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Jan. 10, 2024 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters
01:32:09
The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #825
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Time Text
Hello and welcome to the podcast, The Load Seaters.
I'm joined by Aileen and Stelios.
Hello.
It stuck in my head and Callum decided to make it worse by playing it before we started, so that's fun.
We all need to link arms and drunkly... Next office party.
Actually, next... What office party?
We've had an office party before?
Was I not invited?
To be fair, you know, we've never had an office... I've got to let a cat out of the bag here.
So, we've never had an office party, like a proper office party.
Yeah, yeah.
But back when... I mean, it couldn't have been a party if I wasn't invited.
During one of the lockdowns, in the early days, me and John figured out that, of course, we could break the rules by going to work and having a work meeting.
So we just got a bunch of our mates, just went round and that's why there's a load of pint glasses and beer and wine glasses in the cupboards.
Makes sense.
We need to have a karaoke night.
Do we?
Yeah.
Do we?
I'm sure the audience love it.
Please tell these two.
Wait, wait, wait.
We're bringing the audience into this now?
Yes, they want.
Are you asking, are you saying lads hour karaoke?
Not a lads hour necessarily.
Zoom call karaoke.
Yeah.
Audience interaction.
Zoom karaoke.
Oh no!
So today we'll be talking about the fact that everyone is noticing in Britain all housing is slum housing and the wrath of die Deutsches Farmer.
So we'll be going to the German farmers.
I have an announcement of course which I was alluding to which is Lads Hour is tomorrow.
How have we had 19 of these things already?
Do you want me to cull some?
I can go back and delete them.
No, no.
I'll pretend it didn't happen.
I'm just asking, I feel like you must.
Just completely lost in time, no idea what day it is, no idea where I am, what's going on.
Episode like 800 and something, we're doing podcasting at this point.
Blur.
825, oh god, yeah.
So, yeah, we'll be talking about the IMDb Top 250 and we'll just be going through the movies.
We'll be questioning it.
Yeah, Leo will be joining us as well, so that's that.
Anyway, without further ado, let's get into the noticing, shall we?
Right.
Everyone has noticed something I have discovered.
And no, we're not yet talking about the tunnels.
That'll be tomorrow.
Calm down.
Callum's clickbaited you all yet again.
I wanted to talk about a different kind of noticing, which is noticing that this place we live in is kind of crap.
Like, really bad.
And is that place England?
Yeah, I mean, we've been talking about this fairly regularly in the sense of like, hey, this place kind of sucks, here's why.
And we usually point to the immigration data being the foremost cost of the massive increase in housing and rent, which means you don't open businesses and there's a death cycle going on there, which does suck.
But one thing I noticed is that Aaron Bastani, huge fan of the channel, I'm sure.
I think he might be.
Really?
He's commented on a number of our videos before on Twitter and tagged us in them.
Oh, hello Aaron.
Often time responding, but I think he's a secret fan.
I'd like to join him, I think.
We can finally, you know, shake hands on something.
Because what seems to have happened is that the author of Fully Automated Luxury Space Communism over there has realized, or at least agreed with us, that yeah, most places in the country are kind of crap and getting worse very fast.
So he says here, this is Waterlooville in Hampshire.
My wife's friend took this video and was kind enough to let me share it.
While politicians and the London media live in a parallel universe, this is the reality of much of the UK.
An economic malaise and high streets that look like a zombie film.
Nothing to disagree with there.
This video speaks for itself.
It is awful and far too much like most high streets in most towns you go into these days.
There are some that are nice, but This is quite common.
I mean, the only shop there is a charity shop.
The rest of them are just closed.
I mean, there's benches and a nice cannon and, you know, something to be set up to.
There is a person there somewhere.
There's a human?
Get them!
Anyway, probably high on crack.
Two more humans.
Look, it's like artifacts of an ancient era.
It's like if you find a lost city of the desert, there's some bits that are still recognizable, but the rest of it's just a hollowed out shell.
Yeah, and this is video evidence.
This is people filming where they are.
This does seem to be true that it's up and down the country in pretty much every town.
We've mentioned before, what is it?
Turd Towns, which is a very weird YouTube channel.
Is that where Indians are moving to?
No, no.
It's a chap that travels town to town and rates them, which is a really niche thing to do.
How many people are watching your review of their singular town?
Does it have to do with the top 50 and worst 50 places to live in the UK?
No, no.
He just jumps from which one to tell you what it's about.
But the weird theme he found... You never know what you're going to get.
Well, you do, because that's the thing.
The theme he found is that they're all like this.
Every single town in the country has experienced the same thing.
It's nice to know we're all in the same boat, I suppose.
Except for London, of course, which is where all the money is.
I mean, I think there's a few accounts that do that.
There's one... I can't remember the name of it, but there's an account that goes... I don't think it's TurdTown, it might be a different one.
There's one that goes around cities across places, like in the North, around Stoke and in the Midlands, just saying, like, this was a historic city centre, this used to look like this, now let's take a look at this.
How did this happen?
So, we'll move on, because that's, you know, one tweet, right?
But he did this as well, where he tweeted out, We need to rebuild local news.
So much local reporting is just repeating what the council administration press release says.
Here, transformed city centre apparently means seating, some plants, cycle stands, and local art.
For context, this is what the street looked like a century ago.
And he's referring to an article where it's like, oh look, the Portman of City Council have transformed the city centre.
Which isn't reporting, that's just copy-pasting the press release.
He is right.
And they go on in there.
And this is what it is.
Which is... not impressive.
Utterly boring.
I mean, there is a Boots.
Congratulations.
There is one shop I can see.
That's actually an achievement these days, but there we are.
And then he references the same street 100 years ago.
And for people listening, I mean, not only are there shops and people everywhere, there's a bloody tram line.
He's got trams in the same place.
And now basically nowhere in the country has trams.
Of course.
Manchester does.
The last one.
Manchester does.
And as much as you can complain about with Manchester and even the trams themselves because of how busy they can get during rush hour periods, it's actually a really good form of public transportation for getting around a large city.
Clearly popular.
Like you go, you, you need to go like half a mile across the city.
That could take who knows how long to walk, or you could get a tram and be there in five minutes.
So in spirit, I'm very like, hmm, this is a weird crossover where I very much agree with Mr Bastani here.
And spoiler alert, I think it might have something to do with him having a kid.
Because he also did write this at the same time, where he's talking about the fact that now he's had a child, housing, childcare is so much more important to him.
And he looks in the context of what will be left after him, which is quite interesting, because he looks at his grandmother and her lifetime.
What changed?
And it went from the British Empire ruling the world to now being the rump state that it is.
And then he was thinking, OK, well, if my kid lives as long as my grandmother, what the hell is she going to be living in exactly?
And I don't think he really gets the root of the problem with the housing, obviously the demand side.
Demonstrable.
So, whatever.
That's for another day.
To be fair, he's made some mentions of needing to curb immigration, but he's still not going to whole hog that.
Yeah, I mean, it's the only thing that would solve the housing crisis.
You literally can't build enough houses.
It's just not going to happen.
I mean, frequently you get people, especially who engage in cultural criticism, saying, starting from the idea that the status quo is the worst thing ever.
The point is what kind of solutions they have.
Yeah.
It's one thing to say, okay, this thing doesn't work.
In some cases it is impressive and it is an achievement, as you say.
The question is, what do you want to put in its place?
You get a lot of people who agree that, for instance, things right now in the UK of 2024, January, Some things could have been better, but you get very different diagnoses of why things are broken, and these different diagnoses are leading to completely different suggestions and proposals.
Well, I'll let people come to their own conclusions in the following thing we're about to do.
But, I mean, for the issue of housing, I mean, we can pretty divinitively say one of the solutions is the migration being dropped.
But that's not on the cards for some reason.
But I wanted to do a little slideshow because, of course, you may have seen that footage he demonstrated.
But we live here in Swindon, and I happen to be collecting a whole bunch of images of Swindon before and after a different project.
And this just happened to fall into my lap.
And I was like, hmm.
Time for Show & Tell!
So, welcome to Show & Tell.
Enjoy, please.
If not, um... Just to... Before you begin with your Show & Tell, I'm going to reference some Show & Tell that Stelios was doing about two months ago now, where he took each of us on a small tour around the corner where he had found a turd.
on the street.
And he would just take us, sometimes in groups, sometimes one by one, and give us the tour and say, look at what I found here.
That's a turd Stelios.
I want people to wake up to the desert of the Rio.
Because you were so excited.
You were like, Harry, you need to come with me on lunch right now.
You need to follow me.
And then you just like really gleefully, like a child, like, look, look, Harry, look at what's happened to your country.
I mean, I couldn't incentivize.
I couldn't incentivize you to walk down that street otherwise.
Yeah, but if you told us, we're not going to go look.
Yeah.
We were trying to avoid that.
But I wasn't the only one showing it.
Apparently there was a name for it.
It was called Freddy.
What?
What are you talking about?
Yeah.
I didn't christen it.
Sorry, but what do you mean you're not the only one showing people?
There's like tours.
There's like the tourism board of Swindon.
There's velvet ropes around it.
You can't disturb Freddy.
People knew about it.
That's the kind of town Swindon is for all of you watching right now, is that if you find a turd in the street, it's not just a curio to pass by, it's actual news.
It's real news around here.
I don't know why, there's plenty of them.
But anyway, the slideshow is in fact about Swindon, and I've got no turds, I've hidden those.
Hide your turds, folks.
I've got a picture here we'll start off with.
And it's quite interesting because I've only been here for three years and I've noticed that this place has fallen off a cliff in those three years somehow.
And then we've got people in the office who have been here for much longer.
And so Pete, for example, recognizes all of these stores and what they used to be.
And this is a very typical street where there's, as you can see, a cafe, a snooker club, a corner shop, some other crap, you know.
And this is 2013, so 10 years ago.
There's life here.
It has Joban news there though.
It's not all bad.
But it's 10 years ago.
You mean good.
And now it's this.
It's gone.
Every single one of those is empty.
Quite a remarkable change.
Is this down that big main high street?
Yeah, I don't know if you recognize it.
Freddie was opposite that.
You can see at the bottom there as well, there used to be a train station shop that you could buy little miniature trains.
And then it got turned into a nightclub and then... Oh, wait a second, I do... Yeah, this is opposite Freddy.
No, it actually is.
No, I think you're right.
Oh God, I know who did Freddy now.
Oh no, it was one of those crack addicts.
Oh yeah, that's where they go.
Yeah, because you do, like, there's one particular street where there's some people who will just approach you in the street who are obviously high.
Me and Josh walked past the other day and they were like...
Josh described it perfectly.
It was like watching Gollum, sat up hunched over, staring at us as we went past.
They did Freddy.
There we are.
That's ten years.
So you get from Hustling Bustling to Freddy Town.
And that's not the only one.
It goes on and on.
I mean, ten years ago, for example, they used to have pretty lights in the floor.
Oh yeah, I've noticed they are in the floor, but they're not lit up anymore.
They're still there.
Yeah.
I had this as well.
When I saw this picture, when I found it, I was gobsmacked.
It was like, those things light up?
Because this is what it looks like now.
Those grey slabs over there.
It's the same place.
Obviously, this is in sunlight, so you wouldn't expect them to be switched on, but trust me, at night time, they're not switched on either.
No.
And you may notice one other change.
Let's see if you can spot it.
Hmm.
The shoe store is gone.
Oh, there's a Polish shop where you buy Polish food.
It's run by Polish people, in which a friend of mine went in recently and they just didn't speak English to her.
They do have a quite attractive selection of capes in the window, though.
They do.
Don't get me wrong.
I've never bought one, but they look nice.
But it is ethnic displacement.
Yeah.
So that's cool.
Anyway, so I'm going to have a light up.
10 years ago as well, let's check out this.
So this is 2014, I think this image is listed here.
And I remember when this was even open.
There's a Greg's there and a bakehouse.
You can get your baked goods.
Yeah, they're both gone because they decided to close all that down.
They're destroying everything there and making it more pedestrianized so people would want to walk around here.
Look at this wizard hat!
Yeah, we've got a magician hat.
It's a pride hat.
The thing is, if you pedestrianize an area completely, why do you do that?
You do that so people can walk to the shops and be around.
But if there are no shops... What's even the point, exactly?
Except to see the wizard man?
And he's not selling anything.
He's playing music.
Well, not a day like ours, but... A whole different Earth.
But one of the things I found funny is that this particular area, it's actually also a headline image from the New York Times when they were describing the UK as a shithole.
Oh, yeah.
Okay, so... That's a pretty good picture for it, to be fair.
You know what this building behind reminds me of?
I've been saying... Freddy?
No, no, no, no.
It reminds me of the... Have you watched Expendables 3?
No.
You are going to talk about IMDb Top Movies and you haven't watched Expendables.
I've watched Expendables 1, but I've not watched any of them.
You just watched it because it's got Arnold in it, I bet.
Not only.
It has everyone in it.
But that was the main selling point.
People will understand, okay?
It's like the building that the Expendables are fighting Mel Gibson in towards the end of the movie.
That's like it.
And you see, you have broken windows.
Do you know what it reminds me of?
It reminds me of the tower block from Dread.
From 2012.
Mega Block City.
Mega City 1.
That was a city.
And there's the gigantic tower block that most of the film takes place in.
It reminds me of that, but worse.
It is really hideous.
And that's just the front part here, and then there's the back part.
Yeah, that's what's reminding me of the tower.
And the funny thing is, this photo was taken like a year or so ago.
It's even worse now.
But as you can see, the New York Times just wanted to write an article about how shit the UK economy is, and just went, I'll do.
That's literally where...
I'm taking those pictures.
Those pigeons in the image, they're still there and they will hound you.
I saw one of them frighten Josh once and they got a very girlish squeak out of him, if you remember.
No, I don't.
That seems embarrassing for Josh, I'll be honest.
It is very embarrassing for Josh, isn't it?
There we are.
Anyway, the funny thing I found, so I've shown you images 10 years, 10 years difference, and you think, okay, true.
But the really strange thing I found, especially about Twin, is that The further you go back, the better it becomes?
Which is a really weird situation.
No, that's a right-wing conspiracy theory.
I heard from Reddit that nothing was ever good in the past.
No one has ever opened a shop.
Buildings have never looked nice.
Photographs aren't real.
And you don't get this in much of the rest of the world.
Like, if you go to places in Russia, for example, the further you go back, I mean, you get sort of some nice stuff because the 90s was terrible, don't get me wrong, but then once you go back behind that, it gets shit up over time.
Not better.
And for the UK, not the case.
So, I mean, here, for example, this is the High Street, and I don't know if you recognize it or not, but I think this is around the 90s?
Yeah, I recognize that.
I assume?
I actually had to call my parents and send them this image and be like, is this real?
Is this what swimming used to be?
And they were like, yeah, it was also considered shit back then.
Yeah.
Even though this is way better than today.
Yeah, this was urban decay in the 90s.
And this is the same with, yeah, this is it now.
I mean, you can see the Turkish Barber.
This is the same with every town centre, though.
It's like Kru.
The further back you go, the photographs are really lovely and really nice.
God forbid you could look at photographs pre-World War II, when some of the architecture in that town was actually really nice.
Of course, they demolished it post-war and decided to build some hideous, brutalist blocks there instead.
Some of them were bombarded as well.
Some of them were, but a lot of the town centers in England were purposefully torn down in the 60s.
Okay, let me... I want to say something because I have a beef with the Brunel Tower.
You know, the tower... Everybody does, I hate that!
Okay, hang on, hang on.
So what is it?
For people who don't know, you want to describe it?
Yeah, it's basically the tower here in Swindon, really close to Freddie, where It's just really weird.
It's just horrendous.
Freddy's the center of the map where we measure out everything else from.
I think it's the highest building in Swindon.
It's close to 18 meters or something.
Unfortunately, you can see it from a distance.
It's sticking out of a shopping center as well.
You see, there are some things that don't fit, okay?
I constantly hear the argument that, you know, bad modernist architecture just builds something for money, things like that.
If that were only the case, if that was the only factor in, they would make a box.
This is positively ugly.
It isn't just an issue of making money.
I think there are box buildings, you know, that they take zero architectural, uh, creativity.
I mean, a lot of the architects were trying to make a statement with the architecture, um, like putting one foot out into the future.
They thought this is what the future is going to look like.
And this is good where it turns out if you let those buildings decay, they look hideous and they didn't look that great to begin with.
Yeah, so I suppose I'd want to show something else as well.
So this is that high street from earlier, pretty much the same place.
You'll notice this building here remains pretty easy to find.
And then there's, pure coincidence, but the same time I took this photo, about 30 minutes later, this was the same street.
Swindon stands with the Palestinian people.
Now, we can't really have a before and after comparison with this photo, because if we looked at the before, it would be an empty street.
Well, you can look at the makeup of Swindonians.
Well, you can look at that, but if you want a comparison between protests then, sorry, sorry, well, foreign protests then versus foreign protests now, just be a blank image and then this.
Yeah.
Let's do a game, shall we?
Let's do before and now, in the other order.
Oh, I think John's loading up your tower, so we can all bitch about it some more.
Oh, yes.
There we are.
It's just incomprehensible.
That's the blurriest... I don't know where did you get that from?
Couldn't you get a better photo, John?
No, I like it.
I'll keep it that way.
John's looking at me like...
All right, well, we'll leave that there.
We won't bitch about the tower anymore.
We'll move on.
But let's do the reverse, shall we?
So this, if you zoom out...
This is now.
So this is a place that exists now.
Oh, this is where you find the crack addicts.
Yeah, those police actually aren't normally there.
It was just because it was a game day.
So they happen to be out.
So you can see there the African food to the left of you, a closed down bar, a closed down pub, and then a series of closed down streets and one kebab house.
Callum, if you were to give a rough figure, how many customers would you say that African restaurant normally gets every day?
Legal or illegal customers?
How many people do you typically see going in there and buying food?
In a round number?
Rounded to the nearest number?
Zero.
Also note the blacked out windows.
Do you see the liquid substance there?
I hope it's water.
That is water, thankfully.
But anyway, at least there's a nice tree.
So if we do this in reverse, that's now.
This is before.
This is 1950s.
That same street, same area.
You can recognize it by the architecture if you measure these buildings to the left and right there.
You may notice it's kind of bustling.
There's obviously shops everywhere and it's quite nice.
But the thing is, and I was mentioning, it gets better the further you go back.
Because now we're going to go back to the 1920s.
There's a goddamn tram line!
I didn't even know there were trams in Swindon.
Why did we decide to get rid of tram lines in local towns and cities, for the most part?
Because they're genuinely a really good form of public transport, in my experience.
Yeah.
They make a lot of sense.
And they also run on time, for the most part, unlike most other forms of public transport in this country.
I think motorbuses were meant to replace them, and then they just kind of didn't work as well.
So, there we are.
You know why I think these areas were better for Swindon?
Anything pre-75, 76.
Railways?
No, because 75, 76 was when the Brunel Tower was erected.
Oh, okay.
And from that point onwards, a curse was placed upon Swinton.
It was.
Evil architects are drawn to its mice to ruin the place further.
But anyway, let's do some more of that, shall we?
Let's look at the train station before.
Very nice.
That used to be the Swindon train station, which, you know, replaced the Snow French trains.
Kind of cool.
Looks alright.
This is it now, same place.
And I can't get the monstrosity that is this building in frame and make it make sense.
Note a lot of the boarded windows.
Every single one of those rooms seems to have been abandoned.
See, it's the same in Crew.
In Crewe, we are obviously a railway town, and we have for some reason a gigantic office block monstrosity right next to the train station, which also has all of the windows boarded up and seems to have been mostly abandoned.
Maybe on the first floor there's one struggling business hanging on in there.
Guy selling sandwiches to no one.
I think there is a sandwich stall that operates outside of the building, and that's the most industry you get there.
But it's remarkably similar.
But anyway, I'll end this off with one that I think is the most striking, which, to make Bastani's point real, is this is the park in Swindon, which was set up by the Great Western Railway in the railway village.
And, I mean, look at it, look at all the flowers, the little Cazebo over there, the water features.
There's actually a section for botanical flowers and fauna as well, which I can't show you just because I don't have much time.
But there we are.
What is it now?
Well, if you can go on Google Maps, this is it.
It's just a field.
Fuck all.
There's nothing.
No, nothing, Berger.
And what's hilarious is if you go up to the entrance, I don't know if this will work or not, the entrance is over there, you can actually walk up right now and there's like a little sign on there showing you where I took this picture so you can see what's changed and now it's a nothing.
I like that they don't have a name for the park.
It's like, welcome to the hoodie.
The park.
Welcome to the park.
Great Western Railway has been loved.
You better enjoy yourself, citizen.
Not to draw another parallel, but there is another parallel, which was that Crewe was also mostly built by the London and North Western Railway.
As a town, why is it that railway companies build better towns than the government?
But I mean, you're not wrong to bring up Peru either, because my point being that Bastani's right.
I mean, this is all over the country.
So there we are.
I mean, that's that.
I'll end this off because we did happen to find a propaganda film before we finished this.
So if we can get back to the links real quick, I'll just talk about it, which is that Honda used to have a plant in Swindon.
And for some bloody reason, they made a propaganda movie about how wonderful Swindon was back in the day.
And it's really creepy and eerie.
So we have shit posted on it a bit.
Oh, that didn't age well.
Someone working for Honda there, at Honda CG4, thinks that it's heaven.
Okay, so we're going to play a shitpost version.
I don't know if you'll be able to tell at which point the North Korean music kicks in, but enjoy, I suppose.
Let's play this.
There is a place where people enjoy more comfortable surroundings.
A place of elegance and refinement for today's executive.
Oh, that song.
You're telling me.
There's a roundabout.
There's a roundabout.
Yes.
A big roundabout!
Even the birds talk English.
I don't know if I've got the energy to keep fighting the robots now.
you That's us before we come to work.
Look, even in the big wide landscape shot they had of Swindon for the propaganda, there it is.
You could see it looming through Nell Tower, the evil emanating through the lens.
There we are.
Mr. Postani, we're in agreement.
I think most of the country's in agreement now.
Everyone has noticed just how... It's doomed.
Let's move on.
Well let's not move on actually because this is basically just part two of your segment which is everything in England is rubbish now.
This is part of an ongoing mini-series I would say we have in the podcast.
We need to bring some clown makeup.
We really do because nothing works in this country.
So the towns don't work, but hey, maybe at least if you live in a town, you might be able to have somewhere nice to live in the town, seeing as we're all for building houses these days.
Maybe these new houses are nice.
No, they're not.
I couldn't find it because Callum, being a bastard, having covered them before, has covered quite a bit to do with the new quality of housing in the country, the fact that it's made terribly, the contractors doing it don't know what they're doing, don't know how to put a house together, and the new flats in places like London are literally falling on top of one another, but they're worth a million pounds somehow.
I would have found those segment clips so that I could play a bit of them so we could take a look, but Callum chooses to name his segments things like, oh boy, and Wowzers, can you believe this?
Yeah, good luck finding out what that's about.
And so... And so I couldn't find them.
So you'll just have to take my word on it, and I can cross- I'm playing the long game, motherfucker.
And I could cross-check and reference this with you, which is that, yeah, there was that TikTok...
Was it the TikTok builder going around a load of houses, a load of new builds, just going, look at the state of this!
That's shoddy work, right?
The one called Spanners a bit out again.
The fucking wood butcher's done it more.
Yeah, because we've got...
Okay.
We've got cowboys operating everywhere in this country.
And the other one was there was a particular block of new build flats in London that were in a really expensive area.
I forget exactly where...
Some English guy was paying £900,000 for the privilege of owning the place, and the walls were falling apart and the ceiling was caving in.
Is this correct?
Am I getting the information right?
Yeah.
I would have cross-checked it, but screw you.
I can source my own claims.
Yep.
With my own voice.
Source?
Me?
Yeah.
It came to me on TikTok.
There you go.
Trust Me Bro is the source there.
But those of you who have watched the podcast will know the truth because you'll have watched every single episode like a good, dedicated person that you are.
And so you'll know that what we're saying is the truth.
If you've not seen those episodes, Good luck finding them, I suppose.
Blame Callum for that one.
But I wanted to just talk about that yeah, in communist Britain that we live in right now, all housing is slum housing.
Because not only do we have
We've got shitty housing associations and landlords that don't take care of the places that they're operating with, we've got shitty building contractors making really bad new homes, and then we've also got shitty tenants who don't know how to look after the homes that they're being given, especially if they're, shall we say, new British, being given social housing, and they come in and they see there's some black mold in the corner, and they go, I guess that's going to be a problem three months from now, and then they don't do anything about it, and sometimes they die.
I have a major question about houses in the UK.
Why don't you put a window in the bathroom?
What, so people can peer in?
No, because you can open the window and you're going to have less mold and condensation.
Well, my bathroom's got a window in it.
My parents' house has a bathroom in the window, a window in the bathroom.
All the other places that I've had, that I've lived in, have had a window in the bathroom.
What's wrong with your place?
Why have you got some kind of sensory deprivation box with a toilet in it?
Excuse me, I've seen many houses here who have bathrooms without windows.
I really thought you were going to ask, like, why do we have stupid taps or something like that?
No, no, it's about... Why is it so expensive?
Why do you get so little for your money?
Just have a window and open it, and then you're going to have less mold.
That's beyond us.
I mean, I do.
I do.
I don't know why you've been looking... You're lucky, but there are a lot of houses...
There are some watching right now who don't have that luxury.
There are adults in Stevenage who don't have windows, you know?
They've never even heard of windows.
The light of the sun has never touched their fragile skin.
Okay, that was not the question that I was expecting you to ask, if I'm honest.
Okay, what kind of question would you think I was going to ask?
I was expecting you to ask, why are houses so small while being so expensive?
That's another one.
Why is it that a two-bedroom house with one bathroom in England will cost you upwards of 400 grand, depending on where it is.
It's your fault, basically.
You started the whole point about condensation.
Okay, so when you're doing this, you are talking about the effect, you are also having to talk about the cause.
The cause has to do with humidity.
The question that I want to know the answer is, why so many people don't know how to open a window?
If they have windows, why don't people know to open them to let some air in and help prevent black mold and other problems that can build up?
Because even when given windows, or even as we'll see as we go along, when given ventilation in your windowless bathroom, people do very strange and stupid things.
Were you looking at chat?
Was chat saying something?
I mean, they were just asking sensible things, which is, you know, why do you dumb brits have two taps instead of one?
Why do you have a washer and a dryer in the kitchen?
That's weird.
Hmm.
That's that's because, like, Americans have room to put those things in.
I mean, my place, the taps have the one tap where you don't you don't have to make the choice between ice water and scalding hot water.
You can actually... It'd be $20.50, aren't we?
No!
No, I don't even know how old the place that I'm living in is.
It just has sensible taps.
So, there you go.
So there's the answer to that question.
You can find them.
Like, you can find some places with bathrooms with windows in them.
You can find sensible taps in England.
But still, the places you'll find them in are probably going to be vastly, vastly too expensive for what you're getting.
So, before I get into the...
Okay.
Before I get into the rest of it, there's a website.
Callum will tell you this.
Stelios will tell you this.
There is a website.
You might be watching us on this website right now.
If you're not, you're watching us on Rumble.
Give us a super chat.
Callum's dying, so please put money towards his funeral expenses.
On the website you can find series like Brokenomics, and the most recent episode came out yesterday talking about the book The Sovereign Individual, which is a book
about people from in the late 90s one of whom was Jacob Reed Smog's dad talking about the effect that will come from the internet and making some predictions of that some of which as Dan has told me are remarkably prescient so that might be an interesting one for you to watch if you want if you want to watch it you can get a subscription on the website five pounds a month etc etc you know all this by now so let's look at it so at the moment
There's going to be a crackdown on mouldy houses in England because there's too many mouldy houses and I don't want to exactly throw all blame away from the people who are the landlords of these houses and the housing associations that look after these houses because obviously there does seem to be some problems there.
People are being alerted of problems like mould and leaks in the homes which cause Major problems, which can cause people big problems, and then they don't do anything about it, but also... Spoilers here.
People can buy black mold cleaner.
The spray.
You can buy.
You can do that, but still, if you've got a leak, I would expect most people to, you know, get in touch with the landlord or something.
You can't solve it yourself, but still, if you make your landlord and other people aware of it, they should at least try and do something to help repair it.
So I'm not going to take all responsibility away from them, but there's this law coming in, which I've mentioned before, but it seems to be progressing, which is going to be Awab's Law, I think, and that's named after two-year-old Awab Ishak, who died from prolonged exposure to black mold in his family's Rochdale social housing flat.
So housing that his family was given at cut prices, because it's social housing, and that's how that works, had, let's see if I can find the picture, black mold like this, and if I scroll down there might be more images of it, oh god, All going terribly wrong, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah, here you go.
Black mold like this.
Pretty bad.
But also, they were in that flat for a few years, I think, by that point.
So that would not have been that bad to begin with.
And my flat recently had black mold.
And it was really simple.
I went downstairs and got the spray.
Sprayed?
Screwed?
Sorry, I have to add some things here because I faced some issues with black mold in my previous residence.
Oh yes.
And I said it in a more formal way.
No, basically, a lot of the times it is the landlord's and the agency's fault.
Because you are phoning them and they tell you, okay, no, just clean it.
But it doesn't go away 100%.
It comes back again.
And a lot of the times they tell you, well, just have the heater on.
You can't have the heater on all the time.
Have the heater on?
Yeah, because they tell you you need to increase the temperature.
If you have the heater on with the windows closed, that's going to create an environment where it's going to spread.
Well, it can also spread when you have cold temperatures and really wet temperatures.
But anyway, it's very easy here for people in agencies to just pass the fault and the blame on the tenants.
So, as far as I can see, there's failings going on in a number of places that a lot of these people aren't cleaning up after themselves and aren't cleaning the mold.
If the mold's just started, then you are able to do it.
These people will be moving into houses where either the previous tenant or the housing association or landlord haven't done anything about the problems that were already there, and then they're just there not doing anything about it either.
So, everybody's making stupid decisions, and it means that all of this housing is rubbish.
And not really fit for purpose a lot of the time.
If you can go in and this new house that you've been given or this new flat that you've been given is going to give you respiratory diseases because of how poorly it's been kept, that's a problem.
That's a problem for everybody.
What, do you expect me to disagree?
No, I'm on Team Mould.
You just had a look on your face like you had something to say about all of this.
That's all.
I'm Mould-ist.
Yeah, I stand with the Mould.
I'll just give some information.
The Royal College of Physicians has called on Michael Gove to accelerate a promised crackdown on landlords, failing to fix tens of thousands of Mouldy homes with a warning that unless laws are toughened, many more people will die from the effects.
As the Housing Ombudsman reported, increased failures among landlords to properly tackle damp, mould and leaks in England's social housing.
Professor Sir Stephen Holgate, Special Advisor on the Air Quality to the RCP, warned of widening ill health as more people inhale fungal toxins.
It creates problems like headaches, low energy, declining immunity, increased susceptibility among children for respiratory infections, as well as deaths, which is what happened to this kid right here.
In the nine months since March, the Housing Ombudsman for England, Richard Blakeway, made 721 findings of fault in how landlords tackled damp, mold, and leaks more than for the previous 12 months, and several times more than 2020 to 2021.
About 88,000 households in social housing are believed by the regulator of social housing to be living with serious damp and mold problems.
Last year, Gove, the Secretary of State for leveling up, one of the most worthless and stupid titles ever granted to anyone in this country, housing and communities, promised to introduce Awab's Law, setting tough deadlines for landlords to fix mouldy homes.
After two-year-old Awab Ishaq died from prolonged exposure to black mould in his family's Rochdale social housing flat, On Tuesday, yesterday, Gove announced an 8-week consultation on proposals to require social landlords to investigate hazards within 14 days, start fixing problems within a further 7 days, and make emergency repairs within 24 hours, or pay compensation to tenants.
So this might be a good thing for landlords, like slum landlords, that aren't treating the properties well, because if you've got a situation where you've got one person moving out, Another person moving in.
In that interim period, you as a landlord really should be fixing up any problems like dampened mold, like leaks that are popping up so these people aren't moving into these situations.
But if they are moving into a situation where the house is fine, and then all of a sudden all this stuff pops up and they can't sort mold and other such things out by themselves because they just sit there going, what do?
What do?
I can't breathe anymore, what do?
That's partially their own fault.
There's two classes of people with these problems, we've discovered.
Yes.
I'm sure you're getting to it, actually.
That's Sadiq Khan's Twitter feed.
Yes, yes, and this is... I don't know if we covered this at the time, so this is just some context, but I think...
The best context for it really, because it's not just something that's affecting foreigners.
We've also got this woman, Shelby Atherton, who was in the same area under the same housing association in Rochdale.
Also in social housing or not?
Also social housing by the looks of it, saying that she moved into this place and it had all of these problems and so she was worried that it was going to make her daughter sick and they had to move out.
So there are problems, but also This is the sort of person we're normally talking about in these situations.
Did we show this video at the time when it was released?
Did we cover this?
Uh, not in detail, but you can... I suppose we'll just go ahead.
Yeah, look, because it's amazing to see, and it really gets to your point that... Okay, some of the people we're talking about have done this to themselves, and the difference is... Uh-huh.
The difference is that non-Northern Europeans Aren't used to a Northern European climate, so when they come to a Northern European climate, some of them don't really understand why we have certain things?
Yes.
It's very usual for houses here, because you want to heat the place up, to get a bit mouldy, because you put the heating up and you close the windows to retain the heat, and then that can provide the environment where you can get some mould popping up in your house.
You are able to deal with that by cleaning it up, Not to spoil anything, but wow.
Silit Bang.
Right there.
Silit Bang.
Sponsored by the Lotus Eaters.
And the mold is gone.
£3.50 from your local Tesco.
Or you can find own brand for even cheaper.
Death to Tesco.
Go somewhere else.
You can get it from Asda.
Yay!
Yeah, there you go.
Or even Morrisons.
Or if you're feeling fancy, I'm sure Waitrose.
Does some of their own black mold cleaner.
But you can just get this.
This seems to be above certain New Britons coming into the country.
Let's just play this clip because it is quite remarkable because there are a few telling signs of the character of this person that Sadiq Khan has decided to broadcast for the BBC.
So most people living in poor conditions don't get this kind of coverage.
And they certainly don't get the sort of coverage by Sadiq Khan.
Imagine why Sadiq Khan chose this person to go and visit, and then keep your eyes and your ears peeled for a few telling signs here, okay?
So, let's go.
The mayor has come to visit the home where Dariana lived for more than two years.
So as you can see, the skylight was cracked, which is causing rainwater flow into the property.
She shared this one-bedroom flat with her two children.
One, four, and three.
Four.
Okay, and you've got another good news coming soon.
Yeah.
Uh-huh.
Best of luck.
The next week.
Pregnant Dariana and her children were without heating or hot water for months.
She was using this one.
Yeah, to the kettle to get hot water so she can take a shower.
Yes, it was very cold.
The children were always in the hospital and it was very cold.
It was very, very cold.
She was always in the hospital with the kids because it was very cold and I was melting everywhere.
I was water dripping on the floor and everything.
Dariana says the landlord wouldn't fix the problems but put the rent up by £200 to £1,300 a month, so she contacted the council.
It's made an order to prevent anyone else renting the home until the work is done.
Unfortunately, these are very common.
We see these kind of properties probably weekly.
Maybe to not suggest severity, but the same sort of situation, damper mould, excess cold, lack of heating.
Sadiq Khan was here to announce that 300 environmental officers like Blaze have been trained with City Hall funding to boost Council's enforcement powers.
I think we've got the gist of that there because the rest of it is just Sadiq Khan blathering on about how we need more communism to solve this problem.
So are we playing a game?
How many dog whistles did you see?
I'll throw one out first.
Can't speak English properly.
Yeah, speak Spanish.
Speak Spanish to communicate.
Needs other foreigner to act as middleman for communication.
Okay.
Give her a free house.
Give her a free house.
Okay, what else did we notice, boys?
Chip!
Chip!
Twice!
Twice in the video!
Sky ceiling birds!
They've come to Britain!
Yeah, we got some chirping there.
Also, did anybody notice... Let's see if I can find it.
This!
Now if you're trying to air out a bathroom and you don't have a window, perhaps, this isn't what I would recommend to solve the problem.
This is what I meant by... So if you're not used to a climate, you do stupid things.
Like when you're in a rush, for example, I walked around without a hat for a long enough time until I realized I should be wearing a bloody hat because my head is literally freezing off.
And if you don't understand why you would need ventilation in a Northern European climate that you've just moved to, you'd probably look at that big vent that's letting out all the heat in your mind and think, why is that there?
I'm going to get some duct tape and duct tape up the vent.
What might be the effects of doing that?
Doesn't enter your head.
Hmm, well... What are the effects of doing that, I wonder?
I did see some people also speculating that she might have been doing this because she might have been smoking in the bathroom.
Yeah.
And didn't want it going into the ventilation.
I'm sure you'd want it to go into the ventilation.
Oh well, you never know with some people.
But yeah, so there's a few signs there, and also, remember, she's complaining about the fact that Landlord won't do anything.
So we've got this person coming in into housing which isn't fit for occupation, possibly before she got there, but certainly made worse by her being there, not fixing these problems, not changing the smoke alarm battery.
But that didn't affect the mould!
That didn't affect the mould, but Jesus Christ, can you imagine living in there?
God!
Although, to be fair, if I moved in there, that would be the first thing I'd do.
There we go.
Honey, have we got any batteries?
There we go, sorted.
But also, if she's in contact with the landlord and the landlord's just not doing anything, how easy is it for that landlord, presumably, to slip anything past and be an effective slum landlord because she can't speak English properly?
Because she can't communicate.
Because, oh great, I don't have to do anything now because this person can't speak English.
I mean, I used to know...
Yeah, I can tell the story.
The university, one of the cleaners that came to our hall to clean out the showers and whatnot, she also owned property, so she would offer it to the students.
So she was a cleaner, doesn't pay much.
She's actually a landlord, that's where she makes her money.
She's a cleaner to get access to students one-on-one.
Clever.
So then she could offer up rooms at what seemed like good prices.
And then the house one of my friends moved into, every single bedroom was someone that's being rented.
The front room was being rented.
The dining room was being rented.
The dining room was converted into a bedroom being rented.
And then there was an illegal structure built in the backyard, which was also being rented out to someone to live in.
So she has three, six students living in a house with three bedrooms.
I forget what the term is, but I'm sure that there's regulations against that.
Really illegal, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, that's very illegal to do.
But the people she rented out, because she was Chinese, were mostly Chinese.
And they don't know the law.
Like, I had conversations with them, they didn't realize that, yeah, this is not allowed.
Were they unhappy with the situation?
Quite, yeah.
I bet they were.
So yeah, it turns out that we've got lots of problems in this country, and to a certain extent, as much as I want these people who are slum landlords to be cracked down on with laws like this, this is basically also taking most responsibility away from anybody in these conditions, like this woman, to actually take care of her living space, because I guess the landlord just has to do everything for me now because the law says so.
So yeah, we're in communist Britain, and once again, nothing is working as it should.
On that note, let's move on again.
Shteriosh!
Okay, basically, we are gonna go to Germany.
Before Germany comes to us!
Okay, basically, I want to say that as a Greek who lives and lived in a country that had lots of protests, I want to welcome Germans into the world of protesting.
Apparently, Germany is full of protests right now.
Let's see, on the 8th of December, it says here, Germany hit by last-minute train strike.
Deutsche Bahn trains massively affected.
German train drivers have launched a last-minute strike.
The 24-hour public transport walkout began on Thursday evening.
It is the fourth strike this year and follows disruption earlier this week due to heavy snowfall in southern Germany.
Four per year.
Four for 2023 is not much.
Obviously, this is just for train drivers, but you need to add to those numbers.
And you are adding to those numbers, so kudos.
So it's over working hours and pay according to this article.
We've had very similar things in the past year in England as well.
Yes.
So it seems that across most of Europe and Northwest Europe as well, people just aren't happy with the conditions they're being asked to live in and work in.
Nobody's happy.
Nothing is working for anybody.
OK, so when you're talking about social movements, protests and mass stuff happening, you need to catch a phrase.
What about the term Mist Gabelmob?
You like it?
Mist Gabelmob?
Yes.
Bit of a mouthful, I'll be honest.
I'm just going to go with everything sucks and I hate it.
That's my slogan.
German, that's why.
I think this has to do with a sort of motorized pitchfork mob, which was a pejorative term that the German media used, but people have adopted it from Germany, and especially the German farmers, and they are using it, and they're having hashtag MissGabbleMods. and they are using it, and they're having hashtag MissGabbleMods.
And let's just, you can basically translate this here.
Where can we translate this?
Apparently we can't.
Apparently we can't, but it says basically here that the motorized pitchfork mob is therefore a sign of the adaptation of traditional forms of civil disobedience to modern technologically advanced agricultural practice.
This is how they say that, you know, the means of production change, how social Events manifest before you'd have a pitchfork.
Now you have a pitchfork and a tractor and you'll create mass problems.
Okay.
Okay.
So it refers to a group of people primarily from the agricultural sector or rural communities who use modern motorized equipment, such as tractors, combined harvesters, or other agricultural machinery to demonstrate their protest or discontent.
Um, anyway, so let's look at this here and, uh, sorry.
Okay.
So let's write German farmers.
You see all sort of things being posted.
Let's see some of the pictures.
You see there are a lot of them in a lot of cities.
They have mass protests in a lot of cities.
So what are they doing?
They're all driving the tractors, they're parking them up and blocking roads?
Or are they just massing in particular public areas and honking their horns like in Canada?
Yes, but when you're talking about blocking roads, it is not, for instance, that if an ambulance requires to go to a hospital or something, that they block it completely.
It's just that they are So they're not behaving in the same way that Insulate Britain, Extinction Rebellion, people like that do?
Well, let's see here also some of the footage.
So you can get an idea.
And why is it that the farmers are protesting?
Okay, that's an excellent question.
So basically, Germany's economy was based to a very large extent on cheap energy, which came from Russian natural gas.
And after the war in Ukraine, and especially the issues with Nord Stream Pipeline, They have a problem with energy and a lot of energy heavy industries have incurred added costs because the price of energy has risen.
Let's be frank, the car market.
It costs a lot to keep tractors running.
Well, no, and production of German cars is a huge part of the German economy.
I mean, I have friends who work with subsidiaries of Volkswagen and just the horror stories that come out of them.
It's just like, yeah, they're fucked.
Like not even slightly.
The profit margins are just all over the place now.
Yeah.
So yeah, everyone's kind of panicking because if they can't get any cheap energy back, well, the Germans economy is just dead.
Well, and let me just say this because obviously there are problems, but you could say that sometimes there is an issue of crisis management.
So the question is, things will get bad.
How bad will we allow them to get?
And essentially what the German farmers are saying, basically, that you cannot not have a farming industry.
And the reason why they protest is because They had a tax exemption for the agricultural vehicles, for diesel and petrol and energy to use, which is being withdrawn.
So they will ask to pay for more taxes for the vehicles.
Which I assume is going to make a lot of these farms not economically viable.
Yes.
And they also had some subsidies, which are going to be withdrawn.
Now, the context of all this was that the German government had a budget and it says that the court decided that the budget isn't basically legal.
It isn't holding up to scrutiny.
And they had the sort of gap, I think it was somewhere to 17 billion.
And there's also another question because the farmers are really pissed off with the Green Party.
The Green Party says, for instance, why not use electric tractors?
And they basically say that.
That's a nice clip here.
with respect to the number.
Now, and there is also another question because the farmers are really pissed off with the Green Party.
The Green Party says, for instance, why not use electric tractors?
And they basically say that that's a nice clip here.
We can watch from here.
Well, they're basically not good enough, they're saying.
And they're not good enough.
And there are several problems, like the battery doesn't hold for a long time, it just works for a few hours and you need to recharge it.
Basically, it's not working as far as they're concerned.
Anyway, now let's move to this clip here.
Or is it?
Yeah.
I want us to watch this clip here, which is something that happens- This person's not gonna try what I think- Yeah, let's play it.
Basically, for those who are listening and you don't have an image, what happens here is that there's an ecologist with a Dacia, and he is pissed off with it.
Apparently he has no problem with just-stop oil stopping traffic, but he does have a problem with tractors, and he is trying to tie the tractor to his Dacia.
His small van is going to try and pull a multiple-ton tractor?
Yeah.
Which I don't think is going to work out for him.
What do you think is he going to find out in a few seconds?
That he's an idiot?
Will it work?
This is a stupid thing to do.
No, it will not blend.
Let's see here.
I think his rear bumpers might be about to just yank off.
It could be, though, that the knot isn't well tied.
Is the knot just going to come undone?
He's trying to.
This is just so fun.
And, you know, if we had audio, we would listen to the people.
They're just so chilled up about it.
They know what's going to happen.
Yeah.
Oh, come on.
Come on.
Pull it.
Pull it.
Just.
There we go.
Oh, what a surprise.
Well, but you need to push your limits.
It's like in the gym.
You need to push your limits.
And it took that set to failure and beyond.
Now, I have a meme for both of you here.
No more Brother Wars.
Germany and Canada, finally.
Hand in hand.
We have someone here that has V from V from Vendetta.
His head is on backwards because it's AI.
Anyway, he holds a rose and what does he hold with the other hand?
I can't see.
Is that a bow?
I don't think it's any... I think it's a line.
A fucking leaf.
I think it's a line that's not even attached to his hand.
He's a bit rude.
He's a bit rude.
He has his back turned on us.
Anyway, so he says... He's still trying to look us in the eye like an owl or something.
God bless the Canadian and German Freedom Convoys because, you know, there were several convoys across the world that tried to say that they support it, from Poland, from countries that neighbour Germany, from Canada.
Anyway, now, quick question.
Okay.
Let's say you are governing a country and you have trouble with some protests.
What is the best way to rhetorically divert attention from the actual issues that go on?
And just completely sidetrack the whole conversation so people don't look at the actual demands of the farmers and actually address the issue that, for instance, you need to have a degree of economic self-sufficiency.
Are the German government about to accuse their own farmers of being Nazis?
Well, you'll just see what happened on a lot of media.
And I'll just have here from BBC, let's say here, German farmers blockade Berlin with tractors in sub-city row.
Now let's look, this is a big article, you can see here several stuff, but let us see what happens on the very first page.
Paragraph says, farmers in Germany are blockading roads in protest against subsidy cuts with more than 500 tractors and trucks parked up by Berlin's Brandenburg Gate.
There are also reported blockages in Württemberg.
North Rhine-Westphalia, Saxony and Bavaria.
The subsidy cuts were designed to fix a budget crisis after a court ruled the government's 2024 budget was illegal, just as we said in the beginning.
And there we go.
But the cuts have backfired and there are fears the ensuing row could feed the far-right's popularity.
There you go.
Every single time.
We've effed up massively.
We keep screwing over our own population, and we show every day that we despise them.
We have nothing but bile and hatred towards them.
But people are noticing, and this might fuel the far right, and that's the biggest problem.
That's from the BBC.
Let's go to The Guardian.
German Vice-Chancellor warns of extremism as far-right groups join farmers' protests as it happened.
Is the AFD involved?
Is that what they're referring to as the far-right groups?
Summary of the day.
Okay, two days ago, Sarah Wagenknecht launches new party.
Far-right groups join protests in some regions.
Habeck warns of extremism amidst protests.
You get an idea.
Sorry, but the farmers are calling for the purity of German apples.
I mean, it's just... Seeds and soil!
Seeds and soil nationalism!
Anyway, you can see here that a lot of the... you just click on the page and you'd get an idea of, you know, a lot of their calling for far-right extremism and far-right groups protesting.
And let me just say that they didn't do the same thing when it came to the RMT union strikes.
The Guardian covered the RMT Union strikes, but they didn't fill their papers with worries that the far right are going to co-opt the RMT Union strikes.
I imagine in German media, neither did they do that with Deutsche Bahn, because this is the real divide between people who work and live in the cities and, well, people in the rural areas.
I've seen some, I know that she wasn't putting her stick one way or the other but Lauren Chen in response to someone on Twitter was asking why is it that the right are okay with this kind of protest blocking roads whereas Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain don't get that same courtesy from the right and we say that's a bad thing from them and I think part of it is to do with the fact that Extinction Rebellion and other big globalist causes like that have made it fair game.
They've made it fair game to do this sort of thing.
And also from what Stelios has been describing, they're not trying to block ambulances.
They're not trying to block emergency services.
And I assume not trying to block major roads in any way that could cause harm to people.
So it does seem that they're operating with a bit more courtesy.
Well, I think generally speaking that when you are having protests of such kinds, of course you have an extra risk and you do cause trouble to people.
But the extent of doing so is debatable.
I'm not there in Germany to know, but this is a question.
And it's interesting, the first thing the media does is go for far-right infiltration, far-right groups have started to show up at these protests.
Here we have another article by the Politico.
It says, German farmer protests spark fears of far-right infiltration.
Authorities warn that radical groups aim to trigger a broader movement.
That is interesting, actually, thinking about it, that when we see these sorts of protests by environmental groups, we go, well, who's this causing harm to?
Are they blocking emergency services?
The mainstream media goes, how are Nazis involved in this?
The thing there as well, she's demanding fresh elections.
Member of the far right wants more elections.
Well, this is like the AFD need to be taken off the ballot to preserve democracy because they're too popular.
Well, again, we have here, right-wing extremists and other enemies of democracy are trying to infiltrate and instrumentalize the protests.
A spokesperson for Germany's interior minister, Nancy Faeser, said in Berlin, the country's federal police, Faeser added, believe these groups want to foment a general strike or even rioting to trigger an overthrow of the government.
It would not be the first time far-right groups have tried to gain political sway by latching onto protest movements in Germany.
Something similar was evident in Pandera, pandemic era anti-vaccine protests and in demonstration against military aid to Ukraine.
So all of the things that have led to the economic conditions right now that mean that you're going to take away the tax exemptions from the farmers, that they were saying, "This is a bad idea.
This could ruin our economy." Now that it's ruining the economy and they're protesting again, they're saying, it's the same people.
Could it be my own actions?
No, it's the populace that are wrong.
And where do you think that these infiltration concerns come from?
Mainly.
What do you mean?
Do you mean as in mainstream media?
I'll just read the next paragraph.
It says here... I blame the Russians on this.
The infiltration concerns come after some 100 farmers tried on Thursday to accost Green's economy minister Robert Habeck, preventing him from disembarking from a ferry in northern Germany following a private visit to an island in the North Sea.
Police described the encounter as very, very... He was getting back from his private visit to a remote island.
Green minister.
Reuters, nationwide German farmer blockades heap pressure on Scholes.
Now, summary for those who don't have time to read the whole of it.
Tractor convoys block roads nationwide, Vice Chancellor warns of extremist threat, government struggles to fix budget crisis, far-right groups backing protests.
Okay, and we have here not just the Vice Chancellor, but we also have, where is it?
I see the far-right AFD party, I see that there.
Yeah, we... Back to the protest, good!
I mean, there is a certain degree with this where, yeah, it turns out being able to grow your own food is a really important part of being a sovereign nation.
Yes.
So, basically, that's what I want to say there.
Right now, it seems to me that, you know, when there are people who are demanding an increased degree of national sovereignty or increased control over their own fate, let's say, and their economy.
We are going back to, we are going away from the idea that the whole world is going to turn into a market and every country is just going to produce the product in which it has a comparative and competitive advantage with, you know, with respect to other nations.
This creates a problem of energy dependency to a very large extent.
And as we saw, the German economy was based on cheap Energy from Russia and this has completely destroyed the economy of Germany.
Now, maybe destroy is too strong a word, but I think that they do face economic calamities.
And it seems to me that the, well, a lot of the farmers are saying basically that we need to have an agricultural sector.
Because somebody needs to grow our damn food.
And what we need to remember is that a lot of food and wheat experts in Europe come from Ukraine.
And Russia.
And now with the war between Russia and Ukraine, there is this extra problem of how to ship wheat and food from, let's say, the Black Sea and to reach the other places, Europe and other places.
So basically, it seems to me that obviously it is primarily people who are calling for more Control over their own economy and I don't mean that in the in the sense of more state control over their own economy.
I'm just saying that they are trying to claim that just outsourcing basic industries to foreign nations is going to harm the people.
And the sovereignty of the nation.
The great weakness of the globalized economy was revealed with the Ukraine Russia conflict which is that you're assuming in a globalized economy that there's going to be some kind of perpetual peace the end of history of francis fukuyama meaning the no nations that.
Have economic ties to one another are ever going to end up in conflict with one another ever again.
There's never going to be conflict between nations that causes difficulties in trade routes.
And therefore, once we've got that globalized markets, everyone's going to be peaceful and no problems are ever going to come about, which means that you can be dependent on Russia for cheap energy to fuel your economy.
And it turns out that when that doesn't happen, because that's a fictional fairy land, that it causes major problems.
Yes.
And I'll just say some things here that have to do with nuclear energy, because I think that this is major to bear in mind.
So the German nation and the German government, let's say the federal government, decided to stop using its nuclear power plants.
So I give you here some of the major problems here is that all German nuclear power plants that had gone into operation up to and including 1980 were shut down immediately after the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
They give the names and they say that foreign It doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
I'll show you why in a minute.
Safety concerns.
We can't just improve the safety of these places.
We've just got to shut them down.
Sorry, sorry.
There was an earthquake and then a tsunami, and this power plant took that, and then there was a small leak.
Therefore, Germany, where there are no tsunamis or earthquakes, needs to shut down all of theirs.
I mean, it makes perfect sense.
When was the Fukushima nuclear accident?
I think 2011.
Yeah, 2011.
Yes.
I was still in secondary school when that happened, and they're still going, yeah, we just need to shut them down.
Well, let's just show you some extra bits here.
It says the last three nuclear power plants in Germany were shut down on 15th of April 2023.
Now, the war in Ukraine had started there for more than a year.
It was the 24th of February of 2023.
They started to still kneecap themselves with energy.
So that's one thing.
And let me just show you here the Rationale that they cited.
They had the debate on a lifetime extension for nuclear power plants.
You'll see a lot of the time it has to do with focus on safety issues.
And continued operation.
Is it compromising safety?
This is interesting here.
It says, an expert report recently commissioned by the Bavarian government on ICER-2, that was a power plant, concluded that there would be no concern whatsoever in the case of a lifetime extension of this nuclear power plant.
The federal government, on the other hand, stated that the three remaining nuclear power plants could only continue to operate if at all with safety-related concessions.
And then they closed them down.
So, essentially, the main reason that is given is safety.
Why is it not safe?
Because we say so.
Like Callum pointed out, it was a tsunami and an earthquake hit Japan.
Germany, as far as I don't really hear about earthquakes happening in Germany very often, maybe you can correct me, and Germany, famously landlocked country.
No.
They've got the coastline.
It's not landlocked, but yeah, it's inland.
Yeah, well, still.
It's not an island like Japan.
Yeah, it's not an island and I doubt any of those... But there's no tsunamis.
Yeah.
Ever.
And... So...
Let me just give you an idea of how another nation really close to Germany reacts.
We're talking about France, and these data are from World Nuclear Association, worldnuclear.org, and they are updated in August 2023.
It says France derives about 70% of its electricity from nuclear energy, due to a long-standing policy based on energy security.
Basically, they are increasing and they're pushing for more nuclear plants.
Now, a lot of people, they have told us, because I have talked about it before, some months ago, they have told me that some people from France, from the audience, have told us that basically they don't have as many nuclear power plants yet, or that this is more of a promise.
I'm just giving the data that says here.
And basically it says here something really interesting.
France's present electricity generation mix is a result of the French government decided in 1974 Just after the first oil shock to rapidly expand the country's nuclear power capacity using Westinghouse technology.
This decision was taken in the context of France having substantial heavy engineering expertise, but few known indigenous energy resources.
As a result of the 1974 decision, France now claims a substantial level of energy independence and an extremely low level of carbon dioxide emissions per capita from electricity generation.
Since over 80% of its electricity, it's from nuclear or hydro.
So basically, essentially you have two nations that react completely differently in the same kind of situation, a situation that says your energy supply is basically depends on a particular side.
And that side has a disproportionate amount of power over you because they hold the keys to your economy.
And, you know, that's an interesting point to look at.
And I just want to say that this is interesting because this may be a bit anecdotal, but people have been talking about a German-led EU for a long time.
But these are signs that the EU most probably is going to be more French-led.
In the future.
That's just one, let's say, fallibilistic point.
And I'll end with Sean Maguire.
He says, before starting, I want to say that I'm a techno-optimist, and I believe that Germany's decision to shut down their nuclear facilities was one of the stupidest political decisions in history.
Most of their economy is based on turning energy into chemicals.
Woke economic seppuku.
And thanks to Dan for... Is it even woke that they chose to do this off the back of a catastrophe that happened in Japan in 2011?
It seems more just like blind incompetence.
I don't think it is.
I agree with you.
I would imagine net zero.
But then again, nuclear power helps with net zero.
I have the impression that this is the kind of rhetoric that is used to justify such policies in some circles.
I don't think it's woken us behind it, personally.
This is the language that is being used in order to push forward for these policies to a particular segment of the population that sees itself as West and progressive.
But I agree with the rest of his statement.
It's a stupid, stupid thing to do.
Let me end the segment with this.
It seems that there is something going on with the energy sector and energy dependency of Germany.
And one of its manifestations Has to do with the German protest.
And I think that it is very, it is very, let's say, misleading to say that the entirety of these protests are going to be co-opted by the far right.
I personally, I think that far right organizations will try to do this to a certain extent, but just focusing on that instead of focusing on the on the major issues that drive most farmers to say things like that in protest.
That's the crux of the matter.
And we shouldn't give governments an easy time when they try not to evade the substance of an issue by just saying, oh, it's the far right, it's the far right, it's the far right.
All right.
Well, on that note, let's go to the video comments.
Hey, lads, how's it going?
I've noticed something with the Epstein client list.
I want to see a chart like this where we're going to have The people that are implicated down here on the left, we're going to have a score on how likely their accusations are.
So Billy C gets a 10, Donnie T gets a 1, Andrew gets a 10.
And then what their political opinions are on a whole bunch of topics.
So, you know, Billy C is again 10, where he's all open borders, all into the UN and blah, blah, blah.
Because, you know, Donnie gets very little on all of those.
I reckon we might come to a certain conclusion here.
Who knows?
Everyone.
Let's go to the next one!
Yesterday the nuclear family not working and it being better if grandparents and extended family were more involved was brought up.
The problem is many boomers barely raised their own kids and they were always busy with their own lives.
Divorce seemed like a great idea because the other spouse had to take care of the kids half the week.
The point is boomers hate kids and they want nothing to do with taking care of them.
Today, when you ask a boomer grandparent to watch your child, they make it as difficult as possible.
My wife and I plan on changing this, but that's how it is today.
Yeah, right.
Thankfully, my own parents are going to be happy to be grandparents when it comes around to it, but I understand and have heard that that has been the case for a lot of people who have Boomer parents, is that they barely paid any attention to their lives and are rubbish at being grandparents now that they're having their own children.
So that's a really sad state of affairs for anybody.
Once again, I do not think the problem has been the Western nuclear family.
I think that is a social structure that has worked For generation upon generation, and it's only because of other societal breakdown issues in the West that it's not seeming adequate to some, but I do not see it as anywhere near like a root cause of the issues that we're experiencing right now.
Fair enough.
I don't have much to say on the matter, so yeah.
Right, let's go to the written comments.
I don't know why I'm doing that, but whatever.
You're flanderizing yourself in real time.
Yeah.
Hector Rex says we demand karaoke, so you may get your wish, Stelios.
We'll have the Zoom call.
Yep, you see?
A lot of people wanting karaoke, actually, in the comments.
I'm not going to read the rest of that because it's all just... No, no, no, you'll sing it!
You won't read it, you'll sing it.
Remember to get drunk for your karaoke party livestream.
I don't know, you want that?
Nobody wants that.
You want that's our karaoke.
Go live with me in Japan.
At least you can sing.
No, that's questionable.
Andy Onom...
Andy Onimus says, what day is it Callum?
What day is it?
I'm sure they'll loan me a billion dollars if I try.
Anyway, so on the everyone is noticing stuff, Sophie says, I don't know about you gays.
No, guys, sorry.
Freudian slip.
But I'm highly invested in the story of Freddy now and the creation and destruction of Freddy.
Stelios, you need to give us the segments.
That would be some good storytelling.
Freddy's gone now.
This is epic storytelling.
Fred's dead.
I don't think so.
He's gone though.
Where did he go?
We can rebuild him.
We can replace him.
We can make him better.
There's going to be a movie, you know, The Origins of Freddy.
Anyway, Lord Nerevar says, is it in my job?
I have to talk to a lot of normies.
And even they are starting to realize that things are getting noticeably worse around them.
It's heartening to see them all rail against the world around them, if it seems concerning of the anger.
Kevin Charlie Beagle says, regarding Aaron noticing the stay of the towns, this is just further proof that nothing really counts happening in the country until it reaches them.
Yeah.
I mean, that was the funny thing.
It was like, oh, I have a baby now.
Hmm.
Maybe the future of this place matters.
Really?
Really, bro?
Aaron Bastani's solution?
Fill the empty streets with Africans?
Yeah, maybe.
I don't know if that is his solution.
I'm gonna give him the benefit of the doubt there and say that his solution might be nationalize it.
Nationalize the whole country.
That town?
Nationalize it.
People's Republic of Greggs.
Now you're speaking my language.
Jake McGuire says Shrewsbury in Shropshire is still beautiful even though about eight Turkish barbers and the odd few local homeless in a 15-minute walk.
Yeah, but that's the funny thing.
I mean you'll have that and my prediction, I mean I hope I'm wrong, is that over time the same rot will come there and the good shops will slowly close down and then you'll be left with the Turkish barbers and the homeless because that's what happened here.
I know it's sort of, you know that South Park episode?
California.
Super good to the homeless.
Oh no.
And they go and meet the old town that had the homeless and everyone dead.
Except for the one guy who's like, they started moving into apartments and nobody knew who was homeless and who wasn't anymore.
That's amazing.
Could you imagine if we had that problem?
It would be a paradise.
Oh yeah.
They started integrating and picking up our accents.
We didn't know who was British anymore.
That's never going to happen.
That's never going to happen.
That's why we have no Bangladesh in Swindon.
But what was my point?
Oh, yeah, that I think it'll end up coming to you.
But I in that manner, I really hope not.
I was going to say, if places like Shrewsbury are still nice, I hope that they stay nice, because it's like when you see Texas busing illegal immigrants to the rest of the country further north.
Yeah, that might sound funny for the memes, but all you're doing is making the rest of the world worse.
So John says, Hampshire is on the high streets.
Does the UK not have the drug problem seen in US major cities?
I don't know the numbers.
I believe not.
The saving grace on that, the big difference between us, seems to be that the drug of choice in the United States is always a lot more destructive than the drug of choice in the UK.
The main drug of choice in the UK is cocaine.
Which is mostly taken by city people.
Well if you're walking around cities like I mentioned Manchester earlier, Manchester does have a lot of homeless crack addicts on the streets and I have been walking through Manchester before and seen people obviously smacked out of their mind on heroin just wandering about in a complete daze.
So in the cities you do still get people with major drug problems but as somebody who hasn't been to America I can't really compare it.
My understanding is that the things we don't have that they do is really the fentanyl crisis.
Yeah.
The drug usage, which seems to... I'm assuming this is presumptive on my part.
The level of mental illness in the United States is bloody unbelievable.
And the fact that they're all just roaming the streets, like you see these pieces of footage from just mental people walking around on the subway or whatever.
And you think, what the fuck?
How do those people occur in such weird amounts of numbers and also just exist?
Because you don't run into it the same measure you do in the UK.
And that seems to be caused by the type of drugs they're taking as well.
I don't think if I've run into any clearly, visibly crazy people in the past, Outside of druggies, you don't see somebody really ranting and raving through the streets.
I've seen it once or twice.
We're in Swindon.
We've seen druggies, but it's not proper mental illness here.
I've never seen it.
Okay, probably mentally, and it's not just, you know, crazily erratic people.
Yeah.
Screaming and... Like, I'm talking, we've seen, so we've gone to Tesco to get the meal deal, and there's some alcoholics who, you know, have been a few years, and there's one guy, like, zonked out.
That's getting clipped.
That was funny.
You know, we've got Freddy and his creators.
Why did you point at me?
I thought you'd seen it.
I have seen Freddy.
Celios was so excited to show me.
But no, no proper mentally ill lunatics that you see on the videos of New York Subway.
I don't know.
This is also conjecture and guesswork.
But yeah, apparently if you take cocaine, you're less likely to be a mental lunatic than if you take fentanyl.
So, choose your drugs wisely.
Let's move on.
Zombie Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, throwing racist slurs from beyond the grave.
It's still an amazing name.
The segments of mouldy houses and how Swindon has gone to pot can be pretty much explained by the fact that instead of the public relying on themselves, they rely on the state to fix their problems, but it doesn't work because the state can be easily corrupted and manipulated.
See, I can see though a situation where the state is corrupt.
I think most states will have a certain level of corruption in them, but not completely incompetent and run by clownish fools like we experience right now.
So I think it's the fact that the people in the country don't know how to live their lives without state assistance, and the state don't know how to do anything.
Either they don't even know really how to be corrupt properly, What would proper corruption be?
Epstein's List not getting revealed to the public.
The country not collapsing economically.
The decay not being quite as visible.
If they're all running pedo rings in the background, they could probably get away with it if the country still worked.
And that's a certain level of corruption.
Not that I would be happy with that happening.
So basically people have no idea of what is going on and don't blame them.
If you go back to a time where people are more placated by the culture and economic prosperity, then yeah, there was still corruption back in the 80s and 90s, but things were actually working for people then.
Whereas now, nothing's really working for anybody except those who are corrupt to the top, and so it makes it way more obvious to everybody else how shit everything is.
I must say, I really wake up to the idea of, you know, the elder Harry who says, guys, come here.
I'll tell you how things before I was born were great.
That's what I hear from people who are older than me.
Yeah.
No, I'm just being.
Everybody, everybody who I've met who's older than me says that the eighties and nineties were great.
Economics were great, especially in the eighties under like Reagan and Thatcher.
Um, and obviously, like I say, we know that things were still corrupt back then.
Back when my bones were inheriting, those were the days.
That's what people say!
I have an option for you, because your question about what does real corruption look like sparked something.
Would you rather that all of your politicians had mansions and five cars and were like Andrew Tate, essentially, but all their money was stolen from the taxpayers on various projects, or that all your elites were communist pedophiles?
What's the difference?
Well, one's just greedy bastards who steal money from the taxpayer.
The other one are the ones we have.
I mean, I suppose if there was a choice for the people ruling me to not be pedophiles, I would go with that one.
You'd go with the thieves instead.
Well, the problem is with Andrew Tate, though, is that he has a lot of sex allegations against him anyway.
I know, I just mean the lifestyle.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
The bougie-ness.
Yeah, I suppose bougie fat cats Honestly, after what we've learned looking at your segment, I'd rather have the railway industry running my country than the government, because they actually build working infrastructure in towns that are nice.
I'm taking the train every day.
It's always late.
Railway companies have been corrupted as well.
We need to return to the railway cartels.
We don't actually have private trains in this country.
It's a scam.
So the railway company you'll get, they don't own the track.
The government owns the track.
So all they can do is own a train and run a train.
So it's not actually theirs.
They don't really run everything.
Whereas the Great Western Railway own the track.
They own the trains.
They own the workers who make the trains.
They own where the workers live.
Same with the London Northern Railway as well.
They did the same thing.
And they'd actually have competition, which we don't.
And they actually had an incentive.
Okay, if we're going to build a town where all of our staff members are going to be working, if this is where our employees are going to be working, we might as well make it worth it for them.
What if we go to London?
There's one option.
Which is DWR.
Who else are you gonna go with?
There isn't one.
So it's not a free market, it's monopoly.
No, of course not.
Metal Dave says, I work in property management and a flattened development I managed complained of black mold.
It was an issue for the landlord letting agent to resolve, but as a council environment officer I was attending, I was asked to be there too.
The officer advised most of the issues could be resolved by the tenant, i.e.
ventilation, dehumidifiers, cleaning, anti-mold, paint, etc.
It was interesting to speak to the environmental officer.
Apparently his team has been cut from 4 to 30.
So very over, I assume from 30 to 4, so very overstretched in the borough and also they have an incentive from the council to serve tickets on landlords for not addressing damper mould issues much like a traffic warden has for giving out parking tickets.
It's as if this is their agenda to demonstrate that they are needed, indeed cracking down on landlords.
That definitely sounds like a manufactured problem to a certain degree.
And once again, like you say, the issues could be resolved by the tenant as well.
So, you know, there's a lot of blame to go around, but we can't let people who tape up their own vents in their bathrooms and don't know how to switch a fire alarm battery.
We can't let them off the hook as well.
I'll read one more.
Matt, maybe landlords would take better care of their properties if the government was improving endless tenants to guarantee higher perpetually higher rent and property value regardless of the state of the property.
He's right.
You know, if I've got 10 people for every flat who will want that flat no matter what I charge, I don't have to take care of it.
Yeah.
Okay.
Michael Brooks.
How long until we see bread farmers?
If they are.
Do you reckon Clarkson would be leading them?
Do you reckon Clarkson will lead the British farming revolution?
Yeah, he's got nothing else to do.
It's high time Mr. Beast stopped wasting his money digging wells and building bridges in Africa for people who don't appreciate his work.
And come to Europe and begin building small nuclear reactors so we have an option other than useless wind turbines and solar farms.
I'd love that YouTube thumbnail.
I went to Europe and built a hundred nuclear factories!
Okay.
That's actually a pretty cool arc though, that the channel becomes him just building literally just an infrastructure company that builds infrastructure for the whole of the West.
And then posts it on YouTube with click debate thumbnails.
Yeah, I've lowered your energy bills!
Omar Awad, is it just me, or did they try to label the protesters as something sinister and inadvertently make them sound cooler instead?
Make agriculture great again.
The evil farmers have come.
Okay, and Hector Rex, listen, I know it's a 10-ton tractor, but my Kia, I put premium gas in, going to pull it with this piece of string.
No, you use a Prius instead.
Oh, that makes more sense.
Yeah.
And, um, um, Arizona desert rat.
It's sad how out of touch urbanites are from where all the food and raw materials come from.
Life is going to get rough before the educated elite realize that they need the stupid blue collar workers.
Well, no, but if we're in the, if we're in the globalized economy, right, Germany doesn't need to grow its own food because they can always, you know, outsource it to just throw one out of Zimbabwe.
Along that note, it's time to end the show.
Bye-bye.
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