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July 11, 2022 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:31:27

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #433

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	- Good afternoon, folks.
	Welcome to the Podcast of the Lotus Eaters for Monday, the 11th of July.
	I'm Karl, and I am joined by our brand new full-time presenter, Conor Tomlinson.
	Conor.
	Good afternoon, Karl.
	Thank you for having me, everyone.
	Glad to have you here.
	So, I suppose we better just get cracking because it's kind of insufferable what we're going to talk about today.
	Not good news, because we're going to talk about the Conservative Party.
	So there is one advantage to the Conservative Party having their leadership elections, and that's a general rightward shift in the Overton window.
	But not very far, a very tepid rightward shift.
	So the Conservatives might eventually end up about as right-wing as Mao.
	I suppose you could describe it a little bit more of a fidget, judging by they're forced to conform to their base, but then obviously as soon as they get in they're going to pull a Boris and sing by the platitudes but not actually govern that way.
	Oh god, is that an accurate prediction?
	You don't even need to check that.
	That's going to be the way things are.
	And so, this is all bad, but we're going to go through it because it's really insufferable.
	But before we do, if you want to support us, you can go to lowtocees.com and check out our latest book club, which is Douglas Murray's War on the West.
	Now, this is Douglas Murray's latest book in his cataloguing of the woke war against the West and its values and virtues.
	And this is important because this actually ties into what the conservatives are trying to appeal to in their leadership contest.
	It's actually very interesting watching them learning what virtue signaling is from the right.
	And it's like, OK, good, good start.
	So let's begin, right?
	Sky, I've got an article here just because this is all changing fairly rapidly.
	But this was from yesterday.
	And it's quite interesting because we'll go through who's in, but I think it's interesting who's out.
	Someone like Dominic Raab didn't put himself forward.
	He was too busy doing his usual rowing competitions, I suppose.
	Yeah, but I didn't mind Rob.
	In 2013, Rob was actually standing up to feminism on a moral level.
	I was actually hoping on the original 2019 leadership race he would get in there, because eventually he turned out was one of the only people that said, oh, I won't kneel for BLM, I'll kneel for my wife, my god, my country, and that's about it.
	And I was very impressed.
	And ever since, he's been...
	I suppose a bit tepid.
	He actually caved to the media narratives of, oh, you were on a sun lounger while Afghanistan was happening, and ever since then he's folded.
	Yeah, I know.
	It's really sad, but he was one of the people I actually thought actually had a thought, an original thought of his own about this.
	And a few years ago, it was like 2014, something like that, he actually got in a lot of trouble for standing up against the main narrative about feminism, which I found remarkable.
	Because people forget, but if you go back eight years now, you actually weren't allowed to criticize feminism in public.
	And so Dominic Rao going, no, actually, I think this is sexist.
	I'm wrong.
	Got him a lot of flack, and he stood by it anyway.
	So Dominic Robb was the one person I actually quite liked.
	Michael Gove has also ruled himself out.
	Oh no!
	Anyway!
	Well, good for Gove, really.
	Come on, no one was going to choose you.
	No one was going to choose you.
	No one who went for your education system, including me, was going to choose you.
	Yeah, so let's, before we begin in fact, so everyone's expecting this to get really, really dirty.
	Now, how dirty do you think this is going to get?
	Because if you go to the next one, it's independent, like, look, this is, we're going to get all these dirty dossiers on people, the knives are going to come out, the dirtiest campaign in history, anything's going to be like that?
	I think their definition of dirty is going to be very eschewed from what the base and we think is dirty.
	So I think a lot of the smud slinging is going to be either progressive credentials or three years behind where the conversation has moved.
	Because if you notice, their degree of dirty is looking at Penny Mordant being incapable of defining what is a woman, which I'm sure we'll cover.
	We will.
	But...
	Things like the vaccine procurement, which obviously we're not going to question because we'll be on YouTube, but things like that won't be raised, whereas the GB News constituency viewing base of the Conservative Party very much have those concerns.
	So I think the dirtiest it's going to get is someone like Nadine Dorries coming out and saying about Jeremy Hunt's lockdown credentials, but I think the Conservative Party are going to think it's far...
	They're going to have a different range of dirty compared to what a lot of people actually want to talk about.
	Well, they seem to think it's going to get personal, as in it could be scandal-ridden and But hopefully not.
	Hopefully they actually realise that it makes more sense to start virtue signalling to the right, which would be good for Conservatives, because that would be the beginning of the shift of the Overton window rightwards rather than leftwards, which is a very rare and unprecedented situation.
	So Guido Fawkes have done a quick summary of who is being backed by however many MPs.
	And as you can see...
	Rishi Sunak is tearing ahead.
	Penny Mordent.
	Rishi's on about 35 backers.
	Penny Mordent's on 20.
	Tujind Hat is on 15.
	I can't pronounce him.
	He's half French.
	I'm not pronouncing him.
	He's on 15.
	Truss is on about 15.
	Zahawi's on about 12.
	Hunt's on about 12.
	Bain Nock's on about 12.
	Patel's on about 10 or 12.
	Something like that.
	Braveman's on 10.
	Javid's on 10.
	Shaps is on 7.
	So, I mean, not exactly an enviable group of people.
	Some of them, I think, are okay, or are generally okay, but...
	I'm blackpilled on the lot of them.
	Yeah.
	I'm being very charitable.
	I think they're okay.
	But anyway, so let's begin with Rishi the Globalist.
	Did you see his wonderful campaign?
	I did.
	Someone pointed out, I think it might have even been Tom Harwood who said something insightful for once, that his logo looks like a dishwasher tablet brand.
	And it just reminds me of Sean Bailey's Meryl campaign where everyone was comparing it to a Cilic Bang advert.
	Yes, this is the most boring, bland...
	Corporate.
	Corporate, exactly.
	It's like a LinkedIn graphic.
	Yes, it's just totally devoid of anything that might be considered moral content.
	But then, there's no great surprise there.
	So a quick round-up of Rishi Sunak.
	He's the guy who pumped, what was it, £450 billion into the economy?
	Yes, the money printing statistics for the Bank of England were $150 billion in November 2020 alone to pay for the second round of furlough scheme under the second lockdown.
	Oh God, if it isn't the consequences of our own actions when we're facing 11% inflation.
	Yeah, it was apparently £7 for a slab of butter at the supermarket recently and everyone was really complaining about it.
	It's like, well, this is what you get, frankly.
	But he does appear to be some sort of globalist, as David Afton points out.
	Apparently, he was at a virtual event, a Bloomberg virtual event, led by the World Economic Forum, and called for strong, coordinated global leadership.
	He called for the widespread adoption of mandatory climate-related financial disclosures, which are already present in the UK. So he's just a WEF globalist.
	Totally unsurprising, giving both his background in the financial sector and also, as Majid Noir has also pointed out when he did Joe Rogan, he's the spearhead for the G7's adoption of digital currencies.
	Yes, we'll go to that one next, in fact.
	He wants the centralized digital currency to be run by the government, which is really against the point of the digital currency.
	But what do I know about any of this?
	But yes, he's a very concerning person.
	And of course, he's more than happy to start genuflecting to the left.
	I mean, do you remember the Diversity Britain coin?
	Unfortunately.
	That is the most unelectable picture I've ever seen.
	Like, hi, I'm a conservative.
	I've created a coin that Jeremy Corbyn would have made.
	And I'm going to have my stupid, fat, grinning face next to it.
	I mean, it's just the worst.
	It's like a nightmarish Mona Lisa where the eyes follow you around the room.
	Yeah, it is.
	But the optics on this, to call yourself a conservative, you may as well say that I'm a leftist.
	But also, if you notice on the coin itself, it doesn't have any British iconography beyond the word Britain.
	Instead, it's almost shaped like a globe with an interwoven net around it, so it almost looks like you're wrapping the planet in your ideology.
	Isn't that very interesting?
	Anyway, so, moving on.
	He wasn't sure what a woman was, because no one was.
	And Julia Hartley Brewer was like, it's an adult human female, isn't it?
	And Rishi refused to actually say anything, but just agreed with the Prime Minister at the time, Boris, because he is a yes-man.
	He's a lackey.
	He's just trying to move up in the party.
	Although, in his recent, like, bid, he has actually, if you can go to the next one, John, he's put out a women's rights, I was going to say manifesto, but, I mean, they call it literally a manifesto for women's rights, but, like, The idea of anyone in the Conservative Party having a manifesto implies prior thought and any amount of cogitation on any subject.
	I love whenever Net Zero is raised as a specter.
	Everyone goes, oh, it was in the Conservative's 10-point 2019 manifesto, so everyone voted for it.
	It's, number one, as if the general public read beyond get Brexit over and done with so I don't have to hear about it again.
	And number two, it wasn't exactly outlined very well.
	As I told you off air, I spoke to Chris Skidmore, the man who signed Net Zero into law.
	At the Conservative Party conference last year, he sat on a panel with me.
	Someone asked, oh, what did this entail?
	And he said, I just changed the number to 2050.
	And I looked at him utterly aghast that you didn't budget something that's going to terraform our entire economy.
	Fantastic.
	Thanks for making me pay for that for the rest of my life.
	Yeah, but if I just change this number, then job done, right?
	More years equals more good.
	Yeah, exactly.
	It's so stupid, right?
	So, yeah, in this, there's a link that comes with this.
	So, in his manifesto for women's rights, Sinek will also oppose biological males being allowed to compete against women in sport.
	I mean, thank God for small mercies, right?
	This is a very, very slight rightward shift.
	We're going to speak about something that the left is going to start screeching about.
	It's not even a rightward shift.
	It's a shift to three years ago.
	Yeah.
	I mean, again, I was speaking to my grandparents who were very politically involved and they're some of the turned-on boomers, basically.
	Oh, yeah.
	And they said it's pretty staggering that in our lifetimes we see the main barrier to entry for the opposition party, which should be ahead in the polls right now just for sheer incompetence, not because they're very good, is that they are incapable of defining a primary school level biological category.
	Yes.
	And the fact that we've got here with a mainstream, the leading Conservative candidate, we're lost.
	I can define woman.
	I mean, I couldn't six months ago, but now that this has become an important political talking point...
	After consulting my wife.
	Probably not even, actually.
	No.
	It's probably just that it appears to be the people on...
	Again, I say the right, but we'll say the right for now...
	The only definition that anyone has, really, is adult human, female, or nothing.
	And so, okay, well, if that's something that is actually going to be persuasive, something rather than nothing is what they're all going to pin their colors to.
	But, okay, big deal.
	You don't know anything about any of this.
	You're just saying it because you know everyone is expecting you to say these things.
	And you know this, right?
	Because of the way he follows this up, right?
	Rishi...
	Sorry, on the previous one.
	This is someone close to Rishi who's speaking on his behalf.
	Rishi was brought up in a family of strong and successful women, and under his leadership, women's rights will be better protected.
	Oh, thank fuck he's a feminist.
	Sorry, I shouldn't swear.
	Thank God he's a feminist.
	Well, the fact that he's brought up almost entirely by strong women does explain why he's about 5'4".
	Is he?
	Have you not seen photos of him in the lineup?
	No, no, no, I haven't.
	Yeah, it looks like when you're getting consistent Wi-Fi and the connection drops out.
	But he wants to ensure that women and girls enjoy the same freedom most males take for granted in feeling safe from assault and abuse.
	So literally 2015 feminist rhetoric.
	I'd love for him to see the actual assault statistics.
	Oh yeah.
	Considering the proportion is committed more on men.
	I know it's men by men, but if you're a man who's not planning to commit assault that day, then you're the target.
	Yes.
	And so it's all feminist rhetoric.
	Just feminist rhetoric from five years ago.
	So it's like, okay, great.
	He backs female-only sports competitions.
	They're brilliant.
	So there was this clip going around of Rishi that I think is actually rather unfair.
	It's a clip from, like, 2005 or something, or 2001, where he's very young, and he's talking about, you know, like, how he...
	It's just a social life, really.
	And in it, he's like, well, you know, I've got friends who are aristocrats who are upper-class and working-class.
	Well, actually, I don't have working-class friends.
	It's like, yeah, okay, that, you know, that he's a posh kid, you know, raised in, you know, an upper-class environment.
	No one complained that Boris doesn't have any working-class friends.
	No, it is something that usually hit Reece Mogon, but I don't, I mean, if you are transparent in your political career and you're willing to have fairly open dialogues and, what's the word?
	Surgeries, MP surgeries.
	Yeah.
	If you're happy to have an invitation to everyone to talk to you, having your personal life, having your upbringing, which isn't your fault, where you're swimming in the waters of class privilege, if you've got the humility to bring yourself down to earth, connect with people with real issues, fantastic.
	Has he done that?
	Doesn't really seem like it.
	No, of course not.
	But this is being used as a stick beating by the left.
	But it's just like...
	it's not really interesting or fair to be honest no what's interesting is that rishi seems to have been part of a plot to backstab boris which is what many people seem to think because if you go and look up the domain registrar of his website it turns out it was registered about eight months ago right okay I saw one of the redirecting ones without the number in it was last December as well.
	Yeah.
	So it's obviously been on the cards.
	I mean, so his video, his very highly produced video that came out, I saw Laura Doddsworth, author of State of Fear, say, and here's one I made earlier, as if it's some kind of Blue Peter production.
	It's incredible, yeah.
	Sorry, I forgot to get the video for this.
	But yeah, he had a very, very highly polished video that we'll go through at some point because it's just very interesting what he's appealing to in it.
	But it's very, very well made, and clearly wasn't done yesterday.
	So he seems to have been planning this for a long time.
	What I found interesting, though, is one of my favourite GB News commentators is Mark Dolan.
	Yes, he's a friend.
	Yeah, he's a very smart chap.
	So a very rare dropping of the ball by him by endorsing Rishi Sunak.
	I've had a go at him for this before.
	Yes, he's actually said that Rishi Sunak, again, is anti-woke and he's the only one with enough credentials.
	And I did have a pop and said he is the one that's printed us into this situation.
	Yeah.
	And he is insistent on everyone around him is screaming into the ether, please lower taxes.
	And he just goes, so right, yeah, national insurance rise, got it.
	Diversity built Britain coin, Mark.
	Don't know what to tell you.
	He's not an anti-woke crusader.
	Mark's a lovely guy.
	Oh yeah.
	But for example, when I went on one of his panels, he brought a woman on who was the former Lib Dem spin doctor.
	And the reason she was on the show is because she brought into the green room a series of photos of when she went on holiday with Mark when he was about 16.
	So his family very much know the Liberal Democrat apparatus, even though he's obviously very...
	Well, he's a sort of libertarian.
	He's more socially permissive, but he's anti-woke.
	Right, moving on then.
	Let's go for Grant Shapps.
	This isn't in any particular order.
	Grant Shapps is actually the one in the least position, the lowest position.
	Shock.
	Yeah, I'm going to communicate.
	Okay, what's your plan?
	I had to dig to find out what his plan was.
	I love he says, I can communicate.
	Today he went on and spoke about the transition.
	He said, I don't think we should be talking about this.
	Yes.
	He wants to step aside from these important cultural questions.
	And basically he was just like, oh, well, we need to level up the country.
	I'm an optimist.
	It's very, very stock rhetoric.
	Utilitarian.
	Very utilitarian.
	And, you know, we need to tackle the cost of living crisis.
	Oh, thank God.
	Someone said it.
	Of course we do.
	Of course we do.
	Now, how quickly can you hang Rishi Sunak?
	That's the question.
	If you're going to do that, because he's the one who's responsible for it.
	Is he not?
	He's the architect of our poverty.
	Exactly.
	And he's like, well, I'd like low taxes.
	Yeah, God.
	So would I. Yeah.
	Only someone would have thought of this years ago.
	And you even had that in the Conservative Manifesto, and yet the Conservatives raised taxes.
	So I don't know what to tell you.
	So anyway, okay, good.
	Low tax is good, right?
	Moving on.
	Says he doesn't want to get involved in cultural issues.
	Just let people live their lives.
	You can go to the next one, John.
	He's like, okay, that's all well and good, but then when you have a big burly man in the girls' bathrooms, and the women are like, this can't stand, you're just going to be like, look, just let people live their lives.
	Trams women are women.
	Thanks, Grant.
	Moving on.
	Penny Mordaunt released an embarrassing video.
	Honestly, it struck me as like...
	Plastic patriotism.
	More than that, though.
	It was like, this was the product of a focus group.
	Yes.
	We'll have, you know, diverse people.
	We'll have people, you know, just doing things.
	There's a great bit in this where she talks about the conservative party, the most electorally successful in our history.
	And she plays two clips and she plays the Cameron-Clegg coalition immediately followed by Theresa May.
	If that's your branding, you're getting nowhere, love.
	You could have used Winston Churchill.
	You did for ten seconds there.
	And then this is why I'm saying it's very imitative patriotism.
	It's like the progressive skin suit.
	Because she's even got the wartime BBC voice playing over it.
	She's playing I Vow To Thee, My Country.
	And if it was anyone else and more sincerely felt...
	It would be a very effective strategy, but I just don't believe her.
	No, no one believes her.
	And various people on Twitter who, like, if you go to the next one, this Johnny Peacock, who's featured in the clip, like, as a racer, running a race.
	She's like, can you take me out of that, please?
	Well, no, you don't get that choice.
	But what was really weird is that she included a clip of Oscar Pistorius.
	Like, why?
	Probably pre-eminating her being taken out of the race.
	Like, literally?
	Like, what are you talking about?
	What are you doing?
	Like, this guy's in jail for murder at the moment.
	But he, I mean, I suppose he is a disabled black athlete, so...
	How long till he's on football players' helmets?
	I don't know.
	Anyway, in 2018, she was like, yeah, so trans women are women, which was embarrassing.
	Just literally the progressive line.
	And so now, she just happens to be like, hang on a second, no wait, everyone's like, that's stupid and ridiculous and doesn't make any sense.
	So now I'm a TERF. I am biologically a woman.
	If I have a hysterectomy or a mastectomy, I am still a woman.
	I am legally a woman.
	Some people born male who have been through gender recognition process are also legally female.
	But this is the problem.
	How can you be legally a biological category when you aren't a biological category?
	It's...
	She's trying to serve two constituents.
	Yeah, the verbal conflation that went on with Rachel Levine when they said the first female...
	Sorry, hang on.
	Not female.
	Literally biologically male.
	But that does not mean they're biological women.
	Then don't say legally female.
	They're legally women, maybe.
	But again, what does that mean if it doesn't connect to anything?
	But anyway, she's ridiculous.
	Moving on.
	Tom Tugginhat, ex-military chap who is a Remainer.
	Also went to the Bilderberg Summit last month.
	And wants to rejoin the single market.
	Oh no, sorry, he actually didn't say that.
	Someone else was saying that, and he was like, well...
	But he was a Remainer, an ardent Remainer.
	So moving on.
	Priti Patel has put herself forward as well.
	I'm continually disappointed by Priti Patel because she got up at the Tory party conference and said, we're going to sever the snake of human trafficking.
	It turns out it was a hydra, and you've been utterly unable to slay it.
	I mean, I appreciate her bullying people out of the civil service.
	Yes.
	Again, this is the progressive cudgel.
	They're going to hit her with that.
	They're going to say, oh, she's a bully, and everyone's going to go, yeah, thank God.
	Get them back in the office, they're useless.
	Yeah, exactly.
	That's the one thing I like about her.
	But on her defense, I've not seen her doing any woke genuflecting.
	No.
	So that's good.
	She has been an ardent Brexiteer.
	And the thing is, the problem is, essentially I'm worried that she'll be a continuation of Boris' government.
	If she's chosen.
	Now, I didn't hate Boris.
	I was just continually disappointed by Boris.
	Disappointed by her, generally, unless she's planning...
	If her manifesto campaign pledge was, I'm going to continue bullying the civil service until they all quit, then I'd probably back her fully, to be honest.
	But...
	I don't think she's going to be political dynamite enough to disrupt the party apparatus which has impeded her at every turn already.
	Yeah.
	It's not even that I think her intention isn't correct.
	No, I agree.
	I think her instincts are right.
	It's just that I don't think she's going to be able to do the job.
	Anyway, so moving on, Nadim Zahawi.
	Ugh!
	I hate this man.
	No, tell me why.
	So, as John already covered, he's trying to outlaw homeschooling as former education secretary.
	And then former, as Callum covered before, he's his own press gang arm by owning YouGov.
	And then, of course, vaccination minister who lied to Claire Fox and the rest of us on Twitter about whether or not he's willing to institute vaccine passports.
	I think he's a despicable, duplicitous politician.
	Well, 73% of people disagree.
	But yeah, no, he, again, it's interesting how he's leaning into the culture wars.
	He's like, oh, to reduce taxes, protect kids and raise defense spending.
	And so Pink News were like, oh, we hate this immigrant man.
	This is section 28.
	If we can't propagandise children, you're going to be persecuting us.
	Okay, my opinion is slowly changing.
	Yes, but that's an interesting self-report, isn't it?
	Yes.
	Protect children from perverse nonsense?
	Well, that's going to affect us.
	I'm in this photo and I didn't like it.
	Yes, exactly.
	Well, maybe.
	Maybe.
	But again, I mean, he says, I will continue to focus on letting children be children, protecting them from damaging and inappropriate nonsense, being forced on them by radical activists.
	Okay, well, I like the energy.
	But again, in every other way, I hate the guy, so moving on.
	Let's talk about Suella Braverman.
	I actually don't mind her.
	I... I'm kind of apathetic on her because she hasn't been that strong a presence in the last few years.
	Sure, but she's causing the right people to be very worried.
	She's the Attorney General of England.
	She is...
	She's taken something of a back seat, but whenever she's appeared in public, I've always had actually rather good impressions of the things she's saying.
	Like, she's, you know, Brexiteer, she's very against all this nonsense, and in fact, there's a great quote here.
	She thinks there's a Remainer conspiracy in the civil service.
	Oh, congratulations, you have eyes.
	I don't know if you saw the recent Question Time with Alistair Campbell on it.
	No, I didn't actually.
	He was salivating at the prospect of rejoining the European Union.
	There was another lord who said, when Boris goes, Brexit goes.
	So it's pretty evident that it's seen as a blockade.
	Yeah, and so they're complaining that, oh, she thinks there's a Remainer conspiracy.
	She wants to get rid of woke nonsense.
	You can't accuse her of being racist.
	It's like, okay, good.
	I'm glad you're upset about all of this.
	She did vote for vaccine passports, though.
	God damn it.
	Yep.
	But she does want to leave the ECHR, the European Court of Human Rights, which is currently preventing us from actually stopping the illegal immigrants crossing the channel.
	So there's that.
	The fact that she's come out and just said it is just open.
	I went on France 24 about this, and they accused me and the rest of Britain of being hypocritical on Ukraine, because if you leave the ECHR, you're unwilling to live up to your international commitments.
	One academic British expat over to Paris said, Boris Johnson's doing this to bring back slavery.
	And another academic who was German was saying essentially the same thing, and I just refused to take lessons on international law for a German.
	To bring back slavery!
	I know, it's some sort of fantasy land where Boris is some sort of...
	What, like Napoleon?
	Would be...
	Sorry, again, don't take lectures from Frenchmen either.
	Anyway, she does do a good job putting forward the case from Brexit.
	She's been doing this for years now.
	She did this in 2019 on BBC Question Time.
	And, you know, okay, fair.
	She's against trans pupils or teachers pandering to trans pupils anyway, if you go to the next one, which is fairly good.
	Schools don't have to accommodate this as far as she's concerned, and they shouldn't, so that's good.
	She's generally okay.
	You know, men shouldn't be in women's bathrooms and stuff.
	Anyway, I'm running over on this one a bit.
	Sorry.
	So anyway, next one is Kemi Baynock, who I like, but with caveats again.
	Like, Kemi is one of the smarter conservatives and has actually put a bit of thought into the things that she says and was famously called the Minister for Inequality.
	Which I thought was great.
	Beautiful.
	Absolutely beautiful.
	Yes, that's fantastic.
	If you're going to get the left calling you the Minister for Inequality, then you're clearly doing something right.
	And she wants to focus on limited government, and that would be a nice start.
	Again, though, voted for vaccine passports.
	Yeah.
	Frustrating.
	Yeah, this is why, with caveats.
	Yes.
	You know, but...
	She might be the most amenable to elite capture.
	Yes, I think so.
	In fact, she's well on the way, I would say, actually.
	So essentially, what I think here is interesting, though, she says, the governing Britain today requires a nimble centre-right vision that can achieve things despite entrenched opposition from a cultural establishment that will not accept that the world has moved on from Blairism.
	I think that is interesting because that's a good observation.
	The world has moved on from Blairism.
	And of course, the Guardian is screeching.
	Absolutely screeching.
	Says, right, good.
	She's going to bring the cultural rhetoric to the Tory leadership.
	But basically good.
	Although she does do weird, woke things every now and again.
	Yes.
	Like this.
	Delighted to announce that you can now apply for a gender recognition certificate online.
	Just in time for Pride Month.
	The new service has been carefully developed to meet applicants' needs and remove barriers highlighted by users.
	It's staggering.
	Again, correct me if I'm wrong, didn't she directly debate Kimberley Crenshaw on intersectionality?
	She destroyed Kimberley Crenshaw.
	So shouldn't you be understanding the outgrowth of intersectionality and pride, especially with the racially segregated pride flag, is directly targeting you, all of the people you care about, and so wouldn't you wield that as a weapon against the left rather than sing by their hymn sheet?
	Especially someone who comes very much from the classical liberal mould of limited government, property rights, all of these things that we think are good about the West.
	Recognising that intersectionality is a communist attack on those things seems to be step one.
	So I don't know why she's done this.
	But the point is, as Owen Jones moulds about on Twitter, Is that the Overton window has, at least in some ways, shifted rightwards.
	So that's a good start.
	Maybe we can keep pushing the Conservatives to keep shifting that way.
	But you'll notice that there's one thing that none of them have spoken about, and that's immigration.
	Not one of them have mentioned immigration, and I would say it's probably because the Conservatives gave out over a million visas for foreigners to come and live here last year.
	For some reason, the Conservatives have just become the party of mass immigration, more than Blair could ever have ever imagined pulling through.
	So this, I think, if you're an activist online, feel free to email your local MP, feel free to email any of these candidates, and ask them, why aren't you talking about immigration?
	And please send the Calum and I's video on why it's fueling the housing crisis.
	Exactly.
	Anyway, that's that.
	Fantastic.
	So, on to my segment.
	As you know, the UK have ditched our Prime Minister.
	We also have the Sri Lankan government and the Dutch government being besieged by very valid protests against things like farming, the scrapping of fertilisers.
	So, not to feel left out, the French decided to have their own presidential crisis.
	But to start off with a shill, we have Harry's Libertarians Should Not Trust Big Business.
	It was an article written a little while ago just to explain exactly why companies like Uber, which we'll be covering in this segment, lobby the government to have favorable monopolistic powers.
	So, more than 124,000 documents have been given to The Guardian, and they reveal that Uber have been lobbying various governments around the world, including Germany, the US, the UK, and France, for more preferential treatment.
	They've broken numerous laws, they've exploited bounds of violence between the drivers and local taxi firms for favourable publicity, and they've even gone so far as to suggest staging false flag events for personal gain.
	Suddenly I'm in favour of Sadiq Khan banning them.
	We'll get onto Sadiq Khan's driving policy very shortly.
	So, unfortunately we're relying on The Guardian for this, so everything should be taken as a table of salt.
	But also there's going to be a bunch of other press outlets releasing it all in the Trusted News Initiative.
	Again, be careful.
	The Guardian has led global investigation into the leaked files.
	They're sharing data with media organisations, the Conservatorium of Investigative Journalists, and they'll be poring through all these things.
	Wow.
	So quite a brazen mask-off moment.
	The company's leadership reacted to local business opposition, and it's very telling.
	As Uber launched across India, Kalanick's top executive in Asia urged members to focus on driving down growth even when fires start to burn.
	No, this is a normal part of Uber's business, he said.
	Embrace the chaos.
	It means you're doing something meaningful.
	What the hell are they talking like this for?
	Uber is a taxi service.
	Yes, the problem is when you have parochial on-the-ground taxi services like London's famous black cab firms, you have people who have lived in the area a long time, know the entire place at the back of their hand, Uber can undersell them, especially with their formerly zero-hours contracts, and if they incite the tension between these firms, it makes Uber look a lot more sympathetic when the people protesting them are saying, you're undercutting our livelihoods.
	Man, that is cutthroat.
	It's ingenious.
	It's evil, but it's ingenious.
	So, the decision to send Uber drivers into potentially volatile protests, despite the known risks, was consistent with what one senior former executive told The Guardian was a strategy of weaponising drivers and exploiting violence against them to keep the controversy burning.
	It was a playbook that leaked emails suggest was repeated in Italy, Belgium, Spain, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.
	It sounds very Saul Alinsky rules radical.
	Jesus Christ, who's running Uber?
	We'll get to that.
	Thank God they're running a private business and not a country.
	Oh, wow.
	I'm going to shut up.
	So, Kalanick sent new drivers to a taxicab protest in France, hoping the ensuing violence resulted in sympathy for the growing company.
	I think it's worth it, Kalanick said when addressing how many people were getting injured.
	Violence guarantees success.
	So, if we go on to the USA Today's reporting of the events at the time...
	That is a slogan.
	Violence guarantees success.
	Uber.
	And you can see the protests of peace being ongoing here.
	In 2015 and 2016, French taxi drivers were blocking highways, torching cars, and even taking hostages.
	two Uber executives were arrested and accused of running an illicit business the situation in France is the worst across Europe Uber spokesman Thomas Meister said we are facing a taxi community that is very reluctant to accept any kind of change now something similar also happened in New York there was no violence but New York seized almost 500 cars affiliated with Uber this spring that was in 2016 allegedly picking up fares illegally.
	On Tuesday, the company offered free Uber pool rides to and from City Hall to a protest bill that would cap the number of drivers the company can deploy there.
	So they were monopolizing their service, undercutting other drivers to ensure that they could ferry out AstroTurf protesters to get their legislation passed.
	So, just as a quick side here, a few years ago, I was in New York, and I was getting an Uber around, and I was speaking to my overdrive, just politely, and we ended up getting on to politics somehow, and he gave me this long political spiel about how Uber was actually a really great company to work for, and how he really enjoyed working as it was, and that they were running really well, and I'm starting to wonder whether he was propagandising it.
	Well, I've heard similar things just in terms of GB News have contracts for cars, etc.
	They used to have Addison Lee, then they moved on to Uber.
	And a lot of the Uber drivers, particularly a lot of the Nigerian dads who have picked me up in the early mornings working terrible shifts, they've said, actually, I like the freedom it allows me to provide for my family, I can do the night shifts, I can earn more money, etc.
	Now, part of the problem is in the UK, they recently got workers' rights, minimum wage, paid holiday, and a lot of people may be thinking off the bat, oh, that's good, you've got a baseline standard of living.
	The problem is, of course, then you undercut how many drivers you can employ.
	The drivers weren't asking for that because it's sort of a side hustle, basically, for a lot of drivers.
	I've spoken to lots of Uber drivers about this because I always wondered about, okay, so how much freedom do you actually have?
	It turns out quite a lot.
	There's essentially a freelancing...
	Driver?
	With applying government wage laws, you're basically managerializing the gig economy.
	Yeah.
	Yes.
	So, the reason the protests happened were revenues for French taxi drivers dropped between 30% and 40% in the last two years.
	That would have been since 2015 and 2016.
	An FTI tax union representative told Bloomberg.
	Now, with Business Insiders reporting on this...
	Yeah.
	this was in 2016, and have shut down much of Paris, according to France 24, network I've been on.
	Over 1,200 cars were used to block the streets.
	It sort of smacks the trucker protests.
	It does.
	And it has a similar globalist implication, which we'll get onto shortly.
	According to police, 20 arrests were made, and riot police used tear gas against some of the protesters.
	The protests were described as Black Tuesday.
	So they have their own place in history, because as you'll see on the highways in various tweets in this reporting, there are cars on fire, there are people being beaten.
	One of the best parts, actually, was there was Courtney Love.
	Oh, yeah.
	The woman who drove Kurt Cobain to Sticker.
	Shotgun in his mouth.
	Allegedly.
	Yes, yes, yes, yes.
	She said she had landed and was going to do some sort of gig, and she said, oh, people are running up to our car and beating it with sticks.
	Is this really France?
	I would have been safer in Baghdad.
	I mean, obviously mass immigration has made the two indistinguishable nowadays, but it doesn't time hit you fast.
	I went to Paris a few years ago, you're exactly right.
	Have you seen the urination boxes lining the river there?
	No.
	So mass public urination was such a problem that they created little, almost like newspaper dispenser boxes, bright red, and they lined the river so you could pee facing the river.
	And because of the smell and the unpleasantness, they started planting flowers in the top, so it's just...
	It's almost like we could treat the demand rather than the...
	Yeah.
	Yes.
	Sorry, carry on.
	That's alright, no apology needed.
	The world's descending into hell.
	So, it would appear that Kalanick would be an art utilitarian aimed to use his own employees as agent provocateurs and use the company's infrastructure to facilitate disproportionate representation of projects.
	Sounds like some Machiavellian genius, frankly.
	Well, we would think so.
	However, Kalanick's spokesperson has issued a statement.
	He has declared, Mr.
	Kalanick never suggested that Uber should take advantage of violence at the expense of driver's safety.
	Any accusation that Mr.
	Kalanick directed, engaged in, or was involved in any of these activities is completely false.
	Mr.
	Kalanick is not a supervillain.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	The fact that so many corporate executives have to put out these statements nowadays...
	It's remarkable, isn't it?
	It reminds me a bit of the infrastructure they've got in, weirdly enough, Despicable Me, where you've got to go and apply for a supervillain license.
	All the branding and whatnot.
	Okay, so also included in the leaks are direct correspondence between Kalanick and then-economy minister, now-president, Emmanuel Macron.
	He goes back a fair amount of years.
	He's trying to immunise, I believe it's the next one, John, he's trying to immunise them from sort of economic problems.
	I suppose perhaps he might have been texting the Uber executives because he was ordering his wife a taxi back from her boyfriend's house so he might still be charitable.
	So, leaked files, including text message exchanges between Uber executives and Macron, reveal how the cab-hailing business identified him as a key ally when he was economy minister.
	The file suggests pro-business Macron, who is re-elected France president in April, was close enough to Uber's managers during his two years as the economy minister for them to not think twice about contacting him for possible help when their premises were raided for tax evasion by the authorities.
	Most remarkably, the 37-year-old Rothschild banker...
	There's a connection there.
	So essentially the former socialist government had legislated against Uber with sort of...
	Friendly laws to the local tax firms keep the economy flowing.
	He turned around and said, we want more Silicon Valley investment, so I'll do some backroom deals under the guise of we'll heal the government divide as the transition is going on.
	So, before an initial meeting between Uber and Macron, ministerial aides wrote to the French management asking explicitly for its regulatory expectations.
	Now, this meeting, when it took place on 1 October 2014 at the Finance Ministry, it was described as remarkably warm, friendly and constructive, and Macron wanted to find ways to make France work for Uber so Uber can work for and in France.
	So, public-private partnerships are beginning to open up here, and a lot of the time we wouldn't be opposed to the idea of, for example, tax breaks for emerging industries, but the motivation is incredibly questionable.
	Now, when this eventually culminated after the riots in Uber being investigated for tax evasion, there was a raid on Uber's Paris office in July 2015.
	Government inspectors investigating the suspected tax evasion saw that Uber were frantically trying to kill access to the company's confusers and infrastructure.
	And a text message from McGahn, someone who's an Uber executive, said he had asked Macron to get them to back off.
	Wow.
	Yes.
	Very interesting.
	They had forewarning, and a Gestapo-style burning of all their documents occurred.
	I had no idea Uber was like this.
	Oh, well.
	And I found it remarkable as well, because it seems to me that Uber has the better business model.
	So, you would think that Uber would just naturally succeed?
	Yes, but it's not natural.
	They are being astroturfed.
	I can see.
	If we can go back to the first Guardian article, as you've got it up here, there was a quote from Kalanick.
	When the Vice President, Joe Biden, a supporter of Uber at the time, was late to a meeting with a company at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Kalanick texted a colleague, I've had my people let him know that every minute late he is, is one less minute he will have with me.
	In addition to meeting with Biden at Davos, Uber executives met with Macron, the Irish Prime Minister at the time, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu at the time, and Chancellor George Osborne, the UK's Chancellor, famous for all his Chinese investment, etc.
	A note from the meeting portrayed Osborne as a strong advocate.
	While the Davos sit-down with Osborne was declared, the data reveals that six UK Tory cabinet ministers had meetings with Uber that were not disclosed.
	It is unclear whether or not they abided by the UK's lobbying laws.
	And the UK's lobbying laws are very curious, because when you're a minister, you get issued a parliamentary pass immediately afterwards, and it's valid for a couple of years, but you don't actually have to report how many times you use the pass, but not what for.
	So some ministers are using them up to twice a day to visit parliament long after they've resigned from office.
	So there's a lot of under...
	And this fed into the Owen Paterson scandal, etc.
	People raising questions about who has access to what.
	Who are your elites captured by?
	Yeah.
	So, it's interesting that the World Economic Forum has been brought up here.
	We can return to the op-ed by the Danish Environment Minister, Ida Alken.
	It's pretty infamous nowadays, where she says, Welcome to 2030.
	I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better.
	I'm going to read a quote for you from this, and you can start to see if the threads have pulled together.
	Transportation dropped dramatically in price.
	It made no sense for us to own cars anymore, because we could call a driverless vehicle or a flying car for longer journeys within minutes.
	I think the flying car is a pipe dream, but we started transporting ourselves in a much more...
	I don't...
	I... Is that...
	Right, yeah, yeah, sorry again.
	That's okay.
	We see a slow transition here from the goods to services economy.
	And if there's something that's facilitated that, it's definitely ride-sharing apps like Uber, which, sure, they might be convenient, but with the amount of capital Uber can build up, with the artificial outlawing of combustion engines, with the introduction of EULES zones, etc., they're far better facilitated to adopt electric cars,
	invest in charging infrastructure for themselves, We're good to go.
	Of course they do.
	And actually that they continue to attend the annual Davos Summit.
	So if we go to the BBC article, in 2020, US Donald Trump, teen climate activist and professional useless person Greta Thunberg and Uwe Boss, this was the one after the prior guy who was texting all the time, Dara, foreign name, are among the guests.
	So I have a sneaking feeling.
	That part of this is the lobbyist war on private motor ownership.
	Uber is part of the infrastructure of the Great Reset.
	Exactly.
	That's what you're saying.
	Yes.
	They are the tool for their vision of common ownership of transport.
	So, if we can go to the next one.
	I'm going to plug one of my own things here, but it's just because it was a consolidated roundup of everything for Net Zero Watch.
	Which actually, linking to the prior segment on Conservative Party politicians, some of them, particularly in Suella Braveman's camp, are very interested in anti-net-zero opinions.
	So this could be quite fascinating.
	So the Car-Free Cities campaign have endorsed taking space away from cars to encourage walking and cycling.
	Increasing journey times by increasing traffic will inconvenience people until they choose to walk instead.
	We've seen also the same reasoning for when the highway code was changed last year, where pedestrians and cyclists get a right-of-way over cars.
	And when challenged on this, stop killing cyclists, as if anyone wanted to kill cyclists or could get away with it at least.
	We've all felt it, I'm sure.
	They turned around and said, when asked, is there a practical reason for giving cyclists or pedestrians advantage over cars?
	Is it a reason for safety?
	They said, well, it's good for the environment.
	It's good for the economy.
	Yeah, no, it's not safe at all.
	In fact, it's going to encourage people to step out in front of cars.
	Exactly.
	It's really stupid.
	We see the sort of banality of evil of individual suffering in order to make incremental utilitarian behavioral nudge shifts towards net zero behaviors.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	And then if we look at the next one...
	Now, obviously, we've got the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers looking to strike again, so you're really strapped for cash on public transport options.
	So if you're thinking of driving, and you can actually foot the bill for petrol, which not many people can, because it turns out when Rishi Sunak slashed the fuel duty, he'd got a rise in VAT just before that, so he's technically still taking in the 2p profit per litre.
	So he slashed his own VAT rise?
	Yeah, he undercut the fuel duty rise by inflationary pressures on VAT, which he then engineered.
	But the interesting thing is, if you're planning on driving anywhere, good luck, because ultra-low emission zones, a balmy concept, have been introduced here, and they essentially make you pay a levy for driving an old, non-electric car through a city.
	And I'm just going to go through a list of...
	London has these, doesn't it?
	Would you like to know how many cities have these now?
	Oh god, okay, go on.
	Aberdeen, Bath, Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Derby, Dundee, Edinburgh, Farham, Glasgow, Leeds, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Oxford, Portsmouth, Reading, Sheffield, Slough, Warrington and York.
	I had no idea.
	I thought it was just London.
	I thought it was Sadiq Khan's, you know, latest boondoggle.
	No, well I've just moved to Oxford and they have them only on certain roads as well, so it's intentionally designed to catch you out.
	It's not a set catchment area.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	It's sort of crisscrossed.
	Because you can just avoid that particular area.
	Exactly, yeah.
	But you also, there's no, the sign says, it doesn't say on which particular road, it says starts in X amount of miles.
	So you've actually got to have a separate webpage up, because it's not updated to Google Maps or anything yet.
	from the Oxford Council website to see which roads it is.
	So there's some money making an enterprise for that.
	It's just enough tax.
	That's all it is.
	And it's not, all it is, is pricing working people out of owning a car.
	It's the let them eat Tesla's mentality, which just creates a gap between the ultra elite and those who genuinely need private transport to get their kids to school and to get to work, but who now can't afford it because they're being priced out of it.
	All for dividends to the climate.
	So, rent car services can obviously upgrade their electric models faster.
	They put a squeeze on demand.
	They drive up prices, and that means in accompaniment with inflationary pressures, most people just can't afford this sort of thing.
	So, the WEF obviously has the most sane take on this.
	And just ask, why aren't they everywhere?
	Great question.
	Among the most recent advances towards this policy, the Netherlands announced its plans to enable all cities to set up ultra-low emission zones by 2025, a stepping stone to ban full-on gasoline vehicles.
	I'm glad we're doing what the WEF wants.
	Well, we are, because by 2030 we're actually banning petrol cars in this country.
	Oh, I thought it was new petrol cars.
	Yes, yeah, but the new production.
	But, of course, there have been...
	But, I mean, it's basically...
	Well, I'll get on to why that's a problem, because there aren't enough rare earth minerals for the batteries and charging infrastructure to support electric car adoption.
	I'll move on to another piece of reporting I did a little while ago.
	This actually outlines my conspiracy theory about the billionaire space race.
	So I don't think they're doing this for fun.
	I don't think they're doing it just because they're...
	I thought it was a vanity project.
	No, I think it's because in orbit there are various asteroids with trillions of dollars worth of rare metals.
	Okay.
	Whoever reaches their first and commercializes space travel becomes Earth's first trillionaire and gets monopoly rights on the minerals.
	And of course, if Elon Musk is doing this, everyone else is taking the lead.
	Because if he's looking at Tesla, he's thinking, here's an unlimited supply and I won't have to rely on China, not only for my manufacturing ability, but on the 140-so countries in their Belt and Road Initiative.
	Because at the moment, China have just captured, I believe, almost, I can't remember if it's in the billions or trillions, but the world's largest lithium deposits in Afghanistan.
	They're in lithium deposits in Argentina.
	They're in most mineral processing around the world, including in Zimbabwe.
	We don't have enough minerals to make the six times more mineral-intensive electric cars without going cap-enhanced China.
	And at the same time as all the other countries in the world without going to outer space.
	So, the government knows that renewables and the squeeze on minerals will mean that lots of people can't heat their homes or drive cars.
	But if you go on to the next one, rather than adjust their net zero plans, the UK government are instead exploring legislation that restricts your ability to charge your electric car in your driveway at peak hours.
	Sorry, we want you to have electric cars, but also you can't charge it now or then.
	Or, without notifying you, due to a smart grid and smart meters that you have in your homes, they can actually confiscate energy from your electric cars that are sitting in your driveway and feed it back into the grid.
	So when renewables drop down, you can be locked down de facto with your travel.
	Thank you, Grant Shaps, for that.
	So, resource scarcity, petrol prices, transport spikes, strikes and congestion charges.
	We're being driven into cycling serfdom.
	We're becoming Amsterdam on Thames.
	With our only means of travel contingent on the digital ID and currency that Rishi Sunak wants to institute, which can be revoked for any innocuous critique of the four commandments of globalism, diversity, inclusivity, equity and sustainability.
	And if you want to find out more about why digital IDs and the World Economic Forum are an absolute hellscape, here's my latest deepthinkforlotuses.com, in which I go into that.
	And someone actually pointed out to me, if you look at the WEF logo, they have that strange blue semicircle, and it cuts through all the zeros, and it forms the number 666.
	Yeah, I've seen that as well.
	I'm sure it's just a coincidence.
	I don't think that's a coincidence whatsoever.
	So moving on, let's talk about Elon Musk.
	He's decided that he's not buying Twitter for some reason.
	Well, for bots.
	I think this has all been a part of an essentially 4D chess plan in which Elon Musk has pulled people's strings and actually made them dance to his tune.
	I think that the fruition of his plan is just beginning to bloom now.
	But before that, if you want to support us, you can go to lowseas.com and check out our latest book club.
	This is one that I did with Thomas Dowling, who came in for an episode on Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche.
	I think this is really interesting and remarkably timely for people to read.
	Now, reading it is a different matter because Nietzsche writes like a maniac and he's difficult to understand on purpose.
	But me and Thomas did a good job, I think, and it's worth your time because...
	I can endorse that.
	I disagree with some of the conclusions in it, but I can definitely endorse it.
	It's a valid worth of time watching.
	Yes, it's not necessarily about endorsing or not endorsing or disavowing.
	It's more about understanding that there are multiple ways of looking at morality, and he does have a valid interpretation.
	And the thing is, it appears to me that the critical race theorists are essentially following this interpretation, or one of them.
	And so it's important to be aware of.
	We're doing on the genealogy of morals at some point in the next coming weeks.
	Anyway, so beginning...
	Well, going back a few months, you may remember that when Elon Musk said, look, I'm going to buy Twitter and I can actually pony up the capital to do it, he caused a great deal of, as Yahoo say, freaking out.
	Sorry, it's the Daily Beast, this one.
	The internal employees of Twitter were not happy about this.
	Now, the New York Times actually did a poll of the internal employees, of 200 employees, and found that 27% of them hated Musk.
	27% of them loved him, and 44% were neutral, which is surprising.
	I thought it was a more homogenous culture within Twitter.
	I don't think so, because the most vocal are obviously the HR departments.
	The majority of people actually making the thing operate are the engineers.
	And I would, if they're like James Damore, who circulated his internal memo, who's incredibly based, I think they're keeping their heads down.
	But as soon as they're asked and they're anonymized, they'll say, actually, we quite agree with them.
	Yeah, that's a good point, actually.
	But lots of the employees who are, as you say, the HR department employees, went on social media and just under their own names and started complaining that Elon Musk is a troll and he's essentially the Donald Trump of big tech and they hate him.
	Chad, yes.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Yeah, exactly.
	That's good.
	And you may remember in May he said, well, the deal is on hold.
	Temporarily, at least, because I want to know that less or fewer than 5% of the users on the site are spam accounts, fake accounts, or bots.
	And Twitter was like, of course, that would be crazy to say that our website is mostly populated by bots.
	Because they said that they'd formed an internal review of sample accounts and estimated that an average of false spam accounts were fewer than 5%.
	It was 229 monetizable daily active users.
	Just frantically deleting FBPE accounts as we speak.
	Yes.
	But what's interesting about this is the framing, right?
	So remember that Elon Musk didn't approach Twitter, purchasing Twitter, with the eye of making it a profitable business.
	He's the richest man in the world.
	What does he need a profitable business for?
	He approached it with the eye of politics, as in it was going to be a free speech platform.
	He was approaching it from a consent of morality, that it was unfair that Twitter had banned Donald Trump, frankly, and other various other people, and was clearly loading the way the algorithm works.
	So some people got a lot more reach than others because of their political persuasion.
	And so it's interesting how he approached the situation by saying, well, look, I can offer you a massive deal, $44 billion, which is profitable for your shareholders.
	That's going off the reservation somewhat.
	His concern is for morality, but now he attacks them economically.
	And of course, at first, they refused this because they recognized that he was approaching the purchasing of Twitter as a moral crusade in some way, and yet he outflanked them by saying, well, look, you're a business.
	You don't have a choice.
	You can't refuse this massive increase in money that your shareholders will receive as their dividends because that's what a business is for.
	And so they were essentially kind of forced to go, okay, good point.
	And so the Twitter board unanimously voted, yes, okay.
	And then he appears to have sort of...
	Pulled the lure out from their mouths and said, well, hang on a second.
	Is that the case?
	And they were saying, well, no, of course not.
	You know, this is exactly how it is.
	And so we fast forward to three days ago when he terminated the Twitter deal.
	Okay, this is huge because, I mean, we're talking about massive amounts of money in the most politically relevant platform And how things are now.
	So he said he was terminating the deal, and this has had a massive impact on Twitter's shares, which when he made the offer, they were something like $51 a share.
	Sorry, no, $54 a share.
	Now they're down to $34 a share.
	So you can see how just, again, most of it is just Elon just saying things has really affected this platform.
	It's funny that they did compare him to Trump because it's in the art of the deal.
	He obviously goes for the big ask where you oversell over demand in your initial opening.
	And then you get at least half of what you want from that.
	So he made that tactic.
	And then if you notice, President Trump, God bless him, any transgression against him, he goes full on scorched earth on their reputation.
	And so Elon is seeing them as having slighted him.
	And so he has, well, they swallowed their poison pill.
	Now they're feeding the effects of hemlock.
	Yes, exactly.
	Sorry, I forgot to mention that.
	They took what was known as a poison pill to try and prevent this, but that didn't work.
	And so, yeah, so now Elon Musk is threatening, apparently trying to terminate the deal.
	So this was in a legal filing.
	Musk's lawyer said that Twitter had failed or refused to respond to multiple requests for information on fake or spam accounts on the platform, which is fundamental to the company's business performance.
	Again, notice the two different layers that we're talking about here.
	Elon Musk talks about Twitter in moral terms whenever he references it outside of the business and economic side of things.
	And this is important because he's using the economic side of things to advance this moral agenda.
	So this filing claimed that Twitter is in breach, a material breach of multiple provisions of the buyout deal that they We had agreed because the board had unanimously voted.
	It turned out they basically realised, Christ, we're a bit outflanked here.
	Our shareholders can complain if we don't take this massive increase on the share value price.
	And so now, him pulling back is essentially...
	Springing a trap on them, it seems.
	So, as he says, And so Elon Musk can abandon the moral argument
	and move to the business argument and say, well, I'm approaching this platform as a plan to make it economically viable.
	And he has laid out publicly what his plans to make it an economically viable platform are.
	And so then Twitter were like, well, hang on a second.
	You can't just withdraw now from this massive deal that we agreed to, promised our shareholders.
	So we're going to sue you to force you to buy it, which is very interesting.
	The Twitter board is committed to closing the transaction on the price, and the terms agreed upon by Mr.
	Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement, said Twitter's chairman, Brett Taylor.
	We are confident that we'll prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery.
	And so I read this article from Business Society.
	If we go to the next one, Delaware's a...
	They all register in Delaware because it's got...
	Also Joe Biden's state.
	It is also Joe Biden's state.
	It's very interesting, isn't it?
	So various academics and experts weighed in on this, saying, well, you know, I don't really understand what's going on.
	No, I bet you don't.
	But what's interesting, though, is that when Elon Musk offered to buy this, he offered it for $44 billion.
	They reckon now it's worth $28 billion.
	So that's at least $6 or $7 billion, I think, knocked off the original price before he made his offer.
	So isn't it interesting how he's kind of like ruining the platform by doing all of this?
	This is very clearly part of the game.
	It reminds me very much, them turning around and them forcing him to buy it when obviously all of the shareholders didn't want him to originally, including a Saudi prince who we're not going to take lectures on morality from.
	Reminds me of the old Luditudes cartoon where Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny are going rabbit season, duck season, and Bugs Bunny just goes rabbit season, and then Daffy Duck goes, duck season, fire, and gets himself shot.
	You guys are building the noose for your own neck here.
	It's quite funny.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And so essentially they point out, well, you know, he's made a commitment and the company isn't worth it now.
	So yeah, sure.
	But the question about Twitter was never one about money.
	And I mean, Elon was quite clear about this.
	It's not about money.
	It's about sending a message.
	Exactly.
	And, you know, they say a group of experts told Insider on Saturday that Twitter has the edge in its dispute with Musk, but the company was more likely to try and negotiate a lower sum.
	Oh, really?
	You've got the edge, but you're like, yeah, well, you don't have to pay us quite as much.
	You can pay us less for the ownership of our company that we didn't want you to have and that we're going to have to reveal a bunch of secrets about in a court.
	Huh.
	They're almost treating it like a monkey's paw style thing of where they both agree that it's a utility for the public political discourse.
	Musk is looking at it in the John Stuart Mill utilitarian tradition of it's our medium for conflict resolution so we want it to be open and transparent.
	The progressives are looking at it and Agrawal and all that and all those people that didn't have any shares were on the board as diversity hires.
	They're all looking at it as a way to enforce the hegemon.
	Yeah, political weapon.
	Exactly.
	But it's almost like the progressives realise, okay, with that wish, we've now got so many headaches and because we're incompetent and we didn't build the thing to start with so we've inherited something so we can't run it, that you can take it and you might get what you wish for but we hope you fall afoul of the same things that we have.
	It would be easier for us to just let you have it.
	Yeah.
	And so, I mean, that is just the company is likely trying to negotiate a lower sum.
	That's very interesting.
	And as I said there, they just want to resolve the uncertainty.
	See, now this is very interesting.
	Elon Musk has essentially got them dancing to his tune by continuing to pull and push and make them live in this world of uncertainty.
	Now they're essentially begging for him to take over and they're going to take legal action so he has to take over.
	I mean, that is just remarkable.
	He's weaponized the progressives' own anxiety against them.
	Yes.
	And you notice that they've been doing what everyone wants anyway.
	Lots of people that I know have had their accounts unbanned.
	Right.
	Still waiting for my neon.
	Well, this is the interesting thing from this week.
	Obviously, we can't say anything about it yet, but Alex Berenson, the journalist who was banned for views on the COVID vaccine...
	He brought a lawsuit against Twitter and was reinstated.
	And on his sub-stack, he said that the US government had been interfering with it.
	And this is in the Epoch Times I'm reading from.
	Elon Musk asked him, can you say more about this pressures that the government may have placed on Twitter?
	And Berenson said, due to the NDA, I can't, but I hopefully will report on it in the future.
	Very interesting, isn't it?
	So there's a great...
	There's...
	How to describe it?
	There's...
	He's got hold of something, and if he pulls, a lot of gross things are going to come out that are attached to this.
	And so Twitter have been taking action.
	They've been laying off 30% of their talent acquisition team.
	They've been laying off...
	Oh, no, sorry.
	Several senior executives quit.
	lots of chaos in Twitter itself.
	And it's told its employees apparently not to say anything publicly about anything.
	If you go to the next one, Twitter is telling its employees that they cannot comment on the issue in public because this is all going through courts.
	And one company insider told NBC that Musk had, quote, effing destroyed the company.
	That's very interesting.
	Okay.
	Thank you.
	Hmm.
	I mean, financially, sure.
	But also intellectually, morally, it looks like something's going to come out.
	And so Elon began tweeting about this.
	This is fascinating.
	You can open up this image, John.
	They said I couldn't buy Twitter.
	Then they wouldn't disclose bot info.
	Now they want to force me to buy it in court.
	Now they have to disclose the info in the court.
	Him looking at the real bot numbers is like, is that real?
	And the thing is, I don't think he cares about the bots.
	Not at all.
	Well, obviously not, because the only reason you would care about bots, beyond the unhealthiness of the conversation, the reason you care about bot numbers is because if you have a high proportion of bots than reported, then your ad revenue is worth as much.
	But as you already said, he's not buying it for financial means.
	And also, I mean, he was talking about having a subscription service and things like that.
	Yes.
	He's not interested in using this as an advertising platform because 229 million users makes Twitter one of the smallest tech giants that could exist.
	It's actually a really, really tiny platform.
	It's the nexus, though.
	It's the importance of it.
	And his view on monetizing it isn't even based around adverts.
	So it's just very interesting how Elon is now going to force...
	Well, he's essentially made it, so Twitter.
	He's going to force him into court so they can show everyone...
	What they have.
	And so everyone can now see whether they're lying or not.
	And he put out this meme as well, which I think is hilarious.
	It's Chuck Norris with one piece on a chessboard.
	And he replied to that with Chuck, mate.
	So, I mean, well done, Elon.
	It appears that you've got what you wanted.
	I look forward to finding out about this.
	The Daily Mail published an article just with a couple of important caveats to this.
	What's interesting about the Chancery Court is they can't actually...
	Order punitive damages or anything like this.
	So, I don't know how much can actually be resolved here, but if they are going to take him to the court and they're going to have to have some sort of discovery of information to prove their case, well, this can only get more interesting.
	So, it looks very much to me like Elon Musk is playing 4D chess, and it looks like he's winning, actually.
	So, good for Elon.
	Good of the comments.
	What the men did was raise the beams that had broken off in the Waldie to humidity back to their stations using a carjack and a pole, and then cut poles to size to support them in their proper positions.
	The man who directed the work was the same one who did that bit a few decades ago.
	Er...
	missed a spot.
	Have you ever considered a career in reading Victorian nursery rhymes?
	Good for the next one.
	Good for the next one.
	So this is a chap who, for reasons unknown, has decided he's going to build his own giant Is this the same fella who was dancing with R2-D2 the other day as well?
	No, no, I think it was someone else.
	Oh, was it?
	But no, yeah, he's been doing this for months.
	And they actually are, like, movable robot suits.
	They actually work.
	Okay.
	I didn't realise Jeff Bezos was subscribed.
	He should definitely be funding this guy.
	It'd be fun to see if he had a budget where it'd go.
	Let's go for the next one.
	Canadian Sparky here.
	Well, we've been camping out in the bus at my relative's home and so everything's a little bit more lived in.
	This is the bed that I've been sleeping on.
	And yeah, I installed some LED strip lights underneath the cabinetry here for mum and it's nice and bright there.
	And so my brother sleeps on the hammock, my other brother sleeps on the couch and things are nice and cozy.
	So this chap bought a bus and retrofitted it.
	So it's basically a camper van now.
	I mean, I respect the project, but in the words of a wise man, clean your damn room!
	I think I may have discovered another reason why leftists hate and ridicule men, and I hope you don't mind if I get into some Pauline theology here, but scripturally speaking, the husband represents Jesus Christ, and just as Jesus Christ leads the church out of sin, the husband has a responsibility to lead his wife, lead his family, out of sin.
	The men of today have a duty and responsibility to lead their wives out of feminism, in much the same way that Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt.
	I like the analogy.
	I was talking to my girlfriend about this yesterday because I'm still trying to do the impossible task of articulating what the metaphysics of love are just because I've never been able to nail down a definition that I've Fully understood.
	But I said something that's sort of the cornerstones of every man's life are the practical applications of his talents, the family he's inherited, the family he earns, so his friends and his spouse, the family he creates.
	And all those cornerstones really reflect something that Job was told by God.
	It's where were you and I allowed the foundations?
	Where were you and I laid the cornerstones of the earth?
	And so I like the idea, it's in Peterson's Maps of Meaning, that each man is doing, in creating family and transforming small corners of the world to be a better place, is conducting that act of creation on a microcosmic scale in the emulation of his Heavenly Father.
	See, I think that's a really good outline of what you've got there.
	But I think that what you need to do is step back a little bit and look at the presuppositions you've made there.
	And I think the one thing that you've mentioned but haven't looked into yet is the nature of the relationships of these things.
	I've been thinking about this a lot, actually.
	So I'm glad you sort of brought it up, actually.
	So now I get to talk about something I've been thinking about.
	But there's...
	I think the idea of a relationship is a thing, is a metaphysical thing that we need to actually start considering because of the quality and texture of the relationships themselves.
	If you view it as like...
	Have you ever watched Donnie Darko?
	Jake Gyllenhaal film.
	Yeah.
	No, I haven't, actually.
	Right, it's actually quite good.
	But basically, he's got this invisible tube coming out of his chest, and it's leading him somewhere.
	But I actually think that our relationships could be envisaged a bit like that, as in it's...
	I don't know how to describe it, but it's something that is a real thing that connects you to the things around you.
	And the nature of the relationship has a positive or negative tone.
	And this is the real key and core of what love actually is.
	It's the sentiments you have for that connective, invisible connective tissue that holds you with the thing.
	It's like an instinct that acts like Ariadne's thread to lead you out of the Minotaur's maze of meaninglessness.
	Yes.
	And the thread itself is the relationship.
	And how well you care for the relationship, it makes it glow.
	And it makes you...
	Effervescent and happy and fulfilled when you're in the presence of it.
	It's a long thing to talk about another time.
	But you're right about identifying things, but then these glowing connective threads are that bit that I think you're missing.
	We need to think about it more.
	I think there's something there.
	Sorry, I was going on a bit of a tangent.
	Let's go on to the next one.
	I had an argument with a friend the other day about the recent conflicts between Russia and the Ukraine.
	I asked him why we in Australia are supporting a country so far away which until recently no one cared about.
	I said to him as well that the whole thing is just enough fun to distract people from the important things like the reintroduction of mask mandates as well as the rise of China in the Pacific.
	I also brought in why no one talks about the conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, as those conflicts brought in terrorist groups that committed atrocities in Europe.
	Sure, because in the UK, the COVID briefings about bringing the restrictions, getting rid of them, were being brought back early.
	It was the same week as their week advance to Ukraine.
	And also, I wouldn't just say it's a distraction, it's a profit engine.
	Because if you look at certain American Congress people, a week before they were buying energy and weapons stocks.
	So it's not a sincere commitment to what used to be known as one of the least democratic, most corrupt places on the earth.
	Insider trading is actually supposed to be illegal, you know.
	But it's not.
	No.
	It's just tacitly.
	Anyway, General Haiping says, Not really.
	The WEF is woke.
	Yep.
	The WEF is a woke organisation.
	In fact, you can get their website up, actually, John.
	I bet on the front page of the WEF website, there's some woke bullshit.
	There is.
	I remember when I was...
	A little while ago, they had a thing about increasing black inclusion in the workplace.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I literally pulled it up the other day, and that was...
	That's the...
	Yeah, yeah.
	Just the...
	Yeah.
	Like, they've probably got...
	Global Health Equity.
	Yeah, there we go.
	Path to Global Health Equity.
	Well, if you...
	Again, plugging.
	If you read my article, my latest DeepThink, it goes into...
	Oh, yeah.
	Social Entrepreneur on Disability, Business, and Inclusion.
	Yes.
	Well, they equate their climate goals and their social justice goals in the donut economy.
	Exactly.
	It's all part of the issue.
	So this is an intersectional project.
	So there's no getting away from it.
	Generico says, sure, they might sound right-wing now, but so did Boris at the start.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Don't get me wrong, Generico.
	Totally agree.
	Once these swine win elections, they slowly morph into weft stooges.
	We need to gut the parliament from the inside out.
	Strategically, not literally.
	Yes, electorally, not literally.
	Yes.
	Edward says, Alas, while all this hopium is a hell of a drug, I can't believe we came across like we're optimistic.
	I'm miserable about the whole thing.
	But it is nice to see a slight rightward shift in the rhetoric.
	It's like a dog scratching his backside on the rug.
	That's about as strong as a movement we're going to get.
	I am well aware that the Tory party know that in order to win the candidacy, they have to appeal to right-wingers.
	I think we may see them drift left again come the election.
	That's true.
	It would be amazing if we got Kemi, though.
	Again, Kemi, she seems great, but what's the weird...
	Like, what gender thing?
	So, again, I think people are looking at it as she's the most susceptible to at least counter-capture by the right because her time in cabinet has compromised her unyielding stance as a British Empire apologist, etc.
	And so she's doubled down on gender and voting for vaccine passports.
	So she's the most that people seem they can apologize for.
	But I see it as unless you have a public renunciation of your past policies, I just don't trust you.
	Yeah.
	It's very, very strange.
	Confused says, I want chemo pretty so I can call the leftist racist misogynist when they criticise them, plus they were both pretty-based.
	Yeah, I know, but we're really having the wrong argument there.
	That's the mentality that's ruining it.
	Exactly.
	This is the left-wing dialectic that is advancing everything.
	And so now the Conservatives are sat there going, look, we're the party of diversity.
	Look at the Labour Party.
	They're all white people.
	Okay.
	That's not a bad thing.
	Yeah, exactly.
	The problem is they're incompetent.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Yeah, the problem is the left-wing, you know.
	Yeah.
	Not their wives.
	So are you.
	Like, you've literally adopted all the left's axioms.
	Singing from the same history.
	Exactly.
	And said, well, look, we're the party of diversity now.
	It's like, brilliant.
	Tom says, I think we'll see the Tories out of power for a generation, much like we did when the Dark Lord took over.
	Yeah, I think so.
	I think the Tories' time in office is coming.
	I don't think we're even going to notice that much of a difference, to be honest.
	They're a uniparty.
	Immigration might go down.
	No, no, seriously.
	The Conservatives double what Blair ever hoped to do.
	So we might see less immigration.
	My only hope is that Farage uses this opportunity to tap the animosity people have for Labour up in the North for betraying Brexit and abandoning their traditional voter base to pander to a woke leftist.
	He won't.
	No, I don't think he will.
	I think he's comfortable with it.
	He is.
	I know one of the guys who works quite closely with him, and as far as I know, he's got no interest of dipping out of his comments, especially because he's influencing the national conversation more from behind the camera than behind the podium.
	Yeah, and he's good.
	He's good at it.
	I tell you, I remember when GB News was flailing until Farage came along.
	Farage showed them how it was done properly, because he's been on Fox News and Ironically, Mark Stein is now the lowest ratings, but it's because he's tackling things.
	And he's good.
	Yeah, and he's fearless when it comes to it.
	Lord Nerevan says, I didn't think about it, but now you mention it.
	It is remarkable that all these Tory candidates are suddenly remembering that they're actually supposed to be conservative.
	Penny Morda remembering what a woman is, Rishi calling for lower taxes, and even Kemi reversing her position on net zero.
	They're afraid, aren't they?
	Yeah, now that's what I was trying to drive at.
	It's like, they must have some indication that, like, hang on a second.
	We are in the wrong space.
	Well, Rishi hasn't even called for lower taxes.
	He called it a fairytale.
	Well, yeah, he did, didn't he?
	Yeah.
	That's a good point.
	Spring Duck says, the mention of what a woman is is so controversial that the internet provider stopped you for a moment.
	FBI probably started the deed off for Unstoppable Forces.
	Yeah, I know.
	Justin says, well, it's been an interesting couple of days.
	I take some time off politics due to having to sort things out.
	Got a new job almost twice my previous wage.
	Congratulations.
	Hold on, mate.
	Bought myself a first house.
	Congratulations.
	Have a new girlfriend.
	Good while it lasted, didn't it?
	Yeah, yeah.
	That cancels out the job making twice as much as before.
	Just teasing.
	And then I come back and find that I've missed everything.
	Boris is almost gone, save from being already gone by John Major of all people, they're not intentionally.
	And the only potential replacement I think might be good is Kemi is not looking viable.
	If Rishi does get in, then Tori's dead to me.
	I think he's going to be Rishi.
	You know what?
	I don't think so.
	I think Liz Truss is going to squeak it out.
	I think it's going to come down to Rishi and Liz, and even though Rishi has more name recognition, barring Liz saying something really stupid, they're going to pick her.
	I mean, yeah, she once said that the Americans want to do a deal with us because Love Island's popular, so...
	I was going to say, it's not unheard of.
	But SH Silver says, Tories under Boris and previous PMs could never erase the history of Blair because the Tories shift under Thatcher was directly responsible for Blair.
	Wasn't Margaret Thatcher said that Tony Blair was my greatest achievement?
	Legacy, yeah.
	So, yeah.
	We've been on this course for 40 years now.
	It's the neoliberal amoralists, and they're definitely at work in the Tory party.
	Any time I was in the policy sphere and had a conversation with them about the moral implications of their policy, I was actually told multiple times, there's no morals to free markets.
	This is why you're negotiating the selling point of our civilisation.
	Well, maybe they're right.
	They do want to bring back slavery, then, if there are no more free markets.
	I mean, you know...
	Disavow.
	Well, I'm not...
	No, I... You know...
	The party needs to be saved from the recent heritage of being the party of neoliberalism and become of Britain again.
	Yeah, there's...
	It was Scruton, I think, that made the point that, look, before Reagan and Thatcher, foreigners couldn't just buy up any amount of land they wanted in the country.
	It's actually prohibited.
	It's like, yeah, maybe Reagan and Thatcher have it.
	It's when Kemi said in her Telegraph announcement for her leadership campaign, oh, we're going back to protectionism, populism.
	That has to change.
	I was like, but what if I like those things?
	Yeah.
	And Braveman, Sunela Braveman, the clip that I didn't play, but I watched it earlier, and she's like, you know, if we carry on like we are, we're going to see MEP Tommy Robinson.
	That would be hilarious, wouldn't it?
	Andrew says, And again, a great point.
	So, this whole issue of, like...
	Being against homeschooling is more of the managerial revolution.
	All of the children have to be under the auspices of the state.
	And even if the state is teaching them what I would want the state to be teaching them, that's a hegemonic position that shouldn't be allowed.
	The parents should have the option of...
	It's the false premise of the philosopher king.
	If we just have someone who knows their forms well enough, we can perfectly plan it.
	And sorry, mate, but you've got many calls wrong, and so I don't trust anyone to have that over me.
	And then it reminds me of when the Biden administration said, parents aren't the primary stakeholder in their children.
	Yes.
	Okay, thank you for the mask-off moment.
	Now get away from my kids.
	And it also, it just really fails to understand that, look, even if you were doing everything that I wanted in exactly the way I wanted it, you are still ignoring the fact that these are my children and it's my right to educate them in the way that I want because they're mine.
	Even if it's the most based and red-pilled education you could possibly give them, the fact that I just don't have the option of schooling them myself is the problem.
	Yeah, they're my property.
	I don't want a tragedy of the commons inflicting my child.
	Exactly.
	Edward...
	I'll move on to the...
	I'll have to reload this in a second.
	But Edward says, this is rather distressing.
	I saw you guys bring up the tank of hopium.
	I didn't think we were.
	I thought, you know, again, just to say that...
	There's a slight rightward shift in the rhetoric as something worth observing rather than this is going to fix anything.
	Nothing's going to get solved.
	But rather than fitting it to a rebreather, you decide to beat me to death with it.
	Alright, I should have finished your comment, really.
	Shouldn't I? Yeah, well, you know, it's doing a bit of an Elon Musk on you there.
	It's a trap show.
	Goddammit, things might never get better.
	I suppose that's just the news.
	Yeah, I know.
	I don't think things are going to get better in any particular way either, actually.
	I don't see any options for it.
	The Elvis says, I think there are two things we need to consider when looking at the next Tory leader.
	One, no one is ever going to be 100% for our requirements.
	And two, some of the negative things they may have said or voted for previously might have been forced on them via the party line.
	Now that's a generous way of describing it.
	What do you think?
	I was just following orders is not an excuse.
	I think if they're happy to say, I have the integrity to resign my post now, if you were against vaccine passports and you voted for them to keep your cabinet position, you're a disgusting human being.
	That's true, but conversely, that also means they get gatekept out of important positions.
	And so there is an argument saying, well, look, if you want me to seize control of the Conservative Party and turn it into a base party, I have to be in a position, I have to have worked my way to a position where I am capable of seizing control of it.
	And if I'm gatekept out of the institutions by not doing the occasional woke virtue signal, then I'll never be in a position to seize it.
	I think that ideology makes compromise the name of the game, unfortunately.
	And I think the things you do to attain power, you do it to cling to it.
	So if the civil servants decide to make you squishy on a particular policy, like immigration, when you become prime minister and you've compromised with them and the party apparatus up until that point, then it means that your instinct is not going to be double down on my libertarian principles, as Boris would have done, and instead, I'll just lock us down because the experts are telling me to.
	So I would call yours the strategy of the rhino, or the bull.
	I'm just going to bash my way through.
	But this, I think you could call the strategy of the chameleon.
	Yes, true.
	I'm not saying you're wrong at all, and I principally agree with you, obviously.
	But I can see the argument saying, well, look, you know, If you've got a fox who's being clever, working his way into the hen house, that might be a useful thing.
	Because the Kenny Babenock thing, I've seen lots of interviews from her.
	I've read lots of articles about her.
	I'm surprised that she would put out any virtue signaling nonsense.
	And so it strikes me more likely to be a fox tactic.
	To maneuver into the right position.
	But I may just be huffing hopium.
	Who knows?
	I think you may be right, but the fact that she's willing to do that means I don't know what she's willing to do on anything else.
	And that's a totally fair consideration.
	But I think Elvis here has a good point that maybe...
	Information we're not privy to.
	Possibly.
	That we just don't know.
	Anyway, Robert says, if anyone thinks Uber is bad now, just wait until driverless cars become available.
	Remember, Uber is a software company for and foremost.
	First and foremost, I think he means.
	If people can be removed from them making money, they will be.
	And that would be completely in line with the WEF infrastructure that Uber is.
	Well, also, the driverless cars are actually an excuse for more managerial legislation.
	So the UK government commissioned a report on traffic congestion as a result of driverless cars.
	And they said, because driverless cars will make it more accessible for people to hop in them, it means we'll have way worse congestion.
	And obviously, they've got to line up with when you go, etc.
	So their automated routes can adjust if there's a car near them, which traffic lights stop and that.
	But because there's going to be more cars on the road, they said, oh, the congestion's going to be way worse.
	Even though they're apparently run inside on renewables, they're saying, even though there's no emissions, for pure reasons of congestion, we might have to restrict car ownership.
	That's very interesting, isn't it?
	Because I don't care about the congestion at all.
	Your complaint was the environment.
	I mean, we've always had congestion.
	But that's very interesting.
	Charlie says, regarding Uber's tactics, I don't know if there's an exclusive reason why Uber never really came to Ireland, but possibly a reason which is that Ireland's government banned all zero-hour contracts.
	That might be why.
	Quite possibly.
	Callum says, as a conservative person, I value the taxi driver and the busman.
	Never used Uber, don't plan to, don't want to get into a Prius.
	I'm feeling guilty about using Uber now, because I actually like the service Uber provides.
	I mean, I occasionally do, and I have no problem with the individual drivers, apart from one who reported me when my girlfriend and I got an Uber from a train station that was discontinuing services in the dead of night.
	He drove us for half an hour saying nothing, thought it was all cordial, woke up the next morning and Uber, I'd gotten a strike on my thing for saying you didn't wear a mask in the back.
	So obviously I tweeted about it, and then the customer service got on me and went, well, that's very presumptive.
	You do not know my medical history.
	And they're like, oh, we're very, very sorry.
	Yeah, no, that's a good point.
	But yeah, no, I've used Uber quite a lot because I've had to travel, and it's very convenient.
	And now I'm part of the WEF infrastructure, global takeover.
	Aren't we all, unfortunately?
	I mean, BlackRock has its fingers in every possible...
	That's right, I don't feel so bad now.
	Ben says, Uber is bringing robber barons back into style, apparently.
	Apparently.
	I mean, that rhetoric was just...
	The way that we're speaking was just mad.
	Like, this was literally like...
	What's the oil baron guy?
	Standard Oil.
	I can't remember the name.
	We're having a Biden moment.
	Yeah, no, the guy who founded Standard Oil.
	I can't believe I can't remember his name now.
	I can remember his name.
	It's just on the tip of my tongue and I can't summon it.
	By Rockefeller.
	Yeah, that's it.
	I read his autobiography and it was interesting.
	You can see this is cut in the stuff that Standard Oil did.
	Exactly that kind of stuff.
	Literally, Robert Barron is a great way.
	Drew says, the only thing I will defend is my right to bear arms, my right to own and drive a car.
	Never in my life did I think we'd reach a precipice like this, but here we are.
	Yeah.
	That's where we are.
	Justin says, I won't touch an electric car until one is released that doesn't track you.
	The starter can't be disabled remotely at any time.
	Now, that is my biggest concern, is the idea that someone can just remotely disable my car.
	Why the hell would I have that?
	The same with smart meters.
	Everyone's saying, oh, it's energy efficient, etc.
	The government spent all those Einstein adverts that people might see if they watch mainstream television that the government paid for, and all that is is introducing a device which gives you a personal carbon credit limit and allows the state to track and limit it as it sees fit.
	Unsurprisingly, I haven't got one in my home.
	Matt says, low emission zones, electric vehicles are already not paying petrol taxes.
	That's a good point, actually.
	I saw them complaining about that.
	Where did I see it?
	I saw something about them complaining about the fact that essentially they get away from paying petrol taxes.
	So the government's going to just have to have...
	They're doing road pricing.
	That's what they're going to do.
	They're going to make pay per mile.
	Because they don't have a choice?
	Yeah.
	They could just cut spending and not...
	Whoa, whoa, whoa.
	Oh, an erratic idea.
	Don't go crazy.
	Cutting government spending?
	What is this?
	Radcheck was right, says, I think the most disturbing part of this is, of this you-will-own-nothing outlook of the future, is that all these policies ultimately force people who do own assets, like cars, into a pseudo-service class where they have to drive an Uber just to afford their car.
	You won't even be driving it if it's driverless.
	Well, yeah.
	You'll be just dependent on your universal basic income, and if you transgress the climate orthodoxy, then boom, there that goes.
	And what it will be is, essentially, your car will be, like, in a gun range.
	You know, you'll go to the car range, the car track, to drive your car for the fun of driving your car.
	And then you'll get into the Uber, and then you'll be spirited off.
	Well, most people are thinking, actually, you'll be able to just walk up to them.
	There'll be parks on the street lines, and you'll just be able to walk up to any car and just select it.
	God, imagine how awful those cars are going to be.
	They stink of piss.
	Exactly.
	If anyone's seen a park bench.
	Yeah, yes.
	If anyone's ever seen any public utility.
	They're all on fire in Bristol.
	Yeah, exactly.
	No, it's going to be awful.
	Lord Nerevar says, This entire Twitter fiasco has been an elaborate way of getting Twitter to self-report on the fact they're not a real company and they're just a big censorship machine.
	I do hear Elon Musk ends up in control of Twitter, but even if he doesn't, he's had a massive impact on the most corrupt and influential platform in the world.
	Yeah, and this is very interesting.
	He's genuinely done a remarkable job of just screwing with nothing else.
	I'm not that big of a Musk fan, though, because his support for the Chinese Communist Party on Weibo means that he may blow with the wind.
	But again, like, is it the chameleon or is it...
	Yeah.
	We don't know.
	Yeah.
	Baldy Gil says, The Elon deal fell apart because Twitter has constantly breached the terms.
	They did constantly provide bad false information on the accounts.
	The information they did provide showed a larger discrepancy than what Twitter stated.
	If Twitter goes to court to sue, Elon is going to further destroy them with discovery.
	And I think there are Twitter insiders that will give the damning evidence that will open up Twitter to be sued into oblivion for fraud and lying to investors.
	Yeah, to the advertisers who use the platform.
	Yeah, I mean, if Elon wants to destroy Twitter rather than buying it.
	oh no But he seems to have the upper hand here.
	There's just no getting around it.
	I don't know what Twitter are going to do, and I don't know what kind of panic is happening in their boardrooms, but there's got to be something.
	Fuzzy Toaster says, I wear it like a badge of pride that I'm not on any social media.
	How did you find us?
	I'm curious, actually.
	I still have a Facebook account, but I think I last logged into it when Obama got his second term.
	Twitter is tiring to hear about.
	I do not envy anyone on it.
	Yeah, I know.
	I totally agree with you.
	But unfortunately, it's where public policy gets formed across the Western world and in other countries.
	So, unfortunately, it's an important thing.
	I take the Rogan approach if I just post and let it go.
	And if I look at something and someone's moulding at me over the internet, I'm thinking, okay, you've got no loved ones around you to say, put the phone down, darling, let's do something.
	Whereas I'm not as invested in this narrative that you've built between me and you battling it out for the fate of civilization.
	I don't care.
	Battling out for the fate of civilization on Twitter.
	Yeah, exactly.
	I was there for the Great World War.
	Yeah, it's for trolling and nothing else.
	Rose says, someone on Twitter posted a picture of Elon Musk on the chess team in school.
	And to top it all off, it was the chess A team.
	I'm now convinced that Elon is actually John Hannibal Smith.
	Yeah, no, again, he clearly knows what he's doing with this.
	Supreme Duck says, Twitter, don't say anything.
	Twitter employees, he's destroying the company.
	Elon Musk, hmm.
	But in the meantime, Elon Musk's not like, oh no, Twitter's ruining me.
	But the Twitter employees aren't allowed to speak.
	Twitter insiders are like, yeah, this is really screwing with us.
	Twitter share price is plummeting.
	And they're like, no, we're going to force you to buy our company.
	How can one man keep winning like this?
	We can't keep letting him get away with it.
	Yeah.
	John says, it's about time someone dressed properly.
	Carl, wear a tie.
	I'm not going to shame you.
	Oh, thank you.
	I appreciate that.
	On your first date, you're not going to shame me.
	The thing is, you probably own more suits than me, and so my strategy has always been to mix it up and keep it more interesting.
	It keeps changing it out, because I don't dress very well.
	And just a final one.
	Itachi says, Welcome, Connor.
	Your point regarding bringing oneself to the level of others in order to understand them, regardless of personal upbringing, was brilliant.
	Remains to be seen whether potential PMs will do so if they haven't in the past.
	Thank you very much.
	It's very kind of you.
	Right, well, if you want more from us, you can, of course, go to lodacies.com, sign up, support us.
	This is how we keep the lights on and keep hiring brilliant new presenters like Connor.
	We'll be back tomorrow.

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