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May 12, 2020 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole
01:06:18
Simon Dolan
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Time Text
Welcome to The Delling Post with me James Delling Post and And I'm very excited about this week's special guest.
He's a businessman, a racing driver, and he's about to do something really wonderful, which we should also support.
He is...
It's launching a crowdfunding, a judicial review against the British government, arguing that their lockdown is unlawful.
Welcome to the DellingPod, Simon, and congratulations on doing what I think a lot of us have been...
Well, actually, I say a lot of us.
It's not true, is it?
I mean, half the country at the moment, more than half the country, seems to want to stay in lockdown forever.
Yeah, hi, James.
It's strange, isn't it?
I must admit, I didn't Think that when I started this, it would be quite such a divisive issue.
You know, in my mind, I thought that the vast majority of people would be, you know, let's go back to work.
We need to get out of this.
But I must admit, just the last, I would say the last two days, you know, most of the death threats have stopped.
And the time...
I'm serious.
Do not.
No, no, no, seriously.
Yeah, I've had death threats.
Nothing serious, just your average Twitter troll.
But the time does seem to have turned, I've noticed.
And whether it's anything to do with what I'm doing or not, I don't know.
It just seems to have shifted the last two or three days or so.
So now I'm getting an awful lot more messages of support.
And the trolls and the kind of, you know, the histrionics from the, let's face it, The Marxists are really petered off to almost nothing.
So it's good, actually.
It's restored my faith in the British people, I must admit.
Well, my faith in the British people was at a fairly all-time low, actually, I must say.
I always imagined that The blitz spirit had survived the Second World War and lasted into 2020 and that the British people had a kind of special character, a kind of a mix of stoicism and bloody mindedness and a sort of hatred of arbitrary authority and all that has been very much called into question by the public response to the lockdown.
I mean I don't know whether you've seen but The British people apparently are more scared about coronavirus than any other people on earth.
I mean, that's not something to be proud of, is it?
No, I think it's something to be very scared about.
And, you know, I thought the same as you.
I thought British people had, you know, more of a backbone and more of a, like you say, more of a desire to get up and get going and fight in the face of adversity.
But I do believe they've been completely manipulated, completely manipulated.
And it was interesting, since we started this case, all of a sudden they started releasing some of the SAGE notes.
Not all of them by any means.
You know, there's a lot that have been redacted or sufficiently not put out at all.
But there was one that was put out, I think, yesterday.
And it was from their behavioural people in the SAGE group.
And it was saying basically about how you could scare the population into complying with these rules.
And one of the lines I saw was, and I'm quoting now, the perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased using hard-hitting emotional messaging.
That's...
You know, it's...
Well, you know, we all know how Nazi Germany started, and it's...
You know, it's not far off this, is it?
It's freedom of speech going one day, freedom of movement, manipulation of population, propaganda.
So, yeah, that made me, you know, this isn't the reason I did it, but that made me even more kind of determined to see this through to the end and to show the government that, you know, there are at least some of the British people that have got the spirit and the backbone and they can't just get away with anything.
You know, this is extraordinary times.
Not extraordinary, but unique.
You know, even in the war, people weren't locked up.
And like you just said, people have been, you know, just sleepwalked, I suppose, into sitting at home and begging to stay at home, some of them.
But like I say, it's turning.
And I think this bizarrely timed news about Neil Ferguson yesterday...
No, I mean, that's a whole subject.
I'll let you take that because I'll enjoy talking about it.
Well, no, Simon, do you not think that the Neil – I've just written a piece about this for Breitbart – that the Neil Ferguson sex scandal revelations really couldn't have come at a better time?
because let's face it people people like you and me might be interested in in in details like how the how the government's nudge unit it's a propagandizing us and and how and how the the imperial college study that the modeling is is is suspect but that's quite esoteric for most of the population whereas i think there are lots of people out there who can relate to the story This bloke is a devious shagger.
He's bonking somebody else's wife, okay, in an open marriage.
But he's supposed to be on lockdown.
He's agitating for lockdown.
And instead, here he is breaking the lockdown so he can have a shag.
Now, I think that may move people against him far more strongly than his appalling record as a modeler.
Sadly, again, I think so.
It's just personalities, this thing, isn't it?
It's got nothing to do with the data.
It's got nothing to do with the science.
It's got, you know, you've got this scientist, and I put inverted commas, you know, those little finger ones, when I say that, who's come up with his modelling.
But he was being put up as the genius, you know?
And people believe the story.
You know, he had little glasses and he looked like a scientist and that was what everybody based their models on and the lockdown on and so on.
So, you know, that was a very easy image to portray in the media, wasn't it?
And then you've got Boris rallying his inner Churchill and Blitz spirit in just a few more weeks and, oh, you know, all the rest of the stuff he's come out with.
And now, all of a sudden, coincidentally, I mean, obviously, there's absolutely nothing other than coincidence involved in this.
The main protagonist, the main guy in this, has gone from being the hero to being caught with his pants down.
And, you know, if we were cynical by nature, and neither of us are, we might think that he was being thrown under the bus somewhat.
Oh my goodness.
Do you know what?
I am actually that naive and innocent and sweet-natured that that hadn't actually occurred to me.
But now you mention it.
If one were to construct a kind of thriller and the government realized that they had made the most terrible mistake in relying on the computer modeling of somebody who turned out to be Extremely dodgy and suspect,
and also who was being shown by, for example, the real-world evidence from Sweden that his modelling did not accord with real-world data, then I'd agree that you would need some kind of way of ensuring that this guy was discredited so that you could then have an excuse to move away from him and perhaps choose a different...
A different model.
A bit like he seems to like choosing different models.
No, but is that kind of at the back of your mind?
Is that what you suspect has happened?
Well, now you put the thoughts in my head.
I mean, it wasn't.
You blame me.
Look, you gave me the thought, but I just ran with your idea.
But it's a good one.
It is, isn't it?
It's certainly worth developing at some stage, assuming he ever does get before some sort of committee.
Who knows?
I suppose we can laugh and debate about that all day long, and it is funny in a lot of respects.
I do hope that he isn't Epstein.
I do hope he doesn't try and commit suicide by slashing his left wrist or anything like that.
That's a David Kelly reference, if you look that one up.
Yes, yes, I got that.
Although, do you know what?
I do think that, yes, of course we don't wish suicide or anything else on him.
Nevertheless, there is definitely something about the weapons of mass destruction, isn't there, about coronavirus?
I mean, tell me about your coronavirus journey of enlightenment, because I'll tell you where I was first.
In about...
Where was it?
Sort of early to mid-March.
I'd spent two months reading the stuff coming out of China and reading about bodies being sort of piled up in the streets and these mysterious pyres emitting sulfur dioxide at night.
And I'd heard translations of recordings of people trying to get their...
Grievously ill people into hospital and being told that all the doctors and nurses were either dead or incapacitated with coronavirus.
And I thought for a moment, this is the new Spanish flu.
This is the pandemic Armageddon that we've been warned about once in a century.
And so I was quite nervous initially, but there then came a point, because it's a fast-moving story, as I discussed with my friend Aidan Hartley the other day, that it's very hard to keep up with the changing evidence around the world, but you have to if you want to keep on top of it.
And it became fairly clear, I think, before the lockdown, that this was not as deadly...
A virus as, say, the Spanish flu, which actually would sometimes kill people within 24 hours of them or 12 hours of them showing the first symptoms and which attacked young people particularly.
So it attacked the group that we most fear dying, our children and the young, the really productive sector of the economy.
But this clearly isn't the case.
And I was wondering, did you go through a similar trajectory?
Yeah, I think...
Mine probably work in the same sorts of ways.
You know, I mistrust any kind of news headline.
It doesn't really matter where it comes from.
And so I always look at these things with an eye on its sensationalist.
And we know, you know, most, no, not most, almost all journalism has an eye on clickbait.
You look at news headlines now, you know, the kind of broadsheets, tabloids or whatever, they're all clickbait.
And so I do look at it like that.
And I do remember clearly I was in London just before, probably the end of February, I guess.
I'm there every month just on business and stuff.
And all anybody spoke about at the time was this virus thing.
And I remember saying, you know, nothing's going to happen.
They had it in China.
There was a few deaths.
You know, we've got way more hygiene and everything than China.
And therefore...
Everything will be okay.
Just crack on.
And actually, it was quite nice.
London was quiet.
You didn't have to shake hands with everybody you met.
It was all fine.
But I do remember coming home and saying to my wife, Jesus, I just don't want to hear about this bloody thing again.
And of course, that was, what, two months ago now, and all hell's broken loose since then.
So, yeah, then when you look at the...
You know, the stats, and they're very easy, isn't it, to get embroiled in the numbers because they're published everywhere.
And you go, my God, you know, this is actually quite nasty.
There are quite a few people dying of it.
And then you see awful sites in Italy.
You know, it's terrible.
But then when you saw in America, for example, when they were reusing images from Italian hospitals and pretending that they were in New York, and then when you realise that actually the, I'm not sure, Department of Health maybe, Who tell doctors how to diagnose cause of death are telling them to put COVID-19 on.
Basically, even if they suspect it, you know, if they have symptoms of COVID, then you should put that on the death certificate.
Well, one of the symptoms of COVID is shortness of breath.
You'd struggle to find a dying person that wasn't short of breath, would you?
So you think, well, the death numbers must be exaggerated.
Well, then, why on earth are they...
Why would you do that?
Well, then it comes back to instilling fear, you know, and it goes back to that quote that I read out earlier about, you know, hard-hitting messages.
And you think, no, actually, we've been manipulated here.
So let's try and get to some real data.
And then you start looking at, okay, then, well, if...
They can't fake people dying, you know.
So you start looking at, well, what are the rates of overall deaths?
And actually, up until the end of March...
The average deaths this year were less than the average for the previous five years.
And April, of course, has kicked that over the edge as well.
So I'm of the opinion now, obviously, there is something nasty that's knocking about and it's killing people.
And individual stories, of course, are tragic.
It does still remain the fact that there's only, well, whatever the number, you know, 650 people under the age of 65 that have died of it.
And I think of those, only 10% didn't have some really nasty pre-existing conditions.
So not to lighten those deaths in any way.
At some point you have to say, look, this lockdown really hasn't worked.
It's not done what it's supposed to do.
We need to get out of this because there are people dying now, committing suicide.
There's women getting beaten up and children being killed in abusive homes.
And we're storing up debt of untold quantities.
Actually, I think it's not untold.
After the Second World War, America, sorry, the UK borrowed whatever it was, you know, $2 trillion in today's money from the US. They finished paying that off, I think, two or three years ago.
And that's kind of where we are.
You know, it's catastrophic.
So you think, well, okay, you know, nothing we can do about what's happened.
There's no point.
There'll be an inquiry, but that'll be three years down the line.
It's just utterly useless.
So what can you do?
What can I do now to try and do something about it?
And on the one hand, it's good that in the UK, the judiciary and the government are quite separate.
In France, you couldn't do what I'm doing because they're too tight-knit.
But you do need a lot of money to be able to start these things.
The crowdfunding is lovely, but it's probably, you know, even at 70,000 we've raised at the moment, it's probably 10% of what it's likely to cost if we go full judicial review.
So, you know, it's nice that there's an avenue open, but it shouldn't really just be for people that have got hundreds of thousands of pounds to throw at it.
So, it's been interesting.
So, you reckon you need to raise 700,000?
To make it work, to get a decent judicial review.
Is that right?
That would be what it would probably cost.
If we won, then it would be a lot less than that because we would be awarded costs.
If we lost, it would be a bit more than that because we would have to pay their costs.
But we're not going to get there on the crowdfunding, that's for sure.
The crowdfunding was kind of an adjunct.
When I started this, I was just going to do it on my own.
I got in touch with a barrister, sympathetic, and that was it.
I was just going to do it.
And then someone got in touch, a lady called Erica, who's got a company down south, and she put some money in, quite a lot of money in.
And then she said, well, I've got some friends who might like to donate.
And originally they were going to donate through the lawyer, and the lawyer said, well, look, we can't do it, but why don't you set up one of these crowdfunding things?
Now, that was where that came about.
So there's been an awful lot of...
You know, abuse on Twitter and so on.
Oh yes, you've got to tell me.
Can you read out these threats you had?
Tell me what people say.
Oh, none of them are particularly imaginative.
I got called a grade A throbber, which one of my friends pointed out...
What?
A grade A throbber?
Yeah, one of my friends pointed out that may have actually been a compliment.
So I was looking at it the wrong way.
Equally, when someone called me a donkey, she said exactly the same thing.
So, you know, maybe they are compliments after all.
I don't know.
But they were all along the lines of, you know, this guy's got 142 million and he's sat in Monaco and he wants your money to fund his vanity project.
You know, it's that kind of thing.
Yes.
And it's like, I have answered that question like 40,000 times.
So I just left the tweet up there and that was that.
But that was the real gist of the...
You know, the whole, the argument against me because, you know, it's crowdfunded.
It's really not crowdfunded.
They're very welcome.
And what's more lovely, actually, is just seeing the comments on the crowdfund website.
Crowdjustices.
It's like two and a half thousand, I think, now.
But they're all really nice.
You know, just someone with ten pounds or five pounds or whatever, they're saying, you know, I can't afford much, but I'm really happy you're standing up for us.
That's lovely, actually.
You know, it's really, really nice.
Gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling and makes it all worthwhile.
I think one of the reasons you're going to get a lot of warmth from those who are on board with your crowdfunding is that at the moment we still are very much in the way of being an oppressed minority.
We've got this government imposing this stuff on us.
Propagandising us, as you say, something rotten.
And the media, unfortunately, are also propagandising us.
I think the media's performance in this has been very disappointed.
The way that they fill the papers with the tragic, moving personal stories of people who are dying horribly.
Well, you think about how many people die tragically, movingly and horribly every year without coronavirus.
Their stories never get told in the newspapers.
But suddenly, suddenly we have to have our faces rubbed in the gory horrors of coronavirus.
And I saw one of my favorite, favorite journalists.
I think it was Dominic Lawson.
You a fan of his?
Dominic Lawson, who is normally really, really solid and sound.
And one of the arguments he advanced as to why we should take coronavirus seriously was, get this, that it was an unpleasant way to die.
Well, show me a pleasant way.
Yeah, exactly.
What's the nice way of dying?
Yeah, because that's the way I want to go.
I mean, presumably it's on morphine or something like that, but...
I was thinking...
Underneath a group of hookers on drugs, I was thinking, yeah.
Well, that's...
Yeah, that's...
Yours is even better, and I feel an idiot now not having thought of it.
But you get where I'm coming from.
Those of us who can see through all this...
I very much feel like the little boy who's looking at the emperor, the naked emperor, and just astonished that not everyone else is recognizing that he is actually naked.
And why can't they see it?
It's just ridiculous.
So I think you are appealing to a particularly angry, frustrated constituency right now.
And so, you know, well done.
Well done for doing that.
I also think, by the way, that crowdfunding is a good idea.
Not, as you say, you probably don't need the money.
But what it does is it raises your publicity profile.
Yeah, and I think, you know, obviously the government solicitors will be looking at all this stuff.
It's nice that they can see that there's an outpouring of, you know, it's all very well getting a like on Facebook or, you know, or Twitter or something.
But when someone actually has to put their hand in their pocket, you know, they go and get their credit card and fill the details in and actually pay money.
You know, that is actually a very telling sign.
That there is a, you know, there is public opinion behind this.
So, yeah, it's had a secondary benefit which I think is actually greater than, as you say, the monetary value.
So what have your lawyers, I mean, I imagine a lawyer is never going to say, oh, we haven't got a chance, mate, of winning this case, because that's not how law works.
But tell me, what have they said about this?
How much chance do you stand of holding the government to account and winning this one?
Well, the good news is I think we've already held the government to account, or we are already holding the government to account, because this, I think I said to the lawyers, you know, this plays out in the media.
It will be won in the media.
It won't be won in the courtroom, necessarily.
The actual legal challenge is threefold, and one of them is not particularly interesting.
It just comes whether they've actually ultra-virates To be honest with you, I guess it means outside of the law, but I've not really researched this that much because it's dull.
But that's the one tact.
The second tact is whether it's proportionate.
So they do have measures in emergencies to impose certain things, but they have to be proportionate to the threat.
So was it proportionate to start off with and is it still proportionate?
Yeah, that's telling.
And thirdly, whether it's just a breach of a basic English law, interestingly, not England and Wales, not the UK, but an English law of the right to enjoy private property peacefully.
In terms of winning, you know, the government are going to struggle to defend it vigorously on the legal grounds.
However, it's not the legality particularly, it's the magnitude of Of what we would be asking the judges to do, you know, overthrowing the biggest restriction of, you know, liberty ever.
And so if there is a way for them to get out of doing that, then they probably would.
So it's more we're up against the perception, I think, or the magnitude of what's happened, than we are up against particularly difficult legal arguments.
You know, we're not wriggling around on a technicality here.
It's really quite fundamental.
So what the chances are, you know, then that really comes down to the judges and what they think.
You know, the good thing is, is that they're all thinkers, they're not political animals, you know, so we'd like to think that when we present the case, it will be looked at completely independently, and they'll come to the conclusions that, you know, I really think they have to, certainly on one point, that it's out of all proportion to the threat, you know.
Yeah.
Out of interest, where were you on Brexit?
Were you a Brexiteer or a Remainer?
No, I thought that Brexit was a totally good idea, very badly done.
Still being badly done.
There's not those coincidental timings, isn't it?
I think Britain was well better off outside the EU. You know, for me, small government is always better than big government.
There has never been a history where that hasn't been true.
And look at it now, you know, by the skin of their teeth, the UK have got out of Europe.
And now look what a mess Europe's in.
They're finished.
I believe the EU is now finished.
I can't see any solution other than for individual countries, Italy, for example, to go back to the lira or whatever currency they want and to just simply default on the EU debt.
And if Italy goes, France is going to go socialist, I mean, 100%.
Macron tried to take it the other way and do a bit of a Maggie Thatcher, failed miserably and thought, well, if I'm going to hold on to power, you know, I just need to go socialist.
So the industries will be nationalized.
You know, what is there left?
What is there left for France?
Germany can't hold it all up.
And so I think it will just go.
The UK, I think, stands a good chance of Not exactly roaring back, but of limping along reasonably well.
You know, if they do a trade, it needs to happen.
Yeah, I'm going to go with this digression for a bit because it's quite interesting.
But a friend of mine who's a financier tells me that he thinks that the euro could just collapse, that it could be the end of the euro.
I don't know what you think about that.
It's very difficult to see how it won.
Who's going to pay the debt back?
We saw what happened with Greece, and that was a mess, to say the least.
Do you do currency trading?
No, no, no, no, I don't.
Because I know a lot of people with serious money.
They don't like going outside their comfort zone.
They only like investing in what they know and understand and care about, and they're very reluctant to it.
I'm guessing you're one of those.
I invest in businesses because I understand them, and businesses I can influence.
I don't invest in the stock market.
I don't let other people invest my money.
It's just what I can see and touch.
That's interesting.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm going to ask you about your business career in a moment, but I like your analysis that continental Europe is going down the pan.
But anyway, back to Brexit.
So you were basically rooting for Brexit even though you thought that it was being handled unsatisfactorily.
Is that about roughly where you were?
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
When I say handled unsatisfactorily, I don't mean by Gina Miller and all her stuff, but I just simply mean by the way in which they negotiated it.
You know, I think Theresa May was an embarrassment.
Yes, of course.
Yeah.
No, I'm just trying to get a handle on your politics.
And you're presumably a bit like me, a sort of classical liberal with maybe a bit of a libertarian streak.
You believe in free markets.
Fervent supporter of Ayn Rand and objectivism.
Ah, yes.
Wouldn't it be lovely if we could deal with John Gort and Hank Reardon in real life?
Unfortunately, I think that was what Ayn Rand got wrong, was that she, you know, you can't use that system in a world that we have.
But ironically, you know, the whole John Gort stopped the motor of the world.
The bloody virus did it, didn't it?
Yes, it did.
Well, let's talk economics for a moment.
I mean, have you lost – is your net worth down as a result of this crisis?
I would say – Yeah, I'm just trying to give a reasoned response.
The knee-jerk is yes, and I think the reasoned response is yes, simply because I believe that asset prices around the world have probably – Dropped 30%, maybe 40%, and I mean every asset, you know, homes and businesses and so on and so forth.
That much?
30 or 40%?
I think it's got to be.
If you had to sell your house in the UK now, we wouldn't buy it, you know?
Whether it's going to recover or not is another thing.
It will recover, but when it recovers, it's going to take five years or 50 years.
So yeah, without doubt, I think everybody has lost worth.
But then, of course, it becomes relative, doesn't it?
If everybody's lost wealth, then you're all in kind of the same position.
Yes, but isn't it interesting how few people in Britain...
We're killing our economy.
Your jobs are going to be seriously at risk.
Your children are not going to have jobs.
We are absolutely toast.
And people have gone, you know, the generosity of the populace have gone, la la la, we're enjoying the sunshine.
It's been unseasonably hot or...
An uncharacteristically hot, hot April.
And we've been enjoying our time at home with our families.
And hey, that nice Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, who we love, has been paying us furlough with free money from the magic money tree.
So it's all all right.
Has that shocked you?
Yeah, I mean, I must admit, I was really disappointed in Rishi.
When I first came across him, it wasn't that long ago, you know, maybe six months ago, I thought he was probably, you know, sort of headed for the top, really bright guy, speaks really well, seemed to be very congruent, you know, and then he started doing a Harold Wilson, you know, he's just, I don't know what happened.
I guess there's the kind of, well, what did you expect him to do?
But when you've gone down the path of saying, well, you know, here's 330 billion to make sure that no business in the UK goes bust.
Whoa, okay.
And then you see the other, you know, special interest groups that are coming up and say, well, what about us?
What about us?
Well, what about us?
Well, actually, we need wages paying as well.
Oh, God, okay.
Well, yeah, you can have some.
And so you've got this ludicrous situation where anybody now who puts their hand up is being dished out money.
You know, the bounce-back loan...
They're dishing money out within 24 hours.
And what they don't say, of course, really is, Rishi paints it as, it's interest-free, it's capital-free, don't pay us anything back.
Little asterisks, small print, for 12 months, and then it's 2.5% interest.
So the mountain of debt, I mean, it's just going to be astronomical in 12 months' time from people who now need to pay their VAT, their PAYE, their rent, their mortgage, their business loan back.
At a point where businesses are probably, possibly just about getting back on their feet.
So my worry for the economy is not so much, you know, immediately.
My worry is in 12 or 15 months' time.
But generally speaking, people don't have a massive grasp on economics.
And as you say, the general population is just going to be going, well, you know, this furlough thing is fantastic because...
I haven't got my job now because of this invisible silent killer from China, but I will have it back because my wages are guaranteed, so it's lovely.
And I'm doing my bit for the country, you know, because I go out and clap every Thursday without fail.
Every Thursday.
So, yeah.
Yes.
So where is the...
So you reckon about a year's time is when the shit's going to hit the fan?
Economically, I mean.
Yeah, yeah.
I think that's when the second...
That's the second wave.
Nothing to do with his bloody...
Yes.
And it's going to come when people are going to finally be forced to borrow some money, because they're going to have massive cash flow problems, aren't they?
And they're going to need to borrow.
But where are they going to be able to borrow from?
And at what interest rate?
I would imagine that what will happen is the banks will have to package on.
I'm not quite sure of who is going to be left holding the can here.
I suspect it's I suspect it's the government.
These latest bounce-back loans, I think, are 100% backed by the government, aren't they?
And the other ones were 80% backed.
So I would imagine what will happen is there's going to be enormous bad debts and then they're going to be hived off into a bad debt bank and then just written off, I guess.
Right.
I've no idea.
I've no idea.
We know, don't we, that Before this pandemic, there were a lot of zombie businesses which had been kept alive by artificially low interest rates, by central bank intervention, quantitative easing and so on.
We know that this was a boom that had been kept on the life support machine by market manipulation by banks and governments because they didn't want the They didn't want a recession.
They wanted an endless boom.
I suppose all politicians do.
But now here is that kind of market correction.
But instead of allowing bad businesses to fail, Uncle Rishi, Santa Claus Rishi, with his big sack of goodies, is keeping them all alive.
No, I agree.
I agree.
You know, there were zombie businesses beforehand.
And now, God...
I suppose you didn't really have zombie small businesses, did you?
So now you're not going to have...
No, you didn't.
You have zombie companies, but you're also going to have zombie people and zombie one-man bands that are limping along just about managing to pay enough to pay the interest on their magic free money.
And eventually, at what point do they just go, enough is enough?
And then, of course, when three or four of them...
Then...
There's no personal guarantees on these bounce-back loans, and the majority, I think, of the government-backed loans, there's no personal guarantees.
And so, you know, why wouldn't you just say, I can't afford to pay it?
Sort of.
As a kind of sector in businesses, Have you thought about the kind of world that is going to emerge from this crisis?
What do you think, out of interest, what businesses are going to have more of and what are going to find it more difficult in the future?
It's probably easier to pick the ones that are going to have a hard time, isn't it?
The big loser, I think, is going to be commercial property.
I mean, that market has just been blown apart, not only because of the fact that no one's paying their rent anymore, but of course because of the fact that people now realise that they can work at home and that they're trusted and they're efficient.
What should you be paying a huge amount of rent to be in West London, for example, when people can work at home?
So everybody will be downsizing, and of course there's a downward drive on rental yield.
Most of the commercial property is owned by pensions, and so that will have a downward yield on pensions, so there's another black hole you could disappear down.
I think the companies that will do well, I've thought a lot about this.
Health, obviously, is going to be a big sector.
Wearable tech, I think.
So everybody now is primed to be on the lookout for this silent, invisible killer from China, or whatever the next thing is.
So health tech, I think, is going to have a big uptick.
The working at home type stuff, whatever that might be, you know, that's going to have a big uptick.
What else?
It's difficult, isn't it?
It's difficult to think of, you know, online businesses, I guess e-sports, you know, as much as I hate that, I guess that will have an uptick.
But how, you know, I love motor racing and To watch the guys playing computer games online and thinking that it's in some way interesting.
And it's interesting to do.
I've been on plenty of Sims.
It's quite interesting to do.
But as a spectator sport, geez, it's so...
It's not life, is it?
Except, Simon, I was reading recently...
That Max Verstappen has been spending all his downtime doing simulated motor racing games on his computer because that's what kids of his age do.
So it's keeping Max's racing spirit alive.
Max is pretty much my next door neighbour and Max goes on sims all the time.
All the time anyway.
These guys, Lando Norris is another guy.
They spend all their spare time on sims anyway.
It's nothing to do with the lockdown.
They'll go and do a race weekend, and then they'll be on the sim in the evening and during the next week.
So this is what they do.
They love it.
It's why they're so good.
I've got to ask you about your Le Mans.
You actually won.
You won the Le Mans, didn't you?
Or you won a category in Le Mans.
I don't understand how Le Mans works.
No, it's a bit complicated, but we won the LNP2 class, which is the second fastest class.
So you have the kind of manufacturers, the Audi and the, who was there then?
Audi, Peugeot, Toyota.
So they're all for the manufacturers, spending 150 million a year on it.
And then the tier below that is the kind of privateers, as it were.
And that was the one that we won.
So we won our category and we came fifth overall, which was pretty big a Do you mean you built your own car from different components?
You weren't BMW or you weren't whatever?
No, so the fastest category, those are the guys that build their own cars, hence the really high budgets.
And then in our category, LMP2, you'd buy a car, buy a chassis.
And then you do your things with it.
So you have a base chassis and then you would do the setup and do all the stuff that you do.
So yeah, that's how that works.
And you then drive around this track for 24 hours?
Yeah, three drivers.
So you'll do typically a stint, which is how long you take before you come in for fuel, was about 42 minutes.
So we would do anywhere between two and four stints.
So you could be in the car You know, three and a half hours, I suppose, maximum.
Typically you'd be in for probably an hour and a half at a time.
So in total, in 24 hours, how long are you driving for?
About eight hours.
Well, I suppose that would make sense to react to 24.
Yes, three drivers.
Yeah, okay.
So, and how do you stay awake?
Are you drinking Red Bull or doing cheeky lines of coke or water?
It's actually drug-tested photosports, so you can get away with that.
People have got caught.
But no, it's amazing.
You can be...
So what happens is when you get out of the car, you try and have a bit of a shower and you get a massage and stuff.
And then you go and get something to eat.
And then you go and go to sleep in your hut or wherever you've got just next to the track.
And then someone will knock on your door and they go, right, it's half an hour before you need to be in the car.
And just the adrenaline, you just get up.
Maybe you've had 30 minutes sleep or an hour of sleep or something.
So you go from being asleep in your little hut to half an hour later being rattling down 3 o'clock in the morning.
And then on the Mulsanne Strait doing 200 mile an hour with all sorts of other traffic and stuff about you.
And it's the adrenaline that keeps you going.
Oh my God!
After the race, because you've been up for, you know, probably the best part of 36, 40 hours, 36, 40 hours, something like that.
And then when all your adrenaline's died off and obviously the race is finished and stuff like that, and it gets to be 7 o'clock, 8 o'clock in Eden or something, and then you're done.
You're absolutely dead.
I actually fell asleep when I was eating once.
Yeah.
Did you do sleep training beforehand?
I mean, it must be quite an art going to sleep for half an hour, an hour, when you're kind of pumped up with adrenaline and nerves or whatever.
No, you can't really do that, because if you imagine, imagine you were fast asleep, you'd just gone to bed, you know, you'd gone to bed at 11pm, and then you get woken up at, I don't know, let's say 1pm, hearing a noise downstairs.
You know, you don't then think, oh, God, I've got to get out of bed.
Oh, no, I think I'll have another five minutes.
You just leap up and you rush downstairs, don't you?
And it's just adrenaline.
That's how it works.
And you can't really wrap up.
Right.
And how old were you when you did this?
When we won?
Yeah.
Forty-four.
So you're a fair...
Okay, so Max Verstappen is what?
He's about 19 or 20.
So you can do this racing when you're a bit older?
Le Mans?
Yeah, you can.
Sports car racing, people tend to be older.
The single-seaters, the young kids, and the sports car racing, which is what I do, tend to be a little bit older.
But you still get some...
It's mainly still young guys that are doing it.
Right.
Right.
And, okay, so I've asked you a little more, which is really interesting.
I wanted to ask you about – oh, hang on, let me just get rid of – yes, you can.
So I'm just getting a question from my editor there.
Yeah.
In order to get to a position where you could have your own team racing around Le Mans, you had to make loads of money.
Tell me, just take me back to your childhood and how, lots of people want to know this, how do rich people get rich?
How did you do it from the start?
There was a great quote, I think it was John Paul Getty, and someone asked him the same question, you know, how do people get rich?
And he said it's simple.
He said, some folk find oil and others don't, which I thought was the best answer to that question I've ever heard.
My story was a bit different.
My mum pushed me into getting jobs, so often she would come home and say, oh, I've got you a job doing a paper round, and I'd be about 11 or 12 or something.
So my first job, actually, was delivering newspapers to a hospital ward when I was about 11, I think.
It was hideous.
It was absolutely horrible.
I hate hospitals to this day.
So that was that.
And then she got me a job in a garage, and then she got me a job on the cheese and egg store in Charleston Market when I was about 14.
And I worked there for four years, and it was great.
I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Bloody hard work.
I was doing 12 hours a day.
That's a lot.
When you were how old?
14.
So I would do...
You had a work ethic.
Yeah, I had a work ethic.
I wouldn't necessarily say it was voluntary, but my mum just made me do it.
So I just did.
And I must admit, I enjoyed it.
And the guy I worked for, a guy called Mark, he was only about 21, 22.
And I started off with him when the stand was really small.
We didn't have very many customers.
And then it just got really, really busy.
So I saw someone young making quite a lot of money just from having this really simple business.
And I suppose somehow that...
I didn't think about it at the time, but I guess that just got into me.
I've always enjoyed numbers, like really from a very early age.
I like numbers.
I'm not particularly good at...
Well, I'm awful at maths, to be honest with you, but I'm quite good at arithmetic.
So that all helps.
I'm a contrarian.
You know, we probably both are.
So that helps.
Yeah, we got that, yep.
Yeah, you don't tend to run with the crowd, so that helps.
I don't like being told what to do, so I'm basically unemployable.
Like me?
Yeah, I guess in the end it becomes a necessity, doesn't it?
And it was a necessity for me.
I actually lost my...
I was doing a sales job when I was about 20.
I was selling photocopies and fax machines.
And we went out for, like we did every Thursday after a sales meeting, we went out and got drunk in Mr.
Smith's in Warrington.
I don't know if it's still there.
And then we would drive home.
You know, those were the days.
And of course, one day, it was my day to get pulled over by the local constabulary.
Got done for drink driving, lost my driving license.
So then I couldn't sell anymore.
So I thought...
Well, I'll go on the dole and did that and then pretty quickly ran out of money, really quickly.
And after about a year, I had no money at all.
I had like three months in arrears with a little mortgage that I had.
Credit card debt up to me.
I had literally nothing.
And I thought, well, I've got to do something.
And the only thing I knew how to do other than sell was to do accounts, basic accounts.
So I put a little advert in the local paper in Manchester, where I was living, a place called Denton, and just saying, you know, I'll do your accounts for whatever, £99.
And three weeks after I put the advert in, I got a phone call from a lady called Jenny Watts, who was a florist, and she said, well, I need someone to do my accounts.
So of course I did the accounts, got my £99.
Gave me some money to put an advert in the paper the following week.
Put the advert in.
Somebody phoned up, a guy called Brian Miller.
He was a builder.
And he said, I'm in the middle of a tax investigation.
He said, can you do them?
I said, yeah, funny enough, I'm a specialist at tax investigations.
Which I never...
Is that true?
No, I didn't have a clue.
This tells you how long ago it was.
I actually had to go down the library and research it.
And lo and behold, we went to the meeting with the tax office and we won.
So he was delighted.
I got my £500.
That was all the money in the world.
And that was where SJD Accountancy was born.
Like I said, that was in 1992.
And I sold it in 2013 for £81 million or £82 million or something.
So that was...
Hang on.
Most accountancy firms don't sell for 81 million.
What's the USP? I'll be honest, no accountancy firm.
I'm really proud of this.
This was the largest sale of an accountancy firm in the UK, anyway, ever.
A privately owned accountancy firm.
It was just me, no partners, no nothing.
All organic growth, which I was really, really proud of.
You know, we never bought anyone.
So the 14,000 clients that we had...
We're all earned, one by one by one, you know, over the years.
So it's something I'm really proud of.
So the USP was that there was a lot of clients.
They were all paying monthly by direct debit.
And, of course, it was throwing off a lot of cash and it was very profitable.
So a private equity company identified it and bought it.
So, yeah, it certainly wasn't your typical accountancy firm by any means.
Imagine.
Had you had any sort of formal training as an accountant?
Well, I'd worked for 12 months in an accountancy firm when I was 18.
But that's it.
Yeah, yeah.
And then, so I started in 92.
And you sort of learn it as you go along.
And in 97, I actually qualified as a chartered tax advisor because tax was something that interested me.
So funny enough, I never ever qualified as accountant.
I have literally no accountancy qualifications whatsoever, but I did qualify as chartered tax advisor, which is harder, anybody would tell you that.
That's amazing.
That is really good.
Presumably your parents were not particularly rich.
No, we just had, we weren't poor, we just had a normal upbringing.
I lived in, you know, it's typical for those times, three-bed setting in Chelmsford, in Essex, and I can't say I wanted for anything, you know, so perfectly normal childhood.
Right, and now you live in Monaco, which is just like full of incredibly rich people.
I mean, isn't that a bit weird, just being surrounded by people?
Do people eye each other's cars up and things?
Does everyone know how much everyone else is worth, secretly?
It's really funny, actually.
And that is absolutely the preconception of what it is, and it's what we were expecting when we came here.
But the fact is that there are, per capita, there are a lot of rich people here, but Most people here are kind of well-off rather than being really rich.
So that was quite interesting to start off with.
A lot of people come here and it just about works for them.
So it's not like everybody's worth 100 million or something like that.
And then in terms of the one-upmanship, we see way less of that in Monaco.
Than we did, for example, in Gerard's Cross.
You know, so when we lived in Gerard's Cross, you know, everybody was trying to, or not everybody, you know, people trying to outdo each other and looking at each other and jealous and this and that, and the mums at the school gate were trying to get done up more than the next and all this.
In Monaco, you pretty quickly realise that you look an absolute tit if you try and do that, because the person that you're sat next to, who's in a scruffy pair of jeans and, you know, hasn't shaven or whatever else it might be, It might well be a billionaire.
And so you don't tend to have this kind of showing off mentality.
If that's in you, that gets beaten out really quickly, really quickly.
Because chances are there's somebody in the room who's worth an awful lot more than you are.
So everybody actually coexists really well, you know.
You mix with who you want to mix with.
You know, they're friendly.
Generally speaking, people have an interesting story as to why they're here.
It's actually a really, really lovely place to live.
It's safe.
It's calm.
It's quiet, relatively.
The weather's nice.
There's really nothing, you know, to knock it.
Obviously, the tax is nice.
I still pay tax.
I was going to ask you that.
What is the tax rate in Monaco?
Well, the tax on personal...
Personal income, provided it's not earned in Monaco, is nothing.
It's zero tax.
But of course, if you own companies in whatever country, so I know mainly in the UK, then your companies pay tax.
So the tax advantage is not really as great as people think.
They think, oh, Branson doesn't pay any tax because he's in NECA and all that.
It's not true.
Branson personally might not pay any tax, but his companies do pay a lot of tax.
And it's the same for everybody.
Do you pay capital gains tax in Monaco?
No capital gains tax.
That's good.
So I'm thinking, you know, because I'm obviously thinking for my imaginary future when I've suddenly become rich.
And I'm thinking, you know, I'm looking at low tax zones.
So Monaco, you're thinking, is one.
I mean, France, obviously, is going to be completely stuffed, as you say.
It's going to go socialist, isn't it?
I mean, Germany, where do you think that's going to end up when it all goes tits up?
Do you think Germany will be okay?
Not to live in, obviously.
Good God, no.
They had such a thriving economy beforehand, didn't they?
I mean, you know, people are still going to need cars and whether those cars are powered with electric or manure or whatever they're powered with, you know, they're still going to build cars.
They have robust engineering businesses.
They have a good work ethic.
It'd be difficult to see Germany...
You say that, Simon, but just actually on that point about the German motor industry, it has been dying on its feet as a result of all this green policy, hasn't it?
That they're really struggling in this world where governments are sort of steering us towards electric cars, even though the electric cars, there aren't enough PowerPoints, there isn't enough.
It's not a go at the moment.
So we're in this crazy environment where they're really suffering.
Yeah, they've suffered, but then there's such enormous companies with such enormous cash reserves that it doesn't matter.
They can shift the focus of their business.
If the government suddenly outlawed petrol cars tomorrow, it wouldn't take them a huge amount of time to start churning out electric cars.
So yes, they'll be impacted, but difficult really to see them Being anything other than successful.
Will the profits be as great as they were?
No.
But then when you think Volkswagen were making, what, 12 billion a year or something, you know, even if they're half that, it's still not bad, is it?
You know, they employ...
Yeah, I suppose that's not...
So, no, Germany, I think, fine.
But then when you look at, you know, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, most European economies were suffering anyway, weren't they, before all this kicked in?
They were...
It is a worry.
It is a worry.
I haven't asked you the very important question.
What kind of car have you got?
Range Rover.
Oh, have you?
Has it got tinted windows?
Yes, but not overly tinted, which would be illegal.
All right.
Oh, I see.
Yeah, like not a sort of Kenneth Noy type.
Do you remember Kenneth Noy, the Brinks map robber who then killed somebody in a road rage incident?
I always think of Kenneth Noy when I see a Range Rover with blackened windows.
I always think of a crim.
So, yeah, I suppose...
I wouldn't think this because I'm very much of your party.
But I imagine some people are going to be thinking, yeah, but who's this rich wanker in Monaco trying to interfere with the decisions of our noble Boris Johnson and his government?
What would be your response to that?
Well, thank God someone is.
You know, this isn't something I really particularly wanted to do.
And I was surprised that no one had done it.
It really did surprise me, actually.
The longer it went on, it was like, surely someone's going to do something.
So, you know, they might be thanking me now, but perhaps...
I think history will, if it thinks about me at all, I think history will view me quite kindly, you know, when the statistics come out.
Look, in all likelihood, when we get to the end of this year, 2020, The number of deaths overall in the UK will probably be slightly up on the five-year average and probably somewhere in line with the 20-year average.
That's the bare facts of it.
But we'll have an economy that's got a trillion dollar hole in it.
And, you know, put that in perspective, I think, was it 12 years of austerity?
Again, I use inverted comments on that.
Saved, what was it, $100 billion?
You know, so extrapolate the figures.
We got a lot of paying off to do.
Oh my god.
So that's 120 years, if I'm doing my maths right there.
You're the accountant, not me.
How many years is it going to take us, of austerity, is it going to take us to pay back a trillion dollars of debt?
Too many.
Way too many.
We'll all be dead by the time.
There'll still be...
There'll still be coronavirus bombs knocking about when we're probably in our second or third lives, for sure.
Do you not think that maybe, well, I think you kind of hinted at this before, that the best thing that comes out of this judicial review won't be so much the government capitulating, which I'm sure they'll find a way of, you know, of winning this one.
But it might open up the processes of the SAGE committee.
We might finally see the extremely dubious processes by which these decisions were reached and how haphazard the process was.
I'm really hoping that we get them in.
You know, we've asked for them in the letter.
We've asked to be provided with them.
And it would be very difficult for them, I think, to make the argument that they shouldn't I shouldn't give them up in discovery because they're key to it.
And if you're asking the British people to do something so costly to life and to the economy in unprecedented measures, then why on earth are you keeping back the information that you've relied upon to make that decision?
That's extraordinary.
I mean, even some of the stuff that they've released subsequent to our letter has been redacted.
What are you redacting?
You know, is it that the information is worse than he's already out there?
Christ, how much worse can it get?
So you've got to think that there's going to be more than poor old Neil getting thrown under the bus.
And I think when, you know, the inquiry is going to be announced and it will go on for, what do we think, two years or three years or something like that.
And I'm sure at the end of it, you know, there'll be findings that suggested that these people...
We're no good and this should have been done differently and all the rest of it.
But like you say, I'm sure the government will find a way of coming out of this.
And they can, just simply by having the courage to say, you know what, it's time for us to lift the lockdown.
There's no point in doing a...
Stage lockdown or just a little bit here and there.
It's not going to make any difference.
We know that the peak has passed.
We know that lockdown probably doesn't work very well anyway.
The information is out there.
People are scared stiff to go out.
People who are over the age of 75 and got three pre-existing conditions are probably not likely to be out jogging in the park anyway.
And the only reason for doing a stage release of the lockdown is so that they look...
It appears as though there's some scientific evidence to what they're doing.
Because otherwise you'll be in a situation of saying, well, it was, you know, we can't do anything today, but we can do everything tomorrow.
How does that work?
Much better politically, you know, to just say, well, no, we just need to ease into it gently just to make sure.
Because it kind of validates their process to date, doesn't it?
And I would love, Boris, just to stand up and go, you know what, guys, it's time.
We're opening up the UK. A bit like, you know, a bit like Trump does in America.
Be a cheerleader.
Go, we've done it.
You know, we've done it.
We've broken it, guys.
Let's get back to work.
Let's do this thing.
I think the British people would love it.
I really do.
Has he got the courage to do that?
No.
You know, I mean, you've got to feel for the guy.
He was in an almost impossible situation, I think, at the start, you know, when lockdown was imposed.
Then the poor old sod gets it.
So he's been out of action for a couple of weeks.
And now he's had personal experience.
And he was, like I've heard from people that know, he was really, really poorly.
And you think, well, it's got to take his decision-making process, hasn't it?
So you've got to feel free.
And honestly, this isn't a political thing.
This is not having a proper the government.
It's having a proper government in general.
You know what I mean?
It's the process.
It's the fact that a few people can cause such mass devastation across the board for apparently the wrong reasons.
So, I am hopeful.
Yes.
Do you not rather feel, though, that we're doomed to carry on down this ridiculous path because the government is too embarrassed to do what you like them to do, which is, you know, come on...
We cocked up, basically.
I mean, that's what they should be doing, isn't it?
They're saying, look, we were sold some dodgy advice by this geezer who turned out to be a kind of a roving shagger who broke the lockdown.
And they need to distance themselves.
Well, they will, of course.
You can hear his speech on Sunday.
Why is he doing the speech?
Well, we know why, but he's doing the speech on Sunday as opposed to Thursday so he can grandstand and he doesn't get lost in the news over the long weekend.
Why are you wasting three days?
If you're going to lift lockdown, say it on the Thursday on the day that you said you were going to do it.
Not say, yes, I'm going to give some measures for lockdown, but on Sunday.
Oh, for Christ's sake, is it not gone on long enough?
Two and a half billion every day.
What's another seven and a half billion between friends?
You know, it's ludicrous.
But like you say, the likelihood of them just going, well, hey, you know, we can all go and do whatever we want is zero, sadly.
Before we go, tell me, what has the lockdown been like in Monaco?
Has there been one even?
Yeah, there has been lockdown and it was finished on May the 4th, so what was that, a couple of days ago.
And, you know, honestly, it's funny that there's, oh God, this is going to sound awful, but indulge me.
So, you know, a week ago there was dolphins playing in the sea outside, you know, we were watching them from the apartment and The sea is crystal clear.
The air is beautiful.
The weather's nice.
It's quiet.
The birds are cheeping around an awful lot more than they used to be.
The fish are swimming around in the ocean.
There's loads of them swimming.
It's like an aquarium, you know.
There's no boats belching out loads of smoke.
There's no helicopters going up.
It's beautiful.
It's absolutely lovely.
You can't not eat, basically.
In the end, you have to go out and do something and earn money, which means that you can then go out and feed your children and all the rest of that stuff.
So yes, whilst it's pleasant, in the same way as going on holiday and lying on a beach is pleasant, it's not the way you would want to spend the rest of your life.
And honestly, they've handled it very well here.
It's a small country.
So it's a lot easier to do.
But he's lifted the lockdown as soon as he thought it was safe to do so, which is a lot sooner than others.
And now life is not back to normal.
You have to wear one of those soppy masks in the shops.
So I just don't go into the shops.
You know, my wife does all that.
Are the restaurants open?
No, they're going to be open toward the end of the month, I believe.
But in good old capitalist spirit, during the lockdown, all the restaurants just did take out.
So you'd get your Mr.
Service app and you could order from any of the restaurants.
So, you know, they have managed to keep going.
But it will have an impact on the economy here for sure because, you know, the Grand Prix, I mean, for example, which was cancelled, that brings enormous amounts of tourism money.
All the hotels are shut here, so they've lost out.
So it'll suffer.
It'll suffer for sure.
But, you know, it's not been as bad, for example, as France and Italy and so on.
Right.
Well, Simon, it's been great talking to you.
And listen, I really, really hope your campaign goes well.
I'm going to obviously put down a link to where people can support your crowdfund.
I think people would like to participate, even if they know you can afford it on your own.
But I think people want to do their bit.
Yeah, that's lovely.
Thank you, James.
I mean, anything, it's really nice and lovely to see the little messages that pop up as well.
They do make my day, actually.
It's nice to see and go back on.
Apart from the worst thing, you're throbbing.
Yeah, well...
You're a big throbber.
Listen, maybe it was a compliment.
I don't know.
Maybe I took it out of context.
It was the fact that she called me a cunt just beforehand.
Probably gave it away, but...
Yeah, well, good.
On that note, great.
You're listening to Simon Dolan, and I hope you support Simon's crowdfunding for this judicial review against the ridiculous lockdown policy.
Thank you very much, and goodbye.
Thanks, James.
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