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Jan. 3, 2024 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters
50:54
The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #813
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Hello and welcome to this special podcast, Loathseaters.
It's episode 813, but this is going to be the Christmas White Pill episode, because this should be going out on Christmas Day.
This is pre-recorded, so we won't be going through any comments at the end because, well, I'm sat at the dinner table having a delicious turkey right now, and so should these lads be.
But we decided to do something nice and talk about some good news for once, and surprisingly there is some good news to talk about this year.
I think you both will be able to explain that, and I'm going with a different tack here for my segment, so let's get into it.
Yeah, I mean, explains the jumpers, I guess.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
So I just thought I'd say some good things did happen this year, although I have to say not many good things happened this year.
Not nearly as many as I wanted to happen, but what can you do?
And just to be warned, we've recorded this about a month in advance of when you're going to see it, so things may have changed.
But Malay apparently is going to scrap Argentina's version of the BBC, which is great.
I'm sceptical about Malay.
I know everyone is, but I know I'm sceptical too.
But the thing is, the way I'm looking at it, it's just like, you know what?
It's the best we got.
It's literally the best we've got.
The best we've got is an open borders... Yeah, unironically.
So the way I'm looking at this is essentially there's a sort of global reaction to the globalist order and each country produces a kind of champion that represents their national character.
Yes.
And Malay is very definitely South American.
Yes.
And so here's exactly what I would expect to come out of Argentina.
And so I'm going to totally embrace it, accept it as it is.
I'm not in any way judgmental about these things, especially when he says things like, there's no room for gradualism.
There's no room for lukewarmness or half measures.
There's no way back.
So, okay.
Okay.
Come on.
Let's, let's go wild.
Let's go nuts.
You're in charge now.
Go for it.
And so basically, he's just going to just abolish the state broadcaster in Argentina.
We consider public TV has become a propaganda mechanism.
I do not adhere to those practices of having a propaganda ministry.
Public TV is to be privatized.
It's like, yes!
Privatize it all.
I do feel that meme of, I see what you've done for other people, Lord Jesus, and I want it for me too.
With this policy, I've got a lot of caveats.
I just wish you'd do it over here.
Um, he's going to dismantle the central bank and of course replace the peso with the US dollar.
Oh dear.
Slash the subsidies and halve the number of government ministries.
And, uh, I mean, he really did begin on day one as well.
Um, that would work.
That's not working for some reason, John.
There we go.
Uh, Ministry of Women, Gender and Equality.
Afuero!
I suppose that's probably the easiest one to close very quickly because what What does this do?
God only knows!
Okay, so implement communism!
Yeah, in your coverage of this with Josh on day one, you were saying there are certain departments which could exist for good purposes, the problem is they're perverted by ideologues.
If you did have a women and men's minister in a competent country that recognised sex-specific differences and I can't think of a single country at the moment that would do anything good with any sort of department like this.
That wasn't that.
But the fact that it says gender inequality in there as well means it's always going to be ideologically bankrupt.
So just get rid of it.
I can't think of a single country at the moment that would do anything good with any sort of department like this.
This is obviously a communist tool used to try and continually, gradually implement communism in a country.
Afuero.
So, good start.
And again, like this, we're recording this a month in advance.
He may have dismantled a bunch of other stuff by the time you watch this.
We can only hope.
God willing, says the atheist.
But he will have done.
Another good news is Gert Wilders, who very recently, in fact yesterday, so again, a month ago for you, No idea what's going to happen.
Don't know if any of the other parties will enter into coalition.
What I love, at least about the far right, is the hair.
Did Trump's Madame Tussauds wax work come to life?
Maybe, but have you not noticed that everyone on the far right has just got great hair?
Thank you.
I know, right?
Yeah.
So, just saying, like, if there's one thing, at least we've got style, you know?
I mean... Yeah, we've got style.
Yeah, we do.
Absolutely.
On Christmas, you wear a Christmas jumper.
That Christmas style.
Yeah, on Christmas, you wear a Christmas jumper.
It's appropriate.
Although, as a distributist pointed out on Twitter the other day, and this was retweeted by Mikaely... What's the guy from... Mikaely.
Mikaely?
Yeah.
Wait, distribut... Yeah, you got retweeted by him.
He tweeted, I love Mikaely, but he's dressed like Mark Zuckerberg.
Where are the capes?
Where's the flair?
South American dictators need to dress like him.
And he retweeted that.
I mean, it's like, okay.
Pinochet did have much better style than Bukele, so he's got to start raising his standards.
Say what you will about Gaddafi, but at least he went out in style.
Yeah, I mean, at least he's interesting to look at, you know?
What happened to Gaddafi, by the way, because I didn't realize... What happened to Gaddafi?
He was stabbed in the bum.
I saw, like, when Mary Harrington did her thread of twink death.
Editor, flash this up.
Right.
I saw, for the first time ever, Taffy's twink death.
It was abysmal.
It was terrible.
He was a Chad when he was younger.
I don't know what happened to melt his face like that.
I have no idea, but the very concept of twink death strikes me as being an insanely feminine thing.
Yeah, but it's coming from the women that are observing it, and I was really disturbed because I have a quite striking resemblance to a young version of the Romanian dictator, so I don't know what's in my future.
Yeah, I do, yeah.
Wait, I'm going to have to... Young him does look a little bit like me if I ever shave, so I'm slightly worried.
That is really funny.
Anyway, as you can see, the PVV on 35 seats projected from the exit polls, but the other parties BTFO'd.
And this, of course, is in the light of the Hamas attack on Israel.
Suddenly everyone's like, wait a minute, are these guys actually barbarians?
And Gert Wilders is like, I've been doing this for 20 years.
I want to ban the Quran in the Netherlands.
You're not familiar?
I haven't followed his rise to power.
He's been a very contentious figure in Dutch politics, because he's been saying things that are true, but not very kindly put, often.
And he's always had a hard core of support, and now he's got a much broader core of support, because it seems that the Islamic radicals insist on proving him right, basically.
And so anyway, whether he gets enough people in other parties in the government who are prepared to enter into a coalition with him, I don't know.
Because of course, the Netherlands have a proportional representation, have this massive plurality of parties, so no one ever gets a majority.
So basically, he needs to find someone who will agree to a government with him.
I don't know when that's going to happen.
That's doubtless going to have been resolved by the time you guys watch this, so post in the comments and let me know and I'm sure I'll be aware at the time.
Anyway, so I thought I'd go on to some other good things, good news and not just politics.
Oh yeah, by the way, this is the the map of who got the most votes in every district.
A light blue is Gert Wilders.
He's quite popular then.
Good in that!
Also, flash this up on screen.
This is young Ceausescu.
What happened to that man?
He does look quite a lot like you.
I know, he does.
Listen, you're saying it as if it's a bad thing, right?
All I'm seeing there is a beardless boy who's got no experience and no credibility.
That's why I wear a beard.
When you've got a big fat dictator wearing... You can maintain good looks into older age.
I know, and I have.
But it's okay for the guy to get ugly if he's a massive dictator.
I mean, like, Gaddafi wearing basically... He looked like a sofa.
His face melted!
He looked like Tim Curry in that video game.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, right?
And so that's fine.
It looks like Gaddafi held a magnifying glass to his face, reflecting the sun.
Yeah, yeah.
And melted him.
And that's okay.
Poor man.
That's not poor.
He's in charge of an entire country.
That's not the worst thing that happened to Gaddafi.
Well, yeah, I know that's not the worst.
Gaddafi, not quite the twink he used to be.
I think that's low on his list of priorities.
Just saying.
I did like that Harrington put Stalin as 10 out of 10.
He got better with age, he was like a fine wine.
Oh yeah, no, that's totally not true.
Like, there are going to be loads of young women who are like, wait.
Yeah, but there's one photo of young Stalin where he looks decent and then the rest of them he doesn't.
Oh really, I've only seen that one.
He looks like a well-put-together, kindly grandfather as he got older.
And that's the... I will admit... That's a very charitable way of... Declaration!
He wasn't!
He wasn't, but... One of history's greatest mass murderers, actually.
He did project that image quite well, though, didn't he?
I think I'm not saying that if you didn't know who Stalin was and you saw a picture of him, you'd be like, oh, he's getting his grandkids some sweets or something, you know.
Sure.
Taken straight from the mouths of the kulaks.
Yeah, exactly.
I like how her opinion on Mao was just consistently mid.
Speaking of consistently mid.
Yeah, good news.
Marvel is dying, basically, which is great.
And I say that as a Marvel cinematic universe hater.
I mean, I'm not even irrational about it.
I've got a long list of genuine grievances.
They've got some good ones.
Yeah, about a decade ago.
Guardians of the Galaxy 3 was good this year because it was totally apolitical and entertaining.
It genuinely was.
You'd probably enjoy it.
I can still go back to that very first Iron Man film and have a good time.
Yeah, that's the only one I like.
Because that was before it became a treadmill of just printing film.
Also, in my estimation, Jeff Bridges being in a film always knocks it up a notch.
Sure.
But anyway, so they're losing money, basically.
They had a 75% second week box office drop off for as far as I can remember.
75%?
Yeah.
And the first weekend wasn't that great.
First weekend was abysmal.
I think their budget for this was like $500 million when you take into account marketing.
What were you thinking?
And so it lost $60 million, something like that.
The other ones have been losing like $20 million, I think.
It's like, great.
I love to see the downward spiral of the girl boss, to be honest.
Do you know that the director said she was inspired by The Last of Us Part II?
Womp womp.
Well, I'm just looking here to see... Get what you deserve!
That's what I'm saying.
We do have more projects between now and when this will go out.
I think the main one being... Well, let's hope their absolute does.
What if Season 2?
Are we all excited?
That's director streaming, so... That's director streaming.
They'll never release the figures for it.
I've never heard of it.
It's like an alternate history animated series of like, if each movie ended differently.
So they made Black Panther Star-Lord for some reason?
What if Captain America was a wahmen?
Yeah.
What if we turned off the TV?
But anyway, lowest ever of Marvel's, as you said, 75% drop-off.
Absolutely tanking.
DC's facing the same thing.
Do you know Aquaman 2 has been written to be about climate change?
I started seeing trailers for that pop-up here and there and I was sat next to my missus and the trailer pops up and she immediately grimaced.
She went, oh, what's that?
I love it.
Marvel is giving women the ick.
Oh, that one was DC, but both.
Okay, whatever.
I don't make a distinction between them.
Cape is giving women the ick.
Yeah.
I wish that I actually cared about this stuff anymore.
Yeah, I don't at all.
I'm totally sick of seeing it, and so I'm glad to see it.
I should have really had that at the end of the segment, but I didn't think about it, so never mind.
We'll carry on.
The left is getting totally purged, actually.
Wrong article up here, John, I actually changed that.
But this is a bit of an old one, but basically there's a new one how just the Democrats are just like, hang on a second, is the left the problem?
It's like, yes, the left is the problem and you need to purge them, right?
Don't worry about getting the thing up because let's move straight on to Keir Starmer.
I don't necessarily, not to rain on everybody's parade, but I don't see the Democrats embracing a Starmer-centrism as being a good thing.
Well, I mean, that signals to me total uniparty dominance.
Yeah, well, I'm not saying it's necessarily good or bad.
I'm just, well, I mean, it is necessarily good when the left gets absolutely trashed and kicked out of politics, in my opinion.
Because, I mean, at the end of the day, like, I don't mind if things don't collapse as long as they don't turn us into communists.
It's a small ask.
I think they're inextricable at this point as well with the nature of the United States.
I'm prepared to entertain that as well.
Given that it's a continent deluding itself into thinking it's a country, if something does happen in a neighboring Democrat state, they can just flee over the border and bring their terrible policies there, as seen with the electoral map for Texas.
But the good news in Britain is that the Labour Party, I mean, they are going to win, But they might not be radical.
They will be about six months after winning.
Well, we'll see.
I don't know.
I'm not optimistic.
Good news!
I'm not optimistic because I think we're in a downward spiral and there's no pulling out of it until we crash.
However, on the plus side, at least the downward spiral won't be conducted by someone like Jeremy Corbyn.
Right.
So Keir Starmer at least wants to think of himself as a centrist moderate.
And so he'll do stupid radical left-wing things, but in a way that is not quite as extreme as could otherwise be done.
This is a positive.
So it's more like a Farage plane crash rather than a Andes have to eat your friends to survive plane crash.
Exactly.
We might actually be able to walk away from it.
Right.
Look, I tried to find good news.
This is the best I could do.
It's not great, okay?
Enjoy your Christmas copium, everyone.
Yeah, it is absolutely copium.
Obviously, you've got loads of Corbinites who are just like, well, Starmer is purging the left.
He's kicking us all out of the party.
He's not doing any of the left-wing things we asked him to do.
And it's like, okay, good.
I mean, that's just minor positive.
But I thought the most positive thing that I found, and we'll end on this, not that, is A smartphone ban.
Well, the robot hand's a good thing.
3D printed robot hands, if you've lost your hand.
Oh, nice!
That's cool.
But I thought we'd end with Ireland's smartphone school ban, as approved in the town where it all began.
So in Greystones in County Wicklow, the parents just launched a kind of no smartphone code, where the headteachers from the town's eight primary schools wrote to parents asking them to sign up to the ban, and all the parents basically agreed.
Primary school.
Yeah, I know.
Primary school.
You've got to start somewhere.
The fact that they're in primary school.
I know, but the fact that... Parents.
I know, but at least the parents are like, yeah, I actually know these are a bad thing.
Just so I can say, one of the major arguments for kids having smartphones is that all the kids have smartphones.
Right.
And so, oh, he can't be left out.
He won't be able to contact his friends, blah, blah, blah, blah.
That's one of the arguments they make, that everyone makes to make sure the kids have smartphones.
It's like, okay, well, how about we just ban smartphones for kids?
And then that's the argument taken off the table.
And that's what this town in Ireland has done.
And it seems to have worked.
Actually, it seems to have done a really good job.
Ministers in the Irish Cabinet have approved new guidelines on banning smartphones in school, which have been brought forward by Education Minister Norma Foley, and the proposals would help parents just collectively implement these bans.
And one of the parents, whose daughters go to Greystones, called Christina Capatina, Very Irish name.
Yeah, I know, right.
Okay, whatever.
She says this.
It's completely solved the problem.
Really, has it?
Just banning the kids from having access to the drugs has completely solved the drug problem.
Wait, what if we as adults have authority over children?
Is that the conversation that actually happens?
They do, and they've been like, yeah, we can actually do that, can't we?
Yes, we can.
Oh, that solved the problem.
Brilliant.
So we have a really nice little model here.
The code was voluntary, but all the parents just basically chose to take part, apart from a couple, but then they became the weird outsiders who, you know, no, my kids are definitely having access to that heroin, thank you very much.
Okay, weird hill to die on.
You just shouldn't have bought it for them in the first place.
I know, but it's not the way that people think.
You know, they think social pressure is what, because the kids are like, all my friends have them, you know, and so they have to do it.
You know, you find yourself putting pressure into it.
Well, remember Connor, you got to know that you've got cancer before you can begin to treat it.
Yeah.
And so, apparently, school principals all over the world are getting in touch with the school with messages of support, an indication of how universal parents' fears over childhood smartphone use are.
Yes.
So we can just ban them.
There is going to be a push for that in this country.
It's really good.
And we should do it.
Literally, no one under 16 should have a smartphone, in my opinion.
Can't smoke, can't have a smartphone, although that'll risk your son or uncle increase that by age, so I'll be the last person in the country with a smartphone.
Guess I'll be the oldest.
But anyway... I'm gonna make that statement broad.
No one should have a smartphone.
I don't know, I do... It is a useful tool.
Yeah, but it is heroin.
It's technological heroin, as you suggested.
I'm not saying it's not.
That's not just for the kids, that's for us as well.
Okay, don't make me... Ah, God.
Yeah, okay, fine.
But it's a really useful tool and I can work on the go.
By work, he means use Twitter again.
That is my work.
Yeah.
I get millions of views.
We're promoting the furthest right propaganda we can for the biggest audience that we can.
And it's like, look, that's great work.
I think I'm doing good work.
Anyway, so that's just some good news that I think happened this year.
There wasn't that much of it, but it was some good stuff.
All right, then.
So going on to my bit.
Yeah, I did struggle to find some good news.
I thought I'd just talk about how the right actually wins, and how they won this year.
And it's been mainly through legislation.
We often hear the aphorism from Andrew Breitbart, politics is downstream from culture.
Well, cultural changes often come downstream of legal changes.
Legal changes that go unnoticed because of a long march through the institutions.
And there is There's been a philosophy in the last couple of years from folks like Chris Rufo who have said we need a reactionary vanguard to quietly go into institutions, use the institution's waning liberal sentiments against them, and flip the Long March on its head and get back to something healthier again so it's not just all ideologically captured.
And so I thought I'd go through a few bills.
This probably won't be able to go on YouTube because some of those bills Result in, you know, kids being protected from the gender stuff.
But, oh well!
Again, YouTubers are not on our watch.
Yeah, exactly.
So, this is the good news I found, alright?
That's fine.
So, the first one is that some of our guests, friends, and the like got a University Freedom of Speech Bill pushed through.
So, this was the Higher Education Freedom of Speech Act, 2023, and it allows students, academics, and even visiting speakers to bring civil proceedings against universities student unions, the like, if they are found to be guilty of acts of political bias, censorship, or unfair dismissal.
So if you get your event cancelled, or if you're an academic thrown out of tenure like Kathleen Stock was because she was hounded by crazy students, then you can sue and be reinstated.
Hang on, is this why we're suddenly able to do university talks again?
Yes.
Because unironically, we're being invited back to universities all of a sudden.
I mean that, and since going to Conservative Party Conference and the like, people are like, oh hey, it's you from Lotus Eaters, do you want to come down and annoy all of the student unions?
So it's also a personal thing.
Though we did have our Bristol one, the event was, so by the time that this goes out, we've already done the event, they had to find a new location because the student union revoked the security license under the grounds of worries about Israel and Palestine.
That was the reason given.
What?
Yeah.
So we've still got to do the event.
Hope you all enjoyed it.
Are they afraid the IDF's gonna raid the speeches or something?
Yeah, apparently my Mossad connections are getting us in trouble.
I knew it, so you admit it!
I've just proven all the dissident right correct, I suppose.
They also appointed a new Director of Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom to sit on the Board of the Office for Students.
Their efficacy has yet to be tested, but It's a bureaucrat.
Step in the right direction.
Better than it was before.
Well done to the likes of Matt Goodwin, Doug Stokes, Eric Kaufman, all of whom we've done interviews with.
They'll probably be linked in the description on this webpage.
You can go and watch them.
People are listening, at least.
And we've got some credible people that believe the things we do, that know their stuff, and are pushing for changes in the law.
That's very good.
Speaking of changes in the law, we've had the gender-affirming care bans.
Now, this has come from the backs of some of the stuff that we've done hopefully in the uk um like my conversation with ritchie heron it's also been off the backs of people like matt walsh and actually someone who i've spoken to this is already out by the time that you guys get to watch this uh billboard chris absolute gentleman i will admit i had a bit of a jordan peterson moment with some of these stories it was going through because some of the stuff in here is harrowing it's So it did get to me a bit, but Chris is a absolute gentleman and the sort of dad that I would hope to be eventually.
So great stuff.
Go listen to him.
He's been talking to plenty of Republicans.
He's tried to make some waves in Canada, but it hasn't quite worked because they still voted for a conversion therapy bill ban.
We'll get onto that in the UK in a bit.
But in the States, we're seeing quite a few States that have turned around and said, actually, we're going to ban some of these procedures because They're not necessary.
There's no evidentiary basis.
And even if that were the only heuristic we're going off of, you know, that's negotiable.
But it's premised on a fundamentally false claim that you can change your sex.
So why are we lying to and hurting children?
Not good.
So this is an article that's moaning about it, but I mean, we can just enjoy the fact that I think it's now 20 states that have passed bills and another 12 that have proposed them, but the Democrat legislature shot them down.
But the ones that have passed the bills are Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia.
So to varying degrees of success, some have banned Everything from puberty blockers to hormone treatments to surgery, some have only then banned the surgery, some have done the hormone treatments and the surgeries, but steps in the right direction.
This year, legally speaking, because certain elections were won, because certain members of our wing of the dissident media and newly formed activist pressure groups have come out and said, here's what they're doing to kids, why won't you listen?
Kids have been protected.
Wonderful.
Yeah, that's actually a positive.
Small steps.
It's also been happening across Europe, so that's positive.
So this is now France, Finland, Norway, Sweden, even the Dutch who created the Dutch study are looking at this, and NHS England as well.
Now, of course, with the permeable migration options within the EU and within the UK, you can Go over relatively open borders and seek treatment elsewhere.
It's frustrating.
But, again, small steps.
So, Finland.
New treatment guidelines put out in 2020 advised against the use of puberty-blocking drugs and other medical interventions as a first line of care for teens with adolescent onset dysphoria.
Sweden's National Board of Health and Welfare followed suit in 2022.
They said such treatment should only be given under exceptional circumstances or in a research context.
The reason they didn't do this before is because with any research project, this is what happened in Tavistock, you have to have a blind control group as well.
So there was a coin toss as to if you were a kid, whether or not you'd be entered into the blind control group or just get the puberty blockers.
So they said, well, we're going to forego the blind control group and just give everyone the puberty blockers and do a follow-up study.
And that's now been declared, well, that's awful.
So this does mean that some kids are probably still going to sign up to the clinical trial, but that means that less of them are going to be put on this and they're going to be spared this fate.
So that's incrementally positive.
The National Academy of Medicine in France recommended a plus grand reserve in the use of puberty blockers, and then a national investigatory board in Norway expressed concerns about the treatment, and the only gender clinic in the UK currently, until March 2024 when they go regional, That was formerly the Gidds Clinic at Tavistock.
They closed down and they have said we are not going to provide puberty blockers to children as a treatment measure outside of the clinical research context.
And this means that even though they're doing these satellite clinics now, the official NHS England guidance is to not do that.
So those clinics will be operating under that auspice.
We've just got to keep an eye on those clinics as they emerge if they don't stick to that.
So again, Just the thing though, I always find the Americans really interesting, especially the American left, really interesting.
Because I think they think that Europe is actually a lot more liberal than it actually is when it comes to a lot of this stuff.
Like abortion, for example.
Oh, we can have abortion up until the point of birth.
And the French are like, no, you can have it for 15 weeks.
I mean, in America, the Democrats would scream and pull their hair out over that.
I think there's nine states in the US that allow it up to full term, which is monstrous.
Yeah, it's genuinely monstrous.
Completely evil.
But I think a lot of Americans take a look at the Nordic model, or have heard of the Nordic model.
Have an impression in their mind of what they think the Nordic model is.
Yeah, and they make up these wild fantasies in their heads.
Nordic model?
That sounds like it means my kind of socialism!
It must be liberal utopia!
Well in 2016 on the campaign trail, Bernie Sanders kept quoting the Nordic model, and I forget, it might have been the Prime Minister of Norway.
No, it was Denmark.
He called them socialists, and the Prime Minister of Denmark was like, no, we're capitalists, what are you talking about?
And they're just like, okay, Bernie, shut up.
Yeah, there goes your fantasy.
Yeah, exactly.
But the thing is, on a lot of things like with kids and with abortion and stuff like that, Europe's actually quite a lot more conservative than America is, and sometimes even more conservative than the Republican states.
So just be warned, it's not as simple as just, oh, you're a liberal.
Yeah, and thankfully so.
It seems things are trending in the right direction.
Still uphill battle, but as long as more kids get enslaved, I'm happy.
And speaking of which, we even had a small, I repeat, very small political win with the Conservative Party.
Tiny, tiny win!
Rishi Sunak has decided not to go forward with the Gender and Sexuality Conversion Therapy Bill Ban.
Oh, the big issues here!
Is that who I think it is, in the pride flag mess?
It is Peter Tatchell.
There we go.
Who's very upset about the fact that kids are being protected, I'm sure.
Yeah, so Rishi Sunak has listened to the Conservative Party that turned around and said, okay, what you need to do is disaggregate the fact that conversion therapy for gay people doesn't just mean electroshocks on the brain, it means the ability for therapists to have exploratory conversations at the request of the patient, even if they don't glorify it.
Voluntary compensation.
Yes.
This is not being imposed on anyone.
Yes.
And even if they don't work, they should be allowed to do so.
And then lumping trans in with that means affirmation only as the model, because you aren't allowed to turn around and say to a child, well, your gender dysphoria might be a product of the five to six other comorbidities that almost every patient comes along with that might be the source of this rather than you being born in the wrong body.
You're not allowed to say that.
Under the Conversion Therapy Ban Bill, which Labour has said they're gonna do, fortunately, it has been shelved.
Now, at ARC, Danny Kruger did turn around and say, we expect one of our insidious colleagues to introduce this as a private member's bill somewhere down the road.
Probably someone on the line with Penny Mordaunt, let's be honest, because she's been pushing for this.
I mean, Theresa May was the one that tabled it originally.
But, for the time being, it's been shelved.
Right.
Not bad.
Temporary stay of execution.
Execution, yeah.
But I mean, like, this is just such a small win, though.
I don't want to downplay it.
You asked me to find positive stories.
I know, right?
I know, I know.
But it's just so small.
It's such a fringe.
Like, OK, we're going to have a tiny win on an irrelevant issue, basically.
The sad thing is, though, it's not irrelevant.
Well, no, it's not irrelevant.
You know what I mean?
Like, there are much more pressing things.
For most people in the country, this only affects a very, very small slice of the population.
I mean, it is important.
Speaking of people coming up with deranged fantasies in their heads, I've got an amusing idea in my head now, a conversion therapy session where the person's like, I think I'm transgender.
Oh, well, you might just be autistic.
Have you considered 4chan instead?
I mean, we saw how that played out for Chris-chan, so perhaps not.
Perhaps not the road we want to go down.
Just saying.
The last one that has been positive, it's been a development, and again, a little bit of bit sweetness in the UK, how this has been adopted, but we'll take the wins where we can get them.
This is the age verification stuff that's been going around in the US, and so they haven't gone down the EU and and UK online safety bill control of the internet thing.
I'm sure the Biden administration wants to do it in a very different way.
But because of the way that the states govern themselves, various states have turned around and said, hang on, why don't we have age verification for adult content websites?
This seems like just a sensible measure.
Every child in the school has got a smartphone, but there's absolutely nothing stopping them from accessing Mia Khalifa.
Yeah, so they've turned around and said, okay, if you need ID to buy alcohol, tobacco, firearms.
or pornography in a shop. - Yeah, then you should probably have the same thing online.
And do you know how this came about?
No.
So one of the Republican state representatives of Louisiana watched the Howard Stern Show.
Oh no.
I just glanced at your notes.
So Billie Eilish said, I was exposed to porn at 11 and it destroyed my brain and it meant I couldn't have a real relationship.
And she went, I agree with that.
As a mum, that sounds really sad.
So I'm going to do something about that.
And so she put forward a bill that says, Porn websites are illegally liable unless the websites quote perform reasonable age verification methods, which requires showing some form of state-recognized ID to show that you're over 18.
They passed the House 96 to 1, who was the one, and the State Senate 34 to 0.
And this sent the industry into total meltdown.
I'm just going to enjoy the fact that they really didn't like this.
So this is according to Ethical Capital Partners, which is the company that owns Pornhub.
Let that settle in.
If you've got to put the word ethical in your company name, it makes me think that you're not as ethical as you claim to be.
I know it's overused as a trope, but it is quite Orwellian when they say Ministry of Truth and it's the Body of Censorship, Ethical Capital, literally human trafficking website.
But there you go!
They said that their traffic in the state has dropped 80%.
Oh!
Actually, it does seem to work.
Yeah.
Nobody's been applying for their porn licenses.
Weirdly, banning stuff actually gets rid of most of it.
Yeah.
Also, 80%.
So what proportion of your website traffic is children?
uncomfortable conversation, I'm sure.
I mean, that might also just be people not willing to show their ID so that they can work on porn.
To be fair, there's no way I'd send any ID to a porn website.
No.
The other No.
I'm uncomfortable giving you my IP when I log into your site.
The other states where the law has been in effect, so that's Utah, Mississippi, and Virginia, for a few months, they just shut down their website entirely.
So they thought it was actually too costly to process the user information and do data protection.
So they just went, no, we're not running it here.
And instead you get sort of an error message saying that your state legislature has blocked it.
So six other states have passed copycat legislation.
Sixteen others have introduced similar or identical bills.
So by January the 1st, 2024, and this is when one of the Montana laws is going into effect, 54 million Americans will live in states where they're required to upload their ID in order to access these kinds of websites.
And the UK is now in the process of implementing a similar thing, thanks to Miriam Cates, who felt forced to do it with an amendment to the Online Harms Bill, which is Frustrating, but it was going to pass anyway.
But hey, good news.
Kids won't be able to watch weird sex stuff on the internet and, you know, go down the trans pipeline from that way.
So that's a win.
It's a win.
It's a slow win.
So this is a dad.
That's a win.
Yeah.
So for everyone that's super discouraged about the state of the country, if we do put a bit of effort in, we can at least weaponize the law against our enemies and save some kids.
That's not the worst outcome, I suppose.
Gonna get some re-ing over that last comment.
Of course I am, and I just don't care.
There are going to be libertarians on the internet.
No, I must goon!
That's going to get clipped out of context.
Congratulations!
Guys, have you considered going outside?
No, they have to encross their goon cave.
I want to congratulate you in advance on the meme compilations that are going to be made of that clip.
So, I decided instead of trying to draw blood from a stone, which is scouring the headlines for good news, which is not going to happen.
I decided to go with some good news, which I consider more to be a perennial truth or persistent truth for the time being.
In similar manner to Peter Hitchens, everything that I'm going to talk about in this segment is a threat.
These are the things that I find beautiful and that I find that inspire love for me, for the country that we live in.
Because England is still beautiful.
Britain, as a whole, is still an incredibly beautiful place to live.
Earlier on this year, for my birthday, I took a trip to Wales, and having not really driven around Wales before, outside of the coastline, which is probably the most heavily built up, I had completely forgotten how much of Wales is still a very rural country.
It's all mountains and forests, and it was glorious.
It was some of the most peaceful and relaxing time that I've had over the past few years.
So there is still a lot to love in this country, in this nation.
It is all under threat, as far as I can tell, from various different forces, from the government, from property development, from mass migration, etc., But for the time being, these are still things that we can hold onto and recognize as our own.
For instance, I came across earlier this month this rather lovely example of the fact that high trust culture the classic English culture still exists in parts of the country especially the more rural countryside where people have these closed communities these very close-knit communities where you can all trust one another and trust that if you do something like this so for those listening this is an image of a country road where there is a box
Stationed at the side of the road that's full of walkers crisps, it's got some water in it, some eggs even, some soft drinks.
So it's there to set up so that people who are going for country walks, which is one of the most relaxing and fulfilling things that you can do as far as I'm concerned as someone who's Off and gone on a walk around the country, a nice ramble to pass the afternoon on a lazy day where you've not got anything to do.
If you're going for a particularly long one, you might find that you're a bit peckish, a bit hungry, a bit thirsty, and they've left all of this there with a little sign attached to it saying, water £1, cans £1, and there's a little box where you can leave the money in it.
Look, sorry to interrupt, but look at that comment just under.
You call Lay's Chips walkers?
I hate American solipsism.
Don't all of the rest of the Europeans call it Lays as well though?
Yeah, but that's a company, isn't it?
It's a brand.
I don't know.
Walker's is a different brand.
It's all crisps to me.
Oh, is it?
Right.
Yeah, but we're right.
John's voice emanated from below.
Yeah.
The pillars in on that one.
I'm trying to give good news.
I'm trying to talk about how high trust cultures still exist.
That is a genuinely beautiful thing.
It is a beautiful thing.
Whether you like those crisps or sweets or not, it's wonderful that you can still go to parts of the country where you can trust that I can leave all of these snacks, this drink, this water, and people won't nick it.
People will pay the money and actually take the product and won't have to patrol.
And nobody has to be there to enforce it.
It's the trolley problem, except everybody knows the rules and everybody sticks to those rules because the English have... Go back, John, go back.
This is why we must stop migration, right?
Mary has an article called The Death of the Honesty Box that talks about mass migration.
Anyone from any other country would just arrive here and be like... Nick it.
Yeah.
So the two places that I went to this year, Japan and the States...
Well, as well, in Boston.
No, not Boston.
Massachusetts.
I went to Cambridge.
Not built up Boston, but the sort of Harvard area.
Very Anglo.
They have honesty boxes, they have open take-it-and-leave-it libraries.
It's funny how they've got all the progressive yard signs, but they live in an almost entirely affluent, white, high-trust area, so...
The consequences of their policies never affect them.
The Japanese, and I've said this before, they have vending machines on every corner, they're never vandalised, there's not an inch of graffiti, there's no homeless people there, which is very surprising.
Not really, because they don't have- They're all interned.
Well, they don't have addiction problems nearly to the scale that we do, so, you know.
But they have vending machines everywhere, absolutely no public bins, but no litter.
And it's because people actually care enough about their area to pick up and take things with them.
So, it is about culture and consideration of the place that you live, and we had that one.
Well, even in the cities, we still had that.
There was an excellent quote from, I always forget how to pronounce his name, Lee Kuan Yew, the Singaporean leader.
After World War II, he visited London and saw how high-trust it was, how everybody got along, everybody was very courteous and polite to one another, and he said, I will make Singapore like this place.
London doesn't look like that anymore.
No, it doesn't.
Sadly, a lot of our major cities don't look like that anymore.
But you can still find this beautiful culture, this wonderful culture, out in the countryside, out in the rural spaces, where people know each other, they like each other, and they know they can rely on one another.
And it's a very beautiful thing.
And it's a reminder that we do have deep history.
We do have deep ties to this land.
We built this country.
And there are many things that you can look at that are reminders of that.
And once again, it's the fact that they're reminders.
What is the country doing at the moment other than wasting who knows how much untold money on HS2?
Just a quick thing as well on this.
It's hard to understand just how many fortuitous events have to come together to make something like this possible.
Like it's just a genuine sort of pyramid of history that ends in the honesty box that can just exist and people pay their own money and take the thing that they want and that just carries on like there are so many prerequisite Accomplishments civilizationally that is built on top of, and we just, we look at it and go, oh, that's cute.
But it's like, no, that's a genuine triumph of English civilization.
As far as I'm concerned, this is what I'm fighting for.
The, the ability to have this, not just on country roads, but on the corner of every city and the corner of every street so that your neighborhood, your, your, where you live can be as honest.
As this because compare this to footage that I've seen recently of in Tesco's in the larger cities.
They've had to start putting everything in lock boxes to try and prevent people from stealing it.
Everything except the sunscreen.
Yeah.
And compare it to the footage that you see coming out of San Francisco where people.
Where everything's in.
You'll get you'll get clown cars of people rushing into a shop and stealing everything.
Compare it with the simple quiet honesty.
of this.
Well, the extinction of the honesty box is downstream of the abolition of the conscience.
Well, that's the thing.
It's not extinct yet, so we should treasure it.
And, like I say, we're always surrounded by the wonders that our civilization brought to us previously, like Cambridge, This is still here.
We can still cherish all of this while it's still here.
And I hope that it can carry on into the future in perpetuity.
But it's in danger.
But it's still here.
Same with Lincoln.
We're surrounded constantly, even in London.
Even parts of London, which we've just thrown to the ground and trashed a little bit because, yes, there are some major parts of London, like Brixton, which are Very, very low trust.
I wouldn't recommend going there.
I always say it, but last time I went to Brixton there was a robbery that happened right in front of me and it was very worrying to be in and I thought I was going to get stabbed.
My friend lived there this year and he had multiple murders happen outside his doorstep.
That's what they've turned parts of London into, but this image to me sums up what London could be.
Could be.
If we can get, and used to be, and will be, when we win.
Because that's what we need to do.
We need to stop thinking about, oh what, like everything's doom and gloom, everything is awful, everything is failing around us.
There may be some truth to that, but there is also a certain truth that you can get by stepping out of your front door, and exploring the world, and exploring this country, and reminding yourself that life goes on.
Life goes on, and as long as the English people are still alive, as long as we're still here, England itself will survive in one form or the other.
Even if mass migration kills 90% just to go complete apocalypse scenario.
Kills 90% of the population out of pilgrims.
That 10% if we hole up in somewhere, that somewhere will still be England because we can create the honesty box again.
Because that's who we are.
We are the people that live naturally.
We naturally create the honesty box through our presence.
That's how I see it.
Yep, you've got Wells Cathedral, all of these wonderful things.
I like what this has been posted in comparison to as well.
I saw this the other day.
Oh yeah.
Child sacrifice in Peru, where they were carving open the chest of these kids.
And in England, they were complete, what's this, um, Salisbury Cathedral or something.
This is Welles Cathedral.
Oh, Welles Cathedral.
It used to be painted really garish colours as well, didn't it?
I think all of the churches did back in the day because I think it was the Victorians washed it all off because they didn't like it because of the changing attitudes and stuff.
But before the Victorians, as long as they were maintained, all of the churches and the architecture was very bright and vibrant.
It's a very medieval thing.
It is a very medieval thing.
Hollywood always portrays the Middle Ages as being like washed out and brown.
It's like, no, they had colour everywhere.
It's horrific.
Same as the ancient world, they're like, oh, look at these marble statues.
Aren't they dignified?
Not when they were in life.
They weren't.
They were gross, actually.
I think there's a certain beauty to it.
I like...
There is, but it's...
They're really horrible, garish colors, Whenever you see the restoration, it's just like... Well, I'm not happy to consider that the entirety of human history before the 20th century was this incredibly grey, sombre... I'm not saying they're grey and sombre.
I like to recognise that history was a very bright and vibrant and colourful place where people enjoyed themselves.
If you believe what you see on the TV, you'd believe that people only learnt to smile 50 years ago.
I would, but the thing is, you've got to remember that generally a lot of things would have looked a lot more tacky.
Okay.
You can look up some restorations of ancient sculptures.
Authentic culture seems kind of tacky.
I'm not saying it's not authentic.
I'm not saying it's not.
It's just that they aged well.
They aged really well.
Can I also draw attention to the reply to this that says, Mexicans built this 700 years before England even existed.
Oh wow, you built a rubbish triangle.
Right.
Number one, I'm sure people are going to say, well, aliens built that instead.
So who knows?
Mexicans couldn't build this.
They definitely didn't build that 700 years ago.
That just looks like miserable, brutalist architecture.
And I'm pretty sure that there are graves of infants buried somewhere underneath that.
So yeah, I am going to say we're better.
I will say from the sake of sheer monumental scale, this is still impressive.
Yeah, this is impressive.
This is still very impressive.
I couldn't build anything like this myself.
I wouldn't want to.
Yeah, that's the thing.
The eternal Anglo in me looks at it and goes, but why would I build it like this?
Why wouldn't I make it pretty?
I just love the idea of going around the ancient Mexicans and saying, look at this amazing building.
Yeah, what's that for?
Sacrificing children.
Yeah.
If you built the steps, you could perfectly kick a head in the eggs.
Yeah, true.
It would build momentum.
I don't think they're as old as what they're claiming.
I'm pretty sure they're sort of like... It's on the internet, it must be true.
And then we've got things like King Alfred's Tower.
Yeah, that's only from the 1700s.
Still, it's historical and it's beautiful.
And it's in the middle of a field somewhere.
Yeah.
These are just the sorts of things that you can come across walking through England.
And it's amazing and it's beautiful.
And then some of my personal favorites that I always refer to, down in Cornwall, You have the Minac Theatre, which is a glorious amphitheatre cut into the side of the cliffs by the Romans.
It's very, very old structure and they still put performances on of plays.
They might even do Shakespeare there.
So I've never actually seen a performance there, but it's on my bucket list.
Have you ever been to an amphitheatre?
Yeah.
Yeah, I've been to an amphitheater.
I've been there.
Oh, really?
There wasn't any performances on when I was there, but it's glorious.
Just the atmosphere, standing at the edge of the cliffs with the sea behind you.
It was quite reminiscent of this shot, actually, where you could see the sun set and see the reflection on the water.
It was glorious.
I've been to a bunch in Greece, and one of the things that is always remarkable is just genuinely how well the sound travels.
like actually you know you stand at the bottom you just speak and the person at the top can hear you really really well and so i don't know how they're very well built yeah i don't know what what the physics of it are but they really do work and then also in cornwall there's st maryland's Michael's Mount, which is a tiny little island with a castle on top of this hill where the walkway is submerged in water when the tide is high.
Spirited away.
Yeah, exactly.
England, and Britain in general, is a magical fairytale land.
Yeah, we forget about this because there are places like this where the tide sweeps over the walkway and it submerges it and there's no way of getting to it.
But then when the tide is low, all of a sudden this magical pathway emerges and you can walk to the mystical fairy tale castle.
I've been there.
The castle itself is lovely.
So it's a fantastic walk, a really, really nice day out.
And if you live in this country and you haven't taken the time to explore it, You really should because, like I say, there is a part of this that's tinged with some melancholy because these things are a threat.
Everything in England is a threat.
The English are a threat.
But we are still here and we can still take advantage of everything that this country has to offer because it is so fulfilling to really go and experience it and feel the history when you're in the area because there is an atmosphere when you go there where you drink it in.
You drink it in and you go, my god, we are amazing.
We are really amazing.
And it's not just that, we've inherited things that are amazing.
Yeah, and it's our duty to look after them.
And, no times I will not sign up for you.
There we go.
And you can find plenty of lists like this just on The Times and it doesn't have to be architecture.
It can be the natural landscape that we're surrounded by.
I'm from Cheshire.
Cheshire to me is possibly the most beautiful place in the world.
I'm sure everyone will have different opinions on where it is and it'll probably be more likely to be, well, No, actually where I'm from in England, this is the most beautiful place in the world.
That's fair as well because the whole country is glorious.
It's the magical fairytale land with Yorkshire moors, gorgeous parts of Cumbria.
I've never been to Cumbria actually.
I went to Lake District earlier this year.
Absolutely go.
It's magnificent.
There is so much to explore.
And we're still quite a small landmass, especially when compared to a massive continent like North America.
When my kids are a bit older, I'm going to go to the Lake District.
You can actually rent for about a week.
A decent, really nice cottages up there.
A decent price if you're booking far enough in advance.
Cumbria, Derbyshire, Bath.
Obviously.
Parts of the Cotswolds, which we're right next to.
I mean, this genuinely looks like Hobbiton.
It does.
Yeah, but you go there.
You go around there, and it's genuinely like really old houses.
And the...
The doors are really low, the roofs are really low, and the whole thing just feels like it's just settled into the ground.
Well, Japan is still like this, so it proves that you can still do this in this day and age.
You just have to bring all the denizens of Mordor in at once.
On what you were saying a second ago, though, Carl, when I was still living in Nantwich, I lived in a Tudor house, and I had to duck under all of the doorways because they were all shorter back then.
They weren't expecting that some 6'3 Nordic giant would be occupying the house.
So I had to be very careful not to knock my head, and I still did, which some people watching at home might go, oh, he knocked his head.
That explains a lot of your opinions.
Yeah, there you go.
That's what they're probably saying.
But I mean, this is just such a beautiful Tolkien-esque fairytale hobbit land, isn't it?
Yeah.
And I think it's best to end it there, really, because that's what I wanted to remind everybody of, that we live in a fairytale land, and while, yes, the fairytale is quite dark at times, hopefully we can still have a happy ending with this.
And with that, does anybody have anything else to add?
No, just Merry Christmas and having a great day!
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