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April 17, 2024 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters
01:31:26
The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #895
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Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Editors.
I'm joined by Stelios.
Hello.
And Josh.
Hello!
And today we're going to be talking about the worst place on earth, the EU.
Two different segments, that one.
And also literal financial advice.
So.
Callum, are you looking to get sued?
Yes.
Oh, good.
All right.
Well, I'm glad we cleared that one up.
I have no announcements, so we'll just get into the worst place on earth.
Sure.
So, do you like cannibalism, pirates, drugs and murder?
Because I know I do.
Which is why I want to talk about San Francisco.
Because it's got all of these things.
It's the top tourist destination.
If you like open-air defecation, this is where you want to go.
Obviously, we've covered San Francisco before.
This is partially old news.
However, there are some new things that have happened.
Further insanity that is going to make it even worse than it already is.
And just to remind you of what you are to expect if you go to San Francisco, here it is.
It looks lovely, doesn't it?
Look at all these locals out on the street, a nice community, you know, living together.
You know, it's basically... Not a phone in sight.
No, they're living in the moment.
Just really calm.
They're not staring at their phone.
Really calm.
They're nice and chilled out, aren't they?
They're not causing any problems here.
I mean, look at that.
They're leading the world in fashion.
It is wonderful.
It's great to see.
It's actually pretty cool fashion, I'll have you know.
I'm pretty sure that's a Yeezy hoodie.
That's going to set you back about two and a half grand.
Some of his clothes do actually look like that.
It's horrendous.
But anyway, that's not the point.
It's, you know, a hellhole, obviously.
Look at it.
It looks like, you know, a festival gone wrong here.
This is from, uh, 2023 and yes, they have budget problems, so it's probably going to get worse.
Uh, they're spending more and more money on various things.
And, uh, I imagine that there's probably going to be cuts because of course, look at the police department there.
That they're down $18.5 million.
So yes, it's not going to get better.
And if you think things can get any worse, uh, last year they started getting, uh, pirates.
In San Francisco.
So, uh, I can scroll down here.
There they are in a dinghy.
Just some fucking homeless guys.
Just some rum enthusiasts, you know, they're bringing piracy back.
Um, you know, it's, it has kind of taken on the character of... Get drunk!
Cheers!
It's sort of Somalia levels of failed state here.
Without a doubt, the most fentanyl drugged up pirate I've ever heard of.
Have heard of me!
Sniffs of George Floyd and then leaves.
But yes, they've been looting rich people's boats and it's been causing problems.
I just thought that was interesting.
I didn't realize piracy was a big problem in the US, but apparently in San Francisco it is.
Josh, are you certain that this is not propaganda against Gavin Newsom?
It may well be.
I think maybe Donald Trump is funding the pirates.
That's what's happening.
It's all just a great big psyop.
And here's another thing.
There are homeless people, as I pointed out, but they're getting diseases that are flesh-eating.
And a lady had to amputate her feet because of this flesh-eating disease.
There she is with her stumps.
Was she eaten by other homeless people?
I don't know.
They do look sort of zombie-like, don't they?
So it's possible they could have been munching on a foot or something.
And that, in the business, is what is called foreshadowing.
Wait, are we actually?
Well, we'll see!
That was a joke, I wasn't serious, obviously.
They're gonna eat her foot, oh no.
Not her, specifically.
The attempts to improve the situation in San Francisco have centered on largely things like this.
This was a year ago because all of the stuff we went through was last year and we're going to look at where they're at soon.
So they were saying all sorts of weird things about what they should do to address, you know,
The historic grievances of a certain population and they said there were more than 100 recommendations including payments of 5 million to every eligible black adult, the elimination of personal debt and tax burdens, guaranteed annual incomes of at least 97,000 US dollars for 250 years, I'm sure that's going to help their suffering budget, or just a home for one dollar a family.
Now I don't know how much slavery has impacted people, but I get the feeling that this is overcompensating, even if you accept that people deserve reparations, which they don't.
No one in America has been enslaved in their lifetime, have they?
Unless, you know, it's like human trafficking.
So this is obviously unnecessary.
It's very silly.
At the end of February they issued a formal apology and they said supervisors in San Francisco formally apologized on Tuesday to African Americans and their descendants for the city's role in perpetuating racism and discrimination with several stating that this was just the start of reparations for black residents and not the end.
Supposedly, they want to expand upon this because apparently a formal apology is not enough.
They want Gibbs.
They want money, of course.
That's what it's all about.
That's what all politics is about.
It's just resource extraction.
It's pretty much what most things boil down to.
At least when it comes to this, obviously.
There are things that aren't that.
There was something interesting in here, which I found entertaining.
And that was a new despite statistic.
Black people, for example, make up 38% of San Francisco's homeless population, despite being less than 6% of the general population, according to a 2022 federal count.
And there are about 46,000 black residents in San Francisco.
Of course, 46,000 times 5 million.
That's a lot of money, isn't it?
If they're going to do that.
We've got the Blackadder levels.
What, you think I'm going to run these numbers?
What kind of outlet do you think we are?
Someone who does maths?
I'm going to calculate it lying around somewhere.
That's $218 billion.
No, no, no, no.
It's a lot.
I don't even want a proper figure, I kind of like what we're going with.
46 times 5 equals 280.
Quick maths from Stelios there.
Just add some zeros.
That's true, it's actually quite an easy sum to do.
And of course, all these problems, you know, there's probably lots of complicated reasons, lots of policy reasons for it.
Well, according to one counselor, Dean Preston, it's capitalism's fault that there are all these homeless people in San Francisco, California, one of the richest places on earth.
Non-capitalist economies have never produced any kind of poverty, ever.
No, no.
You know, the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mao's Great Famine, that's all capitalism, isn't it?
I'm sure it was.
I'm really concerned about what people eat nowadays.
with capitalism and racism causing all these problems, that things have got better.
Well, at the end of March there was this story, which is going to be of interest to you, Callum.
A man accused of stealing Amtrak trained victim's severed leg and eating it in sick twist.
This is what is going on in San Francisco.
I'm really concerned about what people eat nowadays.
Their diet is really weird.
You are what you eat.
Turns out this guy grew a foot.
A fella gets run over by a train, chops off his leg.
Another fella turns up and is like... Eating the raw, uncooked leg.
And I don't know why it being uncooked makes eating a human leg worse, but it does in my mind.
Guys, I think you're uncharitable.
He was trying to get the lead to ice so it could...
Well, in his stomach.
So they can just stitch it up again.
He'd previously eaten a lot of ice and he had it lying in his stomach and he ate the leg.
He's trying to find a refrigerator.
A freezer.
What, in his stomach?
Yeah.
But yes, this is, yeah, there he is having a go at the leg, having an oar on it.
I didn't realize this was possible in America.
I've seen bad things.
I've seen the people slouched over on fentanyl.
I didn't realise it was possible to just start gnawing on a leg.
You see a severed leg and you're like, Tasty.
Uh, so yes, things perhaps aren't going quite as well as you would think.
So in November of 2023, um, there's this story.
The 14 year old girl was caught after stealing $30,000 worth of clothes over a dozen retail thefts.
And of course, this is alluding to the phenomenon of the mass thefts.
Remember in sort of 2021, where you had big gangs of people just running into shops and stealing lots of stuff.
Yeah, twerking in the background.
Yes, there was a sort of post-Floyd death euphoria for shoplifting, wasn't there?
Loved it for a short while.
And yes, this is obviously not helping the vibe of San Francisco if the excrement and homelessness and drug use wasn't enough.
That leads us to things like this, where lots of places are leaving Starbucks, Whole Foods, they're all closing stores in downtown San Francisco, and they've been pretty coy about why that is.
They've just said, oh, it's for multiple reasons.
Most leftists have said, oh, well, it was the pandemic, it's hit businesses hard, but actually In lots of other American cities, they've not done this.
It was also ages ago.
Like, I'm kind of getting sick of hearing what the pandemic causes.
Like the long-term effects of the lockdown.
I mean, again, lockdown is not pandemic that did this.
Okay.
There's, you know, it's not gone, but I kind of get sick of just every problem.
I was just like, oh man, the pandemic did that.
Well, it's like leftists in the UK blame every unfortunate thing.
Brexit.
Yeah.
Brexit did this.
Even before we left, Brexit had done things, which I didn't quite understand.
Yeah, like if a leftist falls off their bicycle, somehow Brexit is involved.
It's very strange.
But what are they doing to combat this?
Are they cracking down on criminals?
Are they, you know, making it more appealing?
Perhaps reducing corporation tax?
Josh, it's 2024, it's a blue state, so they're going to address their feelings.
That's true, that's true.
It's all grievances.
Well, apparently there have been some COPE studies going on, that's what I'm calling them, and apparently between January 2019 and June of 2023, San Francisco reported the shoplifting rate decreasing by about 5%.
But also it reached a historic high in that point, so it's still going to be high.
So they're making it sound like, well actually shoplifting has fallen 5% and it's still not as bad as places like New York, but that's not really anything to brag about.
And what do you think Is it really going to happen here?
I think that what's actually happening, and I accidentally removed the link for some reason, is that they're going to try and prevent companies from leaving.
In fact, no, I do have it here.
Oh no, here we are.
No, that's not right.
I don't have it.
Never mind.
But basically, they want a lawsuit.
There's an article on Yahoo Finance that I was going to quote from a couple of days ago, and I'm going to read from it because I think John might have missed the link there.
Members of the Board of Supervisors recently introduced a proposal called the Grocery Protection Act, which would require a closing store to provide the city six months notice and try to find a replacement supermarket for the location it's vacating.
And now, if you're in one of these newfangled food deserts, then you're not really going to find a replacement very easily.
Okay, yeah, John's got it there.
Never mind.
Cheers.
How dare they not want to get robbed?
I know, but this is not solving the problem, is it?
The problem is shoplifting, probably high taxes on the business, you know, high operating costs.
You want to make it attractive for businesses to move there, make their operating costs low, have a high pool of labor, which I think San Francisco probably does have, to be fair, and you make sure that they're protected against theft.
These are three pretty simple things that most people are aware of are important for running a business.
But they're not doing that because, of course, capitalism bad.
So you can't use capitalist solutions.
You've got to use the power of the states to force people to do things that they don't want to do.
But of course, this is just going to disincentivize anyone moving there because they know, hey, if my business doesn't work, I've got to operate for another six months from deciding to close.
It's also extra bad and even worse because there are lots of businesses that have fled the center of San Francisco and there are several laws that I think the local councils have put forward and the governor and they are saying that anything that you steal that is less than a thousand dollars doesn't count.
It's just ridiculous.
And if you combine this with the open border policy, it's just mad.
And they also have some laws that penalize workers who try to resist shoplifters.
Well, people get fired, don't they, for preventing the shoplifting, which you think would be part of the job.
I know when I worked in retail, stopping people stealing was a key part of the job, because if you allow people to steal, believe it or not, it cuts into your profits.
It's this bold new idea of business management here.
But for the sake of transparency, there has been a place that has moved into this food desert, as it's now being referred to, Mi Rancho.
I don't know what that is.
I'm not American.
But yes, there are places moving in still, but not to a degree that it's going to necessarily benefit people as if they hadn't moved away in the first place.
Sorry, I thought you were going to say something, Callum.
No, I was thinking.
Are you thinking of engaging in business in San Francisco?
No, I was thinking of a shovel of this, because back when I worked retail we had the exact opposite advice, which is just let them do it.
Really?
Because it's not worth you getting hurt for a pint of milk that they've stolen or whatever else.
I would die for a pint of milk.
Yeah, I mean people aren't stealing pints of milk are they?
They're stealing Cadbury's chocolate usually.
It's funny that whenever people steal it's never anything that's actually like essential.
I know there's like baby formula being stolen quite often but a lot of the time it's like booze or chocolate as you say.
Well we're not in Maoist China or the actual proper shortages where people are going to starve so it's just people stealing stuff they like.
Yeah even though you know the economy is not great in a lot of the western world we're still able to afford food.
My whole point was, that was the company I worked for, their policy.
And to be honest, I think that's probably the default for most organizations, not trying to intervene, because it's not worth the staff member getting hurt for some bullshit.
But the problem with that, obviously, is that it reveals an even deeper aspect of the food desert, which it's, if you're not going to hire security for that, which most places aren't, It actually comes down to just the people living in the neighborhood.
If the people in the neighborhood just don't steal, you maybe get some kids stealing, you know, some sweets eventually or whatever, but it's not a significant amount.
Profit can continue.
But if the community is one that literally will just take stuff because $900 or below, it's free.
Yeah, you don't have a... Was that more than a recommendation?
Was there any kind of punishment if you tried to stop them?
Sorry, what do you mean?
Yeah, because in San Francisco there has been a law that penalizes... Oh, you could get done for assault, potentially, yeah.
Yeah, okay.
I saw that some places were removing their self-service checkouts in San Francisco because people couldn't be trusted.
It had to be scanned by, you know, an employee, which is going to make the wait times pretty insufferable.
There's this Facebook group I'm in, it's called...
Credit score 430 people are at it again and all it is is just stuff like that.
Like one guy goes to the self-checkout and he's just pretending to beep the stuff and it just takes... What does he just go beep beep?
Yeah he's just he's just moving it there because of course there's a camera so then he just moves it off it doesn't actually scan there's no one you know there's only one person 20 machines no one's really checking so he just steals and then was complaining that it closed down a few months later or something.
I wonder why that happened.
So you'd think that business owners are obviously up in arms about this sort of thing, that they've got lots of important concerns, and in fact one business owner has gone on a hunger strike.
What do you think this is about?
Sorry, what?
A business owner has gone on a hunger strike?
Yes.
What in San Francisco do you think... They stole all the food!
What do you think the concern would be for a business owner?
Honey?
You'd think.
No.
It's a new bike lane.
That's a good reason to go on hunger strike.
And apparently cycling in these bike lanes are pretty controversial in San Francisco.
So much so that he's willing to go on hunger strike.
I would be inclined to believe that there are more important things to worry about if you own a business in San Francisco, like theft and crime and that sort of thing, than a bike lane.
and Maybe all the thieves are cyclists, you know, just to damage cyclist reputations even more.
Also, they're trying to solve the drug problem, these sort of wacky solutions that the state has.
Everyone knows that homeless people love libraries, and so they're offering free drug recovery books at public libraries.
Because, you know, everyone knows drug users, you know, the homeless population.
They just love reading.
They're not, you know, passed out on the side of the street on fentanyl.
That's not happening.
I would say a public library, if you're homeless, is pretty good for the toilet, but then they're not even using the toilets in San Francisco.
Well, they've got a pretty free approach to using the toilet.
They've sort of taken a leaf from the subcontinent of India, haven't they?
In that they have rejected the oppression of the toilet bowl and have embraced the power of the open air.
I must say, I have seen some homeless people reading, but it's not these, let's say, fentanyl infested people.
So they've also had a look at homeless shelters, some new fangled, fancy homeless shelters that look nicer than some London apartments, actually.
And of course, this is very, very expensive and also there's no actual shortage of homeless shelters.
So they actually have vacancies in the homeless shelters and they're just like, well, if we just make them really nice, the homeless people want to use them more, which is a bit of a silly rationale because it's just going to cost the taxpayer a lot of money.
Which is part of the reason they're in this mess in the first place.
And Gavin Newsom has doubled down on this sort of thing, saying that he wants basically rural California precincts, counties I think, to spend a disproportionate amount of money to fix the cities.
Which is going to just annoy lots of rural voters because they're going to have to subsidize places like San Francisco or LA where they're sort of run down and disgusting, whereas it's not their locality.
And obviously it's not going to work because the homeless don't even use these homeless shelters.
There are spaces in them.
I actually looked it up.
There were, I think, about 800 or so spaces last time I checked.
And here is some actual sensible advice from Governing.com, which I didn't realize was a thing, but apparently it just says, um, rehousing drug addicts doesn't work because they're drug addicts.
So they're addicted to drugs and therefore giving them a home isn't going to stop that.
Sort of common sense to my mind.
Um, It also points out that there's more homeless housing than ever, even though the homeless population has skyrocketed.
And also they say that all the studies have suggested that you need to get them off drugs and to improve the employability situation for them.
If you want them to recover, giving them a house doesn't actually help.
I think that this is a theme and I've also heard here in the UK from many social workers that there are many homeless shelters, but a lot of homeless people don't live in them during night because they want to get their fix or something.
Well, I think also a lot of the homeless shelters, because they're full of homeless people, are more dangerous than being on the street and being sort of away from other homeless people.
The biggest danger to people like that are the other homeless, from what I've gathered anyway.
So here are some actual solutions.
Recalling district attorneys that don't prosecute people, this lady was a sort of defund the police strain of Democrat and A county is voting to recall her.
That's a good step.
Also, arresting criminals.
This is a good idea.
This one is from a few days ago.
In one day, they arrested 42 people, including I think 30 of them were wanted fugitives.
This sort of thing.
Just one day you arrest a number of wanted fugitives.
This is good.
Do more of this.
That's what you should be doing.
Fund, you know, the police more.
To prevent criminals from making things worse.
Because, of course, it is crime that is causing a lot of this degeneration.
Also, they've managed to catch the pirates.
This was at the start of the month.
So it seems like they're actually using the police now, finally.
They didn't actually sink the boat, by the way.
They just captured them.
This is Fox News being a bit sensationalist here.
I wish they sunk the boat.
That would have been cool.
Also, if our boarders could also take a leaf out of that headline, please do.
As well as, here's an interesting article from the San Francisco Standard.
I picked out one particular thing.
They're speaking to homeless people about how do you fix homelessness.
And there's one guy who said, you've just got to keep people's hands from getting idle.
It starts with community, opportunity and activities.
As in, you know, you make people have investment in their society.
You don't make it easy as possible to live in a tent and do drugs.
What you do is you reduce the high taxes, get rid of the bloated bureaucracy, make it an attractive place for businesses, make it easier for them to hire people, make it so that there aren't enough workers to fill all of the spaces and therefore they might be more willing to hire someone who's You know, living on the street, potentially a bit rough, and it will give them a foothold to live a normal life.
At least give them a chance, because it should be made as easy as possible to find work and if you want people to care about their community, give them a stake in it.
That's the best way to do it.
But what other things can you think of?
It's sort of promising that things might be going in a better direction, but it's too early to say they're also doing things that may well bankrupt the county, as well as they've got a bunch of leftist politics that could easily sabotage this.
I mean, the only way to improve people's lives, whether they are, let's say, drag addicts or not, is to have a regular environment around.
So when you have basic law that isn't enforced, you have chaos.
And yeah, sorry, no, no drag addict can, let's say, successfully go back to being a normal member of society under such conditions.
Of course.
Conditions where there's no business, no law enforcement, crime is just rampant.
That doesn't help.
And all the language that is just Designed to appeal to the sentiment and sound sensitive is just completely insensitive drivel coming from Democrats here.
Absolutely.
And my point here really is that San Francisco can go one of two ways now.
They're proposing lots of insane leftist things that in the future could completely destroy the city, to be completely honest.
However, there is some evidence of how you solve these sorts of things, right?
Sink the pirates, arrest the criminals, you know, encourage the homeless not to be homeless, Make sure the drug addicts aren't put in a house and get them off of drugs.
These are all things that should be doing, not being discussed.
It's capitalism, you know, we need reparations.
It's insane.
And yes, if you live in San Francisco, I have a lot of sympathy for you and the best of luck with your safety.
I was thinking homeless camps.
Homeless camps?
Yeah, what do you think about that?
Um, is that just like a camping spot or is that more sort of mid-century?
Well, you know, it is mid-century, but not European.
So the Canadians after the Great Depression apparently had a bunch of camps for the unemployed.
They would just take like men of working age and make them do whatever, just so they had employment.
Oh, right.
Really unpopular at the time, but it meant that they had employment.
So they had a means of providing for themselves, which of course means that they can Get in the loop, if you will.
That's why they try and get prisoners to do jobs.
I think that's a good idea.
It gets them used to... I've got three camps full of homeless people.
What do you want doing?
I don't know what I'm going to do with them.
It's going to be funny.
Litter picking.
That's a good idea.
I was thinking building statues.
Because if you get the homeless picking litter, it's going to make them, you know, care about it because they don't want to create more work for themselves.
And so all of a sudden, if the homeless have a pride in their environment, You know, they're going around picking up bottles.
I'm not being serious.
Let's move on.
Right.
We have a new Broconomics.
Dan was kind enough to invite me and we discussed a book by R Reno called Return of the Strong Gods, Nationalism, Populism and the Future of the West.
We're talking about Karl Popper and the open society.
And we debate interesting questions such as whether we actually live in an open society, whether the world will go away and other interesting stuff.
So why does Dan in that thumbnail look like biker Zeus, like Zeus if he owns a Harley Davidson?
What's going on here?
That's the strength of Zeus.
That's Zeus for the 21st century.
Yeah, okay, so that's a really funny thumbnail.
Definitely check this out.
Now, speaking of open society, And the people who are trying to, let's say, destroy debate.
We have several news to show you.
Now, the National Conservatism Conference is a conference of conservatives who think that the nation state, an independent and sovereign nation state, is important for a functioning society.
And it's a project of the Edmund Burke Foundation, which aims to spread the ideas of national conservatism throughout the West.
Now, there was a conference in Brussels that took place in Belgium, and there were several really weird incidents that showed that a lot of independent forces converged together in order to silence people who are national conservatives.
Now, let's look at this response here before we try to get into more details.
Monika Gabriela Bartoszewicz says, The organizers just came to ask if I wanted to leave the National Conservative Talk.
Early as the riot, police have arrived and they worry violence might ensue.
But I'm from Poland.
I don't run up from the Bolsheviks.
I face them.
Cardinal Mueller will close the day.
Now, let's see what is going to happen.
From Visigrad 24 here we have, Belgian police enter the National Conservatism Conference in an attempt to shut it down after declaring it a public disturbance.
Left-wing counter-protesters are threatening violence.
Farage, Braverman, Orban and Zamor speaking.
So, a lot of things happened here.
Well, we're going to let this play.
So, Yesterday was the first day of the second National Conservative Conference, and some of the keynote speakers, as you see, were Farage, Braverman, Orban, Zemmour, people who are, let's say, not particularly liked by the EU, and not particularly liked by the mayor of Belgium, as you shall see.
That's putting it lightly, isn't it?
Yes, I'm putting it lightly.
Now, around two hours after the event started, the police stormed in, and they were under orders to stop the event, prevent people from talking, and prevent people from entering the conference.
Now, the police entered when Nigel Farage was on stage.
Now, meanwhile, You can see everything is normal in Brussels.
There's no public disorder in the streets of Brussels.
Oh, those Belgians.
They're just such a big fan of Palestine, aren't they?
All these native Belgians with their native Belgian headscarves.
Well, as you can see, they don't take out up the street.
They don't prevent traffic from, you know, they don't prevent drivers from getting by and You know, they don't cause any kind of public disorder.
That's not problematic for the mayor of Brussels, but the National Conservative Conference was.
Well, the difference is that if he stopped that, he might expect some rather explosive letters in the post.
You know, strongly worded, I mean.
Well, you shall see, because he is from Turkey and some people have pointed out some very interesting stuff about his... It all makes sense.
Some very interesting stuff about his ties.
You'll see here, we have here the Belgian Prime Minister who denounces the act as unacceptable.
And that's a good thing, at least.
It's a step in the right direction.
The point is that the mayor had enough power to stop the event, at least for the first day, or at least obstruct it.
But the thing is that the Belgium Prime Minister last night waded into a furious row over a local mayor's bid to ban a right-wing political conference attended by Farage and Braverman.
Every article is talking about some of the people who attended.
Right.
Now, speaking of the mayor, he is called Emir Kir.
We have here some stuff from A.N.
Hirsi Ali that I shall show you.
The Brussels mayor in question, who shut down the Natcon conference, also denies the Armenian genocide and was expelled from the Socialist Party for inviting far-right politicians from Turkey to Brussels.
Is this all a coincidence?
Is he doing the typical Turk thing of, you know, in Europe they are leftist, and in Turkey they are far right, according to the media?
I don't know if it's just an issue in Turkey or not, but I would say that a lot of people who are, let's say, in the West, they are voting for Let's say left-wing governments within the West, governments that want unrestricted open borders, unrestricted migration, large handouts to people.
That's what they vote for in the West.
And they capitalize upon this rhetoric that says that anyone who cares about They're voting for that sort of thing because it's resource extraction from the native population, isn't it?
that the far right is not welcome here.
But as you can see, there are considerable questions about his ties.
Well, they're voting for that sort of thing because it's resource extraction from the native population, isn't it?
That's why they get free money from the state.
Yeah.
So there is another article here by Ayan Hirsi Ali, says, mayor with Turkish Islamist links shuts down, not con Brussels.
And it says here, the tactics used by police and the mayor were a reminiscence of a medieval siege.
According to Frank Ferretti, one of the organizers, they threatened to cut off electricity and pressured caterers into dropping the conference contract, leaving those locked inside without access to food and drink.
Now, if it was a bit medieval, you would expect also, you know, hot oil to be thrown outside.
Yeah, but obviously this is just entirely unacceptable.
They tried to disrupt the event.
No, it's just, it just, it's just completely different from what you would expect from a Western country to be.
Well, I mean, it's certainly not unheard of anymore that the government uses its power to preserve its own power as an end in and of itself, standing for nothing other than the accumulation of more power.
Yes, and she says some really interesting stuff, which she will explore in her new endeavor.
She is in the business of building a new platform, and good luck to her for this.
She says, what we have witnessed here is an unprecedented collaboration between Antifa, local politicians, and the police in the capital of the EU to shut down a peaceful meeting of political dissidents.
If they can get away with police state tactics, as shameless as this, against a gathering that included a cardinal, high-profile British and French politicians, prominent intellectuals, and the head of government of an EU member state, what does it say about the state of liberal democracy in Europe?
Well, it's long since dead, isn't it?
Well, there are several forces that want to Bring its death forth.
And I want to say that, you know, just being a national conservative who thinks that the nation state is important and there should be sovereign states doesn't mean that someone is an extremist.
The idea, this is just plain obvious.
The people who are trying, who were trying to shut down these events, they are extremists.
It's just plain obvious.
It's just the elephant in the room.
Just look at what people do, not what they're saying.
That's the difference between action and rhetoric.
A lot of people are going to use the fancy rhetoric designed to talk about, you know, the far right and all sorts of problems like that.
Look at what people are doing.
They're trying to silence, as A.M.
Hercili says, political dissidents.
Anyway, so she has a very interesting article here that I urge you to read.
Now, from National Conservatism, you would expect them to challenge the order, and they are doing just that.
They say, we're legally challenging the order to shut down the second conference as the new third venue.
There's no public disturbance and no grounds to shut down a gathering of politicians, intellectuals, journalists, students, civic leaders, and concerned citizens.
The police entered the venue on our invitation, saw the proceedings on the press corps and quickly withdrew.
Is it possible they witnessed how peaceful the event is?
Stay tuned.
We have from Andino who is going to be with us tomorrow.
He says Antifa have organized heavily against the conference to shut it down by any means necessary.
They appear to have the support of local corrupt officials.
If you wanna hear more from him, just tune in for tomorrow.
Now we have here Matt Goodwin, the left wing, giving us an idea of what is going on.
In fact, for these allies, I'm in that bunker in Brussels.
I'm going to show you what it's like if we just pan around and just show you this room.
Everybody, everybody in this room effectively, they cannot go anywhere because if we leave, there's a police line outside the door.
If we leave, we will not be allowed back into the venue.
This is dogmatic.
It's intimidation.
It's harassment.
All people are doing here is having a conversation about identity, family, the future of European politics.
We have elected politicians here.
We have Miss Isabella Braverman MP, Miriam Cates MP.
We have many European politicians here.
But what you're seeing is a concerted effort to try and shut down this discussion and as you can see lots of people in the bunker they're not going anywhere anytime soon.
So reporting to you from Brussels, Matt Goodwin.
It's an outrage, it's an attempt to shut down democracy and I'll keep you updated.
Thanks.
I don't know, it looks like a riot in there.
Look at them all, standing around patiently with their drinks and canapes.
Well, they are the locusts that are going to destroy the pharaoh's crops in Europe, so the mayor thought that this response was merited.
But I want to say that there is a nice response to this, a kind of stoic temperament and just Drink some wine, keep calm and carry on.
And I've heard also from Uzay Bulut, thank you for contact, for telling me about stuff like that, that, you know, people aren't leaving.
They're really interested in hearing these ideas.
And there, it is just obvious all across Europe that the way things are going right now is completely unsustainable.
And we do need ideas like that to be heard and to discuss with With people who have them and people who disagree with them.
The people who want to silence discussion entirely are the people who agree with what the mayor did.
Now, Sweller Braverman says, if only the globalists in Brussels put as much energy into securing their borders as they did in trying to gag conservatives, maybe our continent would be in a healthier state.
Uncontroversial.
Yeah.
Now, I want to show you some of the reactions to this event because as I'm sure you expect, there is going to be a word that is going to be used and overused.
Is it fascist?
Yeah, far right.
They constantly say every, every, almost every media article is, is the mainstream media article is going to talk about, no, police attacking the far right thing.
They're not going to say that the Belgian PM stopped it.
And they said that according to the constitution of Belgium, uh, free speech is allowed.
I want to show you Thierry Breton.
Do you remember who this is?
I don't think so.
Is he French?
Is he from Brittany?
anyone who's in power in the EU, but sort of the whole problem with it is that they're just random people you've never heard of who are gonna destroy your life.
Why?
Because they can. - Is he French?
Is he from Brittany? - Many people are unelected bureaucrats in the EU, but Thierry Breton especially is one of the persons who is advancing the whole hate speech rhetoric within the EU and is talking about Twitter as being a platform of hate And when Elon Musk was talking about Twitter, he said that the bird is going to fly under our rules here.
You would expect him to make any kind of announcement about this event, but nothing.
There's no announcement.
Last tweet is from 23 hours ago.
Don't think we missed anything here.
He doesn't even make the announcement that, you know, we tackled hate speech, something like that, that would sort of sell to his audience, which is quite interesting.
Now, let's go to this incredible Incredible tweet here.
It says, it's great that a Belgian mayor has exposed something that very few people from the UK can understand, that a worrying number of ostensibly mainstream politicians in the UK are far-right extremists.
Thanks, Belgium.
It needs saying.
That's absolutely incredible.
Just talking about wanting a strong nation and wanting a strong national culture for a healthy society doesn't make you an extremist.
You know, something that sort of gets you there is try to prevent people from talking about having a strong nation state.
That's a bad thing.
But I'm more right wing than many of the people that attended.
What does that make me?
If they're far right, then what am I, like extreme right?
So here we have a Labour MP talking about it.
Boris Johnson has said this proposal is absolutely nuts.
It's just mad.
Well, now he knows how the rest of us felt when he was Prime Minister, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
And, of course, a source close to the right hon.
Member for Fairham who couldn't be here today with us, Mr Deputy Speaker, because she's currently in Brussels, surrounded by the police who are trying to shut down the event she's attending with some far-right fanatics with whom she has much in common.
She said that she is not a fan of the Bill.
Well, now she knows how the rest of us feel about the right hon.
member for Fairham too.
Of course there are some dark s**t speakers.
Boris Johnson.
You see that's the idea, Labour's idea of democracy.
And But let's set the record straight.
If you want democracy, and you want to talk about acting in the name of democracy, you need public dialogue.
If you want public dialogue, you need to allow people who disagree with you on basic ethical matters like what is to be done.
If you're trying to constantly say that there is a situation of emergency that justifies destroying the rights of people you disagree with.
Because you disagree with them, sorry, you're against democracy.
Don't talk about democracy.
Any kind of claim in favor of democracy to justify your claim is just a skin soothing.
And here we have Gifford Hofstad, who is supposed to be someone who says he's a liberal in the EU.
He's one of the most insufferable pro-European people ever to have existed.
Well, he says again, Farage returns to Brussels not to collect his MEP pension, he can get that in England, but to be with Europe's far-right friends of Putin.
So everyone who speaks of a strong nation-state that the EU needs to respect, and that the EU needs to respect the culture of that strong nation-state, immediately is branded as a friend of Putin.
Well, he does realize that Braverman was part of the conservative government, which has given more money to Ukraine than any other European country, as far as I'm aware, at least.
You know, that's our taxpayer money that's funding that foreign war that I have no invested, you know, reason to care about.
Now, we go to an even more weird statement by Anthony Grayling.
Some of what one reads about national conservatism smucks a little too much of national socialism.
Well, this is just an unbelievable statement.
And I want to say that I never expected to agree with Varoufakis on anything.
But I agree with him on this one.
And he says that Nigel Farage should have the right to speak.
He phrases it in terms of Nigel Farage having the right to annoy him.
And I think that anyone should absolutely have this right in a society.
I want to have the right to annoy Yanis Varoufakis in the British Constitution.
I support that entirely.
I know it's very difficult for you to say you agree with this man as well because Yeah.
Of what he's done to Christ.
He is correct.
Yeah.
I mean, he's correct.
Yeah.
So the conference will continue and I'm looking forward to hearing more of these talks.
Alrighty.
Yeah.
I don't know what the hell I'm doing today.
Bless us with financial advice, Callum.
I want to know.
If I give you a big bag of my money, which is not that big, a very small bag of my money, I want you to double it.
No.
Make me money.
Not even slightly.
Not even slightly?
No.
So I didn't know what to do today.
I was struggling for stuff because I was doing other stuff in the morning and then went, you know what?
I thought about doing this for a while, so I'm going to, which is give financial advice.
Now, for legal reasons, this is not financial advice.
So everyone's aware.
But however... No, no.
Yeah.
So before we go forward, I mean, like, so, I mean, you just said it to me there, which is the, if I give you a big bag of money, how do you double it?
And this is usually the conversation I see around finances, especially on the internet, where it's like, man, what should I invest in?
Should I invest in Bitcoin?
Should I invest in stocks?
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But most of us don't have money to invest.
Nevermind like 10 grand to double it or whatever.
People don't have that kind of thing to play with.
So it's just kind of useless to the vast majority of humans.
So I thought we'd go through instead, well, things that are more interesting, which is, they like stuff.
And just some thoughts I had.
Again, people are going to know better than me.
I've just got some ideas.
They've probably got some massive flaws in them.
Have a look.
A hell of a sale!
Yeah, this is the worst segment pitch I've ever heard.
Yeah.
Also, before we get off, because there's always going to be a billion comments about, well, what about me in this circumstance?
Everyone's circumstance is different, so on and so forth.
So there's that.
But the thing that kicked us off is I saw Rishi Sunak doing this crappy tweet where he points out that, oh, I've got inflation down from 11%, trust me, to 3%.
Of course, this is wrong.
Like just, it's the rate of inflation, not the inflation itself.
Because of course, inflation, if I take a balloon and I inflate the balloon, the inflation is how much I've expanded it by.
That's the inflation.
The rate of inflation is how much I'm increasing it by every second.
So in this case, it's 3% every year.
The money supply is being inflated.
It's already been inflated, well, about 27% since 2021 there.
So this is an inflation calculator.
So if you had £1000 in 2021, start of the tax year, April, the UK, by now it would be worth 27% less.
You would actually need £1,272 to have the same amount of buying value.
And that's based on the Consumer Price Index on there or whatever, which is... It's painful, isn't it?
It's a bit fuzzy as well.
A lot of people think that actually that's not the reality.
The reality is even worse.
There's arguments about this, but I'm not going to get into it.
My point is just to point out that that's wrong.
This is just slight of hand because it's the rate of inflation, not the inflation itself.
It's already been inflated 27%.
It is going to be further inflated by about 3% per year.
It is also worth mentioning, Rishi Sunak studied economics.
Callum, you studied physics, didn't you?
And you're correcting the Prime Minister.
I just find it annoying.
Everyone talks like this in the media.
It's just not true.
Well, most people are economically illiterate, and I find it really frustrating because the economics is one thing that affects everyone.
You know, at least with social issues, there's at least some degree of, you know, you can escape them if you go somewhere else, whereas the economy is everywhere.
You can't avoid it.
Yeah, so I mean, if we take, you know, your salary or savings in 2021, and so if you left your savings there, they will have lost 27% of their value.
The government has robbed you of that by printing more money.
They've inflated the currency supply.
You know, taxation is theft as well as inflation.
It's attacked by other means and that's all.
That's your savings, and then there's your income, which also has gone down 27% if it stayed the same since 2021.
And then you can actually put in what you've done yourself, so maybe you've got some savings interest, maybe you've got a salary increase, and then figure out where you are in relation to that.
That's for your own time.
But there's also just the fact that the world has changed so much, because, I mean, here's the graph I keep using, average weekly earnings in the UK.
You scroll on down on this and then you find whichever bullet point you want to compare the average take-home pay per week to whatever it is now, which is the most recent amount.
And then you can see the change over time.
And you can see the curve going up, but of course, compared to inflation, it's a bit difficult.
Well, I would imagine that the curve has not kept up with the rate of inflation because the rate of inflation has been extraordinary.
Yeah, you're almost certainly losing out.
But one thing that has is the minimum wage, which I just It's a real good example of how much things have changed, because this is the national minimum wage and living wage rates in the UK.
As you can see here, so if you're 21 and over, so this is the standard, we pay less in the UK for different ages for some weird reason, but if you're 21 and over it's £11.44 per hour.
So if you're working 40 hours a week full-time on minimum wage, what is that like?
Just under £22,000.
Yeah.
Which is just worlds apart from what it used to be.
Because I looked it up, in 2020 the minimum wage was £7.70 an hour, so that's just over £14,000.
Let's jump from just over £14,000 to, well, £22,000 within four years.
Okay, yeah, that's a lot of change.
So, okay, that's affecting a lot of things, and the world has just massively changed as a result.
Never mind the fact that the prices have gone up ridiculously, also the base rate for labor has gone up there, but everyone else is getting screwed to some percentage.
As I mentioned, you go and compare real inflation versus wage rates increase, and it's not the same, to say the least.
I'm certainly feeling it, yeah.
So I thought we'd do some ideas.
Brainstorm.
So I've got some advice, which people are going to criticize.
They're going to say there's some wrong ideas in there.
Probably is.
Step one, eat shit food.
I knew this was coming as well.
I know you two well.
For people who don't know, Iceland is a lovely place that just sells frozen meals, and I have been abusing the crap out of it.
This is not dietary advice.
But this is financial advice!
So, yeah, no, again, I mean, I don't really know where I'm going with this other than just telling you I've saved some money doing bad things to my body, and maybe I want to do the same.
Well, also, because the pensions are... I was talking to you about this the other day.
Pensions are not what they once were, so actually, if you save money by eating bad food and you die sooner...
You're helping yourself out in two different ways.
So this is Iceland, this is just a stock image, because I was showing off to Michael one day that there was half price on this fish and tomato sauce over here.
Showing off your Iceland fish, are you?
I actually messaged Michael about this, and Michael, the office manager, was listening to me rabbit on about this crap, and then was just like, I'm not that interested.
I don't want the fish.
But the point of bringing this up is to mention that it's cheap, and well, you might say there's a cheaper way of doing these things, which is making it yourself and doing it effectively, and therefore a plate of whatever costs 70 pence.
Or you can get fishing rods, and then the fish are literally free.
Tuna cans.
They have good protein.
But they also sell just terrible food in the form of packet meals, and in Iceland it's £1 for a lasagne.
That is really cheap.
Yeah.
I ain't making lasagna for a pound.
Pre-2019, that would have been like 50p, wouldn't it?
A 50p lasagna.
You can't even really get a chocolate bar for that.
Best part, you can microwave it, so you don't even have to pay for the heating.
Just paying for a microwave.
You're not running the oven.
Don't worry about it.
Anyway, not great, but good idea to save money is all I'm thinking in my head, that's all.
So that's step one, eat shit.
Of course, you can probably do it cheaper, but that's a whole other thing.
Linking to your segment, Stelios, a bit there, isn't it?
That Spanish politician.
I know I'm going to get criticized, but my parents are going to be like, you know, you could just make it yourself as well.
But the reality is people of our age aren't going to as well.
So work within the frame we are.
The Spanish politician you speak of could definitely make it himself.
God, moving on to other shit.
Deals become a whore is my advice.
Number two.
There's no business like whole business.
I know Callum is actually living this advice, by the way, because every time we go to lunch, I see him checking for deals on his phone.
So if you get the McDonald's app, you can get random deals, which are just, you know, cheap food there.
So ignore the McMuffin, that's a con, but the triple cheeseburger for $1.49, that's pretty good.
Not sponsored.
But if you do want to sponsor Callum, he's more than happy.
Other ways of getting free food or cheap food are the Greggs app.
If you download that, you get yourself free drinks.
So do that and then delete the app because Greggs.
And McDonald's, not McDonald's, KFC of all people.
If you get the cheap stuff on KFC, you actually get to be able to gamble for food.
It's a bit dystopian.
This is Callum's financial advice.
Gamble for food!
You could win some food!
To be fair, my McDonald's cryptocurrency is actually more insulated from inflation than my actual currency, as in the McDonald's points that you generate on the app.
Yeah, that's another point.
If you get the McDonald's app, you get points.
Which, of course, we've now dubbed in the office as cryptocurrency.
Because, as Joshua said, it's actually worth more.
Like, the value of the Big Mac on there will remain, regardless of what happens to the pound.
So, other benefits.
Invest in McCrypto, yeah.
Yeah, but as mentioned, there's going to be parents at home being like, just make your own food, and it's like, I don't want to.
Neither does anyone my age apparently.
The moral of the story is be lazy.
Yeah, but the other question or the other advice I have is the one we've discovered is Wetherspoons for the Brits watching.
Oh no.
£2.25 for a freedom breakfast.
I had one for lunch today.
Which is just like not economical for Wetherspoons, so rape them.
Take their money.
Financially.
Oh right, okay.
Jesus!
You know, taking the bookies to the cleaners.
You don't literally take them to the cleaners.
That would be a bit odd.
Well, I mean, if you're cleaning the clothes, it's a lot better than what you said.
Anyway, so that's that.
Sorry for cutting you off.
No, no.
I just want to say that I frequently join you for lunch in either McDonald's or Wetherspoons.
You know, I cook my own food.
But, you know, it's fun when we walk into Wetherspoons and we find all sorts of people there.
It's good for people watching.
You know, I normally have, you know, I normally get a big meal for lunch and then I'll, I'll make something small, but I'm trying not to have as much processed nonsense.
Yeah.
It's all good for your body.
Any of this advice?
No.
I don't say any of this to be like, Oh, just, just spend less on food, dummy.
Um, this all comes back to probably Dave Ramsey.
A lot of Americans will know him.
If you don't, he runs a talk show where he just talks about how to save money.
And it's very American centric.
A lot of the advice is sensible.
It's the kind of stuff your dad would say.
Spend less than you make, then you have something to save.
Make sure you get the best deals on things, blah blah blah.
Don't end up with bad women.
Yeah.
Dave Ramsey also has some wilder viewpoints, I think because he operates in America.
Yeah.
He'll get phone calls where it's like, well, I've got two cars and they've both got payments every month.
I'm in 20 grand of debt on that.
Got 10,000 debt on the credit cards, 200,000 on the house, another 100,000 on the student loans.
And I'm listening to this as a British guy just being like, oh God.
sounds like hell being that kind of debt and dave ramsey is uh very much on the position that debt is like the devil and you must kill it and never get into it but also you know our entire economy is founded on debt so it's unavoidable for most people like you're in a very privileged position not to be in debt like you don't need to be in a hundred thousand pounds of That actually has to be paid back.
You're British.
So that gets wiped off in 30 years anyway.
I'm already paying mine back, and I've paid a decent amount of it out of my own pocket anyway.
Why?
Because... It gets wiped off in 30 years!
We have it easy, man!
I thought I'd be earning enough that it was a sound financial decision, but that was stupid.
Anyway, point being, it's very American, his advice, and it has its own problems, as well, which gets mocked, which I quite like, which is just people being him, and it's just him, got some callers called up, like, how do I, my husband divorced me, what should I do, I've got all these problems, and he's just like, you're poor!
Stop being poor!
Eh.
Marry a rich man.
Yeah.
Um, point being, I mean, do go check him out, but don't take everything at face value.
You know, your own circumstances and everything else, but most of the time, he's just got your dad's advice, which... Stop being poor.
But it's funny, isn't it?
I mean, the internet world, where it's, your dad will give you advice, and you'll be like, shut up, dad.
And then it's like, ooh, this guy on the internet, though, this Mr. Peterson, told me to clean my room.
Maybe I'll do what he says.
But you don't get paid for cleaning your room.
In fact, you probably use some currency for the products that you use to clean it.
It wasn't my point.
It's an opportunity cost.
The time you're gonna devote to clean your room is time you could devote to other... You could be working hard!
Yeah, you could.
Profitable endeavors.
You could be working 80 hours a week!
The same philosophy is why I don't make my bed, because it'll only get messed up tomorrow.
Why bother?
I've got whoring to do.
Yeah.
Just throw away your bed sheets.
My point was more that it's funny how you find people online who are not your dad saying the same thing your dad said.
You're just like, damn, this guy's got it right.
Could have just listened to your dad, but whatever.
But I have some other actual advice, which is more British-centric, but is also a bit of a boring.
Good luck.
Uh, so here we go.
Many people have heard of him, but apparently someone hasn't out there.
So here's Money Saving Expert, and it's a website run by this doofus, and he's kind of annoying, but also his website's pretty good, which is just, if you want new things, so like, if I want a new SIM card, uh, for example, oh god, there's Dark mode is ruining this.
No, it's John's dark mode that's on the screen.
It's making me not know if it's clicked.
Thank you, John.
Sorry.
So, the point being, if you want a new SIM card, for example, you just go, click, look, this one is cheaper.
If you're okay with the terms, get that one.
I actually need to do this personally, because I went from paying £15 a month to £10 a month for the same thing, because I just call it Tesco.
They do my current phone, and I'm like, this deal's shit.
I need that one.
There's even better out there.
The sort of sim only contracts are much better than getting the actual phone as well because they inflate the phone contract.
You know, where you actually get a phone on contract.
I've got one just because I wanted to get a decent phone.
I've never understood this.
What do you mean?
Getting a phone on contract where you're paying for the phone.
Yeah, you buy them separately and it turns out cheaper but you spread out the cost so it's actually, you can get a better phone if you plan on keeping it longer.
I don't know.
I always just buy the phone.
Like I spend, I think 150 quid on my phone and then I just buy the SIM.
That's much more financially savvy.
Okay.
Well, there we are.
Anyway, this whole segment is about financial advice.
There isn't financial advice, but the last thing here that's British centric, which is very good financial advice is just Lysa.
I keep talking about this, but some people don't know it.
John's already cheering because he told me about it when I first started working with Carl and him and we were all together.
And I was like, why the hell did no one tell me sooner?
Because sincerely, like every parent should be screaming about this to their kid.
If they're British, in which it's the Lifetime ISA.
And what this is, is if you're between 18 or 40, you can open it.
So sorry, boomers, can't help you this time.
And what happens is that you put in four grand.
It's the maximum you can put in, but you can put in a pound if you want.
Up to four grand, you'll get 25% from the government for free.
It's just a tax rebate, essentially.
So if you put in four grand over the year, you get a thousand pounds for free from the government.
If you put in 100 quid, you get 25 quid for free from the government.
The catch is that you've got to spend it on a house.
But if you're already saving for a house, and you're keeping that money aside, you're not going to find a 25% bonus on the market, really, are you?
It's not the worst catch in the world, is it?
No.
Because that's probably what most people are going to be saving up for, is the deposit for a house, right?
Yeah.
If you're saving money.
As John is also saying, if for some reason, I don't know, the UK blows up and there's no more houses, or the house prices keep inflating to a rate that we'll never get them, you can also spend it on your retirement instead, so it's not completely worthless.
But the point being, if you're saving for a house, or want to, or even just want to get started so you've got the mindset, or if you just want to make sure you've got this as an option in future, I would just put a pound in.
At least you should put a pound and then you've got it open.
Because even if you don't use it, okay, you've lost a pound.
Friggin' what do you do?
But if you have it open, if the government decides to close down this scheme tomorrow, they can't close your account because you've already opened it.
Because there is talk of them closing down the scheme because it cost them too much, which I wouldn't be surprised by.
Because it's 25% return on the first year.
And then second year, what's it, like 12% return or whatever, and then that's still beating the market.
Not to mention it's just neat to have that.
Also, you get an interest rate on what's in there.
It's not that interesting.
It's like 2% or 3%, but something.
And when you finally buy a house, just saying, not financial advice, but social advice, do use the ONS data to go and figure out what the kind of area you'll be living in.
Because as I've mentioned before, you can actually scroll down and see where you live on the house level.
I hear tell that the darker blue, the less crime.
It's weird.
Natural law.
But for some reason you can now go and check out literally who your neighbours are going to be.
You don't have to hask around the neighbourhood.
Not to mention you can go with every other piece of data that the ONS has.
Again, not financial advice.
Just saying.
Demographic advice.
You've got health advice, financial advice, demographic advice.
I mean, he's a one man show.
Yeah.
And then, uh, I got a friend who mentioned to me that they got a bunch of money sitting around because of reasons and they're not sure what to do with it.
And, uh, then to me, yeah, no, I won't.
But they're not sure if they're going to spend it on in the recent, sorry, very soon, or if they'll spend it later down the line.
And just, I'm thinking, if you've got some wealth sitting around, have a plan for it.
Like, here we go again, money saving expert.
And it's, it's just him pointing out the different savings accounts.
Why do I say the savings accounts rather than the license or whatever?
I know people have been making arguments.
It's because it's just easy access.
Like, if you think you might actually need to send, I don't know, say you've got 20 grand.
You might spend it on a house deposit or whatever for a few months, but you're not sure.
Shove it in there so it's earning something.
Because you get the interest added up every day and then deposited every month anyway.
So it's like 30 quid a month for free.
It's free!
It's free, I tell you!
It's free money!
Don't get anything out of this!
It's free!
That's the thing that gets me.
So yeah, just some advice.
Why do I say all this?
Because it naturally comes to many people.
Obviously, and it's not exactly revolutionary advice.
You know, save money on food by eating dog shit, you won't remember the meal anyway, so who cares?
Not you.
But apparently it is very difficult for many.
But the people I found most interesting is it's really difficult for really rich people.
I know this sounds strange, but here we go.
So here's just an article talking about the number of Americans living paycheck to paycheck.
Apparently it's 78% of Americans, the paycheck to paycheck, which big cultural difference on money between the US and the UK.
The America is just the more interesting one.
I mean, I'm doing this.
If you see here, people on $100,000 or more in the United States.
So that's individual people, not household.
So if you're earning a hundred grand or more, most of them are living paycheck to paycheck.
Well, but the cost of living in America is lower as well.
Depending on where you are, of course.
Yeah.
I mean, you could definitely factor into account where you are and the cost of living, but also the idea of a spending culture.
And the idea that savings aren't an important venture.
I genuinely think it's just a problem of talking about money.
Maybe you can bring some different perspective to this, but I think Anglo-Saxons are terrible at talking about money.
I think basically it has to do with a distinction between more classical economics and more Keynesian one.
When you have societies where you have, for instance, the Fed printing dollars constantly on a daily basis, you sort of urge everyone Well, that's why they do it in the first place.
That's the sort of rationale behind the Keynesian, is that they want people to be spending money, but it's not actually good for your economy because it's money that could be saved and spent at a later date more responsibly.
It prevents people from saving and making rational and, let's say, well-informed investments.
This is not quite what I mean.
So I'm not saying about the higher echelons orchestrating the economy.
I mean on an interpersonal level, I just find British culture really unable to talk to each other about money, what things cost, what's good advice to do with it.
I mean, we have a strong culture if someone asks what your salary is.
I mean, some people even get actually offended asking that question to them.
And I don't know, this just seems...
bad because it leaves a lot of people it seems completely in the dark about how money works or what you should do with it i mean i don't really know how you could be earning 100 000 us dollars and still be living paycheck to paycheck unless you don't know how to use your money how to plan how to save some because hey buddy that that might not happen forever it's just a weird situation if you get fat enough you don't have to save for the future because you don't have one.
That's my financial advice.
Just bear in mind, though, that if you get $100,000, let's say, per year, how much of that is going to be given to the government?
How much of that is going to be taxed?
Of course.
But there's a guy, though, and the reason I'm making this argument is not because I'm unaware of the cost of such things, especially when you get into the higher tax brackets.
The money just gets stolen.
There's this call on LBC, which is just really weird.
And it's a caller calling up because some minister mentioned that 100 grand a year British pounds doesn't go very far.
So then this caller calls up.
And him and his wife together earn 100 grand.
It's not him himself.
And then he lists all the different expenses.
And he's like, you know, mortgages this much, transports this much per month.
I think he's got two kids or something.
And he's listing that, food, electricity, blah, blah, blah.
And then at the end of it, he comes to a conclusion, which I just find really out of touch.
Like comically out of touch.
Let's have a listen, shall we?
For my calculation, I'd say £2.50 in months, which is left over.
Okay, well then divide that by four, so what do we get a week?
£600 a week?
That's the money left over after all of the household expenses for the month.
So he's saving £600 a week?
very much.
You are absolutely right.
That is not very much.
No, it is not very much.
Because why?
That's the money left over after all of the household expenses for the month.
So he's saving £600 a week.
He's saying that £2,500, purely indisposable income after everything else has been paid for, is not very much.
He's out of his mind.
That's loads.
That's what I mean.
It's just something that seems to happen.
Especially when you get to these higher echelons.
It's bloody delusional.
Because I'm trying to think to Margin Call.
Margin Call is probably the funniest example of a human being doing this.
Where it's people who work for banks getting commission.
So their bonuses back then were going from $500,000 to $20 million, depending on your performance.
And the funniest part is when they go through the financial crisis, they sell all the crappy CDOs, and then this guy who really wants to quit because he hates the job, hates what they've just done, and he's convinced to stay, not because he wants to work for the bank anymore, but because, quote, he needs the money.
These people were getting paid 5 million, 20 million every year in bonuses, varying.
They didn't have any savings.
They'd spent it all.
Every single year, they'd just blow through it.
It is sort of maddening, isn't it?
Like, I do my best to sort of scrimp and save and get a deposit for a house, which I'm pretty far off of, actually.
And yeah, the notion of then spending all that money, if the money evaporated from my bank account overnight, I think it would be devastating.
Like, I'm not sure I'd get over that.
Yeah, you'd think if you spent five million in a year and you had none at the end of the year.
But they're going to get for another five million, so.
There are essential needs, like buying choppers, Choppers.
You mean like helicopters rather than like... Prostitutes.
NHS medical doctors.
What?
I mean that coke's expensive right here.
Anyway, my point of all of this was... Well, not much.
I didn't have one.
I didn't have a segment.
So instead, my point was just to show off the... Take money seriously.
Do some actual planning, because it's tough out there.
It's not just tough, it's terrible, actually, looking at the rate of inflation and everything else.
And also, don't let yourself become delusional, because I really feel like the guy there who's sitting on a hundred grand household income, who thinks that two and a half grand a month disposable income is not very much, Has really lost touch with reality.
Even if he's living in London.
Yeah.
Alrighty, let's go to the video comments.
The thing about politicians is that they represent us.
Whatever Danish politician does, that will reflect upon all of Denmark and show that, oh, the Danish are just okay with it.
I am just okay with it because I'm Danish, and foreigners will see that, and that just represents the whole country.
And that's why it's our duty to hold our politicians to a higher standard, because they represent us.
They reflect the entire country.
So, no, just no.
If our politicians represent us in that sense, we are doomed.
Even, you know, British tourists do a better job of making us look good than our politicians do.
I fear that Sophie has become, to what she was complaining about the other week, where she was mentioning that Denmark has a delusion that people care about them.
Oh, we're going to save the planet by getting rid of our carbon emissions, which are half a percent of the global, you know, pathetic police here.
I've never heard of a Danish politician.
I dare to say no one has.
I don't believe they exist.
Man, you might be misrepresenting us to who.
That's all I've got in my head, but there we are.
Let's go to the next one.
Well Stelios, after your segment on Tuesday, I have one, and I mean but one, very simple question.
Why?
Just... Just... Why?
Thanks, Sam.
So, the answer is, we should expose people who have positions of power, especially when they are in departments that have to do with children, youth, and the family.
And also, it's just fun when you see virtue-signaling leftists who are telling you, and me, and everyone else here, how bad people we are and how really we have amassed Messed up system of values.
It's just refreshingly funny to watch the neat shit.
I get the impression that that guy was kind of into being exposed or exposing himself in positions.
That's why I've said it's like Seven, the movie.
This humiliation is part of what he's doing.
He wanted this.
Invoking Thucydides persuading the Athenians to take up arms against Sparta, Oakeshott talks in political discourse about the way that political speech is used to explain risks and promote aims.
Often forms of argument open to the ancients are inapplicable as societies have grown more complex, with discourse relying on identifying problems and risks, but proposed remedies must balance a wider range of outcomes.
The striking statement for me was that political discourse by its very nature doesn't have to take place.
Ideologues should heed advice that they are often better keeping their mouths shut.
If ideologues kept their mouths shut more often, we'd be out of a job, wouldn't we?
Still give financial advice?
Very ideological financial advice.
Your ideology is you want to save money.
Have you tried eating terrible food?
Yes, I have.
I can see Daisy in the chat being like, I despise this.
The next one.
I was watching a lads hour and I found out that Carl is not very impressed by the universe.
So I decided to recommend this book.
I'm almost certain it'll change your mind.
Maybe.
It's a great starting point for anyone interested in astronomy.
I haven't finished reading it yet, but I really like it so far.
I obviously recommend it to all the other Lotus Eaters as well, so if you have the time, please do check it out!
Thanks for the recommendation.
I've been trying to convince Carl that space is actually amazing for quite some time.
It's an uphill battle.
I mean, I showed him the James Webb Space Telescope images, which are some of the best images, you know, ever captured by mankind.
And he's like, yeah.
Goodness sake, Carl.
Space is cool.
Do you agree?
Is space good?
As a physicist, I hate astrophysics.
Wrong answer.
Why?
It's racist.
No, it's just annoying.
It's all black in space.
The best thing I ever did in physics was spacecraft design.
That's in space.
Exactly.
The point being that there's a massive difference between we're going to build some stuff and go there versus this is a billion light years away and doesn't even look like that anymore.
That angers me.
Because that's just knowledge I can't do anything with.
But knowing how the, you know, the laws of physics manifest in the universe is interesting.
And the, you know, just the images of things, the different types of planet, you know... Carl Pilkington put it best, it's like having a hot dinner that's going cold and you can't eat it.
That's what seeing a black hole at the center of the galaxy is.
It's just annoying.
But I don't want to go in a black hole.
I don't want to eat that.
But I want to live when we can travel at the speed of light and explore the world and the galaxy, but we can't!
It sucks!
It sucks knowing what is out there that we can't go and see.
Well, it's that age-old phrase of, you know, we're born too late to explore the world, but born too early to explore the universe.
Love going to Mars.
That's awesome.
But finding an exoplanet on the other side of the galaxy that's probably got life, but we can't go there and find out.
That just makes me angry.
But you're angry because you want to see it, right?
Yeah.
So you're interested in space.
That's all I wanted.
Okay.
Okay.
See the next one.
What the hell is this?
This is Carl's inner monologue.
I don't want this.
Okay.
I assume that's some 90s garbage.
I'm out of the loop.
Let's go to the next one.
One thing I think we really need to bring back is military parades.
And now I know they criticize, oh, well, they cost too much money and they damage the city too much.
I'm like, yeah, but how much money do all these gay pride parades cost?
Probably more, actually, when you think about it.
Also, like, one would be really good for morale and lets all the boys see the arsenal of democracy.
The other one is just you watching a bunch of men give each other STDs on party floats.
Good idea!
Why not have both at the same time?
Save even more money.
What big missiles you have?
The other day I was watching a first-row reading analysis of One Piece and when it reached a certain point it became insufferable.
American politics, especially on the left, Just insufferable.
Why can't politics just be, we have an issue, we have to fix the issue.
No other agendas, no nothing.
Just fix the fucking issue.
Yeah, but Adonis, you know the left doesn't want to fix any issue.
It's time for some California news.
This time, San Francisco has decided to see if we can sue grocery stores for closing.
That's right.
If your grocery store business has so much theft that you're losing money, you can't close it unless you take a penalty from being sued for money that you don't have.
It's so, so brilliant.
California refugee.
We're on the same wavelength, clearly.
Obviously I covered this.
Let's go to the written comments.
Oh, that'll be me, won't it?
Yeah, I've got to read some stuff.
So Das Bros gave us $5.
Thank you very much.
You guys inspired me to create my own content.
I just published my first short book on Amazon for my kids called Dragonslayer Cowboy.
Cheers.
So yeah, if you're in the audience, go support out another audience member and check out their book.
So, for my segment, The Worst Place on Earth, Arizona Desert Rat says, can't tell you how many times I've had this conversation with leftists about theft in stores and how it impacts the individual.
They think the only person being hurt is the big corporate boogeyman.
They have a hard time understanding profit margins, insurance rates, and crime statistics impacting the location of opening new stores.
Yes, it's frustrating.
The amount of economic illiteracy that I have to tolerate in this world is unfathomable.
It's also very traumatic for some of the people involved because a lot of the time it's just guns, knives, no arms and they're held at gunpoint.
Yeah, well, it's not nice if you know you're on a low salary and you've got a gun pointed in your face.
Yeah.
Baron Von Warhawk says this grocery bill is a perfect example of what's wrong with California's leaders.
They can fix these problems overnight and keep their business by cracking down on crime and reversing laws that allow for so much shoplifting, but that would mean admitting they were wrong and that people like Trump are right, who would rather burn the entire state to the ground than admit that.
It's very true.
It's largely ideological, the reason that these sorts of things go on, because they can be fixed.
You can see the difference in the places that do the things that will fix it.
It's pretty cut and dry.
That's true.
um eric nickerson um homeless won't use the homeless shelters as long as the shelters require being clean or sober the homeless will want to stay on the streets if that means they can get high or drunk that's true um and uh yes a lot of the time in britain in particular the homeless get kicked out of the homeless shelters for being belligerent when they're drunk or on drugs or what have you and
And so a lot of the people you see begging on the street for money are probably those people who have been kicked out rather than ones that actually get their food and shelter supplied to them.
Screwtape Laser says San Francisco's homeless problem is built on three pillars.
Destruction of thousands of budget hotels by redevelopment agencies in the 70s, NIMBYism and the 2008 fallout, and insane liberal policies that pay people for destructive behaviors.
I think I'm mainly focused on the latter.
It's a bit more difficult to make a segment about NIMBYism because you've got to go through all these boring planning permission documents.
And I don't know too much about the hotel thing, but that's a good point to thank you.
And then Omar Awad says, government programs almost always fail because having infinity budget means you can just throw more money at the problem instead of considering why it won't work in the first place.
Very, very true.
That's right.
Sophie Liv says, there's still non-perishable items that can actually be resold.
Bread only lasts a couple of days, so you can't really resell it.
Chocolate you can resell for a long time.
Try looking into the Amazon Marketplace where there's a huge problem with all these stolen goods being sold at one-tenth of the original price on Amazon.
Amazon isn't doing anything about it.
They got a cut of the sale so for them it's great.
They also open markets at different places of these cities where people are legit just sitting around on their blankets reselling things as if it was an actual third world country.
Apparently AOC's district has turned into exactly that.
Well actually, if you're interested in saving money Callum, perhaps looking on Amazon for your shopping.
You know, you get all of the past on stolen goods.
Obviously don't do that.
I'm joking.
Ah, delivery fees.
Delivery fees.
Oh yeah, that's true.
Also, someone online quickly going to say that baby formula doesn't get stolen to feed babies.
It gets stolen to cut with drugs.
But at least those, those, you know, um, drug takers, those drug takers are getting nutrients.
That's true.
That's probably more nutrition than they're going to get ordinarily.
Um, right.
Let's go onto the, uh, the Brussels one, shall we?
Right.
Anne E. Moss.
Welcome to the Streisand Effect, Amir Kheir.
If you had not acted, no one would have known about this conference.
Now he has shown the globalists will not tolerate dissent, just like all fascists.
We have a donation by Neon Realist.
Thank you, Neon Realist.
He says, So the Free Palestine People didn't want the Conservative Conference to go on.
Don't shut down the Free Palestine Gathering.
Let's end the Conservative Conference.
Make it make sense.
I think that's their whole goal is to brand everyone who cares about, you know, the West and Western cultures as an extremist and they are the good people whose power need to rise.
And, you know, that's, that's how they do it.
The problem is with the, with the others who are so naive and they just don't want to realize it or don't realize it.
Through the day, genuinely surprised they've gone and started shattering the dissident thought down so publicly and overtly.
Obviously, they think we'll either not notice or can do nothing about it.
I think it's more an issue of projection of force, of might, spreading the message across the world that say that, you know, we are powerful, we can flex our muscles.
Even if the Belgian PM intervened and the conference goes on, it's definitely an act that wants to be heard.
I think this Turk mayor acted of his own volition because the globalists are smart enough to know that doing it that openly would be really counterintuitive.
It's terrible PR for them, isn't it?
If they're seen shutting down a conference with lots of senior politicians from around Europe, that's not a good look.
So I don't think they're dumb enough to do that.
Maybe I'm attributing too much intelligence to them.
I think that they're both malevolent enough and crafty enough that they wouldn't have gone to those lengths.
There's an interesting question though, whether they would, let's say, ally with, to what extent they would form an alliance.
Because a lot of people, let's say in the West, or let's say Western elites, that we talk about Western elites sometimes, I'm sure that some of them are just naive.
I don't doubt it.
Omar Awad, nothing says I'm confident in the democratic process and the future of my party better than suppressing your opposition by any means necessary.
Sharehold democracy.
George Happ, if Brussels would shut down controlled opposition like Braveman and Farage, imagine what they'll do to actually based people.
One has to question why they chose the center of European bureaucracy to hold their conference rather than a place in Poland or in Hungary.
Michael Maguire, progressive taxes and expropriation of wealth are literally in the Italian fascist manifesto.
Yes.
Yeah, and I really like people who point out this because it also reminds me of people like Grayling who are trying to say there is an overlap between this and that school of thought, where you can find overlaps all across the political spectrum.
Richard Monaghan, a bitter German of the Belgian police and mayor, don't you think?
So transparent even if he is Turkish.
The Turks are the new Germans, to be fair.
I think they are the largest minority in Germany.
I'm not saying they all think this way.
I'm just talking about specific people who have positions of power.
I saw something the other day.
There was a food establishment called Berlin Kebab.
Yeah.
And I couldn't believe it because I was thinking... It's in the restaurants in the UK called Doner German.
Donna German?
Yeah, because Donna Kebabs are German.
Are they really?
They're Turks in Germany.
Oh, is that like a Korma, where Indians came to Britain and we made their recipes more British?
Nope, just Turks living in Germany.
Because they're all living in Germany, it gets advertised as German, but it's not German.
Just because no one wants to eat anything Turkish.
The more you know.
Alright, we're moving on.
So the Shadow Band donated 50 bucks to save Callum's frozen meals.
Which sort of annoys me, to be honest, because we don't get any of those as tips or anything, so... That could have been a whole month's worth of frozen meals there.
I'll get in there.
Alright, so, Suits the Redcoat says, so space travel is edging Callum.
Well, there we are.
That's one way to put it, I guess.
So...
AK says, I think Callum doesn't understand that you have no choice but to repay your student loan in the UK.
It is deducted from your salary before you receive it.
And when you get into high pay, it gets crazy.
I pay nearly £400 a month on my student loan.
I do know this.
It's not been a problem for me because I never really get anywhere near paying £400 a month, which, yeah, is pretty awful.
Is that how much you need to pay to actually eventually pay it off?
I don't know.
You'd have to do the math.
So, how it works in the UK is that there's a threshold.
I think, at least when it was pitched to me, it was £26,000, where if you don't reach that threshold, you pay zero per month, and after 30 years it gets written off.
But if you are above that threshold, then there's different amounts that you pay per month, for the percentage of your earnings after the threshold, and then after 30 years it gets wiped anyway.
So yes, if you're running higher amounts, you will actually be feeling the sting of your student debt.
Yeah, I'm paying off.
I'm not even on, you know, I'm not making good money or anything, but I'm paying off my undergraduate and postgraduate simultaneously.
So there's a reasonable amount of money being taken out of my paycheck each month.
Yeah.
Just trying to find stuff here.
Richard says, disposable incomes, that in and of itself is a luxury to most people.
I find it ludicrous that two and a half thousand British pounds is nothing.
Yeah, and Redcoat also says that's just mad.
Says it's more than he makes a month.
Which is just... That's what I can't get over with that person in London.
Like, I know you live in London, so you're a bit warped on what the price of things is anyway, but two and a half grand disposable.
That's crazy to me.
After tax, that's more than most people have from their salary.
Yeah, that dude's just like, oh, struggling to get by.
I kind of do want to wish ill intent towards them for that.
Josh has a good one.
He says, the funny thing about Ramsey is that he's assuming the economic situation will be the same as when he was a kid.
20 years ago, his advice was sound, but as Dan says, we're in a debt spiral with massive amounts of inflation, so having a savings is constantly losing money.
Yeah, this is the part of Dave Ramsey's advice I just think is so American-centric and boomer, and you're absolutely right to say it.
That's the big problem with him.
Like, one of his things is that his threshold for buying a house is really, really high because he thinks debt's evil.
And he also has you save money in a bunch of other places that don't have interest, so you're just losing cash.
And his process gets you to that point.
But obviously, if you're saving to get a house in the US, the amount you're saving has to be better than the growth in house prices.
So if you've increased your saving by 7%, the house price has gone up by 10%.
You're actually now further away from buying a house than you were a year ago.
Yeah, it's not the same as it was 20 years ago or 30 years ago.
He's giving counterproductive financial advice, really.
He's actively sabotaging you if you listen to him.
Well, so, he's got some, basically, all the good stuff is the basic stuff, like people who don't have any savings.
Okay, here's how you get to a point where you're saving something, and then you move up.
But for the long-term goals thing, yeah, he's just, like most boomers, living in a different world.
Well, there we are.
We're out of time, so if you'd like more, tomorrow.
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