,840 none of that even seems to matter anymore because there's 84 00:05:30,840 --> 00:05:33,720 no rudeness or heritage anywhere to be found. 85 00:05:34,080 --> 00:05:37,880 Even the immigrants end up just becoming the sort of drifting 86 00:05:37,880 --> 00:05:42,720 sort of transient consumers or the the, the high streets of 87 00:05:42,720 --> 00:05:46,400 vape shops and these American candy stores and, and this kind 88 00:05:46,400 --> 00:05:48,800 of thing. So there's that one place 89 00:05:48,800 --> 00:05:51,960 becomes the same as another becomes the same as another. 90 00:05:52,200 --> 00:05:55,840 And the people in it are just sort of wandering around 91 00:05:55,840 --> 00:05:59,840 completely disorientated. It's, it's, it's utterly 92 00:05:59,840 --> 00:06:04,600 alienating and, and depressing. And one of the things about it 93 00:06:04,840 --> 00:06:10,160 that there was this, this, I mean, where one of the places 94 00:06:10,160 --> 00:06:11,960 this came from was a Twitter account. 95 00:06:12,720 --> 00:06:16,880 And he would just post out of context photos. 96 00:06:17,040 --> 00:06:20,920 So for example, you would see, for example, like a, a Muslim 97 00:06:20,920 --> 00:06:25,240 family standing outside of like a traditional English pub in, in 98 00:06:25,240 --> 00:06:28,440 Canterbury or something. And that was it. 99 00:06:28,440 --> 00:06:30,640 There'd be no context. That would just be that. 100 00:06:30,640 --> 00:06:33,480 And then the mainstream newspaper, I think it was the 101 00:06:33,480 --> 00:06:37,480 Guardian or the New Statesman or something, they carried an 102 00:06:37,480 --> 00:06:41,640 article on this and they didn't like it because they could, they 103 00:06:41,720 --> 00:06:45,640 knew there was something insidious about this messaging, 104 00:06:45,920 --> 00:06:48,920 but they couldn't actually explain why without standing on 105 00:06:48,920 --> 00:06:52,200 their own land mines. They because it's implicit. 106 00:06:52,280 --> 00:06:55,480 You, you get it. And this is, this is not the way 107 00:06:55,480 --> 00:06:59,000 people are supposed to think. It's supposed to be woven in to 108 00:06:59,000 --> 00:07:02,280 a narrative. You, you have, you have to have 109 00:07:02,280 --> 00:07:05,560 a, a data set and all of the rest of it you. 110 00:07:05,600 --> 00:07:08,440 And, and that wasn't what it is. It was hitting people in the 111 00:07:08,440 --> 00:07:13,000 gut, which they knew intuitively to be off kilter and, and not 112 00:07:13,000 --> 00:07:16,360 quite right. And, and so this is, This is why 113 00:07:16,360 --> 00:07:20,680 I think it's interesting. And and that sort of not quite 114 00:07:20,680 --> 00:07:26,840 rightness that the uncanny valley feeling to it is, is why 115 00:07:26,840 --> 00:07:29,520 it resonates with people who are looking at this. 116 00:07:29,960 --> 00:07:34,080 And unfortunately, you know, in times gone by, we could have 117 00:07:34,080 --> 00:07:38,560 this as a national conversation in the media, but we can't 118 00:07:38,560 --> 00:07:42,080 because we can't address what's actually going on. 119 00:07:42,360 --> 00:07:47,560 So we live in this non place that denies itself and it's 120 00:07:47,560 --> 00:07:50,520 utterly confusing and demoralising for everybody. 121 00:07:52,000 --> 00:07:55,720 Yeah, I like that idea that it's alienating to everyone actually. 122 00:07:56,360 --> 00:08:00,760 You know, this, this kind of multicultural mush where 123 00:08:01,760 --> 00:08:06,880 identity is essentially denied to the majority, but as an 124 00:08:06,880 --> 00:08:09,640 extension of that, it has to be denied to everyone else as well. 125 00:08:09,960 --> 00:08:12,040 So it just ends up being a compromise. 126 00:08:13,320 --> 00:08:16,840 Yeah, I, I, I find it, I find it bizarre that somebody would 127 00:08:16,840 --> 00:08:21,680 leave like the hills of Pakistan to live in it, like above a flat 128 00:08:21,680 --> 00:08:25,240 in Hull or something like that. It's bizarre. 129 00:08:25,280 --> 00:08:28,000 I find that strange. Yeah. 130 00:08:28,400 --> 00:08:30,880 No, I completely agree. I completely agree. 131 00:08:31,200 --> 00:08:35,480 So you talked a little bit about seeing the seeds of the of this 132 00:08:35,480 --> 00:08:40,919 transformation, this decimation of our national story throughout 133 00:08:40,919 --> 00:08:43,200 this essay. And I'm guessing that one of 134 00:08:43,200 --> 00:08:47,160 those might be the the liberal intelligentsia and you've 135 00:08:47,160 --> 00:08:49,280 mentioned the Guardian. Is that is that what you were 136 00:08:49,280 --> 00:08:52,360 thinking about? Well, I would say what he's 137 00:08:52,360 --> 00:08:55,720 describing there is there's the bourgeoisie. 138 00:08:56,880 --> 00:09:00,280 And I actually posted this on Twitter because I'd read it this 139 00:09:00,280 --> 00:09:03,560 morning. And then I kind of went on 140 00:09:03,560 --> 00:09:07,760 Twitter and I did AI posted it. And it's got, it's getting quite 141 00:09:07,760 --> 00:09:11,800 a bit of traction. And he said the the working 142 00:09:11,800 --> 00:09:14,760 man's heart does not leap when he sees a Union Jack. 143 00:09:15,040 --> 00:09:19,520 But the famous insularity and xenophobia in courts of the 144 00:09:19,520 --> 00:09:22,000 English is far stronger. And the working class, Southern 145 00:09:22,000 --> 00:09:25,040 and bourgeoisie in all countries, the poor are more 146 00:09:25,040 --> 00:09:28,080 national than the rich, but the English working class are 147 00:09:28,080 --> 00:09:31,240 outstanding in their abhorrence and foreign habits. 148 00:09:31,800 --> 00:09:36,120 And what, what I think's interesting about that is is, 149 00:09:36,360 --> 00:09:38,680 you know, you just need to look at people standing outside of 150 00:09:38,680 --> 00:09:41,960 these migrant hotels. But fundamentally it's a war 151 00:09:41,960 --> 00:09:46,160 being waged on from on bourgeoisie on the, the working 152 00:09:46,160 --> 00:09:48,480 class. So you could say this was a sort 153 00:09:48,480 --> 00:09:53,840 of it's, it's an old and implicit part of English 154 00:09:53,840 --> 00:09:56,440 identity. But again, to touch on what we 155 00:09:56,440 --> 00:10:00,040 were saying about the, the UK vacation you, I think we're 156 00:10:00,040 --> 00:10:02,480 reaching a breaking point. I think it's become something 157 00:10:02,480 --> 00:10:06,320 existential. But what I, I think the, the 158 00:10:06,320 --> 00:10:11,720 real sort of what Orwell is really hinting at as well is 159 00:10:11,720 --> 00:10:15,520 when he mentions and I, I, I cut this bit out. 160 00:10:16,200 --> 00:10:19,960 Moreover, the tendency of small businesses to merge together 161 00:10:19,960 --> 00:10:24,080 into larger ones rob more and more of the moneyed class of 162 00:10:24,080 --> 00:10:28,040 their function and turned them into mere owners, their work 163 00:10:28,040 --> 00:10:31,480 being done for them by salaried managers and technicians. 164 00:10:32,040 --> 00:10:36,720 This is actually quite a deep point for Orwell, because in 165 00:10:37,920 --> 00:10:41,360 there was a This was an essay in 1941. 166 00:10:41,680 --> 00:10:47,400 In 1942, a thinker called James Burnham wrote a book called The 167 00:10:47,400 --> 00:10:51,560 Managerial Revolution, and Burnham before that had written 168 00:10:51,560 --> 00:10:55,200 other book such as the he was very much a realist in his 169 00:10:55,200 --> 00:10:59,240 approach. And in my copy of the Managerial 170 00:10:59,240 --> 00:11:03,480 Revolution, there's a lengthy introduction by George Orwell 171 00:11:03,520 --> 00:11:07,200 himself. And what's fascinating just 172 00:11:07,200 --> 00:11:10,320 reading that is that there's a, there's a few things, but one of 173 00:11:10,320 --> 00:11:17,160 them is 1984 is actually a, a parody of the managerial 174 00:11:17,160 --> 00:11:22,520 revolution and O'Brien in 1984, people say it's supposed to be 175 00:11:22,520 --> 00:11:27,320 James Burnham. And what they mean by the 176 00:11:27,320 --> 00:11:32,400 managerial revolution is that the future would be dictated to 177 00:11:32,400 --> 00:11:36,760 by as he says there. I mean, this is this is this is 178 00:11:36,760 --> 00:11:42,040 Burnham's sort of view on where the revolution of the world was 179 00:11:42,040 --> 00:11:44,160 not going to be fascist or communist. 180 00:11:44,560 --> 00:11:46,880 It was going to be a revolution of the managers. 181 00:11:47,400 --> 00:11:50,160 And it's interesting to look at what Orwell says here. 182 00:11:50,160 --> 00:11:55,680 You know, he says the tendency of small businesses to merge 183 00:11:55,680 --> 00:12:00,400 together into larger ones, rob more and more of the money class 184 00:12:00,400 --> 00:12:04,560 of their function and turn them into mere owners, their work 185 00:12:04,560 --> 00:12:07,680 being done for them by salaried managers and technicians. 186 00:12:08,320 --> 00:12:13,480 And this means that if you take something like, for example, the 187 00:12:13,560 --> 00:12:18,000 the Ford Foundation, you would normally have thought that 188 00:12:18,160 --> 00:12:24,520 there'd be a kind of a Rob a Baron or Aceo or a kind of Elon 189 00:12:24,520 --> 00:12:28,560 Musk figure at the top. Musk is a kind of, he's kind of 190 00:12:28,560 --> 00:12:30,840 like revenge of the ownership class. 191 00:12:31,280 --> 00:12:35,760 He's a, he's a bit weird in our current age because what we see 192 00:12:35,760 --> 00:12:39,800 in these giant firms and these foundations and eventually these 193 00:12:39,800 --> 00:12:44,120 NGOs is that they are all run by managers and technicians. 194 00:12:44,360 --> 00:12:48,240 It's so it's as if the middle management has taken over 195 00:12:48,240 --> 00:12:51,920 everything. And you can see this in, I mean, 196 00:12:51,920 --> 00:12:56,320 obviously something like the United Nations or the World 197 00:12:56,320 --> 00:13:00,880 Health Organization or all of these bureaucracies, all of them 198 00:13:00,880 --> 00:13:04,720 are managers and technicians and they all rule the world today. 199 00:13:05,240 --> 00:13:09,040 And in the old days, of course, you would have a kind of 200 00:13:09,360 --> 00:13:13,400 charismatic boss at the top who would be almost like a 201 00:13:13,400 --> 00:13:17,000 sovereign, like a king. And then you'd have the, the 202 00:13:17,000 --> 00:13:20,520 work, the, the small businesses as well and the, the workers at 203 00:13:20,520 --> 00:13:23,400 the bottom. But what the managers do is 204 00:13:23,640 --> 00:13:28,000 almost like take over the, the running of the firm. 205 00:13:28,360 --> 00:13:31,240 And so you get these strange things where resources are 206 00:13:31,240 --> 00:13:34,880 allocated to things which the man at the top just knows 207 00:13:34,880 --> 00:13:38,600 nothing about woke and all of the, the, the kind of all of the 208 00:13:38,600 --> 00:13:43,000 funding of woke, it just, it just sort of passed them all by. 209 00:13:43,400 --> 00:13:46,960 This is how you can get these weird things where Amazon or all 210 00:13:46,960 --> 00:13:51,480 these massive corporations are just funding subversive 211 00:13:51,480 --> 00:13:55,240 political movements and NGOs all over the place. 212 00:13:55,560 --> 00:13:58,320 And it's all these kind of Midwick managers in the middle 213 00:13:58,720 --> 00:14:05,000 because society became sort of too complicated for one man to 214 00:14:05,040 --> 00:14:09,440 to to you needed specialists. You needed the technicians and 215 00:14:09,440 --> 00:14:12,400 the managers. And that is what Burnham said 216 00:14:12,400 --> 00:14:17,960 would come to dominate the rest of the twenty 20th century. 217 00:14:18,440 --> 00:14:22,280 I mean, I think we are coming to the end of that system now. 218 00:14:22,280 --> 00:14:25,320 I I think it's beginning to fall apart all around us. 219 00:14:26,120 --> 00:14:29,640 I mean, one of the the perfect examples of would be where 220 00:14:29,720 --> 00:14:34,120 Twitter was a kind of of the managers. 221 00:14:34,120 --> 00:14:37,040 It was of that class. They took it over from Jack 222 00:14:37,040 --> 00:14:41,920 Dorsey and then you what you saw Elon must come in like a 223 00:14:41,920 --> 00:14:45,280 sovereign and just fire them all and get rid of them all. 224 00:14:45,560 --> 00:14:48,480 And so this is a kind of thing, a schism which is going on 225 00:14:48,480 --> 00:14:53,120 across the West and an emerging. But I also think so much of what 226 00:14:53,120 --> 00:14:58,000 we see is a result of the managerial revolution. 227 00:14:58,000 --> 00:14:59,600 You can just see it everywhere you look. 228 00:14:59,920 --> 00:15:03,240 One of the examples would be just last week with the sort of 229 00:15:03,240 --> 00:15:08,480 the Afghani, the Tory party covering up this, this data 230 00:15:08,480 --> 00:15:13,480 breach, which was a sort of malfunction of the bureaucracy. 231 00:15:14,280 --> 00:15:18,080 And they, they all think just sort of like computers. 232 00:15:18,080 --> 00:15:21,160 They, they've got no sort of agency outside of the 233 00:15:21,160 --> 00:15:24,440 bureaucracy. And so they tended to come to 234 00:15:24,440 --> 00:15:28,720 the conclusion that what we're going to do is just carry on the 235 00:15:28,720 --> 00:15:32,440 logic of the system and an important entire army and their 236 00:15:32,440 --> 00:15:36,080 families mean this is the best case scenario. 237 00:15:36,080 --> 00:15:38,400 The other scenario is that you could say it's just completely 238 00:15:38,400 --> 00:15:40,520 malicious. But sticking with the theme 239 00:15:40,520 --> 00:15:44,760 here, you can see that this is all just the system working as 240 00:15:44,760 --> 00:15:47,000 intended by these managers and technicians. 241 00:15:47,160 --> 00:15:49,680 They run, they run everything. And I think they're running 242 00:15:49,680 --> 00:15:52,600 everything into the ground and it's falling apart because they 243 00:15:52,600 --> 00:15:56,280 aren't real thinkers. They don't have any kind of 244 00:15:56,280 --> 00:16:00,280 spiritual element to the more philosophical curiosity. 245 00:16:00,440 --> 00:16:06,320 They are just pen pushing sort of dead swilled bureaucrats. 246 00:16:06,920 --> 00:16:11,760 And, and this is what Burnham predicted was going to happen in 247 00:16:11,760 --> 00:16:15,440 1942. He said that fascism and 248 00:16:15,440 --> 00:16:20,080 communism were both very similar because they they were both just 249 00:16:20,080 --> 00:16:24,800 managerial systems in essence. The thing with Burnham is that 250 00:16:24,800 --> 00:16:27,680 he wasn't, he didn't really believe in ideologies. 251 00:16:27,840 --> 00:16:31,200 He would first and foremost, he was a realist and a 252 00:16:31,200 --> 00:16:34,920 Machiavellian. So the ideology would just be a 253 00:16:34,920 --> 00:16:38,800 kind of post talk justification for what power wanted to do. 254 00:16:39,520 --> 00:16:43,360 And this is essentially when you come to the managerial side of 255 00:16:43,360 --> 00:16:46,560 it, you can see that the systems are actually more similar than 256 00:16:46,560 --> 00:16:49,480 what they're not of the way they function. 257 00:16:50,280 --> 00:16:54,360 And in 1984, of course, this is exactly what you see. 258 00:16:54,680 --> 00:16:58,560 You see this again where you it's this kind of hollowed out 259 00:16:58,560 --> 00:17:03,200 dead soul bureaucracy with a few people at the top, but Big 260 00:17:03,200 --> 00:17:05,079 Brother like doesn't really exist. 261 00:17:05,359 --> 00:17:08,280 And all of the rules at the bottom, it's the ones in the 262 00:17:08,280 --> 00:17:11,359 middle, the the it's, it's a kind of civil war amongst the 263 00:17:11,359 --> 00:17:13,200 managers themselves in the middle. 264 00:17:13,920 --> 00:17:17,160 And so this is what I thought was fascinating about All's 265 00:17:19,560 --> 00:17:22,680 essay was that there's a lot of other things which are nice and 266 00:17:22,680 --> 00:17:25,960 interesting to get into. But I was just quite struck that 267 00:17:25,960 --> 00:17:30,840 this is a year before he would have had his back and forth with 268 00:17:30,840 --> 00:17:34,840 Burnham, and I think about six or seven years before he 269 00:17:34,840 --> 00:17:38,280 published 1984. And it was just fascinating to 270 00:17:38,280 --> 00:17:40,480 see that in, in the article, in the essay. 271 00:17:41,880 --> 00:17:45,040 Yeah, I agree. He he's well predicted many 272 00:17:45,040 --> 00:17:48,240 things, right. But that this, this 273 00:17:48,240 --> 00:17:52,640 transformation of the economic and political systems, that was 274 00:17:52,640 --> 00:17:54,400 one of the things that really jumped out on me too. 275 00:17:54,880 --> 00:17:57,160 I think we were describing that I, I talked about this on the 276 00:17:57,160 --> 00:17:59,880 news yesterday. There was a, a report that came 277 00:17:59,880 --> 00:18:02,760 out last week from an organization called Mooring 278 00:18:02,760 --> 00:18:05,640 Common, who you might be familiar with is run by Brendan 279 00:18:05,640 --> 00:18:08,000 Cox, the widower, widower of Joe Cox. 280 00:18:08,600 --> 00:18:13,560 And they've basically done this big national survey, 20,000 281 00:18:13,560 --> 00:18:14,960 people. And they've broken down the 282 00:18:14,960 --> 00:18:17,720 country into these different segments basically based on 283 00:18:17,720 --> 00:18:20,000 their attitudes towards various different things. 284 00:18:20,000 --> 00:18:23,320 Lots of questions are asked and they got this one segment that I 285 00:18:23,320 --> 00:18:26,920 was fascinated by that they called established liberals, 286 00:18:27,160 --> 00:18:32,200 which is 9% of the population. And these established liberals, 287 00:18:32,280 --> 00:18:34,600 I feel look at them as default liberals, right? 288 00:18:34,600 --> 00:18:37,360 Because if you're a default liberal, that's something I need 289 00:18:37,360 --> 00:18:42,040 from Andrew Breitbart. He used to talk about this. 290 00:18:42,880 --> 00:18:44,680 Basically it just means you don't have to think about 291 00:18:44,680 --> 00:18:47,040 anything too much. Yeah, just default liberal. 292 00:18:47,040 --> 00:18:47,920 Whatever. I won't. 293 00:18:47,920 --> 00:18:50,880 I'll go along with the flow. But that's basically what you 294 00:18:50,880 --> 00:18:53,880 were describing. That's the managerial supposedly 295 00:18:53,880 --> 00:18:55,600 elite. They're the people running the 296 00:18:55,600 --> 00:18:58,000 civil service. They're the ones at the top of 297 00:18:58,000 --> 00:19:02,400 the consulting firms. They're the ones in the the kind 298 00:19:02,400 --> 00:19:07,280 of mid management in the the corporations and actually they 299 00:19:07,280 --> 00:19:10,440 are very happy with the status quo. 300 00:19:10,440 --> 00:19:13,520 Even as the country is going up in smoke all around them. 301 00:19:13,520 --> 00:19:16,560 They just kind of sat there and they think everything's going 302 00:19:16,560 --> 00:19:20,400 fine. That it is in in sort of our 303 00:19:20,640 --> 00:19:23,120 era. It is the consensus forming 304 00:19:23,120 --> 00:19:26,720 apparatus. They dictate and decide what is 305 00:19:26,720 --> 00:19:28,880 allowable and what is not allowable. 306 00:19:29,400 --> 00:19:33,240 What opinions you can have, what you can protest and what you can 307 00:19:33,240 --> 00:19:36,360 stand for. I, I do think it's in crisis 308 00:19:36,360 --> 00:19:39,680 across the board, though, because the, the chronic lack of 309 00:19:39,680 --> 00:19:42,000 agency, the chronic lack of anybody. 310 00:19:42,200 --> 00:19:46,200 I mean, you know, you often find that if, if you work in some of 311 00:19:46,200 --> 00:19:51,840 these, these places, there is this kind of the conformity 312 00:19:51,840 --> 00:19:54,680 become suffocating and you need somebody to come in. 313 00:19:54,880 --> 00:19:58,280 It's it's crazy because I've worked in places like warehouses 314 00:19:58,560 --> 00:20:02,040 where the their way of doing things was just so chronically 315 00:20:02,040 --> 00:20:04,840 inefficient. That the event have instead of 316 00:20:04,840 --> 00:20:07,560 thinking for themselves, they hire another branch of 317 00:20:07,560 --> 00:20:10,680 managerialism to come in and do the thinking for all them. 318 00:20:10,920 --> 00:20:14,000 But it's it's it's the managers like sort of policing the 319 00:20:14,000 --> 00:20:17,720 managers on their own efficiency and it ends up going on and on 320 00:20:17,720 --> 00:20:21,560 forever. I think this is AI do think this 321 00:20:21,560 --> 00:20:27,120 is a good and interesting way of understanding the world around 322 00:20:27,120 --> 00:20:28,760 us. A lot of people would sort of 323 00:20:28,760 --> 00:20:34,400 push as Orwell did find that Burnham's just so cynical that 324 00:20:34,400 --> 00:20:37,400 it it becomes almost like nihilistic in a way. 325 00:20:37,680 --> 00:20:41,600 And I think he parodies that well in of course, I mean, 326 00:20:41,600 --> 00:20:44,240 Burnham was saying this is not what I want. 327 00:20:44,320 --> 00:20:48,280 This is just what will be regardless of I, I don't, I'm 328 00:20:48,280 --> 00:20:50,000 just saying this is where we're going. 329 00:20:50,840 --> 00:20:52,360 I mean, he got a few things wrong. 330 00:20:52,360 --> 00:20:56,440 He assumed Germany would win, but by the end of it, you did 331 00:20:56,440 --> 00:21:00,680 see that sort of Western capital itself would become just 332 00:21:00,720 --> 00:21:05,720 completely managerial, if for no other reason than they had to 333 00:21:05,720 --> 00:21:09,960 produce so many tanks, so many jeeps and bullets, they had to 334 00:21:11,080 --> 00:21:14,160 form all these bureaucracies to ship men around for the war. 335 00:21:14,400 --> 00:21:17,000 And then after the war, when we head into the Cold War, you'll 336 00:21:17,000 --> 00:21:21,440 see that what you've really got is 2 sprawling giant managerial 337 00:21:21,440 --> 00:21:23,840 bureaucracies facing off at each other. 338 00:21:24,280 --> 00:21:28,160 And it always seems to be that something more esoteric or 339 00:21:28,160 --> 00:21:31,760 metaphysical, it always gets squeezed out. 340 00:21:32,400 --> 00:21:37,960 And, you know, to go back to sort of Orwell's essay on, on 341 00:21:37,960 --> 00:21:41,520 Englishness, you will see that a lot of what he's talking about 342 00:21:41,520 --> 00:21:44,480 you can't easily put down on a spreadsheet because it is 343 00:21:44,480 --> 00:21:47,560 something felt and something intuitive. 344 00:21:47,840 --> 00:21:50,880 But that this is this is exactly the, the conversations and the 345 00:21:50,880 --> 00:21:54,200 arguments people have every day on Twitter. 346 00:21:54,520 --> 00:21:58,320 You know, there was something the other day on, on LBC where 347 00:21:58,320 --> 00:22:03,080 there was a little old lady rang in about this situation with 348 00:22:03,080 --> 00:22:06,040 Afghanistan. Who, who are they? 349 00:22:06,120 --> 00:22:09,720 They do have the highest sort of that the data we have got. 350 00:22:09,720 --> 00:22:13,240 They do have the highest rates of like sexually assaulting 351 00:22:13,240 --> 00:22:16,200 people. But this woman was saying like 352 00:22:16,200 --> 00:22:17,840 this is not right. This is. 353 00:22:18,680 --> 00:22:23,320 And Ian Dale was pushing back on it and his sort of, I just think 354 00:22:23,320 --> 00:22:27,680 this is typical of what you see because the old woman, she felt 355 00:22:27,880 --> 00:22:31,160 that something was not right. She, she didn't have the 356 00:22:31,160 --> 00:22:34,480 language, she didn't have the all of the correct phrases and 357 00:22:34,480 --> 00:22:37,320 whatnot, but she was trying to impart something that there's 358 00:22:37,320 --> 00:22:39,480 something not right about this and I don't like it. 359 00:22:40,080 --> 00:22:44,000 And Ian Deal was asking her, for example, his, he was asking to 360 00:22:44,000 --> 00:22:46,960 explain what she meant. And the premise of his argument 361 00:22:46,960 --> 00:22:51,360 was that, well, the Afghans that are coming over were against the 362 00:22:51,360 --> 00:22:55,360 Taliban. And therefore they are like us. 363 00:22:55,360 --> 00:22:58,920 Therefore they are just like the liberals. 364 00:22:59,120 --> 00:23:03,240 They they, they, these people are from like the most backward 365 00:23:03,240 --> 00:23:08,480 place on Earth, are literally just liberal managerial types 366 00:23:09,000 --> 00:23:10,760 waiting. They're all Guardian, they're 367 00:23:10,760 --> 00:23:16,600 all potential Guardian readers and, and all now it's so absurd. 368 00:23:16,600 --> 00:23:20,400 It's so ridiculous. But the problem is the the sort 369 00:23:20,400 --> 00:23:24,480 of the bureaucracy as it stands and the incentives are set up 370 00:23:24,480 --> 00:23:28,320 such a way that that opinion gets rewarded and amplified. 371 00:23:28,640 --> 00:23:32,720 And the little old lady who is actually correct is seen as some 372 00:23:32,720 --> 00:23:38,040 kind of nut job heretic from the orthodoxy and non personed and 373 00:23:38,040 --> 00:23:40,840 all of this kind of thing. And this is how we arrived at 374 00:23:40,840 --> 00:23:43,320 this this because of this system. 375 00:23:43,560 --> 00:23:46,840 Yes, she's been asked to articulate something that 376 00:23:46,840 --> 00:23:49,560 shouldn't need to be articulated, right. 377 00:23:49,560 --> 00:23:51,480 It's just intuitively. Understood. 378 00:23:52,160 --> 00:23:54,680 Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's interesting. 379 00:23:54,680 --> 00:23:55,360 So you. Yes. 380 00:23:55,360 --> 00:23:58,920 So he's these kind of spreadsheet people, data, they 381 00:23:58,920 --> 00:24:02,000 love data, talk about data. It's all about numbers. 382 00:24:02,000 --> 00:24:04,400 If they haven't got a graph in front of them and they can't see 383 00:24:04,400 --> 00:24:08,080 what's going on, it all has to be quantitatively evidenced in 384 00:24:08,080 --> 00:24:11,000 some way. You know, sounds like Dale's in 385 00:24:11,000 --> 00:24:14,720 that in that category. It's a funny thing because when 386 00:24:14,720 --> 00:24:19,360 you draw that to its logical conclusion, a lot of things 387 00:24:19,360 --> 00:24:21,080 begin to break down and make no sense. 388 00:24:21,600 --> 00:24:24,960 And one of them was there was an example when there was one of 389 00:24:24,960 --> 00:24:29,040 those sort of Astroturf green movements and they put some kind 390 00:24:29,040 --> 00:24:32,560 of spray paint on Stonehenge a year or two back. 391 00:24:33,040 --> 00:24:36,760 And I remember the, the, the kind of the, you know, the, the 392 00:24:36,760 --> 00:24:39,560 Lib tapes asking, well, it doesn't matter. 393 00:24:39,560 --> 00:24:42,760 It's just a pile of rocks. And, and another, another 394 00:24:42,760 --> 00:24:48,040 example would be when those, those two idiots cut down the, 395 00:24:48,120 --> 00:24:51,840 the tree at the Sycamore gap and you're, you're left, you're left 396 00:24:51,840 --> 00:24:53,760 with just this. It's tragic. 397 00:24:53,760 --> 00:24:55,360 I mean, it's my part of the world. 398 00:24:55,360 --> 00:24:57,680 I love it up there. I've been there many times. 399 00:24:58,760 --> 00:25:02,520 It really is heartbreaking. But the problem is from the 400 00:25:02,520 --> 00:25:06,400 perspective where everything is just this sort of data sheet and 401 00:25:06,400 --> 00:25:11,080 everything has to be quantified and put down like that, there's 402 00:25:11,080 --> 00:25:13,800 not really any way that you can like. 403 00:25:14,040 --> 00:25:17,280 So what's the problem exactly? There's still plenty more 404 00:25:17,280 --> 00:25:20,880 Sycamore trees. Why is that part of the world? 405 00:25:22,280 --> 00:25:26,400 Why do we treasure the Sycamore gap, that dip in the Roman wall 406 00:25:26,680 --> 00:25:31,320 with that tree there? Why is that objectively like 407 00:25:31,320 --> 00:25:34,720 more important than Terminal 5 at Heathrow? 408 00:25:34,840 --> 00:25:37,280 Why do we appreciate one and not the other? 409 00:25:37,640 --> 00:25:42,160 And the problem is the, the, the system as it stands now and the 410 00:25:42,160 --> 00:25:45,400 intelligentsia and the, the, the, the intellect who get 411 00:25:45,400 --> 00:25:49,280 platformed, they can't answer that question, yet they somehow 412 00:25:49,280 --> 00:25:54,720 still sort of their own values negate even the question 413 00:25:54,720 --> 00:25:58,720 because, well, it's just a tree. Just as in, in the same way 414 00:25:58,720 --> 00:26:02,120 Stonehenge is just a pile of rocks because that's what 415 00:26:02,120 --> 00:26:07,640 they've reduced identity to, which is, and that's how you end 416 00:26:07,640 --> 00:26:09,800 up with the UK vacation of everything. 417 00:26:10,040 --> 00:26:13,360 Because what does it matter if everybody's just a consumer unit 418 00:26:13,800 --> 00:26:15,720 that then it doesn't matter where they come from. 419 00:26:15,720 --> 00:26:17,320 It doesn't matter what the shops look like. 420 00:26:17,320 --> 00:26:20,600 It doesn't matter what the so all this like aesthetics, 421 00:26:20,720 --> 00:26:25,320 metaphysics, it's all just crushed under the Gears of of of 422 00:26:25,320 --> 00:26:28,560 the system. Indeed it is, yes. 423 00:26:29,120 --> 00:26:30,560 Whatever happened to those two fellows? 424 00:26:30,560 --> 00:26:32,440 You got caught doing that for doing that? 425 00:26:32,440 --> 00:26:34,320 Did anything actually happen? You got? 426 00:26:34,320 --> 00:26:37,240 Yeah, they went to jail for, I think it was four years. 427 00:26:37,560 --> 00:26:42,360 OK, But there wasn't actually anything particularly, as far as 428 00:26:42,360 --> 00:26:44,480 I'm aware. I didn't look too much into it, 429 00:26:44,480 --> 00:26:48,120 but I think we're just a pair of drunken idiots. 430 00:26:48,400 --> 00:26:51,000 I don't think there was much. And they snitched on each other 431 00:26:51,000 --> 00:26:53,320 as well. And like it all fell apart. 432 00:26:53,560 --> 00:26:56,880 I don't think it was some kind of insidious plot or anything. 433 00:26:56,880 --> 00:26:58,720 I think it was just a pair of clowns. 434 00:27:00,120 --> 00:27:03,800 And, and you know, they've taken seedlings from the tree and 435 00:27:03,800 --> 00:27:06,960 they've got they've, they're trying to resuscitate it and 436 00:27:06,960 --> 00:27:09,000 bring it back and, and all of the rest of it. 437 00:27:09,000 --> 00:27:12,840 I was thinking about writing something on this because you 438 00:27:12,840 --> 00:27:17,920 just think, well, what, what is this, this kind of painful 439 00:27:17,920 --> 00:27:20,640 effort where they've got all of these curtains and they've got 440 00:27:20,640 --> 00:27:23,920 them in nurseries, tree nurseries all around the 441 00:27:23,920 --> 00:27:27,880 country, painstakingly trying to get the memory to live on. 442 00:27:28,320 --> 00:27:32,240 And, and I just think, but why can't we extend that to the 443 00:27:32,240 --> 00:27:37,160 nation and the people in general instead of doing it in this 444 00:27:37,160 --> 00:27:40,560 symbolic sense? Because unless you, if you, 445 00:27:40,560 --> 00:27:45,040 unless you hold that sort of consistently, it's it's kind of 446 00:27:45,040 --> 00:27:46,880 just performative. Like can we not? 447 00:27:47,320 --> 00:27:48,600 OK, fair enough. I get it. 448 00:27:48,600 --> 00:27:51,000 That's fine. Like let's let's do that. 449 00:27:51,000 --> 00:27:56,720 Let's put more meaning on the Sycamore tree stump week. 450 00:27:56,760 --> 00:27:59,240 That's great. But let's draw that out a little 451 00:27:59,240 --> 00:28:00,800 bit. Let's let's keep going. 452 00:28:01,080 --> 00:28:04,280 But of course they wouldn't. Sooner or later they'll run into 453 00:28:04,280 --> 00:28:07,400 something that they don't like and that will be that. 454 00:28:08,080 --> 00:28:10,320 Yeah, just gets bulldozed out of the way. 455 00:28:10,600 --> 00:28:14,160 I'm reminded now that you've brought up the Sycamore tree. 456 00:28:14,160 --> 00:28:18,440 I found out recently that Epping Forest, not far from where I am 457 00:28:18,440 --> 00:28:23,360 right now, is actually managed for the nation by the City of 458 00:28:23,360 --> 00:28:25,200 London. Did you know that? 459 00:28:26,800 --> 00:28:31,160 And so if you go to the Epping Forest website, the City of 460 00:28:31,160 --> 00:28:35,080 London talks about Epping Forest and it basically says we look 461 00:28:35,080 --> 00:28:38,880 after Epping Forest, which is an ancient, ancient woodland. 462 00:28:38,920 --> 00:28:40,720 It's been there for thousands of years. 463 00:28:40,720 --> 00:28:45,840 It's priceless national asset, an amazing place to go, just on 464 00:28:45,840 --> 00:28:48,920 the edge of London. And they basically describe it 465 00:28:48,920 --> 00:28:56,280 as a national asset that is worth £1.5 billion and it's 466 00:28:56,280 --> 00:29:03,960 worth £1.5 billion because the City of London takes £50 million 467 00:29:03,960 --> 00:29:07,800 a year from various people who want to hold events there or 468 00:29:07,800 --> 00:29:10,240 film things there, whatever it might be. 469 00:29:10,680 --> 00:29:13,200 And then they times that by 30 years. 470 00:29:13,720 --> 00:29:16,680 And therefore, that's what Epping Forest is worth. 471 00:29:17,400 --> 00:29:21,360 So they've reduced it down to an asset on their balance sheet and 472 00:29:21,360 --> 00:29:23,400 that's how they talk about, it's how they think about it. 473 00:29:23,400 --> 00:29:25,840 They've stripped all meaning away. 474 00:29:26,320 --> 00:29:29,200 Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, that's exactly it. 475 00:29:29,200 --> 00:29:30,560 Yeah. That's the kind of grand 476 00:29:30,560 --> 00:29:36,560 aversion of of the Sycamore tree cup and you get this, this is 477 00:29:36,560 --> 00:29:41,520 how you'll get people. One of the, I think I may have 478 00:29:41,520 --> 00:29:45,040 learned this on UK column actually, and it's the way they 479 00:29:45,040 --> 00:29:48,840 get around planning permission laws where they invented like a 480 00:29:48,840 --> 00:29:54,120 new thing called grey belt. And I remember I was in, I was 481 00:29:54,120 --> 00:29:58,600 on the South Downs in Sussex some years ago now. 482 00:29:59,280 --> 00:30:03,040 And they obviously the downs themselves, they had the, the 483 00:30:03,120 --> 00:30:06,000 sort of protection you couldn't build on them rightly. 484 00:30:06,520 --> 00:30:10,520 And but what they'd done was to so that you could stand on all 485 00:30:10,520 --> 00:30:13,240 of these downs and then you could look out. 486 00:30:13,240 --> 00:30:16,360 It was an ancient sort of Woodlands were there and then 487 00:30:16,360 --> 00:30:18,880 you could look out across the English Channel and things. 488 00:30:19,280 --> 00:30:22,920 And, and what they had done was at the foot of the Downs, They'd 489 00:30:22,920 --> 00:30:27,600 they'd got these kind of new build kind of plastic houses 490 00:30:27,600 --> 00:30:34,160 just right up to the very border where where they were allowed. 491 00:30:34,280 --> 00:30:37,480 Like they, they got as close as they possibly could now. 492 00:30:37,480 --> 00:30:42,240 And now technically they weren't building on the South Downs, but 493 00:30:42,240 --> 00:30:45,200 the problem is when you were standing on the top, you were 494 00:30:45,200 --> 00:30:48,200 still seeing all of this stuff. You, you could still see like a, 495 00:30:48,200 --> 00:30:51,240 a little warehouse and all, the, all the rest of it. 496 00:30:51,800 --> 00:30:56,120 And it, it kind of now this is, this is sort of how they get it, 497 00:30:56,120 --> 00:30:59,400 because then they'll say, well, we didn't build on the South 498 00:30:59,400 --> 00:31:01,400 Downs. And I think, well, no, you 499 00:31:01,400 --> 00:31:03,960 didn't. But it's still been destroyed, 500 00:31:03,960 --> 00:31:05,760 hasn't it? If we're honest, it's, it's the 501 00:31:05,760 --> 00:31:11,320 view and and that fear, that ambience, it's, it's still gone. 502 00:31:11,480 --> 00:31:15,680 Yeah, You know, it's, it's and it's this kind of this little 503 00:31:15,680 --> 00:31:18,080 wiggle room which they always use. 504 00:31:18,120 --> 00:31:21,080 Yes. It's just it's cold compliance. 505 00:31:21,280 --> 00:31:24,160 It's the letter, not the spirit of the law, if you know what. 506 00:31:24,160 --> 00:31:28,520 I mean, yeah, the, the this idea, especially in a country as 507 00:31:28,520 --> 00:31:32,200 old as England where, well, there was something that was 508 00:31:32,200 --> 00:31:35,720 like a mill built on a riverbank like 300 years ago. 509 00:31:35,720 --> 00:31:38,720 So technically, yeah, that that gives us carte blanche. 510 00:31:38,720 --> 00:31:41,280 Just put like a a block of flats up there. 511 00:31:41,640 --> 00:31:44,760 It's so ridiculous because all these old buildings are just 512 00:31:44,760 --> 00:31:47,920 part of the language. And so again, it goes back of 513 00:31:47,920 --> 00:31:50,720 what I was just saying earlier, it's, it's the technicians 514 00:31:50,720 --> 00:31:55,760 looking for technicalities to just sort of reproduce 515 00:31:55,760 --> 00:31:59,600 themselves and their own kind of soullessness across the land. 516 00:32:01,000 --> 00:32:05,000 Yes, completely agree. And actually this kind of 517 00:32:05,000 --> 00:32:07,240 dumbing down, I mean, you touched about it before, right? 518 00:32:07,240 --> 00:32:10,160 Dead sold bureaucrats, I think is what I wrote down. 519 00:32:10,160 --> 00:32:11,800 I believe that's the phrase that you used. 520 00:32:12,400 --> 00:32:16,360 And actually, one of the things that Orwell talks about in the 521 00:32:16,360 --> 00:32:21,440 essay is the fact that people who elevate within the system, 522 00:32:21,720 --> 00:32:24,400 the people that the actual ultimate controllers and owners 523 00:32:24,400 --> 00:32:28,840 of the whole thing actually put into positions of authority are 524 00:32:28,920 --> 00:32:32,440 are are are are not the most intelligent. 525 00:32:32,440 --> 00:32:35,200 You don't want intelligent people, well motivated people 526 00:32:35,200 --> 00:32:37,560 with initiative in place. You want just cogs in your 527 00:32:37,560 --> 00:32:39,960 machine. And that's how you end up doing 528 00:32:40,320 --> 00:32:41,840 things that we're talking about here, right? 529 00:32:41,840 --> 00:32:44,440 They don't have the capacity to think laterally about anything. 530 00:32:44,440 --> 00:32:48,080 They just do things to the letter of the legislation. 531 00:32:48,440 --> 00:32:50,720 Yeah. Ultimately, this is I think 532 00:32:50,720 --> 00:32:55,040 where we are today and why the system struggles is because you 533 00:32:55,040 --> 00:32:59,920 you get this sort of, you can see what like Tony Blair brought 534 00:32:59,920 --> 00:33:05,200 in, who was the arch technocrat and managerialist and there's 535 00:33:05,520 --> 00:33:08,240 somebody just pulling up here. Postman's pulling up. 536 00:33:09,640 --> 00:33:11,560 Sorry about that. We've got a we've got a very 537 00:33:11,560 --> 00:33:15,520 jovial postman who who likes to make a song and dance when he 538 00:33:15,520 --> 00:33:17,480 arrives. I lost my pain and thought and. 539 00:33:19,120 --> 00:33:22,160 We were talking about the the managerial, yeah. 540 00:33:22,520 --> 00:33:29,200 What what what you saw coming in is the overproduction of 541 00:33:29,440 --> 00:33:33,960 managers, the overproduction of educated professional types to 542 00:33:33,960 --> 00:33:37,240 go into the system. Now what happens is, and I think 543 00:33:37,240 --> 00:33:40,720 we're there now is that eventually it becomes two top 544 00:33:40,720 --> 00:33:42,800 heavy and you can't keep filling up. 545 00:33:42,800 --> 00:33:47,000 You can't keep creating all of these useless non jobs that you 546 00:33:47,000 --> 00:33:49,680 see these make work schemes with. 547 00:33:49,880 --> 00:33:52,280 So you end up having to say it to many people. 548 00:33:52,280 --> 00:33:56,120 And this with the advent of AI, if it actually comes, I mean, 549 00:33:56,120 --> 00:33:57,920 we're still waiting to see how that goes. 550 00:33:58,680 --> 00:34:00,680 What you're going to have with there's a massive amount of 551 00:34:00,680 --> 00:34:05,480 people on the outside of the the system who should be in, but who 552 00:34:05,480 --> 00:34:08,719 are dispossessed. And I don't mean the the kind of 553 00:34:08,719 --> 00:34:12,840 the working class in this, but actual sort of the bourgeoisie, 554 00:34:12,840 --> 00:34:15,800 as Orwell would have it. There's not going to be a place 555 00:34:15,800 --> 00:34:19,040 at the table for them that's a problem because they begin 556 00:34:19,040 --> 00:34:22,840 milling around outside of it with resentment, being resentful 557 00:34:22,840 --> 00:34:24,880 of weather, of being left in the cold. 558 00:34:25,280 --> 00:34:28,639 And there's a lot of that going on at the moment, which is why 559 00:34:29,159 --> 00:34:33,400 sort of dissident groups become more professional, more slick, 560 00:34:34,040 --> 00:34:37,679 better educated, and this kind of thing, as you can see in the, 561 00:34:37,679 --> 00:34:41,679 in the sort of the hope not hate panic, They, they are in their 562 00:34:41,679 --> 00:34:45,280 own kind of incompetent and stupid way, touching on 563 00:34:45,280 --> 00:34:47,800 something which is real from their perspective. 564 00:34:49,400 --> 00:34:54,159 Yes, Now that is the digitization and particular, 565 00:34:54,320 --> 00:34:58,880 particularly AI now is having some very interesting social 566 00:34:59,520 --> 00:35:01,200 effects. Because you were talking earlier 567 00:35:01,200 --> 00:35:04,560 about this idea that we've had a war by the bourgeoisie on the 568 00:35:04,560 --> 00:35:07,240 working classes in this country for decades now. 569 00:35:07,760 --> 00:35:10,680 And actually, the bourgeoisie are now getting taste of their 570 00:35:10,680 --> 00:35:13,520 own medicine because these new technologies that they're all 571 00:35:13,520 --> 00:35:16,360 rushing headlong into are actually destroying their own 572 00:35:16,360 --> 00:35:20,720 jobs and any possible jobs, future jobs that could come 573 00:35:20,720 --> 00:35:22,760 along. And actually we're going to see 574 00:35:22,760 --> 00:35:26,560 this kind of social collapse. Ultimately. 575 00:35:26,600 --> 00:35:31,200 We've got people who've had established positions in the 576 00:35:31,200 --> 00:35:34,880 social hierarchy for generations, hundreds of years 577 00:35:35,040 --> 00:35:37,800 even, all of a sudden now are on the outside. 578 00:35:38,160 --> 00:35:43,280 And who knows where that leads? Yeah, usually it leads with a 579 00:35:43,280 --> 00:35:48,640 counter elite to to kind of to come in and you can see this, I 580 00:35:48,640 --> 00:35:52,080 think, I think where the where the system is at the moment is 581 00:35:52,080 --> 00:35:57,000 in this kind of desperate mode of throwing up, sort of holding 582 00:35:57,000 --> 00:35:59,800 pens. I would say Reform UK in in in 583 00:35:59,800 --> 00:36:05,240 the UKI think Nigel Farage and Reform are a kind of containment 584 00:36:05,240 --> 00:36:06,840 zone. People may not like that, but 585 00:36:06,840 --> 00:36:11,200 that that that's how I view it. And, and usually it's kind of 586 00:36:11,200 --> 00:36:15,040 like buying themselves a bit of time by throwing up roadblocks 587 00:36:15,200 --> 00:36:19,160 after roadblocks for ultimately there's no direction. 588 00:36:19,520 --> 00:36:23,160 There's no, they don't know where to go because it's not in 589 00:36:23,160 --> 00:36:26,800 their frame of reference. One of the things about Burnham, 590 00:36:28,840 --> 00:36:33,160 I think Orwell wasn't idealist, but James Burnham absolutely was 591 00:36:33,160 --> 00:36:35,920 not. And I think you end up just 592 00:36:36,200 --> 00:36:40,320 almost like this, the Borg where everything just has to be 593 00:36:40,320 --> 00:36:42,920 subsumed. And one of the things that 594 00:36:42,920 --> 00:36:46,920 you'll find as well, which is I know Auk column has touched on a 595 00:36:46,920 --> 00:36:51,600 lot, is this idea that viewing everything as a problem that has 596 00:36:51,600 --> 00:36:53,880 to be solved. And the obviously the, the 597 00:36:53,880 --> 00:36:57,040 biggest sort of example of this would be the COVID sort of 598 00:36:57,040 --> 00:36:59,360 thing. Or you can look at the, the 599 00:36:59,360 --> 00:37:03,400 resettlement of the Afghanis where all of a sudden the, the 600 00:37:03,400 --> 00:37:06,760 system has the, has created a problem through its own 601 00:37:06,760 --> 00:37:10,120 incompetence, its own increasing incompetence. 602 00:37:12,000 --> 00:37:14,960 And then, well, we've got a problem that we have to solve. 603 00:37:14,960 --> 00:37:18,080 And we'll, we'll go on the only solution that we know, which is 604 00:37:18,080 --> 00:37:22,600 the most ridiculous and absurd and destructive one, because 605 00:37:22,600 --> 00:37:27,760 they aren't actually again, tethered to any organic sense of 606 00:37:27,760 --> 00:37:34,160 peoplehood or the land or a poetic sort of Orwellian in a 607 00:37:34,160 --> 00:37:36,360 positive way. Normally you would say in the 608 00:37:36,360 --> 00:37:41,520 context of England, your England Orwellian wouldn't be dystopian. 609 00:37:41,520 --> 00:37:44,400 It would be something quite positive for a change. 610 00:37:44,640 --> 00:37:47,400 But usually we're used to talking about that in the 611 00:37:47,400 --> 00:37:50,600 context of 1984. So it's kind of strange. 612 00:37:50,600 --> 00:37:54,520 You could see from both sides. But more famously, we are in the 613 00:37:54,680 --> 00:37:58,480 dystopian Orwellian age for the time being. 614 00:37:59,520 --> 00:38:02,160 Yes, that's certainly true. That's certainly true. 615 00:38:02,720 --> 00:38:05,000 So there are, there are there are some parallels here though. 616 00:38:05,000 --> 00:38:09,760 So we've said, we said at the start that the UK is is 617 00:38:09,760 --> 00:38:12,800 discontinuous with England as all well understood it, but 618 00:38:12,800 --> 00:38:15,360 actually there are some similar patterns emerging, right. 619 00:38:15,360 --> 00:38:19,080 So we've talked a bit about the liberal intelligentsia and these 620 00:38:19,080 --> 00:38:22,520 are the people to quote from the essay that he describes as 621 00:38:22,520 --> 00:38:24,680 European eyes. They take their cookery from 622 00:38:24,680 --> 00:38:26,520 Paris and their opinions from Moscow. 623 00:38:26,880 --> 00:38:30,760 And I'd say I don't know where the current intelligentsia, as 624 00:38:30,760 --> 00:38:32,880 they like to think of themselves, get their cookery 625 00:38:32,880 --> 00:38:36,400 from, but they probably get their opinions from Brussels 626 00:38:36,400 --> 00:38:38,680 rather than Moscow. But they're pretty much the same 627 00:38:38,680 --> 00:38:42,440 opinions, I would say. But the, the, the counterpart to 628 00:38:42,440 --> 00:38:46,640 that on the right is the the blimp, the kind of regimental 629 00:38:46,640 --> 00:38:50,040 Sergeant major type, red faced, you know, still wearing his 630 00:38:50,040 --> 00:38:53,320 medals down the pub in the 1960s kind of thing. 631 00:38:53,720 --> 00:38:57,880 And I think that Farage and that crowd probably fit quite neatly 632 00:38:57,880 --> 00:38:59,240 into that bucket, wouldn't you say? 633 00:38:59,920 --> 00:39:04,200 I think yes, I do. Well, I think I think he the the 634 00:39:04,200 --> 00:39:08,760 Colonel blimp type for God did he did he pretty much went 635 00:39:08,760 --> 00:39:12,600 extinct. What what I would say about what 636 00:39:12,600 --> 00:39:17,440 I've called before, like sort of bulldog nationalism is, is where 637 00:39:17,440 --> 00:39:22,520 you what you have is a kind of pastiche of a postmodern sort of 638 00:39:22,520 --> 00:39:27,960 spin on this kind of identity where it's you know, you know, 639 00:39:27,960 --> 00:39:31,200 you look at somebody like Mike Graham and all of these 640 00:39:31,200 --> 00:39:37,440 characters, they've all got this aura of I, I am sort of doggedly 641 00:39:37,440 --> 00:39:41,560 speaking my mind as it is and I won't sort of cave in for this 642 00:39:41,560 --> 00:39:45,800 work nonsense. And and it's a certain set. 643 00:39:46,200 --> 00:39:49,400 It's all it's all rooted actually in the post war 644 00:39:49,400 --> 00:39:52,640 mythology. But it is this kind of I'll say 645 00:39:52,640 --> 00:39:54,720 it as it is. I'm not going to put up with any 646 00:39:54,720 --> 00:40:00,440 political correct nonsense. And it's, it's all just stale 647 00:40:00,680 --> 00:40:05,680 and it's all kind of controlled. Boris Johnson's kind of the 648 00:40:05,680 --> 00:40:10,760 perfect example of, of a this, this kind of pastiche of an 649 00:40:10,800 --> 00:40:15,960 older form of, of like this lingering vapour of an older 650 00:40:15,960 --> 00:40:20,600 form of, of English identity. And the people are so bereft and 651 00:40:20,600 --> 00:40:24,720 so desperate for some kind of champion in the elite. 652 00:40:25,000 --> 00:40:28,040 To represent them, which is something that all touches on in 653 00:40:28,040 --> 00:40:35,840 the essay as well, that they'll, they'll at least in recently 654 00:40:36,080 --> 00:40:37,760 they've, they've glommed onto that. 655 00:40:37,760 --> 00:40:40,880 They've latched onto it and thought, yeah, I'll if if you're 656 00:40:40,880 --> 00:40:44,960 willing to stand there with the paint and sort of laugh with 657 00:40:44,960 --> 00:40:47,960 about Muslim women in their burglars or whatever, then 658 00:40:47,960 --> 00:40:50,760 you're my guy. Because that speaks more to me 659 00:40:50,760 --> 00:40:54,120 than Gordon Brown or Keir Starmer or whoever. 660 00:40:55,600 --> 00:40:59,320 And unfortunately, they just get ripped off and backstabbed over 661 00:40:59,320 --> 00:41:03,600 and over and over again. Because it's kind of easy to 662 00:41:03,600 --> 00:41:09,120 package that and sell it and dupe them over and over again. 663 00:41:09,360 --> 00:41:13,280 But I think what we see now was with the general deterioration 664 00:41:13,280 --> 00:41:18,120 of the country, it's people who are willing to go further and 665 00:41:18,120 --> 00:41:20,240 further. Somebody like Rupert Low, for 666 00:41:20,240 --> 00:41:22,960 example, is, is quite surprising. 667 00:41:22,960 --> 00:41:26,720 He's all again, he's almost like a rogue elite in a way. 668 00:41:27,080 --> 00:41:32,800 He's he's he's I'd say he's more of a a Trumpian figure than 669 00:41:32,800 --> 00:41:38,000 Farage, though then again, Trump himself seems to have when the 670 00:41:38,000 --> 00:41:41,600 chips are down, yeah, he'll he'll actually sort of dam up 671 00:41:41,600 --> 00:41:44,840 the deep state and stand guard on a pile of what we're seeing 672 00:41:44,840 --> 00:41:46,520 now. But this is the general 673 00:41:46,520 --> 00:41:49,040 direction. And you think, are we, is 674 00:41:49,040 --> 00:41:54,240 something going to change or is it all going to fall apart? 675 00:41:54,440 --> 00:41:56,840 The, the other, the other view that people have on it, of 676 00:41:56,840 --> 00:42:01,040 course, is that there's already these kind of technocratic 677 00:42:01,040 --> 00:42:05,280 solutions waiting in the wings, such as digital ID and all of 678 00:42:05,280 --> 00:42:07,240 that. I actually think that'll just 679 00:42:07,240 --> 00:42:10,720 make things worse. The putting everybody on a 680 00:42:10,720 --> 00:42:14,280 control grid is just going to make life even more miserable 681 00:42:14,280 --> 00:42:16,840 and dystopian. And the violence on the streets 682 00:42:16,840 --> 00:42:20,280 will carry on regardless. It's I think, you know, the, the 683 00:42:20,280 --> 00:42:25,440 people in coming across in the boats and things there, there. 684 00:42:25,440 --> 00:42:28,560 I think there is a case that this could be all used to bring 685 00:42:28,560 --> 00:42:32,440 in a digital ID, but I don't think it'll keep those numbers 686 00:42:32,440 --> 00:42:34,960 down. And so the, the UK vacation, 687 00:42:35,800 --> 00:42:40,600 it's, it'll, it's weird because on the one hand, sort of AI and 688 00:42:40,600 --> 00:42:45,840 drones and digital technology, it's coded in this sort of slick 689 00:42:46,000 --> 00:42:51,000 way, this futuristic way. But really, it'll still be the, 690 00:42:51,160 --> 00:42:57,000 the, the squalor and the and the and the depression of Great 691 00:42:57,000 --> 00:43:01,680 Britain as it is now, except with more surveillance and and 692 00:43:01,680 --> 00:43:04,600 more sort of control over the population. 693 00:43:05,120 --> 00:43:08,760 Yeah, I do wonder quite how much actual control they'll be able 694 00:43:08,760 --> 00:43:12,560 to implement now, if you think about, you know, if, if if 695 00:43:12,560 --> 00:43:17,200 there's a storm at sea, can you stop the waves from breaking? 696 00:43:17,760 --> 00:43:20,880 You know, is that not a bit about what we're talking about 697 00:43:20,880 --> 00:43:23,320 here? Have they kind of underestimated 698 00:43:23,960 --> 00:43:27,000 the potential for chaos? Like, what does that actually 699 00:43:27,000 --> 00:43:28,960 look like? You know, just because you've 700 00:43:28,960 --> 00:43:31,000 you've told someone to do something on your little 701 00:43:31,000 --> 00:43:33,520 computer screen, it doesn't mean you're going to get compliance. 702 00:43:33,960 --> 00:43:35,960 Yeah. And it's, it's, I mean, the 703 00:43:35,960 --> 00:43:40,800 thing that I've noticed this summer, I, I was thinking about 704 00:43:40,800 --> 00:43:43,200 writing an article on this, I was just doing some notes 705 00:43:43,200 --> 00:43:46,280 before. Is that everywhere you look, 706 00:43:46,560 --> 00:43:50,240 there's this talk of, of, there's these kind of analogies 707 00:43:50,240 --> 00:43:55,720 of, of like Tinder and kindling where the, the, the, the, the UK 708 00:43:55,720 --> 00:44:01,320 is a, is a Tinder box and, or, or people are heaping up like 709 00:44:01,560 --> 00:44:05,920 was it David, Betsy, the dry wood is just getting bigger and 710 00:44:05,920 --> 00:44:09,000 bigger and bigger. We don't know where the spark is 711 00:44:09,000 --> 00:44:12,880 coming from, but it's coming. And these these kind of these 712 00:44:12,880 --> 00:44:17,760 comparisons where the, the, the, the, the country in the summer 713 00:44:17,760 --> 00:44:23,800 of 2025, like what I'll remember for it is everybody talking 714 00:44:23,800 --> 00:44:27,800 about it in terms of something which is just going to explode. 715 00:44:28,280 --> 00:44:30,280 And I'm not sure if that's going to happen, though. 716 00:44:30,280 --> 00:44:33,120 We've still got, you know, six weeks left or whatever it is 717 00:44:33,120 --> 00:44:36,720 before we get into the safety. But but yeah. 718 00:44:36,720 --> 00:44:39,520 And there's people on the streets, there is people on the 719 00:44:39,520 --> 00:44:42,560 streets. There's it is, it is reaching 720 00:44:42,560 --> 00:44:44,400 boiling point out there. Yeah. 721 00:44:45,160 --> 00:44:51,280 And so if you bring in on top of all of that, I think the idea is 722 00:44:51,280 --> 00:44:54,360 these more sort of these, these technocratic surveillance 723 00:44:54,360 --> 00:44:58,600 systems, hooking everybody up with the iPhones on the digital 724 00:44:58,600 --> 00:45:00,240 wallets, all of this kind of thing. 725 00:45:00,640 --> 00:45:03,600 I think the idea is that the, that would be the equivalent of, 726 00:45:03,600 --> 00:45:07,400 of pouring a bucket of cool water onto the kindling, whereas 727 00:45:07,400 --> 00:45:09,960 it could just be adding more kindling onto the kindling, 728 00:45:10,120 --> 00:45:14,640 waiting for even more sparks. So that remains to be seen. 729 00:45:15,600 --> 00:45:19,680 I, I, I I don't think there's a way out of this which is not 730 00:45:19,680 --> 00:45:23,040 unpleasant. No, I, I tend to agree. 731 00:45:23,040 --> 00:45:28,160 I, I don't think that there is an inevitability of the Civil 732 00:45:28,160 --> 00:45:29,720 War. That's the term it's getting 733 00:45:29,720 --> 00:45:32,440 used a lot at the moment. I don't know if Ben's used it, 734 00:45:32,640 --> 00:45:34,840 I'm sure he has done in other interviews, but it was one that 735 00:45:34,840 --> 00:45:37,200 came out a few days ago which you might be referring to. 736 00:45:37,200 --> 00:45:39,520 But if you go onto YouTube, all the kind of right wing 737 00:45:39,520 --> 00:45:41,480 influences, they're all talking up civil war. 738 00:45:41,480 --> 00:45:43,280 It's been going on for about 6 months now. 739 00:45:43,360 --> 00:45:46,120 Yes, very noticeably. They're trying to speak it into 740 00:45:46,120 --> 00:45:47,320 existence. I think some. 741 00:45:47,320 --> 00:45:49,960 Of them. It's strange that it's strange 742 00:45:49,960 --> 00:45:53,000 how this is a thing that just seems to be getting pushed. 743 00:45:53,160 --> 00:45:56,160 Yeah, but even what does that even look like, right? 744 00:45:56,160 --> 00:45:58,880 Like, could you even conceive People say these things so 745 00:45:58,880 --> 00:46:01,440 flippantly? But an actual civil war? 746 00:46:01,440 --> 00:46:05,000 That's an organised conflict. Like who are the protagonists in 747 00:46:05,000 --> 00:46:07,320 this? I, I, I don't know. 748 00:46:07,320 --> 00:46:10,920 I mean, I don't, I don't, I also don't know why. 749 00:46:11,520 --> 00:46:14,720 I mean, I've listened to bets talking about this, but it's, 750 00:46:14,720 --> 00:46:17,240 it's this insistence on the term civil war. 751 00:46:17,240 --> 00:46:20,400 And I know that he's given his own kind of definitions, which 752 00:46:20,400 --> 00:46:24,080 tend to be quite academic. But I, I don't, I got to, I got 753 00:46:24,080 --> 00:46:26,880 to understand if people were going to call it sectarian 754 00:46:26,880 --> 00:46:31,240 strife or something like that, or there were more comparisons 755 00:46:31,240 --> 00:46:34,960 made to Northern Ireland during the Troubles, which could 756 00:46:34,960 --> 00:46:37,720 happen. But when, when it's the like 757 00:46:38,160 --> 00:46:43,440 more incendiary language, like Civil War I, I yeah, I don't 758 00:46:43,440 --> 00:46:44,320 know. I don't know where this is 759 00:46:44,320 --> 00:46:46,560 coming from. I have, I have noticed that 760 00:46:46,560 --> 00:46:51,240 there's a certain sort of network of podcasts that, that, 761 00:46:51,240 --> 00:46:55,720 that, that seem to be really going in on this and who share a 762 00:46:55,720 --> 00:46:59,280 lot of opinions, the same opinions on things. 763 00:46:59,280 --> 00:47:02,000 But yeah, I, I find that bizarre. 764 00:47:02,120 --> 00:47:08,240 And I mean, I would certainly advise people to be very careful 765 00:47:09,040 --> 00:47:14,200 about in the way that they talk about civil war and conflict in 766 00:47:14,200 --> 00:47:18,440 the country, because it seems like regardless of the intent 767 00:47:18,960 --> 00:47:21,960 for people to begin talking up that way, it could very well be 768 00:47:21,960 --> 00:47:24,000 a trap. You have to be careful. 769 00:47:24,000 --> 00:47:25,600 I think I. Completely agree. 770 00:47:26,120 --> 00:47:28,440 Yeah. Because we, we know like when 771 00:47:28,440 --> 00:47:31,120 we're talking about the surveillance day, it is already 772 00:47:31,120 --> 00:47:35,280 here to a large degree. And if we arrive at a situation 773 00:47:35,280 --> 00:47:37,440 where you've got all of these people running around talking 774 00:47:37,440 --> 00:47:41,200 about the Civil war, the the that's going to put the system 775 00:47:42,000 --> 00:47:47,040 it, it kind of justifies aid of exception where where we move 776 00:47:47,040 --> 00:47:51,400 into special territory like what we had to to some degree in 777 00:47:51,400 --> 00:47:54,640 COVID, where they say, well, we're going to have to have 778 00:47:54,640 --> 00:47:57,040 special measures. If you've got thousands upon 779 00:47:57,040 --> 00:48:01,040 thousands of people talking about civil war and violent 780 00:48:01,040 --> 00:48:03,800 conflict. We like this is this is not to 781 00:48:03,800 --> 00:48:08,040 put it on bets or these podcasters or who any just an 782 00:48:08,040 --> 00:48:11,320 outcome of this, whether intended or not could be 783 00:48:11,320 --> 00:48:13,520 justification for the state to clamp down on people. 784 00:48:13,520 --> 00:48:15,920 I'll be very careful about using that kind of language. 785 00:48:16,480 --> 00:48:20,160 Yeah, no, I completely agree. I completely agree. 786 00:48:20,920 --> 00:48:24,880 So, but what about the the working class? 787 00:48:25,440 --> 00:48:28,200 If we could talk about the working class in the UK for a 788 00:48:28,200 --> 00:48:30,160 moment. And I will just pick up on a 789 00:48:30,160 --> 00:48:33,880 quote where she read out earlier which talks about the working 790 00:48:33,880 --> 00:48:37,240 class being outstanding in their abhorrence of foreign habits. 791 00:48:37,240 --> 00:48:41,000 And that quote continues to say that nearly every Englishman of 792 00:48:41,000 --> 00:48:44,120 working class origin considers it effeminate to pronounce a 793 00:48:44,120 --> 00:48:48,120 foreign word correctly, which is completely true still today. 794 00:48:48,120 --> 00:48:51,400 Actually, I found that brilliant when I read that read that line. 795 00:48:52,400 --> 00:48:55,720 But one of the other things that he talks about in in the essay 796 00:48:55,720 --> 00:48:58,040 is the idea that the middle class and the working class are 797 00:48:58,040 --> 00:48:59,960 becoming much more like each other. 798 00:49:00,520 --> 00:49:04,600 Do you think that that's still true today or is do we still 799 00:49:04,600 --> 00:49:08,800 have a very distinct working class culture as distinct from 800 00:49:08,800 --> 00:49:10,440 the middle classes in this country? 801 00:49:10,800 --> 00:49:14,920 I think no. I think it's kind of lingers on 802 00:49:14,920 --> 00:49:19,440 here and there. You'll find it in one of the, 803 00:49:19,520 --> 00:49:23,080 one of the, the things that the, the middle class despised about 804 00:49:23,480 --> 00:49:26,080 contemporary Britain is Wetherspoons. 805 00:49:26,960 --> 00:49:33,720 And, and the reason for that is that because he, he and I went, 806 00:49:33,720 --> 00:49:36,440 I've been in Wetherspoons and I actually think it's great. 807 00:49:36,520 --> 00:49:40,920 I, I think it was really lively. I think you there was a nice 808 00:49:40,920 --> 00:49:44,320 array of cheap beer and that was, it was a bit rowdy and it 809 00:49:44,320 --> 00:49:49,480 reminded me of going out in the big market in Newcastle in the 810 00:49:49,480 --> 00:49:52,160 90s. You know, I'm getting on a bit 811 00:49:52,520 --> 00:49:55,960 and I'm old enough to have like gone properly out, you know, in 812 00:49:55,960 --> 00:49:58,240 the age of like Brit pop and all of that. 813 00:49:58,240 --> 00:50:02,120 In the late 90s I was old enough to go out drinking with all my 814 00:50:02,120 --> 00:50:05,000 mates. And then you genuinely really 815 00:50:05,000 --> 00:50:10,960 had the working class sort of culture and I think it became 816 00:50:11,200 --> 00:50:16,920 kind of softer and what held it together begin to dissolve and 817 00:50:16,920 --> 00:50:20,840 this kind of thing. But I think it lingers on in 818 00:50:20,840 --> 00:50:24,400 places like Wetherspoons where it's still rowdy, it's still a 819 00:50:24,400 --> 00:50:28,880 bit of a laugh and you can get a lot of like cheap paints and 820 00:50:28,880 --> 00:50:33,080 it's a good deals. And it's interesting the way the 821 00:50:33,080 --> 00:50:36,000 middle class just absolutely despised Wetherspoons. 822 00:50:36,000 --> 00:50:39,360 And it's become this another one is Greg's. 823 00:50:39,360 --> 00:50:43,000 They, they, they've got this thing where Greg's is, is like 824 00:50:43,000 --> 00:50:47,480 the, the, the, the slop of, of the lump and proletariat. 825 00:50:48,320 --> 00:50:50,800 Now this, this, all of this would be fine. 826 00:50:51,320 --> 00:50:54,680 This would be fair enough. But when you bring in other 827 00:50:54,680 --> 00:50:58,920 things he talked about these, these asylum seeker hotels and 828 00:50:58,920 --> 00:51:02,720 things it takes on and just historically things like 829 00:51:02,720 --> 00:51:06,720 grooming gangs and whatnot, it, it actually takes something on 830 00:51:06,720 --> 00:51:08,880 very sinister. There's, there's, there's 831 00:51:08,880 --> 00:51:13,600 something so dark that I think George Orwell would have been 832 00:51:13,600 --> 00:51:17,240 horrified by the outcome, by some of the things that's gone 833 00:51:17,240 --> 00:51:19,680 on with it. And, and in that way it, it 834 00:51:19,680 --> 00:51:26,080 genuinely seems something sick and vindictive rather than we're 835 00:51:26,080 --> 00:51:29,640 all well painted, we're all right, we'll pick out and we 836 00:51:29,640 --> 00:51:33,320 don't like each other, but there's a national emergency and 837 00:51:33,320 --> 00:51:36,080 we're all going to club together and we're going to go off and 838 00:51:36,080 --> 00:51:38,960 fight Johnny Foreigner. That's no longer the case 839 00:51:38,960 --> 00:51:42,320 because we can't even properly define who Johnny Foreigner is, 840 00:51:42,760 --> 00:51:46,600 Meaning the sense of the other has become like completely 841 00:51:46,600 --> 00:51:49,680 muddied. And so the the US and the them 842 00:51:49,680 --> 00:51:53,760 that will have to sort of bring club together itself is a 843 00:51:53,760 --> 00:51:56,000 problem. I think it's very dark, very 844 00:51:56,000 --> 00:51:58,240 sinister. Yeah, I agree with you. 845 00:51:58,240 --> 00:52:00,920 I completely agree with you. And I also think one of the the 846 00:52:00,920 --> 00:52:04,880 problems that they've got is that it seems universally 847 00:52:04,880 --> 00:52:10,160 accepted now by all of the, if for want of a better word, lower 848 00:52:10,160 --> 00:52:13,080 strata of society that the people on the top level have 849 00:52:13,080 --> 00:52:16,200 abandoned them basically. So there's another interesting 850 00:52:16,200 --> 00:52:20,240 quote here where he says at any normal time, the ruling class 851 00:52:20,240 --> 00:52:24,760 will rob, mismanage, sabotage, lead us into the muck, but let 852 00:52:24,760 --> 00:52:27,240 popular opinion really make itself heard. 853 00:52:27,440 --> 00:52:30,640 Let them get a tug from below that they cannot avoid feeling 854 00:52:30,880 --> 00:52:33,600 and it is difficult for them not to respond. 855 00:52:34,000 --> 00:52:36,480 And I think that that has been broken now. 856 00:52:36,480 --> 00:52:39,960 Yes, yes, I agree with that, that that is the problem. 857 00:52:40,160 --> 00:52:43,480 There's there's a lot of pulling going on, but it doesn't seem to 858 00:52:43,480 --> 00:52:45,480 ring any bells in the halls of power. 859 00:52:46,000 --> 00:52:52,400 And so you end up where who, who ultimately is representing the 860 00:52:52,400 --> 00:52:58,080 working classes now reform are there to pretend they are. 861 00:52:58,840 --> 00:53:01,680 They are there to occupy that space. 862 00:53:02,280 --> 00:53:06,120 And it's it's not good enough. And there's to be honest, 863 00:53:06,120 --> 00:53:08,720 there's there's not much time left when you when you look at 864 00:53:08,720 --> 00:53:12,480 where things are going. And but it's to give the 865 00:53:12,480 --> 00:53:16,640 impression that. So maybe again, it's it's not 866 00:53:16,640 --> 00:53:20,120 like all doom and groom, though things are very grim. 867 00:53:21,440 --> 00:53:26,280 But the overproduction of the Leeds is is part of the reason 868 00:53:26,280 --> 00:53:28,960 why I think you're seeing a general shift. 869 00:53:30,800 --> 00:53:34,040 You know, you the whole woke stuff and then the all the stuff 870 00:53:34,040 --> 00:53:38,280 that you saw a few a few years ago has largely been sort of 871 00:53:38,280 --> 00:53:42,320 dialled back a bit. And I think this is an attempt 872 00:53:42,320 --> 00:53:47,480 1/2 hearted and useless attempt to rectify this situation. 873 00:53:47,720 --> 00:53:52,320 I mean, to be honest, much as it's you can kind of talk about 874 00:53:52,320 --> 00:53:58,040 sort of because I think Labour and Kia Starmer and left Liberal 875 00:53:58,040 --> 00:54:02,640 types are in our minds here. But let's not forget, I mean, I 876 00:54:02,640 --> 00:54:06,720 absolutely despise the Tory party and I find that the Tory 877 00:54:06,720 --> 00:54:09,360 party have probably done more damage to this country than than 878 00:54:09,360 --> 00:54:15,680 Labour because the betrayal is just so greater and and it was 879 00:54:15,720 --> 00:54:19,720 all just so dishonest. People will say, well, yeah, but 880 00:54:19,720 --> 00:54:22,920 you, Tony Blair set the thing, the whole thing in motion, the 881 00:54:22,920 --> 00:54:26,760 quangocracy and all of this back in 97. 882 00:54:26,760 --> 00:54:31,000 Now that's true, but the Tories, never all they did was add to 883 00:54:31,000 --> 00:54:34,000 it. And and you know what? 884 00:54:34,040 --> 00:54:37,800 What we saw just last week putting on a super injunction to 885 00:54:37,800 --> 00:54:43,440 conceal their treachery. That is the problem that that 886 00:54:43,440 --> 00:54:49,240 mainset and they they can pass it off because they lop as 887 00:54:49,400 --> 00:54:51,800 Colonel blimps from from the essay. 888 00:54:52,360 --> 00:54:58,280 Yes, yeah, I completely agree. At least Labour are honest about 889 00:54:58,280 --> 00:55:01,440 the fact that they hate us rather than the Conservatives 890 00:55:01,440 --> 00:55:04,680 and the reform types who pretend that they still end up in going 891 00:55:04,680 --> 00:55:06,200 in the same direction ultimately. 892 00:55:06,760 --> 00:55:09,520 So there's, there's a quote actually just from the final 893 00:55:09,520 --> 00:55:11,760 paragraph that I think is particularly powerful. 894 00:55:11,760 --> 00:55:13,800 And it'd be great to get your thoughts on this right, which 895 00:55:13,800 --> 00:55:18,480 says it needs some very great disaster, such as a prolonged 896 00:55:18,480 --> 00:55:22,960 subjugation by a foreign enemy to destroy a national culture. 897 00:55:23,680 --> 00:55:25,920 Now, given that we're talking about the destruction of 898 00:55:25,920 --> 00:55:29,480 national culture that's been happening for decades now, does 899 00:55:29,480 --> 00:55:31,120 this, is this what it feels like? 900 00:55:31,120 --> 00:55:33,480 Does it feel like we've been subjugated by foreign enemy? 901 00:55:33,480 --> 00:55:35,840 Have we been? Are we being attacked by the 902 00:55:35,840 --> 00:55:38,760 system? Yeah, I, I, I don't think 903 00:55:38,760 --> 00:55:41,400 there's any doubt about it. One of the, one of the things 904 00:55:41,400 --> 00:55:46,440 that comes up a lot, which I've discussed and, and you will see 905 00:55:46,440 --> 00:55:51,680 people say it's, it's incompetence, not malice. 906 00:55:52,520 --> 00:55:54,440 And it goes back to Hanlon's razor. 907 00:55:54,440 --> 00:55:59,240 Don't, don't ascribe to malice that which can be accurately 908 00:55:59,240 --> 00:56:01,920 described as incompetence or something like that. 909 00:56:02,400 --> 00:56:06,800 And I think that's a bit of a cope because the, the, the way 910 00:56:06,800 --> 00:56:09,520 that it works and it's not the reason. 911 00:56:09,600 --> 00:56:13,080 Firstly, the reason we know it's international in nature is that 912 00:56:13,080 --> 00:56:17,320 it's happening everywhere. I just think that Britain is, is 913 00:56:17,840 --> 00:56:20,840 probably the worst sort of affected by it. 914 00:56:21,400 --> 00:56:28,480 But it the if, if it was just incompetence, if it was just 915 00:56:28,480 --> 00:56:32,360 that the people who the incentive structure was created 916 00:56:32,360 --> 00:56:35,080 in such a way that the people end up who are running the 917 00:56:35,080 --> 00:56:39,720 system, or at least you know, the the bureaucrats at the top, 918 00:56:39,880 --> 00:56:41,480 Keir Starmer and all the rest of them. 919 00:56:42,040 --> 00:56:48,160 If they were just morons, then you would expect the outcomes to 920 00:56:48,160 --> 00:56:52,440 swing in our favour sometimes. If it was just incompetence, 921 00:56:52,920 --> 00:56:56,440 there would be now and then when that incompetence meant that the 922 00:56:56,440 --> 00:57:00,440 normal kind of Brit got got a got a piece of the pie. 923 00:57:00,800 --> 00:57:03,800 But that actually never happens. It never happens that there's a 924 00:57:03,800 --> 00:57:08,440 positive outcome at all. And so the very best you can 925 00:57:08,440 --> 00:57:12,720 hope for is that they are indifferent to your suffering. 926 00:57:13,040 --> 00:57:18,080 I just, I just think we can take incompetence off that, that this 927 00:57:18,080 --> 00:57:21,080 idea that they're well meaning idiots. 928 00:57:21,680 --> 00:57:24,000 I don't think that, I don't think that stands up to 929 00:57:24,000 --> 00:57:26,360 scrutiny. I don't, I don't think you can 930 00:57:26,360 --> 00:57:29,480 get there by that. But then you get this. 931 00:57:30,080 --> 00:57:34,240 So then the best they can hope for is that they're criminally 932 00:57:34,240 --> 00:57:37,280 negligent. That that is the best outcome 933 00:57:37,480 --> 00:57:41,320 where there's all of this suffering, all of this pain, all 934 00:57:41,320 --> 00:57:45,120 of this misery going on, all the people being reduced to poverty. 935 00:57:45,560 --> 00:57:50,960 The the idea that you cut old people's heating allowance, but 936 00:57:50,960 --> 00:57:55,000 then like squander 22 billion on carbon capture schemes. 937 00:57:55,000 --> 00:58:03,840 That that is what is that is, is that like really is can can we 938 00:58:03,840 --> 00:58:08,440 now that that would you can only the very best case scenario for 939 00:58:08,440 --> 00:58:13,640 that is criminal negligence yes. And so you can then deconstruct 940 00:58:13,640 --> 00:58:17,120 that as well and you can think, well, how can how can they be so 941 00:58:17,120 --> 00:58:21,400 negligent all of the time and sooner only in that you're going 942 00:58:21,400 --> 00:58:25,680 to end up where the only rational sort of conclusion you 943 00:58:25,680 --> 00:58:28,560 can come to is that actually it is malice. 944 00:58:28,760 --> 00:58:33,080 That's that's all it can be the idea that Oh well, I'm going to 945 00:58:33,080 --> 00:58:36,680 stop the small boats and they've been saying this for like 5 946 00:58:36,680 --> 00:58:40,800 years and they still come across every day in their hundreds Now 947 00:58:40,840 --> 00:58:43,840 is it incompetence? Is it I mean, come on. 948 00:58:44,120 --> 00:58:47,560 So it ends up where you have to think actually, yes, it is 949 00:58:47,560 --> 00:58:51,080 malicious. Hanlon's rears or is wrong, or 950 00:58:51,080 --> 00:58:54,640 at best the very best they can hope for is that their criminal 951 00:58:54,720 --> 00:58:59,680 totally negligent. Yeah, and, and, or some of them 952 00:58:59,680 --> 00:59:02,640 think that they're doing it for your own good, which I think was 953 00:59:02,640 --> 00:59:05,760 CS Lewis. He talks about omnipotent moral 954 00:59:05,760 --> 00:59:09,720 busybodies who just want to be up in your business telling you 955 00:59:09,720 --> 00:59:13,120 how to live your life. Yes, it's, it's funny because we 956 00:59:13,120 --> 00:59:17,200 mentioned earlier about the, the, the, the Sycamore gap tree 957 00:59:17,200 --> 00:59:21,040 and, and this, these kind of symbols and ideals and things 958 00:59:21,040 --> 00:59:26,040 which transcend the data sheet. Of course, CS Lewis, what was 959 00:59:26,400 --> 00:59:31,080 big on that when he was talking about men with no chests And I 960 00:59:31,080 --> 00:59:34,440 think it was a fountain or a waterfall that he described. 961 00:59:34,440 --> 00:59:38,720 And he, he had the, the, the, the, it was a young boy. 962 00:59:38,920 --> 00:59:42,360 It was this the encroachment of technocratic thinking. 963 00:59:44,160 --> 00:59:49,160 And in the, in this, in this sort of what he's describing, 964 00:59:49,600 --> 00:59:53,760 the teachers tell the boy, describe the, the waterfall, I 965 00:59:53,760 --> 00:59:55,920 think it was. And he says it's, it's 966 00:59:55,920 --> 01:00:00,000 beautiful, it glows, it's got an aura and all of that. 967 01:00:00,400 --> 01:00:03,120 And the teachers are saying, no, that's what you think about it. 968 01:00:03,120 --> 01:00:07,920 What is it like what? And, and, and in the end it's 969 01:00:07,960 --> 01:00:14,080 oh, well, it's HO 2 falling over hard granite and that's it using 970 01:00:14,080 --> 01:00:17,280 gravity. So everything gets reduced to to 971 01:00:17,280 --> 01:00:21,120 its raw components. You can't have any higher ideals 972 01:00:21,120 --> 01:00:24,600 or transcendental sort of symbolism. 973 01:00:26,280 --> 01:00:29,360 This is pure left brain reductive thinking. 974 01:00:29,400 --> 01:00:33,000 Yeah, it's purely materialistic. Yeah, exactly. 975 01:00:33,560 --> 01:00:36,920 OK. So just to, to, to close up, 976 01:00:37,920 --> 01:00:39,880 we've talked about the weaponization of the state. 977 01:00:39,880 --> 01:00:42,960 You've had a a bit of an experience of this recently, 978 01:00:42,960 --> 01:00:46,400 maybe not directly from the state, although by proxy, as I 979 01:00:46,400 --> 01:00:49,400 understand it, you had a bit of a run in with hope not hate. 980 01:00:49,400 --> 01:00:51,880 How has that been for you? What was that experience like? 981 01:00:51,880 --> 01:00:53,960 Because I'd imagine it was fairly dramatic. 982 01:00:53,960 --> 01:00:58,200 Well, most of what they dug up on me was a 10 years old and out 983 01:00:58,200 --> 01:01:03,760 of context and some of it I just don't recognize at all People. 984 01:01:03,840 --> 01:01:06,920 Yeah, I'm not, I'm not crazy, I'm not a nut job. 985 01:01:06,920 --> 01:01:10,040 I'm just, I've just right. And I've seen me thoughts on the 986 01:01:10,040 --> 01:01:13,400 things and they wanted to Take Me Out for I don't know that I 987 01:01:13,440 --> 01:01:15,360 must be too popular or something. 988 01:01:15,800 --> 01:01:19,600 So they, they, they, you know, and it was what I was shocked by 989 01:01:19,600 --> 01:01:23,320 was just the lengths that they went to and how they got some of 990 01:01:23,320 --> 01:01:26,720 the information which speaks to which I can't prove. 991 01:01:27,680 --> 01:01:31,320 So I'm just going to say that I'm not saying it is so, but it 992 01:01:31,320 --> 01:01:33,600 does. I get the impression that 993 01:01:33,600 --> 01:01:36,360 they've got this special calve out in the Home Office to go 994 01:01:36,360 --> 01:01:39,600 through people's passports. There's rumours that Harry 995 01:01:39,600 --> 01:01:42,280 Shuckman travelled around Europe on a fake passport. 996 01:01:42,600 --> 01:01:45,360 The restorationists have done good stuff on this. 997 01:01:47,120 --> 01:01:51,680 And still, the initial sort of thing was that the, the fear was 998 01:01:51,680 --> 01:01:53,720 what I'm going to end up with the police coming to the door 999 01:01:53,720 --> 01:01:55,680 here because that's just how we live. 1000 01:01:56,800 --> 01:02:00,560 And this is going to be this is, this is, this is just how we 1001 01:02:00,560 --> 01:02:02,400 live. We have to expect it didn't 1002 01:02:02,400 --> 01:02:04,640 actually happen. It didn't actually work out that 1003 01:02:04,640 --> 01:02:08,200 way at all. Really nothing happened, Nothing 1004 01:02:08,200 --> 01:02:10,800 changed. I think if it was 5 or 6 years 1005 01:02:10,800 --> 01:02:14,720 ago, it would have been worse. But I think their social capital 1006 01:02:14,720 --> 01:02:17,840 is squandered. I think the the system is is 1007 01:02:18,280 --> 01:02:21,960 kind of exhausted with all of this stuff now. 1008 01:02:23,800 --> 01:02:26,840 What are you going to chase around a Blogger for things that 1009 01:02:26,840 --> 01:02:29,400 he said or may not have said 10 years ago? 1010 01:02:29,400 --> 01:02:33,080 And like, is anybody actually care about that when all of this 1011 01:02:33,080 --> 01:02:36,840 things go in the country? So I'm hoping that hope not hate 1012 01:02:36,840 --> 01:02:42,960 are a busted flush. But I mean, ultimately, I'm only 1013 01:02:42,960 --> 01:02:45,400 sort of describing what's happening in the country. 1014 01:02:45,400 --> 01:02:49,040 I don't have political power. I don't have any influence in, 1015 01:02:49,040 --> 01:02:52,840 in the halls of power. So when, when we look at the 1016 01:02:52,840 --> 01:02:56,440 state of the country, what I find fascinating is that they 1017 01:02:56,440 --> 01:02:59,480 want to somehow project that onto people like me. 1018 01:03:00,280 --> 01:03:05,520 The, the, the destabilising factor, the, the, the danger to 1019 01:03:05,520 --> 01:03:09,520 our home, harmonious and wonderful multicultural society 1020 01:03:09,960 --> 01:03:13,800 with all these freedoms and all of these things accountable 1021 01:03:13,800 --> 01:03:17,320 democracy and everything. The real danger to that is not 1022 01:03:18,040 --> 01:03:20,360 hope, not hate. People like hope not hate or the 1023 01:03:20,360 --> 01:03:23,640 Labour Party or the Tory Party. It's people like me and I just 1024 01:03:23,640 --> 01:03:26,840 think that fascinating. It's like, no, like you, it's 1025 01:03:26,840 --> 01:03:29,080 your fault the system is like this. 1026 01:03:29,560 --> 01:03:34,080 You can't say that people didn't warn, you can't say that people 1027 01:03:34,080 --> 01:03:38,200 didn't express anger about this. All this, what was happening 20 1028 01:03:38,200 --> 01:03:40,800 years ago, they did. It's just that you silenced 1029 01:03:40,800 --> 01:03:44,040 everyone and you shut them down just as you wanted to do to me. 1030 01:03:44,360 --> 01:03:50,960 And ultimately, when you know, when all is said and done, it is 1031 01:03:50,960 --> 01:03:57,880 these sort of shady NGOs which are killing the the civilisation 1032 01:03:57,880 --> 01:04:01,160 and the ideas that they hold within them and the political 1033 01:04:01,160 --> 01:04:03,960 power they can have. That is what the that's the 1034 01:04:03,960 --> 01:04:07,040 destabilising force. That's some Blogger from North 1035 01:04:07,040 --> 01:04:11,840 Tyneside. Yes, I completely agree. 1036 01:04:11,960 --> 01:04:13,680 They are the destabilizing force. 1037 01:04:13,680 --> 01:04:16,600 And actually I think that'd be a nice place to wrap it up with a, 1038 01:04:16,600 --> 01:04:19,120 with a final quote from the essay, actually, which is one 1039 01:04:19,120 --> 01:04:21,200 that really stuck with me, particularly in the context of 1040 01:04:21,200 --> 01:04:24,200 what's happened to you over the past few months, which says, 1041 01:04:24,200 --> 01:04:27,240 talking about the British people, that no politician could 1042 01:04:27,240 --> 01:04:31,160 rise to power by promising them conquests or military glory. 1043 01:04:31,480 --> 01:04:34,760 No hymn of hate has ever made any appeal to them. 1044 01:04:35,160 --> 01:04:37,400 And I think that that it remains true today. 1045 01:04:38,080 --> 01:04:41,080 So Morgoth, absolute pleasure talking to you. 1046 01:04:41,080 --> 01:04:42,680 Thank you so much for taking the time all. 1047 01:04:43,160 --> 01:04:44,320 Right. Thank you very much. 1048 01:04:44,840 --> 01:04:47,720 And everyone listening at home, thanks for tuning in. 1049 01:04:48,280 --> 01:04:51,000 I've been Ben Rubin at UK column Take Care.