Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Oct. 14, 2021 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:30:33

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #241

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters for Thursday the 14th of October.
	I'm joined by Harry, and today we're going to be talking about how Colin Kaepernick is the summary and best thing about American history, how society is collapsing, and mostly it's women's fault.
	And what was the third thing we were going to be about?
	I've forgotten it.
	Oh, the third segment is about whales descending into tyranny.
	Oh yeah, that's right.
	A technical glitch has put whales in a form of tyranny.
	Wonderful.
	But anyway, before we get started, we are looking for a new social media manager.
	Ramvir has gone back to university, and this means that we have an opening.
	So, if you feel that you would do very well promoting LotusEats.com on all...
	Social media platforms that you can think of.
	Do go to our careers page on the website and send us an email.
	There's the job description.
	Have a read through it if you think that you could do that and you could do that well.
	Do send us an email.
	You will have to work from the office in Swindon.
	No exceptions.
	So don't ask.
	But we look forward to hearing from you.
	And on the website we've got loads of new great stuff.
	We've always got loads of new great stuff.
	So this was from the live event, where it's my talk about the very worst of Critical Race Theory.
	I'm literally on the very last essay of the Critical Race Theory Bible at the moment, so you'll start getting a lot of content from that soon.
	And I think it'll be worth it, because they've got a lot to say about a lot of different things that you might not have thought about.
	And not all of it's wrong, either.
	That's the interesting thing.
	But this one definitely was wrong, because what they're trying to do in this is justify why it's okay for black women to have crack babies.
	Interesting perspective.
	Well, it's why I called it the worst of Critical Waste.
	Yes.
	Because if you've ever...
	Just go on YouTube and look up what a crack baby looks like, and it's awful.
	Anyway, so there's that, and next we've got a bunch of other stuff.
	This is just Thomas's excellent debut article about the cynical politicization of Sarah Everard's murder.
	There is, of course, for silver and gold tier subscribers, the audio to go along with that, and it's very excellent.
	That's how I'm enjoying the articles these days, because who has time to read things?
	I don't, actually.
	And you've been going through the CRT Bible, so...
	Yeah, exactly, yeah, I've been a bit busy.
	And obviously we've got Contemplations and Epochs, which, again, are things I really like.
	This particular one, the Battle of Poitiers.
	This weekend we've got the Battle of Agincourt coming up, where it's Bo and myself talking about why did England keep winning?
	And, you know, there are reasons.
	We'll talk about them in the podcast.
	You can watch it.
	And also, after the podcast, or probably now, in fact, I've got an article published that I wrote, because why not?
	Because I've been forced to go down to London and it's hideous.
	I really don't like London.
	So go to the website, have a read of the article and tell me what you think.
	Do you share the same opinion of London?
	Anyway, let's get right into the news, as Callum has ripped off Keemstar.
	Yes.
	So, what are we talking about?
	Right, so Netflix is premiering at the end of this month a new series, a scripted series on Colin Kaepernick called Colin in Black and White, which is part of the promotion of which they have stated that his story is the story of America.
	Okay.
	I know.
	Strong argument, strong premise.
	So as I understand it, Colin Kaepernick is a football player?
	I believe he was an NFL quarterback, so I don't exactly know much about the NFL personally.
	But yeah, I'll get into who he is in a bit for those who are unaware.
	So it's going to be going through dramatized versions of his life using actors and scripted out.
	The trailer features lines such as, well, with him as narrator throughout the whole thing, features lines such as, When we were young, we were told that the world is ours.
	Then one day, we realise that the game we're playing is someone else's.
	In this game, we can't speak our truth.
	So, pretty stock woke rhetoric, let's be perfectly honest there.
	But also, what a ridiculous perspective to begin with.
	It's like, as if, oh, as a child, I was expecting to build the entire world myself, and I wasn't inheriting a series of institutions and...
	I mean, that whole statement seems pretty standard for most kids, really.
	It's unbelievably idealistic, though.
	Yes.
	But anyway.
	But yeah, so as you can see from the image there, it does look a bit strange.
	Colin Kaepernick seems to be dressed in some Matrix-esque...
	Black trench coat.
	They're trying to make him look like Morpheus.
	He's about to wake up the public to the truth of America.
	That's fantastic, actually, yeah.
	And it states on here that it's co-created by Kaepernick himself and a filmmaker called Ava Duvani, some of whom out there may be familiar with her work, such as the classic A Wrinkle in Time, which was not well loved by people.
	It was trashed.
	If you were aware of the woman who played Captain Marvel a few years ago, Brie Larson.
	That's it, yes, the most likeable actress in the world.
	It was the film that she went up on stage and was like, I don't care about what white men have to say.
	But then she did say, I don't hate white dudes.
	So, I mean, you know, she clearly doesn't hate white men.
	With a qualifier like that, you've got to trust what she says.
	I'm sure many of her best friends are white men, exactly.
	Her dad, in fact, may be a white man.
	But she's also directed a number of what you could describe basically as black propaganda documentaries, such as 13th, which I scrubbed through a bit of earlier because it's all available on YouTube as well as Netflix.
	Which is basically a sensationalist, emotionally charged, critical race theory documentary about crime in America and all that sort of stuff.
	It's one of those things that will just throw argument on argument on argument without any explanation to kind of create a mirage of oppression.
	You could say one of those things where it's like, this thing and this thing and this thing and no...
	No explanation is the underlying causes of any of it.
	But amusingly, this, despite not having released yet, has already garnered a 3 out of 10 on IMDb.
	People know what's coming.
	They know what's coming.
	Exactly.
	So, yeah, if we go over to the next link, people who may be unaware of who Colin Kaepernick is, this kind of spells a bit of it out, from one man kneeling to a movement dividing a country.
	So he was the first sports player in America to take a knee back in preseason NFL 2016 during the National Anthem.
	And it was in protest of a couple of police shootings of black men that had happened in the weeks previous.
	I'm not particularly familiar with those incidences.
	Let's just assume they were racial executions.
	Yes.
	Like Black Lives Matter do.
	Yeah, exactly.
	So at first he sat for the National Anthem.
	But then a few weeks later, I believe that he'd been in touch with some members of the military who had shown, said that they were not particularly impressed with him sitting.
	So instead he chose to kneel.
	So I don't see too much...
	I always thought the kneeling was a strange gesture anyway, because kneeling's a sign of submission.
	Yeah, I always think maybe it's an English perspective there.
	I see it as a sign of fealty more than anything.
	I don't see it too differently from people standing for the national anthem.
	But yeah, so that is, as we all know, kind of morphed into the adoption of kneeling for lots of national anthems for anybody who specifically tends to want to support BLM. We saw this earlier on in the year with the kneeling of England at the Euro Cup.
	And this article in particular kind of talks about Colin Kaepernick's background and why he chose to become more politically involved, and it talks about him reading post-colonial theory, people like Frantz Fanon.
	Exactly.
	Well, there we go.
	There you go.
	Which, as far as I'm aware and as far as I'm read upon, is basically intended to demonise Western cultures by positioning anyone within an ethnic minority as being a hostage to the native culture.
	They call them subordinated people.
	Yeah, that sounds...
	That's the term the critical race theorists use.
	Yeah, it sounds about right.
	So if he's familiar with and a fan of that kind of content, then it's no wonder that he hates his country so much.
	Yeah.
	Well, the entire thing is designed to demonise Western civilisations.
	Yes, and promote other ways of knowing.
	Yeah, oh yeah.
	Absolutely.
	But yeah, hopefully this show will go the way of other establishment narratives, as you could put them if you pop over to the next one, such as the Fauci documentary, which, as you can see, the mainstream critics are really desperate for us to love, and the people ain't having none of it.
	I mean, that is probably the lowest audience score on anything I've ever seen.
	That is quite a spectacular contrast as well, isn't it?
	Oh, yeah.
	If you look at that, the critics really want us to bow down to Lord Fauci, whereas the people just do not care.
	I saw a still from this, someone had tweeted out, where it's Fauci sat in a very nicely lit office doing his work under a massive picture of his own face.
	LAUGHTER It's a huge picture as well.
	That's some Dear Leader vibes right there.
	Exactly.
	It's mad, isn't it?
	The picture's four or five times bigger than his own head was.
	So it's this massive, imposing Fauci picture on his own wall.
	He's judging himself.
	What kind of narcissism are we talking about here?
	I know, I know.
	That's off topic.
	So if we skip over to the next, speaking of BLM, let's see what they've been up to recently.
	So if you scroll down here...
	We can see that Black Lives Matter have held a protest outside of a New York restaurant after an alleged racist incident.
	So this article states that the anti-racism protest is demonstrated outside of a Carmine's restaurant on Manhattan's Upper West Side on September 20th following an altercation over vaccine cards that involved a restaurant hostess and several black patrons visiting from Texas.
	Have you ever been to Manhattan?
	I've never been to America.
	I've been to Manhattan.
	What's it like?
	Very wealthy Manhattan is the sort of wealthy centre of New York.
	Well, I mean, Hollywood can't afford to film in Manhattan for shows set in Manhattan.
	So that doesn't particularly surprise me.
	That tells you everything you need to know.
	They go to Chicago instead.
	It's where Wall Street is.
	It is very nice and it's very affluent.
	And so all of the restaurants around this area, I'd be amazed if they were sort of, you know, low-grade restaurants that would have people, you know, they would hire very cheap servers who would be, you know, insulting to the public and things like this.
	All very professional.
	Yes.
	But it says here that NY1 reported that details regarding the incident that occurred several days previous to the protests are disputed.
	According to reports, security camera footage shows three black women entering the restaurant after showing their vaccination cards.
	Shortly afterward, three men arrive to join the party, but only one shows a COVID-19 vaccine card.
	And then the women go out, go into the restaurant with the man, then turn and go back outside where the fight ensues.
	I forgot the New Yorkers under a tyranny.
	Yes, sadly, Bill de Blasio, I believe, is the one who implemented that.
	Racial segregation, if you look at the vaccinated numbers between the different racial groups, as it were.
	Oh, absolutely.
	But a lawyer for one of the women said that the 24-year-old restaurant hostess used a racial slur, antagonised the guests by implying their vaccination cards were fake and then assaulting them.
	Now, I've watched the footage that this all comes from, and it does not look like she is trying to antagonise them.
	I've seen it.
	They turn around, and immediately they are seemingly very belligerent towards her.
	And you've got to wonder, as a single person outside a restaurant, you're just doing your job.
	And like you say, it's quite affluent, quite a nice area.
	They wouldn't be just hiring people who are just going to throw out random insults to people.
	Why, when you're being accosted...
	Yeah, why, when you're being accosted by a number of very angry people, would you then be the one to instigate it by throwing out...
	Especially if you're outnumbered.
	Especially, I mean, six to one, if you include the men as well.
	Yeah, and sorry, are they saying a woman?
	Yeah, a woman assaulted them.
	I find that hard to believe.
	I find it very hard to believe as well.
	So, yeah, obviously the lawyer seems to have been the one to say, like, oh, well, they instigated it with the racial slur, Black Lives Matter got hold of this.
	And what did they do?
	Did they protest the vaccine mandates?
	Did they protest the vaccine cards or anything like that?
	No, of course not.
	No, of course not.
	They protested the restaurant.
	So, I mean, on the video, I take it no racial slurs are heard?
	Well, I mean, it is a CCTV footage, so you can't really hear anything, but just from experiential knowledge of how people behave, if I was being accosted by a number of very angry people and outnumbered...
	Is the hostess white?
	I think she was Asian.
	Right, so she's Asian.
	So an Asian woman, they're saying, started spewing racial slurs and assaulting six people.
	Yes.
	Right.
	Moving on.
	You know.
	But yes, I mean, if nothing else, I don't think much else came from the protests other than people just coming outside and just doing the typical thing that they do where they...
	Down with white supremacy, which is Asians insulting black people.
	Exactly.
	But I do think that this does kind of show what the ultimate conclusions of these sorts of decisions are for the vaccine mandates and vaccine cards and other such things, which is the people on the front line are going to be the ones most affected.
	It's going to be the people having to turn these people away at the door who are going to get.
	I mean, for anybody who has worked customer service or any form of frontline job, you know that if you're the one having to tell people what they can and can't do, whether it's your decision or not at the end of the day. - It's you who takes the heat.
	Exactly.
	Exactly.
	And moving on to the next link, on similar lines, we now have in the UK a BLM-adjacent organisation, because that's what we needed, called Black Lives in Music, which has recently released a report that concludes that black musicians in the UK are being oppressed.
	Right.
	And this is just what the UK music industry needs, which is...
	So Stormzy's being oppressed.
	Exactly.
	All of those people that you hear on the radio, oppressed.
	Right.
	Everyone that you see on the national television, oppressed.
	And what's weird is there are so many other people who are trying to be oppressed in the same way.
	Exactly.
	Like becoming a famous musician of any race.
	Myself included.
	Yeah, it's very desirable and everyone would like that, it seems.
	And, yeah, so in this article here we can see that the report finds that 6 in 10 black music creators have experienced racism, while 86% say they have faced barriers to their career because of their race.
	They also earn £299 less per month on average than their white colleagues.
	Now...
	How much are they earning per month?
	That's the thing, because £299 could be a lot.
	So if it's £1,000 a month they're earning, then yeah, that's a lot.
	But it could be a very small portion of their earnings overall.
	I only earned £30,000 this month, and this guy earned £29,701.
	Exactly.
	What a terrible piece of oppression.
	But it is also very hard to establish when people are reporting this sort of stuff what the parameters are for what constitutes racism.
	Six in ten, you just go, well, I'm not famous yet.
	Racism.
	It could well be.
	It could well be.
	And I've looked a bit further into this.
	The survey that was used for this report is now no longer open to the public, but there were only 1,718 respondents.
	And it was an internet survey as well.
	It was an internet survey that appears to have been open to anybody who visited the website.
	So self-selecting internet survey that could have been filled out by anyone saying anything.
	Yes.
	It does seem slightly less than scientific, methodology-wise.
	So, their testaments echo recent revelations from stars like Alexandra Burke, who said that she was advised to bleach her skin to look whiter.
	The singer, who won the X Factor in 2008, said she was subsequently told that she would have to work ten times harder than a white artist because of the colour of her skin.
	Oh yeah, as if there aren't just no famous black people around.
	They've got no talent.
	They're never on TV singing and dancing and acting.
	The 60s, 70s and 80s, and even the 50s if you go back there.
	Little Richard never happened.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Jimi Hendrix.
	Who was he?
	Yeah, well, what are we talking about?
	But, I mean, okay, let's say someone did say that.
	Who said that?
	If I were to guess, from my knowledge, it was probably marketing people.
	Right.
	And who are you marketing your music towards in England?
	Well, sure, but, like, I mean, like, name the person who said that.
	I want some accountability here.
	Yeah.
	Like, let's out the racist.
	That's what I say.
	Yeah, go for it.
	You know, and I'm not in the UK music industry.
	I don't care.
	You know, let's have them go on their racist witch hunt and let's hear who actually said this.
	Yeah, exactly.
	I mean, at the end of the day, for the consuming public, if this sort of thing is blocking potentially great music from being released out there...
	Absolutely.
	Why not?
	I mean, I don't think it will be, but, you know, I'm cynical.
	Yes.
	But it says, once you're part of a record label or a system, there are lots of complexities within that framework.
	What your budgets are versus someone else.
	You're a rapper, so this is your budget and you're black, but this is a folk artist who's from, like, Shrubbley, Oh yeah, hell yeah.
	I don't see how this is particularly race-specific.
	But I love the idea that there are folk artists from Shropshire who are getting millions of dollars from the big labels.
	Maybe in the 70s, perhaps.
	Not so much anymore.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And once again, these issues are just for anybody going into what is an incredibly competitive business.
	If they only have a certain level of budget for a particular artist, they are going to go for the person who is more viable.
	Yeah.
	I kind of hate big labels anyway.
	In the same way, I hate all of the corporate centralization.
	And I do think they probably do get an unenviable amount of power over the individual artists themselves.
	And with the way that the internet is, well, why can't you just be independent, frankly?
	You're doing it to reach the very upper echelons of fame and fortune.
	And absolutely, there are many stories from decades past of artists who were part of what you could call pioneering genres, bands that I'm a fan of, like Black Sabbath, doing heavy metal in the 70s, who were told by labels, you'll never make it, we need you to write pop music for us, you can't do what you want.
	Well, this happened to the Beatles, didn't it?
	Almost definitely.
	I mean, they started off doing covers, didn't they?
	Yeah, but the first, I recall reading a story, like, just the first labels they applied to all told them, no, we're not interested, you'll never go anywhere.
	It's like, that was a mistake.
	Yeah, and you do have services like Bandcamp, and you can even go on YouTube and SoundCloud and just get your music out that way.
	Yeah.
	But yes, the report found 31% of black creators believe that their mental well-being had worsened since starting their music career, rising to 42% of black women.
	I'm sorry, you're in a business that has a big drug culture around it, and if you do make it, you're going to be on a tour bus away from your family and friends for months at a time.
	So, what are you expecting there?
	And not just that as well, there's something about fame and fortune that definitely distorts people's view of reality.
	Absolutely.
	Just look at Miley Cyrus.
	Yeah, exactly.
	People like that.
	Obviously, these are not healthy industries.
	And I mean, who thinks that the, you know, Hollywood, the music industry, who thinks that these are industries of like, you know, wholesome industries with good mental health and, you know, good sport?
	No, these are predatory industries that literally go around looking for something that will make money and shining them in front of the world, making them, you know, exposed to everything all the time, everywhere.
	And then just dumping them when they're no longer of any use.
	Yeah, I mean, people searching specifically for fortune and fame are particularly vulnerable to this sort of stuff.
	I mean, look at Hollywood.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Exactly, but yeah, before we go on too long, the article continues.
	Like that, people just basically complaining that they're not rich or famous yet, or not rich or famous enough.
	Yeah.
	So, yeah, so Colin Kaepernick is The Story of America.
	Mm-hmm.
	And people complain.
	People complain that they're not famous enough and are trying to introduce race socialism into the music industry, which is...
	But I mean, at the end of the day, like, I can believe that there are problems in these places.
	Oh, yes.
	And if you only think about race politically, then that's all you'll see in it anyway.
	Whereas there are doubtless going to be many other problems in there.
	Absolutely.
	Anyway.
	Anyway.
	Thank God I don't do that.
	So, let's talk about how Western civilization is collapsing on a social level, and this slow-motion collapse has been happening for decades.
	So, let's begin with marriage rates, because marriage rates are a really good indication of how a society is doing on the sort of personal social level.
	And marriage rates are one quarter of what they were in 1971.
	If you can scroll down about halfway on this, John, there's a graph that demonstrates this.
	Because it turns out that in 1971, and the next one down, next one down, yeah, this one there.
	So in 1971, you can see that marriages peaked at 84% Per 100,000 for men and 63 per 1,000 for women, which is relatively high, compared to now where it's 21 and 20 per 1,000 for men and women.
	So you can see this is just a total collapse in stable, wholesome, normal families.
	That is a pretty immense drop.
	Yeah.
	Three quarters.
	Just people aren't getting married.
	Okay?
	And that was in 2016.
	And this is not good for the individuals involved.
	This increases your cost of living.
	Because the cost of living alone is, of course, much higher than living with someone else.
	Another person who can do some work and bring in an income.
	People living alone, as the Office of National Statistics tells us, are more likely to be renting, feel less financially secure than couples with children, or without children, sorry, and with fewer reporting they have money left over at the week of the month.
	And the costs are not just financial.
	When it comes to wellbeing, those living on their own report lower levels of happiness and higher levels of anxiety than those living together with a partner and no children.
	And that's just the ones without children.
	The number of people living on their own has gone up by 16% to 7.7 million between 1997 and 2017.
	While the UK population increased by 13%.
	So this is something that is like the social fabric coming apart here.
	And it appears that just on essentially all measures, it's bad for you to live alone or in some sort of flat share.
	So, in summary, having a family is good for you, both emotionally and financially.
	Have you seen that one?
	Yeah, exactly.
	Radical.
	Radical news, guys.
	Yeah, but this was something that the media used to report in.
	If you go back to, like, 20...
	I think this is 2013, this next Guardian article.
	This is an old article from The Guardian, where they used to be like, well, hang on a second.
	Being single isn't good for the economy, as if that's the real major concern.
	I don't really care about the economy.
	But, you know, it's generally not good.
	Gallup's Frank Newport and Joy Wilk found that the economy would benefit more with more marriages taking place.
	Their recent survey of more than 130,000 people found that those who are married spend more.
	And that's right, they do spend more.
	But as we previously saw, they also have more disposable income and more of it available at the end of the month.
	Since consumption is a part of economic growth, that means the slow economy can be blamed in part on the prevalence of people staying single.
	So, it's selfish to be single, is what The Guardian was saying way back when.
	Yeah, this was 2013.
	But of course, they don't publish articles like this now.
	We'll go into what The Guardian publishes now in a minute.
	However, it isn't that being married makes you spend more.
	Rather, it's that those who can afford to get married also can afford to spend.
	Yeah, but in our parents' generation, they were married.
	They had no money either.
	So how does that happen?
	They still got on.
	Exactly.
	They get on because you just live within your means.
	But anyway, so yeah, this is not good, as The Guardian points out.
	And they say, the decline in the marriage rate is nothing new.
	It's a trend been going strong since 1970.
	The decline has sharply accelerated.
	And this is the same in the US as well.
	In the US, the marriage rate went from 76.5 marriages per 1,000 women to 31 marriages per 1,000 women.
	That's a 60% decline.
	So it's a lower decline than we've had here, but put simply, and we can summarize this, millennials are effing everything up by being selfish loners who are not socialized and aren't following the normal trajectory of a human being, which is to get married, settle down, and have kids.
	Anyway, so let's talk about single parenthood.
	How good is that?
	Oh, it's not.
	It's terrible.
	And if you're a millennial who's concerned about income inequality, well, you're helping to contribute to this because you being a poor singleton is making things unequal.
	As this Wilcox and Lerman analysis shows, the shift away from marriage and the traditional family structures has important consequences for family incomes and has been correlated with rising family income inequality and declines in men's labor force participation rates.
	Using data from the Current Population Survey, they also found that between 1980 and 2012, median family income rose 30% for married parent families, But for unmarried parents, family incomes only rose 14%.
	So if you are a single parent, you are also doing worse than if you were married.
	Again, lots of reasons for this.
	One of those is because you only have to pay for one domicile.
	Like, that's just the most obvious thing.
	Your largest monthly outgoing is going to be your rent or your mortgage.
	And if two people can share that, then that saves you both money.
	It's just common sense.
	I just see it as part of my generation a lot as well.
	There are so many people who I know who are single, still around my age, living with their parents.
	How old are you?
	I'm 25.
	Living with their parents?
	Yeah, living with their parents, just because they can't afford to do anything else.
	Even if they do have a job, because things are just going up so much.
	Anyway, so in addition to this, one of the reasons that it's difficult to move out at 25, because things are expensive, is migration.
	If we can scroll down a bit so we can see the graph in this, John, you can see there that's net migration from 1975, where it was negative, so we had emigration, and to now, where it's over 300,000 people per year, even in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
	The government was allowing net 313,000 people to settle here up to March 2020.
	I think that is the most shocking thing for me, seeing that, the fact that coronavirus, despite all of the sacrifices that we all had to make, apparently they didn't.
	No, apparently people who want to live here didn't have to make these.
	And this is net.
	So there is an outflow of around 300,000, but an inflow of around 600,000 plus.
	So this, naturally, this in fact was the only year that was higher than this was in 2015, where it was 329,000 people who came.
	But you can imagine what that's doing to the housing market.
	Not doing it any favours.
	Imagine you've got one of the most densely populated countries in the world, which is England.
	Scotland and Wales are actually fairly sparsely populated.
	For some reason, everyone wants to move to England and not the coronavirus tyranny countries.
	But that's been happening since before the coronavirus, so it's not the reason.
	But yes, this is why the housing market is just effed.
	It's interesting on that graph to see that it seemed to have been sort of maintaining a relatively stable sort of like peaks and troughs until a particular year where it suddenly spiked.
	1997!
	Could there be any determining factor?
	But what's the excuse from the Conservative government since they've been in since what 2008 or so and we're still in more than Tony Blair ever did to us?
	So why are they allowing this is the question.
	I would suggest that possibly it's because 20% of their income comes from housing development companies, but who knows?
	But anyway, so the point is our society is absolutely screwed.
	Our birth rates are through the floor.
	Our housing market is absolutely screwed because of an excess demand that's requiring them to build over our green spaces.
	People don't know how to get together and form families and therefore are just poorer and less happy because of it.
	Also, women have, because of a consequence of feminism, become, well, a larger and larger percentage of the economy.
	And that's not good for women.
	They can't find men that they actually want to marry.
	Because if you're the breadwinner, you're still trying to marry up.
	Women have not realized yet that they're going to have to marry down.
	This was a study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family by Cornell sociologists who explored America's declining marriage rate.
	They discovered a lack of financially eligible black bachelors.
	That's right.
	Men are responsible.
	That's the framing.
	Men are responsible.
	There are shortages of economically attractive men, says the lead study's author.
	This is also fundamentally an economic transaction, and women want partners whom they can call their equals.
	Well, maybe you should earn less than ladies, because if you're monopolizing all of the jobs, then that's a problem, isn't it?
	You're not going to be able to find your equals.
	And so the pool of eligible bachelors just gets narrower and narrower and narrower.
	And men essentially get locked out of the economy and locked out of relationships, locked out of marriage, forced to remain poor singletons who are unhappy and depressed forever.
	Something's got to change.
	This can't go on forever.
	And if the situation is that being in a stable relationship will be able to take some of that load off, and if you're stuck single because you're poor, those are going to be very detrimental to you.
	And this contradiction can only be resolved by women either relinquishing this economic power that they have, or accepting that the man doesn't have to be the breadwinner.
	And the thing is, on a sort of emotional level, do you think the second one's going to happen?
	Do you think women are going to be like, yeah, I'll be okay with the poor man?
	I don't see it happening either way.
	I don't see women doing that, and I also don't see men being particularly comfortable with being subordinate on the grand scale.
	On the economic scale.
	It is unmanly to be the inferior earner in your relationship.
	This is just a sort of human truth, whether you think it's fair or not.
	And this, of course, is because the feminist lobby has made it so that women are now the majority of university students, by a massive gap.
	In 2017, for example, as the Guardian reports, it was shown that more than 30,000 more women than men were beginning degrees in this year, the UCAS data showed.
	So 100,000 British men were going, but 130,000 British women were going.
	Why?
	What are you doing?
	Why are you swamping men out?
	And that's a third more.
	Like, if it was a third more men than women going to university, you'd hear nothing but equality.
	We need equal representation.
	We need equal representation.
	Okay, but now women absolutely dominate the universities.
	Where's the feminist going, wow, we need equal representation.
	Therefore, we have to advocate for men going to universities.
	It was never about equality.
	Never was.
	Never was.
	And so this, at the time, was the largest gap recorded ever in favour of women and against men, and that's not good.
	And so now we come to the article that started us down this little journey, which again was a Guardian article.
	Well, we can't afford to have kids.
	Millennials can't afford to have kids.
	We'd love a family.
	Get married.
	That's what you need to do.
	Get married and leave London.
	Leave the major cities and get married.
	That's what you have to do.
	So this article is framed around a childless lesbian teacher.
	The average millennial, I assume.
	But judging by the way that the Guardian has framed this, please stop telling me I need to get on with it if I want to have children, says 35-year-old Jen.
	Most of my generation simply can't afford to.
	Being childless is out of my hands.
	It's a devastating and frustrating reality.
	It's not actually out of your hands.
	It's just you're not prepared to do the things required to get to that position.
	So they complain that the UK's birth rate is a record low, with fertility rates for women under 30 at their lowest level since records began.
	It's never been lower than this.
	At the moment, I think it's something like 1.7, which is surprisingly high.
	1.7 children per person or per family, which is below the replacement rate, which is 2.1.
	There are other countries in Europe who have it much worse than us.
	Germany is something like 1.4.
	Italy is 1.2, which...
	So if it's below the replacement rate, if it weren't for the net migration, the UK might be dropping in population?
	All UK population increase is because of migration.
	Because, I mean, if there was 1.65 in the UK, as John just searched up.
	So yeah, in the UK, if there was zero immigration or emigration, the population would just be on a slow decline.
	We'd just be slowly dying out.
	Yeah, but I mean...
	Well, obviously not dying out.
	But 1.65, I mean, you know, so that's not so bad, right?
	But there would be, you know, every generation, almost a quarter fewer people, you know, about 20% fewer people.
	And that's not the end of the world.
	That'd be good for the housing market because, well, they'd be good for first-hand buyers because then the houses would become cheaper.
	Exactly, right?
	But 300,000 people in a year, After year, after year, after year, it means the numbers just keep stacking up, and so actually we've got a massive requirement.
	But the thing is, in Italy, where it's 1.2, that's practically half.
	And so in a couple of generations' time, Italy's population, without massive migration, is just going to have a demographic collapse.
	Now this is bad because people are living longer, and of course we've got a bunch of social programs that need to be paid for.
	And for some reason, the people who are not having children expect there to be people who will take care of them in their elderly state.
	It's all good to expect those things.
	It's another thing to...
	But where are the people?
	Yeah, put it into practice.
	Exactly.
	If there's no one to actually do this for you, why did you think there would be a healthcare system for you to enjoy, a retirement system for you to enjoy?
	If you didn't think, oh, actually, I have to do my part to provide human beings for the generations that I expect to come after me, if you don't do that, there are no generations coming after you.
	And if you are someone who had children, why would you want your children taking care of someone else rather than you?
	I mean, what kind of child is going to be like, well, I'd love to take after my old mum and dad in their old age, but random person from somewhere else is going to pay me to do them, so I'll go do them.
	No one's going to do that.
	When it comes to the absolute dearth of young people in a country, the young people that exist are going to take care of their own parents.
	Because they love their parents, and they don't care about you at all.
	Anyway, so this is a crisis.
	One in five women are childless by midlife, including involuntary and by choice, says Jodie Day, the founder of Gateway Women, a support network for involuntarily childless women.
	And 80% of these are due to circumstance, not infertility.
	So it's not that women can't have children, it's that they're not having children.
	So much of this 80% is due to a tapestry of systemic issues, like student debts and career focus.
	Well?
	It's interesting how they've flipped it.
	The Guardian.
	Student debts and career focus are preventing women from having children.
	What do women need to do?
	What can be done?
	We can't do this for them.
	They have to make a choice.
	Are we going to amass massive amounts of debt by spending your entire fertile years at university and working on a career, or are you going to focus on having a family?
	This is what Jodie Day, the founder of Gateway Women, is presenting to you.
	These are your options.
	I'm a man.
	I can't make this choice for women.
	Someone's got to do it for them, and it's going to have to be themselves.
	And you can lead a horse to water?
	Exactly.
	There you go.
	That's exactly right.
	But you can't make it drink.
	And she says, so family planning is left too late.
	And of course she adds, while rising house prices and a lack of affordable childcare make genuine financial security seem harder and harder to attain.
	Okay, but why do you need childcare?
	Well, you need childcare because you're not giving up your career.
	You're not giving up a career because you've invested too much of your life into getting the education and starting the career to get to the point you're at.
	You're going to have to sacrifice something.
	And you're also sacrificing a certain amount of your own child's development to the hands of somebody else.
	Absolutely.
	That's why I forbade my wife from getting a job.
	No, I'm not even joking.
	I don't want my kids being stuck in a daycare centre where it's like Lord of the Flies.
	I think that for a lot of people there will be more of a compromise that they could make in terms of if there is grandparents or anybody like that available.
	What my mum did is just work part-time.
	My dad worked full-time, my mum worked part-time, and this I think is the normal scheme of things.
	That's a pretty typical compromise that I've seen.
	And with the internet as well, you can do a lot of working from home.
	I mean, my wife is constantly getting really expensive-looking cakes made from other housewives and stuff like this.
	So it's like you can work from home and do things like this.
	But the point is, you've got to make sacrifices.
	If you want to have it all, you have to accept that you can't have everything.
	You can't have your university-educated career and earn 80 grand a year or whatever and have a family at the same time.
	Ladies, men can do that because they don't have to bear the children.
	That's why.
	You can say, well, that's not fair, and I'll say yes.
	That is the case.
	Life isn't fair.
	But the point is, who told you that you could have it all?
	Who lied to you about this?
	Why don't you sit there and think, when was I told I should go to university and earn 80 grand a year?
	When was I told that?
	Because what I want is to have kids and have a nice family and have a house.
	And I can't have any of that because of the situation that I've arrived in.
	The systemic issues like student debts and career focuses.
	Who put that weight on your shoulders?
	And of course, do you owe anything to the men in your life?
	Because maybe they would like career focus and student debts, you know?
	And they...
	just a question.
	Anyway, So these are all contributing factors to this, and in the story of the lesbian teacher, they live in London, and they couldn't really afford a flat, and so basically they've had to change their lifestyle.
	But in the case of the lesbian teacher, they say, well, sperm donation costs around £2,000 per go, so unless you have a friend you can co-parent with, it's very expensive to be a gay woman and have a baby.
	It's also very difficult to adopt, and meanwhile, I'm 35 and my biological clock is ticking, and your biological clock is unforgiving.
	So unless you've got a friend that you could co-parent with, are they thinking that that might be something that they try in the future?
	I don't know.
	I mean, what options do they have?
	Save up that £2000, I suppose.
	But anyway, then they start complaining, well, you know, we're looking to move to an area where the housing market is less inflated.
	Why is the housing market inflated?
	Well, we know.
	Mass immigration.
	Anyway, so while childlessness is on the rise, the stigma around it persists.
	Oh, and the stigma is going to get worse as we realize that our civilization is collapsing because women aren't doing the needful part of having children.
	Again, hate to point this out, we the men can't do this for you.
	It has to be you.
	And Chappelle pointed this out himself, didn't he?
	I haven't seen a special yet.
	I know about that particular one where everybody on this earth came between the legs of a woman.
	That's right.
	And you can say, well, hang on.
	My fairness, this is not fair.
	And it's like, yep, nature has made it this way and we can't change that.
	Anyway, so...
	They complain about the stigma, but I think the stigma is just going to get worse as the situation becomes more dire.
	And then we get to hear about the perspective from the people of colour.
	There can be a cultural element to the stigma.
	Rahul, not his real name, is a 40-year-old first-generation immigrant to the UK and supports his remaining family in India.
	He and his wife live in Manchester and have a seven-year-old daughter, but two years ago they decided they could not afford to have another child.
	Why?
	Well, not because they didn't have the money.
	My wife was very disappointed.
	She wanted two children at least.
	It created quite a lot of tension between us, but I was one laboring the practicalities.
	Once we sat down to go through the amount we'd have to take to pay for childcare, if she continued to work, on top of sending money back and paying for extra tutoring and after-school clubs, we realized we wouldn't be able to give our child the same quality of life as our daughter already has.
	right?
	So it's about having a bunch of commitments that they want to maintain across the board.
	Now, it could be that they could scale these commitments back and equalize them between the children, perhaps, or stop sending money back to India.
	I mean, just saying.
	But this, of course, is what they consider more than can afford.
	So it's about maintaining it's a choice.
	It's not that they can't do this, it's they're choosing not to do this.
	But this is a very interesting statement here.
	Yvonne Jo Yvonne John, a workshop facilitator at Gateway Women, says, culturally, you're part of a collective as a person of colour, and everything you do is adding to that collective.
	Is that only for people of colour and white people not part of any collective, like families or local communities?
	But the people of colour are part of those.
	That's weird.
	Well, it's a separate community, they would argue.
	I guess they would.
	But it's just interesting, as a person of colour, you're part of a collective.
	Are they?
	I mean, can they not be independent?
	I mean, if they're integrated.
	Well, I suppose.
	But anyway, I just think it's a very weird way of looking at things.
	But what's interesting is the Child Poverty Action Group said, well, in 2021, the cost of raising a child to 18 is £71,000.
	Oh my god.
	£71,000?
	I don't have that on me.
	Oh, wait a minute.
	Wait a minute.
	That's £4,000 a year.
	That's £330 a month.
	Is that it?
	That's it.
	See, there is...
	I can't afford children.
	I haven't got £71,000.
	No, you don't need it all at once.
	That's the strange thing to me, hearing figures like that, is that when I was growing up and still being educated, there was seemingly a concerted effort to encourage people not to have children, where they used Malthusian economics and all that sort of stuff to say, oh, the world will collapse if we keep having children, so everybody should stop having children.
	And one of the ways that they tried to scaremonger slightly was that I was told as a...
	A young man, that if you have children, the cost of raising a single child to 18 was something like almost £200,000.
	So I don't know.
	Well, this is a very recent assessment.
	Yeah, and this was in school, so maybe it's dropped since then, or maybe I was not.
	Given inflation, I find that highly unlikely.
	Yes.
	But the point is, this is not a huge amount of money, especially for someone who's just got...
	You know, if you're earning the average wage, which is something like £24,000 a year...
	Then you've got two grand a month, and £330 is not that much.
	And people have to remember that when you're a parent, you don't actually spend that much money on other things.
	Not only will you have more money overall, but you're not going out clubbing every night.
	I mean, if people were just a bit more sensible, £2,000 a month when you've included rent and everything, you don't need to go out and spend as much as so many people do nowadays.
	But yeah, like £330 a month, and that's an upper estimate as well.
	That's as much as £71,000, so as much as £330 a month.
	That's actually remarkably affordable.
	But Iona Bain, a financial expert, says Britain's housing shortage needs to be tackled through land value reform, encouraging downsizing among older homeowners, and the reacquisition of social housing lost to the private sector as part of right to buy.
	Only then will it have a knock-on effect on birth rates.
	Or we could reduce the demand for competition by stopping immigration, but that's not politically correct, so she can't say that.
	But anyway...
	Moving on.
	Female students...
	I realise we're running over a bit, but this is interesting, I think.
	Female students at Cambridge being literally told have babies.
	Literally told at Cambridge.
	President of an all-female Cambridge University College, Dorothy Byrne, introduces fertility lessons telling students not to leave a family too late after the woman in charge here had her daughter conceived by IVF at 45.
	Are there practical examples in these fertility lessons?
	Well, I have no idea, but just, like, good advice, I think, is that.
	But basically, they're actually having to have seminars.
	Ladies, you're going to want kids at some point.
	Have kids.
	You probably should have kids.
	Have kids.
	Anyway, so, what does the Guardian say about this?
	What do you think?
	Whose fault is it?
	Men's fault?
	Well, it's certainly not the women's fault.
	Well, it can't be the women's fault.
	Literally, don't blame women for our low birth rate.
	We need to fix our precarious society.
	Who effed it up?
	I wasn't expecting it to be so blatant.
	Just don't blame us.
	Scroll down, John, so you can see the entire thing.
	It's like five paragraphs.
	Scroll down.
	Keep going.
	Keep going.
	It's like five paragraphs.
	There's nothing to this.
	There's nothing to this at all.
	Do you remember that old Simpsons episode where Bart becomes the, I didn't do it, kid?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, it's just, I didn't do it!
	Yeah, well, who did?
	Who's occupying all the university positions?
	Who's out-earning the men?
	Who's finding themselves, like, having to be lectured about having children before they're 45?
	And it's very impressive to be able to say to all of your girl boss friends down at the cafe while you're crying into your coffees about how lonely you are.
	Well, you can feel your ovaries drying up.
	I mean, I'm just saying, you know, anything other than accountability, isn't it?
	That's the thing.
	You've been given everything you want, and now you're like, well, the Collapsed Society isn't our fault.
	Well, who did it?
	Who's doing it?
	You tell me!
	Just, I'm sorry, but it's just The Guardian, literally, like, oh, it's not women, it's not women.
	Yeah, okay.
	All right.
	Feminist levels of self-awareness.
	Absolutely.
	Anyway, let's leave it there.
	All right, so...
	Welsh tyranny, sadly, has won by one vote after Wales has decided to implement vaccine passports due to one Tory MP or MS experiencing a glitch, a technical glitch.
	So, as you can see here from the Telegraph, people in Wales will be forced to show COVID-19 vaccine passports for nightclubs and sporting events after a Conservative member of the country's parliament failed to log on for a knife-edge Zoom vote, it has emerged.
	Gareth Davis, who was attending the Tory party conference in Manchester at the time, said he could not appear remotely for the Tuesday evening vote on the measure because of technical difficulties.
	But staff at the Welsh Parliament, or Senate, dispute that, saying that they made every effort to get in touch with him so that he could cast his vote.
	Mandatory COVID-19 passes in nightclubs and large sporting events are now due to come into force across Wales on Monday, which was...
	That was this week, so Monday the 11th, so they've already come into effect.
	After the measures were agreed by 28 to 27 votes, and it says here that if the opposition members of the Welsh Parliament had taken part, the Welsh Government would have had lost in a tie with the Tories, Lib Dems, and Plaid...
	It's Welsh, so I apologise.
	Plaid Cymru...
	Cymru.
	Cymru.
	Yeah, it doesn't look like it's pronounced that, but I have been corrected on this myself.
	I should learn to expect the unexpected.
	They would have all opposed the scheme, and the strange thing being that Ellen Jones, the presiding officer, basically told him, you don't need to get into the Zoom call if you want to cast your vote, here's my phone details, so that you can contact us and cast your vote over the phone.
	So it's very strange that he was unable, as far as I can tell, to...
	Looks like a bit of a hornswoggle, doesn't it?
	A little bit.
	So if we skip over to what he was saying on Twitter, this is what he said, I think, the day of the vote, which was a statement that he gave publicly on Twitter, as you can see here.
	I've had so many emails and messages from Vale of Clyde...
	I have no idea how to pronounce that.
	I'm going to say Cloud, just as a safe guess, which is the constituency that he resides over.
	Residents over the past few days to oppose vaccine passports in Wales.
	To confirm, I'll be opposing the Welsh Government's proposal for vaccine passports in Wales and vote today.
	This legislation will make an unfair and two-tiered system.
	And on the Twitter thread beneath it, he explicitly stated, I won't advocate for subjecting the Vale of Cloud residents to a second winter of misery and despair.
	And the fact that this is even being voted on, I think, is awful.
	Absolutely.
	It's unbelievably immoral that this is being done, but that's my opinion.
	Yes.
	How they managed to get this up to a vote, I don't know.
	But then, obviously, what happened...
	Why the people of Wales have voted for half of the parliament to be...
	Not the people.
	20, what, 56 in total?
	Yeah, but the people of Wales put those people in their positions to be like, yeah, they voted for these lunatics.
	Now they're getting this because of a technical glitch.
	And it's like, right.
	Yes.
	And if you skip over again, this is the statement that he made...
	After the vote, I'm deeply upset, frustrated and angry at last night's events and my inability to cast a vote against vaccine passports.
	Yesterday evening IT challenges meant that I was unable to access the voting system.
	Throughout the voting period, I was speaking with the Chief Whip and Welsh Conservative staff members in an attempt to solve the IT issues.
	The Senate system currently operates under a hybrid system that means only half of our representatives can vote in the chamber, with others voting remotely from elsewhere.
	You could have just called them, mate.
	You had the number.
	You could have just given them a phone call.
	I was working and representing the group at the Conservative Party conference and would have been able to vote remotely if I'd been able to access the remote viewing tools.
	Concerns have been raised with the Senate's ICT department.
	So, that's it.
	That's what you said.
	Blame the IT guy.
	But I mean, at the end of the day, if that was the case, surely an allowance could be made.
	Well, there was a technical glitch, so he was prevented.
	So what was his vote?
	Can we just add it at the end?
	Yeah.
	It does all come across a little bit suspiciously, isn't it?
	Oh no, the rules say sorry, no.
	If this was an honest, fair-minded system, surely you'd do that.
	Yeah, it's a pretty spectacular bungle, if it is a bungle.
	So yeah, they've been, as I've said, implemented from Monday the 11th, and will apply to any nightclubs playing music between midnight to 5am, which, when you think about it, means that they will include venues traditionally not seen as nightclubs, as well as the large sporting events and stuff like that.
	So if you're a music venue or anywhere like that, you're likely going to have to implement them as well, potentially.
	And if we skip over again, Dank has already made a video on this, and he's actually pointed out that Scotland has already implemented this.
	Yeah, I'm aware.
	Yes, and in this little video here, which you should check out, he mentions what the implementation has already meant for Scotland.
	Oh, go on.
	Which is that it's not stopped people from meeting up, it's just meant gigantic queues for every nightclub, and people just showing up and going, I'm not going there then.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I saw that the nightclub industry themselves were opposing this.
	I mean, why would you support it?
	Well, exactly.
	You're saying, well, you're going to just...
	I mean, it's not like nightclubs are doing brilliantly anyway.
	I mean, we can see this in Swindon itself, right?
	Go back 10 years, Swindon had a booming nightclub scene, and they're all gone.
	They're all gone.
	And I can't imagine things around the rest of the country are doing much better.
	And so if you're a nightclub owner, you're going to be like, oh, God, yet another problem that's going to kill our industry off.
	And like what we heard earlier, it's going to put the people, actually turning people away, in potential risk.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And plus, just as somebody, if you're on a night out, you're with a few friends, even if you do all have your vaccine passports, you go to the nightclub, and it's rammed, and you can't get in there within half an hour or so.
	Yeah, how long are you waiting?
	Yeah, how long are you willing to wait, is the thing.
	So of course it's going to be very detrimental to the business.
	Terrible idea.
	Yes, absolutely.
	So, it appears that England is surrounded by countries implementing this.
	By the Celtic nations, who have all decided, yeah, we're pro-tyranny.
	Freedom?
	Nah.
	In the bin.
	William Wallace, who's that?
	Exactly.
	So it does raise a little bit of the question at the moment of how long is the Conservative government going to hold out?
	Well, I really wonder.
	The famously strong...
	Conservative government.
	Yes, they're known for their iron spines.
	Exactly.
	So if we skip over, you can see that Nadim Zahawi has already been making mention of certain things that aren't specific, but does all seem to be pointing in a particular direction.
	Setting the foundations for it, right?
	Yeah, so this article in itself is a bit strange because it's a little bit of a puff piece.
	It goes on about his history and, oh, he was bullied when he was younger and all this sort of stuff.
	But it makes mention of stuff like here saying that having entered Parliament in 2010, he had to wait a long time to get into the Cabinet.
	He rose to prominence as vaccine minister at the height of the pandemic when his networking skills came into play.
	Is that the same way that everyone ends up in the Cabinet?
	Yes.
	I mean, obviously.
	It doesn't paint a great picture of the parliamentary process, but that's how it works.
	But he's stated here, already the number of children off school has risen by 50% to 204,000 in the past fortnight, making it sound like that's all COVID's fault.
	And he was asked, does he think it will get worse, and could schools close again?
	My focus is to protect education in the way that we protected the NHS, to keep those schools open.
	The attendance is just about 90%.
	I will have to keep a very close eye on the infection rates.
	We have contingency plans in place.
	Hmm.
	What are those contingency plans?
	And he makes a mention here, millions of children aged 12 to 15 have been vaccinated in Europe and America.
	But the government scientists came out and said that they shouldn't do that.
	Yes, but they're not particularly...
	They're not great fans of that particular piece of guidance.
	Oh, we're not trusting the science now that that's against the idea of vaccinating children, right?
	Yes.
	I mean, he did state, in my view, it's the right thing to do to protect their mental well-being and education.
	But not to prevent COVID, not protect them against the disease...
	Yeah, it does come across like a threat.
	Yeah, it does.
	As most things do.
	We need to protect your children's mental well-being, and if you don't do what we say, we'll lock them up in their homes where their mental well-being will do great, I suppose.
	Well, we know it got worse over the lockdowns.
	Exactly.
	And that's bad for their education as well.
	So, like, oh man, it does come across like a threat, doesn't it?
	It does.
	But let's contrast this, how the UK is doing, which is not well, with how Scandinavia is doing.
	Which seems to be pretty well in all regards to this.
	As you can see here, Norway has, from the 25th of September, decided to remove all lockdown restrictions.
	They stated the country will remain in an increased state of preparedness, but all national coronavirus measures will end.
	This includes the advice to keep at least one metre distance away from others, the capacity limit on public and private spaces, and restrictions on opening times for bars and restaurants.
	said Prime Minister Erna Solberg.
	That makes note that local restrictions could still be in place where you live and you can check out your municipality if you're in Norway.
	But when the authorities' advice and rules essentially disappear, the individual can choose for themselves what risk they want to take and what measures they want to practice, said the government in a press release.
	How liberal of them.
	The rule changes follow a similar approach to the one taken by Denmark one month ago.
	Obviously that would be August at this point.
	Denmark's government lifted all national restrictions but kept some of its entry rules in place, especially for unvaccinated travellers.
	Which seems...
	Yeah.
	It is interesting to me whether Norway will keep this in place, given that I think the government will be changing over soon.
	They had a Conservative government that's removed all these restrictions, but in a recent election, the coalition between the Labour Centre and socialist left parties has won.
	Again, people get what they vote for.
	Exactly.
	Why are you voting for these lunatic leftists?
	We'll see how long the freedom and the respect to let people make their own decisions lasts.
	And I imagine conservative is not a very right-wing perspective in Norway.
	I'd imagine not knowing how the people look up to those countries.
	Yes, yes.
	But yeah, the mandatory use of quarantine hotels is to be used and children under 18 will no longer have a quarantine obligation but will still require a test at the border and the government is stressing the pandemic is still not over.
	We are lucky to live in Norway because we have vaccinated many but there will still be a pandemic in the world for a long time to come, maybe for several years.
	The director of health, Espen Nackstad, said he urged people to still take care and stay home if they feel ill and get tested if they show any symptoms.
	So they are just letting people decide for themselves, make up their own mind about what risk they're feeling.
	Because unlike certain countries, you could say, they seem to have an actual respect of the efficacy of the vaccinations.
	I mean, if we've got such a large percentage vaccinated, then we should just be able to lift all the restrictions.
	I mean, I thought that was the purpose of the vaccines.
	Exactly.
	And as far as we can tell, and we can see this in Britain's own COVID numbers, I mean, it seems the vaccines did work.
	Yeah.
	You know?
	From what we've seen, and from what I've seen myself as well, since they've lifted the restrictions, Norway's positive cases have just gone straight down.
	Great.
	So it appears that they took the right choice.
	Yeah.
	Spicy take, the vaccines worked.
	Open up.
	Immense.
	YouTube, please.
	Yeah, yeah, exactly.
	Give us a break, YouTube.
	Yeah.
	And we can see...
	It's so ridiculous!
	I know.
	Anyway, go on.
	Yeah, we can see how people are reporting on this.
	I first heard about this from Peter Sweden on Twitter, who just posted this a while back.
	Denmark removed all restrictions, no COVID passport requirements.
	Sweden will remove practically all restrictions, no COVID passport.
	Norway removing all restrictions tomorrow.
	This tweet was before then.
	No COVID passport requirements.
	So just stating the facts from what you can see.
	And is it Reuters?
	Is that how you pronounce it?
	It is pronounced Reuters.
	Yes, Reuters said no.
	Actually, there's some misinformation there.
	Oh.
	Some users on Twitter replicating the text on social media commented that it suggests these countries stopped believing in the existence of COVID-19.
	What?
	worth of public health measures like face mask wearing and vaccines.
	What?
	Hang on.
	How can you take that from Peter's tweet?
	It's a very reasonable tweet that you can see there.
	That's just a statement on policy positions.
	Remove all restrictions, no passport.
	Remove all restrictions, no passport.
	Remove restrictions, no passport.
	That's not a commentary about the belief in COVID. I mean, the Reuters goes on to conclude its missing context.
	Denmark, Sweden, and Norway ended all or most of its COVID-19-related restrictions due to an epidemic control and a high vaccination rate.
	Not because they stopped believing in the pandemic or vaccination efforts, as claimed on social media.
	Who said that?
	Well, Peter certainly didn't say that.
	Who said that?
	Nobody related to this particular article.
	Nobody that they've listed, anyway, in the article.
	Yeah, nobody that they've listed has said that, but they're still reporting it as if it's misinformation.
	So, Peter himself had something to say about this.
	I'm a good fan.
	Which is that the Reuters fact-check falsely claimed that one of my tweets is missing context.
	And in the thread, if you go down, he states here, Reuters did actually have several factually incorrect statements in their own article.
	Well, this wouldn't be the first time.
	I know.
	They claim that 73.3% of the Norwegian population is fully vaccinated.
	Actually, it's 68.5%, according to official Norwegian sources.
	Mm-hmm.
	And further, Reuters claims in their articles that Norway introduced a vaccination certificate in June for holders to enter events in Norway.
	Reuters does not mention that these COVID passports are now not required to enter events as all restrictions have been removed.
	So, absolutely BTFO-ing the so-called fact-checkers, and giving an example there that apparently people are right that maybe we should take a bit more of a Scandinavian approach to some things in policy.
	But yeah, so Wales is going down the drain.
	Following the Scottish model.
	Following the Scottish model, and maybe we could learn something from the Scandinavians after all.
	Great point.
	Yeah.
	Let's go to the video comments.
	I'm a pathologist practicing in the United States.
	I actually have to deal with the blood bank quite often, and one thing that you should know is every unit of blood is tested for HIV along with a host of other diseases and has been for decades.
	Irrespective of how you answer the questionnaire, the changes are long overdue and appropriate.
	However, The framing for diversity is about the dumbest thing ever.
	That's good to know.
	I'll pass that along to Callum.
	Yeah, that is good to know.
	Being involved in that particular one, it was slightly scary.
	Oh, yeah.
	I mean, it sounds absurd, but...
	Yes.
	So I've noticed lately that the use of the term simp has started expanding into territory that includes essentially any expression of interest in women at all.
	And I have to say, if that's where it's heading, then I'm out.
	I'm off that train.
	So if you want, could you please either draw the distinction between the two or just let me know the price of Callum's bathwater?
	Callum, how much is your bath water?
	Too much.
	He says too much.
	So, yeah, I mean, I agree, you know, obviously, you know, being nice to women on occasion is acceptable.
	Being a simp is not the same thing.
	I agree.
	Also, just for that guy, if that was a bookshelf in the background, I noticed that might have been just a nerdy thing for me.
	Black Lodge patterns from Twin Peaks, if that is the case, nice.
	Right, okay, yeah.
	Turf. Turf. Turf. Turf. Turf.
	Turf.
	Do you see where you went wrong here?
	What the f- What the f- What the f- Did you expect?
	Brought to you by- That's cscoopa.com.au.
	You f- That was pretty good.
	Trans-inclusive radical feminist compared to a trans-exclusive radical feminist.
	You see the depth of the distinction there, can't you?
	Get the TIFs out.
	Yeah.
	There are more than 6,000 oral languages in the world today.
	Most of them are spoken by indigenous peoples.
	His eyes don't look good.
	His eyes.
	You understand?
	Ball.
	Ball.
	Saw.
	Okay, what might an eagle do?
	Saw.
	If you've got a cut on your finger, it might be...
	...sore.
	Stronger.
	Faster.
	Harder.
	Stronger.
	Faster.
	Harder.
	It's the accent of a true Londoner.
	I like the way that the Scots are an indigenous people.
	Oh, absolutely.
	English people are indigenous.
	I mean, I watched Clarkson's Farm recently.
	Some of the accents in there were absolutely incomprehensible.
	Absolutely.
	But that's not a bad distinction to draw, actually.
	The sort of received pronunciation accent is, yeah, kind of artificial, actually.
	And I think I'm a victim of it, personally.
	Yeah, me too.
	I come from the north, and I don't sound very much like I'm from the north.
	Yeah, I can understand what you're saying.
	Yeah, well, that's true.
	G'day.
	If there are any artists out there who want to publish their own Western-style comic books, hit me up and I'll help you get them started.
	You know the website.
	For God's sake, Western comics are not dead yet.
	Yeah, we do need to fight for Western comics, it's just that the mainstream of Western comics seems to be dying a very protracted death.
	I've very tangentially followed comics gigs.
	I'm not really into comics, I'm just interested in the sort of culture war aspect of it, but I like seeing their success.
	It is great to see.
	Yeah, because they've raised millions and millions of dollars to create actual alternatives to Marvel and DC. That are just trying to tell fun, interesting stories.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And I'm a big fan of some of the content creators who just do philosophical videos talking about things they like.
	So it's really good to see them succeeding.
	Absolutely.
	Well, the vaccine mandates have begun.
	Companies are saying it's to protect those employees with unvaccinated children, the least most vulnerable group.
	And if it's to protect, why doesn't proof of previous exposure count when it's up to six times stronger than the vaccine, while the Pfizer vaccine drops to 50% effectiveness after a month?
	Because it's not about protection or making sense.
	It's about compliance.
	Dude, that's awesome.
	That is pretty cool.
	Yeah.
	But I agree with what I was saying.
	I think, I forget who it was, but some kind of organisation came out basically just saying like, oh, if you've been vaccinated, the next step, get COVID. Yeah.
	Just get COVID and then you'll be triple protected.
	But I've had COVID. Oh, have you?
	Oh, yeah.
	Oh, fair play.
	It's just, you know, it's like a bad flu.
	I've not had it.
	I know a number of people my age who've had it, and some of them barely even registered it.
	Oh, yeah.
	I mean, you may well have had it, but just not known, to be honest.
	Maybe.
	So, anyway.
	Hey, Ludus Eaters!
	Tony D and Little Joan with an infamous legend of the pines from the roads of home by Henry Charlton Beck is the story of Antonian LeBlanc, a French immigrant who came to Morristown, New Jersey to work for the Sayre family.
	Unfortunately, he robbed and then killed the couple and their maid.
	He was caught shortly thereafter, hung in the village square, but the most gruesome part is a few days later, as was custom, they made souvenir purses out of his corpse.
	The appropriate thing to do to a Frenchman who murders someone.
	Yeah.
	I'm sorry, Harry, but you're confusing those awful Marvel movies with comic books.
	There's a point in the late 90s to early 2000s where Marvel editorial was doing whatever they could to split Mary Jane and Peter up.
	Eventually, they would succeed by having to make a deal with the devil, but before that, the creator of Babylon 5 would write the comic.
	This is largely considered the best Spider-Man run ever made.
	Not only did it solidify Mary Jane and Peter as a couple, but it also led to Aunt May learning Peter's secret.
	It has no action scenes, is entirely dialogue-driven, and it's one of the greatest Spider-Man comics ever made.
	You can't have this kind of issue without the decades of character interactions that have built up to this moment, and what Gay Superboy is lacking, good writing.
	That is fair.
	I do agree that I was being slightly reductive of the importance of character writing and relationship building in comic books.
	It has been long said for a long time that the X-Men comics are just superhero soap operas.
	I was more just sort of being, like I say, a little bit reductive on it.
	But I still stand by that most Western comics nowadays are trash.
	I don't think there's too much disagreement.
	No, I doubt there is much agreement.
	I don't think there's too much disagreement.
	Oh, Callum, why would you do that?
	No, not Tucker.
	Yeah, of all the people.
	Sucks to be you guys.
	Well, she's Danish, so she's probably talking about vaccine passports.
	Oh, yeah, that's true.
	The problem with comics is actually deeper than some people think it is, because there was this guy who actually tried making an independent comic, a new superhero canon universe, and he wanted to base the first villain organisation the heroes came across off of MS-13, the Mexican gang.
	When he tried publishing it, the store said we're not allowed to publish this because it's racist, and our policy is all criminal organisations in superhero stories must be Nazi-inspired.
	Right, the left-wing definition of Nazi, so normal people like you and I, so you can't just make your own comic.
	People tried.
	That doesn't surprise me.
	That's hilarious.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	The bad guys have to be Nazis or nothing.
	What a rule that is.
	It was pointed out on Tuesday that they tried to make Red Skull, who is a Nazi, basically Jordan Peterson, in one of the most recent Captain America comic books.
	There's their definition.
	Did you see the actual comic?
	I saw the panels, that it came to ten rules for life and stuff like that.
	But the thing is that they make Red Skull the hero.
	Basically.
	Unironically, Red Skull's just giving this amazing speech.
	It's like, okay, well, Hail Hydra.
	Tanahisi Coates, you've done a great message.
	Completely unintentionally.
	It should have been Captain America giving that message, not the Red Skull, but okay, whatever.
	Anyway.
	Still based.
	Yeah, still based.
	Joe says, when you get used to preferential treatment, regular treatment feels like discrimination.
	Thomas Sowell.
	That's correct.
	Yes.
	David says, the funny description of that Collins story is only me upon hearing dramatised biography that makes me think made up.
	Yes.
	Yes, you should watch some of the actual teaser trailers and stuff that they've released of it for some scenes and it absolutely just looks completely made up.
	Small L Libertarian says, 50 Cent literally made that his name because the first label he went to said he would never make 50 cents.
	That's pretty great.
	M1Ping says, Kaepernick's largest contribution to history is destroying the unifying power of sport and turning it into yet another political wedge.
	That's a great point.
	Yes.
	And that's exactly what's happened over here.
	I mean, when you've got, like, the England fans booing the England team, you've done something wrong.
	And then the fact that for a brief, glorious moment, it did unify people.
	Yeah, against it.
	It did bring people together.
	Against the England team.
	Yeah.
	That's not what it's there for.
	Student of History says, Colin Kaepernick, a mediocre quarterback for the 69ers whose only relevance culturally is being an unadulterated race grifter.
	That may be true.
	I don't know enough about American football.
	I've heard this before.
	When this whole thing first went on, again, I'm not an American, but I had a lot of American people commenting saying, he was a nobody.
	No one cares about his opinion on football because he wasn't any good at it.
	And so I guess this is one way of getting attention.
	It's one way of boosting your profile.
	It is, yeah.
	Kevin says, ah, the classic headline, men are poor, women most affected.
	Which is exactly what's happened.
	Which is exactly what's happened.
	Marcus says, women can't afford kids because they've replaced men with the government, and the government is an even worse father than even the most absent of deadbeats.
	Even a poor family with two parents produces a more well-rounded and well-meaning offspring.
	The children of single mothers, more often than not, end up gravitating towards the same sense of entitlement their parents did.
	Yeah, but that's not actually the problem that we were talking about there.
	The problem isn't actually the single mothers.
	It's the well-off women who are unwilling to sacrifice their own career to actually become mothers.
	That's the problem.
	So it's actually not that problem.
	It's another problem that women are responsible for.
	And you can raise children and then pick up a career, if that's what you want to do.
	There are plenty of stories of people doing that in the past, and probably still plenty nowadays, it's just more and more choosing not to...
	It's the Jordan Peterson thing of, like, choose what's meaningful, not the expedient thing.
	So many people are just going for the expedient nowadays.
	Yeah, and you can tell that the career you've chosen isn't meaningful because of your constant writing of Guardian articles.
	Saying, God, I just wish I could have kids.
	I just can't have kids.
	I can't afford it.
	Yes, you can afford it.
	Who can I blame for my own actions?
	Exactly.
	And if you had all the meaning that you wanted in life, you wouldn't be having these cravings.
	Anyway, Anthony says, Regarding the marriage rates, what's the reason for this?
	Is it both parties or the women, perhaps the men, not one to take the risk of having their finances ruined, potentially for the rest of their lives following divorce?
	Cohabitation and illegitimacy no longer have the stigma they used to.
	Words and a number of factors, as you point out.
	I mean...
	You know, the divorce courts are harsh and not fair, and they need to change as well.
	JJHW says 80% of divorces are initiated by women, 90% for university-educated women.
	And there we go.
	That's it.
	They get the kids, the house, half the man's stuff, an income from the man for life, plus whatever the government gives them.
	Marriage is not in a man's interest today, even if it was.
	The absolute state of most women these days makes even dating not worth it unless you happen to find a unicorn, aka a stable, non-crazy, trustworthy, loyal woman.
	For anyone who thinks I'm exaggerating, go and watch content on YouTube from the likes of Ham Hand, Replicate Fish, Tale of the Fiend, Entrepreneur's Cards.
	I mean, you're right.
	Women have to change.
	Men have to change.
	We'll then change to suit whatever it is women want, and then life can actually carry on as normal.
	And that's a pretty typical statement, that men will just do whatever will get the women's attention in that situation.
	They will.
	Ultimately, I do think that men would like to be the breadwinner.
	They would like to have a job where they can provide for a wife and family.
	So they can feel like they have a proper place in the world and that they're doing a responsible thing and that the people who are depending on them are well looked after.
	That's what men would want.
	And if we can ever ask that question, maybe women can be like, yeah, well, I mean, that's fair, you know, and we'd like that too.
	But also, you know, I want all of the other things as well.
	It's like, well, you've got to choose one.
	Yeah, sorry.
	I don't mean to go hard tradition on this, but we're looking into a bit of an abyss here, so we've got to make a hard choice fairly soon, as unpleasant as that is.
	Alexander says, yeah, I'm single living on my own on £9.21.
	I can't really afford it.
	Well, again, that's part of the point, isn't it?
	More often than not, I'm relying on breads and those sorts of foods.
	I get a bonus twice yearly with my new, started this year if you recall, career.
	I've only had the one and it went on my car and a deposit for my flat.
	The next bonus is in December, and it's going to be in savings, so I can start to afford better food.
	But if I'm focusing on my survival most months, what am I going to do to find anyone to share that with?
	And would I want to?
	It's not really possible.
	I work in young men and old married women.
	No one I'd actually want to share my life with.
	Well, this is another problem, isn't it?
	If you're not actually meeting people and actually finding someone who would like to start a life with you, then that's not easy either.
	I mean, social media and dating apps has made it more and more difficult to find just normal women.
	Yeah, don't use dating apps.
	Dating apps are cancer, social media is also cancer.
	Yeah, and don't get me wrong, with Alexander's point here, it's not to say there aren't problems.
	There absolutely are problems, and none of it's easy.
	But unfortunately, being single is worse off for your finances and your mental health, and there's no getting around it.
	So, saying, "Well, what are my answers?" I don't know.
	You've got to figure that out for yourself.
	But the direction you should be trying to go in is to try and find a woman who's not insane and does also want a family and happiness.
	They are still out there.
	Yeah, they do still exist, you know, but just don't go to a university campus to try and find them, because the women who are on these university campuses have been programmed into being man-hating feminists and don't understand that they're going to die alone and get eaten by their cats.
	From recent experience, I can attest to the accuracy of that, sadly.
	Tyba says, probably not something politically correct to say, but one of the issues regarding wages and marriage and dating that is never discussed was women getting into the workforce.
	Yep, absolutely.
	You can't talk about this really, but it's true.
	As we have pushed it more and more, we've doubled the workforce, which suppressed wages, and since women tend to only go for men with higher means to provide, this was an inevitable problem.
	With more affirmative action in school than work for women, they're putting the nail in the coffin of their future.
	And that's totally true.
	If women were to make the conscious choice, be like, okay, I'm going to not just drop out of the workforce, but just reduce the number of hours that you do.
	You create a demand for labor that then can be filled by men who can then take on the role of breadwinner in a family.
	And it's a whole part of a symbiotic cycle that's currently in a vicious decline that's going down.
	I think he is correct there as well.
	Women do tend to go for...
	I think there's studies on it.
	Oh, absolutely.
	Women always just go for the men with more, whereas men are like, I'll take someone there, the same as me, or lower, whatever.
	A woman's earnings is just not something that men consider.
	There have been loads of studies that show this, and there are loads of articles out there In fact, John, can you find one?
	Like, you know, I earn 100k a year, why can't I find a man?
	Something like that.
	Because there are so many of these, and it's just like...
	I'm sure there's plenty of probably quite lazy men who would love to get with a woman who can just pay for everything.
	Yeah, but you don't want to be with that man.
	Yeah, exactly.
	She doesn't want to be with that man.
	The sorts of men that that's going to attract are layabouts.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Who aren't going to be able or willing to go out and actually do anything for themselves.
	I mean, if you want a younger brother to look after right there.
	That's basically what it is.
	But the point is that men are just not interested in women's earning capacity.
	That's just not something they look for.
	And that's something that, frankly, has got to be resolved at some point.
	So, anyway.
	Moving on to the Welsh tyranny comments.
	Free Will says, I don't believe the Tory Welsh Parliament member.
	Sorry, here you go.
	Why are so many professional millennial women unable to find dateable men?
	Well, it's because they earn too much.
	That's why.
	You earn too much to find dateable men.
	What more do you want?
	What can be done?
	Yeah, back in 2012.
	It's probably just got worse.
	Oh, absolutely.
	There are so many of these.
	Anyway, don't believe the Tory Welsh Parliament member.
	They're all in it together.
	They want authoritarianism.
	We are betrayed by our democratic representatives, either through gross incompetence or deliberately.
	I wouldn't be surprised, but I can't confirm or deny, unfortunately.
	Lord Nerevar says, not watching live today, so I'll say this in advance.
	I live in Wales and the decision over vaxed passports is generally feeling dodgy as hell.
	You're not supposed to talk about it.
	The idea of revolt is verboten.
	Something definitely happened here and it's not kosher.
	Well, I'm sorry to hear that, man.
	The evidence seems to point in that direction as well, sadly.
	Yeah, something weird has happened.
	David says, typical excuse from the National Socialists here in Wales, and they are National Socialists.
	Instead of rerunning such an important vote, instead they just say we tried and we have to stand by it because democracy.
	Funny how they had the opposite idea when it came to how close the Brexit vote was.
	I'm English and I live in Wales, but I live close to the English coast, so every meal out or personal shopping would be a drive over the border for me.
	Yeah, but they did close the border during the lockdown, didn't they?
	I don't think I've seen anything about them planning to do that again.
	No, but they've got a precedent.
	We've already closed the border once.
	And Nadim has contingency plans in place, so what do the Welsh have?
	Exactly.
	Well, that's exactly right.
	But again, how we're allowing this to happen?
	Like, surely you should be...
	I don't know.
	Like staging a walkout, some sort of secession of the plebs or something.
	I don't know.
	You've got to object.
	You have to object.
	You can't just let them do this.
	Rob says, Yeah, maybe.
	What could we throw out right now?
	I don't know.
	Trans activists are going to be walking out of Netflix, and they're not going to accomplish anything in doing so.
	Yeah, they got BTFO'd by Dave Chappelle.
	I imagine that will probably raise the overall quality of staff in Netflix.
	But no, there's not much in the way of good news, to be honest.
	Sorry.
	Duffy says, Yeah, again, this is very much the modern perspective, isn't it?
	It's like, well, you know, but I might have to spend less money on myself.
	Yeah.
	Very consumerist attitude.
	I just need...
	I need new product.
	Yeah, it is.
	And it's like, well, yeah, but you'll be getting something much better and not quantifiable in exchange.
	You know, this is what it is.
	You know, it's good for you.
	And you can't really put a price on fulfillment.
	No.
	No, God no.
	You know, and there's...
	Like, you know, even if I had to...
	You know, go without money and have to struggle to get by.
	I'd still be so glad I had my kids not.
	Oh, absolutely.
	I can't even imagine, you know.
	And it's another thing.
	When I'm 80, I don't want to look around me and go, oh, God.
	I've left nothing.
	Well, at least a foreign immigrant's going to be changing your nappy, you know?
	Such an attractive prospect.
	Well, that's what they're going for.
	That's what's going to be the case in Italy.
	That's going to be the case in Germany.
	It'll probably end up being the case here.
	It's like, what on earth are you doing if you're not having kids?
	Well, it's people like me, as part of my generation, who need to put their foot down and say no.
	Yeah, it is.
	Because I want kids.
	I'm going to have kids.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Why not?
	I know you absolutely should.
	And the thing is as well, I do think we have an obligation if we want to carry on the civilization that we think is so great.
	Oh, I want to continue my consumerist materialist lifestyle.
	Okay, but how did you get that?
	Well, a certain kind of civilization formed and produced this, and so you've got to do your part to keep that thing going.
	Exactly.
	Or you lose it.
	Ryan says, I can't help but feel that we've tried to separate our civilization from Christianity, but the further we get away from Christianity, the more our civilization crumbles.
	It feels like while Christianity isn't true in a measurable scientific sense, it certainly seems true in a spiritual sense.
	If we followed the Bible, even without a full conviction, many of our society's biggest problems would resolve themselves.
	Would they?
	I mean, yes.
	A lot of our problems are coming from a lack of sort of biblical teleology.
	Yeah.
	And as somebody who's not religious myself, I have always tried to...
	There was a brief period when I was a teenager where I was an edgy teenager.
	It's like, oh, Christianity, all that.
	Everyone went to that.
	I think everybody did that.
	But when you get older and you start to think a bit more deeply about these things, you do realise that there is...
	A certain pragmatism within the principles that it's encouraging people to take on.
	So I do agree.
	And not just that as well, like, I mean, the other day, I've had both of my sons baptised now.
	Oh, really?
	Yeah, I'm an atheist, you know, I'm not, like, someone who wants to go to church or...
	But just on the off chance?
	Not even just on the off chance.
	It just felt like the right thing to do, because it's traditional, you know?
	It's like, you know, like, my wife wanted it.
	And, like, I get that.
	I mean, my parents aren't religious and they still have me baptised because it's what my grandparents wanted.
	And they didn't want to upset my grandparents.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And so it's just the right thing to do in this sort of traditional sense.
	And so I was just like, yeah, okay, that's good.
	We'll do that.
	But yeah, I mean, I do agree with you, basically, that, like...
	The religion, for all of its faults, and for not being scientifically accurate, still had the measure of what humans require on a day-to-day basis.
	As in, you know, if you're a man, you need to work hard and get a job.
	If you're a woman, you need to think about your family.
	Yeah, well, I mean, a lot of the teachings could be said to be distillations of, not even centuries, thousands of years old teachings.
	Yeah, the repeated iterations of thousands of years of experience.
	This works, let's put it all in a book.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And so basically, you have to do these things to have a flourishing life.
	And so even if you don't want to be a religious person, you can look at that and go, well, I mean, you know, 2,000 years of trial and error...
	They must have figured something out.
	There must be something.
	Getting married, having kids, and being happy.
	Maybe I don't believe that there's a big invisible man in the sky, but...
	In a way, I've been thinking about how atheists should think about God as Christians say it.
	Because the new atheists had a very flat analysis of this.
	And they were like, oh, well, you're saying there's a bearded man in the sky who's judging me.
	It's like, well...
	That's one way of framing it.
	Or you could say that the universe has certain rules, and these rules are predictable, and if you abide by lessons learned about these rules, then you'll succeed, and if you don't, you'll find yourself in a place of suffering.
	And that seems to be true.
	I suppose if you look at God as more of a metaphysical concept and less literally, then you do get those conclusions.
	When they say God says get married and have kids, it's like, yeah, because the alternative is being depressed, poor, and alone.
	And batting away potential male suitors with your girlfriends at the bar.
	Yeah, and it's just like...
	Exactly.
	So there are real-world reasons to follow these rules, even if you don't believe them.
	And one of those articles that we had up, there was the image of all of the women sat at the table, and we're out looking for dates.
	It's like, can you imagine going up and asking anyone at that table if they want a drink?
	None of them will be having any of it.
	No, I own my own house.
	Why do I need a drink from you?
	Oh, Christ, good point.
	Well, never mind then.
	I'll find someone sat in the room.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Anyway, Thomas says, adding to the lack of budgeting schools, at the start of the lockdown, several of my peers ended up having money in the bank at the end of the month for the first time ever.
	Yeah, see?
	It's about your spending, not about how much money you actually have access to.
	It seems the school system and parents have completely failed in imparting life lessons onto people.
	Well, they're very materialistic and pro-capitalist, shall we say?
	It's like consumer spending, consumer spending, consumer spending.
	Get out and buy this junk that you don't need.
	And you can have capitalism without that kind of mindset.
	Well, I actually...
	Callum pointed this out to me.
	He was like, look, Milton Friedman never calls it capitalism.
	He always says free enterprise.
	That's true.
	And it's got an entirely different set of assumptions that underlie it, hasn't it?
	Private property ownership and the personal ability to dispose of your property.
	I mean, as far as I'm aware of Milton Friedman, as much as he is pushed as one of the libertarian economists, from when I've read Capitalism and Freedom, he only ever refers to himself as a liberal.
	As does Mises and many of the other libertarian Austrian economists.
	They're all liberals, which does have more of a philosophical foundation to it, rather than just being purely like, oh, just buy next product.
	Yeah, capitalism definitely has that sort of tone about it.
	And I think it's because I'm sure it was a communist who coined the term capitalism.
	Almost certainly.
	And so, you know, you can see exactly it's got this very thin, one-dimensional, just consumer mentality built into it.
	But he says, anyway, thank heavens my parents wanted me and my brother to be independent, so we went through these lessons.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Manage yourself, you know.
	David said, if the migration was to end today, would it be possible to see a rise in British babies when we have more space, houses, and higher wages?
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	You know, absolutely.
	And, like, it's something...
	And this is what happened with the HGV drivers, isn't it?
	Yes, exactly.
	Their wages, like, doubled.
	Yeah, and it literally doesn't take very long for the market to be like, right, we need something, you know.
	On the feminist problem, as Emperor Chappelle told us, the definition of feminism is the belief in the equal rights between men and women, therefore we're not all feminists, and the modern-day fascists calling themselves feminists should now be level extremist feminine supremacists.
	That would be one way of...
	Subverting them.
	I've never liked the feminist just means equal rights.
	Oh, it's a lie.
	It seems like it's trying to take a monopoly on the idea of equality between the genders, in a sense.
	Absolutely, that's a lie.
	Miss Flibble says, hypothesis, the falling birth rate is a natural adjustment to the economic resource situation and would in time resolve many problems and the adjustment would fade.
	Unfortunately, migration is preventing that adjustment from actually achieving anything and locking it in.
	Dallas, I mean, who knows if it's, you know, chicken and egg.
	You know, I don't know which way it is.
	But we definitely should just stop mass immigration.
	And population.
	I mean, if you want to look at it as a market, it would readjust itself.
	Yeah, it absolutely would.
	There's going to be an invisible hand there that takes action.
	Edward said, being a Londoner, I can't help but agree with Carl's assessment in my dear city.
	Ah, I see you've read my London article.
	I was very proud of it, actually.
	It's the work of many weeks as well, because every time I go to London, something else about it pisses me off.
	And so I was just adding to this document, and this is another paragraph or two of why I hate London.
	My father, having worked there for most of his life, did rally against this, saying it's the greatest city in the world, but he and I both know he hates all cities and takes every excuse to leave.
	I'm working here for the foreseeable future, barring finding a new job or an act by a merciful God.
	Dan, well, I'll have to stop there, I'm afraid, because we're out of time.
	But anyway, right.
	So, if you think you can manage our social media platform, come to lotuses.com slash careers and send us an email as to why we should hire you.
	We've got to work in the office.
	We'd like to hear from you.
	Other than that, sign up at lotuses.com if you'd like to support us and allow us to continue growing.

▲