Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

April 23, 2024 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:32:22

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #899

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Music playing.
	Music playing.
	Hello and welcome to Podcast of the Lotus Eaters episode 819.
	It is the 23rd of April, which means it is St.
	George's Day.
	So, happy St.
	George's Day, everybody.
	I am joined by history enjoyer, Bo.
	Alright.
	And also history enjoyer, and also steam train enjoyer, Alex, welcome to the show!
	Good afternoon.
	God save England.
	Happy St.
	George's Day.
	Yes, excellent, excellent.
	So, before I do something else, I will first say, if you are a jolly good sort of chap and you look at us and you think those are interesting, good-looking, wonderful people, I would like to work with them.
	Well, now's your chance, because we have some job vacancies up on the site.
	We are looking for people who can do the button stuff with the cameras and the computer.
	If you're one of them, than have a look at our job vacancies.
	And there's various ones up there, but production manager is one of them.
	So if you know what that means, videographer type thing.
	So anyway, if that's you, come and join us.
	And now we mention Alex.
	So that's you, isn't it?
	Yes.
	Obviously on that one, follow me on Twitter, AlexThatSteamGuy, for my unique brand of cutting political commentary and esoteric steam engine posting.
	Just to break the timeline up, I think we get into a bit of a rut, so yes, some odds.
	You've always got to balance those two.
	You do, I think balance is the key to life.
	Really, so yeah, follow me on that.
	In my life, I'm actually the chairman of a charity called the Robey Trust, based down in Tavistock in Devon.
	Our Steam Fair is Sunday the 2nd of June, so come down we're going to have all our engines out doing trailer rides around our beautiful town.
	We've got food and drink, we've got classic cars, we've got tractors, we've got live music, so there's something fun for all the family.
	Superb!
	Similarly, there's our website.
	I know that some of your people don't have Facebook.
	I think anybody sort of under the age of about 30 hasn't got Facebook anymore.
	They've all got Snapchat, which is something I don't understand.
	So there's our website for all our other updates, but there's also more.
	I am currently running a project to replace coal in the last Four years we've seen our fuel bills basically treble for a number of various reasons.
	We used to get it from Fossey Fran in South Wales.
	That got shut by the Welsh government.
	So then we started buying Russian coal.
	That supply dried up for certain reasons.
	Now we're starting to look at buying coal from places like South Africa, Australia, Colombia.
	So it's getting further and further away.
	Yeah, it's done with that fancy foreign coal.
	None of that fancy foreign coal.
	If you put the Colombian stuff in, the engine starts to shake.
	So what can you replace coal with?
	Well, I'm going to replace coal with this, which is a standardised, compressed charcoal briquette.
	I'm making these.
	This is an artisanal product at the moment.
	Okay.
	Spending hours of my life.
	But the steam movement and the heritage movement only make about 35,000 tonnes of coal a year, really using.
	For a mine, you need about two million.
	So we're not going to get a mine open anytime soon, but actually making 35,000 tons of what are essentially barbecue briquettes is actually a perfectly reasonable... And you can run a steam train on that.
	I have run an engine on the prototype version of these.
	At the moment I'm currently making another batch.
	Right.
	And the idea, if you go on the Patreon and support me there, we're going to Let's build a bunker load of them and then go and really put them through their paces.
	We'll take an engine out for a hard day's work, you know, put a trailer behind it, go up hills, see how far we can get, what the sort of usage are.
	But actually, my younger brother is currently at university and he's run some trials on this and he thinks there's 10% more energy in it than coal.
	So if we can make a go of this, we've basically saved the steam movement.
	Well, yes.
	And when the EMP blast comes, you'll be the only one who can actually get around.
	Yes.
	As I've said to a number of hybrid owners, yes, that's very clever, but my traction engine will last forever.
	That is good.
	Out of interest, just while we're on talking about coal, even though all the coal pits have closed, We've still got massive seams of coal under the ground in Britain.
	So if I was Prime Minister, I could order a new coal mine to be opened and it's all still there.
	Just to annoy a leftist environmentalist.
	Oh, and to add insult to injury, not only have we closed all our pits, but we're importing about 2 million tonnes of coal a year.
	Because we use it in the steel and chemicals industries.
	So yes, it's gone from a net export to a net import.
	So we probably should have at least one mine, right?
	Yeah.
	There's not really a good reason why Britain, of all places, should be an importer of coal.
	No.
	It's a bit of an insult to our forefathers, really.
	Yes.
	We didn't exhaust our supply of coal.
	Oh, there's hundreds of millions of tons of stuff left.
	No, that's not very good.
	Right, let's talk about something less cheerful then.
	Let's talk about Ukraine.
	So, I don't know if you noticed, but over the weekend there was a bit of a kerfuffle about some money.
	In fact, you may have seen this.
	This video, glancing at that, you would assume is the Kiev Parliament, because you've got a whole bunch of politicians there waving a little Ukrainian flag.
	You will be shocked to learn, chaps, that's actually the Congress of the United States there.
	I will be shocked.
	I've never seen it from that angle before.
	It's very weird.
	It's Thomas Massey, isn't it?
	So I think he probably filmed it himself.
	He sort of stuck it up on there.
	But if you're wondering why they're so happy and why they're waving the Ukrainian flag despite the fact that they're in the US Congress, it's because they've just secured their next bonus with this money that's gone out.
	It's so weird and freakish.
	There's certain things, certain images you see that happen.
	In your own, like, you know, like, you know, like, really iconic things like the, the, the Twin Towers coming down or something like that.
	Yeah.
	Or Trump coming down the escalator.
	Certain images.
	That's one of them.
	That just, that's just bought and paid for shills, globalists, traitors, whatever you want to call it.
	It's just, it's bizarre.
	It's honestly bizarre.
	Something you, you didn't think even just a few years ago, maybe as much as 15, 20 years ago.
	You'd never dream you'd see that, something like that.
	Well, I mean, as an Englishman, I would only ever fly the English flag.
	I'm not going to disrespect somebody else's flag, but you know, I fly my own flag.
	But they're just, yeah.
	I think it's a bit upsetting as well that they've passed a bill worth billions of dollars and the only flags they've managed to get was the sort of pack of a hundred for six quid off Amazon, actually.
	Yes, it probably was off Amazon, wasn't it?
	I quite like the point that this chap makes, Ronan, quite a base chap.
	He says, you know, that's a picture of a couple of very happy, cheerful congress type people um smiling grinning off their face and he just points out there's no connection their minds to what they're doing and young men dying in trenches you know they they they just are not making the mental connection of what's going on here it's smash cut from their grinning faces to yeah uh drone footage of a dude trying to run away and then getting blown smithereen Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Brilliant.
	Quite.
	I mean, presumably in their mind they've got some sort of Hollywood image where the weapons that they send over just do their own thing and blow up and... Well, they've been told Zelensky is Winston Churchill and Putin is Hitler.
	Yeah.
	That's basically the narrative.
	I mean, literally, Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and stuff were saying that, weren't they?
	Yeah.
	Last time Zelensky was over.
	He's the Churchill of our time.
	I mean, you can go deeper on the whole Churchill question, I suppose.
	We won't go into that now.
	This is an article from, I don't know if anyone remembers this, but BBC, they used to be quite popular in this country, but anyway, they've done an article on On this subject.
	Now I'm going to put out a few quotes because I just thought they would be interesting.
	So from the article they say both Mr. Zaslensky and head of CIA William Burns have said that Ukraine will lose the war without American help.
	This is true.
	Ukraine will lose the war without American help.
	It will also lose the war with American help.
	But that bit wasn't mentioned.
	Quick take.
	They've already lost.
	It's a fait accompli.
	Putin's troops are in the Donbass, the bit of territory he wants.
	They've been occupying it for ages now.
	They're not going to get booted out of there.
	Every offensive the Ukrainians attempt is just an abject failure.
	It's already over.
	And they'll probably have to end up going into the bit where they don't necessarily want.
	They'll probably have to end up going right up to the Dnieper just to lock in the win.
	But, you know, a deal could have been done months ago.
	And they can't even make the argument that the Russian economy is on its knees.
	Because I think somebody came out last week saying... Bigger than Germany.
	Yeah, it's growing faster than anybody in the G7.
	So it's actually looking rather nicely at these sanctions.
	And it's largely, it seems to me, largely an artillery war.
	And they're producing something like seven times more artillery... More and cheaper.
	...ammo than the whole of NATO put together or whatever.
	Yeah.
	It's like, it's over.
	It's over.
	Strategically.
	Yeah, it's tragic.
	The BBC says that has been reinforced over six months by Russia taking more territory, yes, since the peace deal was rejected, and other Western allies struggling to fill the gap left by Washington.
	Ukraine is now feeling the weight of American support once more.
	Well, yeah, I'd say the poor sods being rounded up off the street and being sent to the front line with a gun pointed at the back of their head if they don't go forward are feeling the weight of that American support, so I don't know if that's a good thing.
	Um, and then this extraordinary line, and this is a really extraordinary line, this is not a silver bullet that will help Ukraine win the war, but extend its window to fight and keep the negotiation table at bay.
	Keep the negotiation table at bay?
	So keep peace at bay.
	This is all about extending the war to stop peace happening.
	Now what do they mean, what do we mean by extending the war?
	Well obviously we mean until November the 6th, the day after the US election.
	If possible, 21st of January, 2025.
	After the inauguration?
	Yes.
	When it will be Trump.
	And, um, you know, it's somebody else's problem.
	But that is what this whole thing is about, is we are going to give them enough weapon systems that we can get them to the other side of the US election, so it's not a problem for us.
	So it doesn't look like we got humiliated in Afghanistan.
	Yeah.
	And also Ukraine.
	Yeah.
	The Americans can't lose two wars in one term.
	That's just bad PR.
	There certainly are shades of Vietnam a bit here.
	Vietnam's a bit of a pet project of mine.
	I've never done an Epochs or a History Bro episode.
	Oh really?
	Okay.
	But I will do it at some point.
	Anyway, for many, many years, I've been fascinated by Vietnam and Nixon.
	Actually, I've got videos all about Nixon on History Bro.
	Check that out.
	There's shades of that where for years, literally years and years and years, The Americans were just extending it, keeping it going, in the hope that they could bring Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Cong to the peace table in Paris, usually, and sort of wring good terms out of them.
	And it just never ever worked, because their resolve was implacable.
	So that whole strategy was doomed to failure from day one, and yet they stuck with it for years and years and years, dropped millions of tons of ordnance on North Vietnam, and lost tens of thousands of American soldiers' lives.
	And that strategy completely failed.
	It's the same here.
	Putin's not going to suddenly go, oh, OK, yeah, he's great to have all the territory back.
	No.
	That's not going to happen.
	If anything, it's getting worse because the original peace deal was Cede, Donbass and Crimea.
	But it's not going to be those terms anymore.
	It's going to be like, okay, and these two regions or, and soon it will be up to the NEPA.
	So, I mean, you can keep dragging this out and the terms you're going to get are worse.
	Anyway, from the article, the House vote had been delayed by Republicans for months, with some objecting to sending money overseas instead of dealing with the US-Mexico border issue.
	Well, that seems reasonable to me, to be honest.
	Oh no, that's trifling domestic policy issues.
	That's not going to get you in the history books.
	Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson who said that he wanted to push these measures through even if it jeopardised his position.
	So, you know, priorities.
	Globalism first.
	You know, what my constituents and my members want very firmly second, if at all.
	Well, he knows what side his bread's buttered.
	Obviously, his handlers, his overlords, whoever they are, have said, look, this is your agenda.
	These are your priorities.
	He wouldn't say something like that unless he's got the next job lined up.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	All my political positions have exploded.
	Other conversations have been had.
	Yeah.
	On Saturday, it was passed by a comfortable margin, but those numbers obscure the increasingly sharp partisans of IEDs, with 200 Democrats, all of them basically, voting in favour, and the Republicans more voted against, 212 to 101.
	That's 112 to 101.
	So that could spell trouble for Mr Johnson.
	Three House Republicans are already calling him to be ousted as Speaker.
	Well, yes.
	Because you're advocating on behalf of powers other than the US and its taxpayers.
	I remember the so-called offensive Ukraine tried.
	Oh yeah.
	Was it last spring or last summer was it?
	Yeah.
	Just an utter failure.
	Yeah.
	But we'd sent them apparently billions and billions, well America, but we'd sent them billions and billions and billions.
	I don't even know the number.
	Silly number of billions of dollars worth of aid and things.
	And that offensive was just effectively an abject failure.
	Yeah.
	So what makes you think that sort of the battlefield conditions have really changed?
	Well, like I say, I think it's not about winning, it's about dragging it out into the other side of the election.
	Well, it seems to be just an exercise in money laundering, is it not?
	Well, very much so.
	I mean, how much money can they launder to Zelensky's people?
	Yeah, well, funny you should ask that question, because my next article is this from Seymour Hersh, Trading with the Enemy, and it's got some great lines in it.
	So, of course, Seymour Hersh is a very distinguished US journalist.
	He's a bit lefty, but I mean... I'm surprised he's still around, he must be an ancient.
	Yeah, but he's a proper journalist from back when that was an actual thing, before journalism became obsolete.
	So basically the gist of this is that the CIA Director Burns had to warn Zelensky to stop stealing so much money.
	So here's some lines from it.
	The issue of corruption was directly raised with Zelensky in a meeting in January in Kiev with CIA director William Burns.
	His message to the Ukrainian president was, I'm told by intelligence officials with direct knowledge of the meeting, was like something out of a 1950s mob movie.
	The senior generals and government officials in Kiev were angry at what they saw as Zelensky's greed.
	So basically he wasn't letting them skim as much as he was skimming.
	Burns also presented Zelensky with a list of 35 generals and senior officials whose corruption was known to the CIA and others in the American government.
	Zelensky's response was about 10 days later he dismissed 10 of the most ostentatious officials doing nothing else.
	The 10 he got rid of were brazenly bragging about the money they had stolen were driving around Kiev in their new Mercedes.
	So the ones who were really pushing it And making a show of it and bragging it, they got chopped, but the ones who just kept it a little bit on the down low, they were fine.
	Zelensky's half-hearted response and the White House's lack of concern was seen, the intelligent official added, as another sign of the lack of the leadership that is leading to a total breakdown of trust between the White House and some elements of the intelligence community.
	Hirsch went on to note that by one estimate, analysts from the CIA put the embezzled funds at 400 million in just last year alone.
	They also added that there will be no professional audits in Ukraine of this money.
	So just to put that in perspective, I believe the US has just hired 85,000 new IRS agents.
	So if you're an American taxpayer and it looks like you might have possibly not paid your £5.72, $5.72 on some crypto trade, you know, you're going to get audited.
	72 on some crypto trade, you know, you're going to get audited.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	But 400 millions of these guys, no, that's fine.
	Thanks to his general and his generals and his family, they can have endless money.
	Got it.
	Yeah, yeah.
	But basically, it's extraordinary.
	The CIA flying over there and basically saying, would you please keep your stealing to an appropriate minimum?
	And would you please keep it under wraps?
	It was like in Goodfellas when after the Lufthansa Heiss and Jimmy Conway, Jimmy the Gent is annoyed that all the other mobsters have sort of bought fur coats and a new Cadillac.
	And he's like, just stop!
	At least for a few months, at least.
	Yeah, just tone it down a bit.
	Now, the Ukrainian side of this, I think that they are basically complete amateurs when it comes to the whole embezzlement thing.
	In fact, I'm going to go to this Reuters article where they have this absolutely lovely line which I had to include.
	So people like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop.
	was closely watched by US defense contractors who could be in line for huge contracts to supply equipment to Ukraine and other US partners.
	So people like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop.
	Now, just by coincidence, those three names that I've just mentioned also happen to be the top spenders in lobbying dollars in Washington.
	Yeah.
	Funny that.
	What a coincidence.
	Yes.
	And in fact, my central thesis of this whole segment, if it's anything, it is this.
	The purpose of this funding is not to win the war.
	The purpose of this war is to win the funding.
	You need to reorient it in your mind.
	When you think about it on that terms, everything that's happening just makes perfect sense.
	But like your point that you were making earlier, clearly it's not to win a war, because that's just not happening.
	No.
	Yeah.
	Well we did a Brokeconomics about confessions of an economic hitman, where what you do, you give a foreign, or you coerce a foreign government, bully them into accepting Oh, I'm about to connect those dots.
	A crazy amount of aid, but they have to spend it with you.
	Yes, I'm absolutely coming to that.
	So anyway, that's my general gist of what's going on.
	If you prefer to receive your information in meme form, I'm going to go with that.
	It's not that this system is broken, it is working exactly as intended.
	Just before we came on air, so I didn't have a chance to include it, but Volodymyr Zelensky put out a tweet and basically he said he's been speaking with diminutive, unelected Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who's just informed him that they're going to be sending half a billion quid's worth of storm shadows and missiles and other things over there.
	So at least the defence contractors in the UK are getting a taste of this as well, which is obviously important.
	So anyway, what's in this Ukraine bill?
	So let me answer your point about how the money circulates, because that is an important point.
	When we say 61 billion going to Ukraine, it's not, is it?
	I mean, a bit of that will go to Ukraine, and a bit will end up going to Zelensky's Coat Dealer and the General's Merck Dealer.
	But actually, most of the money stays in the US, so most of it goes directly from Congress straight to the defence contractors.
	So let's break this down slightly.
	And I'm acquitting Reuters here.
	The largest of the four bills and dollar terms allocated 61 billion to support, and it's Ukraine.
	Breaking that down, It includes $23 billion to replenish U.S.
	weapons stocks.
	Right, so that's straight to the defense contractors.
	$11 billion for current U.S.
	military operations in the region.
	Well, that's straight to either the government itself or, again, the defense contractors.
	It also includes $14 billion for the purchase of advanced weapon systems.
	So those weapon systems might end up in Ukraine, but first the money goes to the defense contractors and then they ship a box out over there.
	So what are we up to now?
	Oh, that's like 40, 50 billion of basically it stays in the US, mainly via the defence contractors, and the rest I presume ends up in the pocket of Zelensky and paying some civil servant wages, but that's about it.
	But it wasn't just Ukraine that they were voting on, there was a little bit of Israel in there as well.
	So Israel is going to get 26 billion.
	£5 billion will go to replenishing Israel's missile and rocket defence systems.
	So again, box turns up in Israel, but I'd imagine that five billion is going straight to the defense contractors as well.
	It's five billion pounds.
	Well, five billion dollars.
	Yes.
	That is that sort of one volley from the iron dome.
	So that that performative strike from Iran has basically cost the US taxpayer five billion dollars.
	Well, I think we are.
	I heard that just the just just Israel spent one point three billion dollars on that strike from Iran.
	Yeah.
	So as soon as you get another Two or three of them.
	Three or four goes at that.
	Yeah, because obviously they're going to ramp things up rather than dial it down.
	So, you know, they're going to be needing those systems well stocked.
	According to Ben Shapiro, they can protect themselves.
	They don't need America, isn't that what?
	Mr Shapiro?
	They can fight their own wars, can't they?
	Why do they need more billions?
	I don't understand.
	My understanding is, yes, absolutely, they can defend themselves.
	Two, the US must support them, because otherwise they won't be able to defend themselves.
	And both of those seem to be true at the same time.
	I don't fully understand how it works, but it's one of those dualities.
	I mean, they're the best allies, aren't they?
	So what's five billion amongst friends?
	Well, yes.
	Especially when you go straight to the defence contractors.
	Like, the extra 3.5 billion will go to purchasing advanced weapons systems.
	So, again, defence contractors' box turns up, presumably.
	A lot of that will disappear into R&D.
	Yes.
	So that will be black boxes in the Nevada desert that, you know, like the Zumwalt class and things like that.
	And they go, well, we spent $100 billion on a destroyer and it doesn't really work.
	But, you know, lessons learned.
	Oh, and by the way, the CIA now have some black sites that are well-funded somehow.
	A billion to enhance weapon production, and 4.4 billion to other supplies and services provided to Israel.
	So they might actually get a bit of that.
	Then there's more!
	We haven't run out of the billions yet, so there's an Indo-Pacific aid bill that goes in there, which is 8 billion to counter communist China and ensure a strong deterrence in the region, which I presume is going to the defence contractors as well.
	£3.3 billion allocated to submarine infrastructure and £2 billion in foreign military financing for Taiwan.
	Okay, well, at least Taiwan get £2 billion out of the eight.
	But, you know, the rest of it... It's always funny when you've got to spend billions of pounds defending yourself against your primary trade partner.
	It's a very good way of putting it.
	And the US General made this point a while ago.
	He was like, well, why are we borrowing Trillions from China, so that we can then build up our military systems by buying stuff from China to defend us against China.
	Surely that... Yeah, millions of tonnes of Chinese tack can leave the South China Sea, but the Chinese Navy can't.
	Yes.
	And meanwhile, the national debt is just inched over, I think, 34 trillion?
	Yep.
	Just recently inched up to that, I think?
	Yeah, what is it?
	Is it a trillion every hundred days now?
	Yeah.
	Surely that's not... Well, they're operational budgets.
	No, no, so... Is it a trillion?
	It could be.
	Yeah, it might be for the last one, yeah.
	It could be true.
	Yeah.
	It's, um...
	It makes no sense.
	It doesn't add up.
	It doesn't come close to... That's not a monetary system.
	That's a scoreboard.
	Yeah.
	No bearing on reality.
	We're in a debt spiral because what's happening now is...
	It's not like you're borrowing money to invest, the good kind of borrowing, and it's not like you're borrowing to pay your current expenditure.
	They're borrowing to pay the interest on the borrowing.
	Yes.
	So that's not going to end well.
	There's also a bit of a TikTok ban shoved in there as well, because I mean, of course, you know, obviously when US lawmakers are doing things, they like to bundle everything in for whatever reason.
	Um, so, so ByteDance have got to divest itself of U.S.
	stuff, um, because apparently, um, TikTok is spying on you.
	Well, yeah, obviously TikTok's spying on you, but so is Google and everything else.
	And Facebook.
	Yeah, they are all spying on you.
	On all our devices, if you've got a camera in it, the NSA, or in our case, GCH, or whoever, they can just look at you through your own camera at will.
	I don't know if that's completely true, but I think people like Snowden have said that, and no one has said, no, that's definitely not the case.
	I think all devices can spy on everyone at all times.
	I don't use TikTok but I wouldn't be afraid of it because I don't care if the Chinese spy on me because they're not my government.
	I'm much more concerned about my own government spying on me because they can actually mess with me and they might.
	I always think it's funny those meetings when they say, like the big government or the intelligence services are always after our data and it's then the data and it's just people just being normal or doing nothing, being stupid, not doing anything of any interest whatsoever.
	There's a great one of like, you know, the FBI agent with his head in his hands and he's just like, you know, day 37 of looking up the far right and all he's done is read esoteric posts about Evola.
	Yeah, I always feel sorry for the ones that get assigned to watching the various streams that we do.
	Oh yes.
	Because they must bloody hate that.
	Yeah, and to our GCHQ friends, hello.
	I call them Gary.
	I just nicknamed our GCHQ handler Gary, so I just refer to him as that.
	I don't know if your name is Gary if you're watching, but I just call you that.
	Sorry Gary, I am going to watch that old British Transport film again.
	Yes.
	There's also the 21st Century Peace Through Strength Act, which basically means that they can steal the Russian assets and send them over to Ukraine so that they can then send the money to the US.
	Now that is a massive mistake, that one.
	Yeah.
	Because, well, to put this into perspective, we didn't seize the German assets during even the Second World War, but we're doing it with Russia.
	Now the reason that's such a mistake is because A lot of people trade in the US dollar because it's got that depth of liquidity.
	And then if you're trading in it all the time, you think, OK, well, I've got a big stock of dollars.
	What I'm going to do with it?
	I'm going to hold dollar-denominated assets.
	Whereas now everybody's going to think, well, hang on a minute.
	What if I upset the US?
	And it's a war.
	It's the Russian war today.
	But at the rate things are going, it will be like, if I'm not actively pushing the rainbow dildo heavily in my own preschools in my own country, well, that's going to be the thing that upsets the US.
	Yeah.
	So I might have to trade in the US dollar because it's got that depth of liquidity today, but I'm going to hold my assets in something else.
	Yeah.
	And I'll also try and instead of hold it in dollars, I'll try and hold it in gold or something like that.
	Yeah.
	Oh, exactly.
	Yeah.
	And gold is flying out the door.
	Yes.
	But the ETFs aren't, which is very interesting, isn't it?
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	Well, a different topic, but yeah.
	Yeah.
	That is, you're right.
	It's interesting that dollars become just a risk, suddenly a liability in the broader sense of the word.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	It's just, is it worth my time and energy?
	Or is it worth simply that, the risk?
	It's too risky.
	So the way it was designed was to be a riskless system, and then they made it a risk system.
	So yeah, people are going to get out of the dollar.
	So that is a small part of this whole thing, but that is a massive mistake, regardless of where you stand on this.
	And also there's a bit in there about Iranian sanctions, so they want to put more sanctions on their oil exports.
	The problem is, The West has a phenomenal demand for oil.
	the more you sanction the places that make the oil all that actually means and we've seen this with russia is that it gets arbitraged through india and you just pay a markup on it yeah so so that is basically the the make um india buy more gold chains and have more bling bill because the my the oil is getting cycled back around again And meanwhile, the continental United States and Canada and the Gulf of Mexico has got tons of oil of their own oil.
	Yeah, yes.
	I know they can switch it on because they were running an oil surplus under Trump.
	So the only reason they're net immigrants is because they want to be?
	Yes, because they hate Biden.
	So they could see that he was switching off US domestic oil production.
	They were attacking all these other places and they were like, OK, screw you.
	We're not going to help you get elected.
	Let's turn down the oil production.
	Yeah, totally.
	I also wanted to mention this, which is such a child's level view, but I'm putting it up there just in case there's anyone in the comments who feels like making an argument like this, but you see this sort of stuff.
	So for those listening at home, this is an NPC who basically says, if you're against military aid for Ukraine, you are pro-Putin, Pro-Russian government, pro-Russian invasion of Ukraine, pro-Russian genocide of Ukrainians, pro-terrorism and anti-democracy.
	It really is as simple as that, she says so.
	It is such a child's level understanding of what's going on, but I have to mention it because Who is she?
	Is she anyone of importance?
	No, but this kind of... Right, yeah, yeah.
	There's loads of views on it, I mean... Yeah, but this one has been a bit vile.
	If I could mention or point out that on lotuseters.com there's a very interesting conversation between me and Apostolic Majesty.
	about Russian and Ukrainian history going back to the 9th, 8th, 9th century.
	So if you did want a more nuanced view.
	Yes.
	Then you would get by watching MSNBC.
	It is out there.
	Yeah.
	History didn't start in 2015.
	Yes.
	Well, or February 2020, which is what a lot of these people think.
	I mean, I quite like Scott Ritter's response there, or against Nazis.
	I mean, it's just, you know, war is bad and this one needs to stop because they're just digging the hole deeper.
	That's broadly my view.
	So anyway, I will close off this segment by saying, if you are broadly of the view that blowing people up is, on the whole, a bad thing, then you might like working with us.
	And we actually have a couple of job vacancies up at the moment.
	We're looking for people who know technical things about buttons and editing stuff and that.
	You know what I'm... If that's you, you know what I'm talking about.
	Anyway, have a look on our website.
	We've got a couple of job vacancies up there.
	Do get in touch if that is your thing.
	That's something else.
	Okay, and now for something completely different.
	That was a zoomer's again.
	I don't know what the hell I'm talking about there.
	Where's my mouse?
	I just want to move it.
	Oh, here we go.
	All right.
	Well, it is St. George's Day.
	Yay.
	The 23rd of April is St. George's Day, nearly always, although Alex, you're saying that sometimes because of Easter, it can fall on.
	Yes, if the preceding Sunday is Easter Sunday, they move it back a bit because obviously you've got all the Eastertide bits to do first.
	I think the last time that happened was 2014.
	Interesting.
	But today is St George's Day, so I thought I'd talk a bit about St George, because Lotus Seaters has been going for, what, three years now, and the last three years we've not really done much.
	We should have done, shouldn't we?
	Yeah, we really should have done, yeah.
	And it's probably a bit on me as well for being the resident history nerd.
	It's probably on me.
	I do something for Armistice Day every year.
	So last year I really kicked myself for not doing anything on it.
	So this year at least a podcast segment.
	Can I say the line?
	What line?
	The line that they always say.
	What's that?
	He's Turkish.
	Oh, St George?
	Yeah, and therefore... He's a Turk?
	Reasons, reasons, we have to have infinity immigration.
	Yeah.
	That's what you see every St Georgian.
	I mean, I haven't looked on Twitter yet today, but I'm sure it'll be up there.
	Your patron saint is a Turk.
	Yes.
	Therefore you must accept endless Somalis and Afghans and Bangladeshis into your country endlessly forever.
	It's that you like foreign thing therefore you don't exist.
	Yeah.
	So, checkmate bigots!
	So first thing to say is there's the real historical figure of Saint George of Cappadocia and then there's the legend, the myth and legend built up around him.
	Where's Cappadocia?
	So Cappadocia is in Anatolia, modern-day Turkey.
	So, to call him Turkish is right and wrong.
	I mean, it's wrong because there was no Turkey in the 3rd century AD.
	So, if today's borders went all the way back in time, then they don't?
	To Roman times, so the 3rd century AD.
	Oh, right.
	So, he died in about 300 AD.
	So, the majority of it just after 300 AD.
	So, he's Roman.
	It's Roman era.
	So he lived and died under the reign of Diocletian, who was a couple of emperors before Constantine, and it's Constantine's reign that really leads to Constantinople, Byzantium becoming the capital of the Roman Empire, at least the eastern portion of it.
	So it's just before really the Byzantine Period.
	Era.
	It's Roman.
	It's late antiquity.
	It's Roman.
	Okay.
	It's Roman.
	Okay.
	It was in the army.
	Perhaps the Praetorian Guard.
	During the reign of Diocletian.
	Now I'm fascinated by that period, the crisis of the third century and the reign of Diocletian, the Tetrarchy, the four Roman Emperors and then the rise of Constantine and reuniting everything.
	There can be only one Constantine the Great.
	So if he was a Praetorian guard, was this the bit when the Praetorian guard had gone a bit iffy?
	Because they were a bit iffy, weren't they?
	Yeah, yeah.
	I think the bit where the Praetorian Guard were a bit iffy was just called Roman History, wasn't it?
	Well, yes, I suppose so.
	Well, it's after Constantine, finally, at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, finally takes control of the whole Western Empire and the city of Rome itself, that he disbands the Praetorians at that point.
	The last remnants of the Praetorians are killed at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge just outside Rome on the River Tiber.
	About a generation after St George was supposed to have lived.
	Now, I say supposed because he probably is a real historical figure, but he might not be.
	But he probably is.
	He probably is.
	However, the legend of him, because, you know, a lot of the iconography, a lot of the images of him, he looks like a knight, a medieval knight, something like a knight Templar.
	So how can that be?
	Well, I want to just try and talk about that a bit, try and peel the onion, all the various layers between history and myth and how we end up with that.
	So he is a saint.
	So that is a Catholic thing.
	That's in the Catholic tradition.
	Oh, and Eastern Orthodox and Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox.
	My understanding of being a saint is that you need to have performed a miracle of some sort.
	Well, no, not necessarily.
	It's just up to the Popes or Patriarch to canonise you as a saint.
	Yeah, you'll have to have done something exceptional.
	Probably, I mean Mother Teysa didn't really do anything exceptional.
	She's got a good PR.
	She's got an exceptional brand.
	And of course the history of very early Christianity is rich pickings for saints because there's all sorts of fabulous things happening.
	It's also the time period of the Diocletian repression and it's the sort of That interesting moment where Christianity is still not an underground cult, but has not been accepted as a mainstream thing yet.
	And essentially Diocletian sort of flips his lid at them because one of the things I heard was he was passing through to go and fight the Persians.
	And was obviously going up to the temples and, you know, trying to consult the oracles and predict the future and trying to invest himself in the old Roman gods.
	And there's always these bloody Christians behind him making the sign of the cross.
	You're clouding the judgment of the oracles.
	I can't commune with the gods if you're sat there doing all your Christian nonsense.
	And he eventually just decides just to persecute them.
	Right.
	Out.
	So, yeah, absolutely right.
	There is this period of sort of the early Christian martyrs where, again, Constantine, about a generation later, famously right at the end of his death, sort of, right at the end of his life, sort of made Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire.
	Until then, there'd been a period of a couple hundred years or more of sort of the rise of Christianity, the early, very early Christian period.
	Different emperors felt differently about these things.
	Some persecuted Christians heavily, some not so much.
	Likely she went through a period of having a lot of them martyred for basically not giving lip service to the other cults.
	The cult of the Emperor himself and things.
	So when did the Pontifax Maximus of Rome flip over to being the Pope?
	Oh, that's a good question.
	Difficult to answer.
	Right.
	That's a bit... that's difficult to... Because that's the guy... Some people still call the Pope... Yeah, but I don't sort of...
	Merged or whatever, but isn't that the guy who hands out the Sainthoods?
	So don't you need somebody to the Pontifex Maximus to have made that flip in order for this guy to become a Saint?
	Well the first Pope is Saint Peter, that's supposed to be how it is.
	So there was a period where you would have a Roman, a Pagan Pontifex Maximus and a Pope in inverted commas at the same time.
	So it's not just a thing suddenly The Pontifex Maximus stops being and then we have start having croaks.
	It wasn't as simple as that.
	Okay, there was a bit of a dropshare going on.
	It's all that sort of it being very Roman.
	There's a period where they try and officiate the church.
	They essentially try and make it a body of the Roman government and that all comes after Constantine the Great and that's where they actually set up.
	The administration of the church and make it an official body where the Pope becomes a proper position?
	We have things like the councils of Nicaea, for example, again, where they work out really what their doctrine is going to be and what type of ecclesiastical structures they're going to have.
	And they go on for centuries.
	Well, you still have them occasionally nowadays, very occasionally.
	A synod, where all the powers that be in the church get together and decide things when they need to.
	But also, to throw a little bit more complications on top of that, you've got, there's been various schisms down through the ages, so like the Eastern Orthodox Church isn't the same as Rome, is it?
	They've got a patriarch, they've got their own patriarch.
	Yeah, they seem quite close to me.
	So there's all these different things.
	But anyway, getting slightly off track from St George.
	I just did want to mention that it is, in the Western tradition anyway, a Catholic thing and Britain is at least since the age of...
	Good Queen Bess, the Virgin Queen.
	We've been Protestant, haven't we?
	But nonetheless, you know, St.
	George's Cross is our flag.
	And, you know, but the thing I first want to mention is that he's only been our patron saint since the 14th century, since the age of Edward III, who was a martial king.
	He was very much into his wars, this old Edward III.
	And so before Edward III, our patron saint was the Confessor, St.
	Edward the Confessor, an earlier King of Owls.
	And then before that we would have, well, didn't necessarily have a patron saint, you know, but we liked St Dunstan, who is a proper English one.
	Or St Edmund, Edmund the Martyr, an earlier one.
	So Edward III kind of thought, yeah, I don't fancy that, but let's go shopping for a better patron saint.
	Quite literally, yeah.
	Because St Edward the Confessor represents sort of piety, not war.
	Edward the Confessor was famous for not being warlike.
	And Edward III wanted a more war-like patron saint.
	And Edward III is also the sort of high-water mark of the chivalric tradition.
	So he sets up the Order of the Garter, which of course still survives to this day.
	Um, it's that officiate where all the heraldry and all the rules around the standardization of heraldry come from.
	It's also the sort of time that the three lions become the official English symbol.
	And it's that sort of, right, I've got, we want to go and bash the French.
	I've got a group of mates and we're going to be the altar of the Garda because that's all it is essentially is drinking.
	Oh, I see.
	And then we need an emblem, and we need a mascot, and the mascot is the patron saint.
	I'm getting it, I'm getting it now.
	So, I mean obviously you've got to go and fight the French, obviously.
	Because Edward III is the Hundred Years' War, the first portion really of it.
	I see!
	His son, the Black Prince, smashing the Macbeth.
	And you needed to upgrade the propaganda, the narrative.
	In order to get more French bashing done.
	Yes.
	Ah, with it now.
	This is also the period, of course, where this sort of Anglo-Norman aristocracy properly folds itself into Englishness.
	It's also about the time that the aristocracy stop using French and start using English.
	So that's the sort of, we're just as English as you are, even though, you know, we're descended from England.
	And to prove it, we're going to go and get the Frenchies.
	Yes.
	So if you were shopping around for a new patron saint, you'd be looking for one of the more martial saints.
	So different saints are sort of connected to different things.
	For example, I don't know, St Christopher's patron saint of travellers and pilgrims and sailors and things.
	So there's various sort of martial military soldier-like saints.
	Archangel Michael is one of the main ones.
	You invoke his name if he's going on a crusade.
	Could you have him as a patron saint?
	The Germans do.
	He's the patron saint and the 1918 offensive is called the Michael Offensive after Oh, well they get a celestial being.
	And there are other ones.
	I mean, St.
	Theodore of Tyre is one of them.
	In fact, a lot of his legend is mixed up and crossed over with, mixed up with St.
	George.
	There's St.
	James, or as the Spanish call him, Santiago.
	Matamoros, the Moorslayer.
	He's a very warlike one.
	The Moorslayer?
	The Moorslayer, St James.
	Santiago.
	So he slayed the Algerians and stuff, did he?
	Killed the Moors in Spain.
	I mean, he sounds useful.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Well, the Spanish love St James.
	He's their boy.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	The French have got St.
	Louis, for reasons I don't quite understand.
	Not as cool.
	Not as cool.
	What was he into?
	Like, Brie and...?
	Yeah, nice wines.
	Right, okay.
	You know, chalets and things like that.
	Yeah, that makes sense.
	Skiing.
	Praying.
	1980s citrons.
	So, when did the dragon get killed?
	Okay, so, well, just before I move on to that, there's one last thing, I suppose, because we've actually gone through a fair bit of time already.
	Just to mention that he's a Roman soldier, basically, that was Christian and under the Diocletian persecutions, was martyred for sort of refusing, like a good Christian, refusing to give up his beliefs, even when he could relatively easily have done so, and was tortured for seven years, almost certainly nonsense, and in the end beheaded.
	So he's a Christian martyr.
	He's a stubborn chap, isn't he?
	Very stubborn, yeah, putting up with torture for seven years.
	Another bit of the English character is apparently he laboured under these great trials with great humour.
	One of the stories is that the Emperor gave him some iron boots to wear, with nails up through his feet, and when the Emperor said, ah, how do you like them apples, he went, well it's very kind of you to give me some in the correct size.
	And they buried him in a pit of lime for three days and when he popped out he went, oh yeah, that was nice.
	And skipped away.
	Is that all you've got?
	Bring it on!
	He had a crown of incorruptibility like a lot of the martyrs.
	You could not break their will.
	You just could not do it.
	That's their raison d'etre.
	And so he's got all sorts of things connected to him.
	He's obviously the dragon slayer, the trophy bearer, the son of the truth.
	You're skipping over the dragon slayer.
	That's a big deal for me.
	In fact, let's just skip ahead to that.
	So that's the real historical figure I have.
	Then you've got centuries, really, of myth and legend and all sorts of things, and the image of certain martyrs and certain saints being used and reused, and their narratives and their stories slightly fiddled with or added to.
	And that's the nature of myth and legend, isn't it?
	Take, for example, someone like Robin Hood.
	Did he live during the age of John and Richard I?
	Or did he live during the age of Edward I?
	Did he live in the age of the early Tudor period?
	Did he live in Nottingham or Sherwood?
	There's just many layers of not firm fact, shall we say.
	Right, OK.
	So, OK, just to skip ahead then, I suppose, there's so many other things could be said about it.
	Well, just one quick thing before I get on to the final.
	The Golden Legend, where he slays, where he's suddenly sort of an 11th, 12th century knight in plate armour with a lance, slaying dragons all over the shop.
	Before we get there, just say, St George, we're not the only one who Venerate St George has him as a patron saint.
	Oh, really?
	Yeah, also Georgia, the country of... Not the American state.
	Ukraine.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	Malta.
	Bosnia.
	Bosnia-Herzegovina, sorry.
	Ethiopia.
	He's got a lot of connections with North Africa, which I'll get into in a moment.
	Even in Catalonia and Aragon.
	Moscow.
	Moscow, Revere and Venerate.
	If you think the Barcelona football team, they've got St George's cross in the crest.
	Because he's the patron saint of Barcelona.
	Hmm.
	Yeah.
	So he's a famous, well-liked, well-known saint.
	It's not weird in any way that Edward III, and thus us to this day, put a lot of emphasis on St George.
	Right.
	Okay.
	So, by the 13th century, Well, about the 1260s.
	The golden legend, in so-called, was put together by Jacob de Vorighin, who was Archbishop of Genoa, an Italian man, who put together an anthology of just lots and lots of stories and apocrypha around all sorts of saints.
	And of course, St.
	George is in there.
	And one of the stories put together then, so 13th century, is all about slaying the dragon.
	And that has passed down to us, not unbroken, not unchanged.
	In the Tudor period at one point there was bits added to it and stuff.
	But that's where we get the story of St.
	George in inverted commas, who was actually a 3rd century Roman from Cappadocia, i.e.
	Anatolia, modern day Turkey.
	He's suddenly in North Africa, in Libya.
	He turns up and there's a damsel in distress and he saves her.
	Like Kitty Good Dragon.
	Yeah.
	So the story is, there was a dragon near Selim, the town of Selim in Libya.
	There's a massive dragon that lived in a pond just outside their town and he was insisting on being fed.
	So the townspeople would bring him a sheep every day, and then he insisted on two sheep, and then three sheep, and then that still wasn't enough, so they ran out of sheep.
	Sheep, rather, the plural of sheep is sheep, isn't it?
	They ran out of sheep, and so they had to feed him somehow, so, you know, the kids, the child folk of the town have to be sacrificed by lot, by lottery, a bit like in Hunger Games.
	How big was this bloody town?
	If you run out of sheep that fast, you're going to run out of children fast, I would have thought.
	That's inflation for you.
	Well, yes.
	And in the end, even the king's daughter, the princess, by lot, was chosen to be fed to the dragon.
	The king didn't want to, obviously, but all his people have sacrificed so much, you can't really say no.
	So they dress up as a bride.
	Oh yeah, as you obviously would do that anyway.
	They dress her up as a bride, send her out, tie her to her stakes and leave her there so the dragon can come out of his pond.
	And does that happen to be the moment when St George comes galloping over the hill?
	Exactly the moment.
	That's convenience.
	When it's sort of 11th, 11th century, 12th century in the style of a Templar really.
	I mean even the Templar cross is, it's not exactly the same as the modern cross of St George but it's a white background with a red cross.
	Basically St George turns up Again, completely, they don't have a great sense of history in the 13th century.
	They wouldn't necessarily, if it's supposed to be St George, they wouldn't make him seem like a 2nd century Roman.
	He just appears as a 12th century knight.
	Presumably his Roman clothes had worn out at that point and he would have had to have had them replaced.
	He stopped off at some sort of heavenly Marks and Spencers.
	Like James Bond, he's just eternal, he never ages.
	Sometimes he gets a bit younger.
	So he fights the dragon, he saves her.
	And he fights the dragon.
	Doesn't kill it in the first instance.
	Go on.
	I'm thinking there's three possibilities here.
	One, this actually happened.
	I mean, that's the correct one.
	Two, they just made it up.
	And three, this whole thing is a clever allegory for something else.
	More serious people say that.
	It's an allegory for the endless fight between good and evil or light and dark, that sort of thing.
	So who do we think the princess is and who is the dragon?
	Well, again, just goodness and righteousness and the forces of darkness and evil.
	Which is probably why she's in a wedding dress, because they like doing that.
	This is also the sort of high point of a lot of gothic fiction.
	So when you look at medieval fiction, there's an awful lot of demons and damsels in distress and all that.
	And all the great Arthurian legend stuff, that all comes from this point as well.
	So all you do is you take an Arthurian legend and say, oh yeah, and he came down from heaven.
	Well, one other thing I need to say before I sort of move on and wrap up, because I want to give you Alex plenty of time, is that there is this long tradition, you know, how do we get from the 2nd or 3rd century AD to suddenly the 13th century AD?
	Where's the dragon come from?
	There's just this long tradition, again over centuries, of sort of the Thracian horsemen or the Roman cavalry Spearing or lancing serpents.
	That was just an image, that's just a thing that was done, right?
	That slowly morphs into sort of more like knights, proto 8th, 9th century knights spearing bigger lizards, bigger serpents, It just keeps morphing until you get to... Oh, I can see a bunch of soldiers getting together bragging.
	It's like, oh, I speared an anaconda or something.
	And then the next guy's like, yeah, I speared a really big anaconda.
	And then the other guy's like, oh yeah, I had a bloody dragon, I did.
	So you can see how it... It's a thousand years of I caught a fish and it was this big.
	Yeah, yes.
	Also, there's this thing that in the scripture, in the image of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, the serpent is bad and evil and should be slayed.
	That's the correct thing to do.
	And a horseman or a knight is a force for good and justice and righteousness.
	So it just makes sense that a knight killing some sort of serpent type creature or a dragon, it's just exactly as you say, an allegory for good versus evil.
	all sorts of ways okay so to carry on with the story he defeats the the dragon with his lance and shield right but doesn't kill it in the first instance he takes the princess's girdle or maybe corset Puts it round the dragon's neck and they're able to lead it off like a tame dog back to the city.
	They've defeated it and controlled it.
	They take it back to the town of Selene and the townspeople want him to kill it.
	We don't necessarily want it tamed, we want it dead.
	He said, well I will kill it, I will cut its head off for you if you all convert to Christianity real quick.
	And they did.
	And then over the next few centuries, things get added here and there, like her name.
	In the first instance, she doesn't have a name and she gets given a name.
	And then some say it wasn't in Selene in Libya, it was in Egypt.
	Actually, and then just more and more details, like he's got a sword and then the sword gets a name, Asculon, and so on and so on until, you know, like by the 16th century, by the age of the Tudors or William Shakespeare, he can quite happily put in the mouth of Henry V, cry Harry and St George.
	You know, by that point.
	So there's centuries, I've skated over centuries and centuries, over a thousand years of layer upon layer of history and myth and legend and all sorts of things.
	But I'll bring it to an end about there.
	So yeah, just to say that's why he's our patron saint and that's why we've got the St George's Cross still.
	And long may it last.
	Right.
	Excellent.
	Alex, tell us about red tape.
	Is that a good thing?
	Yes.
	Well, after that stirring bit about a fiction or indeed fact, as you choose to believe, I thought I'd finish off by immiserating everybody by talking about regulations and how that is actually, if I can find my cursor, how the world actually really works.
	Does it go down or up?
	Yeah, you can scroll.
	All right.
	Oh yeah, the mousey thing, it does that screen and also the big one over there.
	So to begin with, when you think about regulation, you know, everything you do in life is regulated.
	I mean, the idea that we live in a free market economy is bunk.
	I think if you don't accept that, you probably shouldn't be watching the podcast.
	But a lot of people don't sort of appreciate how controlled you are.
	It's a bit depressing, isn't it?
	Just how complicated it is.
	You don't need to conspiracy jacket anything.
	You just need to spend two hours on the Gov website and then you have to go and have a drink.
	So to begin with, you look at the UK government and we've got 24 ministerial departments.
	20 non-ministerial departments, 421 agencies and public bodies, 113 high-profile groups, 19 public corporations including the BBC, it's interesting there on the government website, and three devolved administrations.
	Every single one of them is a little castle given its own little thing to look after, you know, and to regulate.
	I could certainly not even name the first 24 ministerial departments.
	I mean, they're the sort of ones that you know, you've got the Attorney General Office and the Cabinet Office, which is probably the one that's actually in charge.
	Business and Trade.
	I mean, they change their names every week, which doesn't help, does it?
	So Culture, Media and Sport, Education, Energy, Security and Net Zero.
	That used to be the Department for Energy.
	I wouldn't have guessed that one.
	DEFRA there, Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
	So a department for levelling up?
	That's Michael Gove, isn't it?
	That was the Department for Local Government, I think.
	Oh, for God's sake.
	Is that not Michael Gove's domain?
	Yes, wasn't it?
	Well, it was anyway.
	Er, Rhys Mogg was there for a while as well, I think.
	Department of Transport, I know.
	Work and Pensions, I know.
	Health and Social Care, I know.
	Science, Innovation and Technology, that's depressing, isn't it?
	Er, Health and Social Care, obviously that's a massive one.
	The FCO, the Treasury, the Home Office, the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Justice, and on and on and on we go.
	We could a-fwearer quite a lot of those, couldn't we?
	It gets worse when you get down to the public bodies because, yeah, having 421... some of them are like six blokes in Newcastle.
	That sounds crazy that there's 400-odd.
	That sounds absolutely... We found one down the road just like across the road from us.
	Like some government department of like 12 people who get like 20 million a year for doing some lefty shit.
	I don't know what that is but it was that basically.
	It's also the reason that every time you do your driving license it always goes to Swansea.
	Yeah.
	Oh no, they're not driving license, they're just utter left-wing twattery.
	Sort of make work schemes in depressed areas.
	So what you do is that you shut all the mines or you shut the steelworks and then you put a government department there and its job is to make sure nobody else does any work.
	Right.
	To the next one, as we can see on that.
	Oh, no, I pressed it as well.
	So I thought I'd go and have a look at cars, because we all like cars, and having driven here today.
	So there are three really dealing with that.
	You've got the Vehicle Certification Agency, you've got the who look at when you want to bring a car to market and make sure it's safe.
	And you know, they're the ones who get to crash things into walls and all the rest of it.
	You've got the Vehicle Safety Standards Agency, who are things like driving on the road, telling you how many trailers you can pull, what the maximum loads are and things like that.
	And you've got the DVLA, who actually issue you a license.
	You just look at this, and of course, every single one of them, they've got a nice cheery, you know, website guidance on the required standards.
	And here are some standards.
	So we've got, you know, A-frames and the common one that you get people arguing about, bull bars.
	So we need to go here to look at bull bars.
	Carrying passengers in horse boxes.
	Is that an epidemic problem that we have?
	Loads of people wanting to ride in horse boxes?
	It's a matter of government concern, I imagine it would be.
	Compressed natural gas, you know, converting a van, all this thing.
	And all of this has been put together.
	I mean, some of them are quite old, you know.
	And each of these would have required like six months work from a dozen people.
	Yep.
	Each one of these gets looked at every now and again, you know.
	And actually, the big thing is, is that every single one of these, the authority can add bits And it all comes under the purview of, because ultimately you fall down the rabbit hole of, well, where does this come from?
	And it goes back to, in this case, a lot of it goes back to the sort of Road Traffic Act, 1988, 91, and other sorts of things.
	But in there, there'll just be like a one-liner that says DVLA to manage this.
	And that's it.
	And then these chaps have got absolute carte blanche to say anything they want.
	But that one, how to safely transport items on top of a vehicle.
	Well, if I put an item on top of a vehicle, I don't want it to fall off because it's my item.
	Yes, but the government must make sure you do it in an appropriate manner.
	Well, why don't we just get rid of that, all of that, and just have one line that says, if something falls off your vehicle and damages something or hurts somebody, you're in big trouble.
	Just leave it at that.
	Ah, well, you see, the problem with that is, is that that wouldn't give these chaps anything to do.
	And a lot of it is about prevention.
	And prevention's great, because what you do is you make up a scenario and then write some policy to stop that scenario happening.
	And also, of course, there's an infinite number of made-up scenarios, so you have an infinite amount of regulation.
	One of the ones I... It's like horse-drawn vehicles, for example.
	Yeah.
	It comes down to this sort of very broad sort of political philosophy of big government versus small government.
	Do you want government to be intrusive into your life.
	No.
	Or not.
	Most people, well, anyone that isn't hard left, who wants the government to build them a path from cradle to grave, to use Billy Bragg's words.
	Yeah.
	Anyone that doesn't want that, just want, yeah, Stay out of my life.
	I want to run an experiment where... This is obviously... Where us three take over the government and we just look at all of that stuff and just go, no.
	We just go for all of it and just go, no.
	And then we will see what happens.
	Like, do we then have hundreds of bits falling off the top of vehicles and people crashing because they're transported in the back of horse boxes and everything just goes wrong?
	Or is everything fine and taxes come down from 34% of GDP to like 12% or something?
	To quote Sir Humphrey, that would be to strike at the very foundations of our civilization.
	I think rather appropriately there's one that says mascots and flags on motor vehicles, which being St George's Day I think is quite a good one.
	I want one now.
	I didn't want one until I didn't know that I wasn't allowed it.
	There you are.
	So I looked at one which is maximum number of trailers.
	This one's more of a brag on behalf of me, obviously looking at steam engines, driving steam engines.
	So what I come under here is number five as a locomotive.
	So you can have three trailers?
	I can have three trailers, but it gets better when I get down here to, uh, what was it?
	For the purposes of items five, six, and seven.
	That's me.
	Yeah.
	Uh, where is it?
	A tow roller.
	No, uh, for the purposes of this regulation, the word trailer does not include a vehicle which is drawn by a steam powered vehicle and which is used solely for the purpose of carrying water, which actually means I get to tow three trailers and a water cart.
	And there's another one in here which is on the other trailer.
	Look, that is good, but in my world, you should be able to tow as many bloody trailers as you like on your steam trailer.
	As long as I can get up to the hill.
	So if you were caught with four trailers, you could be prosecuted.
	Or, I put something on the water cart, like I put my lunch box on the water cart to keep it away from the engine, and I'm carrying something that isn't the water, and then they'll go, that's a fourth trailer.
	Ultimately, I think there's an ultimate length which is 96 feet.
	But, on that, yes, you get some great old black and white pictures and they've got like 14 on the back of them.
	It's amazing.
	Chad, that is so Chad.
	And if you went to 96 feet and 2 inches, or 96 feet and 1 mil.
	That's it, prison.
	Yeah, that is now unsafe and you'll get done by the British Transport Police.
	But I looked at vehicle type approval.
	This is when a manufacturer has got a new design, so it spent millions and millions of pounds investing in its engineers, and then millions and millions of pounds designing the car, and now it's got to spend lots and lots of money at crashing its cars to make sure it's all safe and you know this is where a lot of things like all the crash prevention stuff and the radar guided cruise control that nobody actually asked for and nobody actually wants it means that a new car is really really expensive well i've got that in my car and it just beeps at me all the time it's like
	oh shut up yeah i know i have my seat belt on but i'm just moving up the drive or something i'm just going to the car park you know something like that yeah but no no i'm just going to the off license um but if you if you scroll down so you've got the type approvals we've got the gb type approval scheme because obviously now we're out of the eu we can't do the ncap system oh Oh, we get, we get to write more of our own regulation then.
	What we get to do is have another one, but it's only a provisional one because, you know, we're, we're, what, eight years past the referendum and they still haven't, essentially what they're going to do is go, ah, dynamic alignment.
	So we're just going to cut and paste all the EU regulations in.
	Um, but the last one down here is UN ECE type approval.
	What is that?
	Which is type approval based on the international 1958 agreement concerning the adoption of harmonized technical United Nations regulations for wheeled vehicles.
	Now, who are the UN, uh, ECE?
	If I go to that.
	There we can say, so this is a UN agency and a 1958 technical agreement that the UN will manage vehicle standards globally.
	What?
	It's an opt-in system at the moment, but... I thought they just sat around in a circle and pontificated about stuff and then had lunch.
	Oh no.
	They do vehicle regulation as well.
	Oh yeah.
	Bloody UN.
	There we are.
	UN regulation covers all vehicle categories, including non-road mobile machinery, which I think means like towed diesel generators and things like that.
	Engines and are primarily focused on vehicle systems and components.
	So sharing stuff between Toyota and Ford, that international market of motor parts.
	They're very interested in that to make sure we're all using the same stuff.
	I had no idea.
	And then it says UN Regulation 0, which might be worth further reading, has introduced the concept of international whole vehicle type approval, the M1 category vehicles, that's passenger vehicles, within the UN ECE framework.
	But the practical application is currently limited in global markets.
	So once you start setting standards, you start wanting to harmonize with other sets of standards.
	Once you move to international standards, the logical conclusion is it all gets run from the top.
	So that's it.
	Either you have national standards or global.
	So this whole global government thing that we're told is a conspiracy and you're just basically laying out how it's just a routine thing that they're just doing every day?
	It's there, you know, has been happening since the 50s.
	Because the thing is, standardisation of things isn't inherently wrong or evil or anything.
	If you look back at the 17th or 18th or 19th centuries, it was absolutely, I know you know your history of science and stuff, so it's absolutely really important that we standardise things.
	It is a massive leap forward, progress in a real sense.
	However, it seems like it moves into sort of really sinister territory though after a certain point.
	UN regulation zero.
	That just sounds sinister to me.
	As though they're saying we can do and say anything from above and the whole world have to just swallow it.
	The thing that I find most chilling about this though is not necessarily the sinister angle, it's just the pure banality of it.
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	And this is the fascinating thing.
	We love to go on about attacks on free speech.
	We love to go on about, you know, all the sort of woke issues and things like that.
	But actually, and yeah, the global government spying on my phone.
	But actually, there is this tranche of global governments that has been there for decades, that runs basically everything you touch.
	So this table will be made out of MDF which will be internationally patternized.
	There will be a global standard for MDF and the vinyl that's on it and the glue that holds it on together.
	Every single one of that will be absolutely standard across the world and there will be some bloke in an office somewhere whose job it is, his driving passion in life is to regulate the standards of wood bonding agents.
	I mean, just think about that.
	The universe was created 14 billion years ago.
	The cosmic coincidences that need to result into the moment of your birth, and you've got this one special precious moment of consciousness in the universe, and you decide to spend it doing wood regulations of bonding materials onto vinyl.
	Yes, but it does mean you get to go to lots of international conferences about the Harmony.
	Yeah, full of other twats like you.
	So why would you want to go to them?
	So I went in and I just wanted to look at like, you know, headlights and indicators and things like that.
	But then I went, who are the UNECE?
	Well, the UNECE, there they are, the UN Sustainability Goals, as you love them.
	So the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe was set in 1947 by ECOSOC, who are the European Economy, Economic and Social Council.
	Is that not right at the birth of the whole UN?
	Yeah, right at the very start.
	Right at the very start.
	So we've just had a massive war and it's like, oh, what do we do now?
	Oh, let's start regulating shit.
	Yeah.
	But immediately if, if everybody has to use the same baskets or something or tractor wheels, then there can't be a war.
	They don't give us a minute off, do they?
	Um, no.
	And, and the UN has got such, you know, commission for Africa, the, uh, Asia and the Pacific.
	There's one for Latin America and the Caribbean, and there's one for Western Asia.
	There's not one for North America.
	Interesting.
	Um, and I just wanted to say that is the European.
	Uh, commission map, which interesting, of course, uh, you've got the U S you've got Canada, you've got, uh, Turkey and Cyprus and Israel.
	Uh, and then weirdly Suriname, South America.
	So they're all, there's no limit on who can be in the European council.
	Anybody can be a member.
	Oh, I, I had assumed naively that you'd had to be European.
	No.
	Right.
	And Russia hasn't been kicked out.
	So the Russians are all using UN approved, you know, knives and forks and screws.
	Oh, they're not complete savages then?
	No, no, no, no, no.
	Absolutely.
	Both sides of the Bering Strait count as European.
	But this is a, this is an enormous regulatory body that goes around the world.
	Okay.
	Nobody's ever heard of it and you're paying for it, of course.
	Because regulators are, um, is there like a bit of Rome that, I think that's the Vatican.
	Oh, the Vatican.
	Oh, they opted out.
	They're like a bit of the Isle of Man or a bit of Brittany that opted out or something.
	Is that the Channel Island?
	Is that what it is?
	Counting the Isle of Man as separate things.
	And ultimately, yes, it goes back to the European Nation, the United Nations Economic and Social Council, which is one of the six principal organizations of the UN.
	So you instantly go from, you know, if you wanted to start out in the motor industry, Um, and he wanted to build a midsize, you know, five seat family saloon.
	That is going to be regulated by the UN.
	Because there was a time where the industrious people in this country would have gone exactly that.
	They would have, they would have cleared out their shed and they would have made a car and then they would have sold it.
	And then if it was any good, people would have bought it.
	Whereas now, before you can do any of that, you need to spend, what, 15 years getting up to spec and all this regulation?
	Yep.
	So you've got to generate a proposal and then you've got to put it through all this compliance.
	And then, and then maybe you can start the battle for planning permission for your factory.
	Right.
	I'm starting to think this is why we don't make anything anymore because it's just too much of a ball lake.
	Yes.
	And it's also why, you know, multi-billion dollars companies can be run off a laptop in Starbucks because regulatory wise, that's much more easy than trying to make stuff.
	Yes.
	And it's also why all cars look the same because of course they've all got to conform to the same crash structure.
	So if they're all conforming in the same mechanism, they all look the same because... Because that's compliant.
	Right.
	You can't put your brake lights in a weird place because that would be non-compliant.
	You can't have a weird shaped steering wheel.
	You can't have your radio in, you know, like Citroen used to love putting the radio next to the handbrake and putting the indicators on top of the dash and things like that.
	No, you can't do any of that because that's non-compliant.
	So all that That sort of maverick zaniness, all that innovation, all the artistry, has all been managed out.
	That's long gone.
	Engineers are now merely automatons who build things to become compliant.
	There's loads of things specifically about cars which I find annoying, that you can't have certain splitters on the front or certain spoilers on the back, or really cool configurations of exhausts and things, because you're just not allowed to by law anymore.
	It's like, oh, that's a shame.
	And it's because somebody in, yeah, somebody up in Bracknell or somewhere like that has merely written a piece of legislation.
	Don't like those guys with the Focus STs.
	Get rid of all that.
	And that's what they do.
	And you look at small businesses, which we're not going to go into here, but every now and again, you know, like small restaurants and things like that, the health inspector comes around.
	And it's, oh, this year you can only keep the salmon mousse for 24 hours.
	You know, it used to be three days.
	Yeah.
	Now it's, you know, and more cost requirements.
	But I mean, this has a very real impact because I mean, I remember when I came out of the city and I had a bit of cash to do with something and I was thinking, okay, well, I should start a business because I'm young enough.
	I've got enough energy, got a bit of capital.
	I should go and start a business.
	And I thought about it for a week or so.
	And then I thought, Yeah, but stuff like this will just make it... Why bother?
	I'll just go and invest it in somebody else's business.
	Yeah.
	Where they've got a compliance department, a legal team, and it's just easier.
	Yeah.
	That's happening all the time now.
	And that's really what it is, is that you see constantly regulation being used as a closed shop.
	And it's why it seems a lot of big businesses, there's usually sort of the government, the auditors, and then like six big companies.
	It usually comes down to six for some bizarre reason.
	I think it's so they can give the sort of Top coat of free marketness, but it's the executive.
	Also, if you have two people from the government side, you can get all eight round the table.
	Yeah.
	And I mean, eight round the table is about as big as you want a lunch to be.
	Anything more than that and it splits off.
	So it's not a monopoly.
	There's six.
	Yeah.
	There's not a monopoly.
	Yeah.
	So, and of course it means that everybody at the top knows each other because actually there'll only be 150 people on earth with that sort of knowledge.
	And if you think it's bad in cars, it's even worse in shipping.
	Now shipping makes sense because shipping is a global business because you're taking stuff from one place and then you're going through international waters and then you're putting it somewhere else.
	The big thing in shipping at the moment is net zero.
	And they don't know how to mash the global trading world economy model into you can't move anything because net zero model.
	And the IMO, the International Maritime Organization, are really trying to work quite hard to try and marry the two up.
	From a technological perspective, there are a lot of little projects currently being run by some of the bigger shipping firms using alternative fuels.
	Whether they can store hydrogen as nitrogen, or as ammonia rather, whether they can use biodiesel, whether they can Even like sail powered ships and things like that.
	I wonder how much we lost if they just stuck to their principles and said right now we're going to do we're going to do absolute net zero.
	You can't have ships anymore because then we'd have to rebuild vast waves of industry and instead of just buying cheap plastic on Amazon you'd have to find somebody up the road who made something useful.
	Yeah you'd have to go to the village blacksmith or the basket weavers.
	Yes.
	So I kind of want them to just, you know, just go and bloody do it.
	Go all out, whole hog.
	Yeah, well if these are your principles, if you think that we need to shut down the global economy, go on then, just bloody do it.
	And there we are, you know, the IMO is the United Nations Specialised Agency with responsibility for the safety and security of shipping and the prevention of marine and atmospheric pollution by ships.
	So the safety and security thing I absolutely get because in the event of a shipwreck you want the ships to be able to talk to each other and you want them to be able to talk to each other so they don't crash into each other and all the rest of it.
	Doing things like international flag signals and radio frequencies and Identification systems.
	That's all good stuff.
	That's all perfectly sensible stuff.
	When it comes down to the marine and atmospheric pollution, that essentially means that you want to minimize the impacts on the environment.
	Some of the stuff about using diesel tanks and filling them up with seawater for ballast and then dumping it all back in.
	In the sea.
	I can see where they're coming from with that, the sort of maritime pollution stuff, but the atmospheric stuff, they're really going after the main engines.
	It's all about carbon again.
	Yes.
	At the risk of stating the bleeding obvious, for anyone who might not know, international shipping, the world goes round on international shipping.
	Yes.
	Right.
	If you screw with that too much, then your real world reality will change significantly.
	Living standards will be materially affected.
	Right.
	Right.
	I think there's only about... Everyone's life will be touched by that.
	Yeah.
	I think there's only about six nations on earth which are net exporters of food.
	And two of them are currently at war with each other.
	Yes.
	And we're definitely not one of them, although we probably could be if we actually made the effort.
	Yes.
	You might think a lot of the world's freight is done by air, but I think the vast majority of it is shipping still.
	The vast majority.
	Air is really for stuff, is high value stuff you've got to get somewhere quickly.
	All right.
	Even things like bananas and mangoes and things you put them on a ship in a refrigerator container full of CO2.
	The science around it is fascinating where they pick the bananas way too early and then they actually they ripen them on the ship so as they get to Tilbury Docks they're absolutely fine and then sometimes they get it a bit wrong and then you end up with green bananas in Tesco's.
	Um, the next one there.
	So yeah, as I said there, the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships.
	Now, when was the last time that was in anybody's manifesto?
	Or was even discussed in Parliament?
	Oh, they don't put, they don't even put like immigration in the manifestos, let alone whatever that is.
	And, and, and this is the thing you've got to realize is that decades ago, the world's governments essentially got together and through the treaty system, They went, right, we're going to hand regulation of this enormous part of our, you know, international shipping is a massive part of a nation's ability to be a nation is managing its own shipping.
	And they just went, right, we're going to, we're going to hand it over to the UN.
	And that huge tranche of control, you know, setting tariffs and shipbuilding strategies and port facilities and all the rest of it, all that, all that stuff.
	And how you use a merchant Navy in times of war.
	I was going to say we've got a massive, long, giant tradition of a Merchant Navy in Britain, haven't we?
	And it's basically disappeared because now everything is Panamanian or it's all registered in the taxation.
	So I'm starting to more fully understand why there was such a massive freak out to Trump when he said things like, oh, why are we in the UN?
	Why don't we just leave the UN?
	Because I thought it was just this big talky thing about international geopolitics.
	Actually, It's a hell of a lot deeper than that.
	This is the sort of shocking thing, is that when they talk about an international rules-based order, they don't just mean like, please don't go to war with each other.
	They mean regulation of basically all international trade.
	And since basically all trade is international these days, they mean all economic activity.
	Because the only thing that's left for the national government is that little bit of the economy which only happens inside the country.
	So what you're basically saying is the globalists have well and truly got their fist in all the pies.
	They have been there for decades.
	Right.
	That international order that came from Bretton Woods, it wasn't just a monetary thing, it was God, they were industrious, these bureaucrats in the 40s, weren't they?
	Well, they got a lot done, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	So as you can see here, so we've got the 1973 convention, was it 1978, 97, and the entry into force in 1983.
	can see here so we've got the 1973 convention uh was it 1978 97 and uh the entry into force in 1983 so maritime pollution that's been around since the 70s um and various pollution standards uh Uh, so, you know, prevention of pollution by oil, the control of pollution, not just liquids.
	I mean, some of this is actually quite sensible, you know, you don't want to be dumping crude oil in.
	I have heard that because a lot of them are these giant diesel engines, right?
	Big tankers like that.
	It's usually diesel, right?
	Because it's cheaper.
	Is that right?
	I have heard that like, um, I don't know if this is true, correct me if it's wrong, but that they do pump out a lot more emissions than airplanes.
	Yeah.
	It's, it's a bit of a, It's how they count it.
	Because what they say is, you know, a supertanker burns a thousand tons of diesel a day.
	It's like, yes, but it's a quarter of a million ton ship.
	You know, so actually when you, when you go down to sort of emissions per ton mile, it's tiny.
	And those big ships are astoundingly efficient.
	And they've now got things.
	So it's not a high speed diesel engine going through a gearbox.
	The big marine diesel engines will tick over at about 83 RPM.
	That sounds low.
	It's very, very low.
	They're literally just like... And then they're bolted straight to the propeller.
	There's no gearbox or anything like that.
	And the thing moves at two knots?
	It'll do about 15, 16 knots.
	And that was the interesting thing is back in the 50s, everybody assumed that we're going to have nuclear powered container ships and they're going to do 35 knots.
	And then they went, yeah, that's really expensive.
	And a lot of it was coming out of this and just the physics of it.
	Yeah, so everything's just going to get slow, really.
	So yeah, once you've got your regulation, you need to have it audited.
	So there's another tranche here.
	This is Lloyd's Register, who are sort of the UK auditors.
	So when they've said you're not allowed to put stuff in the sea, you go, I've got a book that says I haven't put anything in the sea.
	And then you need the auditors to come in and say, yes, they have actually told the truth in the book that they've not put anything in the sea.
	Lloyd's do a lot with ship building as well, so managing designs.
	This is all stuff you've got to pay for.
	You know, so you've got to design your ship and then you've got to have the design appraised as safe and legal and all the rest of it.
	The Lloyd's of London still insure loads of people.
	That's them.
	They've now called themselves Lloyd's Register, but it is, it's the same business that started in the coffee shop.
	So very quickly, just to cap off, is the EU emissions trading scheme.
	What we've got here is that since it came into effect, was it 2021, but they've been talking about this since 2005, about essentially having a maximum amount of emissions and then you buy permits to emit.
	We, we should get into that in our Brokenomics.
	Yes.
	And I'm sure we will.
	Um, so they've got the reducing the emissions, uh, in the sector, uh, where essentially all they've done is gone, right.
	We need to go to net zero by 2050, therefore straight line.
	Um, particularly as no, no business works like that.
	It's always like a, yeah, it's always an S curve.
	So there was one on, was it that one or the next one, where it actually gives like, it's so wonderfully managerial.
	They actually give the exact number of tons.
	For a certain type of bureaucrat, this must just be like ambrosia.
	Oh, this is absolute wet dream stuff, this is.
	But I will just finish off by saying, don't worry, chaps.
	We're not going to be ducking out of this because the UK has its own emissions trading scheme currently in a draft form.
	Why not?
	Of course it does.
	So there you are.
	Regulation, you cannot escape it.
	Right, let's have a quick look at the comments.
	Um, so we've got... Video comments is sort of the most important.
	Oh, oh yes, video.
	We've got any video comments today to... Oh, no video comments.
	Oh, no video comments.
	Right, OK.
	So, um, George Hap says, Happy St George's Day to all brave Englishmen.
	It's a big dragon to slay and we're right people for the job.
	Yes, I think that's right.
	I think that's a very sensible thing to say, yeah.
	Kevin Fox says, used to love the steam fair.
	I work security at Dorset steam fair.
	Imagine the Tavistock steam fair crossed with the Glastonbury festival, loads of mud, drunkenness and thievery.
	Yes.
	And Dorset is a tragic example of overregulation because one of the reasons it doesn't happen anymore was because it was getting too expensive and too onerous to run.
	So two years ago, they never really recovered from Covid, but the organiser was saying it's costing them £5 million just to run the event.
	And the biggest thing, which is something we haven't got, was not only regulatory compliance about suddenly you've got to have a counter-terrorism strategy, You are, yeah.
	But it was, um, marshalling and the insurance.
	And the insurance just went absolutely haywire.
	Yes, that makes perfect sense.
	I've been to the Wiltshire Steam Fair.
	Was it last summer now?
	God, it seems like yesterday.
	It must have been last summer.
	Anyway, um, I really enjoyed it.
	Great day out.
	Absolutely brilliant.
	Loved it.
	Yes, uh, ladyfiftyish on, um, a Rumble rant for $10, thank you very much, says, Tommy's case dismissed on St George's Day.
	Poetic justice.
	That's, oh, that's good.
	Us rather, yeah.
	Yes.
	Sean487 for $10 on a Rumble Rant says, Thoughts for a show?
	Daycare and the disaster effects on society, including the indoctrination of the vulnerable to the alphabet people and other ideologies.
	Well, Sean487, check out the latest Brocanomics with Poe.
	Actually, the latest but one, with Poe the person, where we did do the daycare stuff.
	Not so much of the alphabet people, because you have to be careful with that one, because you can all channel catch, you know.
	Chopped.
	We can do a couple of comments from each.
	So BasedApe on the Ukraine money says, Welcome to Lotus Eaters, Alex.
	I love to see innovation and positive solutions to problems rather than societal destruction of solutions we are normally imposed with.
	And Faxpass says, All American and NATO have achieved is confirming to the rest of the world that the West is weak.
	Yes, unfortunately so.
	On St George's Day, Ru The Day says, what a murder of a Dapper Gents today.
	Is that what you call a collection of Dapper Gents?
	Is it a murder?
	I can't think of anything else.
	A crash of Dapper Gents.
	A smoking room.
	Well, I like it anyway, so yes.
	Yes, very good.
	Thank you, Ru The Day.
	A cloud of Dapper Gents.
	Oh, we got a Rumble rant from Sean487 again for $10.
	Most people in the Anglosphere are totally ignorant of the period following William the Bastard and the enforcing of the French at the English courts, even to the extent of having tongues removed.
	Well, not everyone's into it.
	If you do sign up to Lotuses.com, click on the Epochs tab, you'll find me and Kyle talking about the reigns of William Rufus, William II, and then Henry I.
	The next one.
	So yeah, the period directly after the Conqueror is fascinating.
	I find the generation or two directly before the Conquest and directly after even more interesting than the age of William the Bastard himself.
	Yes.
	But on Epochs, we've covered it.
	So if you want a fair few hours of me and Carl talking about exactly that, It's on the website, £5 a month.
	Check that out.
	Let me see.
	Actually, I'm going to read another one from Brewery of the Day here.
	Do more history segments on the podcast.
	We need this reprieve, please, I beg of you.
	So that went down very well.
	Oh, great.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	I do try to make my segments at least maybe half the time history themed or history related in some way, if possible.
	So, yeah, I'm happy to do that if people Omar Ward says, the dragon is so greedy it can't be satisfied with the sheep and decides to devour our children.
	Are we sure the dragon isn't current day politicians?
	Yeah, or the vaccine industry.
	The dragon, as we say, is a metaphor for all things bad.
	I think, yes, the story ticks rather more boxes now than it did maybe ten years ago.
	Yes.
	On this St George's Day, it is apt to point out that St Patrick was born in England.
	Yes.
	Very good.
	And then we'll just close off with a couple on the Gordian Knot of red tape.
	Lars Petersen says, blessed be the regulations.
	Richard Monkden says, red tape twattery, bureaucracy is Jobsworth culture on overdrive, the fortress wall preventing the public from working on or achieving any benefits from public spending of various departments.
	It is a huge blob and an endless drain on the taxpayer.
	Yes, yes, quite.
	Let's do one from Miss Rat as well.
	Let me get this straight.
	The UK government is highly concerned about climate change, but they're not really keen on vehicles being converted to alternative fuel.
	Have I got that right?
	Well, should we say, check out the brokenomics?
	Yes.
	All I'd say on that is that they're more concerned about you doing it their way than they are about you doing it.
	Yes.
	Yes, excellent.
	I would like to cover more, but I think we're out of time, so I shall just have to say thank you, Bo, for...
	For Boeing today, and thank you Alex for your fascinating insights on coal.
	Just how bad it really is.
	And regulations and other such.
	You've been excellent, thank you very much.
	Thank you very much for having me, it's been a pleasure.
	Absolutely brilliant.
	So check out his socials on, you know, the Twitter and the various other things.
	Maybe go to his Steam Fair.
	But other than that, thanks very much.

▲