Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Nov. 8, 2022 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:30:42

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #519

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Hello and welcome to the podcast of Lotus Teasers for today, the 8th of November 2022.
	I am joined for the first time by our newest recruit, Dan Tubbs.
	How are you, my friend?
	I'm very well.
	Thank you very much for having me.
	Lovely.
	If you wouldn't mind, just introduce yourself to the audience who may be unaware of you.
	Yeah, sure.
	Give a quick 60 seconds on me.
	So, yeah, my background is I'm a finance guy.
	I spent 20 years in the city of London doing venture capital and asset management.
	And then I semi-retired in 2020, and I thought I was pretty much out of it, and then the world went completely mad, and I took umbrage to that.
	So I started tweeting and complaining about that, which led to some pushback.
	I got called a despicable rat by prominent economist and author Francis Coppola.
	Not the guy who did The Godfather.
	No, different one.
	I got called the sort of person who would slow down for a car accident by Kate Burley, which was slightly ironic because I was talking about her career at the time after she broke her own Covid rules to have that party.
	I was called Dangerously Misinformed by Piers Morgan.
	Right.
	Turns out, actually, the issue that I was talking about, I was correct.
	And I was called a Covidiot by at least half a dozen Tory MPs.
	I do know that the Tories are now down about 27 points in the polls.
	Yeah, I had the misfortune of attending the Conservative Party conference, and you could feel the palpable energy of an electoral listener.
	Perhaps they should have bloody listened.
	Anyway, so that led me to doing a lot of podcasting and radio, and...
	Now I've joined the Lotus Eater, so here I am.
	Yep, you're stuck with us for the foreseeable future.
	So today we're talking about FLOP26, or at least what we hope COP27 will be.
	27, not 26, I went to the last one.
	Cost of Living being the new current thing, your first segment with us.
	And how central bank digital currencies are going to be coming soon.
	little update for technological immiseration of us all.
	First, we have our last day, I believe, of content being free for a week.
	It's day 28.
	This is our interview with Helen Dale.
	Carl conducted an interview with her a little while ago, talking about the sorry state of conservatism, as you just alluded to, funnily enough.
	So that's free for a week.
	And then tomorrow, we have to celebrate our second anniversary, a hangout special with all of our Gold Tier subscribers.
	So if you haven't subscribed yet, is it anyone?
	It's open for everyone?
	Okay, well, floodgates open, I guess.
	Hopefully it entices you to subscribe for future months when you can join future gold-tier Zoom calls.
	Without further ado, let's get into the segment.
	So last year, I attended COP26 in Glasgow, where rain fell about as freely as the tears from the face of our COP minister, Alok Sharma, when the deal fell through when China and India went, mmm, don't really feel like scrapping coal power all that quickly, thank you very much.
	This year, some political leaders, ambassadors, and unelected international bodies will convene in the climate-conscious state of Egypt, Sharm el-Sheikh, where most people go on holiday.
	Lovely.
	But just like last year, our self-appointed elites, jet-setting hypocrisy, and scarcely-veiled attempts to immiserate and enslave us are on full display, so let's look at some of their stupid proposals from the inaugural day suggested as our path to energy security, shall we?
	First of all, speaking of our elites sending us senselessly to our deaths, if you'd like to subscribe to the website, you can watch our Epoch series, this one on the Armistice, ahead of Armistice Day.
	On Friday, Beau and Carl did a very good job of discussing the events leading up to the end of the war and some particularly emotive aspects of, well, the brave young men who died pretty senselessly in trenches.
	And Beau had a wonderful reading of a war poem at the end, which I really have to commend him on.
	And I'm glad I worked with the guy because he's very lovely.
	So first of all, let's go to the fact that COP is being sponsored by Coca-Cola, the number one plastics producer in the world.
	Now, I do like to laugh at this sort of stuff, right?
	But for me, and as you said, you've done some radio and bits and pieces before, so I don't know which stations you specifically did, but as someone who frequents GB News and Talk TV a fair bit, I am kind of bored about the, oh, but they're using private jets argument.
	Because, yeah, of course they are.
	They don't give us any moral consideration.
	We are the little people.
	So our hypocrisy charges are just going to fall on deaf ears.
	They don't really care.
	The rules don't really apply to them, do they?
	No, absolutely not.
	So I do think pointing out hypocrisy is very useful to show the uninitiated or the sort of fence-sitters on the climate debate that it's not really about saving the planet, it's about immiserating us, controlling us, making sure that they are enriched at our expense.
	But I do think that it's pretty useless to keep going, you're all hypocrites, you should change your ways, because they don't want to change their ways, because it's not about moral consistency, it's about them getting fat and happy and us being poor and cold and easily predictably controlled.
	So, as much as Coca-Cola, it's fun to point out, make a lot of plastic every year, that's the point.
	They're all in it together.
	So, not to dunk on James Melville, because he puts out some good stuff, but it's going to fall on deaf ears, I'm afraid.
	There's also their menu at the event.
	So, do you remember when Patrick Vallance, the guy who basically locked us down for two years, turned around and said, oh yeah, we need behavioural changes, like abandoning meat to save climate change?
	There's little nudge things.
	Turns out all of the global elite who are going to this thing, when they land in Sharm El Sheikh, For the 12-day conference, they're going to be able to taste Angus beef medallions with sautéed potatoes for £100, sorry, £90, $100, creamy salmon for $35, $40, sorry, £35, getting my currencies mixed up here, and also seafood platters for £43.
	They can get an after-dinner tipple bag for £43, including Beer, red and white wines, all imported of course.
	And for those who like dessert, they can pay £110 for 90 minutes of bottomless cocktails.
	So, very climate-conscious meals here.
	Definitely not just having a piss-up at our expense whatsoever.
	If we can go to the next one, again, the charge of hypocrisy, we're not going to open this video and play it, but we're all just going to let it go in the background.
	I'll describe it for you.
	Sky News put up a warning saying, oh, warning, protesters hit by military police in this.
	Basically, a couple of hundred environmental activists stormed down to the damn airport and sat in front of private jets to stop them taking off to go to COP. And I'm kind of happy for the climate fanatics to sit there and eat their own, because they get dragged off, and while they're beating drums, they're beating with battens, and they didn't actually ground any commercial flights.
	They didn't get in the way of us little people going on holiday, of course.
	But...
	I have to question, why are you protesting this in the first place when the entire global elite are on your side?
	You're essentially the foot soldiers of the regime that think that your policies are a foregone conclusion.
	And we can see that these policies are a foregone conclusion if we look at our appointed, not elected, Prime Minister's statement.
	If we go to the next one, this is a speech he gave yesterday, and I'm just going to read a little bit from it.
	It's mainly Waffle.
	People are criticising him not being harsh enough, right?
	But there's really one key part here.
	Climate security goes hand in hand with energy security.
	I agree.
	Putin's abhorrent war in Ukraine and rising energy prices across the world are not a reason to go slow on climate change, they're a reason to act faster.
	Right.
	Does anyone happen to remember, and I'm sure that they do, but they just don't care, they're using it as an excuse, it's a controlled demolition, does anyone remember exactly what got Germany hooked on Nord Stream pipelines in the first place?
	That's right.
	It was the decommissioning of their nuclear power plants by 2022, an attempt to go wholesale renewables, and then, boom, rolling blackouts, which resulted in some people dying because some hospitals didn't have backup generators.
	Going all in on Russian gas and then cancelling that as well.
	Yeah.
	But no, that's interesting, actually.
	So if these protesters glue themselves to the road while we're trying to get to work...
	Police are all nicey-nicey, but if you go and block the private jets, then batons come out.
	That's a very valid point, yes.
	I'm curious.
	Yeah.
	Isn't it interesting how it only matters if you inconvenience the elite, who already agree with you anyway?
	So, Sinek then says, there are reasons to act faster, because diversifying our energy supplies by investing in renewables is precisely the way to ensure ourselves against the risks of energy dependency.
	It's also a fantastic source of new jobs and growth.
	Well, we'll be seeing slightly later why renewables quite aren't up to the task, but I don't see how anyone is surprised by him doubling down on the green-only dogma, because even though he moments ago said that he wouldn't be going to COP, last year he made this pretty extraordinary promise.
	Let's just compare his speech, shall we?
	He says, I wanted to rewire the entire global financial system for net zero.
	So, hmm.
	Quite an ambitious scope to moralise markets via the legislature.
	And this includes measures such as, and obviously your background in finance, you may be able to identify the exact kind of ideology that is parasitising businesses with these kind of tenants.
	But he says, better and more consistent climate data, sovereign green bonds, mandatory sustainability disclosures, proper climate risk surveillance, and stronger global reporting standards.
	I suspect there's going to be another one in there, which he hasn't mentioned, which is considerably more bungs to landowners for hosting wind turbines and solar panels.
	That's probably going to be where actually most of the money is going to end up.
	See, it's funny because I was in a Zoom call with Bim Afalami, who's one of the business ministers.
	I don't know if he's still appointed now.
	But they were discussing after the National Tree Strategy released about how government can incentivise more landowners to plant more trees to offset more carbon.
	And he kind of interrupted and just went, we hear a lot of talk about incentives, but we have the laws.
	Why don't we just force them to do it?
	And it is interesting that it could be the case, as the Dutch government are seeming to do, for example, with their sudden scaremongering about nitrogen emissions, but instead they just want to seize land to either build on it or create new...
	Well, that applies to our boilers, for example.
	So, I mean, the government have decided that they're just going to ban us from buying non-EV cars after 2035.
	They've decided that they're going to ban us from having the type of boilers that we might like to have.
	So they have no issue using compulsion whenever they want to, except when it comes to landowners when it has to be incentives.
	And that's the point.
	We have no moral prohibition against them just confiscating your land.
	It's just a matter of time.
	But for me, this reads a lot like ESG's instantiated interlaw by the British government on a global scale.
	So you have to report your sustainability record.
	You have to report your carbon labelling.
	You have to basically buy climate change insurance from the power brokers who are selling it to you based on scaremongering projections that aren't even in the IPCC. I mean, there's this book here, right?
	I'm going through it at the moment.
	We're hoping to get Alex on the show eventually at the start of the year, Fossil Future.
	And he does go through the fact that in the IPCC report, when they talk about Floods, storms, droughts.
	The IPCC said it's either so strenuous to link it to human activity that it's utterly improbable, or the results were at least inconclusive.
	So everyone's turning around and saying, oh, Germany, oh, Pakistan.
	No, you're pulling it out of your backside.
	Well, and also I know that they keep talking about these sort of floods and they talk about rising sea levels.
	Yet every bank in the world is still perfectly happy to lend 30-year mortgages on coastal property, such as the one that Obama recently bought.
	So why is it that these banks with their large risk departments are perfectly willing to go against the green ideology which they claim to sign up for?
	It's also interesting that Bill Gates decides to import Caribbean sand via shipping crate every year to his own private household beach.
	But meanwhile, we have to eat 100% sympathetic beef.
	Isn't that interesting?
	Sunak is making good on his promise, though.
	This is from Harry Cole.
	I believe he's the political editor of The Sun off the top of my head.
	And he's noticed that recently, Sunak has scrapped Liz Truss, shortest Prime Minister in history, Foreign Policy and Security Council and restored the National Security Council.
	But he's also added a new National Security Council on Europe that has removed Suella Braverman, you know, the Home Secretary, in charge of migration policy.
	So the National Security Council, which deals with Europe, It's not including the woman who is meant to be dealing with the influx of channel migrants from Calais.
	The most revealing thing though, and this is why I've linked it to COP, is because Jeremy Hunt, the again appointed Chancellor that no one wanted and he's compromised by China, see our segment for that, now chairs the Home Affairs Committee which covers economic policy.
	If you can scroll down to the second tweet just here, John.
	This standalone Climate Committee is also gone and it's swallowed into the Domestic and Economic Affairs, Energy, Climate and Net Zero Committee.
	So that means that SUNAC, within Cabinet, has folded net zero concerns climate policy into economic policy wholesale, and Hunt now chairs that.
	Isn't that interesting?
	Basically, the entire reorientation of our domestic finance policy, at a time of recession, is going towards the green transition.
	Well, and funny, because normally what this means is that they are going to be pursuing policies that they know that the public don't support.
	Yes.
	But if they wrap them up in the green agenda, then they can bypass that buy-in.
	Yeah.
	Well, it's the realisation of the fourth industrial revolution with COVID as an excuse.
	I wonder where they got that idea from, shall we?
	So let's talk about the lone positive that may have come from COP26 so far, shall we?
	And this was already in the works of Liz Truss and Biden beforehand.
	Not that Biden remember whose he spoke to about five minutes ago, let alone the last Prime Minister, but...
	Rishi Sunak has basically struck a deal with the US, to all of our US viewers over there, thank you very much, to ease Britain's energy crisis.
	And the idea is to have the US be the UK's primary oil and gas exporter.
	So, they're promised to export billions of cubic metres of liquefied natural gas to the UK, sources have told The Telegraph.
	The UK hopes the figure will be around 10 billion cubic metres, according to UK sources.
	The whole of the European Union was promised 15 billion cubic metres by the US this spring, so we're outdoing those guys.
	It would also provide reassurance on UK energy supply.
	The National Grid has warned of blackouts this winter between 4 and 7pm.
	The Guardian reported a little while ago that the BBC have actually drafted their briefings for winter blackouts announcements to be read on air in January.
	It's unclear how much of the gas, which will be sold by US companies rather than the US government, of course, but they are currently having a stranglehold on the licences and leasing.
	Obviously, Biden signed all his executive orders blocking new federal oil and gas leases and drilling on federal lands.
	It's unclear how much of it will reach the UK energy system for winter.
	It may just drip feed into the new year.
	The interesting thing, though, I don't want to be raining on the parade, but this could be shut down in one of two ways, because they're also partnering more on renewable technologies, and the Biden administration are emphasising the renewables half of this deal.
	So I think what may happen is, with the Republicans winning the midterms, possibly today, because it will be a safe and secure election, what will happen is that the Republicans will turn around, rightly concerned about American national security, and go, well, hang on a minute, Biden, we've had two years of him stopping gas drilling.
	therefore the prices are up, so our internal gas markets are screwed up, so we can't afford to export at this time, therefore we'll put this deal on hold for a little while.
	And I would understand that, but also we'll be very cold as well.
	And then that will be the excuse for the Democrats to turn around and go, okay, we can at least help them with the renewables aspect of the deal, and they will double down on the policy they'd already agreed on was destined for us anyway.
	Well, that's very possible.
	And even if that's not the case, the only reason why the US is in the position to export some of this liquid natural gas in the first place is because they've been getting so heavily into fracking.
	Hmm.
	So, effectively, what the UK government is saying is that we can't have fracking here, but what we can do is we can buy American fracking product only with a mark-up and a transportation cost added on top.
	Doesn't make any sense to me.
	Well, it definitely makes sense when you realise that the fracking vote and the attempts to whip the party members into shape behind the scenes was the catalyst to Liz Truss's final...
	Nail-in-the-coffin resignation.
	And it's definitely that there seems to be a foregone conclusion within the Tory party that there is a micromanagerial international state ideology at work with at least half of them, and they don't like it when someone upsets the apple cart a little bit.
	At least half.
	Yes.
	The other half seem to be more internationalist warmongers, but...
	Bless you.
	So, speaking of our Prime Minister in waiting, shall we?
	The guy who's going to inevitably take over at this rate, because the Tories are committing suicide if we don't murder them with the general election, and, well, two pigs, different colour rosettes.
	Keir Starmer's authored this piece, it was in the Observer originally, but it's been reprinted in the Guardian.
	It is said that Britain is not in the business of showing climate leadership on the world stage.
	That is because of Sunak's weak position.
	The Prime Minister's first priority will always be the basest instincts of the Conservative Party.
	What fiction is he peddling?
	They are all on board with net zero.
	For the Tories, it's always party first.
	What's best for the country and for the planet comes a distant second.
	It's time for a fresh start, one that recognises the crisis we face are linked and will only be solved by a new approach.
	The UK's energy bills disaster was exacerbated by Putin's grotesque invasion of Ukraine, but it was caused by 12 years of failure by Tory governments to unhook Britain from its dependence on fossil fuels.
	Now, that is in part true, because 12 years of Tory rule, also in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, which we'll get onto later, have basically sabotaged Britain's energy independence by Theresa May selling off our shell gas reserves, the reluctance to build new nuclear power, the partnership with China on new nuclear power stations, the unwillingness to up North Sea oil and gas drilling, which Quasi Kuateng also wanted to do, suspiciously, and then he was ousted again.
	But then what do you reckon his solution is going to be?
	What do you think Labour's big, throbbing brain idea will be for this?
	No idea, do tell.
	At the same time, we have an accelerating climate crisis illustrated most recently by the devastating floods in Pakistan and Britain's first 40-degree day.
	So he's calling it apocalyptic situation caused by fossil fuels.
	It's why I have set out a world-leading commitment for Britain to be the first major economy to reach 100% clean power by 2030.
	So 100% renewables in 8 years.
	Utter fantasy.
	The ambition of those plans is matched only by my determination to deliver them.
	Under my Labour government, the UK will become a clean energy superpower.
	And he wants to establish a national wealth fund and GB Energy, a publicly owned energy company, to invest in the technologies and the jobs of the future.
	From green hydrogen to floating wind turbines, gigafactories to new nuclear, clean steel to tidal power, with a Labour government, new industries will thrive.
	Now, he's going to have to overcome a lot of the anti-nuclear sentiment in his base to get any nuclear on the docket.
	I think it's going to end up just being 100% renewables anyway.
	And that was actually the Green Party position, has been for quite a while, the Extinction Rebellion position as well.
	And that's become the mainstream talking point of both parties, the Conservatives and Labour.
	We'll demonstrate exactly what the Conservatives think about the But just to prove I'm not making it up and the Green Party do really want 100% renewables.
	Their Energy Party policy, 10 and 11, they say, So no nuclear in there at all.
	I remember Caroline Lucas also saying that we don't need nuclear power.
	So, actively just sabotaging our energy system, because you need a dispatchable base load to consistently run in the background when the weather isn't opportune, when the sun doesn't shine and the winds don't blow, and also because the battery storage power just isn't there yet, which we'll get onto in a minute.
	But what happens if we either generate a surplus that we don't need, Or if we are in a deficit and our neighbours have better weather.
	Well, it turns out that point 11 on this, it says that continuity of supply will be ensured by using the UK's renewable energy sources and a variety of storage technologies and links to other countries' grids.
	So every country is going to have undersea cables interconnecting them.
	You know, like a Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
	And we're going to be dependent on each other, holding hands and singing kumbaya and sharing power when we all have either generated too much or not enough.
	Well, and that's essentially how we got into the problem that we're in now, because that energy plan, the balancing factor at the end of it, is that we can just buy energy off our neighbours.
	Well, it turns out that everybody else had that in their energy plan as well, and when there's an energy shortage, there isn't actually any spare energy left.
	No.
	It's a finite supply, and especially because the tech just isn't there yet, so we can go on to the next one.
	Just a little bit of research I did a little while ago.
	If you think renewables are up to scratch to be adopted wholesale by 2030, I've got a bridge to sell you.
	My modelling for the Adam Smith Institute found that if the average energy production rate of renewables, which at the time of 2021 was 7.76 gigawatts, and that became the sole source for Britain's national grid, it would fall short of meeting existing average consumer energy demand, 30 gigawatts, by 74.5%.
	And obviously with the rise of remote work and the like, that's only going to go up, especially with the use of electric cars and the increasing digitization of things like gas hobs into induction hobs.
	So we're just going to need more and more energy.
	Also, if wind and solar were to double their grid contributions, it would cost consumers, before inflation, an increase by £10 for every single megawatt hour of power.
	So, utterly unaffordable for households.
	That's if the generation could also be stabilised enough to be reliable.
	Last year's weekly peak for renewables production was 46.4 gigawatts.
	Its deepest trough, a 21-day stretch of 15.5 gigawatts.
	So that's half the average energy demand for 21 days.
	To expand the grid capacity, to be able to store enough energy generated renewably to make up for those 21-day deficits.
	Which, by the way, the batteries aren't there yet.
	It's gotten to the point where they're trying to store it in sand silos, like it's the pig silo from the Simpsons movie.
	That's not going to work.
	To store 7,560 gigawatts to safeguard against these 15-day-long generation troughs would cost £2.9 trillion, which is more than the UK's annual GDP, of course.
	Again, before inflation, so it's just going to go up.
	A feat was also to require the redirection of global battery manufacturing capacity from now to 2030 itself to be directed just to the UK and just for the grid.
	So no one can have any electric cars, no one can generate their own renewables.
	Phones are kind of a problem.
	It's simply not a question of cost.
	The lithium refining doesn't exist.
	All the way down the chain you go, all of the base elements that you need in order to get to this point, the capacity simply isn't there.
	So you can throw as much money at this as you like.
	It's simply impossible.
	Yeah, and also the places that do have the lithium, like Afghanistan, which we just abandoned, the 140 countries in China's Belt and Road Initiative, like Zimbabwe or Argentina, where they have whole salt flats full of lithium.
	China now owns those.
	And we were exporting lithium and precious metals out of a couple of countries a little while ago, but they seem to have gotten in a bit of a kerfuffle.
	Oh, Russia and Ukraine, of course.
	I'm sure it's all down to Putin and not the fact that we outsourced all of our energy needs to our enemies.
	So, if we can just explain why we're in this mess.
	Nick Clegg, back in 2010, explained why government policy has put us in this place.
	We can play this clip.
	By the most optimistic scenarios from the government itself, there's no way they're going to have new nuclear come on stream until about 2021, 2022.
	So it's just not even an answer.
	Great.
	Thanks.
	Thanks.
	So because you thought 10 years was too many years away, we're now living in that time, and we're cold, and things are very costly.
	So cheers, you corrupt git.
	Thanks very much.
	And as Adam points out, the short-termism of our current system is quite literally killing people.
	Yeah.
	Fantastic.
	Speaking of awful 2010s politics, guess who decided to pipe up about COP? It's the Shadow Climate Secretary himself, Ed Miliband, failed Labour leader.
	Do you remember in 2014 when he did his Ed Stones, giant tablets of his policies, and Item 4 had controls on immigration?
	Well, this is how quickly the conversation has sprinted leftward of the Overton window.
	He's actually suggesting global climate reparations.
	I'm going to subject you to this clip, and I'm sorry in advance.
	To go back to COP, part of the debate is going to be about the richer part of the world paying the poorer part of the world to help them deal with carbon costs.
	And some people even call it reparations.
	Essentially, wealthy countries ought to be giving money to countries that are finding the impact of climate change very profound and difficult.
	Would a Labour government pay reparations to developing countries for climate change?
	I don't see it as about reparations.
	And actually, when you talk to lots of campaigners, this is about the issue of so-called loss and damage.
	This is the fact that poorer countries are facing massive effects of climate change.
	We see it all around the world.
	And we can quibble about the terminology.
	Well, no, the terminology matters because lots of people are allergic to the term reparations.
	But our viewers will want to know also if a Labour government would transfer...
	Large amounts of cash to the developing world, including to China.
	Would Labour give money to China?
	It's not about China, no.
	It's not about China.
	I don't think China isn't necessarily asking for money.
	This is about poorer countries that are on the front line of the climate crisis.
	Pakistan had these disastrous floods recently, 30% of the country underwater.
	So this is about global solidarity.
	I mean, yes, we have some historical responsibility, but this is about global solidarity, and it's absolutely part of our aid commitment.
	You know, we don't think the government was right to The 0.7 aid commitment.
	So you would, just to be clear, and I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but to be clear, a Labour government would give that money.
	Absolutely, it's about supporting poorer countries, completely right.
	And let me just say, it's morally right, Laura, but it's also in our self-interest too.
	Because if we don't act, and if we don't help countries around the world, we're going to end up with the problems that countries face in terms of refugees, for example, coming back onto us.
	Except that China is part of the group of countries that is asking for loss and damage to use the...
	We should recognise loss and damage, absolutely.
	It's not about giving money to China.
	I promise you, Laura, it's not about giving money to China.
	That's not what this is about.
	This is about countries like the Maldives, like Pakistan and others, and we have aid commitments.
	Now, unfortunately, the government has resiled from many of our aid commitments, but it is absolutely about recognising our moral responsibility.
	Right, it will be absolutely about giving money to China.
	100%.
	When he says global solidarity, that just translates to redistributive international climate communism.
	And also, I don't want to work for the rest of my life so you can tax me to death so we can pay Pakistan, a nation which stones rape victims to death, for their floods and their inability to prep for them because they're a corrupt hellhole.
	And actually, it's worse than that because he did hit upon an interesting point there.
	He talked about the fact that it was money going to these poor countries to sort of stop a refugee crisis.
	Well, current Western policy, like I said, because everybody's run out of energy, what they're doing is they're basically bidding up the cost of energy that they can get in.
	So that means that Western nations are taking whatever little amount of energy fuels are available and it's not going to those third world countries.
	There isn't enough diesels for countries like Sri Lanka and other places in order to run their agricultural equipment.
	So current Western energy policy of bidding out for all the energy that is available is going to result and is starting to result now in famine across the third world which will result in another wave of immigration that will be coming this way which I'm sure the government will be only too happy to accommodate.
	Yeah, it just so happens that all of the policies the global elite are pursuing at the same time they're concerned about global population levels happen to result in a lot of deaths.
	How weirdly convenient that is.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Speaking of China, funnily enough, it came out today that China has emitted more CO2 over the past eight years than the UK has since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
	So why the hell should we be paying them when we're 1% of all emissions and...
	By my numbers that I found last year, China opened 252 coal power plants to exceed capacity, and that would add 16% to total global emissions by 2030, when we're trying to eliminate 1% by 2050.
	So that's just suicide.
	Between 1750 and 2020, the UK emitted 78 billion tonnes of CO2, whereas China put out 80 billion tonnes since 2013.
	They're only outpaced by the US. But of course, under President Trump, the guy who...
	Withdrew from the Paris Accords.
	Evil climate denier he is.
	Oh yeah, year on year, due to fracking, they actually became the leading nation to decrease their emissions.
	And they became energy independent all at once.
	I wonder why they got rid of him.
	So we laugh at this proposal.
	Rishi Sunak's actually doing this.
	He's doing it.
	Let's go to the next one.
	Sunak has announced that due to their key funding commitments, they're spending $11.6 billion on international climate finance, recognizing the existential threat climate change is already opposing around the world.
	From catastrophic floods in Pakistan to the drought in Somalia, again, no evidence that climate change caused either of those, the government will commit to triple funding for climate adaptation as part of that budget, from $500 million in 2019 to $1.5 billion in 2025.
	Let's go to the next one.
	The projects include new and expanded solar and geothermal power plants in Kenya, backed by British international investment, UK export financing for Nairobi's groundbreaking railway city, etc.
	They're trying to compete with China's Belt and Road scheme.
	Whereas, personally, I wouldn't send Pakistan so much as a pool noodle, even if they were neck-deep underwater.
	I don't.
	Care.
	No.
	Nicola Sturgeon's doing the same thing, again with our money, because the Scottish economy is in a shambles.
	And I find it interesting that when List Trust tried to cut taxes by around about the same amount of money, it apparently caused a crisis that resulted in having to go.
	But when that money's being used for international subsidies, then that's okay.
	Isn't it really interesting that we had two years of literal economic crash, engineered by the man who is now occupying Downing Street, and the Bank of England didn't blink a bloody eye because he was on board with digital currencies.
	But Liz Truss goes, I'm going to cut your tax by 1%, and oh boy, we couldn't possibly do that.
	Some might say problem, reaction, solution.
	Yes.
	Some might say coup.
	Yeah, Nicola Sturgeon just said she's going to announce another 5 million of reparations, taking the total to 7 million, that could be used by developing countries to address the, quote, direct impact of climate change or non-economic effects, such as, direct, quote, loss of cultural identity.
	Sorry, can I start claiming for that?
	The amount of mass migration you've inflicted on me, because my country doesn't look exactly like it was.
	I'm going to start calling migrants climate change.
	Here's why we can't have absolute monarchy to prorogue this terrible parliament as well.
	Remember when King Charles was told, don't go?
	Yeah, he decided to do his own mini-cop at home instead.
	Great.
	He's not on our side, lads.
	He literally gave the keynote speech at the WEF in 2020, so as much as we will take any solution to a bad parliament at this point...
	He's not going to provide it.
	And lastly, speaking of climate communism, let's look at Greta Thunberg, who actually isn't going to COP27 this year, so all the attendees get a break from being told, how dare you?
	She's calling for System-Wide Transformation, her book launch in London.
	She said, We're good to go.
	Tedros Anom, I'm not even going to pronounce his last name, the guy who heads up the World Health Organization, literal party communist, and Thomas Piketty from The Economist, and apparently he's a French materialist who's proposed a global tax on wealth to reduce income inequality.
	So a bunch of commies, just endorsing her open...
	When asked by Ms Ahmed whether she thought it would be as simple as making laws that outlaw things, she responded, there are many things that we can do, but while we do these things that we can do within our current system, we have to realise that we need a system-wide transformation.
	That sounds like the kid.
	Do you know the meme of...
	Do you think that...
	Do you think that...
	Did you ever have a dream that...
	Wonderful nonsense.
	Predictive text.
	We need to change everything because right now our current system is on a collision course with the future of humanity and the future of civilization.
	I don't know why we're actually surprised that Greta's saying this now though because a couple of years ago she published this article that not many people know about in Project Syndicate that says school children, young people and adults all over the world will stand together demanding that our leaders take action.
	Not because we want them to but because the science demands it.
	That action must be powerful and wide-ranging.
	After all, the climate crisis is not just about the environment.
	It's a crisis of human rights, of justice, and of political will.
	Very Rousseauian.
	Colonial, racist, and patriarchal systems of oppression have created and fuelled it.
	We need to dismantle them all.
	Right, so she's always been a climate commie, and you guys just didn't notice.
	Frankly, I would rather burn tires in my front garden than give Greta what she wants.
	The problem is, all of this ideology leads to one place.
	And I just thought I'd finish with this.
	Now, he didn't endorse this, the Oxford academic.
	He was merely explaining it But this kind of climate utilitarianism, this indifference to human life shown by Just Up Oil blocking ambulances, leads to this kind of genocidal rhetoric.
	You shouldn't save people if they're drowning because they eat meat and the ultimate harm is done more to chickens at a battery farm than this one person dying.
	That is going to be the ideology of the Malthusian, misanthropic climate activists and the elites that agree with them in the end.
	And again, I just so hope it's a coincidence that all of these policies result in more deaths and they're not deliberately trying to engineer lower population.
	I hope they're just stupid and we can convince them out of it.
	So I suppose I'll just wrap up with, we can best hope that COP is a flop, because if it's successful, we'll be living under the leatherless boot heel of the climate cultists, won't we?
	Yeah, not ideal.
	Right, so in our next segment, we're looking at potentially a new current thing.
	So I was looking at the BBC webpage yesterday, and I noticed Monday morning that Ukraine has now been bumped down to their second top item.
	Replacing it is the cost of living.
	So, you know, just as the European population starts to get really fed up with sending billions to Ukraine for a war that can't possibly be won and should have been negotiated away right at the beginning back in April, we've now got this instead.
	Now, before we get into this topic, I'm just going to highlight the freemium article that we got available.
	So, as you know, we've been making items available from our premium section free for everybody to access.
	And this is now going up.
	This is going to be available for a week is our fantastic interview with Helen Dale.
	Although what I would say is you should really just sign up for the premium account.
	It does cost only five pounds.
	That's about the same cost as a pint of beer these days.
	Now, look.
	If you met this man in a pub, you'd buy him a pint of beer, wouldn't you?
	So don't do that because he drinks too much.
	Sign up for a premium account instead.
	That's what you've got to do.
	I can't dispute that claim, I'll be honest.
	Or do both.
	Right.
	So, yes, let's talk about the inflation crisis that we've got at the moment, or as it's otherwise known, the government printed far too much money in the beginning of 2020.
	The official inflation rate, if we just scroll down a little bit on this page from the Bank of England, the official inflation rate is currently 10.1%.
	Now, I don't actually believe that number.
	I think it's higher than that.
	But...
	just that number alone is quite devastating.
	What that means is that if you don't get a pay rise in ten years, sorry in eight years, not ten years, in just eight years the purchasing power of your wages will halve.
	So if you're earning 50 grand today and you think that's a pretty good income, all you need to do is not get a pay rise for eight years and you have the purchasing power that somebody earning 25 grand today has.
	So this is going to be a colossal impact to us all.
	Now, where is that value going to go?
	Well, that value is going to accrue to people higher up the value chain, so it could be your employer.
	And it could be anyone else along that value chain.
	And of course, it's going to be government as well, because they're not lowering their tax thresholds during any of this.
	So it is going to be a massive transfer of wealth from the wage earners to the owners of capital and the government as well.
	It's also interesting that during the COVID crisis, they gave themselves a pay rise, MPs did.
	They didn't do that.
	They were happy to get quite comfy, weren't they?
	Indeed.
	So let's take another look at this BBC segment.
	So they've got a whole topic now on cost of living.
	Now they've got various stories listed down below on this one.
	They've got the story from Wales of a woman who says that her children are asking her if they will be able to eat.
	We've got one slightly above there, which is a man from Derby is asking, do I have to leave the UK because of interest rates rise?
	But I wanted to focus on this one here from Wessex, which is this single mum, 28-year-old single mum here, Alexandra Mitchell, who has a one-year-old and a three-year-old who is having to seek refuge in Chelmsford Library because it's who has a one-year-old and a three-year-old who is having to And she's saying that her children don't know why they're there.
	Now, being a parent of young children myself, I can confirm that one-year-olds and three-year-olds quite often don't understand why they've gone to any particular location.
	But this is the heartbreaking story that we're getting from this.
	Now it gets worse.
	I was going to say, I wouldn't be surprised if you start just seeing pensioners going into Wetherspoons and buying the 99p refillable coffee and just sitting there all day to take advantage of the heating.
	Well, to be fair, they do that already, and all power to them.
	But this is becoming increasingly a thing.
	So as we go into this story, we see the case of young pensioners Chitsuelu, if I'm pronouncing that right.
	Chitsuelu and her friends have taken to seeking refuge from the mild November weather by hanging out in the library and adopting the free Wi-Fi, such as the cost of living impact that we are having to escape from it as best we can.
	Now, I'm wondering if this whole segment...
	And the people's reaction to it.
	I'm sure it's something that we've all encountered as well.
	The cost of living is going up.
	Maybe that is going to make people start to think that just possibly shutting down the economy for two years and spaffing 400 billion in the process, not to mention the additional billions that we spaffed off to Ukraine and keeping immigrants in hotels.
	Perhaps some of that was a bad idea.
	So you think the inadvertent effect of the BBC trying to manufacture consent about a worsening economic circumstance will actually radicalise people in the opposite direction and go, well, shouldn't I start to be critical of government policy that is eviscerating all my tax money?
	Well, very possible.
	That's the hope.
	You can certainly see why they had to go via Ukraine.
	You couldn't go straight from lockdowns to making this the new country.
	No, because that was their fault.
	You had to have something to break it up, otherwise people might push back against them.
	Wasn't it interesting how they accelerated lifting lockdowns?
	The decisions and vaccine passports on that about a week after they had the Ukraine briefing.
	It was quite a seamless switch, yes.
	So you're very impressive how they did it.
	Now, of course, I want to make a story, give you a story that everybody can really relate to.
	And so I've gone to this one.
	This is, you know, City of London.
	There's a lovely little pub right in the middle of all the banks.
	It is one of the oldest pubs in London.
	This is a place that dates back to 1757.
	It's been going for...
	260 years.
	So it is almost 130 times older than the Lotus Eaters, which is celebrating its two year anniversary tomorrow and there will be special segments on it then.
	But this is a business that has survived everything that London could throw at it for 260 years and the Covid crisis managed to get it.
	So if a business that old is going to go under, you can imagine that plenty of other hospitality businesses have.
	So, thinking about this level of inflation that we've got, I told you that I didn't really believe that number of 10%.
	There's a lovely little website that I like which is called Trueflation.
	Now, what this website does is it calculates independently the true rate of inflation.
	And they are coming up with a figure of almost 17% inflation, which I think you would agree is probably far more realistic.
	That's probably more what you're experiencing in your personal lives.
	Definitely in supermarkets.
	Exactly right.
	And they also break down some of the categories within that.
	So I thought that housing was quite interesting.
	They're calculating an inflation rate on housing, so rents and mortgages, of 30% at the moment.
	Isn't it interesting how 52% of all women in the UK over 30 are childless, and yet the housing demand just keeps going up.
	I wonder where it's all coming from.
	Yeah, if only there was some sort of explanation for that that we covered recently.
	The other one is utilities.
	Utilities have gone up at 83%, Lutty.
	So, yeah, this is where some of this is going.
	Now, that headline inflation rate of 17%, I told you earlier that if you didn't get a pay rise, you would effectively half your purchasing power in just eight years.
	If you calculated at 17%, it comes down to just five years.
	So the only thing that you need in order to half your ability to purchase is to not get a pay rise for five years at these current levels of inflation.
	This genuinely is a crisis, and we're going to hear all about why the government thinks that they can shift the blame for this.
	Can I ask a quick question then?
	Absolutely.
	On the prior part where they were breaking it down by, so I understand the Consumer Price Index creates the inflation level because it takes a broad average, right?
	And they game it.
	They've gamed it for years and years to try and get things out of it.
	So, if you were to take out lifestyle-dependent things, for example, like alcohol and tobacco, if you don't drink and you don't smoke, wouldn't that mean that your share of your money that is actually going towards stuff is going to be worse affected if you...
	I don't know how I'm phrasing this properly.
	Well, I mean, actually, that is how they game it.
	So what they do is they include those substitutions effects.
	So actually, the official CPI is a really good measure if you live in your mother's basement and you consume digital media.
	That's what I meant.
	You watch Netflix and you rent pizzas and that kind of thing.
	Then actually, the official CPI is a pretty good metric for you.
	If you do anything in the real world, like say you want to rent a place or you want to have a mortgage or something, the CPI has been twisted over the years to make sure that it doesn't really apply to you.
	And that's why we all feel so disconnected from the official inflation rate.
	So if you're a parasitic kuma, you'll be paying far less as a proportion of your income.
	However, if you're a responsible homeowner with a family, you are going to be bitten in the backside.
	Exactly, because they love putting substitutions in for digital streaming services, that kind of stuff, which has been coming down.
	But that's not really a high quality of life.
	Now, so governments are going to try and tell us that it's all Putin's fault.
	Don't believe that because even in the UK the official inflation rate was at 5% back in January and that was before the Russian-Ukraine conflict started so we're not going to accept that one.
	Over in the colonies, one of them is having an election at the moment.
	We're looking forward to covering that and how fortified that one is.
	We're already hearing that the...
	We can't say that on YouTube.
	No, you can say fortified.
	You can say fortified, of course.
	That's the official term.
	We're already hearing that it's very safe and secure, of course.
	Yeah, they're going to do everything they can to stretch out the counting until it is properly fortified, of course.
	Over in the colonies, they're very sensitive to their gas prices.
	Yes.
	Their petrol prices.
	And Biden is now taken to tweeting out every time it comes down a couple of cents.
	I'm not sure why they're quite as set about it as they are, because if you work that out, that comes to about 60 pence per litre.
	We would love to have fuel prices that much, that low.
	But the way Biden's got to it is by draining down the SPR reserve.
	So the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is there just in case the US gets invaded or it suddenly finds itself in a war with China, it used to have over a thousand days of reserves in it and Biden has taken it down to just 22 days in an attempt to win the election.
	Trump tried to replenish it entirely and Congress blocked him from doing it.
	Yeah, and he tried to do it when the oil price had turned negative.
	Yes.
	So yes, that's the advantages of having Democrats in your political system.
	Right, so let's go back to that BBC site and we're going to pull apart, I decided it might be fun to fact check one of these segments.
	So the Bank of England have provided BBC with five things that they feel that they know about the economy.
	So the first one they say is that the UK is set for a two-year recession.
	Now I'm actually quite happy with that one, I think that they probably are going to have at least a two-year recession.
	And that's because we spent two years strangling the economy of lockdowns and now we're asphyxiating them with high energy prices, inflation and tax rises.
	And whole net zero policies.
	Exactly.
	So at least two years of recession.
	So I'm going to give a thumbs up on the fact check to that first section.
	Next, unemployment rate to nearly double.
	So I believe the current unemployment rate is officially about 3.5%.
	And the Bank of England here is saying that they expect it to go up to 6.4%.
	Now, I'm sure that unemployment is going to rise.
	However, I'm going to take issue with the numbers that they've got there because, again, I don't really trust the official numbers.
	I prefer to look at the labour force participation rate.
	So this is all the people of working age who could have a job.
	Now, if you look at it from that perspective, the unemployment rate is actually 22%.
	Now, there will be some of those people who don't want a job.
	There could be people who have made so much money trading shitcoins and meme stocks that they feel that they can have a little bit of time off.
	There will be people who are stay-at-home parents who won't be looking for a job.
	And certainly a lot of us were forced into that situation over the last couple of years as they shut down schools.
	But nevertheless, it is a useful measure because it's not gained by officialdom in any respect.
	Now, the labour force participation rate had reached an all-time high just before COVID, and now we're looking at, you know, a multi-year low, as the unemployed on this metric goes to 22%.
	So, again, don't trust the official numbers.
	I think that there's something going terribly wrong there as well.
	well well they're gamed anyway by the fact that as well the david cameron government caused a mass influx of eligible working age 16 year olds into colleges sick forms eventually universities via the tony blair school to uni pipeline that means that lots of people were taken out of the economy to fudge the numbers but things didn't get cheaper to be a student or 16 to 18 and so it just meant lots of people couldn't get a head start on earning a living and instead got themselves into debt yeah that's that's the future for young people certainly debt um Third item.
	They tell us that mortgages could rise by £3,000 a year.
	Yes, because in order to protect the face value of government debt, they're having to increase interest rates in order to try and attract a little bit of money to buy our gilts, which is causing interest rates to go up.
	Now, I don't know why they said some mortgages could rise by 3,000.
	I actually worked out what it would be on my own mortgage.
	So I'm a big believer in mortgages.
	Because you can borrow money at a lower rate than the current inflation rate, so effectively it's free money.
	And what I did is the moment that our previous but one bumbling Prime Minister came shuffling out onto stage to lock down the country, I immediately realised what economic carnage that was going to cause.
	And so I locked my inflation into a 10-year fixed rate at below 2%.
	So this morning I worked out how much it would cost if I had to remortgage today at current rates, and I'd be paying an extra £500 a month.
	So, £6,000 a year.
	So, yes, some mortgages might rise by £3,000 a year, others by £6,000 and sort of everything in between as well.
	Is it going to get to, like, early 90s crash scenario where people might have to start handing the houses back?
	Yeah, here's the problem.
	Actually, I'll cover this under item number five.
	They can't let these interest rates get too high, and I'll tell you why in a minute.
	The fourth item on this list is they're talking about inflation is going to slow down next year.
	Now, that one I'm going to give a highly qualified yes to, but this is the sort of jiggery-pokery that officialdom engage in.
	So, yes, inflation is almost certainly going to come down, but that's because inflation is a rate of change metric.
	It's not an absolute.
	What I mean by that, so let's say you're paying £100 a month for your energy bills.
	And then the next year you're paying £200 a month for your energy bill.
	You've experienced 100% inflation on your energy bill.
	But what if your energy bill goes up by another £100 a month for the third year?
	So you're now paying £300 a month for your energy bill.
	Well, now you've only experienced a 50% inflation because it's got a higher comparison from the previous period.
	So yes, inflation will come down because inflation is that rate.
	So all it's saying is that the line doesn't go parabolic.
	So this is how they can get us, by making claims that they are doing something to address a situation where really the situation is just actually so screwed up that you're comparing screwed up with already screwed up.
	It's the new normal.
	Yes, exactly right.
	Now, coming back to your other point there, number five, interest rates won't go up as much as expected.
	Yes, that is true, but that's not to help us with our mortgage.
	The reason for that is that the government, unlike the 70s, are the main holder of debt at this point.
	So, back in the 1970s, and this is the thing that people, commentators, often like to refer to, is they basically just put interest rates up to crush inflation.
	They're not going to do that now.
	It's because it's the government themselves who own all of that debt.
	So if they push up inflation rates at this time, they're going to bankrupt the government.
	At this current level, if all of the government debt were to have to roll over at current interest rates, they'd be spending about £150 billion a year.
	On just debt servicing costs, which is almost as much as they spend on pensions, and it's not that far behind what they spend on of NHS. And that's just at 5.5%.
	So, you know, you go much higher than that, and the government as a whole breaks down.
	So it's perhaps not surprising, with all of this, this is what prompted November's Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, to give this article for The Times, which I think we can call up, Where he explained the state can't fix all of your problems.
	But we can certainly cause them.
	Well, quite.
	And this is the thing.
	So I've been having a think.
	I was pondering this and saying, OK, well, what problems do we have?
	Well, the first one, inflation is hurting.
	Well, that's because the government has been printing vast amounts of money since 2008, and a particularly large amount of money at the beginning of the COVID crisis in 2020.
	So that's why inflation is hurting.
	Taxes are going up.
	Well, that's because they wasted $400 billion on lockdowns, as well as the millions, as we've already talked about, on Ukraine, immigration, COP, all of those things.
	So that's why our taxes are going up.
	Energy shortages.
	That's because you sanctioned Ukraine.
	So you sanctioned Russia, which is the world's largest energy producer.
	What other problems have we got?
	Unemployment is soaring.
	Well, yes, again, C above.
	You asphyxiated the economy for two years.
	What other problems have we got?
	We've got these, as you referred to earlier, the yoghurt-weaving lentilists who are gluing themselves to roads.
	The reason they're doing that is because the government is propagandising them into believing the world is going to blow up in 12 years unless they do something about it.
	I had a look at the Just Stop Oil website a little earlier today and it is resplendent with quotes from government scientists up and down it.
	So, you know, the government and these lentilists, they are on the same page on this one.
	The only thing they differ on is the timing.
	The government wants to get there to net zero by 2050 and the lentilists want to get there by 2030.
	It is simply a question of that.
	Right, violent crime.
	That's another problem we've got, Rishi Sunak.
	Why have we got that?
	It's because you're importing a million people a year with little to no vetting.
	Societal norms are collapsing.
	That's another problem.
	Well, that's because the government is incentivising through its welfare policies and other policies the breakdown of standards at school and media.
	So that's why societal norms are collapsing.
	So actually, when I think about it, most of the problems that we have are caused by government.
	So he's probably right to say that he can't fix all of our problems, but it would be jolly nice if he could stop causing them.
	That's probably a little bit too much to ask.
	Anyway, so having trashed the financial system, they're probably going to be looking for an alternative.
	And I think this is something that you might want to touch on in your third segment, Goddard.
	Yep, let's go into it then, shall we?
	So, we at The Lotus Eaters have been ringing alarm bells about central bank digital currencies for quite a while now.
	Beyond the stated intent by political leaders and international institutions to force us all to go cashless, we may be beginning to see the evolution of the infrastructure that will actually be the practical route to central bank digital currencies being rolled out internationally and in our independent countries.
	Whereas the safe and effective medical treatment, passports, were the wedge issue for digital ID systems, it may be that the state is legislating to legitimize proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies as the first step towards central bank digital currencies.
	Today we're going to look at maybe one of the likely candidates for the blockchain-eligible Co-opting by Big Brother.
	Speaking of central bank digital currencies, if you'd like to go and visit our website, you can watch Harry's video on this, where he gives you a nice frame of reference if you aren't familiar with just how dystopian the term is by going through the Chinese social credit system and one of my personal favourite episodes of Black Mirror, 15 million merit.
	One of the most outlandish, and it turns out that we're all going to be living in the metaverse soon, creating renewable energy by sitting on bicycles so we can earn little digital credits to spend on our avatars, and it wasn't that too far-fetched after all.
	So, let's talk about Ethereum, shall we?
	Now, what is Ethereum?
	Now, obviously it's kind of opportune that you're a financial expert to have you on here.
	As far as I understand it, it's one of the blockchains that NFTs can operate on.
	It's more of a decentralised smart contract system than it is a direct digital currency like Bitcoin.
	Yeah, obviously Bitcoin went first and then you had a couple of other chains follow in the process.
	Ethereum is one of those biggest.
	It's the biggest cryptocurrency behind Bitcoin itself.
	It is certainly one of the candidates for building a central bank digital currency on.
	There are a couple of others.
	I would point to Cardano and Solana as well, but both of those are also proof-of-stake digital currencies.
	Now, the proof-of-stake thing is an important difference between the two.
	So with a blockchain like Bitcoin, the reason that we can trust it is because it is almost impossible for anybody to influence it.
	The way that Bitcoin actually works is that, like the name cryptocurrency suggests, in order to generate a new block in the cycle, an awful lot of mathematical work has to go into finding the next block.
	The person who does it then gets rewarded with some Bitcoin and it embeds the transactions.
	And the way that is done is with millions of machines called ASICs.
	I don't know if we can pull up a picture of an ASIC on screen, perhaps.
	Yep, so these things, millions of these machines all over the world are calculating.
	To try and solve the next cryptographic problem.
	And that happens about once every 10 minutes a new block is discovered.
	And that's really important because if you wanted to try and unwind transactions or if you wanted to manipulate the blockchain in some way, you would have to replicate a truly staggering amount of computing power.
	You would have to put out as much computing power as all of these machines, and there's millions of them all over the world, Plus the sum of all of that computing power back to the point where you wanted to change the transaction.
	And it is what gives Bitcoin its incredible level of security and the reason why you can effectively trust it over long periods of time.
	If something is based on proof of stake, then ultimately there are individuals behind it.
	And individuals, you can do things such as go and put a gun to their head, which is the sort of thing that governments like to do, and say, you will do what we tell you to do.
	So if you have a national currency, which is based on one of those...
	Other systems, then it will give governments what they want, which is ultimate power as to who gets what, and they can reorganise the ether of money any time they want.
	Yeah, who watches the stakeholders is the big question.
	If we can just scroll down, John, a little bit, we can see what the Ethereum developers are actually interested in.
	There's a little table of icons.
	If you can just keep going, I'll tell you when.
	It starts talking about there being banking for everyone, more private internet, peer-to-peer network, and it being censorship-resistant.
	So you would think when Ethereum says no government or company has control over Ethereum, the word we have to insert there is yet, because the universal scope of banking is also an ambition shared by international institutions and various governments that have signed on to those proposals.
	And so Ethereum claims to be censorship-resistant Definitely it was with proof of work, with the sort of checkpoint verification system that it was going through, much like Bitcoin.
	Now it has proof of stake, and he who appoints the stakeholders controls the code and the contracts which Ethereum dishes out to its users, you have to wonder...
	Which hidden hand will be manipulating this particular piece of blockchain technology should it be recruited into the digital currencies that a lot of the elites want us to be hooked on?
	We can just go to the next one, John.
	This recently happened, as you alluded to, with something that the Ethereum were celebrating as the merge.
	It went from proof of work to proof of stake.
	And they're saying the reason they did it was to cut energy consumption by 99.95%.
	That's of course because they don't have to have as many verification computers or their computing power online at once.
	However, I think you can pinpoint exactly the breach in ideology, again with climate policies, why this isn't about renewables or lowering carbon, it's about control.
	Because this entire digital currency system, smart contracts, could be ran on renewables if they were as good as all the elites are insisting that we get on to.
	So it would have no carbon issues at all.
	Instead, no, no, no, no, no.
	They just want to control you and then they're going to be hooking it on renewables anyway.
	Well, I mean, this is probably something for another segment.
	I don't think we can get into this in the podcast.
	But actually, with the Bitcoin mining, you're heavily incentivized to use renewables because you basically need an energy cost as close as possible to zero.
	What I would point out in terms of energy usage, well, have a look at how the dollar is ultimately underpinned.
	Now, I often say that the dollar and other fiat currencies, they're backed by nothing more than the promises of politicians.
	But actually, ultimately, they are backed by the military of those companies.
	The reason why the dollar is as strong as it has been over the last 50 years is because the US military is as strong as it has been.
	And you look at the energy consumption of the US military.
	That is ultimately what is underpinning a lot of these systems.
	And if we have a central bank digital currency, it will be exactly the same thing.
	The security in the chain will not come from proof of work the way that it does with Bitcoin, which is decentralized, which is stateless.
	The security is ultimately going to come from men who work for the state, who are armed, and you won't be.
	Yes.
	So, again, who appoints the stakeholders?
	Very concerning.
	We can look at people appointing stakeholders.
	We go to this Bloomberg article next.
	One over, please, John.
	Perfect.
	So here's just an example of someone who is interested in cryptocurrencies, in proof of stake, in developing digital IDs and digital currencies.
	Anderson Horowitz has invested 70 million in an Ethereum staking protocol.
	Sorry, that's the one after.
	I don't want to spoil my segment.
	So this is Adam Neumann here, and he's the guy who created WeWork.
	So it's a startup that has rent-only office spaces, communal working spaces, kind of like you would see in a tech platform.
	But all across the country, I've been to one in London before to film something.
	They're very nice, but very universal man.
	There's no particularity about it.
	He was ousted from WeWork due to his partying and extracurricular consumption habits.
	But now he's partnered with a hedge fund called Anderson Horowitz to create a carbon credit tracking system and a property rental company...
	All tied to a bank account connected crypto wallet.
	So, he's founded two separate startups that involve crypto, Flow and Flow Carbon.
	Flow Carbon uses blockchain technology to track carbon credits and Flow, which raised 350 million from Anderson Horowitz in August, is a residential real estate company.
	Flow hasn't made the details of its plan public, but they include a digital wallet for handling cryptocurrencies, according to people familiar with the matter, who declines to be identified in discussing private information.
	The wallet would also offer you other financial services, such as allowing users to connect their bank account.
	So rental-only properties, carbon credit systems, digital IDs, digital currencies, all linked to the global financial institutions.
	You will own nothing.
	You will be happy.
	And you can see that Aniston Horowitz has a specific interest in Ethereum, as I already gave the game away with the next article.
	They've invested $70 million in an Ethereum staking protocol.
	So again, stakeholders.
	They are setting themselves up as someone with an interest in using these smart contracts to rule over you financially.
	So let's look at their figureheads, shall we?
	This is not a comprehensive overview, but just cherry-picking a few people that are involved with this.
	We can go to Anderson Horowitz's website.
	Just a few people.
	Tom Tilleman joins as our new global head of policy.
	Tamika served as a senior advisor to now President Joe Biden and two secretaries of state as Hillary Clinton's speechwriter and has decades of experience at the highest levels of Washington in international policymaking, so a member of the deep state.
	He was chairman of the Global Blockchain Business Council and has held advisory roles with the UN, the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, and numerous blockchain companies.
	Right, so Democrat Operative, in bed with international institutions, is their head of policy, and they're the ones investing $70 million in Ethereum staking.
	Fantastic.
	Then there's Brent McIntosh, who's joined as an advisory partner, and he coordinated the G7's work on crypto.
	So you know all those countries that are spearheaded by Rishi Sunak to adopt a central bank digital currency?
	Yeah, he's in charge of investing this as part of this hedge fund.
	Then there's Rachel Horowitz.
	She was Coinbase's first vice president of communications.
	And Coinbase, the cryptocurrency exchange platform, has partnered with the World Economic Forum.
	So you see how all these dominoes are beginning to fall, with people who have their hands in many pies going, this is an interesting technology, why don't we use this one specifically?
	We can also look at an Anderson Horowitz partner.
	She's based in Silicon Valley and she's working with a venture capital firm.
	She was originally scouted from China and it turns out she's a young global leader with the WEF. So again, lots of people in higher positions all coordinating on the same idea.
	Let's look at the WEF's agenda specifically for cryptocurrency, shall we?
	So this is their cryptocurrency regulation article that was released in July of 2022.
	So it says, if you can scroll down, John, to the criteria for net positive macroeconomic outcomes table.
	Here we go.
	Wonderful.
	So they want to...
	Promote access to the financial system for people who have been historically excluded.
	So that translates to financial equity across identity lines, of course.
	There's also in here an obsession with running everything on renewables, as we said.
	Mask off moment.
	It's not about the energy usage.
	It's just about whether or not they can control you.
	And then they start talking about the different countries in this article.
	If we can scroll down...
	For the European Union, at the end of June 2022, the Council Presidency and the European Parliament reached a Provisional Agreement on the Markets in Crypto Assets proposal, which covers issues of unbacked crypto assets and stablecoins, as well as the trading venues and wallets where crypto assets are held.
	They concluded that, if they're going to adopt crypto, there's going to be a €200m per day cap on daily transactions.
	So a hard cap on total transactions using the currencies they've approved.
	Which means that if this becomes the coin which you are forced to use as a digital currency, and collectively the district you are living in within the EU has hit its transaction limit for the day, too bad!
	Doesn't matter what you want to buy.
	Then they also talk about the US. This is a direct quote from them as well, so I guess it's just a conspiracy series to say it's all happened at once.
	Almost simultaneously, the United States Department of the Treasury issued a framework for the International Engagement on Digital Assets, which organises the collaboration across the G7, the G20, the Financial Stability Board, the Financial Action Task Force, and the Egmont Group of Financial Intelligence Units, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, The OECD. Other standard-setting bodies, the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, the World Bank, and other multilateral development banks and other regional and bilateral engagements.
	So, how did they all agree on this one thing at the same time?
	We're going through this document from 2015.
	A blueprint for digital identity.
	Now, I brought this up recently, considering Goldman Sachs were going to all of the Biden administration meetings with Silicon Valley tech platforms to see who was kicked off.
	We can scroll down to page 12, please.
	Look at that.
	So for those who are listening in, it's the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Thomson Reuters, Mastercard, JPMorgan Chase, Lloyds Bank, Deutsche Bank, Visa, Barclays.
	I can just list them all day.
	It's every single financial institution.
	But on the right here, it says the Australian Government Digital Transformation Office, the UK Cabinet Office.
	Did we vote for this?
	No.
	So we're doing this behind the scenes.
	So again, this is a foregone conclusion.
	They are trying to get us on digital currencies, which they can manipulate, inflate, or confiscate at will.
	If we can go down to page 17, please.
	This is what they have in mind.
	Public transactions and private transactions.
	So that means your ability to vote.
	Your ability to bank, your ability to take out loans, whatever you buy.
	And in this document, they actually say about a corporate citizen's ID. So their approved companies that are on ESGs will be the ones linked with digital currencies.
	And with smart contracts included, do you remember when the Bank of England said they could be programmable by a state or employer?
	Of course, companies that aren't on ESG, you're not going to be able to buy from them.
	It's basically not a currency.
	It's like food stamps.
	And what happens when you say the wrong thing with your social media tied to your digital ID? Boom!
	Disappears.
	Now, of course, it's just conspiracy theory to say they're all doing this at once.
	They couldn't possibly be doing it at once, right?
	Let's go to the European Commission.
	European Digital Identity.
	Ursula von der Leyen's direct quote, Every time an app or website asks us to create a new digital identity or to easily log in via a big platform, we have no idea what happens to our data in reality.
	That is why the European Commission will propose a secure European e-identity, one that we trust and that any citizen can use anywhere in Europe to do anything from paying your taxes to renting a bicycle.
	Renting.
	You will own nothing.
	You will be happy.
	You will be a digital serf.
	A technology where we can control ourselves what data is used and how.
	We meaning the state.
	They see themselves as the embodiment of the general will, and much like Lenin's vanguard class, they will do things on behalf of the proletariat rather than a dictatorship of the proletariat.
	Again, just a conspiracy theory to say it's happening everywhere, because it couldn't possibly...
	Oh, the UK's doing it as well.
	Of course it is.
	Yep.
	The G7 today has published a set of public policy principles for retail central bank digital currencies alongside a G7 finance minister's and central bank governor's statement on CBDCs and digital payments.
	CBDCs could be a form of central money that could be used alongside physical notes and coins.
	This is all something Rishi Sinek said before.
	You don't have to click on this.
	You can read it in your own time.
	But in this article, there is a PDF and it's the G7 finance minister's and central bank governor's statement.
	And it says, we commit to the ambitious implementation of the G20 roadmap...
	Again, foregone conclusion, to enhance cross-border payment and welcome the quantitative global markets that have been set recently for addressing the challenges of cost, speed, transparency, and access by 2027.
	So we have our date.
	Wonderful.
	2027.
	Five years away, and we're going to have no cash.
	Can't wait.
	Now, those thinking in Freedomland that they're exempt from this as well, we can go to our last link here.
	Biden recently signed an executive order on incorporating crypto in here, and his reasoning is, and I'll read this little paragraph because it's very long, but we can go into it another time.
	The United States has an interest in responsible financial innovation, expanding access to safe and affordable financial services, and reducing the cost of domestic and cross-border funds, transfers and payments.
	It's like the same person wrote these briefs.
	Including, through the continued modernization of public payment systems, we must take strong steps to reduce the risks that digital assets could pose to consumers, investors and business protections, financial stability and financial system integrity, combating and preventing crime and illicit finance, From the Bidens, really!
	National security, the ability to exercise human rights, financial inclusion and equality, and climate change and pollution.
	It is the instantiation of ESGs within the financial system.
	And, if you do not like it, tough luck.
	Because you will be forced to abide by this when they eradicate your hard fiat currency.
	So, of course, it's probably just a little coincidence that the WEF And hedge funds and businesses and governments are all just working on this all at once.
	It's undeterminate whether or not Davos is giving the orders or if they're just a nexus or where all our leaders can meet and propose policies that they already agreed upon anyway.
	But I'm sure after all the receipts we've provided, it's just a conspiracy theory, isn't it?
	Well, here's one more conspiracy theory for you.
	They're going to let the financial system get to such a state that the only way people can make it through the week is with a...
	Universal basic income of some sort and the only way that you'll be able to get that universal basic income is if you sign up to their central bank digital currency when they're ready in a few years and then they're going to have you trapped on the system then they can simply phase out all other forms of payment you have to use this and the infuriating thing about it is because they will be offering free money when we get to that point those of us who speak out against it we're going to be called heartless don't you want people to get free money?
	It's going to be like the last two years all over again.
	Like the pilot schemes in Canada and California.
	It's not a recession.
	It's a controlled demolition.
	On to the video comments.
	Hey Lotus Eaters, just a quick update from Virginia's 2nd Congressional District.
	I caught up on a segment earlier where you guys were talking about Elaine Luria, who's running against the Republican Jen Kiggins down here.
	Elaine is on the January 6th committee.
	So I'm actually about to go to a Jen Kiggins rally with Governor Glenn Youngkin.
	And we're about an hour and a half out from the rally and the parking lot's already full.
	So I think tomorrow we're going to have a lot of good news.
	Just wanted to give the fun update because you guys were talking about my home state.
	What can we say on the website?
	No pipes burst, for example?
	No wine coolers turn up?
	Something like that?
	Yeah.
	I'm sure the blood red moon will hopefully be an omen from last night.
	I hope it's a red tsunami.
	Let's go next, Tony D. Tony D and little Jim with another lotus eater white pill from positivenews.org comes the story of the giraffe population.
	Across Africa, it's up 20% to 117,000 giraffes.
	And this is since 2015.
	There are four species of giraffe, northern, reticulated, Maasai, and southern giraffes.
	The first three, they're up, and the fourth one remains stable.
	So good news for the giraffes.
	That is wholesome.
	The only thing, Tony D, the amount of browser tabs you have open actually stresses me out a little bit.
	But I do love that you've got a bookmark bar thing that says ghosts.
	I had no idea there were four different species of giraffe.
	You learn something new every day.
	No, neither did I, actually.
	Brass neck on that lot.
	Is that it for the video comments, John?
	One more.
	Let's go.
	I recently found that my job's going to be ending at the end of November, and I'm looking for work.
	But for some strange reason, I have absolute confidence that these people laid off from Twitter aren't going to make it harder for me to find work.
	I don't know why, it's just a feeling.
	Also, on that note, I'm trying to spin up some secondary income streams as well, so I'm putting up some stuff like minis on Etsy.
	I don't have a whole lot up, but who knows, maybe someone will see something they like.
	Think of it this way.
	It's for a good cause.
	All proceeds will go to the Capitalist Self-Exploitation Fund.
	Okay.
	Sounds positive.
	Have a look, I guess.
	I wonder if those were custom models.
	Oh, God, Nick Clegg's face, of course.
	Why'd you have to torture me with this stuff, John?
	Right, as for comments, we've got a couple right off the bat.
	So, Spring Valley, I didn't catch the beginning, but I guess Dan is the new presenter.
	And, oh, Lord, job well done, mate.
	Love your style, and you're easy to listen to.
	Keep it up.
	I endorse that one.
	Well, you've, poor sod, you've got to put up with the rest of us.
	But don't worry, we'll break your spirit soon enough.
	John Locke Matters.
	Sure, he was right about atheists.
	Welcome, Dan.
	Really enjoyed you being on today.
	I hope to see you in more segments of all the other great guys.
	There we go.
	So, on COP27 then, JJHW. Mark Carney, the former Bank of England governor, said that companies won't go green, will be bankrupted, making places like China and Russia freer places to do business than the UK. Again, state instantiation of ESGs.
	Mark Carney's obviously spearheading central bank digital currencies.
	Yeah.
	We just have to import all of our energy or use foreign firms which pay no attention to this whatsoever, such as those in China.
	Yeah, typical greenwashing.
	Frank Reynolds, and I just started blasting, the Maldives have been five years away from being underwater for the past 15 years.
	Yeah, it's like the polar bear population, which has increased.
	Because lots of them migrated to Russia, where they're protected.
	One thing to do at some point is to go back and have a look at the Inconvenient Truth documentary.
	Every single prediction has come to pass and found to be wrong.
	Harry and I are starting a series on climate policy, because that was my prior background before going here, and it's staggering the amount of bollocks that has just spread around.
	It is unbelievably...
	As long as you entice the next generation with fresh lies, it doesn't matter.
	That's an unfortunate truth, bloody hell.
	Sophie, just remind everyone, I live here in Denmark, the greenest country in the world.
	Most windmills per citizen in the world.
	We've got two different ocean winds constantly blowing in, indeed making it the ideal place for windmills.
	Don Quixote would hate you.
	And they are currently running commercials encouraging people to wash their clothes in the middle of the night to save on electricity.
	Yeah, did you hear about the government's subsidy scheme that said they were going to give you discounts on your energy bills if you use it at non-peak hours as well?
	They were floating that idea recently over here.
	Yeah, I mean, it makes sense.
	I mean, they certainly haven't got enough energy for the whole day.
	No, they haven't.
	Well, Grant Shapps, who's the Transport Secretary, and I'm sure it's going to carry over, has already proposed bills that allow the national grid to extract from your electric car battery and your household appliances via a smart meter.
	All the electricity is stored and put it back into the grid during droughts without notifying you.
	So you can just turn your car off remotely.
	Which you are going to be forced to have from 2035.
	Yes, and they're still going to road price you because they've got to replace that fuel duty somehow.
	Richard, renewables are BS, economically unviable, highly polluting.
	Yes, they involve carbon fibre.
	And do you know you de-ice a wind turbine?
	You get up in a helicopter with a jet washer or a flamethrower.
	It's amazing.
	It's like something like Hank Scorpio would do.
	Are you joking?
	Nope.
	Oh, right.
	Look it up.
	There's photos.
	Resource-heavy and energy-consuming.
	They are useless, in other words.
	They also tip over at a remarkable rate as well because they're made of fibreglass and...
	You have to feather them or turn them off in really strong winds.
	Like last year, I think we spent 500...
	Telegraph points.
	500 million.
	We lost 500 million because we turned wind turbines off because it was too windy to generate.
	And you can store it.
	So they're breakable pieces of rubbish.
	Hey, I'm doing my best.
	Someone online.
	If they aren't promoting nuclear, then they don't care about the environment.
	They just want to control people and kill them.
	Factual.
	Right, and also going back to the private jets point, if they're willing to ban cars for us, if they're willing to ban boilers for us, why wouldn't they ban private jets?
	Well, why does Bill Gates have a fleet of classic cars, private jets, helicopters?
	Oh, right!
	It's because you are the carbon they want to reduce.
	JC, the green energy might just work if the plebs accept a lifestyle akin to the Stone Age feudal serfdom.
	Free Will 2112.
	So the PM has now decided that Britain ought to play climate reparations.
	Ed Miliband denied this would include China, but if anyone still believes these goons, they're fools.
	Isn't this conference just another WEF meeting in disguise?
	What do you mean, disguise?
	The World Economic Forum has actually sent envoys?
	Go check their Twitter now.
	They've got videos of their young global leaders and partners actually speaking at the event.
	So it's just another nexus.
	It's just they decided to do it more than once a year because they enjoy the piss-up.
	SH Silver.
	And of course Biden's piped up, saying he wants to stop all coal power recently.
	Great advertising for the midterms.
	Go vote.
	Yeah, if any of our American viewers have just woken up to watch the broadcast, go down to your local polling station, even if you're in a miserably blue district, because you might be able to counteract some of the fortification.
	Who knows?
	Yeah, Biden's tweets have been interesting.
	Yesterday he put out one saying that he was going to stop all further oil drilling.
	And this morning he put out another tweet saying that it was disgusting that oil companies were making 100 billion in profits and they needed to expand their capacity.
	Have you noticed the unanimity of the windfall tax narrative across everywhere?
	Yet ExxonMobil had basically a boardroom insurrection by ESG-friendly people to go over and transfer all of their stuff to investing in renewables.
	It's funny how these narratives get rolled out within five minutes of each other across the Western world these days.
	It's funny how the oil companies themselves are happy to pay the tax.
	It's almost like they want to demolish their own business model because they've been co-opted by international institutions obsessed with renewables, which can be restricted so we can all be poor and die.
	Hmm.
	Conspiracy theory.
	If we go on to the comments for your segment, I don't want to eat into your time then.
	Yeah, right.
	Okay.
	Binary Surfer, good chap.
	Dan is spot on re-inflation.
	I suspect it's even higher than 17%, more like 20% to 25%.
	Yeah, it could very well be, depending on what you're looking at.
	We certainly know that it's a lot higher than the official rate, and it has been that for many years.
	How do central bank digital currencies work when the power goes out, asks JJHW. Well, I guess they don't, but nothing else is going to work either.
	So, yeah, it's a slightly unfortunate situation.
	Well, to be fair, they'll be rationing renewables to ensure that you can have just that amount.
	But then if they decide to turn your renewables power off, well, they'll be turning off your central bank digital currency at the same time anyway.
	So it only won't work for you if you tweet the wrong thing.
	Yeah, they'll be turning off their social credit system as well.
	So I suppose there's upsides as well.
	Hakluyt, I think, says, on the cost of living, brilliant and frightening revelations on the way that government manipulates the numbers.
	Yes, they do it on absolutely everything, and I'm going to be getting into that a lot more.
	On my series, Brokernomics, which you can find in the premium section.
	Which you'll be filming the first episode of today.
	Exactly right now.
	Silver asks, yes, Rishi, the state can't solve all the problems, but it could stop causing the problems and getting in the way of the people who do want to solve them.
	Yeah, all we need is for a terribly unfortunate accident to happen to government, get it out of the way for a few years, and the pre-market will probably fix most of these issues.
	But that's not the way that we're going at the moment.
	Free Will says, inflation and taxes are the tools of the Great Reset.
	Yes.
	So my position on the Great Reset is I think that they know that the financial system is going to collapse and we're getting the Great Reset in order to give them the tools that they need, so the digital IDs and the central bank digital currency, so that when that collapse happens, people who are wealthy and powerful now get to remain wealthy and powerful on the other side.
	Have you read the World Economic Forum article which is literally titled, Do We Need More Marxism to Save Capitalism?
	I do read a lot of stuff from the World Economic Forum, but I missed that one.
	Again, are you making that up?
	They literally said that, did they?
	Yep, yep.
	You can literally Google it.
	Connor's going to find it.
	I'll do one more comment.
	John, do you fancy finding that for ten seconds?
	Marxism needs more capitalism than the World Economic Forum.
	That's a bit on the nose, even for the World Economic Forum, but yeah, why not?
	Sophie says, we could have rolling blockouts.
	Let's make all money digital.
	Am I the only person seeing a massive flaw in this plan?
	Yes, government is not quite joined up in this respect.
	They've based our economy on being energy abundant, and then they're sanctioning the people who produce all the energy.
	I wasn't lying.
	Does capitalism need some Marxism to survive the Fourth Industrial Revolution?
	It's a very revelatory read.
	They conclude yes.
	Yeah, and that genuinely is a worldeconomicforum.org link.
	Yes, how remarkable.
	2016, almost around the same time they were developing digital IDs.
	Hmm.
	Interesting.
	Zen says, the inflation rate has given me such a black pill.
	I just don't care about trying to further my career anymore.
	Why bother?
	No matter what I earn, it will never be enough to live on.
	My sector, hospitality, never gets any pay rise.
	It's all for naught.
	Why bother?
	Just collect shark and sticks and prepare for money itself to stop mattering.
	Do both.
	Zen, I understand exactly the black pill that you've got here.
	You've just got to plug on, mate.
	You've just got to do the best you can.
	You've got to further yourself.
	Don't try racking up the salary.
	Do something that you actually enjoy.
	And as long as you make enough to get through to the next day, I can promise you that the current mess that we're in is not going to last forever.
	It can't.
	It's mathematically impossible for our financial system to last forever.
	Too much longer, but I'm afraid it will be a while yet.
	But you hang in there, mate, because you're going to get to the other side.
	They rely on you becoming nihilistic and despairing rather than angry to institute compliance.
	What you need to do is, rather than just throwing your hands up and going, I guess they're going to win anyway.
	No, double down on hating these people.
	Hate them.
	Do literally everything you can to spite them and resist it.
	And then at least you can say, if they're somehow successful, which our entire careers are based around ensuring that people know enough so that they aren't, but even if they somehow wage this war successfully, you can say that I didn't live on my knees, I died on my feet.
	Well, the reason I'm doing this as opposed to staying in my semi-retirement is because I think that this is a fight that we can win.
	Yeah, and it's too unconscionable to not do anything about it.
	Yep.
	I think we've got a good chance.
	Well, my old man, he's absolutely, like, pretty much apolitical other than when I witter on at him and I've radicalised him over the COVID lockdowns, but he's a plumber, you know, and he just said, I've never been on a protest march in my life, but if they take my boiler on my car, you'll see me in the street.
	You'll guarantee it.
	Like, if they abandon cash, you will see me in the street outside a parlour rattling on the downing street gates.
	Like, I will be angry, and I think there's quite a few people, hopefully.
	I don't think it's just a boomer pipe dream to hope that there's some kind of something.
	The next crisis is coming, and when it happens, we need to make sure that people understand why it's happening, and that we focus our anger in the right direction.
	On Central Bank Digital Currencies, Colin P. Dear world leaders, please stop making dystopian fiction a reality.
	Central Bank Digital Currencies are another way for the government to control at least your speech, if not your actual thinking.
	Yeah, it sets up a perverse incentive structure that makes sure that you are compliant in order to earn a living.
	And what's the Dave Chappelle quote?
	If you take a man's livelihood, it is akin to killing him.
	Seems to be true.
	Well, and inflation is doing that to all of us 10% of the time at the moment.
	17% of the time.
	Yeah, I mean, basically, if this coming collapse goes the way the WEF wants it, we will earn nothing.
	However, hopefully, if the coming collapse...
	It results in people, as you said, awakening to the actual causes of economic downturn, the bad consequences of mass migration, and shakes up the housing market a little bit.
	I would hope to, I don't know, maybe own a house someday?
	I'm not getting too cheery about it.
	Well, that's the whole game.
	Rule sets get rewritten when there's a crisis.
	We are heading into a crisis.
	If we can spread the right assumptions as to how we got there, then it will make all the difference when the new rules are being drawn up.
	And I think that's going to happen at the end of this decade.
	So, you know, we're doing valuable work, and all the people at home, if you can imbibe these messages and pass them on to your friends and family, that's what's really going to matter in the coming years.
	Oh yeah, well, not being funny, we're algorithmically suppressed.
	Like, Elon taking over Twitter can maybe do something, but we basically rely on you guys, even if you don't pay £5 a month, which you should, because we've got some great content, especially me doing Buffalo Bill impressions on the most recent piece of premium content.
	And Brokernomics, that's coming out soon.
	Yep, definitely watch that.
	But even if you...
	If inflation's hitting that bad and you can't, the best thing you can do, you absolutely have internet access.
	If you fancy sharing a clip from us on an issue you really care about, whether or not it's just sending it in a WhatsApp chat to your friends and family, or putting it on Twitter or Facebook or whatnot, we appreciate the advertising.
	We can only do so much, and we hope that us and the people that are...
	In the same sphere, on the same journey together, can remoralise the population and create a bulwark against the kind of awfulness that international institutions are opposing on us.
	But we do thank you for sticking with us.
	It's rough out there.
	Adam has a good comment.
	He says, thank you, lads, for depressing me on my day off.
	Well, good news, there's plenty more where that came from.
	Yeah.
	Jokes aside, it is nice to see a new face on the Lotus Eaters, and I look forward to seeing more of your work, Dan.
	Omar, carbon credits will be just like COVID passes.
	Certain classes will get exceptions or loopholes to exploit journalists and the elite that could travel unrestricted during lockdown.
	Yeah, the COP26 saw Alok Sharma travelled to like 17 redlist countries.
	So, jet-setting during COVID, during the lockdowns he imposed on us, and wants to ban jet fuel.
	Prick.
	Worst case scenario, they resort to purchasing carbon credits to offset their beefsteaks and jet-setting to meetings that they could have Zoom called.
	Effectively, luxuries, such as personal travel or staying warms, will be gate-kept by money.
	Specifically, digital money.
	Callum.
	Not that one.
	Datum.
	I've said this before on another segment of Lotus Teases.
	As bad as fiat currency is, it's not as bad as digital currency is.
	Yeah, so Harry and I are going to be doing a book club in future on Hopper, and I really am getting round to the argument of, let's just use shiny rocks.
	It was almost better in the monarchical age where you actually had an investment in tangible things you do.
	I own a tiny bit of crypto, because the tech is interesting, and it's an emerging sector, so you might make a little bit of change off the back Well, what we need to revert to is some sort of hard money system, which is going to be either gold, and the only one of the cryptocurrencies that fits the hard money description is Bitcoin itself.
	It's not one of these rip-off ones.
	But yeah, that would be an interesting conversation.
	A couple of weeks down the line, I'm probably going to be doing a video on that myself, and then maybe we can get together and have a chat about that.
	Yeah, happy to.
	Come on, man.
	Always happy to sit second chair.
	I'm just getting to the point of where I'm just like, material commodities, that's it.
	I like my books.
	I like my simple as.
	I'm not going to do digital because you can just confiscate them.
	Well, the way I always put it is if you are an optimist, you buy Bitcoin and gold, and if you are a pessimist, you buy baseball bats and tins of beans.
	Ha ha ha, I like that.
	Screwtape.
	Proof of stake is the only way to make a viable currency that can support its sufficient transaction throughout.
	Whether it's proof of work or stake, it's still the richest parties that can afford to influence the network.
	Yeah, so there's some interesting points there.
	I will want to pull them apart, but I can't do it in 30 seconds, so I would say sign up for watching Brokernomics when it comes out, and those are exactly the sort of questions that I'll be covering.
	So it'll just be the question of who controls the computing power, basically, for even the...
	But it's less fraught with the opportunity for interference.
	It's not so much a Nirvana, it's a question of which is the least worst option.
	Right.
	As it is with all politics.
	We've got some honourable mentions here.
	Lord Kevcroft, I was in the local pub last week and the car machine went down, meaning not many people could buy a pint and went elsewhere in a mass exodus.
	So if this is any indication to go from, it's not really looking good at all.
	Yeah, so with the card systems, obviously a lot of those are done landline, especially in this country, but I think with the onboarding of satellite internet, that won't be a problem in the elite size.
	So the cashless system, the only limitation to it will not be energy, because they'll make sure there's enough running for a baseline of their systems to operate.
	It won't be internet connectivity, because that will be up in the atmosphere.
	Instead, it will just be whether they like you or not, so they can turn you off rather than the entire system ever going down.
	Well, and ultimately the layer below that is our willingness to comply.
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	Start using cash more, lads.
	I mean, I like paying cash in restaurants anyway because it makes me look a bit more...
	I know I'm a petty, small-minded man, but when the waiter gives you the bill and your missus looks at you and you just slap down a lot of cash, you know?
	Yeah.
	Something cavemanish.
	There you go.
	Juicy, not sommelier.
	The White House digital currency announcement.
	Imagine someone who could believe Joe could write something like this.
	Well, yeah, obviously he didn't write that.
	He just signed off on the executive order.
	Also funny that it must be an executive order.
	One would think that good things that can take a while should go through...
	He says parliamentary process, but of course he means Congress, the House and Senate.
	They know that this probably won't get anywhere because it will be...
	Blocked up by especially the Freedom Caucus, who don't particularly like this, the only people that voted against Ukraine.
	That'll be very interesting with the American midterms today.
	Because I know there are major predictions that Republicans can win upwards of 250 seats, sometimes 260.
	I know the...
	Polling was a possible 13 points below, and there was still three points ahead in the general congressional ballot.
	So if the election is fair and transparent, it could be very interesting to see what current things start falling apart, whether or not the net zero policies get challenged, whether or not...
	Ukraine aid suddenly dries up.
	I suspect that's why Western media has started dropping the Ukraine thing and is looking elsewhere, because they know that the willingness to send billions over there is going to dry up pretty sharpish, especially if there is that change in the house.
	Last one, Fozzie Toaster.
	Who's ready to have black market bath systems?
	I'll have 15 eggs, 20 pounds of lumber, a 12 pound lump of jade, and 4 hours of manual labour.
	I need 80 pounds of steak, a sack of potatoes, and a barrel of salt.
	Yeah, it's a bit Fallout-ish.
	What's the, um, it's not Cormac McCarthy's The Road, but there's another post-apocalyptic film that doesn't come to mind.
	It's got Denzel Washington in it.
	Book of El or something?
	Yeah, Book of Eli.
	That's the one.
	Yeah, they got that barter system basically down to a T, definitely.
	What are they using in that one?
	They're trading over actual cotton buds and things like that.
	So that's just what it's going to come down to.
	It's like this jack-of-the-beanstalk level of I'll trade you a cow for some magic beans.
	That's what the apocalypse is going to revert us to.
	We're going to be smuggling commodities on our feudal between our pods.
	I'll give you a three-minute podcast for a pound of flour.
	Yeah, suddenly the information economy is going to dry up, whether or not censorship comes in.
	So enjoy our content while it lasts.
	Speaking of which, of course, tomorrow we have our Gold Tier subscriber Zoom call, which everyone can join.
	Oh, it's a hangout, sorry.
	Which pretty much everyone can enjoy.
	It's a celebration of our two-year anniversary.
	There's also that content that Dan has mentioned before.
	Go enjoy that on the website for another week.
	Thank you very much for subscribing.
	Thank you for watching today.
	Dan, Connor, we're back tomorrow at 1 o'clock.
	Until next time.

▲