October 7, 2022 • 43 mins
The gang talk about Liz Truss, the Conservative party, and how the British government has consistently made life worse for most of its citizens
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to It could happen here a podcast
about how everything is falling apart, and today we are
talking about how the United Kingdom of Great Britain Northern
Ireland is continuing to fall apart. And James, can I say,
great job, nailed it, Thank you buddy, out of the park.
(00:25):
You absolutely just stunning work introducing this podcast. Yeah, I've
bought the level of commitment that British people have brought
to governing half of the world for centuries. I have
my coffee cup that says fuck it and that that's
where we're at with this one. That's exactly what we
wanted from you. Yeah, I'm incredibly sad about the plight
(00:46):
of my home country and continue to be so that
I'm going to explain the reason for my sadness to
Garrison and Chris and Robert today. One of hell, yeah,
one of the reasons for my sadness. Okay, So what
I want to talk about today is Elizabeth Trust liszt Trust.
I want to talk about the British cost of living crisis,
(01:08):
and I think more broadly, I want to talk about,
like how we consent to be governed by people who
do not give a single funk about our well being. Well, now, James,
that's an experience that only the British have, so that's correct. Yeah,
it's notably not something that much of the colonial periphery
experience for centuries, which he thought the monarchy away. Now
(01:33):
beat beat the monarchy garrison. That's a bold we garrison
from a Canadian. Yeah, that's right. Your people try to
stop it. Yeah, that's all we did was in evade
you a couple of times. I don't think you can
sneak in there. And then the ambiguity of accents by us.
Passport is on the way, on the way, on the way. Yeah,
(01:55):
so was the Queen of England's. Yeah, Liz Truss is
gonna come take that away, King Charles, it's gonna make
it not allowed. I do have to get into a
Canadian passport with the king on it now, which sucks.
That was the most I guess we all learned a
lot because it's been so long since you had a
change of monarch. But the fact that everyone has to
(02:17):
stop using the money and everyone has to skip is
fucking absurd. This is the worst political system I've ever
heard of. Just wait, because it's gonna get even more
kind of Okay, Chris, you live in Chicago. Yeah, but here,
here's the thing. Here's the thing right in Chicago, right,
(02:38):
everyone everyone like like too. In the core of their being,
they know that the people who ruled him are robbing them.
Everyone in Britain actually genuinely like wants to be like this.
No one in Chicago wants any of the people in
Chicago who rule us to be ruling us. Right, everyone
in Britain is like pro like they want you have
(03:00):
to throw all their money away because some fucking ninety
year old of a hat died. Is an incomprehensible level
of just yeah, outstanding. Yeah, it's a marvelous country. There's
nothing wrong with it. It will continue to be marvelous.
And the lowest ten percent of income people in Britain
now enjoy a quality of life which is substantially lower
(03:22):
than that same income bracket in Slovenia, which look at
the economic powerhouse of Slovenia. I just want to say,
we do not deserve a better quality of living than
the people of Slovenia actually rules. Yeah, it does great places. Yeah,
it's a really nice place. She takes about two hours
(03:42):
to cross, but it's a great country, right, you can
ride your mic across it. But that's great, that's what
you want to do. What's what's happening here is that
MAOIs Liz Trust is like very slowly returning all the
breads of the countryside. She yes, she's she's doing a
cultural revolution. And let's talk about Mauice Liz Trust. So
her parents are actually a long way to her left.
There was a thing a little while ago where her
(04:04):
dad refused to campaign for her when she ran for
a seat as a Conservative, which is based critical support
for Liz Trus's dad. Her mom also ran as a
Lib dem which is not exactly like the Liberal Democrats
are not exactly like the party that are going to
liberate the working class through glorious revolution. But it's still
pretty funny to have your mom running for a different
(04:25):
party than you and like objectively amusing. She was born
in Oxford. Her parents her mother's a teacher. Her dad
is an academic. I think it leads her dad's he's
a mathematician. What a nerd? God damn it. Her dad
is not the nerd here. Her dad is the best
Trust as far as I can tell. It's it's Liz
(04:47):
who were worried about she described her parents as being
to the left of labor, which is not hard. Labor
just exists to kind of these days really to have
the pretensive opposition right, they've deliberately per urged the left
from labor after two thousand and nineteen, and they exist
for Keir Starmor to say I broadly support this terrible
nearliberal policy but and and then say something completely ineffectual,
(05:11):
and I'm sure he will be Prime Minister soon and
nothing will change. And I think that Liz Trust has
done and is doing, will be walked back because Britain
doesn't have an effective left opposition in parliament. It does
in society and in the streets, and we'll see there
are lots of movements. Our parliament is a fast and
continues to be a fast, and it's lots of dudes
who went to the same educational institutions making this funny
(05:32):
kind of noise that there are more diverse people in parliament.
But I'm sure people have seen videos of the British
Parliament right and everyone was like when someone sounds just
like that, yeah, that thanks Daniel. Americans who don't understand
entirely how British educational culture works. The fancy schools that
(05:52):
they go to. They're like Hogwarts if you replaced like
the Magic with kids beating each other in the shower
and yeah, with the repressed sexuality and yeah, violence, bullying
and being picked on because you're the poorest kid in
at school. Ful. So actually it is. It is a
lot like Harry Potters, quite a bit like Harry pod Yeah, yeah, yeah,
(06:14):
there are still turfs. It's very disappointing. So talking of
educational institutions, trust went to ox It right, she went
to merchon, I went to talk to two. I didn't
go to merchant that's a better off college. I went
to college which is renowned for being poor. For what's
that's worth within Oxford colleges, which were all full of
rich people doing rich people's stuff. She read PPE Politics,
(06:35):
Philosophy and Economics, which I don't think you can really
do as a degree in the US. Right, what is
that Politics, Philosophy and Economic Yeah, yeah, it's called PP
three made up things? Well, what are you saying? Other
other degrees, on the other hand, are real and tangible
and yeah, of course in the physical space where you
(06:58):
can touch them. Everyone knows that. Yeah, it's true. Apart
from p P PP is so like I went to
Oxford two, I took Modern History and Politics, which is
way cooler and better in every way. But the PPE
kids such so that people understand. A vast number of
British prime ministers have taken pp as as their undergraduate degree.
(07:19):
It's like the kingmaker of degrees and you take it
because you're an insufferable fucking dorc who wants to be
prime minister or like work for the British government in
some way right, like it is this like kingdomaker one
of the prime minister. It looks like such a good job. Yeah,
they last a long time. They have universally great approval ratings.
(07:39):
And to be fair, they do just go on to
griff to share a ton of money like it's not
and they don't have to do it for like a
fixed period of time like American presidents do, so that's nice.
They can just have a bunch of parties for their
friends in the lockdown and their leave, which is more
or less what Boris Johnson did. And I don't I
don't expect Liz to be prime minister for long, but
it's what she's doing and what she has already sort
(08:02):
of done that I think it's of interest here. Certainly
she was also president before we get off her university
time at the Oxford University Liberal Democrats and so oh yeah, yeah,
great stuff. The so like she's gradually drifted to the right,
which you know, what are we? What we she's grifted
(08:23):
to the right. You know, the lib Dems were a
little bit more left then, but Labor was very neoliberal
in the nineties right when she was in when she
was in Parliament, So sometimes the lib Dems provided something
of a left opposition if you remember, like Tony Blair
New Labor. It was just kind of bold neo liberal,
like shameless near liberalism. Right now, Tony Blair is the
(08:47):
one who was played by Hugh Grant, right, is he
the one of his He the inspiration for love? Actually
I was assuming because Tony Blair was the only British
politician I could name as a child. Okay, but we
must have been right because Tony Blair is completely devoid
of charisma, and the one thing that that Hugh Grant
character has is charisma, So maybe maybe he does kind of.
(09:08):
I mean, they're all white men, they are all white man.
That is a very white movie. He looks like him.
But then that's not exactly a remarkable thing, is it
in sort of homogeneous British ruling class that we have
so trust has gone through like being Secretary of State
for Justice, through being Lord Chancellor, through being Foreign Secretary. Okay,
(09:29):
Lord chancellors are pretty cool sounding title. I gotta give
it to him first. That's like Star Warship, which did
you do they have a shadow Lord Chancellor to the
thing that you're right is they pick the terms to
make it all sound cool, like when whenever one of
like your parliamentary coalitions collapse, they're like the government has fallen.
(09:52):
It just makes it all sound like it's so much
cooler than it is. It does lend an air of
shakespeare An epic, whereas what is is these seventeen people
who all went to the same schools and read the
same Telegraph newspaper columnists have disagree with each other from
minor point and will shortly be reconstituting their alliance in
a slightly different way. Yeah, but it sounds like people
are fighting each other with machetes. That has a Game
(10:15):
of Thrones beheading via maybe that's where this is heading.
Who knows she I think if people had heard of
Lives Trust until she became Prime Minister, it was probably
from her really wonderful pork market speech, which if you
haven't watched the pork market speech, it is a study
in when you should and shouldn't pause for applause. Robert,
(10:36):
have you seen this pork markets? No? Okay, what is
the fucking pork market? In December, I'll be in Beijing
opening up new pork markets. What the fund is this ship?
She's not a real person. She's it's reminiscent of like
(10:59):
when you take a fish of water and it moves
its lips but makes no coherent noise. You can alien
trying to pretend to be humid. Yeah, it's it's this
is a great this is a great leader of our people,
and it's like the uncanny valuable craft Ian and it's
in its unsettling nous. Yeah, yeah, what's what's what's happening here?
(11:21):
What we're seeing is this is this is the This
is the final result of affirmative action from white people. Yes,
we're going to get you to that. This is why,
this is why she has this job. She she she
benefited from affermative action from white people. Other examples of
this include Destiny and yeah, yeah, you get the same
kind of person every single time, same same right, like
Destiny and the Prime Minister of the UK and yeah,
(11:44):
so like she becomes prime minister. And it's worth noting that, like,
the way you become prime minister in the UK is
different to the way you become president in the US. Right,
you are the leader of the majority party in Parliament,
or of the coalition that controls the majority of the
votes in parliament. So she becomes prime Minister not through
a vote of the people, but through a vote of
the members of the Conservative Party. And you can understand
(12:05):
as like people whose dogs have girls names and whose
daughters have dogs names. I think that is I think
that's a trash future bit. I don't know where it
came from, but it explains the perfectly. So these people
got together and they she ran against Richie Sunac right,
and who is eminently more capable of doing the fashi
(12:27):
neoliberal ship that they want to do, as are many
other people of color within their party. But above all things,
they are racist, right above even doing this kind of
speed run extraction from the British economy. They are still racists.
They're they're they're fine with having people of color in
in positions in the hierarchy, right, there's something that Britain
(12:48):
established through hundreds of years of empire. But the idea,
the idea of having someone in a leadership position is
is fundamentally anathema to the Conservative Party. So instead they
picked kind of Liz Trust to just flap her lips
around and talk about pork markets, right, So that's how
we get Liz Trust as Prime Minister. So no one
(13:11):
per se votes for Lizz Trust. No one even per
se votes for like the Liz Trust a genda that
we're seeing now, right, and I think that's really important.
And in her acceptance speech, she talks to Boris Johnson
as she said, you're you're admired from Kiev to Carlisle. Yeah,
she says, yeah, okay, first of all, Bizz, Absolutely thing
(13:35):
I know about Boris Johnson is that he looks like
Donald Trump. If Trump didn't have his ship quite so together, yes, yeah,
he looks Donald Trump. His mom didn't tell him to
come his hair and tuck his shirt before he went
to school. Yeah, if Donald Trump couldn't have paid paid
a half. People like check him before he walks out
the door. That's how he would look. Yeah, yes, exactly.
If he fell over in a wind tunnel, he would
(13:55):
look like Boris Johnson. Burris Johnson, a guy so fucking
rich he's never had to comb his hair. Stop being
prime minister because of these scandals, right, these sleeve scandals
about them having parties during lockdown. More or less, that
was what destroyed him. Not any of his terrible policies
is biggoted bullshit. Him writing up ed saying that the
problem with us was not that we were in charge
(14:18):
of Africa, but that we're not anymore. God. Yeah, yeah,
this is a type of guy who exists and can
become Prime minister. Like people don't understand. I think, um, British,
the British right is very different from the American right,
and I think we're going to get into that. And
also a guy who famously just like pulverized a small
child on the trip to Japan playing Okay, you don't
(14:40):
need to say the things that he did that are
rad he he did finally discover the actual third world
British politics, which is that if you have fun in
a way that someone else can't have fun, they will
destroy you. Yes, the mere British perct with your act
of a British person seeing another person having any joy whatsoever,
(15:01):
like just like the so a switch flips in their
brain and they just turned into like Brits but worse.
This is yeah, so this is like there are basically
two ways that a British political party can be right.
One is that they enjoy themselves while they're plundering the
institution to still remain in the United Kingdom. And the
(15:21):
other one is that they are like magnastically abstemious while
they're doing it right. And Labor tend to be the
obstinuious ones, uh, And the Tories tend to be the
ones who drink the poor and have the lockdown parties
and have like literal karaoke events when they're asking people
not to go to their grandparents funerals, and Labor tend
to be the ones who wring their hands to go
oh no and then fundamentally do the same ship right.
(15:42):
That that is a different Chris is entirely correct that
that is the thing that irritates British people most, right,
And maybe we'll just talk about this right now, it's
increasingly like it's not the material conditions that bring down
British governments, because material conditions are getting worse and have
been getting worse since we started this this austerity stuff
in it's these stupid scandals, right, these these personal scandals
(16:06):
which yes normally involved them having too much fun when
they're supposed to be pretending to be serious while they
steal all the all the things that still remain in Britain.
And I want to talk about a little bla this. So, yeah,
she said Boris Johnson was aboutd from Keith to Carlole.
He's not. That's why he's not Prime Minister anymore. Everyone
hates him. And also I don't think she's been to
(16:27):
Carlos because I got family who lived there and not
everyone loves Boris Johnson there, and I'm sure not in
Kiev either. But so the UK has been having this
cost of living crisis since the economy reopened in right,
since the end of lockdown. What this cost of living
crisis is what cost of living goest DoD is generally
is when the goods that you need to buy to
(16:49):
exist arising more quickly than the wages you get paid.
For working Now some of these causes a globe or right.
We have this inflation issue in the US too, but
the UK has compounded this I leaving the European Union,
that creating massive labor labor shortages and these repeated bumps
in the energy price cap. Right, which is the limit
(17:09):
that an average family should pay for their energy consumption.
It's not it's not a hard stop. It's not a
limit on how much you definitely will pay, but it's
a limit on how much the average family should pay. Right,
and so Trust come to power in the context of
skyrocketing energy rates for British consumers. Gas is used for
(17:32):
hitting most homes in the UK, and it's increased in
price since before the coronavirus times, despite the fact that
most British people don't pay spot prices for gas and
pay the going market rate for gas. There's a serious
crisis and affordability. Now. It was looking like the gas
(17:56):
bills were going to go up, into the average gas
bill for the average British per someone's going to go
up more than it now is. Because Trust has has
announced some capping of spot rates. We're going to get
into why that isn't as great as it sounds. The
big issue here is that Britain doesn't have a nationalized provider, right.
It's privatized its energy greate, it's privatized its energy generation,
(18:17):
and it ends up with this bizarre situation where one
of the one of the people you can buy energy
off and often you don't have a choice, right depending
on where you are, is the French national energy company.
That makes sense, Yeah, it makes perfect sense, right, it's
it's great and one of the notables that cons going
too this is a gas price who've gone up. France
(18:38):
caps the prices that consumers can pay. Britain allows them
to charge a lot more so British people at this.
It's as a rule, one thing that britis telling me
that France finally won that long war and say that
we have been owned by the French. And if that
doesn't bring down the Conservative government, I don't know what will.
Because there's one thing British people dislike, its French people.
(18:59):
And and so yeah, Britain is now subsidizing energy rates
for French consumers, which is great having just left the
European Union, because we are incredibly xenophobic as a nation
as it turns out, and people may have seen this
UK TV show called This Morning where they did a
wheel of Fortune type thing where you could win a
(19:19):
thousand pounds or or they will pay your energy bills. Yeah,
but for like three or four months, right, months, four
months of energy bills and the blank they're doing it
in it's just like it's this side of relief when
he gets energy bills, right, He's like, oh massive, Like
I'm gonna have my energy bills pay for four months.
(19:40):
It's such a relief. And this guy is one of
four million people in the UK who uses what's called
a pre payment meter, which I'm reliably informed that Americans
don't have. So do you do you all? Are you
familiar with the concept of pre payment meters? Uh? No, okay,
(20:00):
so maybe people are permiliar with like pay as you
go phones right where you go to the shop. Yeah. Yeah,
if you if you're like selling drugs, or you're you're
you're engaged in anti government extremism, Yeah you want you
want to phone like that? Sure? Yeah yeah yeah. Or
if you're doing journalism, you might want journalism reasons it's
the same as one of the others. Yeah, yeah, yes, true. Yeah.
(20:23):
Here in cool Zone media, you know, you know, you
know who won't use a prepaid cell phone to sell
you drugs because they're not Wait yeah they would, you
think so? I think they just got enough money they
would just use a regular phone bill and have a lawyer.
Just you know, I think I think they're deep into
boost Mobile for the only thing. Even John laugh, they're
fucking back. Okay, so you know who have to go
(20:46):
to Walmut to buy more credit to their phone so
they can sell you some weed. It's the advertisers who
support this show. Okay, we're back and we are talking
about prepaid energy meters. Scintillating topic. So the prepaid energy
(21:10):
meter r you have to go out, you have to
pay for energy, so if your rate to go. The
reason for these overwhelmingly is that, like there's an agreement
by which most energy supplies won't just cut you off
in the UK, like if you have old people in
your house, you have children in your house, like they
have to do this. The appearance of caring is this
thing that we're going to see is really important in
lots of these policies. Right, so they can't cut you off,
(21:33):
but if they have it, if you have a meter
and you can't prepay for the electricity, then your de
facto cut off right. And the best distates I could
find about this was in seventeen were roughly a hundred
and forty tho households of the of those that had
pre payment meters self disconnected. Self disconnected the euphemism for
they couldn't pay right for gas or electricity. In seen,
(21:57):
they couldn't afford to our credit to their meter right,
and they didn't the credit, so they couldn't get the electricity,
so they end up disconnecting. And if you add to
this that the British houses are made out of cheese.
Our houses are very poorly insulated for the most part.
Right that they're often single brick, so it's expensive to
heat them and they get cold in the winter and
(22:18):
they get hot in the summer. We're not we have
like houses are designed to deal with the extremes in
temperature which we are now experiencing because we have ruined
the climate. So people are spending more and more using
more and more electricity and gas to heat their homes.
It's costing more and more and increasingly they can't afford
to pay it right, and this will lead to people dying.
(22:41):
So if we look at like what the average pensioner
in the UK, right, I looked up some statistics of
the Office of National Statistic. Here the average pensioner in
the UK has on a fixed income. It's making seventeen
thousand pounds a year, which it's I guess pounds of
what though their gold, rubber gold. You take your pounds
(23:04):
to the Bank of England and they give you golden return. Okay,
not anymore. That actually, interestingly was, if we go on
a side note for a minute, one of the ways
Britain achieved greater democratization when the middle class were excluded
but landowners were included was the middle class had cash
money and the landowners had wealth in the form of property. Right,
So in the middle class threatened to tank the entire
(23:25):
Bank of England by taking all their pound notes and
asking to have them converted to to the gold that
they that they were supposedly pegged to. And there was
not enough gold to actually to do that for the
entire money supplies, so they could have tanked the Bank
of England. So yeah, a bit of Reform Act history.
(23:45):
They're no longer they're decoupled now from that, so you
can't do that sadly. But seventeen pounds is not a
lot of money, right. Trust has just announced that the
energy bill for an average family is going to be
kept two thousand, five hundred pound a year, which it's
a decent chunk of your income, right if you're making
seventeen thousand Before that, the previous planned limit has been
(24:09):
three thousand, five hundred forty nine pounds for an average
family based on average consumption, which is a very significant
chunk of your seventeen thousand pound a year, right, especially
if if if you're renting. On top of that, Right,
the cost of housing, the cost of rental housing has
got up in the UK, and so and this is
arise again. The capital already been risen in April. Right.
(24:31):
It's not a price cap, right. This doesn't mean that
you as a family are guaranteed that you will not
pay more than this two thousand, five dred pound number.
What is It's a unit cost limit. So not all
families are typical, not all homes are typical, but the
cost is for those who interested tenpence per killer for
gas stay fourpence parkiller for electricity. So what this means
(24:56):
is that like we've capped a little bit of the cost,
and in response like, and this is pretty this is
pretty typical for what the conservatives do. Right, They'll do
this thing where they give the appearance of caring and
then at the same time they bundle it in with
a bunch of incredibly like uh, just like the best
(25:16):
way to understand these people is that they view the
free market as a religion, right, So, and they believe that,
like the only way out of anything is to cut taxes.
Whether they actually believe that because they think it will
genuinely make the situation better, or they're just trying to
get as much as they can for them and theirs,
I think it probably I'm leaning towards the second one, right,
(25:37):
But so she bundles this with the UK is gonna
gonna lift it ban on fracking, right um? The UK
band fracking after a series of earth tremors near Blackpool, which, like,
there's a lot of cursed things about Britain, but until recently,
we hadn't added earthquakes to that list. And so thank you, Liz.
(25:58):
They it very funny work. Business School published to study
in twenty pointing out it is widely widely recognized that
the open and liberal nature of the UK's gas market
means that the market price the national balalty point is
unlikely to be influenced by shell gas development. So shell
gas is fracking right in the UK. So the UK
(26:19):
is going to start fracking, which is great. And she
also proposed removing the top tier of income tax, which
is reducing the amount of tax paid by people who
earn more than a hundred and fifty thousand pounds a
year right now they pay tax above that. This announcement
caused a pound to fall to a historic low against
the dollar and for Trust to find herself in open
(26:42):
beef with the Wokes goals at the i m F.
So the i m F said new economic measures laid
out by the UK government will likely increase inequality, and
they added that the i m F does not recommend
large and untargeted fiscal packages at this juncture. So she
always during this like she she promised that she was
(27:05):
going to cancel a planned rise on corporate tax and
scrap a proposed cap on bankers bonuses. This has been
one of her big policy things, along with Simon Clark,
who declared a new age of austerity. At the time
they announced this right, But there's this constant like everything
Britain does is only one way in which conservative governments
(27:26):
to move can move, and that is taxing the other
people who went to the same schools and universities as
them less. So I kind of want to take a
step back here and talk about the ideology that underpins
a lot of what Trust is doing. And and it's
that she and Chance to the Executuasi Quieting and pretty
Patel and Dominic rob who are all in her cabinet,
(27:49):
I think a part of this free enterprise group within
the Conservative Party. And much like you have caucuses in
the American Senate, in Britain, we have these groups. And
they wrote this book called Britannia Unchained, which I don't
know if people are probably not familiar with, right, I've
heard of it, but I know very little about it. Yeah,
it's just like a it's a series of short essays,
(28:11):
just like doing a Milton Freedman, like an unreconstructed free
market fundamentalism that it's it's very different to what the
because the American right likes to talk about markets and
libertarianism and stuff, right, but like in general their entire politics,
it's just kind of owning the lips, right, like these
socio cultural a grievances, and then when they get in power,
(28:33):
they they they're spending is largely just about one might
argue staying in power, right, whereas the Conservatives in Britain
are genuinely committed to slashing government, including slashing services, including
slashing any kind of social safety net. Right, it does
have these amusing consequences sometimes, like Britain continually cuts the
(28:53):
number of police it has, which is great, it's genuinely
really funny. Yeah, it's it's very funny. It's very funny
that like our most right wing party and I guess
not almost writing party if you've got some proper nutters,
but we've defunded the police just by not wanting to
spend money on them. It is also okay, and by
by funny, you have the incredibly depressing that like like
(29:15):
Corb Corbin was running on adding more cops, which is
like the most cursed, like the British left like always
like they always find a way to destroy themselves. That
they've been doing this for like two hundred years. It's
it's really impressive stuff. Yeah, yeah, it's incredibly it's incredibly
depressing to watch, Like, yes, the British left just tear
(29:37):
itself to piece. Not that the American left doesn't tear
itself to pieces, right, it seems to be a thing
on the left. But yeah, when the British left had
a serious run and making a serious difference in instead,
we decided to just absolutely like tear each other to shreds.
And here we are, right here we are with the
number of children in poverty going up by six hundred
(29:59):
thousand in since with the number of from twelve. The
number of children who rely on food banks for their
food security has tripled. By the end of this year
that in National Health Service National Health Curve, which is
our nationalize socialized medicine system, right, the budget will have
been cut by compared to six that's despite the fact
(30:23):
that we just went through a pandemic. The poorer socio
economic groups in the UK are experiencing a full in
life expectancy for the first like we we have life expectator.
It is pretty much continually trucked up since the Industrial Revolution,
but we're now finally slashing that down again. Well I wonder,
(30:44):
I wonder why. Yeah, there's no way of explaining it
that there's it's just happening. The only solution is a
free market, a free market, a free our market. He
had to pump more things into the area. Yes, ye
we are, well here, I'm going to take a puff
from my in hailer because my lungs are dying. Yeah,
well that's because one is outrageous right now. You're not
(31:05):
getting fracked hard enough in the Pacific. More fracking will
fix my fix pollution and the fact that people are
literally dying, yeah, younger than their their parents did. And
the Tories don't they have these like what's very important
to them. It's the performance of patrician care, right, Like
(31:26):
we saw this with Theresa May's burning injustices, which of
course remain burning injustices because you're doing anything about them.
Boris Johnson's leveling up agenda, and people familiar with his like, God,
I can't believe you have a minister, you have a
shadow minister of leveling up. I just like, at what
point do you just go none of this is real?
(31:49):
And like if they start sending cops, you just keep
beating them up until everyone else is forced to concede
that they're like, no, there is not in fact a shadow,
a shadow Minister of leveling up. Yeah, I don't know.
That is the big The big question that I want
to ask is at what point do we realize that
there is not a shadow Minister of leveling up, and
that we don't have to open new pork markets, and
(32:12):
that maybe that isn't the solution to us dying younger
than our parents, and that we don't have to do
what these people say when they are just very blatantly
like trust is very obviously doing an extractive speed run
on the British economy right there, and I'll tell you
what you know, who else will do an expective steed
(32:33):
run on the British economy. Is that the products and
services that yeah, the show it is, sadly yeah, alright,
we're talking about extractors. Speed runs were back. So with
(32:54):
Johnson and even with Theresa May right who was a
Prime minister before him, there was this important perform moments
of of caring right being like, oh, We're gonna make
life better for the poorer socioeconomic groups, the poorer people
in the UK. I think what's changed is that like
the nature of of consent from the governed is is
(33:16):
this thing that maybe we need to elucidate more, right,
Like in Britain, there was this kind of consensus that
like the the governing party will pretend to care and
we'll pretend to do things, and sometimes they would let
you have nice things, right, little treats and trinkets, and
that in return you would largely not kick them out, right,
like either physically or electorally, or that it's very hard
(33:37):
to keep them out electorally because of Britain's asked backwards
electoral system, which is another relic of a previous era.
Now they don't seem to be bothering to pretend to care, right,
Like when you're looking at a system in which, when
trust came to power, old people were going to die.
We we were looking at a system in which people
(33:57):
are dying younger than their parents, and all people were
going to die in the al this winter. Like I've
got friends I remember this was years ago, but it
was when the utility prices maybe started going up. When
my grandfather passed. My grandmother lived on her own and
her being really afraid to heat the house because of
how much it costs. Right, And I've got friends who
have spoken to this time who are like, well, we're
preparing to have our grand come and live with us
(34:19):
so that we can we can heat the house, or
like if we just move into the downstairs parts of
the house then we can keep those warm, right, or
like you know, we're going to go back to having
fires and we'll just google warm my house with a
wood fire. Right, Lots of houses in the UK still
have fireplaces that are functional. Yeah, my my house growing
up was heat with a wood fire. It's great. It's
good for their lungs. It's gives them a good coating
(34:42):
that they can then use in the rest of your
life to repel other pollutants. Coal fires are great inside
the home, highly encouraged. So like people were really making
these like it's it's it's the sort of stuff you
you associate maybe with like like the hard times in
the Soviet Union in right, like like sort of being like, well,
we're going to go to the food bank and we'll
(35:03):
line up and get food and then we'll we'll all
huddle in one room to stay warm. But these are
the plans that people were making like this this summer
looking to this winter, and Lits Trust responded to that
with like, okay, well, the way to fix this is
lower taxes for high earners and no cap, but removing
the cap on bankers bonuses so that the financial services
(35:25):
industry will relocate to the UK. I wish it weren't
because the UK has left the European Union, right, and
it's now kind of a pariah in that sense. So like,
I don't really understand how the UK, how the British
government abstain obtains consent from the government anymore. And I'm
(35:47):
partially interested to see how this goes, and partially obviously
like a poll to see the costs of this. Like
they're not even trying to care, they're not even pretending anymore.
They're just going to take what they can and then
presumably bounced to some tax island where they can they
can survive and thrive while the rest of us freeze
our asses off over the winter. So what I wanna,
(36:09):
I guess, finish up with is this idea that like
so in America, you have fixed terms of elections, right,
so every we're we're having a mid terms next month
and then we'll have the presidential In Britain, we don't
write in Britain the government has to lose a vote
from no confidence, which is when the majority of MP's
vote they no longer have confidence in the government or
(36:29):
the Prime Minister have to warr in theory the monarch
castic corner election. Right, So I guess King Charles could
just because they didn't let King Charles go to the
climate summit recently, which is another amazing thing that Lives
Trust has managed to do within like a month of
being in office. She's already like openly in beef with
the monarchy, which is the one thing that conservative people
might like more than white people who tax rich people less.
(36:55):
She wouldn't let King Charles go to a climate summit
because conserved is a more or less climate change deniers,
or at least sort of climate change don't give a
fuck because we need to extract more money and so
like at some point, like I don't know what the
withdrawal of consent looks like anymore. Right, it's the people
who British politicians see themselves like, see themselves as governing
(37:18):
for like their constituents are seemingly like columnists in the Telegraph,
and the people who are the CEOs of these big
companies in London which have grown and grown and grown
and grown based on this endless supply of free money
that it is now drying up, right, So instead of
dealing with the root cause of that, they're going to
try and look at other ways for those people to
continue to grow and extract finance. And I don't know
(37:40):
what that means for the rest of British people, Like
I don't know what the withdrawal of consent from a
system which so obviously doesn't care about the material conditions
you live in looks like. But if we want to
talk about collapse, and collapse is a thing that gradually
happens rather than the thing that kind of we click
fingers and it's there. I think some of this is
(38:03):
what it looks like, like people refusing to pay their
power bills. It's becoming a thing in UK, right. I
should mention the energy companies are recording record profits throughout
this time period. Maybe it looks like protests in the
street that Britain has had these, like they had big
tuition feeth protests and we had the quote unquote London riots, right,
which were incredibly harsh you put down and people went
(38:23):
to jail for a long time for like stealing a
bottle of water from Motesco. So like, I think it's
worth watching for people who are not in the UK, Like,
what does it look like when you're governing elite stop
pretending to care about you, And what is the withdrawal
of legitimacy or the withdrawal of consent look like? And
like I said, I don't know, it's it's looked different
(38:44):
every time it's happened, right, looked different in the Soviet
Union too, Uh, the way it looked in Like I'm
trying to think of other regime collapses in South America.
And but like we say that, ay, we say that
a regime is consolidated when the rules of the game
are more important than the outcome of the game. And
I think we're getting to a point in Britain where
(39:05):
maybe the outcome of the game is going to be
more important than the rules of the game. So that
might mean some serious change, It might not. It might
just mean, you know, we put a new dude on
our on our coins and everyone puts bunting up industry
and we do nothing fundamentally different and just acquiesce in
living conditions getting worse and worse and worse, and more
and more people are dying because they're poor. I don't know,
but yeah, Garrison's just nodding better. Yeah, I think that
(39:30):
last one is going to be the one that happens. Yeah,
maybe we'll do it Olympics, and we'll spend the next
what was London twelve, the next decade just reminiscing over
how great that was, and then we'll just not notice that,
you know, our grandparents are dying unnecessarily because Distress's friends
have to make more money. I have. I have an
enormous amount of faith in the British people to just
(39:53):
do nothing like they they have, They have an unbelievable
ability to just be like a things are getting worse,
like I don't know who cares, like we're still British,
Like they like they can't even really effectively do imperialism anymore.
But it's like everyone so wedded to the like imperialism
(40:13):
machine that everyone that like, you know, everyone, every everyone
will constantly vote against their class interests, everyone will constantly
act agains a class interest. Everyone will constantly just sort
of like literally let hundreds of thousands of people die
around them. Yeah. Yeah, because flags and sports, I think
Corbin has and energized a lot of people into realizing
(40:37):
their class interests, perhaps more than they were before because
there was briefly a parliamentary alternative, but right now there isn't.
Like kiss Down is not Jeremy Corbyn, but then you know,
but it's also the British right, like it's like, well okay,
so they sort of reconsolidated and left it did nothing,
got owned and then imploded and now it's being split
between like just complete pure like people arguing that star
(41:00):
members doing socialism like your Labor Party hacks, and then
like a bunch of people just doing nothing because it's
the UK and it fundamentally never gets any better. Yeah, yeah,
there was like I take a little bit of hope
from like have you seen the the where people are
to be deported from the UK and then they were
(41:20):
like mass mobilizations to prefriend happening. Yeah, that gives me
some hope. Right, that's a lot of people willing to
give up this Saturday or the Sunday to shout immigration
offices and like that's something that didn't happen by and
large in the in the US right, even with the
like gross abuses of the immigration system under Donald Trump,
people people didn't stop that happening. So some of that
(41:42):
it did happen in places like there are a lot
of flights that got blocked and stuff. Yeah, I guess,
I guess, yeah, yeah, it happened. Is visible then, yeah,
in a different way, some people here did so, like
in I think there was an icing and barrial logan
and it got run out of town. So I shouldn't
say that, but that gives me hope, as we hope
that maybe some people will realize that, like, the solution
(42:04):
is not to vote harder right, and the solution is
to is to organize and to do things in extra
parliamentary fashion and not trust the people who are participating
in your exploitation to leave you from your exploitation, which
has maybe been our mistake for too long. Yeah, we
we Everyone in England needs to take a page from
the Harry Potter books and arm the children to murder
(42:28):
government officials. If I'm remembering how those books ended for
for for form a gerrilla army of you and your
friends and attempt to overthrow the governments Harry Potter. Probably Yeah,
let's let's say that's that's that's that's the plot of
the Order of the Phoenix. Okay, yeah, I remember it
now when they when they do a car bomb. Yeah,
that's it. That's so. That's that's our message for you today.
(42:52):
Read Harry Potter to a car bomb. There we go,
There we go. That's our legally binding message for you today,
non actionable for red. It could Happen here as a
production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool
Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
(43:13):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
find sources for it could Happen Here, updated monthly at
cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
Hello, and welcome to It could happen here a podcast
about how everything is falling apart, and today we are
talking about how the United Kingdom of Great Britain Northern
Ireland is continuing to fall apart. And James, can I say,
great job, nailed it, Thank you buddy, out of the park.
(00:25):
You absolutely just stunning work introducing this podcast. Yeah, I've
bought the level of commitment that British people have brought
to governing half of the world for centuries. I have
my coffee cup that says fuck it and that that's
where we're at with this one. That's exactly what we
wanted from you. Yeah, I'm incredibly sad about the plight
(00:46):
of my home country and continue to be so that
I'm going to explain the reason for my sadness to
Garrison and Chris and Robert today. One of hell, yeah,
one of the reasons for my sadness. Okay, So what
I want to talk about today is Elizabeth Trust liszt Trust.
I want to talk about the British cost of living crisis,
(01:08):
and I think more broadly, I want to talk about,
like how we consent to be governed by people who
do not give a single funk about our well being. Well, now, James,
that's an experience that only the British have, so that's correct. Yeah,
it's notably not something that much of the colonial periphery
experience for centuries, which he thought the monarchy away. Now
(01:33):
beat beat the monarchy garrison. That's a bold we garrison
from a Canadian. Yeah, that's right. Your people try to
stop it. Yeah, that's all we did was in evade
you a couple of times. I don't think you can
sneak in there. And then the ambiguity of accents by us.
Passport is on the way, on the way, on the way. Yeah,
(01:55):
so was the Queen of England's. Yeah, Liz Truss is
gonna come take that away, King Charles, it's gonna make
it not allowed. I do have to get into a
Canadian passport with the king on it now, which sucks.
That was the most I guess we all learned a
lot because it's been so long since you had a
change of monarch. But the fact that everyone has to
(02:17):
stop using the money and everyone has to skip is
fucking absurd. This is the worst political system I've ever
heard of. Just wait, because it's gonna get even more
kind of Okay, Chris, you live in Chicago. Yeah, but here,
here's the thing. Here's the thing right in Chicago, right,
(02:38):
everyone everyone like like too. In the core of their being,
they know that the people who ruled him are robbing them.
Everyone in Britain actually genuinely like wants to be like this.
No one in Chicago wants any of the people in
Chicago who rule us to be ruling us. Right, everyone
in Britain is like pro like they want you have
(03:00):
to throw all their money away because some fucking ninety
year old of a hat died. Is an incomprehensible level
of just yeah, outstanding. Yeah, it's a marvelous country. There's
nothing wrong with it. It will continue to be marvelous.
And the lowest ten percent of income people in Britain
now enjoy a quality of life which is substantially lower
(03:22):
than that same income bracket in Slovenia, which look at
the economic powerhouse of Slovenia. I just want to say,
we do not deserve a better quality of living than
the people of Slovenia actually rules. Yeah, it does great places. Yeah,
it's a really nice place. She takes about two hours
(03:42):
to cross, but it's a great country, right, you can
ride your mic across it. But that's great, that's what
you want to do. What's what's happening here is that
MAOIs Liz Trust is like very slowly returning all the
breads of the countryside. She yes, she's she's doing a
cultural revolution. And let's talk about Mauice Liz Trust. So
her parents are actually a long way to her left.
There was a thing a little while ago where her
(04:04):
dad refused to campaign for her when she ran for
a seat as a Conservative, which is based critical support
for Liz Trus's dad. Her mom also ran as a
Lib dem which is not exactly like the Liberal Democrats
are not exactly like the party that are going to
liberate the working class through glorious revolution. But it's still
pretty funny to have your mom running for a different
(04:25):
party than you and like objectively amusing. She was born
in Oxford. Her parents her mother's a teacher. Her dad
is an academic. I think it leads her dad's he's
a mathematician. What a nerd? God damn it. Her dad
is not the nerd here. Her dad is the best
Trust as far as I can tell. It's it's Liz
(04:47):
who were worried about she described her parents as being
to the left of labor, which is not hard. Labor
just exists to kind of these days really to have
the pretensive opposition right, they've deliberately per urged the left
from labor after two thousand and nineteen, and they exist
for Keir Starmor to say I broadly support this terrible
nearliberal policy but and and then say something completely ineffectual,
(05:11):
and I'm sure he will be Prime Minister soon and
nothing will change. And I think that Liz Trust has
done and is doing, will be walked back because Britain
doesn't have an effective left opposition in parliament. It does
in society and in the streets, and we'll see there
are lots of movements. Our parliament is a fast and
continues to be a fast, and it's lots of dudes
who went to the same educational institutions making this funny
(05:32):
kind of noise that there are more diverse people in parliament.
But I'm sure people have seen videos of the British
Parliament right and everyone was like when someone sounds just
like that, yeah, that thanks Daniel. Americans who don't understand
entirely how British educational culture works. The fancy schools that
(05:52):
they go to. They're like Hogwarts if you replaced like
the Magic with kids beating each other in the shower
and yeah, with the repressed sexuality and yeah, violence, bullying
and being picked on because you're the poorest kid in
at school. Ful. So actually it is. It is a
lot like Harry Potters, quite a bit like Harry pod Yeah, yeah, yeah,
(06:14):
there are still turfs. It's very disappointing. So talking of
educational institutions, trust went to ox It right, she went
to merchon, I went to talk to two. I didn't
go to merchant that's a better off college. I went
to college which is renowned for being poor. For what's
that's worth within Oxford colleges, which were all full of
rich people doing rich people's stuff. She read PPE Politics,
(06:35):
Philosophy and Economics, which I don't think you can really
do as a degree in the US. Right, what is
that Politics, Philosophy and Economic Yeah, yeah, it's called PP
three made up things? Well, what are you saying? Other
other degrees, on the other hand, are real and tangible
and yeah, of course in the physical space where you
(06:58):
can touch them. Everyone knows that. Yeah, it's true. Apart
from p P PP is so like I went to
Oxford two, I took Modern History and Politics, which is
way cooler and better in every way. But the PPE
kids such so that people understand. A vast number of
British prime ministers have taken pp as as their undergraduate degree.
(07:19):
It's like the kingmaker of degrees and you take it
because you're an insufferable fucking dorc who wants to be
prime minister or like work for the British government in
some way right, like it is this like kingdomaker one
of the prime minister. It looks like such a good job. Yeah,
they last a long time. They have universally great approval ratings.
(07:39):
And to be fair, they do just go on to
griff to share a ton of money like it's not
and they don't have to do it for like a
fixed period of time like American presidents do, so that's nice.
They can just have a bunch of parties for their
friends in the lockdown and their leave, which is more
or less what Boris Johnson did. And I don't I
don't expect Liz to be prime minister for long, but
it's what she's doing and what she has already sort
(08:02):
of done that I think it's of interest here. Certainly
she was also president before we get off her university
time at the Oxford University Liberal Democrats and so oh yeah, yeah,
great stuff. The so like she's gradually drifted to the right,
which you know, what are we? What we she's grifted
(08:23):
to the right. You know, the lib Dems were a
little bit more left then, but Labor was very neoliberal
in the nineties right when she was in when she
was in Parliament, So sometimes the lib Dems provided something
of a left opposition if you remember, like Tony Blair
New Labor. It was just kind of bold neo liberal,
like shameless near liberalism. Right now, Tony Blair is the
(08:47):
one who was played by Hugh Grant, right, is he
the one of his He the inspiration for love? Actually
I was assuming because Tony Blair was the only British
politician I could name as a child. Okay, but we
must have been right because Tony Blair is completely devoid
of charisma, and the one thing that that Hugh Grant
character has is charisma, So maybe maybe he does kind of.
(09:08):
I mean, they're all white men, they are all white man.
That is a very white movie. He looks like him.
But then that's not exactly a remarkable thing, is it
in sort of homogeneous British ruling class that we have
so trust has gone through like being Secretary of State
for Justice, through being Lord Chancellor, through being Foreign Secretary. Okay,
(09:29):
Lord chancellors are pretty cool sounding title. I gotta give
it to him first. That's like Star Warship, which did
you do they have a shadow Lord Chancellor to the
thing that you're right is they pick the terms to
make it all sound cool, like when whenever one of
like your parliamentary coalitions collapse, they're like the government has fallen.
(09:52):
It just makes it all sound like it's so much
cooler than it is. It does lend an air of
shakespeare An epic, whereas what is is these seventeen people
who all went to the same schools and read the
same Telegraph newspaper columnists have disagree with each other from
minor point and will shortly be reconstituting their alliance in
a slightly different way. Yeah, but it sounds like people
are fighting each other with machetes. That has a Game
(10:15):
of Thrones beheading via maybe that's where this is heading.
Who knows she I think if people had heard of
Lives Trust until she became Prime Minister, it was probably
from her really wonderful pork market speech, which if you
haven't watched the pork market speech, it is a study
in when you should and shouldn't pause for applause. Robert,
(10:36):
have you seen this pork markets? No? Okay, what is
the fucking pork market? In December, I'll be in Beijing
opening up new pork markets. What the fund is this ship?
She's not a real person. She's it's reminiscent of like
(10:59):
when you take a fish of water and it moves
its lips but makes no coherent noise. You can alien
trying to pretend to be humid. Yeah, it's it's this
is a great this is a great leader of our people,
and it's like the uncanny valuable craft Ian and it's
in its unsettling nous. Yeah, yeah, what's what's what's happening here?
(11:21):
What we're seeing is this is this is the This
is the final result of affirmative action from white people. Yes,
we're going to get you to that. This is why,
this is why she has this job. She she she
benefited from affermative action from white people. Other examples of
this include Destiny and yeah, yeah, you get the same
kind of person every single time, same same right, like
Destiny and the Prime Minister of the UK and yeah,
(11:44):
so like she becomes prime minister. And it's worth noting that, like,
the way you become prime minister in the UK is
different to the way you become president in the US. Right,
you are the leader of the majority party in Parliament,
or of the coalition that controls the majority of the
votes in parliament. So she becomes prime Minister not through
a vote of the people, but through a vote of
the members of the Conservative Party. And you can understand
(12:05):
as like people whose dogs have girls names and whose
daughters have dogs names. I think that is I think
that's a trash future bit. I don't know where it
came from, but it explains the perfectly. So these people
got together and they she ran against Richie Sunac right,
and who is eminently more capable of doing the fashi
(12:27):
neoliberal ship that they want to do, as are many
other people of color within their party. But above all things,
they are racist, right above even doing this kind of
speed run extraction from the British economy. They are still racists.
They're they're they're fine with having people of color in
in positions in the hierarchy, right, there's something that Britain
(12:48):
established through hundreds of years of empire. But the idea,
the idea of having someone in a leadership position is
is fundamentally anathema to the Conservative Party. So instead they
picked kind of Liz Trust to just flap her lips
around and talk about pork markets, right, So that's how
we get Liz Trust as Prime Minister. So no one
(13:11):
per se votes for Lizz Trust. No one even per
se votes for like the Liz Trust a genda that
we're seeing now, right, and I think that's really important.
And in her acceptance speech, she talks to Boris Johnson
as she said, you're you're admired from Kiev to Carlisle. Yeah,
she says, yeah, okay, first of all, Bizz, Absolutely thing
(13:35):
I know about Boris Johnson is that he looks like
Donald Trump. If Trump didn't have his ship quite so together, yes, yeah,
he looks Donald Trump. His mom didn't tell him to
come his hair and tuck his shirt before he went
to school. Yeah, if Donald Trump couldn't have paid paid
a half. People like check him before he walks out
the door. That's how he would look. Yeah, yes, exactly.
If he fell over in a wind tunnel, he would
(13:55):
look like Boris Johnson. Burris Johnson, a guy so fucking
rich he's never had to comb his hair. Stop being
prime minister because of these scandals, right, these sleeve scandals
about them having parties during lockdown. More or less, that
was what destroyed him. Not any of his terrible policies
is biggoted bullshit. Him writing up ed saying that the
problem with us was not that we were in charge
(14:18):
of Africa, but that we're not anymore. God. Yeah, yeah,
this is a type of guy who exists and can
become Prime minister. Like people don't understand. I think, um, British,
the British right is very different from the American right,
and I think we're going to get into that. And
also a guy who famously just like pulverized a small
child on the trip to Japan playing Okay, you don't
(14:40):
need to say the things that he did that are
rad he he did finally discover the actual third world
British politics, which is that if you have fun in
a way that someone else can't have fun, they will
destroy you. Yes, the mere British perct with your act
of a British person seeing another person having any joy whatsoever,
(15:01):
like just like the so a switch flips in their
brain and they just turned into like Brits but worse.
This is yeah, so this is like there are basically
two ways that a British political party can be right.
One is that they enjoy themselves while they're plundering the
institution to still remain in the United Kingdom. And the
(15:21):
other one is that they are like magnastically abstemious while
they're doing it right. And Labor tend to be the
obstinuious ones, uh, And the Tories tend to be the
ones who drink the poor and have the lockdown parties
and have like literal karaoke events when they're asking people
not to go to their grandparents funerals, and Labor tend
to be the ones who wring their hands to go
oh no and then fundamentally do the same ship right.
(15:42):
That that is a different Chris is entirely correct that
that is the thing that irritates British people most, right,
And maybe we'll just talk about this right now, it's
increasingly like it's not the material conditions that bring down
British governments, because material conditions are getting worse and have
been getting worse since we started this this austerity stuff
in it's these stupid scandals, right, these these personal scandals
(16:06):
which yes normally involved them having too much fun when
they're supposed to be pretending to be serious while they
steal all the all the things that still remain in Britain.
And I want to talk about a little bla this. So, yeah,
she said Boris Johnson was aboutd from Keith to Carlole.
He's not. That's why he's not Prime Minister anymore. Everyone
hates him. And also I don't think she's been to
(16:27):
Carlos because I got family who lived there and not
everyone loves Boris Johnson there, and I'm sure not in
Kiev either. But so the UK has been having this
cost of living crisis since the economy reopened in right,
since the end of lockdown. What this cost of living
crisis is what cost of living goest DoD is generally
is when the goods that you need to buy to
(16:49):
exist arising more quickly than the wages you get paid.
For working Now some of these causes a globe or right.
We have this inflation issue in the US too, but
the UK has compounded this I leaving the European Union,
that creating massive labor labor shortages and these repeated bumps
in the energy price cap. Right, which is the limit
(17:09):
that an average family should pay for their energy consumption.
It's not it's not a hard stop. It's not a
limit on how much you definitely will pay, but it's
a limit on how much the average family should pay. Right,
and so Trust come to power in the context of
skyrocketing energy rates for British consumers. Gas is used for
(17:32):
hitting most homes in the UK, and it's increased in
price since before the coronavirus times, despite the fact that
most British people don't pay spot prices for gas and
pay the going market rate for gas. There's a serious
crisis and affordability. Now. It was looking like the gas
(17:56):
bills were going to go up, into the average gas
bill for the average British per someone's going to go
up more than it now is. Because Trust has has
announced some capping of spot rates. We're going to get
into why that isn't as great as it sounds. The
big issue here is that Britain doesn't have a nationalized provider, right.
It's privatized its energy greate, it's privatized its energy generation,
(18:17):
and it ends up with this bizarre situation where one
of the one of the people you can buy energy
off and often you don't have a choice, right depending
on where you are, is the French national energy company.
That makes sense, Yeah, it makes perfect sense, right, it's
it's great and one of the notables that cons going
too this is a gas price who've gone up. France
(18:38):
caps the prices that consumers can pay. Britain allows them
to charge a lot more so British people at this.
It's as a rule, one thing that britis telling me
that France finally won that long war and say that
we have been owned by the French. And if that
doesn't bring down the Conservative government, I don't know what will.
Because there's one thing British people dislike, its French people.
(18:59):
And and so yeah, Britain is now subsidizing energy rates
for French consumers, which is great having just left the
European Union, because we are incredibly xenophobic as a nation
as it turns out, and people may have seen this
UK TV show called This Morning where they did a
wheel of Fortune type thing where you could win a
(19:19):
thousand pounds or or they will pay your energy bills. Yeah,
but for like three or four months, right, months, four
months of energy bills and the blank they're doing it
in it's just like it's this side of relief when
he gets energy bills, right, He's like, oh massive, Like
I'm gonna have my energy bills pay for four months.
(19:40):
It's such a relief. And this guy is one of
four million people in the UK who uses what's called
a pre payment meter, which I'm reliably informed that Americans
don't have. So do you do you all? Are you
familiar with the concept of pre payment meters? Uh? No, okay,
(20:00):
so maybe people are permiliar with like pay as you
go phones right where you go to the shop. Yeah. Yeah,
if you if you're like selling drugs, or you're you're
you're engaged in anti government extremism, Yeah you want you
want to phone like that? Sure? Yeah yeah yeah. Or
if you're doing journalism, you might want journalism reasons it's
the same as one of the others. Yeah, yeah, yes, true. Yeah.
(20:23):
Here in cool Zone media, you know, you know, you
know who won't use a prepaid cell phone to sell
you drugs because they're not Wait yeah they would, you
think so? I think they just got enough money they
would just use a regular phone bill and have a lawyer.
Just you know, I think I think they're deep into
boost Mobile for the only thing. Even John laugh, they're
fucking back. Okay, so you know who have to go
(20:46):
to Walmut to buy more credit to their phone so
they can sell you some weed. It's the advertisers who
support this show. Okay, we're back and we are talking
about prepaid energy meters. Scintillating topic. So the prepaid energy
(21:10):
meter r you have to go out, you have to
pay for energy, so if your rate to go. The
reason for these overwhelmingly is that, like there's an agreement
by which most energy supplies won't just cut you off
in the UK, like if you have old people in
your house, you have children in your house, like they
have to do this. The appearance of caring is this
thing that we're going to see is really important in
lots of these policies. Right, so they can't cut you off,
(21:33):
but if they have it, if you have a meter
and you can't prepay for the electricity, then your de
facto cut off right. And the best distates I could
find about this was in seventeen were roughly a hundred
and forty tho households of the of those that had
pre payment meters self disconnected. Self disconnected the euphemism for
they couldn't pay right for gas or electricity. In seen,
(21:57):
they couldn't afford to our credit to their meter right,
and they didn't the credit, so they couldn't get the electricity,
so they end up disconnecting. And if you add to
this that the British houses are made out of cheese.
Our houses are very poorly insulated for the most part.
Right that they're often single brick, so it's expensive to
heat them and they get cold in the winter and
(22:18):
they get hot in the summer. We're not we have
like houses are designed to deal with the extremes in
temperature which we are now experiencing because we have ruined
the climate. So people are spending more and more using
more and more electricity and gas to heat their homes.
It's costing more and more and increasingly they can't afford
to pay it right, and this will lead to people dying.
(22:41):
So if we look at like what the average pensioner
in the UK, right, I looked up some statistics of
the Office of National Statistic. Here the average pensioner in
the UK has on a fixed income. It's making seventeen
thousand pounds a year, which it's I guess pounds of
what though their gold, rubber gold. You take your pounds
(23:04):
to the Bank of England and they give you golden return. Okay,
not anymore. That actually, interestingly was, if we go on
a side note for a minute, one of the ways
Britain achieved greater democratization when the middle class were excluded
but landowners were included was the middle class had cash
money and the landowners had wealth in the form of property. Right,
So in the middle class threatened to tank the entire
(23:25):
Bank of England by taking all their pound notes and
asking to have them converted to to the gold that
they that they were supposedly pegged to. And there was
not enough gold to actually to do that for the
entire money supplies, so they could have tanked the Bank
of England. So yeah, a bit of Reform Act history.
(23:45):
They're no longer they're decoupled now from that, so you
can't do that sadly. But seventeen pounds is not a
lot of money, right. Trust has just announced that the
energy bill for an average family is going to be
kept two thousand, five hundred pound a year, which it's
a decent chunk of your income, right if you're making
seventeen thousand Before that, the previous planned limit has been
(24:09):
three thousand, five hundred forty nine pounds for an average
family based on average consumption, which is a very significant
chunk of your seventeen thousand pound a year, right, especially
if if if you're renting. On top of that, Right,
the cost of housing, the cost of rental housing has
got up in the UK, and so and this is
arise again. The capital already been risen in April. Right.
(24:31):
It's not a price cap, right. This doesn't mean that
you as a family are guaranteed that you will not
pay more than this two thousand, five dred pound number.
What is It's a unit cost limit. So not all
families are typical, not all homes are typical, but the
cost is for those who interested tenpence per killer for
gas stay fourpence parkiller for electricity. So what this means
(24:56):
is that like we've capped a little bit of the cost,
and in response like, and this is pretty this is
pretty typical for what the conservatives do. Right, They'll do
this thing where they give the appearance of caring and
then at the same time they bundle it in with
a bunch of incredibly like uh, just like the best
(25:16):
way to understand these people is that they view the
free market as a religion, right, So, and they believe that,
like the only way out of anything is to cut taxes.
Whether they actually believe that because they think it will
genuinely make the situation better, or they're just trying to
get as much as they can for them and theirs,
I think it probably I'm leaning towards the second one, right,
(25:37):
But so she bundles this with the UK is gonna
gonna lift it ban on fracking, right um? The UK
band fracking after a series of earth tremors near Blackpool, which, like,
there's a lot of cursed things about Britain, but until recently,
we hadn't added earthquakes to that list. And so thank you, Liz.
(25:58):
They it very funny work. Business School published to study
in twenty pointing out it is widely widely recognized that
the open and liberal nature of the UK's gas market
means that the market price the national balalty point is
unlikely to be influenced by shell gas development. So shell
gas is fracking right in the UK. So the UK
(26:19):
is going to start fracking, which is great. And she
also proposed removing the top tier of income tax, which
is reducing the amount of tax paid by people who
earn more than a hundred and fifty thousand pounds a
year right now they pay tax above that. This announcement
caused a pound to fall to a historic low against
the dollar and for Trust to find herself in open
(26:42):
beef with the Wokes goals at the i m F.
So the i m F said new economic measures laid
out by the UK government will likely increase inequality, and
they added that the i m F does not recommend
large and untargeted fiscal packages at this juncture. So she
always during this like she she promised that she was
(27:05):
going to cancel a planned rise on corporate tax and
scrap a proposed cap on bankers bonuses. This has been
one of her big policy things, along with Simon Clark,
who declared a new age of austerity. At the time
they announced this right, But there's this constant like everything
Britain does is only one way in which conservative governments
(27:26):
to move can move, and that is taxing the other
people who went to the same schools and universities as
them less. So I kind of want to take a
step back here and talk about the ideology that underpins
a lot of what Trust is doing. And and it's
that she and Chance to the Executuasi Quieting and pretty
Patel and Dominic rob who are all in her cabinet,
(27:49):
I think a part of this free enterprise group within
the Conservative Party. And much like you have caucuses in
the American Senate, in Britain, we have these groups. And
they wrote this book called Britannia Unchained, which I don't
know if people are probably not familiar with, right, I've
heard of it, but I know very little about it. Yeah,
it's just like a it's a series of short essays,
(28:11):
just like doing a Milton Freedman, like an unreconstructed free
market fundamentalism that it's it's very different to what the
because the American right likes to talk about markets and
libertarianism and stuff, right, but like in general their entire politics,
it's just kind of owning the lips, right, like these
socio cultural a grievances, and then when they get in power,
(28:33):
they they they're spending is largely just about one might
argue staying in power, right, whereas the Conservatives in Britain
are genuinely committed to slashing government, including slashing services, including
slashing any kind of social safety net. Right, it does
have these amusing consequences sometimes, like Britain continually cuts the
(28:53):
number of police it has, which is great, it's genuinely
really funny. Yeah, it's it's very funny. It's very funny
that like our most right wing party and I guess
not almost writing party if you've got some proper nutters,
but we've defunded the police just by not wanting to
spend money on them. It is also okay, and by
by funny, you have the incredibly depressing that like like
(29:15):
Corb Corbin was running on adding more cops, which is
like the most cursed, like the British left like always
like they always find a way to destroy themselves. That
they've been doing this for like two hundred years. It's
it's really impressive stuff. Yeah, yeah, it's incredibly it's incredibly
depressing to watch, Like, yes, the British left just tear
(29:37):
itself to piece. Not that the American left doesn't tear
itself to pieces, right, it seems to be a thing
on the left. But yeah, when the British left had
a serious run and making a serious difference in instead,
we decided to just absolutely like tear each other to shreds.
And here we are, right here we are with the
number of children in poverty going up by six hundred
(29:59):
thousand in since with the number of from twelve. The
number of children who rely on food banks for their
food security has tripled. By the end of this year
that in National Health Service National Health Curve, which is
our nationalize socialized medicine system, right, the budget will have
been cut by compared to six that's despite the fact
(30:23):
that we just went through a pandemic. The poorer socio
economic groups in the UK are experiencing a full in
life expectancy for the first like we we have life expectator.
It is pretty much continually trucked up since the Industrial Revolution,
but we're now finally slashing that down again. Well I wonder,
(30:44):
I wonder why. Yeah, there's no way of explaining it
that there's it's just happening. The only solution is a
free market, a free market, a free our market. He
had to pump more things into the area. Yes, ye
we are, well here, I'm going to take a puff
from my in hailer because my lungs are dying. Yeah,
well that's because one is outrageous right now. You're not
(31:05):
getting fracked hard enough in the Pacific. More fracking will
fix my fix pollution and the fact that people are
literally dying, yeah, younger than their their parents did. And
the Tories don't they have these like what's very important
to them. It's the performance of patrician care, right, Like
(31:26):
we saw this with Theresa May's burning injustices, which of
course remain burning injustices because you're doing anything about them.
Boris Johnson's leveling up agenda, and people familiar with his like, God,
I can't believe you have a minister, you have a
shadow minister of leveling up. I just like, at what
point do you just go none of this is real?
(31:49):
And like if they start sending cops, you just keep
beating them up until everyone else is forced to concede
that they're like, no, there is not in fact a shadow,
a shadow Minister of leveling up. Yeah, I don't know.
That is the big The big question that I want
to ask is at what point do we realize that
there is not a shadow Minister of leveling up, and
that we don't have to open new pork markets, and
(32:12):
that maybe that isn't the solution to us dying younger
than our parents, and that we don't have to do
what these people say when they are just very blatantly
like trust is very obviously doing an extractive speed run
on the British economy right there, and I'll tell you
what you know, who else will do an expective steed
(32:33):
run on the British economy. Is that the products and
services that yeah, the show it is, sadly yeah, alright,
we're talking about extractors. Speed runs were back. So with
(32:54):
Johnson and even with Theresa May right who was a
Prime minister before him, there was this important perform moments
of of caring right being like, oh, We're gonna make
life better for the poorer socioeconomic groups, the poorer people
in the UK. I think what's changed is that like
the nature of of consent from the governed is is
(33:16):
this thing that maybe we need to elucidate more, right,
Like in Britain, there was this kind of consensus that
like the the governing party will pretend to care and
we'll pretend to do things, and sometimes they would let
you have nice things, right, little treats and trinkets, and
that in return you would largely not kick them out, right,
like either physically or electorally, or that it's very hard
(33:37):
to keep them out electorally because of Britain's asked backwards
electoral system, which is another relic of a previous era.
Now they don't seem to be bothering to pretend to care, right,
Like when you're looking at a system in which, when
trust came to power, old people were going to die.
We we were looking at a system in which people
(33:57):
are dying younger than their parents, and all people were
going to die in the al this winter. Like I've
got friends I remember this was years ago, but it
was when the utility prices maybe started going up. When
my grandfather passed. My grandmother lived on her own and
her being really afraid to heat the house because of
how much it costs. Right, And I've got friends who
have spoken to this time who are like, well, we're
preparing to have our grand come and live with us
(34:19):
so that we can we can heat the house, or
like if we just move into the downstairs parts of
the house then we can keep those warm, right, or
like you know, we're going to go back to having
fires and we'll just google warm my house with a
wood fire. Right, Lots of houses in the UK still
have fireplaces that are functional. Yeah, my my house growing
up was heat with a wood fire. It's great. It's
good for their lungs. It's gives them a good coating
(34:42):
that they can then use in the rest of your
life to repel other pollutants. Coal fires are great inside
the home, highly encouraged. So like people were really making
these like it's it's it's the sort of stuff you
you associate maybe with like like the hard times in
the Soviet Union in right, like like sort of being like, well,
we're going to go to the food bank and we'll
(35:03):
line up and get food and then we'll we'll all
huddle in one room to stay warm. But these are
the plans that people were making like this this summer
looking to this winter, and Lits Trust responded to that
with like, okay, well, the way to fix this is
lower taxes for high earners and no cap, but removing
the cap on bankers bonuses so that the financial services
(35:25):
industry will relocate to the UK. I wish it weren't
because the UK has left the European Union, right, and
it's now kind of a pariah in that sense. So like,
I don't really understand how the UK, how the British
government abstain obtains consent from the government anymore. And I'm
(35:47):
partially interested to see how this goes, and partially obviously
like a poll to see the costs of this. Like
they're not even trying to care, they're not even pretending anymore.
They're just going to take what they can and then
presumably bounced to some tax island where they can they
can survive and thrive while the rest of us freeze
our asses off over the winter. So what I wanna,
(36:09):
I guess, finish up with is this idea that like
so in America, you have fixed terms of elections, right,
so every we're we're having a mid terms next month
and then we'll have the presidential In Britain, we don't
write in Britain the government has to lose a vote
from no confidence, which is when the majority of MP's
vote they no longer have confidence in the government or
(36:29):
the Prime Minister have to warr in theory the monarch
castic corner election. Right, So I guess King Charles could
just because they didn't let King Charles go to the
climate summit recently, which is another amazing thing that Lives
Trust has managed to do within like a month of
being in office. She's already like openly in beef with
the monarchy, which is the one thing that conservative people
might like more than white people who tax rich people less.
(36:55):
She wouldn't let King Charles go to a climate summit
because conserved is a more or less climate change deniers,
or at least sort of climate change don't give a
fuck because we need to extract more money and so
like at some point, like I don't know what the
withdrawal of consent looks like anymore. Right, it's the people
who British politicians see themselves like, see themselves as governing
(37:18):
for like their constituents are seemingly like columnists in the Telegraph,
and the people who are the CEOs of these big
companies in London which have grown and grown and grown
and grown based on this endless supply of free money
that it is now drying up, right, So instead of
dealing with the root cause of that, they're going to
try and look at other ways for those people to
continue to grow and extract finance. And I don't know
(37:40):
what that means for the rest of British people, Like
I don't know what the withdrawal of consent from a
system which so obviously doesn't care about the material conditions
you live in looks like. But if we want to
talk about collapse, and collapse is a thing that gradually
happens rather than the thing that kind of we click
fingers and it's there. I think some of this is
(38:03):
what it looks like, like people refusing to pay their
power bills. It's becoming a thing in UK, right. I
should mention the energy companies are recording record profits throughout
this time period. Maybe it looks like protests in the
street that Britain has had these, like they had big
tuition feeth protests and we had the quote unquote London riots, right,
which were incredibly harsh you put down and people went
(38:23):
to jail for a long time for like stealing a
bottle of water from Motesco. So like, I think it's
worth watching for people who are not in the UK, Like,
what does it look like when you're governing elite stop
pretending to care about you, And what is the withdrawal
of legitimacy or the withdrawal of consent look like? And
like I said, I don't know, it's it's looked different
(38:44):
every time it's happened, right, looked different in the Soviet
Union too, Uh, the way it looked in Like I'm
trying to think of other regime collapses in South America.
And but like we say that, ay, we say that
a regime is consolidated when the rules of the game
are more important than the outcome of the game. And
I think we're getting to a point in Britain where
(39:05):
maybe the outcome of the game is going to be
more important than the rules of the game. So that
might mean some serious change, It might not. It might
just mean, you know, we put a new dude on
our on our coins and everyone puts bunting up industry
and we do nothing fundamentally different and just acquiesce in
living conditions getting worse and worse and worse, and more
and more people are dying because they're poor. I don't know,
but yeah, Garrison's just nodding better. Yeah, I think that
(39:30):
last one is going to be the one that happens. Yeah,
maybe we'll do it Olympics, and we'll spend the next
what was London twelve, the next decade just reminiscing over
how great that was, and then we'll just not notice that,
you know, our grandparents are dying unnecessarily because Distress's friends
have to make more money. I have. I have an
enormous amount of faith in the British people to just
(39:53):
do nothing like they they have, They have an unbelievable
ability to just be like a things are getting worse,
like I don't know who cares, like we're still British,
Like they like they can't even really effectively do imperialism anymore.
But it's like everyone so wedded to the like imperialism
(40:13):
machine that everyone that like, you know, everyone, every everyone
will constantly vote against their class interests, everyone will constantly
act agains a class interest. Everyone will constantly just sort
of like literally let hundreds of thousands of people die
around them. Yeah. Yeah, because flags and sports, I think
Corbin has and energized a lot of people into realizing
(40:37):
their class interests, perhaps more than they were before because
there was briefly a parliamentary alternative, but right now there isn't.
Like kiss Down is not Jeremy Corbyn, but then you know,
but it's also the British right, like it's like, well okay,
so they sort of reconsolidated and left it did nothing,
got owned and then imploded and now it's being split
between like just complete pure like people arguing that star
(41:00):
members doing socialism like your Labor Party hacks, and then
like a bunch of people just doing nothing because it's
the UK and it fundamentally never gets any better. Yeah, yeah,
there was like I take a little bit of hope
from like have you seen the the where people are
to be deported from the UK and then they were
(41:20):
like mass mobilizations to prefriend happening. Yeah, that gives me
some hope. Right, that's a lot of people willing to
give up this Saturday or the Sunday to shout immigration
offices and like that's something that didn't happen by and
large in the in the US right, even with the
like gross abuses of the immigration system under Donald Trump,
people people didn't stop that happening. So some of that
(41:42):
it did happen in places like there are a lot
of flights that got blocked and stuff. Yeah, I guess,
I guess, yeah, yeah, it happened. Is visible then, yeah,
in a different way, some people here did so, like
in I think there was an icing and barrial logan
and it got run out of town. So I shouldn't
say that, but that gives me hope, as we hope
that maybe some people will realize that, like, the solution
(42:04):
is not to vote harder right, and the solution is
to is to organize and to do things in extra
parliamentary fashion and not trust the people who are participating
in your exploitation to leave you from your exploitation, which
has maybe been our mistake for too long. Yeah, we
we Everyone in England needs to take a page from
the Harry Potter books and arm the children to murder
(42:28):
government officials. If I'm remembering how those books ended for
for for form a gerrilla army of you and your
friends and attempt to overthrow the governments Harry Potter. Probably Yeah,
let's let's say that's that's that's that's the plot of
the Order of the Phoenix. Okay, yeah, I remember it
now when they when they do a car bomb. Yeah,
that's it. That's so. That's that's our message for you today.
(42:52):
Read Harry Potter to a car bomb. There we go,
There we go. That's our legally binding message for you today,
non actionable for red. It could Happen here as a
production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool
Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
(43:13):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
find sources for it could Happen Here, updated monthly at
cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
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Robert Evans
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