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March 7, 2022 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters
01:31:26
The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #343
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Hello and welcome to episode 343 of this, the podcast of the Lotus Eaters.
Today, I am your host, Harry, joined by my good friend, John.
Hello, Lotus Eaters.
And today we're going to be talking about the energy price crisis in the UK and the West, and the potential referendum on the UK's net zero policies, or at least the push for a referendum.
We're also going to be talking about the Ukraine's facts versus feelings of And also Scotland's new lax transition laws.
But before we get into any of that, we've got a few announcements to make.
First of all, we've got a new video from John himself talking about the destabilisation of Ukraine.
Would you like to talk us through a little bit of that?
Yes, people often begin the story of Ukraine with the Russian invasion of an occupation of the Crimea and the separatist states and so on.
It actually goes back a lot longer than that, since viewers may remember, for example, the leaked Victoria Nuland call and so on and so forth, and I basically take you through those events and point out why actually the West is more involved in Ukraine than we would like to be as people.
Yes.
For quite a contentious topic, I've seen it's been getting a mostly pretty positive result so far.
Obviously there are those who don't want to approach it with any particular nuance.
Well, it's a little bit taboo to say anything that isn't Putin bad at the moment.
And Putin is bad!
But there is more to the story of what's happening than that.
Yes, exactly.
We've also got a new article from Beau talking about Tiberius and a personal view.
I've not read this and don't really know much about Tiberius, but Beau always writes good articles on history.
He knows his stuff.
His article on Augustus was really good, so I'm looking forward to reading this.
Excellent.
And finally, we've got a new contemplations came out yesterday, talking about the country profile, unsurprisingly, nice and timely, of Ukraine, which was one that you discussed with Josh.
With Josh, yes.
Now, this was before everything kicked off, and obviously I've been researching it quite intensively since, so it'll probably be a bit cringe for me to watch back.
But I think we do a reasonable job covering the basics of the political situation in Ukraine.
Excellent.
And the country still exists by the time it came out.
Yes, that's nice and timely.
We'll see if this is a historical capsule to look back on or if Ukraine will continue being Ukraine going forward.
So, now that we've got all of that out of the way, it's time to get into the news.
Those of you in the UK and in the West may have started to notice a bit of a crunch going on with prices to do with oil, gas, electricity, anything that you can think of, the prices are starting to go up.
I for one know that this is hitting me particularly hard, being someone who drives fuel prices, especially diesel prices in the UK. Are absolutely skyrocketing at the moment.
And there are a number of reasons for that, obviously.
The one we'll examine first is the issues going on with exporting oil and gas from Russia.
And the other one, which we'll be focusing on that's much more domestic, is going to be the net zero goals that our government are aiming towards for net zero emissions by, I believe, 2050.
Right.
Which is something that's been pushed by Boris Johnson for quite a while now.
But let's get into what exactly I'm talking about and why this is happening.
So the most recent surge in prices is covered in this BBC News article talking about oil prices rise again as buyers shun Russian crude oil.
I'm sure you're all aware of the fact that there are a number of sanctions being placed on Russia at the moment, which is stopping exports and imports going over to that country.
So the cost of oil surged on Wednesday.
Traders snapped up non-Russian oil, increasing the chance of further price rises at UK forecourts.
Brent crude, which is the global benchmark for oil prices, passed $113 a barrel, its highest level since 2014.
And don't worry, it has, in fact, gone up since then.
then, and I'll be showing you the figures in a moment.
Traders are struggling to sell Russian oil, even at a discount, because of the new difficulties in shipping and payments amid its invasion of Ukraine.
Gas prices also doubled, which could feed through to energy bills.
Almost 70% of Russian crude oil exports do not have a buyer, according to UK-based research consultancy Energy Aspects, and on Tuesday, oil trader Trafigura offered a cargo load of Russian crude oil at a record discount of $18.60 per barrel below the market rate for Brent, but could not find a buyer willing to take the risk.
So all of this seems to be based on one thing, which is that it seems that we are very dependent, or at least parts of the European Union are very, very dependent on Russian oil and Russian gas.
And obviously all of these sanctions are...
giving it quite a hit.
And Rita Sen, its founding partner, told the BBC World Service that buyers are concerned that they could run afoul of Western sanctions and lawyers are poring through the language of the new rule.
So this is putting off people who could be buying this and selling it for cheaper prices and saying, well, I don't know if I'm going to be hit legally with these sanctions, so I'm just not going to risk it at all, and we're all having to front the bill as a result of that.
The RAC said that if the higher oil price is sustained, the cost of filling up a car in the UK will increase with it.
The sudden $10 jump in the oil price is likely to take the average price of petrol towards 155p a litre and diesel to 160p, particularly as it's looking like this price isn't just a market blip caused by the US and allies deciding to dip into the strategic oil reserve.
And my experiences over this past weekend can absolutely confirm...
Yes, diesel prices have hit 160 pence per litre, and in some places are going over that, especially if you're going on the motorway service stations.
It's absolutely ridiculous.
Not that they're known as the best value for money in the first place, but it's not looking good if you're driving.
And I'm thinking about getting myself a bicycle or something so that I don't have to drive so much and rely on public transport.
Household gas and electricity bills are also set to rise after the annual energy price cap increases to £1,971 in April.
But the rise in wholesale prices amid the war in Ukraine may mean the price cap ratchets up to £3,000 by the end of the year, according to one energy analyst.
Wholesale prices make up between 40-50% of household bills, said independent energy analyst David Cox.
If these high prices stay around 400p per therm, we may see the price cap head closer to £3,000 a year, which is terrifying.
Energy analysts at Cornwall Insights also predicted a jump at the energy price cap in October, based on turmoil in the European wholesale gas prices, to over £2,900.
So, no matter which way you look at it, it's not looking great.
No, it's going to be bloody, so it's going to be pretty terrible.
No, I think that deserves a bloody, we need to express our Britishness here, it's going to be bloody awful.
Right, and I've seen a lot of people on Twitter, particularly celebrities and check marks and the usual lot, saying, guys, we can afford to have a little bit of a squeeze so we can stick it to Putin.
It's like, this reminds me of the old meme, some of you may freeze to death, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make.
Yeah, that's the Hassan Piker situation of, I can participate in society while also being the one living, the dragon hoarding my gold in a castle.
You guys have to foot the bill.
It's very easy to be able to say all of these things when you've got enough wealth behind you to absorb the costs.
But for anybody on the ground, such as myself or many of you watching, these kinds of prices are not the sorts of things that we are looking forward to, or even that many of us will be able to handle if we can find spots in our budget where we're able to actually make up these differences in prices.
I also have to wonder, for people who are working on that, it's one thing, but people who are retired and living off pensions, do their pension allowances really handle this kind of price jump?
That's a good point.
That's a very good point.
Who knows if they'll be able to handle it.
It'd be great if we had a strategic reserve of natural gas or something to deal with this, wouldn't it?
It would.
I've not actually got anything regarding that, but from what you were telling me...
Well, I learned recently that apparently Theresa May sold the country's entire strategic reserve of natural gas because she decided that we live in a buy-on-demand economy now.
Yes, because if I'm in the desert with my last glass of water, I will happily sell it for that pretty penny, because it's a buy-on-demand economy, I suppose.
But yeah, so it's not great, and whether you can afford it or not, even if you do find a space in your budget, you can be guaranteed that because of the money that you're going to be spending extra on that, the rest of your quality of life might have to take a bit of a dip.
As a result of it.
And this isn't to mention as well that the Tesco meal deal price has gone up 50 pence as well.
So that's putting even more of a squeeze and crunch on me.
But let's take a look at the graphs that are showing the fluctuating prices.
With oil is easily the most fluctuating.
Here you can see that we are reaching, I think it's about $124 per barrel currently, which is almost as high.
It's reached...
Any peak beyond 2008, which I believe hit to about $158 a barrel.
So we're getting to 08 depression, recession kind of levels, which is not looking very good.
Happily, this website also includes little details at the top about why they might be fluctuating so much currently.
So, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said Sunday in the U.S. and its allies are considering banning Russian oil and natural gas imports in an effort to ramp up sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
So, to fight Russia, you and I will all have to go bankrupt.
Thank you very much for that.
Let's take a look at gas prices as well.
Gas prices, you can see, for the past 25 years, relatively stable up until sometime last year.
And this is one thing that you'll have to notice as well.
The actual spikes seem to have gone up quite rapidly in the past few days, yes, but there was signs of rising prices before then, which obviously cannot necessarily be purely due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict currently.
But it was pretty stable up until about 2020, 2021, and then all of a sudden it just completely skyrockets.
What happened at the beginning of last year, 2021?
What happened in America?
Oh, we got a new president, didn't we?
Yeah, we did get a new president, and he was...
Shutting down a few things, like pipelines and other such things as well, wasn't he?
I wonder if that would have anything to do with it.
And finally, let's take a look at the price of coal, which is also absolutely spiked.
Its price per tonne has gone to $418, whereas before it was once again relatively stable until...
Some point between 2020 and 2021, where it started to go up.
With prices like that, we ought to get the Welsh back in the mines, I'm just saying.
Yeah, we really should.
We could make a killing right now.
Yeah, probably in more ways than one, though.
Newcastle...
Don't claim us Welsh.
Yeah.
Yeah, of course.
I'm northern, so my people would be very happy to hear of the mines reopening and the amount of money they could all make from it.
But yeah, so we've got another massive spike and it says here, the Newcastle coal futures topped a new record high of $430 per ton amid the conflict in Ukraine.
Recent sanctions on Russia, such as restricting access to European ports, triggered a rush in utilities in Asia and Europe to find alternative suppliers, such as Australia.
and it seems that that rush to find alternative suppliers may not have been massively successful or perhaps they just don't have the supply to meet the demand, hence why the price is absolutely exploding right now.
And let's take a look at why it might be that Russia in particular has such a big effect globally on the prices of these things.
Because I don't claim to be any kind of expert on this, so if I do get any of these statistics wrong or I misinterpret some things, please let me know down in the comments below.
It will only help me to be able to learn more about this situation.
So, Russia's main trading partners are non-CIS countries, which makes up 86.9% of their exports.
What does that mean, non-CIS? I don't know, actually.
So you might want to check that out.
So the top five are China, who have a trade turnover of $112 billion.
Germany at number two.
What is CIS? I thought so.
Commonwealth of Independent States, which is essentially the post-Soviet bloc countries.
Ah, okay.
Yeah.
Germany obviously makes up number two with $46.1 billion.
Netherlands, then the US, and then Turkey.
And what is it that Russia is mainly supplying those countries with?
Well, if you scroll down again, you can see that the top six Russian exports by product value, number one topping out, is fuel and energy, making up 53.8% of all of their exports to these countries, which is...
Vastly outshines anything else that they are exporting.
So, for whatever reason, we have become incredibly dependent, or at least certain Western countries and China have become very dependent on Russia for these kinds of fuels and energies.
And people like Michael Schellenberger have got a lot to say about this.
Michael Schellenberger is an author who has written books like Apocalypse Never, recently came out with one called San Francisco, talking about cities.
And he's been very interesting discussing all of this.
I think if you scroll up, I might have got the wrong link for this one, John.
Scroll up again.
Oh god, I might have got the wrong one in here, actually.
Yeah, scroll up a bit further.
Yes, here we go.
Sorry, I got the wrong link in there.
So he's talking here about people think that Europe depends on Russia for energy because it lacks its own, but 15 years ago, as seen in this graph, Europe exported more natural gas than Russia does today.
Now Russia exports three times more gas than Europe produces.
Why?
Because of climate activists, partly funded by Russia, blocking fracking, which, from all the other information that you can find in this thread, if you click on the link, he does talk about, I think, Russia funding it with $95 million worth of funding into these sorts of climate things, climate initiatives.
So that is quite spectacular.
Before, it seems that if this had happened years and years ago, we would not be in the situation where we're having to worry about putting food on our plates at the end of the week, as we are now.
And he makes another point here, where he talks about...
Go to the next one, if you wouldn't mind, John.
Oh, to the next link.
Sorry.
There we go.
Yep, thank you.
That was the original...
I must have swapped them around.
Apologies, folks out there.
But yeah, he basically just talks about how Russia's invasion of Ukraine could have been deterred had Putin feared that Europe would stop buying his oil, gas, and coal.
But Putin knew that Europe and the US couldn't stop buying Russia's fuel without severe shortages and triggering a recession.
Now, it does seem like, even despite that, we are sanctioning them, we are potentially pulling out of getting all of this oil, gas, and coal, but...
As said, we are going to be suffering some severe shortages and massive, massive hikes in prices, as I've already experienced.
So, had this not happened originally, it might have been a situation where Putin may have thought twice.
Obviously, putting aside any of the other considerations like you've talked about in your destabilizing Ukraine video, it is interesting to consider, if we hadn't been so dependent, would he have felt confident enough to be able to pull this off?
And it's worth pointing out that fracking is just one aspect of our energy policy.
And specifically, the debate around fracking seems to centre around fracking on land.
You can also frack under the sea, although it's more expensive, of course.
But yeah, our general refusal to equip ourselves with fossil fuel reserves looks rather short-sighted right now.
I would absolutely agree.
And it is, of course, all in the push for the Net Zero initiative, which, many people have noticed, seemed to, before all this happened, be starting to slowly rise prices even before Russia was getting so involved in Ukraine.
And Nigel Farage has decided to come out and say we need a referendum on the net zero madness.
So he's launched a new campaign with Richard Tice called Power Not Poverty, basically just making the point that we should probably be building up our own power reserves and becoming more energy independent.
Mm-hmm.
So that we're not impoverishing our own citizens for the sake of punishing Russia or anybody else.
Or just safeguarding ourselves for the future in case any other situations like this happen again.
And he's put a big thing in the Daily Mail talking about it, the Sunday Mail.
I'll read some of the article and then read a little bit of his letter that he's done as well.
So Britain means business, which I think was the original name for it, which is now Power Not Poverty.
Will call for the abandonment of the flagship Green policy.
Ex-Brexit leader says that the political class in Westminster has taken the country down a ruinous path.
Something that I'm not exactly going to be disagreeing with.
He established movement with Leave Means Leave co-finder Richard Tice.
This will call for the abandonment of the flagship Green policy, which experts claim could cost £1.3 trillion.
Probably more.
Probably more.
In fact, almost guaranteed more, because if the government says it's going to cost one thing, take that number and triple it.
And remember, that's your money that it'll be using to pay for it.
Mr.
Farage says that the political ass in Westminster has taken the country down a ruinous path by committing to the net zero target without any public debate being held.
Yeah, isn't that curious?
I mean, the government takes a lot of major decisions that affect all of us without ever actually putting it forward to the public.
No, they just seem to talk to a few lushes and a few activist groups and then they decide their policy.
I think lushes is probably an excellent term for these kinds of people.
He writes, Without any debate, our energy bills have been loaded with green subsidies.
Our businesses have been disadvantaged, yet our leaders seem happy to outsource industrial production just as long as they can say it reduces Britain's CO2 emissions.
We will campaign for the 5% VAT on energy bills to be removed.
Green subsidies are shoveled straight into the bank accounts of rich landowners, wealthy investors, and foreign-owned conglomerates who own much of the renewable energy sector.
And mentioning Schellenberger, I've been flicking through a little bit of Apocalypse Never, his book, and he talks a lot about how all of the green initiatives seem to be pushed by large fossil fuel companies.
For instance, the move to natural gases over coal was originally...
Originally opposed mainly by coal companies who knew that if they went onto natural gas, they would be losing out on a massive share of profits that they could be getting from it, which is one of the major problems that you can get with lobbying.
His views have found an echo in the Cabinet with Chancellor Rishi Sunak, expressing his concerns to the Prime Minister about the cost of net zero, which might be one of the only sensible things I've heard about Rishi Sunak in recent years.
Yes, but then Rishi Sunak was grilled on it by Andrew Neil, of all people, right at the start of GB News.
That would make sense.
Andrew Neil was the only person in the entire media establishment who asked Rishi, how much is it going to cost?
And he had no answer because he was just prepared for a media circus where the BBC and ITV and so on would be asking him, so why can't you get to net zero faster then?
Yes, whereas the more practical questions always get left at the wayside when it comes to such things that I would say...
He was completely unprepared to answer that question.
I would say a lot of the climate debate has become very ideological rather than based on facts.
It's a religious argument.
It's not a scientific argument, even if you can argue there's a good scientific case for climate change.
Even despite that, the sort of alarmism, the panic, the desperation to go to net zero, whatever that means, that's a religious drive, I think.
Yes, it's like the old-fashioned doomsayers brought into the 21st century.
In fact, I would say it's exactly that.
The Independent Office for Budget Responsibility has calculated the cost of making buildings carbon neutral at £400 billion, while the bill for vehicles would be £330 billion, because part of the initiative is to make all vehicles carbon neutral as well, as far as I can tell, in addition to the £500 billion needed to clean up power generation And a further £46 billion for industry.
So just sprinkle an extra £46 billion on there.
And this all sounds like money that we're all more than happy to pay and all decided collectively and agreed to pay.
Right?
Right?
No.
No.
Of course not.
That would happen in a democracy, Harry.
No, I'm sorry, I forgot that we're currently living in these...
What would it even be?
I don't know at this point.
The glorious nation of England.
I don't know.
After energy savings across the economy, this would leave a £400 billion bill for the Treasury.
Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, economists had forecast that inflation would peak at 7% per year this year.
Now they fear that even without extra support, the disruption to global supply chains caused by the conflict could push it to 9%.
Or even into double figures, so great.
We're being asked to pay more, and our money is worth less.
Wonderful.
And Faraj, in this, writes himself, if you want to scroll down, because I think his letter is further into this article.
Yes, here it is.
Consider this.
There are vast reserves of shale gas in Lancashire and Yorkshire.
Yet, even with the world in such a fragile state, the government prefers to import natural gas instead.
And of course they also push things like wind farms, which when you actually look into it, take up about 400 times more space than a natural gas factory would, for instance.
Indeed, there are two shipments from Russia docking at Kentport this weekend, yet importing gas in tankers creates substantially more CO2. This is cross-party campaign, and it will have considerable support from businesses.
To truly succeed, though, we need to hear from the public.
We intend to provide people with the means to make their voices heard in this most vital debate.
Be in no doubt this argument matters to every man, woman and child in Britain.
It is not fair that under net zero the elderly will die colder, poorer and sooner, and it is not fair that the young will be burned with higher costs, fewer jobs and less money.
Common sense must be allowed to prevail, which honestly I think is a good start on all of this, It's a strong starting point, to put it towards people, whether this actually will go ahead or not.
Whether we get the referendum, that will take a lot of effort.
It will take a lot of effort, possibly a long time.
The campaign will have some momentum, though, because it is an issue that affects everyone.
Hopefully it will have some effect and also raise a bit more awareness to the fact that these supposedly altruistic and virtuous campaigns often just come at the expense of the general public for the sake of pushing what the elites want, their agendas.
And just as a reference to some of the stuff that they were talking about in there, talking about the fact that there are lots of subsidies put on your electricity bill, let's see a breakdown of your energy bills provided by Ofgem.
I believe, John, you've got some figures up for this if you want to go to the first figure.
So we've got direct costs, and you can see there there's quite a sizable chunk of your electricity bill dedicated purely to environmental and social obligation costs.
That's about a quarter, isn't it?
It is, in fact, a quarter.
If we skip along, 25.48% of your electricity bill each month is going to environmental and social obligation costs, which basically just means it's funding the government's wacky net zero policies.
So, again, a stealth tax.
Yeah, basically.
It's another stealth tax.
Like inflation is a stealth tax, like everything else.
So if our bills do go up to £3,000 a year, then that means you'll be paying £750 a year in stealth tax for net zero.
Yes, it absolutely does.
Which doesn't sound like something that I want to be doing, but I guess I don't get a say in this, do I? And, of course, the typical Lushies, as you would say, have come out to let it be known that they are furious that Nigel Farage wants to give the people the power to determine their own future and their own fate.
I'm glad we have a man of the people to come and tell us how to behave.
Hugh Grant...
Tells Nigel Farage to go F yourself over net zero referendum campaign because Hugh Grant, as we all know, is a friend of the people.
He is a man who knows what it's like to suffer with high bills, massive increases in the cost of living.
He's an environmentally conscious man as well.
Yeah, and if we move along, we can see the struggles that he has to go through on a day-to-day basis on his private jet, his multiple fast Italian supercars, which I'm sure are very carbon neutral, and don't guzzle much gas at all.
But it's, once again...
Very easy to say all of this when you already have enough money to absorb the costs, isn't it?
And we've got other controversy from Climate Nutters.
We've got an article from The National talking about the announcement was met with furious backlash, with many pointing out that the plan may be counter to the goal of weaning the UK off Russian oil and gas, even though it's explicitly, if you read what Farage is saying, to get us off of dependency.
On Russian oil and gas by having our own and we can be independent on.
One person wrote, the curious thing about Nigel Farage is even when something has nothing to do with Brexit, because you've got to throw that old chestnut in there, his campaigns always seem to tally with Russia's interests.
Here I have to stop you there and point out the National's front cover, which I believe was today.
Oh yeah.
You got that in here?
I've not got that in there, no.
There's a big picture of a British nuclear submarine saying, we have to scrap Trident.
Because nuclear deterrence don't work.
Oh, that one!
I have seen that one, yes.
That's from this paper.
Oh my god, what absolute nutters.
See, there's never been a nuclear war, so we obviously just don't need nuclear deterrence.
Right, and then they have the cheat to accuse Farage of having his interests tally with Russia's interests.
Oh my god, yeah, John, get that up for us.
There we go.
Lafs in Russian.
SNP chief.
Trident must go.
Oh my goodness gracious me.
What on earth?
And they go on, here in mists of war, where Russia's only Trump card is its oil, Farage launches a campaign to step up our consumption of oil.
And if we have no nukes, and they have lots of nukes, what do you think that says for whether we have to bow to Russia's interests or not?
And I love the way they just swap the word production of oil to consumption of oil.
Yeah, very, very sneaky.
But, thankfully, there are people with large influences, along with Nigel Farage, coming out and starting to speak some common sense.
In fact, like people like Michael Schellenberger, some of the premier advocates for environmentalism.
Elon Musk, in the past, has been very, very focused on electricity, renewable energy.
CEO of Tesla, makes electric cars.
Yep.
Even he has come out and said, hate to say it, but we do need to increase oil and gas output immediately.
Extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures.
Move along.
And he said, obviously, this would negatively affect Tesla, but sustainable energy solutions simply cannot react instantaneously to make up for Russian oil and gas imports.
Excellent points.
And then he also said, move along again, North Korea.
Oh, yeah.
Musk once again proving that he would make a much better leader for most of the Western countries than our current Western leaders.
At least in terms when it comes to the fact that he seems to actually understand what it is that he's talking about on a practical level.
He may not like it, but we know that these renewable energies cannot adjust themselves in the same way that the pre-existing infrastructure that we've already got can if we were to become more independent with our own energy.
Absolutely.
And that's about all I've got to that.
If you are in support of Nigel Farage and his referendum, as I am, hopefully we can make some inroads with all of that.
So I want to talk about Ukraine, but I want to do something a little different with this segment.
There's so much news, so many stories pouring out of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, that it seems almost wrong to cover them as news, since it would omit so much that's not covered.
And actually, I think this issue is so important to many of us that I want to hear what you, the viewers, think about it.
I want to know what you think of Russia's invasion and the events leading up to it over the past 10 years.
I want to know what you think we should do or shouldn't do, what you think will happen or won't happen.
So I'm going to lay out what I think about the conflict so far, and I'll probably be wrong on multiple points, and perhaps this discussion will age terribly in six months' time.
But I think we need to start the discussion here.
Let's get into it.
So if anything, I think there's an excess of Ukraine stories, a flood of shocking stories and really shocking footage which undermines our ability to think rationally about the facts of the conflict.
The fact is there's a war on.
Conventional wars kill lots of people and at some point the war will end.
I think the questions we should be asking are how should the war end and what can we do to ensure we get the good ending?
What do you think?
Alright, well, I'm just going to throw out another preface which I always say with a lot of this stuff to do with Ukraine, I am no expert on these matters and do not have particularly strong opinions one way or the other primarily because of the fact that my attitude towards the whole thing is that of the little Englander of, I don't want this to get me kicked out of my house because I can no longer afford to pay the rent or my energy bills.
And I don't want this to escalate to a full-out war where I'm going to get drafted to go elsewhere.
So as far as I can tell, the war's end, as far as I can see it, doesn't really matter that much to me.
Obviously, barring the suffering that people on the ground in Ukraine are experiencing, which I obviously sympathise with, but I don't really know how it should end.
I can't really give much of an informed opinion on that.
As long as it...
And I don't want to put forward a strong opinion, because I might worry about risking making myself look a bit of a tit, to be perfectly honest, as some people have, who have come out with very strong opinions on things that they're not very well informed on.
But I just think to myself, I don't want to get dragged into this war.
I want what's best for everybody.
But the fact of the matter is, I don't really know what that is.
Yeah, and I respect that.
And I think it's also worth realising that lots of, like us, you, me, and many people who are watching have had absolutely no agency when it comes to the history and destabilisation of Ukraine and so on.
And so, because we have had no agency and we also have no responsibility morally.
Yeah.
I don't have anything to do with Russia.
The people that I do know that are from the Eastern European countries are all lovely people.
Some of them are very pro-Putin.
Some of them are less pro-Putin.
So it's just very interesting.
That's the closest connection that I have.
And I've not really spoken to them since this whole thing, so I'd be very interested to find out what their feelings are on the situation right now.
So, above all, I think to really address this matter, we need to think about the long term.
All of the public conversation so far is fixated on the short term.
This is a great way, in my opinion, to generate endless bloody crises with no hope of long term peaceful solution.
Before we can address the questions properly, we need to identify what the likely scenarios are for the end of the war.
Plenty of people in the build-up to war in Ukraine thought that Ukrainians would be steamrolled by Russia's military.
I certainly thought that.
But this campaign has revealed so many flaws in the Russian military that it deserves an essay all of its own.
It's now abundantly clear that Russia will not bring this fight to a swift conclusion.
It will take weeks or months for them to grind out a victory, and that's if the war goes their way.
As far as I can see, there are several potential outcomes for the war.
Either there is a negotiated peace or a Russian victory or a Ukrainian victory.
Alternatively, the war may escalate and directly involve NATO and potentially the use of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons.
This last option is clearly the bad ending.
Yes, if there was definitely one ending I didn't want to have happen, it's that one.
More than anything, as well as being drawn into the conflict directly and having to go out on my boots and fight myself, I don't want nuclear war.
No.
I don't think anybody wants nuclear war.
Nuclear war is a bad idea.
But it is interesting what you're bringing up there with the fact that we all kind of expected that if something like this was going to happen, it would be done in like a weekend.
They would just steamroll the whole place, the whole place would be taken over, and it would almost be...
I think we have strange expectations nowadays that a war like this would be clean.
In a sense.
Obviously, as clean as a war can be where you have to suffer casualties.
Well, I think that's partly because of the media coverage of Britain, the US, and NATO's wars, where we have obviously, our media has tried to portray them as clean.
Yes.
But it's definitely not the sort of thing that's happened.
It's strange looking at, with Callum, some of the images that have been coming...
Obviously there's so much misinformation going around that I covered last week talking about a lot of the propaganda stories, the fog of war coming from there where you can never tell what's truly being accurately reported or not and what's just being put out for the morale of the people on the ground and just being misinterpreted by Western media.
But there are those photos of the small little Scooby-Doo van full of Russian soldiers driving in that makes you think...
These guys aren't as well as equipped as I was expecting.
As we were led to believe.
Yeah, and there were also reports of just tanks breaking down at the side of the road.
A lot of really old equipment.
People were expecting that by now Russia would have so much more advanced equipment to do this whole thing with.
And it doesn't seem that they do.
Yeah, but part of the reason for that is, of course, NATO aid.
And although it's the fashion of the day to criticise NATO for an anemic response, we should be in no doubt that NATO's aid to the Ukraine has been lethally effective.
Without the huge arsenal of anti-tank and anti-air weaponry donated by the Western world, to say nothing of military advisement missions like the UK's Operation Orbital, which trained 22,000 Ukrainian soldiers in the Western way of war, And the wealth of military intelligence from satellites and intel specialists being poured into the Ukrainian high command.
The list goes on.
Without all of this, it is quite likely that Ukraine would have fallen within the first week.
Russia's aircraft would have operated with impunity over Ukrainian airspace.
Its armored vehicles would have made successful incursions across the Ukrainian countryside, cutting off major cities.
And the Kadyrovtsy brigade sent to take out Zelensky may even have succeeded.
So this should be cause for celebration, right?
We got involved, we supported our ally, and rather than them being abandoned to a hostile power, they've conducted a spirited and effective defense.
But if you've been following the footage closely, you will notice that an awful lot of Russian conscripts have been blown to pieces by the weapons and expertise we've given the Ukrainians.
That's what they're there for.
You know, it's not just pictures of smoking vehicles.
Like, hundreds and hundreds of Russians have been killed by these weapons that we're giving.
And I have to ask myself sometimes, if the end result of this conflict is that Russia does take Ukraine, what have we achieved other than acting as merchants of death and destruction and multiplying the death toll on both sides by a factor of 10?
I can't really say much to disagree with the points that you've put forward there.
Once again, I'm not particularly well informed on it.
I know.
It's a tricky one.
And I'm sure people will be getting mad in the chat and saying, look, Ukraine has a right to defend itself.
It's a sovereign nation.
The people want self-determination, all of this.
And yes, I fully sympathise with all of those points.
But I'm looking at this from a Western perspective and I'm thinking...
Are we, like, we all think we're doing the right thing, the best thing.
Are we simply extending this?
Yeah.
Artificially past the natural point it would come to.
If we look at this slightly more long-term, not just the day-to-day of, oh, look, a Russian tank was blown up with a British anti-tank weapon.
Isn't that great, plucky little Ukraine?
If we look a bit more long-term than that, are we just causing an enormous disaster and getting thousands of people killed?
Well, you could also make the argument that in choosing to push these people forwards into this invasion in the first place, that ultimately all of the responsibility lies at Russia's door for taking the invasion in the first place.
And there is also reports, I don't know how accurate these are, that many of the people who were positioned on the border of Ukraine were not expecting these instructions to come in, that, OK, you need to go across the border, we're taking it, lads.
Certainly.
And the Russian military, I think...
Well, obviously the Russian high command, but also the Russian military at all levels bears a huge amount of responsibility for their, like, criminally incompetent display.
I mean, they are the ones who seemingly are sending these people in with massively under-equipped...
But we also have to remember that it's not just a greater Russian body count that supplying all of these weapons gives.
If the end result is to be a Russian victory, then what we are doing is ensuring a very large Ukrainian body count, since they prolong the conflict, the shelling, the bombardments, and so on and so forth.
Yes.
The refugee crisis and so on.
Of the footage that I have seen, it's not been very pleasant to see.
No.
Otherwise, very nice European cities in Ukraine being shelled and seeing the fear that people are going through as they're just out on their balcony or something.
And then all of the windows behind them get absolutely just demolished and blown out from a shell hitting the building.
Right.
So clearly...
This applies a moral argument whereby if we've added all of this weaponry then we now need to make sure that Ukraine doesn't lose because otherwise we would have just made the whole situation worse.
Would that not be the sunk cost fallacy in action though?
Yes, it would be.
So you see there are no easy answers but I'm just trying to lay out the unpopular positions here because I think they really need to be considered.
Yeah.
It's very, very difficult whilst, to use the word again, the fog of war is engulfing everything and everybody related to it.
It's very difficult to be able to pick out the morality of any individual action because it's going to have so many knock-on effects down the line that will inevitably, because at the end of the day there are people on the ground fighting on both sides, it will inevitably lead to death.
Yeah, absolutely.
Which is...
Horrible.
I think it's also worth saying, the invasion of Ukraine has come as such a shock to the West that many have immediately just declared Putin a madman.
It's tempting, but Putin is not mad.
He may not have the veneer of statesmanlike cunning that he maintained until this particular operation devolved into a fiasco, but he is still viewing geopolitics through a rational, realpolitik perspective.
The idea that he is a lunatic beyond the reach of reason is misinformed.
And that's not to say Putin's a great guy or anything like that.
It's to say that there is a rational calculus by which Putin operates.
He just has a very different perspective on the world to our leaders.
I'll agree with that entirely.
I mean, one of the...
probably one of the better commenters I've seen talking about this, at least in terms of putting forward the...
part of the Russian side of it has been Konstantin Kysin from Trigonometry, who...
I think he's Russian.
He's either Russian or Ukrainian.
Whichever one.
So he has a bit more of a perspective on the attitudes and mentalities of the people talking about over there.
And once again, people are saying, oh, Putin's a madman.
Most people in Russia don't support Ukraine.
I have to massively disagree with that, given once again the people that I do know who are from that area have been very, very pro-Putin in the background.
Obviously not going to say without...
Yeah, I mean, I've known a fair amount of Russian people, and there is a split.
There are some people who are definitely pro, and there are some people who are definitely very anti.
It's curious how that manifests in diaspora communities as well.
But Konstantin has basically just been saying on a few Twitter threads that...
That underestimating Putin as a madman is not the way to go, and in fact it's putting a very Western perspective on things, because we're looking at things through a very Western perspective on what war is, on what land is, on what historical conflicts are, where we're trying to put things aside.
What nations are as well.
Yes, whereas Putin is looking at things in a very Russian sense, which, not being a Russian, I can't really speak to, but it's But let's try and explore that perspective a bit more.
So I think in a real sense, you could say that Vladimir Putin has no option but to take Ukraine at this point.
With the amount of resource and influence that Russia has already lost in this invasion, he needs concrete gains.
Otherwise, his regime will probably be eaten alive by the Russian nationalists that constitute his primary power base.
If NATO arms shipments and sanctions make the difference between him winning or losing the war, I think it's likely that he will escalate, and a country with 40,000 tonnes of chemical weapons and 6,400 nuclear missiles should be dealt with very carefully, and not through virtue signalling on Twitter.
No, just claiming that he's a madman means that you're underestimating him.
And as a result, I don't think that Putin can accept a status quo ante bellum, which means everyone goes back to the pre-war borders and then pretends like nothing happened.
I don't think he can do that.
On a conflict of this scale brought into European shores for the first time in who knows how long...
That's absolutely not going to happen.
So what concessions does he want then?
And we should be aware of this, by the way.
He has reiterated three demands several times, and he will probably compromise on them if the war continues to go badly.
So those demands are the recognition of the Crimea and the independent separatist republics in Donetsk and Luhansk, the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine, and the assured neutrality of Ukraine.
So, recognition, demilitarization, and neutrality.
These are likely the minimum gains that Russia will accept for a peace without escalation, unless there is a black swan event, I expect.
Potentially.
So, then look at how Ukraine would respond to that.
Well, Ukraine is unlikely to accept demilitarization, I'm just saying.
Yeah, probably not.
Right.
They can't exactly trust Russia at this point, so they won't accept that unless their armed forces are decisively destroyed in this conflict, which would mean tens or hundreds of thousands of soldiers killed.
And that's what I was alluding to when I was referring to NATO aid.
Ukraine does have a large minority of genuine, ultra-nationalists, SS-badge-toting neo-Nazis.
Something which is almost taboo to mention these days, although the BBC were more than happy to discuss it as recently as 2018-2019.
This minority is unlikely to accept territorial concessions to Russia unless they have no choice.
They're not going to accept recognition of the Crimea or Donetsk or Donetsk.
Neutrality is a whole other question.
Even if an agreement was signed on paper, the West will undoubtedly find many ways to undermine the neutrality of Ukraine through economic aid and so forth.
This is something that America has been a master at for many years.
So are we simply hoping that a combination of devastating economic sanctions and lethal military aid will bring down Putin's regime before he can reach for the nuclear button?
That may be what happens, but it could turn out to be a catastrophically dangerous fantasy.
Yeah.
Sorry, there's not that much I can add to some of this.
No, that's quite alright.
So as it is, I think that the main motive behind Western aid on our side is to make politicians and followers of the mainstream media feel good about themselves.
I really think that's what it's come to.
The average British citizen isn't seeing the dismembered corpses of Russian and Ukrainian conscripts littering the outskirts of Kiev.
They just see a few knocked out armoured vehicles and think, hooray for the end law.
I suppose a lot of people aren't, but there is still access, much more easy than it would have been back in the day, to these sorts of footage that, for instance, that you've seen over the weekend, where you see the actual physical toll that this has taken on people who have been...
You know, dismembered and blown apart by shells and other such things.
It's not pleasant to look at.
So I think if people are going out to find the reality of the situation on the ground, they're going to find something much more grisly than they're being shown in the mainstream.
But obviously the mainstream does have an outsized reach.
Yes, and you have to look quite hard, I think, to really get a picture of it as well.
It's also difficult with some of the stuff to tell whether it's real or fake.
Finally, I want to talk a bit about the home front as far as it relates to this.
So on the home front, there are concerning developments.
While nobody is arguing that the Russian oligarchs deserve the egregious wealth they've gathered through generally exploitation and cronyism through the collapse of the Soviet Empire, few people seem to realize that Ukraine has even bigger problems with oligarchs than Russia.
Judging by the Pandora papers, Ukraine is the most corrupt country in the developed world when it comes to oligarchs.
President Zelensky's long media and political career appears to have been bankrolled by the Ukrainian Cypriot Israeli oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, who is one third of the triumvirate that owns Privat Group, the largest and most influential monopoly in Ukraine, with thousands of holdings across the world.
So these oligarchs are not being punished for corruption or ill-dealing, but for dissidents.
Their relationship with the Russian regime is what marks them out for punishment, since the Western establishment stands against the Russians.
This has allowed the UK to seize nearly $300 million in assets, I think, at the last count.
Sadiq Khan advocated for confiscating their London properties to the tune of nearly £400 million.
The fact that foreign investors have been able to speculate on the British housing market, by the way, driving up prices to ludicrous levels, is a discussion in and of itself.
But it's not just Russians.
Ukrainians, Chinese, Arabian billionaires, many foreign investors are deeply involved in the London property scene.
Nothing has been done about these, of course, until they, too, become political dissidents.
With these seizures, I fear we are moving towards a world where property rights are only absolute for those who tow the party line.
Yeah, I feel that a lot of the seizures and talk of that sort of thing is a bit severe, a bit quick to...
I don't know.
It's a little bit of a tough move to make, and I don't think we should be doing that sort of thing.
It feels very gangster-ish.
Yeah, I've seen some people talk about potentially...
I forget which one it was.
It was like a Tory or Labour MP talking about how we need to just throw out any Russian-born people...
I think it was in a comment on one of the previous podcasts, actually, they were talking about how we need to just deport all of the Russian, any Russian citizens who are currently living in the UK. And I really dislike that kind of brand of collective guilt.
I found it amazing how, within five days, everyone had gone from not caring about Russians at all to a full-on state of Russophobia in this country.
Yeah, I think it's a very, very bad thing to negatively demonise every individual on the basis of whatever collective group that they may be part of.
The speed with which that happened, I found, even having followed propaganda and mass psychosis and so on, I found that quite frightening, quite disturbing.
Not particularly surprising given the climate we currently live in, though, sadly, socially speaking.
Yeah.
So, what will happen in Ukraine?
What should happen and what should we do about it?
Let us know what you think in the comments.
Alright, well, it's time to move away from Russia and get into something that I'm a little bit more comfortable.
Let's go to a real dystopian society.
Yeah, something I'm more comfortable speaking about.
Well, not comfortable in the classic sense, but have a bit more knowledge on and can put my opinion forward a bit more strongly.
I would say, which is that Scotland is looking to simplify gender change, and that's self-ID, gender identity, that they're talking about.
So whether you consider yourself a man or a woman, and whether people legally have to uphold those feelings that you have about yourself...
It's going to be much simpler.
So they've revealed a controversial new plan, and they've published controversial plans to simplify the process of changing gender identity.
The Holyrood Bill contains proposals...
I don't know, is it Holyrood, is that...?
The Scottish Parliament building.
Ah, the Scottish Parliament building, okay.
So they've named this bill after their building.
Contains proposals to make it easier and quicker for people to change their legally recognised gender and to reduce the minimum age for change from 18 to 16.
Which is fantastic, because I know that at 16 years old I was absolutely certain about every decision that I made.
Certainly to do with alcohol.
Certainly to do with alcohol.
And would really love to still be dealing with the consequences of every big decision I made at the age of 16.
Physically, of course, because obviously the counter-argument that people can provide to this is that people are expected to know what career they want to take at the age of 16 and therefore have to plan their educational moves from that point onwards.
But you can change courses.
You can change your direction of your life that you want to go on a career or educational basis.
You cannot reverse the effects of years of hormonal treatment and you certainly cannot grow back a penis.
Supporters of the changes have welcomed the move as very important but opponents have labelled it appallingly regressive.
Currently, trans people need to apply to a UK gender recognition panel to obtain a gender recognition certificate.
That sounds just so silly to me.
You've got a license for that gender there, sir.
Or madam.
It basically allows them to change their birth certificate.
And applicants must have lived in their acquired gender for at least two years and have a formal diagnosis of gender dysphoria, the discomfort felt by someone as a result of the difference between their biological sex and what they regard as their gender identity.
And this is why when people say that transgender people are mentally ill, according to this definition, it's a statement of fact.
On a perfectly legal and medical basis, it is absolutely true.
And in fact, the formal diagnosis of gender dysphoria, the fact that it is a mental illness, which is, I believe, included in professional textbooks and big books of mental illnesses in America and the UK, Oh, sorry.
Oh yeah, plot twist from John.
It's a lie.
There is no gender on birth certificate, only sex.
Well, that doesn't matter in our new postmodern world, John.
Sorry to break it to you.
But yeah, that's the only reason that it's classified as a mental illness, that they get it covered on insurance.
Right.
Right.
In America, and also in the UK, because of course the NHS is national insurance for everybody, but you still have to pay if you want cosmetic surgery.
You certainly can't...
Well, I'm sure there are probably examples that you can throw at me, but you shouldn't be able to, for instance, get breast implants on my tax money...
So if all of a sudden it's not a disorder anymore, you shouldn't be able to get a cosmetic sex change or gender change on my taxpayer money either.
The gender recognition reform bill would remove the need for such a diagnosis to allow people to make their application after three months of living their acquired gender.
Three months.
Three months and no diagnosis.
And to be honest, a lot of the doctors that you speak to regarding this, from what I've read, are not great.
They're not exactly thorough in the way that they...
They just officially subvert sex on all official documents by calling it gender, whilst changing sex on documents.
Yeah, John's got a good point here, which is that the differences between the terms gender and sex and the sort of moulding of the two is subtle.
A little form of linguistic subversion.
Yeah, that's a quick summary of that.
Gender was basically invented by a sexologist called John Money.
Check out one of my old videos on the left's problem with paedophilia.
Absolutely horrible, reprehensible guy.
We should not be using that word or his pseudoscience to describe these issues.
Whereas biological sex is what has always been used and it's reliable and sensible.
Yes, but to get back to the thing, so it's not about...
It's not just the social stuff that's regarding the gender identity, it's also the surgical stuff as well.
The fact that after only three months with no medical diagnosis, if you just dress up in a dress for three months, you get access to the hormone treatments and the surgeries once you've been through the hormone treatments is a pretty serious change that will affect a lot of people and it needs a high barrier of entry For the people who will inevitably detransition.
And this is especially important when we're talking about people who are not even 18 years old yet.
Yeah, and it's worth having a conversation here about whether it's best to have a false positive or a false negative in this.
And I would argue overwhelmingly that...
Well, depending on how you define that, it is far better to have fewer people transitioning and fewer people experiencing trans regret than it is to have more people transitioning and fewer people supposedly regretting not transitioning sooner.
Yes, because the regret after you've already gone through the surgery is not just...
Like, if you or I were to think back to a time when we were 16, made a stupid decision when you're out drinking and go, oh, that's a bit embarrassing.
This is something that carries long-term, in fact, lifelong side effects and issues going forward forever, until you're dead.
And this is the thing, right?
If it took longer, if you couldn't make the decision until you came of age, you could still make the decision later in life.
Okay, you could argue that the hormone therapy wouldn't have as much of an effect, but that's all you're losing if you ultimately do choose to transition.
But think of what you're losing if you fully transition from the age of 16 and then choose to detransition.
Right, you are now sterilized.
You've completely screwed up your biology.
You cannot undo that decision.
It's incredible.
It's something that you can't walk back.
Certainly.
So their new application will be submitted to the Registrar of Scotland, following which they would undertake a three-month period of reflection, reflection, that's it, reflection, before a certificate is issued.
They would be required to take an oath stating that they will live in their required gender permanently, and any false declaration would be considered a criminal offence.
And I find this So stupid.
So basically they just have to make a promise.
I swear that I won't go back on this.
But how is that promise falsifiable?
If they detransition later, would they be held legally accountable for lying?
How would you prove that they were lying or they just didn't know the decision they were making at the time?
Especially a 16-year-old.
And if you don't hold them accountable, would you hold somebody else accountable for pushing them into that lifestyle choice or tricking them or convincing them into thinking that they had these problems?
So this whole thing is just a complete legal fog where you've no idea...
How any of it will go moving forward is all very subjective, and when you're talking about laws, you kind of need some objective criteria for them to be able to be applied in situations like this.
Scotland's Social Justice Secretary, because of course Scotland has a Social Justice Secretary, Shona Robinson said, Trans men and women are among the most stigmatised in our society, and many find the current system for obtaining gender recognition certificate to be intrusive, medicalised, and bureaucratic.
Many things are intrusive, medicalised and bureaucratic these days.
This is one of the few places where I would absolutely defend those claims and say, good, that's where it should be.
You need it to be medicalised because the end result of transitioning is surgery, massive, major, life-changing surgery, and the bureaucracy, as I've said, needs to be there so that people have enough time to think it through properly because you need a high barrier to entry for this sort of stuff.
I just hate the way...
And Scotland, having a particularly low quality of education in its politicians is notorious for this.
But their statements are just incredibly cookie-cutter.
Completely unimaginative.
Like, trans men and women are among the most stigmatised in our society.
You could probably find that in Google Engrams.
And once you type that in, you'll find that the incidence of that set phrase will just go...
Since 2018.
Yeah.
Yes, and I would say I would like to see the figures on that, and I would like to see whether it's qualitative or quantitative data.
It doesn't matter, Harry.
It's a religious statement of belief.
I'm sorry, I just expect people to back up certain claims with evidence, so this is wrong of me, I suppose.
This is a statement of belief, and then they're saying, based on our ideological belief, therefore...
Alright, I'll start burning books as we speak then.
Helen Joyce, Abigail Schreier, in the fire with you.
There you go.
This bill does not introduce any new rights for trans people.
It's about simplifying and improving the process for a trans person to gain legal recognition, which has been a right for 18 years.
But it's not adding rights.
but it is removing important barriers that are necessary.
Welcoming the introduction of the new bill, the Scottish Trans Equality Network, LGBT Youth Scotland, and Stonewall Scotland, and the LGBT Health and Wellbeing said in a joint statement, because of course there are like 50 different organisations, they all think the same thing.
It's just differences in titles.
These are very important reforms.
The current requirements stigmatize trans people by linking legal recognition of who they are to a psychiatric report and deny them their right to privacy over personal choices they have made about medical treatments.
Well, if it's being paid for with taxpayer money...
It's not as private a decision anymore, is it?
And because they cannot currently apply until two years after they have been permanently living in their transition sex, trans people are currently at risk of discrimination or harassment whenever they need to use their birth certificate to prove their identity.
And I swear that this situation that they are describing does not happen as often as they say it does, and is never as traumatic as people are saying I have an example where it does happen, very recently, and it is much more traumatic than most people claim, which is transgender Ukrainian citizens trying to leave the country.
Ah, yes!
Because biological males are not allowed to leave the country, they have to pick up a gun and fight.
All of a sudden, when you find when it comes to life or death, all of the ideology, all of the religious further gets dropped, and it's like, sorry, you've got the muscles of a man.
Yeah, also birth certificate doesn't have your current photo on it, so it's not ID. Just as I was saying, John has proven me right, nobody's having to present a birth certificate.
It happens occasionally.
Well, not very often, and certainly nowhere near as often as these ideologues would have you believe.
And, of course, what has this led to?
It's led to people predicting a surge in gender change surgery, which definitely will not have any ramifications or bad effects 10 years or 15 years down the line.
Not the way they've got that photo there.
It implies that Nicola Sturgeon hands a Yusuf in front of the queue.
I wouldn't be shocked.
There could be a tenfold increase in the number of people applying to change their gender in Scotland after controversial legislation abolished the need for medical diagnosis.
They mentioned Shona Robinson again.
she admitted the number of applications for gender recognition certificate in Scotland was expected to surge from around 30 to between 250 and 300 per year.
So these individually are not huge numbers, but if you're looking at them proportionally, that's a massive increase, an almost 1,000% increase in people, and who knows how that will go further.
But feminist campaign group Fair Play for Women claimed there could actually be a hundredfold rise under the legislation's plans to make Scotland the first part of the UK to allow people to self-identify their legal gender.
Amid concerns that predatory men could exploit the new laws to access female-only areas, the group warned the bill allows birth sex to be hidden.
Ms.
Robinson insisted that a tenfold increase was a small number in the context of the Scottish population and insisted the bill has no direct effect on single-sex spaces such as women's toilets and changing rooms.
Now, I've mentioned already...
That when you're putting your personal medical decisions on the taxpayers' front, it's no longer as private a decision as it could have been made.
But this is where I'm going to take the opposite stance in responding to this.
Because when you're talking about the people in context of the population, yeah, it's not very many.
But when you're talking about the lives of individual people, because that's who these people are, they are individual people...
They're no longer a statistic, and these effects will have massive ramifications for their lives going forward.
So it's a very nuanced and complex issue that they're trying to just turn into slogans.
She urged people not to conflate the issue of violence against women with transgender rights.
An accompanying fact sheet issued by the Scottish government argued trans people can and have been using facilities that match their gender for years, and they will continue to do so.
And that's not been controversial at all, has it, Scotland?
There's been no issues with that, nothing in Loudoun County, nothing like Fallon Fox beating the ever-loving crap out of biologically female UFC fighters, for instance.
The plans have triggered the fiercest internal opposition within the SNP that Ms.
Ms. Sturgeon has faced since becoming the First Minister more than seven years ago, with around 10 MSPs wanting a free vote.
Kate Forbes, the Finance Secretary, is understood to be among those who have deep misgivings.
However, Ms. Sturgeon's spokesman said that those in the Cabinet are bound by collective responsibility.
Exactly what...
I mean, no responsibility.
Yeah, exactly what I would expect a socialist to say.
And to bring this point on about detransitioning and other such things, you might want to be interested in checking out Blair White, who is a trans woman who talks a lot about these issues because they are very important.
She's probably the only trans YouTuber that I'm aware of that puts a spotlight on these things.
And if you just scroll down...
You can see the title of this.
Detransitions of TikTok, the other side of the coin.
Because even on a platform like TikTok, people detransitioning is suddenly becoming more prevalent.
They're becoming more forward-facing as more and more people come out as having detransition.
And if you want to check the video, go for it.
But just be aware.
Some of the stuff that they talk about in there is not nice, because these stories of people who were pushed into this or sort of got caught up in the social contagion of this, and basically, I think the term is trans-trender, they really, really regret their decisions.
I'll just put it like that.
And they are not getting any support from the people who supposedly were there to support them in the first place.
This is the thing.
There's a kind of a cameraman's fallacy going on here where all of the mainstream will show you is, oh, look at this person.
She transitioned.
Now she's so happy and that sort of thing.
Oh, this person, he transitioned.
Now he's so happy and all of that.
So you think, oh, well, isn't that a great thing?
And then the other side of the aisle, you see these people who are the false positives, the people who transitioned and are now trying to detransition and their lives have been irrevocably damaged by the whole process.
creating two camps on this issue because one side here is only the trans joy is real side and the other side is like sees the trans regret side of it and uh and they actually live in alternate realities simply because of where the camera is pointed yeah i would say i'm sure there are examples people like blair white who transition responsibly and then make it very well known all of the difficulties and issues that come with transitioning shit
She has said plenty of times that if she had been given a choice between transition or take this pill that makes your gender dysphoria go away, she's like, well, I obviously would have taken the pill because it wouldn't have required all of this effort to go through with it.
Yeah.
don't have that pill currently.
And sadly, because of the trans activists, not the trans people, the trans activists, any sort of inroads when it comes to looking into other potential ways of treating people with this dysphoria are being blocked and stigmatized as evil, as transphobic and other such buzzwords. any sort of inroads when it comes to looking into
And somebody put a big thread about this on Twitter, Malcolm Clark, who I believe is a journalist, talking about, well, if you're going to remove any and all qualifier other than you live as the other gender for three months, you're going to end up having to legally recognize...
People like this person, I will not gender them in any sense, just in case I get in trouble with YouTube, but a six-foot-two mechanic who identifies as a six-year-old girl.
Now, as an individual, this person has every right to consider themselves a six-year-old girl, but do we want legal services to recognise this person legally as a six-year-old girl?
I wouldn't say so.
I don't think he does have the right to view himself as a six-year-old girl, to be honest.
I think he has responsibilities as an adult six-volt-two mechanic that he needs to live up to, but that's my bigoted opinion.
That is a very bigoted and disgusting opinion you've got there, John.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
Make sure to give 20 Hail Marys after this is done.
And just as another reminder as well, here's another update that the NHS is going to start giving out cervical screenings for trans men and non-minory people who have cervixes.
So just another reminder that no matter what the prevailing vision is, no matter what your ideology is, biology and concrete reality will always win out.
And on that note, let's go to the video comments.
So, I've been telling every new guy that has moved in from the blue states over to the red states is that do not count on the local population to carry anything for you.
We're doing what we can, but we are under assault by the coastal colonizers as well as the local population who has gotten so used to it being so good here that they end up becoming more susceptible to new ideas.
You need to help reinforce these people and to help stave off the woke garbage that's basically pouring in.
So, get out there and vote.
Very interesting.
Government comes from the Latin verb gubernare, sometimes rendered in more modern or non-classical Latin as gubernare.
Okay?
Gubernare means to control.
And then the second part of the word ment comes from the Latin noun mens mentis, which means mind.
When you put them together, the word government literally means to control the mind.
It is mind control.
To believe in it, someone has to be under mind control.
Because they have to believe in the erroneous concept of authority backed by violence.
I think that is a false etymology, personally, but I'll have to look into it.
Yeah, I couldn't speak of that.
If that is true, that's very interesting.
But while I am no fan of statists and statism, I am not a full anarcho-capitalist libertarian type, just yet.
Just yet, you'll need to talk to Hugo about that.
And I would say there are definitely elements wherein a state is needed to ground legal processes.
And I think meant is more like the action of doing or the state of doing, so like abandonment, establishment and so on, that sort of thing, rather than mind.
A problem I have with this whole war on misinformation, besides the freedom of speech implications, is the fact that you can often use the misinformation to gain an understanding of what the interests and personality of those spreading it are, as well as the fact that it will often tangentially bring up subjects that as well as the fact that it will often tangentially bring up subjects that the powers that be probably don't Yeah.
Yeah, very interesting.
With a fresh pop-up protest in my town of Waterloo this weekend, I got into a blazing row with a friend who started a conversation off with me with the words, talking of racists.
Did you see the protests around this weekend?
Well, that was like a red rag to a bull.
I gave him more than just a piece of my mind.
There are precisely two things that annoy me more than anything else.
One is mindlessly throwing around epithets, and the other is, and this is typically a North American thing, using the word slavery while showing the worst understanding of what that was.
Operative word was.
Honestly, Alex Ogle is so calm, so rational on our channel, I can almost not imagine you getting angry, but I imagine it must be a scientist.
Yeah, I can't imagine you really giving it to those guys, so it must have been somewhat spectacular.
Well, I bet you've got the intellectual firepower to do so, judging by the comments you put on our channel, so that would have been quite interesting to see.
Yes, yes, it definitely would have been.
Good on you for that.
Tony D and Little Joan with another legend of Ottawa.
This time it's the story of Justin, a man who is haunted by the sound of truck horns.
Night and day, the honking continues.
He hears them in his sleep.
He hears them at work.
He hears them when he puts on blackface.
The honking just never seems to stop.
Legend has it the only known cure is to stop being a communist.
Ha ha ha!
Thank you.
It's honestly really fun and wholesome to see collaborations.
I also wonder if the whole Ghost Stories was just a long build-up to this show.
Just for that one, well, it seems like we've got another one here.
Okay.
Tony D and Little Joan with another book about the pines.
This time it's the Piney's Book Eight, Roadkill Piney.
For those of you who might remember, I did a video comment about Indian Curse Road.
That's Route 55 in South Jersey near Deptford.
And it is considered cursed because it was built back in the 80s through an Indian burial mound.
So the Pineys have to go there and deal with the curse and find out the secret.
It's a story 10,000 years in the making.
Sounds interesting.
Yeah, sounds good.
I always like the, oh, it's built on an Indian burial ground, but I do think that it's not anywhere outside of Scooby-Doo and the Poltergeist film.
It's nowhere near as prevalent in media as you would expect it to be.
Yeah, but it does speak to something that actually Bridget Kipling mentions in some of his short stories and poems, which is the idea of going to a foreign land and there being foreign gods there that are kind of real.
Yes.
It's quite spooky when he relates that in India, for example.
Yeah, that's always really interesting sort of ground to go over.
I think it's actually a precursor to Lovecraftian horror, in a way.
What, the folk tales and whatnot?
The idea of this sort of...
So Lovecraftian horror is this idea of sort of vast and cosmic horror, like lying beneath everything that you do, whereas there's a similar intonation to that when it comes to encountering foreign gods in foreign countries, I think, the way Kipling describes it.
Yeah, no, I can see that comparison.
Oh, we've got a snake...
So I've had this video planned for...
basically since the Alec Baldwin stuff came out.
Oh, really?
But I couldn't video edit back then.
So, enjoy.
Excuse me, sir.
I'd like you to sign my petition.
Yeah.
Get out of my way, you hippie freak.
By the way, this is Tyrion.
He's our ball python.
Well, that's just lovely.
Yeah, don't step on him, though, is all I can say.
Yeah, yeah, that's true.
Do not step on the snake.
I like that he's called Tyrion as well.
That just brings to mind the immense regret I'm sure so many people have at having named their beautiful baby daughter Khaleesi Daenerys and all variations of such when they...
Then she turned out to be a mass murderer.
Who could have seen it coming?
Then she turned out to be Dragon Hitler.
Whoops.
Well, I'll just call her Dany from now on.
There you go.
So, on to the written comments.
S.H. Silver says Biden's idea of resolving the Russian oil shortage is to instead get it from Iran and Venezuela, Russia's allies that are even worse dictatorships.
Trudeau will probably follow suit.
Drilling oil domestically is so scary to the Western NIMBY, not the My Backyard Liberals, that they'd rather outsource to dictatorial assholes, even if it's much more expensive.
He goes to be all that effort not to swear, I think.
Yeah, but then he's just throwing it in there.
Even if it's much more expensive and gives these countries disproportionate power over us.
Our countries are held so captive by the green lobby that I wonder if they aren't really secretly in league with foreign energy companies to cripple the West.
Well...
Well, interestingly enough, it does seem that Russia, and I imagine a number of other companies, might have a lot to do with the funding.
I imagine it.
I said companies, I meant countries.
China must be winning big out of our reluctance to spend any energy.
I wouldn't be surprised if they're absolutely funneling money into all of this, because it really does put them and countries like Russia at a massive advantage.
Theodore Pinnock, stuff like Coke, CG Project Red, and MasterCard refusing to operate or sell their products in Russia are not going to affect the Russian state and force Putin to back down.
I'm sure Putin has...
And Cyberpunk 2077 by now.
He's going to be devastated.
And they're not designed to.
They're meant to persecute the Russian people in the hope that they blame Putin and therefore lead to a popular uprising that forces Putin to back down, if not overthrow him completely.
However, it is eminently possible, even likely, they will do the even more obvious and straightforward thing and blame those companies.
Yeah, I think the counterpoint to that is the middle class in Russia.
However large or small they are, are more likely to blame this on Putin, whereas the lower classes, so to speak, in Russia are more likely to blame it on the decadent West.
That's true, but I think the majority of people are going to go straight to the source for who they should blame.
It wasn't Putin who specifically said, I can no longer play my video games or use my Mastercard.
The thing is, as we reported with Callum last week, it's the fact that some of the bans are so petty that it just looks like Russophobia rather than sanctions against Putin.
Into a particular, like, award show or something.
It's ridiculous.
I mean, what's that going to do to stop Putin?
Putin was there like, oh, I was really hoping my little kitten was going to get number one.
That's not going to stop it.
Oh, I'll pull out now, guys.
I'm sorry for the whole fiasco.
Next they're going to ban Russian dolls and the song Russian by Caliban Palace and so on.
Yeah, there's a band I like called Rush Kaja.
I'm not going to be able to access them on Spotify much longer.
Straight to Gulag.
Straight to Gulag.
Student of history, why are we beating around the bush with wind slash solar and looking more into nuclear for green energy if we really, really wanted green?
Well, from what I looked into before this, there were some parts of the net zero proposals that were actively investigating nuclear energy in the UK. And from what I'm aware, nuclear power plants, eight of them across the country, already supply us with 20% of the energy that we use, which just goes to show how amazing they are.
If only eight...
Can provide 20%, but without having looked further into that, I don't know if it was just a case of, you know, like, oh, we're looking into it, but we're only putting that in there to satisfy a few people and we're just mainly focusing on these other things.
Yeah.
The thing is that nuclear is not part of the green religion, even if it's green technology.
You won't find people like Greta Thunberg cheerleading for nuclear.
In fact, you'll find her protesting.
And the reason for that, I would say, is sociological.
It comes about because the environmental movement comes about through the anti-nuclear movement, the campaign for nuclear disarmament and so on, which was all funded by Soviet money during the Cold War.
So why were they anti-nuclear?
I wonder.
And so because of that, I think there's this strong association between nuclear weapons and nuclear power.
That's a very, very astute of you.
Paul Newber says we need an immediate crash program to build nuclear power plants.
Yeah, but they are expensive.
We are having a couple built...
There was talk of one being built in Bristol Channel with Chinese money, wasn't there?
I mean, if they're going to put so much money into my...
If they're going to charge me 25% extra for my electricity bills, they can take that money and do something...
That's true, but it seems to me like in order to build nuclear power plants in this country, the country which, by the way, invented civilian nuclear power in the West, it seems like the only people we can go to to do this are foreigners, the French, the Americans, the Russians, countries which actually have civilian nuclear power companies.
But if we wanted to actually fund it, I've got a few ideas for where we can cut government funding.
I've got a big, long list, I'll tell you that.
Adrian of the Fountain says, I hate climate alarmism because the discussion of it with normies is infuriating, and hence why I just...
I don't know.
I filled the work van three weeks ago, and it cost me €90, when it used to cost me, at most, €70.
Just keep this in mind when you see the price of tradesmen going up.
This is not even to mention the price of materials also skyrocketing as well.
Great point, because...
Like, the knock-on effects from something as basic as fuel in the economy are massive.
Yeah, because that will affect all transport costs everywhere.
Yeah, all the business costs, everything.
Yeah, and everything else would go up as a result as well.
Student of history.
Well, S, this is a bummer.
Bit of a shame.
Someone stopped the Keystone XL pipeline and stopped fracking.
Otherwise, this would be manageable.
Yes, it would be, if only people hadn't voted the way that they did.
Freewill2112 says during World War II, the government froze prices for necessities to stop speculation.
Yeah, and created an enormous black market, but they did freeze the prices.
Yes.
"If we have to have our fuel prices driven up by the war in Ukraine, why can't the government help us out with a temporary price freeze?
Our idiots Thunberg drones have helped to drive up prices by their indulgent mass hysteria, influencing the lemmings who rule us." The only difficulty that I can see with that, sadly, because I do not want to support the massive prices going up, is that if they don't, we might get shortages of people trying to stockpile for when they feel like the freeze might be taken off.
That's what I would say to that as much as it sucks...
I don't know if that is the best solution, even though the price cap's going up, which sucks anyway, to be honest.
Colquhoun Sloan says if they're worried about the young paying more than they should, they should have thought about that before they bought into the climate activists.
Yeah, the 90-year-old clinical psychologists blocking roads around London.
Yeah.
Let's move on to Ukraine feels versus facts.
Let's see if people are absolutely horrified by my take on that segment or not.
Let's have a look.
Student of History says, I'm sorry, but hearing people talk about essentially revoking the rights of the Russians in their countries is very unsettling.
I start getting the World War II Japanese internment camp vibes.
Fun fact, it wasn't good.
Yeah, pretty much.
M1 Ping says, I bet Ukraine wishes they hadn't given up their nuclear deterrence.
Yep.
The Elvis says, as regards to the Russian-Ukraine conflict, basically, I completely distrust the MSM, so although I do try to do my own research and remain objective, my default position is to believe the opposite of what the MSMs say.
Probably a safe position.
A lot of people are like that.
It's better than the alternative, which is to believe everything they say, but it's not ideal.
I think, take the objective facts, if there are any, that you can take from it, and just throw aside any opinions.
Mm-hmm.
Alright, now let's get into the criticism.
Barron from Warhook says, Look John, you may criticise the West for supplying Ukraine with guns to blow up Russian tanks, but this is nothing new.
All throughout the Cold War, whenever one of the major powers got into a proxy war, such as the Russians supporting the Viet Cong, Chinese supporting Pol Pot, and the US supporting Afghanistan, the major powers always support the people fighting the other powers in order to undermine their Cold War opponent.
This is nothing new.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
That does happen.
That's true.
I think it's just the scale of destructive power of Western weapons.
This sort of aid is now far more impactful, I think, than it was then.
Paul Neubauer says, even if the Russians eventually win, it's important that the cost be high and that it be shown.
People are willing to sacrifice themselves to resist.
There is the point that peace at any cost is the path to surrender.
Yeah, that's true.
Christopher Fisher says, We need to pay close attention to the very simple fact that the main source of our news for the Ukraine issue are the collection of corporate-controlled media that still says Rittenhouse should be imprisoned for shooting, quote, harmless protesters.
As far as the nation of Ukraine goes, I feel deeply for the civilians who are caught up in this mess, but that nation has been a proxy for NATO expansion against treaties and a criminal enterprise for many US and European financial interests.
Also true.
We have no real business being militarily involved yet.
There are very critical issues happening in Europe and North America that are being ignored over this, and the likelihood of a positive outcome for those citizens lessens every day, while the same multinationals that have regularly profited from our misery gain even more wealth and use this as an excuse for even more domestic control for national security reasons.
Yeah, it's just not a good situation, is it really, fundamentally?
Callum says, to try and answer John's question on the Ukrainian, I can't help but look at the Ukrainian conflict without thinking about the Soviet-Finnish Winter War and seeing many parallels between those two conflicts, not only just in the nature of the fighting going on, but also the global interventions by nations at the time and now going on as well.
Will Ukraine remain independent?
Will Russia collapse after this?
That's a much bigger question and don't want to waste comment section time for others.
Right now, it could go either way, depending on how things play out.
Learning from history is the first steps of wisdom.
That's true.
I think there are a few differences between this and that, but it is a better analogy, at least, than World War II, which is the eye roller that people usually come up with.
Learning from history is good and useful, but I think that sometimes people can try too hard to make present situations fit into past historical paradigms when they don't.
Yeah, no, I'll have to think about that one.
Alex Ogle says, Constantine Kissin's performance on Question Time was a tour de force and should be viewed by all.
I've seen a clip of it where he's got his head in his hands as a woman says that because there's been no nuclear war, we should get rid of all of our nuclear warheads.
Something that the National agrees with, and I think the woman in fact was an SNP MP, proving once again that the devolving of parliaments was a mistake.
Yes, it seems the biggest inequality between Scotland and England is the attainment gap of their politicians.
Angel Brain says, The nations in that area, like Poland, Latvia, etc., will now have to at first demonstrate a willingness to defend themselves and in doing so carve out a national determination.
What has happened over and over again is that those nations have had to either fold into the post-World War II European project or fold to the Russian counterpoint to consolidated European hegemony.
the US and China need to stay out of this it is not their fight and is not the fight of the UK either this is something the Slavic states need to sort out amongst themselves only they understand their nations and it is arrogance of the highest order that we can tell them their minds better than they can all we can do now is offer support and refuge without becoming fully entangled in the conflict I think that's a very balanced that's very very reasonable I And you put my...
You put only one...
That second half about the Slavic states sorting it out amongst themselves, you put that into words much better than I have, certainly.
I would say a counterpoint to that is that the process of European nations working out their own national self-determination has happened in Europe over many centuries through many, many bloody wars.
So, yes, which is a bit sad.
But as you've said, our involvement in such is just extending and increasing the body count.
I agree with that.
So after the Treaty of Versailles, for example, there were loads of wars in Eastern Europe.
Poland went to war.
Poland seized that territory called Galicia.
And I think there was a war with the Ukrainians as well as part of the larger Russian civil war and so on.
It was just fights all around.
You could say that's the failure of the collapse of the Russian Empire, of the Treaty of Versailles and so on.
But it's messy.
It is messy.
To create this self-determination by warfare.
Chris Wolfe says, I think Putin's efforts will drive the final nail into the coffin of globalism.
A global government cannot respond to threats without quartering a foreign force or conscripting the local populace.
Either the locals fight a battle for some foreign ruler, or they rely upon foreign troops to defend them from enemies of the empire.
When war happens, New York and London can't fight on Russia's doorstep.
They will rely on the locals.
Countries see now that our defensive alliance just means that those countries get to be our defence against Russia.
There is that, but the thing is, the whole idea of the global government is that its weapons are economic, like the sanctions that have been placed on Russia.
It's about isolating and cutting people off from sources of funding and money so they can't buy things, they can't trade and so on.
That's their weapon, and it remains to be seen how effective a weapon that is.
Yuri Polo says Ukrainians will not surrender.
Even if Russia manages to occupy any city, the ground will burn underneath their feet.
Ukraine still remembers words like Siberia, Solovky, Gulag, Holodomor.
Finally, we have a chance to answer Russia.
Paul Neubauer says Putin has thrown away the concept of mutually assured destruction and embraced the concept of nuclear-backed conquest.
If this is allowed, it will continue.
Except that Taiwan, Poland and the Baltics will be the next targets.
Biden's Afghan disaster opened the door and his promotion of a transgender admiral finally convinced Putin he can act.
This is something that we and many others have been saying for a while, which is the East is going to look over to the West and go, well, what fight are they going to put up?
Exactly.
Putin must be shown the West is willing to risk all to oppose him, or concede to the vassalage of Europe to Imperial Russia, concede Southeast Asia to the Middle Kingdom.
I think the prospect of the vassalage of Europe to Imperial Russia is extraordinarily unlikely.
First of all, Russia's military is ten years out of date, and by the time, even if they were able to make the reforms to make it effective, It would be another 10 years out of date because we would have moved on 10 years, is my analysis on that.
But I do agree with the principle that you put in there.
On to the Scotland trans comments.
Ivan Wesenberg says...
It's a Danish name.
I'm not sure.
Oh, very interesting.
Is hiring a trans child a violation of labour law?
I wouldn't be able to tell you, but I tell you what, if things in Ukraine do escalate and we have to get drafted over there, perhaps in Scotland, I don't know what the draft laws are like when it comes to drafting trans people.
So maybe that's an easy out for those of you who get a three-month window...
to prepare, shall we say.
Jimbo G, how does Scotland's proposed law work with the concept of gender fluidity?
How can you promise to stay something that's ever-changing?
It's a bit oppressive, really, isn't it?
It's a good question.
It's almost like these people don't really know what they're talking about.
And shouldn't be qualified to promote any law whatsoever.
Who knows?
It's kind of like your CV gets chucked in the bin if you're the wrong identity group, is it?
Perhaps they just want the boot of oppression on their neck, because they're kinky like that.
Angel Brain says, I am fully behind this drop in the age of consent and transitioning, with a couple of provisos.
Also drop the age one can buy cigarettes, booze, and get tattooed.
If kids can make lifelong choices about their body, at least allow them to get some wicked ink, and the chance to get hammered on WKD Blue...
I mean, they're already doing that, just not legally.
Why not?
If we're gonna get rid of the responsibilities adults have to guide the young, I want to see a young trans person smashed out of their head, smoking three ciggies at once, driving a car recklessly, with a spiderweb tattooed on their face.
Go all in, or go home.
So he's saying he wants to go to Russia.
Yes!
In fact, I think he's more than happy for us to be all Russian vassals, actually.
We can be dancing in the forests.
I see where your loyalties lie, Angel Brain.
To be fair, that brings up a funny example.
When I was in high school, my friend had a younger sister who was going out with one of the rough boys, shall we say, who was 13 years old and was like a cage fighter.
I'm pretty sure he was a gypsy.
And because of the fact that he was in with a certain crowd, he got a tattoo of her name on his arm at 13 years old.
When he showed her, she broke up with him.
And I'm sure he never once regretted that decision.
And on that note, that's all the time we've got for today.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
Tune in tomorrow, 1 o'clock English time, for the next episode of the podcast.
Podcast of the Lotus Eaters.
I have been Harry, joined by John.
Thank you for tuning in.
Have a great day.
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