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July 17, 2023 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:30:48

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #698

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	Hello and welcome to the podcast The Lotus Eaters for 17th July, Day for once, actually.
	That's a bit weird.
	Anyway, I'm joined by Carl.
	Hello.
	And Charlie.
	Good to be here.
	And today we're going to be talking about the fact that there's a young girl out there with £50,000, still can't buy a house.
	Strike, strike, strikes, and Canada censors the news.
	So, will we be the news?
	No.
	In Canada?
	No, because basically the question is, who do you hate more, Silicon Valley or journalists?
	It's a tough call, so.
	Anyway, I suppose I don't have anything to announce, so we'll get into the news.
	So, there's a young lady out there with £50,000 British pounds, sterling, and she can't buy a house still.
	And this has become a story in the BBC, and the responses I thought were quite funny.
	So, I thought we'd just go through it, because it's an interesting circumstance.
	But to start off, we're just going to promote something on lotushears.com, this being Eric Zamora's blockbuster speech.
	Themes?
	Don't like them.
	It was a good speech.
	Go and check it out, the full thing.
	I thought it was brilliant.
	I really enjoyed doing this breakdown of it.
	Yeah, the last bass man in France.
	Yeah, translated from French, so go and check that out.
	It is very nice.
	It does also really crack me up that he's a Jewish-Algerian man.
	He's like, no, look, we need to get rid of all the foreigners and they don't know how to deal with it.
	I just love it.
	Who else will lead the far right in France?
	Exactly.
	Jewish Algeria.
	There we are.
	But we'll get to the story.
	So you see this blew up.
	This BBC article just says, I have £50,000 in savings, but I still cannot buy a house.
	And then there's a picture of some young girl.
	Okay, before we get into this, I saw this headline going around and I find that Uh, not plausible, even in the current environment.
	Hard to believe.
	I can't disagree that most people looked at that and went, eh?
	Yeah.
	I mean, the responses, for example, someone says here 50 grand for a 200,000 or 250,000 house should be more than enough.
	Yeah, I mean, most mortgages are like, you know, 5 or 10%, something like that.
	So she should be able to get a massive house from that.
	Yeah.
	She also says, someone else responds, she can afford a mortgage, just not one she feels entitled to.
	That's what I'm thinking.
	Someone else says they can buy a house, just not the one they want.
	Someone else says houses in the northeast, you could buy one for 50 grand.
	Like that.
	And someone else went with try eating less avocados.
	But obviously, ironic there.
	Where the hell does she get 50k from anyway?
	It's got to be her parents.
	She does have just stop oil physiognomy.
	So it's no surprise that she still feels sort of more entitled than your average.
	Just because she's young.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Okay, right.
	Where does a young person get 50 grand from?
	She doesn't look like she's cut out for OnlyFans.
	And she does, as you say, she's got the sort of upper-class, just-stop-oil physiognomy.
	So I'm guessing mummy and daddy gave her 50 grand, and she's like, but I can't buy the mansion I want.
	Am I right?
	We'll see.
	So my personal favourite response, though, was someone said, quick, import more immigrants.
	But we're getting into the story itself, because here's the deets.
	As you can see here, the article in question.
	We see the subjects of today, our interrogation.
	This is Freya over here.
	She really does look like she's about to go and vandalise the Tate Modern.
	I mean, I will admit, before we go further, couldn't have picked a worse subject for trying to make the point about how bad the housing market is, but go through it.
	So Freya, 24, is just one young person trying to get on the property ladder with no end in sight.
	Where does a 24-year-old get 50 grand?
	Well, she may have been working since she's 18, saving every penny, live with her parents, blah, blah, blah.
	Who knows?
	Yeah, she looks the type, doesn't she?
	Well, she says, I was told by previous generations to get a good degree and the rest will sort itself out, but it hasn't.
	So that theory is already out the window.
	Yeah, okay.
	She's not working since 18, she's got...
	Agreed.
	So she's a uni student, right?
	Freya said some support from family.
	Ah, there we go.
	There we are.
	Meant she was able to get her own deposit, but high interest rates and a lack of affordability, livability properties meant that she was stuck paying almost half her salary on renting.
	No doubt.
	The back of mum and dad.
	Yeah, well, no doubt she wants somewhere in London or some other city as well.
	So that's going to, you know... And don't get me wrong, I'm totally sympathetic to the cost of living, the house prices and the mortgage crisis, obviously.
	There's just something about this.
	This is a bit odd.
	Yeah, Bank of Mum and Dad, I mean, we've been over this, actually, I think, last time, and that was actually a significant option, so if you want to buy a house, it's probably going to be where you're going to be going.
	At 24, be optimistic.
	Although, side question, I mean, why not 24?
	Just why can't we build a society where people can buy a house at 24?
	That would be nice as a goal.
	Instead of always being like, oh, what if it was slightly less worse?
	And I'd love to have aspirations back in this country.
	I'm just saying, I'm sick of every single day being like, oh, but what if it was worse, but not as bad as you're predicting?
	Honestly, back in 1992... I have the data.
	In the before times.
	Yeah, in the before times, before Tony Blair.
	Yeah, we can, yeah, because I already know where you're going with this, because £50,000 would have been the house.
	Can I just add, you know, what she said about the, I'm sure you experienced this as well Callum, being told that a university degree is, you know, the sort of one-size-fits-all solution to all your problems.
	I was told that as well.
	I bet she's got a great degree too.
	Everyone has been lied to.
	Don't go to uni.
	Waste of time.
	In fact, the government today, I don't know if you saw it, put out a tweet saying that one in five university degrees financially leaves the person worse off than if they hadn't gone.
	So you've got a 20% chance of being worse off financially.
	I think that's optimistic.
	Well, that's only negative.
	There's another 20% where you're owning a whole grand more.
	Yeah.
	How brilliant.
	But don't you remember Tony?
	Well, of course you don't remember Tony Blair.
	Education, education, education.
	50% of people in universities.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	A little bit.
	1960.
	Average age of first-time buyer?
	24.
	Mm-hmm.
	So there we are.
	Average time spent to get the deposit was two years in 1960.
	Today it is five years, so there you have it.
	I mean, five years, that's not as bad as I was expecting.
	That's the average, I think, for 2011, actually.
	Oh, okay.
	Statistics I was looking at.
	Yeah, anyway, another time perhaps to have a conversation about could we have a nice country, but whatever.
	She says here, she has a well-paid job as a scientific content creator for an educational games company, but said she cannot see how single young professionals are expected to buy without further support.
	I kind of hate this.
	Support, support, support.
	Just give me more support.
	No, we're foreigners.
	Simple as.
	I'm sorry, but this is kind of my shtick at this point, because it's true as well.
	But I mean, yeah, but like, this is the whole thing, isn't it?
	You're letting a million people a year.
	No, but the obvious thing is, oh, I just want more government money.
	Moreover as well, you know, there's no... maybe a husband in the picture, perhaps?
	No, but... Could help ease the burden.
	In her defense, It shouldn't be... Like, she's got a good job, she's got £50,000, she should be able to get a nice place.
	Yeah.
	She says here, my salary isn't enough to cover the threshold to get a mortgage of £200,000, she said.
	Now, the idea she's going to buy something for £250,000... Bit optimistic, I would say.
	We'll get back to that.
	She says, although I work full-time, I can't earn enough.
	I don't drink, I don't go out, I don't eat more than once a month.
	Oh yeah.
	normally for a friend's birthday, which is all good news.
	I mean, most people who are bad with money smoke it away, drink it away, or gamble it away, so that's nice.
	Freya, who pays £775 in rent a month, excluding bills, in her one-bedroom flat in Cardiff, said, I wouldn't mind renting if it wasn't so expensive for a property that often comes with a huge amount of issues.
	But she's right about that.
	I mean, renting is absolutely bloody miserable.
	She said she often found properties in the Welsh capital were low quality, and a previous property she had, that she was living in, the ceiling collapsed, meant it was so cold I couldn't actually sleep.
	Well, she's not actually wrong about that.
	If we take a look at modern houses... No, the decline's totally real.
	...is totally true.
	My thingy has stopped, John, so I should probably just unplug that at some point.
	I don't know if my mouse has died as well now.
	There we are.
	Okay.
	I have no controls.
	I'm going to rely on John from here on out.
	So there we are.
	This is one thing.
	This is a Welsh building inspector who started making TikToks about how bad the country is.
	Oh, yeah.
	And, well, they're good fun, so let's play this and enjoy the low-quality housing.
	Hey guys, back again.
	Starting off, this turf has been installed on top of soil pieces.
	Look at the state of these drain miters.
	They are shocking.
	This meter box is covered in excess mortar.
	This property is handed over.
	Could nobody clean that just before they moved in?
	Awesome job here guys.
	This gate bolt doesn't line up to the key.
	We've got an absolutely shocking finish to the mastic sealer on this front door.
	Look at the state of that.
	This brickwork is 14mm out of plumb.
	The tolerance is 4mm per meter.
	We've got a nice split to the edge of this door.
	Look at that, lovely.
	This new post is 31 millimetres out of plumb.
	That's ridiculous.
	We've got a massive gap between the wall and the floor and to these tiles.
	Look at that.
	This shower wants to be a swimming pool by the looks of it.
	We've got an extremely poor finish to the mastic sealer on this windowsill.
	And how would you like your window No, sir.
	I'd like them all cracked, please.
	That window's cracked.
	This window's cracked.
	That window's cracked.
	Everything's cracked.
	We've got an absolutely shocking finish to this patching.
	That is ridiculous.
	And what is this?
	I could shave upside down along the stairs.
	Just buy the correct timber.
	Anyway, that's just a fun little look at new builds.
	Eastern European pride in British building.
	Thank you for your work, Poles.
	Weirdly, standards have gone down all over the place.
	Strangely, some of you weren't doing your best, because why would you care?
	It's not literally for even your own people, never mind yourself.
	So there you are.
	So new builds just generally are crap.
	But we'll get some numbers, shall we?
	Because she mentioned £775 a month.
	She said that was about almost half our income, so let's assume that's 45%.
	So she's on £1,700 a month.
	£20,400 a year.
	£400 more than the minimum wage.
	It's a net, okay?
	That doesn't really make sense that she's considered herself well paid.
	I will ignore what she said then and just give her £2,000 a month, so that's £4,000 more than the minimum wage.
	It's still not a good salary, but there you are.
	We'll go to the next one here.
	You can see more about this.
	Just a sideline about how British wages have gone to s***.
	So in 2022, the most common full-time wage for work is 30 grand.
	So in 2023, it's about 32 grand.
	So that's a 6% rise, but 10% inflation.
	So it's a 4% pay cut as well.
	My point being, she's not actually in a well-paid job by her own standards.
	Let's just assume that it's good for what she does.
	Maybe that's what she meant.
	Or she's just flexing.
	Maybe.
	But we'll go to the deals.
	Let's check out if there's any deals.
	She says here, a typical five-year fixed mortgage deal now has an interest rate of 6%, a level not seen since the last financial crisis.
	I mean, I saw a lot of boomers, for example, responding to the story with that part saying, well, I used to pay 10% in the before times, before foreigners.
	Yes.
	I used to pay 10% on a house that was 50% cheaper.
	Yeah.
	I have a boomer we can go and have a look at.
	Probably more than that, actually.
	For this, a nobody, a former MP, not anyone with any power during that time period, Edwina here, just to tell us, all the baby boomers, who are now mortgage-free homeowners, went through paying interest rates of, sorry, 16%.
	It was normal.
	We didn't have much of a choice, but home ownership rocketed and we survived.
	Edwina, the average price of a house now is, what, 300k?
	The average price of a house then was, what, 50k?
	It's a percentage problem.
	I mean, there's a local children's entertainer who made a response to this.
	It was rather nice, from Mr. Rat, if we can get him up.
	They were three to four times the wages back then, they're now 10 times, 20 times the wages.
	That's why everyone hates boomers, as you make that point.
	10% on 80k is 8k, 10% on 200k is 20k.
	Yeah.
	So, yeah.
	Why could this be?
	Why could this be?
	Well, let's go to the next link back to it and find out.
	Let's look at this graph, shall we?
	The number of homes available is down by a third, adding even more pressure to buyers.
	I don't know how that could have happened.
	Now, we can see here supply is down.
	Oh, well.
	OK, but I'm worried about the demand bit.
	I'm worried about the Julia Hartley Brewer angle here.
	It's like Callum.
	Build more houses is not a solution.
	It's just concrete of every inch of this country.
	For who?
	Not the youth of Britain.
	The people who need the houses.
	Who are going, we need to have the houses to house these people.
	And then when that doesn't stem the problem, we can just build upwards until eventually it's just Somalians in the stratosphere.
	Ah, Britain.
	I mean, I agree.
	I'm sure many people have noticed I'm sick of the like Westminster response of just like, why forbid more houses?
	Hmm.
	Yes.
	For who?
	Name them.
	Yeah, the incredible Tom Harwood take.
	I'm told something happened in the late 90s to cause that massive spike in demand, are we?
	I bet that quote from earlier, you can get a house in the North East for 50 grand.
	I thought I'd check it out, because that's quite tempting.
	So we went to Rightmove, and I looked up a few properties.
	This one just happened to be the most funny thing I could find for 50 grand.
	That's cute, man.
	That's nice.
	It's not a house, obviously.
	It's like an old church.
	It's an old monastery with no insulation, which you can move into for 40 grand.
	Yeah, but that's awesome.
	Give them licensing.
	Anyway, my point being... My point being, right, that if you're a right-wing Christian group, Club together, buy it.
	And then live in the middle of nowhere in the Northeast.
	Yeah, rejuvenate local community.
	What do you want to do, live in London?
	Yeah, I don't know what people are going to do when they move to this side of the road monastery.
	Go on walks?
	Think of how many tower blocks we could build on those hills.
	I was going to say, it looks beautiful, you could go for a nice ramble, couldn't you?
	But I did find a lot of other properties as well, it's just that they're all up for auction, so that's not actually the price.
	Right, okay.
	People don't know.
	But, the entire youth of the South moving to the North, I don't think is actually a solution.
	For a couple of reasons.
	One, there's no job for them to go to, but number two, Northerners exist, is my main complaint, because it's cruel for the Northerners.
	Don't flick Southerners on them.
	Yes, sincerely.
	Because, I mean, they've got jobs and are trying to also buy a house and are having a tough time, and then all the Southerners turn up and make their house prices skyrocket by immigrating to the North, because a bunch of immigrants immigrated to the South and made house prices skyrocket.
	I mean, it just seems mean.
	It is kind of just kicking the problem down the road.
	It's where the Northerners are going to move to.
	Scotland?
	Get rid of the Scots, anyway.
	But let's check out Freya because... Probably a lot more northerners than there are Scots.
	We've got a sort of Tibetan solution on that.
	Anyway... Another time, another time.
	Suddenly demographic displacement will become an issue.
	We're going to check out where Freya wanted to live because I did and I found this... Just a quick thing there.
	You know there are more Pakistanis in Britain than there are Welsh?
	Yeah.
	There are just more Pakistanis in Britain than there are Welsh people.
	It's mad, isn't it?
	Anyway, sorry, carry on.
	No, I just want to let that stay in the air for a minute.
	Yeah.
	God.
	Anyway, so back to Freya.
	How does Mark Drakeford feel about that?
	Probably very positive.
	So we'll click on that second image there because I just looked up, you know, what does she want exactly?
	And there we are.
	There's a house, it's got two bedrooms.
	She wants to get a boyfriend and live there or something, start a family.
	I mean, that's really not an extreme ask on her part, is it?
	190 grand?
	If she was asking for like a four bedroom detached mansion or something, I'd be like, OK, fair enough.
	Terraced house, for people listening.
	Two bedrooms, one bathroom.
	Listed as first-time buyers.
	Look, nicely presented, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	Yeah, it looks pretty reasonable, all things considered.
	Check out the financing.
	It's not fun.
	So, you get the next image on there, which is... I don't know, I think it's the one before, perhaps.
	Or maybe I didn't put it in here.
	I thought I did.
	The next image, John, not the next tweet.
	Sorry, I don't have control, because the things are broken.
	So, I can't do that.
	Next, not before.
	And if we can look at that, there you are, she's got a deposit.
	Monthly repayments £1,123 on an interest rate of 8.45.
	£123 on an interest rate of 8.45.
	God, that's a lot in there.
	So you might think I'm a bit mad putting in that interest rate.
	We'll go and check out the current interest rates.
	So, if we go to the next one here, you can see those interest rates, the next link.
	And there you have.
	So, I used the SVR there, which is not true.
	It wouldn't be the first one you'd get.
	That's people re-mortgaging, to be fair.
	So, you can get it down to £885 if you get the smallest possible interest rate.
	But that's also five-year fixed and it's going to go up.
	But with 44.25% of the income on the mortgage, she would be spending.
	Yeah.
	Who's going to actually approve that mortgage?
	I wouldn't lend her that money.
	I'm not actually confident she wouldn't end up defaulting, because she probably would.
	Because remember, when you take an interest as well, they also warn you, this could go up by another 2%, so be sure you could pay that.
	And she probably couldn't.
	So, yeah, I actually am not surprised.
	She probably wouldn't be able to buy a house in the range she's looking for.
	But we'll get real quick to the next one here.
	This is a Telegraph article about why demand... Just as a quick thing here, this is just a brilliant advert for marriage, though, isn't it?
	You could get married and then suddenly you can afford that house.
	You then have a kid.
	She definitely better be staying home, at which point you can't pay the mortgage because she's not working anymore.
	You could try child care and good luck.
	But they say here about demand.
	So, buyer equity across the country has fallen 45% in June.
	That's good.
	It's good for houses.
	There we are.
	This is all just about interest rates have gone up so no one's buying.
	Yeah, it's fair.
	I mean, they say here Coventry Building Society is now not offering any two-year fixed mortgages.
	Zero.
	No percentage will they offer you one because they're expecting the market to completely be too risky.
	But we'll go back to Freya's numbers real quick because, as I mentioned, scroll down on this.
	I don't know if it has the details I put in.
	It does not.
	Never mind.
	If it goes up by three percent, she's paying £1,100 again, even on the lower So we've already lowered her expectations by 60 grand.
	We're not there.
	So what about a flat?
	Let's put her at flat.
	You know, Freya, I'm here.
	I'm your new estate agent, so pay me for this segment.
	So we'll check this one here.
	There we are.
	What's that?
	85 grand for a flat.
	Pretty reasonable.
	Needs a bit of work, to be honest.
	Sure, but... Go through the images.
	She's 24.
	She's got some time on her hands.
	Hopefully.
	Touch a bit flat.
	This looks like a flat in Afghanistan.
	A lot of malls.
	The flats in Afghanistan were better.
	I can bet.
	Bathrooms were better, never mind.
	There we are.
	It's also in not a great area of Cardiff, so there's that.
	There are six options, though.
	She wants a flat with two bedrooms.
	This is just the first one I found for her.
	This was the third most expensive.
	The second most expensive was only being sold to investors, so no.
	The first most expensive was for cash buyers only.
	The fourth and the fifth most expensive were retirements only, and the sixth was also only cash.
	So that was the only one I could find for her in that price range.
	So we'll up her budget a bit.
	So here we go.
	This is for 130.
	Can we look through those pictures a bit, John?
	That actually looks quite nice.
	This is very nice.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So we've been able to actually find something here for her.
	Nice stuff.
	Do you want to guess the catch?
	You don't have to take a refugee in with you.
	Might as well.
	There's 100 years on the lease, and then it reverts back to the person who owns the land.
	Oh yeah, it's a leasehold.
	This is something I explained to a Serbian friend of mine who couldn't comprehend how we do apartments in the West.
	So in Serbia, if you buy an apartment, you own the apartment.
	You own literally the air where the apartment is.
	And if the apartment gets destroyed by a natural disaster... It's like an ice core.
	You own everything down to the center of the Earth.
	Yes.
	They have to rebuild, and that air where your apartment is still belongs to you.
	And the insurance company, for example, if your building is destroyed, has to rebuild your apartment.
	So, uh, we don't get that.
	Um, we don't actually own our apartments.
	You get them on leasehold.
	And, um, that means you have it for 100 years in this case.
	Usually they're about a thousand years, which means it doesn't really matter.
	But a hundred is not great because as soon as it gets to one, it is worth zero pounds.
	So you're literally just burning money the longer you own it.
	Anyway, I've done enough house searching.
	Can't be bothered.
	If anyone in the audience wants to marry Freya, go and find her a house, I suppose.
	Send her it, and there you are.
	You'll all live happily ever after.
	She seems to have rich parents.
	She certainly does.
	Imagine you could get some of that money.
	I'm just sort of advertising Freya as a partner now.
	There we are.
	There's people in the audience who deal with it, so go and try it out.
	Anyway, we'll go to the next one here, because house prices... I have a theory about why they might have gone up.
	I love the graph.
	I'm just having a guess.
	Because the thing is, like you can see on this graph, it only goes up to 400,000, and so to actually track in the actual number of migrants who have come into Britain since 2020-2022, you actually have to go miles, and that's probably not even high enough, actually.
	That'd be about 600 grand.
	Yeah.
	In terms of foreigners.
	Not money.
	But no, really, yes.
	I mean, if we go to the next link here, I mean, it just goes on and on.
	There are reasons.
	I mean, that's it.
	Why is demand way up?
	We're not having any babies.
	And also supply is way down.
	Why?
	Who knows?
	Something happened.
	Maybe we're in a bubble.
	I mean, a lot of those articles, for example, we're talking about perhaps we're in a bubble.
	Crash is coming.
	Yeah, I don't see how the crash is coming.
	House prices could go down 5%.
	Ooh, and then you could buy one.
	That's 5% since last year, not since house prices went up 30% in two years, but never mind.
	Yeah, I'm not really convinced there is a bubble.
	No.
	I'm actually quite worried that nothing is going to happen.
	And house prices will just stay about the same, because the demand is ridiculously high.
	All right, back to renting, real quick, because... It's a W for the landlords, that the house prices stay up, so... Of course it is.
	Good news for you.
	Here's The Guardian, reporting the average monthly rent outside London is now more than a grand.
	Jesus.
	It's gone up 25%, according to Hampton's.
	Cool.
	This is a two-up, two-down situation.
	I wonder why that is.
	25%?
	Hmm, wonder why.
	Shall we go for a single room instead?
	Because I'm bugger buying a two-up, two-down.
	Oh, sorry, renting one.
	Never gonna buy one.
	Let's go to the single rooms instead.
	Let's see how that's doing.
	£700 a month on average.
	There we are.
	Good luck, boys.
	Spare rooms data shows that rents have increased in the UK everywhere.
	In Edinburgh, it's up 25%.
	In Middlesbrough, 21%.
	In Manchester, 20%.
	And the rest of the country, around about the same percentages.
	And I have to wonder why that happened, because that isn't the work of foreigners.
	The demand side, yeah, somewhat, obviously.
	But who could have made the money worthless?
	I'll just end this off as I usually do, which is the last one here.
	Just see inflation graph.
	There you are.
	Since 2020, 25% of inflation.
	And in the same time, as they say, since the pandemic, so 2020, rent's gone up 25%.
	House prices have also gone up 25%.
	If only there was a reason why this could have happened.
	Number of foreigners into Britain has gone up by 100%.
	There we are.
	Sorry, Freya.
	I tried my best of looking up in Cardiff what you could buy, and best of luck to you and your boyfriend who will come from this segment with a house offer, I presume.
	Go on, boys.
	Otherwise, that's that.
	Yeah, I saw that.
	A lot of boomers I saw were acting like, oh my God, what is she, stupid?
	Just buy a 250 grand house, like that first comment.
	And no.
	No, she can't.
	Things have changed.
	Alright then, well.
	Strikes, strikes, strikes.
	Why do we bother?
	If you get that reference, sorry.
	I love you.
	I don't get that reference, actually.
	Fawlty Towers.
	Alright.
	Very good.
	I actually never watched any Fawlty Towers.
	You should, it's very good.
	My dad would put it on and I'd be like, this is boring, dad.
	You should try re-watching it.
	I'd recommend everyone check it out.
	I just expect you sitting at home watching UK Gold anyway.
	I don't watch TV.
	I play video games.
	So there are strikes going on up and down the country in lots of different sectors.
	And I think this is just another symptom of the general decline of our country.
	So you can read Carl's very good article on this phenomenon that we're seeing.
	It's so palpable, though, isn't it?
	You can walk through the streets in fear.
	Yeah, like with your one, the quality of everything.
	Things are in disrepair.
	The roads are in disrepair.
	Everyone's walking around like they're trapped in a nightmare, and it's just like, God, how is this happening to us?
	Yeah, very depressing.
	So yeah, I'm going to just cover some of the strike stuff that's going on.
	Some of the decline.
	Some of the decline.
	So real quick, have you seen Turd Towns?
	No, I haven't.
	Wonderful YouTube channel.
	It just goes across the towns across the country and shows how much of a turd they are.
	And he did one on Wiltshire recently and Swindon won number one, of course.
	Anyway, but he's just showing off footage and it's just things you look at and you think, yeah, it really is visible everywhere after you check out five or six of his videos.
	Yeah.
	Did I show you the pictures from 2011?
	What, Swindon?
	Yeah.
	Was it a different world?
	Yeah, it was.
	Totally different world.
	Were they English people?
	Yes.
	You've been kind enough to invite me into your town, so I don't want to be too rude.
	In the last five years, there has been a noticeable decline in Swindon.
	It used to be great, but anyway.
	Anyway, so I'm just going to talk about who is striking and when it's going to happen.
	But first of all, Calum already talked about the average earnings in this country.
	So it's about 31, 32 grand is the average wage that most people are earning.
	Full-time work.
	Yeah.
	So I want viewers to keep that in mind as we go through this discussion.
	So, John, if we could have the next link.
	So teachers are striking.
	They're demanding a 6.5% pay rise and the government has already offered them £1,000 in a one-off payment for this academic year.
	So the average salary of a teacher is between £30,000 and £46,000 which, I don't know, I mean teaching is a very obviously very important profession but it's not a profession that you get into because of the amazing money, you know, potential.
	I mean, I've become just totally radical on state schools.
	They're teaching a bunch of gender nonsense now.
	Yeah.
	We covered it the other day.
	It's like, no, I'm against teachers.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	How much do you want to pay that teacher who's screaming about cat gender?
	Nothing.
	It is zero.
	Well, quite right.
	But if you're private and you do a good job, have a billion pounds.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Accountability through competition.
	Yes.
	So moving on, we have Tube Staff.
	They're in a long-running dispute about pensions, job cuts and working conditions.
	And you'll hear those phrases come up a lot because they are essentially the boilerplate strike reasons and have been for decades.
	Because it's very vague language because, you know, working conditions could literally mean anything.
	I chose to work in London.
	I love the Tube staff though.
	I mean, I don't know if it's the drivers, but the drivers are the ones I love the most.
	Yeah.
	So at least like the teachers and whatnot, I can sort of agree because, okay, 10% inflation, you want 6% pay rise.
	You're still taking a pay cut.
	Tube drivers make an ungodly amount of money to drive a train?
	Well, between 55 and 65 grand.
	Really?
	Must be nice.
	It's one of the best paying jobs you can get to in the government.
	32 grand during training as well.
	Well, they need to start thinking about becoming diversity officers in the NHS actually.
	Well, perhaps, yeah.
	So again, they're demanding a pay rise, but I mean, as you said, that's a fairly well compensated line of work.
	It's just because they've got great leverage, because if they go on strike, the whole city just stops.
	It's a natural monopoly, isn't it?
	Anyway, junior doctors, as is widely reported, so these are not yet qualified to practice independently, and they do account for about half of all doctors in hospitals in England.
	So the BMA, the British Medical Association, Claim that junior doctors have seen a real-terms pay cut of 26% since 2008.
	So naturally, they're demanding a 35% pay rise.
	Bearing in mind that junior doctors earn about 58 grand by the end of their training.
	So, I don't know where they think that money... Well, the start of their training is about 30.
	I mean... To be honest with you, I'm mildly synthetic.
	It's like, you know, they have taken a quarter pay cut since 2008.
	I mean, but who hasn't?
	Yeah.
	This has been done to all of us.
	And once again, you know, the factors involved in that.
	One wonders.
	We have been over this, like junior doctors have been particularly shat on, especially compared to like Australia or Canada.
	Sure.
	Yeah.
	Similar.
	And it's just like, why not just leave as soon as you are qualified to be a doctor?
	Well, yeah, the Peter Hitchens strategy.
	But yeah, they're demanding a 35% to be right.
	To be fair, it's not even the Peter Hitchens strategy for them.
	It's just a cold economic calculus.
	Well, yeah.
	Australian Canada pay way better.
	Peter Hitchens is full on Denethor posting at this point.
	Yeah, that's very depressing.
	Rail workers again pay job cuts, disputes about working conditions and so on, and there's various different areas of the railway that are striking.
	So it's rail travel assistants who earn about 33 grand, construction and maintenance operatives about 35, transport operatives 49 and drivers 59.
	So once again, demanding pay increases and so on.
	Nurses won't be striking anymore but have striked because they have come to an agreement that they're going to receive a 5% pay rise and a one-off payment of £1,600 from the government, earning an average salary of about £35,000.
	Now again, you know, the thing with the sort of strike trade union conversation is they have such a dialectic advantage because it's like, oh, you do hate nurses, do you?
	You hate teachers.
	And it just doesn't, it's not a good, it's not a good look, right?
	Don't make me say I do.
	Don't keep asking the question.
	Yeah.
	You know, again, I'm joking.
	Yeah.
	Is nursing a profession you get into for the money?
	I don't know.
	Again, they should be well compensated.
	Don't misunderstand.
	Why do you go to work?
	Yeah.
	Well, you understand what I mean though.
	In their defense, they probably are getting screwed.
	Yeah.
	Well, I don't, again, I don't doubt it.
	And I don't, I don't, just a quick thing here as well.
	I genuinely don't envy having to work for the NHS, especially at the sort of like, you know, mid-level sort of thing.
	Yeah.
	Every day, you've got more and more people coming in who you just don't have the resources to deal with.
	And it will always, I mean, they're always complaining, oh, the NHS is being underfunded.
	And it's like, yeah, but that is just what's always going to happen.
	Yeah.
	While we're in the current paradigm that we're in.
	It just can't be fixed.
	I heard a story on the radio actually fairly recently.
	It was a nurse saying that she's quit and moving to Australia because she's NHS nurse.
	She came in one day and there was a man who had a rupture in his bladder to his anus.
	So he was urinating through his anus in horrific pain and he was sat there for eight hours and then died.
	while she was at work.
	She could have done nothing for him.
	So it wasn't the case of, I could have saved this man or anything.
	She doesn't have the resources to save him, so he died.
	That was his last day on her.
	Sat in an NHS waiting room for eight hours.
	I didn't mean to laugh, but that's just awful.
	Yeah, it's horrific.
	She just looked at that and went, okay, I quit.
	That was her last day at the NHS.
	I didn't even realize that was a thing that could happen to humans, let alone be a way that you could die.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, that's dark.
	Yeah, again, I mean, the purpose of this is not to come down on the people striking.
	No, no, you've got a fair argument.
	Yeah, it's just a symptom of a decline.
	You know, my girlfriend actually works for the NHS, and she tells me about it every day, the stuff she sees.
	It's unbelievable.
	Moving on, ambulance workers, same thing, essentially.
	Passport office staff, again, same thing.
	These are the people I genuinely care about.
	Well, this is when we get to the civil servants and, you know, we're demanding a 10% pay rise, better pensions, job security, so on.
	They've been off the lump sum, but they're still going to be striking.
	Although some have paused the planned strikes.
	All I'm saying, Rishi, is let me negotiate with the civil servants.
	I'll offer them 10% longer rope, okay?
	And finally, university staff.
	Now, this one is personal for me, because I've just graduated, right?
	But I don't know what degree I have, I don't know what grade I have, because my work hasn't been marked, because they are just refusing to do so.
	Again, it's about working conditions, so-called.
	John, if we could just move on to, not the next link, but the one after.
	Just take this in for a moment.
	Look at this.
	Yeah.
	I think that all universities should be private.
	Yeah.
	So, um, as I say, I've been personally affected by this and it's, I mean, I have my graduation and they told us there will be people who go up onto the stage and take a certificate.
	We will have to return the certificate when the grades come out because they're not actually going to be graduating.
	So that's just absurd.
	And again, the.
	Contamination of the years before where they just didn't teach us.
	Well, exactly.
	Yeah.
	I was there for that too.
	They just went on strike and there was no t-shirts.
	Why am I paying anything?
	Yeah, it's absurd.
	But again, the complaint is about working conditions.
	And I don't know about you, but I've... Horrific universities, like the coal mines of old!
	I was going to say, it's not like they're going down into the mines, is it?
	You know, again, this language, it's just very vague.
	It sort of allows you to fill in the blanks.
	But yeah, that's very frustrating.
	And Anna McGovern's written a good article on this.
	John, if you want to go to the next one.
	Front page, fat feminist with blue hair.
	I know.
	I want you to bear that graphic in mind, by the way, that was just up on the screen as we move forward.
	So this is a good article.
	I'd recommend reading it because it does sort of sum up basically, you know, how my cohort from university have been treated.
	I'm not going to say we've had it really tough because it's university, but you know, it's been strikes, it's been COVID and now we're not even, you know, I'm 50 grand in debt and I don't even know what degree I'm going to have.
	So, not great.
	I mean, even though it's not like a grueling physical exercise, it's still totally unjust and shouldn't have been done.
	Absolutely, yeah.
	And again, the uh, excuse my words carefully here, the types that are defending the strikes and the types that are going on strike are exactly the types you would imagine.
	Let's just say.
	And the next one is not, it's not happening in the UK, but I just thought it was kind of funny to include.
	It's the Hollywood's, sorry, Actors and Writers.
	I was going to do a big thing on this at some point, because I'm just in favor of the total destruction of this entire industry.
	As am I. I mean, again, I was going to say, I'm sure we all agree that the entertainment industry is a seedy, nasty place, but not because they're not getting paid enough.
	No, no.
	It's many, much deeper issues than that.
	I saw Adam Ruins Everything being like, yeah, we're going to fight the power in Hollywood.
	And I'm like, I hate you both.
	If your representative is Adam Ruins Everything, you've lost my vote.
	Yeah, no, it's very funny.
	I mean, this is the first time that actors and writers have been on strike since 1960, so big news.
	But the whole thing is, oh, we're withholding our labour.
	Oh, thank God.
	Thank God you're withholding labour.
	How can we continue this statement?
	Nature can begin to heal at last.
	Yeah, well, yeah.
	Maybe good writing.
	It's crap writing.
	Yeah.
	Well, exactly.
	And we'll do a thing on it, man, because it's so funny that the writer from She-Hulk was like, I only got paid $600 for this.
	You got paid $600 for that?
	I mean, just, anyway.
	Yeah, unreal.
	But yeah, I mean, one of their complaints, it's kind of interesting, they're complaining about AI taking their jobs, essentially.
	And, you know, being able to use AI to resurrect dead actors.
	Someone needs to learn to cope.
	Yes, yeah, well put, yeah.
	So, anyway, moving on.
	I thought I would just run through very quickly the schedule for July, just to communicate the scale that we have here.
	So, 3rd of July, we've got the train drivers unions beginning a six-day overtime ban.
	5th July, teachers in England begin the first two days of strikes.
	July 7th, again more teacher strikes.
	The 8th, final day of the train strikes.
	13th, five day strike by junior doctors.
	20th, rail workers begin three days of national strike action.
	22nd, again more rail strikes.
	This is a quick thing.
	John, can you go back up to the text at the top of this?
	I saw the name Mick Lynch in there somewhere.
	And this is the thing, like, okay, it's not that they don't have a legitimate concern, but I do hate these persistent communist busybodies.
	Opportunists.
	Yeah, opportunists who are constantly behind all of these things.
	Well, I'm going to get onto that.
	Oh, okay.
	Sorry.
	So yeah, moving on.
	I do want to talk about... I really want to ask Mick Lynch, just, Mick, what's a woman?
	I want your definition of a woman.
	Before we go on to that, the tone, the kind of aesthetic of strikes and labour unions has changed a lot since, say, the winter of discontent, which is something else we're going to talk about.
	If we look at the next image here, now contrast that with the university graphic I showed you before.
	Sure, these are people with a legitimate concern, I'm sure there was debate at the time, but these are at least respectable Englishmen, or Welshmen, and so on.
	Um, now, I mean, James Burnham observed in the managerial revolution that, like everything else, trade unions have been, they've, um, been kind of overtaken, um, there's been like a kind of coup happened by a kind of managerial elite, which are very different.
	There's a term I'm going to, uh, quote, I'm going to read out.
	Just as a quick thing, do you know what the average union member looks like?
	I looked this up a while ago.
	It's a 40 year old woman.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And that's funny.
	If you look at pictures of strikes, you know, if you just search strikes and look at images, it's mostly women, which is kind of interesting.
	But Burnham says that within the huge trained unions, a similar managerial officialdom, the labor bureaucracy, consolidates its position as an elite.
	This elite is sharply distinguished in training, income, habits, and outlook from the ordinary union member.
	I think that's spot on.
	There is this kind of managerial elite above the members who are very different.
	And actually, I do have an anecdote about this.
	I know a fella who shall remain nameless, who is a trade union activist now.
	And he's very vocal about all this sort of thing.
	But six months before he got into that, he was writing for Turning Point UK.
	So he's quite, he's a sort of soft-handed opportunist, very different in just, you know, personality to guys like this.
	Yeah.
	And I think that's, although that's only a single anecdote, I expect that there is a, you know, but it's probably indicative of the wider culture of the trade unions, that there is a, you know, the people who occupy the elite positions are just an entirely different type of person to the membership.
	Well, I mean, the membership now is mostly women.
	Yeah.
	So not that different.
	Well, to be, okay, to be fair, maybe it's not that different because it is, you know, the, the top brass, I do get this kind of HR vibe often.
	Oh yeah.
	And then if all the members are HR, maybe they aren't represented.
	No, but that's, that's the thing.
	And the thing I'm most concerned about is them appropriating the use of the term labor.
	Yeah.
	Like, sorry, these guys probably actually did labor, like actual labor.
	Yeah.
	You know, we've, we've arrived at the sort of hyper-reality of a Hollywood writer's strike where everyone's sat there.
	My labor is sending emails all day.
	You are literally just employed just so you're not on benefits.
	Okay.
	And of course, this is the case in a lot of things, but it just seems like they're LARPing as these guys, basically.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	They love the aesthetic of this, but they are soft-handed university educators.
	Well, that's the thing.
	This whole thing feels like a giant LARP.
	It's not that they don't have, like, you know, with the doctors and teachers and whatever, it's not that they don't have a genuine concern or a grievance.
	I'm less concerned about the tube drivers, but you know.
	But the whole The whole thing is kind of embarrassing and it makes me cringe.
	Yeah, the modern strike has the vibe of a pride parade, I think, in many ways.
	But anyway, I mean, the most obvious comparison with what's going on in England at the moment is the winter of discontent, obviously.
	And, you know, viewers may or may not know about this, but I'll just run through some quick information.
	It was bad.
	It sounded rough.
	I mean, you know, I didn't live through it.
	My dad lived through it.
	Yeah.
	This is why my dad has just been, he just totally voted Thatcher.
	Yeah.
	He hated Labour so much.
	Yeah.
	Because Labour absolutely ruined the country.
	Yeah.
	So enormous numbers of private and public sector trade unions.
	Well, naturally.
	Yeah, trade unions striking on an enormous scale because they were demanding pay rises greater than the 5% limit imposed by James Callaghan's Labour government.
	So just a few of the horrors.
	So there were strikes by grave diggers that left unburied bodies just piling up.
	Strikes by refuse collectors left the streets filled with rubbish and that's kind of the most iconic imagery of the time, just these streets where it's just I don't know what even to compare it to.
	It's just a vision of hell.
	Some third world backwater, you know.
	NHS strikers blockaded hospital entrances, meaning that only emergency patients were treated.
	Lorry drivers' strikes led to... Not even emergency patients being treated now!
	Yeah.
	Well, by all accounts, people dying in their own fecal matter.
	Lovely.
	So lorry driver strikes led to supply chain disruption, rolling blackouts and homes left unheated during a particularly severe and nasty winter.
	And also mass panic buying.
	Callaghan sort of remained in denial of all of this to the better end.
	He came back, he'd been swanning around on planes to some conference and he came back and said there is no mountain chaos in Britain.
	You know, just in complete denial.
	And I think that does have, there is a similar sense at the moment.
	The conservatives are just in denial about what's actually happening in this country.
	You see Rishi Sunak and I, we're going to have a barbecue.
	Yeah.
	To raise the morale of the conservative party.
	It's like, don't bother.
	You're, you're, you literally condemned men at this point.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	You say that you went to see Buckland, didn't you?
	Did you say it to him?
	No, I mean, if he does another surgery, I'm definitely just going to go in and be like, TikTok, TikTok.
	People who don't know, I went and saw the MP on the weekend and asked him about legal immigration and illegal and his solution was that we have to deal with it.
	Yeah, I'm not voting for him.
	My solution?
	The poll numbers, Robert.
	You're not going to be a bloody MP anymore, Robert.
	Yeah, so I'm working with reform here to get him out.
	So, yeah, I mean, in that time, obviously Callaghan's government fell to the, there was a no-confidence vote and then Thatcher's government came in and was able to re-establish order and stability.
	I mean, I'm not a great fan of Thatcher, but there's no denying that she was the necessary force at that time.
	For the time, Thatcher would have seemed brilliant.
	Yes, no doubt, yeah.
	But the situation we have today, this has all come about under a Conservative government.
	I know.
	There's not even the excuse of, well, it was under Labour, so what do you expect?
	And the Conservative government that has caused all of this is going to be replaced by a Labour government.
	I know, and the thing is, the Labour government is going to be more right-wing than the Conservative government.
	Well, we can only hope.
	No, but it is.
	It's like Keir Starmer, everything that he's said so far, like the two-child benefits cap, that's more right-wing than the Conservative government.
	Said yes, but I mean, again, you look at the New Britain.
	I'm not.
	Yeah, I know.
	It's awful.
	But the thing is, the Conservatives have just been doing that anyway.
	Well, that's true.
	I don't think the Labour Party are actually going to increase immigration beyond what the Conservatives have done.
	Not that I want the Labour Party, obviously.
	Yeah, we can only hope.
	It's just, you can't make it any worse.
	It's the most left-wing government I've ever seen in this country.
	I mean, most left-wing government we've ever had.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Anywhere.
	And we had Antony set up the bloody NHS.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	But anyway, Britain is crumbling and collapsing and, uh, well, things can only get better.
	You say that?
	They used to say that in Swindon 10 years ago.
	Well, no doubt.
	Things got way worse.
	Oh, God.
	Good news podcast, this.
	Actually, I do have some good news for you.
	Canada has just decided to censor the news.
	Probably a net benefit.
	Yeah, exactly.
	I was getting, what does that mean?
	Yeah, what does that mean?
	Because it's the journos, I mean.
	Yeah, yeah, no.
	Canada has decided to implement legislation that will crush journalism in their country, once and for all.
	When we say journalism, what do we mean?
	The actual journalism or the joke journos?
	Oh, well, you can use it as you like, because the whole class is going to get absolutely annihilated by Trudeau's government.
	I didn't see it coming either, but suddenly, uh, I better not make too many jokes, but good for Trudeau.
	Before we begin, go and watch my latest, uh, like think piece on lotuses.com, uh, why ideology is theology.
	I've been spending a lot of time digging into the philosophy behind just all of this and just trying to figure out what ideologies are because nobody's actually really any good at defining them.
	And what the alternative is, and there's a reason why the abstract doctrine of an ideology takes on the aspect of a religion, where compared to the lived political traditions of a society, which of course change with the needs of the people at the time.
	And actually I think it's useful to have this spelled out so you can realize why when someone says I'm a Nazi, I'm a fascist, I'm a socialist, it's like you live in the 21st century, you are actually none of those things, you may as well claim to be a Polish winged hussar.
	You are not these things.
	You're an idiot.
	Anyway, let's move on.
	So, Canada's Online News Act.
	Can only be good, right?
	In French, l'ensoir... I can't pronounce that.
	Commonly known as Bill C-18, is a federal statute that requires internet search engines to pay Canadian online news companies to link to their websites.
	We've heard this before, haven't we?
	Isn't this in the EU?
	Yes!
	We're going to get to it in a minute.
	And that's how we know this is going to fail.
	That's how we know this is going to crush journalism under the bureaucratic heel of the now virtuous Canadian government.
	What I love about this is there's, in fact, the ideology thing does play into this because you've always got, it wasn't the Milton Friedman position.
	You can claim whatever you like, but reality is going to end up being different.
	And this is such a good example of that, right?
	So the goal of the law is to enhance the sustainability of the Canadian digital news markets.
	Instead, they are crushing the Canadian digital news market, which I'm more in favor of.
	If we can just crush every other digital news market, then we can just rely entirely on Twitter for our news, and that will actually improve the quality of journalism.
	That's not even a joke.
	No, that's sincere.
	Yeah, it's totally true.
	You notice how good it's gotten in terms of I can actually trust people now?
	Yeah, yeah, it's brilliant.
	I mean, the community notes is just so good.
	And it's also quick information that's not filtered through a particular ideological prison.
	No, you filter it yourself.
	Exactly, you filter it yourself.
	And it can be fact-checked by literally hundreds of thousands of people.
	It's the future, and old news needs to die.
	So thank you, Canadian government.
	So the primary component, as they say, of Bill C-18 is a provision that allows eligible news business, as in, that's not you, is it?
	You know, we wouldn't be an eligible news business.
	To initiate bargaining with a digital news intermediary.
	So basically, they want the Canadian government to be the union for the House Canadian media.
	Regime approved Canadian.
	Regime, yes.
	The Uncle Toms of Canadian news.
	Rebel News probably not getting this sort of representation.
	In order to essentially leech money out of Google and Facebook for using their links on their website.
	Now you might, for anyone who doesn't understand the digital news economy, think, hang on a second, aren't Google and Facebook doing the digital online outlets a favor by putting their links on there?
	Because what they're doing is driving traffic to monetized websites.
	So a click on that is a penny for whoever they got clicked on.
	So you would think, actually, you would do nothing in your power to reduce the amount of traffic that is going to be funneled by Google and Facebook to these websites.
	Seems reasonable.
	Yeah, it seems reasonable.
	Because everyone in news media is high on coke and always wants more.
	That's right.
	And they've got access to Trudeau's government.
	And therefore, that means they're going to crush them instead.
	It's brilliant.
	Because, I mean, they literally complain.
	Look, there's an asymmetric bargaining position here.
	And so in response to the law, Meta and Google stated they're just going to block all Canadian online news content from their services.
	So that's zero clicks that you're getting from Facebook and Google.
	Again, a net benefit for the West.
	I know, right?
	Who knew Trudeau was such a patriot?
	Yeah, so if we go to the next one, this is the actual Online News Act itself from the Canadian government's website.
	And again, listen to the language, right?
	It's like the Online News Act will ensure that fair revenue sharing between digital platforms and news outlets, and it will provide for collective bargaining or promote voluntary commercial agreements.
	Voluntary commercial agreements, you've made it law!
	It's not involuntary about this, you liars, right?
	And again, I don't want to defend Silicon Valley.
	Like, Oh God, I've got more reason to hate Silicon Valley than almost anyone else, right?
	There are literally only about a dozen other people who have had it worse than me, the Silicon Valley, right?
	And so, and you know, fair enough.
	They've had it worse, but you know, I've still been punished.
	Uh, anyway, And so they say, Oh, look, we've got these great expectations.
	And they actually outline the expectation, the expected outcomes of the legislation.
	Once implemented, the Online News Act is expected to result in a flexible regulatory framework that facilitates fair business relationships between digital platforms and news outlets.
	The sustainability of the Canadian news ecosystem.
	I hate the Canadian news ecosystem, as much as I hate every other news ecosystem, including the sustainability of independent news businesses, as well as indigenous and official language minority community news businesses, and support for innovative business models.
	A diversity of news businesses within the Canadian news landscape that provide service to different populations in every province.
	Again, this will not include Rebel News, right?
	And of course it will maintain press independence.
	That's right.
	The most independent press is the one that's being negotiated on behalf of by the government.
	There's no more independent press than that.
	And of course, they've got a little eligibility criteria for news businesses.
	So it has to employ two or more journalists and adhere to a code of journalistic ethics or be run by indigenous people.
	And so, yes, the message response we go to is just say, no, actually, we won't do that.
	This is their statement.
	If you get the next one, John, we're confirming that we're not doing this and we warned you that we're not doing this.
	And so we are just pulling all, um, they say we are literally, um, just pulling all news content.
	And the thing is in this Facebook point out the previously one look.
	The Online News Act is flawed legislation that ignores the realities of how our platforms work and the preferences of people who use them and the value we provide to news publishers.
	And unfortunately, I have to side with Facebook because they are totally right.
	Like I would love for us to be on like the list of things that get shoved into people's faces.
	Despite the fact that obviously this little graphic on the right here is a dystopian vision of hell.
	You are right that Meta are in the right.
	Yeah, I mean, I obviously I hate Facebook.
	I hate Google.
	I hate San Francisco.
	Why is all of their cartoons so low quality?
	Just a side note, like everything Meta makes is just hideously, I don't know.
	Mid-naughties.
	Yeah, animation's awful for a company with billions.
	It is weird that the Metaverse was the ugliest thing I've ever seen in my life.
	It looked worse than Lawnmower Man.
	Have you ever seen that film?
	Lawnmower Man?
	How's that?
	Average Zoomer comment.
	Second Life?
	I haven't played Second Life.
	That was basically what the VR was, except worse and with less plugins, because obviously Second Life's been going for ages.
	What is it?
	It's a virtual world where you dress up as whatever you want and you pay real money for this.
	I dress up as whatever I want in the real world?
	Yeah, you can't dress up as Kermit the Frog with correct proportions.
	I bet that if you Google it you can.
	Anyway, Google's response was pretty similar.
	If you get the next one, there's like, no, this is unworkable.
	The government has not given us reason to believe that the regulatory process will be able to resolve structural issues with the legislation.
	As a result, we've informed the government that we've made the difficult decision that when the law takes effect, we'll be removing links to Canadian news from our search news and discover products.
	We'll no longer operate Google News Showcase in Canada.
	Great.
	Yeah.
	That's brilliant.
	That's a win.
	Yeah.
	I take that as an absolute win.
	Uh, with this point that it's come to this, but, uh, we're not going to back down because this has just been an attempt to just siphon money out of Silicon Valley.
	And don't get me wrong.
	I want to siphon money out of Silicon Valley too, but.
	I do hate Canadian journalists.
	And it's not just Canadian journalists, but we'll get to that in a minute.
	So anyway, if we go to the next one, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation were like, this actually seems to be hurting our own domestic news ecosphere, has warned that it would.
	David Beers, the founding editor of The Tie, an online magazine, said Meta, the colossus that owns Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, as if anyone's heard of that, So that's one complaint.
	The other complaint is we're losing lots of money.
	the tie felt the sting.
	This represents a truly weird and pivotal time for digital news publishers in Canada and other countries who are considering similar moves.
	The outlets say they know the restriction is coming but at the same time are dismayed as critical emergency information about the province's increasing wildfire threat is now not being shared widely on social media where many people would access it.
	So that's one complaint.
	The other complaint is we're losing lots of money because you are losing lots of money.
	And yes, that's true and this is what the Canadian government has done to you.
	while saying, hey, we are operating in your best interests.
	This is a genuine like political failure from the Canadian government because I think we can recognize that Google, Meta and the Canadian government in Schmittian terms are friends like no doubt about it.
	And the Canadian government have just said you know has just stabbed both of them in the back essentially.
	It's a weird sort of nationalistic move from the Canadian government isn't it?
	No, no, no.
	Our homegrown indigenous media is more important than you.
	And Google, like, actually is it.
	Base Blair is bad enough.
	We're not having base Trudeau.
	And so this is what it looks like.
	We'll go to the next one.
	So a lot of news media, like CBC in fact themselves, obviously promote their content on Instagram or Facebook or wherever.
	And now they don't.
	So the Canadian taxpayers, as Rowan's pointing out there, paid 1.2 billion to the CBC annually and can't even see their own content.
	Very good.
	If only we could get that for the BBC.
	You reckon the Labour will do it?
	Because they will see this and be like, hang on a second.
	God, I wish.
	We can try and get money out of Silicon Valley.
	Sorry, I don't know if you have an update on the EU stuff, but I looked it up whilst we were... Oh yeah, yeah, but go on.
	Well, I'll save it, because I know where this is going, because we have been here before.
	But yeah, isn't that brilliant?
	So going back to the CBC article, The premier David Eby said in a statement that meta decisions cut off news access for many people in British Columbia who use the social media sites is unacceptable.
	It's like, well, you literally told them that you're going to start extracting money to do it.
	And they were like, we don't want to do that.
	And they gave you plenty of advanced warning and then you did it.
	And then they did it.
	And you're like, well, that's unacceptable.
	They're a private company.
	They can do what they want!
	But then they're like, well, we're not going to advertise on Facebook then.
	It's like, great.
	So less taxpayer money is being wasted on Silicon Valley megacorps.
	Great question, right?
	But that means, yeah, I mean, literally billions of taxpayer money, dollars in Canada.
	If that isn't real money, is being given Silicon Valley and the people in Canada don't have to be exposed constantly to BS propaganda.
	This just wins all around, right?
	And the thing is, this was ridiculous and doomed to fail from the start because this is a dance that has been danced with Silicon Valley and national governments before, and Google and Facebook have already won this battle in places like Australia.
	As Vox reported, like two years ago this was, less than a week after suddenly banning news links for Australian users and shutting down Australian news pages to protest an upcoming law, Facebook had reassurances from the Australian government that it won't be forced to pay publishers.
	Took a week.
	It shows you the phenomenal power that they have, though.
	Yeah, it does.
	But it also shows you how... Like tyranny.
	Like in this case, someone just came to you and said, well, you owe everyone else money.
	Well, I don't.
	Yeah, you do.
	We're providing a free service that helps out the journalists in your country.
	The people who come and buy bread from your bakery.
	Yeah, you owe them money?
	Yeah.
	No!
	I'm shutting down the bakery then, go to hell!
	Again, of all the people I don't want to defend, Google and Facebook are really high up on that list.
	And these are like, you know, progressive initiatives from the government, local governments, from these regional governments.
	And I just really hate them, and they're just wrong on the face of it.
	But anyway, obviously they've rolled this back in Australia, and so Facebook are like, right, we'll turn on the tap again.
	You know, your, your local media can start making money again.
	Now there are people who are like, well, doesn't this tell us about the warning of all the centralized content?
	So yeah, we've been saying this for years, but you weren't listening.
	So what does it mean?
	Anyway, moving on as well, Google won this battle in Spain too, because apparently, uh, last, I know 2021, uh, Google News relaunched in Spain.
	Because of course, the Spanish government were like, okay, fine.
	We will not try and extort you like, like the Australians and the, uh, the Canadian government is doing.
	And again, this is exactly the same, exactly the same.
	Uh, Google, the Spanish government were like, Hey, you're going to have to pay us.
	And Google said, no, we don't.
	No one's heard of Spain.
	Goodbye.
	Turned off the tap and eight years later, the Spanish came crawling back to Google saying, okay, you don't have to pay a fee for Spain's entire media industry and that you can negotiate on an individual basis.
	That's the key point.
	Yes.
	And that was the thing I found when we were looking out.
	So the European Copyright Directive was passed.
	And what happens in the EU, specifically Germany, because it's basically just Germany, it turns out, I was reading here that the companies did end up signing, specifically Google, to pay more than 300 publishers within the European Union for their content.
	Two thirds of those publishers are all German.
	Of course they are.
	And obviously the vast majority are state run.
	So they did actually lose in one instance, at least the German.
	Well, this is more a sort of a backhanded deal really, isn't it?
	Yeah.
	It's like, look, we will pay your little pet house media, you know, a small amount of money and then we don't have to pay everyone else anything.
	There is something slightly more going on here.
	At least there's been argued from the circles I've seen as to why they went through with this.
	I'll just answer one more fact being that France fined them 500 million euros in 2021 for not paying French media, state-run media.
	Did they pay it?
	I presume they did.
	It doesn't tell me in this article in front of me, but there was an argument at the time.
	The reason the EU actually went with this is not because anyone cares that this is moral or immoral or corrupt.
	That's business as usual.
	The argument from the EU is, why have the damn Yankees got all the Silicon Valley?
	Why don't we have some of that?
	We're a pretty advanced set of economies.
	If we, you know, blah, blah, blah, the EU altogether could be better than the United States.
	They were totally up front about saying it.
	Yeah.
	It's literally just jealousy.
	But it's also kind of geopolitics in the sense of what if we set up some trade barriers in this form and in that way start incentivizing tech to be built in the European Union instead of all being in Yankeedom.
	That's why we're all using the German version of Twitter.
	Well it seems to be the case, at least Germany, that Google went well we can't have that and did back out and then just pays the money because it's easier to get rid of that trade barrier to maintain the global dominance they have.
	But with Canada, They're not going to compete.
	So yeah, just screw them.
	Turn off the tabs.
	You are going to win that one for sure.
	Google and Facebook are definitely going to win this.
	So like I said, we've danced this dance before and there is just simply no chance that Canada is going to be able to put enough pressure on Google and Facebook to capitulate.
	So this will be rescinded at some point in the near future.
	And it was a really stupid thing to do because it's just going to hurt your own domestic media as the CBC had to report Let's go to the video comments.
	There are none, so we'll go to the written comments instead, which are totally different.
	Do you want to read them, or should we do each segment?
	You can do your own.
	Yeah, do your own.
	So, Terry Wharton says that my dad sold his motorbike to get a deposit to buy his four bedroom terraced house in Greater London for £1,500 in 1955.
	Must be nice.
	He sold a motorbike for a deposit on a house.
	Imagine how good your motorbike has to be for that to be true today, in London.
	I don't know if there is a motorbike good enough for that to be true.
	I think the average deposit in London, if I'm recalling correctly, was around a hundred grand.
	Jesus Christ.
	So, buy a house.
	Yeah, but that, I mean, I would expect to pay a hundred grand to buy, if that's your first house.
	The house is a hundred grand.
	It used to be.
	There is a side point we didn't really get into enough with that whole new builds being crap.
	They're not worth it.
	You give me this new build for 300 grand.
	Oh look, this big house for 300 grand.
	That's just steel because we've just built it.
	But it is crap.
	And we've been over like the bathrooms aren't sealed, for example.
	So you just end up getting them leaking.
	Or here's your nice lovely front lawn.
	And as you showed, it's just full of rocks.
	There's no actual earth under there, so the grass dies a couple months after you brought the property.
	Or there was another one where they had, what was it, the access point to the drainage under the grass.
	So once there was a blockage, this guy found out that that happened because the blockage people came around and dug up his garden to get access to the drainage.
	Whatever, it's just they're not worth that money.
	There's loads of new builds where I live in Kent and they look horrible.
	There's such a blight on the landscape, like these kind of Ikea-esque, just identical rows of the same houses.
	But it's not even that they look the same in the architecture and everything else, which is totally a valid complaint.
	It's the actual functionality.
	Outside of Plum, that chap mentioned for quite a lot of it.
	Baron Von Warhawk says she claims she cannot afford a house due to rising house prices.
	However, she also seems like the kind of person who continues to vote Labour in order to be able to bring hordes of immigrants.
	Yeah!
	Well, she's a 24-year-old rich woman.
	I don't expect her to have... I don't think she's rich.
	I think she's come from a middle-class family, right?
	But the... Middle-class?
	Getting 50 grand to your kid?
	I think that's rich.
	Maybe.
	No, that's not rich.
	Nah, that's rich.
	No, you're just poor.
	Well, whatever then.
	It's not rich, it's middle class.
	That's the sort of money a middle class family should expect to have in the bank.
	Metal Dave says, as someone who lives in South London... Just a quick thing there.
	Yeah, I know.
	It's really hard to drum up sympathy for a Labour voter complaining about house prices.
	Yeah, they picked the worst subject.
	They didn't pick Mick, who's 29, has been working all his life, still nowhere near buying one.
	Some Northern plumber or something.
	I'd be like, oh yeah, he's getting screwed.
	But a 24-year-old Labour voter... I've only got 50 grand!
	Anyway, go on.
	As someone who lives in South London, send help, seeing the rate of property price increase in my locality is startling.
	My parents' place cost 135 grand 20 years ago, and the neighbouring houses are now going for 650 plus.
	Though I have been saving a deposit, I have about 45 grand overall, and a slightly above average wage, and I'm actually further off from buying a property now than I was five years ago.
	This is what I've been saying to my parents, right?
	So in about 2000, they bought a new build in Cornwall for 100k, right?
	Really nice four-bedroom house, beautiful house.
	And now it's worth somewhere between three and four hundred, I think, right?
	And I've been saying, look... They might as well have not worked.
	They made more money on the house.
	Well, this is the thing.
	It's like, look, you know, you're all the way down in Cornwall.
	You don't have kids there now, because obviously me and my sister in that intervening time have grown up and moved out.
	You have grandkids a bit further up the country.
	Sell it, buy a bungalow for half the cost or, you know, however much.
	And then, you know, you've got 200k up.
	And you're only an hour away to see the kids.
	And for some reason my dad won't do it because he likes the environment.
	It's like, okay, but make the most of it now, you know?
	Like, I mean, you know, I don't, we don't need to inherit it, right?
	To be fair, play the long game, Carl.
	Wait for him to die.
	I don't, yeah, I'd rather him be up here now though, you know?
	I don't need the money and my sister can go without.
	You're not wrong.
	I mean, it's actually insanity.
	I mean, we've spoken about the generational problem in the bank of mum and dad becoming the solution.
	We read some Telegraph articles earlier.
	All these millennials relying on the bank of mum and dad.
	I was like, why?
	Because they don't have any wealth.
	And the house price meant that the boomers have an incredible number of people.
	If they have houses, of course.
	Ryan Redacted said... Yeah, but most of them do have houses.
	Yeah, that's my job.
	I'm just saying, there is a percentage out there who don't.
	Sure.
	There's a rather sad case, actually, of a friend of ours.
	He lives in his house, nothing spectacular, but right next to him, there's a family and they have rented forever because they had kids, and another kid, and another kid, and they don't have the best paying jobs in the world, so they've always ended up in that house renting.
	The lady who owns the house, obviously, has a couple of houses in Spain.
	And they're well aware that they've worked all of their lives to pay for that old lady to have a couple of houses in Spain.
	Which is, um... Mao was right.
	About landlords.
	That's all they get for having kids, the dirty people.
	How dare you try and save the country?
	This is a real problem for the right, though, right?
	Because it, like, I've seen comments, even on our comment section, it's been like, hang on, isn't this communism?
	You know, suggesting... Foreigners need to go, is that communism?
	Maybe it shouldn't be 20 times the average wage to buy a house.
	It's not communism, actually.
	It's actually prudentialism.
	Is it prudent to allow your children to be dispossessed from the land they're meant to inherit?
	Surely they're supposed to own some of this land.
	It's actually very traditionalist to want your kids to own something.
	Then they arrive in communism.
	I really do think the right needs to get away from the kind of libertarian... Oh, the free market economics is dead.
	The market has as much destructive capacity as the communist revolution.
	What do you mean?
	London's been saved.
	So I hear, yeah.
	I put this in a video to join peace and it's like, look, I, I care about property ownership, not the abstract of the free market.
	You know, property ownership is a real concrete thing, a relationship between the person and a particular place.
	You know, the free market is just this abstract non-reality and the free market is currently inhibiting your property ownership.
	I made the same case in my premium article, What is Managerial Capitalism, which you should check out.
	Private property ownership is a fundamental, it gives you a skin in the game in your society.
	It's just a renter.
	You go anywhere, you're the sort of universal man, fungible economic eunuch, you're plucked out of here and put anywhere else.
	Whereas if you own brick and mortar here, it's yours.
	And moreover, that fosters a sentimental attachment to the place you're in.
	It's the very bedrock of a sentimental attachment.
	What am I supposed to be attached to if I don't actually own something here?
	Belonging.
	There's also just something hilarious about it.
	You work all your life, you get loads of money, it's a big pile of cash, 50 grand, and you can't spend it on what you wanted to spend it on.
	Physically impossible.
	The person's like, no, I don't accept that money.
	But it's a joke for the Soviet Union.
	Towards the end, everyone ended up with loads of money, but nothing to buy.
	Oh, yeah.
	Because it's just paper.
	Yeah.
	Brian Redacted said, I brought my house 22 years old.
	Two years ago, I have been working since I was 18.
	Worked my way up to a decent wage deposit of 17.5 thousand pounds, bought a two-bedroom end of Paris with a little garden too.
	That's brilliant.
	Live in a coastal town and a community commute to London, if needed.
	Hearing people of my generation saying 50 grand isn't enough is mental.
	People need to look away from the cities, get your foot on the ladder, and then work up to the place you want in future.
	I would have said yes, but that two years ago, mate, really did make a difference in terms of the interest rate.
	I don't know if you've seen the graph.
	It's flat and it goes up.
	And the demand as well.
	And it will go further up as well.
	Getting out of the cities is just good advice in general, though.
	You're definitely correct about that.
	Although, I have to say, it's not that easy.
	If you look at some of the old, quaint little villages around Swindon, the house prices are insane.
	That was the last time a house was built in that village.
	Exactly.
	Rightfully so, because otherwise... Yeah, don't get me wrong.
	But the house prices, it's not that easy.
	And people are right to say it's not that easy.
	Lord Nerevar says, I'm resigned to my fate.
	I know I'll never buy a house, settled with student debt for my useless degrees, and stuck with an enjoyable job.
	I will simply exist from now on, and is there a lower level than a black pill?
	Where apathy takes over, that's me.
	Void pill.
	Yep.
	Just smile.
	Bob Slade says, read the mortgages.
	All the facts and figures are based on a standard 25-year mortgage.
	Why not go for a longer one?
	Surely 40 years of paying off your own property is still better than paying rent for 40 years.
	That is depressing as hell though.
	I mean, this is why the government brought in the idea of a hundred year mortgage.
	I'm not excited.
	Your grandchildren can pay this mortgage off.
	Yeah.
	I mean, a lot of the other responses from people to the lady were, why not just move to the North?
	Like, yeah, why not just abandon your entire family so you can raise your kids with no family support whatsoever in a land that is foreign to you, the people you don't really know that well.
	And regard you as an outsider as well.
	To be fair though, I mean, he's got a point.
	You may as well, you may as well spend 40 years paying off your own property rather than 25.
	But again, isn't that so British?
	Maybe if things were slightly worse, not better.
	I'm sick of that.
	I'm sick of our mindset.
	Sure, but if you're Lord Nerevar and you've got no particular way of doing anything about any of these systemic problems, that is at least an option to get you a property.
	Hell in this place.
	No, I agree with Christopher Hitchens, not Christopher.
	Peter Hitchens?
	Yeah.
	Like Denethor?
	Did you see his interview?
	Which one?
	With New Culture Forum?
	No, people who don't know, we were Christopher Hitchens fans, I imagine there's a fair few.
	Oh, the Christopher Hitchens?
	Yeah, I haven't seen that one.
	Yeah, his last interview ever before he died was with Richard Dawkins and Richard managed to find the tape finally and has released it, so if you like Christopher, Google it.
	I still maintain that Christopher Hitchens would have supported Trump rather than Hillary.
	Almost certainly.
	From that last interview, there are little quips where he's like, well, the religious right aren't a threat to anything.
	So, I was scared of them.
	Great question.
	It almost renders all of New Atheism's activism totally pointless.
	You were pushing on an open door the whole time.
	Ethelstan95 says, while I agree with the sentiment, this is rightly the wrong subject.
	A relative lives in London.
	He could buy if he lived outside London, but does not want to sacrifice the living standard of low commute times and the social benefits of being young and in the city.
	I much prefer rural or coastal villages, but each to their own.
	No way she could buy a house for 50 grand.
	It's the age old adage, everything has trade-offs.
	I'd love to have a 50k deposit saved.
	I mean, that's great, but I am just sick of our mindset, as I mentioned previously, of why don't you just accept your standard of living dropping?
	Well, I mean, like I said, I don't think we should accept the standard of living dropping, but there's literally nothing we can do.
	Yeah, but if you're going to move to another part of the country, across from leaving your family and everything else, why not just get on a plane and go somewhere else?
	Because frankly, your standard of living will be way higher, your future will be better off, and you're less likely to have your wages continuously cut by inflation.
	Play the old reverso, you know, switch on the Smalians, move there, colonise there.
	Afghanistan's lovely this time of year.
	No, but I'm sincere and, you know, why have the Poles gone back to Poland?
	Because this place is crap by comparison.
	Well, yeah, it's falling apart.
	The only barrier is, you know, you speak Polish, but show English, don't learn it.
	Le French can buy a second home?
	I doubt they can.
	I doubt they can.
	How long could you own it before it gets burned by a migrant?
	They have had more immigration than us.
	I doubt they can buy a second home.
	The mortgage rate problem is happening all over Europe, probably due to the combination of lockdowns in Ukraine, cough, Nord Stream, cough, on the side, plus the house prices in France are slowly going down, so you can actually buy one if you want a great deal.
	He's actually right.
	Oh, is he?
	Yeah, I was recently in, I don't know how you say it, Lessen, just north of Le Mans.
	We used to own it.
	It's where the war started, the Hundred Year War.
	Oh, really?
	Good times.
	Anyway, we saw that beautiful, like, almost, compared to British standards, a mansion of a house, 160 grand.
	The lesson.
	Beautiful, beautiful place.
	Old English connections as well.
	So, yeah, you can buy one.
	Arizona Desert Rat says, so does she have a degree with a high-earning salary to afford a mortgage?
	If so, is she working?
	The answer to either of those questions is no.
	She can't afford a house.
	Not in the UK, not in the US, not anywhere in the world.
	She just needs to do better than what she was arguing was a good salary.
	She's on a roughly £400 more than minimum wage.
	The thing is, when house prices were four times the average salary... Yeah, she could have bought one.
	Again, you're right.
	I think this is a real mindset problem, which is why I went through this, because I know I can play about houses.
	This isn't my real point about... I'm sick of the British modern mindset of managed decline, and I kind of get it for my parents' generation of the decline of the empire and winter of discontent.
	Since the 1990s.
	I think we can draw a line under it and go, no, I want something better and we need to stop destroying the country.
	Yeah, I had a conversation with my parents just recently, actually, where they used that age old phrase, that's just how things are now.
	Oh, brilliant.
	And I was like, that's such a negative vision of the future.
	Is that really what you want my generation thinking?
	Because no, I don't accept that.
	Honestly, before Tony Blair came in, we had an amazing country.
	We genuinely, like, you didn't even think about how great the country was until 25 years later.
	I'm just looking at going, oh my God.
	You know, I was never afraid to walk anywhere.
	Like, there was never any fear of going.
	Like, I'd go to London as like a 19 year old.
	Never think about it.
	Didn't think about it twice.
	Well, I mean, I don't wear jewelry, but like, uh... No, I mean like people who are into watches.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	You never watched their channels.
	You never thought about it, right?
	I never looked at the future and thought, wow, I'll never get a job that'll allow me to buy a house.
	I never thought that.
	You know, there just wasn't excess pressure around.
	The country wasn't falling apart.
	Like, things seemed to be of a high standard.
	And the thing is, at the time, there was also this kind of positive cultural attitude towards Britain.
	Yeah.
	Like, you know, blur an oasis in, like, cool Britannia.
	Yeah, yeah.
	You know, Austin Powers evolved.
	There was this genuinely positive attitude, actually Britain's pretty great, and screw it, we're going to be happy about that.
	And now, it's just minoritarianism, the country's in decline, everything's dangerous and scary.
	Everyone walks like this, as you've said, and has the mind thought of maybe things won't be as bad in the future.
	Or this is just the way it is now, you've just got to get used to it.
	That mindset we need to eradicate from our heads, because it is dragging us down.
	And I think even in voting terms, where people are like, oh, I'll vote for Conservatives, because it will get worse, but not that much worse.
	That needs to die.
	That mindset is just, it's leading us to ruin.
	The thing about the Conservative, what we should be doing, is gleefully waiting for them to absolutely get crushed by whoever crushes them.
	I don't care.
	You know, you are traitors to this country, and I want you destroyed.
	The Drew Doomhan says, if I had 50 grand in America, that would be a very nice down payment on a house.
	Yuppies are morons.
	Yes, but America is massive.
	Also, I had an experience recently, because I was looking at house prices in the United States to see what I could do, and I found one I could afford.
	And I was like, oh, that's great.
	And then I saw the same thing you saw when you visited.
	Made of wood!
	Ugh!
	I spent all that money on, and all I get is wood.
	Yeah.
	No stones.
	It's timber.
	Right.
	And the bit that terrified me even more, and I'd never thought about it... You know when you hear a story in America?
	Children killed in drive-by shooting as the house was shot.
	Yeah.
	I never put two and two together.
	Makes sense now, yeah.
	I'm not living in an American city with wood.
	It's gross.
	I don't understand it.
	It's not even that, it's like... This is literally gonna last like 50 years.
	Yeah, it's all the things, but the... I would not feel safe.
	I would have to put, I don't know, lead in the wood or something to keep out the bullets, because I don't trust that someone isn't going to end up shooting me, because I've got that mindset about America.
	At least it means when the archaeologists go to America after the empire has collapsed, they will find no remnant of anything that was there.
	It's literally going to be like Sparta.
	I think it was Thucydides who wrote, you know, in future generations, people will look at the ruins of Sparta and not believe that this was a world power because it's just like four little villages and no monumental architecture.
	It's just a couple of little villages.
	That's all America's going to have left.
	And the French Statue of Liberty.
	And the giant sphere now in Las Vegas.
	Oh god, yeah.
	What's that called?
	It's terrible.
	I think it's just called the sphere.
	I hate it.
	Comment in the chat if someone says, oh no, it's great because it means it can be rebuilt when it goes out of fashion.
	What?
	Oh no.
	That's the most modernist opinion I've ever heard of.
	Fashion?
	Yeah.
	Oh, fashion's the problem.
	No, but again, it's another one of those mindsets.
	I just, I need to go.
	That's why you don't build beautiful houses.
	No, but this is like, literally, it's just the current year argument.
	Any appeal to fashion is an appeal to the current year.
	Appeal to the eternal reality of tradition, capital T.
	Appeal to something that's lasted more than 25 years.
	Appeal to Bath.
	Literally.
	We've got buildings in this country that are still in use that are older than the United States of America.
	That's a good thing.
	You know, that's a really good thing.
	And they're adorable.
	Hubs, literally.
	Yeah.
	So the letter M is for mortgage says, is there a greater than 0% chance that Hollywood is striking to distract from the sound of freedom?
	The strike was going on before.
	Yeah.
	I mean, you do have to ask whenever the mainstream media are covering a story on that scale, you do have to wonder what they're not talking about.
	Sure.
	I don't think that's the reason.
	No, because they've talked about the Sound of Freedom plenty.
	Oh, look at this weird anti-child trafficking film.
	Don't we hate this, fellow leftists?
	They have a strange reaction.
	Rickard Just Call Me Rick says, Do you hate teachers?
	Oh yes I do, and I am a teacher.
	Most teachers are insufferable ideologues who make life hell for the few of us who do our best to stay sane in this profession.
	And don't get me started on headmasters.
	Summer break is pretty neat though.
	Greetings from Hellscape, Sweden.
	Yeah.
	Well, I mean, like you say.
	I hate teachers.
	Yeah.
	Like two months off during the summer.
	Yeah.
	Screw you.
	SH Silver says, Carl, what is free about our markets?
	Is it free when government gives benefits to megacorps and foreign financiers in their ability to scoop up property and other assets?
	Yes.
	I mean, I do, I do tend to, I agree.
	We talked about the managerial revolution earlier.
	I can answer this.
	So the issue is the, it is actually the freedom for someone outside of the country to buy something within the country.
	Yeah.
	That is the free market.
	That's the main problem with the free market that has.
	But obviously I'm not in favor of the government siphoning money to bribe corporations to do things or whatever.
	But the problem is there's no particularism with transactions in this country.
	It's really, really annoying.
	And I don't think that the country should be bought up by foreign billionaires.
	But again, is this just pure rationalistic view of economics where everything is just a fungible unit, just a market actor?
	But moreover, then it becomes literally just the entire country, the purpose of it is just line go up.
	And no, I don't care.
	I don't want the line to go up, actually.
	I don't care if it does or it doesn't.
	I just want my son to be able to buy a house.
	Not too much.
	Yeah, I know, yeah.
	Ewan Baker says, Actors' protests don't threaten me with a good time.
	Well, exactly.
	Again, is it really a bad thing when people creating subversive material that destroys our civilization strike?
	Of course it isn't.
	They are literally a net negative on our civilization.
	Could you imagine?
	Just Kibbley Crenshaw and all of MSNBC go on strike.
	Yeah.
	Drew Doomhand says, teachers and nurses are the ones who screeched at me for not getting vaccinated and not wanting to stay locked in my home.
	The ones who want to brainwash children into their ideology.
	Do I hate teachers and nurses?
	Maybe I do.
	Yeah.
	I mean, fair enough again.
	But again, I'm talking about the normie, you know, Joe Normie.
	When you say, when you oppose teachers and nurses, you can understand how that looks, right? - Maybe I'm beyond caring.
	- Well, okay. - The thing is, I genuinely hate those TikTok videos.
	- Oh, the dancing nurses.
	I just hated it.
	It's like, okay, you're not busy.
	And the clap for the NHS stuff.
	I can't stand the cult of it.
	X, Y, and Z. Here's an idea.
	Stop being the hospital service for all comers who show up from all points of the earth.
	Might make resources go further.
	I mean, literally, it's not the National Health Service, it's the International Health Service.
	I hate it.
	Yeah.
	Ethelstan95 says, I am sick of people who advocate for public monopoly services like the NHS, also complaining about low pay.
	Either accept that public budgets restrict the amount of earnings or support privatization and competition of wages.
	Yeah, fair enough.
	I'm totally up for whatever the government was taxing me.
	Just give me it back and I'll pay for the private service.
	Yeah.
	Totally up for it.
	Baron Von Warhawk says these people ruined Star Wars, DC Comics and Indiana Jones while also being pals with Harvey Weinstein.
	Hollywood, Dylenda S. I did enjoy Ricky Gervais' little speech at the Golden Globe.
	Someone online says let Hollywood execs and the creepy actors and terrible writers drag each other to the bottom of the sea.
	End.
	Yeah.
	Big Ed says the strike to watch out for is that the UPS contracts last day is 31st of July.
	And at this rate, they will likely go on strike.
	Okay.
	But the Amazon delivery guy is going on strike.
	That's the thing I need to know.
	You consumer.
	Well, I'm not a consumer.
	It's just that that's literally the only place I'd buy things from anymore because the service is just better than everything else.
	Yeah.
	Convenience trumps everything.
	Exactly.
	So it's just like, okay, well, I actually, if I need something, I've got to get it from Amazon.
	Unless it's less than a pound.
	Poundland's always open.
	Yeah, that's true.
	Oh no.
	I'm sorry.
	George Hap says, Oh no, how will we manage without the groomer teachers and the cultural vandals of Hollywood?
	They should strike for a couple of decades until they get what they deserve.
	Yeah.
	There's some missing context on your understanding of this law, Carl.
	Canada's recent regulation also forces these websites, if they're operating in Canada, to promote a majority Canadian-based news over other sources to Canadians.
	They're essentially creating a Canadian intranet.
	I did know something about that, actually, and I forgot to put it in.
	I just assumed it wasn't true, because that sounds mad.
	Yeah, it does sound mad, but no, I think they are doing that.
	They also, they want to siphon off a sort of ring fence, a portion of it for Canadian indigenous people.
	Capital I, I noticed, by the way.
	They're creating that sort of, it's the same as the capital B blank thing.
	He is right.
	I should have mentioned that.
	I was more thinking about the power struggle between the Canadian government and Silicon Valley.
	It's just amusing how the Canadian government is going to lose.
	Governments are actually not very sovereign anymore.
	This is the world they agreed to, so what are you going to do?
	Grant says, there is essentially only one Canadian news company that is exempt from this because they do not qualify as a news company under the bill, and for some reason that I don't fully understand, you guys hit it intuitively Rebel News.
	Yes, I knew Rebel News wouldn't because the actual news site.
	Yes, again, just pure friend-enemy.
	Yeah, no, no, that's exactly what it is.
	I'm not like a big Schmittian type or anything.
	That's clearly a description of reality.
	Yes.
	It's accurate.
	You know, it's obvious.
	Chet says, my country of Canada has become a dystopian nightmare.
	The government has censored the internet.
	They have debunked some of my friends protesting.
	They have fired thousands of healthcare workers and made it in law.
	We're in BC where doctors, nurses and paramedics can face six months in prison and £200,000 fines for saying things that are misleading or misinformation.
	We have carbon taxes brought in earlier this month and 15-minute cities are coming to effect real soon.
	Hey man, you forgot that the government killing people is one of the leading causes of death in Canada.
	Sixth most common last I checked.
	10,000 people a year are euthanized by the government.
	It's mental.
	It's absolutely mental, but this is what you get.
	Drew says, every time I hear or see a sock den making plans to tax or charge the rich with massive corporations, I always ask, what happens when those rich corpos leave?
	And my favorite response so far has been, we don't need them anyway.
	Well, this is exactly, I'm sure it was Milton Friedman who did it.
	Because he was just literally like, you say you can tax the rich but they'll leave.
	And this is exactly what has happened.
	You know, we'll just shut it down.
	And they're like, right.
	It took a week in Australia for him to be like, please come back.
	There we go.
	Omar says, nobody ever accused socialists of having too much foresight.
	The companies are providing a service, and if you make it not worth their time to provide that service, they'll just stop doing it.
	They'll do the same with taxes and wonder why they've received less tax this year, idiots.
	Yes.
	Isn't that called the Laffer Curve or something like that?
	Yeah, I think so, yeah.
	Lord Nereval says, what else could we expect from Sheikh Justin Trudeau?
	Even more terrifying is that Biden's handlers are trying it in the US as well.
	We have to be properly careful now.
	I don't know how it'll work in the US because of First Amendment, actually.
	So I don't know what the options the US have there.
	Probably be fine for them, to be honest.
	Well, don't forget the USA is also on a downward curve.
	Dan says, "It is with a heavy heart I'll be emigrating with my family from England to the USA.
	I can give them a better life there.
	I hope I live to see these difficult times past." Well, don't forget the USA is also on a downward curve.
	So, I mean, you know, it's better than it is here.
	Better loss.
	I'm not saying it's not better, but it is definitely better.
	Yeah, but also the future prospects.
	I mean, it's like we've been over GDP per capita since 2008.
	The UK is just a flat line.
	I think the Germans are very similar, whereas the Americans just went down for a year and then just skyrocketed through it.
	Okay.
	All right, then.
	The temptation to leave is very understandable.
	So, even with all the American problems, they're able to just punch through things.
	Well, there's also, I don't know if you saw the news, Ben Wallace.
	Do you remember him?
	He's stepping down, isn't he?
	He was the Defence Minister.
	Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Did a lot of things for Ukraine, got a lot of weapons, a lot of missiles, endlessly.
	There was even a prank call where he was asked for even more, if you remember.
	Oh, I do remember, yeah.
	And then a couple of days ago, he came out and said, well, not Amazon, because he was sick of them.
	Because they just kept asking for more and more.
	And upon making that statement, he's now going to step down.
	He's very sad, he's had enough of this.
	Sure.
	And he's leaving.
	And as he's leaving he just published an article that says by 2030 we will be at war, the UK, with the Russians and the Chinese and some form of terrorists in Africa.
	The way you said that, by 2030 we'll be at war with the UK, it's like, oh.
	Welsh Taliban begins.
	It's just like, okay.
	So, I mean, with all the people and none of the food.
	Like, at least the United States has more food than it even eats.
	Oh, yeah.
	And even for how fat they are.
	Look at vast amounts of farmland.
	They're a food exporter.
	Whereas the UK, I mean, they're just strategically far more vulnerable.
	Well, we can only support half the population we've got with domestic farming.
	Wow.
	You know what you want to do to fix that?
	Import more migrants.
	All I'm saying is skyscraper Somalis by 2050.
	By 2050, every single Somalis on Earth will live in England.
	And also in the cloud cover.
	So over the power of the years, promising them by next year, Somalians will make up 40% of the population.
	Not 45, because we're not Labour.
	No Somalian on my watch will ever see the ground, okay?
	Cayman's Claire says, forget the drive-by shootings, it's the termites you need to watch out for in the US.
	Ah, that's a great point.
	Didn't even think about it.
	I never really understood that reference either.
	Yeah, because we don't have termites here.
	We build out of brick.
	So they get termites and then the whole house gets eaten?
	Yeah.
	Wild.
	Luckily the house costs $25, but... How much is a brick house in the US then?
	I mean, is that your king of the castle?
	Who's got a brick house?
	Probably, yeah.
	I bet it's all like New England stuff.
	I bet it's only in like New England.
	All in Maine or something.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Northeast, where the English actually...
	I love how I got to specify.
	You'd never write it in English.
	It's a brick house, please.
	I don't know how I'd get a wooden house in England.
	Omar says, the Hollywood writer's strike is AI versus NPCs.
	That's a great point.
	That's a great point.
	It makes little difference where the laugh at corruption of my entertainment comes from.
	Alexander says, I love Callum's face while there's Carl claiming giving a kid 50k is middle class.
	No, Callum is correct.
	It's rich, not middle class.
	No, rich people give them an entire house.
	I think we have different definitions of rich.
	Yeah, yours is wrong.
	My idea of middle class is they've got sky and they can afford it.
	Yeah, that's wrong.
	Whereas if there's poor people, they've also got sky, but can't afford it.
	Yeah, working class people have sky.
	And can't afford it.
	Middle class people have sky and can afford it.
	Yeah, but they also have a pool of wealth in the bank.
	I'm not even... I looked up brick houses in Maine.
	I can't find a single brick house.
	Really?
	It's all just in wood.
	Look at that!
	Look at that!
	It's shed!
	Look at that!
	600k!
	For something that looks like a Red Dead Redemption.
	It literally just made of wood.
	Look at that.
	It's like a treehouse.
	Oh yeah, I'll put it, I'll send it to John now.
	That is... You can't point and laugh at the filthy Yankees and your wood obsession.
	$600,000 for a treehouse.
	I mean, don't get me wrong, things are bad here, but...
	Americans are the funniest people on earth for these kinds of reasons.
	You'll think they're just like you, and then they'll point out that their fridge is the size of a house, compared to a British one.
	It's the same with Canadians.
	They're like, oh, we're just like you, and then they'll have a bag of milk.
	What is wrong with you?
	We are not the same!
	Dan told me the other day that they've got mailboxes in the United States, and if you want to send a piece of parcel, you put it in your box and you just flick it up, and the mailman will come by and open the mailbox and take your parcel.
	I mean, that sounds great.
	How is this worth 600k?
	It's made out of wood.
	It also doesn't look that amazing.
	I mean, on the outside, it looks a lot worse than the inside, to be fair.
	Well, it looks great, to be honest, but it's wood.
	How much is that in Finland?
	It just seems like a Finnish house to me at that point.
	But also, I can see the... I mean, that looks terrible from the outside.
	There's some water, I guess.
	They've got water in there.
	Look, on the outside, though.
	That's awful.
	Maybe it's to keep out thieves.
	I guess, yeah.
	Keep out Bigfoot.
	Anyway, we're out of time.
	If you'd like to buy a wooden house, don't get ripped off.
	If you're backstage, there's a place for you.
	If you don't... If you want to buy a brick house and get ripped off, come to London.
	And if you want to buy a brick house and not...
	Go to France, I guess.
	That's my experience.
	But, you know, keep it going.
	Otherwise, let us know in the comments.
	Or don't.
	We'll be back tomorrow.

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