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April 19, 2024 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #897

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	Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Seaters, episode 890.
	Today, Friday the 19th April 2024.
	I'm your host Connor, joined by Josh and Bo.
	Hello there.
	Thanks gents.
	Today we're going to be discussing Liz Truss' redemption arc, how it's okay to be Scottish and an Iranian reckoning.
	Update on the Israel-Rom conflict brought to you by Bo.
	But Before we get started, if you aren't a premium member, you should sign up because it's only £5 a month, and if you do, you'll be able to watch us live on Lads Hour today, where Josh will be taking us through everything to be understood about the regional cultures of the UK.
	Yeah, looking at lots of differences within the UK, allowing other people to understand it, as well as, you know, even within the UK we enjoy sort of navel-gazing at our differences, don't we?
	Yeah, so if you've been missing your weekly hit of Contemplation, this is essentially a similar thing, except there's going to be more of us and there's going to be a lot of piss-taking involved.
	As we usually do.
	But also, we also have another announcement quickly.
	If you are looking for a job and you fit the relevant qualifications, we have a couple of job openings here at Loadseaters for people with technical skills.
	And if you're interested in seeing what that entails, please do go over and look at our website.
	I'm the top one's production manager, but I think there's a few more bits and pieces on there as I've been instructed by a business manager to read out.
	So go and have a look and sign up if you want to work with us and you can.
	But without further ado, let's jump into today's stories.
	Right, so former Prime Minister Liz Truss has been doing the media rounds ever since she's released a new book called Ten Years to Save the West.
	And I must profess, even though I've been a bit mean to her sometimes, I do have a bit of a soft spot for Liz Truss.
	Because she's had some decent instincts on domestic issues, not foreign issues, I think.
	But I think that she was More likely to have listened to dissidents, as seen by her recent attempt at a road to Damascus since being unceremoniously cooed out for Rishi Sunak, than any of her predecessors or who have come since.
	And I think she was treated pretty unfairly by the establishment.
	She was certainly cooed, wasn't she?
	And if I'm to sort of get the most charitable thing I have to say out of the way first, Her budget was a step in the right direction, the one that supposedly crashed the UK economy by cutting taxes and the like, which in a sane world would actually be seen as, okay, this is obviously to encourage economic growth.
	This is what we used to do, and it worked.
	Well, it's constantly framed as an unfunded tax cut, but that's obviously oxymoronic, because the tax cut itself should not be the thing that's unfunded.
	It's just that we're going to promise to steal less of your stuff.
	So you would think that a sensible, fiscally responsible government wouldn't blow their budget on betting that they're going to confiscate more money from you.
	And also, again, we'll mention later how the Liz Trust crash the economy thing is just a canard which was used as the pretext to ouster.
	Because I think for Liz's greatest faults, And I have said this before, and I don't mean to be mean.
	She's basically nice but dim.
	I think she means quite well, but just doesn't understand how power or politics works at all.
	Like, I think she understands policy, but not really how human beings work.
	She's seemingly likeable, but very, very awkward in all of her, like, caught-on-camera interactions, or any time she talks about cheese.
	And so... We're opening new pork markets!
	markets or that is a disgrace please clap so i think since this she's got the energy of like a vengeful ex-girlfriend who's realized just how bad the person she was with was and is now going around the house and telling everyone about it so it's interesting to watch her sort of development i can feel you seething though yeah well what's the creature in ice age that's always trying to get that a call oh scrap squirrel yeah no i find a contemptible i
	I don't see anything redeeming about anything she ever did.
	Why's that?
	She's obviously a bought and paid for globalist, isn't she?
	She's definitely, like, leans in the neocon direction.
	She has described herself as a massive Zionist before, and she seems still committed to the funding of Ukraine.
	I think she's part of that faction, the Tory party.
	There are two of them.
	There's the globalists, and then there's the neocons.
	She's certainly not a globalist, because she keeps saying that we've got a new liberal world order.
	She's very hawkish on China.
	So she seems to be one of the more, like, post-war, Cold War liberals who think that China, Russia, etc.
	are the enemy, and therefore we must fight on behalf of Israel and the like.
	But she's not one of the sort of WEF stooge types.
	Oh yeah, it was just like when she was her record-breaking short for premiership, I don't remember her doing or saying anything about immigration and that, yeah, I'm a huge Zionist now.
	I mean, a huge Zionist, she said, didn't she?
	I mean, you don't say something like that by accident, do you?
	Right?
	So I don't trust her at all.
	That's just the bottom line, I mean.
	My sort of opinion is that she was perhaps one of the better of a terrible bunch.
	Obviously the Conservatives are not people I support in the slightest.
	I think they've done more to destroy this country than even Tony Blair, which is really quite a high bar to jump over, and yet they've still managed to do it with flying colours.
	That's basically her opinion now, by the way.
	And yeah, I think anyone who was in the sort of central nexus of the destruction of this country should be viewed with immense suspicion.
	And I think that there's also the fact that being in the Conservative Party when it's dying, by the way zero seats, you kind of can get away with saying a lot more because you don't have as much to lose.
	Because the Conservative Party might even be taken over in the polls by reform, which I don't think that's going to be the case and also I think she thinks that's not going to be the case and I think that she is positioning herself in such a role where she will usher in the next leadership candidate without her actually being her to wreak vengeance on the Conservative Party.
	So I think Liz Truss's redemption arc is essentially accelerating the demise of the Conservatives and she's basically admitting that.
	She's got relatively safe sea, isn't she?
	Yeah, she is going to stay.
	Yeah, which should be kept in mind.
	So just a couple of things here.
	I'm not going to play any clips from this, but she's done interviews with GB News, Talk TV and The Sun.
	So I picked bits and pieces from that just to Like, for example, she went on with this Sun interview and she said, Britons have been free for many years.
	The idea that human rights were only invented in 1997 is a Blair fiction.
	All it is invented is rights for people that shouldn't be in the country.
	So she said that we should tear up the Human Rights Act, the Climate Change Act, the Equality Act.
	And what's the other one?
	She said another piece of, oh, the Constitutional Reform Act and abolish the Supreme Court.
	It's a start.
	Yeah, exactly.
	I agree.
	So she's essentially said there is zero willingness to do so by the non-democratic, unaccountable institutions that are working and advising the ministers and are going and circumventing ministers' wills, and essentially the Cameron consensus has refused to challenge Blair because, even like George Osborne was calling Blair the master.
	Of note, I always come back to this, when I tweeted out that David Cameron and the Conservative Party are destroying the country when he's appointed Foreign Secretary, she then followed me on Twitter.
	So I think she is quite bitter.
	Yeah.
	It is odd though, isn't it, when politicians change their view, sort of, not just policy points, but sort of their world view when they come in and out of high office.
	I mean, it's more than suspicious, isn't it?
	I mean, it speaks volumes, like, Why wasn't she saying that stuff on the day she entered number 10?
	A couple of things.
	I think she had literally no idea how it actually worked.
	But I think, you know how Trump went in and, like a boomer, thought that everyone was going to do as they were told?
	She seems to be labouring under the same delusion.
	And I think it takes quite a seismic betrayal to reassess your worldview in that way.
	And so I think this is sincere, if so late as to be unhelpful.
	Basically.
	It's like Suella Braveman.
	She went on Trigonometry recently, right?
	And Suella is actually, like, an out-liberal.
	So people think Suella's conservative.
	She's not.
	But, still, not an over-enemy.
	She went on Trigonometry.
	She said, oh, we need to leave the ECHR.
	We need to reduce immigration.
	And Constance just went, well, hang on a minute.
	Weren't you in government for the last how long?
	And she went, yeah, but I can do now more that I'm out it.
	Liz Truss said the exact same thing.
	It's almost like the system from Brazil, right?
	Of where the government is set up to purposefully pass papers around so that no one ever has any accountability.
	So the establishment order just keeps ticking over.
	So no one can actually interrupt it?
	I think the most horrifying thing is that if Liz Truss is our equivalent of Trump and she's going to come back with vengeance and clear out the deep state, heaven help us.
	Sadly, I think it's probably the closest thing.
	I'm just not sure about the argument that, um, you know, she just didn't know.
	I mean, she'd been in cabinet for years before she became Prime Minister and, um, you look at, like you say, Savannah Breverman or, um, Jacob Rees-Mogg.
	I saw Mogg on GB News once saying, oh, are there still, are there still grooming gangs?
	Oh, oh, is it still going on?
	Oh, I didn't know.
	Yeah.
	I don't buy that.
	No, I don't buy that one.
	Come on.
	Definitely not.
	Come on.
	They think we're stupid in all sorts of ways.
	Though, I will say her cabinet positions were, so she was treasury minister and she was saying that she was running up against the treasury because the treasury was saying this is treasury policy so we can't actually affect anything.
	Then she was equalities minister and she was pushing her back against the gender self-ID stuff but other than that sort of tepidy went along with it because she was a Lib.
	And then she was foreign secretary and she didn't go against the foreign office orthodoxy because as we both said She was a neocon.
	It's only until she goes against government or establishment policy when she's in government that she's then sharply cooed out.
	And I think that was the moment of realisation for her.
	I think it took being backstabbed to then go, hang on a minute, actually, something's not right here.
	And I do sympathise with that a little bit.
	A little bit.
	It's just the idea that she has been in and around the top echelons of government.
	So it's not like she's completely new to it, yeah.
	But I mean, the story about how she got cooed out is, or how Boris got cooed out and then how she got cooed out, both of those are a travesty, a stain on our system.
	A ridiculous thing, looking at what actually happened.
	She goes into some of that actually, but...
	I was going to say, there may well be a trail of empty Coke cans leading to Rishi Sunak's office from that knife wound.
	Yeah, quite.
	So, Alison Pearson of The Telegraph decided to interview Liz about her new book, and she's got some interesting details in here, adding off of the other interviews that I watched and listed in the description.
	So Alison writes, for various reasons, I've come to believe that Liz Truss was hard done by and some of the conspiracy theories she's accused of peddling may be far nearer the truth than most realize.
	Unfairly or not, Liz Truss crashed the economy as taking root in public imagination.
	It's a cruel fate for a fiercely bright driven woman.
	Opinions may vary, of course, at this table, who is in a tearing hurry to stimulate growth to spare high taxes.
	As she left number 10, Truss said to a friend, the economy is going to get much worse and Rishi has no answers.
	If they think they're getting rid of me of the answer, then they're much mistaken, which she was right about.
	The people who claim I crashed the economy, Liz Truss says, are not telling the truth.
	They're either very stupid or very malevolent because it's clearly not true.
	So they should be ashamed of themselves.
	But you must realize people say their mortgage has gone up because of Liz Truss.
	And she says, it's not true.
	And she says, what I care about is the truth.
	I don't care what ignoramuses in the BBC say.
	If I cared about that, I wouldn't be a conservative.
	Not quite true.
	I'd be a shape-shifting conservative in name only who was concerned about what people at London dinner parties thought.
	It seems to me there's, and then essentially it goes on to explain that, it seems to me there's barely a fag paper between the Popcons, the movement that she's running with Mark Littlewood, and Reform Party.
	Sadly true.
	What's Popcorn?
	Popular Conservatives.
	It's basically a pressure group that they've invented that has got very few sign-ups but has a lot of money.
	They did a launch event.
	I thought it was something you eat at the cinema.
	Sorry.
	Dad joke out of the way.
	They did a launch event a little while ago and a bunch of GB News people, including Farad, showed up and everyone was going, so is this going to be your route in?
	And he was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
	And she gets asked here, OK, are you just going to get Farage to join the Conservative Party?
	Because he showed up and he's mates with the guy that's running it.
	And she went, well, I would like to see Nigel join the Conservative Party.
	We agree on American politics.
	We need people with good communicators.
	We share conservative values.
	But the future has to be the Conservative Party.
	I just want to say I did call it.
	Did call it as soon as it came out.
	So just, you know, just patting myself on the back here, because not being funny, reformer a busted flush.
	Again, Bo knows all about that one, unfortunately, because I can't take a bloody joke.
	And so, if someone is going to have a path to power, it seems to be the sort of most hard-done-by-embittered ex-Prime Minister revolutionising the Tory party from within when they've got barely any MPs left except a sape-seater like herself, and if she's amenable to folding Nigel Farage in if reform don't perform as well as they hoped, I wouldn't be shocked if it happens.
	He can have a little boogie with Preeti Patel whenever he wants that.
	No, and Liz!
	She was there at his birthday, she was there at the GB News Party, at the Conservative Party Conference.
	We're seeing all the people intersect, I think.
	He can bang his pots and pans in solidarity with the NHS on the doorstep of Number 10.
	Yeah, quite, quite, yeah.
	Very much not happy about that.
	Anyway, so she gives some insights into basically working in cabinet in this interview, and I found it quite interesting.
	She said, of cabinet meetings, even suggesting that a conservative government should keep its election promises not to raise taxes was somehow regarded as an extremist position.
	And when asked, what should you say to Telegraph readers who hear all this and think the conservatives suck, why should I abstain from voting and not just vote reform?
	And she said, well, I want the Conservatives to be honest about the current situation and propose a bolder policy agenda that actually changes the system, which is what voters keep telling us they want.
	And until we do things like leave the ECHR, cancel Net Zero, take back control of economic policy from the Bank of England and OBR, who's running the country's economic policy at the moment, until we admit it's a problem, it's harder to persuade people to vote Conservative.
	And Pearson notes, Now, I don't blame her for being slightly perturbed by her successor because he did literally assassinate her political career.
	And this is something we went over at the time.
	So the whole Liz Truss crashed the economy thing that we hear raised here.
	Dan and I covered this because Dan being a resident economist, actually you probably know a fair bit about this bug.
	Basically what happened is, in the two days leading up to it, the Bank of England realised that their liability-driven investments, which is the way that they actually pay for the British pension system, they'd bet in the wrong direction and left themselves absolutely no fiscal headroom and had a bill come due.
	So they sold off loads of gilts to try and make up the money the day before the mini-budget got launched.
	So there was major market instability, and then they only announced it the following day, and then leaked via the OBR, we still don't know who leaked it, the fact that there was now a 70...
	Was it 17 million?
	Or was it 7 billion?
	Shortfall in Kwasi Kwarteng's budget, which made it look like they cocked up the economy.
	And then Liz, not knowing anything about economics really, sort of caved to the narrative and started rolling back on her promises.
	And then from there, it was just a death sentence.
	But it actually wasn't her fault.
	She had absolutely no control over that.
	She just seems to have been the scapegoat for really poor and globally unique Bank of England monetary policy.
	It should be abolished, just saying.
	Well, quite, yeah.
	She's calling for the abolition of the OBR, basically, because the OBR was set up by David Cameron to tell the Treasury how to spend responsibly, but that's according to the Bank of England.
	Bank of England, who, I think in early March, put out a new report about their new monetary policy, and they said we have a, quote, high Keynesian approach, which is just going to cause you an aneurysm.
	It certainly will, yeah.
	Yeah, I mean, the OBR, Can't be trusted as a body, I wouldn't have thought.
	The Bank of England, the people that control that, the small body of people that control the policy of that, yeah, maybe Keynesians and stuff.
	But the bottom line is, if it wasn't for the Tory Parliamentary Party stabbing her in the back, she could have continued.
	It was the MPs, it was her own MPs that It caused her to have such a short tenure as Prime Minister.
	It's on them in the end.
	Not the newspapers that go with, not the Bank of England, it's those MPs.
	I think there's a large collection.
	I think there's three groups.
	So it's definitely the OBR, the Bank of England and the like who manipulated monetary policy.
	And then suddenly when Rishi Sunak gets cooed in and promises, I don't know, billions of climate reparations to Pakistan, they don't bat an eyelid about fiscal responsibility.
	Right.
	There's also the media who don't tell the truth and then manipulate public opinion against her to then continue to submit the Tory's demise, even though there's literally a fag paper between cigarette paper, I should say, we're on YouTube, between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer.
	So they're going to be indistinguishable in policy.
	And then yes, Conservative Parliamentary Party.
	I mean, Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Huntley had so much to gain from throwing her under the bus and installing a prime minister who wasn't even elected by either the British people or parliamentary members.
	Yeah, nobody wanted Rishi.
	Just nobody, really.
	And his popularity reflects that.
	Yeah, they deserve zero seats.
	It's mad what they've done.
	Well, you brought up lockdown.
	I mean, the irony of all of this is the Bank of England has only been put in this position By which they're selling off loads of guilt and raising interest rates at the same time, which is a very thin, tight road to walk.
	You know, to try and control inflation, which hasn't worked, because it went into recession last year.
	Because Richie Sinek, World Chancellor, spaffed billions away on lockdown.
	And then, of course, on Ukraine.
	So, if he is suddenly Prime Minister after causing the recession and the market's going, oh that's tickety-boo, there's no instability there.
	Does nobody smell a rat here?
	Am I the only one thinking that I'm a conspiracy theorist?
	I smell a rat king.
	Yeah, quite, yeah.
	So from the interview, basically Liz gets asked about this.
	And it's detailed.
	It says, before quasi-quarting stood up in the Commons, the OBR warned there was a 70 billion hole in quarting and crosses calculations, which involved cutting corporation tax and dropping the 45p higher tax rate.
	Quote, the OBR was lying through their teeth, then leaking to undermine Liz, says one member of Team Trust who's still furious about the ambush.
	It was all part of their game, the OBR, the Treasury and the Bank of England working against them.
	The day before, the bank sold tens of billions pounds worth of gilts.
	According to one economist sympathetic to Trust, the policies in the mini-budget involved a lot more borrowing and the Bank of England just happened to choose that exact time for more government bond sales to the market.
	Basically, it couldn't have been more unhelpful.
	So does Trust believe that they were gunning for them?
	I don't have any proof, she says.
	I mean, one version of events is that the Governor just believed in what he was doing.
	The economic consensus had been, among the Bank of England, Treasury and the OBR, relatively loose monetary policy, cheap money, which had been going on for years.
	I think that this was actually very damaging to the economy, with high taxes and high levels of regulation, and I don't think Andrew Bailey, Governor of the Bank of England, who wants the digital pound, by the way, so it's not like he doesn't have an incentive to crash said pound, wanted to move away from that, even though we've got a mandate to do things differently.
	So the markets reacted badly to the fact fact that it was clear that the governor of Bank of England and the government were not necessarily on the same side.
	After Truss was ousted, the bank swiftly reversed its actions, which looked like the markets were overjoyed at the installation.
	And then Pearson says, I was about to write coup of Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt, the so-called adults in the room.
	So how is that not a stitch up?
	So Truss has called for an inquiry into it, but it does look oddly suspicious that they suddenly do this right before the budget when she's going to reverse the sort of treasury orthodoxy and then go straight back to business as usual and then aren't worried about massive borrowing and spending, which goes up after Hunt and Sunak get in.
	Just to any common sense person that looks at the financials of it goes, well, this doesn't seem like they're being honest, does it?
	So I do have a little bit of sympathy for Truss, who stood on a political landmine and basically didn't understand how power and the interlocking presumably neutral institutions work.
	And it blew up in her face.
	And she's only now realizing what's happened.
	There's always a bigger snake.
	It's only since Gordon Brown that the bank has been completely independent.
	So, again, like the idea that you actually have borders or that you don't devolve government to regions or that you all these sorts of things that you have a Supreme Court.
	It's not that long ago when things were very, very, very different, profoundly different.
	I mean, economists will and do argue about whether it's good or not to have an independent Bank of England, or semi-independent, or various shades of how independent it is, but I'd say it's only since Gordon Brown.
	I think it's actually what's more important.
	If they've got their own agenda, if they're playing their own games, how is that in the national interest really?
	I think it's actually what's more important.
	It's not necessarily if it's de facto or du jour independent, but whether or not you have people running it that are acting in the national interest whatsoever.
	This is something I've always said about the people that go, oh, democracy, the House of Lords is unaccountable.
	I would be happy to be ruled over by a certain group of people that I couldn't vote for if they actually gave a shit about me.
	Meanwhile, we've got Hobson's choice at the moment in democracy with every single party parroting the exact same talking points.
	To the extent where Reform UK are having their candidates vetted by Hope Not Hate.
	We literally have no one to vote for, so the fact that we can vote for them matters less than the fact that if they care about us and want to govern the country properly.
	We could have a parliament of 650 barnyard animals and we'd still end up with the same policy because the MPs don't determine it, do they?
	It's, you know, the shadow government of the civil service, you know, the Bank of England.
	The unelected bureaucrats behind the scenes that have increased their power, their scope, and you can see that from the actual massive increase in the size of government despite the fact that the way in which governance is going, if you're looking at it objectively, you actually would need less and less government because we're much more efficient at information exchange.
	So we don't need as many people managing things and yet it's expanded massively.
	Especially because there's a lot of boomers and gen x's, no offense, but sitting in parliament who don't quite understand how the internet and social media works yet are trying to govern it and also keep pace with the rate of information exchange and then they're just grasping at straws of the narrative so it looks increasingly more absurd.
	So essentially our current governance system is unfit for governance and there is no democratic accountability because even the MPs who are meant to be doling out the policies just get received wisdom from a bunch of institutions which are beholden to higher powers like WHO, the WTO, the WEF, the World Bank, the IMF, etc.
	So, Liz didn't realize all this existed, because she was sort of naive, really.
	So, I mean, you can blame her for being painfully naive, but I do have a little bit of sympathy for her, and that's why she's now, since on her book tour, and I hope this goes just beyond the book tour and trying to sell a few copies, she's just going scorched earth, like she said, yeah, just abolish the UN.
	Don't care.
	They don't do their stated purpose.
	They do way worse than they actually say.
	This UN Security Council has China and Russia on it.
	The Human Rights Council has Iran on it.
	Like, this is an absolute joke.
	I think Britain is the second largest per capita contributor to the UN, and yet we are constantly disadvantaged by having our enemies' policies pushed through.
	Another level of government which undermines the sovereignty of the UK.
	Why are we paying money towards something that works against our interests ultimately?
	She's been Foreign Secretary, she's only saying this now.
	Weird.
	I think it's because she's been severely spited, basically.
	I think it takes a lot of people a real splash of cold water in the face to realise that the institutions aren't neutral or working in your favour.
	So, again, you can fault her for being Painfully naive and are suffering under it, but I think this is at least sincere if a bit too late basically and then there's also this she's just written a recent article basically saying yeah, um Blair is entirely at fault and so are the Tories for keeping it up So we need to abolish the Human Rights Act the ECHR the Climate Change Act and all the constitutional reforms And we don't and she even said we don't need a British Bill of Rights.
	We've already got Magna Carta So I'm not even gonna bother with it Which, great!
	I'm glad she's been watching Dr. Parvini or something in her spare time.
	I just do wish that this post-liberal Liz Truss was around when she was scrabbling at the levers of power and possibly could have stuck about a bit to listen to some dissidents.
	So the tragedy of Liz Truss is having good intuitions on things like the gender issue and now constitutional reform.
	Okay, so we tend to cover lots of bad news coming out of Scotland but today I've actually got some good news.
	Good news from Scotland I know it's unheard of.
	to a sort of reverse long march through perhaps what is left of the Conservative Party if she retains her seat.
	Okay.
	So, we tend to cover lots of bad news coming out of Scotland, but today I've actually got some good news.
	Good news from Scotland I know it's unheard of.
	I feel like Zoidberg.
	Zoidberg?
	Isn't that good news, everyone?
	No, that's Professor Farnsworth.
	Good news, everyone!
	Of course.
	Don't worry, I know my Futurama.
	But I also know my Scottish politics.
	And yes, obviously Scotland perhaps has some of the worst cases of implementation of wokeism and that sort of thing in the British Isles.
	It's nice to see some of it getting rolled back and all at the same time.
	And this is very important because I think the popularity of the SNP in Scotland now is very, very low.
	We're going to be looking at that a little bit more.
	But basically, if you're in Scotland, it's a day of mostly good news.
	I am going to give you, you know, a sort of your daily dose of Black Pill at the end anyway, just because, you know, it wouldn't be Live Seaters without that.
	It is mostly good.
	So the first thing is that Scotland has paused their gender clinics prescribing puberty blockers to under 18s following England and Wales and Northern Ireland's lead there.
	They finally relented because of course with the devolved parliaments, Holyrood gets to determine health policy and they seemed to actually be sticking with this until there was a sizable amount of So there's only one place in Scotland that can do this in the first place, which is known as the Sandiford Clinic, which is in Glasgow.
	It's quite curious because the Cast Review, for anyone who doesn't know, is non-legally binding and only administered advice to NHS England and Wales because of the devolved administration.
	And Scotland have... One of the things that really accelerated the demise of Nicola Sturgeon wasn't just the allegations of money laundering, but was also the gender bill which went down like a brick in a duck pond and ended up having the English Parliament overruling Holyrood.
	So, they've been full-throated on the gender stuff, so even they must have thought this is so undeniably optical poison it would impress on, despite the Cass report that they've gone, we'll adopt it anyway.
	Yeah, so this place in Glasgow, the Sandyford Clinic, was the only place that could prescribe puberty blockers to 16 and 17 year old Scottish, I suppose, children.
	And so I think it was on the end of 2023, there were about 1,100 patients on the waiting list.
	Which is quite small, really.
	Obviously, there's still too many.
	I don't think that there should be anyone on that waiting list.
	And they've paused all new prescriptions from mid-March onwards until there is more evidence, sort of slash, there has been a sufficient review of the evidence that already exists.
	Because it's my understanding, having read the evidence, that there is more than enough evidence to suggest it's a bad thing.
	Does this mean that they're still conducting clinical trials and some of those kids will be signed up to participate in them?
	Because I know that's a thing in England.
	The people who remain will be 18 plus, so they'll still be trialed upon, as well as the people who've already been prescribed it.
	So there's just no new prescriptions, but whoever has been prescribed carries on.
	Obviously, it's not nearly enough by my reckoning.
	However, it is at least a step in the right direction, which from Scotland is rare.
	And another thing as well, this is the same week they have scrapped their carbon emissions pledge and this was a pledge to reduce emissions by 75% by 2030 and this is again following England and Wales and Northern Ireland.
	The rest of the UK has already done this.
	So it says here, Mary McAllen, the Scottish Net Zero Secretary, is expected to announce that Scotland will instead follow the UK and the Welsh Government's lead by adopting five yearly carbon budgets and a significant policy climbdown.
	Again, a step in the right direction, still not nearly far enough.
	But things seem to be at least softening in Scotland, which is interesting.
	I think it's a reflection of just how unpopular they are becoming, the SNP that is, the governing party.
	They are set to lose quite a few seats to Labour.
	Just a small anecdote, because when COP26 was hosted in Glasgow, blimey, three years ago now, so we went and did a fringe thing.
	We went to Whitley Wind Farm, which used to be, I think, the largest inland wind farm that's once since been built.
	I think that's right, yeah.
	So I spoke to the engineers and I was like, okay, so what's the cost of this thing?
	How much carbon does it save?
	How energy sufficient is it?
	And they went, oh yeah, no, it's manufactured in Spain, it's shipped over, they never make back the carbon that they cost to produce, and we still need a dispatchable baseload like nuclear or gas for them to even contribute to the grid at all, so they're a busted flush.
	And it's like, The engineers at the wind farm themselves said they're bloody useless in Scotland, and if Scotland are doubling down on renewables, specifically in rainy Scotland where the sun never shines, yeah, you might need to mediate your carbon targets a little bit just for the fact that the technology will not be there.
	Yeah, well, the technology isn't here yet, is it, to make it feasible?
	And you know, I understand that, you know, there are There are carcinogens contained in fossil fuels, but it's the best bet we have.
	If we self-sabotage, we'll never get any innovation.
	You make energy as cheap as possible to incentivize innovation.
	So sure, there might be more fossil fuels burnt in the short term, but in the long term, it would pay off from their frame of mind.
	I don't know whether we'll find the technology because I'm not working in that industry.
	So fossil fuels for the meantime, we should be making them as available as possible.
	That's my opinion.
	I think it's funny how Scotland think they're like a country that sort of really matters.
	You're just doubling down on the... Well, no, like in the scheme of things, England doesn't matter.
	You know when like China say, sorry, who are you?
	Yes.
	You know, we don't care about what you import or export or anything.
	You're nothing.
	So Scotland's even more that, like their population is tiny, like you talk about people on blockers, a hundred people.
	Scottish heavy industry.
	Well, 1,100.
	Oh, sorry, so still a small amount in the scheme of the world.
	Like, an oil refinery.
	You know, Scottish heavy industry compared to, you know, US or China or any of the big players.
	It's just... Like, who really cares?
	What does it matter about Scotland's carbon emissions?
	Come on!
	Seriously, in the scheme of things.
	It's very small, yeah.
	It's nothing!
	The UK collection... Their population is tiny, their industry is tiny.
	The UK collectively is 1% of world emissions, so Scotland is infinitesimally... It's a population of five and a half million, you know, and within the UK if that's 1% that's hardly anything on the global scale.
	Though I suppose there is a sizable contribution from all the Bunsen burners for their heroin spoons.
	Got him!
	I'm not running for reform, it's fine.
	Scottish half of my family are going to be very upset when they wake up from their smack coma.
	Anyway, none of my family are drug addicts by the way, just to clear that up.
	So I thought it'd be good to gloat because lots of climate charities have been complaining about this and I wanted to read it and enjoy their seething.
	Friends of the Earth said this is the worst environmental decision in the history of the Scottish Parliament.
	I doubt that.
	Oxfam Scotland said with the world becoming dirtier and deadlier place every day, they're not talking about mass immigration, any decision by Scottish ministers to rewrite Scotland's climate rulebook would be an acute global embarrassment.
	I don't think anyone's paying attention as Bo said.
	Is it just becoming dirtier and deadlier because loads of their workers who decided to non-sum kids have gone to more countries and done that?
	You're about Oxfam here, yeah?
	Yes.
	Yeah, they're not the best charity, are they?
	It would also be the direct and damaging consequences of the Scottish Government's own dilly-dallying on climate action.
	So yes, Oxfam clearly captured.
	Boo-hoo.
	Oh, poor Vox fam, they're upset.
	Greenpeace, legislating to reduce Scotland's climate ambition fresh off the back of the planet's hottest ever, I don't know why I'm doing that voice, ever recorded 12-month period.
	It's like striking a match in a petrol station.
	It might not set the whole thing ablaze immediately, but it's clearly a dangerous step to take.
	A little bit sensationalist there, Greenpeace.
	You know, you're obviously so known for your level-headed commentary on all things climate.
	Also, I think the best way, if you want to reduce carbon emissions in Scotland, I have a little meme for you.
	It is this.
	The Ladybird Book of Independent Scotland.
	Is that Buckfast in the bottom left?
	It is, yes.
	It does look like Humza Yousaf.
	But yeah, the funny thing is that I'm Scottish on one half, from Devon from the other.
	So my Scottish family just moved down to the source of Buckfast.
	I thought you were just going to say, I'm Neanderthal on the other half.
	Well, one could mistake that, yeah.
	Oh, sorry, you're not Harry.
	Is that, maybe this is such a dumb question, but is that real or is that a Photoshop?
	No, it's a Photoshop.
	Obviously the Buckfast is added on.
	No, this isn't actually a proper Ladybird.
	Okay, I was going to say, it doesn't even make sense.
	The point of this is that Scotland's economy very much relies on Britain, yet they have this very strong Push towards independence and I think you can be more self-governing, that's fine, but just recognise that you do rely on the people south of the border to fund your lifestyle, right?
	If they were truly independent they would go back to the Stone Age.
	Yes.
	Without us.
	Which is, you know, my very thick, Scottishly-accented grandfather, when I asked him, why did you move to England from Scotland?
	He basically said, well, obviously Scotland's very beautiful, but in every other way, England is better.
	And he was about as Scottish as you could possibly get.
	The shape being Scottish.
	That's it, yeah.
	They all agree.
	They all seem to agree.
	And it's not me being mean.
	You know, every Scot I've ever met has been very friendly to me.
	You know, lovely people, at least to me, at least.
	And I associate them with my family.
	So it's not like I'm trying to be mean on purpose.
	Yeah, when I visited my takeaway was Scotland, lovely looking place, shame about the government.
	That's it.
	Like, they deserve better governance.
	Yeah, when I'm criticising it's the Scottish government, it's the SNP that I'm criticising.
	It's not the Scottish people, which I have a deep affinity for.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Edinburgh is lovely and every Scot, I think without exception I've ever met, has been a funny and interesting person.
	Glasgow's horrible though.
	I've never been to Glasgow.
	Oh, don't.
	My dad told me he used to keep a broom handle next to his basement flat window in Glasgow to jab the smack heads that were trying to break in.
	That was Glasgow in the 70s.
	So there we go.
	Lovely place.
	But no, I think Scotland has punched above its weight on the global stage and contributions to humanity.
	So I'm not being mean.
	Yeah, the Scottish Enlightenment is a real thing.
	They've absolutely outperformed themselves in a good way throughout history.
	So this is me trying to shake you, saying you've got it in you to be amazing.
	You know, you don't have to accept the S&P, you're doing this good stuff, keep up the momentum, crush the S&P, take over, make Scotland based again.
	I would love if the SNP collapsed in Scotland.
	I would love that.
	Good news!
	Peter Murrell, the husband of Nicola Sturgeon, the former leader of the SNP, has been the body double of the fat controller.
	He has been charged with embezzlement of S&P funds, which these were funds that were set up for another independence referendum and instead he was arrested in 2021 and then released after there were complaints about how donations were used.
	A bunch of things were seized by police around this sort of time, including a £100,000 camper van outside his mother's house.
	Which is interesting because, you know, that's a lot of money on a camper van to give to your mother, presumably.
	Clearly he didn't spend it on hair plugs.
	No, he's not been to Turkey recently.
	But he was arrested for this on the 5th of April 2023, and he was released.
	And now he has been arrested and charged, and he's yet to have his day in court yet.
	But I think that the fact that he's been arrested once and released, and then they arrested him again seems to suggest, well, they think that they've got him this time, right?
	They're going to get him.
	And to my mind, he looks like a squealer.
	He looks like he's going to bring other people down with him.
	Hey, Penfold looks like he has absolutely impenetrable integrity.
	So my thinking is that with Murrell here, he's going to take some other people down with him in the SNP.
	And because, you know, his wife was the leader, it's going to be some pretty senior people.
	And if they're shown to be the crooks that they are, let's be honest, they're embezzling money that was given to them, set up for an independence referendum and buying expensive caravans or camper vans or whatever.
	Well, that speaks of the kind of people that are calling the shots in the S&P, doesn't it?
	Obviously.
	Yeah, I mean, Penfold's really let himself go.
	Yeah, it's quite a lot of money though, right?
	It's over 650 grand.
	Yes, that's right, yeah.
	660, I see, that sort of number.
	That's not like a few hundred quid, even a few grand.
	That's a lot of money really.
	It is.
	So if he is convicted, and we'll see, obviously wait for all the real gloating after he's convicted, if he is.
	But it doesn't look good.
	It doesn't bode well, right?
	Because of the reasons, the way that the police do things and the way the courts do things, they probably wouldn't have rearrested him unless their investigation has shown something.
	Well, I wonder if... We don't know, but... If he does get convicted, will it be to take the rap so that Nicola Sturgeon doesn't go down for anything?
	Who knows?
	Maybe.
	You know, the police van is wet.
	The charge sheet, wet.
	Speak of the devil, let's go to the Ayatollah of Scotland, shall we?
	Here is Hamza Yusuf, there he is.
	Shooting lightning out of his palms like Palpatine.
	Yes, the leader of the Scottish National Party now after Nicola Sturgeon resigned after these you know financial allegations and his popularity is absolutely collapsing because of the hate speech laws.
	I'm going to read a little bit from Breitbart about this just from the top here and it says the survey conducted between April the 9th and the 12th by Norstat for the Sunday Times found that the First Minister Youssef's net popularity among those who voted for the Scottish National Party in the 2019 general election fell to negative seven percent That's his popularity within his own voters there.
	A steep decline from January when the leftist leader had a positive popularity of net 14%.
	The poll, which was done after the chaotic introduction of the new hate speech laws, championed by Youssef, went on to find that supporters of his party believed he is doing a bad job, more so than a good job, with just 29% of S&P voters approving of his performance compared to 36% who disapprove.
	So if he's polling that badly among his own voters, That is really quite a condemnation, isn't it?
	That's a swing of 21% total, then.
	That's massive, yeah.
	In terms of the Scottish public as a whole, Yousef saw the steepest decline of any politician since Norstat's last survey in January, with the leftist First Minister a position roughly equivalent to the Governor in the United States, which I thought was a funny addition by Breitbart there.
	Seeing his net popularity falling dramatically by 15 points to a popularity rating of negative 32 this puts Yusuf ahead of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak who's been played by his own popularity struggles by just three points.
	So Rishi who no one voted for, no one likes and you know zero seats You know, if he's only doing marginally better than him, that is massive.
	It's almost like installing people to run the country who nobody voted for is a deeply unpopular thing to do.
	So every single devolved administration and now the UK Parliament has done the same thing, and now they're all about to be kicked out of jobs.
	Yeah, and it's also important to mention that sure, Yusuf is unpopular, but also they've recently replaced a leader, and although it doesn't stop the Tory party, generally speaking it's very bad to keep on replacing your leaders because it makes you look weak and unstable and uncertain, and people don't want that from people running the country, funnily enough.
	But yes, I promised to depress you a little bit, and so the time is nigh.
	I've given you the good news, the sugar for the pill, and here's some of the... Oh no, yeah, yeah, this is right, sorry.
	There was a move to repeal these hate crime laws that were ridiculously punishing, and this was lodged by Scottish Conservatives, and this was voted down last Wednesday, and it was Russell Findlay, who was a member of Scottish Parliament, who actually had something that I found quite interesting to say.
	He almost said it in a way in which I might term these sorts of things, which is surprising from a Scottish politician.
	So he said the Act had transformed Scotland into a place of international mockery, which it certainly had, When JK Rowling put this to the test on social media, Police Scotland confirmed she had not committed a hate crime, but what of those without her cash and clout?
	Even if prosecutions are unlikely, being subject to investigation can be daunting, disruptive, humiliating, and financially costly.
	Police arriving at your home or workplace, taken away in handcuffs, phone seized, forced to pay for a lawyer, Stigmatising and damaging to personal reputation and employment prospects, and I'm particularly struck by the phrase, the process is the punishment.
	Anyone who's ever taken on Scotland's powerful and unaccountable public bodies will know exactly what this means.
	So that last part in particular, the process is the punishment, That's an interesting thing to come out of an elected representative, because we've been saying that sort of thing for quite some time now.
	They do have staffers that write their speeches, so it's not impossible that the staffer has been percolating on our wing of the internet.
	I will say, though, bitter irony coming from the Conservative Party, again, zero seats, rightly deserved, who have set up abortion buffer zones and criminalised women for praying inside their own head.
	This is basically the equivalent of going, oh, gay race communism, bit far.
	You can have the communism, but not the gay race bit, basically.
	But the point being here, not that I'm giving the Conservatives any points, I hate them, it's simply that it seems like dialogue and discourse, you know, the Overton window has shifted to things that we might say which is interesting for Scotland and Scottish politics more generally.
	It's also worth mentioning this, Count Dankula, a man who has certainly fallen afoul of hate speech laws in Scotland before, talking about this.
	He's saying that Hamza can't genuinely compute how taking people's human rights away made the same people not like him.
	He really is that stupid.
	He did serve on the American Supreme Court so he knows what he's talking about.
	That's true, yeah.
	But Mr Dankula here points out an important thing that the very first arrest under the new law was a bogus complaint and it was an old, a little old lady and Humza was warned that this law would turn Scotland into Salem.
	People would just point the finger at anyone they had a grievance with and Humza didn't care.
	So let's just read this case.
	A pensioner has been left feeling very emotional after she was wrongly accused of breaking Scottish hate crime law and taken to the police station.
	Morag Madougal Brown, 74, says she has endured two years of abuse from a nightmare neighbour who then one day received a knock on the door from the police.
	So demented obsessives are just using the law to attack people they already didn't like.
	Yeah, and this is something I've been saying about laws like this, you know, since I've been doing this, really, that people are just going to use them to get rid of people that they don't like.
	That's why a lot of laws are used for it.
	You can call them up anonymously if you wanted to, right?
	So, well, then you're in what you would call an informer society.
	That's one of the most sinister things it's possible to have.
	It's like they've got the NKVD or the Gestapo and, you know, we're taught in school that this is bad and yet this is also public policy.
	So it is very strange to me that this is going on in a supposedly a country that is resistant to this.
	Obviously we're not.
	We've been doing this for a long time.
	One of the things we've mentioned, Ankula, here that I've always thought was just terrible was when he was obviously wrongly convicted of doing anything wrong vis-a-vis the pub.
	But then when he was ordered to pay a fine, He was, as I understand it, he was adamant that he just wouldn't do it and see what happens, take the process further, and the state just simply took the money out of his account.
	Yeah, they nicked 800 quid off of him.
	Right.
	That is, that's all sorts of red flags and lions crossed in all sorts of ways, above and beyond a political prosecution and unfair, unjust laws, that they then, at the end of it all, literally steal the money.
	Quite literally, there's no other way to describe that than theft.
	Yeah, it's terrible really.
	Here we have, this is all the way back in 2022, just to prove that this sort of thing was going on before this new hate crime legislation and it's only going to make it much worse.
	Here's some leftists, you can tell by the EU flag and the Ukraine flag, posting in 2022, no one's been arrested for jokes, now shut up and sit down, and Dankula just shows his own arrest photo here.
	He's also responding to Otto English who is the revisionist historian tack dog of the regime and I'm not surprised that he has these sort of people in his mentions.
	Also Scotland has still gone insane in some ways in that Scottish primary schools appoint children as LGBT champions and says Children as young as four years old are being asked whether they're gay, lesbian or trans, the Telegraph has revealed.
	Apparently, the documents provided to the Telegraph have shown that they're setting up LGBT clubs and gender and sexual orientation alliance groups for pupils as part of their membership scheme run by LGBT Youth Scotland.
	And again, they've received a million quid from a subsidy scheme.
	I was going to outline that because it's It's so painful to me that money stolen from the taxpayers is then being used to indoctrinate their children.
	It says politics is downstream of culture, culture is downstream of law.
	Basically the state just sponsors via patronage these insane ideological groups and imposes it on impressionable children.
	It's horrifying.
	And just in case you wanted to drown your sorrows, which I know Scots are pretty fond of, yeah, recently MSPs have voted to increase the minimum unit price for alcohol in Scotland, which I know is going to be felt by many Scots as they slowly sober up.
	So it's set to rise by 30%, and this would mean that the minimum price per unit of alcohol goes from 50p to 65p, which is pretty sizable, a 30% minimum increase.
	Of course, the intention here is they want to reduce the amount of drunkenness because of the health consequences of it for their socialized healthcare systems.
	That's the rationale that they provided publicly.
	30% is massive and also just because Hamza is a Muslim.
	They hate pubs and alcohol.
	But no, 30% is massive.
	Usually in a budget, they tweak stuff like that by 1%, 0.5%, 1.5%, stuff like that, right?
	You know, if they up something on cigarettes or alcohol by 3 or 4%, it's like, ooh, that's crappy.
	It's like a Noah's Ark style policy.
	So just to whack 30% on it... The hilarious contradiction of this is...
	What hasn't been mentioned in this article, I'm sure, is that now they're also doing legal drug-taking rooms in the Scottish NHS.
	So at the same time, they're trying to stop you from drinking.
	Oh, right behind this curtain where you can do your heroin, sir.
	As long as you do it supervised, that's not gonna have any health consequences whatsoever.
	We need a train spotting three, so we can't clean you up.
	But no, I think I should just start running bottles of Buckfast across the border to help you all out, because I feel a little bit sorry for you that if you're surviving in Scotland, you know, you can't even drown your sorrows anymore because it's going to be too costly.
	So I've given you some good news, but I've given you some bad news, which is why it's perhaps just okay to be Scottish.
	But yes, at least you've got the nice outdoors.
	The S&P haven't ruined that quite yet, so go for a nice walk.
	That's my advice to you Scottish people.
	Wait till you find the Muslim Hiking Clubs hit Scotland.
	We're just big fans of the Fallout series.
	Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	There you go.
	There's your mouse.
	You're rushing the tech over here at loads of seats.
	All right.
	It's all right.
	We're just big fans of the Fallout series.
	Right.
	No, we're not.
	So I thought we could say a few words about the Israeli-Iranian crisis that's going on.
	And in fact, it turns out that it seems right now there may be missiles in the air as we sit here.
	At least at the time of recording.
	So, it's the 19th, about two o'clock British Standard Time.
	So yeah, just before we came on, I saw that there were reports that there's been some, perhaps, explosions in Iran, perhaps from Israeli missiles.
	Doesn't seem like it's a giant airstrike or anything.
	Perhaps, but also actually.
	Right, well yeah.
	Well, who else is it going to be?
	Well, just the reports are very, very new.
	It was literally like two hours ago, so about an hour before we came on air, so it was all preliminary.
	But there's a G7 going on and Blinken was there and he said something about Israel are going to do something.
	Yeah, the only marginal thing it could be is a false flag, but let's be fair, given escalating tensions, it's unlikely.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Well, so in case anyone doesn't know, there's been this tension between Israel and Iran, to put it mildly.
	But before I get into that, I thought I could just talk a bit about the history.
	That's sort of my wheelhouse, isn't it?
	Just talk a bit about the history.
	How did we end up here?
	So, before I talk about specifically Israel and Iran, I just wanted to talk a bit about Iran.
	And I thought maybe, you know, try and see things from their point of view a bit.
	Now, in 1979 they had an Islamic revolution.
	So at that point everything changes, I would say.
	All the calculations on both sides profoundly change at that point.
	But before 1979 there's still a long storied history of all sorts of countries Just screwing with Iran or Persia as it used to be.
	It was Persia until like the mid-1930s.
	It was only then it changed its name to Iran.
	And I wrote an article ages ago now, nearly the best part of two years ago, where again it wasn't sort of a particularly hot take at the time, it's not like massively brilliantly insightful, but nonetheless just talking about how Iran has been
	Well, that part of the world, Persia, sort of east of the Zagros Mountains and west of Afghanistan, that part of the world has just sort of had endless war, in a way, ever since the ancient world, you know, going back to Cyrus and Alexander and the Persians and on and on and on.
	So it's sort of, I say it's sort of surprising in a way that Those same mountains, those same deserts where the Mongols passed through and Saddam Hussein had wars with, is still going to be a place of war even to this day.
	I remember actually editing this for the website, and I read it quite a few times, obviously, in the process of that, and it's a good article, so yeah, check it out.
	Thanks, yeah.
	Sorry I threw you off there.
	So yeah, from the most ancient times, nearly, until today, it's sort of a crucible of conflict.
	There are a few hot spots on the earth.
	Poland seems to be one, or that part, that particular bit of Eastern Europe, sort of on and off, but for all time there'll be giant clashes of civilizations there.
	Isn't it a lot of the time geography determines where the battlefield is going to be?
	The land sort of flows armies into certain places, almost like a river.
	Yeah, no, absolutely, right.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I mean, it gets even more specific than that.
	There's certain passes in the world.
	There's certain passes in the Balkans, or what's the big one in the Indus Valley, in the Punjab?
	The Khyber Pass, for example.
	There's a reason why there's been so many conflicts and battles on the exact same spot.
	Because the geography funnels it there, it really does.
	It's the reason why so many steppe peoples end up in Hungary, what we call modern day Hungary, because it funnels them there.
	So it's almost inevitably going to end up in the same places.
	So anyway, with Iran, particularly Russia, And Britain have sort of screwed with their program quite a lot in history in the 20th century, in the 19th and 20th century.
	So I don't know if you've ever heard of the great game concept of the great game.
	Of course.
	Yeah.
	That's where in the broadest geopolitical strategic sense, Russia and Britain had a game with each other who would control big parts of Asia, Central Asia.
	We had wars over Afghanistan, again in the 19th century.
	And if you can imagine Russia, places like Northern Iran and the Caucasus, Northern Iraq and all places like this, around the Caspian Sea, they consider it their sort of interest, their sphere of influence.
	Where Britain sort of controlled vast swathes of the world in the 19th century when you had the empire, we go west out of, again, the Indus Valley in what today is called Pakistan, what was then the Indian Raj.
	Britain and Russian interests come up against each other, okay?
	And so a country like Persia, as it was, is just really a pawn in that game in all sorts of ways.
	I mean, in the very early 20th century there was coup d'etats and Britain's oil interests In Iran, what is now BP, used to be, what was it, just like the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, is that what it used to be called?
	And we had just massive oil interests in Persia.
	And we sort of treated them with a massive amount of disrespect for decades and decades and decades.
	Iranians, you know Iranians call America the Great Satan.
	They call us the Old Fox.
	I'll take that.
	If you've got a historical memory in Iran, you'd massively distrust Britain.
	Yeah, it'd be no surprise that the RAF is involved in stuff.
	Yeah, it's no surprise that the Royal Navy is still a threat in the Straits of Oman or the Straits of Hormuz, the Gulf of Oman there.
	It's the Royal Navy.
	Yeah, the old fox is still involved in it.
	It's surprising.
	You know, I know Iraq is something different, but you know, we've had wars in Iraq, in Basra, lots of times.
	It's funny how history does repeat, or at least rhyme quite a lot.
	We went back to Basra in 2003 and stuff.
	It's like the same place, the same places.
	Anyway, in 1941, i.e.
	in the middle of World War II, Britain and Russia, because we were friends with Uncle Joe at the time, We just completely stabbed the Shah of Iran in the back and jointly invaded him out of nowhere.
	Not many people know about that.
	It was really quick as well, it took I think about one month.
	The Soviets invaded down through the top of Iran.
	We invaded eastwards from Mesopotamia, from Iraq, and upwards from the bottom, from the Royal Navy.
	We just invaded and regime-changed Iran in one month in the middle of World War II.
	Were they not one of the powers that was flirting with an Axis alliance?
	Because I know a lot of Arab states were.
	Yeah, well, Iraq very much so.
	Well, so... Okay, that's an interesting question.
	Yeah, so they certainly weren't formally just joined the Axis, no way.
	But the Shah of Iran tried, the old Shah, tried really hard to remain neutral or try to balance.
	He didn't want to really be on one side or the other.
	But he was still sort of doing as he was told.
	But we feared, both the Soviets and the British, feared that he might Cut off our oil supply.
	So there was a really important, for example, a really important railroad that ran across the top of Iran, through the top of Iraq and up into the Caucasus.
	And of course, the Russians are fighting the Nazis not a million miles away from that.
	So in Stalin's mind, he needed to have absolute control of that.
	And in our mind, we needed to have absolute control of the oil fields and refineries in the south of Persia.
	So we're just like, oh, well, screw any sovereignty the Iranians have got.
	We'll just invade.
	Now, can you imagine from the Iranian point of view?
	Yeah, all our neighbours we can't trust.
	The West, in inverted commas, we just can't trust.
	They just screw us over endlessly.
	They've treated us with such disrespect over the years.
	And then, after the war, I won't go into it in sort of too much detail because there's so much that could be said.
	But sort of after the war, the intelligence services, more of America now, because I suppose the cockpit of world power shifts really from places like London to Washington, post-World War II.
	And so the Americans, the great Satan, get involved in just sort of endlessly screwing with Iran.
	There was a politician they had called Mossadegh, And they had the Shahs, by this point, we'd got rid of the old Shah and his son, who was much more of a blind puppet, was in control.
	And we, well the CIA, under Alan Dulles, sort of did a coup and all sorts of things, just all sorts of fiddling around and getting involved with Iran and treating them really with contempt.
	Because there's lots of examples of the 50s.
	Was it 1953?
	I think it was when they did the whole Mossadegh thing.
	Yeah, 1953.
	So the Korean War was still going on at that time.
	And the Americans, their calculation was that we don't like World War II type things.
	We don't like Korean War things where we have to send in hundreds of thousands of Our boys, Marines, if we can get our foreign policy goals done with just a few CIA agents, then we'd much rather do that.
	It was Eisenhower by that point.
	Eisenhower loved special forces and intelligence services things.
	He'd much rather do that.
	I mean, he was Supreme Commander in World War II in the West, so he knew war.
	He really did know what war was all about.
	He was the first person to warn about the military-industrial complex by name as well.
	Which he set up, which he set up and allowed to flourish.
	Thanks, Alec.
	Thanks for that one.
	Yeah, so anyway, all throughout the 50s and 60s, you know, there's a long and fairly well documented now story of the American intelligence services getting involved in stuff.
	I mean, Arbenz in Guatemala, DM in Vietnam, you know, they got involved.
	Noriega in Panama this much later but there's actually loads and like dozens of examples of them getting involved and America's just been kind of endlessly not just America other countries as well just endlessly involved in just screwing with Iran is the point I'm trying to make.
	Anyway, in 1979, finally, the forces of Islamic revolution did away with the Shah, the old Shah at that point.
	And deposed him.
	And they had the Islamic Revolution.
	And we're still dealing with that regime now, with Ayatollahs being in charge.
	It's a theocracy really, isn't it?
	The mullahs of Tehran sort of control the government of Iran, right?
	Now, let's throw Israel into that maelstrom, into that complete dumpster fire of a situation.
	Will they endlessly be sort of striking at each other one way or another?
	Will they endlessly have proxy wars against each other and shadow conflict?
	Because politically and religiously, again, Israel finds itself in a situation where there's no obvious way out, there's no easy way out.
	If you remember Ahmadinejad, do you remember him?
	He was the ruler of Iran quite a few years ago.
	Rick Merrill called him, ah, my dinner jacket.
	I thought that was quite funny.
	But he said, he was just openly saying in speeches, yeah, if we could, or we mean to, roll Israel into the sea.
	We would if we could annihilate Israel.
	Well, the state itself is intertwined historically with the passing from the British Empire to the global American Empire, isn't it?
	So if they're deeply angry at Britain and America, they see them as kind of a triumvirate.
	Yeah, yeah, I'm sure.
	Yeah, right.
	And Israel have always said, you know, like, we will not allow Iran to get nuclear weapons.
	We will not.
	They say it is an existential threat.
	Old Nettie has been saying it for years, quite literally, and completely explicitly, like at the UN and stuff.
	It's like, if we find out they've enriched uranium past this certain point, we're going to do anything and everything it takes to stop it.
	We're just going to assassinate their scientists, their leading nuclear scientists.
	We can do all sorts of espionage and skullduggery to prevent them from doing it.
	And if it takes, in the end, You know, massive airstrikes or a big full-scale conflict, then we'll do that if we have to.
	So they're on a collision course.
	That's the point I'm trying to make here.
	They're just absolutely on a collision course.
	Neither side is showing any signs of really backing down or any signs that they want or desire or are even in the frame of mind of getting some sort of roadmap together to work their way out of it.
	No, they're on a collision course.
	And, well, Iran, with their proxy, well, because they sort of basically control Hezbollah and Hamas in all sorts of ways, don't they?
	I mean, control is... Bomb.
	Yeah, let's say that.
	Okay, let's leave it at that.
	Fun train, perhaps, as well, to a certain extent.
	Provide intel.
	That seems to be what I've heard being alleged, anyway.
	And actually, there was one comment on this, on that article I wrote, where someone said, two years ago now, where I said the possibility of Iran Possibly doing a full-scale attack on Israel.
	And someone in the comments said, I don't think they'll do that.
	They're geographically too far away.
	We'll see Iraq and Jordan sort of in the way and things.
	And Iran's not that stupid.
	Well, it happened.
	It has happened now.
	The other day, last weekend it was, they were launching actual missiles from Iranian territory across Mesopotamia.
	And in Israel, I think very, very few of them actually landed.
	They got rid of 99% of them, yeah.
	And I don't think there were any substantive casualties.
	I think both Jordan and Egypt as well were helping Israel shoot them down, from what I gathered.
	Yeah, well, we spoke about this on Monday with Dan.
	And I said what also could have been important there is not just that the Iranians wanted a show of force, because, of course, the Israelis blew up the building next to their embassy.
	But also they may have wanted to gauge whether or not the Jordanians are on their side or Israel's.
	Because the Queen of Jordan has been making a lot of noise about what she's calling a genocide in Palestine, but also the Jordanians are not taking in any of the Palestinians and haven't taken any sanctions against Israel.
	So Iran are probably thinking, well, are they going to back us if we go to war with Israel?
	They're going to back Israel.
	So by flying it over their territory, they're seeing how many are shot down from that.
	Interesting.
	It's interesting how countries like Syria and Iran and Egypt are just not interested in taking Palestinian refugees.
	Very interesting that.
	Jon, can you maybe just put up that article just so people can see?
	Because it was a while ago, a little more than a week ago, Israel hit a building.
	It was either the Iranian Embassy or the building next to the Iranian Embassy.
	It was the building next to it.
	Right.
	And it killed a couple of their senior commanders.
	So you can see there.
	But of course, the story doesn't start there.
	It's like this idea that when Putin invaded Ukraine, for example, the story starts there.
	Of course it doesn't.
	There's quite literally centuries of backstory.
	As Putin told Tucker at great length.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And I talked about with epistemic majesty at great length as well.
	Same with Persia and Israel.
	The story doesn't start there.
	Yeah, Iran launched missiles into Israel.
	And then since then, it's been about a week has passed, so just under a week, where Israel hadn't responded.
	And they kept saying things like, we'll do something about it when we want to, on our timetable.
	And some were saying, even last night, the news was saying things like, maybe Israel won't do anything.
	Why didn't they take the win in that not enough of the bombs had landed to actually injure anyone, didn't it?
	So it seems that there's clear signalling from Washington, don't do this.
	They wanted to de-escalate.
	Yeah, most of the Western, particularly the White House, wanted to de-escalate the whole thing.
	And Israel have, once or twice in history, even I can recall, showed quite a lot of restraint.
	In the first Gulf War, Saddam launched scuds at Tel Aviv.
	And America, the White House, asked the Israelis not to do anything about it.
	And they didn't, so they showed a lot of restraint there for once.
	But anyway, the point is that there were voices saying perhaps Israel should take the win.
	It's a weird win, but anyway.
	But I suspected that they wouldn't, and it looks like they're not now.
	As I say, events are actually happening right now, it seems.
	Certainly, I think a lot of stuff, well not certainly, but I think a lot of stuff might happen over this coming weekend.
	But it seemed to me, from everything I knew, That Israel really want an excuse to smash up Iran in all sorts of ways.
	Particularly, specifically, Netanyahu.
	Netanyahu, if anyone is too young or doesn't remember or doesn't know, has been on the scene for years and years and years.
	How long has it been?
	30, 40 years he's been around in politics, at the top of Israeli politics.
	He was an old hand in 2001 when 9-11 happened, right?
	You can get a lot of Senate hearing clips of him encouraging them to go into Iraq because Saddam has WMDs.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	Right.
	So that's even in the early nineties and stuff.
	Oh, well, sorry.
	No, like, uh, post.
	Okay.
	But anyway, so, so the point's been around and his family, his father was an important person and, um, so they've been around for a long time.
	He's always wanted to attack Iran.
	And now it's like, if, if there's a time it's, it's sort of now where he can finally get to do what he wants to do.
	I just thought it was unlikely that old Bibby wouldn't take the opportunity.
	Because he's got a casus belli, right?
	He's got a reason for war, a reason to do it.
	I thought it was unlikely that he wouldn't take that opportunity.
	And it looks like now, it does look like now, they are going to do something about it.
	Just going forward, you know, lots of people say things like, it's World War Three.
	World War Three has started.
	I still don't see that.
	I still don't see that.
	America have said, whatever happens, we're not sending in the Marine Corps, right?
	Whatever happens, you know, might give you air support and all sorts of things here and there and money and political cover and all sorts of things.
	But we're not sending in the U.S.
	Army from sort of the Gulf of Oman to invade Iran.
	Okay.
	Russia hasn't said to Tehran, we've got your back boys.
	If America blink, we're going to nuke DC.
	That's not on the cards.
	I think that's happening.
	China doesn't care one way or another.
	Well, not that they don't care, but they don't say to Iran either, you know, if Israel crossed this line in the sand, we're going to send our missiles into Tel Aviv.
	I don't see a World War Three happening.
	I really don't.
	I don't think any of Iran's political allies are being willing to start a nuclear war to defend them.
	They're sort of allies of having a shared enemy in the West.
	And of economic convenience as well.
	Yeah, and that too.
	And so, you know, it's the enemy of my enemy.
	sort of thing going on.
	But there's so much more I could or would want to say about this, but I have to start drawing it down because of time.
	But I'll just say that in the broadest sense on the global stage, Iran's got very few friends, very few allies, let's say.
	It's got a few friends.
	You know, someone like Russia or China even are not their out-and-out implacable enemies.
	In terms of real allies that have got their back, come what may, to the bitter end, very few.
	And part of it is religious because they're Shia, aren't they?
	Shia, there's not many Shia countries.
	I think, is Bahrain There's very few, there's not many big, populous, rich Shia countries.
	Iran's the only one really, the main one.
	Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan.
	So Azerbaijan, nothing.
	There's a minority in Pakistan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen.
	But yeah, the only majority is sort of Iran, really.
	And their actual government is hardline Shiite.
	So, you know, even Saudi kind of hate Iran, right?
	So even Saudi and Israel can make common cause against Iran.
	Per the Abraham Accords that Trump and Jared Kushner put together.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	So it's more than just, uh, my enemy's enemy is right, wink wink, don't touch.
	It's actually, no, we're happy to put something in writing.
	Yeah, screw Iran.
	But do we, do we think, so my only contention, and I think this is Dan's reading on it as well, and I'm inclined to agree with him.
	I don't think Iran and Israel are thinking in terms of mutual allyship or political terms.
	I think they're thinking in long-term religious and existential terms.
	So is Israel taking the gamble of, well I might piss off the international community in the short term, Bibi Netanyahu's thinking that, in his lifetime, but then in a hundred years when the people and the state of Palestine is not around anymore, the people and the state of Iran aren't around anymore, we won't have to deal with this problem.
	Therefore we'll suffer short-term condemnation for long-term security.
	Maybe.
	I don't know for sure, but yeah, maybe.
	All that is absolutely plausible, isn't it?
	Yeah, absolutely plausible.
	I think Netanyahu... Obviously, I'm not a fan of the guy.
	I'm not going to go to bat for him or defend him or anything.
	One thing you could say about him is that, politically speaking, he's relatively fearless.
	Like, he'll say to London and he'll say to DC, I'm going to do what I want.
	No, no, no.
	The interests of my country come first.
	I'm going to do what I want.
	Thanks.
	Thank you, though.
	You wouldn't see Rishi Sunak or Macron being like that, acting like that.
	We take our foreign policy straight from the Pentagon, it seems, or straight from the State Department.
	I've always said, basically, I want what Israel has, which is strong national defence, surplus birth rates, decent GDP, and leaders who actually give a shit about its people specifically.
	That would be quite nice.
	Yeah, I'll take it at this point.
	Yeah, right.
	So, I mean, I'm just going to end the segment by talking about predictions, what I think predicts what will happen.
	But really, it's sort of, it's very, very difficult to predict what will happen.
	This might age really badly, but I feel like over this weekend or at some point in the coming days, might be weeks or months from now, but I think fairly soon, Israel might do some sort of big thing in Iran.
	I don't think they're going to Chinook a massive amount of their army across Iraq and land in Tehran or somewhere, or Isfahan or somewhere, and actually they might do, but I don't think they're going to do that.
	Iran's got a big standing army as well, hasn't it?
	Yeah.
	But I say this in Epochs all the time, you want quality over quantity.
	Saddam had a giant army in 2003, like a million men or whatever.
	And stomped it, yeah.
	Yeah, I mean, with ease.
	I mean, it was laughable how easy, really.
	America will send, you know, like, not even a whole tank division, just a few tanks.
	And the Iraqi army just folds in the face of that.
	In, let's just say, in 1941, Iran had, Persia had a really massive army and it was talked up like they were superb.
	It collapsed in one month.
	Yeah, we sent in, we had like just a few Indian divisions.
	Say Indian, there's still a third sort of British, Britishers.
	A few Indian divisions just make the whole thing collapse.
	They're not, in the modern world, Mesopotamian and Persian armies have got quite a bad track record.
	So anyway, my prediction is, I don't think Israel will probably send in full-blown Full scale, regime change, boots on the ground stuff.
	But I think they may do something significant in the air, whether it's aeroplanes, whether it's fighter planes, ground attack craft, or whether it's just missiles, sort of cruise missiles and things.
	Who knows?
	But my gut says that Bibi is not going to just do one tiny little thing.
	And leave it at that.
	I feel like he would think, he must think that this is his chance, this is his moment.
	Because he's not all that popular in Israel at the moment.
	He might get voted out relatively soon.
	He might not be Prime Minister again.
	I feel like he probably thinks this is his shot.
	Now how Iran then responds to that, who knows?
	At that point in the future, for me anyway, becomes completely dark.
	I've got no idea how it will play out.
	It could be bad.
	It could be really bad.
	But I don't see a World War 3 where the biggest nuclear armed countries in the world have a nuclear exchange over Iran.
	There you go.
	Okay, I'll leave it there.
	Clip it for when we're all burnt to a crisp, I suppose.
	One thing John has brought up, just before we go to the video comments, is apparently there is a suicide bomber currently holding the Iranian consulate hostage in Paris.
	The French police are responding to that, so there's an escalation on European soil relating to the Iranians.
	News as it's happening.
	Yeah, eyes glued to Twitter, I suppose.
	With that, video comments.
	With the show mentioning investments yesterday, I've been busy working on my own investment.
	Computerized legs for my giant robot.
	The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, making it a very worthwhile investment.
	So during the rampant inflation apocalypse, no one is going to want to mess with the guy with a giant robot.
	Yeah, I think if anyone's prepared for nuclear apocalypse, it is probably the Mecromancer, isn't it?
	I will say, if you do go on a Killdozer-style rampage, pre-emptive disavow.
	Just so, because otherwise we've been for multiple years documenting the process of you building this thing.
	So just don't kill anyone with it, please.
	My thoughts immediately did go to a Killdozer project.
	Because this guy sends in videos a fair bit, and whenever I see one, my mind immediately goes, Killdozer, Killdozer, make a Killdozer.
	Don't make a Killdozer.
	I hope that somewhere we've saved all of the video comments he's ever sent in, so that when that eventually happens, we can just do a documentary on it.
	Watch the entire process play out.
	I think it's very cool.
	That was my thought.
	It is, it is.
	It'd be cool if that thing he made just transformed itself into a Killdozer.
	I'm not sure that technology exists quite yet.
	Transformers.
	Anyway, disavow!
	On to the next one!
	To Andy Ngo, I just wanted to say thank you for everything that you do, and for all the coverage that you've provided of various things that have been going on throughout the world.
	Keep up all the good work that you do, and no matter What anyone says or does, never, never back down.
	Yeah.
	Andy's a good lad.
	That is, um, no, that's exactly right.
	I said much the same thing to Andy when I met him all those years ago.
	And, um, yeah, sorry.
	We didn't get to play that yesterday, I suppose.
	I don't know whether you've made it with the intention of him seeing it afterwards, but there we go.
	Okay, I'll send it out afterwards.
	You'll see him now.
	Oh, there he is.
	Anyway, we'll leave that there.
	I just want to say that I'm actually very impressed with that man.
	I'm not sure that Carl should be too proud of Miss Kasparian's apparent Damascene moment.
	To me, she seems like the fatty who has gastric bypass surgery and shows weight loss afterwards.
	Everyone congratulates the fatty, even as he continues to shovel food down his gullet and fail to address the underlying issue.
	Yeah.
	Anna Kasparian does, like, our dissident wing is not a refugee camp.
	I think we need to be quite discerning as to who is and isn't a sincere political friend.
	Oh, I don't trust her as far as I can throw her.
	No, no, no, no, no, no.
	Not in a million years.
	Even if it is sincere in her own mind, I don't care.
	I don't care anymore.
	No, no, she's shown herself to be morally bankrupt.
	Put it mildly.
	On to the next one.
	This is true.
	Callum does just dream of you, C.S.
	Cooper.
	Constantly.
	That's why he goes blank in everyone else's segment.
	That was great.
	I look forward to seeing mine.
	He did Carl the last time I was on.
	I've got to admit, I do this all the time.
	I'm so old.
	Who the hell is C.S.
	Cooper?
	What is that?
	He often chills his books at the end of our podcast.
	You haven't heard of the prolific author C.S.
	Cooper?
	He basically uses us as free advertising because he pays us for a subscription, which we appreciate.
	Thank you very much.
	Yeah, we appreciate the support.
	Josh's inner monologue is going to be him thinking about that time that he was looking up the girl's backside when he was walking up the stairs on the bus and said he's guilty as charged.
	What?
	You can find that clip from Lads Hour.
	There you go.
	There's edit fodder for you.
	Thanks for that, Connor.
	You're welcome, mate.
	Love you.
	Right, on to the next one.
	California Native Flower Friday.
	Today we have Rusintegra folia, which is known as the Lemonade Berry Bush.
	And that's because its berries taste like strawberry lemonade, depending on who you ask.
	And you can just eat them right off the bush, or you can make it into a juice or a jam or whatever.
	So it's really good to actually eat.
	But it's also got really beautiful flowers, these pink flowers.
	And it reminds me of the Japanese cherry blossoms.
	So I want to get one for sure.
	Nice to know there's something redeemable in California.
	Yeah, this guy's really wholesome.
	I've noticed.
	He always leaves really insightful comments as well.
	I actually like California refugees.
	Very nice chap.
	Yeah, I'm kind of interested in botany.
	It's not the most masculine of fields, but I'm interested in botany.
	It's good stuff.
	Yeah, you know, I love my bushcraft and survival and stuff like that.
	So it's my bread and butter.
	Gardens are beautiful.
	I went to Horniman Museum about two weeks ago, just walked through the butterfly enclosure and it was really nice.
	That's it.
	Just very nice.
	You're talking about the aesthetics.
	I view nature via my stomach.
	I sort of think, what can I eat in this lovely, beautiful land?
	There's not much meat on most butterflies.
	I'm still willing to try.
	Anyway, Sophie.
	Guys, I want you to celebrate with me.
	See this?
	This is antidepressant medication, Citalopram.
	I spent the last two years going down in doses, bit by bit by bit, and today is the day where I can finally say, a triumph!
	I'm done!
	It will probably be a bit of a thrall this summer, as it has been every summer, but it's going to be the last time!
	I'm done!
	Congratulations, yeah.
	Yeah, well done.
	This is one white woman who's given up SSRIs, so you're a statistical outlier, it seems.
	No, seriously, well done.
	Well done.
	Very good fun.
	Right, on to the written comments.
	Can I nick the mouse just briefly?
	You've got two.
	You've got a mouse on each side.
	Unlimited power!
	Oh, that's gonna get clipped.
	Galacta Watkins.
	Bo, you helped me fall back in love with history, which I've adored since I was five.
	Never stopped the epochs.
	I love that sort of comment.
	I get it every now and again.
	That actually really means a great deal to me, when someone says something like that.
	You've actually touched someone's life in some way.
	It actually means something.
	So thanks for saying that.
	I saw a bunch of those comments when I ended Contemplations and I was sort of sat there the weekend an episode would have gone out just reading them like oh this is... I sort of really indulged myself and read all the nice comments so I did see them.
	I didn't have the time to reply to them all but I did reply to ones on Twitter, a lot of them.
	Very awesome.
	Ashton, one day Bo will do an epox on the price of Scottish beer rose at the start of revolution.
	I don't know what that is.
	Well, it's referencing the price hike of alcohol.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I don't know what the Scottish beer... Oh, right, okay, that specific bit.
	Gotcha, gotcha.
	This is the moment in time which caused the Scots to finally go berserk.
	There will be arguments over like which specific policy or point in history toppled a certain government, wouldn't there?
	It'll be very interesting.
	You know there's moments in time like, Ceausescu's a famous one, when there's sort of a moment in time when he's given a speech he suddenly realises that the mob are like not with him and he's in real trouble.
	Maybe, yeah, the 30% higher con boos for the Scots is that's... Just drowning out the booing with the call to prayer.
	Yes, the other point being, it sort of matters less if she becomes a conduit to taking over the Conservative Party with a bunch of people who actively hate what it's done for the last 14 years.
	as a skin suit just to become more popular with the actual right wing perhaps I'm being too pessimistic yes the other point being it sort of matters less if she becomes a conduit to taking over the Conservative Party with a bunch of people who actively hate what it's done for the last 14 years so if she's just by virtue of her being really vengeful the gateway to like a base to take over of it I'm not going to say no I'm a results-based man, I suppose.
	Theodore Pinnock.
	I think Truss is, having been booted out, just trying to get on the dissident right, and it's Grifton speaking circuit.
	I mean, possibly, but she hasn't been, like, warmly received from the establishment, so maybe, maybe.
	Who knows?
	Maybe I'm just an optimist.
	Lancia.
	This Truss is not dim.
	She's just, well, I don't know about that.
	He's saying she's just a woman, but that's not really the case.
	I can't remember who said it.
	I think it was probably a leftist, but it still made me laugh.
	They said they look into the eyes of Liz Truss and they see all the intelligence of a pigeon looking back, which I think is a little bit harsh.
	Yeah, I think it's a bit harsh.
	I've said routinely, Liz is a bit nice but dim, basically.
	I don't think she understands people very well, whatsoever.
	Thomas Howe, Liz Truss would have bungled us in the right direction, whereas Sunak is intelligently driving us in the wrong one.
	I think that's probably the best read on it, basically.
	Rishi Sunak is knowingly managing decline, whereas Liz Truss might have accidentally buggered it up to not be as bad as it currently is.
	So, missed opportunity to soften the damage a bit, I suppose.
	Okay, so...
	Hector Rex says, and I'm going to do a bit of an accent, I've just woken up from a Buckfast and Smackbender, what have I missed?
	There you go.
	I gave it something.
	The bunny no pole.
	And a base date who, um, who is, I believe a Scott, The problem with Scotland is the unthinking, adversarial attitude to UK politics.
	We approach every issue by looking at what England wants and choose the opposite.
	We then inevitably get outvoted because the Scottish population is half the size of London and it's used as more proof that we are unfairly being controlled by England and it becomes this circular, self-fulfilling pattern, Scottish politics.
	No, that's exactly the impression I've got over the years of following Scottish politics as well, and I think it's clearly what's going on.
	want for Scotland and never bother to think for a moment what we do want for Scotland.
	Scots, what do we want for Scotland's future?
	And don't just say not England.
	No, that's exactly the impression I've got over the years of following Scottish politics as well.
	And I think it's clearly what's going on.
	Like, I remember talking to my family about it, my Scottish family, and they were talking about hatred of the English, which, you know, because my family were sort of relative, you know, they were south of Edinburgh, sort of Midlothian, that sort of area, you know, close enough contact with England that, you know, that they're not you know, close enough contact with England that, you know, that they're not actually demons that are willing Yeah.
	But if you were near Newcastle as well, I would kind of hate the English.
	The orange reflection from all the fake tan would blind you.
	Yeah, well I was on the Tube once with the, who was the former leader of the SNP that used to go, Rezaein Prime Minister, Rezaein!
	Like constantly.
	Alex Salmond?
	No, no, no, in Parliament, leader of the SNP in Parliament.
	Ian Blackford?
	That's him, that's him.
	I was like sitting opposite on the tube before, just overhearing him talking to an aide, and the general gist of the conversation was, I just don't care anymore!
	Like we're talking about things we just don't care about, and particularly in regards to the ceasefire thing.
	So I think what Baystapes hit upon here is not just the sort of Orwell notes on nationalism thing where all Celtic politics is just anti-Anglo politics, but it's just consciously cynical, like they're just doing it to gin up sentiment to therefore accrue more power to themselves.
	OK, one more comment.
	Annie Moss, thanks for the Scots News Josh and of course any mention of Dankula.
	Any chance you can get him back on the show on an earlier train of course so he won't be late.
	He's Scottish, of course he's going to be late.
	It doesn't matter what train he gets.
	I'm allowed to say that, half my family are.
	But we're always happy to get Dankula in, of course.
	I have no power to do it.
	He's on his schedule, he's got two kids basically.
	He lives in Scotland, we're in Swindon, it's quite far.
	Right, on to Beau's comments.
	Oh, OK.
	What's this?
	Nick Taylor says, I saw Scott Ritter... Scott Ritter?
	Rings a bell.
	I saw Scott Ritter saying Iran's strike was successful and the large percentage that was shot down were decoyers.
	Well, how would it be successful if the overwhelming majority of them were shot down and there was only, I think, one minor casualty?
	It's not really successful.
	Scott Ritter, an American author, former United States Marine Corps intelligence officer, blah blah blah, and convicted sex offender.
	Is that the same one?
	He was an analyst during Operation Desert Storm.
	That sounds like the right bloke if we're talking about that.
	So if he's a convicted sex offender then...
	One take I did see, which was odd, was it was obviously a pro-Iranian person or at least an anti-Israeli person.
	They said it was a win for Iran because Iran had sort of shot off a few million dollars worth of missiles and it cost Israel a few billion dollars in iron dome stuff, countermeasures, to protect themselves.
	Therefore it's a win.
	I mean, That's a weird take.
	I may well be right.
	I probably is right.
	But it's just a weird take to say, to take that as a win.
	I think the premise of that would be that Israeli war coffers could be exhausted, but I don't see that happening when essentially all of the Anglosphere is going to subsidise them.
	America will endlessly give them money.
	It seems there's no real question to that.
	Screwtape Lasers says, why did Iran telegraph their intentions to strike Israel so clearly?
	How does that toothless strike fit in with inexorable collision course?
	Yeah, I mean, everyone sort of knew it was coming, right?
	About three days before.
	I remember Twitter going, people like, who's the guy, like History Debunked?
	Sunweb.
	Sunweb.
	He made a video and loads of people made videos.
	I see tweets.
	I did a tweet like two days before, or one day before, saying it's going to happen, right?
	Iran's going to do something here now.
	And then they did.
	It was, yeah, to call it telegraphed is absolutely right.
	It's odd, isn't it?
	Why are all the actors in this doing what they're doing, the way they're doing it?
	Often it just doesn't seem to make real sense, does it?
	How is it in Hamas's interest to do that October 7th thing?
	It doesn't make any sense, if you look at it in those terms.
	But you are dealing with mad Islamists, so...
	We are going to have to wrap up because in about 20 odd minutes we're going to be doing Lads Hour.
	Again, if you haven't subscribed, please do.
	It's £5 a month and you'll be able to watch us live and on catch-up.
	But thank you very much for watching.
	We will be back at one o'clock on Monday.
	I'm actually taking two weeks off so you won't see me for a bit.
	Hooray!
	Sorry.
	You're a git.

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