00:02
This is a Global Player original podcast.
00:06
It's three minutes after ten. You're listening to James O'Brien on LBC. Here's a headline. Experts blame climate crisis for Western Europe's worst ever heatwave. I'll read you a little more of the story. The heatwave in Western Europe is the most severe and widespread ever and only possible because of the climate crisis driven by fossil fuel burning, scientists said today. Almost half of Europe's 850 largest cities are also suffering their worst ever heat stress. It's a combination of temperature and humidity they have found, with muggier conditions, meaning that sweating is less effective at cooling the body, at which point everybody goes, oh, that's why I can't sleep at the moment.
00:46
And then there's a lot more detail and a lot more science, if you like, a lot more statistics. It's the World Weather Attribution Consortium that shows how rapidly extreme heat is worsening as carbon pollution piles up in the atmosphere.
01:05
There's two big stories in the news today. One, obviously, I just shared with you, and the other you'll be aware of involves the king's finances and the potentially slightly tricky decision to spend hundreds of millions of pounds doing up Buckhouse and then not actually living in it. The first monarch, I think, since Queen Victoria, who won't be living in Buckingham Palace, despite these very necessary and very extensive renovations. And I...
01:31
I break up today. I'm off for the next couple of weeks. So I find my brain probably beginning to shut down slightly.
01:38
But these are both traditionally subjects that I file under massively important, but not necessarily phone-ins. Do you see what I mean? I can sit here and I hope be very entertaining and informative on both subjects.
01:54
But I don't know that I've ever absolutely nailed the right question when it comes to the very existence of the royal family. Can I do a topic? Would that be too meta?
02:05
Why have I never done a really good phone-in on whether or not we should have a royal family?
02:08
Is it because it just gets bogged down in predictable positions and stereotypes? Is it because I'm not a very good radio presenter? Perish the thought. And I feel that this week we've flirted. I feel like Icarus.
02:21
But I've flown a bit too close to the sun, if you pardon the analogy. And yesterday, that conversation we had about what should we be doing differently, I felt it only really kicked off about 10 to 11. And that must be my fault. It's tempting to blame you. But it means I didn't quite get you in the place that we all needed to be in until about half past 10, despite a 20 minute monologue. Or maybe you needed the 20-minute monologue to percolate, if you like, through your own thinking and your own consciousness.
02:51
And you didn't find yourself having much of interest to say until a little bit later in the hour. So we hit 11 o'clock. We could have carried on for another hour. The switchboard was full of people with interesting things to say about why we aren't coping, what we would do better to cope better with the heat.
03:09
And it can historically be the same with the royal family. And, you know, I'm also fascinated by what word are we going to use?
03:17
What word are we going to use? Because some of the phrases that we use, some of the phrases that I use, some of the phrases that I've introduced you to, are unhelpful in the great scheme of things.
03:27
The furiously hard of thinking is one of my favourites. But the people who believe that they know better than the scientists, or the people who believe that their favourite Daily Mail columnist somehow knows better... than 99 plus percent of all the qualified people on the planet. And it's not like Brexit, really. And that single element of it is like Brexit.
03:53
But the complications of understanding what the European Union is all about are much greater than the complications of understanding the relationship between carbon-based pollution and a heating planet. And it's really not that difficult to grasp.
04:08
And yet there was a widespread refusal to grasp it. Lots and lots of people fell for. Would you agree with me that the people who you might once have expected to be poo-pooing climate science have now decided to attack children instead for being too hot?
04:23
Do you see what I mean? It's like the movement of the, shall we say, the fatally incurious rather than the furiously hard of thinking. Because some of these people are perfectly capable of thinking. They just choose not to. So you move from, oh, I don't know about climate science. I mean, it was very hot in 1976. That obviously doesn't hold water as an argument against decades of observable science. But instead, rather than thinking about it or indeed acknowledging the mistake, instead you move effortlessly to blaming children for being too hot.
04:55
You know, they're having to shut hospitals because the machines don't work in this heat. And yet it's not that hard to find people on social media insisting that the young today aren't resilient enough because they're not capable. Usually in air-conditioned television and radio studios or air-conditioned newspaper offices, insisting that they shouldn't be shutting the schools or that children today aren't tough enough, despite the fact that hospitals in England are declaring critical incidents because radiotherapy machines, scanners, cooling units and IT systems are failing.
05:30
Under my glorious rule, it will be compulsory for anybody in this line of work who opines about the resilience of children... from an air-conditioned studio to conduct the next time we have the hottest day in history. They have to conduct their entire programme from the middle of Trafalgar Square with no shade, or from the 14th floor of a tower block with no lift, or just from a school with no air conditioning. And let's see how I'd be faring after three hours in the kind of heat that I've endured in every other aspect of my life, but which I don't have to endure while I'm actually at work.
06:06
I mean, it's comical, right? But also dangerous, like almost all of the opinions held by these people. Because it's always hand in hand, isn't it?
06:14
It's Brexit, it's Johnson, it's Trump, it's climate change. It's always going hand in hand.
06:20
And the question I really want to ask you, really, is whether or not it's dead.
06:26
Now, because they've tried to demonise net zero, they're trying very, very hard to demonise net zero.
06:32
There is currently a conference unfolding in London with a sort of who's who of the professionally ignorant, opining about everything from two-tier policing, which of course doesn't exist. right through to net zero, demonising Ed Miliband, funded by Donald Trump donors, funded by fossil fuel companies. I mean, it's not even hiding. It's not like Tufton Street where they don't declare who is paying them to come on radio and television programmes and argue against climate science. It's literally published who funds them, and here we are, still reporting it in some corners of the media with a straight face.
07:11
Has it failed?
07:13
even though net zero, I told you a while ago they were going to try and turn it into the next Brexit. They're trying really hard to turn it into the next Brexit. I don't know whether Nigel Farage has been given £5 million by fossil fuel companies or by 10 fossil fuel companies. We'll never know who else may have given him £5 million for undisclosed reasons, because he won't tell us about the money. We only know about the £5 million he took from Thai-based billionaire because of journalism, and he doesn't think that's any of your business. So you never know, really, with some characters, how much money they've squirreled away from vested interests.
07:50
That's why they squirreled away, I suppose.
07:54
Is it going to fail simply because of the weather? You know the party's final most terrible command, that we ignore the evidence of our own eyes and ears. And we sit here, some of us sit here marvelling at how others can ignore the evidence of their own eyes and ears.
08:12
right?
08:13
And others sit here ignoring the evidence of their own eyes and ears. It's a fairly binary divide. But can we actually ignore the evidence of our thermometers? Can we actually ignore the evidence? I don't really see. I haven't actually looked at what the Daily Mail columnists have done today, but I imagine one of them will be sort of going on about strawberry mivies or complaining that children aren't resilient. Actually, I can't be bothered. I'll have a look later. That idea that the The power of propaganda is so great that it can persuade populations to vote to become the first in history to impose economic sanctions on itself.
08:51
You can persuade people that a Ukrainian has set fire to Keir Starmer's old house because he wasn't paid for his prostitution services. There's so many examples of people being persuaded by this. the engines of propaganda to believe things that are obviously not true, that it was quite easy until relatively recently to get very depressed about net zero and climate change.
09:17
And they're still trying. Make no mistake, they're absolutely pushing. The idea that we shouldn't be doing this.
09:24
And there are some arguments about pragmatism. There's no argument about whether the world should be pushing towards net zero. There are some pragmatic and practical arguments about whether the United Kingdom should be taking quite such a leading role. And I get that. But the opposite of drill, baby, drill is shill, baby, shill.
09:41
If you are, I mean, literally, or rather the cousin, the twin brother of Drill Baby Bill, Drill Baby Drill is shill baby shill. You are lying to the public. It's insane to argue that we should be putting more carbon into the atmosphere or that by doing so we would somehow improve the state of our country.
10:00
But is it going to work?
10:02
And why do you think it is? Can we be a bit more optimistic today?
10:09
Do you think?
10:10
Can we say that even if you are programmed to ignore the evidence of your own eyes and ears, Can we say with some confidence that this is not going to work, that we are now approaching a point where everybody is going to have to acknowledge just the science, the reality?
10:35
I mean, in some ways, I've got two questions. I'm fascinated by the psychology of people who...
10:43
who don't understand things or who insist that they don't understand things. How on earth can you be persuaded that this is not a consequence of all the fossil fuels that we're pumping into the atmosphere? I used to hear from people in that category quite often. Now they're as rare as hen's teeth and they're always mad. So I mean that and I'm not pulling my punches or being kind or unkind. They are absolutely bonkers. The idea that you can look at all of the science and with a GCSE in domestic science you can conclude that you know more than all of the scientists do and of course if you're getting paid for that then good luck to you you know your kids need shoes you've sold your soul if you're not even getting paid for it if you're just going on social media you're just phoning up radio shows to insist that you know better than all the scientists do a i suppose it's a bit brexity and b i think you're on a hiding to nothing Richard Tice does it, I think.
11:38
Richard Tice has the brains of a pillow.
11:42
That much is clear. All these Nepo babies surrounding Farage who have either given him money in return for a job or are just expounding positions that are ridiculous. I don't think the net zero is going to land. I think it's going to fail.
11:59
I think the attempts to rubbish it, to demonise it, to denigrate it, to undermine it are just going to be undermined by days like today.
12:07
And not just the one-offs, but the fact that this is, as one newspaper's front page reminded us yesterday, this is the new normal.
12:16
Listen, as Craig points out, it's 22 years. It's 20-odd years too late.
12:22
But it's better late than never.
12:24
It is simply the case that you can't really argue against this science anymore unless you are an obvious idiot. So that's the question, really. That's where I'd like to encounter some optimism today. Do you think... And, of course, you're more than welcome to be pessimistic.
12:41
But do you think...
12:43
that the current crisis right across Europe is going to provide the political appetite needed for profound, prolonged and meaningful change.
12:57
Because the engines or the tanks parked on our lawns are powerful and exceedingly well-funded, but I think they might be increasingly impotent.
13:09
I haven't got a lot of precedent for that because they normally win, those tanks, those vested interests, those shills, those client journalists, those propagandists, those lobby groups masquerading as think tanks. They normally win. They've won on immigration, for example, which is largely designed to distract you from the real reasons for inequality. They've won on Brexit. They've won on tax issues. They've won on wealth distribution, poverty being the fault of the poor, not the...
13:39
They've won on almost every front. I think today they might lose this one.
13:44
They might lose this one.
13:48
0345 6060 973 is the number that you need. Just to tell me whether or not you think that this time, this weather...
13:57
is just going to change everything. 0345 6060 973. That this weather is going to change everything. And if you've been waiting for this moment, just give me a shout on why you welcome it, or whether you welcome it. You've been waiting for this moment.
14:18
An epic failure of journalism, but of course journalism is bought and sold in this country, just as politicians, some politicians are.
14:27
How do you greet the relationship between the public discourse and this extreme, this excessive, this extraordinary weather? Is it over? 0345 6060 973 is the number that you need. It's 1018.
14:44
Because I have to tell you what haunts me a bit at the moment is the thought that the weather breaks, it gets cold again next week, and the conversation goes back on the, well, forgive me, but goes back on ice. And this movement, I'm not doing a very good job of expressing my misgivings to you because this movement is gathering pace. You can almost hear the tills ringing.
15:08
I tell you that there is a conference in London at the moment being addressed by the leader of the opposition, being addressed by all of the mad people our media has turned into celebrities, the tough headmistress, the free speech bro, the leader of UKIP, Reform, the leader of the Tories. They're all there at a conference that's being funded in large part by fossil fuel companies. It's as if you can see the process.
15:34
beginning again, that the desperation to deny the reality of what we are all feeling. You'd like to think, wouldn't you, that there was a sort of fatal irony to the idea of a conference on extreme heat being cancelled because of extreme heat. Down in Kings Lynn, the Reform UK Council was poised to have a meeting to lift decarbonisation programmes to reverse climate change addressing policies. And they had to cancel the meeting because it was so hot.
16:05
Literally, the street that the council building is on has got flood barriers up because that is what happens as the climate changes, the waters rise.
16:15
And I just, I don't know, I just want either to canvas your optimism or your... It's a fairly straightforward question.
16:22
Is the weather going to end the debate? Or is the power and money of the liars so considerable and so great that the debate will not be over and it may even not be won? 10.22 is the time. Freddie's in Epping. Freddie, what would you like to say?
16:41
Good morning, James. Good morning to all of your listeners.
16:43
I know you don't have to say good morning to all of them.
16:48
Thank you. Carry on. No, I don't think that the debate will be won because I think there's too many persistent attitudes in society about the heatwaves and what came before them. You always hear the argument from older people about the heatwave of 1976.
17:04
And I think as long as that mentality is around, people of that age group supporting climate denialist parties such as reform will always be able to win the argument by just saying 1976, 1976, over and over and over again.
17:18
But what if in return now we have got the 11 hottest years ever? So it would be, OK, 1976 was anomalous.
17:29
And extraordinary, and you say to these people, perhaps politely, perhaps not, say there's a reason why you can remember it, you prune. It was 50 years ago, and you can remember it because it was so out of the ordinary. Those temperatures are normal now.
17:44
Surely that, and I know I'm possibly applying too much logic to illogical people, but surely that is the end of that particular argument.
17:53
I'm afraid it's not because every year, last year I heard 1976, particularly online. And then the year before that I heard 1976. And I just don't think that memory, that nostalgia is going to go away. And I think as a result, people will slowly begin to believe that discourse about that one summer 50 years ago or however long it was. 50 years, that's maths.
18:17
Yes, I know, crazy. But then I think... Again, I just think that attitude is too embedded and the longer... How old are you?
18:25
Do you mind me asking how old you are?
18:28
I'm 16, so I'm very concerned about climate change.
18:30
Yeah, that's really sad that you think that that oil tanker, as it were, is never going to be turned around because the crew are committed to the nonsense. Why do you think it works, Freddie? When you look at older people possessed of really stupid opinions, like the one you're describing, why do you think it works so well? Particularly given that almost all of the science, in fact, all of the science... Actually, that's not true. Kieran's picked me up on that. He said, James, you're talking rubbish again. Richard Tice has many experts to refute your claims. He just can't identify or name any of them. But that's hardly the point, is it?
19:02
Facts and evidence are all so old fashioned. So when you encounter an old person possessed of a really stupid opinion that jeopardizes your future, why do you think it works? How can they end up thinking something that is so obviously false and so demonstrably false?
19:18
Well, I think the reason we got into this mess about slowing down on net zero is because of the Conservative Party and particularly its voter base. So you'll remember, James, that in 2023, the Conservatives suddenly changed against net zero. And I think that was because they were concerned about, in 2024, losing their older voter base. So they pivoted to this argument. And with the Conservatives being such an old political force, it's the most successful party in the Western world, people will naturally believe it because traditionally so they trust it to be the party of government of sensibility if the party of sensibility is putting out these opinions and making them mainstream then people will think well surely they're right because they've governed us for so long and they can be trusted you're very very bright i don't mean that in a patronizing way i just mean the way that you're joining the dots because you're right cami baden i was a conservative government that introduced the
20:11
The pledge to hit net zero by 2050. And then you have to wonder why Cammie Badenoch decided to abandon it after becoming leader of the Conservative Party. And it could be epic ignorance. You know, you can never rule that out when you're talking about Cammie Badenoch. An extraordinary disdain for the facts or indeed for doing the reading and doing the research. But it's probably simpler to say that she's done it because she's frightened of losing all the votes that you still think are there among people who reject science.
20:40
So what do you think the polling was in November? What percentage of Britons do you think supported cutting carbon emissions to net zero by 2050? You probably know because you've done the research, but play along. Do you know?
20:53
I think it was around 70% supported the net zero target.
20:56
It was 60 last November. It's probably gone up now. So you're talking about 25% of the population. If I were to say to you, in desperate pursuit of optimism, that gets split, that gets shared out between Bader Knot, Farage and the other fellow who used to own Southampton Football Club.
21:13
That's not a threat, is it? That's 25% split three ways. And presumably it would be down to about 20% now because of, well, mortality and natural wastage. And also because some people will be sticking their head out the window and going, yeah, maybe I'm going to actually listen to the scientists and not to Richard Tice.
21:33
Well, I think the issue is that I think compared to 2019 before the pandemic, I think because of the economic crisis, people don't care about climate change because that's in 25, 50 years. People care about their problems now. And that's why people are voting for reform because, well, they've never held office. So they must be able to fix the problems because they're different.
21:55
Yeah, and everyone else has had a go.
21:59
Yeah, as long as we're in this crisis, I don't think economically, I don't think people will be worried about climate change until it's solved.
22:05
You are as bright as a button, young Freddie, because, of course, the other bit of the YouGov polling that I've just referred to does indeed show that people prioritise the cost of living. So saying that I support the government's commitment to carbon emissions is relatively meaningless unless you add, give me all your money. or we're going to cut carbon emissions by, you know, getting rid of your job or making life harder for it. So, I mean, it might be a demonstration of understanding, but as Freddie quite brilliantly reminds us, that understanding gets immediately diluted by the inevitable realities of living.
22:38
Johnny's in Bristol. Johnny, what made you pick up the phone?
22:42
Morning, James. Just picked up the phone because I was thinking exactly what you were saying. Will this change everything? And... Like my background is over the last 25 years, I've spent quite a bit of time working in oil and gas for big companies like Saudi Aramco, Adnok and Abu Dhabi.
23:01
Wow.
23:02
Shell, sepsis. So I've seen it on the inside. And remember all this climate stuff at the bottom end, it comes down to energy, right? It comes down to carbon and what drives our economies. And for the last 10 years, I've been...
23:14
working independent, trying to raise capital for bioenergy, solar, wind plants. So I've gone to the other side of the paradigm, if you think about it. And in a nutshell, you had a great high at the Paris Agreement 10 years ago. This word ESG came in, we're going to change the world, it's going to be great. You saw BlackRock and all these big investors coming in saying, we'll do it, we'll do it.
23:38
Once we got over the marketing process,
23:42
BS, I suppose is the polite thing to say.
23:45
When you're sitting inside, these companies, these investors, these pension funds, they start to work out it's really hard and it's really costly.
23:54
And you just don't want to be doing it. You then move on a bit. You've got two energy shocks, Russia, COVID-19.
24:02
And you're here today.
24:03
And now Iran. And now Iran. Now, the only guy who said it well that I've heard recently is your man, Greg Jackson from Octopus.
24:10
Yeah, big fan of him.
24:11
Those Torquay games last week. He stood up and he said, look, how we try to do renewals is stupid. We put windmills on people's land that they didn't want. And then we sent them a bill with 100 quid in green saying, this is great. And I was just going, yeah, you're dead right. It's like net zero. Who cares about it? Like, who even knows what net zero is? You know, these utopian goals don't work.
24:34
That's the language of politics. It's not actually the language of meaningful change.
24:39
Yeah, exactly. It doesn't make anything. And look, on the other side, you have to go, I got solar panels in my house there recently, right? You think of it as a consumer here. I'm doing that to be energy efficient, to use less. My missus comes in and goes, great, I can do more washing and leave the dryer on all day. And I'm like, no, that's not the point. We're trying to reduce carbon.
24:59
Well, that's what Jackson does, isn't it? He cleverly makes it – he appeals to our baser instincts by saying that net zero will deliver cheaper energy costs. So, you know, if you're not going to – it's almost as if he swerves the climate imperative angle of the argument. And he's right to because it doesn't – I mean, listen, if you're in favour of net zero, but you're more worried about the cost of living, then the only way forward is to make the cost of living benefit from net zero. So you bring down energy costs. The thing I struggle with, and I understand that the initial investment for a domestic user is very high and you don't make back the savings.
25:37
40K. Yeah, to pay off. So you will be moving in the right direction, but you need, it's like everything else in our world. It's Vimes' boots, isn't it, out of Terry Pratchett. If you've got the money, then you'll be better off because you will be investing in the technology and you will be paying less for your energy for 100 years. Even if it takes you 30 years to move into profit, you're going to then have 70 years.
25:58
But James, it doesn't have to be that way because I was talking to your man, Chris Stark, in the energy department last week. He's a very good fella. Now, the problem is this. If you look at me, house, right? I'm above the grant. So you have to be a salary below 36 to get the grant to get all your heat pumps put in, right? So if you're 42, if you're in that middle, and I always hear you talking about people trying to buy a home, you know, let's get going in life. But you have to shell out 40K, right? I don't want to get into technical boring stuff here, but if you then go, I'm investing 40K, I'll save money on my electricity.
26:31
What value does it put in the house? It doesn't come up on a, you know, it doesn't come up. The EPC, so the rating for your energy in your house, doesn't give you, oh, I put in 40 grand, that's 80K on the value of my house, right? It doesn't work like that. Plus, you can't go, you know, the banks go on about green mortgages, right? Yeah, most people can't get a mortgage. But if you go to them and say, well, I've got my salary, I want 40K, they won't give you a loan like that for structural stuff. So it's a regulation thing.
27:02
Government can change the EPC and the value. And the bit that Greg Jackson does really well is, He talks about energy like they are iPhones. He makes it understandable to the human. You know what I mean?
27:13
Yeah, and I mean, and his central point, as you will know, but some people listening may not, is that you are not going to be able to do it if it means that bills go up. You have to.
27:24
or he frequently asserts that clean and green energy is cheaper to generate, but our markets and our grids prevent the consumers from seeing those savings. Look, no one's infallible, but I'm a fan of that guy. I've got a family member who works for him, actually, and he is among his own workforce. He's held in almost uniquely high esteem. I think that's important as well when you're looking at how people operate. But there it is. I mean, the obstacles that Johnny describes are very real and very big. And so the idea, the somewhat simplistic idea that you just walk outside now and conclude that it's time to start ignoring people that are telling you the scientists are all wrong is probably overly simplistic.
28:05
But that's the question. I still think, you know...
28:09
It's got to change, hasn't it? This new normal. You can't cite, and Freddie, sad to hear it, a relatively idealistic 16-year-old being quite defeatist about silly old men who, in my experience, have moved on a bit from arguing that the scientists are all wrong and are now just attacking children for being too hot.
28:31
But maybe I'm being overly optimistic. It's 10.33. Dominic Ellis has your headlines.
28:37
10.37, the psychology of people who deny things that are, I mean, either irrefutably true or almost certainly true.
28:49
I mean, it's a human condition, isn't it? We are not, I don't think, quite as sophisticated a species as we like to think that we are.
28:56
Donald Trump still got approval ratings in the United States of America in double figures, which is incredible, right? All of the evidence of his idiocy and depravity is right there in front of you. But something happens in our brains. We are not rational beings. I've always got that Brian Cox quote from Succession in the back of my mind at this point when he says to his own children, you are not serious people.
29:23
We are not serious people.
29:25
And that's why my optimism that the current evidence of climate crisis being the new normal will change the conversation is at the very best somewhat muted.
29:42
There's also a hideous report out from a UN commission of inquiry about Israel committing genocide in Gaza by deliberately targeting children. And, you know, there will be a hell of a lot of people determined to refuse to believe that as well and to attack the messengers or to attack the commission or to attack the United Nations. And it is, to me, fascinating in every example. of the lengths and efforts that people will go to to cling to their own, I mean, false convictions.
30:16
It's extraordinary. I'll be sharing a little bit more detail of that report later in the program because someone has to. Jan is in Siren Sesta to steer us back to the net zero conversation or at least to the propaganda conversation. Jan, what would you like to say?
30:32
James, good morning. I'm not optimistic about net zero, but I think we should be trying for it.
30:39
And I just don't think that the current heat wave is going to make any difference in terms of our targets. But we should be going. But we must be realistic. You can't replace what we've got with nothing. You've got to have something to replace it. And we're losing a massive opportunity of moving towards net zero with other forms of energy.
31:03
And what a fillip for the country in terms of jobs and security. Because security of supply is crucial.
31:15
I mean, these are the points. I don't want to labour the point about people who will not see what is obvious. But, I mean, the very word sustainable, the massive contrast between a finite thing that's really bad for humans and has to be dug out of the ground or pumped out of the seabed versus the eternal... Turning. The eternal blowing of the wind or the eternal shining of the sun or the eternal flowing of the water. We should have done it as soon as it was invented, really.
31:47
And yet we didn't. And we're still not, as you say, doing anything like the scale that we should be.
31:52
That's right. And we're losing an opportunity. But you can't expect the individuals to suddenly say, all right, we're not going to drill and the North Seals run out. What do we run the car on if you can't run it on electricity?
32:04
And you can't expect the politicians to do it while there is a very real chance of their opponents succeeding in telling the same voters lies.
32:15
That's right. So that's why I remain... I'm not quite as cynical as you, but I'm cynical that we're not going to get to net zero whatever date you put on it.
32:26
No, whatever. Because the effort's been put into resisting it will remain so great. I don't know. Can you think of something we could do differently?
32:34
What if I put you in charge? Because you've really highlighted a problem here.
32:38
Because even if you had a government... that absolutely said, I don't care about the opposition, I don't care about the propaganda, I don't care about the lies, I'm doing this for the next generation and for this generation. We're putting everything on it as soon as we possibly can. They'll be voted out potentially after four years.
32:55
Because no party, whatever colour or hype that they promote, is ever going to think long term, which is what we should be doing. They're thinking, how can I get re-elected in four or five years?
33:10
And that is the biggest. And of course, you've got, as Cami Bader not proves, even if a party commits to it, another leader can come along and for entirely selfish or ignorant reasons, decide to abandon the policy that your own party had introduced in the first place. And that is a consequence of precisely the engines of propaganda that... that we started off talking about today. I want more optimism, please. We haven't had much optimism so far. In fact, I'm not sure we've had any optimism. It's not often that I'm the optimist, but on this one, I don't know. As soon as I start thinking about it, I think, well, it's going to rain next week and we'll all sit down again.
33:44
So what would we do differently? How would we push this?
33:48
And maybe, what time is it? We've got time to have a little look at why the psychology works.
33:52
Why are people persuaded of things that are not true when the stakes are, I mean, unspeakably high? Unspeakably high.
34:01
Ginny is in Glastonbury where there's no festival this year. Ginny, what would you like to say?
34:05
Well, I'm afraid I'm not going to be very optimistic, James. What's going on, Ginny? Go on then, never mind.
34:14
Okay, so this is an analogy, really, and it doesn't completely hold water, but many years ago, 50 years ago, I was doing a psychology degree, and the social psychology at that point was looking at how vulnerable people were to having their views changed, their behaviour changed regarding smoking. Because there was a big move to... Do you know what I discovered yesterday?
34:38
This bloke that I'm obsessed with, Don Perlman, who was like the godfather of climate change denial, working for a US lobbyist, lobbyist stroke law firm, Patton Boggs, and just became, he invented climate science denial. He changed smoke throughout all of the meetings, all of the UN meetings that were about climate change. I don't know why I thought of that as you mentioned smoking, but you're right, changing people's psychology is...
35:02
So basically, they got a bunch of smokers, heavy smokers, and they showed them photographs of damaged lungs. And the photographs were different degrees of severity because they were slightly damaged right up to, oh, my God, what's that? And after that, they obviously tested their attitudes to smoking and lung cancer. And lo and behold, there was, in fact, a tipping point. We love tipping points. And the tipping point was that on that scale, there was a certain point at which people's attitudes did not change at all.
35:34
They changed at the slightly damaged lungs, but when you got to them being super damaged, they just switched off. And they were exactly the same about smoking as they had been.
35:43
I don't have any complete chapter and verse on this. Nobody does.
35:47
But you sound like you've studied psychology.
35:49
Yeah. So that idea that you can show people, it's almost like showing people that they're driving towards a cliff and they will just not believe you. They'll just carry on regardless.
35:59
Yeah.
36:00
And that's why you're pessimistic.
36:02
Yeah. I think also there's a certain amount of other stuff, obviously, about, well, nothing I can do. I'm just going to fiddle while Rome burns, basically.
36:11
Don't look up.
36:12
Yeah, exactly. They don't look up for Norman. So I think there's a lot of that. But I thought that stayed with me, that experiment, all these years. And I thought that's really, really interesting. People get too anxious. They just go, la, la, la, talk to the hound.
36:26
Do you know what Jimmy Carter did in 1979?
36:30
Probably not.
36:31
He's put solar panels on the White House.
36:36
1979.
36:37
And of course, they would not have been very efficient back then and they would not have been able to replace much of the traditional fossil fuel infrastructure. But that direction of traffic, imagine what would have happened if we'd gone all in with Jimmy Carter, who, of course, I think of often at the moment.
36:55
of what he did with his family peanut farm when he became president put it into trust so that absolutely no perception threat suspicion danger risk whatsoever of anything he did as a president having a beneficial economic impact upon his interests in a peanut farm and you compare it to where we are now we've got an actual peanut in the white house It's 10.49. You're listening to James O'Brien on LBC. We are actually doing quite a lot. It's just hard to know where you'd go to find out in the context of net zero and in the context even of that 2050 pledge.
37:32
Given that our media discourse is dominated by liars, has been now for 10 years, people who lied about Brexit or were too sick to understand what they were saying about Brexit, they continue to dominate discourse, both in politics and in the media. It's extraordinary. And some of them are really good at it. Some of them are brilliant at spouting the snake oil or persuading people of things that are not true. Some of them are brilliant at it. And some of them are Richard Tice, who recently got asked about climate science in an interview, I think, with Bloomberg on their Zero podcast presented by Akshat Rati.
38:05
And this is what happens. But again, you know, this isn't going to get anything like the coverage that some nonsense about two-tier policing will get in the right-wing media that is still largely opposed to net zero policymaking because it's largely owned by people who continue to make a ton of money out of fossil fuels. I wish it wasn't that simple because it sounds almost like a conspiracy theory or a really simplistic, let's just put a wealth tax on everything and solve all the world's problems kind of position. But it really is that simple.
38:34
They pay a lot of money in order to both promote and persuade. And what they are trying to promote and persuade is the idea that we should carry on pumping carbon into our atmosphere, even though that is the reason why our weather is so extreme. It's that simple. This is what happens when someone actually does their job. So the first thing you'll hear is him complaining about being asked to justify his opposition to the science.
38:59
You can't present me with a whole load of graphs that I can't read, that may well be bullshit, and put this out there. So this terminates now. It's end of podcast. This is ridiculous. I'm sorry. You cannot seriously think this is a sensible way to conduct a podcast. We're not doing it.
39:18
We're ending now. All I'm saying is this is the summary for policymakers.
39:21
And I don't agree with any of it. And you can't present something to me...
39:25
And expect me to comment on it when I haven't read it, I don't know what you're talking about in terms of what you're presenting. And one of the foundations of the IPCC's very ethos in the last 20 or 30 years, they've just abandoned it.
39:40
I love it. I don't understand any of it. How dare you ask me about it? And I wish it wasn't funny. Well, it's not very funny, actually, is it? If you pause for a nanosecond to think about what the consequences are. We saw it with Brexit. I don't understand any of it. And you're biased for asking me. Project fear. He should have just shouted project fear. But of course, there are some experts who back him.
40:00
Your view on climate science, which is that thousands of scientists disagree that net zero is not the way to tackle climate change. Who are the scientists who are advising you on that? Can you name any, the thousands of scientists?
40:13
I've got lots of people who advise me. I don't list...
40:15
all my private advisors with regard to anything, whether it's net zero, whether it's housing policy, whether it's industrial policy.
40:24
You know, people who advise me from all different sides, who are coming at me from all different angles, very often opposing. And that's great, because that's how you listen and learn.
40:34
That's who we are.
40:36
He's as thick as mints, isn't he?
40:38
And I don't say that lightly because it's not a very nice thing to say. But my God, you need to have a millionaire on your family tree, don't you, to end up anywhere near Parliament with a brain as small as that. So the first argument is I don't understand any of this. How dare you ask me about it? My opinion is very strong. And the second argument is you can't expect me to name any of the scientists that I insist are opposed to all the other scientists. It's unreasonable. And I'm going to play that again because sometimes I think intelligence is the...
41:10
Yeah, just listen to the second one again. It's so easy to do. You just point at some scientists. There'll be someone in my inbox, some ex-bloke from Greenpeace who's joined the other side, and they will be held up as proof in the same way that Patrick Minford during Brexit, The Economist, was held up as proof that it's a 50-50 argument. 99 economists over there saying it's going to be awful. One over there saying it's not. Treat them like they're equal.
41:34
They can't even do that. That's how stupid he is.
41:37
Your view on climate science, which is that thousands of scientists disagree that net zero is not the way to tackle climate change. Who are the scientists who are advising you on that? Can you name any, the thousands of scientists?
41:49
I've got lots of people who advise me. I don't list...
41:52
all my private advisors with regard to anything, whether it's net zero, whether it's housing policy, whether it's industrial policy.
42:00
You know, people who advise me from all different sides, who are coming at me from all different angles, very often opposing. And that's great, because that's how you listen and learn.
42:11
That's who we are.
42:12
That's who we are. This is who they are. Because this stuff matters. If the people at the top of the party, albeit that they're only there because they've donated so much money to Farage's company, the people at the top of the party are just sort of utterly proud of how stupid they are. I don't understand anything. How dare you ask me? Then you end up with people like this on Kirkley's council.
42:31
I don't understand the constitution.
42:34
I have not had sufficient time to read that as yet. I don't understand what standing orders are, what they're made up of, nor do I understand what an amendment is. There is a possibility that we might vote for something that we don't understand at the moment. And whereas ignorance is not a defence, risk should be mitigated.
42:53
That's a newly elected Reform UK councillor complaining that she doesn't understand anything about doing the job that she got elected to do. And somehow that's not her fault. But who can attack her? Is he deputy leader of the party? Who can attack her when the actual deputy leader is arguably even thicker? And I don't know where she went to school, but his education would have cost his parents a fortune.
43:16
And he's come out with the brains of a pillow. And he's almost proud of it. Imagine just how privileged you have to be in life to not realise how thick you are when you're that thick. That poor woman, bless her, acknowledges how ignorant she is.
43:32
She doesn't quite grasp that that is really a reason why she shouldn't have been running for the council, but she at least acknowledges it. There's a sort of innocence to her acknowledgement of how ignorant she is. But Tice has managed to grow up in a universe where his epic thickness hasn't mattered at all. And he can end up thinking, well, I think I could have a go at being a politician, actually. Why not?
43:55
I've got very strong opinions. I can't back any of them up. And if you ask me to, then I'll threaten to leave the interview. But my gosh, they're very strong, very strong opinions.
44:04
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Politics for me, definitely. Politics for me. And climate science is wrong. I just can't name any scientists who agree with me. But who cares? Who cares?
44:15
James is in Abergavenny. James, what would you like to say?
44:19
Hi, James. A bit nervous. It's only me. Yeah, only you.
44:25
How can you be nervous when you've just heard a man who gets invited onto Question Time demonstrate on national radio that he is as thick as mince? How can you be nervous? Mate, you could come on here and just make strange noises and sound more intelligent than Richard Tice. I forbid you from being nervous.
44:42
Well, I have skin which is thicker than rice paper. I'll be gentle with you, James, I promise. So I work in offshore wind sector and I'm in two minds about this. Just from my professional life as well as just looking at the wider political discourse with reform and everything. I think the positive is the economic momentum is with renewables.
45:09
Like you look at the growth of the renewable sector, like CBI, kind of predicting that it's 100 billion quid a year. And like compare that to kind of 0.8% of growth nationally. Like it's a massive opportunity, especially in areas... like kind of northeast England, Port Talbot, South Wales, where there has been a lot of deindustrialisation and there's a lot of opportunity to regenerate those areas via renewables.
45:43
I'm just going to pause you there for the benefit of people who don't pay as much attention to these things as you do, myself included. So this is from, what's the date today? This is from the CBI just two days ago on the 24th.
45:54
4th of June. The Climate Change Committee is right to identify the need to stimulate demand across the economy to match the growth in clean power supply as one of the biggest gaps in reducing UK emissions. To realise the benefits of a decarbonised power system and lower costs, the UK must accelerate electrification, provide real clarity on the role of hydrogen and deliver on existing CCUS commitments. Targets alone will not drive progress. Market conditions must be able to respond quickly to adoption barriers and external shocks. As you point out, that follows the CBI telling us that the sums and the jobs in play are already huge and set only to get huger.
46:30
And then, as you say, the political discourse is largely dominated by people with the brains of a pillow.
46:37
Yeah, I mean, exactly. I mean, a bit of optimism I have is when Trump did get in.
46:44
Well, that's not optimistic, but there was a lot of leasing off the coast of Australia. the United States. And Donald Trump basically did a lot of stop work orders on these projects. And they've been going back and forth, back and forth in legal battles.
47:03
These are wind turbines.
47:05
Yeah.
47:05
Which he's got a weird, almost fetishistic dislike of, hasn't he?
47:09
Yeah. I mean, I think they look quite nice. I do too.
47:14
They're quite majestic sometimes.
47:16
Yeah. I mean, I split my time between Wales and Edinburgh. And I don't know anyone in Scotland at the moment, but if you kind of walk up after the seat and have a look at the big yellow jackets towards Leith, those are kind of for a new offshore wind farm being constructed. They represent...
47:35
humankind's dominion over nature in a way i've got i can get a bit fetishistic about cranes and bridges because they remind us what human ingenuity can do with the elements and wind turbines i understand that you know if you if you stuck one in front of edinburgh castle then some people might object and then i'd understand why but generally speaking when they're offshore what's the problem
47:57
Yeah, I mean, exactly. And that's not to pretend there's a lot of big barriers to this economic momentum, like, you know, grid and supply chain.
48:07
Yeah, that's Greg Jackson's territory.
48:08
I've kind of seen firsthand from government, like, pretty much within the month after they got into power, the speed of consultations, of working groups, of strategic planning has been absolutely breakneck.
48:26
um because they get it and and and speed is of the essence unfortunately i'm just going to do you mind awfully james if i drizzle on your parade yeah just with just with a bit of historical precedent because i i was um today years old as the kids say when i discovered that jimmy carter had put solar panels on the white house in 1979 would you like to guess what happened in 1986
48:49
It was the unsure.
48:52
Ronald Reagan ripped them off again.
48:56
That would be the Republican, almost certainly in receipt of huge donations from the fossil fuel lobby. To be fair to the fella, I think they were leaking a bit and there was a roof resurfacing project going on, but there was nothing to stop them being put back up again. And they weren't. The likelihood of solar panels being installed by the current incumbent of the White House is Yeah, less than zero. It's 11.01.
49:20
It's four minutes after 11. I'm going in. It's my final day before my holiday. I'll be off for a fortnight. Lewis with you next week. I dread to think they've got lined up for the week after, but you'll find out probably before I do.
49:35
I'm going meta. I'm going to do something that I will almost certainly regret, quite possibly within the next 11 minutes.
49:41
I am going to ask you...
49:45
why I've never had a successful phone-in about the existence of the royal family.
49:50
I've had quite a lot of phone-ins about the existence of the royal family. I just have a sense. You may disagree. Maybe your memory is better than mine. I have a sense that they've never really sung. Now, the last hour of this program, I found incredibly enjoyable and illuminating. And sometimes in the past, I've struggled with climate change phone-ins as well.
50:09
Are we getting too meta? I don't think we're getting too meta. I honestly think that, you know, everyone enjoys the show more if it gets better. You do, I do, everybody does. And working out why some shows are better than other shows should be in both of our interests, shouldn't it? Not just mine.
50:27
I think it's like being interested in the Formula One cars, beyond how fast they can go.
50:34
Why is that car going faster than... Anyway, I digress. I don't know. We've had some fascinating and brilliant phone-ins about the appalling treatment of the Duchess of Sussex and indeed the Duke of Sussex and the way in which, for some people, the natural hierarchy of British humans was completely exploded by the fact that the Duke of Sussex had the audacity to fall in love with a woman of colour. because if you feel that your ethnicity and of course it's quite a good period of history for you at the moment because you've got people telling you that the color of your skin really matters um and and white people are being sinned against and it's terrible to be white in this country i'm not even joking they're doing it claiming that white people are victims of police racism it's an extraordinary position to adopt but of course those are precisely the people who couldn't quite understand why they hated megan markle so much and got really furious when he pointed out that it was because she was mixed race.
51:31
And the reason for that is that our deference, our social hierarchy is so baked into all of us that we can't quite compute the idea that somebody who is inferior in the eyes of white supremacists and monarchy, aristocracy, almost everything about class in this country has a slice of white supremacism in it. Can't quite compute that a mixed race woman could end up so near the very top of the pyramid.
51:57
Or, and this was, of course, Harry's grave offence, someone could reject the system itself despite being a massive beneficiary of it.
52:07
I don't know. Would he have rejected the system if he'd been the older brother? I don't know. We'll never know. He probably doesn't know. But to be so near the top of the pyramid and to condemn the pyramid, not just sort of elements of the institution, but also its symbiotic relationship with a toxic media.
52:25
How dare you? You can't question our system.
52:28
You can't question our class system, Harry, because I will feel really stupid then because I'm a forelock tugging, cap doffing, flag waving...
52:37
loyalist.
52:39
So if you, near the top of the pyramid, think that it's a bit rotten, you're making me feel really stupid. Because I uphold it, despite not being a beneficiary of it.
52:48
I'm upholding the system that has allowed your dad to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on a palace that he's not even going to live in. And you're making me feel really stupid. And what are you doing falling in love with a mixed-race woman where Britons never, never, never shall be slaves? Which is a kind of roundabout way of saying that Britons are always white, and if you're not white, you're not British.
53:10
Which I only discovered, thanks to a caller to this programme, two weeks ago, would you believe.
53:14
So I can have those phone-ins. Those phone-ins are interesting, right?
53:19
About the class, about the deference, about the racism directed at the Duchess of Sussex, all of that.
53:25
And I enjoy the way that some people's blood boils at the sight that they see in the mirror that I hold up in front of them. I'm not racist. I'm not racist. How dare you say I'm racist? She's uppity. It's an interesting word that you used there. She's uppity, is she? I mean, you spent a lot of time with her. Would you describe anyone else?
53:44
You remember that extraordinary selection of stories where the Duchess of Sussex and Prince William's wife, Kate Middleton, as she was, did identical things, up to and including the actual bouquets that they had at their weddings. And Kate Middleton's bouquet, because that was her name on her wedding day, Kate Middleton's bouquet that day was a beautiful nod to tradition and modernity and history. A fragrant tribute to English legacy.
54:14
And then Meghan had the same flower in hers. She was trying to poison the bridesmaids. She was trying to poison Princess Watsits, William's daughter. Literally the same flower in their wedding bouquets. One of them was a beautiful tribute to tradition, floral history, and the other was trying to poison Princess Charlotte. That's how it got written up by the British media, which is definitely not biased or toxic or dedicated to upholding white supremacy. So I can do that. That's interesting, right? You're enjoying this. This is good stuff.
54:45
This is good content. Why have I never had an interesting phone-in about the royal family? When I was a kid...
54:52
Just give me a minute because I'm going to say there were three things and I've only got two in my head. So I need to get three. When I was a kid, it's a great trick that Keith. I don't know if you're interested in oratorical flourishes. It's a great trick to say there are three things. It gives you time to think of what they are and it makes people pay attention a bit more. So there were three things. When I was a kid, there were three debates.
55:13
that we used to have every flipping week, it seemed. There were three hardy perennials of the student debating circuit. There were three debates.
55:24
I went to a very Catholic school, so one of them was probably more common in my school than it would have been in yours if you'd had a debating society. But the other two were absolutely stone-cold hardy perennials. The first, as you've probably guessed, because I mentioned the Catholicism, was the abortion.
55:43
Should abortion happen? Eleanor went to a comprehensive school in East London. They had that debate too. A lot. The abortion debate. So it wasn't just a fancy pants, posh Catholic public schools. It was a really big part of debating. Debating! The abortion debate.
56:00
Do you want to have a guess at what the other two were?
56:04
Obviously, one was the royal family. Otherwise, I wouldn't be citing it now. All right. So what was the other one then? So abortion. Should we abolish the royal family?
56:12
And the third one? No. Wasn't legalizing drugs.
56:17
Not at my school anyway.
56:19
Anyone? Should I leave it open? Should I leave it? Should we wait and see?
56:26
The death penalty.
56:28
Everyone just went, oh, of course. So abortion, royal family, death penalty. I don't think I've ever done an interesting phone-in about any of those, actually.
56:38
I don't think I've done an interesting phone-in about abortion because it's not really a debate and everyone who thinks that it is is weird. I don't think I've ever really done an interesting phone-in about the death penalty. Because it's not an interesting debate, and everyone who thinks it is... Fox hunting was up there as well. You're absolutely right. I should have gone with four, but it's the rule of three. It's a rhetorical flourish, the rule of three.
56:57
You give them three things.
57:00
And I don't think I've ever done an interesting phone-in about the royal family, about whether or not it should exist. Now, I don't know whether you're going to come with me on this.
57:12
And if you don't, I need to warn you now, I'll have to do another monologue. So we'll have to come back from the hydration break and I'll have to set up another monologue, which will be about the king's finances and whether or not they're blah, blah, and a detail driven. I shouldn't really say blah, blah, blah when there's a very strong chance that I'm going to have to turn it into a fascinating phone in about six minutes time.
57:33
But...
57:34
We're looking at the news today, which you will be aware of. The monarchy's core funding will double within three years, rising to £100 million a year of public money by 2027, 2028. It turns out that the king and his oldest son have paid £51.8 million. No, that's the wrong figure. They've paid about £50 million in income tax since 2022, but don't worry, they're still all right.
57:56
And the Buckingham Palace renovations, which have taken about a decade when they are complete, come in at £369 million, but the king ain't going to live there. The king and queen will not be moving back into Buckingham Palace because they really like it at Clarence House. To which I've got two responses. One is, yeah, fair enough. And the other is, well, what's it for then?
58:15
What's it for if you're not living in it?
58:18
What are they? I mean, hello?
58:21
I digress.
58:24
So that's the story. The King and the Prince of Wales have paid a combined figure of £50 million since the change of reign in 2022. He becomes today the first monarch to publish his tax bill. Payments to HM Revenue and Customs are calculated on the income the King and his heir receive from the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, respectively.
58:44
So, is it my fault?
58:51
Is it my fault? Is it just a reflection of my poor presenting skills?
58:56
Is it that you can tell when I turn my attention to the royal family that I am not as engaged as I am with other subjects?
59:03
So you could tell how engaged I was with the treatment of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and the white supremacism that's baked into our class structure and the racism directed at Meghan Markle as she was. I can tell how engaged I am with that because I find it fascinating.
59:18
But whether or not we want a royal family, can you tell that maybe I'm not as engaged with that as I could be? Because then you know what I do next. Why am I not more engaged with it? It's so endemic to our national experience. I mean, you cannot teach a young woman in this country that she can do anything when she can't be a princess.
59:39
Unless she marries a prince.
59:42
Do you see what I mean? You can't teach young people that the sky is the limit. Because in America, you can tell, particularly after Barack Obama, you can tell people that they could be president one day. That's the American dream. Anybody could be president.
59:57
Don't quibble, all right? It's technically true.
60:00
You can't do that in this country. Not even Kemi Badenot could be... Actually, she probably could pull it off. Let's not... Yeah.
60:07
Apart from Kemi Badenot, nobody in this country can be queen unless they marry the king or are the daughter of a monarch.
60:16
It is so constipated, our class structure. It puts people in pigeonholes. It puts people in boxes and consigns them to those boxes. I mean, it should... Why don't I care more? Have they done a job on me?
60:33
Apart from that little window after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, when the royal family came under existential threat for judging everything so appallingly, it has not, at any point in the 40 years since I first started debating things at school, at no point has this conversation justified the amount of energy dedicated to it by student debaters.
60:55
Should we abolish the royal family? So why? Why?
61:01
Why is it not an interesting conversation anymore? I'm sure it used to be. Did it used to be? It did used to be, didn't it? They were good debates, weren't they? They were fun times. It was a good debate. It was better than the abortion one. That always got a little bit heavy going. The death penalty one, a little bit morbid. Fox hunting one was fun. But the royal family one was probably my favourite. We could have a brilliant debate about the royal family. Why doesn't it happen anymore? What's happened?
61:27
This is a phone-in about why I don't have good phone-ins about the royal family.
61:32
And it's risky. I'm not going to lie to you. I wouldn't be doing this if I wasn't going on holiday later.
61:37
It's risky. And it's up to you whether or not it works. And, of course, it's not just enough to join in. You've got to join in in a good and impressive way. No pressure at all. But if you don't, if I haven't got a selection of phone calls in two minutes' time addressing the question of why we don't have interesting phone-ins about the existence of the royal family, or let's call it the abolition then.
61:55
Why don't we have interesting phone-ins about the royal family? If I haven't got a selection of interesting calls, I'm going to do another monologue and we'll talk about something completely different.
62:04
How do you like them apples?
62:06
All right?
62:07
So, the number you need to tell me why you think it is very difficult for the most successful speech radio programme in the history of UK commercial radio to have an interesting conversation about the royal family.
62:17
If anyone can do it, you'd think it would be the most listened-to speech radio programme in the history of UK commercial radio. If they can't do it, who can?
62:25
Why don't we have interesting debates about the royal family anymore?
62:29
And I suppose...
62:33
No, I'm not yet going to accept people actually having the debate.
62:36
I want to have a conversation about why the debate is not interesting. So don't ring me to tell me what your answer is to the question of whether or not the royal family should be abolished.
62:44
Ring me to tell me your answer to the question of why we can't have, why we've never had an interesting conversation about it.
62:51
And if you think it's my fault, that's fine.
62:52
I promise not to bite your head off.
62:54
Well, I can't do that. I promise to try my best not to bite your head off. All right? So why are...
63:04
Why is one of the hardiest perennials of British debate...
63:11
So dead in the water today. Why do we never hear interesting conversations about the existence or the abolition of the British monarchy anymore? 0345 6060 973. And if I'm part of the problem, that's absolutely fine. I just want to know how and why and whether or not we need to do something about it. Phone lines are open. It's 1118. You know the number.
63:32
And remember, if I don't get good calls on this, I'm going to do another monologue.
63:36
It's 20 minutes after 11.
63:38
Phone-ins are only enjoyable if you can relate to them, says Joe in Leicester. That's not true. Some of the best phone-ins we've had have involved things you can't relate to at all. For example, we have fun phone-ins about people like Richard Tice. You can't relate to that level of stupidity in any way, shape or form, Joe. So I disagree with that. Phone-ins that we don't know much about, they can work.
63:56
Look at Ash in Northampton, schooling us on the Strait of Hormuz this year. They're absolutely fascinating. Conversations about things we know nothing about. Conversations where I haven't even made my mind up what my opinion is can be quite interesting.
64:09
I was worried, actually, when I began to feel the benefits of therapy, becoming a much less strident and angry person. I was worried it might affect my job. I was worried I might be less good at this if I didn't have tub-thumping, pungent opinions all the time. The opposite turns out to be true. We have more enjoyable conversations.
64:28
So why does the royal family conversation in this country feel curiously, what's the word I want, flat?
64:37
Why does it feel so flat when it really shouldn't? It underpins so much. Steve's in Thursk. Steve, what do you reckon?
64:45
I think it's made complicated. Hang on, Steve.
64:47
Hang on, mate. No pressure, but in many ways, the success or failure of this entire topic now rests on your bony shoulders.
64:58
I'm not sure that's fair, but it's made complicated. And this is why people struggle with it, because you get pulled in a million different directions. So, for example, these tax announcements today, it's largely fluff. So the fact that Prince William and the other guy, they pay a lot of tax. Well, Kel Supreme's rich man pays lots of tax.
65:27
Well, they don't all pay a lot of tax. A lot of them dodge it like it was going out of fashion.
65:31
Well, quite. And that is the point, is really we should be looking at, has he paid the right amount of tax?
65:37
Now, that's when it gets complicated, when you've got their opaque finances. You've got three layers of stuff, and then the public and private is all mushed. And so it all gets very complicated.
65:46
But you care, I sense, that you care.
65:48
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I do. Because as you said, you alluded to earlier, it's very much an intricate part of the country, rightly or wrongly, and wrongly in my case. Yeah.
66:01
You know, the class system is so ridiculous in this country because we still have a royal family.
66:06
I mean, we still have one.
66:08
But it's not complicated. I mean, today's story is, but you're telling me why that wouldn't work as a phone-in, and I'm not having that phone-in. Should the royal family exist?
66:19
Should this sort of... That's not complicated to me. No. I can give you that answer straight away.
66:24
But it will be quite boring. No offence, Steve.
66:27
Prove me wrong. Why is it boring? Well, let's find out. You're talking about the structure of how a country is run. Yeah, I know. We forever talk about how terrible politicians are. I know. And how our system is wrong and awful. And the royals and the constitutional monarchy is very much, you know, is intrinsic to that. I know. We've got, and so it's not boring. It is.
66:50
It's a rubbish phone in me.
66:52
Why is it bored? Because why?
66:53
Well, that's Mike. That's why I'm asking you. You can't just throw it back at me.
66:57
Well, you must have some idea, although you wouldn't pose it.
67:01
So I would say, no, it's not boring.
67:03
I wish you could actually have seen my face, Hen. I looked a bit like a dog chewing its own tongue. I just literally looked away from you, the switchboard, because you said you must have some idea, and I thought, he's right, I must have some idea. And I had a little think, and I thought, I haven't got any idea. I've got no idea why this isn't a very good phone-in.
67:21
I mean, this is a good phone-in, because this is a phone-in about why we never have good phone-ins about this subject, and you're arguing that we do have good phone-ins about this subject, but I'm here to tell you that we don't, and I'm in charge.
67:31
But what's your metric for that? Why are you saying it's not a good phone-in?
67:35
I've just done that thing again. Hang on, I'm just going to pull that face again. I look away from the camera and start sucking my own lip.
67:41
I don't ever remember coming off air and saying to Eleanor, God, that one really slapped.
67:48
But isn't the point of phone-ins and LBC to have a conversation to get things going?
67:54
Yeah, so it's my fault then. So the answer to the question is because you're not a very good presenter.
67:59
I don't know. I wouldn't go that far.
68:00
Keith, calm down, mate.
68:01
All right. No, I wouldn't say that at all. No, that's not fair.
68:05
Keith, if you nod that furiously, you're going to do yourself an injury, mate. Some people crick their neck when they nod like that. I've never seen him nod so furiously.
68:12
Well, to have, as I've said before, it is a broad topic because, you know, you can look at it. I mean, I'd say there are three reasons why there's a problem with the monarchy.
68:21
Go on, rule of three.
68:23
Rule of three. It's wrong in principle, OK? The idea of being a democracy and having an unelected head of state and getting a job just because your dad's got it, I mean, that's pretty straightforward. We get that. And that itself has a corrupting influence on the rest of our political system, i.e. you can be privileged and get jobs, you know, that leeches into other things.
68:44
Yeah. The entrenched entitlement and privilege. I guess, have we been conditioned into not questioning it then? Is that why?
68:53
Absolutely.
68:54
Well, it's taken as a given that so much nonsense gets spewed out about the royals and how beneficial they are. Like, the defensive line straight away is, well, they don't have to pay income tax, but they do. Well, why? The rule of law in this country is that everybody should be treated the same with the law.
69:13
Not the monarch, actually, is it? The monarch can't be, I don't think, put on trial. You're good at this. Have you phoned me before on royal phone-ins?
69:20
Yes.
69:23
So it's your pet subject, then?
69:25
Yes. The problem you've got with the monarch, as in the monarch can't be put on trial, well, no, the state itself can't be put on trial, but the individual surely can. So if you wanted to, say with Andrew, I would argue, if Charles ever needs to be called to the stand, surely he should be made to abdicate. And then he can take the stand.
69:45
Yeah, I'm going to crack on now. You've kind of proved my... No, you can't carry on now. I've just said I'm going to crack on. Well, no, because it's an interesting topic, James. Okay, well, other people are to judge that. You and me are disagreeing about how interesting this conversation is.
70:03
The last point I will say, you didn't let me finish my three.
70:07
I thought you'd only use that as a delaying tactic.
70:09
No, the third one is the monarchy itself. Even if you are a royalist, there's no reason why it has to be so corrupt and so bad.
70:18
It could be better. So the finances could be a lot more straightforward.
70:20
I don't think you can say corrupt. You could say opaque.
70:23
I'd say corrupt because corruption is abusing entrusted power.
70:29
Well, yeah, moral. You can talk about a moral corruption, but I wouldn't... Mate, I don't want to get sued. It's unlikely that I would get sued, but no one is alleging actual corruption. It's more a sense of a sort of moral... turpitude i always get the difference between turpitude and torpitude wrong i mean roughly the same thing but one's much stronger than the other i wrote it in my column the other day and they took out both words i said use one or the other depending on what the lawyers say and they didn't use either of them uh 27 after 11 is the time david's in east molsey david what made you pick up the phone well i think it is an interesting topic and i think the king has just thrown a huge rock into the pool by announcing his tax affairs because
71:08
He's actually sort of proving that there is some money there or just reminding us that there is some money there and that he's graciously paying it voluntarily. But, you know, behind it all for me is the sort of the Duchy of Lancaster. What is it? The Duchy of Cornwall. What is it? What does it do? Where does the money go? How much money is there?
71:33
How much money does the king get? How much money do all the acolytes get, all the other members of the royal family?
71:40
Is that not published on the civil list, some of that?
71:43
Some of it is, yes. But no, please, James, explain to me the Duchy of Lancaster.
71:49
I think you pass it on the left-hand side.
71:52
Anyway, look, the thing is, it's much more...
71:58
it's a whole series of systems of you know and there's the private money as well so there's the thing that's owned by the monarchy and then there's the stuff that's owned by the individual so the Queen can pass stuff on to King Charles that is just like any mother passing stuff on to their son and we don't know as much about that and it is wheels within wheels isn't it as you describe it it is and the other thing is that you know organisations like this
72:26
prop up everything, including local councils. There's a Lord Lieutenant for every county, or maybe there's more than one Lord Lieutenant. What do Lord Lieutenant do when they're not actually standing beside the King on telly?
72:42
Is it a well-paid job? Do they get a free house or something like that?
72:45
I don't know anything about it, but I would like to.
72:48
How is this an answer to my question? Because you're saying it should be more interesting, but we're not talking about it.
72:55
Well, we aren't talking about it, but actually, I think it's... I can't understand the lack of curiosity.
73:03
Maybe that's what I'm asking. Maybe that's what this phone-in actually is, David.
73:07
Maybe people should point out things like, what is the Duchy of Lancaster? Because it gets quoted in news reports from time to time, just as a sort of passing interest in a conversation. And you think Yeah, yeah.
73:25
What is it? It is mad. Yes, it's the incuriosity that explains the lack of engagement. And maybe it's a bit of a no-brainer.
73:32
And if we did know... This is why the late Queen always said, don't let the light in. Keep the mystique, keep the magic.
73:38
Exactly. The magic is the secret. And the royal family, they wobbled a lot in the early 90s during the Annus Horribilis, etc.
73:48
They did, yes.
73:49
But they're back on their feet now. And of course... When the king went over to America and did that job as a guest of Donald Trump, he was absolutely brilliant.
74:01
He played a stone cold blinder. It was one of the best moments of the whole presidency.
74:07
It was. But then on the other hand, how easy was it for him to... do that, because who's he up against? Trump, for God's sake.
74:15
Not everybody has managed to dance around.
74:17
Do you know that your name comes up on the screen? You must be an expert in another field, because your name comes up on the screen as someone who must be booked by other programmes.
74:25
Well, yes, I'm an expert in aviation. I used to be in the RAF and things like that.
74:31
Are you still the operations and safety editor of Flight International magazine?
74:35
I have a slightly different title now. I'm the consulting editor. There we go. There we go. There we go, indeed.
74:41
Because it doesn't happen very often. That just means that we ring out to you sometimes from the studio.
74:46
Well, the thing is, when I was in the RAF myself, the king, or as it was the queen at that time, was my boss.
74:54
Yes, technically. Yes.
74:55
And I had an awful lot of time for her, and I still do when I think about her. Now, King Charles, I think, you know, given that he's got the monarch's job, I think he's doing it reasonably well. But what is the job? What are the terms of reference?
75:10
And as soon as you start thinking about that, there's a sense that it all begins to fall apart, which may be why we don't think about it. Because we don't want it to fall apart. So there's a sort of psychological self-deception going on.
75:21
But then you've got the Daily Mail leading all the other sort of right-wing tabloids. And there's just a huge amount of deference and praise for the magic.
75:35
Yeah, for the mystic, the intangibles.
75:40
And who doesn't like the trooping of the colour? Blah, blah.
75:43
A little bit of pageantry. I always think of the pyramids at that point. People always say you need the royal family, otherwise you can't have the pageantry. And I think, well, no, you don't. That's like saying you can't have the pyramids. The pyramids are still very popular. Big old tourist attraction, but there ain't any pharaohs anymore. We're going to have people outside Buckingham Palace for the rest of our lives, despite the fact that the king doesn't live there anymore, which is mad. It's not even a particularly impressive building. I've been there. More on that later. It's 11.33. Dominic Ellis has your headlines.
76:11
It's 11.36. David was brilliant, wasn't he? In fact, Stephen Thursk was brilliant as well.
76:16
But maybe the way to have interesting phone-ins about the royal family is to ask why we never have interesting phone-ins about the royal family. But I sense that we're groping in the dark towards something significant.
76:27
And it is that the more you think about it, the more ridiculous it becomes. So perhaps we've been gaslit into not thinking about it very much. I think there's possibly something in that. Paul goes in a different direction. He says, I think it's because people either love them or hate them. They're the personification of Marmite. There's never any nuance. I mean, I think anybody with a strong opinion either loves them or hates them. But I don't think that you can rule out ambivalence as being part of the answer to my question. It just doesn't feel as important as it did in the 1980s when we were debating it every 10 minutes.
77:01
We're all preoccupied.
77:04
We're all too preoccupied, wondering, A, who we're going to get for the next fortnight, James, and B, what major national crisis will occur while you're on your holidays? I did think that I'd got the dates wrong at the beginning of this week when the Prime Minister resigned. That is normally the kind of event that is reserved. for when I am in a different country, for when I am overseas.
77:22
But no, we've had a prime ministerial resignation. Perhaps this will be my first holiday in living memory where major, major news did not unfold. Or, I don't know, maybe the king will abdicate.
77:31
We can't abolish the monarchy, writes Catherine, because then the Daily Express would no longer have a reason to exist. Um...
77:38
And it's a boring phone-in topic, says Stephen, because it's essentially futile. No one is ever likely to change their mind. There are equally strong and weak arguments on both sides. And more importantly, no amount of phone-ins on this subject will ever change the status quo, as the establishment will always prevail.
77:54
I mean, spoiler alert, Stephen. That's true of every good phone-in.
78:00
I love the thought of minds changing, but I don't think that even we manage to achieve it as often as we would like to and as often as the facts should ensure. Meg's in Hereford. Meg, what made you pick up the phone?
78:13
Hey, James. Hello. So I think it's interesting because me and my fiancé have debates about this all the time, like healthy, nice debates, but we do frequently debate about it because he's team it. a waste of time. We should get rid of it. It takes up too much money. Whereas I'm team. But it's nice. It just brings us a bit of joy. Plus there's the tourism and the national identity and the stability. And we tried it before in the 1640s and it didn't work. But the reason I think it's a boring topic is because primarily because the monarchy doesn't make policy.
78:48
Obviously the king doesn't decide our taxes, spending, laws, foreign policy. Obviously they are kind of part of it in terms of, you know, they'll host things and so on, but they don't actually, like, whoever the monarch is at the time doesn't actually have
79:04
their power to decide these things but also so they've got a different there's a different sorry to interrupt you but i just want to clarify it's a very different salience to talking about politics because rightly or wrongly we think that the politicians are in charge or will be in charge and therefore talking about them has a different salience to talking about the royal family
79:27
Exactly. And I think the big one as well is that the debate often does then end up becoming about personalities instead of principles. Yeah, but they can be good phonics.
79:36
I mean, tell me that you didn't chuckle when I pointed out how stupid Richard Tice is. That was about a personality.
79:41
Absolutely. You see? No, but like when it's the royals, we often end up focusing on the individual rather than the actual person. institution as a as its whole and so then the debate often then becomes targeted which might obviously rightly or wrongly on specific people um than the actual constitution um i think people are just relatively content with what it like people i think they just steven thursk isn't steven thursk isn't and somehow i don't know i mean it's conditioned interest from a very early age isn't it i don't know what your what your fiance's background is fairy tales Exactly.
80:18
You don't question it. And I remember when my daughters wanted to dress up as princesses, albeit that they were a bit more Disney than Windsor, it was gorgeous. And I loved it.
80:28
And I didn't allow myself to sort of start trying to give them Republican lectures while they were pretending to be Elsa out of Frozen.
80:36
Exactly. And I think with the palace at the moment, with the money and so on, I was reading into it last night when it first came out and we were talking about it and it said about a lot of it was to do with boilers and wiring and the piping and that it was naturally kind of there was some safety concerns regarding that. And we were discussing it and obviously it is a lot of money and tourism does bring in a lot of money and they are going to be opening it up to... like more because obviously the king won't be there. But then we were discussing how... And what's the point of it? If the worst thing happened, well, if the palace burned down, like if something catastrophic happened and the palace burned down...
81:12
People would mourn. People would mourn it as if it was a monarch themselves, I think. An iconic building, really?
81:18
Again, it's another London thing, like the conversation we had about London yesterday. If you live here, you possibly don't imbue it with quite the same mystique as you do if you don't live here. It's going to be very weird, though.
81:28
When Notre Dame burned, it was horrible. Everybody was so sad, like worldwide. It was horrible.
81:34
But I do think that neither side has a monopoly because all the evidence... Well, what if Sharik is right? ...turns into values rather than facts?
81:40
What if Sharique is right? It's boring because it's designed to be boring, lest people actually start having the debate.
81:47
Yeah, yeah.
81:51
That would be David's point, I think, and possibly Steve's as well. That was lovely. I mean, I don't want to cast aspersions upon your domestic arrangements, but I doubt that these are the most interesting conversations that you have with your fiancé.
82:03
Yeah, we love a healthy debate.
82:05
We all love a healthy debate. You're in the right place. 11.42 is the time.
82:11
Chris is in Bifleet. Chris, what do you reckon?
82:13
I think the main issue that we have with why ultimately the debates seem boring is because although we have kind of the monarchist versus the republican debate, but I feel like the ground has shifted beneath our feet over the last 30 years. And in fact, we're living in a very different paradigm. So the principles don't really align with with the debates we're having. Because we can talk about who controls everything and who's ultimately the power behind the governments, but at the same time, currently it's very clear that every policy that the US is currently making is because oil companies want to have licences to drill.
82:44
Yes.
82:46
And...
82:47
That is really, you know, so the principal debate is elsewhere, I think, perhaps, and there's too much grain.
82:53
Yeah, also, I wonder, actually, listening to all the calls, because this word entrenched, it's a lovely word, isn't it? So you're either entrenched or you're ambivalent.
83:03
And if you're ambivalent, then neither of the entrenched sides are likely to sway you. So if we had a heated debate about it on this program, it would be to my ears, and I accept that not everybody hears what I hear, it would be quite dull because I've heard it all before. And so have you. We've heard it all before. Tourism and this and that and the other. I think Megan Hereford made this point. We've heard that so many times before, that it is going to seem a little bit boring. But it wouldn't be boring if it felt as if there was a constituency of people that could go one way or the other.
83:40
So if we were having a referendum at the end of next week on the abolition of the monarchy, it would somehow feel much, much more interesting than it would when we're not.
83:51
Because the ambivalent gets...
83:55
The ambivalence is removed from the conversation, I think.
84:01
I'm just letting that settle. Are you there, Chris?
84:04
Yeah, no, I think that's wrong. I think ultimately, and again, it's where it comes down when we talk about, you know, as you mentioned, obviously, the infernal ratio, the 48-52. Again, that's where that sits. That's where that wobble sits. And it comes down to who can maybe shout the louder.
84:17
And what's the point in me having a strong opinion or indeed engaging with this debate? Because it ain't ever going to lead anywhere, which means you've got to have a really strong opinion to start with. And if you haven't, you're not interested. I think there's something in that. What is this? This is like the kind of...
84:31
The chemistry of the time that we spend together every day. Why some subjects work, why some subjects don't. Why some presenters... Nick Abbott could read the phone book every night and it'd be utterly compelling radio. Other people can be conducting the technically most fascinating subject under the sun and you'd rather have a milkshake. It's coming up to quarter to twelve. You're listening to James O'Brien on LBC. Up next, the MP Wendy Chamberlain who is doing the Lord's work when it comes to a medical condition that...
85:00
Well, it's controversial, it's confusing, and it's very close to my heart as well. Find out more after this.
85:08
It is 11.48 and you are listening to James O'Brien on LBC. I hope I'm not going to get into trouble with my next guest, but I was scheduled to visit the House of Commons yesterday for a debate, but we took the view that it was far too hot.
85:24
And so we didn't go. Happily, the debate unfolded anyway, led by Wendy Chamberlain, the Liberal Democrat MP for North East Fife and crucially chair of the all party parliamentary group on Pans Pandas. Now, if you haven't heard of Pans Pandas, you probably have if you think you haven't. If you read a headline that says things like Jack's parents were told he was autistic. In fact, he has a little known condition that can be triggered by an everyday infection and cured by antibiotics. Not quite cured, but um that's the daily mail for once doing something of which i heartily um and and completely approve it's drawing attention to a condition called pans pandas or pans and pandas an infection triggered autoimmune neuropsychiatric condition um and wendy was leading the debate in parliament yesterday because um there is some movement on this that is largely positive but we want more what what
86:20
prompted your interest in the the broader subject wendy to to to begin but thanks for having me on james i think like any mp who um gets um interest in this condition it's usually because a constituent gets in touch because they are struggling to get help and support for their child both from a medical and indeed from an educational perspective Because one of the things about this condition is the sudden onset of the symptoms that young people who get it experience is just pretty devastating for a family.
86:53
It's OCD, it's tics, it's fudeboidens. It's just basically absenting themselves from everyday life, from schooling where they've normally been doing quite well. And the infection trigger that you described, it sometimes can be a few weeks after an infection. So it's very difficult to put two and two together. So I had a constituent who basically was struggling for support. I got involved. They were fortunate enough to have the means to go private to get the right antibiotics and support. And that's very much the norm.
87:24
And from my perspective, I just think of potentially those children who are undiagnosed with families who can't afford or support getting and paying for private support. And therefore, those families in their entirety are written off. When we talk about the crisis in mental health and young people, I do wonder if PANS is part of that picture. And it's just... So it's described as a rare disease. I'm not convinced it's rare. I think it's more undiagnosed.
87:51
Yeah. So, I mean, you know, my wife works in this field as a psychotherapist, and I think she would chime with that fear or suspicion, the idea that there will be a lot of families who are dealing with an almost overnight transformation of their child's behavior with some... conditions that present as mental health conditions like OCD and then some physical symptoms like like tics and spasms but which may well have a completely physical explanation in terms of brain inflammation caused by the strep virus or by black mold or by Lyme's disease there's so much work to be done on working out what it is and it could it could be good news in a sense for families who are still baffled by what it was that caused such a complete turnaround in their child's conduct, their child's condition.
88:41
There are guidelines coming because when my wife first started working in the field, there was still a lot of resistance to even existing. It's often the case if you've spent 10 years at medical school and then someone comes along and says, oh, here's something you've never heard of. A lot of doctors, not all, happily, but some doctors will push back against that and tell you to get back in your box. But the guidelines that are coming later this year, I think they're due in the autumn. They will hopefully change that part of the story.
89:10
Yeah, that's very much what we're hoping. As I say, I got involved in 2022. I held a debate in the last parliament where we got some positive response from the government. But progress has been really slow. And some of that sadly is due to some resistance within medical practitioners. Sometimes we talk about a postcode lottery often in terms of conditions, but sometimes it can be a GP lottery, even within a practice. I've had another conviction where one GP will be supportive, the other GP will basically not when they know a flare up is happening and antibiotics are required.
89:45
So it is really challenging. So it's about that guidance getting out as far as possible, about it being accepted by the medical community. And clearly we need to have a lot more research. Now, Panspanda, the charity that works with the APPG, they've been, you know, they've been having to fundraise themselves for things like survey studies, etc. And given how I am concerned, and I think other MPs are, that this might be more widespread, it's difficult to understand why we aren't putting a priority on this when we look at children's well-being.
90:16
So that was the point of the debate yesterday. You knew that the new guidance was coming in the autumn, but you wanted to focus the mind on these issues.
90:24
Yeah, we wanted to ensure that we were continuing to hold the government's feet to the fire. It's the first time we've had the opportunity to properly get a response from the Labour government in relation to this, wanting to have that reassurance that they were addressing it. And for me, you know, my colleague asked some specific questions around what engagement is happening across the devolved administrations, because it's, you know, from a Scottish government and NHS perspective, we're seeing exactly the same challenges for families.
90:55
The phrase that always resonates with me and I know you used it in the house yesterday is that the parents are seeing their child disappear before their eyes. Did you get what you wanted yesterday in the house?
91:06
I think we had cross-party support. One of the other Conservative MPs, Julian Lewis, was talking about the fact that actually that acceptance that it might be Pans Panda and some antibiotics being prescribed might be the thing that stops it getting deep-seated. What we often find is children go into that mental health wait times and in that period the OCD, the ticks, just embed themselves. So it's much, much more difficult to unravel. Look, yes, we got positive noises from the government yesterday, but it's quite clear that we need to do more on this front.
91:41
And one of the things I've thought has been really important, appearing directly from the children themselves. So we actually a couple of months ago had the Pans Panda Youth Board come into parliament and engage directly with MPs. And one of them was very good because he did say that we, you know, this group, we are the voters of the future and we're going to be paying close attention in terms of what you do. But to hear that, you know, parents talking about their children disappearing overnight. But how terrifying must this condition be for a child? who from overnight goes to, you know, being lively, outgoing, performing well academically, to basically cut off from their friends, family and the community around them.
92:19
It must be dreadful, dreadful.
92:21
This is then a rare example of things getting better, I think.
92:27
Slowly, too slowly is what I would say. But yes, it feels like we are finally seeing some real consensus and real movement. But for those families who, as they can't seek private health support in order to alleviate this condition, there is so much more that we need to do. And in fact,
92:44
it's a cost saving aspect as well of course because if you spend that money now then you're going to save a fortune in the long term as with so much of your world um so much of politics wendy it's um it's a funny one isn't it it's a um a final question there will be some parents listening to this and possibly some people listening to this who are hearing bells ring in the back of their brain what what do they do now what do they get in touch with the charity that i mean
93:11
Yeah, I think I would recommend that in the first instance, certainly engaging to see the different resources they have that are available. And indeed, get in touch with your MP. I mean, for all that, yes, it was very hot yesterday and it was a shame some of the families that we talked to come along, made the difficult decision not to. There are a lot of MPs who are engaged and interested in this work and actually more of them will be so when constituents get in touch with them to highlight the challenges that they're facing.
93:41
And for people who don't know, an APPG, an all-party parliamentary group, is a bit like committees. It's where in many ways...
93:49
our parliament is at its best at its strongest because it works across parties it works with common goals whether to to scrutinize or to frame or promote legislation and so a quick shout not just to you wendy chamberlain but also as you say to sir julian lewis who is of course a conservative and and judging by his comments yesterday really knows his stuff um and julie minns the the labour mp um up in carlisle um and i think freddie van miello the the one of your fellow liberal democrats yeah i mean they're really really interesting to hear people talking about knowledge they have come to as a consequence of representing their constituents so time timely reminder that you do some good after all you lot
94:32
We certainly try to do our best. And on this stuff where you can reach cross-party consensus, I think it's really easy to just think of politics as we come in and we sort of are completely blinkered and we don't engage with other parties.
94:45
For myself, a Liberal Democrat, when I started in 2019, there were 11 of us. You don't get anything done when there's only 11 of you without trying to work on a more collaborative basis.
94:55
That's beautifully put. Wendy Chamberlain, thank you. Liberal Democrat MP for North East Fife, as you hear, also the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Pans Pandas, which is, I think, I told you this a while ago, actually, something that is going to become more and more familiar to people as more understanding is achieved. I'm going to squeeze in one more call, and given that that was a Scottish MP...
95:20
it's appropriate that we will take a Scottish call on the question of why those royal phone-ins don't necessarily sing in the way that most of our phone-ins do. Eileen's in Hamilton. What would you like to say, Eileen?
95:31
Good morning, James.
95:32
I think it's a brilliant phone-in because I was saying to your researcher there, as well as questioning each other and having a wide debate on it, it's made me question myself this morning and question my own opinions. As a As a practising Catholic and my family is of Irish descent, fundamentally I am against the royal family. However, there's an element of we're not going to get rid of them.
96:03
They are here to stay. So let's use them to the best of our ability. Dumfries House is a great example of where the royal family can benefit all parts of society and lean on social justice, which I'm very strong about. really passionate about. So let's use them more as a commodity rather than just saying, oh, they're lovely.
96:27
I think the King would agree with you on that. I think the King does see his role as being very much engaged with his subjects' lives. I don't like the word subjects any more than you do, but them's the breaks. That's how it works. And that's the King's foundation, Dumfries House, which is, again, something about which very little is known. And I think Jess Phillips,
96:47
Do you know this? It's amazing. It's amazing.
96:50
I think Jess Phillips said recently that the King's Foundation was pretty much the only charity in her constituency doing a certain type of work with young people, offering a kind of a place of sanctuary for young people. I could have got that wrong though, so don't sue me if I have either. Promise?
97:06
I should add as well, they should be under more public transparent scrutiny. So for example, just putting it out there a wee bit controversial, but If £12 million was paid to someone, the former Queen's son didn't know, didn't meet, didn't whatever. If there was more scrutiny all those years ago, I firmly believe Virginia would still be alive.
97:32
And those women would feel, and those victims would feel more believed... and more credible in their accounts of what actually happened.
97:40
And that ties in with what David was saying about the money and about it being all very well that we're learning about the tax today. But if we'd known that someone who is essentially a public figure was privately making the payment that you allude to, then yeah, maybe some alarm bells would have gone off and some scrutiny would have followed. And you remind us of all the different elements of the conversation that are fascinating even if sometimes it feels as if the central element on the on the monarchy's existence or otherwise has has lost its sting in recent years as shariq suggested possibly almost deliberately well okay i stand corrected i thought that was fascinating every call was good there um not good enough to carry on for another hour i don't think i don't think the appetite is there and there's a story i want to talk about that
98:23
It just again plays into one of my all-time favourite subjects which is about education as an end in itself rather than a means to an end.
98:33
It is five minutes after 12. James writes, Rich, your response to that question about the Duchy of Lancaster was brilliant. I wonder how many people picked up on it. Enough, Richie. Enough people. Because you got it. And even if no one else did, that's my little gift to you. Keith got it as well. That's my little gift to you. If you've no idea what I'm talking about, you can listen back on the Global Player to the last hour of the programme. And a nice little, I would estimate, early 80s book.
99:00
Birmingham-based pop reference that I managed to squeeze into the conversation about the royal family that I was having with David.
99:07
And it's good to know I'm not the only child involved in the programme today, which is with me every step of the way.
99:16
I like this. I need to confess something to you. I think I've told you this before.
99:22
But as I get older and as my children reach the relevant age to what I'm about to discuss, I think of it more and more. My university education was completely wasted on me.
99:34
I mean completely wasted. It was a waste of money and it was a waste of time. And that was entirely my fault.
99:42
If I could go back now and spend three years, four if you include the year that I failed, I told you it was a waste of time. If I could go back now and spend three whole years of my life doing nothing but learning and reading and studying and listening...
100:00
without any real other worries. All right, I'd hold down a job in the union bar or I'd be selling suits on Regent Street on Saturdays, but I didn't really have any other worries. My rent was paid.
100:12
This is, of course, in the days before tuition fees. What an absolute joy that was.
100:19
And here's the thing, when I say that in those terms, you don't hear somebody describing a commodity. You don't even hear somebody describing something that has an immediate application in the workplace, do you? I wish I could spend three years reading and listening and learning.
100:41
You know, you get to the end of the first week of your holiday and your relationship with books has changed because you can spend two or three hours reading one and you suddenly remember what it was like when you used to read like eight books in the summer holidays or more sometimes. And you just lose that as you get older. You're too busy or you're too easily distracted, even without the invention of smartphones. There was too much going on.
101:05
And I used to be proud of my approach to my studies because I got a good degree and I got it by doing the same things that I did when I got a good A-level, a good set of A-level results. I did absolutely naffle for most of a year and then I spent a week cramming furiously and my brain was such that that was enough to get me over the wire. Of course, if I'd worked all year or if I'd crammed for a month... I'd have done even better. But I did well enough, and I was proud of the fact that I didn't do much to get my results, whereas now I'm ashamed.
101:39
Isn't that a strange thing?
101:41
That in my early 20s, I'd be proud of the fact that I could get a good 2-1 from an excellent university without having done any work, except the year that I actually failed, which is a slightly different story.
101:52
I'd kind of forgotten to give up one of my papers that I was entered for.
101:58
And I was proud of that. I liked that kind of sense of a bit like a kind of predictable right wing newspaper pundit boasting about how little work they did. I think I've seen Jeremy Clarkson doing something. And I like Jeremy Clarkson for the record.
102:13
Not as much as he likes me, but I do like Jeremy Clarkson. And now I'm just ashamed. Now, I don't think that I wasted my dad's money or my mum's money particularly because it wasn't built in that way, the higher education system. And I was self-funding for the repetition of the year that I failed.
102:32
But I was...
102:36
I'm ashamed now that I wasted that wonderful opportunity. I'm never going to get it again, I don't think. I did a course. I didn't tell you at the time, I don't think, because I thought you might laugh at me. I did a course earlier this year at the City Lit College in central London, which is largely adult. Well, it's entirely adult education. It's largely, it's entirely voluntary.
102:56
What do I mean by that? You can do anything there. I think you can do ballet dancing and basket weaving or you can do 19th century continental philosophy. It's one of the most wonderful places that I've discovered in London in the last few years. I've been here a long time now. There's not a lot left to discover. But you know what Dr. Johnson said, he who is tired of London is tired of life. But what I loved about this building...
103:20
was the fact that it was full of people who were generally older than me. I think there must be a very high incidence of retired people there because you've got to be free in the day to go and do a course. There's more in the evening, but mine was in the day. So I suspect if I was going in the evening, there would have been younger people there, people who were still working and then going along in the evening to the higher education college.
103:45
And what I loved about the place, the building, was the energy.
103:52
The energy. It was people who were engaged with an educational environment in ways that actually were inspiring. People were not there to get a better job at the end of it. People were not there because they were on a conveyor belt from kindergarten and the next stage of that conveyor belt because of their background and their class was university. They certainly weren't there to faff about for three years and then cram in the final weeks and get a half-decent degree. They were there...
104:20
To learn for learning's sake.
104:25
Isn't that an interesting phrase? To learn for learning's sake.
104:30
Why are you studying that? Well, I want to get a job in that sector. Why are you studying that? Well, I think that it might be. Why are you studying that? Because I just want to know stuff. I want to do it. Think about it in physical stuff. You go to a dance class, you're not expecting to become a prima ballerina. You go to a tap class, you're not expecting to be the next Ginger Rogers or the next Fred Astaire. You're just enjoying it. You do it purely for enjoyment. But an intellectual, an academic course...
104:59
It used to be normal that we'd do it purely for enjoyment, that the education was an end in itself.
105:08
Drama. All right, I've told you now. I did a drama course. I did an acting course.
105:13
Quite good, actually. If you're very good, I shall do my... I did my audition piece for Eleanor the other day, and she just looked at me as if I was behaving inappropriately. I thought you'd be more interested and excited by my adventures in drama classes at this stage of my life. Absolutely stone-cold bored. Before I'd even drawn... It's a great monologue as well.
105:35
You know, the one that Edmund gives about astrology, about how he would have been as I am.
105:41
I would have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled.
105:46
Keith's fallen asleep. Keith's actually fallen asleep. Wake Keith up, will you? Eleanor did a degree in English, and she's bored rigid by my King Lear monologue. Keith's actually fallen asleep.
105:57
So I don't think I'm communicating the sense of energy to my own colleagues that I derived from that place. But I know you get it, right? That idea of people gathering there, making friends, but learning and studying.
106:10
Which is why I find these stories so dispiriting.
106:15
Young men studying arts and humanities are worse off on average if they go to university than classmates who do not. It's government data.
106:25
Median earnings published yesterday. If you're in your mid-20s, then in the 2023 to 2024 tax year, particularly with arts degrees, the kids that went to university will be earning less than the kids who didn't.
106:45
If you want to know, and this kind of tallies with the point I made about commoditization, the biggest earners were those who studied economics at Cambridge University. So if you did economics at Cambridge, you'll be earning £105,000 a year on average within five years of graduating. The lowest ranked course and institution combination was Allied Health at the College of Integrated Chinese Medicine. I don't even know if they should publish this stuff.
107:12
Is that a phone-in?
107:14
Should they even be publishing this stuff? Do we have to turn every degree into a financial transaction?
107:22
Because if you go to the City Lit College in London, those people there aren't calculating their enjoyment of that degree or the value, not doing degrees generally, but they're not calculating the value of that course by how much they will earn as a consequence of having done it. They're calculating the value of that course by how it makes them feel and what it does to them.
107:43
And now we have government. Is this new? Have we always published government data on what the relationship is between a certain course and income? Have we? I don't remember this from when I was of that age.
107:54
Graduates who had studied law, economics, business and management did better.
107:58
Women earning between £6,200 and £13,200 more than their cohort, their contemporaries who didn't go to university. Men, slightly less, £2,600 to £11,000 more than their non-graduate peers.
108:15
But the gulf, the biggest gulf, is between men who did arts degrees...
108:22
versus men who did no degree.
108:25
And men who did arts degrees earn less than the men who did no degree.
108:36
What's the question then?
108:41
Young men studying arts and humanities degrees are worse off on average if they go to university than classmates who do not.
108:48
The question is, are they really?
108:52
Are they really?
108:53
Are you someone who listened to me talking about wasting my time at university and thought, well, I'm glad I didn't?
109:07
Are you that perk? Well, I'm glad I didn't. I got loads out of doing my arts degree. What I didn't get was a qualification that's going to improve my earning potential.
109:17
But the idea that I'm worse off than the lads who didn't go at all, goodness me, no. I discovered things that will be with me for the rest of my life, whether it's a poet or a novel or a picture, whatever it may be. The idea that a degree is to be discouraged because you won't earn more money as a consequence of having done it, that depresses me, actually.
109:46
But I'm so out of the loop on this.
109:49
I left university so long ago that my experiences are irrelevant. And I've got one daughter at university whose approach to her studies is so completely different from mine that I learn little from her except what it would be like to be the kind of student who loves learning.
110:10
I had these moments of loving it. I had these little moments of loving it.
110:16
But I never really got that sense of being there like I got when I was at the City Lit College and everybody was just there because they wanted to be and they wanted to learn. So what do you get from an arts degree if not money?
110:36
And of course, I don't want to confine this to people who have done a degree.
110:41
I'm interested in why there is a growing sense that they're trying to disparage and denigrate the arts as an area of learning. You know I have a big theory about fascism. I think that fascists hate the arts because the arts teach you empathy. The arts are one of the only ways in which you can imagine what it would be like to wear somebody else's shoes. You watch a play about a refugee, your attitude to refugees will change. You watch a play about a sportsman, perhaps. You watch a play about the England football team under Gareth Southgate, and your attitude to all of that will change.
111:13
Your attitude to racism might change. Of course, the people most in need of the exposure to these kind of things are often the people least likely to experience it. That's why putting arts in schools is so important, getting to people when they're young.
111:26
But I hate the way... Was it Oscar Wilde who said a cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing? Sounds like Oscar Wilde. Let's leave it with Oscar. A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Headlines like this...
111:43
An arts degree doesn't pay for men in their 20s looks to me, as a man in his 50s, like an example of knowing the price of everything but the value of nothing.
111:53
So what do you get from studying the arts?
111:59
And I know you could come away now with 60 grand's worth of debt, which might make my position both romantic and ridiculous. But that's what the phones are for. To tell me, James, you've got to give your head a wobble. You're being romantic and ridiculous. An arts degree is not worth anything because of the amount of debt that I've come out with.
112:16
But what do you get from studying the arts that people who've never studied the arts don't know? What is it that you get? 0345 6060 973 is the number that you need.
112:31
And if you're older than me and you've studied later in life, I'd love to hear your answer to that question.
112:37
When you're not there because of the conveyor belt, you're not there because it's Buggins' turn. You're there because you want to be. What do you get from studying the arts that has nothing to do with earning potential?
112:52
Hit the numbers now. You will get through. 0345 6060 973 is the number. This is LBC.
113:01
It's a funny one, isn't it? Because all of that kind of eyefalutin romantic theorizing could be pointless and irrelevant and anachronistic and completely out of date because of student fees, because of tuition fees. I sit here and say to you, tell these people why it's worth doing an arts degree, even though it doesn't improve your learning. And you can, I think, be forgiven for saying to me, shut up and sit down, James. That might have been true in 1991, but it's definitely not true in 2026. But I want to explore it. And I want to still, get to the nub of the question of what you get out of it other than the money and other than the earning.
113:38
Because it's quite, I mean, do you understand why I find it depressing?
113:42
To see a list of degrees linked to earning power, I genuinely don't know whether that's a new thing or not. But it wasn't. I went to the London School of Economics, where you're probably more conscious of the relationship between your qualification and your earning power, because so many of the students there go into the city and go into financial institutions.
114:04
And even there, on the Bachelor of Science economics faculty, even there, learning for learning's sake was kind of recognized and valued. But maybe the world has changed so much that what I'm saying, what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling begins to sound either ridiculous or out of date or both. But I really hope not.
114:26
I really hope not. I really hope it is still worth having a conversation about why an arts degree in particular, because they are, in some sense, the least valuable in financial terms, is valuable for other reasons.
114:41
Maureen's in Chichester. Maureen, what would you like to say?
114:44
Well, I absolutely feel that I have an understanding that people who go to university straight from school or I don't have any sort of early education, early higher education, I would say, because I know what it feels like to be an adult that's uneducated as well as an educated and highly educated actually now adult as well. So I get the difference between those two things and can therefore value, if you like, education much.
115:14
Wow.
115:15
much better than if I'd either just gone straight to university or had never had the chance.
115:25
Tell me about it. What changes?
115:28
Well, what changes? You get to understand a world that you were completely confused about. Actually, because I'm in my 70s, I used to feel there must be something wrong with me. I didn't understand these things. Everybody else seemed to understand them, but not me.
115:44
What sorts of things?
115:46
Well, politics mostly. So an Open University social science degree was where I started off. So I didn't get all that lovely stuff that kids do when they go off to university, all that amazing sort of friendship making thing. It was just an intensive education for me whilst I was bringing up my kids. Why did you want to do it?
116:10
Yep.
116:10
I always had that feeling that there was something out there that I didn't understand and I didn't get.
116:17
And even though I read, you know, classic books and did stuff like that and pondered things, I always felt that, you know, somehow I must be stupid if I don't get it.
116:29
So, yeah, so education sort of helped with that and then helped with a career. Then I went off and...
116:35
And became a nurse therapist.
116:37
But it would have had a value even if it hadn't had a career application. Oh, absolutely. Because what you've described is almost the core of you was changed by studying.
116:46
Completely, James. That's absolutely what it is. I learned how to learn. That's so, so important. That's what kids get when they go to university. They learn how to learn.
116:58
Mm-hmm.
116:59
Just out of curiosity, why was it not a path available to you when you were sort of 18, 19?
117:05
Oh, well, girls... Just because I'm nosy. Girls at that age, especially when you're educated in the East End of London, where there weren't the places for girls, was quite a barrier to females.
117:18
And do you know where I'm coming from when I describe a sense of depression at seeing this chart of degrees linked to earning power?
117:28
Yes. Yes, I absolutely do. I absolutely do. And I hate the idea that kids have got to pay for that higher education as well.
117:35
Yeah, but they do. So maybe this is a natural and inevitable consequence of that. Well, thank you. You put that beautifully. How quickly did you feel the change in you when you started studying, that learning to learn? How quickly did you become more intellectually secure or at least less insecure?
117:52
I will say my absolute first tutorial was an amazing experience. I had a lovely chap called Mr. May, who had been a tutor at Oxford, I think.
118:05
And I said, I handed him my first essay and said, look, this is no good. Please just tell me and I won't waste anybody's time. And he came back with, no need to rewrite, Maureen, you're definitely one of my star students.
118:17
Oh, Maureen. What a lovely moment. Do you know who never would have said that thing you said to him about it possibly not being any good?
118:24
A man.
118:27
It reminds me of callers to the show sometimes. Never get a bloke, ever, saying, oh, I'm not going to be as good as all your other... And that's part of what you referred to. I wouldn't mention it otherwise, but it's part of what you referred to as the common experience when you were in your late teens. Expectations, really. Casey's in Barnet. Casey, what would you like to say?
118:48
Well, I'm slightly cheating because I didn't get a degree. I got a diploma in the 70s going to a drama school, which did a combined teaching course. And I thought, I'll never do teaching. And I'm 72 now. I'm still working. And of course, teaching is part of that. And what I don't understand, we are all different. I value what other people do.
119:12
But I, like you, think learning for learning's sake and teaching children from 6 to 18 every day, giving them confidence, giving them a voice, letting them enjoy a variety of literature, being in other people's shoes makes them human. What makes humans different from maybe animal species is our wanting to record our value of the richness of our culture. And that makes our life more beautiful, aesthetic and pleasing when we're doing those grinding jobs that some people have to do.
119:46
And if you don't bring on the musicians, if you cut all the courses and you devalue drama and art and music, what have you left? The slaves for the planet.
119:59
Flippin' heck. I think you've killed the phone in Stone Dead, Casey. What can we add to this?
120:05
Well, the Greeks and Romans knew they valued art and sculpture and plays.
120:09
Do you sense, I'm just drawing upon your years now, if I may, do you sense that the direction of traffic is changing, that the discourse is becoming more negative about...
120:21
I think there's a slight change because although the numbers for, say, studying music have really gone down, and orchestras, okay, tastes change for sure. But you know yourself, the richness of literature. I also examine, so I see children and different plays being performed. And, you know, we have to keep wanting to use it. You know, I love, you know, diverse accents, cultures, and that is wonderful that we are getting that.
120:53
But we have to support the arts. If we are a civilised society, we have to record who we are. And empathy is so important.
121:06
Yeah, I mean, I bet you're a brilliant teacher.
121:09
Well, I enjoy it, and I get so much from it, listening to their ideas.
121:14
Can you, and forgive me if this is an unfair question, I don't want to put you on the spot, but can you describe what happens to a child who hasn't been exposed to any of the things that you've just waxed lyrical about, when they, thanks to the ministrations of a teacher like you, when they actually do discover them?
121:33
Well, you often see children come in who don't feel their opinions are valued or they come from a sort of strict situation. We know class sizes, you know, they're going to reduce a bit, aren't they now? But, you know, when they got big, they don't get an opportunity, you know, the show and sell mentality. allowed to be excited about their experiences or a rock or a stone they bring into class and allowed to say why it's important, that it's sort of not valued and that their chance to speak aloud. So they're getting their parents to go to their university interviews, I've been told.
122:08
They don't dare do that.
122:10
They answer the phone to the boss and they say, oh, sorry, Mr. Smith's in the loo.
122:14
I mean, appropriate. You mean young people sort of feel that they matter through the arts more than they would do otherwise, I think?
122:23
I think it gives them a voice. It allows them a safe space to share their thoughts and opinions and ideas and to get excited about them.
122:34
And yeah, I have to point out that we are all, three of us, the first two callers and me, are all of an age where the access to these things was, if not free, then in my case, a fraction of the cost of what it is now. And that doesn't in any way dilute the beauty of what you've said, but it possibly changes the relationship of that young person with the...
122:57
Um, with the experience, I don't know, you know, coming away with 50, 60,000 pounds worth of debt, then it doesn't make anything you've said not true, but it possibly makes it harder to justify on the part of a young person. Um, 1231 is the time.
123:14
Amelia Cox has your headlines.
123:17
12.34 is the time. This story has been around for most of this week, but it hasn't received anything like the coverage that you might have expected.
123:26
And so I'll just divert from our conversation about an arts degree for a moment with your permission.
123:32
A UN commission of inquiry says that Israel has deliberately targeted Palestinian children resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Gaza Strip, as well as war crimes in the occupied West Bank.
123:47
It alleges that Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately carried out acts inflicting death and severe bodily and mental harm on hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children, and that those killings continued even after last October's ceasefire in Gaza.
124:05
There are only really three responses to this story, aren't there? There is utter disgust and condemnation. There is, I presume, approval or some sort of argument that, oh, it's all very sad, but it's inevitable. Or there's denial.
124:22
And those final two categories are often sometimes quite hard to tell apart. Because you will remember when the Israeli government utterly rejects this report, calling it a libelous sham.
124:35
They used to say the same about the figures coming out of Gaza. They used to say you can't trust those and people would come on the radio show and say, oh, you can't trust those figures. They're from the Hamas-run health ministry. But of course, as we often say on this program, some things are not opinion, some things are just counting. And eventually the official figures would have to be opinion.
124:56
Well, I don't say they would have to be, but you would find it very difficult not to acknowledge the official figures because they kept the names. They kept a record of all the names. And they did, again, in a story that was criminally underreported, the Israeli government eventually accepted the figures that had been put out.
125:13
from Gaza were on the money, as it were. 73,035 is the bare minimum number of people killed in those Israeli attacks, and that includes 21,280 children. Those figures from the territory's Hamas-run health ministry, considered reliable by the UN because, as I told you several times, They kind of keep a record. They keep the names.
125:45
So now we've got the commission accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
125:53
That was a report last September that found there were reasonable grounds to conclude that four of the five acts of genocide defined under the 1948 Genocide Convention had been carried out by Israeli authorities and security forces.
126:09
Again, the government in Israel called it distorted and false. But it is, I suppose, inevitable that people who denied what was going on are now ignoring the evidence that it was going on, which is why perhaps some people are not drawing attention to these stories and these reports and these findings that include, of course, humanitarian organizations in Israel and beyond but it's the targeting of children in Gaza directly by shooting at their vital organs using precision weapons such as quadcopter drones and snipers and by using high-impact weapons in strikes on residential buildings schools and displacement camps crowded with children that this report focuses on And as I said, maybe some people need the arts in order to develop empathy and maybe some people will never have any empathy at all.
127:06
Because my coverage of these issues has been really kind of defined in some ways by the outrage some people seem to have at the sense of heartbreak at the death, equal heartbreak at the death of a Palestinian child or an Israeli child.
127:21
Because, of course, the Palestinians, or at least Hamas, were also guilty of war crimes and other grave violations of international law on the 7th of October 2023.
127:38
If you're normal, you find it easy to acknowledge both of those things. And, of course, inevitably, you count.
127:46
But only, I guess, if you're normal. 12.39 is the time. Back to the conversation about the arts. And I suppose I should apologise for the fact that I didn't share that with you soon. I just presumed it would get a slightly higher status on the national news agenda. But hey-ho, here we are. Paul's in Coventry. Back to the arts and their value. Paul, what would you like to say? Hi, James. Nice to speak to you.
128:05
Likewise. Yeah, so I am in my 30s and I studied contemporary theatre and performance at uni.
128:14
And I completely agree with you in that there's so much more to the world than just finances.
128:19
Yes, but you have come out with a large amount of debt, of course.
128:24
Yeah, and I'm still not rich. I'm still not financially rich. But I think my perspective of it is that you can be miserable in the highest paying jobs in the world. And so for me, I get a lot more worth out of What I learn about people through my job. So if I could just explain briefly one of my projects. Yeah, take your time. I run a project called the Museum of Me, which essentially plunks a museum structure in a community space and then works with 10 residents of that area.
129:00
And every day it becomes a museum of a different resident. And it gets to share human stories. And we have an opening ceremony where the community can come along and have a drinks and canapes reception and meet somebody of their community. And I've been doing it just a couple of minutes ago. Kind of did it in Sully Hall. And it was with the newly arrived members that have come to Sully Hall over the past few years. That included Ukrainians. That included Hong Kongers. That included people who put up Ukrainian families.
129:30
Right. Just what you learn about them and what you get to share about them and seeing the environment around them really taking pride that they're part of Solid Hall and that they're part of this is, to me, so much more meaningful than getting 105K in five years. Was this your own idea?
129:50
Yeah. That's fantastic.
129:52
What a wonderful idea.
129:54
Thanks. You are Paul O'Donnell.
129:58
I'm Paul O'Donnell, yeah.
129:59
I'm just looking you up. I'd not heard of that before, but there's loads here. That's really, really impressive.
130:05
Yeah, we told the story of an eight-year-old person who came over from Hong Kong when he was three and now lives in Fully Hall. It's very cheeky, very playful.
130:16
And it's just, I think the arts is really good at kind of breaking that division that we're all feeling in the world at this moment in time, because when you apply it to a person and you see... Jan or you see Sandra or you see whoever it is you read what actually is going on behind this and how they've got to the point they are at this moment in time that's where I feel like the power particularly in the world at the moment that's where the real power and value of arts is that isn't financial it's personal it's community it's bringing people together, connecting.
130:54
I love this tagline that you have on your website. You are worthy of a museum. And that, of course, means everybody is worthy of a museum. Because every subject is a story.
131:07
Yeah. And every person's individual story, I feel, is universal. And what we really love, and literally every single person we've done a museum about has said to us, I don't know why you picked me. There's nothing interesting about me. And then you asked like two more questions. We had a really great interaction in Charlesmore, which is my own patch where we did the museum. And the local radio were there interviewing people. And a woman kind of went, oh, I was thinking about applying to be a museum star for this.
131:40
But I didn't think there was anything interesting about me. And then two questions later, it turns out that she and her sister were the first conjoined twins to be separated in the UK.
131:49
Are you serious?
131:52
Yeah. That's incredible. How do you pick people then?
131:55
So people apply, do they?
131:58
It's a bit different every time. So we're going to do it because we're based on Coventry.
132:07
But we've just been promoted to Premier League. And so we're doing it. We're going to be doing it later on in the year when the season starts again with football fans who stick to the team through sick and thin.
132:18
Oh, I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. Where did you get the idea from?
132:24
My arts degree, maybe.
132:26
Just while you were studying?
132:27
You just came up with this idea of recognising... My degree was in contemporary theatre and performance, so it's a little bit different, but it taught me... The skill it taught me was that there's...
132:41
the future beyond this present. Like, what is next for arts? What is next for theatre? What is next for the world? What do they need? And so...
132:51
it's built in me kind of a way of going okay somebody else is doing that how do i do something different or lovely story brilliant thing and a word if you would on you just on your background because i got one text i've lost it now um uh saying that this was a conversation confined to people of privilege which i thought was a bit unfair
133:13
What was that, sir?
133:14
A word on your background, because I got one critical text before you came on saying that this was a conversation confined exclusively to privileged people, and that people who weren't privileged would not recognise all of the things that we were describing. In relation to the art? I think they meant private education. I just wondered what your background was.
133:32
I mean, for the first five years of my life, I'd say I was in a quite working class background, not particularly deprived at any point in my life, but I have moved into kind of a middle class after that, into a middle class kind of environment. But I live with diabetes. I live with homosexual. So there's lots of different ways to...
133:56
decipher what privilege means.
133:58
That's a very true point. And I'm pretty sure that text would not have included you in that criticism. And it was a reasonable point that was made. I just wanted to pick up on it. I love this. So you just Google Museum of Me to find out more about the work that Paul and his colleagues do. That's absolutely gorgeous. And then every subject has a picture that you can click on and find out more about them. Because that's so true, isn't it? I'd never ever, ever thought of that.
134:25
Every person is a story. It's 12.45.
134:28
Bit cheeky this, but I'm going to play you two clips from Full Disclosure this week because they're relevant to the phone-in that we're having and because I've told you quite a lot about the subject of this week's interview. Beban Kidron, or Baroness Kidron to you, sort of best known for her filmmaking. She made the film of Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. She's got an extraordinary CV. actually um all sorts of films to Wong Fu thanks for everything Julie Newmar you probably remember that um starring Wesley Snipes and Patrick Swayze that's after she moved to Hollywood something that she'll that she talks about she directed the second Bridget Jones film um with well you know who's in that Renny Zellweger Colin Firth and Hugh Grant loads of stuff I mean just loads of stuff um and then she set up the kids film club which is relevant to what we're talking about Today, an educational charity that sets up office after school film clubs in England and Wales, free to all state and primary secondary schools.
135:29
Gordon Brown heavily involved in that when he was chancellor. But I told you about her yesterday, if you weren't already familiar with her, because she made a film in 2013 called In Real Life.
135:40
which looked at teenagers and their relationship with the internet. And her life changed direction at that point. She made another film or two subsequently, but she's dedicated most of her energies since then to campaigning for action on children's access to and use of social media. I mentioned to you yesterday that she must be... The first question I asked her during the interview was about how...
136:06
the rest of the world has finally caught up with her because she's been in this space since 2013. And one of the things she was most interesting on was relevant to what we were talking about in the first hour. So how on earth do we end up with tobacco not being legislated against when its health negatives are so obvious. How on earth does the fossil fuel lobby continue to poison us and have support from politicians, some of whom are being paid, some of them are probably too sick?
136:38
to understand anything and don't even need to be paid. And I think that the social media scandal that has engulfed younger people right across the world probably has similar answers. And that, I think, was one of the questions I'd put to her.
136:54
And that's what this was in response to.
136:57
I had a chat with someone who was, if I could say, you can't get any higher up in the security services in the US. And they were saying to me, you know, that they were looking at a piece of research, they were looking at why government doesn't work.
137:12
And they did a really interesting piece of work. And what it showed was that until the mid 80s, um, In America, Congress, the Senate, people used to vote according to the interests of their area. Kentucky, you know, California, Newark. What would be good for their constituents? And they were ruthless because they wanted to be reelected. Since the mid-80s, they have consistently voted for what suits the top 10% of earners.
137:48
Democracy is no longer representative. It is bought.
137:54
These guys are trying to get in power and stay in power. They are not seeking to represent us.
138:01
And when people look... at their own choices, I ask them to look at that, right? And I'm going to say something so outlandish, which is I don't care anymore whether they're left, right or in the middle.
138:17
I get that.
138:18
Yeah? What I want to know is, are they independent? Are they for me? Yeah. And I don't mean me in a tiny way. I mean me in my neighborhood. Yeah. And that is what it is. And so I think the answer to your question is we've been bullied and.
138:39
And a combination of bullied into distraction. So we're all worrying about the wrong thing. Yeah.
138:47
We're all sort of just busy scrolling and worrying about how thin we are.
138:52
And at the same time, you know, the people who are supposed to represent us have given up that job and they're representing the other guys. And in that toxic mess comes through five companies that seek to rule the world.
139:07
Literally.
139:08
Literally.
139:10
Of course, I suppose, listening back to that, because I conducted the interview a couple of weeks ago, listening back to that, I suppose, if you are not happy with the amount of priority being given to the interests of the richest people in the world by the electorate, then you could just give five million pounds to a politician in the hope that...
139:27
the scales would be tipped even further away from ordinary people just just thinking out loud um she'll get on to the subject of the tech itself shortly but i want to squeeze in one or two more calls before then on the question of the actual value of an arts degree rather than the price of it matthew's in bexley heath matthew what would you like to say well i'm doing a physics degree at the moment and i'll be quite honest is that like the most value i get from my degree is not even the very sciencey sort of things it's
139:57
quite a lot of the very interdisciplinary modules and the other sort of things I learned in uni, and looking at my friends who did sociology and all these more political degrees and more liberal arts degrees, there's immense value that you can get from just being able to grapple with the sort of ideas they learn in the course. And I do have a little bit of jealousy, I'll be honest.
140:17
Oh, how interesting. And yet your degree is probably more financially beneficial when you graduate.
140:25
Yeah, yeah, that's why I picked it to begin with.
140:28
Fair play. I mean, you're describing swings and roundabouts, aren't you, in a way? It's, you know, the trade-off you get may hopefully, will hopefully be financial, but you sense when you look at some of your peers that you're losing something as well, or you're not accessing something as well.
140:45
Yeah, I think as well, like, as time goes, and also with the overwhelming presence of just kind of AI and also how it's used in media and just kind of information like that.
141:00
I've got my opinion.
141:01
Yes, of course. Well, you're obviously not shy of critical thinking either, but just give me a quick sentence on what it is you think they get that you don't.
141:10
Well, I'm trying my hardest to get to that sort of understanding because I've been trying to supplement myself with some reading and all that sort of stuff. But when you do a degree, you spend an immense amount of time doing these sort of activities and tasks and the amount of research that goes into, like, even for my, like, you know, uh, lab reports, like I've spent an ungodly amount of time.
141:38
University, they force you to spend a large amount of time on these very important, um,
141:44
Yeah, no, and then space. I mean, this is, I don't want to sound all sort of like an old beard, a grey beard, but you think you're struggling to find space and time now. Wait until you're my head. But I know what you mean. I do know what you mean. Exactly. I would say, in full patronizing old git mode, I would say that if you're even thinking like this, then you're okay. If you're even aware of what it is that you think that you're not getting, you're probably getting it. You're certainly aware of its value, which means you're okay.
142:15
The people I would worry about most are the people that Oscar Wilde was talking about when he described knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing. At least I think it was Oscar Wilde. I haven't checked. I know that it was Beebe and Kidron that I was talking to for full disclosure this week because I've checked. And I'm always slightly gratified by how many people, how many of you have already listened to it by the time I come to plug it because it drops early morning on Fridays. And I can tell you now that this has already garnered an awful lot of approval from people who've listened already. She's a magnificent woman.
142:46
She's a fascinating person.
142:48
And her life has been dedicated latterly to dealing with precisely the social media and technology issues that the rest of the world has finally woken up to. And here she is on that subject.
143:00
The thing that irritates me the most is when a minister comes to the dispatch box and says, we couldn't possibly have anticipated, or we don't know enough, or we have to see how this rolls out. And I go, no, we don't. We understand. We've known for a long time. It's political. It's not practical. Stop pretending it's practical. I think that the public anger about AI, the parental anger about social media, the fury of young people about where their jobs are going, I think that's really proper.
143:38
It's really important. And I would say right from the get-go, that's where my book ends up. It says we have to take democratic control back. And you know what, guys? That means you, you who are listening, not people like me who have this privileged place in Parliament. So I say bring it on.
143:56
But you have been warning about the dangers that are now in the papers every single day for well over a decade. I have.
144:02
I walked into my kitchen. 2012 was the moment when a smartphone became the price point that an adult might give one to a child.
144:15
I walked into my kitchen and there were four 15-year-old girls not talking. And I just thought, why aren't they talking? I mean, I've never seen four 15-year-old girls not talking. And then I realized they were looking at the phone. And I thought, oh, I wonder what it's going to be like to grow up here, like in my kitchen here and there. And then I went, where is this? And that idea, that idea that there was another there at the end of the phone that I didn't know, that changed my life.
144:50
And that interview could change yours, actually. It's that good. Absolutely fascinating. Beban Kidron on full disclosure this week. That is it from me for today and indeed for the next two weeks. I will be back, I promise. all being well but um if you're going to miss me then obviously the global player contains all of our shows going back a fair old distance lbc app similarly and there's a archive of full disclosures and mystery hours and and the daily show as well you can listen to all of those and james o'brien daily the best bits of this show every day so do download that it's free from your app store now ben kentish is in for tom swarbrick at four o'clock today but now it's time for sheila fogarty thank you very much james have a lovely holiday This has been a Global Player original production.
