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Oct. 20, 2023 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:45:18

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #767

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	Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters for Friday.
	You have made it.
	It is a holy day and a good day because we're joined by Carl and Harry.
	And today we're going to be talking about Farage is happening.
	Something's happening.
	I'm telling you, I'm convinced something's going to happen.
	Indeed have a happening.
	Hassan making Piers Morgan look good, which was a hell of an achievement.
	Honestly, though, right?
	I don't actually hate Hassan until now to make me think more of Piers Morgan.
	Yeah.
	Anyway.
	Happened a few times.
	And also, escapism is dead.
	Which, yeah, nice way to end the weekend.
	Go play your video games!
	Just, no, play video games from prior to 2016.
	That's literally all I do.
	I mean, there you go.
	2015, Witcher 3 came out.
	2016, Doom Reboot came out.
	And then you can just cut it off, really.
	Yeah, I totally agree.
	Everything since then has just been monumental disappointment.
	Anyway.
	I do want to just interrupt real quick.
	I've currently been playing Blitzkrieg Anthology on Steam.
	Of course you have.
	Way older.
	That sounds great.
	I'm going to abuse my position here, because if anyone has the cheats that work, I would quite like them.
	Because I've been trying to get them to work.
	Anyone has one of those old cheat books from the back of the magazines?
	I googled the cheats and did what it said on the internet and it hasn't worked and I'm not the best player so I can't read them.
	I guess when cheats were a thing where you could just input a code into the game and it would do something for you and you didn't have to pay for it as a microtransaction.
	I miss those days.
	IDKFA.
	You don't know what that means, do you?
	Sorry, I don't speak- IDDQD?
	You don't, you absolute zoomers.
	The chat knows, the chat knows.
	I've got absolutely every faith the chat knows exactly what that means.
	IDKFA, I can't believe you don't.
	Is that the up, down, left, right?
	I was going to say, I know the Konami cheat.
	Brilliant.
	Up, down, left, right, BA.
	Okay, yeah, never mind.
	Right, let's move on to the real world, as disappointing as that is.
	So, something is actually happening in British politics.
	Now, you might be taken aback and say, hang on a second, nothing happens in British politics.
	That's not the case.
	But no, something is definitely happening.
	It's just that when these things happen, they happen very, very slowly, then all at once.
	And we're in the slowly building phase of the happening at the moment.
	Well, I disagree that it's not that nothing ever happens, it's that things just slowly get worse.
	Yeah, that is true.
	There is, of course, the overarching gradual decline of the country, but something else might be happening for the first time in a very long time, since Brexit really.
	And I'm very excited about it, because actually this would signal an actual change in British politics.
	Again, I know you can't even imagine it because you've never lived in a time period where that's been the case.
	I've not lived in a functioning country.
	No, but something, I'm not saying the country will be functioning afterwards, but who knows?
	I don't want to make big, bold predictions, but something is definitely happening.
	I'm very excited about it, right?
	But before we begin, go and sign up to Lotteries.com.
	You can either sign up for £5 a month, or you can spend £1.89 and watch Lads Hour number six ranking British cities.
	Because I think our cities are a good indicator of the decline of our civilization.
	13 years under the Conservatives, the cities have just got worse and worse and worse and worse, including the town that we live in.
	And it's comical now, just how bad our cities are.
	And the British have never been very good at cities anyway, actually.
	All the continental Europeans have always been quite good at having beautiful cities.
	We've got plenty of beautiful cities.
	We've got a very high density of good cities.
	No, not really.
	We're really good at towns and we're really, really good at villages.
	Maybe just your soft southern cities.
	No, the beautiful cities of the north that are known throughout all of Europe, yes.
	Shall we start talking about some northern cities, shall we?
	Go on.
	Okay, what about like Hull?
	Never been there.
	Right.
	What about Birmingham?
	Birmingham's not a Norman city.
	What about Manchester?
	Manchester's okay.
	I've lived in Manchester.
	I've spent time in Manchester and there are parts of it that are very near and dear to my heart so I can't write the whole place off.
	You did tell us quite a few stories.
	Listen, my friend was solicited by a homeless woman who tried to get a free night at my university flat by saying that she would, you know, for both of us, and I had to tell him vehemently no.
	Okay, comparing that to somewhere like Prague... I'm sure there are prostitutes.
	Okay, okay.
	You did not pick a good example.
	Well, the sex degenerate capital of Europe.
	Yeah, but it's also a beautiful place, right?
	Okay, but Manchester's got some nice buildings.
	I'm sure it does.
	Munich or Vienna or... We were never good at cities anyway, and they've just gotten worse, and it's the 13 years of Conservative government that has allowed this to happen.
	So let's begin with a couple of by-elections that have recently happened.
	Because these are, as the BBC is telling us, historic.
	Now the BBC is of course misframing this because the BBC is a hive of left-wing activism and they want you to believe that Labour are on some sort of massive upswing.
	And it's actually not that Labour are on a massive upswing.
	It's that the Tories are just collapsing.
	Absolutely collapsing.
	And actually the results show us this.
	Let's go down to their little There we go, oh look at that.
	Oh my god, vote share of 34% from the Labour Party.
	They must have really... 12% up, the Tories 28% down.
	Wow, that's massive.
	That's absolutely massive.
	Labour must have really converted a lot of those voters to get them across the line.
	Which is not what happened, actually.
	Because instead, what happened was there was a 44% Reduction in the turnout for the electorate, which is actually not that usual because the by-elections are usually slightly lower.
	Like we'll get about 65% turnout in a general, 75% if it's a really impressive, important general in 2019.
	And the by-elections will be somewhere like between 50% and 60%, so it's not terrible.
	But here is about 35% of the people turned out.
	So let's go down and have a look at the stats.
	Yeah, I love looking at these stats.
	Look at that, right?
	So, the Labour Party won with 13,000 votes, and the Conservative Party lost with 12,000 votes.
	Festus Akinbosuyi.
	Uncle Festus.
	Average Conservative Party member, right?
	Obviously the best candidate for the job.
	Somehow lost to Alastair Stratham.
	Not by much, though.
	Lib Dems on nine grand.
	Independent, Gareth Mackey at 1,800.
	Reform at 1,400.
	The monster-raving loony party are still a thing.
	Yes.
	Apparently.
	They're catching up on the Green Party.
	So that's pretty interesting.
	Born in Nigeria, moved here in the 1990s.
	Oh, great.
	There we are.
	Great.
	Exactly.
	He did his Master's degree in African Studies.
	Amazing.
	So, let's look at the previous election results, where there was a 73% turnout.
	Oh, look at that!
	The Conservatives with 38,692 votes.
	That's how Nadine Doris won this.
	The totally unremarkable Nadine Doris.
	Yeah.
	Got almost 60% of the vote there, but 38,000 votes.
	Putting the blue rosette on... I don't want to insult Nadine, because I don't dislike Nadine, but she's not remarkable.
	No, she had actually a very good chance to do stuff and did nothing with it, so that's why I'm not impressed.
	Yes, and like I said, I don't mean to insult her, but that is a minus 1% reduction from previous.
	And now it's down to 12,000 votes from 38,000, and the Labour Party didn't pick up a squat.
	So 26,000 or so Conservative voters are just like, uh, no.
	I'm not voting Labour, because you'll notice that Labour... Labour got less overall vote.
	Absolutely, they got 13,872.
	So this isn't like a historic win for Labour.
	We actually lost to them.
	Yeah, we actually went down... 150 or so people decided they'd rather stay home.
	Yeah, they thought, eh, don't care, we'll probably vote Green or something.
	Lib Dem.
	Actually, the Lib Dems did get a thousand or so extra votes.
	But that's the thing, this isn't historic win, this is complete collapse for the Conservatives.
	This is complete collapse for British representative politics, given that nobody wants to participate anymore.
	Yeah, yeah, given there's about 35% of the turnout.
	And something else very similar happened in the 2023 Tamworth by-election.
	As we can see, staggering turnout.
	35.9%.
	That's almost like a council election.
	That's almost like a Welsh local election.
	A drop of almost 30% from the last by-election.
	But again, staggering win for Sarah Edwards.
	I can't help but notice the Englishness of the names of the Labour Party candidates as well.
	Here's Alastair and Sarah.
	I mean, at least it's Andrew Cooper on the other side for the Conservatives, right?
	But 11,000 votes and that's a 22% swing, minus 25% for the Conservative.
	Of course, if we look prior, 64% turnout.
	30,000 votes.
	So the Labour Party gained what, like 100?
	And Conservatives lost 20k.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Hang on a second.
	I mean, that's pretty harsh.
	Yeah, the Labour Party, no, the Labour Party gained about 800 votes.
	The Conservative Party lost about 20,000 votes!
	Wasn't 2019 a record year for turnout and for the Conservatives?
	It was a good year for the Conservatives.
	We all know that, with which they did absolutely nothing.
	So what's happened is all those people who were really Really excited.
	Boris is finally going to get us out of the EU.
	Brexit's going to get done right.
	They're going to enter a new era of prosperity.
	We're going to get out all the people who aren't supposed to be here, tighten up the borders.
	Why would they show up this time?
	Because now they're voting for... Rishi Sunak.
	Yeah, Rishi Sunak.
	So I think it's good to assess, as you're alluding to there, the reason why 20,000 people in that constituency who voted for Boris Johnson are now just gone.
	And we have some data on this, which is Matthew Goodwinson, when he came in.
	And his previous work, he's shown I think it's about 40% of people who voted for Boris now vote for no one.
	Yeah.
	And the reason they voted for Boris was entirely the worldview that everyone was excited about.
	Yes, it was, yes.
	A rightist worldview of maybe we should defend our borders, get rid of foreign control over us, and that's about it really.
	Yeah.
	That's the keynote points.
	Can we have Britain being a bit British for once, please?
	And Boris did seem like quite a good avatar of that.
	But betraying that will lose you 20k votes in this place.
	And I can't help but notice, if someone had got 20k votes in this by-election, they would have beaten the Labour Party.
	Yes.
	By 100%.
	Yes.
	If Boris had run as an independent, he probably would have beaten them all.
	Or if somebody had shown up as Joris Bonson and said, I will do exactly what Boris said he would, but I will actually do it.
	And he's not the evil cousin.
	He was the evil cousin the whole time.
	But then you get the question of, well, what's going on with the independent parties?
	Reform in the previous one got 1,400 votes.
	Yeah, not fun.
	Not particularly impressed.
	UKIP in this one obviously got 436.
	Oh no, the previous one, 436.
	Go back.
	Yeah, yeah.
	There we go.
	Yeah, yeah.
	436.
	There we go.
	436. Like, Britain first got 580. Like...
	Yeah, I know, right?
	Reform versus not outperforming UKIP.
	Yeah, it is, yeah.
	Reform on 1,300.
	It's like, what is going on?
	There are literally 20-25,000 Conservative voters who just sat around and like, no, it's the Conservatives or no one.
	I've just noticed, Andrew Cooper for Conservatives, Ian Cooper for Reform.
	Was there some sibling rivalry going on in this constituency?
	I have no idea.
	I hope so, that would be funny.
	Yes, but the point being, The right is doing a very bad job of capturing those disaffected voters.
	Yeah, we can, well any political scientist assessing the British situation is able to point out that there's a massive swath of rightist voters who presumably in any other system would vote for a right-wing party and the right-wing parties here are not picking them up.
	Yes, because they're all staying home.
	And this is something I said at my traditional Britain speech, whether you like it or not, going around the problem doesn't work.
	We live in a two-party system where for some reason people will vote Conservative or Labour or nothing.
	I wrote about this recently and my conjecture, my theory was just that because the Conservatives have been grandfathered in to the point where if you're voting right wing in the UK your mind immediately goes to the Conservatives and they've got...
	Sadly, that's true for most normies.
	That's what happens.
	And they also think to themselves, well, the conservatives have been around for so long, they must be full of people who know what they're doing and know how to govern the country.
	Why would I put my faith in this new party who may be full of newbies who, if they got into Whitehall, for instance, would have no clue what's going on and wouldn't be able to navigate it.
	So they immediately put their stock into the conservatives.
	And when the conservatives turn around and prove that they're completely useless, they go, well, all hope is lost.
	Yeah, no, I actually totally co-sign that theory.
	I think that there is a venerableness to the Conservative Party for Conservative voters.
	They are the oldest, I think, one of the oldest parties in the world, and the most successful as well for surviving that long and winning as many elections as they have done.
	Which is really remarkable, given how bad they are.
	Okay, but there is a side point to this that is true as well, which is that UKIP started in, I believe, the 90s or something, and then by 2016 they were commanding, in the polls, 20-something percent of the vote, and that was probably the best moment that's long-term.
	The Brexit party was kind of a blip thing.
	It's not really a long-standing success, let's say.
	UKIP did have a Trump card.
	It had Nigel Farage, don't get me wrong.
	The argument, British sovereignty.
	Of course as well.
	And the, a lot of time there.
	So you go from the nineties, that's 20 something, 25 years.
	25 years.
	To get to your, your 20 odd percent in the polls.
	I mean, reform have been around for five minutes.
	Yeah.
	There, there is that difference to take into account.
	Cause I don't want to, I, I, I'm tepidly agreeing with you guys that this is probably the case, but at the same time, I'm skeptical that the conservative party can't be destroyed.
	I think it could.
	I'm not saying it can't be destroyed.
	I think you need a party with momentum and leadership like UKIP had in 2016, along with the party completely collapsing from the inside.
	Well, interestingly, those two factors need to coincide with one another if the Conservative Party is to go for good.
	Well, what's interesting is Mid-Bedfordshire has never been won by the Labour Party before, so as you can see, losing 26,000 votes there That's not, again, the Labour Party did not gain any votes there.
	This was the Conservatives to lose, and they lost it.
	So this is their problem.
	And literally, you would have thought that just 10 minutes worth of campaigning on the ground with a half-decent, like, if you're like, look, Mog, just go around there, please.
	Just someone that the public kind of likes, the average Conservative voter kind of likes, just walk around, knock on some doors, and have some friendly chats with people, please.
	Just please.
	We, you know, we just need 10 more votes to win this.
	Please, Mark, save us, Mark.
	Yes, exactly, right, but obviously they couldn't even muster this, right?
	I think there might be another factor in this as well, because we know that the two main parties are the two mainstream parties that will do whatever they can to suck up the most votes possible, and with demographic change being what it is within the UK, increasingly the Conservatives, so that they can try and appeal to the new voters that are being brought in, will start to appeal more and more purely to the interests of those voters.
	which will, as we've seen, as was one of the reasons that UKIP was so popular, disenfranchise a whole host of the native voters within the UK, and they will be pushed bit by bit into other parties who say, we won't pander to the New Britons, we will cater to your we won't pander to the New Britons, we will cater to your needs and That might be something.
	I've heard that argument many times, and it seems logical, but I don't really see any evidence of it actually happening.
	Uh, I've I just see the Conservative voters just throwing up their hands, like you said, and just being like, all is lost, give up.
	I'm not going to vote for anyone.
	It's like, okay, great.
	Unless you can inspire them.
	Well, yeah, I'm thinking as conditions get worse, perhaps.
	Maybe in like 20 years time, when the boomers are out of politics and it's now people who are not attached to the prior parties.
	But as it is at the moment, it just doesn't seem to be the case, you know?
	So anyway, let's carry on, because of course you get Conservative MPs who are feeling the earthquake beneath their feet and saying, well hang on a second, aren't hundreds of us about to get slaughtered electorally?
	At this point, aren't we all about to fall off the edge of the cliff, Wile E. Coyote style?
	After we had the biggest win ever, we did nothing wrong.
	As far as I'm concerned, they're already off the edge.
	They're just Wile E. Coyote floating in the air.
	They absolutely are.
	Everyone can see that they are Wile E. Coyote running in the air, right?
	And the thing is, as well, just a quick thing on the mid-Bedfordshire thing.
	That's never been Labour.
	It wasn't a Labour landslide that won it.
	It was a Conservative collapse.
	The other one, which was Tamworth, the Tories won that in the 90s.
	And that's been, for 30 years, a pretty safe Conservative seat.
	And yet again, that just complete collapse, right?
	So, of course, you get, like, MPs, like, Conservative MPs, like Andrew Jenkins, and they're like, well, voter apathy is evident, yes, again, in both the by-elections.
	Low turnout, minus 20k, failed to turn out in Tamworth, and 24k failed to turn out in Mid-Bed since the last election.
	We need to make far-reaching changes now to instill confidence in the Conservative voters.
	Yes, you do!
	Yes, you do.
	There is one worry I have.
	That they'll go further left.
	Yes, you can see immediately.
	There you go.
	Yeah.
	They'll start listening to the Euro flags.
	But look at him.
	No, no, get back up.
	Look at him, right?
	Euro flag, British flag, cricket.
	Don't know what that is.
	Pride flag.
	But some weird technology guy who thinks that the solution... Some guy in Somerset which is 95% English.
	Yeah.
	Purge the UKIP and racists.
	But I can tell you for sure what will happen is there will be a faction of MPs who are the most pathetic humans there are.
	Yes, yes.
	Who will come out and there will be a leadership fight after they lose the next election.
	And when Nigel Farage takes over the party, he needs to literally eject them all.
	Just literally on day one, do what Starmer did to Corbyn.
	Out.
	All of you.
	You know, 200,000 people have left the Labour Party.
	That's roughly about the number that Corbyn brought into the Labour Party by reducing it to like £5 a joint.
	Barrage needs to set the tone by not just kicking them out, he needs to deport them.
	Show what's going to happen under my glorious rule.
	I'm not sure you can deport all of them.
	I think most of them might only have British citizenship.
	They can find citizenship elsewhere.
	Yeah, there you go.
	We'll give them forced employment as the workers in the Rwandan hotels that we'll be selling.
	Ah, good point.
	Anyway, jokes aside, literally just eject all of these people from the party in exactly the same way that Starmer did with Corbyn.
	Because what Starmer has shown us is that actually the public do not care at all about the internal politics of a party, really.
	What they care about is what the leader of the party is like.
	And Starmer is really boring, so at least he's not offensive.
	Jeremy Corbyn was directly against the grain of British life.
	I mean, I can't think of anyone in this country who hates Britain more than Jeremy Corbyn.
	In politics.
	I mean, obviously you've got like the Ash Sarkar's of the world.
	I mean, I can think of a few people who aren't British in Britain who hate it more.
	Sure, but elected MPs, Jeremy Corbyn, there isn't a terrorist group on earth he hasn't got a picture of him standing by going, ah, you know, like there's just not.
	There is just not!
	He's been anti-Britain and basically pro-Soviet his entire life, and so it was unsurprising when, on the doorstep, the activists in Labour were like, yeah, everyone hates Corbyn, everyone hates Corbyn, everyone hates Corbyn, and of course he lost.
	But if you have a party leader who everyone doesn't hate and isn't going against the grain of what it is to be British, then you can get a different result.
	Actually, the situation is quite well laid out, and as you can see, when Nigel Farage turned up at the Conservative Party conference, he was massively popular.
	Everyone loved him, and everyone was like, okay, that's interesting.
	Why does the entire Conservative Party love Nigel?
	Like this.
	Nigel's been doing the proper conservative thing for the last 26 years.
	Having a positive future.
	Yeah, exactly.
	A positive vision of what Britain could look like in the future, not under the heel of EU.
	And just on every subject, Nigel is, if he's not exactly at the right place, he's going in the right direction, right?
	So no questions there from me.
	And so everyone's like, yeah, but Nigel said he won't do it.
	It's like, yay!
	He says a lot of things.
	He did say he wasn't going to do it.
	Quote, while the Conservative Party is not a proper Conservative Party, something like that, right?
	How many times has he now officially resigned from politics and definitely, definitely isn't coming back?
	Exactly.
	I think we're on our fifth.
	Exactly, right.
	Fifth retirement.
	I'm not even countenancing the argument.
	And wasn't he first retiring just so that he could run an LBC radio call?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	How long did that last?
	Look, let's drop the pretense.
	Nigel Farage wants to be Prime Minister.
	I want Nigel Farage to be Prime Minister.
	And actually, the stars are aligning, so actually maybe Nigel Farage might
	End up as Prime Minister because basically what he'll need to do is join the Conservative Party which of course Rishi Sunak did not rule out because I mean what what an uncomfortable position that would have been like everyone in the Conservative Party oh my god we love Nigel Farage and Rishi's like yeah he's not allowed to join I mean there's just been scowls so have you looked at our polls Mr Sunak like what are you doing here we didn't vote for you you know you you can the energy would have been very very polluted against Sunak maybe but this is the
	Curse of this party, which is, I imagine, the argument, but we need to regain the center ground.
	We can't be seen to be aligning with Farage.
	That was our mistake.
	Yeah, but that's not what actually the members of the Conservative Party think.
	There's a difference between the Conservative voters and the people who are the members and committee members.
	Sure.
	I mean, at the party conference, it was the members and they all loved him, but you're right that there's the upper echelons of the party as well as the decision makers.
	And they have moral authority while the party isn't utterly collapsing and hasn't failed in every way.
	But once it has, it will become an untenable position for them to say, yeah, you know what we need to keep doing?
	What we've been doing for the past 13 years that has led us, internal polling in the Tory party that implies that they're going to get less than 100 seats in the next general election.
	But what have they been doing for the last 13 years?
	Because to you and me, that's obvious.
	They've been doing leftist nonsense or complete inaction.
	But to weird normies or these Internationalist types should become those Conservative Party candidates and then take on committee positions, etc.
	A lot of them have leftist mindsets, and if you look at what they've been saying about current rule for the last 13 years, they're like, the party's moved so far to the right they're now even talking about deporting people who break the law!
	Have you read what they said in The Guardian?
	Yeah, and so what I think will happen is the next election, the Conservatives will get absolute crush.
	Now, you've got to remember, the Conservative Party has never had less than 100 seats.
	It's never been in this position before.
	This is literally historic defeat.
	And it's historic defeat not to a mastermind like Tony Blair.
	It's a historic defeat to a block of wood like Keir Starmer, like an actual block of wood just sat there with his gormless face being like, uh, vote Labour.
	The Conservative voters are just like, well we're not voting for anyone so I guess everyone's getting it.
	It would be even more embarrassing because earlier this year Starmer was making smart moves under the tutelage of Blair where he was throwing out the red meat and then just over the past few months he's gone, nah, gateway is communism, that's actually what I want.
	Yeah exactly right, so the point being the pressure inside the Conservative Party We'll be so great, and the legitimacy of the people who are like, no, we can't make Britain great again.
	Why would we do that?
	Their position will be so untenable that I think it will be possible for Farage not only to win a conservative leadership election, but just find the political capital, just eject every single one of these people from the party.
	God, I hope so.
	And I'm not saying it's going to happen, I'm saying I think it would be possible that such a thing could happen.
	Yeah, we should help him do it if he goes down this route.
	Exactly.
	And we, on the right, I know there are people on the right who are like, oh, oh, Nigel Farage this, look, no, no, no, no, no.
	We've got, I think, just one shot of this.
	Well, we try everything to win.
	Exactly.
	And if that includes this, okay, give it a go.
	I think it definitely is going to include this.
	And I really think that we should be doing everything we can.
	And that means, and I can't believe I'm recommending this, joining the Conservative Party, actually.
	It might be worth joining now, because then in a year's time you can actually apply to go into various positions internally in the party and things like this.
	A lot of things you've got there for at least a year or longer, blah blah blah, right?
	So, it might actually be worth doing that.
	I spoke at the traditional Britain conference the other day.
	I asked them to hold up their hands if they're a member of the Conservative Party.
	How many hands do you think were held up?
	Five?
	Zero.
	All of the, like, the right wing in this country, this one, none of them were a member of the Conservative Party.
	And I think that's why this is happening.
	Because the right kind of self-selected itself out of the Conservative Party.
	No, we All of the people in all of the minor parties, we all just should just bail into the Conservatives at this point, because they are about to get a staggering defeat.
	And when we do, we need to be in the Conservative Party conferences, we need to be in their meetings, we need to be in the local, like, party meetings being like, you fail.
	Not you personally, obviously, Harry.
	But, you know, pointing at the moment, you failed.
	This all failed.
	It's Farage now.
	This is Farage's party.
	We're going over the top.
	We're getting rid of... This is Farage country.
	Exactly!
	Exactly!
	This is Farage country now, right?
	And actually, if ever there was an opportunity for this, it is now, and Farage sees it.
	And there are a bunch of left-wingers, like the New Statesman and, you know, the New European, going, oh god, the Tory party could end up being the Farage party.
	And I'm like, yes!
	Come on!
	Something is actually happening.
	We can actually have a win, which would be great.
	Of course, we're probably going to lose.
	Everything will probably collapse.
	I'm not saying it's going to happen, right?
	But what I'm saying is it's like watching a beam of light passing through trees and suddenly the alignment, you could see the light.
	So yes, we should go and we should do the best that we can.
	It might fail, but what else have we got?
	Right?
	We're not going to go around.
	The third party isn't going to work.
	For some reason, the British public just won't do it.
	But I think they will vote.
	I think those disaffected Conservative voters will vote for a Faragist Tory party.
	So that's what I think we need to do.
	It's not over.
	It's never over.
	And actually, maybe there's a glimmer of hope here.
	So.
	All right.
	Callum, you look like you have many thoughts.
	I don't know how I can really help with that, because I got kicked out for mentioning Swindon's demographics.
	Wait, did you?
	Yeah.
	So I joined the Conservative Party, I've been working with them to try and learn about them, and then I posted the demographics of Swindon with no comment in a group chat, and they instantly kicked me.
	But did they kick you out of the party?
	As far as I'm aware, yeah.
	Because it doesn't seem like my payment's going through anymore.
	When was this, though?
	Don't mind me asking.
	A while back?
	Right.
	Like last year or something.
	Whenever the census data came out, I was just like, oh, here's the new census data for Swindon.
	Kicked.
	What?
	So I messaged them, I was just like, what the hell?
	And I assume that this was with just low-level, random other members, or was it with people of actual importance?
	I mean, the MP was in the group chat with the people in charge of the constituency, so...
	I don't know.
	So he took it as a personal insult that I dare mention the demographics of his own constituency.
	What you could do is join your local conservative association, get in their little group chat with the MP, and then just post the thing going, you're about to lose your seat.
	You're about to lose.
	You're about to get slaughtered like a pig by the Labour Party.
	You're dead.
	You know, kick me if you dare, but I'm the future.
	Are you saying just grope?
	Why not?
	They're all about to lose their seats.
	And they all deserve it, frankly.
	And they all know that they're going to.
	They deserve sleepless nights.
	Hundreds of Conservative MPs are going to become unemployed tomorrow.
	Well, after the election.
	And they know that they are wily coyotes.
	Start posting McDonald's job listings.
	Yeah, right?
	You know, feel free because, and if they're going to kick you for being like, oh, I want an actual conservative party, then okay, but we'll be back with Farage.
	So, you know, bide your time.
	All right, openings at the circus.
	Look, here's your clown makeup.
	You can get it nice and cheap.
	Exactly, exactly.
	Like, look, exactly, just like.
	We don't endorse bullying, but God, it's fun.
	Anyway.
	Don't put that bit on YouTube.
	Yeah, that bit doesn't go on YouTube.
	So Hasan Piker was invited on Piers Morgan, which was not a crossover anyone was asking for, frankly.
	I don't know how much you hate him.
	Two racist thinkers of our era.
	Just why did Piers Morgan get Hasan Piker on?
	I mean, we're not... I think I speak for us when I say we're not the greatest fans of the Piers Morgan Show, hosted by Piers Morgan with special guest Piers Morgan.
	Because of the... Backed by Piers Morgan.
	Because of that.
	Celebrated by Piers Morgan.
	Because of that problem.
	And he's a goof, is the best way I can put it.
	The most polite way of putting it.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And well, he had Andrew Tate on a while back, and we did a segment about it, where Piers Morgan utterly failed because Andrew Tate just asked him to explain what he meant.
	And Piers Morgan couldn't.
	And then he lost.
	And it's amazing how bad he does in such situations.
	Which I...
	It's why I...
	He lost with Mizzy as well.
	He didn't even.
	Mizzy made him look like an idiot.
	It's like, really?
	This little latchkey kid?
	Well, you don't know what Mizzy was carrying.
	So if Piers was a bit nervous, I can understand.
	I guess.
	But I come to you with the news that apparently there has been an opponent that has made Piers Morgan look good.
	Finally.
	Which is because of Hassan's own idiocy.
	This is like in wrestling when you've got a really weak wrestler and you want to make him look good so you just throw some random weakling out and you just go squash him.
	For anyone who doesn't watch wrestling, it's like in Star Trek when a new alien race turns up and they beat up Worf.
	Oh yeah.
	It's like, that's what this is.
	Oh, poor Worf.
	Yeah.
	But before we get into this, I'm just going to mention something on the website being the Ideal Holiday Lads How We Do, which is this is where we sit around and have a bit more fun and have a bit more free informed discussion than we can have on YouTube.
	It's a lot spicier than we can have on YouTube.
	Certainly is.
	And this is about your ideal holiday.
	And of course, special guest Lord Miles to get his take on that.
	So do go and enjoy it.
	Miles is really funny as well.
	He's a hell of a character.
	But let's get into the interview, because this is the clip that went viral with people who don't like Hassan.
	I'm going to show the people who like Hassan what they have learned as well.
	And this is Hassan saying to everyone, um, I'm a propagandist.
	Which is a pretty weird debating strategy.
	Um, I suppose I'll just let him speak for himself.
	I am not going to, I am not going to conclusively say that this was not Israel's fault.
	I don't expect you to.
	Why?
	Because I just gave you, because I, and not because I'm a propagandist.
	As far as me being a propagandist goes, everyone is a propagandist.
	I'm just honest about it.
	You're a propagandist.
	We have our biases.
	I am at least honest about my biases.
	Who do you think I'm a propagandist for?
	Who do I think you're a propagandist for?
	Every media person is doing propaganda.
	Who for?
	I've got to be doing it for somebody.
	You think it's a bad word, I don't.
	That's just the difference.
	I do, I think it's actually quite a serious charge.
	I think it's a serious charge to level, not as a podcaster, but as a journalist who's broadcasting around the world, who has a reputation, I believe, for being fair and impartial, actually, on these issues.
	It's quite a charge to just say, I'm a stenographer for the Israeli government, or I'm a propagandist.
	I don't think there's any evidence I'm either of those things.
	I'm curious who you think I'm doing the propaganda for.
	While we're having this conversation, 3,000...
	Pierce, while we're having this back and forth, 3,840 Palestinians have been ruthlessly slaughtered in the last incursion into Gaza.
	I feel like this is an incredibly selfish, self-centered conversation to have.
	You asked me to be on here.
	You wanted to hear my perspective.
	I'm willing to give it to you.
	I don't want to talk about whether the... I don't want to talk about Noam Chomsky-style manufacturing consent conversations about how the media is operating in the behest of capitalists.
	There are dead people...
	I only asked you because you're the guy that called me a propagandist and called me a baboon in a suit.
	I was curious as to why.
	You don't want to say who I'm doing the propaganda for.
	We'll move on, we'll move on.
	I agree with you.
	I just love it.
	That's amazing.
	It's two retards fighting.
	It honestly is.
	Hassan's got the biggest open goal.
	Yeah.
	And he fumbles it.
	Who am I a propagandist for?
	Piers, your name is going, you're a propagandist for yourself, Piers.
	That's literally you.
	Literally behind you.
	Your name is on a reel.
	It's just solid gold.
	Yeah.
	Whoever is paying you, Piers, has a worldview that they want put out into the world that you are the mouthpiece for it.
	That's what you say there.
	I know the interview... If you want to give a serious answer, you can say, well, the current military-industrial complex backed by the people who pay you.
	I know the interview that Hasan is referring to when he says the Noam Chomsky manufacturing consent thing, where he's speaking with maybe Andrew Marr, maybe somebody else, I forget the name, but where he says, I don't normally like Noam Chomsky.
	He's a maniac.
	But he was right when he said to this person, and the guy goes, oh, who am I standing for?
	What makes you say I'm a propagandist?
	He says, well, if you weren't in favor of everything that the regime wants you to be, you wouldn't be sat here interviewing me right now.
	That's the right answer to these sorts of things.
	Both of them are idiots, so this entire conversation goes nowhere.
	Specifically dealing with Piers, though, I think the correct answer and the truthful answer really is Piers is just for himself, which is fine.
	You know, he's a personality, a brand, if we want to put it in those god-awful terms that makes me want to throw up.
	But that's how people in London operate, and okay, whatever.
	But instead, Hasan decides to just completely fumble and make a complete moron of himself.
	But literally come out and say, yeah, I'm a propagandist, and... Yeah, that's the double... He doesn't just... He could stab Piers and instead stabs himself.
	But also, like, I mean, I've seen a bunch of clips of Hassan going around on Twitter of him just uncritically accepting Hamas's claims about, like, the hospital and things like that.
	Anything.
	Yeah.
	Anything that confirms my worldview is true.
	Whatever Hamas says is true and Israel is always lying.
	It's like, okay, I'm sure that's the case.
	I'm just trying to avoid being definitive on either side.
	There's a war currently going on where both sides are going to try and portray anything that happens as it being, it was these guys' fault, no it was their fault.
	So I'm just sat there going, no it's just a conflict in the Middle East.
	As far as I'm concerned, I don't want to look stupid by tying my allegiance to either side.
	I'll let people who are experts in airstrikes figure out what in what isn't an airstrike, not me in my bedroom.
	At the very least, I'll wait a couple of days until the actual evidence of it comes out.
	But that's the clip that was shared by people who don't like Hassan, and for fairness, I'm going to show the clip that was shared by Hassan's supporters, which got a lot of traction, but I'm not really sure why, because I wasn't really impressed with this either.
	also is much shorter for some reason.
	It is violence required for its maintenance.
	Okay, listen.
	And that violence is frustrating people.
	I hear you.
	That violence is radicalizing people.
	Hold on.
	I hear you.
	As far as Israel, as far as what Benjamin Netanyahu has done, as far as the war government, what they have done, peers going into Gaza and bombing Gaza and killing 3,480 Palestinians so far in Gaza, 1,000-plus Palestinians so far in Gaza, 1,000-plus children out of all of those casualties, 22 hospitals being bombed, a bakery, the only remaining intact bakery being bombed yesterday,
	These are horrifying crimes that you would openly say are horrifying and unjustifiable when Russia does it, but when Israel does it, Israel has a right to defend itself.
	This is identical to the same talking points that I've heard from every Israeli administration official.
	It's the same talking points that I've heard from American politicians championing the exact same talking points.
	It's the same thing that I've heard from everyone else in the media.
	You might have been against the Iraq war.
	And you use that, but you're using that for evil, in my opinion, at this point, if you are not sitting here and condemning those acts of war crimes, those acts of violence, those acts of collective punishment.
	So that's the pro-Hassan side, but I couldn't help but notice- You're using your opposition to the Iraq War for evil?
	How?
	Did he just compare the Russia-Ukraine thing to Israel-Palestine?
	When did Ukraine invade Russia?
	Anyone who supports Gaza, I really don't think they should be bringing up Russia-Ukraine because one thing I did notice in Russian circles and Ukrainian language circles is that both of them sort of stopped fighting for five minutes once they saw the atrocities in this conflict and went, Jesus Christ!
	You guys are uncivilized as hell!
	It's like everyone was moaning about the various war crimes or whatever's happening in Russia and Ukraine, and then, well, Gaza happened and everyone was like, oh, I forget what real brutality looks like.
	So, not a great idea.
	But his whole argument is just the, well, pro-Palestine line, which is, well, you bombed us, that's terrible.
	It's like, well, yeah.
	You murdered families.
	Yeah.
	Kidnapped children.
	It's a collateral damage in a war.
	Yeah.
	I don't know.
	I just, there was nothing there that made me think, you know, he's come up with a good thought.
	It's literally not even his own thoughts.
	So.
	Well, obviously nothing of certain things is his own thoughts.
	Yeah.
	I mean, not to mention, I'm just going to quickly go through because of course, I mean, look, I don't want to get into the whole conflict, but I do find this just boring.
	I don't know why people who support Gaza don't just, you know, own it.
	Because the whole thing of like, wow, there are dead kids on both sides.
	It's like, yeah, well, you target children and Israel does like roof knocking, which is a whole weird situation where the dead kids are collateral damage.
	They're not something you want to do.
	Yeah.
	I mean, there's just a clip of this for people who are interested.
	So what is roof knocking exactly?
	So they send you a bomb and it hits your roof and it does a big bang.
	And then they give you a period of time to get the hell out.
	Okay.
	Because that's a warning.
	We are going to bomb this target.
	So then after some time has passed, you can see the smoke here and then it will disappear because they have to skip forward.
	And then the building gets blown up by the IDF.
	It's not a huge period of time though.
	No, there's a cut there.
	It's hard to see, but there's a cut in the edit there where the smoke disappears.
	So how long is the period of time?
	It depends on the circumstance, is my understanding.
	Do the people in the inside of these buildings, do they get an indication of what it's going to be?
	That is still more than can be expected from a lot of other... Well, literally no one else on earth does this.
	We've never done this.
	The Americans don't do this.
	I mean, we're trying to minimize our civilian casualties because we're trying to make ourselves look good.
	Killing loads of Iraqis is kind of awkward when you're trying to be the leaders of the free world.
	So you try not to do it.
	That's the argument.
	But I mean, the Israelis are doing stuff that no one else is doing.
	So just this whole idea that like, well, we're purposely targeting kids.
	I don't think they are.
	They just are killing kids by the result of their actions, which is bad.
	Don't get me wrong.
	Don't like dead kids.
	But I know, breaking news.
	But getting back to Hasan, because he decided to carry on, which is, he decided to come out and openly say he is an idiot.
	Which I'm for, you know, I like...
	Self-improvement.
	Not just my perspective on the matter, I'm just a dumb idiot with a Twitch stream who is live reacting to the news and trying to make sense of everything as it's ongoing.
	I usually have a policy of not covering breaking news and sometimes that policy is violated, but ultimately I'm not held up by the same journalistic standards even though I think I do a much better job than most other news outlets in general.
	What was that?
	I'm a moron, but I'm still better than most of the media.
	That was just a cavalcade of lies, right?
	I don't normally cover breaking news.
	That's all he does.
	You see his tweets, get him, we're talking about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever's happening literally that day, right?
	Because what he does... Reaction content.
	Exactly.
	He gets up, he looks at a bunch of news sites, and then just reacts to whatever's happening through a communist lens.
	I thought most of what he does is he switches his camera on, points it at his chair, and then goes off and does other things while other people's YouTube videos play.
	That's the kind of filler.
	It depends on how hard he's working.
	Oh, OK.
	That's the hard work he's doing.
	But then for him to be like, yeah, well, I'm not held up to the same journalistic standards.
	Well, you're not reporting anything.
	You're literally just reacting to the news, so why would you be?
	Though I think I do a much better job.
	How could you do a much better job?
	Because you don't do the job at all.
	You react to the job.
	And then the false modesty.
	Well, I'm just an idiot with a Twitch stream, but I'm way better than all of you guys.
	I mean, Hasan, nobody hates journalists as much as I do, but you're obviously not.
	I should have got the clip.
	There's this fantastic clip, I think it's the Liver King, who's on H3's podcast, and Hasan is there as well.
	And the Liver King just goes off on one.
	That's a hell of a crossover.
	He just starts bringing it up.
	He's like, man, I can't stand people who just react to stuff.
	Imagine, you know, that's fine, but go do something as well.
	Just people who sit around and react to things, and H3 and Hasan look at each other and go, yeah, I hate those guys too, am I right?
	That's because that's literally all we use.
	There were hilarious clips from earlier this year when H3 was getting really annoyed at people stealing content on Twitch and Hassan's just sat there the whole time like, oh god, don't look my way.
	The little looking away meme.
	He went on here as well.
	He says, yes, I am a propagandist and that's why I just confirm my own bias.
	I'll quickly just play some of this, I suppose.
	Just very quickly, if Hassan had anything interesting to say as commentary, I could forgive it all.
	It's interesting that you call me a propagandist, because I want to play you.
	- I could, I could be like, yeah, okay, well at least he makes a good point there and that was insightful, but he doesn't.
	He's an idiot, an actual double digit IQ moron. - It's interesting that you call me a propagandist 'cause I wanna play you, this was your reaction to when the hospital got bombed. - I'm a propagandist. - Well, no, no. - For the record.
	I'm a propagandist.
	I'm saying I am.
	I'm saying I am.
	Before you even play it.
	I'm going to play the clip.
	This is your reaction to the bombing of the hospital the other night.
	While I was in the process of getting ready for the stream, Israel enacted one of the singular worst strikes they have done thus far, and an airstrike, an Israeli airstrike, hit the Al-Ahly Hospital in Gaza City, where thousands of civilians were seeking medical treatment and shelter from the relentless bombing campaign.
	Now interestingly, when you were saying that, I was coming on air too.
	And I took a position, based probably on 30 years of being a journalist, running major newspapers, working at CNN and others, of waiting.
	Of just saying, I think we should just wait and see.
	what has actually happened here, get clarification, see who's actually to blame before we start passing judgement.
	You raced in to assume, as many people did by the way, including the New York Times, BBC, mainstream media, and of course most of the Arab world then followed, that this was clearly, indisputably, an Israeli airstrike or mishospital.
	And yet all the evidence now suggests very strongly that it wasn't.
	That in fact, this was a rocket that misfire coming from a terrorist group inside Gaza.
	So my question for you is this, why would you be so certain in what you said before you knew? - Okay, so first and foremost, before we get started on this conversation, let's understand something very important here.
	There's no... I can't be bothered.
	No, no, I want to know what his answer is.
	I really want to know his answer.
	It's literally just leftist rhetoric.
	There's no food in Gaza.
	There's no water in Gaza.
	This is all by design.
	This is because Gaza is under a brutal blockade, a brutal occupation by the Israeli government.
	Okay?
	So that plays a role in the fog of war and misinformation that gets spread.
	Having said that, however, you You made it seem as though there is a certainty that this was 100% not an Israeli airstrike.
	No, I didn't.
	I didn't.
	I literally just said, I literally just said it's not.
	Okay, you can pause there.
	You made it seem like there was 100% certainty it wasn't Israeli.
	No, you said it was 100% certainty that it was!
	You absolute liar!
	And Piers just said the evidence suggests.
	Yeah!
	We didn't know, so we waited.
	Video came out that it turns out it looks like it's a rocket that misfired, blah blah blah.
	I mean, this is the incredible thing about this interview.
	Unbelievable.
	I learned this segment on this, which is that, correctly, as you point out, I don't think anyone hates journalists more than you.
	And Piers Morgan is definitely on that list, mostly because of... I wouldn't call Piers Morgan a journalist.
	Well, recently it's because of all of the self-obsession as well, which is a whole other conversation.
	And then his interviews he's done since he set up his show.
	He's done a terrible job because he's been owned by multiple guests who come on who just ask him basic questions.
	He's owned by a London street thug.
	Not even a thug!
	And somehow Hasan has made himself look even worse.
	Because even Piers Morgan can stand over Hassan and be like, well, at least I have the ability to wait for the truth and just find out what the evidence suggests.
	Instead of just going, yes, I am a propagandist and I stand for whatever my bias thinks so.
	And that's his worldview.
	I kind of admire the honesty.
	Like it's literally like an idiot just coming out and going, yeah, I'm just a propagandist.
	I'm totally lying to you.
	And I get paid for it.
	And Piers is like, yeah, but I wanted to have a dialogue.
	And he's like, no, there's no such thing.
	I mean, this is amazing, though, because it's that... you get propagandist from, like, the pro-global American empire position, the anti-American empire position, let's say.
	But very rarely do they just come out and say, yeah, well, my life is basically worthless because all I do is say whatever I need to say.
	But this is how low IQ Hasan is, right?
	Because everyone else understands that you have to mask that behind plausible deniability, right?
	Everyone else, okay, well, maybe I rushed a judgment, my mistake, I'll take that back.
	Hasan's like, I don't care that I lied, I'm a propagandist and I'm too low IQ to understand why that makes me look bad.
	Or maybe that says something about the audience he's garnered.
	Absolutely.
	They will believe literally anything and then the exact opposite if he tells them to.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	What a cancerous community.
	Oh, I suppose we'll move on.
	Was there not another link that you had?
	I don't have enough time.
	I'll save it for another day.
	Fair play.
	Alright, onto the last segment, and we were just speaking about propaganda.
	Do you love that your escapist entertainment that you were supposed to spend your spare time playing and enjoying is now all purely propaganda?
	I don't play modern video games.
	No, that's probably the best idea, really.
	What about you, Callum?
	God.
	No, I don't either.
	The last video game I played was Medieval 2 Total War, which came out in 2006.
	Fair play.
	Very based option.
	It's a great game.
	The game hasn't changed.
	And it's just like Shogun 2.
	Yeah, it's too foreign.
	Time for guns.
	Exactly, that's why I don't like it.
	As part of this...
	It doesn't have crusades.
	We'll discuss something else as well as just the propagandistic elements of everything these days.
	I will also briefly touch on video game graphics, because Callum, we had this discussion earlier this year when we were talking about J.K.
	Rowling's legacy, Transphobe's legacy in video games, and you were talking about graphical fidelity and the clarity of the image.
	Basically just declining and declining and declining in the arms race to get the shiniest, most prettiest graphics with all of the sparkly effects.
	It's so real, it's so real though.
	It's so real.
	I can't see anything on screen.
	I've really come around to your position on this, I have to say, because I've been playing a lot more old games recently and it's nice just being able to tell what the hell I'm looking at.
	Colour contrast.
	Yeah, not everything being a desaturated, grey, lens-flared mess like a J.J.
	Abrams movie.
	But it's not even because you can do... This is one of the criticisms I hate of Fallout 3, where they're like, oh, it's great.
	It's like, yeah, it's a post-apocalypse, you moron.
	But it's that ability to tell what is an enemy, what is an object, what you can go and see.
	I don't know what the correct word is.
	It's instantly recognizable visual design.
	Yeah, and people have made endless video essays on valves, particularly Perfect work when it comes to Team Fortress 2.
	I think it's designing the silhouette was what they really wanted for Team Fortress 2.
	But it's the colours, the type of colours you use, there is a weird amount of thought that Valve put into that example.
	But then when you go to a modern video game... It shouldn't be weird though, it should be the basic amount of thought that you put in.
	You go to a modern video game and it's just, yeah but it looks real.
	I'm like, it doesn't.
	But even in the race to look as real as possible, we have hit uncanny valley territory where the more realistic you try and make it look, the more it highlights all of the not realistic aspects of the way that faces are moving.
	But also, there's this weird element of red herring to it as well.
	So I'm a big Total War fan, and I'm most disappointed by Pharaoh Total War.
	I didn't buy it, thank God.
	I watched everyone else's reviews of it, and they were like, oh my God, what is going on?
	And like, zooming out is a great example where you've got just masses of men, but there's no color distinction.
	There's just some variant of brown on a brown terrain.
	And it's just like, okay, what is going on?
	But then if you look at like all of the promo stuff and like the main menus and stuff, it's these incredibly high detailed high definition like characters of the thing.
	And it's like that was such a waste of money.
	Who plays Rome Total War and then zooms in to see the graphical fidelity of your legion?
	No, you see the blocks fighting.
	Sure, but even if you're a bit closer or something, fine.
	Okay, it's fine.
	It's understandable to make the individual soldier.
	Nice, but not photorealistic.
	Okay, no.
	Go and make him look photorealistic if you have to, right?
	I don't care.
	Why have you spent all of this money making photorealistic ancient Egyptian commanders?
	No one cares.
	That's not what the game's about.
	That was a total diversion.
	And then, you know, just all of the sort of High definition graphics that don't apply to the actual play of the game itself.
	It's such a red herring.
	It's such a waste of time and money.
	And it's not like the game was any good anyway.
	So why did you bother?
	And you know, the sales speak for themselves.
	I think what matters, if you want to present it with the advertising and all of the nice flashy features that will draw people in eventually, and then make sure that the game, when you're actually playing the game, doesn't need to be anywhere near as high detail as you're talking about.
	Just make sure that there's a level of clarity where I can tell what I'm looking at.
	and that the gameplay is fun and then you make all of that all the bells and whistles around it worth it you would think so wouldn't you yeah you you would think so but the game designers aren't intent on making games fun anymore and our escapism isn't escapism anymore because i was i was shocked just a quick thing before you go on right that nothing hammers this point home more than pharaoh total war actually right because i haven't played it i haven't played it either right i I've played Troy Total War.
	It has really annoyed you.
	No, no, I've played Troy Total War, so I basically have played Pharaoh Total War because it's literally just a reskin of that.
	But the numbers are what shows it, right?
	On average per day, there's about five and a half thousand people playing Medieval 2 Total War, and there's about two and a half thousand people playing Pharaoh.
	There's 200,000 people playing TF2 right now.
	Sure, and... Of course there are!
	There are, you know, loads more for other... No, no, but it speaks to the solidness of the gameplay.
	If you make a game that's that solid, doesn't matter how much time will pass, people will still... Yeah, it has longevity.
	People still go back and play the original Half-Life with all sorts of mods to try and make it look nicer, but you can still just play it because the gameplay lasts.
	The gameplay lasted to the point where you can still enjoy it as an experience over 25 years later.
	But what I don't think will last is stuff like the newest Spider-Man game.
	Spider-Man 2 for PlayStation 5, which I played the first one when it came out on PlayStation 4 back in 2018.
	There was a lot of time I spent at university playing that when I should have been doing work.
	But that's the university experience, realistically.
	And it was an okay game.
	It wasn't Spider-Man 2 for the PlayStation 2.
	But it was an okay game, had a decent story, and it was fun.
	Fun?
	Yeah, I know, right?
	Remarkable.
	And then I see this, and I think, no, this can't be real.
	It's a 4chan post.
	This can't be real.
	So it's Spider-Man 2.
	Let me read this.
	Yeah, yeah, go on.
	Has so much positive energy and progressive political messaging that at one point I actually found my cheeks hurt from prolonged grinning as you swing through the game's immense and detailed virtual New York.
	God, who wants to see a detailed virtual New York?
	You'll take in a fantastically diverse city filled with people of various ages, gender identities, physical abilities, and skin color, all just living their lives.
	There are cultural street festivals, such as rats cooking, dancing cooking that you can almost smell, rainbow Ukrainian flags hanging in front of stores.
	That can't be real.
	People speak in the languages in which they are fluent, which means that Spanish, English, or ASL.
	I looked into that.
	Yeah, American Sign Language.
	And the missions often up the positivity ante.
	Good God.
	You know, I was really enjoying... Have you finished the paragraph?
	Some of my favorites, the one where there isn't even any fighting or action, because that's what people play Spider-Man for, but rather Spidey just doing friendly neighborhood Spider-Man stuff.
	Like when he helps a gay kid arrange a series of surprises around campus for his boyfriend.
	Why would I play this game?
	Yeah, why?
	I'm reading this.
	God, it sounds so fun.
	I can't wait to go and help.
	I love the commentary there though.
	Haha, another 4chan hyperbolic woke game description.
	It's from an actual game review.
	Oh.
	Yeah, and then it caps it all off with, this game makes for fantastic escapism.
	How?
	What am I escaping from?
	That's what we live with.
	I'm escaping from the real world into a colourful facsimile of the real world, where you have all of the things that everybody wants, well, that everything is promoted to us, but now it has a nice, colourful, shiny Spider-Man veneer over it, and things New York works, apparently.
	I've made progressivism work.
	It's in a video game.
	Finally, if we have Spider-Man webbing the whole thing together and just gripping on both sides like Tobey Maguire trying to make progressivism work, that's how you do it.
	Yes, if we literally make it fictional, it can work.
	And sadly, this is a real review.
	From the financial post, Average Games Reviewing Site.
	Average Games Reviewing Site, yes.
	And they missed out some other good little details here.
	So they say, at one point, someone says they want to pay Spider-Man for his services and he replies that Spider-Man never accepts payment except for hugs.
	He'll always take a hug.
	Was he a pedo?
	I don't think that's supposed to be the implication.
	He was helping children earlier.
	I suppose maybe he's the gay guy.
	Maybe he wanted to show how inclusive he is.
	It's also worth noting that our hero, or heroes, and this is just a great admission of the fact that this game is not made for anybody to just play it.
	It's just not made for anybody.
	Yeah, it's not made for anybody to play and enjoy and go, wow, I can't believe I'm in a magical fantasy world.
	No, it just says they also serve as a talking point for the game's progressive message.
	We get to play through as both 20-something Peter Parker and teenage black Puerto Rican Miles Morales.
	There's also, there's no paternalistic talking down from Peter to Miles.
	They are equal in every way, because we wouldn't want the game reaffirming hierarchy between, like, a master and a student or anything like that.
	Even definitionally, no one's, oh whatever, why am I trying?
	It's actually fake progressivism.
	I know, it's just ridiculous.
	Anyone who refuses to play Spider-Man 2 simply because of its pro-people vibe, it's pro-people, if you don't want to play this... Oh, I'm anti-people.
	Yeah, you're anti-people now.
	It's going to be denying themselves one of the most entertaining games of the year.
	I'll live.
	Yeah, I'll just have to live with that.
	I'll live.
	I'll just be crusading in the Middle East.
	And then very shockingly, very little of this review is dedicated to talking about, you know, the actual game.
	Oh, really?
	The actual gameplay part of this.
	Plugged onto this progression.
	I thought it was a series of slides of pride flags and Spider-Man, you know, high-fiving trans people and arresting transphobes for mean tweets or something.
	But no, there is a game involved in this as well.
	And then they say, oh, it plays really great, it's so great, except I never noticed a lag or stutter while zipping about.
	The game did unexpectedly quit on me a few times, so it did.
	It crashed.
	It crashed on you.
	But I took that, and this is incredible, I took that as evidence that Insomniac, the developers, are pushing boundaries with this one.
	What?
	The game crashed.
	The game's a buggy mess.
	Yeah, well they're pushing boundaries, you see.
	That's a sign of quality, don't you know?
	I'm pretty sure Insomniac might have written this review themselves.
	And I think, Insomnia, correct me if I'm wrong, chat, but I think they're the guys who did Spyro.
	They did the original Spyro games back in the day.
	And now they're doing this.
	Now they're doing this.
	When does Spyro come out?
	Back in the 90s.
	Yeah, there we go.
	So 20 years ago, it's probably an entirely different studio.
	Yeah, it's probably entirely different people inside of it.
	But it's just annoying to me that game studios can get away with this, where you have the name of an incredibly prestigious game studio that's produced some classics in the past.
	It's filled with completely different people.
	It's not as if you have anything to do with success.
	You are correct.
	It has.
	Yeah, they did Spyro.
	And they can still get away with calling themselves, we're the guys that made Spyro.
	No, you're not.
	Black Isle, man.
	I used to love Black Isle.
	Black Isle, they did the Fallout.
	Fallout, they used to do so much great stuff and then they just created.
	The last thing I remember about Black Isle is they became, oh god, Fallout New Vegas developers.
	What are they called?
	Oh, I don't know.
	You know the ones I'm talking about.
	I do know the ones.
	And they did Fallout New Vegas, and they kept getting shafted by having games that they were going to make the best game ever, but they had increasingly small time limits to be able to produce them.
	Still produced classics like Fallout New Vegas that were just boogie messes.
	Obsidian Entertainment?
	Yeah, Obsidian.
	That's it.
	That's the last thing I remember about them.
	And then the last game that they made was Outer Worlds, which also, as far as I'm aware, has lots of progressive messaging in it, but not as much as Starfield.
	Oh wow, there we go.
	Which is just boring.
	Would you like the pride flag or the racial pride flag on your video game?
	Decisions, decisions.
	God, I love being a gamer.
	Again, the Pope has just declared a crusade on Cairo in my game.
	I'm just saying.
	Like, which would you rather play?
	That is pretty cool.
	But like, it makes you wonder.
	Like you say, this game isn't intended for anybody, really.
	Nobody who will actually play video games.
	But who do they think they're developing it for?
	Well, they think they're developing it for the same people that say that the first one from 2018 was Pro Cop.
	Why?
	I guess it is.
	I guess that's true.
	Why, you may ask?
	Because Spider-Man, at some points, helps the police.
	Yes, I'm sure Kate Harreld there is a big fan of video games.
	Yeah, so they're designing it for these sorts of people because they came out in interviews and said, oh, we didn't intend for it.
	We didn't intend to be pro-cop in this game where you fight crime.
	That would be pro-criminal!
	Like, what, is Spider-Man going to go in there and be like, yeah, are you looting?
	They didn't put out BLM during 2020, because if so, they are literally pro-criminal.
	I mean, like, there's a smash and grab going on.
	Spider-Man swings in, wraps up all of the loot that they got and helps them carry it away.
	Turns around.
	Thank you, Spider-Man, for being on the side of justice.
	Turns around, calls the police bigots.
	Yeah.
	Webs them to the wall so the looters can get away.
	If they'd only had their physical needs provided for them by the state, this wouldn't have happened.
	Socio-economic factors, like, unbelievable.
	So they're basically making this game for Redditors?
	Yeah.
	And how do you know that they're really making it?
	Well, because they put the bloody Spider-Man point meme in the game.
	If you run into Miles Morales as part of the game, you can run up to him and go, oh, point!
	Oh wow, I've seen that meme.
	And all of Reddit went absolutely wild.
	Can you believe it?
	Yeah.
	And here's where I get onto the graphics, because like I say, you can see from some of these clips, wow, those are some pretty photorealistic graphics.
	Oh great.
	Pretty nice graphics.
	But when you zoom in... Piss stop?
	What?
	I think that's meant to be that.
	Please stop.
	Please stop.
	It's just another one of those places where they're pushing the boundaries and not Yeah, you can see how photorealistic, how much effort must have gone into the graphics.
	Maybe it's just a realistic depiction of how little effort is put into the painting on the thing in New York.
	But how much effort did they put into the faces, particularly Mary Jane's face?
	This is one of the problems that the photorealistic graphics had.
	Look at that!
	For one, in the first game, she looked nothing like this.
	She actually looked like a pretty redhead, like you would expect her to.
	And they decided, you know, because games companies now are filled with middle-aged spinster women, and we can't have attractive women in our games anymore.
	Let's make her this.
	You know what?
	I bet she looks exactly like one of the developers.
	Probably.
	I've seen the facial model that they used for her and she looks nothing like her.
	Because in all of the sort of like, you know, millennial remakes of everything, they're basically self-inserts of unattractive women.
	I mean, look at that.
	Look at that.
	So that's Peter and that's his elderly grandmother.
	I love that they're basically trying to degrade women.
	Women, aren't they ugly and kind of weird looking?
	Peter Parker looks pretty normal, like average looking guy, but why doesn't she look like she's 70?
	Why not?
	Breaking down boundaries.
	Have you seen women?
	It's like, literally it's like what a misogynist would do to disgrace women if they were trying.
	So an army of chudjacks has taken over Insomniac and they say, billions must refund.
	They don't want it to succeed anymore.
	We're taking it down from the inside.
	Yeah, okay, great.
	So yeah, the moral of this particular part of the story is don't buy this game.
	I don't even know if it's out yet.
	I've just been seeing these reviews and these screenshots that make me go, don't buy this game.
	One of the things I love about this though is, you know the sort of like, oh, the progressive, the past was never good.
	Everything was always awful.
	No, there's never been an attractive women.
	Women have always been unattractive.
	We can't represent attractive women anyway.
	All of the women who rejected me, they weren't attractive anyway.
	Women were always transgender.
	Yeah, we've got Mark Watson here.
	What are they doing?
	Mark Joe Watson.
	This is hardly the first time that they've done this either, right?
	There have been loads of high-profile games with the women characters in it.
	Yeah, well, the interesting thing, mostly they're Sony games, for one, so there might just be some mandate from up high from Sony going, no attractive women, no, we can't be having that.
	Unless you're a Japanese developer.
	Unless you're one of our Japanese developers, in that case, make them as sexy as possible.
	Is it the evil queen from Snow White who's currently in charge of Sony or something?
	No, Sony might, being a Japanese company, they might just be trying to sabotage the Western market and sell more of their own domestic games.
	Wait, but this is literally, who's the fairest on the wall?
	It's like, oh look, a video game character.
	No, make her foul!
	Because Horizon did the same thing, where the first game, the main character wasn't like a stunner or anything, but she looked like a pretty average girl next door type.
	And then they made her face fatter, chubbier, more masculine, more pronounced jaw and chin.
	And they spent a lot of processing power putting peach fuzz on her cheeks.
	Can you imagine?
	Like 20 years ago, they were going, imagine the developments in gaming that we'll have 20 years from now.
	What we'll be doing?
	And then the developers just use it to put peach fuzz on the women's faces.
	Oh, how disappointing the future must be for people like yourself.
	You feel represented, ladies.
	Maybe, but don't buy this game.
	What you should instead buy is a subscription to our website.
	That's correct.
	Now, this is true.
	This is actually a free article, so if you want to try before you buy to see the kind of quality that we put out, then you can check out this recent article that I did where I was talking about brief history of blackwashing, talking about race swapping within media, because being Black History Month, I thought... Is it?
	Yeah, it's October in the UK.
	It's February in America, October in the UK, but in the UK, because we're little America, we still have to celebrate it kind of in February anyway.
	It's weird, I haven't seen anything about it.
	I think the news has been overtaken with a few other things at the moment.
	I guess so, yeah.
	But I discuss in this not just examples of characters being race swapped, but I also talk about a lot of the top-down imposition of you have to do this.
	And once again, with these games companies, it is from the top down.
	The games companies have decided women are no longer attractive.
	You're no longer allowed to have attractive women.
	All of your heroes are black now.
	Women, ugly.
	People in charge, black.
	Pretty much.
	Okay.
	Who's the new boss exactly?
	Exactly, what?
	An ugly black woman, presumably.
	Speaking of which, in Ofcom, I point out, not saying that you should draw any association there, but I point out in this article that Ofcom have guidelines for television programs and all sorts of media that they regulate saying that you must demand that broadcasters commission content with diverse stories and voices.
	So, from the top down, if you're regulated by Ofcom, Then you have to insert progressivism.
	You have to insert... If it helps, right, we have a lot of diversity on this show.
	We do!
	We talk about diversity every single day.
	Yeah, we have a diverse range of opinions.
	Does it say you have to do it positively or negatively?
	To be fair, it doesn't specify.
	It doesn't specify, right?
	I kind of have an idea of which way they'll push it.
	Sure.
	We report lots of crimes.
	All I'm saying is when Ofcom come for us and they're like, you don't have any diversity on your show, we're like, au contraire.
	This is how bad London is now.
	We have an Irishman.
	No, no, no, no.
	We feature diversity all the time.
	We cover it non-stop.
	This is very true.
	But speaking of Ofcom, their diversity bit back because diversity, it turns out, as we've covered, is diverse and also has a diverse range of opinions and beliefs.
	Diversity has a hierarchy.
	Diversity certainly does have a hierarchy and it's very clear to see who's higher and lower when Ofcom's director for online safety supervision, so presumably the woman that was about to smash us as soon as this comes into power.
	Israel's like, no!
	Thank you, Israel.
	Jumped in the way and got her suspended.
	I thought it was fired at first, but it's suspended because she liked a post calling the British government's support for Israel a vile colonial alliance and calling the Jewish nation an apartheid state.
	Just suspended.
	She's just suspended.
	She's not fired.
	Not been fired.
	They say that women exist.
	Like, I probably would have got some sort of hate crime record for saying something like that.
	She just gets a slap on the wrist and some time out.
	Sit on the naughty step for us.
	And then you can go back to managing the country's media.
	And she was only, Fadzai Madzingira, she was only appointed in June.
	So it took her about four months.
	But the Conservatives are in charge of this.
	Is there a single leftist, insane, bonkers, batty leftist that they won't put in charge of an important institution?
	No.
	No.
	That seems to be the only answer.
	Because Labour passed the Equality Act and goddammit... We're going to enforce it!
	There isn't anything more sacred to us.
	The Conservatives will never do anything if it's not enforcing Labour policies to the nth degree.
	I tell you what man, I can't wait for the Farage's takeover.
	That's all I'm saying.
	Well, fingers crossed, because she described herself as a Zimbabwean, black feminist, a student of decolonization, so no wonder she was liking the posts that she was after we've learned what decolonization actually looks like, and a deep believer in liberty for all.
	So glad she's in charge.
	I feel like there's a contradiction with that last bit.
	I'm a libertarian totalitarianist.
	It just came completely out of nowhere.
	Okay, so you're crazy leftist, crazy leftist, crazy libertarian.
	Isn't it so weird that we're putting someone who actively identifies as Zimbabwean in charge of British media?
	I'm not saying you haven't.
	Obviously.
	Obviously there's deep historic ties with Zimbabwe, but it'd be like going to Peru and then being like, yeah, so we're putting a Chinese guy in charge of the media of this country.
	It's like, why?
	Why would you want that?
	Like, whose idea was this?
	What trade would we do with Zimbabwe?
	Well, it was the Conservatives' idea.
	Yeah, the right-wing party is like, yeah, so we're just going to put some rando who's an insane left-winger.
	Some insane leftist in charge of an organization that regulates our television, the propaganda arm of the government, basically, that already has really strict guidelines on forcing diversity into all of your stories.
	You don't want black Anne Boleyn?
	Well, sorry, this regulation here says you're getting Anne Boleyn.
	You know who should be in charge of what the citizens of your nation can say and do?
	A foreigner.
	A foreigner who's bonkers, absolutely mental, and wants to eradicate Israel.
	Why not that person?
	I can think of lots of reasons, actually.
	Well, I don't want to cause a fuss.
	I suppose there is that.
	It makes perfect sense to me.
	And if they didn't do it, it wouldn't be very British of them, would it?
	If the Conservatives pushed leftist policies, it wouldn't be very Conservative or British of them.
	That's very true.
	Yeah, well, the problem is because elsewhere in pop culture and the media, even if you do have the original creators, even if you have the people whose babies, this was my project, they still go along with all of this because they have completely imbibed intersectional Kool-Aid.
	But I don't know if you watched the other year, the Invincible cartoon on Amazon Prime, I think it was.
	Well, they took a very popular character who, if I scroll down, looks like this, this blonde, blue eyed woman.
	Yeah.
	She's too attractive.
	And they turned her into this.
	Right.
	And not only did they do that, they also changed her personality entirely.
	She's got to stop being happy.
	And now she's got to look at the facial features.
	She's just smiling.
	Here you can see that she's just finding out that her boyfriend is a superhero.
	And she's like, oh, wow, this is really cool.
	I'm really happy that you're going out and helping people.
	And now she's miserable.
	In this, she figures out before he tells her, and then freaks out that he kept ditching her dates so that he could go and save people's lives.
	Despite the fact that she already knew that he was a superhero and just didn't tell him that he'd figured out.
	And the creator of the original comic book, Robert Kirkman, who also was behind the Walking Dead comics, has basically said, oh, it's perfectly fine that they've done this to my creation because we have to recognize a couple of dumb white guys made this comic book in the early 2000s.
	Yeah, good point, actually.
	He deserves to not have anything.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I don't want to hear from dumb white guys.
	I think he's got a good point there.
	He said that he and artist Ryan Otley failed to make the original comics sufficiently diverse, particularly by modern standards.
	Imagine just thinking to yourself, beating yourself up over the fact that, oh, I couldn't imagine where social trends were going in the next 20 years.
	How terrible of them.
	But that means this isn't sufficiently diverse for 2100.
	That is, of course, true.
	Yeah, 20 years from now, these guys are going to be kicking themselves I'm just thinking about the concept of representation book club that we did, right on the, on the website.
	So, okay.
	What's being represented?
	Okay.
	Well, the, the, the, the white girl is happy, supportive and kind, and she wants to help her boyfriend.
	They are representing the black girl as being resentful and difficult.
	That's what they think when they're making present.
	Black girls are like, oh yeah, well, she's got to be really difficult to deal with.
	She's got to be a really combative, aggressive, loud mouth who won't shut up.
	She goes on and on about how she's going to go to literally study a social justice course in university.
	And they're all like, yeah, yeah, okay, great.
	That's representation.
	That's what black people like.
	It's like, Is that really what you think?
	Would you be surprised if I told you Seth Rogen produced this?
	I'd be disappointed.
	It's true.
	He also produced All of the Boys, which has slowly been going down a massive slope as well.
	Season 1 was funny, but the rest of it's trash.
	Yeah, season 1 was alright, and then 2 and 3.
	But great.
	And you get the same thing elsewhere.
	You've got people saying, oh, we need to benefit to the broadened cast for representation of Percy Jackson, which I don't.
	Oh, who cares?
	Who cares?
	That's all these people believe in.
	All they believe in is we just need more black people.
	The more black people, the higher the Rotten Tomatoes score.
	I'm full on accelerationist at this point.
	No, no, no.
	No, no, no.
	They all need to be trans.
	Every character in your show needs to be trans, actually.
	Possibly from Mars.
	Like, every...
	No, no, no.
	I want full spectrum diversity and representation in everything ever, all the time, because it's going to cause you to crash and burn.
	Well, if we can't have them all trans, we need to have them all at least be black first, because...
	Do you know who else was black?
	Jesus was black.
	Oh for God's sake.
	I thought it was bad enough that Robin Hood was black.
	Of course it was.
	This was actually really hilarious because the film is being done by... Jesus is black and resentful.
	It's a Mel Gibson movie to wake people up.
	No, it's being backed by Jay-Z.
	It's being directed by some guy, James Samuel, who directed a film called The Harder They Fall.
	Is that John the Baptist as well?
	Yeah, that's probably John the Baptist.
	It's called The Book of Clarence.
	This isn't Jesus, this is Clarence who decides to basically steal Jesus' shtick to try and make some money.
	Right.
	Oh, really, does he?
	But don't worry, if you watch the trailer, Jesus is still black.
	Everyone in Jerusalem was black because we were Israelites.
	Great point.
	More diversity is needed, I think.
	And I just wanted to highlight... Can we talk about colorism?
	Because their skin isn't actually that dark as black people.
	Well, they're African-Americans.
	Exactly.
	That's not black.
	Is that real representation?
	You know, people from Nigeria, they're going to be like, well, you're oppressing me by being... Nigerians are light-skinned blacks.
	They're not that light-skinned.
	We've got to talk South Sudan.
	South Sudanese representation.
	I'm not watching it.
	Yeah.
	Well, I just wanted to, before I finish this off, because of the Jay-Z Association, they talk in Bounding Into Comics, in this article, about Jay-Z a bit and there's some insane stuff in here that I didn't know got on recently and I just wanted to highlight it.
	He's talking about the film and he says that what happened when we, people of colour and powerful women, powerful wamen, like my wife who I've cheated on a number of times, Occupy and inhabit a space.
	I knew I had to put our spin on it and inject our flavor into it.
	Rapper Jay-Z would double down on his claims and further push the narrative that black people were in fact the center of biblical Jerusalem.
	They're not just stealing the setting, these people doing it are actually insane enough to think that's real.
	Yeah, noting the director is fearless and a genius, he's not afraid to think big about things that put us as a people in places where we were erased.
	Not that we weren't before, that we always were and we were erased from it.
	That's right!
	That's literally what this is.
	I support this 100%.
	He said, we didn't exist in Western times?
	We all know that's false.
	Nobody's saying that you never exist.
	Not even joking, when was the last time you really laughed?
	It was Western times as well, actually.
	When was the last time you laughed at a comedian like you're laughing now, right?
	I want more of this.
	I'm in full support of it.
	Totally.
	More, please.
	That's right, Jay-Z.
	We didn't exist in biblical times.
	History would say otherwise.
	Yeah, it does.
	It does.
	And then it goes on to say, Jay-Z, who has been the subject of theories claiming that the rapper is a member of a secret society of elites founded by religious leader Clarence Edward Smith, who might be who this film is about because it's the book of Clarence, who view themselves as gods, You know what?
	I don't want to take anything away from them.
	Recently opened the Book of Hove exhibit in Brooklyn, New York as a celebration of his own life.
	The exhibition... Celebrating my own life?
	That's totally normal.
	includes the Rattwood's very own Book of Psalms, which is 30 years of Jay-Z lyrics written and displayed as if they are biblical scripture from God himself.
	I need to show the Book of 99 Problems. - In these sacred words you will find a bitch not in a single one.
	I mean, this is a real... No laughing please, I am a god.
	I'm not even the son of God.
	I named this segment Escapism is Dead.
	It's not!
	This is real escapism.
	I too wish I could escape into psychosis.
	Is Mel Gibson on Fiverr?
	Because I want to pay him to endorse this.
	Yeah.
	So, escapism isn't dead after all, and we should all go and give the Book of Clarence our money, not Spider-Man 2.
	Well, with that brilliant news, we'll go to the video comments.
	I'm just your average Lotus eater, so of course I've written a few novels.
	If you want to read a fun story, then go to cscooper.com.au.
	because I'm not trying to sell you my novels.
	And he has such a winning smile.
	He had me there.
	I thought it was another guy.
	Yeah, that was sweet.
	Yeah, that was nice.
	You know, there's actually a lot of giant robots around, but they're too complicated, expensive, and dangerous to actually fight with.
	I mean, there was a supposed fight a few years ago, but that was so heavily scripted, they pretty much just pissed in the Cheerios.
	They even stated they didn't know what a giant robot fight should look like?
	Talk about morons.
	So we're a few years away from MechWarrior then.
	It's an American idiom!
	It's an American idiom, they pissed in the Cheerios.
	It must be!
	I've never heard that.
	I like it, though.
	Yes.
	Cheerios.
	Is there another one, John?
	I think that was it.
	We just had the two.
	Right.
	Should we go a bit longer on the comments today?
	Because we've overrun.
	Yeah, we can do.
	And I get the thing.
	There are going to be a lot of people who want to have a bit of chip in on this one.
	So Matt Thompson says, in response to the Farage is happening bit, Boris's response to London becoming minority British was apparently it happened.
	To be honest with you, at least he recognized it happened.
	Like, there are still loads of people in the Labour Party who are like, no, it's still majority British.
	It's just not what the numbers say.
	I think we are still overall as a country, I think, is it 80% white British?
	So Labour might be pointing to that.
	It's somewhere between 70-80%.
	What they do is they fold in the European numbers.
	Oh, okay.
	See, look, it's 56% whiter, but I didn't say it was 56% whiter, so it's 37% English.
	I don't want London full of Frenchies.
	Yeah.
	No, no, literally the French occupy a lot of where the Cockneys used to live now.
	There's 200,000 French in London occupying where the Cockneys used to live.
	It's like, why?
	Don't they have... no, I mean, I suppose there are North Africans occupying where the French used to live.
	So I guess they've got to go somewhere, but like... They're refugees.
	Yeah.
	There's a lot of piss idioms in American language about refugees.
	Yeah, I found an idioms free dictionary and they've got pissed in your cornflakes, in your Cheerios, in the soup, in the pocket, in your food.
	Anyway, Matt says, I don't trust anyone until I see results, which is totally fair.
	But if Farage leads the sort of Farageist jihad against the Conservative Party, I'm totally going to support that.
	Mike Hunt says, two years ago, a Conservative Party delegation representing Britain said to an international conference on freedom and democracy in Miami that Farage was the largest threat to both.
	Well, that's good news.
	You know, I like it when the people I want conquered are like, oh, I'm really scared of this guy who's about to conquer us.
	To think he could become their leader just shows how desperate they've become, or just how weak they've become.
	Because, I mean, I don't think there's anyone currently ruling the Conservative Party who's like, God, I hope we get Farage.
	Calum, stop looking at piss idioms.
	Apparently there's a US Marine Corps one called Piss Cutter.
	It's the hats they wear.
	Okay, well... But what's wrong with American culture?
	How did this become a thing?
	How long do you have if you want me to go over that?
	Anyway, Ethelstan says, I agree with Harry's evaluation of the failure of the new parties to establish themselves against the older institutions, but I'd argue it's missing something.
	There are too many new small right-wing parties.
	Small parties are never going to get votes to make a difference unless they are a one-issue party.
	People won't vote for something that feels like a protest vote.
	That's why having Reform, Reclaim, Heritage, UKIP, all as separate parties is not a threat.
	Better they were one rival party with different factions to keep ideas fresh.
	That makes a lot of sense to me.
	I totally agree with that.
	Also, they split the votes.
	Absolutely.
	I mean, it would be nice to have them, they probably got something like 4,000 votes all tallied up or something in these constituencies, which would be threatening the Lib Dems.
	And it would show those who decided to sit out this time because they don't want to vote Conservative anymore.
	Oh, there is somewhere I could vote for.
	Yeah, it would be good.
	But to be honest with you, all of these parties should just be joining the Tories.
	Just be like, no, we're going in.
	I think the easiest way is going to be through.
	Colin says, to be fair, the Monster Raving Loony Party are probably same in the Greens.
	Yeah, but they're about as left-wing as the Greens.
	That's the thing.
	I really hate that they still exist, to be honest, because they advertise themselves as this, oh, we're a quirky throwaway protest vote.
	We're outside of the establishment.
	No, you're exactly what the establishment wants.
	Exactly.
	To be able to make it look like there's a protest vote.
	In no way challenge anything that's being said.
	It's like Lord Buckethead just comes out and goes, I'm a progressive.
	Okay, why aren't you in Labour then?
	Yeah, exactly!
	Literally, if Lord Buckethead was in Labour, he'd probably get a seat.
	Yeah, he probably would, and he would be not the most clownish person on the front bench.
	He probably wouldn't!
	There are way bigger clowns than Lord Buckethead in Labour!
	Yacoub says, Carl, something's happening.
	I don't know if that's much good, but I'm excited.
	A thousand suns are rubbing off on you too much.
	Well, I'll allow it.
	Robert says, is a no vote more effective than an affirmative vote to a losing party?
	Voting for a party that does not fulfill your values is inherently a vote for someone else's values.
	Surely abstaining sends a better message to the losing party of the action they need to take to secure more votes next time.
	And that's actually a great point from Robert.
	The Message seems to have been received by the Conservatives that whatever they're doing now is not being voted for, right?
	It's not the voters aren't loyal to the Conservative Party for some reason.
	It's never about, is it the right thing to do?
	Is it the thing that will save people from having to live worse lives?
	Yes.
	Oh, we're actually starting to lose votes.
	Best we crack out the good ideas box again.
	We're talking about politicians here.
	I just can't stand that the conservative messaging is always like, right, we're going to do the opposite of what the voters want until they start banning us, then we're going to throw out the red meat.
	It's like, yeah, but what if we were just eating steak all day?
	Like, what if your entire platform was just red meat?
	What do you mean, have a vision?
	Yeah.
	You know, I don't even- I don't think the Labour Party has one, though.
	For all the like- A vision of evil!
	Yeah, but the Labour Party will come to you and say, we're going to do this crazy crap.
	And then they just do it.
	And then insane leftist university students go, we want that!
	Yeah.
	The Labour Party are literally like, we're going to set up Mordor.
	And it's like, okay, vote for us.
	It's like, okay.
	And then the Conservatives are like, well, even though they've got in power, what do you mean they're setting up Mordor?
	They're not allowed to actually do things.
	Vote for the forced eunuch party.
	Oh my God, they did what?
	So Robert is right that abstaining rather than voting for the third party is impactful, but I just can't get over the Conservative mindset, which is just like, We're losing, quick, do things voters like.
	It's like, why are you losing if you know what the voters like?
	Right?
	If you know what the voters like, you would do that all day, every day, to the maximum extent, so the most number of voters like you, and you're constantly winning.
	There is also the question of funding, because they go, we'll do exactly what you like, but then the people who are actually giving the money may turn around and say, why don't you do what we like instead?
	Matt Thompson says, Right wingers simply need to make a pact to maximise their votes.
	In my opinion, we should just vote for whichever one of the right wing parties appears first down the list.
	Sort of an informal pact.
	Well, the British Britain First is going to win big on that one then, aren't they?
	Because they actually came first out of the right wing parties.
	There was one thing to note though, I think it was only one of those by-elections, is that the reform vote did actually take away the election from the Conservatives.
	If they had the reform votes, they wouldn't.
	Yeah, that was Bedfordshire.
	When I saw Richard Tice celebrating it this morning, he was like, I'm proud to say that we were able to take a seat from the Conservatives, because fuck those guys.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Okay, cool, but it's still only 5%.
	Yeah, why aren't you on 25%?
	Because that's the number of disaffected Conservatives in that location.
	That's the vision.
	I just can't get over it.
	Um, JJHW says, Nadine, I will destroy your birthright with the online safety bill.
	Doris is awful.
	Uh, yes.
	Oh yeah.
	Good point.
	I forgot about that.
	Richard.
	His surname, I can't pronounce.
	Monikendum.
	Yeah, maybe.
	Making assumptions about political parties is how we got the sorry state we're in.
	Assumptions are for arseholes and ignorant ones like that.
	I will not apologize for being blunt.
	Give no quarter is my strategy.
	The truth is paramount.
	Yeah, and that's really why we should just be going into the Conservative Party and literally bullying all of the wets.
	Oh, no, that's racist.
	Is it?
	Good.
	That was racist.
	We'll try this on for size.
	Then we'll do it some more then, won't we?
	I'm so sick of it, man.
	Sam Piker, Baron of Moorhawk says, Breaking news!
	In response to Sam Piker's comments on Piers' TV show, the Israeli government has hired a new military special operator to fight the gunstrip named Sam the Candyman Hyde.
	His actions in battle have been described as very bloody and very silly.
	The Alamo James says, was it a requirement to host Hassan was to check for Sam Hyde?
	Great question.
	I love that Sam Hyde is a suspector.
	Charlie says, regarding Hassan, this is the same idiot that defended slavery in the Ottoman Empire, saying it was mostly white people.
	Also, it was a lot better because they got made into Janissaries because it's okay, bro.
	I don't doubt that Hassan Baikas said something.
	How do you justify that?
	Oh, okay, that makes sense.
	If Piers really wanted to twist the knife for Hassan, all you need to do is just get that clip of him saying, America deserved 9-11.
	Yeah, does Israel deserve this 9-11?
	Yeah, and just keep playing it over and over and over again.
	Yeah, but all Hasan Piker will do is sit there and go, yeah, because he's an absolute idiot and doesn't understand how he looks at other people.
	He still doesn't get banned from Twitch.
	Yeah, yeah, of course.
	Have you seen him arguing with Cenk recently, when Cenk's appeared on his stream?
	I've seen some clips on Twitter.
	Cenk dominating him, and Hasan was just like, look, I'm an idiot.
	When he's turning around and saying, like, people don't vote for crazy socialist policies.
	I don't know why you keep saying that.
	Nobody in their right mind will vote for a socialist in America.
	And Hasan's just going like, basically like, no, you're ignorant.
	No.
	But that is, that is, I hate to say that Jenk's right about something, but again, when you, when you place these absolute morons next to Hassan, they really don't look so bad.
	It's actually amazing.
	There's like, this is how they glow that you get when you look at least 20 IQ points higher sat next to Hassan.
	You do.
	Yacoub again says, who's dumb though?
	Hassan who admits to being an idiot and a propagandist or peers for trying to debate him.
	That's a great question.
	A man who thinks about the Roman Empire says, I'm surprised that Hassan hasn't been kicked off everything yet.
	So, okay.
	Yeah, that's, that's a great point.
	I don't know why my throat's giving me such hassle.
	Why hasn't Hassan been kicked off everything?
	Hasn't he been kicked off anything?
	What has he lost?
	I mean, not a single thing.
	Didn't he get kicked off the Young Turks saying America deserves no less?
	I think he got a minor suspension for the whole cracker debacle from last year.
	Did he get a minor...
	On the Young Turks when that happened?
	Because remember, he did it on his own stream and then he got called in to have the little how do we save Hassan's public perception.
	Wasn't he on there?
	I thought he was doing both things.
	Yeah, like Cenk Roymon to do that puff piece of like, don't you want to say sorry?
	And he was like, oh, I guess.
	But they did deserve it.
	Right.
	I think he got a minor suspension for the whole cracker debacle from last year.
	What happened there?
	Well, he was just using terms like cracker and honky.
	And I think people mass reported him for it.
	Racism.
	I don't remember if it was YouTube or Twitch.
	I think it might have been Twitch and I think he got like a week-long suspension for it.
	Oh yeah, I remember that.
	Okay, that's interesting.
	But yeah, so I mean... So you know we're a protected people.
	Well, it's the right kind of racism.
	That's why Twitch is like, well, I guess we have to.
	Um, Dr. Ziggy says, uh, the only good thing that ever happened to Piers Morgan was him getting punched by Jeremy Clarkson.
	I can neither let it happen.
	Jeremy Clarkson up in my estimation even more.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	I'm surprised that, honestly, I'm surprised that's not happened more often to Piers Morgan.
	When did that happen?
	They were at some event apparently, Piers Morgan tells the story, where he started like berating Jeremy and Jeremy was just like, I've had enough.
	Jeremy Clarkson is massive, he's six foot five, don't start berating him for no reason.
	That's just brilliant.
	There should be a load of like Sigma male memes about Jeremy, where it's just like, you know, directors in your way, punch him.
	Journalists?
	No.
	Served cold sandwich?
	Bang.
	Yeah.
	I'm the local council.
	Yeah, she turned up to the next local media just to be like, I have a reputation.
	I have to... I had no idea you had that reputation.
	Anyway, Omar says Hassan may be an idiot, but at least he's consistent enough to support the same side as the Nazis.
	I suppose that's true.
	Matt says Hassan physically disgusts me.
	That's only because he's disgusting.
	As Desert Rat says, this Hassan character is full of malarkey.
	At least he's honest about being a propagandist.
	Most try to claim neutrality.
	Yeah, like Piers.
	Piers is literally like the fake neutrality propagandist versus the idiot who doesn't realize he's supposed to pretend to be neutral.
	Alexander says, Piers vs Hassan.
	Two retards deserve each other.
	Same with Ethan and Hassan.
	Again, what's remarkable about Ethan and Hassan is that Ethan actually makes Hassan look smart by proxy.
	I watch some of their streams sometimes and I'm just like, wow, Hassan, at least he has a line to give, right?
	Ethan is so dumb.
	So we found the hierarchy of retards.
	Yeah, literally.
	It's Ethan, Hassan, Piers.
	Nobody expected that.
	Richard said, Piers should get punched more haha.
	Severian Nox says, well it seems Israel removed capitalism from Gaza so now you can send all the western communists to live there.
	Hasan has a lower IQ than the amount of virgins he's meant to get.
	That's probably true, Ewan.
	Dirty Belt says, new games suck.
	Everything is broken on launch.
	The devs hate you.
	The files are bloated.
	Oh yeah, that's another thing I absolutely hate.
	They forgot how they can compress files.
	It's not even that.
	It's the, okay, look, we're going to have photorealistic graphics.
	Okay.
	But that means like, you know, 5,000 times the number of pixels that you need to pack into the bloody maps to put on things.
	Or to obscure my vision of what I'm actually trying to do.
	Exactly, all to just make the game less entertaining and pleasurable to play.
	And probably run worse as well.
	Yeah, so great.
	So now I'm being punished with a crappier game that's ten times the size that I'm going to play for literally like an hour after downloading it for like three hours.
	I hate modern video games, man.
	But again, in my video game, the Pope that I'm controlling is the one who's going to go on the crusade to Cairo.
	It turns out that if you make the papacy a playable faction in Medieval 2, you just go into the inni file.
	The Pope's changing the armies.
	Yeah, I can control the Pope, right?
	And so I'm literally, I've conquered Italy, I've put France and Germany in their place, I've put Milan in their place, and now I've got the Pope in like a doomstack, and I'm going to sail him out to the Middle East.
	You've got the papal caliphate.
	Yeah.
	Is he wearing 40k armor?
	No, no, he's wearing his full papal regalia.
	Oh nice!
	And he's also, but I've also got him a horse, right?
	So he's got a unit of cavalry.
	So I've got like the papal doomstacks that are just going to start burning the Middle East down.
	Have you got the cross unit as well?
	Where it's just a big fucking cross that follows you?
	No, actually I can't get those.
	It's Milan and Venice that gets those.
	I mean, maybe I can, but I haven't built the artillery yard or whatever.
	But the point is, this game's like 15, 20 years old and I'm still having a great time with it.
	Screw modern games, man.
	But he's right, the devs hate you, the games are over 100 gig, DRM makes the performance worse, and the Day One DLC and stuff like that.
	I hate.
	And he's like, I'm still playing Left to Bed 2 with my friends in MechWarrior 2 on DOSBox.
	Great question.
	And also, Lotus Eater's Team Fortress 2 server, when?
	Tell me you're going to need to get on that.
	Christian Johnson says, what are you talking about, Carl?
	You were streaming Rome 2 the entire last week.
	Yeah, Rome 2 came out in 2013.
	Like, people forget how old Rome 2 was.
	And it took a decade for Rome 2 to become playable.
	And Rome 2 is still worse than Medieval 2.
	It is, but it's not bad now, actually.
	I'm not having this.
	No, no, no.
	I keep falling for this.
	Josh will take me to lunch and tell me it's good now, and then I'll download it again and then be like, oh.
	No, no, no.
	There are things you have to do, right?
	So, obviously, they've had... Fix the game.
	Yeah, yeah, no, no.
	They've had a decade to get a bunch of fixes in, but then you need to get the Divide at Imperial mod for it, which actually fixes the game.
	And so, with this three-part mod, I'm not even joking!
	An extra 60 gigabytes!
	Yeah, it's literally, it's not that big because it's made by people instead of... Yeah, it doesn't bring padded game parts.
	But with this three-part mod, Rome 2 becomes quite an enjoyable game.
	Not quite as good as Medieval 2.
	I have still got Rome 1.
	You may as well play that.
	Ewan says, Retro games and indie games are all I go for.
	AAA games are absolute trash.
	The focus on graphics over gameplay is all these big companies go for.
	Yeah, and I just don't understand it.
	And they still look ugly.
	Yeah, A, I'm not impressed with the graphics.
	And B, I just don't care.
	They focus on pure, like you say, amount of pixels on screen, graphical fidelity.
	Whereas what they should be relying on is art style.
	Yeah.
	So if you have an eye-catching and memorable art style, that can carry you for decades after your game's released.
	There was a game released probably like seven years ago now called Magica, which was really interesting.
	I haven't heard of it.
	It had quite a little novel.
	Can we get it up?
	I don't know.
	Quite a novel art style.
	And it was just creative.
	You were like a wizard.
	You had to remember combinations of button presses to cast certain spells, right?
	So it took sort of skill on your part to learn how to cast these spells.
	And so it looked, look how nice and like bright.
	It's not on screen, yeah.
	Okay.
	But you'll see, right?
	Still on the images.
	Thank you.
	Yeah.
	So, you know, it's just nice and bright and fun.
	Oh my God, I can tell what's happening.
	Yeah, exactly.
	You can see it's like little wizards casting spells and blowing up bad guys.
	And it's just quite a little fun game, right?
	It's just a little indie thing, you know, didn't cost very much.
	The graphics aren't amazing, but they're stylistically consistent.
	And it was just one of those games that took off and it was a real, like, runaway little success because everyone's like, hey, this is fun.
	What's that?
	I forgot what it felt like.
	There's an element of challenge, there's creativity in this game.
	It looks a little bit like Age of Mythology as well.
	Kind of, but it's top-down isometric.
	You're controlling a little mage running around.
	You pick up wands, but you've got to remember how to cast the spells on the fly with certain combinations and stuff like that, right?
	And so it's just a fun game.
	It's just fun.
	Fun bro, do you remember it?
	No.
	No.
	You must've paused the trans black woman.
	I think this probably did come out in about 2013 as well.
	So, you know, who knows what the latest iterations of it are.
	2011 it says.
	Oh, 2011.
	It's even older.
	Yeah.
	But again, just, you just can't get good.
	So far away from the good times, ancient times of 2011.
	But that's when the, that's when the video game industry must've basically died.
	Like, literally, like, whatever the video game industry was, where it made fun games that looked cool to play, to now, at some point it's died and been reanimated as something else we just didn't notice.
	Anyway, Alexander Drake says, there are some good modern video games.
	Hunt's Showdown is great.
	Never heard of it.
	Elden Ring is solid.
	I've played it.
	I just want to dismiss it and be like, no.
	If I've never heard of it, how can I play it?
	I've played through all of Elden Ring.
	I've completed the story.
	Yes, it is solid, but it's way too long.
	Way too big.
	And in comparison to the Dark Souls 3 and Sekiro and Bloodborne, the boss design is trash.
	I enjoyed it, but some of the bosses, especially towards the end of the game, were Terrible.
	Right.
	Halo Infinite.
	Anyone played that?
	No.
	No.
	Doom Eternal is great.
	Nah, it's not.
	That's the problem.
	I've not played that one.
	I've played the 2016 Doom, which is great.
	Yeah, 2016 Doom was fun, but it's losing its doomness, weirdly enough.
	And so, like, it's kind of getting lost in its own mythology of like, oh, you're this thing.
	Oh, the demons are afraid of you.
	It's like... You don't know what made Doom great.
	And, like, so I didn't even bother finishing Doom Eternal.
	I've not played it yet.
	I know that 2016 Doom had a story that you could basically ignore the whole way through.
	There was lots and lots of audio logs and files that you could read through, but why would I care?
	I'm here to kill demons in hell.
	Even then, Doom Eternal is not that great, to be honest.
	It was okay.
	It's kind of just like copy-paste of the 2016 one.
	And there are still some good games that come out, just not nearly as many as it used to be in the 90s and 2000s.
	Well, there is that.
	Omar says, you can barely trust modern game devs to handle a simple asset flip level expansion.
	That's just totally true, man!
	I remember a number of games with a sequel building on the previous game, in the same engine.
	Turned out buggier, unstable, and lost features.
	Yeah, like Rome.
	Like, honestly, it's just so insufferable looking at the number of features that Rome Total War 1 had compared to Pharaoh.
	I still can't believe, when they launched Rome Total War 2, that most of the game was capturing a flag in the middle of a field.
	Yeah, I know.
	It's not that now.
	Well, that got kicked pretty quickly, but I'm still not really sure how on earth that makes it to launch.
	Like, you have to be so negligent to think that that's acceptable.
	I just don't understand how they don't understand why people play their game.
	Like it's literally like being like a blind baker or something and just grabbing whatever's at hand.
	But everyone going, oh, this was delicious.
	Make more of this.
	And you're like, I don't know what I made.
	I don't know how this turned out delicious.
	Sorry.
	But then the modern dev comes in, you know, just mixes dirt with flour and then serves you this bread.
	And then he's like, why is no one liking it?
	Yeah.
	I guess I'll do the same thing again.
	Yeah.
	Anon says, Spider-Man will sell loads because of the IP in the first game, but it's sad seeing what Insomniac has become.
	The Ratchet & Clank series perfectly encapsulates the downfall of Insomniac, from company being cool, masculine and male friendships to Ratchet being a wimp.
	I forgot that they made Ratchet & Clank.
	Some of the Ratchet & Clank games are great, especially the early ones.
	DrZiggy is again endorsing Elden Ring.
	Once again, it's a good game, but I tired of it by the end.
	The thing is, it's not the kind of game I enjoy playing.
	That's fair, they're certainly not for everybody.
	Yeah, I mean, it's like Call of Duty.
	I'm sure they're great at what they do.
	I just don't want that experience, right?
	So, it's whatever.
	To be more specific about what I'm talking about, I hated how for some of the later bosses they were over-tuned to such an extent that they were so difficult that you had to rely on the Summoning function that they had if you wanted to have a chance of beating them properly, because otherwise you would be sat there for potentially hours and hours and hours learning to fight a boss whose mechanics aren't that fun.
	Dark Souls 3 you sometimes had to spend hours fighting a boss to try and get to the point where you could beat it, but the mechanics were really fun for those bosses.
	This one, it's just they have never-ending combos.
	You just dodge, spam, dodge, spam, dodge, spam, and the boss Just to say, this weekend, when my Pope gets to Jerusalem, it's gonna be a bloodbath.
	None of you are okay.
	12 hit combo.
	It just wasn't fun.
	Just to say, this weekend, when my Pope gets to Jerusalem, it's going to be a bloodbath.
	Some of you are okay.
	No, no, no.
	None of you are okay.
	Exterminate.
	Okay.
	It's currently ruling Jerusalem in your game.
	Uh, I have no idea.
	I haven't got the Middle East.
	Does it matter?
	You don't even know!
	Does it matter?
	I thought Jerusalem's gonna die.
	Whoever they are, he's dead.
	Whoever he is, he's dead, so it doesn't matter.
	Yeah, exactly.
	I haven't even got there yet.
	Turks, Egyptians, I don't know.
	You turn up, it's the G&E.
	It doesn't make any... Yeah, maybe it is.
	It doesn't make any difference to me whatsoever.
	Alexander says the woman was suspended for anti-Israel views.
	If she expressed anti-England views she'd be okay.
	Well, she had expressed anti-England views and that's probably why they chose her.
	Kevin says Lenny Henry was complaining about the lack of black representation on TV.
	That's ironic considering he's been on TV since the 80s.
	I've seen articles in the Times from him where he's been interviewed and he's complaining about how black people haven't got reparations yet.
	And I just think, okay, so either you've been recently radicalized or this was always under the surface and you just didn't mention it at all.
	Yeah, it was weird because he never used to be like this, did he?
	No, he was just a normal funny comedian back in the 80s and 90s.
	And then somewhere, maybe it was breaking up with Dawn French.
	He was like, damn, now I've got nothing holding me down.
	That radicalized him, did it?
	I don't know.
	Breaks up with Dawn French, so you know all those white people.
	I'm racist now.
	I guess we'll leave it at that.
	Anyway, we're out of time.
	If you'd like more from us, lowesys.com.
	We'll be back Monday.

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