X is not a news source, it's a sewer

four minutes after 10 is the time very good morning indeed to you um it's a funny one isn't it i i'm gonna start talking today about pubs i think the whole show today will look largely at domestic situations although I'm keen to catch up with Simon Marks about the events in Minneapolis we went in so

deep on those yesterday and nothing really has changed the liars continue to lie and the horror of what happened continues to reverberate around i wonder whether people ask themselves the question what what will i do when they start murdering innocent people and blatantly lying about it what what will i do when they start killing innocent people and blatantly lying about it you know um sadly we live in a world where for some people it's going to depend upon

characteristics um you know when george floyd was murdered and it was blatantly lied about Some people felt that his criminal record or his ethnicity or his history justified the murder as if the law is not universal, as if it doesn't apply to everybody. In the case of Renee Nicole Good, it's a little harder to do that. So people who have asked themselves the question, how will I react? What will I do? Journalists, perhaps. How will I report when they start killing innocent people?

and blatantly lying about it. I suspect a lot of people are very surprised to find what their real answer to that question is. on both sides of the Atlantic. I bet they never thought a month ago, a year ago, 10 years ago, that they'd be, well, I'd probably defend it, or I'll both sides it.

Or I'll try to turn it into something that is debatable. Or I'll completely ignore it because I've been such a passionate supporter of Donald Trump. I've used the phrase Trump derangement syndrome to describe people accurately reporting on who and what. he is what he does and the threats that he poses so I'll probably just not mention it at all I don't know I honestly don't know but it's an interesting question isn't it what will I do

when they start murdering innocent people, murdering civilians, and blatantly lying about it, because I still find it impossible to believe that we are actually there. We are actually there. It's happened. Not here yet, thank goodness. Hopefully never, but there, it's happened there.

And don't at me. Of course, it has happened here in some ways, particularly if you're looking at the history of the troubles in Northern Ireland. And then you have that other story, which involves looking across the Atlantic. But I think given that so many people here are still on that platform, it does count as a domestic story.

I can't get my head around it. Sometimes I come on air and I say to you, we're doing a Marvin Gaye. a what's going on topic like literally just all come one come all and explain to me what is going on but twitter which i mean when i first joined twitter it was a lovely warm fluffy funny place And now it's the place that you go to, and I'm going to say this in a sense with an air of disbelief, it's a place that you go to if you want to make child sex abuse images for fun.

Pardon? And the owner seems entirely comfortable with that. The changes that they've made, reported in our news bulletin, now limit the freedom to make child sex abuse images to your heart's content. To people who pay to be on the platform, you can no longer do it if you don't pay. Although you can still, if you don't pay, make all manner of hideous. and probably illegal images. So I don't know how we get into that at 11 o'clock. Sometimes when I say we're going to crowdsource...

I want you to text me or WhatsApp me with ideas of how we talk about it. If you can frame it in a sentence or two, ideally interrogatory, ideally questions, I might just nick it and give you a producer credit at the end of the program because we're not quite sure how to get into it.

to this as a subject. We could book a bunch of experts. We've already spoken to a bloke who knows this story inside out this week. We did that on Wednesday. But how does it work in a conversation that we can have together? Because...

What's that word that we used earlier in the week to describe something that you can't quite believe even as it unfolds in front of you? Twitter has been turned into a... Sorry, say that again, James. Yeah, you go there now and you can turn... um pictures of any woman on the planet into basic pornography well sophisticated pornography utterly convincing pornography do you know what they've done they've they've taken pictures of a

Young woman who died in that hideous fire in Switzerland over the Christmas period. A 15-year-old girl who was educated in this country and instructed the app to put her in a bikini. And within minutes of... Renee Nicole Good being killed yesterday. They were doing the same to pictures of her. And I can't, you can tell from my voice, I'm not a prude by any stretch of the imagination. I suppose I'm a child of my upbringing a bit.

But I can't quite believe what I'm saying to you. And when I can't quite believe what I'm saying to you, I struggle sometimes to come up with a way into the conversation. But we'll try, I think, at 11. And we'll do something a little bit lighter at 12.

But here we are, pubs, pubs and U-turns. I'll read you something interesting from Chris. It's a very honest and it's quite a plaintive text. I was so full of hope when Labour won the general election. But after having had many years to prepare, why are they so bad at government? I'm just so confused and disappointed. I understand that things take time to redirect the country or get results, but they seem to be so awful at communication.

and make poorly thought out decisions. Please help me understand why these intelligent people cannot seem to get it together. And then on the other hand, Henry makes this point. I beg your pardon. Henry's telling me why I should get myself down to Hickory Smokehouse at the first opportunity, which is what my grandma's old pub has been turned into up in Leeds. But Patrick writes, the media and public.

Demand change. Please change the policy. Please perform a U-turn. So the government performs a U-turn and the media and the public start hollering, not like that. Not like that, or too little, too late, or not enough. He's got a point, hasn't he? And if it were one or two U-turns, if it were one or two policies that are quite significant and are...

And the point you have here, and I will be mindful of the fact that Starmer's challenge, the government's challenge, is epic and much of it is caused by the people who can't wait to start hurling abuse at him the minute he gets into Downing Street. going to stop hitting these marks on a daily basis. But you're talking about austerity. You're talking about Brexit. You're talking about Boris Johnson. You're talking about Liz Truss. All of those things.

were inflicted on the country by a combination of wealth and right-wing media and increasingly far-right rhetoric. So the idea that he can undo all the damage done by those four or five things in a year is ridiculous. I'm not part of that crew. But you do have the plain observation that if I was being sent out to defend something and explain why it was necessary by my boss... And then, I mean, they abandon it. They U-turn. I, as a key member of that team, would be disillusioned.

and dissatisfied. So how the heck can you criticise voters like Chris for just wondering what on earth is going on? What on earth is going on? Over the Christmas period, the inheritance tax on farmers was... reduced the threshold was raised which in a way that would remove most farmers most family farms from it because the big defense of that was always it's not family farms that are going to be affected it's the people who use

special dispensations given to farms in order to avoid tax. So, you know, the I think Dyson, the Hoover bloke, is one of them who's bought shed loads of farmland because it is much cheaper to hand it on to the next generation under the previous rules than almost any other asset that you can hold in this country.

I presume he'll still be on the hook for that because I presume he's got more than two and a half million pounds worth of farmland. But that was the idea. That was how you defended it by saying, no, no, no, it's not. It's not farmer barley mow. It's a little bod nod there for you. It's not Farmer Barley Moe who's going to be affected by this. It's the big multi...

It's the corporations or it's the individuals who are using purchases of land to avoid inheritance tax that would be due on pretty much any other asset they could hold. But you defended it. on those grounds and then they do a u-turn which acknowledges that that's not what it was doing at all you've got the um

I don't know if the two child benefit cap counts as a U-turn, because most people who were supportive of this government probably wanted it. But Sir Keir vowed that he would not ditch the cap. And then he did. It was announced at the last budget that it would be scrapped. So there's that famous line that John Maynard Keynes probably never said, but it has gone down in history anyway. When the facts change, sir.

I change my mind, what do you do? And that's a brilliant line. It makes a mockery of that Thatcherite. mantra about the lady's not for turning you turn if you want to the lady's not for turning what if you're driving towards a cliff madam you turn if you want to the lady's not for yes you're driving towards a cliff

The clouds have cleared on the road that you're travelling down, and it turns out that you're actually heading towards a cliff at 80 miles an hour. Are you going to do a U-turn? The lady's not for turning. No, you're driving towards a cliff, Mrs Thatcher. So you can see that that's... a stupid thing not only to say but also to fetishize politically which we've done in this country for three or four decades but the problem with these u-turns is that the facts haven't changed

The facts haven't changed. The scenario in which Sir Keir Starmer promised not to ditch the benefit cap is the same scenario in which he ditched it. The context in which the Labour government introduced inheritance tax on farms worth more than a million pounds, farming estates worth more than a million pounds, is exactly the same context as the one in which they reversed it to... a threshold of two and a half million pounds.

You know that the national insurance rises. There's a promise they wouldn't increase and they increase. You probably get that one as the facts changing. So some of the U-turns were built upon the discovery of just how bad things had been. at the end of 14 years of Tory rule. And I can be sympathetic to that. Let's be honest, you'd have to be absolutely bent.

to pretend that they didn't inherit an almighty mess caused largely. I mean, look, this is a party that put Boris Johnson in charge. This is a country that made him prime minister. So in many ways, in a Catholic with a large C sense, this is self-flagging. This is penance. We deserve to be punished for our stupidity. I haven't even mentioned the fact that we were persuaded to vote for Brexit by exactly the same people that persuaded us to vote for Boris Johnson. But you have a lot of

evidence, don't you, of the facts not changing, but the government changing their policy. So I think we will... What's the word that I want? I think that we will address Chris's question directly this morning as well as looking at the bigger picture. So to address Chris's question directly, why are they? apparently so bad at this i've got a couple of answers to that question myself oh three four five six oh six oh nine seven three and i just want you to tell me in the first instance

What do you think of the U-turn? I mean, what do you think of this U-turn? There's a temptation to do a topic on whether or not pubs are dying an inevitable slow death. Will they all be Hickory's smokehouses? eventually i never knew my grandma my dad's mom i never had the pleasure of knowing her but um she was a landlady a leeds landlady of some repute and um i think it was called the lawnswood arms you'll know if you're in that part of yorkshire

better than I will. And it is now a Hickory Smokers, I think relatively recently, because we went to it about 10 years ago, and it was still a pub then. And she had a place in the centre of Leeds called the Market Tavern, which was notoriously rough.

And that's just not there at all. That's been redeveloped and knocked down. And I subscribe because I'm weird to websites about ghost pubs and pubs that are no longer there. There's websites where you can track the history of pubs. I'm fascinated by it.

um how many there used to be and how small they used to be in some parts of the country you have basically tap rooms where it would be someone's front room had a bit of homebrew out the back and you'd have eight people sitting neighbors just coming around to It's just an intrinsic part of our society, but so was sending children up chimneys. It might just be one of those things.

that is petering out for a variety of reasons. And that is an interesting conversation. We may move on to that this hour, but I want to begin with the politics of it, with your permission. Rachel Reeves has avoided another damaging rebellion. against her economic policies with the promise of a U-turn on controversial tax rises for pubs in England.

I think Tom Kerridge probably focused a lot of minds on how ludicrous this was when he described the scale of the increase he would face on his pub in Marlow in Buckinghamshire. A really lovely pub, actually, as you'd expect from a legend like Tom Kerridge. But whether they were the right thing to do or not, what do we think about this? Is it a sign of weakness or a sign of listening? And where's the threshold for you?

Can you make a case for saying that this isn't something we should be criticizing? They're new, they've been out of power for 14 years, they've come in, they've made a bunch of announcements in good faith, and then they have realized... that they were wrong. There's a great line, isn't there, in the construction industry. Measure twice, cut once. So they measured once, made an announcement.

and then measured again and realized the announcement was wrong. So they've measured twice, and they're only going to cut once. So are U-turns a sign of weakness or a sign of listening? And... Does this government at this time deserve any credit whatsoever for changing course when the course is so unpopular?

0345 6060 973 is the number you need. Because you want government that listens to people, right? But you want government that listens to people probably before it makes massive announcements. That's just the bit I'm really struggling with. You want to pay attention before you make a massive announcement. You want to do your homework before you hand it in. You want to do your research before you reach your conclusions. You announce your conclusions

And then further research leads you to renounce. You move from announce to renounce in a heartbeat. And this government seems to almost be defined by big announcements and then slow reversals.

What's going on? Why do you think it's happening? 03456060973. And hand on heart, what is your opinion of... the u-turns in general and this u-turn in particular hit the numbers now you will get through it's 20 minutes after 10 it is 21 minutes after 10 have a little listen to anna turley the labour chair mp for red car who was talking to Nick earlier today about this perceived U-turn. When is a U-turn not a U-turn? Well, Anatoly had an attempt at answering that question earlier.

So telling a sector their business rates are going to rise and then telling them they're not, that's not a U-turn in your book? Their business rates are independently valued. So that was going to happen as a result of coming out of COVID, plus the relief that we put in place for COVID. for COVID was going to come to an end. So we've moved a lot.

in the budget to try and support them through this process if more needs to be done we'll look at that and we keep every policy under review and it's a sign of a confident government that is willing to listen to the public take the right decisions and not just plow on ideologically I don't know. I'm about to ask my listeners. But lastly, then, you will say a government that's committed or performed 11 U-turns is a government that's in a position of power and strength, is it, Minister?

Policies change all the time. I don't see every shift in a policy. We can spend the next three years calling every shift or slight amendment in a policy a U-turn. I don't think that's fair. The reality is we have to make sure that we get things right for people. to keep our policies under evaluation.

The 11 U-turns figure comes from the Daily Mail today, and it's not really fair or accurate. But there are certainly more U-turns than you should be comfortable with. As Paul in Scalmersdale puts it, I'm a big fan of Labour and their mistakes. though frustrating, are mistakes. U-turns aren't always weakness. In fact, quite the opposite. And then, just like Ian in Liverpool, he quotes one of my favourite lines, Back at Me. What is the point of having a mind... if you never change it.

Ian suggests, a wise man once said. It wasn't me. I thought I'd come up with that. It turns out it was actually Edward de Bono. Well, he was a philosopher before he founded U2. That's my favourite dad joke, and no one else ever laughs at it, but I'm never going to surrender, as with all the best dads.

jokes you should never never step away from it you should never step down but the idea that there is no point having a mind if you never change it is a defense of so-called u-turns i'd add to that there's no point having convictions There's no point having policies if you never stick to them, is there? So there's a fascinating tension here.

There's a balance between wanting governments that acknowledge mistakes, that listen to criticism, listen to the people likely to be most affected by a policy. and a government that plows on regardless. For example, the poll tax, probably the finest example of why being psychologically and politically incapable of U-turning is politically ridiculous. It did for Margaret Thatcher.

But where do you put the line between healthy listening and mind-changing and weakness and flip-flopping? Ryan is in Scarborough, not a million miles away from my grandma's old pub. Ryan, what would you like to say? Hi, James. Hello, mate. Yeah, great to talk to you. Yeah, I've got a cafe and I've got a pub in Scarborough. And I believe it's quite an easy U-turn, really. And I think they should have listened.

a lot earlier to uk hospitality and all the pub companies because in pubs are done on turnover and my cafe is done on floor space so you know you could have a pub making a lot of turnover because they're open a lot more, but as we know turnover... is just turnover it's not profit so i mean it's i always think of corner shops and and i often wonder how a family-run corner shop how much each individual member of that family is actually getting paid on an hourly rate when they're open for sort of

20 hours a day and those customers are dribbling in and dribbling out. So, yeah, that's a really good point. I didn't understand that. And that's always been the way. Cafes and pubs have always had their...

rates judged differently, set differently. Yeah, there's a lot of, I mean, your cafes, you pay, you know, in a pub, you get an offset on your VAT because alcohol has VAT, whereas in a cafe, everything's vattable. So there's a lot of... pros and cons to each business and it's quite you know i'm like in a position to understand the difference why you might get a cafe owner kicking off why aren't you reducing my yes rate of value but a pub

landlord could be open seven days a week they're providing a service they're open they could they make very little profit pubs make very little profit so the cafe is actually there So you're almost getting punished for trying to stay afloat, the way the imbalance works in measuring the two businesses. That's it. So I'll give you an example. If a pub's done half a million turnover...

then in this revaluation, suddenly it's doing a million pound turnover. Its rateable value might go up 100,000, but it's not making any more money because the rateable value is based on turnover. Yes, not profit. How were you going to be hit? Did you do this? I presume you did the sums as a businessman. Yeah, I mean, I'm not actually going to be hit at the pub. It's actually gone down a couple of thousand, but the pub up the road is doing more turnover.

Since the re-evaluation, that's going up to 52,000 a year. From what? From 30,000. Yeah, that's a huge chunk. And mine's gone down 2,000. Just explain to an idiot. And that is me, Ryan. I am the idiot here. Let me be clear. I'm not playing the part of the idiot. I am actually the idiot. But just explain to an idiot why yours is going down. Man's going down basically... Probably for no reason at all, but I'm doing a bit less turnover. Okay. So...

But the rateable value is on a multiplier for pubs which have reduced. So you've got a 40% rebate. Now, what they did is they've moved the multiplier down. So effectively, I'm paying the same as last year. So you kind of say on a pub multiplier, if your rateable value is, say, 90,000, you would pay 30,000 payable.

They're not... So the more I listen to people like you, the more I think they're not really U-turns, these. They're tweaks and developments, evolutions and adjustments. Some of them, not all of them. But I...

they don't have control over how they reach the public politically. So you began by saying they should have done it sooner and they should have done this and they should have done that. But do they get any credit from you at all for doing it at all? For not going full poll tax and pressing on regardless?

Yeah, I think, yeah, on this issue, I'm not benefiting from it. In fact, the cafe they took out of Ratable Value, in my instance, have actually helped me. And I think the people shouting the loudest of the people... For instance, there's a little country pub in Scarborough. Its rateable value was probably about 30,000. It's doing a lot of food, a lot of beer. Its turnover's gone to a million, and suddenly they want 132,000 rateable.

So they will be paying about, I don't know, do a third of that, 45,000 type area. So it was a blunt instrument. Are you describing by any chance the three jolly sailors? No, it's a place called the Farrier. So it was a blunt instrument then, and they've sharpened it. They've made it a fairer process. Yeah, their argument was we've thrown a lot of money into transitional rail.

So what happens with that is, I think John Kerridge was on news night and he was trying to explain it, that basically transitional rate release, so they don't initially put you up to that, but it's like a slow death. So when it gets to year number three, you're on the full rate. Got it. Yes. So, yeah, I think in this case, it is common sense what they've done with pubs. We've drawn this. And you lose. So, I mean, yours is the greatest praise of all. What is, do you want to give your pub a shout?

out, Ryan, you're more than welcome to. Yeah, it's the Waterhouse Bar in Scarborough. We're open tonight. We've got live music on. It's, you know... What sort of music? It's basically live music. So you've got acoustic artists and bands and...

You know, we're mainly open Friday, Saturday night. We've had to adapt a bit, you know, with the opening hours. But it reduces my turnover and my business rates. Yeah, no, I get it now. Actually, that last bit there really made sense to me, is that you open less. And then your turnover comes down and you're only open at the potentially most profitable times. It won't be an option that's open to every landlord, but it shows that perhaps...

It is a little bit more complicated than a lot of the coverage allows. And listen, I'm not suggesting for a minute that the government shouldn't have been across how complicated it was, but... Is there an argument for saying better late than never? In fact, if we were to go full tabloid, thank you, Ryan, this whole conversation is better late than never versus too little too late, isn't it? And the truth probably lies somewhere between the two. But...

On the bigger question, so I'm fascinated by the pubs question, and we may move on to the question of whether or not the industry is going to survive in anything like its current form. But the... But the bit that it's just what you think about the U-turn, what you think about changes. Because I think we want governments that actually reflect and respond. to reality, even if they should be criticized for getting it wrong the first time.

Or does that make me sound like a victim of footballification, something that I always criticize other people for? I take a lot of convincing that any of the other contenders would do anything other than return the country immediately to the dog days of Brexit. Brexit austerity, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, who, of course, Nigel Farage was almost as big a fan of Liz Truss's economic policies as he is of Vladimir Putin's foreign policies. But the danger... of defending unduly.

is real. I just think here, what do you want? You want them to listen and change or you want them not to listen and change? If you accept that they've done this thing in the first place, what do you want them to do next? 0345 6060 973. Dominic Ellis has your headlines.

Hi, James. Right, it's Colin. I just had to get in Retford, who is probably not going to hear this because he tells me he's just getting back into the shower at the end of his message. I just had to get out of the shower to type this and make the point that these are not U-turns, they are adjustments. How many of that Daily Mail 11... have been completely reversed. I'd guess zero or one at a push.

You're right, actually. The family farm tax is an adjustment. The employment rights bill is an adjustment, if you like, a watering down. I think the two-child benefit cap probably counts as a U-turn. We will not ditch it. Yes, we will. I mean, the problem is in political terms, a U-turn just means a change of course. Obviously, in motoring terms, and we don't do motoring topics on this program, as you know.

A U-turn means a complete reversal of direction. It's a 180 degree change. So you're right, Colin, but you're probably sounding a little bit Malcolm Tucker or a little bit... at Bird and Fortune. which is showing my age a bit as a cultural reference, isn't it? So let's carry on through the list. Increase in income tax, that's not a U-turn. It was hinted at in November of last year on the 4th. This is how desperate they are to portray U-turn.

Increase in income tax hinted at on November the 4th and then confirmed it wouldn't be happening on November the 13th. So that's one of your U-turns. That proves Colin's point rather gloriously. The welfare reforms. This was the five billion quid that was supposed to be saved. And then you had a backbench rebellion. I think that's probably a U-turn. No more.

tax rises i think that's a technicality and a semantic isn't it the freezing of income tax thresholds um the green pledge not really i go back to september of 2021 long before they were in power i think it to be a u-turn it has to be something that has happened while they were in power um the grooming gangs thing I mean, we'll wait and see what happens there. But, of course...

The successive inquiries that haven't had their recommendations enacted perhaps explain why there was an initial reluctance to have yet another one there. The winter fuel payments, that probably counts as a U-turn. That was supposed to be... restricted to those on banner so that was a u-turn probably the only one really only two the rest would be adjustments and does that make you feel more warmly towards this this lot or more negatively

Jamie suggests that a left-hand turn at a tricky junction, a tricky corner, is not a U-turn. Or even a right-hand turn, mate, at a tricky corner is not a U-turn either. 10.37 is the time. I've had a message from one of my favourite landlords.

of one of my favourite pubs, which I will share with you shortly, but not until we've heard from Norman, who's in Epsom. Norman, what would you like to say? Yeah, hi, James. Again, the more I hear about this, the more I feel sorry for Rachel Reeves, because...

Yeah, we're the first country in the world to impose economic sanctions on itself. That's a very good line. I shall be using that in the future, Norman. Thank you very much. And we have no money. And we're desperate to find any proposal from the Treasury. that raises revenue. And she's grabbing at it. What they don't seem to be doing, well, there's two things they're not doing. One, they're not doing the quality control check.

And in manufacturing and industry, we talk about getting it right first time. But to actually make these changes, to go back and change products that you've introduced, costs you more money. So you want to get it right the first time. So they don't seem to have a quality control process. And whatever process they have isn't rooted in any politics.

Or ideology, actually. Or ideology. That's the mad thing, isn't it, that is becoming increasingly harder to argue with, that no one knows what they believe in. Yeah, they have no belief to say, we're not going there, or we're not going here.

Because this is what we believe, and this is where we're going. So Osborne can turn around to the Treasury, as he did, and he says, well, we're not going to introduce this tax because we believe in a smaller state. Whereas Rachel Rees and Keir Starmer, they... seem to be almost accepting proposals from the treasury because we're in a deep hole and they need to find the revenue because we've

We've cut off our nose to spite our face through Brexit. Have you ever had food delivered and realised at the last minute that you may not have enough cash to pay for it? And you run around the house like a mad thing, right? You go sort of shake old bottles where you used to keep five peas. You maybe even start eyeing up the kid's piggy bank. You're checking the drawer, the back of the sofa. You're just searching for money.

to find some money because the doorbell's about to go and you're four quid under for your pizza. I grant you this isn't. a modern event because everything's ordered online these days. But I remember those days. And that's what the government is like. And every time they find some money and announce that they found some money, oh, we're going to find some money, then, you know, the sofa's object. And they have to say, oh, actually, no. Yeah, that money belongs to someone else.

We're going to have to put that back. We're going to have to put that money back. And there's another problem, James, with the whole budget process, that typically with policy introductions, they go through consultation processes and so on with NGOs. But with the budget, it's all done in secret. And they can't really go and consult with people to give hints. I mean, they tried to do that a little bit this time.

But this whole process, and I think Sam Friedman in his book, Fail State, really goes into a lot of detail. It's a brilliant book. Yeah, it's a really good, this whole budget, it's all about performance. It's not really a serious exercise anymore in real financial management. It's about performance and pulling rabbits out of hats and all kinds of things he talks about.

The budget process in itself seems to be creating problems where if we didn't have this once-a-year performance, we could actually do things in a more considered way. This is nuanced. There's not much room for nuance in political commentary in this country. Well, obviously we manage, but generally speaking, it's either too little too late or it's better late than never. You're doing both, aren't you? You are critiquing the operational...

processes of politics in general in this country. But this government deserves particular criticism for not having a clearer idea of what its announcements would do, what the... what the reaction would be in the economy, not just in the sector, from the people, but from the numbers. And yet at the same time, it has to be preferable to make these adjustments as opposed to not making them.

I think, James, the problem that Labour faces is that 95% of the media is against them. Yes. And so if it was the Conservatives, they would get the benefit of the doubt for making an adjustment.

But because it's Labour, they're going to get buried for making an election. Well, I mean, speaking of someone who leans much more towards the Labour... tradition than the conservative tradition i would give the conservatives the benefit of the doubt for making an adjustment you'd be like you might be like why did it have to come to this why did we have to wait so long but thank goodness they've done the right thing in the end they don't even get that do they

They don't get that, and they should understand, again, the politics which they're dealing with, and they really should know if they're real Labour people, is the press are always going to be against them, so they need clear...

And that's the problem. And that's the frustrating thing for supporters and admirers is that so much of the damage seems to be self-inflicted. And thank you, Norman. That's brilliant stuff. And Barbara picks up on the point about the winter fuel. being a u-turn i used to get it and now i don't so that's an adjustment as well but it was a fairly hefty adjustment it didn't go for if it was binary it goes from naught to one or one to naught right that's a u-turn but

I don't think you're going to win that argument when it comes to the traditional definition of a U-turn in politics. What I would remind you of is how ridiculous it is to pledge never to make U-turns because you might find yourself heading at 80 miles per hour towards a metaphorical cliff.

that you didn't know was there when you set your course that morning. And suddenly you're about to fly off a cliff, but you're going to insist that you don't do U-turns. And to oversimplify things violently, that's pretty much what happened with the poll tax and Margaret Thatcher. A quick word.

And then we can expand it if you want to into what is the problem. Chris's original question at the top of the show about as someone who was really looking forward to a Labour government and now struggles to understand why they make so many mistakes. the poor comms, the poor decisions. You welcome a reversal, but you'd much rather not need the reversal because you wouldn't have made the poor decision in the first place. Have I shared my theory with you?

I came up with this over Christmas, and I was with someone who... who really knows his onions, politically speaking. I'm not going to embarrass them by telling you who that was or what their qualifications are, but it's somebody who knows about winning elections, right? Not necessarily in this country, but they know about winning elections. And I cautiously, because they're much cleverer than me, I cautiously suggested that the problem is actually loyally.

With a W. Not loyally as in loyalty, but loyally as in lawyers. And that Keir Starmer, what many people find very confusing about Keir Starmer is that there is no project. There is no ideology. They obsess about messaging. but they don't know what they're selling. It's as if you had 90% of your budget going on slogans and advertising campaigns without spending anything on the product. What is the product that they are selling?

And I was trying to work this out. I was trying to think how has that happened? How has it become all about the battle, as it were, rather than the substance? And I think it's to do with lawyering. with being a lawyer. I think that when you're a lawyer, you are handed a brief and your job is not to quibble or question the guilt or the innocence of your client. You are told what your job is. Your job is to either prosecute or defend.

And so I found myself thinking about this during immigration conversations and a lot of people like me very surprised to find a Labour government sounding at times as if it's slightly to the right of Genghis Khan. Never mind Nigel Farage. And yet if you are a lawyer and your job is to prosecute or defend and you have concluded or been told that the public, the electorate, has a problem with immigration.

You do not think it is your job to explain to the electorate why they should not have a problem with immigration. You do not think it is your job to reach for statistics because your job is to prosecute the case. And the case you've been given, your client is an electorate concerned about immigration. All the polling shows.

that it is a concern. It goes up and down, but it's generally a concern. So Keir Starmer sees his job as giving the client what the client wants. And the client wants to be less concerned about immigration. So they're going to reduce immigration, quite possibly this year.

zero and every single consequence of that will be bad but the client will have been well served it's not perfect but if you're searching for an explanation for the absence of ideology and an obsession with messaging when nobody knows what it is They're actually selling. I think, and this is going to sound even more arrogant than usual, I think you'll struggle to come up at the moment with a better explanation than that. But feel free to try on 0345 6060 973. Why do they?

appear to be disappointing so many people. And what do we think about the so-called U-turns that are almost always more accurately describable as adjustments, but just keep? happening we ended with one last year on the farms and we've began with one this year on the pubs that can't be a good thing however loyal you are however tightly your scarf is knotted around your neck your bright red labour scarf you cannot

be arguing this is a good thing, and you can't really defend it. But I'd love you to try. It's 10 to 11. You're listening to James O'Brien on LBC. It is inevitably rather more complicated than most of the headlines allow.

The reasons why pubs were facing this hefty... hefty hit was at least threefold. The reductions in COVID era reliefs. So, I mean, the socialist policy, essentially, that Rishi Sunak brought in, or Boris Johnson brought in, I forget which, to give money. to companies simply to keep them afloat. That obviously gets reduced now that COVID. is no longer causing closures, causing temporary closures. Then you have the three yearly revaluation, which kicks in in April of 2026.

which you should have seen coming. Everybody knew it was coming, but it nevertheless leads to big increases exacerbated by... by the other thing. And that meant that the reduction in headline rates, which was announced in the budget when Rachel Rees claimed that 750,000...

businesses would see their lowest tax rates since 1991. While true, it gets wiped out by that double whammy of a reduction in COVID-era reliefs and the impact of a three-yearly revaluation. Now, in a completely honest universe... that would be or rather in a Tory universe if the right wing media were consistent and honest they would simply say things well you know

Get on your bike. If you can't afford to keep your pub open, maybe you should cancel your Netflix subscription and have fewer avocados. You know, people they don't like can't afford things. There's no such thing as poverty. But we need to get the smallest violins in the world out for parents who are required to pay VAT on their school fees. I'm not of that ilk, by the way. I try to be... honest and fair in my opinions i almost certainly fail but you have to at least try

It's not right. You should have state intervention. I like pubs. I always think of hedges in Switzerland. Do you know why I think of hedges in Switzerland? Probably not even true. But when I was a schoolboy, a geography teacher told me that in Switzerland, farmers are paid money to keep hedges.

They could make more money by ripping all the hedges out and then their big tractors could drive right over the land without any impediment and they could do things quicker and have more crops. But hedges are nice. They make the community look nice. They add to the general picturesque.

nature of the landscape and therefore farmers get paid by the government to keep hedges I like the idea of government spending money and having policies that are motivated by things other than profit and pubs are a good thing for communities I love pubs

So I don't think they should just live and die by free market values, as everybody on Tufton Street would be arguing today if they were vaguely honest, which of course they're not. But I do wonder whether this particular... U-turn is proof of something deeper, a deeper malaise in this government.

I've stopped saying avocado pears, Roddy. You're quite right. I finally arrived in 1983 when it comes to my description of that particularly delicious food stuff. And speaking of particularly delicious food, a quick word. From our sponsors. No, that's a joke. He's not our sponsors. He's a landlord of one of my favourite pubs. This is from Angus. 25 years service. Been in hospitality all my working life. It's not...

particularly on the topic that we're discussing. He's probably down in the cellar at the moment without the radio. But please don't forget, as a manager owned and run by Fullers... who've already had to sell their own family brewery to a conglomerate, as there is no money in brewing beer anymore on that sort of scale. Now they, stroke we, just run the pub arm of the business. They soak up all the pressures that private landlords face and don't get the recognition.

they deserve over 450 pubs open and afloat I love my pub so do I Hospitality is in my blood. My pub is my life and my pub is the life of a lot of others. So please, a big shout out to the larger pub operators like mine. They're not all good, but Fuller's is. Very much a force for good. for allowing us to do what we do. They may be working for shareholders, but they are also keeping these lifeblood establishments open. Just. Do pop in soon. I will. And that's the point I was trying to make.

is that there has to be a balance between serving the shareholders and serving the society. And pubs are a really good example of that. And that maybe defends labour a little bit. on this adjustment or U-turn, whatever you prefer to call it. And in case you're wondering, that pub is the Red Lion in Barnes. Very good rugby pub, actually, if that's your thing, but also a lovely pub on...

on non-rugby days. Malcolm is in Anglesey. Malcolm, what would you like to say? James Morning, nice to speak to you. I'm calling as a very, very frustrated Labour supporter. Yes.

I've had quite a long career in hospitality, both at sort of PLC board level and I've run my own businesses. This reflects, I think, a general concern I've got with Labour's economic policy. got in partly on the basis that we said we are going to make some fundamental impact on fiscal policy and business rates was an element of that.

The situation with pubs that isn't getting a lot of coverage is that pubs are the only sector where the business rates are set based on the turnover of the business, not the physical size of it. Yes. run a successful pub and you put your turnover up

when it gets to the next revaluation, you are literally penalised for growing your business. Yeah, I did point this out with the first call. Sorry, I was... No, no, I'm not. I'm not being defensive. I'm just saying, to me, that was a revelation. So you're right. to suggest that it is not talked about enough. For example, yeah, a while ago, we had a restaurant and the valuation office agency, who are a complete law unto themselves, decided that it wasn't a restaurant, it was a pub.

Right. And the rates, the business rates trebled and the appeal process took four years. Good Lord. Can I have gone in there and just had a pint without ordering any food whatsoever? Yes, you can.

could. It's an interesting, it's almost a phone in this. When does a pub become a restaurant? Well, exactly, but the business was actually called something restaurant. Fair enough. Yeah, but it says down, as my late father used to say, it says Omo on the side of buses, Malcolm. It doesn't mean they sell it inside. Well, that's very true. But for example, if you look at businesses, I hate the word gastropub, but if you look at some food orientated businesses,

That's a really important point. You're absolutely right. And you've got a different tax scenario depending on what it is defined as, what it is described as. It's really weird. Now, my biggest point was going to be we said we were going to sort all this sort of stuff out. Like we said, we were going to sort out taxation on residential properties, stamp duty.

council tax bans, all that. Instead, what we've done is either fiddled at the edges like we did around property taxes in the budget, or we seem to have fundamentally misunderstood the issues. And this latest business rates thing where Rachel Reeves and James Murray are standing in Parliament saying we're bringing down business rates when people are literally sitting looking at their business rate bill. Yeah. And it's going up. I don't know.

I don't know whether it's incompetence at the Treasury, because most of this seems to come back to the Treasury, or a lack of just joined up planning across departments or whatever, but this... probably sense it in my voice the massive frustration because we said we were going to make some big changes and we're either fiddling at the edges is there someone at the door or are you having building work done

Sorry, yeah, they're replacing the roof. We're in temporary accommodation on Anglesey, and the guys have just turned back up whilst I've been on the phone. We've got loads of building work going on here. Do you know what happened this morning? Malcolm, not to make light of your contribution, which we'll return to imminently. They put up a screen...

on our floor where our office is, and Eleanor, the producer's tofu lunch, was on the other side of the screen. So her tofu lunch has actually been screened off. She can't get hold of her tofu lunch because the builders did it within half an hour of her getting to work the fridge. is in quarantine now. So I know what it's like. I know what it's like to have the noise going on. I agree with every single thing you've said. I'm on Anglesey. By the way, what's a tofu lunch?

I share your sense of frustration as well let me read you what Anna Turley said this morning I think I know what your reaction will be This is actually about listening. I think it's a sign of a government that is actually in touch with people, that is listening to people and that is responding. I think listening to constituents isn't being bullied or lobbied. That's what we're here to do. I could defend that in some circumstances. I could maybe have defended...

I don't think I can defend it today. I think, I mean, I feel for Anna Turley because she's been sent out to cover this. She's not got the departmental responsibility for this.

It's not about... The point is to get the decision right in the first place. That's the point. That's not too much to ask. And if there's one or two examples of measuring twice... cutting once or changing course when you've had a little better look at the road ahead or the road ahead has changed that's fine but not not when it seems to be more more likely to happen than not

What are they doing before they make the announcements, exactly? Exactly. I mean, you know, I hesitate to raise the farm tax. We've had 14 months of grief for something that is ultimately going to raise... as money that effectively will be a rounding error in treasury budget in the great scheme of things this is where my running around the house looking for a few quid to pay the pizza delivery guy um

kicks in again. It's as if they're just desperate to find money and they're looking everywhere for it and they're ending up sacrificing huge amounts of political capital on small change. Exactly. That is, again, and that is not a problem of messaging. That's a problem of not having logic in the decisions. This is my big breakthrough over the Christmas period. I've spent six months going, it's all about comms. Everyone's telling me it's all about the messaging. They're bad at comms. They're not.

Well, they are, but that's a symptom, if you like, of not having a product. I don't know what they're selling. Thank you, Malcolm. A lot of people offering to drop some food off for you, Eleanor. I don't know. Hickory Smokehouse, apparently, is rather good for barbecue food. It's one minute after 11. So there is the story.

you heard in Dominic's bulletin, you can go on to how do we divide the world at the moment? I mean, I used to spend a lot of time on Twitter, as it was known then. Too much time, if I'm honest with you. But I loved it and I had well over a million followers by the time I left and I left pretty early I didn't I presume some people left

earlier than me. But I think to have that level of following and to just decide to walk away from it is a little bit harder than it probably sounds to you because you're not going to find yourself in that kind of... situation it's a marketing tool as well you know when i've got a book out or when i'm promoting bits of the radio show um it was hugely important and hugely valuable

And I just couldn't countenance it anymore. This is me sounding a little bit up myself, but you're used to that by now, I hope. It was an act of conscience. It was a genuine act of conscience for me. It was saying I can't be part of this. That's very personal, and I'm not suggesting everybody else should do that. LBC, the station, is still on there, and they still post my clips on there.

So, you know, that minimizes some of the loss of business, if you like, or the loss of potential revenue for James O'Brien, the radio presenter. But James O'Brien, the dad. James O'Brien, the man, I couldn't stay on there. I just couldn't. Not when I saw the stuff that was being pushed onto people. I didn't want to be part of that anymore. And I would have stayed and fought the corner.

of the righteous, if that hadn't been spoiled as well. You know, the obvious engineering of the site to promote Nazism, to promote white supremacism, to promote epic misogyny. while the voices that stand in opposition to all of those things were deliberately dialed down. You could see it happening in real time. It became unconscionable for me. That's a very personal thing. There is nothing more personal than conscience.

And I think the government should come off the platform, but I wouldn't necessarily extend that to anybody or anything else. It is a personal decision that you make. And I think after... After discovering the joys of therapy, I would no longer be in the business of telling you what you should be doing according to my moral compass. So I'm off it. And I wonder how the world divides on this latest story that you just heard in Dominic's bulletin. You either probably know...

Actually, it's not, Charlie. I was going to say you either know a lot about it or nothing about it. But even if you know something about it, you probably share some of the confusion that I feel this morning. You have... I still can't get there. I'm really sorry. I don't know why this is. It's like a sort of psychological blockage. I can tell you what's going on, but still not quite believe it, and I'm not going to go and look. You see, that's the problem.

I'll have a look at some stuff on there if you send it to me, although it's a pretty odd thing to do to someone who's come off the platform. But if you think it's newsworthy enough, then obviously I'll have a little look while I'm in the studio. I'm not going to log on or sign in, but I can see it on my screen. I'm not going to go and look at what these sexually violent videos are, fully pornographic videos that look professional.

This is research by AI Forensics, a nonprofit organization based in Paris that just found 800 images and videos created by Elon Musk's app. And that includes pornographic content. Laura Bates told me about this in a podcast interview and in her book about six months ago. She says, as ever, Laura Bates, who founded Everyday Sexism, very ahead of the curve on this, where they try to... terrorise women by putting their faces in footage, pornographic footage, and it can look completely convincing.

They're now doing it with child sexual abuse images. Do you see what I mean about... Oh, my tummy's going funny. You can go on Elon Musk's app and put a child's... You can make child sex abuse images and you can, you can, a child who hasn't actually been abused, you can create images of them being, hasn't been physically abused. You can create images as if they had, you can make that film.

So that is, for me, I'm finding this quite hard to talk about because I can't believe it's happening in a place that I used to consider home. That's the thing that's weird about it.

I've told you a few times, this maybe needs a trigger warning. I told you a few times about an interview I remember reading with somebody who had to watch child sexual abuse as a police person to try to find culprits. And there's a line... that haunts me to this day there's there's a line that was contained within the interview with this poor man this incredible man whose job was to go through looking for things that might help them to identify abusers it's like stuff in the background

And there's one line, I don't know if I can share it with you without getting emotional, because it breaks my heart every single time I think about it. There is a little girl who says, do all little girls do this with their daddy? And that was contained within the footage. That's what he's watching. I think, I hope, they caught that guy because of something that this man managed to identify in the background of that film.

I know that exists, but it exists in sewers. And I know that it goes on in homes, but it is behind locked doors. And I wish we could catch more of these people. I wish people would... put some of the energy that they put into pretending that they care about women or children who are being abused by members of ethnicities or religions that they are bigoted about into all women and children that are being abused. But they don't, obviously.

But there's something about this story that just absolutely sickens me to my core. And I can't believe it's still going on. I can't believe Dominic's bulletin contains the news. that lots of people won't be able to do it anymore. Do you know who won't be able to do it anymore? The people who aren't paying Elon Musk. If you're paying Elon Musk, you can still do it. You can still instruct. the technology to create pornographic footage of a child whose photograph you have uploaded or provided.

Two other stories, three other stories that are going to perhaps highlight the sickness of what that place has become. There is a 15-year-old girl who died. She was educated in this country. And she died in that hideous nightclub fire in Switzerland over Christmas. And you can go on to Elon Musk's app and ask what she would look like in a bikini. Someone has done that.

And, you know, that's something her family will have to deal with and have to process. They've already done it to Renee Nicole Good. You can go on that app and ask. And remember, I'm going in... quite mild you can ask to see what she would look like in a bikini um you could do more you could go further and then there was another person i read about over the weekend who was photographed outside auschwitz

And somebody asked Elon Musk's app to take her clothes away. And I can't quite understand how it's still going on. how that man can think that it is in any way suitable to respond by removing it from people who aren't paying him, but leaving it in place of people who are. And I know I say this to you quite often.

And sometimes it's a little tiny bit performative. It's, you know, a bit theatrical. So I wonder what the question is. I always mean it. I never know exactly what question I'm going to ask you and pretend that I don't when I come on air. But I don't know what the phoning is. I think that we just need to have a conversation about it. The woman outside Auschwitz, by the way, was a descendant of Holocaust survivors.

It speaks to all sorts of issues, this. I mean, the obviousness that these organizations are, these platforms are publishers and should be held responsible for what is published on their platforms, furiously. resisting that. The fact that Musk has managed to get very much in front of the far-right white supremacist movement means a lot of people will be defending him, who if it was somebody else doing it would be able to find their moral.

compasses other people are not talking about it I think because it's so disgusting and and I don't want to be one of those people I don't want to talk about this because I find it so disgusting. You know when your mouth starts watering a bit at the back as you're getting ready to be a bit sick or something? That's how I feel about this story. I don't understand what's happening to our world.

I really don't. And I think it has a resonance because it's happening on that platform, on X or Twitter, as it was called, when we used to swap jokes on there together and tease each other. And of course, there was a little bit of trolling. But goodness me, I presume even the most... committed trolls on Twitter are disgusted by what this is representing.

It's unlawful, says Keir Starmer. We're not going to tolerate it. I've asked for all options to be on the table. It's disgusting. X need to get their act together and get this material down. We will take action on this because it's simply not tolerable. But what? What would the action be? You can't hurt them financially. You just turn it off, don't you? Get off their government so they can't come off it because...

It's one of the key sources of news for huge numbers of people in this country. Have you seen what it's like at the moment? It's not a source of news. It's a sewer. It's a petri dish for the most disgusting. people and opinions. And a lot of it, of course, is manufactured anyway. So it's not a bug, to coin a phrase. It's a feature, I think. That's what we've learned this week.

And I want to talk about it, but I don't have a neat and obvious question. I mean, I'd like to ask, why on earth do people do this? Let's do that. I suspect women will find that question easier to answer than men. Why on earth would you see a picture of a dead 15-year-old schoolgirl and instruct the technology to put this person in a bikini? How on earth could you respond to the picture of...

Renee Nicole Good dead in her car. Renee Nicole Macklin Good dead in her car. Killed by a federal immigration agent on Wednesday. And instruct the technology that you subscribe to. to put her into a bikini. And then to tell Grok how happy you are with it. And Elon Musk's technology responds by saying, glad you approve. What other wardrobe malfunctions can I fix for you?

If you understand technology, tell me whether this is in any way excusable as in the sense of it's a genie that's got out of the bottle.

But we spoke to Eddie Perez earlier in the week who worked for Twitter before it became a sewer, and he was adamant, and he worked in this sector. He was adamant that it's very easily fixed, and he explained to us with evidence of how... amused elon musk even stuck a picture of himself in a bikini up there it shows you how concerned he is can you get more misogynistic than that is it possible to imagine a more obvious hatred of women objecting to being abused in this way

than to put a picture of yourself in a bikini up there. So there are two at least ways into this. The first is technology. What's going on? 03456060973. The second is misogyny. Why would people, I know it's a silly question, but I think sometimes we need to hear the answers to questions like this. Why would people do this? And then I think it's an Elon Musk topic as well. You might know a lot about him. You might think you do. Why would he allow this? Why would Elon Musk allow this to continue?

Why is Elon Musk allowing this to continue? And that cuts to the heart of all the issues we talk about on this programme. Freedom of speech, far-right rhetoric. Why is Elon Musk allowing this to happen? I'm fairly clear, thanks to experts, that it's easy to stop. Why is Elon Musk allowing this to happen and, dare I say, apparently enjoying it? 0345 6060 973 is the number that you need. Why is Elon Musk allowing this to happen when anybody...

Anybody with the vaguest social conscience, moral compass, sense of decency would do everything in their power to stop it in a heartbeat. Hit the numbers now, you will get through. 0345 6060 973 is the number you need. And I'm clear about my disgust. I am not fully comprehending, fully cognizant of what is happening.

I won't burn my eyeballs by going to look at some of this stuff. I understand and have described to you what it is. But if there is something that you want to simply add to the conversation, then feel free to do so. on 0345 6060 973. Why is Elon Musk allowing, encouraging, comfortable with this? Why is it still going on? Regardless of him, why hasn't someone flicked a switch, pulled a plug, turned it off? And why would anybody respond to murder, death, tragedy by asking to see...

the victims in their underwear. 0345 6060 973 is the number that you need. It's one of the grossest things I've ever spoken to you about, and I honestly don't know the answer to that big question. Why is Musk letting this happen? 21 minutes after 11, Liz Kendall describes it as unacceptable, indecent society. Keir Starmer describes...

it as unlawful, disgusting. X need to get their act together. I don't know what right-wing politicians are saying. Some of them seem to have been desperate to butter up or suck up to Elon Musk in recent months. So they'll either be... staying silent or um or pretending that they're unaware of it or don't understand the details it is probably in in the context of access availability and context it's

probably the most disgusting thing that I think we've talked about together because it obviously is not as disgusting as incidents of actual abuse happening in actual... places to actual people but in the context of scale what it does to a society to have this encouraged and mainstreamed it's disgusting on a scale I don't think I've ever

felt before but of course the question underpinning all of this is how is it allowed to happen and why is Elon Musk doing it? 03456060973 because of course what he's done today has proved that he could stop it. He's taken it away, taken this ability away from people who don't pay him. But people who do pay him have still got it. So he's proved that he could take it away from everybody. He's chosen not to.

I genuinely can't understand. Well, I mean, maybe I can understand because you're going to tell me, but I can't at the moment for the life of me imagine why he's doing this. He's the richest man in the world. So it can't be for cash. What does it say psychologically? I don't know, philosophically? Personally? Grant's in Dartford. Grant, what would you like to say?

Morning, James. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, a bit like yourself. I came off X. I had nowhere near the amount of followers that you had but it was instantaneous really overnight if you look at the way when he took it over it turned into a cesspit of beliefs and you know Just the morality of people on there has just gone through the floor. There isn't any moral understanding.

I pretty much came off it within a week of it going like that. It was evident that it was going to go that way. With regards to why he's doing it, I think it's a simple thing that, A, he can. There are no checks and balances to stop him other than the outcry of people like us saying, you know, what are you doing? And you sometimes think he enjoys that. I mean, it's a line I normally use with a smile on my face, but I'm not smiling now. It upsets all the right people, or it gets the woke.

It's exactly that. You're right in saying he's not doing it for the money. He's the richest man in the world. And he can turn this off, which he has done, although leaving it on for people that will pay him. So, again, there's the financial aspect there. But it's his whole attitude to everything about this. It's his view of, you know, his philosophy of, I believe, of objectivism.

you know, his ethics and rational self-interest are the only thing that matters to him. If he feels that this is right, which he obviously does, he will allow it. I mean, shocked to hear that the girl that was... shot by the ice agent and first thing someone with that mentality can think to do is put a dead body or her body in a bikini. I mean, what? It doesn't even...

It doesn't compute what is going through someone's mind. That is the first thing that they can think of to do. It just doesn't make any sense. And these people are almost a cult.

if you like are following this guy for what he believes that he has the right to create this technology which he does everybody has the right to create stuff but whether it's right or wrong and it's being used for these kind of things that's that's the question that's got to be asked and to generate images of children and this man who is the richest man in the world who has the ears of the leaders of the world can sit there and allow this to happen with no moral judgment

being pushed on himself other than by people like us. And he'll do nothing about it. He won't change. Well, it's not just people like us because Keir Starmer could do something about it. He says that he's going to. Quite how this is for Ofcom. to deal with and not not the serious crime squad or the metropolitan police i don't fully understand that might change but i mean

I don't know. Normally I quite like that answer because he can. I think it applies to a lot of the most terrible things that have happened in the world. They're done by deeply damaged children who grow up to be deeply damaged men and think that they'll feel better inside by causing mayhem. and hurt and harm outside. He's doing it because he can. Do you think that's as far as we're going to get with this? Do you think it is just simply because...

You know, we can speculate about all sorts of things. He's told incredible lies about this country. He's joined in the worst kind of far-right propaganda about London and the United Kingdom. He's talked about Jess Phillips. and genocide even, and civil war, turning up at a Stephen Yaxley-Lennon rally, giving speeches there. And Kami Badenoch, of course, refused to condemn him for any of that. No wonder she's quiet about this. It's like everything at the moment is about the people who are...

clumsy and correct pointing out the hideous direction of traffic being proved right on a daily basis and all the people that were criticizing or condemning or attacking them are either joining in now going full fascist or staying completely silent but musk is i don't get it mate and you don't either really because because he can isn't enough is it it doesn't reach no it's not enough it's far from enough that he can because just because he can doesn't mean that that he should

But it's going back to the objectivism thing. He subscribes to the Ayn Rand philosophy of... you know, not having any checks and balances, being able to do what you want to do, whether you think it's right or not. They're so thin-skinned, aren't they, these people? It's extraordinary that they think that people should be free to do absolutely anything they want except criticise them.

Exactly. With no checks and balances to go out and create a piece of software that strips children of their clothes and makes pornographic images of them. I mean, he feels that because he can do that, he will. No one tells me what to do. No one tells me what to do. And it's just diabolical that the government are standing by and letting this happen.

You were right in what you said again, that they use Twitter because it's a way of getting information. That's absolute nonsense. It doesn't work. There are loads of platforms out there. They can send a text. to a number and everybody receives it. They've done that test more than once. That's absolute rubbish.

I mean, let's not get carried away. I think we'd be pretty hacked off if we were getting text off Keir Starmer every 20 minutes. It'd be like the time that everybody got that U2 album on their iTunes account, whether you wanted it or not. But I take your point. Because the more there goes, all the journalists would have to follow them. Yeah, they would have to. But it's the only way that people like him are going to see.

I know a lot of people that are still on X. And I've got friends that are on the left, friends are on the right. And I had a discussion with one of my friends about... me being on blue sky yeah and and he was oh well you would go to that because you know you're you're a typical lefty and i said i'm not a lefty i'm not i'm more interested in what's right i don't want to be on the site that promotes child sexual abuse imagery it's not controversial

No, you'd go on to that. And I mean, like I said to you, within a week of that place being taken over, the algorithms had changed so much. Oh, and the people he let back on, some of the worst people. I mean, the statement of intent was clear. You could see it from space. if you pardon the pun. But of course, there's none so blind as those that will not see. Let's be real.

writes emma starmer is scared of what musk can do our economy's already in the doldrums if musk takes personal offense at the uk which he already has emma to be fair as you know what else can he turn off what can his mates turn off this is why we cannot have billion Once you hit a billion, the UN should take everything over that amount and give it all to international food aid. Fear. I mean, why is Starmer not doing more?

I'm going to read you something from Florian after the news because this is the first he has heard of the story.

And that's a fascinating position to be in, because if this is the first you've heard of the story, you could be forgiven for thinking that I've gone mad. Couldn't you? You could be forgiven for thinking, no way. James must have got the wrong end of the stick. This can't be happening. Outside Auschwitz?

The girl that died in the Swiss nightclub fire. The poor woman who was killed in Minneapolis on Wednesday. No, no, no, James. You must have... Well, it can't... But it... And yet it is. And it's been done on your child's phone. by Elon Musk, who many politicians in this country still seem to woo and court. More of your thoughts about what on earth is going on. And Simon Marks will be joining us at 11.45 from...

the other side of the Atlantic for a quick update on what's going on there. But in the meantime, Dominic Ellis has your headlines. It's... It must be really weird to be hearing about this in detail, or indeed at all, for the first time today. Tony writes, this is the first I've heard of this story. This is absolute madness. Surely there are crimes being committed all over the place. If a person... I don't know what... The crimes are obvious, actually. The legislation is clear here and in France.

manipulation of these images is an offence. Possessing them, disseminating them, sharing them is an offence. But it's all happening in Elon Musk's back garden, front garden, house. So everyone's too frightened to do anything about it? Is it that simple? I need a little bit of help with this. I've got a few men waiting to talk to me and that's fine because we're trying to understand the issue.

not just the behavior. But I think we need a female perspective on the misogyny here, on the power game that's going on, because many, many men listening to this will not know what...

the men doing this get out of it. Do you see what I mean? We will be, and as my inbox demonstrates, we will be hearing this with an absolute sense of horror, but also... disbelief incredulity is the right word i suspect and again judging by my inbox that women are a lot less incredulous than men does that make sense I suspect that women are hearing a familiar song played on a new instrument because this is about misogyny. This is about power.

But I think that I and many others would benefit from having that clarified. So why do men do this? Two questions. One, why is Elon Musk letting it happen? And why do men do it? I wonder if the answer is exactly the same. And it wouldn't be, as Grant and I conceded a moment ago, simply because he can, it will go much deeper than that. Why the men behave like this? What are they actually doing? And then, of course, why does Elon Musk allow it?

Lorraine in Leicester sent me a message. I would not wish it on his children or condone it, of course. But I do wonder what would happen if his own children were being abused in this way. I wonder if he would find it in himself to care. Well, Lorraine, extraordinarily. One of his son's mother has described herself as feeling horrified and violated after fans of Elon Musk used this tool to create fake sexualized images of her.

by manipulating real pictures. This is a woman, she's called Ashley St. Clair, who became estranged from Musk after the birth of their child in 2024. She's revealed that supporters of Elon Musk were using the tool to create a form of revenge porn, up to and including undressing a picture of her as a child. So what you cautiously describe is very close to happening, and it doesn't appear to have affected Elon Musk one jot. I felt horrified. I felt violated.

especially seeing my toddler's backpack in the background she said of an image where she'd been put into a bikini turned around and bent over i'm sharing with you the details of the story and she puts it rather well it's another tool of harassment consent is the whole issue people are saying well it's just a bikini it's not explicit but it is a sexual offense to non-consensually

undress a child. Why do men do it? And why is Elon Musk allowing it? Michael's in Shepton Mallet. Michael, what would you like to say? context around my position. I'm kind of an ex-right winger. I used to actually really hate listening to you.

But I now absolutely love listening to you, and I completely agree with everybody. You know what that is? That's the woke mind virus that has got you in its grips, you see. Yes, I'm infected, unfortunately. But, yeah, I think it fundamentally comes down to a lack of empathy from the right. I think as someone who's been in that camp and has kind of thought, oh, you know, it's just an image or it's just words, you can get so offended by these things. But you don't think about the people involved.

Yes, I think it's a lack of empathy from men in general. And I think your point about getting women to be involved in the conversation more is good because something that I've never understood as well is like catcalling. When men catcall at women, to me, it almost brain breaks me because I just think, why would you do that? What do you get out of that?

So I just find it really weird. Do you know, again, this is two blokes chewing over an issue that affects women, but you probably are right to put that on the same page. It's some sort of... articulation of of of power isn't it or some even if you know people write it off it was one of the first phonemes that informed my change of mind on on feminist issues actually was was listening to people explain

responses to that listening to older women say how they didn't they quite liked having their bottoms pinched at work because they found it flattering and you find yourself in this very difficult position of mansplaining why they shouldn't have felt that way but that's societal that's what that's what misogyny that's what patriarchy

means that's what it does is it creates these um roles that women are forced to fit into and i suspect you're right to bring that into this conversation because these men are trying to force women into

into other roles, supplicant roles, quasi or even actually pornographic roles. It's the non-consensual that is the element. This is where I sometimes get a bit... potentially prudish you do whatever you want if it's consensual even if it's stuff that makes my eyes water but if it's not consensual then

It becomes the thing that Michael describes, whether it's telling a woman what you think of her when she hasn't invited your comments and isn't interested in them, or in this case, going much, much further, the sort of weapons-grade equivalent, which would be... ordering technology to undress her thank you michael v is in horsham v what would you like to say

I think the mayor of Minneapolis summed this up in his press conference the other day. Some words he used that you're not allowed to use in this. I won't use those words. Thank you. described the reckless use of power. And I think both on the broader scale and on the closer to home scale, this is exactly what Musk is doing. It's the reckless use of his own power to run a system like this.

But for the people that are using this facility, it's a sense of power, it's a sense of irresponsibility, it's a sense of humour that is being normalised. That's where we cross the line. We're using a facility like this where maybe some decades ago, like you said, this was behind locked doors. This was behind the scenes where we would...

balk at this disgusting behaviour in public, now we're being told that this is acceptable, this is normal and this is accessible for the vast majority of people. And let's face it, looking at X at the moment, most people have started paying for that blue tick when that all came across.

So many people are already paying for his service and therefore this facility as well. There's more than one thing going on here. I hadn't realized that until I started listening to you. And I presume... that there must be lots of men who find the child sexual abuse repellent, but quite like the idea of subjugating women.

Do you see what I mean? So for them, I wonder if it is, well, that's pretty gross and I wouldn't want to get involved in that. But if that's the price we have to pay in order to see every woman naked that we want to see or every woman stripped down to her underwear against her own will and without her...

consent and it's got an air of both incels and trad wife rhetoric doesn't it it's about it's about power and dominion and women being pushed back into a place where they had to do what men wanted them and told them to do And the more you squeal, the more you scream and protest, the more of a victim you become. Yes. And that... And that's him laughing. That's Musk in his bikini. That is him laughing at the people who were shouting about how completely unfair and abhorrent it is.

Why? Why as a society are we accepting the normality of this? Why doesn't it even exist there? And you're right, Starmer, turn the bloody thing off. It's a child protection issue. It's not even a freedom of speech. You're being publicly turned into a victim at somebody's whim. And Elon Musk loves it. He absolutely loves it. He must hate women, right? He must really, really hate women to be where he is now on this. I think he loves anybody that is less than him.

He otherises the whole planet. He pushes everybody else who isn't Musk, who isn't Trump, who isn't a billionaire, is an other to him and less than him. And if anybody, if anybody out there thinks that he thinks anything other than that, they have got completely the wrong end of the stick. It also makes me wonder how much of the sort of protect our women brigade are projecting. are actually projecting their own hatred of women and trying to pretend that they're not massive misogynists because...

Only Muslims can be or only brown men can be or only men of Pakistani heritage. Because you would presume if there was a scintilla of sincerity and they protect our women rhetoric, then this would be the biggest story since. Noah's Ark, this would be the biggest story of our time. For those people, for the people on Little Tommy Ten Names' marches and stuff like that, and the people protesting outside the asylum houses, this would be the biggest story ever.

because this is about every woman potentially being a victim of misogynistic abuse, every child potentially being a victim of child abuse. And they seem to be either silent or... unconcerned I wonder how much of that whole protect our women and girls thing the leaders of it not not the people who fall into those places because as with most

extremisms a lot of people fall into it through no fault of their own and for perfectly understandable reasons but the people monetizing it the people leading it are projecting their own hatred of women onto other men in order to get themselves off the hook it's just a theory But I think you'd have to get up very early to argue with it. Thank you, V. The time is 11.45. 11.49 is the time. The Commons Women and Equalities Committee has stopped using Elon Musk's platform as this.

I don't even want to call it a row as this hideous, hideous scandal continues to unfold in plain sight. And I hope many other political...

individuals and institutions join forces. But it is to American politics that we return our attention next. Simon Marks joins us live from Washington, DC. Towards the end of yesterday's conversation, Simon, we turned, as we often do, towards the question of how the media... will respond to the latest abomination in this case the killing of

Renee Nicole Good. And we kind of have an answer of sorts because it turns out that four members of the New York Times staff spent an almost unprecedented amount of time with the president, with Donald Trump in the immediate aftermath.

of the Venezuela abduction. What do we learn from this? What do we learn from that? And how does it actually answer the question of how some legacy media that isn't in the pocket of Trump or his supporters is going to rise to the challenge of telling the truth while he... and his closest associates continue to lie through their teeth.

Well, I mean, absolutely extraordinary, really, James. The New York Times, four of their reporters, had the opportunity on Wednesday to spend over an hour in the Oval Office with the President of the United States, even watching him as he took a...

telephone call with President Gustavo Petro of Colombia. They were allowed to report that they had seen him Having that call, the contents of the call were understandably restricted by the White House, although it is unbelievable that any president of the United States would ever conduct a phone call with another head of state, let alone another head of state.

was at the time threatening to attack in front of four reporters from the country's leading national newspaper. They started reporting what they had heard in that more than an hour long interaction. with Donald Trump on Wednesday evening, and indeed their initial dispatch focused on what he'd said about Venezuela and his decision that the United States is now going to be running Venezuela indefinitely. There's no timetable for elections, doesn't it?

even think Venezuela is capable of holding an election and certainly the United States will be owning Venezuelan oil for the foreseeable future. It was nearly 24 hours later before the New York Times which had told us that they were going to be writing several articles based around these conversations with Donald Trump. Almost 24 hours later, before the newspaper disclosed to the American public that Donald Trump had used the phrase during the interview...

I don't believe in international law, had announced that he wasn't going to be constrained by international law, that he would instead be constrained only by his own morality. That's all I need, he said. Almost 24 hours they sat on that. Well, I mean, that's the other aspect of it. Of course. I mean, the notion that the world is going to be now hanging on Donald Trump's own personal morality.

which I think we can all, I mean, I think even Trump supporters, I think, would stipulate to the notion that at times the president's morality is somewhat questionable. But the idea... that the old grey lady, you know, the nation's leading newspaper, would sit on that for nearly 24 hours at a time when, for example, our own Prime Minister has been saying he needs to hear from Donald Trump the legal...

rationale for what took place last weekend in Venezuela well guess what there isn't going to be a legal rationale because the president of the United States says I don't need international law. And by the way, James, I just tried to find that story again on the New York Times website. It's not even on the homepage anymore. I mean, partly because...

Of course, so much is going on here. You know, we're in this. The last week has been the craziest news cycle on record, but you can't even find it on the homepage anymore, which is pretty staggering, given the nature of what the president disclosed. those journalists what would you have done i know that's a completely unfair question but let's imagine it was you and me it's unlikely simon let's not let's not quibble it's you and me that were sitting in the oval office

And Donald Trump said I'm just gonna take a call from the president of Colombia. What would you have done? What would we have done? Well, I think we would have done what the New York Times did with regard to the phone call with President Petro if they weren't being thrown out of the Oval Office. I think we should leave the room. I think we shouldn't be party to this. No, I definitely wouldn't have said that. That's the point, isn't it? I would have said no. Yeah, that's the point. Correct, yeah.

No, you'd stay in the room. My issue is not with them listening. I mean, I think it's bizarre that the White House... I mean, bizarre, right? I was just enjoying the image of you and me sitting in the Oval Office.

reason i asked the question um back back to i was more enjoying the image of you and me leaving the oval office him having said i don't believe in international law and us in the grounds of the white house immediately calling the newsroom and saying blimey we've got a heck of a scoop except as as as that over disappearance from the home page kinder all he's done is say out loud what everybody paying attention knew to be true

isn't it i mean i mean it puts some of his supporters in temporary discomfort for pretending or claiming or genuinely believing that he wasn't all of the things his critics have described him as. But we come back to that point again, where will anybody let go of their support for Trump as a consequence of him proving that he's all the things they insisted he wasn't?

The whole week has been President Trump saying out loud the things that he would not... previously have said out loud, not just on international law, but on this whole notion that he will be the determining factor in terms of what territory the United States takes, that if he wants... to seize Venezuelan oil. He's going to go right ahead and do it. After that call with President Petro, he said that he's not planning currently to launch attacks on Colombia, but it absolutely remains in.

his back pocket, as does the possibility of military action to seize Greenland. I mean, the paper says that in his conversation with the Times, Mr. Trump sounded more emboldened than ever before when asked what... What was the higher priority, obtaining Greenland or preserving NATO? Mr Trump declined to answer directly, but acknowledged it may be a choice. He made it clear that the transatlantic alliance was essentially...

useless without the United States at its core. I mean, I got a text last night from a former State Department official who simply... wrote to me, we are teetering on the edge. And I think that that is an accurate reflection of how dramatically his language, his approach, bruiser presentation of himself on the world stage has shifted in what just nine days since the start of the year um before we talk about renee nicole good and and how

and who is amplifying and supporting Trump's lies about what happened to her. It was Louis XIV, I think, who said, L'État, c'est moi. shortly before he got his head chopped off. That is the French equivalent of saying the only thing that matters is me. Totally. It is pure living in the 14th Territory. Wow.

And the final question, who, I mean, no surprises, I don't imagine. Is anybody dissenting from the Trump line? Is anybody actually declining the... uh order to ignore the evidence of their own eyes and ears have there been any sort of marjorie taylor green type moments where a slavish devotee actually wakes up and smells some of the coffee

Yeah, I mean, well, we have seen Marjorie Taylor Greene moments, but she, of course, has already departed the train. There is absolutely no one on the inside at all that is raising any public questions about this. No indication that anyone's raising any private questions.

We're even at the point now where the president told Fox News... last night that he's going to meet next week Maria Corina Machado the opposition leader from Venezuela and he indicated that if she would like to pass her Nobel Peace Prize onto him, he would graciously accept it. He would consider that to be a very gracious move by Ms Machado. He is basically holding this Nobel Peace Prize up as

one of the prices that she has to pay in order to secure American support, even for her, just to return to Venezuela. They haven't even demanded that opposition leaders must be allowed back in to Venezuela. So that's the sort of the venal point at which we now find ourselves. And, you know, all the gloves are off. I mean, the veil has been lifted. There's no pretense anymore about the nature of...

authoritarian rule in this country today, but also, of course, at the end of this week, about the nature of the police state that he is creating here. You know how much I value your contributions because you crystallise the things that we're frightened of. to address sometimes, the seriousness, the profundity of these moments. Bellingcat, the New York Times visual investigation team, Washington Post visual forensic team, all publishing analysis showing that the man who shot...

Renee Nicolgood was not in her path when he shot her. Completely and comprehensively contradicting statements made by Donald Trump and his various cronies and nobody. Nobody has broken ranks. That's terrifying. Well... It was J.D. Vance yesterday who I think provided a really blood-chilling appearance at the White House. If you've not watched it, the rant that J.D. Vance went on behind that White House podium accusing...

Renee Nicole good of being part of a lunatic radical left fringe He wouldn't even use her name. He kept referring to her as that woman I mean there were almost echoes of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky in it insisting that she had used her car as a weapon to ram officers engaged in the entirely legal law enforcement operation in which they were engaged. He dragged her name.

through the mud he attacked the media saying that the media that had been falsely in his words reporting what had occurred were propaganda agents of the radical left he claimed that shooting was justified based on her actions and there is no you can't even take a casual glance at that video and reach that kind of conclusion and the other thing we learned yesterday James is

that they are absolutely going to whitewash the investigation it's not even going to be a proper investigation the fbi now cutting out minnesota yeah They're cutting out the local law enforcement and the local investigators. The FBI taking this in-house only. And we already heard from J.D. Vance yesterday. The agent...

is a hero. I mean, it will not be long before that agent finds himself invited into the Oval Office to be personally congratulated and thanked by President Donald Trump for the stone cold at... close-range shooting of an American citizen who may or may not have been participating in protests against ICE and its anti-immigration operations. But even if she was, was not... clearly engaged in illegal activity? I was a little bit.

ambushed at the end of last year by the obviousness of that moment in the Oval Office when they brutalised and insulted and sought to humiliate Volodymyr Zelensky being of... epic historical significance being the moment that America's role on the world stage was comprehensively and irreversibly rewritten for the length of Trump's administration and his followers it can be reversed of course when

decent people get back in this is the domestic equivalent right i mean i know that this is death so this isn't just words but this is the point at which As Trump goes public with his contempt for international law, this is the point at which his administration detaches itself entirely from domestic law.

Yes, and it's interesting that in that New York Times piece, I mean, the reporters argue that President Trump, there was a distinction between the lack of constraint that President Trump felt on the world stage and the constraint of the court, certainly not Congress, that he professed to feel...

But when you start killing American citizens, civilians, dead... on the streets of Minneapolis, two people injured in Portland yesterday by the Border Patrol, who again are not cooperating with Oregon's investigation into what took place to that man and that woman found... shot in a vehicle in Portland after they raised the alarm yesterday.

When you have the masked agents of an authoritarian government taking to the streets and terrorising, and in Minneapolis... killing members of the public, the train has left the station and it's not going to be returning anytime soon. And Simon thank you and we will continue to track its progress wherever it ends up heading next with your help for which we remain.

Ever grateful. Three minutes after 12 is the time. It's been a week, hasn't it? As Simon said, a news cycle from America and in America, the likes of which I can't remember witnessing before. Things have been quite as frenzied or as frantic here. I'm currently minded to have...

a little bit of fun in the next hour just just a little bit of fun it's based on the news almost everything we do is um but it's it's a question um partly inspired by a story in the news today and partly inspired by luke littler that Ranks among one of the one of my all-time favorite questions that I've ever asked you we may not we may Wade

mercilessly back to the deep end but just just a quick heads up we may spend a little time splashing about in the shallow end after this eight minutes after 12 is the time i wonder if this needs to be a new year's resolution but i spend a lot of time putting the boot into People who are essentially client journalists for, well, most obviously for wealth.

but also more specifically for the absolute insanity of Brexit, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, austerity, whatever it may be. Do you think I spend enough time telling you good people to read and follow? It's always a tricky thing to do, actually. Because you'll always get somebody who goes, oh, well, I don't like them because they did this. It's impossible to publicly like anything in the world of the internet.

Have you noticed this? If you recommend something on social media, someone will point out that it's behind a paywall or that they don't have the... They don't subscribe to the platform upon which the film that you're recommending appears or that not everybody can afford to buy a book or go to the theatre. And I know that that's true. And I'm not in any way making light of the reality being described. But what's the point?

of telling me. It's such an odd thing to do. And yet that is the world that we live in. And I'm almost certainly guilty of it myself. You may be aware, I'm going to give you a little example. I'm just going to have a little sip of tea so that people watching this on YouTube later will know exactly what I'm talking about, okay? So you may be aware that I own an enormous mug. My LBC mug is, I mean, obscenely large. It's so large that it...

It makes people laugh out loud if they don't know that it's coming. So we went on the Australian equivalent of Have I Got News For You? or a kind of satirical news show in Australia. And they just showed the clip of me. I don't think it had anything to do with what they were discussing. And I was being...

quite grown up for a change. And then I just, mid spiel, I just had a sip of tea. And the minute that my enormous mug moved into shot, everybody started laughing. It's a comically large mug. My mug is a very large mug. But people keep telling me that I've got a very large mug.

I walk away because we're having a bit of building work done in the office at the moment. Well, a heck of a lot of building work being done in the office at the moment. And it means, for example, that poor old Eleanor, the producer of this programme, has lost her lunch.

When she came into work this morning, the fridge that she keeps her tofu in was accessible. And when the show started at 10 o'clock, the fridge was no longer accessible. A new wall had been installed temporarily, behind which all sorts of building work.

is going on, but also behind which lurks the fridge in which Eleanor's lunchtime tofu was nestling. Between you and me, it means that she's failed to read about 458 emails that have been sent out to everybody in the building about when these temporary... would be erected and why you should get everything out of your fridge before 10 o'clock on Friday morning. But because we're having a lot of building work done in the office at the moment, across all the floors, global towers...

I find myself wandering around the building looking for things like lavatories and taps. Because I need a very special kind of tap to fill my tea.

mug up because it's so enormous i can't do it with a kettle well there aren't really any kettles but even the urns that have been put in place temporarily if i go and fill my mug from an urn if there's a little there'd be a queue behind me by the time i've finished so i look for one of those special taps that are all over the building where, you know, the boiling water that comes out of the tap boiling.

But it means that I'm going to parts of the building that I haven't gone to before. Every day there's a new wall that's been built, as Eleanor discovered this morning. And it means that a whole new bunch of people get to see me walking around the building with my enormous mug. And almost every... one of them will say to me, gosh that's an enormous mug. To which I have no idea how to respond. It's like, what do you say? Yes, I know. I know. I'm walking around. Shall I express surprise?

Shall I go, good grief, you're right. It wasn't this size when I got into work this morning. What's happened to my mug? I own an enormous mug. But it's so enormous that everybody feels the need to say so as I walk by.

I wonder, I mean, I don't get irritated by it. I get amused by it. I don't know whether I'd have got mildly irritated on the 14th or 15th occasion that it happened in a single morning in my pre-therapy days. But the way to, I mean, people are being nice. People are trying to make conversation. They're genuinely gobsmacked by the size of my mug. And in order just to sort of remind myself, I had to imagine what I would do if I passed somebody on the stairs who had an even bigger mug than mine.

So if I passed on the stairs somebody with an even bigger mug than this, there's no way I wouldn't say anything. Nobody is going to walk past a mug the size of a beer barrel without commenting, if it's the first time that they've seen it, on the size of the mug. It's a... a fairly normal thing to do and yet of course everybody does it

I don't know if it's the same as me recommending that you read something and then you telling me you can't read it because it's behind a paywall. I know it's behind a paywall. I'm recommending it to people who can read it. You wouldn't say to me if I recommended a book. You say, well, I don't know why you're recommending that book. I haven't got it.

Would you? So when I recommend a film, why do you say to me, well, I don't know why you're recommending that film. I don't subscribe to Amazon Prime. That's not my problem. I wish everybody had all of the things that I've got, but I know that you don't. A lot of my stuff is work anyway. Subscriptions to newspapers and things.

But anyway, all of that is a very odd diversion from the fact that I was wondering whether you think I should recommend more things to you rather than just taking a swing at the shills and client journalists who have done so much to pollute public discourse in this country over the course of the last... 10 years. Because I have to tell you that Martin Samuel, who is

By day, the doyen of sports reporters writes such a beautiful notebook in the Times newspaper on Fridays that I really, I turn to it first and I really urge you to read it every day as well. And he gets it today. I mean, he's writing in Rupert Murdoch's Times, so his article appears, opposite one, by someone called Gerard Baker, which is a really desperate, desperate piece of journalism trying to sort of almost put a positive gloss.

on what Trump has been up to this week. I mean, the deeper you've gone in.

on trump the harder it is now to admit what's really happening and so an awful lot of people including this baker character are going to have to undertake contortions the like of which the world has has rarely seen in order to either put a positive gloss on the hideousness or um or pretend that it's not hideous um his article ends with the line power creates its own rules and while you may not like the new world order the new world being born you surely cannot

dispute that powerlessness in the end creates nothing he's got no idea what he's talking about he just knows that as someone who either did or or came perilously close to using the phrase trump derangement syndrome as an insult he is now in a position where all of the people that he used to argue with and criticise have been proved irrefutably right. So poor old Martin has to write his stuff opposite this bilge. But what he writes is beautiful.

And it merits a little mention this morning. I'll read you the beginning and the end of the article. Just shoot them in the face. That's the new normal? The new penalty for low-level disobedience? If indeed there was any low-level disobedience. Summary, public, final, and apparently...

justifiable. And then I'm not going to spoil the rest by reading it all out because I really want you to seek it out. And he goes on to make the point that we made via WB Yeats earlier in the week about the difference between anarchy. and rules, pointing out that he's not Rick from The Young Ones and won't be calling someone a fascist just because they've told you to wait for the next bus because this one is full. But this final line here, this final two lines here.

but convincing the public what it sees is not what happened, then blaming and framing an unarmed individual for her own death? It may not worry you. but it scares the bejesus out of me. Sometimes short-form journalism is the most powerful. When I first worked on a tabloid newspaper, my late father, who worked on The Telegraph, said to me, that's harder.

Sometimes it's harder to do in 200 words what broadsheet journalists can do in 2,000 words. And the notebook is short form. It's not a big column. It's just, you know, a few paragraphs. And that's just perfect, what Martin Samuel has written today. And I really urge you to seek it out. He doesn't do any other story. He focuses exclusively on that one, but he comes at it from various different angles.

And it is one of those rare moments when I can open up the Times newspaper and feel proud to be part of the same profession as somebody. So that is one of my New Year's resolutions, to make a little bit more recommendations of positive stuff rather than... routinely reminding you of the awfulness of people like Dick Littlejohn. But that's not what we're going to be talking about this hour. Stay tuned to find out what we are going to be discussing after this.

I love this. It's on the subject of my enormous mug. Tony's near Hull. He says, I was born on Christmas Day, James. So whenever I have to give my date of birth, people will respond and say, oh, that's Christmas Day. I try not to respond by saying, is it? I didn't, I don't know why I find.

this so funny and so interesting but we could how long do you reckon we could get towards sheila fogarty without talking about anything could we do an hour not talking about anything i got a message um during the last bit of the show it said have you seen this james

on Blue Sky. So I thought, oh, I wonder what that could be. So I clicked on it and it's a message that isn't sent to me and it's not been posted by someone who follows me. So they may not know anything about this programme. They may not even know that this radio show exists or that it is adorned by a man named Keith. But here is the message. Have you seen this, James? Asked Penny. I went to a toddler class today and there was a toddler called Keith.

That's just a moment for regular listeners to revel in, isn't it? We may have found, albeit obliquely, our youngest Keith. Keith's back, baby. What are we going to talk about? Golf. Golf and dance. I really, really like this because at first glance it's silly, but the more you think about it, the more interesting it becomes. A gym boss... writing in the Wall Street Journal. He's not your ordinary gym boss. He's the managing partner of a luxury gym company has claimed that golf is not exercise.

You're hitting, I like his turn of phrase as well as his thought processes. You're hitting a little white ball around a golf course using a golf court, golf cart and drinking at the ninth hole. I mean. Really, there are two words, aren't there, for anybody who thinks that playing a lot of golf keeps you fit and healthy. One of those words is Donald, and the other one is Trump.

But it's quite a controversial take. And lots of England golf, the governing body for amateur golf in this country, has mounted a vigorous defence of the game, espousing its various health benefits. I think... The golf cart is going to be the deal breaker. If you're spending your whole time being driven around in a cart, you're probably not doing anything that is exercise.

heavy, cardiovascular health, strength, balance, burning calories. If you're walking around the course, Mark Twain, of course, described golf as a good walk ruined, then you probably are. Well, you obviously are getting more exercise than if you're just sitting on your backside at home. But for most people, going for a nice walk doesn't necessarily constitute major exercise. That's not what I...

wanted to talk about. That's just a way into this conversation. I've been waiting since Monday, since the day we got back. I nearly said to school. I literally just caught my son. Since the day we got back to school. We all got back to school, didn't we, on Monday. I've been waiting to talk to you about Luke Littler and darts. As you may know, I love darts and I loved it long before it became fashionable.

My first trip to the Circus Tavern in Perth Lee. I think we recorded it for this programme, didn't we? Or did I just go with the producer at the time on a Christmas jolly? I can't remember. But I loved art. And Luke Littler is a phenom. A phenom. How do you pronounce that word? P-H-E-N-O-M. It's like a miniature version of phenomenon. And the reason why I love darts is because in the same way that I love snooker, I marvel at what human beings can do.

So I also really like bridges and cranes for the same reason. I really like the stuff that makes me feel small. So the Olympics 100 metres, in some ways... speaks to a similar appetite inside me but not as loudly not as loudly as darts does there's something primal about darts there's something so fundamentally human about throwing things at things accurately that i i can watch it for hours darts but here's the phone in as a gym boss in new york says that golf isn't exercise

What is a sport? How are we going to define us? Because I think darts should be in the Olympics. Not least because we'd be guaranteed a gold medal, wouldn't we? Same with snooker, actually. But why do I... Why do I think darts is a sport? But I'm not sure that snooker is. 03456060973. Is golf a sport? Yes or no? Is darts a sport? Yes or no? Is snooker a... And of course...

We could be here all day, couldn't we? I could just name every sport. Some sports, nobody would dispute that they're sports. But what... And don't look anything up. Let's not spoil it. Do you remember the phone-in we did about 20 years ago about why gold is valuable? I mention it to you quite a lot. I think it was the birth of Mystery Hour, actually. But the questions that seem silly at first glance but get more and more interesting the more that you think about them. Why is gold valuable?

That's not the phone-in. Don't ring me to tell me why gold is valuable. We may let ourselves do it. Have we got any big anniversaries coming up? Have we got a big anniversary coming up? They celebrated Nick Ferrari's 20th anniversary on this radio station, you know?

Nobody mentioned mine. I didn't even get a card. Seriously, the whole thing went by without even a raised eyebrow or a nod in the lift from the boss. They had enormous celebrations. I think they hired out the Albert Hall for Nick Ferrari's 20th anniversary on Albert Hall. See, I got nothing. It's the anniversary of the independence of the United States of America. But I don't think that's not really one of ours, is it? We haven't got anything coming up until the 25th.

anniversary of my time on this radio stage. I don't know, but if there's a nice anniversary up, then we'll do that again. We'll have an anniversary phone-in on why gold is valuable. So, Karen points out, Connect Four isn't a sport. but it does involve mental acuity and mental agility. So what I want to assemble between now and one o'clock is a decent, a workable theory of what makes a sport.

Because I think golf is a sport, and I think darts is a sport, but oddly, and I'm a huge fan of snooker, for some reason, subconsciously, whatever subconscious criteria I have in place... to define what a sport is. For some reason, snooker currently isn't reaching them. But it's golf and darts that we're focusing on first. Golf because it's in the news and darts because I have been trying to bring Luke Littler into the conversation since we got back to school on Monday.

and if you're wondering why it's because he's 19 years old no offence to the lad but he's not what you would describe as a picture of health

like most darts players. He just looks like he enjoys a kebab and he's quite open about the fact that he does enjoy a kebab. I'm not a picture of health myself. There's no side involved in this. But what... do you think what do we think actually constitutes a sport what would be the single thing you said proves that something is a sport i can tell you that that is a sport because

Now think about it, because it's actually a really good question, this. That is a sport, because when I finish playing, I am what? Or I feel what? Or while I am playing... I do what? Or I feel what? Darts, to an outsider, is usually overweight men throwing things in a pub. But to an insider... It's a titanic challenge. It's an extraordinary physical and mental feat. The concentration level's needed. Do you know what dartitis is? It's a real thing. Dartitis involves...

Raising just you've got your darts arm up you're getting ready to throw a dart and You can't let go of it. It's like a mental turmoil a parallel a paralysis a psychosomatic paralysis Jan van Veen, who got beaten by Luke Littler in the final this year, this time last year he was suffering from dartitis.

You can't let go of the darts. So when I say mental and physical, I'm not exaggerating. So despite on paper not ticking any of the boxes that you might ordinarily associate with sport, to me, darts is an absolutely... pure sport. But why? Why? What would you use as the definition of a sport? I'll shut up, shall I, and take some calls. Adrian's in Southampton. Adrian, what do you reckon? Hi, James. How you doing? Very well, mate.

We haven't spoken for a long time. I was homeless the last time I speak to you, but that's a long time ago. And you're no longer homeless? I'm not anymore, no. Well, fantastic news, mate. That's brilliant. I'm so glad to hear that. That's all right. I don't know why I said that. Anyway.

It's important. It's quite a big deal, mate, isn't it, being homeless? I can't believe you're surprised that you've said it. I think if I'd been homeless any time recently, I'd have mentioned it. It's like my mug. You can't not mention it.

I'm one of those saddos that thinks that after the thousands of calls you've had in the interim, you'd remember that call. Did you live in your car? No, I was... You helped me, actually. A couple of people phoned in and helped out. It was around Christmas time, about four years ago. That's lovely. Anyway.

Snooker. I've just pulled into the services because you've wound me up. You don't do that very often. Right, so I'm on my way to play snooker now. I started playing snooker three years ago for the first time ever in my life. Decided I was going to be a coach when I retire. That was the plan. Oh, that's nice.

I practice three hours a day. And in those three hours, I do about 600 sit-ups. You think about it, you're bending down, you're standing up, you're bending down, you're standing up. And I walk about five kilometers. Every single day playing snooker. Now, you tell me that darts does that, because it doesn't. How... What's your biggest break? What's your biggest break? 107. Cool, you are? In three years?

Yeah, I've practiced a lot. Clearly, Dave. That's amazing. It's not, I promise you, it's hard work. It's really hard work. Hang on a minute. Before we get stuck into that, when you got your 107, did you then miss one or was that a clearance? To be honest, I didn't realise I'd done it because I video myself sometimes. I didn't realise I'd done it. If I'd known I'd done it, I'd have practised it.

concentrated a bit harder. You might have got more if you'd gone over 100. So, okay, that's really powerful. I told you that it was subconscious and it doesn't necessarily make sense, what I said about darts. You don't need to be rude about darts, but... No, I'm not. I'm just saying that snooker is definitely more physical than darts, 100%. Yeah, so what is the criteria this gives us? So we say it is only a sport if... It helps you get fit.

Well, then golf's off the case, then. Golf does help you get fit. Look at Donald Trump, mate. Yeah, but honestly, come on, he doesn't play golf. He just gets people to throw balls near the hole for it. He would say he plays golf. I mean, if it gets you fit, it's a sport. So, balls is not a sport? Yes, bowls is a sport. My dad plays bowls. And I promise you, the reason that people, when they're older, play bowls is because it's sedate. It's slow and it's all they can manage, but they're still...

I want to take up bowls. I want to take up bowls. I mean, does it cut both ways? Because walking is everything that gets you fitter a sport. Because Eleanor says walking is not a sport, but she's clearly never watched walking at the Olympics. It definitely is a sport. So this would leave darts... You might as well say that ice skating is not a sport.

Of course it is. So darts is the only... I could have opened a can of worms here. Darts will end up being the only one that's not a sport because it doesn't get you fitter. And there's no evidence that being healthier and fitter makes you better at darts. I think... No, it does. I think it does. If you look at the best players in the world, taking Luke Littler out of it, most of them go out running. Most of them are having sports psychologists. It's all about... It's all about...

From my point of view, it's the practice. It's not the playing. It's expertise. It's expertise. No, not even expertise. It's a skill that's honed to close. It's the pursuit of perfection, maybe. Yeah, absolutely, 100%. And that's why we love the 180s and the 147s so much, because that speaks to the pursuit of perfection so completely. Do you know we're nine days into the new year and we've already had four 147s this year?

I didn't know that. That is pretty special, isn't it? That is very special, yeah. Good luck. I'd like to know a little more about your journey. off the streets, back into home. But it's up to you whether we ever have that conversation. Have a little chat with Eleanor now, because I know a lot of people listening will remember your call and will be interested to know how that happened and indeed what role.

this um this program played in the process but only if you're comfortable with it 12 32 is the time tim humphrey has your headlines 12 35 is the time a new york gym owner suggests that golf is not exercise and a Big mouth on British radio suggests that snooker isn't a sport. I think that that's probably been dealt with by Adrian. That was just a bit of a mental glitch of mine. Of course it's a sport. Do you know how darts was invented? I don't know.

You know, one of the biggest problems with this job is there's a little bit of my brain that thinks you've listened to every single show I've ever done. And I wouldn't expect you to remember them. But, I mean, it's hard enough remembering sometimes that very few people listen to the whole show once. You know, zoning in and out of your attention zone. You've got...

Other things to do. I'm in the background. The phone rings. You've got to go out. You don't like me. You're only tuning in by accident because you're here for Nick Ferrari or you're getting in early for Sheila Fogarty. And yet somewhere in my brain. I presume you'll remember everything that's happened on the program. And I told the story straight at the end of last year, which means it will have got a little bit further into the public consciousness.

The idea that darts was invented when the Earl of Dartmouth had to postpone archery practice because of the weather and brought his troop of archers into his hall. And one of them made a miniature archery game in order to keep the lads entertained. And that's how darts was born by servants of the Earl of Dartmouth. And I told it with a straight face at the end of last year, which means that it will have...

reached parts it hadn't previously reached. It's not true. I invented it. It's entirely my own invention. But it is such a successful invention that it has, on two occasions, been told, well, once to me and once to one of my daughters. They've been told, I've been told by somebody else with a straight face how darts was invented. And it was a myth that I started live on this programme.

We can't really get into the business of starting more myths because then we'd leave ourselves open to accusations of fake news. But darts, what is a sport and why? What criteria would you use? 12.37 is the time. Richard is in Norwich. Did you know, Richard, that in the 17th century, Norwich was the second largest city in England?

You said it with a straight face, James. It must be true. Yeah, it is true. I only read it yesterday. I did a double take and looked it up. It's actually true. Yeah, there was a story. Some nutcase was claiming that we didn't have immigration in the early Middle Ages. And so somebody else did a little bit of...

research into it, and they mention Norwich, the second largest city in England in 1600. About a third of the population had been born somewhere else. Wow. There you live and learn. Anyway, why did you ring in? The sports versus games thing. I think, and this is only what I think, if you have to change your shoes to do it, it's a sport. So temping bowling is a sport.

Exactly. Tempin bowling's a sport. Controversially, snooker isn't, because you don't have to change your shoes. Darts is not. Deepest apologies to your last collar. Yeah, darts isn't, because you walk into a pub, if it's been snowing, you've got your boots on, you can have a game of darts, can't you?

That's my theory. I'm trying to think. I'm going to keep you on the line until I can think of a fly in the ointment of your theory. Something that you change your shoes for that is clearly not. What about swimming? Well, you have to take your shoes off, don't you? Well, you're just changing it now. You're as bad as Donald Trump. You're backtracking all of me now. Yeah, OK. Fair point. Well presented. No, you do have to adjust your footwear to do it. There you go, then.

So darts is off, snooker is off. You play football, but you do have to suppose to have just because you can play it in any shoes doesn't mean you're not supposed to have. Yeah, I quite like that. I mean, it's not going to win because golf, golf count as a sport. then? Golf shoes. You have golf shoes, don't you? Do you need to wear golf shoes when you're on the golf course? Can you not just wear normal trainers? Chess. You could play football in your hobnail boots if you want to. Chess.

I'm putting chess. Chess is a bit of a curveball, isn't it, actually? You don't need to change your shoes to play chess. But you'd say that was a game. Darts game, snooker game, chess game. What is in the Olympics that's a game, not a sport at the moment? Now you're asking. About dressage. You need to wear boots. All right. Well, I mean, to be honest, the more we think about it, the more powerful this criteria begins to look. Speaking of shoes, do you know why?

Every day's a school day. Do you know why Justin Hood, who was kind of the breakthrough star at the darts this year, do you know why his nickname is Happy Feet? No. And his insignia is a penguin. Big feet, maybe? No, the opposite. So I think that he turned up for a game of darts, and there might actually be rules about footwear if you're playing competition darts. I think you might have to wear a certain type of shoe.

And he didn't own any. Yeah, so darts might become a sport. Someone else will know more about it than I do. But he didn't own the correct shoe, so he borrowed a pair of somebody with much bigger feet than him. So as he approached the hockey, he could almost fold the shoe over the top of the curb. So that's why he's known as Happy Feet, because he looked like a penguin.

During an early game of darts when he was walking around in a pair of shoes that were about four sizes too big for him. The other thing we love about Justin Hood is that he intends to use his £100,000 prize money. that he picked up at Alipali to open a Chinese restaurant because he loves Chinese food. Come on. If that's not a sporting hero, I don't know what is. Thank you, Richard. Will's in Liverpool. Will, what would you like to say?

I feel I'm going to take this far too seriously. No, no, no, you cannot take it too seriously, Will. That's the point, isn't it? Good to speak to you. I haven't spoke for a number of years. Good man. Many, many years ago... I left school, didn't often, but I ended up doing a sports science degree. Oh, yeah, go on. And it absolutely changed the way I view not only the world, but more importantly, sports. Yes. So...

The argument that golf is not a sport is just absolute rubbish. Well, it's not my argument. It's this fellow in America. I appreciate that. Why is it absolute rubbish, though? You can't just say that. You've got to back it up. I'm going to break it down for you now, and then we can move on to other sports. So, for example, to perform a golf shot, it's accumulation.

of multiple actions so when we talk in sports science of sports to kick a ball is an action to pick up a spoon on a coffee table is an action Now, when you look at golf, there's multiple actions that come together to allow you to perform a single golf shot. Yeah. Particularly at elite level. The gentleman saying it doesn't improve health and fitness. Well, actually, I've been playing golf off and on most of my life. Unfortunately, I...

My aspirations of being a pro got cut short because I ended up in a wheelchair at 13 years of age. But what it allows you to do, it's your core strength, it's your health and well-being, and these are, you know, it's weight transference, it's balance. It's visual perception, i.e. understanding a dynamic environment. So let's talk about, so to say that it's one of the most complex actions you can deliver.

to do correctly. That's really interesting. And darts would be the same, would it? Darts is absolutely the same. Darts is technically one of the hardest actions to perform. That goes back down to what's known as fine motor control. Fine motor control or spine motor control? Fine motor control. You're having to go with my bendy back now. I'm not, I promise you. I'm having to go with your accent, if anything. Fine, with an F. No, you're not the first there. Fine, fine, with an F.

Bad motor control. Yeah, sorry. I genuinely misheard you. Go on. As if I'd make a joke about you being in a wheelchair live on the radio, I'd be cancelled by tea time. Honestly. Yeah. Go on, get on with it. Go. Fine motor control. So when we talk about fine motor control, the guy performing the action will have to control his breath, control his heart rate, control his...

all this stuff that's going on in the body, what he's also got to be doing, and this is one theory I absolutely adore, is the homunculus. So, a Russian theorist come up with the idea that within your brain... Right? You've got a homunculus, which is a little fella with a load of levers, and he's doing all calculations to allow you to, for example, pick up a pen that's on your desk.

When you pick up the pen that's on your desk, you're taking information into your brain, you're working out where you are in space, you're working out how much force. has got to be used with the tips of your finger to pick up that pen, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So whatever the actions at elite level where they put the 10,000 hours of...

practicing, not just messing around, but practicing, which is typical. So you could argue that a pianist could be a sport if it's put with... codification now this is the other thing that comes into sport when is it a sport and when is it not a sport it goes back to the codification of many of these games Years ago, games were fun. You were joking about your staff, the darts, where that comes from. But actually...

You know, Romans... Somewhere along the line it got codified. What was essentially a scrum or a kickabout or a message... Somebody started, like Marquis of Queensbury would be the perfect example. For example, we... The British... codified most sports. Yes. That's just a fact. Rule Britannia. Britannia rule the waves. Let's not go there, please. All right, fair enough. But we codified the sports. But most cultures...

played similar sort of games. So, for example, the argument is we invented football. There was football games all around the world. Of course there were. Golf's the same. Many ancient civilizations used games and sports to train their armies. Where do you think a javelin throw comes from? This was all war training many, many centuries or thousands of years ago. So the whole concept of what's a sport and what, you can go on forever and ever.

It's fascinating. People are going to think they've tuned into Radio 4 by accident and that they're listening to a documentary. You are brilliant. Oh, cheers, mate. Oh, you're welcome. That's absolutely fascinating. So there's a degree of randomness in it, as in, you know, musical instruments are really interesting. You don't think, because you have competitions as well. So you are actually, almost all of the criteria.

of sport would apply to the Young Musician of the Year competition. Look, dancing's younger when you've had a few drinks and you're all playing with your mates trying to pull it up. That could be, if you put the right codes, the right... structure and the regs. So your benchmark, it can be a sport. So is...

No, it isn't because some people are just natural talent. So can you do it in a sentence? Because I was thinking repetition in pursuit of perfection. But that doesn't quite work because... I think it's... It's about the codification. We do many actions. We do actions all the time. You could have competitive housework almost, couldn't you? Anything could be a sport. Well, you've got extreme ironing now.

I don't know if you've been aware of that, but you've got extreme ironing. I have heard of that. Because it's codified. Someone has gone to the trouble of introducing a set of rules. And under the parameters, within the parameters of which you pursue perfection, and at that point it becomes a sport. So chess, chess, what about chess? Well, for me, it's a sport. Why? Because...

It's cognitive processing, isn't it? Yeah, but there's no actions. You can play it on a screen, you can play it on a board. I mean, chess. But there's structure, there's codification, there's cognitive processing. Now... And the other thing with chess, so some of the things we've referenced in sports science is open environments and closed, or dynamic environments, closed environments. So golf...

for example, is a pretty closed environment in that you're playing against a course, not an individual. Whereas tennis, you're playing against an individual, not a course. Likewise... So the same sort of play, you play... No, I get it. You're playing against... I'm really late. I could do this all day. Because now I want to ask you about Monopoly, and I think you'd be able to answer it as well.

Lots of people believe that story about darts, by the way, including the producer of this programme. But Dave in Bexley Heath spent most of Christmas telling people. that the Duke of Dartmouth, in his case, not the Earl of Dartmouth, had invented darts when it was too wet and rainy outside for his bowman to practice. So we're all in on this.

It's not just me. Now you're part of the joke. You're part of the secret. But Will in Liverpool there, it was practically a TED talk. I'm still not able to completely nail down. Oh, go on then, quickly. In a sentence, Monopoly. Is it a score? There you go. Bamboozled, I think. 12.49.

12.52 is the time. I don't know if we're going to have any more room for callers. An awful lot of people making the same joke, but Dave was the one I saw. David suggesting that chess was invented by the Earl of Chester. And a lot of people commenting on...

The similarity in sound between our last caller and the great John Bishop. Speaking of brilliant people, I think he's gone now, so I can tell you. This kind of radio where it's... We began at 12 o'clock with a bit of... about my mug this this weird whimsy that i hope you enjoy i need to do it sometimes and i love doing it when we do

I was introduced to it as a concept on the radio because I'd previously only ever listened to news radio growing up, or music. I never really listened to personalities between songs, having big personal... Steve Wright, I suppose, but that was so tightly... Anyway, it was Jonathan Ross.

on radio too who um just made me realize mrs o'brien and i used to sometimes plan our journeys on saturday mornings because the three hours we were in the car would go so much quicker if he was on the radio and in the middle of that conversation he walked past he walked past the window of the studio because um he does a show on classic fm and he does a podcast here at global as well i just love it when stuff like that happens i thought i'd share it with you um

I'm going to do this first just so that we definitely have enough time for it. OK. And it may be that we've got time for a call or two at the end of it. But the. The point is this. Donald Trump, as Simon Marks was telling us earlier, has told the New York Times that he doesn't believe in international law and that the only thing that he will go by when deciding that something is right or wrong is his morality.

So I thought it might be timely today as we end our week together to have a little look at what we know about Donald Trump's morality. and what it might mean for the United States of America and, of course, the wider world. So what is the morality that Donald Trump will rely upon in preference to laws, decency? What was it? The bonds of obligation that bind us all. Well, here is one of the most obvious examples. I've got to use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her.

You know, I'm automatically attracted to beautiful. I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Whatever you want. Grab them by the . I can do anything. Nothing to worry about there. Outside of his personal life and into his political, of course, this example of Donald Trump's morality remains very relevant. This is a major fraud in our nation. We want...

The law to be used in a proper manner. So we'll be going to the US Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop. We don't want them to find any ballots. four o'clock in the morning and add them to the list, okay? I mean, we're only two calls in and we've already got self-confessed sexual offenses, election fraud and lying. How much worse can it get? So, look, all I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.

Because we won the state. That's him trying to get Georgia's secretary of state to commit election fraud. That was in January of 2021 that that got leaked. Back to his personal life. This is pretty grim, but hey-ho. He's in charge. I don't think Ivanka would do that inside the magazine, although she does have a very nice figure. I've said that if Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her.

It's the laughter, isn't it? It's a bit like The Hunger Games or some sort of dystopia where the hideous central characters, whether it's Coriolanus Snow or someone else, is surrounded by sycophants. who a bit like what's happening with mosque at the moment, actually, I suppose. Anyway, this is Trump, whose morality is what will be replacing international law as the guide by which the free world is run.

This probably needs a little bit of context, and it works better if you can see it. But this is when he decided to mock the New York Times reporter Serge Kowalewski, who suffers from... um well a fairly chronic decision condition very chronic condition this was right at the beginning of the first campaign the first attempt to become president written by a nice reporter now the poor guy you got to see this guy oh i don't know what i said

I don't remember. He's going like, I don't remember. Oh, maybe that's what I said. It was 14 years ago. He still, they didn't do a retraction. Interesting how much more alive he sounds, more vital that he sounds just 10 years ago. He sounds nothing like that now. I mean, we talked a lot about Joe Biden slowing down.

Donald Trump, I hadn't really clocked how much he's slowed down in the 10 years since he was publicly mocking the disabilities of a New York Times reporter. And then finally, a little bit of context here, because of course it is Donald Trump's morality that will now be guiding. the world no longer international law about which he has expressed his contempt or indeed domestic law which you've seen his contempt for in the aftermath of

Rene Nicole Good's killing in Minneapolis. Here he is essentially endorsing bribery and... criticizing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which makes bribing foreign entities illegal. So imagine you're answering a question of, what do you think about the idea of making it illegal to bribe foreign...

businesses or politicians or individuals or indeed any kind of entity at all. Every other country in the world is doing it. We're not allowed to. So it puts us at a huge disadvantage and let them clean up their own act. So in terms of what Donald Trump's morality currently consists of, there's self-confessed sex offending, lying, election fraud, encouraging other people to... commit election fraud, sexualising your own daughter, mocking the disabled and passionately pursuing the right to bribe.

individuals, entities and businesses. There's nothing to worry about there. And indeed, if you're worried about any of those things, please don't forget that just simply means that you suffer from Trump derangement syndrome. If you missed any of today's show, I'm off to play darts. If you missed any of today's show, you can listen back on our free...

global player app or the lbc app the newish lbc app where you can stay up to date on the top stories and opinions put your news categories in the order you want you can pause and rewind live radio and listen to a range of podcasts including james o'brien Daily, the best bits from my LBC show every day. So do download the official LBC app for free from your app store now. Tom Sawbreak will be with you at four on LBC, but now it's time for Sheila Fogarty.