None. I have a very good friend who
emigrated to the UK few years ago and he sent me some videos.
Yesterday he went to the beach. Looks like you have great
weather at the moment. The weather has been very, very
pleasant. Yes, there are lots of people
who have suddenly decided that anything approaching 30°C means
death, but for the rest of us it's it's really pleasant.
I'm surprised about your beaches.
They are Seriously neat if if if that video is anything to go by.
Very clean. That's only on the surface.
Once you get into the water and you watch the stuff floating by
then, then that's that's another thing.
No, our our water companies are appalling at the moment for just
dumping raw sewage into places where people swim.
There's a problem everywhere though, isn't it?
Well, I don't know that it is quite to the same degree.
I mean, I don't know, I don't know.
But but in this country we have a really special arrangement
with, with these big corporates where we basically said we're
going to privatize water or we're going to privatize
electricity. And in fact, what all we did was
privatize the retail side of things.
So, so or, or at least in, in the water, in the case of water,
we just permitted them to, to extract profit and and dividends
for shareholders and we did not in any way require them to
actually invest in infrastructure in the meantime.
And sorry to mention it again, but of course it is such a big
issue because we have increased our population by so many extra
millions in the last number of years, but we haven't provided
any additional infrastructure to cope with that either.
Then things are creaking at the seams.
And so, you know, instead of treating the treating the sewage
properly, it just gets dumped in the sea and in the rivers.
You mentioned private privatization.
That's an interesting segue because I've been chatting about
that with some people the last few days and they argued that
sometimes state ownership of various services is superior.
It depends. And I think the idea that
privatisation is what you imagine it might be is
completely wrong. So for example, with water, it
doesn't create an open marketplace.
So if you live in the southwest of England, you have to use
Southwest Water. I mean it stands to reason, but
I think a lot of people don't necessarily consider it in those
terms. So with water, which is what we
are talking about, the privatising doesn't actually
change anything for the consumer in terms of what they get.
The price, well exactly accept the price.
So that so in every regard or at least the two important ones,
which is first of all what are you getting and secondly, what
are you paying for it. The state still sometimes
actually controls, but certainly on price they have the ability
to introduce caps or taxes or tariffs.
So therefore what you're paying for can in large part still be
dictated by the state and you don't have any choice in terms
of products. So one big topic at the moment
in the UK and what should be a big topic anywhere else in the
world is the introduction of fluoride into the water, which
has been covered on a number of interviews by UK column.
And even if you think there's benefit to consuming fluoride,
which even if you know it's a byproduct of an ammonium
smelting process, nonetheless, if you think it's a good idea,
you do still have to acknowledge that it is a a medicine and
therefore that turns water into a medicated product.
And of course that's with anything medical medicinal.
Rather, it has to be done on a dosed basis, which isn't or
can't be done. If I drink more water than Mike,
I will end up having more fluoride and that may or may not
be appropriate. Isn't really is what I should
say. So there are lots of issues with
it in that actually handing over what they're describing as
privatisation is a completeness neighbor.
And so, so nobody wins except for the people that run the
companies and receive dividends from them.
It's, I think it's, it's been a disaster, which was fairly
obviously going to happen anyway.
And I'm struggling to think of an example where that in some
way isn't actually the case. It's the same with the the
railways to a certain extent in that you don't really have a
choice, I don't think between different companies to pursue
the same route. It's the same.
So if you live in a particular place, you, you have to get the
water off those people. So yeah, but bit of a joke, but
I'm glad you raised beaches. So just to just to jump back for
little bit the beaches, I, I'm biased because I know, I know
how much you like to a wax lyrical about South African
beaches with which I totally agree.
But there are lots of very, very beautiful beaches in
particularly the Wilder parts of the United Kingdom.
And luckily many of them are still very under visited.
But what I would say about those beaches that are visited is that
they tell quite a tale about the way in which people behave.
And it's not uncommon to go to a large beach and find that 95% or
more of the people there are all crammed into one tiny bit of it.
And that's, I would say, indicative of the way in which
people do do stuff. And, and I can think of a
particular beach in South Wales that I go to on occasion and
it's totally fascinating. The beach itself is actually
over a mile long and the eastern end of it is always jam packed
with people. If there are people there, if
the conditions are are nice enough.
And then there's a massive expanse of sand and there's
never anyone there. And and part of the reason for
that is that the jam packed bit is close to the car park, but
also there's a sort of de shallow river to cross and
people don't want to do it. But hold on, they're about to go
in the sea. Exactly.
Or not. Or just be on the beach but not
get in the sea, just get the sunburn.
I think we're bad at recognising what's around us.
And often, you know, this has come up before.
Often it does take going away to a different place that does have
a different culture, landscape and all the rest of it to
appreciate what you have at home.
And I think one of the things about the UK, just before we
started this call, you were talking about going hunting.
Obviously, I'm not exactly sure the setup of that area, but by
and large, one of the comparisons with Africa, let's
say, is that if you want to go and visit a beautiful wild place
where you're going to see amazing scenery and wildlife
mostly, you'll have to pay for it.
And it's all regulated. You go through gates, you stay
in official authorized places, and this, that and the other.
OK, the UK doesn't have the wildlife element in the same
way. Nothing's going to jump out of
the Bush and kill you probably, but you can go where you want.
You don't have to tell anyone and it's all free.
And I think a lot of people don't appreciate that.
And OK, the the spaces aren't as big, but there are large parts
of Wales, north of England, southwest, even where we are,
Dartmoor, Exmoor and the Highlands, there are huge tracts
of land which we have at the moment pretty much unfettered
access to and I think people don't really appreciate that.
So sorry that I've drifted a little bit from privatisation.
Well, what, what, what look, let me just say something here
because because part of the reason that people don't
appreciate it is because it's so difficult to get out of cities.
And, and this comes back to infrastructure again.
So you know that the, the, the roads are usually jam packed.
So unless you're leaving at 3:00 in the morning, it can be tricky
to get out. So it does take a bit of effort
to go to, to these places. I think it's worth the effort,
but but that's probably one of the things that puts people the
same way that they don't move more than 100 yards from the car
park when they get to the beach. But getting back on the
infrastructure thing again and the question of privatization or
nationalization, the, the, the main issue with, with basic
economic infrastructure is things like railways, roads,
water, power, these kinds of things is you can't have
competition. You can't have a private sector
in these areas because you can't have pipes belonging to every
possible player in the, in the retail market running under the
street to provide you with your gas or your, or your water
supply. So, so you've got a, a basic
infrastructure there which can't really be privatized in the, in
the genuine sense. It could be handed over to a
private company for them to operate it in the same way that
a state owned business would operate it.
And it's just as inefficient, but it's even more expensive
because they're trying to profiteer from it.
But the point here is nobody is then left with the
infrastructure, with the responsibility for maintaining
the underlying infrastructure. And so what's happened with
every major, uh, system of infrastructure that the UK has
privatized is that they have allowed the infrastructure to
degrade, not being properly maintained, or at least doing
them the absolute minimum to maintain it.
They, they might fix the odd leak, but if we look at the
water companies, for example, you know, the amount of water
that's lost every year to lakes that they just don't know where
they are because they don't know where the pipes go is just
unbelievable. So, so this is, this is the
problem that we're left with. We've had the profiteering from
the private companies. No one has maintained the
infrastructure. And at some point a decision is
going to have to be made about who's going to take
responsibility for repairing or renewing or whatever the the
current infrastructure. And that's going to fall on the
taxpayer. And that's when people are
really going to appreciate that that was a pretty bad deal.
So, you know, I, I'm not a fan of nationalized industry as a
rule, but I believe that the basic economic infrastructure
like that should be a function of the state and the state
should be held to account for its the the fact that whether it
operates or not. So, so anyway, that's just
that's just a a thought. But to add to what you're
saying, Mike, is the the typically capitalist or free
market argument that well the state simply doesn't do it as
well? Yeah, I mean, the, the, the,
the, the fact that Britain's infrastructure is in state of
such a state of collapse is, is a perfect demonstration of how
privatization doesn't work in that context.
And that doesn't mean that that by default nationalization works
either. You've got to, it's got to be,
there's got to be some kind of understanding about how it's
going to work, where the responsibility lies.
And the people that are running any business, whether it's
private or national, have a responsibility to somebody.
In the case of a private company, it's to the
shareholders normally. And of course that means to
maximizing profit. And the only, in fact the only
interest that the shareholders have is in maximization of
profit. There should be an
accountability for a nationalized business as well.
And certainly there should be a requirement that if, if a
manager or whatever the CEO or whatever fails to fulfill their
obligations, that that that they're, you know, they are
fired effectively or there's some kind of economic sanction.
And of course that one of the problems of, of nationalized
industries in the past has been that because it's effectively
seen as some kind of civil service role and nobody ever
gets fired from the civil service.
They've, they just get promoted out of the job that then of
course that doesn't work either. So, so there's got to be, you
know, in principle, I think the state needs to be in control of
this type of infrastructure, but there's got to be a proper
framework for that so that so there's proper accountability.
And that's something that's never happened in this country
at least. Technically, though, the state
doesn't actually produce anything it outsources.
Yeah. Well, now it does in the in the
past it is, it has, I mean, businesses have been state
owned. So so effectively the state is
the shareholder. You could look at it from that
point of view and perhaps if there was shareholder value for
the taxpayer, then then maybe that's that.
That might be a good model. That is it's run like a private
company, but any profit goes to the to the taxpayer.
I don't know, you know, I don't have, I don't have an answer
that's guaranteed to work here, but that's what I what was,
what's absolutely clear is that the current model is insane
because we are going to be left with a, a bill for a replacement
of infrastructure that we simply can't ever pay.
I think you're talking about the point that Jason Kristoff was
making earlier in the week about a friend of his who built roads
in Canada. And I totally agree.
And I think if one winds the clock back, then you look at a
situation in which roads or railways were built by people
who had to maintain because that was their business.
And unfortunately, we've moved into a situation where either
the infrastructure has been built by an organization or an
entity that doesn't have control of it anymore because the state
has taken it over. And that's created either an
uneasy relationship with whoever provides the service on it,
which is exactly what Mike's describing, or, and this was
Jason's point, the state is paying somebody else to to do
that. And therein lies, well, I mean a
number of problems, but I think the most obvious one being that
that organization, having been contracted to do it, doesn't
actually have any interest in what happens next.
So, and as an example of that, it's a small scale example, but
I live in a rural environment and the government's been
banging on about rural broadband for ages.
Then something was done and where we are, a fibre network,
whatever you call it, was was dug into the ground.
In some places it was done relatively well and others it
was chaotic. Anyway, the point is that that
was said to be a project that was owned by the County Council.
And therefore if used as sort of microcosm of the state, then we
think OK, yeah, it's a state project.
But of course it wasn't. It was done by a third party
commercial enterprise and then they folded and no records of
what they did, what they put where the infrastructure survive
absolutely outstanding. And that happened immediately
the project reached its, well, I think in fact may not have quite
concluded. So everything that's been done
so far, IE something I did eventually, reluctantly sign up
to, if there's any drama with it, no one knows.
No one has any idea what was done, how it was done.
So yeah, too far another. Great example of this.
You mentioned France. France is another great example
of this actually, because French motorways are generally toll
roads, mostly toll roads. And so the French government
commissioned companies, private companies to build these roads.
They're absolutely brilliant roads.
They're relatively traffic free compared to the to UK motorways,
for example. So it's, it's quite easy to move
over long distances in France. But the original deal was you
build the road and you can put your toll booths on it for 20
years. Well, the 20 year period came up
about 3-4 five years ago, can't remember exactly when.
And they, they just the, the government then just entered
into a new 20 year deal with the companies and they just shafted
the taxpayer. You know, the agreement was 20
years with tolls and then it was owned by the state.
Now you could argue that that's fair enough because those roads
are well maintained and, and so on.
But nonetheless, you know, at the same time, there's still
you, you enter into an agreement with somebody and, and it's
supposed to be for a fixed term and that's it.
And then suddenly the rules get changed so that there, there
are, there are things to consider here.
And, and I'm not sure that there was any, ever any proper
consultation. It was just done.
If there perhaps would have been a consultation with the, with
the, the road user and the taxpayer, then, then it might
have been a different situation. But that was a pretty unpopular
move at the time. There's.
A bridge that goes between mainland China and Hong Kong.
I forget the name of it now. It's very long.
I think it's like 20 kilometers or something.
It is a magnificent piece of architecture.
It was not done by a private company, it was done by the
state. Will it become a white elephant
in 20 or 30 years time? Well, I suppose that.
Depends on the economic impact that it has.
If it if it's if that's allowing economic activity to happen,
which is generating tax dollars, then then it's not a white, it
can never be a white elephant. It's only if it's if it's a
vanity project that never had any real economic value in the
1st place that it would end up that way.
No, but I think. A lot of Chinese stuff is
vanity. I don't, I'm not sure that
that's necessarily fair. I think some, some I'm certainly
when I look at at wind turbines and the, I think perhaps you
could argue that because they are selling those products to,
to other countries. But I mean, you look at some of
the really big infrastructure projects like 7 Gorges Dam or
whatever. Is that what it's called 33
Gorges Dam? I mean, I mean, not that has
that has changed people's lives. So, so it's not just a vanity
project. I think, I think they and high
speed rail is certainly not a vanity project.
For example, even the Maglev well that certainly was a
research project and, and, but it's it's still working,
although they haven't developed built anymore, it's still
functioning and it's still operational and so on.
So, so I'm not sure that I'm not sure that much of it is is could
be just called a vanity project just.
To be specific, I think don't you mean the bridge to
Singapore? No Hong.
Kong. Because Hong Kong is connected
to mainland Jonas by land. You mean the one that goes?
Under the sea a bit. There's also that one, but
there's one that goes over the over the sea.
Right. OK.
No, no, I was, I was only wondering about the Singapore
one, which sorry, this is red herring and sidetracked, but
there are two ferries a day, 2 hydrofiles a day, which which
make that route very busy and therefore that that bridge has
been completely justified. But sorry, I thought you're
saying that one because that you could say that there was a bit
of vanity in that, in that it does.
You may have seen it online, but it it goes under the sea or
exception in order to allow bigger ships to pass effectively
over the top of it where there wouldn't be room to go
underneath the COVID. ERA should have very, very
blatantly shown us that the dichotomy between state
ownership and private ownership is a false one.
It's a fake binary, because technocracy is really not about
either one of those. It is this merger which which
Ian Davis refers to as stakeholder capitalism.
Yeah, I mean. This is the, the global public
private partnership where you've seen the, the rollout of PPI and
PPP projects over the last 40 years or whatever.
And, and, but what we're starting to see now is, is
something which is, you know, order of magnitude bigger and
worse. And it's not just, it's not just
a merger of, of state and corporate, it's state corporate
and Tony Blair's third way, you know, that all the NGO think
tank charity sector as well. It is, it is a total merger of
everything. And, and yes, so it is true that
in the not too distant future, the whole issue of public versus
private is going to be moot because there's not going to be
any difference between them. They're going to be the same
thing. It is incredible what they're
building at the moment and how fast they're doing it.
And that's what Catherine Fitz is constantly warning about.
You know, if you, if you, if you arguing about red versus blue in
the States, you, you're being distracted.
Well. And and increasingly everywhere
because, you know, we, I mean, I think everybody's referring to
this idea of the UNI party now, you know, a perfect example was
was because I only mention it because it's in everybody's
immediate memories. But you know, Keir Starmer was
elected here one year ago pretty much on the idea of change.
It was a change agenda. We've heard politicians talk
about change. There's always been somebody in
the last 40 years that's been running on a change platform.
Well, he ran on a change platform and quick as a flash,
no sooner had he become Prime Minister then absolutely nothing
changed. All the same legislation simply
got rebranded and pursued. The only difference, the only
change in fact, was the speed. So they, they've attempted to
run through the same agenda in a much faster pace.
And so there's absolutely zero change.
And it's a perfect example of how the UNI party works because
policy just continues. And you know, the, the question
is where does policy come from? And, and it's certainly not
coming from political parties anymore.
They might, they might pay some lip service to being, you know,
Labour being a Socialist Party and there's nothing socialist
about it anymore. They got rid of any semblance of
socialism in two stages either partly with Tony Blair.
And then when there was an attempt to move back towards
being some kind of basically a Socialist Party with Jeremy
Corbyn, they, they, they pulled the full strength of the
anti-Semitic card to get rid of him and every Corbynite
influence in the party. And so the Starmer party is, is
much even even further away from being socialist in the, in the
Tony Blair version of it. So it's, it's been an incredible
operation to, to, to change that.
So if, if we're talking about a change agenda, maybe that's
where the change was. But nonetheless, you know that
the Tories even reform in some respects, but although we
haven't really had any indication of exactly what kind
of policies Reform will pursue because they haven't really
published anything yet. And so the, the, you know,
they're mainly talking about the issues that are most motivating
the general public like immigration and so on, but
they're not actually getting into the gritty or the weeds of,
of actual policy at this point. But nonetheless, none of the
mainstream parties have anything different to say.
So it is genuinely a uni party and, and anybody that's watching
the news yesterday, the UK column news yesterday will have
seen us talking about the fact that they've redefined the what
it is to be an MP in the UK. And they've removed from the
definition or from the page that describes this, any reference to
elections and any reference to representation of an electorate.
And so we're clearly seeing that in the documentation that they
are publishing, the role of, of MPs changing and therefore
democracy changing. And we have been arguing for a
long time that democracy no longer exists, we only have
dictatorship. And I think the a dictatorship
run by uni party is exactly the model we're looking at.
So basically. An election is just moving the
chairs around on the Titanic. That would be a reasonable way
to pull it. You think that's unfair,
Charles? No, no, no.
I think there's probably a bit more to add to it in that what
it does is it provides the public with what they think they
need, which is the opportunity to influence what's going on in
their country. And therefore they to, to a
great extent, excuse things that continue to go disastrously
wrong or to prolong the Titanic analogy, to strike the iceberg
or whatever it's supposed to have done.
But so yeah, I think the the election process is a, it's just
another part of the theatre. If we didn't have elections, I
think people would far more readily understand exactly what
is happening. But because we've always got
this transition, just going back to the plan for change thing,
it's fascinating. Now you read any government
document and exactly like Mike says, the policy is the same,
the legislation is the same, everything that's coming is the
same, might be dressed up in a slightly different way and the
and the pace is different. But you see this tagline under
Labour's plan for change, which is meant to convince the reader
that this is happening. And it's completely different
from what would have happened if they hadn't been there.
And it's the same way in which the changes that were made
during the 2020 to ever after the, the sort of due to COVID
bid, you know, due to the change of this and the other.
So there are many elements to it.
I had an insight recently. I went to an event that I'll be
reporting on, but it was a an event that describes itself as
being about regenerative agriculture.
Of course it's not really about regenerative agriculture, but I
listened to a discussion that was chaired by somebody called
Henry Dimbleby, who's son of one of the broadcasters, I can't
remember which. He has worked with five
successive governments to advise them on food and food strategy,
qualified as he is by having run a restaurant.
And he was speaking to a former government minister called
George Eustace and a former boss of Sainsbury's called Justin
King. And it was fascinating because
they were all agreed that the government was the problem and
that farming was suffering because the government wasn't
providing any long term solutions.
Then we had the climate staff and all the all the various bits
that were rolled in to create this very complicated web that
the government had apparently made a mess of.
So they seem to be agreed on that.
And then as a sequitur, they described the government as
being the solution. And everybody in the audience
seemed, as far as I could tell, to be thinking, yes, this is
right. We have absolutely no evidence
that the government can and will create the right conditions
because they never have. But we're going to continue to
back them to have a go. And this seemed to be the theme
throughout a lot of the talks at this event, which I'm not
surprised by. I mean, I didn't go there.
I think, oh, crikey, this isn't what I thought it was going to
be. I knew exactly what it was going
to be. But it's very interesting to see
people sit there and talk about it like that.
And particularly to hear Justin King, who's at Sainsbury's,
talking about the way in which the relationship with government
worked and how government really, especially if they've
got people like Dimbleby there who's not an expert in how to
produce food. And again, OK, sidetrack.
And I mentioned this last year, and it might seem unfair, it
might seem petty, it might seem personal, but it is true.
They all sit there and talk about health and highly
processed food and this, that and the other, and they're all
considerably overweight. And I know it seems like an
unkind point to make, but seriously, where does one draw
the line? You know, there's only so long
you can talk about this sort of thing without actually doing any
of it yourself or setting an example.
But this seems to speak to the wider problem.
So King at Sainsbury's was talking about a supermarket
leading the consumer, rather than listening to as though
there wasn't a situation in which the consumer might know
enough to be able to demand such and such a thing from a food
producer. And that in turn is informing
government policy. And that's very obvious now
because they've set up something called the Food Strategy
Advisory Board, which is entirely populated by people
with big industry interests. So at no point is this ever
designed to benefit the people at the individual level, or
actually the people who are supposed to be producing the
food. It, it is a system that
perpetuates. And, and this again is the, is
this sort of public private partnership And, and the, you
know, the UNI party is, is absolutely a part of it.
And the way that the civil service is informed and pushed
by a sort of combination of commercial leaders and so-called
think tanks means that it's a it's an absolute stitch up.
So I go back to the point about the the four year cycle, five
year cycle or you know, or less whatever it is for elections
where people are presented with a well, totally false choice and
that being false choice between voting red or blue.
I mean a false choice as in that they think they're actually
choosing something. They're not.
They get no choice. But.
That's what Noam Chomsky said. You keep people controlled
within a parameter, and then you encourage lively debate within
that parameter. Exactly.
Totally. So, yeah.
And then this is what's such a joke to see people going to an
event that's supposed to be about regenerative agriculture
and letting naked nature take over.
And yet every single stand there is about letting somebody else
do the work that nature's supposed to be doing and to have
some sort of input, whether it's through some government scam
slash scheme or, you know, commercial enterprise that come
on and sort this out for you. So, yeah, it's a, it's a massive
diversion. Red herring a good friend.
Of mine, Farmer Angus, who I know you know, Charles is a
strong advocate of regenerative agriculture.
Yeah, he is. And he, he actually knows what
it means and he knows how to do it.
And further, he understands that if you do do it properly, then
it works as a business and it works for, for the land.
It does improve the environment. It creates a healthy situation
for the soil, for the livestock and the people that eat it.
I mean, it is not that complicated, and it's how things
used to be done before. As with anything that's been
tinkered with before, greedy people saw opportunities to
subvert the way in which things can be done naturally with
minimal inputs and minimal costs.
I for the. Longest time was part of the
sort of free market mindset. I mean, I read Adam Smith and
Rothbard and and Mises and and Murray.
No, not Murray. Is it Hayek?
Sorry, Hayek and a little bit of Milton Friedman too.
But you come to realize, particularly when you think to
the thing back to the COVID era that it's just all kind of
academic wankery. It sounds great on paper, but in
but reality is is a lot more complex.
I think, I think, well, I don't know that the reality is more
complex. I mean, I think, I think the
wankery as you put it, is, is, is, can be made as complex as
you like. And, and they often do.
I think, you know, at, at a very basic level, economy is about
providing something that somebody wants, producing
something. I think, I think with respect to
food production, that the, the, the, the idea of producing
something that that people can live on has been replaced with
just profiteering. And you know what it's, it's a
very interesting conversation. I think with with, with someone
to, to ask the question, are you producing the food that you're
producing and the way that you're producing it, which is
effectively devoid of proper, proper nutrients?
Because you know that for somebody to get the, the level
of nutrition that they might need, they have to therefore buy
more of it and therefore you can profit more from it.
The problem with regenerative farming as far as this type of
mindset would be is is that of course, if you're producing much
less, but it's much more nutrient dense and therefore
people don't need to eat need to eat as much of it, they can't
sell as much of it. Now then you get into the
question of whether you can charge more for that.
Well, at the moment you can because because it's it's, it's
a a minority project. It's a niche thing and people
are willing to pay more for it. But if it becomes, if it were
ever to, to become once again a sort of the mainstream, then
then the question is how you make it pay.
And, and if, if you're, if you're only looking at things
from a corporate standpoint and you're wanting to maximize
profit rather than from a, an industry which is based on this,
on the small family farm where actually people are just need to
make a comfortable living. And then, you know, it becomes,
that's where the complexity starts to come.
I mean, I would, I would love to see more farmers take the risk.
And because I mean, I, I get it. The, the current farming model
is it only works if you're massive corporate.
And so if you're a small farmer trying to play in that, in that
game, in that pool, you're really struggling and you're
therefore absolutely reliant on government subsidy of whatever
form it is. And so they are the small farms
of the medium sized farms that we're seeing at the moment are
therefore pulling more and more land out of food production in
order to get involved in these renaturization schemes, because
that's where the government subsidy in the UK is at the
moment. And of course, that then puts
people more at the behest of the of the big corporate, you know,
hyper processed factory food industry.
And this is, this is a very bad place to be going.
I would, I would like to see some farm into it.
I've not underestimate the risk. I would like to see more farmers
take the risk of stepping away from that model and actually
thinking about how they might produce high quality, nutrient
dense food that in the short term, medium term at least, they
can charge more for. And you know, it's going to
require more people. Sorry that you were speaking to
Ivor Cummins last night. It was that went out last night,
wasn't it? And, and the basis of that
discussion was, you know, if you're not well, you can't
fight, you can't resist if you're, if you're having to, if
all you're doing is spending time dealing with your health.
I sort of touched on this last week as well, but, but you know,
I, I hope that, I hope there's been a good response, a good
audience for that discussion. I've been disappointed in, in
the response that we've had to similar discussions from other
people in the past. We have got to, this goes back
to this whole business of looking after ourselves first.
We've got a, we've got a appreciate that in the past a
larger proportion of our monthly, weekly, monthly income
was spent on food. And, and we have got used to the
trade off between cheap supermarket rubbish that we
consume that fills a hole, that makes us feel as if we've eaten
something but doesn't actually do us any good whatsoever.
We've, we've chosen that so that we can take our two holidays or
three holidays a year in foreign countries.
And, and we've, we've got to start making the right
decisions. And one of those is to look
after ourselves. And that might mean actually
supporting farmers and encouraging farmers to take the
right steps and going towards a more regenerative model instead
of this mass food production thing that where they're totally
beholden, you know, let's let's grow some weight.
Well, actually, how much is weed selling on the global markets at
the moment? And, and that model has to
change because those farmers are on a hiding to nothing.
They're reliant on the state. The state can withdraw the money
at any moment. And, and they're in fact, at the
moment, as we know, pulling land out of food production in order
to get that government subsidy. And as soon as you've got a
farm, which is no longer its primary purpose is no longer
food production, then what's the point of it?
So anyway, that's that's. My thoughts on that, I mean, I
agree with you. My complexity comment was, was
more around the idea that public bad, private good, you know,
that that that dichotomy that we've seen over the years is
just simply not realistic. And we can certainly see that
now with the sort of the stakeholder capitalism, the
public private partnership concept taking taking hold in a
in a very strong way. Now that that it, it is more
nuanced. Maybe nuanced is the better
word, but. Absolutely.
And part of the problem here is, is that that that one is seen
because it's so ideological. 1 is seen as being left wing
communist if you like and therefore no we don't want that
and the other is seen as being, you know, capitalist and
therefore good at the extremes. Neither of these things is good
and and we are being royally shafted by corporate entities
every single day of the week and it it just beggars belief that
that nobody is prepared to set aside ideology and have a
serious conversation about what would be the best thing to do at
this point. The comparison that Angus made
was a really good one. He talks about the food to his
workers and says, well, in actual fact, the beef that we
sell by weight costs less than the potato chips that you go and
buy in the shop. And you get a hell of a lot more
nutrition out of it. And you'd always be surprised.
You know, we talk about nutrient density.
What does it actually mean? OK.
I think in the first instance if you change from a diet of
largely. Processed food that has to be
consumed by volume to make you feel full.
Then switching to say nutrient dense, properly farmed beef,
you'd probably want to be consuming more of it than you
necessarily need to. But after a while you adjust and
then it is quite incredible how little of something you need in
order to feel full and how long that will keep you feeling full
for. So I think the the whole way
that we're, you know, the sort of three squares a day for some
people, yeah, OK, maybe that absolutely is what they need to
do. But I think people don't even
recognise the signs that they get from their body.
And people can't distinguish between what is hunger and what
is just a blood sugar low and how long you can be sustained
for by a particular food. OK, There are there absolutely
are issues with one size does not fit, does not fit all.
And I think there are a lot of different things to to look at
in terms of metabolism and the way your blood type informs your
digestion and all that kind of thing.
But the principle of it is that food of the right quality, the
right type goes so much further than that doesn't.
And I would say in overall cost, there's no contest.
Proper nutrient dense food costs you far less because it enables
you to be in the right state of health and state of mind to be
able to do all the things you want to do.
Don't get ill, you don't get tired, you don't miss out on
this out on the other. You don't have to go to why we
do anyway, but you don't have to go to a doctor.
You don't have to engage in all sorts of things that either cost
you money or certainly prohibit you from making money.
So I think that's how people need to look at it rather than
the upfront thing of Oh well, I could buy something and I can
stick in the microwave for X amount or something next to it
that I know has been produced properly, which appears to cost
more. So, but it is a transition.
I think it takes a while to work that out and to understand your
body's response to any of these things and, and conditioning
your way into. Which reminds me slightly of
what James Walton was talking about with his prepping
discussion. And because he, I think he, he'd
been going through something that I can't believe that all
his family necessarily signed up for voluntarily.
But he was talking about going through a period of time where
they would eat for X number of days of the week and then not
eat for some of them, which people would otherwise describe.
If you take the prepping side of it, you know, it's just
intermittent fasting. So, but nonetheless, it's very
interesting and I think a lot of people, probably a lot of people
listening, they're saying, oh, there's no way I wouldn't be
able to do that. I would not be able to go for a
day or two days without food. Well, OK, this is not advice,
but if you are interested, then look into it.
I mean, personally speaking, it's something that I probably
didn't think I'd really wanted to do, but it's very achievable
and it is really interesting and I think it does have a
beneficial effect on the body. But again, that is not medical
advice. So try these things, but not
necessarily under the label of prepping.
You don't have to think. Oh, well, go.
You just never know. I might have to be stuck in the
woods for a day or two days rather more.
Just think, well, why don't you just embrace that as a system of
life? And then if you do get stuck in
the wood for a couple of days, you're already adjusted to it
and it's fine. Yeah, but that's what.
He says. He says prepping is just a a
term that was coined years ago, but effectively it's just a
lifestyle that's about thinking about how to approach certain
events, which is something that we all talk about anyway.
It's solutions orientated thinking.
Yeah, totally. I mean, this is it.
But I still well he yeah, he markets himself for his product,
his website and all the all the content as as prepping or you
know, that they are preppers. And yes, of course, he's, he's
quite right to go into the, the whole language element of it,
because I don't think it does describe at all what it is that
you're doing. To me.
It's simply a process of living how you should.
And if one of the consequences of that is that if there is a
shock to such and such a system, you're, I mean, you might not
even know about it doesn't make any difference to you.
Rather than thinking, OK, well, I've got a bagpack for that,
I've got a freezer for that, and everything's a sort of what if?
I don't think any of it should be a what if it should be.
This is how I live my life. Well, I mean, personal
anecdotes. My wife and I were at a music
festival, I don't know, a year and a half ago, whatever.
And and we we camped and while setting up the tent, I
accidentally slipped and I stuck my knife into my hand.
So I've got AI mean I've got a scar here now from it.
Now, if you don't know how to handle a situation like that,
you're in trouble because there's a lot of blood and and
you get light headed very, very quickly.
I mean, the whole thing just becomes very complicated very
fast. Yeah, but that.
That's what I mean. I mean that that should be part
and parcel of life. Everyone should know that stuff
from the earliest possible time because that can happen.
I mean, you can do that in the kitchen.
I wouldn't. Put a label of prepping on that,
that that is that's, Charles says.
That's just life. And, and actually a lot of
people just need preparation. Yeah, but.
But, but it has this connotation that you're prepping for some
major disaster. You know, I, I think a lot of
what is labeled as prepping is actually just living and, and
something that we should. These, these are skills we used
to have. They're skills we absolutely
should have that we have remove from ourselves by giving
ourselves up to the to automation in many ways and to
the the state provided healthcare system and big
pharma. So food, health, these types of
things. This is again comes back to the
conversation we had last week to some degree.
These are things that that we should view as being areas of
personal responsibility and, and something that we can control in
our own lives if we choose to do so.
And, and so, you know, it's, it's a matter of, of choice
about who we decide is going to be responsible for these things.
And if we're going to outsource that ourselves to, to, to the
state, that's perhaps not the best form of public service that
that we should be encouraging. And we need to, we need to
relearn these skills, that thing.
With Facebook and the gathering of data to influence the
American election, can you remember that whole thing?
It was about around 2016, yes. Alex created about it and I
can't remember what it Yes, I know.
I know what you mean. And Steve Bannon?
Was part of it. Damn it, I've gone blank now
are. You talking about Palantir and
and? No, no, no.
And Zuckerberg was still held in
front of Congress to ask about it.
Does Cambridge Analytica. Sorry, yes, yes.
Yeah. Well, yes.
But again, how was that? How is that even possible?
That was possible because we decided that that's giving our
data to all these these types of companies is a good thing.
And instead of having personal relationships just among a small
group of people, we suddenly decided to, to want to talk to
the world. There have been, there have been
plenty of benefits to Facebook, as I've said before, and, and,
and that's a regeneration of, of Internet service, because ideas
have propagated amongst people that would never have been
exposed to them otherwise necessarily.
But, but I'm not, I'm still very much not convinced that the
benefits of outweighed the, the negatives at this point.
I, I would be delighted to see Facebook not exist or Twitter or
any of them. What, what we're seeing there
is, is the influence of these guys.
And, and you know, I'm very, very cynical about any of these
big tech leaders, Zuckerbergs and Peter Thiel's of the world.
A lot of these peoples have, OK, some of them have, some of the
founders have come directly from the intelligence agencies.
There's no question about that. But a lot of the influence that
we see coming from the tech sector is from nerdy types that
were probably bullied at school, that are probably have a very
anti human view of the world. And, and if we want to see where
the whole transhumanist agenda is coming from, it's coming from
them. And when we start seeing them
ending up at at a level where they are actually influencing
presidents and prime ministers, that that is something I don't
think anybody, very few people in the world are even conscious
of. And, and they need to be
conscious of it because, you know, if you want to merge with
the machine, that's up to you. But but the destination ain't
going to be nice. So, so, you know, if we're
human, but we consider ourselves human beings to a certain
degree, we've got to reject this merging with the machine that we
are, even to the degree that we already have and, and relearn
the, the basics. And that starts with
regenerative farming. It starts with taking
responsibility for own health. It starts with taking
responsibility for our own navigation from one place to
another and relearning skills that we lost because we're going
to end up, you know, with, with a permanent connection.
You know, wearables are going to be embedded soon.
And well, exactly. And, and you know, the UK has
just announced that that every newborn baby is going to be
genomically sequenced. This is, this is just the next
step along that road. We, we've seen this, this
infrastructure building, the disinformation industrial
complex, if we want to call it that.
We've seen a building particularly since 20/15/2017.
And we, we've seen the use of terms like post truth world.
We've seen the use of terms like trust, who are trusted sources
and so on. And, and it's very clear to me
now that that AI is a part of this in a very big way.
It is there ultimately, in my opinion, to so pollute the
information space that people are going to be increasingly or
they're going to be encouraged to rely on the trusted sources.
And the trusted sources are going to be the BBC, for
example, or CNN or the Guardian or the Times because they are
the Orchard GBT. No, I don't think, I don't think
that's, I don't think that is actually the ultimate
destination here. I, I think that if, if you have
an AI system which is hoovering up data from the Internet and
spitting out answers, the purpose of that in fact is, is
just to pollute the information space.
Now what comes next? I, I, I don't know yet, but
what, what we are going to see is, is the point where it's
increasingly, it's already increase increasingly difficult
to know what the truth is. But once we start seeing
generative AI being seriously used and we start seeing videos
appearing. I mean, for example, 2 videos
that appeared recently that got people very excited were the one
with the the guys on Macron and Co on the train who were
possibly snorting something white.
And then Georgie Maloney, who apparently was doing the same
thing, although the Italian government seems to have said
that she accidentally took a contaminated medication.
But anyway, they, they were, there has been, you know,
evidence of these people effectively being off their
heads at various Times. Now, in the not too distant
future, generative AI is going to get to the point of being
able to produce videos like that, which look absolutely
convincing. And for somebody that is outside
of the system, it's going to be very, very hard to work out or
discover whether that is a real thing or not.
And I believe that's the main purpose of this version of AI
that we're seeing at the moment, because we've got to remember
there's nothing, it is artificial, but there's nothing
intelligent about it. So this it's, it's a marketing
exercise And but it's, it's, it's got a purpose at the end.
And the purpose is to to so pollute the scene that, that
we're going to not, not us specifically, but people are
going to be encouraged to rely on the official sources as being
the only reliable trustworthy source.
So trust has been something trust coalition, the trust this,
the trust project here, trust project there that's been trust
is been developing over the last number of years and we're going
to see that accelerate. And so so that that's, you know,
that's that's basically I think where we're going and and we we
got to start thinking about how we're going to deal with that
now do. You remember a few years ago
when Jacinda Ardern said on TV that the government should be
the primary source of truth? Yes I do.
Maybe that was a fake video. No, she didn't that that No,
well, well, you think she did, but maybe it was generatively
generative there. No, I, I believe she did say
that and I and I think that is giving an insight into exactly
what's in their minds. It really does.
And this. Is this is something that people
have got to start appreciating that, that that a lot, that
large proportion of what they see is, is intended to create a
it is applied psychology being used as intended to create,
create a psychological effect on somebody who's intended to make
behavioural change behavioural insights, behavioural this that.
And the other isn't about encouraging people to take a
vaccine that that certainly was used for that.
But it's it's much it's, it's much more broadly used than just
that rather limited thing. This is something that that we
are, that we are being bombarded with on a daily basis, every
minute of the day. And, and the idea is to drive
people in particular directions. And that applies to the
so-called freedom movement as much as anybody else.
That the one of the real issues with social media is, is the
data collection aspect of it, as you say.
And, and the, they, they have been for, for many, many years
now from the, from the beginning.
That's why it was set up in the first place, pushing out little
bits of information just to see how people react to those it.
But it's done in a scientific way.
It is a scientific dictatorship that we're we're in a
technocracy if you like. And so we've got to consider
that every time we see something on on the Internet.
Yeah, just with regard to ChatGPT, we'll probably only
have the other AI stuff that you can ask questions to, apparently
in the belief that it knows something.
If you know people that do do this and do go to it for
information that has any nuance to it, rather than, you know
what colour is the stop traffic light, then ask it a question,
let it give you the answer and then say to it that's not true
and see what it does because it is being designed to be terribly
polite. But it will concede absolutely
that it hasn't got its right it right.
So we'll say, Oh yes, of course, I failed to mention this that
and the other and you just keep going, just keep going.
That's not true, That's not true, that's not true.
And see what it does. It's very interesting.
So that would be my advice if you're tinkering around with it
thinking is that can't, can this in any way provide information
that is accurate in any way, a whole view of whatever it is
you're asking about. But I would also say that if you
know young people who are being encouraged to use it, tell them
to do that. Just say that they're aware that
if you do challenge it, it will just start casting around in
other directions and try to pull in bits of information that it
thinks you want. So that the, the whole idea is
that it's, I've said this before.
It can be like asking for directions in a place where
there's not really a common language.
And you say, is it that way? And you go yes, yes, yes.
And then you say, is it that way in case?
Yes, yes, yes. And it's the same thing.
So it just wants to please and it wants you to continue to use
it. So so challenge it and see what
happens. Gentlemen, thank you for joining
me in in the weekly banter.