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July 14, 2025 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1207

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	Hello, and welcome to the podcast of the Loadseaters episode 1207 for Monday, the 14th of June, 2025.
	I'm your host, Luca, joined today by special guest and friend of the show, Lewis Brackpool.
	How are you, sir?
	I'm very well, thanks.
	Good to finally do a segment.
	It's the first time.
	It's been a while, hasn't it?
	Because we were on the panels together back during the general election and the live stream for the US election.
	You were here for that as well, weren't you?
	I believe so.
	Yeah, but it's the first time being on the podcast together.
	So, no, wonderful to have you here.
	Thanks, ma'am.
	So, today we're going to be covering the ROT, that is the British honour system.
	But then we're also going to have something a bit more cheery for you and celebrate the birthday of England.
	And then, after that, we're going to talk about the gamers rising up.
	The greatest revolution of the 21st century, of course.
	No doubt, no doubt at all.
	So, with that all said, let's begin.
	So, the British honours system is one of those, on the face of it, quite beautiful mythic aspects of British society.
	You know, when you think of, you know, kneeling, the sword on both shoulders and you arise a knight of the realm, right?
	Speaks to a truly mythical spiritual past.
	Yeah, definitely.
	Right, there's something really to that.
	There's a lot of thick concepts to it.
	And it all falls into that thing that is part of the deep magic of England.
	And it's also something that other countries in Europe don't get to experience, right?
	They don't enjoy it.
	The French, Happy Bastille Day, by the way, in France.
	You don't get to do that because you had a Bastille Day, right?
	There are no knights in France anymore.
	Knight of the Republic.
	Although that was a good Star Wars game, actually.
	Knights of the Old Republic.
	But anyway, so now you end up with things like this.
	Arise Sadiq Khan, London's mayor.
	Now, obviously, this is a fairly recent story, but it's not exactly new news.
	You've probably all seen this before.
	But I wanted to use it as an example of the secularization of what is essentially a spiritual practice.
	Yes.
	Because it shouldn't actually be theoretically possible for a Muslim to be a knight.
	Right.
	Because it is innately a Christian concept.
	Yes, yes, very true.
	That ties into European Christian themes of chivalry.
	And yet he was simply made a knight of the realm because there isn't actually any criteria that you actually have to fit now other than the authority of the British state, the secular British state that is entirely obviously enveloped in multiculturalism and the multicultural project.
	And so you see this more and more now, that it constantly just awards minorities for simply kind of existing.
	It's almost become a kind of pantomime now, right?
	It's a bit like, it reminds me of like the Commonwealth and lots of other things that we had as tradition, but now it's become like, why are we putting one foot in, one foot out when it's the pass of the empire, right?
	So that's how I view it now is a bit of a bit of a pantomime.
	And that's sad, really, because like you said, it has such spiritual and big meaning to it from, you know, days past, but not anymore.
	Not anymore.
	No.
	And when Sadiq Khan said about this, he said, obviously, from my background, being the son of immigrants, my parents coming here from Pakistan, it's a big deal to us, right?
	So that's what he said in reaction to this.
	And you can see what that means.
	It's, you know, in some way, him becoming a knight, you know, he sees that as like being accepted by the system.
	Right.
	Right?
	He's being accepted by the establishment.
	Obviously, you and I know better and know that he is the establishment.
	Yeah, exactly.
	There is nothing counter in the politics of Sadiq Khan.
	And that is the symbolism of what this is now in the modern time.
	Yes.
	Yes, it is.
	So then you obviously have things like this because it's not just knights.
	We also have, I say smaller, not in an insulting way, but, you know, member of British Empire and Order of the Garter, all these different honours.
	And you have one here for, yeah, an MBE for Mubin Hussein, who led a Muslim community boycott of South Yorkshire police after the Rotherham grooming abuse scandal and has been awarded an MBE for services to integration and cohesion.
	It's just a joke.
	It's like they made, was it Rotherham, the place for children and culture, was it?
	Oh, the City of Culture.
	City of Culture.
	Yeah.
	That was last year or the one before.
	Yeah, last year.
	Yeah, it's just an extra insult.
	Yeah.
	An extra insult.
	He called on Muslims to sever ties with South Yorkshire Police and take all the necessary action to protect ourselves back in 2015, obviously meaning the Muslim community to shield them from the backlash of what those from within their community had obviously been doing to these young girls.
	And his group won that any Muslim groups or institutions in Rotherham that do not adhere to this policy of disengagement will also be boycotted by the Muslim community itself.
	Wow.
	Right.
	So, but like total ethnic, you are with us or you're against us.
	So bad.
	You're with us or you're a traitor to your people.
	Rhetoric.
	And yeah, as you can see, so he's going to be getting an MBE.
	He's going to be getting an MBE.
	Great start to the Monday morning, eh?
	Yeah, sorry about all that.
	Well, like I said, this is why it's the first segment.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Rip this bandpaper off, and then we'll get to something a lot more fun.
	But obviously, it's not just politicians and community leaders as well.
	There is, you know, a massive propaganda Arm in terms of cultural power, films, music, all these sorts of things as well.
	Took up one of our Edison Samson's tweet here from a while back.
	You might remember this film turning up on Apple TV, Blitz, and you may notice something slightly historically inaccurate about the cover to this.
	But obviously, this film was directed by Steve McQueen, British film director, Sir Steve McQueen, in fact, even though he was also the director of such things as 12 Years a Slave.
	Oh, yes.
	Right?
	And so he, and from reading what he talks about, the films that he engages with, and the fact that, you know, when you look at that one, like The Blitz, it was more, well, obviously, I just wanted more representation for my people, right?
	It's about inserting them.
	We've always been an island of immigrants.
	We've always been here.
	And obviously, those sorts of politics, again, are rewarded with knighthoods, even though he's an enormous race baiter.
	Well, like we were talking about, it's now that honours system as a whole has turned into a welcome to the establishment as opposed to this is what it used to represent.
	And hit the nail on the head there.
	Also, obviously, let's not forget the great contributions to music, such men like Stormsey.
	Are you a Stormsey fan, Lewis?
	No, I'm not.
	No, personally not.
	I must admit, I do like some grime.
	Weirdly, I know, very strangely.
	I do like some of it because it reminds me of the old punk sort of stuff.
	Some of it, I don't mind.
	But I'm not a Stormsey fan, no.
	And I think he did say something recently that caused a bit of a commotion online.
	And I think Rafe, is it Mankou called him out to a debate on the British Empire and all of that?
	That's yet to happen.
	But I would love to see that.
	That would be really good fun.
	Well, as an honorary doctorate of Cambridge, I'm sure that Stormsey will have all the necessary knowledge, historical facts.
	I'd love to see it.
	And know-how to single-handedly dash Wraith in that debate.
	Yes.
	No doubt about it.
	But so what was it to do with Stormsey?
	Why is he so worthy of receiving this honorary doctorate?
	Well, at Cambridge, he also set up the Stormsey Scholarship, which is entirely designed for basically getting more black applicants into Cambridge.
	So again, just even when they say it's about, well, it is all about, again, rewarding people for working towards a multicultural project, right?
	Just getting more of the different races who are now in Britain into the institutions, into positions of power, where they can, of course, send Snowball and Avalanche 20 years down the line and be in the institutions that are really going to be deciding the direction of this country.
	So throwing out meritocracy with something completely different.
	Well, and also just throwing it out in terms of a politics that we're simply not allowed to do.
	Because Stormsey just looks at, you know, the young black kids and he goes, I'm responsible for them.
	Right.
	He's not responsible for the white working class kids.
	Feels no, even though they're, you know, not exactly likely to end up going to Cambridge either.
	Yes.
	Right.
	Stats, yep.
	But that doesn't matter.
	Right.
	It's not about that.
	It's about, again, it's about racial loyalty.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	It's about racial loyalty.
	Sad.
	With these sorts of people.
	And so then let's begin to talk a little bit about the House of Lords.
	Now, you said to me that you...
	You might have some aspirations to become Lord Brackport.
	It's a very new thing.
	I've been thinking recently, because some people have asked, would you get into politics?
	And I've said yes.
	I've had conversations with friends who have also said that they would.
	Time is running out with that sort of thing.
	I don't know if I'd be a good MP.
	However, I have liked the idea of getting into the House of Lords, even though that I want it abolished.
	So, you know, it's quite an interesting thing.
	Guy Fawkes wanted to get into the House of Parliament, didn't he even?
	I mean, what?
	Well, like, I just, the thing is, I don't know, there's something about it.
	I think, as much as I do want it abolished, I think with lots of legislation that is being passed through now, you know, the assisted dying, the recent abortion bill as well that's been expanded, you know, lots of different things all to do with civil liberties, you know, freedom of speech, all of that.
	I do see how important this is right now in this, but we want to get to a point where we don't need it.
	We don't want another Tony Blair institution.
	We want to start rolling back.
	And I feel I would like to, in my later years, do something like this.
	I don't know how it's possible because I'm not very well liked by these guys.
	So, you know, it would be quite a fun little thing.
	Probably because you pester them like Andy Dufran in Shawshank Redemption for sending them a freedom of information request every week.
	That's it.
	And I don't think they're very fond of that.
	But yeah, imagine, like, I'm just thinking of it through FOIs.
	Imagine being in there and being able to, you know, get some more important information out to the public.
	That's how I see it.
	And yeah, that's what you say about the House of Lords being a Blair-right creation.
	Of course, the House of Lords is much older than that, but you're absolutely right in the sense that the House of Lords is just another institution that Blair just grabbed and changed to his own image for his own purposes.
	Because as you can see here, back in 1999, so When I was two, there was a bill put through, the House of Lords bill, which was basically used to remove a lot of the hereditary peers, the landed gentry of England, to be replaced with more and more, you know, Blairite disciples and Cameron.
	Globalists.
	Yeah.
	And Cameron went on to do this too, of course.
	Cameron put in people like Baroness Warcy, who now sits in the House of Lords, friend of the English, always been our ally, never done anything to try and subvert us ever.
	But it's part of that thing that so we're replacing the landing gentry of England, the old hereditary class, with people from the new multicultural, the new UK, modern Britain.
	UK aesthetic.
	The UK lords, lords of the UK.
	But also, I think it comes down to another point about the House of Lords as well, is that actually, on the face of it, I don't disagree with the idea of having a second chamber that is of the hereditary peers, right?
	Because the argument was, well, it's not democratic, right?
	You get this argument a lot where it's like, well, isn't it good?
	Because when you've got all of the MPs who are, you know, constantly thinking about just saying whatever they need to say to get re-elected the next time, once you remove that anxiety away, you can have, in theory, a chamber that can dedicate itself more to some long-term planning because it's not constantly thinking about the next election cycle or what donors do I need to compromise myself with in order to gain that influence.
	So I do think there is some merit to that.
	But of course, I also won't pretend that historically speaking, the House of Lords has always not been open to corruption and abuse.
	I can't help but think about back when I was doing an epoch with Beau, all about Pitt the Younger, back when he was Prime Minister.
	And one of the plans that he and King George had in order to cement Pitt's power in Parliament was just to absolutely open the peerages, to just put all of their friends in the House of Lords to get them through that way so that he could pass everything through the second chamber very, very easily.
	So again, I'm not going to pretend it's a perfect system, but it was still better.
	But it was still better than before Blair.
	I agree.
	Right, it was still better than before Blair.
	I do agree.
	Then you have other lords.
	Oh, yes.
	Like Lord Hermer.
	He's been making the news recently.
	Yes.
	Now, he actually only received his peerage last month.
	Oh, was it only last month?
	Yeah, from what I can tell, it was last July.
	But obviously, he was in the headlines recently for, well, as we can see here, saying that it's disgusting to say that the UK has a two-tier justice system.
	If he's saying that, then great.
	Well, exactly.
	I mean, Robert Jenrick was doing fantastic work recently when he was talking about the kind of people he was representing.
	And there seems to be some weird...
	So you don't really get to choose?
	Is that how it usually works?
	I know we're going into a completely different subject, but with the justice system, aren't you like given you're not supposed to pick?
	Yeah, I'm not sure.
	But if someone in the comments knows, do please let us know.
	But yeah, he said such as, I think it's offensive to our police.
	It's offensive to our crown prosecutors who are trying to apply the law in the best faith.
	It's offensive to the courts where the independent judges are applying the law to reach the right sentences.
	We don't have a two-tier justice system.
	We have a one justice system.
	That is an independent justice system.
	And I think we all need to get behind it, not seek to undermine it.
	Oh, yeah, let's just all get behind it.
	You know, jailing people for mean tweets.
	Brilliant.
	It's an independent justice system that just happens to always come down on the side of people of particular backgrounds and particular, again, human rights, whoever the human rights lawyers most favour.
	It's just, it's tiresome.
	And like I said, I think going back to the generic shilling, sound like I'm generic shilling now.
	I think he's been doing fantastic work on trying to talk about this sort of subject as well.
	And there's lots of others that have been doing exactly the same, but I've been very impressed recently.
	And, you know, getting this guy in the headlines, I think it can only be a good thing.
	Well, indeed.
	I mean, but also it's that thing that it's like, well, who are some of the people that he's associated with?
	Well, he did stand up in court on behalf of Liberty, the human rights activists, and basically tried to defend Shemina Begum's right to stay in the UK, of course.
	Jerry Adams as well.
	Jerry Adams, another famous fan of Britain that he helped to defend.
	Well, not defend, but who he has associations with.
	But then from, you get those enemies of Britain, right?
	You get people like Warcy and Hermer, who just obviously seem to keep, there's a pattern of them making decisions that constantly make Britain a more dangerous place.
	And they're then rewarded for it with peerages.
	But then you also get absolutely mind-boggling ones like this.
	You might remember from a few years ago, the Charlotte Owen becoming a baroness.
	She was 30 at the time, making her the youngest in the country.
	And it was really, really vague as to why she got it.
	She was one of the ones that Boris Johnson gave a peerage to on his way out, presumably for being a very talented aide.
	Right.
	Instrumental in just organising his day-to-day affairs.
	Never heard of her.
	No, right.
	And I just, I don't know.
	It doesn't.
	Is being helpful to Boris?
	Yeah, Worthy of a life peerage?
	Yeah, because I'm pretty sure usually you're given a peerage.
	Correct me if I'm wrong.
	You're given a peerage if you've made a substantial contribution to society.
	Which is why they're generally reserved for people who are older.
	Which is why the average age of a peer in the House of Lords is 71.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	You're supposed to have done something with your life.
	Yeah, exactly.
	That's bizarre.
	But there's a lot of them like these.
	And let's not forget as well that Jacob Reesmog, Pretty Patel, honoured in Boris Johnson's resignation lists as well.
	So, Pretty Patel, you can reside over the Boris wave and become a dame.
	Right?
	Just...
	It's like there's no...
	Because this is another thing.
	It's kind of just become a theme these days, a reoccurring, almost like incestuous little institutional tradition of itself, that just by being prime minister, you are entitled to a knighthood.
	Doesn't matter if you were one of the worst prime ministers this country's ever seen.
	Doesn't matter if you were Tony Blair, Boris Johnson.
	They're just able to keep pumping out all of these knighthoods.
	And, well, I mean, I was going to skip ahead a bit.
	No, it's fine.
	I'll leave it.
	You know, people like Jeremy Hunt as well.
	So people who said, why aren't we just one-for-one copying the Chinese lockdown?
	I was about to say that.
	Yeah, I was about to say that.
	The words were out of my mouth.
	Oh, sorry.
	No, no, no, it's good.
	That's a very important quote to bring up, especially with Hunt.
	And, you know, you hear stuff like that during the height of absolutely everything.
	And I mean, we don't even need to go into too much detail about, you know, China and its civil liberty problems.
	It just does my head in.
	Again, does my head in.
	Knight of the realm while seemingly having a fetish for an ancient realm over in the Far East.
	Right?
	Just doesn't work.
	Just doesn't work, Jeremy.
	Give it back.
	No.
	Yeah.
	Oh, yeah, Gove.
	Gove gets a peerage.
	Do you feel better?
	Do you trust the institutions more, Lewis, knowing that my Lord Gove is in?
	No, I think I'm...
	I think I'm correct in saying that there is a particular debate.
	I'm not sure if it's public knowledge yet.
	So I don't know whether I can go into detail.
	But there is a debate that is going to be happening soon.
	I believe Gove is moderating between a friend of ours and another person within conservative space.
	And I'm very interested to see how that's going to go.
	I don't know if it's public knowledge yet, so I don't want to say it.
	Yeah, all right.
	Give it away.
	Yeah, sure, sure.
	Hmm.
	Be interesting.
	It will be.
	But, yeah, let's not forget as well that this is, yeah, according to the folklore of modern England.
	This is a man that when Jonathan Bowden approached him and said, what are we going to do about mass immigration?
	Gove, Gove simply said, oh, it wouldn't be British to do anything about it.
	Just let it continue.
	This was back in the 90s.
	Right.
	Apparently.
	So, again, Gove is just someone who is being a creature.
	He's just the creature of the establishment, right?
	And has been certainly the creature of the Tory Party.
	Didn't Nadine Dorris write extensively in her book about Gove?
	Right.
	I haven't read it.
	So many of the problems begin with Gove.
	Well, not begin, but are always exacerbated by Gove.
	That's interesting.
	I must read that.
	And obviously, most infamously of all, in recent memory, we, of course, have the knighthood of Sir Tony Blair, the Dark Lord himself.
	Wow, one million.
	Right.
	And even though there was a petition that passed one million signatures, it wasn't enough to rescind it.
	Because your consent does not matter.
	Doesn't matter.
	Does not matter whatsoever.
	Right?
	And so it's one of those things where one of the gravest insults about all of this as well, of course, is that there are some people, genuine entrepreneurs, general pillars of the community, people who have really done something of pure interest, who have, you know, contributed to the greatness of Britain, who have also received knighthoods, of course, in their lifetime.
	And it's really irritating because they're now mangled, or, you know, that is mingled amongst people who are totally unworthy of it.
	It's more of an establishment club now, which is such a shame.
	It's such a shame.
	And it's, you know, like we've spoken about during this whole segment, the spirit of it, you know, it's part of our lineage, heritage.
	Whether you agree, I don't.
	I'm not a royalist.
	I'm not any of that.
	I'm not interested.
	So Oliver Cromwell.
	I'm not interested in any of that.
	But to see our institutions, our lineage, heritage, everything, just be moulded into this blob, this globalist blob where it's become more of a club as opposed to, you know, English tradition.
	It just makes me, it just upsets me a bit.
	But this is the way that we're going and we're kind of powerless.
	All we can do is really talk about it.
	All we can do is sign one million signature petitions to get across.
	But that's the thing, isn't it?
	You go through all these things.
	can be responsible for mass immigration.
	Yeah.
	You can act war.
	You can advocate for the most totalitarian lockdowns, and you can be rewarded for it.
	Push for digital identification and a social credit system on the entire populace, still, even after quitting politics.
	All to rub the rights' noses, right?
	But, you know, I like to believe that that which has been given can be taken away.
	And perhaps in the future, it just might be.
	Get me into the House of Lords.
	I'll start repealing and doing my bit and helping.
	I'll go through some of the rumble rants.
	The Engaged Few says, that picture would be so much better if Charles were swinging that sword.
	Well, it does look a bit like the Count Dooku.
	The Count Dooku clip, doesn't it?
	The Engaged View also says, how the hell do you boycott the police, refuse to obey the laws?
	They're already doing that and have been since they landed on English shores.
	That's a problem.
	Well, of course, I quite agree.
	And Habsification says, it's a classic case of nepotism and wearing the skin suit of the institution after destroying it.
	These people demand respect and status while simultaneously destroying its value.
	Yeah, very well said.
	Habsification.
	All right, Lewis.
	Right.
	Cheer me up.
	Yeah, we're going to try and be...
	You see, here we go.
	Okay.
	Happy birthday, England.
	So we're going to do, for once, I've never done a positive thing, so I hope this goes well.
	You don't know how to be.
	It's his first time ever.
	It's my first time being positive, guys.
	So, you know, please bear with me.
	But England had its birthday recently on, I would say, the 12th of July.
	I think that should become some kind of holiday or something, because it isn't.
	Where 927 AD, which is its 1098th birthday after King Ethelstein, sorry, not Stein, the grandson of Alfred the Great,
	defeated its rival kingdoms, such as the Great Heathen Army, the Vikings and the Danes, the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to unite them, including Mercia, East Anglia, Northumbria, Kent and Sussex.
	And so I thought it would be really fun and appropriate to celebrate, obviously, England and its biggest achievements that have changed the world from this tiny country.
	So I've only got 10.
	It's quite a lot, but I think we can get through it.
	Anything you want to add?
	Anything you want to correct?
	Just in case I've got anything wrong, be ready.
	There'll be history buffs in the game.
	Oh, there'll be some, no doubt.
	They'll be there ready with the keyboard.
	So all is good.
	So the first one I thought that we could celebrate is common law.
	Very big.
	Laid the foundation for modern legal systems in over 80 countries.
	Rooted in precedent and rights, common law is England's legal legacy, foundational to justice systems in the United States, Canada, Australia and beyond.
	And common law originated in England after the Norman conquest of 1066 under William the Conqueror, where he unified diverse local customs into a national legal system.
	Common law is a judge-made law.
	Courts rely on previous rulings to decide current cases, creating a consistent evolving legal system.
	Now, I say this with a really tight smile, because we know what the country's going like at the minute.
	And we recently had the news that they want to give, is it juries as well?
	So I don't think that's good, personally.
	And unlike civil law, used much in Europe, common law isn't based on a codified set of statuses, but evolves through judicial decisions.
	So I think that's something to really celebrate from England.
	Yeah, I entirely agree with you.
	Although, as you say, it's one of those things that come back at you on what you were saying, that about obviously there is concern about what the future of the common law, of course, is, but the nature of it being decided by precedent was, that's a great victory when you look at things such as Shemaima Begum being made stateless, right?
	If we're talking about precedent, that's a pretty good one for the future.
	And you do get some people that do actually take the common law.
	So I do recommend looking into it.
	It's quite a grey topic for myself, but it's a topic that I think is very important.
	Some people, though, have taken it and gone a bit too far with it.
	You know, don't go to a bank, take out all money, buy a Ferrari, then leave it on your drive and say, common law.
	You know, don't do that, please.
	Don't advocate for that.
	But that moves on to the next part, which is Magna Carta.
	Which let me just bring that up.
	Magna Carta of 1215.
	Very important.
	The first document to limit the power of the crown under law.
	It birthed constitutionalism and inspired the United States once again, the Constitution, the UN charters, and what you think of them now, global human rights movements when they used to be good.
	So what you're saying is the Magna Carta was a mistake.
	You could say that.
	It's actually, so there's, from what I understand, there's four surviving copies of the Magna Carta.
	Yes.
	And I've had the privilege of seeing three of them.
	Really?
	The two in the British Library, one in Salisbury Cathedral, which is one I haven't seen, and the one at Lincoln Castle.
	That's awesome.
	And so, and when you just stare at that, and yeah, there is something truly.
	Magical, man.
	Yeah.
	800-year-old piece of parchment.
	And yeah, it's quite extraordinary.
	Also, one thing as well about the Magna Carta as well is the fact that It also spawns from the there was a charter by Henry I as well.
	I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head.
	Forgive me.
	Again, perhaps someone in the comments will.
	But really, it's about trying to keep the spirit of the ancient English freedoms intact.
	Those ancient liberties of the English that were just taken as a given back in Old England before the Norman conquest, now codified, so that the Norman class is also, well, the Norman king.
	Also, just one more thing to say about the Magna Carta as well, just from a historical point of view, which is that if John wasn't such a terrible king, right, if John was just mediocre or a little bit crap, right, we probably wouldn't have it.
	It took something truly terrible.
	It took a true tyranny to create something quite.
	And that's something to be said, I would say.
	That's something to be said.
	It's a lesson for all ages.
	It's a lesson for all ages, exactly.
	And England has been through terrible times, up and down, throughout its history.
	So that's why I'm always optimistic, considering civil liberties, you know, mass migration, culture, heritage, all of these topics in today, in 2025, it's never too late.
	You know, so I'm always optimistic.
	I know it's easy to get blackpilled, no blackpilling.
	So, you know, everything will be fine, I think, in the end.
	I've got here written down, yeah, King John of England was forced to sign the Magna Carta by rebellious barons at a meadow called Runnymed near the River Thames.
	It wasn't meant to be a founding document, but was a desperate compromise between a weak king and angry nobles meant to avoid civil war.
	Clause 39 famously states, no free man shall be seized or imprisoned except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.
	And this planted the seed for the rule of law that even monarchs must obey legal limits.
	I know.
	I know now.
	I know.
	Yeah, go for it.
	I was just going to say as well that so John, when he originally gave this his seal back in 2015, he had no intention of honouring his word.
	He was basically sure that the Pope would annul it for him.
	And then, of course, when Pope Innocent III did void Magna Carta, well, it wasn't me.
	It wasn't me.
	But that's where, you know, enter Sir William Marshall.
	To go back to the earlier segment, if we're talking about Knights of the Realm, Sir William Marshall is the greatest knight who ever lived.
	His story, his history, Beau did an epoch on him.
	You should go check it out.
	But he is one of my favourite people in all of English history.
	He lived the most extraordinary life.
	He served five different kings of England.
	That's awesome.
	He lived to be about 72.
	He went on crusade.
	He was the veteran and victor of over 500 against 500 opponents in tourneys and mealies.
	He was honestly, and, you know, the guy who is really responsible for why we still have the Magna Carta now and saved us from a French invasion.
	So he was basically the perfect man, the perfect knight.
	That's awesome.
	I need to look into that.
	I didn't know about that.
	Habeas corpus came from the idea that you can't be imprisoned without being charged traces back to clause 39 and its focus on lawful detention.
	It became a symbol of liberty worldwide through written, though written for elite landowners, Magna Carta evolved into a global symbol of freedom, inspiring revolutions, reforms, and movements from England to America.
	The next one, it's a pretty obvious one.
	The English language.
	It is, I think it matters so much, the English language being biased.
	Sorry about that.
	It is the dominant language of science, diplomacy, trade, media, and the internet.
	And God.
	And God.
	God spoke English.
	I don't make the world laughing out there as well.
	Rooted in Anglo-Saxon, enriched by empire, solidified by cultural reach.
	So spoken by over 1.5 billion people.
	English is spoken by around 20% of the global population around, either natively or as a second language.
	It's the most widely learned second language on earth.
	The language of the internet as well, like I've mentioned, over 60% of all online content is in English.
	Domains, programming languages, social media terms, all shaped by English.
	And one day, space.
	And one day space.
	Can you imagine?
	Like in Star Wars, everyone speaks English.
	Yeah, exactly.
	95% of scientific papers today are published in English.
	95%.
	And even in Anglophone countries, researchers must publish in English to reach a global audience.
	English has absorbed thousands of words from Latin, French, Norse, Greek, Hindi, Arabic, and more.
	That's why it's so flexible, adaptive, and easy to borrow from a linguistic empire in itself.
	So a big one.
	Something to celebrate.
	And also, it just has to be said, beautiful.
	Yeah, it is.
	We have a genuinely beautiful language.
	I don't mean, yeah, you've got 10 quid, bruv.
	I mean, like, the old new King James or King James style poetic.
	A Charles Dickens novel.
	Yeah.
	Shakespeare.
	Yeah.
	Tennyson.
	Although I do like the word quid, to be fair.
	It's a good work.
	I'll give you that.
	The next one.
	The Industrial Revolution.
	Transformed global production, society and economics.
	England was the birthplace of the steam engine, although it was Scottish.
	Was it?
	So, what?
	So it doesn't count?
	Leave it in there.
	Mechanized factories and railways, sparking the modern age.
	England was the first country to industrialize.
	By the early 1800s, England became the first industrialized nation, shifting from agrarian work.
	Said that correctly, am I?
	Agrarian?
	Agrarian?
	Don't know why brain just went then.
	Work to mechanize factory labor at an unprecedented scale.
	The textile industry, as well, a big one, was the first to mechanize using inventions like the spinning jenny, water frame, and power loom.
	England became the world's workshop for cotton goods, and England moved production out of cottages and into centralized, mechanized factories, birthing modern capitalism and wage labour.
	England's rich coal seams powered the revolution, fueling steam engines, metalworking, and home heating.
	The phrase dark satanic mills comes from English poet William Blake.
	Yes.
	Describing the industrial cities of the North.
	Yeah.
	Honourable mention.
	Yeah.
	I am the North.
	It's Captain North.
	Love it.
	Railways were invented in England in 1825.
	England launched the first public railway, the Stockton and Darlington line.
	In 1830, the Liverpool-Manchester Railway became the first modern intercity railway.
	And this sparked a global industrial revolutions where France, Germany, the US and Japan followed England's lead, importing English machines, engineers and methods.
	And we still can't get them to bloody go on time.
	No.
	No, yeah.
	And then the rest of the world proceeded to surpass us with their bullet train.
	I mean, thank you.
	And we got HS2.
	Yeah, which hasn't even been built.
	Next one.
	Literature and theatre.
	Yes.
	Has to be said.
	Profound global cultural influence from Hamlet to Lord of the Rings.
	Massive.
	Big fan of Lord of the Rings.
	Incredible.
	I know you've done a lot of work on Lord of the Rings.
	That's why I wanted to give a good nod to.
	No, I'm something of a Tolkien fan myself.
	England's literary canon shapes storytelling, language, and moral imagination worldwide.
	Shakespeare is the most influential writer in human history.
	Rightly so.
	His works have been translated into over 100 languages.
	He introduced over 1,700 new words and phrases into English, including eyeball, bedroom, lonely, and break the ice.
	The Globe Theatre was the world's first mass entertainment venue built in 1599.
	It brought drama to the common man and theatrical revolution, where nobles and peasants watched the same plays side by side.
	Isn't that nice?
	And the English novel was born in the 18th century.
	Writers like Daniel Defoe and Samuel Crusoe.
	Yeah.
	That's it.
	And Samuel Richardson, Pamela, helped invent the modern novel, a new form of storytelling focused on the individual psyche.
	King James Bible, honourable mention, shaped English style, commissioning England, its majestic, poetic phrasing influenced centuries of literature, rhetoric, and religious thought too.
	But you could name so many.
	I've got a list here.
	William Blake, like we've mentioned, Williamsworth Wadsworth, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Bram Stoker, Jane Austen, George Orwell, Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, my favourite.
	The list goes on and on.
	They do.
	No, honestly, it's absolutely extraordinary, the number of writers, you know, famous English writers.
	It's, well, I mean, it's very helpful for me as a presenter on a show called Chronicles, just going through pieces of literature.
	Awesome.
	It's going to be inexhaustible.
	Yeah.
	It's like never-ending.
	Yeah.
	It's incredible.
	Absolutely incredible.
	The next one.
	Football, not soccer.
	I want to say that.
	Well, to be fair, I'm opting out of this one.
	You're opting out of this one.
	I've never been a footy fan.
	Fair enough.
	So I'll let you represent.
	It is the world's most popular sport.
	Undeniably.
	Even if you don't like it or you're not a fan, I've gone off it personally, but I still do watch the World Cup.
	Codified and spread globally from England.
	It became a universally cultural language, one of the few shared global rituals, which is awesome.
	The Football Association, or FA, was founded in London in 1863, making England the birthplace of modern football.
	It was the first time the rules were standardised, separating it from rugby.
	The first match under FA rules took place in December 1863 between Barnes FC and Richmond FC in London.
	Soccer, this is where the term obviously came from, from association football, shortened by English public schoolboys in the 1880s.
	And ironically, Americans kept using it longer after the English dropped it.
	Just thought I'd say, do love my American brothers and sisters though.
	I think they're cool.
	I think they're awesome.
	The oldest football club in the world is English, which is Sheffield FC.
	Founded in 1857 and is officially recognised by FIFA as the world's oldest club still in existence.
	Pretty cool.
	That's remarkable.
	Very remarkable.
	And it was spread globally by the British Empire, football was.
	So that's an honorable mention.
	British sailors, engineers, soldiers and merchants introduced football to Latin America, Africa, Asia and Europe, often before these regions even had nation states.
	And England played in the first ever international match in 1872, where they faced Scotland in Glasgow, the first international Football match in history, and this became the seed of international tournaments and global football diplomacy.
	And it's watched by over 3.5 billion people globally, making it the most popular sport on earth.
	That's astonishing.
	Astonishing.
	Yeah, I'm hearing these figures for the first time.
	Yeah, that is genuinely pretty popular.
	I don't suspect it to be high, but yeah, that's incredible.
	And the FIFA World Cup is the world's largest single sport event.
	So an honorable mention, considering it's English.
	What's all this?
	Did England rig the result?
	I'm only hearing about this for the first time.
	I just wanted to get the photo.
	Is this Scottish propaganda?
	It probably is.
	No, it wasn't rigged.
	Next one.
	Very important one.
	The British Museum and the concept of public access to knowledge.
	So opened in 1759.
	It was one of the first national museums open to the public and it set a global precedent for education and cultural access.
	You know, and obviously people are trying to say that it's controversial because it was built through the empire, but enough of the naysaying.
	You know, we're focusing on positives here.
	It was the first national public museum in the world, funded by Parliament and free to all for studious and curious persons.
	And a revolutionary idea in the 18th century.
	Unlike royal or aristocratic collections, the British Museum was open to the public from its earliest days, a move that helped democratise access to science, art and archaeology.
	Very important.
	The British Museum became the model for national museums worldwide, inspiring institutions like the Louvre.
	Is it Louvre?
	In Paris?
	Paris?
	The Louvre.
	The Louvre.
	I think.
	Don't even pronounce it properly.
	Sorry about that.
	This is about England, okay.
	Yeah, exactly.
	I'll say Louvre if I want to.
	The Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. And is it the Hermitage in St. Petersburg?
	It may well be.
	I'm not familiar.
	I know how you say it.
	Have you ever been to the Victorian Albert Museum?
	No, I haven't.
	That's my favourite.
	That's my favourite in London.
	Yeah, if you haven't already, go to a Victorian Albert.
	That's an astonishing display from all over the world.
	Some good content from that.
	Another very important one.
	The English public education system.
	It was the blueprint for mass education from England.
	Grammar schools, Oxford and Cambridge and universal education policy were pioneering steps towards literacy and academic excellence.
	Grammar schools founded from the 12th century onwards, so a massive institution, very old institution, which offered classical education in Latin and theology to boys regardless of social class.
	Oxford, which was established in 1096, and Cambridge, established in 1209, became the intellectual engines of the English-speaking world, producing generations of scholars, clergy, scientists, statemen, you name it.
	The tutorial system is of one-to-one or small group instructions.
	It's still used, obviously, at Oxford and Cambridge, and is considered one of the most intellectually rigorous teaching methods globally.
	Very cool.
	Very cool indeed.
	Very cool.
	We're going full nerd in this and enjoying it.
	And from the 19th century onward, public schooling in England helped form a cohesive national culture teaching history, patriotism, English literature, and Christian values.
	Patriotism.
	Oh, they should bring that back.
	Teach that again.
	Yes.
	So we have the foundation there.
	Why not use it?
	Number nine is naval power and global trade.
	Very significant.
	We hear, obviously, about the British being one of the best navies in the world, so why not mention it?
	It set the terms of modern geopolitics and commerce.
	Through maritime dominance, England helped create a global trading system, spread capitalism.
	It does have its faults, I will say, but it lifted a lot out of poverty, so that's the positive there.
	And laid the foundations of the modern global economy.
	And in the late 1500s, England invested heavily in naval strength, defeating the Spanish Armada in 1588, a turning point that allowed English maritime expansion.
	Established by Henry VIII, the Royal Navy became the most powerful naval force in history by the 18th century, projecting English power worldwide.
	And England played a central role in shaping Admiralty law, still the legal foundation for international shipping and naval conflict today, and obviously beyond.
	And England created the first global trade network.
	Something to be proud of, I think.
	And by the 1700s, English ships connected Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean, India, China, and Europe, enabling the first true global economy.
	Something to be proud of, I think.
	Well, and just not to mention, of course, those particularly famous and wonderful English explorers, like Sir Francis Drake, Captain Cook.
	These are some of the most famous heroes in all of English history.
	Right?
	And deservedly so.
	Exactly.
	Deservedly so.
	Yeah.
	No blackpilling, please.
	And I thought I'd leave the most controversial to the end.
	Oh, yeah.
	And that's the British Empire, otherwise known as the English Project.
	Used to be, anyway.
	There is no desire, there's no denying it for Let me start that again.
	Excuse me.
	There's no denying that the British Empire was one of England's greatest achievements.
	There's just no doubt.
	You know, whatever your view is now, we can look back easily and, you know, pick out atrocities, which, fine.
	I actually don't have any qualms with that.
	We should look at the bad and the good too.
	But to diminish it and say it's not one of the greatest achievements is denying history, in my view?
	Well, to say that the British Empire was bad for existing, or was evil because it was an empire, is fundamentally to not understand human nature.
	It's to misunderstand civilization.
	In history, going back to the Akkadians, you either ruled an empire or you became a part of someone else's.
	You were either conquered or you were a conqueror.
	And when you have an empire like Britain, it's very interesting to see how much of it in those early beginnings came about by accident.
	Especially when you've got a lot of the Puritans and the religious minorities obviously leaving to the Americas and lots of people.
	And then invariably what would happen, of course, they would grow and they would need some regulation.
	And so the British state will get involved.
	And then before you know it, and people say, oh, Britain shouldn't have taken India.
	Just as one example of a country famously a part of the empire.
	Raj.
	You're right, the Raj.
	But before that, you know, with the East India Trading Company.
	Yes.
	And obviously becoming really under Britain's fear at the end of the Seven Years' War.
	It's like, oh, well, it was evil for Britain to conquer us.
	We should have been an independent India.
	There would never have been an independent India.
	India, as a collective ideal of a nation, did not exist in 1757, whenever it was.
	And you were either going to be under the British or you were going to be under the French.
	Right?
	It's that simple.
	That is the hard reality of the situation back in the middle of the 1700s.
	So they can lament that it existed, but it doesn't grapple with the reasons for why such a force would come to exist and needed to exist in the first place.
	And obviously as well, the British Empire is one of those empires that actually foresaw its own dissolution in the end.
	Even if some people might feel like its paternalism was misguided, it still actually saw its own end after providing a certain level of civilization to its colonies and other place in the world, which is, generally speaking, not the psychology of most empires at all.
	So yeah, no, the British Empire was a remarkable achievement on behalf of England.
	But of course, we can't, we don't just define ourselves by it, right?
	England is a much older nation in the broad aspect of history.
	The British Empire represents about 250 years.
	Yeah, exactly.
	In a nation that, as you say, is nearly 1,100 years old, right?
	So we've always been more than just an imperial power.
	Exactly.
	Tiny bit of history.
	Obviously, there's not enough to cover when it comes to the Empire.
	There's lots to obviously discuss.
	It was English sailors, merchants, lawmakers, and monarchs who launched it long before Britain even existed.
	And for centuries, that empire reshaped the world from law and language to railways and representative government.
	It's become fashionable now, really, to apologise for the empire, you know, with these calls for decolonization, which we've been hearing for a long, long time now, even before we were born.
	The king not been able to go to another foreign country without giving a land acknowledgement.
	Oh my gosh.
	Is it Canada recently?
	Yeah.
	See that?
	I'm waiting for the English's land acknowledgement of England.
	Yeah, I'm waiting for that one.
	But we should recognise the immense legacy that England did leave behind.
	England began overseas colonisation in the late 1500s, founding colonies in Ireland in 1171, Virginia in 1607, and Newfoundland in 1583.
	The Acts of Union 1707 created Britain, but by then the empire was already spreading.
	English common law spread across the empire.
	The legal systems of Australia, Canada, India, the US and Hong Kong all stemmed from English common law, not a pan-British code.
	Parliamentary democracy was an English export.
	The Westminster model with elections, civil service and a sovereign legislature was exported from England to dozens of colonies.
	Railways, telegraphs and infrastructure were English blueprints.
	The Empire spread English technology, building rail networks in India, Africa and Australia that still function today.
	Not so much, I think, in India.
	I think a little bit less.
	Perhaps not.
	Perhaps not.
	The British Museum and the Imperial Archive were English creations.
	Institutions like the British Museum 1759 and the Royal Geographical Society were founded in England to organise and study the Empire.
	Scotland benefited from the Union.
	Just going to say it.
	But England still built the system.
	You loved it.
	I'm just going to say it.
	You guys loved it.
	You were overrepresented in the Empire.
	Enough of this.
	You hate it.
	You hate it.
	Come on, guys.
	I love the Scots.
	We had a hell of a time.
	Yeah.
	And they were overrepresented because they were good.
	They were good at what they were doing.
	They were.
	Very good at what they were doing.
	So I don't buy this whole, oh, I hate it.
	I hate it.
	Yeah, we were locked in the trunk of the car.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And taken along for a ride.
	No, no, you lost.
	No, you loved it.
	No, you called shotgun.
	Yeah, you called shotgun.
	Yeah, exactly.
	You loved it.
	Let's be honest here.
	You loved it.
	Love you, Scots.
	Yeah, we love you.
	After 1707, Scots became key players in the empire, but they joined an English system already in motion.
	The infrastructure, charter companies, navy and colonies were English built before Union.
	Even the critics used English tools.
	Anti-colonial leaders such as Gandhi, and I can never pronounce his name properly, is it?
	Nkrumah in Ghana?
	Oh, I'm not familiar.
	were educated in English, trained in English law, and used English institutions to seek independence.
	The Empire abolished the slave trade.
	England led the global abolitionist movement with the help of Christians, ending the transatlantic trade in 1807 and using the Royal Navy to enforce it at economic costs.
	So I believe Royal Navy Marines died a lot to abolish this trade.
	Blockaded Brazil.
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	That's a large coastline.
	Huge.
	Massive.
	Look, I want to end it on this.
	It is incredibly fashionable now to just hate England.
	And I get it.
	I have my qualms with my own country, the British state.
	I'm not happy.
	Obviously, it's why I'm doing what I'm doing.
	It's why you guys do what you do here.
	Because we love our country.
	We don't want to see it go to ruin.
	And it upsets me a bit.
	I'm getting a bit emotional, man.
	It upsets me to see it go down this route.
	It really does.
	Well, we still have to...
	I didn't think that that would happen.
	No, it is.
	I have my criticisms, obviously, we all do, of government and its predecessors.
	You know, the bad parts of history.
	We have to tackle it on, obviously.
	But I do believe that this is something to be proud of.
	It is.
	And I want to keep that going.
	And we wouldn't do what we do if we just hated our own country, culture, history, and to just deny the empire's legacy and before that and after that.
	And to deny it, I think, in my view, essentially erases history.
	I think you're entirely right.
	I mean, it really comes from a genuine sense of unconditional love for the land and its people.
	This weekend, I went to a visited Tewksbury for the first time and went to the medieval fair there.
	And you just go to Tewksbury and you just see all these exquisite medieval houses.
	And you really just, it's, that's another thing about England.
	Just the land itself, the landscape, its rolling hills, it's rivers, its shrubs, its wildlife, its architecture.
	You know, just the visual, you know, splendour of England is genuinely unparalleled.
	It's a beautiful land and I could never live anywhere else.
	I'll die an Englishman and that'll be it.
	I'm not going to Dubai, like all the influences.
	I'm not doing any of that.
	I'm not interested.
	I've lived and I've breathed in this country and I'll die here.
	I don't care.
	Even if it means that it doesn't look like the England that I know and love, I don't care.
	I'll die here.
	That's it.
	It's still the first ticket in the lottery of life.
	Exactly.
	And I'm very grateful.
	That's it.
	Cool.
	I'll just quickly go to the guitar.
	I was like, keep it together.
	Keep it together.
	The Bully Maguire, like, gonna cry.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Gonna cry.
	Gonna poo your pants.
	Logan Pines, Logan 17 Pines says, as I learn more of the French language, I know the English is both the most pleasing to hear and the one language that treats words with reason.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	I do actually want to learn another language at some point.
	And I don't like the Englishmen who just go abroad and shout in English loud.
	Cross the ass, mate.
	Yeah, yeah.
	It's not me.
	So that's great.
	I hope the French is going well, Logan.
	That's good.
	And Rhys Jampie says, congratulations to Chelsea on winning the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup.
	Trump decided to join in the trophy celebration.
	Yeah.
	It was super bizarre.
	I was not expecting it.
	I was like, what?
	Very me.
	And the most important part of the message, Britannia rules the waves.
	Yeah, there you go.
	Indeed.
	Well.
	Neckbeards of the world unite.
	You have nothing to lose but your games is my message for this segment.
	Very good.
	Very good.
	Because they're coming for your video games.
	And by they, I mean exactly who you think.
	Lobbyists, corporations, and people who don't have your best interests at heart.
	Now, you know, I'm, well, fairly young, I suppose, on the grand scale of things, you know.
	I remember my first console, you know, was back in the early 2000s, was probably a PlayStation 1, PlayStation 2, something like that.
	And so, of course, you know, your mum or dad would very generously buy you a video game.
	You'd stick the disc in.
	And then it's yours.
	And it's so much yours that I've still got those games.
	I still remember.
	I still remember playing on my Super Nintendo and getting Super Mario World.
	That was the first game I ever properly played.
	Then I remember my dad coming home, I think it was around Christmas time, and he had the PlayStation 1 and I couldn't get off it.
	I was playing, I think it was Mickey Mouse Adventures, don't ask why, and Formula One.
	Very, very different.
	Big Formula One fan when I was a kid.
	So like, yeah, I absolutely loved it.
	But now my taste has grown exponentially since.
	Very glad to hear it.
	Well, also, so what we're getting to here is, of course, the fact that one time you bought a game and it was yours.
	But now, because of the evolving system, video games, you have a lot of them that are becoming more and more reliant on online servers, right, provided by the host and the companies who made them.
	And so you have here a message from Ubisoft, famous, infamous French-Canadian games company, probably most famous for, well, Assassin's Creed.
	That was the One I always used to go to back in my youth.
	But you can see here they say that the EULA, which is the end user lice, sorry, end user license agreement.
	If I just bring it briskly to point C, that it can be stopped at the time of Ubisoft's decision to discontinue offering or supporting the product.
	So say, for example, you go and pay £60, £60 for a video game by Ubisoft, and it's entirely reliant on their servers.
	Then you're going to play the game.
	And say three years down the line, some Ubisoft exec decides, well, we don't have enough gamers playing this game anymore.
	We don't have enough people using that server.
	We're just going to close down that server.
	Yeah, we'll give you a little bit of notice, but we're going to basically just close down the server.
	And so that leaves you, well, hang on, I paid £60 for this game, and it didn't say on the box, you're not going to be able to play this in three years.
	Because some execs decided to pull the prog.
	Yeah, it's sad.
	Yeah, Ubisoft had done...
	Splinter Cell Double Agent.
	I used to play that a lot.
	They've completely killed all the servers on that.
	There were so many games that had servers completely killed that were even popular.
	So, yeah, sucks.
	Well, so obviously every action has its equal opposite reaction.
	Of course.
	And so the reaction was a movement, a consumer movement, called Stop Killing Games.
	Right.
	Nice and to the point.
	And it says that the initiative was started in 2024 by Ross Scott after the shutdown of The Crew, which was a racing game published by Ubisoft.
	Right.
	Ubisoft.
	That required a constant internet connection despite being mostly single-player.
	Yes.
	Which is even more insulting.
	It is insulting.
	Because again, I remember towards the end of the noughties, there were a few games that I had for the 360, where, sure, the multiplayer servers have stopped now.
	You can't play online with friends, but you still have the single-player campaign.
	Yeah, basically.
	Yeah.
	So you've still got half a game.
	Not to worry, we still have half a game to play.
	Theory me.
	But now, obviously, that's moving out.
	And Ubisoft turned off the game.
	And millions have paid for it.
	And obviously, they began revoking the license.
	And so what are you left to do?
	And there's more examples of it here of different games.
	I've not played any of these personally.
	But what matters, of course, is a principle that people have bought all of these games.
	And the games companies haven't, you know, because not most people, you don't pick up a game, do you, and read like the end user agreement on the back of a box.
	No one does that.
	No.
	Right?
	You just pick up the game, you see if you like the game, and you expect to keep the game.
	Yeah, you're focusing on, you know, the game, not the terms and conditions.
	Yeah.
	So this ended up with petitions.
	My gosh.
	So there's one petition for the EU, right, for the European Parliament.
	And then there's also one here for the United Kingdom.
	And yeah, as you're wowing out, this has got nearly 200,000 signatures.
	Still going up.
	Yeah, well, I'd encourage everyone to sign it because what are you going to do?
	Side with the lobbyists?
	Yeah, exactly.
	So what does it say?
	The government should update consumer law to prohibit publishers from disabling video games and related assets or features they've already sold without recourse for customers to retain or repair them.
	We seek this as a statutory consumer right.
	Very cool.
	Most video games sold can work indefinitely, but some have design elements that render the product non-functional at a time which the publisher controls with no date provided at sale.
	Okay.
	And so you have here the Video Games Europe, which is the big group that is basically against this.
	This is all, you can, if I go forward a bit, all of these companies that you see here are affiliated with Wizoft.
	Right.
	Yeah, they keep coming up, don't they?
	Yeah, of course Blizzard is up there.
	Of course.
	They've been shafting people for a long time.
	Surprised to see Bandai Namco on there as well.
	I'm not familiar with them.
	Who are they?
	Dark Souls.
	Oh, right.
	Okay.
	I believe that's Black Wukong myth.
	Oh, gosh.
	oh you've really tested me now bandai namco is that Like Budokai?
	I'm shocked.
	That is that, isn't it?
	Thank you, Samson.
	Yes, I did get that.
	That's right.
	Nintendo doesn't surprise me.
	Netflix doesn't surprise me.
	No, not at all.
	There's a lot of them I haven't heard of.
	Obviously, Sony.
	Well, for the sake of time, I'll just skip forward a little bit.
	So they had a response to this, which was that we appreciate the passion of our community.
	However, the decision to discontinue online servers is multifaceted, never taken lightly, and must be an option for companies when an online experience is no longer commercially viable.
	We understand that it can be disappointing for players, but when it does happen, the industry ensures that players are given fair notice of the prospective changes in compliance with local consumer protection laws.
	Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players, as the protections we put in place to secure players' data, remove illegal content and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable.
	In addition, many titles are designed from the ground up to be online only.
	In effect, these proposals would curtail developers' choice by making these video games prohibitively Expensive to create.
	We welcome the opportunity to discuss our position with policymakers and those who have led the European Citizens Initiative in the coming month.
	But obviously, the Commission, sorry, the petition put forward to the European Union has got over 1 million signatures.
	Right, so this is in reaction to that.
	And it's also the fact that you have, obviously, an enormous dialogue going on amongst a lot of the bigwigs from the gaming community.
	Now, I'm not actually going to pretend to be an expert on this, but you have people like Pirate Software, who has quite a big following.
	He decided to come out in favor of the lobbyists.
	Is that the guy who used to work for Blizzard?
	Am I correct in saying that?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Thank you again, Samson.
	Well, his fact-check is in his brain.
	Really, it should be Samson up here, to be honest with you.
	Yeah, that's great.
	It's funny.
	But then, yeah, so there's been a whole host of discourse around that.
	You can see him here giving similar thoughts.
	But then on the other side, witness for the prosecution of the lobbyists, you have people like PewDiePie saying that he strongly encourages everyone to sign the petition.
	You also have saying, yeah, if buying a game is not a purchase, then pirating them is not a theft.
	Fair play.
	Which I think the logic is certainly there.
	Of course, Asma Gold.
	Asman Gold, yep.
	Also come out in favor of the petition as well.
	He's become quite based as well, right?
	become very based hasn't he and also um because of the um the ages uh in the It doesn't personally affect them.
	You know, what's happening to the gamers, right?
	Build a chair.
	Stop sitting on the chair all day and playing.
	When will the boomers recognize the persecution that's being put on the gamers?
	Yeah.
	But then, of course, you have a gentleman's name here I can't really pronounce, Nicolae Stefanuta, vice president of the European Parliament, who has voiced his full support.
	That's cool.
	Right?
	That's cool.
	Because let's face it, he looks like a gamer.
	Yeah.
	He looks like he'll turn up.
	That's a sniper game, though.
	Yeah.
	Turn up to the European Parliament and then just kick back with a few cold ones and a good game at the end of the day.
	You're a from software kind of guy, I think.
	So yes, I would just encourage people to actually sign this because it is ridiculous.
	Yeah, on the face of it.
	It's, you know, a bit like how in mobile phones, they'll purposely sabotage them so that they'll break in four years.
	So you have to buy the updated model.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Scam.
	It's just, it's genuinely sabotaging it so that you constantly have to buy the latest console, the latest game.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	And it moves it along in such a way where, especially if, obviously, when you've got games that are on Steam, right?
	Where you just download the game.
	And then if Ubisoft or just keep riding on Ubisoft, right?
	Ubisoft or one over the game.
	We're taking it away from the library.
	Yeah, we're taking it away now.
	I bought that game.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	And also, it's just about actually preserving the games themselves.
	exactly.
	Yeah.
	Even if it's, you know, an empty lobby or something, I mean, could you imagine if at the end of the noughties, it was just a massacre of physical discs.
	They're just there coming with sledgehammers, breaking your crashed bandicoots.
	Right.
	Your Spyro discs shattered on your bedroom table.
	Yeah, great.
	Yeah.
	Well, not great, you know, but I was thinking of those two games.
	Yes.
	So if you're in the EU, there's a petition right there for you to sign.
	And if you're in the United Kingdom, actually, on that, this is your last day that you can sign one in the United Kingdom.
	It just happens to be that way in presenting the segment.
	So gamers, unite.
	Nice.
	All right, I'll just go through these rumble rants.
	EngageFew again says, my first console was the Atari 2600.
	Well, I was going to show my age there.
	I thought, how do I get it?
	2600.
	It's because I bought one.
	Yeah, I did buy one a couple of years ago.
	Don't you dare talk to me about being old.
	Well, do forgive me.
	And that's a random name says, what kind of games do you guys play?
	I'm working on a sci-fi strategy game as a solo dev and would like to send you guys free copies once it's done.
	That's awesome.
	If you need voiceover, I'd be happy to provide that.
	Yeah, I'd love to play it.
	I'd love to play it.
	I mean, as regards to what games I actually like, I was saying to you before we came on, I've just retreated now into those nostalgic classics.
	Mountain Blade Warband.
	Oh, great.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And my favourite game.
	One.
	I never actually got around to playing Bannerlord.
	Yeah, it did look great, but I just never got around to it.
	But also my favourite game of all time, which is just, of course, The Lord of the Rings, Battle for Middle-earth 2.
	Fair play.
	I haven't heard that.
	That's the green cover, right?
	Is that the green cover?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I had that.
	Oh, it's so fun.
	I played it.
	It's so, so fun.
	Long time ago.
	Oh, gosh.
	Especially when you get the mods.
	Oh, the modding community for that game is genuinely extraordinary.
	I didn't know that.
	yeah, they're wonderful.
	Mine is...
	Oh, so just quickly, that's a random name wants to know how to contact you for voiceover work.
	If you, okay, if you send an email, if you go on my Twitter, Lewis underscore Brackpool, and go to the link tree, you can send me an email on the tips, LewisBrackpool at proton.me.
	Just send me an email and we'll get in touch.
	There you go, your voice acting career sweet.
	I've always wanted to do it.
	I've actually always wanted to be in like a video game as a voice actor, whether it be an enemy or whatever.
	That would be awesome.
	What kind of games do I?
	So my favourite series of all time is Metal Gear Solid.
	That's my favourite because it's very lore-heavy.
	I still haven't completed the fourth one, even though it came out years ago and my friends all had it, but it took like eight hours to download the game, and you had to wait with, you had Snake smoking a cigarette, waiting for it to install.
	So I still haven't played it, and it's impossible to emulate.
	I tried for a while, I gave up.
	So it's Metal Gear Solid.
	I do like Dark Souls a lot because I like the difficulty of it.
	That's really fun.
	I also like strategy.
	Dwarf Fortress is really fun.
	that's mega but then i like Gosh, Age of Empires.
	Imagine if they were built today.
	And they're like, oh yeah, we're removing the online servers so you can never play Rome Total War again.
	That's sacrilege.
	But I love Silent Hill as well.
	That's one of my favourites too.
	Yeah.
	Rome Total War.
	They should be playing that in a thousand years.
	Yeah, hopefully.
	They really should.
	Apparently, it's the game with the highest divorce rates attributed.
	Yeah.
	Apparently, that is Rome Total War.
	It is, yeah, the game that is mentioned in the most divorce cases.
	I'll bear that in mind.
	I'll bear that in mind.
	All right, let's go to the video comments, Samsuite.
	I just watched Superman, and this just proves that Hollywood people need to learn how to shut up.
	That is a political conflict within the context of the movie, but the movie is really not political.
	It is the most goofy of comic book comic movies.
	If you like 19's goofy comic book, you'll like this.
	If you don't, you won't like this.
	Simple ass.
	Is it New Superman?
	Yes, just.
	I've not seen it.
	No, I've not either.
	I'm probably not going to go, to be fair.
	Yeah, yeah.
	With it all.
	But I totally take Sophie's point as well.
	You get a lot of things like this where actually a film or a TV series might not be enormously political, but like one rogue actor just wants to make it about something.
	But then it all gets bogged down into, oh, These are some of the many structures left behind by the Polish refugees when they were returning to their homeland.
	But what is so amazing, these structures made out of lime mixed with marum are still strong and habitable.
	Interestingly, this borehole, now seemingly abandoned in the bush but still functional, was sunk by the refugees.
	A few meters from this water point is a well-designed temple built from 1943 to 1946.
	That's very cool.
	This is very cool.
	Didn't know that.
	Polish World War II establishments in Uganda.
	That's so random.
	Polish Empire.
	Yeah, yeah, the Polish Empire in Uganda.
	That's random.
	I didn't know that.
	Very funny.
	Is that all the video comments, Samson?
	Yes.
	Okay, great.
	Well, thanks for the confirmation.
	We've got the comments at the bottom, haven't we?
	Yes, I'll just start going through them.
	So, Electric Boogaloo says, the honour of becoming a knight of the realm should have similar responsibilities.
	For one thing, it should mean you are bound to the sceptre dial.
	Any knight who betrays this and chooses to live outside of the UK should be exiled.
	This is a great point as well by Boogaloo here, about the actual responsibility of the thing.
	It's not just about the achievement getting there.
	It's about how you are going on from it as well.
	Absolutely.
	Just like- Yeah.
	Well, just like the secularization of knighting, the secularization of oaths, just taking oaths.
	Like, you remember when the last parliament started and you had Clive Lewis, MP for Norwich, right?
	And he put his, you know, hand swear allegiance to Charles, but he wouldn't swear them to his descendants.
	And so they had to make him take the oath again.
	That's it.
	Yeah, they had to make him do it again.
	And it's like, well, what's the point?
	He's already said that he's not in favour.
	It just like, there's no force behind it.
	There's no, there's no, there's no problem if he breaks it.
	Right, there's no...
	Yeah, it did.
	There was a genuine consequence if you wavered from that.
	Absolutely.
	Fuzzy Toaster says, the new nobles should earn their keep the way the old ones did, with blood, sweat, and gold.
	They got the gold, admittedly.
	However, I see no sweat.
	Public works for the good of the British people.
	And blood, point to one of with anything approaching military service, you can't.
	Well, no, entirely true, fuzzy.
	And then I'll just go for Nicholas Ware, who says, watching the motherland lose everything I love is heartbreaking.
	It makes being so pro-British in America difficult.
	Can you imagine the blurred out word I get over here?
	No, I cannot.
	I cannot.
	But we appreciate your loyalty to us.
	So thank you, Nicholas.
	Shall I read out the happy birthday to England one?
	Yeah, go for it.
	So Sophie Liv says, unironically, a majority of my favourite authors are English.
	And if you didn't even get to Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams or Ben Aronovich, have I said that correctly?
	An Englishman who cannot pronounce words.
	Terrible.
	I believe so.
	And their works are just soaked in this sense of humour, and that is entirely unique to British.
	Yeah, I can already see Monty Python underneath that.
	Don't forget that.
	Blackadder.
	Yes.
	Yes, I'm a fan of that.
	There's a character in that called Captain Darling.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Apparently.
	Oh, yeah.
	Oh, my face.
	Yeah, yeah.
	If you hadn't said anything, that's hilarious.
	You get the eye twitch going.
	This wonderful, dry, sarcastic, clever British humour that England brought to us with Monty Pythe and Blackadder, the IT crowd, and its like.
	I'm genuinely sad to see that sort of humour also becoming more and more rare.
	And the office as well, I want to point out.
	Shall I do another two?
	Yeah, go for it.
	We've got time.
	First Keeper Orland.
	The English invented time, or at least the standardization of time.
	And like the majority of inventions by the English, was invented because something was a minor inconvenience without it.
	Very good.
	What else should I pick?
	And someone online says the only exciting soccer thing I've ever heard of was one guy bit off another guy's ear.
	Oh, that was Luis Suarez, who bit off a guy's ear.
	Yeah.
	Argentinian player.
	Yeah.
	Is that it?
	Sounds pretty savage.
	It was pretty savage.
	And then from the final segment, we've got George Hap here who says, I appreciate what the Stock Killing Games campaign is doing, but getting the EU involved is like inviting a vampire into your house.
	I'd much rather the general consumer realizes that he doesn't only digital copies.
	Sorry, digital games, and online-only ones have an expiration date.
	Well, obviously, yes, I would much prefer that as well.
	I would like to raise the awareness, but I suppose it just comes down to that thing that's something that they shouldn't be doing anyway.
	Right?
	They shouldn't be in this.
	They just shouldn't be allowed to do that, I don't think.
	Absolutely not.
	So I absolutely understand your point, George, about government overreach.
	And perhaps you know more about the subject than I do as well.
	But I just feel like on this occasion that it seems like the guys have got the right idea of just actually getting the institution to back them over the lobbyists if they can.
	We've got Naomi Roberts who says, I just want to play Age of Empires without Steam, and it's apparently not possible.
	Well, that's another point as well.
	Yeah, it's all aggregating to servers.
	You've got some standalones like Escape from Tarkov and, gosh, what are the standalones without Steam?
	Well, I played Battle for Middle Earth.
	Oh, yeah, of course.
	That's a standard.
	That's not on Steam.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I don't know why.
	And EA don't have the license anymore, of course, to those games.
	So you can only get it through the community who have made their own online servers to play.
	And I feel like those guys should be rewarded for that.
	Absolutely.
	It speaks to true loyalty.
	Without them, we wouldn't be able to play that game as a community anymore.
	Exactly.
	And then we've got Lord Inquisitor.
	Hector says, I remember the last time they came for our video games, it spawned the birth of a young lad called Sargon of a CAD.
	And the rest, as they say, is history.
	Only know now.
	Only wanted to play video games.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Should have learnt the first time.
	And now we're here, eh?
	Gamergate 2.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And then last one before we go out, Fuzzy Toast says, seriously, peer-to-peer, just have it as a backup in your net code.
	I understand it has a slew of issues, but it sidesteps this stuff.
	Let people host their own servers, and hey, Presto, know more of this tripe.
	Yeah, well, as we were saying, having your own servers is probably the best way forward, to be honest with you.
	If you can do it, sure.
	Well, that's all we've got time for today, ladies and gentlemen.
	I hope you've enjoyed it.
	Lewis, thank you for coming on again.
	It's been wonderful having you here.
	No, thank you for having me on.
	It really means a lot.
	And we'll see you at 1 p.m. tomorrow.
	Okay, thank you.
	Have a good time.

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