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Jan. 21, 2021 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole
46:01
Laura and James chinwag #11
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I love Danny Paul.
Come and subscribe to the podcast, baby.
I love Danny Paul.
Unless another time subscribe with me.
I love Danny Paul.
There are things that turn me into an irascible old man, and I guess show my age, but they just annoy me out of all proportion.
Computer running, though.
No, I ignore them as well until, you know.
They clog up the right-hand side of the screen, and they distract you.
And, I tell you what... Oh, no, I've got... I get loads.
I tell you what else I hate.
I really, really hate.
People calling me on my mobile phone and thinking that that's how I want to be called.
I like being called on a landline.
And if people are going to call me on my mobile phone, I'd rather have a text first.
Yes.
No, I know what you mean.
It's impertinent.
I mean, a landline call is big to me.
That's big.
I still have a landline, mainly to call my parents.
But I mean, lots of people don't even have them now.
You are definitely showing your age.
Anyway, Laura, can I just say, why do you think I'm so excited today?
I don't know.
Why?
Because you were late for the podcast.
Oh wow, you're not recording this now, you know that?
I don't see records.
Oh, it says recording on mine.
Oh right, OK, fair enough.
OK, OK.
You were late for two.
I think it was.
And do you remember what you told me about your dates that you went on?
Yeah, I don't know.
What happened if your date turned up late?
Well, I just would never have seen them again.
Exactly.
So basically, I've won.
That's number one.
And number two, the other thing that makes me happy, lots of people have started saying things like, you need to get a new camera.
You need to get a new microphone.
And they're not they're not talking about me this time.
They're talking about you.
No, I know.
Yeah, I mean, do you realize that what you look like, you look like a kind of blurry, blurry brown thing.
I'm happy with that.
That's fine by me.
People will just have to cope, you know, until some benefactor builds us our studio, James.
They can all just suck it.
Have you seen the traffic we're getting?
Have you seen?
The last one did well.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think we're up to about 15,000 regulars now and possibly more as the snowball goes down the mountain and turns into an avalanche and kills everybody.
No, we don't want to be that, do we?
No, it's an acquired taste, I think.
No, I don't think so.
I think it's like, it's no worse than, it's no worse than coffee.
Okay.
I don't think.
Yes.
No, the reason I mentioned that is that when I was, um, when I was a boy, My dad used to say to me, you've got, you've got to try it.
You've got to get used to drinking coffee.
And I said, it's horrible.
And he said, it's an acquired taste.
And I said, well, why do I want to acquire it?
And he said, because it's a very important social drink and you'll find it very useful in your life.
That's true.
That is true.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I didn't start, I can, this is where I can drop in that I didn't start drinking coffee until I went to Cambridge line postgraduate.
So I was really, I was old.
I'd forgotten you were at Cambridge.
What college were you at?
For the postgraduate, not my undergraduate I did in Ireland.
What's it called?
Not Ireland, your college.
Oh, Darwin.
Darwin.
So it was full of scientists.
So I feel I'm pretty well placed to speak upon how the scientists view the world because there were very few, you know, lawyers or English grads there.
It was obviously because of the name, because it's Darwin College.
Yeah, they were all scientists.
They were all great.
Yeah.
We should talk about that because nothing is accidental.
The world that we live in now is a function of all manner of different strands from the past coming together and I think and I did actually touch on this in watermelons, but it's but it's really I think even more germane in these in this kind of age of Scientism, you know kind of fake science junk science political politicized science but
It almost began with that C.P.
Snow lecture, you know, the famous one about how arts graduates didn't understand basic science.
And it kind of created this division, set up this division between scientists and liberal arts graduates.
And C.P.
Snow's implication was kind of that the The liberal arts graduates were inferior.
And since then, I mean, over the decades, we've got the fetishization increasingly in the last couple of decades of STEM subjects.
You know, you get even arts graduates like Gove, who read English.
Yeah.
Talking about how important it is to get STEM subjects, as though if you haven't got a STEM subject, you're somehow lacking.
And this is the way forward.
And you saw this as well in the thinking of I've almost forgotten his name.
He's disappeared now.
Dominic Cummings.
Dominic Cummings wants to turn Britain into a kind of science-y, technocracy, with a sort of DARPA-like relationship.
A sort of state-funded institution which makes us so science-y.
We're going to be the science-y.
He's going to science the shit out of us.
Did you see that movie?
Yeah, I saw a part of it.
Yeah, it was okay.
What was it called again?
Oh, with Matt Damon?
Yeah, he's on it.
Yeah, I know.
This isn't a digression, because I think it's relevant.
Even in that film, that phrase, I'm going to science the shit out of it.
This idea that science is our new God.
Science has replaced God, and science has all the answers.
And it doesn't.
And these people have been raised on, for example, Radio 4, that awful program by Jim Al-Khalili.
I haven't listened to it for about five years.
Again, he puts scientists on a pedestal just because they're scientists and reveres them and everything they say because it's science.
Well, this has got us into an awful mess.
Sorry, I've talked too long.
No, you can have a round.
No, it's fine.
Look, I think in terms of the scientism, and it's true, this is the great takeover, but what it's allowed the politicians to do, I think we had this with globalisation, is that, OK, it could be scientists, but it's not just that.
It's more the dominance of experts.
You know, so what they do is they try and grab more and more policy areas and they say, and it's not just to arts graduates, it can be of course to anybody, people without a degree.
I mean, they're even lower, right, on the totem pole than your average lawyer or Arts graduates.
So what the policymakers are able to say is, no, I'm sorry, this is too complicated for the ordinary man.
This is a question of expertise.
And I think, as I'm reading a book on it now, I think we had this at globalisation, like, no, no, no, you don't have an opinion on free trade or globalisation or how much we should outsource the jobs, because this is just a matter of logic.
Of course we should outsource all of our jobs to China.
Why wouldn't you do that?
What would stop you from doing that?
All the goods that you buy will then be cheaper.
And then someone says, yeah, that's true, but my neighbor is going to lose his job.
No, but so what?
But all the stuff you will buy, and in fact that your neighbor will be able to buy, will be much, much cheaper if we outsource the job to China.
This is a matter of logic.
I mean, this is just expertise.
And you're like, yeah, but I don't want my neighbor to lose his job.
And I'm pretty sure he doesn't want to lose his job.
And you're getting the same thing with this, with this COVID thing.
And as I said, I don't even, I'm pretty agnostic.
I know that you aren't.
I know that others aren't.
I'm agnostic enough on the science as in how serious is it?
How is it not serious?
Blah, blah, blah.
But I reject the concept that the scientists are the new experts.
And they get to make what is a policy decision.
These are political decisions, you know, or moral decisions.
How much do you close?
How much do you keep open?
You know, these are all and but what they're doing, and this is exactly the phrase, follow the science, this is what it does is say, shut up.
Because you're simply not qualified enough to give an opinion on whether or not we should close your restaurant, because we're following the science.
So in a way, they're abusing science.
It's they're abusing science and scientists.
And of course, the scientists themselves, I mean, because they're all nerds and they're loving the limelight.
So, I mean, it's almost impossible for them, but some of them do, in fairness, and some of them do say, these ultimately are policy decisions.
You know, we can tell you, we can tell you what we think will happen.
And obviously, people are free to disagree or agree with that.
But even if you accept them on their case, ultimately, the final decision is a moral, political, ethical one.
And for all the politicians to essentially hide behind scientists is a form of cowardice.
It's also a power grab because like so many things, you know, economics or whatever it is.
Oh, this is just a question of expertise.
And I said, it's not just liberal arts graduates that they might give a good kicking to.
Remember, if you don't have a degree, remember what they did with Brexit.
And they say this like, this is a closed dunking case.
Well, all the non-graduates voted to leave.
And?
Your reply to that should be, and?
But they're thinking, because not only are graduates, you know, superior in terms of qualification, and this is the big change in the last 30, 40 years, they're morally better.
You're actually morally a better person if you have a degree than if you don't.
And I say this as someone who's got a lot of degrees.
And it's poisonous.
It's completely poisonous.
You and I have both got degrees.
Yeah.
Don't look down even a fraction of an inch on people who haven't got a degree.
Often I find, and without sounding patronising because I don't mean it at all, I found this very much during Brexit.
You have a chat with somebody who hasn't got a degree, probably got a sort of proper job like, I don't know, being a roofer or a plumber or something like that.
I never come away thinking, well, this person hasn't got a degree and he really can't converse with me on the subjects that matter.
I think finally, finally I'm talking to somebody who gets it.
And also, I mean, you're younger than me, so you must have seen the beginning of this, but there's no question that the kids, the newer generations are far more poorly educated than my generation was.
I mean, I actually did, you know, when I did my English degree, I did actually read Mallory and Beowulf and stuff, and we talked about the actual text and its relevance to literature and history and so on.
Now I'm sure they're all doing kind of gendered, you know, gendered nonsense in unreadable crap.
Yeah, so isn't it interesting?
Somebody pointed this out to me.
Actually, it was Steve Hilton.
Are you familiar with Steve Hilton?
He's one of the good guys.
He's got a show on Fox News.
He used to be David Cameron's advisor.
But he's a very interesting case study of somebody who was right in the system.
I mean, right up the system.
And somehow has emerged with his intellectual integrity intact.
Anyway, he said something very true the other day.
He said that the only interesting thing that anyone said during the entire Brexit campaign was when Gove came out with his line about we've all had enough of experts.
And isn't it weird that one of the main guys pushing this cult of of experts now is Gove.
I mean, we are in thrall to people like the awful Neil Ferguson and the awful Witty and the awful Valence.
They're deeply compromised individuals.
At the moment, scientists happen to be the experts, but I wouldn't really have a dig at them because the next time, you know, as I said, during Brexit, it was the economists, right, that were the experts and the trade lawyers were the experts.
And in a few years time, someone else with the next big Well, here's the thing.
Here's the thing, Laura.
When they say that though, really it's a way of saying, of hiding the fact that ultimately there are moral decisions to make, there are ethical decisions to make, and they're not, you, Mirjo, are not allowed, you're not allowed even have an opinion on it because you're not an expert.
You're not an expert.
Here's the thing.
Here's the thing, Laura.
Have you noticed how certain experts are acceptable, but other experts aren't the right kind of experts?
So look at how... Mike Yeadon is a classic example.
This guy spent 30 years working at Pfizer, ending up heading their respiratory diseases research department.
So, like, if you had to pick a more expert-y expert with fields, with expertise relevant to what's going on now, you would instantly pick Mike Yeadon.
But look what's happening.
You've got Mail on Sunday expert Dan Hodges.
You've got IEA think tanker, expert on smoking and the nanny state, Chris Snowden.
And they're writing these really vituperative pieces, just absolutely trashing Mike Yeadon as a complete kook.
And again, Ivor Cummins, who's an engineer by training, but engineers, I think we've established before.
They're the kind of, the most rigorous scientists, because they have to be.
Because you don't want to go over a theoretical bridge.
You want to go over one that actually works.
But look at the concerted attempt by the government's propaganda machines, which is what it is really.
I don't know how they got to Snowden and co.
They're actually trashing the reputation of Yeadon so that people like us are unable to say, well, hang on a second, Neil Ferguson is saying one thing, but here's Mike Yeadon.
He actually has scientific expertise relative to this field, which, by the way, Neil Ferguson doesn't even.
I mean, he's a physicist and a modeler.
It's a hall of mirrors.
We are being played.
I absolutely agree with you, by the way.
You're here as the normie.
You're playing the Toby Young, the uncucked Toby, because you're not a cuck, at least, like Tobes.
But you are the normie.
I'm further down the rabbit hole.
But in a way, I need you to spell it out very simply, that lockdowns are wrong, regardless of what these experts are trying to do.
That's always been my position, and in a way you could almost say that it's an even tougher position, because even on their case, even if their worst case scenario is true, I still think it's wrong.
Or at least it's wrong because it's definitely disproportionate.
As I said, I would have been open to some restrictions, but it completely fails to test the proportionality.
So, um, you know, look, what, you know, what can you say?
No, I mean, we can't.
I mean, the way they have rounded on the lockdown sceptics, which I think is a silly term, but anyway, I mean, I would just call me myself a normal person, but the way they've sort of rounded on is very, um, look, people are free to criticize, I guess you could say, but it's, it's also just, it's like, first of all, you're, they're a tiny percentage of the population.
Unfortunately, I accept that.
And our influence is sadly probably quite small.
But it's like, you know, it is that totalitarian mindset, isn't it?
That there can be no dissent.
Absolutely no dissent.
And unless you're completely signed up to this narrative, you know, you're like, you're a danger to society.
And to me, I'm just looking at them going, do you have nothing better to do with your time?
Because even, you know, for all the people you've mentioned, even if they're all lockdown hawks now, even on their terms, they're a bit like, you know, look, it's the least of worst evils.
You know, I mean, we're all nominal conservatives or whatever, and look, and their line seems to be, I mean, I haven't followed that closely, their line seems to be, look, we've the vaccine here, right?
We've it right here, and we just need to bide some time.
Maybe it's three weeks, maybe it's four weeks, right?
Let's just bide some time until we roll out the vaccine.
Maybe it's three months.
Yeah, that's their line.
In which case then, why aren't you on top of the government, A, to make sure the vaccine is rolled out, and B, to stop any goalposts moving?
But if the government moves those goalposts, they will be defending them.
They will be there going, oh well, there's a new variant, you know, what could you do?
And I'm like, you're not interested in holding this government to account at all.
And at the end of the day, I'm only interested normally in holding people who have power to account.
Yeaton doesn't have any power.
The rest of them doesn't, you know, Ivor Cummings doesn't have any power.
So why are you going after them?
Why don't you, why don't you do what a libertarian is supposed to do, namely examine the power that the government is trying to impose on you?
Why don't you do that?
But no.
No, it's all like, oh well, Ivor, he's an engineer, he's a... Shut up.
Just do your job.
Oh, I do hope Chris Sloden watches that bit, Laura.
I like it when you tell him off.
Yeah, just do your job.
That's really good.
Yeah, Lulbertarian.
What a fail.
How many goalposts are the government going to move before they say, actually, enough is enough?
You know, actually, no, you can't keep it going till June.
No, you can't keep it going till the last body on Great Britain has a vaccine.
But I don't think because they're so invested right in their position, I don't think that's ever going to come.
No, you're absolutely right.
Yeah, I think that the the government's response to coronavirus in the last give or take 12 months is now much easier to understand and it can only be understood in the following terms.
The government's priority was not to stop people dying.
It was not to get the economy back working.
It was not to minimise the disruption caused by coronavirus.
Their main objective was to get people to take the vaccine regardless, to rush out the vaccine, and we're now in the stage where they've got to get everyone to take it.
And the reason that you can see that this is the case, even though it sort of defies all logic, you know, why would government's policy be, you know, Well, I mean, I suppose the I suppose the the kind of the generous line would be the sunk cost fallacy that they decided quite early on what maybe about April last year.
That they were going to roll out the vaccines and that this was going to be their route out.
So the sun costs policy.
They've spent all this money, exhausted all this political capital prepping us for the vaccine.
So now they've got to carry through.
That's the that's the generous explanation.
I would.
I think the real explanation is much, much darker than that, because look, look at.
What they're saying now about how they've changed the rules on the vaccine, it used to be, once you've all had the vaccine, you can all get back to normal life and you don't have to wear masks and stuff and everything will be normal again.
Now it's, even when you've had the vaccine, you still need to wear the mask, you still need to keep social distancing.
Oh, and by the way, it doesn't stop you, necessarily stop you transmitting coronavirus.
And it only buys you, what it does is it buys you some reduced symptoms maybe, And you've got to have another injection in a few months.
Yeah, no, I know.
People are just going, oh, yeah, must take the vaccine.
Well, they've gone from terrifying the public in general, as we said on the last podcast, you know, just that you just their complete sort of terrorism campaign that went on for a week or so.
And now it's switched, as you say, subtly to say now they seem to be terrified that anybody who's gotten the virus is now going to go out and, I don't know, meet somebody else or something.
It's not like they can go to a restaurant or a pub anyway.
So anybody who's hoping for their vaccine passport, I can tell you that's one thing that will not be coming down the line because it seems they're terrified of that people, you know, will get the vaccine and then sort of go and party hard.
I mean, I don't know why your average 85 year old is going to be doing that.
But yeah, I mean, it just, you know, every week there's a new sort of terror campaign.
It's moved, as I said, from the general, you mustn't, you know, you just mustn't even breathe general population to now vaccine, if you get vaccine, please, please keep to the rules.
Well, how many people, how long are you going to be saying that?
Are you going to be saying that for when the entire population is vaccinated?
You know, I mean, the goalpost moving is so dangerous.
Well, the entire population apart from me.
Yeah, I mean, it's just so blatant, and they're never called out on us.
Ever.
You know, it goes from like mid-February to maybe the beginning of March, and now it's like, now it's like, oh, well, you mightn't even have Easter.
We may get to meet, so the Sun guy, Tom Newton, whatever his name is, was tweeting- He's awful.
Oh, awful, yeah, I know.
Was tweeting yesterday- Really bad.
You know, oh, the leak is now.
Will families be able to meet up at Easter?
You're like, hang on, you told me at Christmas that Easter was going to be my new Christmas.
Not to have Christmas, but to have a big Easter.
That's what you told me at Christmas.
Now you're saying we're going to cancel Easter?
Like, why does nobody call them on the Gold Pulse movie?
It is the most infuriating thing.
It really is.
Can I just say, very briefly, Tom Newton-Dunn, he tests my faith in the private education system.
Tom Newton-Dunn went to Marlborough.
You know, his parents, how much would that have cost?
They'd have cost the equivalent now of about £35,000 a year to educate young Tom Newton-Dunn posh boy.
He's just become this horrible establishment creepy stooge.
I don't understand how you can become a journalist and not be interested in fighting corruption and getting to the truth.
Instead, he's just become a propagandist for the liberal elite.
I'm sorry, James, but my view of the private schools, especially the more elite ones, I mean, I think people are only interested in climbing the greasy pole, right?
And professional success.
They're not interested in, sort of, propagating a particular viewpoint or stance.
You know, that would be my... You could be right, Laura.
I mean, we're sounding like a couple of bloody lefties, aren't we?
Why is it that... Did you have a private education?
No, well, the last two years, but not really, no.
You had a sort of elite education.
My kids have a private education, but as they always say, the small ones, the small schools.
I just think it's curious.
Why is it that we, is it because maybe we're common?
Is that we're not posh enough?
Is that why we have this scepticism?
I don't, I don't, yeah, I don't know.
I just, I just, you know, I wouldn't say no to someone coming along and saying, I don't know how much am I, how much would I sell out for?
Um, uh, I, I don't know.
It's hard to say, isn't it?
It's hard to say.
You can, you can, I think I would find it hard to, uh, to be in a job I really didn't like or to, to, you know, push for somebody or something that I didn't believe in.
That would, I would find that very difficult.
I couldn't, I couldn't do it.
I genuinely couldn't do it.
Yeah.
I would be, If somebody wanted to give me five million to say something I was going to say anyway, I'd have no moral problem with that at all.
If somebody wanted to support me, as long as the deal was you can say what the hell you like, I'm going to back you because I love you.
That seems to me entirely legit.
But if somebody said to me, I'm going to pay you to say something you don't believe in, no.
No, no, I agree.
That's like worse than prostitution.
Anyway.
You're probably right that you're selling your soul as opposed to just selling your body.
No, I think that's true.
I mean, I mean, of course, the question is, is where where are I mean, all the all the conservative funding, all the funding for conservative causes goes into very, very mainstream, you know, institutions.
You know, we would be considered too far of an outlier, I think.
We're outside the Overton window.
Yeah, yeah.
People wouldn't be willing to take a risk because then, well, who knows what would happen.
It's all because the lefty, liberal, well not even liberal, the leftist stance rules in the media.
So, you know, if you made a donation, I mean, I'm not even saying to us, but to anybody or to say our website, a big donation, they will have to accept the fact that they will be monstered by the left-wing press, maybe some of the right-wing press.
And then what they'll do is, you know, they will dig up some blog out of the 20,000 blogs, right, that we've run on Conservative Woman.
That was a little bit out there.
And they will say, you, sir, whatnot, you have donated to this website that once ran a blog in 20, 2012 that said this about, you know, homeless people.
You're a monster.
And then he, unless he's willing to say, fuck you, he'll, he'll, he'll, he'll just be a coward and go running.
That's why.
That's the problem.
Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.
Laura, I wanted to talk to you because I know that this is the kind of thing will interest listeners a lot.
Just the small sad stories that you hear about this encroaching tyranny, the vaccine tyranny, for example.
So let me tell you two stories.
Very sad.
One of which is, I know this osteopath.
Who is very much of our party on vaccines.
She had coronavirus last year, you know, diagnosed and had a proper test for it and got a certificate and everything.
So she's effectively got, certainly, T-cell immunity.
She's not going to get it again.
But she's now had a letter from her association, her trade association, saying, You must have the vaccine.
And she's really against the vaccine.
She's really worried about it.
She's in despair.
She doesn't know what to do.
That's terrible.
No, that is bad.
People who are even pro-vaccine should be against that stance.
It is completely incorrect.
They're basically threatening her livelihood unless she gets the vaccine.
You know, that's not acceptable in a democratic country.
Irrelevant of your stance on vaccines.
As you said, she's immune anyway.
She's T cell immunity anyway.
No, I mean, I think that is bad.
I think there's going to be a lot of that.
Again, it's easier for me and you because we don't have an employer to fire us.
But, you know, if your employer comes along and says you have to get a vaccine or else, it puts him in a very, very difficult position.
Are you familiar with the concept of the cathedral?
Oh, go on, vaguely.
The cathedral, in the sense of burn the cathedral, that our society, Western civilization pretty much, as it is at the moment, is this cathedral constructed by the liberal left, where people say, well, it's not like the government is necessarily telling you, you know, dictating these terms
You know, we're all sort of free individuals, but actually we're not because every constituent part of this edifice is working towards the same goal.
I mean, OK, so common purpose, for example, helped by infiltrating every sort of public public body and stuff and training selected people to think in the correct liberal left way.
But this is an example of, you know, the government.
The government has not yet told us that we must have these vaccines.
Trade professional bodies, like whatever represents osteopaths are doing, are acting in concert with the government and they're gold-plating government directives to make them inescapable.
And that's the really scary part.
That's what we're heading towards now.
Did you know, for example, that Chelsea Flower Show this year is insisting that everyone who comes to Chelsea Flower Show has to have a negative I mean, how much are those tests?
I had one done by my friend Adrian Hartley, but he's gone back to Kenya now.
But his was just about affordable.
How can they get away with that though?
Because they can't, like a dog licking its balls, they can't.
Yeah, because the government, as you say, they won't necessarily have to issue sort of a mandate in the old-fashioned sort of fascist way, you almost have a vaccine.
But exactly, all the corporations that we've, are complete enemies, so I don't know why conservatives, you know, I'm not defending them from a massive tax burden, if that's what people want to do.
The corporations, all of the, a lot of the charities, yeah, there'll be enough People or groups to voluntarily say you must get a vaccine or you can't come in without a vaccine for it to make it de facto mandatory.
No, I mean, I know it's and then again, because everybody's just willing to go along with it, you know, and well, it doesn't disturb my life.
People like your friend are essentially crushed underneath the power.
That's why it's so important for even if you have a vaccine to say, I have a vaccine, I have no problem.
But no, she, my colleague, should not be made to get a vaccine for the sake of her livelihood.
Another example.
A friend of mine in his 80s feels as we do about the vaccine, didn't want to get it, has now had I think his fifth call from his GP demanding or heavy hinting that he really needs to come in and get his vaccine.
And all his circle of friends, and you can imagine when you're in your 80s you don't get, you haven't got that many people around to hang out with, They're all sort of bullying him.
They won't associate with him unless he gets the vaccine.
Ooh, that's not nice.
Another story.
A seven-year-old girl, daughter of a GP, comes to school, comes to her class with a nasty cough, such as children through the ages have had.
It's a girl's school.
All the other girls in the class go to the other side of the classroom.
Like she's got coochies or something, as Americans say.
And you know how cruel little girls are.
And the teacher says, stop that.
And they say, no, she's got coronavirus.
She's got coronavirus.
She's got coronavirus.
The girl hasn't got coronavirus.
But anyway, the nurse comes, the matron comes along and takes her away.
And the girl's in tears.
She's been humiliated because she's got this cough.
The mother says, look, I know she hasn't got coronavirus.
I know what the symptoms are.
Blah, blah, blah.
The mother knows.
So anyway, the girls get a coronavirus test.
And guess what?
She hasn't got coronavirus.
And now this girl is going to be a pariah in her school.
And all these girls are going to have it fixed in their brains, their seven-year-old brains, for the rest of their life, that the correct policy when any disease comes along is to reject the person.
To treat them as a pariah, that no precautions are too strong, that masks are important.
We are creating a horribly dystopian future for ourselves.
Yeah, no, it's very cruel.
And as I said before, the most annoying thing is how people who are going along with this view themselves as sort of the selfless ones.
And, you know, they have the high moral ground.
You're being utterly selfish.
You're asking everybody else to make it massive sacrifice because your health is so precious.
It's all for me.
And just how dare you even come close to me?
I am so precious.
And you're just so self-obsessed.
And if you really push them with it and ask them a number of questions, like, are you happy with the fact that children won't be able to read and write now because they've closed the schools?
They'll just go, Yeah, it's a price worth paying.
Which brings me, as I said, to the schools before.
And I'll just say, because it kind of links in, I mean, talk about experts.
The problem with this, and I totally disagree with the schools being closed day to day, and the secondary schools and the universities, but this again is going to feed into the whole leftist aim, of course, of collapsing standards and having a complete race to the bottom.
Because what are the government going to do?
They're just going to do, as you said the last time, it's going to be prizes for all, the universities are going to be bullied into basically giving firsts, God knows what's going to happen with all the A-levels and G's.
They'll just be given, you know, whatever, fake grades.
Nobody's actually going to know anything because they simply will not have learned it.
You know, and it's actually frightening.
And I mean, because even with last year's cohort, you've got, I mean, so many A's were given out, I think, last year, weren't they?
They're giving A's for exams.
For exams you never even sat.
Now I have sympathy.
I have huge sympathy for them.
I get that it's not their fault.
But you've been given something, essentially, that you do not deserve.
You didn't sit that exam.
I agree, it may have worked over the year, but I think a lot of them stopped in April.
And you've been given a grade for an exam you never sat, and then you're going to be given a degree, for a degree you've probably barely read anything for, depending on how long this goes on for.
You know, and it's just, as you say, it's just this mirage.
It's just this sort of, you know, what we call it like the matrix.
You're just being lied to all the time.
Of course, in deep inside-- - It is the-- - Yeah.
But deep inside they know they're being lied to.
And that's a form of shame and humiliation.
You know, I got an A even though I know deep down I didn't do any work for it.
Or I got it first even though I know I didn't do any work for it.
I'm very glad you invoke the matrix because I'm obviously Neo.
Are there any female characters in Neo's gang?
I can't remember.
There's the girl, I forget her name though.
Dark hair.
Come on, you can be the girl with the short dark hair then, whatever her name is.
Yes, I'm going to have to see that film again.
But you you are not you're not wrong there, Laura.
We are we are in the Matrix world.
We are being played massively.
What's going on is not normal and we shouldn't accept it.
I mean, the other analogy I was going to use, I feel at the moment like a kind of if this is our World War two that we're living through and it is I do very much feel like the The Nazis are hunting down the French resistance in in We've got our redoubt up in the mountains.
Maybe in the woods in the mountains and And they're coming for us that and they're picking us off one by one.
It's extraordinary that and I I'm not going to surrender.
No.
I just think we've got the truth on our side.
We've got morality on our side.
What is being done is wrong.
And everyone listening to the watching the show knows it's wrong.
And that in a way is that's why we need each other.
Our audience need us and we need them because we need to sort of share.
Yeah, no, I know.
I mean, they'll also, they'll rewrite history as well.
They'll forget about all the goalposts moving and they'll forget about how they said, you know, I mean, again, it was three weeks to flatten the curve.
Do you remember that?
Then there was the lockdown in November.
Or squash the sombrero.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You just have to remind yourself the lies.
Then it was let's lock down in November to save Christmas.
Then it was cancel Christmas.
Then they cancel Christmas anyway.
Then it was cancel Christmas to avoid a lockdown in January.
They locked down in January anyway.
And then it was... No, it's literally all the time.
It's true.
It's true.
You're not making it up.
No, no.
And then there's a lockdown in January until the vaccine is rolled out.
And then you can bet your bottom dollar.
And then they've added on, unless it's a new variant.
But I mean, of course there'll be a new variant.
So they've already prepared the next excuse?
Yeah, but it won't be killing anybody.
I mean, how could it possibly?
First of all, people will already be vaccined against it on their terms.
And secondly, lots of people have already had it.
So I mean, eventually, look, I mean, they will lift it in spring and summer, mainly because people will just go out and you'll have the same thing that you had last year.
That's the writing season.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, people aren't going to stay.
People aren't going to stay in their house, OK?
They can't go to rest.
So eventually, the pressure will build.
Once the numbers come down, and you have to believe the numbers will eventually come down, you know, pressure will start to build, to open up here and there.
But they will stretch this out for as long as possible.
And supposedly, oh yeah, this is what, do you believe the polls?
Or do you think they're lying?
85% support the lockdown.
Laura, I think everything that you hear from an official source is a lie.
I do not trust any of it, because they have an agenda.
No, I agree, and I think you go over completely compromised, but to be honest, it doesn't surprise me if all the over-50s supported it, but there's nobody I know who supports it.
You know, so I'm just wondering how long... I mean, why isn't... I guess there's just no organised opposition.
This is the problem.
And they were very splintered at the moment.
Well, it's interesting, isn't it?
I think we've mentioned this before, that the most together people on this issue have been the anti-vaxxers, the 5G people, the Piers Corbyn crowd.
And I think it's very interesting that Piers Corbyn Um, is there was subject of a hit job in the mail on Sunday, and they did some undercover sting, like how difficult is it to an undercover sting on?
I mean, he's, he's perfectly upfront about what he believes.
It's no, it's no, no secret.
And what they do is they say, here is this man with these ridiculous views.
He thinks that COVID is a hoax.
To all intents and purposes, it is a hoax.
I mean, there's no question that people are dying of it and that it's like a bad flu year.
But the idea that this is a unique and unique bug that deserves to be treated even more seriously than the Spanish flu just makes no sense.
Yeah.
It makes no sense at all.
Well, I mean, there is always a long running smear campaign.
Oh, yeah.
So and then did you see the Lord Sumption thing?
Did you see that he did not take your advice and he went on BBC?
Big questions.
Big mistake.
Brave and foolish.
Is that the one that Nicky Campbell presents?
Yeah, I think so.
It's awful.
It's just awful.
Unless you know how to handle them, which he didn't.
And I can tell you what his error was.
I did have a lot of sympathy for him.
Oh, tell me, tell me, because I didn't watch it.
Tell me what you did.
Well, what happened was, of course, it was just a dumpster fire in a way.
So he's talking overall about, you know, the costs and benefits of lockdown.
And I think he was talking about, I didn't watch it, but this is what I've read.
You know how nice is it when they're determining whether to give someone a treatment, they... The qualities, yeah.
They ask how many quality life years are left, okay?
So Lord Simpson ended up saying to somebody who had cancer, she was saying in her 40s, that her life was of less value than someone who I presume didn't have cancer.
And his defense was, you know, when determining government policy, when knife, for instance, they're considering treatment, these things are weighed up.
How many quality life years will you have left?
But of course, everybody else, including that horrific person, Nell O'Brien, was like, God, you, you see, you think people have no value.
You, you, you, your life is, how dare you say someone has less value?
And, you know, I've obviously defended him, saying, look, first of all, Lord Sumption doesn't need to be in this fight, right?
I'm sure he's got a lovely house somewhere in the country, he's ex-Supreme Court judge, and he could read his way through this lockdown, no problems at all.
He's an intellectual guy, this will have very little impact on him.
So I think there's an element of courage for him to put himself in this.
Number one.
And number two is he again is debating government policy.
He's debating the huge amount of power that the government now has over you.
And what are the limits?
And what should you consider when that power is being exercised?
He's not making a moral and ethical judgment between person A and person B, you know, just randomly in a coffee shop.
So out of interest?
Apart from saying no to the invitation, which is given, how could he have avoided that trap?
Because they do set traps for you.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I just think if it was me and if I was... Look, I'm afraid Lord Sumption Hughes supposedly has the brain the size of a something or other.
Yeah, you can be just a bit too smart for your own good.
And I'm afraid most of these debates, especially those audience debates, come down to emotion.
And the only thing, you shouldn't be getting into the technicalities of this policy and that policy, which you will have done as a judge, right?
Because you're going to be so meticulous.
Reading every judgment, reading every submission, going back on previous judgments.
What is precedent?
What isn't precedent?
Like it can turn on a tiny point of law, right?
A particular decision.
So you have to be meticulous.
But when you're with Nicky Campbell, you want to put all that in the bin and all you need to be talking about is the complete hardship lockdowns are creating.
How it's going to ruin education for kids, how it's causing teenagers to be suicidal, how people are dying of cancer because they can't get treatment, how people are going to be bankrupt, what the unemployment will raise, the unbelievable misery that lockdowns are creating, and you, whatever pro-lockdown hawk, Don't care.
You have to make them the bad guys.
Instead he spends the next 48 hours defending himself.
On my view now, most things should be argued on a motion.
Because you don't have time to get into the intricacies of this policy and that policy.
And some people just don't get it.
That's also a problem.
Don't get it!
I like that.
Argue from emotion.
I wish we could carry on this conversation, but unfortunately, I've now got to hand over the office to my wife.
She's got a Zoom call.
This is the kind of age we live in.
Laura, before I go, is there anything you can do about your microphone or your camera or your lighting or anything?
Some people get upset about it.
I don't know.
I like the fog over my face.
I don't, yeah.
People, you know, you're being unfair on yourself now.
People want to see, people actually love you and want to see more of you.
Probably in the comments they will, they may give tips and, you know, listen to people.
Send me a link.
Send me a link to a nice microphone.
Or indeed send me a microphone.
Yeah, help Laura out.
Don't say, oh, you need to get some new equipment.
That's not helpful.
What's helpful is saying, you need to get this, you can do that, and this will make things better.
That's what we need to know.
Laura and I, we're liberal arts graduates.
Next time.
I can see it in the lights, but I like it dark.
That was great.
Till next week.
That's been really fun.
Take it easy, James.
Bye.
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