Our Thoughts on 2025

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which is on like 1.2 million views about the history of america it's one of the best episodes like that was only eight months ago it feels like it was three years ago I know, and that's the amazing thing when you do two America trips and all the content that we record here and the fantastic conversations. There are times where I go, that seems like two years ago. Yeah.

Genuinely. Two years ago, if you said to me that was two years ago, I'd go, yeah, that sounds about right. Just because of the frenetic pace at which we record. So that is surprising in a way. But also I think it's due to the fact that... Because of the team that we have and because of the schedule and because of the amazing guests, we have such incredible conversations that you do want conversation. And then in a week later, you have another equally brilliant one.

Yeah, and it's been a wild year. We've had everyone on from the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, to Boris Johnson, to Dana White, to Dave Smith for a discussion, and all this, Richard Minutes, as I mentioned, Tommy Robbins, like the whole... the whole year has just been absolutely incredible uh but it was dominated particularly the first kind of 10 months of it i think it's fair to say by the war in gaza that was a big part of the conversation and what's fascinating to me

is that that conflict is still ongoing. And no one is saying anything about it. This is the amazing thing where a ceasefire was declared, the hostages were given back, which is... Let's be honest and let's take a moment to celebrate that because I'm not sure if you would ask even the most ardent optimists, would the hostages be returned in 2025?

I don't think there'd be many people who would think that would be possible. Well, Sam Harris, who I don't think is usually described as a Trump superfan, did say that Donald Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for that.

So that kind of tells you the scale of the achievement, I think. Oh, absolutely. And it was Trump. And it was very interesting because there was an interview with Trump on Air Force One and he paid a lot of... I wouldn't say respect is the wrong word, but saying how it was a team effort, which was very un-Trumpian, actually, saying that Erdogan and a few other people were...

instrumental in making this happen so a huge achievement but then you know Hamas being Hamas turns out you can't trust a genocidal racist death cult and they just reverted to doing what they know and do best But what I also, like I say, find interesting is like all the people who were screaming about the genocide don't care anymore. Do you not find that so fascinating? Yeah. Isn't that weird?

For this entire year, they spent their time banging on about genocide. And the ones on the left now, they've gone back to, they've reverted to the mean, which is now they're banging on about the tax-original billionaires. And the retards on the right are banging on about how Charlie Kirk killed himself or Erica Kirk killed him or whatever it is that they're onto now. And you just go, there's been this, like, there is a herd thing going on where people really just...

They just follow the crowd and they talk about stuff that they don't know much about. And then that thing is still going on, but then they don't talk about it anymore because a new thing has come up. It's so strange. It is. It is. And it just shows, A, the power of social media, where if something is constantly put into your feed, then...

people then go, oh, this must be the thing that everyone's talking about. This must be the most important issue of the day. And let's be honest, it is a very important issue as well by the Stein and Gaza and all the rest of it. But then you go, look. If you're so activated by it, which I understand, it's a very emotive topic, then you wouldn't have this reaction where the moment it's done, in inverted commas, you then go, okay.

What's next? You would be genuinely concerned as to what's happening, the fate of the people. Have Hamas actually put down their weapons? Is this ceasefire workable? But it just seems they've all gone... Okay, let's move on now. Yeah, it's really, really strange. But of course, one of the other things that happened during the year in relation to Gaza was the 12-day war when the US bombed Iran.

and damaged or destroyed their nuclear facilities. You know, there were people predicting it was going to cause World War III. Our recent guest Dave Smith called President Trump to be impeached. you know people lost their yeah and ultimately it was kind of a an overall success and that is in some ways a really strong contrast because the trump administration has delivered a lot in the middle east

while not delivering anything of what they promised in Ukraine. And that's been a really interesting thing to watch. And I think it's partly because of the people involved. It's like Jared Kushner, I think, is really, really talented. And from what I know...

He's done an amazing job in the Middle East, not just now, but with the previous Abraham Accords work they did. Whereas, you know, Steve Witkoff doesn't seem to have the measure of Vladimir Putin just here, which is, you know, not a surprise because Putin really knows what he's doing. Steve Wyckoff doesn't. But that is another conflict that's yet to wrap up. It's obviously close to my heart. So it's sad to see that we end the year with that war still ongoing.

Yeah, it's been a year of conflict around the world. It has been a year of conflict. There was India and Pakistan that flared up for what seemed like... Three hours. Yeah, three hours. But there was a point, I remember when it started going...

This could potentially be disastrous. And it's what we often talk to some of our guests about, which is going from a unipolar world to a multipolar world. And this is, I think, the fact what the... left or progressives or not even the progressives, just the anti-interventionists, shall we call them, fail to appreciate. The moment America recedes from the global picture, the moment America stops being an inverted commas of world's policemen.

That's the moment that certain nefarious actors are taking a cheeky look around and going, okay, well then maybe we can take this and maybe we can do this. Because this idea that we were all taught at university where, you know, in basic economics where... You know, if you trade with someone, you know, everything is going to be great. Turns out.

isn't always true well what's interesting of course is those two conflicts started under the previous they started under the biden administration and i think they were a response to the weakness uh of of that administration president trump came in he's managed to get some progress on one, not so much on the other. But hopefully next year does bring proper peace to both of those places.

oh well look that's what we're all desperately hoping for because the the war as all wars but particularly that war is just so brutal and horrific that you hope that some measure of sanity can be restored the thing that i find worrying whenever i'm in the united states is this kind of pro-putin rhetoric that comes out where people are saying well you know

Ukraine, the skirt was a bit high, therefore she deserved the black eye. And you're like, really? Yeah, and they're also, as we discovered in our episode with Ann Coulter, quite famously, because that clip's gone super viral, they're very badly informed. It's just a bunch of talking points.

that none of them have actually looked into. But the reason they're all doing that, I think, is it's a much better explanation than the real explanation, which is they just don't want, they want to be isolationists. And I would just have a lot more respect for those people if they just said, like, we're isolationists. We don't care about Ukraine. We don't care about the Middle East. Like, that at least is an accurate reflection of their true motivations.

um whereas making up all this stuff about i've always found it very um what's the right what despicable really it's like why would you make up lies to justify to so that you don't have to say the truth about what you actually believe just say

I'm an isolationist. I don't want America involved in foreign affairs. And then that is a legitimate debate that people can have about what is the role of the West and America as its leader in maintaining world... order and so on or the current world order if you like because if you don't maintain the current world order a new one will emerge and that it will be a world order in which the west and the united states in particular are no longer the dominant force i mean this was

the crux of our debate with dave smith a few months ago so or a month ago whatever it was yeah right that was that was a big part of the conversation of course this was also a year i think in which You know, it's interesting because on the one hand, it feels like all of the arguments that people like us and many of our guests have been making for a long time about the culture within Western countries, wokeness and all of this other stuff.

It really was the year where our arguments started to be dominant. In many ways, you could argue that on many of those issues, we've won the arguments. But at the same time... I think the murder of Charlie Kirk, which was a political assassination, it just showed that we are living through a very... explosive you know i'm trying to find the right words we are living through a very combustible time there is a lot of people who are very angry

There are a lot of people who've been trained to think that their anger entitles them to do horrific things. And I don't just mean in terms of political violence. I see people within the political world now saying, well, you know, they did this, therefore we're entitled to do that.

And Charlie Kirk actually gave a lot of very bad actors, I think, on the right an excuse, which we've seen since, to go, well, you know, debate died with Charlie Kirk. And it's such a... a terrible thing to do to his legacy because this was a man who actually not only operated in the world but demonstrated through his life and sacrifice the right way to approach these things which is to argue

to win the argument which is what he did ultimately he was successful because he persuaded people and he became undeniable in that and his his murder was tragic but in many ways, it only proves his point. And I think one of the things that has happened since is way more people have now come over to the side of rational discussion. But it's also, of course, given a lot of bad faith actors.

uh ammunition to do terrible things well and and this is the dispiriting thing about i mean obviously the murder was awful but then like with all of these types of events I think it was Douglas Murray who said it best. He said, it sends a flare into the sky. And then you can see where everyone really stands. And the people who have integrity and principle on either side behave with integrity and principles.

And the people who have neither and more personally, the incredibly bad faith actors who then use a tragedy in order to enrich themselves, behaved in that manner as well. I mean, the obvious answer, the most pertinent example of this is Candace Owens. Her behavior after Charlie's murder is, let's be honest, it's been despicable. She's become a lunatic.

She's such a lunatic that Nick Fuentes is calling her out. Yeah. Yeah. And what makes her behaviour and her actions even more heinous is this is somebody who had a personal relationship with Charlie.

This is somebody who was a friend, yet uses the death or the murder of her friend, so-called friend, to then spread misinformation, to then spread conspiracy, and then become... even richer as a result of it and the thing is with Candice's behavior is it's been it's despicable but it's more understandable if you don't have money if you're trying to make it

It's not acceptable in any shape or form, but it's more understandable. But you go, you're already huge. You already have all the money that you need, the notoriety. And yet you still carry on down this path? That, to me... makes it even more heinous it is it's just and it's interesting you can see lots and lots of people turning on on that on this issue and just going like this is crazy this is insane uh but that but

But there's a lot of that going around now, and people are just throwing stupid and crazy stuff out because they can. And the other thing they're doing very dishonestly... and Tucker does this, Tucker Carson does this all the time, is he deliberately conflates being criticized for the stupid and wrong and factually incorrect things that he says with people trying to cancel him. And you're just going, no, no, no, no, no.

You have a right to express your opinion and we will defend your right to express your opinion. But we will also defend our right to criticize your stupid opinion. And he keeps saying all this stuff about how... Hitler didn't really want to dominate Europe. Like, Hitler is on record saying that he wanted to dominate Europe. I think he was pretty clear about that. Yeah, he was. He seemed to be quite determined, actually. Yeah.

Both in word and action. Yeah. But it speaks to a thing. And Jimmy Carr on an episode that went out recently, which is absolutely crushed. I mean, he made the point that the founding myths of the West in the last 70 odd years are crumbling. I do think that's true. And I think it's partly because in recent decades, the progressive left just ran away.

from reality and started calling everyone a fascist and everyone a Nazi and they diluted it to the point where you no longer can use those terms as accurate descriptions of people who are those things. Nick Fuentes, for example, is a Nazi. That's just a fact. He doesn't deny. He himself says that Hitler was cool, right? Like, there is a word for that. And that's what he is. But because the left destroyed that term as far as they have...

It doesn't really have the impact that it once did. And all of these things are now being renegotiated in real time, which is one of the reasons after we had our conversation with Dave, we invited Nick on the show. And like Candace before, he's ducked it. Yeah, he has. And there was a clip of him going, oh, maybe I will, maybe I won't, maybe I won't. They're not even American. Yeah, because...

The reality, look, the reality is why he's ducked it is because unlike a lot of people who have interviewed him, we're not going to soft soap him, mentioning no names, sucker. We're not going to get and start telling him how outraged we are and how despicable his words are. Just argue the point. Which is the kryptonite for people like him.

Yeah. Because what he feeds off is people being outraged by his horrific views. We'll just dismantle his horrific views, and that's what he's afraid of, because all he's good at is... is playing the stupid character to his audience. What he's actually terrible at is engaging in the argument because there is no argument to support the points that he's making. Something we've learned doing this show.

is that people's thoughts about a given issue often depend on where they get their news. That's why we use ground news to see how the same story is reported across the political spectrum. For example, take the story about Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson signing an... executive order creating so-called ice-free zones. Follow along at ground.news slash trigonometry.

Using ground news straight away, we can quickly see that the story is being covered by sources across the board, but with more coverage from outlets on the right. Scrolling down the page, Ground News allows us to easily compare the headlines. We can see the Chicago Sun Times, which is on the left, focused on the city's decision to declare municipal buildings ice free.

Meanwhile, The Hill, a centrist newspaper, simply stated that Chicago's mayor signs ice free zone executive order. But the New York Post on the right went with. White House blasts sick Chicago mayor for aiding illegal immigrant killers. Same news story, completely different takes. Ground News compiles these divergent perspectives in one place.

Another feature we use heavily at Trigonometry is the blind spot feed, which highlights where coverage is lopsided, lets you compare bias across the political spectrum, and shows what's being emphasized. or ignored. If you care about getting to the truth by seeing things from all angles, Ground News is essential. Go to ground.news slash trigonometry and get 40% off their unlimited advantage plan. That's the plan we use.

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to organize every room in your home, from your garage to your attic. Visit homedepot.com. How doers get more done. And it's also as well, it's going, okay, so you're putting yourself forward as the leader of this movement. What's your grand vision? What do you want from the West? You talk openly about how much you despise women and how terrible they are. And all right, well, yeah, but you need women in order to have babies for the moment.

I don't think he's worked that part out. Yeah, yeah. Well, maybe. Yeah. But you also need women in order to have children in order to keep the West going. And in order to have... Most of the time, you need stable marriages. You need healthy relationships. That's how you build a healthy, functioning society. We've spoken about it on this show time and time again, that one of the major issues with the West is...

fatherlessness, the breakdown of the marriage, and in the younger generations, the fact that both males and females have a distrust of each other and they're not relating to one another as they used to before. Well, Nick, is this your grand vision? basically saying that women are disgusting and stupid. How is that going to make anything better? Well, I don't think people like him and those previous iterations of him, obviously, as well.

And you see this on the left as well. I think what we have with the Gen Z generation is a lot of very understandable anger. And I did a live show with Andrew Gold at a theater in London. And one of the guys who came up to me at the book signing before the show, he said, I've got a teenage son and a teenage daughter, and I'm trying to pull my teenage son in from going to the right.

too far. And I'm trying to put in my teenage daughter from going too far to the left. And that's kind of the society. I refuse to accept a world in which our daughters vote for Zoran. Mamdani and Zach Polanski and our sons are watching Nick Fuentes and Bonnie Blue. Yeah. Separately, not together, because that would be great content. You know what I mean? But that is...

In terms of the influences that are prominent, that is the world we're heading in. And it is because people of that generation in particular alienated. They're angry. Let's be honest. And we talked about this. I had a video on this talking about the phenomenon of Nick Fuentes, but more broadly.

It's like, and our conversation with Nick Freitas, the main interview hasn't had huge numbers, but some of the clips are like millions and millions and millions of views because what he's saying is true. Young men... Add to that white man, add to that Christian man, particularly in America. They have been demonized for things that they were neither responsible for nor benefited from. And they were told, you're a piece of shit.

you've got male privilege, you've got white privilege, you've got this privilege, when they actually didn't. They lived in a society that was obsessed with promoting women and actually just openly, callously, maliciously negligent. men's need for respect and opportunity and purpose and all these other things. So that anger that exists in the young generation is totally justified. It's totally justified. But the question is...

Can they learn what all of us have to learn during the course of our lives? That when you are angry, that's good because you can channel that anger into positive action. Creating something, building something, uniting people. Charlie Kirk was so widely revered and respected, even by many people who didn't share his views, because that was the approach he took. Coalition building, having a huge impact in electoral politics.

actually channeling things into productive action. That is, I think, where this thing needs to go. And that is a battle. I think that's the next battle. If we've won the arguments on wokeness and net zero and illegal immigration, etc., which I think we have at this point, let's be honest, even in Britain, we have, then that...

Culturally, that is the next big battle. I agree with you. I think what's really important when talking about the Fuenteses and the people on the right and the Polanskis and people on the left, what they do is they activate. in my opinion the very worst of the male brain and the very worst of the female brain and there's also the economic element where people feel that they have no hope that if they get a job they're not going to be able to buy a place

The economy is becoming more and more degraded, it seems, year on year. Not only that, infrastructure is crumbling, hopelessness, anger, resentment. So you've got these two people who are basically saying, let's throw the board game up in the air. And look, on the one hand, you go, that can be a visceral thrill, a rush. We saw it in 2020.

you break something you feel you feel as if you're doing something you feel as if you're sticking a finger to the man but it's like when during the brixton riots of the early 80s where A lot of people, the Caribbean community came out. They were very angry. They had many reasons to be angry. You smash up the place where you live. Well, all right, you smash up the place where you demonstrate your anger. But then what are you left with? You look around your area, you go...

All the businesses are broken. People have lost their jobs. People have lost their livelihoods, their jobs, their businesses. Everything's in ruins. Eventually, you are going to have to build it back up again. unless you want to live in a ruin. And that's a choice we're all facing. Do you want to go down these paths? Because I'm telling you, on that side, you don't want to end up there. And from my personal, and you've got experience of it as well.

on the far left it doesn't end well either or are we gonna actually go you know what things aren't great we're in a really tough situation societally economically culturally And are we going to do the frankly immature thing of throwing the ball going up in the air and having a big tantrum about it, even though it ain't fair? Or are we going to actually work together and figure out a way for us to live?

in a far more harmonious way and try and do our best to fix the problems we have in society. Because to me, that's the option. Not that. Well, right. And anger is addictive. And the righteous anger that people like to feel is why a lot of people argue about these terms. But the woke left, this is what it was about.

giving you an excuse to be angry and unconstructive and whatever is happening the equivalent on the right call it woke right don't call it work or whatever it's exactly the same it's basically a bunch of people channeling channeling people's anger into money and clicks for themselves because that's all that's happening right let's be honest nick fuentes if you're one of his viewers he's not taking you to a better place he's not trying to make a better america and he won't

And likewise with all this other stuff. So, yeah, and that's the challenge because ultimately you're going to have to build things. And it's interesting because in the U.S., of course, the Trump administration is doing many of the things that people elected him to do. They're closing the border. They are doing their best, as we discussed, to end global conflicts. They are rebuilding America's manufacturing base. They're doing lots and lots of things to reset.

America's relationship with the world and with itself. And here in the UK, I think it's fair to say that the arguments on things like illegal immigration... the arguments probably on mass immigration in general, and the argument on just the cultural disintegration of the country. The crime, all of that stuff, they've been one. Everyone agrees with us now.

All the stuff we've been saying and people have pretended we're right wing for saying, now those very people are coming over to our side because frankly, the country's got to the point, particularly the economic situation is really bad. But it's going to be a while before that turns around politically because there's not a scheduled election for the next three years unless there's the fiscal crisis that Alistair Heath predicted on our show.

uh in the next couple of years or the the beginnings of one which leads to an early election we're kind of stuck in the situation for a few more years And there's a few luxury beliefs that we have yet to let go. Net zero is one of them. There's still a lot of people who don't realize that it's economic suicide for no gain whatsoever. And the other one is...

and this is what no one talks about, and I mean no one up to and including reform, is the gigantic unaffordable welfare bill that we have in this country. That as long as we continue to spend more money than we have and than we earn... we will remain poor, which is what we are. And I know so many people, both in our space, but also in the business world and elsewhere, they're not leaving, they've left.

Yeah. They've left for Australia. They've left for America. They've left for the Middle East. They've left for the UAE, Dubai. We are bleeding. There is a giant brain drain going on in Britain that people... Some people don't realize it's happening, but it is happening. And that, if you think about the scale of that achievement, to get hundreds of thousands of talented, creative...

entrepreneurial risk takers to leave a country like Britain, you really, really, really had to run it into the ground. And that's where we've got to. Well, and this is the worry for me is that we have the politics of resentment. where we have the evil billionaires and millionaires. And we can have a conversation about tax. We can talk about that, the tax burden, et cetera. But the reality is, those are the people who create wealth.

They're the people who pay the majority of the taxes in this country. They're the people who actually keep the public services running. You get rid of them, you demonize them. Well, that's fine. But then what are you going to do when they leave?

and they're leaving in their drives. And they're not just leaving, the next generation of millionaires, the next generation of wealth creators, the next generation of business owners are leaving because you have made it untenable for them to live in this country. We've got a 60% tax rate once you start earning a six-figure salary. And the people on the left will be like, oh, boo-hoo, boo-hoo. All right, what about your consultant? You found a tumour in your neck.

You're going to go and see your consultant, your oncologist. He's on a six-figure salary. But if he goes to Australia, he can triple his salary. If he goes to America, he can go and triple it. If he can go to Dubai, he can earn whatever, triple it. And pay no tax. And pay no tax.

So what do you want your consultant to do? Do you want him effectively to be on a third or even a quarter of what he could earn globally when he's probably got a family and he's got to pay school fees? I know they've got a private school. It's terrible. Whatever. Why is it terrible? It's saving the government money. Oh, yeah. I know. I know. And that's... It was a good job. But yeah, but they're not involved in the state school system. And you go... You are forcing all those people out.

the talented. And you're bringing in 55,000 illegal immigrants a year at the same time. And you go, we cannot keep going down this path. And if we do, we're going to end up somewhere. where no one wants to be ultimately. And one of the reasons I say we've won the argument is you've got the Home Secretary of this country, Shabana Mahmood. Yeah.

I mean, she sounds like Eno Powell at this point. I saw an article the other day saying that they're going to deport the children born in Britain who are born to illegal immigrants. They will deport them with their parents, which...

If Nigel Farage had said that five years ago, they would have crucified him. So it's an extraordinary thing that's happening in that they are no longer pretending that illegal immigration is... people are concerned about it because of racism because you can't pretend that anymore and more and more everywhere we go now we have people coming up to us going thank you for what you're doing keep up the good work etc um so

You know, in some ways, in the course of this year, I've said repeatedly that I've become an accelerationist. And I don't mean that I want the transition. You know, we had this conversation with Jimmy Carr. He sort of meant... by accelerations he meant that you want things to happen super quickly and that always is quite dangerous i don't mean quite that i just mean that i am happy that things have got so bad that people can't pretend that the problem doesn't exist anymore because i've concluded

In my opinion, most people in Britain or in any other country, frankly, they will not wake up and take painful action until inaction becomes much more painful than not acting. And that's kind of where we've got to. Yeah, that's exactly where we've got to. Where you go, what are we going to do? What are we going to do? Because at this point, it just feels like we're on a cliff and we're in the car. And you know the cartoon where you're teetering on the edge?

But the problem is we're teetering far more that way than we are that way. And eventually we're going to flip over and the car is going to fall into the ravine. Yeah. And it's just a matter of time before we go, are we actually going to wake up? and start looking and taking painful yet necessary action to, let's be honest, save our country, because that's where we are now. That's where we are.

Or are we just going to be continually oblivious and maybe even with these disastrous tax policies, put our foot on the accelerator? Well, we will see, obviously, over the course of the next year. I mean, next year is going to be fascinating in that respect because the economic troubles that we've been concerned about on this show for a while. they may or may not materialize next year but they could uh and that would obviously change everything overnight so um

And then you come to the political side of a reformer currently leading in the polls. They've been doing well for this entire time. And it... feels to many people like whenever that election happens they are likely to win you know it's very early days but then you go you know what about nigel we've had nigel on the show nigel farage a number of times

I was asked actually, The Telegraph did an interview with me for a profile thing and they asked me, everyone wants to ask you about Thomas Robinson and Nigel Farage now. That's what everyone wants to ask, not you, me. You know what I mean by that? Of course, of course, yeah. That's what everyone wants to talk to us about. And they said to me, what do you think of Nigel? I just said, I like him. I've always liked Nigel, actually. In terms of as a person, I've always liked him. And...

One of the things I've always really liked about is he's very forthright. He says what he thinks on the vast majority of things directly. But the question is, has he got the money to win the next election? Has he got the candidates to win the next election? That's something I've asked him repeatedly, and hopefully we'll have him on again in the new year. And the third thing is, if he does get elected, can he actually do the thing?

Because nobody knows. With all respect to Nigel, who, like I say, I really like him. But nobody knows whether he can do... He's never done anything like that before. He's never run a massive thing like the government. To be fair, neither had Tony Blair. Yeah. All his trust. all his trust or you know boris johnson ironically did yeah he was the mayor of london which is about as close as you can get but if and when nigel does become prime minister that's that

People think there are too many people who think that will be the answer. He's elected and then everything is solved. He's got a gigantic job on his hands if he is, in fact, elected. Gigantic. And it's not going to be easy. It's not going to be pleasant. It's not going to be popular at times. Some of the things they're going to need to do are going to be deeply unpopular as well. And that is hard. Look.

There are a lot of people left and now on the right who want to criticize Nigel Farage and they say, oh, he's just in it for this or this or that. This guy was standing. against the European Union and losing his deposit 25, 30 years ago, whenever it was. He's clearly a man who's stood up for his principles, but there's still a difference.

between being a public figure and expressing your opinion and standing as a politician and running a huge thing, much of which, by the way, hates you, thinks you're evil and wants to sabotage your agenda. And that's the civil service? And that's the civil service. Now, that is a huge challenge, which several people we've had on the show, like Boris Johnson, like Steve Hilton, who was the advisor to David Cameron.

uh list trust will tell you the same it it's impossible to deal with they found so you've got a that's a huge job you're tuned in to trigonometry right now because you want the truth not someone else's prepackaged version of it. That is exactly why Freespoke exists. It is a search tool for people who value independent thought and are tired of big tech deciding what we can and cannot see. Freespoke shows you coverage from left-leaning, centrist and right-leaning outlets.

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Get started today at stitchfix.com slash Spotify. That's stitchfix.com slash Spotify. And that's, I don't think that's what, I don't think people understand how. Having a civil service that is captured or whatever way you want to describe it, that will not implement policies that it does not agree with.

how that means that ultimately democracy is compromised. Because you can vote for whatever party you want to get in on whatever policies they may have. Left, right, centre, it doesn't matter. But if the people implementing the policies...

refuse to do so or what they do is then they drag their heels like a dog dragging itself across across the road when you're trying to give it a walk ultimately you're not going to be able to do the action And at that point, you go, well, we don't really have a functioning democracy. Look. The counter argument is you need a civil service because if you change ministers every three months, which increasingly every party does.

you have to have some level of continuity of course right uh but but we have got very far from the idea that the job of civil servants is to implement the elected the views of our elected representatives into policy Look, the hint is in the title. You are a servant. What does a servant do? They carry out orders. A servant doesn't go, oh, actually, you know what? I disagree with that because I believe in X, Y, and Z. No.

That's not your job. Your job is to carry out the instructions of the minister to the best of your abilities. Yep. Well, one great... hope for reform, I think, is they've got James Orr on board, former guest of ours, good friend of ours. James is like a high-caliber human being on every metric. He's a great man. He's a great mentor to young people. He's a great leader. He's incredibly smart. He's incredibly sensible.

He is not an extremist by any stretch of the imagination. And he's now heavily involved. They've got Danny Kruger to defect from the Tories. I'm sure next year we'll have more positive things. happening for them as well with his involvement and others, of course. So that's exciting. That's very exciting as a possibility of a party that's actually going to be prepared to do something. Of course...

We talk about reform on the other side of the political spectrum. You have the emergence explosion onto the scene of Zach Polanski, which... I find simultaneously inevitable and also mind-boggling at the same time because this is a guy who is speaking about stuff that people care about. Of course he is. But...

But with very little substance, as far as I'm concerned. Of course. But to me, the problem with this and people like Polanski is they're not the problem. They're the symptom. They're not the cause. And part of the cause is the fact that we are economically illiterate as a population. We don't understand economics. We don't understand...

We don't even understand basic financial products. You stop the average person on the street, you ask them what APR is, they wouldn't be able to tell you. They wouldn't be able to really tell you how credit cards work. If you buy a hundred quid pair of trainers, how much are you going to be paying off every month?

And the reason is we don't teach people about that. So we're raising this generation of young people who are economically and financially illiterate, which makes them incredibly vulnerable to the nonsense, in my opinion, that Polanski spouts. Because it sounds good. And if you don't understand the basics of how a country is run or how a business is run or how money is made or created or finance and wealth, then of course that's going to sound good.

But that is really on the education system and that's on us. Yeah. And I think you're absolutely right. And by the way, I don't think we wouldn't want people to take away from this conversation that we think like we always knew everything or even now we know everything. But I just think in the process of a having the conversations that we.

had with people and educating ourselves about this stuff and also you know there's 12 of us now at trigonometry we have a team of 10 people working with us and once you are in that position you have a responsibility to make that work. to make sure that it works as a business. And in the process, you really understand the Thomas Sowell line of there are no solutions, only trade-offs. You're constantly making decisions. And we can tell you as effectively a small business what happens.

when the government jacks up tax rates on small businesses. We will not hire as many people this year as we otherwise would have done. That means that there will be fewer jobs in the country. Now, you multiply trigonometry by a million. small businesses, what do you get? There are today millions of jobs that have not been created simply because of the fact that the government is making it harder to run a business. To say nothing of the fact...

That, look, there are plenty of people like us who've left for other countries. Chris Williamson, our friend. Yeah. He's a good example. He moved to America, hasn't looked back. Zuby, who we've had on the show... Raised in the UK, I went to school with Zuby, went to university in the UK, started his career in the UK. He's moved to the Middle East. And we could go down, business owners, etc. So if you do that over a period of 10 years...

There are literally millions of jobs in this country that could have existed that do not because of a government policy. Exactly. And millions in taxable revenue. Of course. Billions? Billions. Billions. Billions and billions and billions. Because of just that. Because of this idea that anyone who's financially successful is a bad person.

But that's basically the Zach Polanski message. And I had one of his people when I went to cover the protest in Cobra. We didn't put it in the main thing because we just thought it would distract, but people can find the clip. There's a journalist... from the sussex byline i think it's called and i i said to him so what have you what have you found here and he basically started banging on about neoliberalism at a protest in which

There was just like families going, we don't want 600 illegal immigrants in a camp in our small town because they're infiltrated. Their brain is rotten with the shit that they've been fed. about how it's the billionaires we are worried about the people who fly in on private jets not the people who come on illegal boats really really is that you're worried about them are you because that's not who i worry about nicking my phone in london no

That's not who I worry about when I'm walking home at night late. It's not the billionaire on a private jet. It's not 600 billionaires being moved into a camp in Krober that gives people their... their concerns, right? Do I think billionaires should pay taxes? Yes. Do I think they should pay a lot of taxes? Yes. They already do, by the way.

demonizing them further and chasing them out of our country, it's not productive. I'm not a billionaire. I will never be a billionaire. I'm perfectly content with that. I pay a lot of tax. I'm perfectly content with that as well. But...

The effect of pushing all of this narrative through our society is detrimental. And that's why we're talking about it. That is, of course, why we're talking about it. People go, oh, it's about left versus right when they talk to me. Oh, you say this because you're on the right or you say this because you're right wing. And I think we both come to this from the same point of view. I don't care about left versus right.

I care about what works because I want my country to be successful. I want everybody to have the best possible chance or shot at making something of themselves, whatever that is, and however you want to live your life. I want it to be the fairest place with the best public services, etc. But we know that these ideas are bad. They don't work.

They haven't worked. They've been proven time after time after time not to work. And they're not working now. And they're not working now. So that's why I push back on them. Not because, and we do, not because we're, you know. We hate the left or the left are evil, you know, or any of these things. It's like, no, it's economically disastrous.

And when you have policies that are economically disastrous, they are going to impact the poorest the most. That's what happens. That's what happened in Venezuela with communism. Everybody who was rich and had money left. Or... If they didn't, they stayed and they insulated themselves from the catastrophe as best they could, which is the same thing that's going to happen here. And that's what we care about. Does it work? If it works, brilliant. Implement it.

If it doesn't because it's a crap idea, don't do it. It'll never take on, mate. No. And on that happy note, it's been a pleasure doing this for another year with you. Absolutely. With our amazing supporters. It's been a great year. You know, I always tell this story. I'm not sure if I've told it publicly about the girlfriend you had when we first started this.

Whenever we used to complain about the state of the world and get upset or this was happening and she would just go, look guys, everything that's bad for the world is good for trigonometry. And I'm afraid to say we've had a great year. And next year is probably going to be even better.

You know, it's weird, but I do feel like we are starting to make, like I said, winning the arguments. That's where you start. Then it has to take political shape. I mean, that's what happened in the US. The election of President Trump is a consequence of the fact that the arguments were won.

Right. So hopefully that will happen here over time as well. We're going to keep doing our best to talk to people, have debates. We haven't even talked about some of the great interviews we've done this year, whether that's Deborah Francis-White. that debate or lots of other things that have been fun or crazy or wacky. We've still got some amazing episodes to come out from our America trip. But it's been a great year.

um we thank everybody for supporting us uh for seven and a half years now that's how long we've been going it's been it's been a hell of a trip it's been a hell of a journey and i loved every minute of it we're gonna kiss We are going to kiss, but that's only for Substack. So check us out there.

The exciting thing is what we've got coming in. They're coming down the pipeline. The new ideas we're going to be implementing, the new content that we're talking about, I'm already excited about. Now, the guests that we're going to get, they're going to be even bigger. They're going to be even better. So I can't wait for 2026. And we're going to see what the world is going to bring us. I'm sure it's going to be delightful. Merry Christmas, everybody.

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