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April 27, 2023 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:31:11

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #641

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	Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters for the 27th of April 2023.
	I'm very pleased to have football legend Matt LaTissier here with me today and I'm very chuffed to be able to speak to you.
	Thank you mate, lovely to be here.
	We're going to be talking about Whether Matt Letizia was cancelled.
	We're going to be reviewing some of the news stories looking at these sorts of things and some of them are pretty egregious and I'm sure I'll be making fun of them and then we're going to be talking about the acceleration of political persecution where I'm going to talk about cancel culture and I'm going to say that perhaps it's not the best term because at this point it's so widespread and so insidious that it's just political persecution.
	We can't really put a euphemistic bow on it and say it's this thing when actually it is quite a serious thing.
	And finally we're going to be talking about the slow death of Britain whereby we're going to be looking at aspects of British culture that seem to be undermined for political reasons and I certainly don't agree with this and I think that this is something that It really gets me wound up.
	I quite like British culture, if that shouldn't be much of a surprise to most of the people watching, who watch regularly.
	But yeah, I think there are lots of things that we should be happy about.
	Absolutely.
	But to introduce Matt, if you're not familiar with him already.
	He's made about 500 appearances, I think probably more, isn't it, for Southampton Football Club, scoring over 200 goals, which makes you the club's top all-time goalscorer.
	Only in the Premier League.
	In the Premier League.
	Nick Newton is the top goalscorer of all time for Southampton.
	Okay.
	And you also played for England, although I would say far too little.
	Thank you.
	I'd say the same.
	And you're also known for your technical football skills and I think that's something that everyone knows you for and I think I would be very remiss not to mention the fact that you only missed one out of 47 penalties taken while you're at Southampton which is incredibly impressive and I know we have some Americans that might not know much about football or as you call it soccer but that is very very good.
	Thank you very much.
	And just on a more personal note my personal favourite goal of yours is October 1993 against Newcastle where you caught it almost on the studs of your boot.
	Flicked it over my own head?
	Yeah, flicked it over your head and then over the defender and then right past the goalkeeper.
	When I was younger, when I was a lad, I spent hours and hours with my mates trying to recreate that.
	Did you really?
	Wow.
	I was not able to do it.
	I don't think even I could recreate it so I don't know what chance you had.
	I wasn't nearly as good, not even close.
	I played for the school football team and that was about it.
	But following your exit from professional football, you went on in 2002 to become a presenter, I think it was in 2004, for Sky Sports Soccer Saturday and I saw you quite a lot on that as well.
	It has been a pleasure.
	Thank you very much.
	So moving on to whether you were cancelled and I've collected some stories from recent times looking at exactly that and this one is from the Daily Star which obviously is not an outlet I'm a fan of but here it is.
	Matt Letizia and Patrice Evra cut from Premier League Hall of Fame shortlist after outbursts and I'm just going to read a little bit from the body of text just so you get the idea of what it's talking about.
	So It says this year's shortlist has been reduced to just 15, 10 less than last year as only three stars of yesteryear will be inducted based on a fan vote rather than six previously.
	Teddy Sheringham, Edwin van der Sar, Robin van Persie and Rud van Nistelrooy have all been axed.
	All good players as far as I'm aware.
	So what's your perspective on this?
	It's interesting, if you go back to the headline of the piece, where it says, Matissi and Patrizia have a cut from Prem Hall of Fame shortlist after outbursts, reading that headline kind of says, oh, these two have been cut from the Hall of Fame because of what they did and what they said.
	But if you read the actual story, there's six players there that were dropped from the shortlist, yet they chose to pick on me and Patrice, and barely mentioned the other four.
	None of the other four did anything wrong, but they're intimating that me and Patrice are out because of what we said.
	Very misleading headline, as is the way with these publications.
	And yeah, I think it's something that they've obviously done on purpose to make people think that me and Patrice are really bad people.
	Yeah, so it's pretty much that they're misrepresenting the situation.
	Very much so, as is their want, as is what they normally do.
	There's going to be a lot of that, unfortunately, so sorry to...
	It's nice to be able to put the record straight and try to explain to people exactly what these publications are doing when they write these headlines.
	So this next one is titled Stratford Town Cancel Sporting Event with Southampton legend Matt LaTissier after outrage from fans and I'm just going to read a little bit saying here that bosses at Stratford Town FC have cancelled their sporting evening with former professional footballer Matt LaTissier as they do not wish to create division within the community or within the football club.
	And, I mean, I don't really understand.
	A lot of the time when these higher-ups say these sorts of things, there isn't nearly the level of outrage that media publications seem to make out.
	So it's interesting.
	So yes, Stratford Town booked me to do a dinner.
	The dinner sold out within 24 hours.
	And then on their social media, probably four or five fans had said that, you know, they weren't happy that I was there and that the club were giving me a platform to speak.
	Even though my afternoon speeches are all about my football career and my career at Sky, I don't touch on any controversial issues from the last few years.
	I mean, it would be very strange if you went to a football-related evening and then you started talking about, I don't know, the pandemic or something.
	So it was a bit bizarre.
	So the interesting thing is that yesterday I think it was about four or five people complained and on the basis of that Stratford decided they didn't want to create division within the community so they cancelled it and upon cancelling it they then had dozens of people on their social media actually having a go at the football club for cancelling me.
	So they bowed to a very small minority of people, when the vast majority of people, and as you can see it was obviously quite popular because it sold out within 24 hours, and they decided that they were going to cancel it.
	And by canceling it they actually created more division.
	within the community than they would have done had they just let the event go ahead.
	It's the case almost always, isn't it?
	Whenever these sorts of things go on, the whole reasoning for it doesn't make any sense when you look at it in hindsight because normally they cause far more problems, as you say, than would have existed beforehand.
	Yeah, and this is what happens when you bow down to a gobby minority.
	Yeah, and it's always one direction as well, isn't it, in that it comes from a very select group of people, from a very select part of the political spectrum.
	Quite often the concerns of other people get pushed to the side, they're not important in fact.
	It's probably the Be Kind movement.
	Yeah, people that are kind but are more than happy to ruin people's lives.
	Absolutely, can't let him earn a living, you know, can't let him pay his mortgage and feed his family.
	The rationale behind it, I just can't get my head around because if you're thinking about it from a purely practical standpoint, persecuting people, potentially ruining their career, defaming their reputation, that's not going to win them round, it's going to make them double down, isn't it?
	Absolutely it will.
	Yep, big problems in society at the moment with stuff like that.
	Moving on to this one here, this is from May 2022 and this is Jersey Ball Cancel Appearance After Fan Backlash.
	Of course, Americans will recognise that name because that is one of your own teams.
	So the Jersey Bulls football team in the Channel Island of Jersey.
	Oh, that Jersey!
	Thank you for correcting me.
	Yeah.
	Sorry, I'm fake news there.
	So yes, this is the... That's embarrassing.
	So bear in mind, I grew up on Guernsey, the other Channel Island, which is Jersey's biggest rivals, you know, a lot of rivalry there in the sporting context between the two islands.
	So I was asked to go and speak at the Jersey Bulls end of season awards dinner.
	And again, that headline, if you can just go down to that headline again, it's interesting.
	Now that is completely fake news.
	Jersey balls cancelled my appearance because ITV in Jersey had gone to the Jersey Bulls and said, basically, we are going to cover this event and we're going to treat it as a controversial event because you've got Matt Letizia speaking there.
	This had nothing to do with any fan backlash.
	So once again, not for the first time, funny enough, is the BBC promoting a completely wrong story.
	They've never been known to do that before, have they?
	Absolutely disgusting.
	It was ITV that got me cancelled because they threatened the Jersey Bulls that they were going to turn this into a controversial function and they were going to report on it as such.
	And so Jersey Bulls bowed down to ITV.
	Nothing to do with any fan backlash whatsoever.
	That's really interesting.
	I didn't know about that.
	So they're effectively just making things up?
	BBC have made that up.
	Fan backlash.
	There was no fan backlash.
	It was all to do with ITV Jersey, who for some reason didn't want me appearing there.
	One can only assume because of your political views.
	Indeed, of course.
	The mainstream media will not tolerate me in any way, shape or form.
	I spent 15 years, nearly 20 years working on Sky Sports, talking about sport.
	And the minute that I spoke up against what was going on in our country, The minute I spoke up against the government narrative, the minute I spoke up against Black Lives Matter, I was sacked from my job.
	And at the time, I spoke to my agent, and I told him the news, and he was like, don't worry, we'll find somewhere else for you.
	And I said to him on that day, I said, I will not be employed again by the mainstream media.
	I can guarantee you that now.
	And three years later I'm not wrong.
	They effectively have blacklists from what I've heard from behind the scenes.
	They have physical lists sometimes of people that are just like, under no circumstances can we have this person on the show.
	That they're even necessarily fringe figures that are promoting so-called dangerous ideas.
	It's more that they disagree with them and don't want to be in a situation... They can't have any debate.
	They don't want to debate, they just want their narrative to be upheld at all times by all people.
	It's not just the television either.
	I was a regular contributor to Talk Sport.
	Whenever anything happened, Southampton football club wise, I was the first person they would ring and say, could you come on for an interview?
	Which I did, free of charge.
	Probably 99% of the time.
	When I went into the studio on occasions, I did get paid for that, but any of the phone interviews I did, never charged them for.
	And from that moment onwards, Talks Bought will no longer ring me, anything to do with Southampton.
	I did have once, about six months ago, it was a segment they wanted on penalties.
	And they rang me and asked me if I'd do it.
	I said, oh, that's interesting.
	I said, yeah, OK, I'll do that.
	This could be fun.
	And do you know what they did?
	They've never done this before to me.
	They pre-recorded the interview.
	Oh.
	I know why they've done that.
	I wonder why they did that.
	First time ever they invited me on and pre-recorded the interview just in case I went off track and started speaking about stuff they didn't want to know about.
	Interesting isn't it?
	I don't really understand the necessity for that because you've got a track record of many many years talking purely about football in football related programs so what you're gonna all of a sudden all of a sudden i'm just gonna go off piste and start talking about the government and their response to all the nonsense of the last three years I struggle to get my head around it because it seems so simple to my mind.
	It's a weird world.
	So I think this is one that a lot of people who are watching this segment are probably keen to see and it is this one from The Mirror.
	Matt LaTissier suggests Sky Sports sacked him for views but insists I'm not a nutter.
	Interesting that they went with that quote above any other in the headline because it kind of implies That if you're having to deny it, then there must be something to it.
	Of course, that's what they do.
	I don't even remember saying the words, I'm not a nutter.
	It seems... I'm not a stupid human being, I think is the actual quote.
	I don't really use the word nutter at all.
	So they've changed the language in the title to make it look even worse.
	Of course they do.
	They also call you a conspiracy theorist in the first line as well, which is a bit absurd.
	That's what they do they throw that word because if you if you call somebody that that must mean that you know they're a bit nutty and you know and that really means that they don't have to debate anything with that person they don't have to speak to him because you can't speak to him he's a conspiracy theorist well actually if you if you sit down and look at what I've been saying over the last few years
	A lot of the stuff that I spoke about three years ago actually kind of ended up happening and trying to happen and so... I think you're... I've actually got to the point now where being called a conspiracy theorist is actually a compliment because they've got a lot more right in the last few years than what the mainstream media have and certainly the Daily Mirror and Daily Star... The Covid and pandemic stuff, that's aged quite well hasn't it?
	I'd like to think so but I'm not one to say I told you so.
	But one thing about the whole conspiracy theory thing is that more often than not it's just a very uncharitable reading because of course there are conspiracy theories that the media doesn't label conspiracy theories like the Russiagate thing in the United States is a great example of that.
	Exactly.
	Well, there's a conspiracy.
	Intelligence agencies told Twitter to cover it up.
	Yeah.
	We have it explicitly.
	We know it happened.
	And I was saying, you know, that Twitter is being censored from behind the scenes.
	I didn't necessarily know for certain whether it is American intelligence agencies doing it, but it turned out it was.
	It was, you know.
	It's funny how these things mysteriously become true down the line, isn't it?
	Well, it's been a tactic used for many, many years of just throwing that conspiracy theory label at somebody to try to discredit them and it means you don't have to debate them and talk about what they're talking about.
	And that's just a tactic of the mainstream media.
	So this article here, it goes on to talk about the pandemic related stuff and it seems to imply that you were forced to retire, I think is that the right way of putting it?
	From my ambassadorial role at Southampton?
	Is that what we're talking about?
	No, from Sky Sports.
	I was forced to retire?
	I don't know.
	I don't know the best way to put it.
	Oh, so I was sacked from Sky Sports, quite frankly.
	There's no other way of putting it.
	I had seven months left on my contract.
	I heard loads of people going, oh no, his contract was up and he just didn't renew it, which was absolute BS.
	I had seven months left on my contract and they told us with a week before the season started, by the way.
	So, not really gave the three of us any chance to find other work anywhere.
	And we were told in the week of the season start that we were no longer needed, that the show was going in a different direction, is the words that they used on the Zoom call.
	A euphemism, isn't it?
	It's a very polite way of saying, yeah, you're sacked.
	Yeah, so at that point I just asked them if it was anything to do with my stuff that I was posting on social media.
	To which the reply was, well, you know, we have to take into account the reputation of our company.
	And so I just asked them, well, you didn't seem that bothered about the reputation of your company when you re-employed Jamie Carragher after he spat at you.
	We'll be talking about that one later.
	Okay, so that was all part of that.
	But this seems to imply that it was your views on the pandemic in particular that were a sticking point and of course it is impossible for them to know that, but did you give them any reason to believe that that might be the case?
	Do you think that's a fair assessment or is it just your views more generally?
	I think
	Probably my views are it was probably having to do with my views on the on the pandemic but also to do with my views on specifically the football clubs the way they behaved during the time when they were trying to restart the season and there was stuff that was going on with the testing and everything and and some clubs coming out and saying yes that's our players that are testing positive or and all those there were certain football clubs that were would have been very happy
	if the season had not started again.
	Let's put it that way.
	And that the season was just devoid and you start the next season with the same 20 teams in the Premier League.
	And so yeah, the teams that were kind of angling towards trying to get the season cancelled were the ones that were towards the bottom end of the division who could possibly fall out and lose a lot of money by getting relegated from the Premier League.
	And I pointed that out in a tweet.
	That upset one of the chief executives at one of the clubs involved.
	I also refused to wear the Black Lives Matter badge and I was the kind of first person on Sky to kick up a bit of a stink about it, wasn't happy about it.
	But rightly so, though, in my opinion.
	I think in hindsight, given what's come out about that organisation... They stole all of the money, didn't they?
	Yeah, I'm pretty confident and pretty happy in my stance that I took back then.
	It also, I think it is a fair thing to say, that what does it have to do with football as well?
	I mean, there are already avenues for politics.
	Why does it have to ruin something that is people's escape from Yeah, you know, and I get a lot of people going, oh, well, it's because, you know, he's an anti-vaxxer that he got sacked at Sky.
	And I was like, well, actually, this is August 2020.
	Vaccines haven't even come out yet.
	So you can put that one to bed, mate.
	It's just some of the stuff is just crazy that gets said about you.
	But the Mirror here was referring to these things as conspiracy theories.
	And then you go to an outlet like the Telegraph, around the similar sort of time and there's a very different uh tone being taken here of course this is just the the views of one of their contributors but not the whole paper but they say bravo to the lockdown skeptics who were smeared and dismissed for daring to defend freedom which i think is a fair thing to say in my opinion is certainly what i was trying to do throughout the pandemic but yeah
	It's very interesting now that we've come out the other side and there are lots of questions being asked about these sorts of things, that all of a sudden we're defending freedom rather than being a conspiracy theorist and causing chaos.
	Yeah, and I think that was always my My issue was about defending freedoms.
	I could see the route that we were going down and I didn't like what I was seeing.
	I could see ulterior motives behind what was coming in and they were using the pandemic as an excuse to bring in some legislation that they would in normal times have not a zero chance of bringing in all this stuff unless they'd have a An emergency to do it.
	Even in a wartime situation, some of the legislation that they passed was even unprecedented, like in World War II.
	So, to justify it and say it's necessary, given the situation and with the benefit of hindsight, is absurd.
	It's, yeah, it's absurd.
	I mean, they knew very early on just how dangerous this virus was.
	They had data from the Diamond Princess cruise ship very early on.
	I think Chris Whitty even admitted live on television very early on that, you know, this is only going to affect the either very elderly people or the immunocompromised.
	And he also said that masks didn't work early on and then changed his mind on that one when obviously somebody told him that's not the right thing to do.
	I actually covered recently a large systematic review of the research that found that there are actually lots of negative health consequences to wearing a mask over the long term.
	Any sensible rational human being, you don't have to be a scientist To actually understand that covering your mouth for hours upon hours a day and breathing in your own exhaled breath is not going to be particularly healthy for you.
	I'm no scientist but common sense tells me that ain't good for you.
	Also, the fact that it's just unpleasant when you actually do it as well.
	There's a reason that it feels unpleasant.
	It's because it's not healthy for you.
	Absolutely.
	And it was another, for me, that was another way of just keeping on instilling the fear into the population and a reminder That you should be fearful.
	The study I was referring to also found that actually wearing a mask created the perfect environment for viral mutation.
	Funny that.
	So it may have actually made things worse.
	This next story here from the Daily Star again, they seem to really have it in for you is Matt Letizia claimed Sky Sports Sacking was down to being a middle-aged white man and do you think that is reflective of how you actually feel?
	I think the quote that I actually said was, when asked about the show, Soccer Saturday specifically, I said I don't think having five middle-aged white men for six hours on a Saturday afternoon was a particularly good look for Sky when they're trying to promote diversity.
	That's what I said.
	So that's obviously what they sensationalized it to a certain extent.
	Twisted that around a little bit and actually I think you'll find that Sky themselves have said they wanted to be more diverse and we've seen that with the more women pundits on there and I don't have a problem with any of that stuff.
	I believe and I've said this right from the start That I think television should be representative of our society.
	So I think proportional representation on the television is a good thing.
	Okay.
	And, you know, that's been my stance right from the start.
	But obviously, you say things like that, that's far too sensible.
	You've got to sensationalize things and twist your words to try and make you look like an idiot.
	I've always held the opinion that as long as they're the best person for the job it doesn't matter, right?
	Exactly right.
	That's obviously a point as well that gets forgotten in a lot of these debates where, you know, I think if we had a society where it was a proper meritocracy and you just had a system where the best person for the job gets the job irrespective of colour, creed, race, sex, whatever, I think society would be a much better place.
	I very much agree.
	And on a topic of society not being a particularly good place, let's talk about Jamie Carragher.
	So, you mentioned that Sky Sports didn't sack Jamie Carragher and he spat at a 14-year-old girl, didn't he, from his car?
	He did, yeah.
	You know, he was suspended for five or six months and then, you know, just brought back in when all the furore had died down.
	So yeah, I just asked the question, if they were that worried about their reputation, why would they re-employ Jamie Carragher, at which point they didn't wish to continue the conversation.
	It's funny that, isn't it?
	It's strange.
	A lot of the time you actually ask difficult questions of the people on the other side of the argument, they tend to run away from the conversation and don't want to engage anymore, and then just go, conspiracy theorists, not talking to you.
	I think it might be part of the reason why they're so hot on crushing dissenting opinions is because when it's in open debate, well, maybe they don't have... They can't stand up.
	Their arguments don't stand up to open debate.
	That's why we're seeing, at the moment, all across the world, the governments across the world trying to police the internet.
	I really detest this sort of thing.
	Oh my god, it's just disgusting.
	It's pure information control, isn't it?
	It's information control.
	So basically these people have been spouting lies and BS for so long and the internet has now shone a light on a lot of the corruption and a lot of the conflicts of interest in this world and all of a sudden the genie is kind of escaping from the bottle a little bit and they go, oh my god, we can't have all these people knowing what we're doing.
	We can't have them Knowing about our conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical industries, we've got to censor this and we've got to employ millions of people to shut down debate on the internet and grasp people up and block their Twitter accounts.
	It just defies belief that people still look at this and go, oh yeah.
	Yeah, the government are right.
	Let's get the online harms bill and send that through Parliament.
	Brilliant.
	I really despise that bill.
	It's horrifically dystopian.
	It is horrific.
	And the fact they're posing it as being this societal good.
	Oh, we're protecting children whilst also, you know, removing trafficking children at the same time.
	But there's another thing you just won't talk about.
	So I'm going to quickly mention this article we have on the website.
	This is from a little while ago, written by Noel Yaxley.
	This is from November of 2022, titled Football, Qatar and Performative Activism.
	So make sure to check that out if you're into football and how it intersects with politics.
	What were your views on the whole Qatar thing?
	Because of course there were Lots of people talking about how they're going to boycott, you know, the tournament.
	Yes, it was interesting, wasn't it?
	Because of the use of the Qataris, and then mysteriously, all of that disappeared when we started to do well.
	Yes.
	There was no mention of it.
	Yeah, it was really strange, wasn't it, how, you know, all these virtuous people talking about human rights and everything, and all of a sudden they're quite happy to go and take the money and go and You know report on these games and you know present their programs from over there and You know whilst trying to go yes, we're gonna try and change things from the inside BS, you don't care about that at all.
	Gary Lineker.
	Yes, I'm just about to mention him in fact.
	Oh, excellent.
	So of course I'm talking about the so-called scandal of Gary Lineker comparing the government's plan to curb migrant channel crossings as something akin to Nazi Germany or using the language I think was the specific way he put it of Nazi Germany and he got in trouble because of course the BBC that employ him in fact he is the highest paid presenter at the BBC they said you can't say this
	this is controversial this goes against our guidelines so to speak and he was temporarily suspended but of course he was reinstated after of course he was Many of the members of Match of the Day performatively, I would say, boycotted the decision even though, you know, if you're interpreting the guidelines he did do something wrong.
	And I'm not actually going to throw him under the bus as much as possible.
	I mean, I don't agree with what he said.
	I actually said at the time, you know, Gary is entitled to freedom of speech the same way we are.
	That's exactly what I was going to say.
	And we should all be allowed to speak our minds and have our opinions.
	The problem comes is when somebody like Gary says something and somebody like I say something and the reactions are two very different reactions.
	So Gary gets his job back, probably get a rise and I don't work again for several years.
	I think there's mistaken perception around the notion of impartiality in particularly the BBC, because human beings can't be impartial.
	Absolutely.
	We bring presuppositions to whatever we understand, and that shapes how we understand it.
	So it's a misguided aim in the first place.
	I think if you wanted this sort of setup, I don't believe in state media.
	I think the BBC should be privatised.
	Yes, I agree.
	I absolutely agree.
	And I think everybody in the BBC, if they want to have some guidelines for when they are on air about not being biased, then by all means, if they have a personal Twitter account, then they should be allowed to have whatever views they want on those.
	If they're working for the BBC and they're on air and the BBC want to impose guidelines on them then they can impose those guidelines and they have the choice whether they want to stick to those guidelines or not.
	I think it's actually better for society if it operates in a way like that as well because you get to know what the person who's meant to be this objective arbiter of news actually believes and if they're hiding behind this, oh I'm just an objective presenter, I don't really have opinions that shape things, Well you're setting yourself up to be the ultimate arbiter of truth.
	Yes.
	Which is a very hubristic position to adopt in the first place because of course truth is a very elusive thing and no one person can truly understand it.
	That's exactly right and it's one of the points that I've been arguing for the last few years is you know you're talking about the rise in the fact-checkers and I tweeted something about two and a half years ago where I just said who fact-checks the fact-checkers?
	So what I'm saying is, why are we outsourcing our thinking to these people?
	We don't know who they are.
	A lot of people don't know who funds the fact-checkers, for a start.
	So there's going to be an element of bias because if you're funded by a certain group of people, Like the pharmaceutical industry, you're not going to be fact-checking against your income stream.
	And this is what a lot of people don't understand.
	So you cannot just appoint one person as the arbiter of truth, as you say.
	Truth is not always what you think it is.
	And you've got to go through your life and you've got to make your own mind up.
	You need as much information as you possibly can.
	And then you as an individual make up your mind as to what you think the truth is, given the evidence that's available to you.
	Absolutely.
	So, one of the final ones I'm going to cover is that you criticised Ian Wright for being completely contradictory for him supporting Gary Lineker.
	I'm not sure if this is the media again generating fake controversy or whether that's actually something that you believe.
	So yeah, Ian Wright's reaction to the three of us, myself, Phil and Charlie getting sacked at Sky was I felt in its own way actually Ian's reaction was actually a little bit racist if I'm honest.
	Oh really?
	Yeah, it was.
	I really felt like it was quite derogatory to white people what he said.
	And the way that he obviously came out in support of Gary was completely the opposite of what he had said when the three of us were sacked.
	So I just found it interesting.
	I'd always looked upon him as I'd say a friend.
	We shared an agent.
	We met each other quite a few times.
	I played golf with him and I just felt like... I felt disappointed in the way that he reacted to our sacking at Sky.
	Well, that's a shame because you would hope that he would have stuck up for you, right?
	Well, I don't expect people to stick up for me.
	I'm a big boy, I can stick up for myself.
	But what I don't expect is hypocrisy.
	No, I think that's fair enough.
	And thank you very much for going through all of these stories because I feel like I've learnt a lot that the media probably wouldn't have told me.
	The media don't tell you a lot.
	That's true, yeah.
	But it's good to have the record corrected.
	So, moving on to the acceleration of political persecution and I wanted to make the point that what we call cancel culture has been escalating in recent months and I do the quotation marks there because I feel like the term isn't strong enough anymore because it's got to the point now where it is just political persecution.
	You can't really call it cancel culture because the term cancel seems to imply, you know, I've cancelled my reservation at a restaurant.
	It's not nearly emotively charged enough for what the actual thing that is going on is.
	I think you're absolutely right.
	I think it's a lot stronger than cancel culture here.
	And I think calling it persecution is, you know, calling a spade a spade.
	I think so and I think calling it persecution also will penetrate deeper into the minds and consciousness of the public.
	And I think that's why they don't use the actual proper word that we should be using for it because they want to try and make it sound a bit softer.
	And the media has been somewhat gaslighting the people who care about this in that They've been relying on the framework of, this thing doesn't exist, and then they say it exists but it's not a problem, and then they say it exists and it's a good thing.
	And I can show you this, of course I had to search for the specific articles, but this is from July 2020.
	Cancel culture does not exist, this is the new statesman basically arguing that it's Not a thing, even though obviously it is.
	I mean, everyone's just firing themselves, are they?
	Are they ruining their own lives?
	It just happens spontaneously, it's like spontaneous combustion.
	And then we move on to this next one here, and this is, of course, American.
	Washington Post, the GOP, obviously the Republicans, gibberish about cancel culture never looked so dumb.
	So they're not denying it doesn't exist, but they're just saying it's stupid, that it's mistaken.
	And then we move on to February 2023 and here's Rolling Stone, why cancel culture is good for democracy.
	Oh, it's a good thing.
	Wow, of all people the Rolling Stone, just honestly.
	And if I read a little bit from this, this is really insufferable as well.
	It says, for many years cancel culture has been despised and misconstrued as a new phenomenon that's caused havoc on free expression and speech.
	We're supposed to now assume that we can't say or do anything without an angry mob instantly judging us and preparing to end our careers before they start.
	In actual fact, we are the people who make up the so-called mob and we have control of our own actions.
	Council culture has leveled the playing field for those who can't always rely on the government to protect them.
	Right now, bigots are protected under the First Amendment to fuel disgusting rhetoric without state-sanctioned consequences.
	The America that tolerated white supremacy in their policies and laws is the same country That wants to remind us how such forms of hate are still legal via free speech.
	Cancel culture is the poison to those in power that have benefited from unchecked free speech.
	And as with a lot of American political analysis here, it forgets that this is a phenomenon outside of America and you only need to go to Britain where we've got no guarantee of free speech.
	People still get cancelled.
	It's not really accountability against the First Amendment, is it?
	Because we don't have that, unfortunately.
	I wish we did.
	No, we don't, but what I've come to understand over the last couple of years...
	is that these kind of articles and you know the politicians they they project they always accuse you of what they are and I've noticed that a lot over the last two to three years.
	Sometimes it's preemptive as well before there's even a chance to you know point out what they're doing they'll be accusing the opposition.
	That's the best way to defend you the best way if you've committed a crime the best way is to go yeah you did that Because you go, well you're the first person that's made the accusation so it couldn't possibly be you that did it, could it?
	And that's a childish tactic that we probably learnt as kids and they're still using it today.
	But it still works, it seems.
	It still works on people, absolutely.
	Obviously disprove the notion that it doesn't exist.
	The best case, of course, is this.
	Canada says it will freeze the bank accounts of Freedom Convoy truckers who continue their anti-vaccine mandate blockades.
	And they actually did a good job of saying it was against the mandates.
	So well done, Business Insider.
	You actually did something right there because, of course, it wasn't reported like that.
	It was reported as against the vaccine's full stop.
	Per se, yeah.
	It wasn't about that, it was that, you know, they're truckers, they have to go between the border, and they didn't agree with the state mandating a health decision.
	Absolutely.
	That isn't their business, which I think is perfectly reasonable, and I think they did a very good job in protesting it, and of course the state went and froze their bank accounts.
	Froze the bank accounts, and that is... that was...
	One of the most disgusting things I think I've ever seen and it got very little attention in the media in terms of, you know, any negative attention towards Mr. Trudeau, who this week has come out and said he never forced people to take the vaccines, you know, he didn't mandate them, he just coerced a little bit, you know.
	Just a bit of PR language there.
	The backpedalling that's going on at the moment is unbelievable.
	It's so frustrating, isn't it, as well?
	And also, the rationale for it was that, well, they're disrupting, you know, infrastructure and the flow of goods.
	Well, I mean, by that rationale, then the government could freeze the bank account – I know this is a different country – in Britain of the just-up oil or those sorts of people who are blocking motorways.
	Absolutely crazy.
	But that obviously wouldn't be a just thing to do, even though I disagree with them.
	You shouldn't punish people for their political views, although they do deserve to be arrested for, you know... Absolutely.
	...causing a disruption.
	Yeah, of course.
	So this one was absurd, this is another just to beat a dead horse.
	This was a bit more recent, this was the 20th of March 2023.
	Peer disinvited from university debating society over support for Rikki Gervais trans joke.
	I'm just going to read a little bit from the body of the article and it says a peer has been disinvited from a university debating society over her support For a transgender joke made by Ricky Gervais.
	Baroness Clare Fox, the founder of the Institute of Ideas Free Speech Think Tank.
	Irony there, isn't there?
	Was invited to Royal Holloway, the University of London, to speak to students about the importance of discussion.
	But the University's debating society claimed it was strong-armed and bullied into cancelling the talk by Royal Holloway's Student Union.
	Of course, the Student Union is always to blame.
	The latest no-platforming row to flare on the British campuses comes as Baroness Fox is to fight a Lords amendment on Tuesday to soften a legal tort in the upcoming Higher Education Free Speech Bill, which will allow cancelled speakers to seek compensation.
	It's funny that, isn't it, that they cancelled her.
	I mean, is there not a vested interest by the Student Union here to maximise their power, which is very little, but they wield like petty tyrants?
	I've been a member of one, unfortunately, and it was true.
	In fact, I was at Plymouth University when they banned loads of right-wing newspapers, and I was the only person in the room to be like, should we be banning newspapers?
	Is that not a bit totalitarian?
	Yeah just like well we've already done it so there's nothing we can do.
	Yeah I mean I see I would find it an interesting world I think it would be a much better world to live in and a much simpler world to live in if people didn't get offended by words.
	It would be nice, wouldn't it?
	It's just words.
	But you're the person in control of words.
	You're the person in control of whether you get offended or not.
	If somebody stands in front of me and swears at me and calls me all sorts of names under the sun, it's much more effective for me to laugh at them and walk away.
	It only makes me laugh intuitively.
	Yeah, than for me to go...
	Oh, where's the policeman?
	Go and arrest this man!
	It's because they equate it to physical harm.
	They say, oh, it's harmful language, but language is only harmful if you allow it to be.
	It's up here that it affects.
	It's your choice.
	It's not like physical violence, is it, where you don't have a choice?
	They're not comparable in any way.
	Go and ask a million people if they'd rather be sworn at or if they'd rather be punched in the face.
	Let me think.
	How many people do you think would choose the second option?
	I don't know.
	There might be a few people out there that like a punch in the face.
	I don't know.
	People are weird, aren't they?
	Well, I suppose Sadomasochists might be into a bit of that.
	Yes.
	So it's also worth mentioning as well that if this is the false concern, why is Forbes giving earnest advice to leaders of businesses to avoid the effects of cancel culture?
	Oh, yes.
	Because they're talking about it like it's an obvious and real thing because everyone understands both left and right.
	If they're being honest, that this is an aspect of our society now.
	And it says that council culture can affect everyone.
	It isn't only a problem for the rich and famous.
	Anyone with an opposing viewpoint can become the focus of an online mob and potentially find their reputation and livelihood at stake.
	Knowing what to do when this happens is key to coming out on the other side intact.
	They basically go on to give advice to people.
	business owners about how to avoid it.
	They wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't a legitimate thing.
	If it wasn't a legitimate concern.
	And, you know, a lot of the time... I think we... I don't know if we're going to speak about it... Did we speak about the Manchester boats?
	I'm going to be talking about that later.
	I'll come to that later.
	But another thing that's also been carrying on, and because it's been an ongoing thing, it hasn't been covered that much, I think it's been going on since about 2015, but the university campus talk interruptions, which of course the government is actually trying to protect to a certain extent, as in the speakers, not the protesters, but
	These talks are getting disrupted where, you know, perfectly acceptable right-wing figures, not even necessarily controversial by the regime's standards, will still be interrupted at a university campus by people physically going in there and making noise so no one can hear them, or threatening them with violence.
	And here we have...
	An instance, which was a recent one, foul-mouthed woke protesters are accused of destroying a bible while they're trying to shut down a conservative event with a conga at upstate New York Public University and I actually saw the footage of this and they weren't even trying to engage in like a civil debate like they used to in like 2015 where they would try and have an exchange of ideas, it's just go in and cause a ruckus for your own benefit.
	And that's the thing, they can't debate They can't debate because they can't win a debate.
	They just have to shout you down and then run away.
	That's what they do.
	There's so many things where, you know, you get reports and papers and they go, oh, such and such has said this and this shouldn't be a thing.
	But they never actually name the people that are doing it and so you can't actually pin them down and sit and have a debate with them, or ask them to sit down with somebody with an opposing view and have a debate.
	It's just so frustrating, it really is.
	There are no editorial accidents when they make those sorts of decisions, are there?
	They know what they're doing.
	And although this has been going on for a while, it has escalated quite a lot.
	So this most recent one, this was published on the 20th And it was titled, I was in the Pittsburgh trans debate, activists had me scared for my life.
	And this was after Michael Knowles, I think it was, was giving a speaking event, one of the Daily Wire hosts.
	And then we move on to this next one here.
	Protesters set off smoke bombs, burn an effigy of a conservative speaker in the street.
	And then, this is all the same event by the way, and the next one.
	Explosion reported amid protests over University of Pittsburgh transgender debate.
	So people are setting off explosives in civil discussions because they don't approve of the conversations being had.
	And this is what's going to happen if this continues.
	It's going to become worse and worse to the point whereby the state is effectively going to be able to defend the perpetrators of political violence against ideas that they don't approve of.
	And that's where it's going to go.
	I don't want there to be violence in the streets.
	I know that's a controversial... No, it's not.
	That's where it's going to go, and I don't think that's a good thing for anyone really.
	It's not a good thing for anybody, it really isn't.
	And it's almost like these things are being done by design, isn't it?
	To bring in more legislation.
	And it's not just in-person discussions as well, it's also online.
	In about mid-April a bunch of political commentators were punished by YouTube all at the same time mysteriously for their coverage of a person who cannot be named on YouTube but they're sponsored by Bud Light.
	You actually can't name them anymore otherwise we're going to get a mark ourselves so don't even say it in the comments because you're going to get us in trouble but lots of people were arbitrarily demonetized or given guideline strikes despite You know, following the rules otherwise.
	And we had our entire channel demonetized on YouTube, even though we had followed the rules.
	And as far as I was aware, we were kind of like a poster child of this self-moderation.
	We tried to mark everything as closely to the guidelines as possible so we could continue saying with the limited free speech we had what we wanted to say.
	And even that, even following the rules, Didn't do us any favours because then they just arbitrarily said no, you're not allowed to make any money off of any of this anymore.
	That's it.
	It's quite scary how it's all been so coordinated amongst the social media sufferers.
	And as Sarah Gonzalez points out here, My YouTube channel had three videos removed today and received a strike for telling the truth about transgenderism.
	Tim Cass just had two videos removed on his channel and they demonetised Matt Walsh's blog and entire channel.
	They want to censor us out of existence, which is true.
	That's exactly what they're trying to do.
	They don't want to have any kind of debate.
	And just for another example, our very own Harry, who is a presenter who you might have met, Off camera.
	He was in a band, it was like a fun band, where he dressed up as a pirate.
	But he was very serious about it and he, with his band, had signed to a record label and had been touring the country in his spare time, on top of doing this job, which is hard work.
	He got forced out of his own band by the record label and because of course the bandmates didn't want to lose the signing they went along with it and so he was forced out and I couldn't think of... Was he dressed as a pirate?
	No, because of...
	Because of his political views.
	Of course.
	Although I'm not surprised they haven't tried to cancel Pirates yet.
	I mean, of all the controversial historic figures.
	But yeah, I couldn't think of a less deserving person to be cancelled because he's such a nice guy interpersonally.
	Yeah.
	I really don't understand.
	Yeah, it's just very insidious, the things that are going on right now at the moment.
	And there are some very, very good people with good intentions who are being demonised very unfairly.
	Absolutely.
	And of course, there are lots of negative consequences to this for society.
	Some of the less important ones are things like this, how cancel culture turned World Book Day into a minefield for parents.
	But it's meant to be a bit of fun where you dress up your kids, and as they've illustrated here very nicely in the thumbnail, you can't go as a Harry Potter character because JK Rowling is transphobic, you can't go as an Oompa Loompa because they're racist, you can't go as any Dr Seuss characters because he's...
	Sexist, I think?
	I forget which... Whichever-ist it is.
	He's somehow bigoted, in some way.
	But, of course, this all goes over the head of the children.
	It doesn't matter to them.
	So it's the adults getting offended at children's costumes, which, when you think about it, is about as pathetic as it can possibly get, isn't it?
	I think we can...
	We can sum it up really in one sentence, I think, and that would be, the left need to grow up.
	That's very true, yeah.
	They have a very infantile attitude towards living with other people.
	It's incredible, it really is.
	Just making the world such a miserable place to live in, you know, it's just crazy.
	And I refuse to live in a miserable world, so I will always keep upbeat, keep optimistic, and I will never let them grind me down.
	That's what I like to hear.
	I feel very much the same.
	I mean, that's why I'm doing this in the first place.
	Good.
	So they're also going to, this is a bit more egregious, continue to rewrite classics of literature and that I think is quite egregious.
	It's like going to the Sistine Chapel and saying, you know what, I find these depictions of the naked human form, I'm going to paint over that, I find that offensive.
	It is offensive, it really isn't.
	We all thought George Orwell's book was a book of fiction.
	Yeah, well.
	Well, have a look at what's going on.
	You mix that with Brave New World into some sort of hybrid and you've basically got modern politics.
	Pretty much.
	And if you wanted to, you know, cheer yourself up at the decline of Western civilization, you can't even go to stand-up comedy anymore because, of course, There are such rigid lines now that even what would be considered a pretty straight-laced comedian in the 1990s now struggles to get a gig booked in today.
	It's just incredible that the government are infantilising their population to such an extent.
	I know.
	That they can't make up their own mind if they want to go and watch a comedian crack some jokes.
	Honestly, you know, people know People know if they're going to go and see a comedian, they're probably going to be a little bit near the knuckle.
	That's the whole point, isn't it?
	That's the whole point of being a comedian.
	And it's just crazy that you're just stopping people and giving them guidelines as to what they can joke about and what they can't.
	So this is just the first step in a very slippery slope of a government trying to control your language.
	But it's not all doom and gloom.
	Here we have an article from GB News saying woke Labour councillors pushed to cancel Henry VIII for entrenched inequality.
	They're going back a bit far there, aren't they?
	Fails after local backlash.
	So they wanted to name a school that was named after King Henry VIII, funnily enough.
	to the Abergavenny Learning Centre, which is about as boring as possible, from King Henry VIII School in Abergavenny.
	I mean, being named after a king, or something that sounds like it's from, I've forgotten the name, but the bureaucrats from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, they must have come up with that title.
	That is so boring.
	Honestly, I think you just have to understand that we have had a history.
	History is there, you can't change it.
	And you have to embrace it and you have to learn from it.
	It's funny you say that because this next article basically says exactly that.
	Kate Blanchett of all people seems to agree with you that we are destined to repeat the mistakes of history if we embrace cancel culture, but I'm sorry to interrupt you there.
	No, not at all.
	You just can't change what happened in the past by trying to cancel it.
	We have to learn from what's gone on in the past because that's how we go forward as a society.
	And you've set me up very nicely for this final link.
	It's almost like we've rehearsed this.
	We didn't!
	Just naturals, that's what it is.
	This is something that I found from cityjournal.org.
	I know it's quite an obscure source, but I thought it was a really good breakdown.
	So an American went on holiday to Italy, and I'm just going to read what they had to say about it, because I think it's a very useful perspective.
	It says, for Benito Mussolini, Italy's fascist dictator and ally of Adolf Hitler.
	On a recent visit to the city my taxi driver knew exactly where it was and found nothing remarkable about a request to go there.
	The Mussolini obelisk standing watch over Foro Italico sports complex served as the starting point for my atypical tour of the Eternal City's fascist architecture.
	At the very outset our tour group asked our guide Why has the Mussolini obelisk not been removed from what appears to be a place of honour?
	For an American visitor, it was the obvious question.
	We have become accustomed to the removal of the likenesses of Confederate generals, even Christopher Columbus, from public places, but it was not a difficult question for our guide to answer.
	In Italy, we view it as history.
	Efforts to remove it had fizzled.
	And it carries on to say, the loss that comes from laundering the past was made clear to us in this historical lesson our tour group received that day, a lesson that would have been impossible if cancel culture American style had prevailed.
	Over more than four hours the reminders and remainders of Il Duce served as a point of entry to a history that underscored why we view Mussolini as a historic villain.
	At the same time they provided a series of clues to help answer the question that prompted me to book the tour in the first place.
	How was it that the country of the renaissance of great art and great literature had veered so far off course as to help enable the holocaust?
	And what they're getting here is that, well, you might not like everything around you in your environment but it's a reminder of your past and if you rewrite the past then It's going to give you a far worse understanding of the future.
	Absolutely.
	Very, very good points.
	Very important points.
	It's almost so common sense, I feel silly pointing it out, but apparently it has to be pointed out.
	Common sense is no longer very common, is it?
	That's what I've realised in the last three years.
	I'm going to start calling it rare sense.
	Rare sense.
	It doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?
	So I'm going to skip over that final link because we are slowly running out of time.
	I've still got one more segment to go.
	So I wanted to touch on finally something that's very close to my heart and that is the decline in British culture, that's the only way I can put it, and I don't like to rag on Britain saying it's getting worse and being fatalistic, but I can't help but say it is, and we're treating our culture with such entitlement and disdain simultaneously That we've forgotten how best to preserve it and build upon it.
	Absolutely.
	And instead we're too intent on tearing stuff down.
	And a good example of that is the Guardian here trying to agitate basically an astroturfed Scandal here because no one was talking about this, but it's just a Guardian columnist got offended at something which quite often happens, believe it or not, and this is titled Abandoned Ship.
	Does this symbol of slavery shame Manchester and its football clubs?
	I find it quite bizarre that they've looked at these badges and thought that the ships was the thing that offended them the most.
	When we spoke earlier, it matters not to have a literal devil on their crest.
	And nobody's offended by that!
	Satan himself, manifest on Manchester United.
	No, that's not controversial.
	Not controversial at all, but those ships, yeah, that's... Freemasts, that's it, that's the wrong era.
	I mean, if I'm not wrong, slavery was abolished several decades before the...
	You've anticipated what I was going to do here because it was abolished in 1865 formally although 1833 was another key date in that.
	Let's move to this next page.
	I had the misfortune of going on to Manchester United's own website and they mention here founded in 1878 So that's what, is that 13 years?
	Yeah, 13 years after the abolition of slavery.
	So you would presume that if they're depicting a boat it must just mean we're, you know, a port city.
	It's something integral.
	That's why my team, Plymouth Argyle, has the Mayflower on its badge.
	Oh my goodness!
	Outrage!
	Disgusting!
	How has that not been cancelled yet?
	It should be a great season they're having, by the way.
	I know, yeah, I'm chuffed.
	Back in the Championship.
	Yes, it's about time.
	So, if you're just as concerned about the nature of Britain and how it has changed over the years.
	Make sure to check this out on our website, which is Karl & Callum looking at old footage, I think it's particularly from London, and comparing it to the modern day, and just making aesthetic judgements about the place, how things will run, and I think it's something that you should check out because It makes the difference from the past very stark, even though I'm not especially old, but I remember how different things were, and they've changed a lot in recent years.
	Yes.
	For the worse, in my opinion.
	Technology hasn't always been for the better.
	No, certainly not.
	It's been abused, I believe.
	I very much agree.
	I think social media in particular has a lot to answer for, or the people using it, more specifically.
	There is a lot of language control going on here, and I think controlling language also controls the people who both use it and hear it.
	And a good example of that is this.
	Brecken Beacons to be renamed over links to climate change.
	So they're taking exception to the term beacon because it's a fossil fuel pollutant.
	Dear God.
	I thought this was satire at first but it's not.
	Whenever I see stuff like this now I actually do have to take it seriously because it's just getting more and more crazy and yeah I think three years ago if somebody said that they'd have been laughed out of the country.
	And yet now you see it and you go, oh actually yeah, they're probably being serious.
	I'm not even too fond of the Broken Beacons.
	I had a pretty horrific experience of, I had, I was pretty unwell.
	I think I had post-Covid.
	I drank a full red bottle, a bottle of red wine and then the next day, first thing in the morning, I did some of the tallest peaks there and by the end I was basically crawling on my hands and knees.
	Nice.
	Exhausting, so yeah.
	I'm still a bit bitter at the whole place but even so it shouldn't be renamed.
	So, here's another one.
	Judge asks jury if it's fine to call them ladies and gentlemen and says he understands some view that as old-fashioned.
	Really?
	Funny enough, no one did think it was old-fashioned.
	Oh, where's that come from?
	LBC.
	Honestly, the majority of people in this world are not offended by being called ladies and gentlemen.
	Stop pandering to the minute minorities that get outraged about everything that's driving me mad.
	It's like 99.99% of people have no problem with that whatsoever.
	Absolutely none whatsoever.
	Speaking of which, here's another one where JoylessWoke have made endearing terms like pet and love unsayable, says Carol Malone.
	Not in my world.
	I'm saying it, if you get offended, tough.
	Down in the West Country, where I'm from, you get people saying me lover and stuff like that.
	And it's nice.
	You go into like a chip shop and you don't know the person.
	They say, are you right, me lover?
	Even did the accent a bit there.
	It was, yeah.
	I noticed that.
	But it's nice.
	It's warm and friendly.
	It is warm and friendly.
	It goes back to the first point about...
	people just being offended by but it's what it's doing is fragmenting our society it's creating division all the things that bring us closer together the warmth and friendliness the familiarity with people yeah is being fractured for the sake of division because of course um even caesar said it divide et impera divide and conquer that's how you control people is you divide them and that's what's going on here um it's pretty difficult to dispute it yeah
	So this one is one that really infuriated me.
	I think this is one of the worst.
	So this is a council saying it could sell its inappropriate biblical paintings.
	And if you could scroll down, John, a little bit, these are obviously lovely works of art, you know, classics that you would normally pay to see in an art gallery.
	But apparently These things have no ties to the city of Oxford, which is the council debating whether to remove them and things like the head of John the Baptist, if you could scroll down to that one John, should be a painting of him, his head on a platter, there we go, things like that, obviously biblical references.
	Apparently they have no place in Britain or Oxford or British culture, you know, there's no history of that That's the other thing I've noticed in the last few years, there seems to have been an attack on Christianity as well in this country.
	And I've got no horse in this race, I wouldn't describe myself as religious, but I certainly think that they shouldn't be persecuted for the beliefs that they have.
	I think it's been the Church of England in particular being very subversive with religion.
	I mean, they're pushing progressivism more so than perhaps lots of other institutions in Britain.
	Yeah.
	Which is very strange to me because you would have thought that people of supposed conviction, they claim to be believers, would be a bit more to the book, wouldn't you?
	But there we go.
	But yeah, they're going to sell off all these paintings for more diverse paintings, in their own words.
	But if they're actually as offensive as they're pointing out, who's going to buy them?
	That's true, yeah.
	You're going to struggle to get a buyer.
	You can't get a buyer now.
	It's going to offend everyone.
	These keystones of culture, I think there's one depicting an ancient Roman myth, but of course Rome is the thing that brought us Christendom.
	So the connection with Christianity there is pretty obvious, isn't it?
	Because it's head of John the Baptist and a Roman myth, of course.
	The Romans, their significance in Britain is their conquest of it and introduction of Christianity.
	And this one was just ridiculous, this next one.
	British library staff to get emotional support to help them add trigger warnings to the archive.
	Can you imagine?
	You need emotional support working in a library.
	How pathetic do you have to be?
	It is pathetic.
	This is such a weird world to be living in.
	As weird as it is, I've actually found it quite fascinating the last few years to live through what we're going through.
	It's an excellent thing from a psychologist's perspective because I get to see all of this madness out in the open, whereas before you had to go and get permission for a case study.
	Well, it's never been easier for me.
	I can just enjoy it.
	Look out the window!
	I've got case studies abound.
	Incredible stuff.
	Another one here is, work primary school bans pupils from playing tag in favour of games rooted in love.
	What does that even mean?
	I mean, I played tag in school and it was just a fun, physical game that you could play with your mates.
	There's no violence there or anything.
	I mean, you could look at that headline and think, are they trying to promote paedophilia there in some way, shape or form?
	I think subtly they're trying because I think that's what actually the next step they'll try and do.
	Oh yeah, we've been talking about that a lot recently.
	Normalising paedophilia is the next thing.
	I've seen a few articles about it already.
	What does the plus stand for is the question we should be asking.
	Exactly.
	Exactly, yeah.
	It's not a nice... I think a lot of people's line will be crossed with that one.
	I think it will certainly be a line because I know a lot of ordinary people that don't have any clue about politics whereby, you know, if that were to be pushed it would get them out on the streets and protesting.
	Absolutely.
	And rightfully so.
	Rightfully so.
	So here's another one, this is again on the Christian point of view.
	Woke University scraps Lent term name as Christian titles replaced with new alternatives.
	Apparently Christian labels for terms no longer resonate with students.
	I mean, I don't understand this because I use these sorts of terms and don't even necessarily think about the Christian connotation in the first place.
	No, I think a lot of people don't.
	Which is probably bad on my part, but it strikes me as just needless and aggravating.
	It is needless, and it is, as I said before, it seems to be a concerted attack on Christianity.
	It's just something going on that's linked with so many other things which is also wrong.
	Yeah.
	Which just all seem to lead to a point where you think, what is the plan behind all of this?
	What are they trying to achieve by attacking all these institutions?
	I will be addressing this very soon.
	I feel like I've at least got an explanation whether I'm right or not.
	I look forward to it.
	But another thing that I find very frustrating is you get things like this new migrant policy unthinkably heinous says anti-racism group and they say it cites someone who works for stand up to racism and they talk about demonizing and scapegoating of refugees And then you have this next story.
	19 suspected terrorists with links to groups including Islamic State crossed the channel on small boats last year, with most lodging asylum claims to stop them from being deported.
	Wow, who would have thought that might happen?
	I mean, ISIS did literally say... Isn't that crazy?
	They said they're going to send people and mysteriously they sent people.
	Yeah, fair play to them, sticking to their word.
	Their word means more than the British government's apparently.
	You're not wrong.
	I never thought I'd be saying that.
	But yes, these sorts of things that... This is like an objective fact and they're like, well, they're just being scapegated.
	It's so obviously disingenuous.
	It's so easy for the media to manipulate people's thoughts on subjects you would not believe.
	And I think it's just to keep migration going.
	Of course we've got the legal migration which is at its highest rate it's ever been at.
	I think it's a million a year now which is unfathomable really.
	When you have more people, then it pushes wages down, you build more properties, and funnily enough, 30% of all of the Conservative Party's donations come from property developers.
	I mean, follow the money.
	And then even the King himself, seemingly in danger of becoming so woke, as The Telegraph puts it, he's in danger of abolishing himself and supposedly he's commissioned a study into the monarchy's historic links into slavery and has not ruled out reparations.
	But of course, I don't remember... What he should be doing is having an inquiry into his brother's historic links with Jeffrey Epstein, is what he should be doing.
	And maybe an inquiry into himself for his links with Jimmy Savile.
	I mean, that would be a start, you know?
	Apple didn't fall far from the tree, did it?
	Wow.
	Seemingly.
	Doesn't appear so.
	I'm not going to make any accusations.
	I don't want my head cut off.
	But yes, according to many academic historians, there are no links, but the person that's been hired to do it is just a PhD student who has probably been selected deliberately to find links.
	That's what normally happens.
	That's what happens, isn't it?
	They cherry-pick a specific person who will give them the answer that they want to hear.
	That's how science works.
	It is, yeah.
	That's why I'm not in science anymore.
	I was going to be an academic and a professor, but I didn't.
	After I got a window into how it all works behind the scenes, I was just like, well, this is hardly meritocratic at all.
	It's not about the merits of the argument like I idealistically and naively thought it would be.
	When you think about it logically, I've never really given it a huge amount of thought, obviously I was playing football for years and watching football for years and just enjoying my life.
	When you think about it logically, who is going to fund a scientific paper to come up with an answer they don't want?
	Well, many companies.
	I can think of some, I'm not sure if I can say it publicly, but certain pharmaceutical companies might want to do that.
	Funny, isn't it?
	I mean, if you're going to fund a scientist to do an experiment, You want a certain outcome from that experiment to help you on your way.
	It's like tobacco companies paying doctors to endorse their products in the past and obviously we now know that's immoral and bad because it portrays smoking as being healthy.
	But comparable things are still going on and we're clapping and applauding it as being great science and all that sort of thing, which obviously it's not.
	I think greater scepticism of pretty much everything is the whole point of it.
	Absolutely.
	My scepticism has led me away from science.
	That's why I'm doing this.
	Mine too.
	My scepticism has led me away from science, it's led me away from doctors and it's led me away from government.
	Mm.
	And I would add science as in the institution in its current form, not necessarily the practice and the aims of it.
	It's important to differentiate that.
	Well said.
	And moving on again.
	Finally we got to the point where the Telegraph has caught on that yes, the anti-racist mission to destroy Britain is working and we have surrendered.
	I think surrendered is the right word because the battle has kind of been fought and lost and there's not a lot... Was there even a fight?
	Not really because it happened so quickly and under people's noses that There wasn't much to put up with in the first place.
	I think institutional capture and the fact that the people who are inclined to go into government have a certain mindset.
	You've got to be sort of bureaucratically minded.
	You've got to believe that government solutions are the right solutions and that predisposes people with a left-wing bias towards going into these institutions in the first place because of course the more typically right-wing perspective is that You have a more limited government, at least in the British tradition of sort of classical liberalism and conservatism.
	You sort of have free market, limited government intervention, sort of in the 19th century vision of Britain, whereby we governed only as much as we needed to and nothing more.
	I do get a bit sick to death of everybody accusing Britain of being a racist country.
	We're probably the most anomalous example throughout all of history of a tolerant society.
	Absolutely, absolutely.
	I know it gets cited a lot but we did abolish slavery and I mean we were paying for it up until 2015.
	I mean the loans were massive and it was the only way we could have done it.
	People say oh well you didn't compensate the slaves but then you wouldn't be able to do it.
	There were practical considerations involved.
	And you also didn't want the entire global economy to collapse when you're transitioning very quickly.
	There is that, of course, not making excuses for the slave owners, but it's a more complicated thing, is what I'm trying to say.
	And I think part of the reason that all of this is going on is a man I'm sure you're familiar with.
	I'm afraid so.
	I wasn't up until about three years ago, but he very quickly came onto my radar as some kind of Joke, James Bond villain-type character.
	Well, he's German, born in Nazi Germany, in Ravensburg, and he wears a costume which makes him look like the Emperor from Star Wars.
	So... He does.
	He does.
	He doesn't help himself.
	I think the world would be a better place if he wasn't on it, quite frankly.
	He's an appalling human being.
	He's an appalling human being, but he's surrounded by similarly appalling human beings who appear to be taking orders from him.
	One of the creepiest sentences I think I've heard in the last three years was when he Boasting how his young leaders have managed to penetrate the cabinets?
	I was going to say that, yeah.
	Honestly, that was just the creepiest thing I've ever heard.
	I've made my skin crawl.
	And he makes my skin crawl whenever I see him.
	I think it being said in a German accent doesn't help.
	No.
	They've got a bit of history of villainy.
	But yes, the point I'm trying to make here is that a lot of this stuff is being pushed top-down, I would say.
	There's not really a grassroots desire for it.
	Sure, there are a few activists, but a very, very small minority.
	But I think the real force for this rapid social change we've seen has come through institutions like, say, BlackRock, who have signed up to Klaus Schwab's Environment and Social Governance scores, which is basically a score which marks How socially progressive a company is.
	How woke you are.
	Yes.
	It's like an objective metric somehow.
	But it's intended to be a marker to inform resource allocation.
	So if you own a large company, and you are dependent on investors, well, you need to sign up to these because you're not going to be competitive.
	Your company's not going to be around for very long unless you adhere to these rules.
	And I think there's not necessarily a willingness to go along with this, but there's not really given a choice.
	It's bullying and coercion again, isn't it?
	Absolutely.
	This is why lots of institutions have gone along with this sort of thing because they can't continue if they don't.
	And of course this pressure in the private sector also makes the government aware of it because of course They don't want all of their businesses to collapse and then be a basket case like some sort of Venezuela scenario and so they're concerned about it as well although I would argue that particularly in the Conservative Party there are people who are more than happy to go along with this at the ideological level as well.
	As well as the civil servants who enact the government's so-called will, deliberately sabotaging any attempts to scupper it.
	It's a multifaceted thing, but I think that this is a large part of the decline, and deliberate decline, because there is a new ideology on the way, and it has no space for competitors.
	It is stakeholder capitalist globalism, to put it in a wordy sentence, but more or less.
	Stakeholder capitalism is Klaus Schwab's baby of just, yes, not being purely for profit, we need to push ideology as well.
	That's more or less what it is in a word.
	And of course, globalist in that it doesn't respect national borders and actively undermines them by undermining their culture.
	Exactly right, which is what we've seen a lot of.
	And, you know, I got quite concerned, you know, when I started seeing A coordinated effort from world leaders around the globe starting to use the term Build Back Better all at the same time.
	It's also a bit of a grammatical abomination.
	It doesn't really make sense.
	Not in English-English, anyway.
	No, no, it doesn't.
	Because to build something back better, first you have to destroy it.
	Yeah.
	And I think we feel like we're going through that phase right now.
	There is an implicit threat in that phrase, isn't there?
	Basically is, yeah.
	It's very passive-aggressive, isn't it?
	It's like, I'm gonna build you back better, but first I'm gonna sort you out.
	But first I'm gonna have to smash you to pieces.
	Honestly, and it's also worth pointing out finally that Many of the companies that are going woke, as The Rolling Stone points out, if you could scroll up to the headline, John, quickly, aren't really going broke.
	They're becoming more profitable than ever, and that's because, of course, the investment firms are allocating more resources to the companies with better ESG scores.
	Therefore, they're getting more investment, and they can grow more quickly.
	And it goes on and lists lots of things, and this is in response to the Bud Light thing, which, to be fair, Bud Light did see a significant drop in their stock price, but They can take it temporarily on the chin, but even so, it doesn't seem to be impeding people.
	I think that the best thing here for people would probably be knowing who has signed up to these sorts of things, not buying large corporations.
	I've all of a sudden started sounding like Jeremy Corbyn.
	Chances are, if they're a large corporation, they've probably bought into this and are contributing to the death of your parent culture, which is not a good thing.
	Absolutely.
	You should very much avoid this, if possible, if you care about the country that you grew up in.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Support your local farmers and all that kind of stuff.
	Definitely, I'm all up for that.
	Okay, so on to some of the written comments now.
	I'm just going to read what some of the people have said on our website, some of the commenters.
	So Bob Slade says, Latisse, on behalf of many other saint supporters, I'd like to thank you for the many moments of pleasure you provided us with as a magician with a football.
	Ah, that's nice.
	You can read the bad ones out as well, I don't mind.
	I don't think there'll be many, to be fair.
	JJHW, Matt is double plus good.
	I don't really understand, but I presume that's a good thing.
	That's not like the LGBTQ plus plus, is it?
	I think that must be what he's playing off there.
	Robert Longshaw, been a nice episode, lads.
	Matt has been a joy to listen to.
	Thanks very much.
	General Hyping says, I've been looking forward to this since hearing about it yesterday.
	Matt's always come across as your everyday guy that enjoys sport, a pint, and not skirting around the real issues.
	If only we could go back to the days when goose-stepping was the first indication of someone might be a Nazi instead of some falsehood levelled against people who want to talk about real issues, not media fabrications or distractions.
	Very good point.
	Freewill21112, why don't you understand the rationale, Josh?
	It's about power.
	They want their ideology to win.
	I do understand that, funnily enough.
	They don't think any other views have any legitimacy, so they see no reason to be fair or allow dissenting views.
	If someone's career is ruined because of being cancelled, it doesn't matter to them because the person is an ideological enemy.
	This is a merciless creed that brooks no compromise and 20th century history is replete with movements that held these views and all the institutions have been infiltrated or are sacred of them.
	So don't expect fairness from these people, you won't get it.
	And to quote Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones, power is power.
	And they're not wrong.
	And when I said I didn't understand it, what I meant was I grew up in a place where people were nice to one another.
	They were civil and friendly.
	And it was more of an interpersonal point that I don't understand how a person can do that to themselves as well as other people.
	But obviously I understand the political power side of things in that power in and of itself is the end goal.
	It's sort of the Foucaultian view, as in Michel Foucault, of how politics functions, that seems to be the dominant political paradigm today, that power is a good ends in and of itself because then you can enact whatever you want.
	You don't actually need to have an ideological stand and I think we can see that in a lot of modern politics in that there's lots of, I think the term is electioneering isn't it, whereby
	The politicians make their views as vague as possible so they then when it later comes out what the public will is then they can shift accordingly without looking like a hypocrite and that has become I think particularly in Britain post Blair I think Blair was the master at it and that's why Radiohead wrote the song electioneering in 1997 but It's become the dominant thing.
	It's almost become post-ideological, but in the worst possible sense, in that there are no principles anymore.
	Or the people who do have principles, like your Andrew Bridgens, for example, get kicked out of the party.
	I know, and a party that kicks out Andrew Bridgen but allows Matt Hancock to stay in it.
	Now that is something else isn't it?
	I know, yeah, and I mean the less is said about Jeremy Hunt's connections to Chinese state media the better.
	Yes, oh there's plenty of examples I'm sure.
	But the problem we've got is that the people who would make the best leaders are not interested in that kind of job.
	They don't want the power.
	Yet they would be the best kind of leaders.
	I think it's such a ruthless fight up a greasy pole that anyone who has any moral virtue doesn't quarrel.
	You've got to stand on a few heads to get up the top, don't you?
	Or be promoted by Mr. Schwab!
	So Shaker Silva says, and he's quoting here, you're the person in control if you're offended or not.
	That's actually quite a stoic point that you rarely see that perspective nowadays with people obsessed with taking offense.
	Absolutely, yeah.
	I think a bit of stoicism would go a long way to be fair.
	Wouldn't it just?
	We used to be such a stoic group of people.
	I wrote a massive article talking about, it was basically a love letter to the British, Stiff Upper Lip, and talking about how even in 2011, which is relatively recent, there was a cruise ship full of British tourists being pursued by Somali pirates and they just got the pianist playing over dinner to play Rule Britannia as they carried on eating while being chased by pirates.
	I mean, if that doesn't define our national attitude, I don't know what does, or at least what we should strive for.
	That's what we should be, yeah.
	So, Charles Burgess, we live in the South and should have never let the left tear down the Civil War statues and monuments, I presume, in America.
	We capitulates allowed them to give away our history to the Klan, never let these people dictate your history.
	And I think that, yes, I think on top of that as well, why do you not want to keep up statues of controversial people?
	There are sort of ex-Soviet bloc countries that keep up statues of Stalin and Lenin, even though everyone hates them.
	It's not that they're venerating them, it's that they understand that it's a part of history.
	And a statue can become a different thing over time.
	It can be a reminder of how evil those people were, which they certainly were.
	If the word evil applies, Stalin and Lenin probably are some of the best examples of it.
	Indeed.
	Where were we?
	Someone going by the name Le French Footballer.
	The UK is going through similar changes with regard to Christianity as France did after the revolution until complete separation of the church and state more than a hundred years later.
	It's not going to stop at words.
	I think you're probably right there unfortunately.
	Brian Tomlinson, Oxford City Council and Oxford County Council have been captured by the WEF supporting Labour, Lib Dems and Green councillors.
	And that's true, because they were talking about the 15-minute cities, weren't they?
	They were indeed.
	Another thing that was a conspiracy theory about two years ago.
	Yeah, it's funny that, isn't it?
	And all of a sudden, look what's happening.
	It only takes two years to prove them, though.
	I mean, that's the bright side.
	Well, it's getting shorter and shorter with time.
	And talking of being short of time, we're out of time.
	But it has been a real pleasure.
	I've really enjoyed this, actually.
	Thanks, Josh.
	Me too.
	And thank you very much for watching.
	Make sure to check us out tomorrow.
	There's also a Gold Tier Zoom call at 3.30 with Carl and Callum that will be on the website.
	That's also British summertime.
	If you're American, that has changed slightly.
	So make sure to check that out.

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