December 11, 2024 • 36 mins
The team (plus special guest Matt Muir) explain why cryptocurrency has been pumped up in the USA and why it’s only going to get bigger in the UK. Plus what’s happening in the race between the Tortoise and the Observer, and the government’s mixed messaging on electric cars.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast
(00:03):
. Hello and welcome back toanother episode of Page 94.
My name's Andrew Hunter Murray, andI'm here in the eye office with Helen
Lewis, Adam McQueen and Matt Muir.
I'm thrilled to be back.
Cut that
fact check.
Come.
Yeah,
sorry.
Yeah, and we're delightedto have you know really?
Oh, thanks.
Yeah.
Great.
Yeah.
Okay.
So we're here to talk about lots ofstuff that's going to be, or has recently
been in the news in between mags.
(00:24):
But first there is a nice update tothe last episode, which covered a
lot of ecclesiastical matters and,there has been a victory for the Eye.
No, in fact a victory for page 94.
We never have victory for Adam,
almost personally, Iwould say, on this one.
Okay.
so the Archbishop Of Canterbury resigned,which you covered on the last podcast
he did.
You mentioned that, he was stilldoing the Christmas services,
(00:45):
still planning on putting on the nicefrock and doing the Christmas services.
Yes.
Which he since dropped out of doing.
He has.
And the last issue of the magazinementioned that the, Archbishop
of Canterbury Teddies are stillavailable in the Canterbury Gift Shop.
in the trademark Welby specs and, withthe trademark, Eton, history, That's, that
was just a lovely little story, but therehas been a further development since then.
(01:05):
Is that right, Adam?
Yes.
He made his resignation speech inthe House of Lords because as Helen
pointed out, all those bishopsstill got a say in our government.
he made the most.
Extraordinarily Tinedresignation speech, didn't we?
no.
He said the thing is, if you wanna makeGod laugh, and I know a lot about that
as an archbishop, then you make plans.
So I had a lot of plans for next year.
Actually.
(01:25):
They won't be happening.
this is honestly genuinely the tone of it.
He said, the person I really feelsorry for is my diary secretary,
if you are going to pity anyone,pity my poor diary secretary.
The crashing sound of noviolins, breaks out in sympathy.
Just the extraordinary.
And then he, kept saying things like,someone was technically in charge.
He's the phrase, technically in charge.
That's what you are.
If you're Archbishop of Canterbury,now you're technically in charge.
(01:47):
Wow.
yeah, and said someone's head had to roll.
I suppose it had to be mine.
it was all the way through.
It was a basically like.
I'm annoyed about this.
I actually had a lot of excitingfrock wearing planned for next year.
It's been ruined by you people, but Iguess someone had to take responsibility.
I guess it had to be me.
It's
very, it is very Greg Wallace.
It's per spectacles, bald man.
not really apologizing.
And then it was
(02:07):
an absolute Greg Wallace because hethen, just as Greg Wallace did, the
very next day, he had to apologizeand say he'd got the tone of it wrong
and he was extremely sorry and, Hemight be showing some repentance for
the first time in this entire affair.
Okay.
Yeah.
And there was a
bishop sitting next to him whohad her head in her hands, who
I believe Adam, is this right?
Is she the bishop of London?
It was only the Bishop ofLondon because, Welby didn't get
(02:28):
Paula Nels as the first, second
choice to Paula Vennels.
you might well haveyour head in your hands.
Yeah.
That, so what was that as inVennels was, nailed on for the job?
He wanted to give the job of Bishopto London, where he wrote about
this at the time, to Paula Vennels,head of the post office and chief
villain in the post office scandal.
Which I mean, give you an early,a early measure of HR competence.
(02:50):
Anyway, he's gone now.
He's not gonna be on yourtelly over Christmas.
He's not gonna be doingthe New Year's message.
So I think the rule of thisis don't mess with Page 94.
Fantastic.
Okay.
And if you want to deliver theChristmas message, you can apply now.
we'll do details at the end of the show.
let's get into the business of thisweek's podcast, and we're gonna
start off from Canterbury to crypto.
(03:11):
Seamless, Matt, there have been alot of stories about crypto recently.
there's been a huge scandal inthe UK this week about a, money
laundering, crypto gang that hasbeen smashed and it's got roots
stretching all the way back to Moscow.
But one of the main reasons peopleare interested in it at the moment
is that crypto is suddenly backin an enormous way because Donald
Trump is going to, I believe,establish a US Federal Reserve of.
(03:32):
He's gonna turn Fort Knoxinto a bitcoins, we're all
going to be using imaginaryinternet money in the future.
that's basically that, Andy, that's allyou need to know fundamentally, I suppose
we need to start with a basic explanationof what we mean when we say crypto.
most simply.
It's a bunch of different currencies,and I use this in inverted commas
because they, as a general rule, arenot backed by any bank or government.
(03:55):
as Helen said, generated throughthe cryptographic process and
which exists on the blockchain,an immutable, decentralized ledger
of transactions, which means thata, you can own them anonymously.
B, you can transfer them anonymously.
And c in theory, every transactionthat is taken using, money that's
(04:18):
on the blockchain, cryptocurrencycan be tracked and is there forever.
So it's a way ofauthenticating, , ownership.
Or purchases or something like that.
okay, so we have this Anonymous,slightly sketchy pseudo currency
whose value fluctuates wildly.
And there are many,different variants of them.
The one that everyonehas heard of is Bitcoin.
(04:38):
Yes.
that was the original one that wasinvented by the mysterious Satoshi
Nakamoto but various things have, asthe terminology goes, forked off that.
So there's Ethereum, which is verybig, which is what tended to be used to
by all of the NFTs that listeners mayremember were briefly very buzzy around
about the time of lockdown and NFTs,just to quickly bracket in that non
(04:59):
fungible
tokens.
And they were pictures of monkeys,
which were among subtle things,which were largely, but not
exclusively, pictures of monkeys.
Yeah,
you're paying a lot of money for a jpeg.
All of this is.
Completely mad to it.
I know, I'm sure our listeners tothe podcast will be deeply invested
in the meme coin scene, but it's,very hard to understand why this is
(05:19):
relating to the real world and to
American fiscal policy.
The thing that's important toremember about cryptocurrencies as
they currently stand is that theyare, whilst they can be used for the
storing of large volumes of money, etcetera, they are in the main used as
incredibly volatile gambling tools.
Okay.
And to launder money, as youmentioned, at the top, as was revealed
(05:41):
in the, in the ft of the weekendand, and very often to buy drugs.
the, main reason back in the early daysof Bitcoin, why anyone would invest in
Bitcoin was to be able to, yeah, buy.
By drugs on the dark web.
So football trading cards, you'relike, panini stickers don't
have any inherent value, buteverybody together decides to that.
Some like the special golden oneis going to be worth 10,000 pounds.
(06:03):
And as long as you can find abuyer for that special golden one.
But what happens is there arethese things called meme coins.
So Doge is an example of that.
Everybody who likes a certainmeme gets very excited about them.
They sell a coin related to it.
And as long as you can find somebodywho is willing to keep buying in and
keep buying in, the price goes, oh.
Up and up.
So they've become the site of what iscalled pump and dumps, which is when I
say I'm issuing Helen Coin and everyoneneeds to get on the ground floor.
(06:26):
'cause this one's going to the moon.
It's gonna be massive.
And then all the, let's behonest, thousands and thousands
of Helen fans buy my Helen coin.
Yeah.
I sell it off, make a massive profit.
I've pumped it up by talkingabout how amazing it is.
And then I dump all of my stockin it, all of my investment
in it, and the value crashes
and all of the Hellenfans lose their shirts.
Yeah.
But I still get that moneyin, real actual money.
(06:47):
and why is America now going,hell leather on this, please?
so partly because of the Donald,despite having previously
indicated skepticism as to the,
it's all a scam.
Yeah.
he said literally it was used tobuy drugs and the Donald famously
does not like drugs and used.
He's right about that though, right?
A hundred percent right about that.
A lot of it is a scam.
(07:08):
except, weirdly, that's the
answer I was looking for.
That's what it is, right?
Okay.
Yeah.
It's a scam.
Okay.
except, weirdly, over the courseof the past four years, pretty much
since effectively covid, Florida.
Has become one of the intellectualcenters of, Bitcoin, a lot of the people
that are heavily into cryptocurrency,the speculation around cryptocurrency
and promoting it as a viable financialalternative system who congregate in
(07:30):
Florida, which is coincidentally whereDonald Trump has spent a significant
portion of the last four years.
Now, if you are someone likeDonald Trump who is fundamentally
at heart, something of a largerthan life huckster personality.
what better vehicle for someone than acurrency that is largely mimetic based on
nothing more than vibes, and which can,if you treat it properly, stand to make
(07:53):
you as the person at a top of a pyramidof it, quite astonishingly wealthy.
He did a lo-fi version of this and that hesold actual, like digital trading cards.
So they were essentially NFTsfeaturing very him in various AI
generated poses looking butch.
And then if you bought the full set,you got a piece of the suit that
he was wearing when he got shot.
So
this was like panini stickersthat we used to trade up still.
(08:14):
But that's how I just,
honestly, that is the way tothink about all these things.
Okay.
They like all money really, unlessit's backed by a government, they
have no value apart from what someonewill agree that the value is right.
It's a kind of collectiveagreement about it.
The market decides what the value is.
This is taking me back to a veryupsetting time for me in 1997 trying
to get the entirety of the Liverpoolfootball squad in panini sticker form.
(08:34):
Do the words gots got
needs still fill you with aterrible sense of anxiety.
They
certainly do.
I, yeah.
so this is.
I'm starting said it.
T the problem about it is that obviouslylots of people bought in Bitcoin 10 years
ago when it was valued much less andhave made whopping great fortunes in it.
Yeah.
So everybody thinks that they can bethe person that does that now, and this
is technically known as the GreaterFool theory, I believe, where you're
(08:56):
trying to find someone who's abigger muppet than you to take these,
overinflated things off your hands.
And there's something really interestingabout the extent to which this.
Plays into a wider set ofthemes in American and frankly
broader Western culture.
Again, this feels very much likethings that have happened since 2019.
It feels like, things thatfermented during covid that bubbled
(09:18):
up as a result of people havinga lot of time on their hands.
Some people having a significantamount of disposable income because
of reduced cost during that time.
Deciding that they were going to use thoseto speculate and invest wildly in these,
at the time, excitingly frothy things.
it was NFTs then now it's meme coins.
And, it's also linked into things likethe deregulation of online gambling
(09:39):
in the states, which has createda frankly terrifying situation of,
Fairly febrile speculation, aroundsports betting, which, if you're
not in sports, you don't need to be.
If you're in celebrities, just buyyour favorite celebrities meme coin
and hope that in 24 hours you'vemultiplied your investment by a hundred
rather than lost your entire house.
(10:00):
And the reason that there's a politicalangle in it is that all of the big
established banks have been, to someextent, creeping towards investing in it.
So Howard Lutnick, who was the Trumptransition chair and will be a Secretary
of Commerce, he is invested in a fundthat has a holding in, I think Tether,
which is one of the stable coins.
and Trump now has, David Sachs,who was in the All In podcast.
He's one of the PayPal Mafia, alongwith Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, that
(10:23):
kind of group of investors that gotvery big at the end of the 1990s.
He's now gonna be Trump's crypto czar.
There's a huge amount of pressurefrom people in Silicon Valley who
like this deregulated finance that'soutside the traditional financial
system for it to become accepted.
The problem is that, they've gotfortunes to lose and gamble, right?
The reason that we have, forexample, things like deposit
(10:44):
protections is because for.
People lower down the chain.
If you put 40,000 pounds, if you putyour kid's college fund, if you put,
your mortgage payment, you don'ttell your wife about it into a meme
coin and suddenly it turns out it'snot as funny as you thought it was.
Yeah.
No one comes to save you.
And this is what, I think isinteresting in terms of the British,
aspect to this, which is thatobviously legislation lags quite.
(11:08):
A long way behind the realityof what people are doing.
So Parliament have just legislatedthat Bitcoin and other digital assets
are considered personal property.
But that was this year, that, so that's,they are having to catch up quite fast.
And I think it's 12% of British adultsnow own Crypto in some form or another.
And a third of people who own Cryptowho were surveyed said, if, something
(11:30):
went wrong, I could raise a complaintwith the financial conduct authority.
Really?
Yeah.
And that's the problem.
You can't, because they're not regulated.
As you say by the FinancialConduct Authority.
do you want to allow people to dothis but regulate what they're doing?
Or do you just simply want to sayto them, look, this is really risky.
You stand to lose everything,
Yeah.
My bank, when, in my banking app, when Ipay people, I dunno if you've seen this,
but it has a popup and all the popupsof all the things you might be doing.
(11:52):
One of them is, are youpaying for cryptocurrency?
And I did press that once andit was like, it went, woo.
Are you absolutely sure you wantto hand over all your money to
someone that you've just met on theinternet that often turns out badly.
It's interesting the extent towhich this is also a very much a,
young people thing and one mightargue a young people problem.
Oh, a young man problem.
I think a young man problem thatit's part of that we're talking
(12:15):
about kind of culture of you listento these podcasts that are very male
and not these, not this, podcast.
Oh, this process is quite male,
I disagree
actually,
but, but it's like a, it's a whole life.
'cause it's seen as being risk taking.
And the whole Trump thing isvery much like we are men.
Men take risks.
Women are like the HR departmentconstantly going Uhuh.
(12:38):
But that's what men do.
They put their money intoHawk Tuah . Girl's meme coin.
Now I think for Adam's benefit we shouldexplain what Hawk Tuah girls meme, coin.
'cause all of, see, imaginehaving this conversation in 2015.
It's ridiculous.
You could, I know what a girl is.
Okay.
I think Should we, I know
what a coin is.
I'm okay with those two minutes.
So do we start with Hawk Tuah
(12:59):
? Hawk Tuah Girl rugged.
A meme coin Adam.
Oh
dear.
Okay.
There's an Adam.
I'm just gonna zone out this for,there's a new American celebrity
whose name is Hailey Welch.
She's known as the Hawk to a Girl and I,here's the BBC explanation of who she is.
This is from the BBC News website, knownonline as the Hawk Tuah . A girl, Ms.
Welch, went viral after speaking.
The ONA matter appear Hawk Tuahimitating the sound of someone
(13:21):
spitting during an interview.
In June, it made the 22-year-old fromBelfast, Tennessee an overnight sensation.
So why would someone be spittingduring an interview in June?
There's, context here.
It was, the answer was aboutwhether or not well wanted to
perform a sex act, which cannotbe described on a family podcast.
How would you make that good?
And she said 'you would hawktuah and spit on that fang'.
And that was enough to, now shehas a podcast called Talk Tuah,
(13:43):
which in fairness is a very, good.
Titles.
Great.
Can't argue that.
But obviously she's got some verysmart people behind her who have
worked out all the ways that you canmake money outta the kind of modern
internet, one of which is having apodcast and adverts and all of that.
She's
got a dating app that she released lastmonth, which is in no way special, but
requires a subscription to use because herfans might want to meet other of her fans
(14:04):
via an officially sanctioned dating app.
Great.
It's like the Matt Hancock app.
it's like the
classified ads in Private Eye.
Okay.
Yeah.
You can put it that way.
And she recently, in fact,within the last week I believe,
launched, her own crypto coin,
right?
We had this podcast forquite a while now, guys.
And we don't have our owndating app or our own Bitcoin.
(14:25):
So what are we doing?
The hell are we doing with our, I dunno.
You're absolutely right.
We
could have Page 94 coin, butwho, I'd like to think that our
Herbert would be so, Herbert Gusset
would put absolutely everything
gusset coin...
into the gusset coin.
Oh, gusset coin.
Come on.
That's good.
Come on.
We were doing memesbefore the internet, and
the problem was that after Welchlaunched this cryptocurrency coin.
(14:48):
various people piled in and thenit lost 95% of its value, right?
So everyone who'd investedlost, lost their, guesses on it.
All that one
assumes that Ms.
Welch hasn't.
Probably not.
I think her lawyers suggest thatshe, with any such suggestion
would be deeply defamatory.
But yes, I think someone, someonehas clearly been on the right side
of this trade for all the peoplewho've been on the wrong side of it.
Yeah.
It speaks to something about how modernfandom works and how there are now so
(15:12):
many creators who build direct theseparasocial relationships and you become
a kind of figure through having yourown podcast, through having your own.
Dating app, every sort of,all the brand extensions.
Yeah.
And we hear about Hawk Tuah Girl.
'cause it's amusing to explainto your parents who that is.
But there are, I'm not your dad
for the purposes of this conversation.
(15:33):
That's the thing.
Official podcast dad, when Ian's not here.
Yeah, great.
Exactly.
what's fascinating about that,that this is a story that will have
been repeated all over the place.
Elon Musk used to pumpDogecoin all the time.
I just think we should put down a markernow that unfortunately people are gonna
be hearing a lot more about this becauseit's going to become deeply involved.
there not, Andy, we've talked aboutgovernment regulation things, but
I remember you doing a couple ofstories a few years back when Rishi
(15:55):
Soak was in the treasury aboutlaunching an official British crypto.
The idea was discussed and then I think itwas kicked into the longer, I think G GB
coin, as I believe it wasg possibly coined coin.
That's right.
Yeah.
is still theoretically floating aboutas a potential idea, Michael, the
other one's theoretically floating.
But what's, what is alsointeresting about this is the.
(16:16):
As he was saying, this is driven byUS culture and US politics, but it is
very much a problem over here as well.
Or it will become more of aproblem over here as well.
because whilst the main markets forthese things, the main people who
create these coins are often thesevery, big high profile international
celebrities that come outta theUS and who are very mimetic.
There is then this secondary layer ofgrift, which is all of the people who are
(16:40):
attempting to make a living by attemptingto sell information about this stuff and
sell the get rich quick schemes, right?
And to get a little bit of sidecash for promoting these things.
So the number of influencers.
Influencers, again, use the invertedcommas, in the UK are making a lot
of money out of promoting Oh really?
A lot of these schemes.
(17:00):
So last month alone, the FSA, whichas of last year now regulates,
advertising around this space.
they've had, interviews undercaution with 20 influencers for
misrepresenting crypto deals, notbeing accurate about risk, et cetera.
But I think it's, fair to saythat 20 is a drop in the ocean
if it's very easy to go on.
(17:20):
I briefly went on.
Reluctantly went on X this morning.
Okay.
and just have a quick look at thesort of people who are currently, as
of today, flogging this stuff on X.
And what's fascinating aboutit is that all of them have in
their biographies words like.
Definitely not advisingconsumers in the uk.
Definitely not giving financial advice.
Proceed with caution, but also wow.
(17:42):
Book a free strategy call with me.
So what's fascinating about thisis that a lot of these people are
avoiding regulation by a, puttingdisclaimers on stuff that they.
Put on social media whether or notthe disclaimers you might think are
adequate is open to debate, but stillthey are at least ostensibly attempting
to abide by the lesser of the law.
But then at various other points,directing, people who follow them to
(18:02):
channels on Telegram or channels onDiscord, which the regulator can't see.
Oh, wow.
And which is basically a small closedcommunity where one bloke at the top tells
a load of people, Hey guys, why don't youchuck a few hundred quid into this week?
That's why I'm interested
when you say 12% ofBritish people hold crypto.
'cause I wonder how many of thosepercentage think that they hold crypto.
Because you quite often read now in theconsumer champion bits of the money page,
(18:25):
someone will get taken in by a scammer.
It says, give me some money.
I'll send you a screenshot showingthat I've got it in my crypto wallet.
And how many people actually havethe level of sophistication to know
that could just be a screenshotof anyone's crypto wallet.
They never have direct access to it.
So what about these magicbeans that I've got?
hold onto them.
Might go into something.
(18:45):
From the giddy heights ofmeme coins and crypto...
Adam, tell us what'sgoing on at the Observer.
for, to right over to old media, theoldest liberal paper in the country.
Was it 1791, I think for set up?
yes.
it is going, it was confirmed lastweek, that the Scott Trust, owners
of the Guardian, and as the guardianin perpetuity, but not the observer.
(19:06):
Have given the initial, goahead to the deal with Tortoise
Media to sell off the Observer.
And they did this on the second day ofa strike by Observer and guardian staff,
just to add insult to a lot of injurythat was already being felt over there.
So you've covered this recentlyon the pod, but this is all
development since then, right?
yep.
Yeah,
this is in the week since we were last.
(19:28):
Corot.
This is in the, fortnight.
Since, the last podcast,yes, since the last issue.
It's, last time we had a mediamisery roundup, and this is Luck.
This now is the very much theflagship misery because they
are very unhappy, aren't they?
This all, this is special
Christmas misery, isn't it?
Yeah.
Last week in Private Eye we quoted,the former guardian critic, Philip Hope
Wallace, and his advice that you shouldnever work for a liberal, employer because
(19:48):
they will sack you on Christmas Eve.
just ahead of Christmas comes the news,that yes, The Observer is being offloaded.
we've, we're talking about this interms of a sale, actually, still quite
murky a lot of the details on this, butsome of the things that have emerged
last week, one is that the, one ofthe people that the Guardian Media
Group are selling, the Observer to is.
The Scott Trust who are going to, beone of the investors in the new thing.
(20:09):
They're putting in 5 million poundstowards the Scott Trust wait, the
observer is partially buying the observer.
the observers owners, the ScottTrust are selling the observer
partially to the Scott Trust.
Yes.
I, they had
a good price for it.
Quite weird.
5 million, that was, got out them slightlyunder sance at the meeting of, of,
journalists with management last week.
So
why,
would they do that?
(20:29):
I think that was done because thefeeling among The Observer staff
was that they were selling off thepaper to a pretty dicey prospect.
And that taught us is a startupand has relied on funding rounds
and there was a feeling that TheObserver was therefore gonna back.
This startup by saying, look,we'll give them a cash injection.
they're much more likely to survive that.
The kind of the, the, anger fromThe Observer staff came from the
(20:52):
kind of, this is essentially softlyshutting the observer because, it
staff has been run down for a while.
It hasn't had its own web presence.
So I think their feeling was that thisis a kind of, this is you offloading
it, getting off your hands and youdon't really care what happens to it.
In order to assuage that, the ScotTrust said, look, we're gonna, we
are willing to put some money in.
It makes it much more likely thatthis brand will survive long term.
(21:12):
I think that feeling was probably bestexpressed in the meeting, last week
by Charles Garsa, who's the chair ofthe, Guardian Media Group who used a
really weird passive voice construction.
He said The reserve a much smallerbrand and it's found it much more
difficult to obtain the investmentit requires in recent years.
Which why it then has to be, whichis a bit like staffing someone for a
few years and they say, gosh, you'relooking terribly thin, aren't you?
(21:33):
It's just, okay.
Do you want to know who some ofthe other investors are who are
piling in two tortoise to put footup the money for the observer?
Of course.
one is, yellow Wood, which is privateequity company, which as far as
I can see, specializes mostly ininvesting in shower gels and makeup.
And as we all
know.
Private equity makes everybusiness that invest in better.
Oh
yeah, Lovely stuff.
standard investment, who do have some,some media investments, they're behind.
(21:55):
grad cart, remember it?
Vanity Fair Editors Air Mail thing,which is like a weekly newsletter.
That's a newsletter.
Yeah.
he sent out, yeah.
And a few other things.
Malcolm Gladwell'spodcast company as well.
They've invested quite heavily.
Kin
Industries.
That's the one.
yep, So there is somereasoning behind that.
This day, which turns out not tobe private equity, it's actually
a charitable foundation set up by.
Gary Luner, who is a big,donor to the Labor Party.
(22:16):
And also the last one I've goton my list is Fillion capital,
So all of this money is going intotortoise, is going through the tortoise
actually, and coming out the other endof it through the tortoise to grab.
Okay.
what is the prospect for the actualObserver hacks who are gonna be parceled
up and transported over to Tortoise?
(22:37):
this was the other big developmentof last week because they are not
necessarily all going to be parceled up.
You'll remember from our last podcast,listeners that we were talking
about the amazing deal that allGuardian Observer staff have with.
Between their union and managementthere, where there can be no
compulsory redundancies whatsoever.
So they run a, that's a fantasticallycushy agreement, which is,
unusual for most workplaces.
They have managed to getwritten in as part of this deal.
(22:59):
the fact that all existing termsand conditions of employment will be
honored by Tortoise, but also the anyObserver staff who don't wish to go,
and, work for Tortoise will be offeredvoluntary redundancy on enhanced terms.
And that was one of thethings that was causing.
Particular fury at the Observer because,there was a voluntary redundancy round
earlier this year, which quite a lot ofhigh profile people took and jumped ship
(23:22):
closed just before they discovered that.
In fact, their management had beenin negotiations to flog off their
paper for some months before that.
that makes, to me, makes a lot of sense.
I think that's, again, Ithink torts have got a really.
Brilliant deal outta this in terms ofwhat they got from The Guardian, because
you have to think if you are a nimblestartup, you might not necessarily need
absolutely everybody, particularly,long established and therefore quite
(23:43):
well paid writers and columnists.
And if they can.
if they can get, if they can, what theyseem to actually want is the branding and
the news, like the newsprint presence.
They don't necessarily want Absolutely.
All of the staff, although they'veagreed to take them on in principle.
So that bit looks slightly goodand, as you say, good for the
staff that they can also exit onpretty decent, generous terms.
(24:07):
the people I'd be a bit worried aboutas well is the existing Tortoise staff,
because it does seem that tortoise,which has already pivoted from being
a slow news organization, which wasthe idea behind the name Tortoise.
Yeah.
To a kind of podcast producernow seems to be flipping over
completely to being, uniquely, thepublisher of a weekly newspaper.
So all of those people who joinedthinking it was gonna be one of those
things before in a slightly odd position.
(24:28):
Now, do we have any feel
for how readers of the Observer might.
Feel these changes.
We know
we, have a little, and we have thatfrom the edition of The Guardian,
which, which came out the day afterthe two days of strikes last week.
for those people who are stillbuying a paper, they may have felt
rather shortchanged by two very thineditions of The Guardian last, last
Wednesday and Thursday, which, Theymanaged to fill out the entire feature
(24:49):
section with just a very difficultquiz from some school in the island.
Man.
Nice.
That they publish every year.
I never get any of those right.
No, it's impossible, isn't it?
Completely and
utterly impossible.
but, most other things were missing andalmost every byline in there brilliantly.
We just said guardian staff.
Guardian staff, which I guess wasjust cath finer and, oh, I was gonna
(25:10):
say, and her husband, but even AdrianGiles did not turn up for work.
He was absent from the pagesof the Guardian, last Thursday.
So, that was yet another delight thatGuardian readers was missing out on.
But on Saturday there was, a letterspage, and that did have some fairly
excoriating letters from readers saying,if you think it's such a great case to
be made for selling off the Observer,why don't you tell us what it is?
(25:31):
And certainly in that meeting last week,the council I, I hear from speaking
to various Observer and Guardianpeople, is that they remain very,
unconvinced and extremely angry as well.
So it's not a happy Christmas comingup over at the Guardian and Observer.
our third section today is aboutsomething called the ZEV mandate, and
(25:52):
this is something that was actuallyin the latest issue of the MAG.
It's a piece by Hedgehog, who is oneof our most secret correspondents.
Hedgehog writes all about mattersof road transportation, and this
piece was about the very confused andconflicting signals that are being sent
on the matter of electric vehicles.
Not only the signals beingsent To the British car
industry, but also to customers.
(26:13):
And firstly, what is the ZEV mandate?
Earlier on I said those wordsto Helen and Adam, and they both
looked at me like I'd grown horns.
I think that's fair to say.
I
thought it was a sanctioned oligarch.
Genuinely, I
just assumed it was another Bitcoin.
So
well, so the Zev mandate, zero emissionvehicles mandate Is the mechanism by
which the government is trying to getBritain to switch over from petrol and
(26:36):
diesel, two electric cars, and they'retrying to do it in relatively short order.
And there has been a lot of discussionin the press recently about whether
this is feasible, whether thetimescale is reasonable, whether the
mechanisms being used are reasonable.
Am I right in thinking that itwas supposed to be by 2030 and
it's been pushed back to 2035?
you'll be staggered to hear it'sbeen completely hashed around
(26:57):
with it almost every stage.
Theresa May, who let's not forget,introduced, the, idea of, net zero
by 2050 and brought it into law inone of her final acts in Parliament.
She said, let's do 2040.
And to be clear, that data is, all newcars being sold will be electric, right?
It's not to do with, you won't be,you'll be able to drive your petrol car.
(27:18):
You'll be able to drive a secondhandand buy a secondhand petrol car.
It's about new cars all beingswitched over, Cleaned up, on dirty
tap off by that point, 2040 fine.
Boris Johnson then said, Ithink we can do it by 2030.
Have a crack.
You'll be staggered.
You'll be staggered to hear that.
Might not have been completely workedout, often an ambitious target will get
(27:39):
to the moon by the end of this decade.
That kind of thing.
Spurs action and innovation.
Fine.
Rishi Sak then said, no, let's do 2035.
Actually, it's all been going a bitfast and it was all looking a bit
difficult, so let's not do that.
Car manufacturers must be fuming.
They have,
yeah.
Literally
that fuming is, good
for not for very much longer.
They'll just be overheating time.
(28:00):
They'll
just be gently buzzing.
They are because they have put a lotof effort and energy, although maybe
not as much as a lot of people saythey should into this transition, and
they keep getting different signals.
Labor was elected saying wewill bring it back to 2030.
Reestablishing Boris Johnson's initialvery ambitious goal, they have not
(28:21):
yet confirmed, in a legislative sense.
That's definitely what's gonna happen.
But what they have saidis, we are keeping.
We're back to the sanction, oligo, theZev mandate, and that is the ratchet
mechanism by which you get more and moreelectric cars sold each year up to the
point of which it's, a hundred percent.
So this year all car manufacturershave to sell 22% of cars.
(28:44):
The cars they sell have to be electric.
Do car manufacturers not like this?
'cause my impression was thatactually building electric cars is
good and people do, when they getthem, like them, that, people tend to
be worried about the range of them.
people do tend to like them when they'vegot 'em and say, oh, I wouldn't go
back to petrol, like sort of 97% Carmanufacturers have had a nightmarish
(29:04):
time, but it depends how quicklythey've invested or haven't invested.
So the cars which have, like Tesla, veryhappy with the Zev mandate 'cause they
sell a hundred percent electric cars
by contrast.
Yeah.
having famously, recentlyrebranded and yeah.
With its commitments, goal Electrichasn't, which is one of the
reasons why it's had to pivot.
Exactly.
Okay.
Yeah, And, Stellantis, which is a giantumbrella, which has, Fiat, Pergo, voxel
(29:29):
load loads of different brands under it.
They have been really slow.
So they have been frantically lobbyingto go slower and say, oh, we think
this ZMA is a bit, much, bit soon.
But it completely depends howmuch they have or haven't done.
And how much manufacturinghave they got based in Britain?
Presumably that allties into the political
well,
with SM port has to go all electrical.
That's quite a big deal up in the, Yes.
(29:50):
So Stellantis have said, we're gonnaclose our voxel plant in Luum, which is
one of their two big plants in the uk.
And they've been tryingto link it to the mandate.
They've been trying to say,this is actually thanks to us
being forced to go electric.
And what the problem is, that it'snot really, 'cause globally they've
been having a nightmarish time.
They've just had an awful, they'vehad to recall like 400,000.
Petrol cars in America.
'cause the steering wheels werefaulty that like they were, yeah.
(30:13):
They were never, they weren'tdoing tremendously and
haven't been for some years.
And the sort of shadow underall of this is Chinese cars,
which are increasingly electric.
I think it's half of all new cars now inChina are electric, which are quite cheap.
And they're pretty good.
And Western car manufacturers are really.
They haven't responded fast enough.
And so they're now having to rely eitheron tariffs, which are double-edged because
(30:36):
it means that they can't sell their carsto China if the tariffs are raised on
both sides or, they're having to relyon, very expensive cars that people
buy, but they're buying fewer numbers.
The reason this is on the news atthe moment is the big lobbying going
on, seeing will the new governmentstick to the guns, that it was
handed by the outgoing conservativesor will they water things down?
(30:57):
And Louise Hague, the transportsecretary, was one of the two
big voices in the room on that.
RRIP.
RIP
and the other is, Jonathan Reynolds,who's the business secretary.
so the one thing that I keep on seeingsaid in certain corners of the web about
electric cars is that one mustn't ever buyone because if one does, the battery is
liable to explode and burst into flamesat any given moment, and you will be
(31:18):
mated as though you were driving a Tesla.
Is this true?
Mine
has caught fire every single day.
I've had it so far and it'sbeen a flipping nightmare,
but this is why I think to go back to it,is the involvement of Elon Musk in the
Trump and being first body is fascinating.
'cause I know I've said this before,but the Trump speech that I watched
at the rally, he had to reverse outof saying that electric vehicles
were bad when in the late, A neuronsparked somewhere at the back of
(31:39):
course, for people who want them.
They're great.
Yes.
And so I think there is a reallyinteresting counter pressure,
which is obviously that yeah.
That Elon Musky is hanging around theUS president lobbying constantly for
his electric car companies completely.
So that of all the bits of theenergy transition that I think
might very well happen on schedulethis one is, this one's a goer.
Yeah.
But, and environmentally, Andy, what'sthe, what are there issues with, because
(32:01):
it's lithium batteries, isn't it?
Yeah.
Where are they getting the lithium from?
Oh,
there are a few differentbattery technologies basically.
There's no way of making a carthat it doesn't involve extracting
something from the ground.
The advantage of, I think the electricthing is that you don't have to keep
extracting several billion tons a year ofoil to refine and turn into your petrols.
Once you've got the chemicalsin your car's battery.
You should be able to recyclethose pretty efficiently.
(32:22):
'cause at the moment, not many carsare being recycled electric cars
because they last a very long time.
But once they start being recycled,the idea is that eventually your
car, at the moment, which you'vegot, you run it for 10 years, you
wanna change it, you recycle it.
The chemicals in there will makea slightly more efficient battery
next time round the same quantityof chemicals 'cause battery
technology would've improved.
So that's the bigadvantage, which is great.
(32:43):
And the other big advantage isyou don't have to keep on buying
petrol for it all the time.
in terms of where those chemicals comefrom, what are the interesting things
about, to go back to the point aboutChina and the increasing Chinese dominance
of the electrical market, one of thereasons for that is that they have a.
I wouldn't say a monopoly, but they havesignificant hands on the world's supply
of the rare metals that are required tomake these batteries as a result of the
(33:05):
Belt and Road initiative that basicallysaw them buy up large swathes of Africa.
In exchange for miningrights and things like that.
Which means that now the Chinese market isable to produce batteries scale that Yeah.
Simply isn't possible toother manufacturing bases.
Yeah.
is
that the geopolitics I think are gonna bereally fascinating 'cause we're talking
in a week, it has not been a good weekfor the kind of other block of power.
(33:28):
The kind of Russia, Iran, Syrian access.
Yeah.
Some of which is, backed by, China.
But it's really interesting that youhave to, hive off China as being in
a very different situation to all theother bits of the world economy that are
opposed to essentially American interests.
Still, the Chinese economy sloweddown, but still in a pretty good place.
But other bits of that axisare not looking so fresh.
(33:50):
No, they're not just thinking
about the knock on effects our economy,we're gonna lose petrol stations.
The wellbeing cafe will be no more.
Where will you
be able to buy?
Where will you able to veryenter present for your wife on
Christmas Eve when the pub
closes,
but you still get superchargers thataren't significantly better than
charging your car from your main at home.
And it'll be a long time before you cancharge as efficiently at home as you can.
So the, yeah, elsewhere, andthis is the thing that actually.
(34:12):
The government really needs toget a grip on because chargers on
a motorway are really expensivecompared with charging a home.
They cost 10 times as much.
In a lot of cases, you can chargea car at a on a home supply if
you have a charger for a Fiverr.
And if you get a car that goes 300miles for a Fiverr, that's nice.
That's good.
People are gonna want that.
Yeah.
Can take advantage of that.
Yeah.
But.
30 or 40% of people in the UKdon't have off street access.
(34:35):
I try and get the green Ubersaround the place and I always
talk to the driver 'cause I'm anerd about this kind of stuff.
And they also, yeah, I chargeon the expensive rapid chargers.
'cause they don't, they livein flats or they live in places
which don't have their own drives.
So they have to use this system, which isvery expensive, so the, government hasn't
really announced what they're going todo on really liberalizing the charging
(34:55):
infrastructure, making it easy foranyone to just bang in charges anywhere.
It's such an interesting storybecause, so part of it is that
kind of very musk guy, let the freemarket reign break free or renovated.
Yeah.
But then it's all has to be backedup by essentially infrastructure
that only the government has gotthe ability to really invest in.
Yeah.
It's gonna be a hassle to do.
Can I just offer a solution?
Yeah.
Milk float.
You don't see them aroundanymore, so there must be a
(35:16):
load of secondhand milk float.
It's not gonna matter.
The
Sinclair C five,
it's durable.
It's also good.
yeah.
Clive Sinclair and Benny Hill has thefastest moment in the west, I think.
Other way forward here.
that's what we've got time on.
The oldest podcast in the world.
You call me your dad.
Super.
Just going with it.
okay.
That's it for this episode of page 94.
Thank you so much for listening,and thank you to Helen, Adam, and
(35:38):
Matt for being here in the room.
We hope you've enjoyed it.
If you have and you'd like themagazine, go to private hyphen.co
uk and buy a subscription.
We'll be back in a week's time.
and actually none of us willbe back in, in a week's time.
Even better
than
but Ian and an All Star cast will beback in a week's time with, the Eyes
Annual Christmas Show, which is live.
It's recorded in frontof a delighted audience.
(35:59):
It's all the best bits ofthe gags from the year.
it's really great.
And that is going out in a week's timeas a little bonus Christmas treat.
And then a little while after that,we will be doing our end of year
Christmas quiz, hotly anticipated.
You won't believe what the scoreshave been like for this year.
It's striking.
so do tune in then.
That's all.
Thank you again for listeningand as always, to Matt Hill of
Rethink Audio for producing.
(36:20):
Bye for now.
Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast
(00:03):
. Hello and welcome back toanother episode of Page 94.
My name's Andrew Hunter Murray, andI'm here in the eye office with Helen
Lewis, Adam McQueen and Matt Muir.
I'm thrilled to be back.
Cut that
fact check.
Come.
Yeah,
sorry.
Yeah, and we're delightedto have you know really?
Oh, thanks.
Yeah.
Great.
Yeah.
Okay.
So we're here to talk about lots ofstuff that's going to be, or has recently
been in the news in between mags.
(00:24):
But first there is a nice update tothe last episode, which covered a
lot of ecclesiastical matters and,there has been a victory for the Eye.
No, in fact a victory for page 94.
We never have victory for Adam,
almost personally, Iwould say, on this one.
Okay.
so the Archbishop Of Canterbury resigned,which you covered on the last podcast
he did.
You mentioned that, he was stilldoing the Christmas services,
(00:45):
still planning on putting on the nicefrock and doing the Christmas services.
Yes.
Which he since dropped out of doing.
He has.
And the last issue of the magazinementioned that the, Archbishop
of Canterbury Teddies are stillavailable in the Canterbury Gift Shop.
in the trademark Welby specs and, withthe trademark, Eton, history, That's, that
was just a lovely little story, but therehas been a further development since then.
(01:05):
Is that right, Adam?
Yes.
He made his resignation speech inthe House of Lords because as Helen
pointed out, all those bishopsstill got a say in our government.
he made the most.
Extraordinarily Tinedresignation speech, didn't we?
no.
He said the thing is, if you wanna makeGod laugh, and I know a lot about that
as an archbishop, then you make plans.
So I had a lot of plans for next year.
Actually.
(01:25):
They won't be happening.
this is honestly genuinely the tone of it.
He said, the person I really feelsorry for is my diary secretary,
if you are going to pity anyone,pity my poor diary secretary.
The crashing sound of noviolins, breaks out in sympathy.
Just the extraordinary.
And then he, kept saying things like,someone was technically in charge.
He's the phrase, technically in charge.
That's what you are.
If you're Archbishop of Canterbury,now you're technically in charge.
(01:47):
Wow.
yeah, and said someone's head had to roll.
I suppose it had to be mine.
it was all the way through.
It was a basically like.
I'm annoyed about this.
I actually had a lot of excitingfrock wearing planned for next year.
It's been ruined by you people, but Iguess someone had to take responsibility.
I guess it had to be me.
It's
very, it is very Greg Wallace.
It's per spectacles, bald man.
not really apologizing.
And then it was
(02:07):
an absolute Greg Wallace because hethen, just as Greg Wallace did, the
very next day, he had to apologizeand say he'd got the tone of it wrong
and he was extremely sorry and, Hemight be showing some repentance for
the first time in this entire affair.
Okay.
Yeah.
And there was a
bishop sitting next to him whohad her head in her hands, who
I believe Adam, is this right?
Is she the bishop of London?
It was only the Bishop ofLondon because, Welby didn't get
(02:28):
Paula Nels as the first, second
choice to Paula Vennels.
you might well haveyour head in your hands.
Yeah.
That, so what was that as inVennels was, nailed on for the job?
He wanted to give the job of Bishopto London, where he wrote about
this at the time, to Paula Vennels,head of the post office and chief
villain in the post office scandal.
Which I mean, give you an early,a early measure of HR competence.
(02:50):
Anyway, he's gone now.
He's not gonna be on yourtelly over Christmas.
He's not gonna be doingthe New Year's message.
So I think the rule of thisis don't mess with Page 94.
Fantastic.
Okay.
And if you want to deliver theChristmas message, you can apply now.
we'll do details at the end of the show.
let's get into the business of thisweek's podcast, and we're gonna
start off from Canterbury to crypto.
(03:11):
Seamless, Matt, there have been alot of stories about crypto recently.
there's been a huge scandal inthe UK this week about a, money
laundering, crypto gang that hasbeen smashed and it's got roots
stretching all the way back to Moscow.
But one of the main reasons peopleare interested in it at the moment
is that crypto is suddenly backin an enormous way because Donald
Trump is going to, I believe,establish a US Federal Reserve of.
(03:32):
He's gonna turn Fort Knoxinto a bitcoins, we're all
going to be using imaginaryinternet money in the future.
that's basically that, Andy, that's allyou need to know fundamentally, I suppose
we need to start with a basic explanationof what we mean when we say crypto.
most simply.
It's a bunch of different currencies,and I use this in inverted commas
because they, as a general rule, arenot backed by any bank or government.
(03:55):
as Helen said, generated throughthe cryptographic process and
which exists on the blockchain,an immutable, decentralized ledger
of transactions, which means thata, you can own them anonymously.
B, you can transfer them anonymously.
And c in theory, every transactionthat is taken using, money that's
(04:18):
on the blockchain, cryptocurrencycan be tracked and is there forever.
So it's a way ofauthenticating, , ownership.
Or purchases or something like that.
okay, so we have this Anonymous,slightly sketchy pseudo currency
whose value fluctuates wildly.
And there are many,different variants of them.
The one that everyonehas heard of is Bitcoin.
(04:38):
Yes.
that was the original one that wasinvented by the mysterious Satoshi
Nakamoto but various things have, asthe terminology goes, forked off that.
So there's Ethereum, which is verybig, which is what tended to be used to
by all of the NFTs that listeners mayremember were briefly very buzzy around
about the time of lockdown and NFTs,just to quickly bracket in that non
(04:59):
fungible
tokens.
And they were pictures of monkeys,
which were among subtle things,which were largely, but not
exclusively, pictures of monkeys.
Yeah,
you're paying a lot of money for a jpeg.
All of this is.
Completely mad to it.
I know, I'm sure our listeners tothe podcast will be deeply invested
in the meme coin scene, but it's,very hard to understand why this is
(05:19):
relating to the real world and to
American fiscal policy.
The thing that's important toremember about cryptocurrencies as
they currently stand is that theyare, whilst they can be used for the
storing of large volumes of money, etcetera, they are in the main used as
incredibly volatile gambling tools.
Okay.
And to launder money, as youmentioned, at the top, as was revealed
(05:41):
in the, in the ft of the weekendand, and very often to buy drugs.
the, main reason back in the early daysof Bitcoin, why anyone would invest in
Bitcoin was to be able to, yeah, buy.
By drugs on the dark web.
So football trading cards, you'relike, panini stickers don't
have any inherent value, buteverybody together decides to that.
Some like the special golden oneis going to be worth 10,000 pounds.
(06:03):
And as long as you can find abuyer for that special golden one.
But what happens is there arethese things called meme coins.
So Doge is an example of that.
Everybody who likes a certainmeme gets very excited about them.
They sell a coin related to it.
And as long as you can find somebodywho is willing to keep buying in and
keep buying in, the price goes, oh.
Up and up.
So they've become the site of what iscalled pump and dumps, which is when I
say I'm issuing Helen Coin and everyoneneeds to get on the ground floor.
(06:26):
'cause this one's going to the moon.
It's gonna be massive.
And then all the, let's behonest, thousands and thousands
of Helen fans buy my Helen coin.
Yeah.
I sell it off, make a massive profit.
I've pumped it up by talkingabout how amazing it is.
And then I dump all of my stockin it, all of my investment
in it, and the value crashes
and all of the Hellenfans lose their shirts.
Yeah.
But I still get that moneyin, real actual money.
(06:47):
and why is America now going,hell leather on this, please?
so partly because of the Donald,despite having previously
indicated skepticism as to the,
it's all a scam.
Yeah.
he said literally it was used tobuy drugs and the Donald famously
does not like drugs and used.
He's right about that though, right?
A hundred percent right about that.
A lot of it is a scam.
(07:08):
except, weirdly, that's the
answer I was looking for.
That's what it is, right?
Okay.
Yeah.
It's a scam.
Okay.
except, weirdly, over the courseof the past four years, pretty much
since effectively covid, Florida.
Has become one of the intellectualcenters of, Bitcoin, a lot of the people
that are heavily into cryptocurrency,the speculation around cryptocurrency
and promoting it as a viable financialalternative system who congregate in
(07:30):
Florida, which is coincidentally whereDonald Trump has spent a significant
portion of the last four years.
Now, if you are someone likeDonald Trump who is fundamentally
at heart, something of a largerthan life huckster personality.
what better vehicle for someone than acurrency that is largely mimetic based on
nothing more than vibes, and which can,if you treat it properly, stand to make
(07:53):
you as the person at a top of a pyramidof it, quite astonishingly wealthy.
He did a lo-fi version of this and that hesold actual, like digital trading cards.
So they were essentially NFTsfeaturing very him in various AI
generated poses looking butch.
And then if you bought the full set,you got a piece of the suit that
he was wearing when he got shot.
So
this was like panini stickersthat we used to trade up still.
(08:14):
But that's how I just,
honestly, that is the way tothink about all these things.
Okay.
They like all money really, unlessit's backed by a government, they
have no value apart from what someonewill agree that the value is right.
It's a kind of collectiveagreement about it.
The market decides what the value is.
This is taking me back to a veryupsetting time for me in 1997 trying
to get the entirety of the Liverpoolfootball squad in panini sticker form.
(08:34):
Do the words gots got
needs still fill you with aterrible sense of anxiety.
They
certainly do.
I, yeah.
so this is.
I'm starting said it.
T the problem about it is that obviouslylots of people bought in Bitcoin 10 years
ago when it was valued much less andhave made whopping great fortunes in it.
Yeah.
So everybody thinks that they can bethe person that does that now, and this
is technically known as the GreaterFool theory, I believe, where you're
(08:56):
trying to find someone who's abigger muppet than you to take these,
overinflated things off your hands.
And there's something really interestingabout the extent to which this.
Plays into a wider set ofthemes in American and frankly
broader Western culture.
Again, this feels very much likethings that have happened since 2019.
It feels like, things thatfermented during covid that bubbled
(09:18):
up as a result of people havinga lot of time on their hands.
Some people having a significantamount of disposable income because
of reduced cost during that time.
Deciding that they were going to use thoseto speculate and invest wildly in these,
at the time, excitingly frothy things.
it was NFTs then now it's meme coins.
And, it's also linked into things likethe deregulation of online gambling
(09:39):
in the states, which has createda frankly terrifying situation of,
Fairly febrile speculation, aroundsports betting, which, if you're
not in sports, you don't need to be.
If you're in celebrities, just buyyour favorite celebrities meme coin
and hope that in 24 hours you'vemultiplied your investment by a hundred
rather than lost your entire house.
(10:00):
And the reason that there's a politicalangle in it is that all of the big
established banks have been, to someextent, creeping towards investing in it.
So Howard Lutnick, who was the Trumptransition chair and will be a Secretary
of Commerce, he is invested in a fundthat has a holding in, I think Tether,
which is one of the stable coins.
and Trump now has, David Sachs,who was in the All In podcast.
He's one of the PayPal Mafia, alongwith Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, that
(10:23):
kind of group of investors that gotvery big at the end of the 1990s.
He's now gonna be Trump's crypto czar.
There's a huge amount of pressurefrom people in Silicon Valley who
like this deregulated finance that'soutside the traditional financial
system for it to become accepted.
The problem is that, they've gotfortunes to lose and gamble, right?
The reason that we have, forexample, things like deposit
(10:44):
protections is because for.
People lower down the chain.
If you put 40,000 pounds, if you putyour kid's college fund, if you put,
your mortgage payment, you don'ttell your wife about it into a meme
coin and suddenly it turns out it'snot as funny as you thought it was.
Yeah.
No one comes to save you.
And this is what, I think isinteresting in terms of the British,
aspect to this, which is thatobviously legislation lags quite.
(11:08):
A long way behind the realityof what people are doing.
So Parliament have just legislatedthat Bitcoin and other digital assets
are considered personal property.
But that was this year, that, so that's,they are having to catch up quite fast.
And I think it's 12% of British adultsnow own Crypto in some form or another.
And a third of people who own Cryptowho were surveyed said, if, something
(11:30):
went wrong, I could raise a complaintwith the financial conduct authority.
Really?
Yeah.
And that's the problem.
You can't, because they're not regulated.
As you say by the FinancialConduct Authority.
do you want to allow people to dothis but regulate what they're doing?
Or do you just simply want to sayto them, look, this is really risky.
You stand to lose everything,
Yeah.
My bank, when, in my banking app, when Ipay people, I dunno if you've seen this,
but it has a popup and all the popupsof all the things you might be doing.
(11:52):
One of them is, are youpaying for cryptocurrency?
And I did press that once andit was like, it went, woo.
Are you absolutely sure you wantto hand over all your money to
someone that you've just met on theinternet that often turns out badly.
It's interesting the extent towhich this is also a very much a,
young people thing and one mightargue a young people problem.
Oh, a young man problem.
I think a young man problem thatit's part of that we're talking
(12:15):
about kind of culture of you listento these podcasts that are very male
and not these, not this, podcast.
Oh, this process is quite male,
I disagree
actually,
but, but it's like a, it's a whole life.
'cause it's seen as being risk taking.
And the whole Trump thing isvery much like we are men.
Men take risks.
Women are like the HR departmentconstantly going Uhuh.
(12:38):
But that's what men do.
They put their money intoHawk Tuah . Girl's meme coin.
Now I think for Adam's benefit we shouldexplain what Hawk Tuah girls meme, coin.
'cause all of, see, imaginehaving this conversation in 2015.
It's ridiculous.
You could, I know what a girl is.
Okay.
I think Should we, I know
what a coin is.
I'm okay with those two minutes.
So do we start with Hawk Tuah
(12:59):
? Hawk Tuah Girl rugged.
A meme coin Adam.
Oh
dear.
Okay.
There's an Adam.
I'm just gonna zone out this for,there's a new American celebrity
whose name is Hailey Welch.
She's known as the Hawk to a Girl and I,here's the BBC explanation of who she is.
This is from the BBC News website, knownonline as the Hawk Tuah . A girl, Ms.
Welch, went viral after speaking.
The ONA matter appear Hawk Tuahimitating the sound of someone
(13:21):
spitting during an interview.
In June, it made the 22-year-old fromBelfast, Tennessee an overnight sensation.
So why would someone be spittingduring an interview in June?
There's, context here.
It was, the answer was aboutwhether or not well wanted to
perform a sex act, which cannotbe described on a family podcast.
How would you make that good?
And she said 'you would hawktuah and spit on that fang'.
And that was enough to, now shehas a podcast called Talk Tuah,
(13:43):
which in fairness is a very, good.
Titles.
Great.
Can't argue that.
But obviously she's got some verysmart people behind her who have
worked out all the ways that you canmake money outta the kind of modern
internet, one of which is having apodcast and adverts and all of that.
She's
got a dating app that she released lastmonth, which is in no way special, but
requires a subscription to use because herfans might want to meet other of her fans
(14:04):
via an officially sanctioned dating app.
Great.
It's like the Matt Hancock app.
it's like the
classified ads in Private Eye.
Okay.
Yeah.
You can put it that way.
And she recently, in fact,within the last week I believe,
launched, her own crypto coin,
right?
We had this podcast forquite a while now, guys.
And we don't have our owndating app or our own Bitcoin.
(14:25):
So what are we doing?
The hell are we doing with our, I dunno.
You're absolutely right.
We
could have Page 94 coin, butwho, I'd like to think that our
Herbert would be so, Herbert Gusset
would put absolutely everything
gusset coin...
into the gusset coin.
Oh, gusset coin.
Come on.
That's good.
Come on.
We were doing memesbefore the internet, and
the problem was that after Welchlaunched this cryptocurrency coin.
(14:48):
various people piled in and thenit lost 95% of its value, right?
So everyone who'd investedlost, lost their, guesses on it.
All that one
assumes that Ms.
Welch hasn't.
Probably not.
I think her lawyers suggest thatshe, with any such suggestion
would be deeply defamatory.
But yes, I think someone, someonehas clearly been on the right side
of this trade for all the peoplewho've been on the wrong side of it.
Yeah.
It speaks to something about how modernfandom works and how there are now so
(15:12):
many creators who build direct theseparasocial relationships and you become
a kind of figure through having yourown podcast, through having your own.
Dating app, every sort of,all the brand extensions.
Yeah.
And we hear about Hawk Tuah Girl.
'cause it's amusing to explainto your parents who that is.
But there are, I'm not your dad
for the purposes of this conversation.
(15:33):
That's the thing.
Official podcast dad, when Ian's not here.
Yeah, great.
Exactly.
what's fascinating about that,that this is a story that will have
been repeated all over the place.
Elon Musk used to pumpDogecoin all the time.
I just think we should put down a markernow that unfortunately people are gonna
be hearing a lot more about this becauseit's going to become deeply involved.
there not, Andy, we've talked aboutgovernment regulation things, but
I remember you doing a couple ofstories a few years back when Rishi
(15:55):
Soak was in the treasury aboutlaunching an official British crypto.
The idea was discussed and then I think itwas kicked into the longer, I think G GB
coin, as I believe it wasg possibly coined coin.
That's right.
Yeah.
is still theoretically floating aboutas a potential idea, Michael, the
other one's theoretically floating.
But what's, what is alsointeresting about this is the.
(16:16):
As he was saying, this is driven byUS culture and US politics, but it is
very much a problem over here as well.
Or it will become more of aproblem over here as well.
because whilst the main markets forthese things, the main people who
create these coins are often thesevery, big high profile international
celebrities that come outta theUS and who are very mimetic.
There is then this secondary layer ofgrift, which is all of the people who are
(16:40):
attempting to make a living by attemptingto sell information about this stuff and
sell the get rich quick schemes, right?
And to get a little bit of sidecash for promoting these things.
So the number of influencers.
Influencers, again, use the invertedcommas, in the UK are making a lot
of money out of promoting Oh really?
A lot of these schemes.
(17:00):
So last month alone, the FSA, whichas of last year now regulates,
advertising around this space.
they've had, interviews undercaution with 20 influencers for
misrepresenting crypto deals, notbeing accurate about risk, et cetera.
But I think it's, fair to saythat 20 is a drop in the ocean
if it's very easy to go on.
(17:20):
I briefly went on.
Reluctantly went on X this morning.
Okay.
and just have a quick look at thesort of people who are currently, as
of today, flogging this stuff on X.
And what's fascinating aboutit is that all of them have in
their biographies words like.
Definitely not advisingconsumers in the uk.
Definitely not giving financial advice.
Proceed with caution, but also wow.
(17:42):
Book a free strategy call with me.
So what's fascinating about thisis that a lot of these people are
avoiding regulation by a, puttingdisclaimers on stuff that they.
Put on social media whether or notthe disclaimers you might think are
adequate is open to debate, but stillthey are at least ostensibly attempting
to abide by the lesser of the law.
But then at various other points,directing, people who follow them to
(18:02):
channels on Telegram or channels onDiscord, which the regulator can't see.
Oh, wow.
And which is basically a small closedcommunity where one bloke at the top tells
a load of people, Hey guys, why don't youchuck a few hundred quid into this week?
That's why I'm interested
when you say 12% ofBritish people hold crypto.
'cause I wonder how many of thosepercentage think that they hold crypto.
Because you quite often read now in theconsumer champion bits of the money page,
(18:25):
someone will get taken in by a scammer.
It says, give me some money.
I'll send you a screenshot showingthat I've got it in my crypto wallet.
And how many people actually havethe level of sophistication to know
that could just be a screenshotof anyone's crypto wallet.
They never have direct access to it.
So what about these magicbeans that I've got?
hold onto them.
Might go into something.
(18:45):
From the giddy heights ofmeme coins and crypto...
Adam, tell us what'sgoing on at the Observer.
for, to right over to old media, theoldest liberal paper in the country.
Was it 1791, I think for set up?
yes.
it is going, it was confirmed lastweek, that the Scott Trust, owners
of the Guardian, and as the guardianin perpetuity, but not the observer.
(19:06):
Have given the initial, goahead to the deal with Tortoise
Media to sell off the Observer.
And they did this on the second day ofa strike by Observer and guardian staff,
just to add insult to a lot of injurythat was already being felt over there.
So you've covered this recentlyon the pod, but this is all
development since then, right?
yep.
Yeah,
this is in the week since we were last.
(19:28):
Corot.
This is in the, fortnight.
Since, the last podcast,yes, since the last issue.
It's, last time we had a mediamisery roundup, and this is Luck.
This now is the very much theflagship misery because they
are very unhappy, aren't they?
This all, this is special
Christmas misery, isn't it?
Yeah.
Last week in Private Eye we quoted,the former guardian critic, Philip Hope
Wallace, and his advice that you shouldnever work for a liberal, employer because
(19:48):
they will sack you on Christmas Eve.
just ahead of Christmas comes the news,that yes, The Observer is being offloaded.
we've, we're talking about this interms of a sale, actually, still quite
murky a lot of the details on this, butsome of the things that have emerged
last week, one is that the, one ofthe people that the Guardian Media
Group are selling, the Observer to is.
The Scott Trust who are going to, beone of the investors in the new thing.
(20:09):
They're putting in 5 million poundstowards the Scott Trust wait, the
observer is partially buying the observer.
the observers owners, the ScottTrust are selling the observer
partially to the Scott Trust.
Yes.
I, they had
a good price for it.
Quite weird.
5 million, that was, got out them slightlyunder sance at the meeting of, of,
journalists with management last week.
So
why,
would they do that?
(20:29):
I think that was done because thefeeling among The Observer staff
was that they were selling off thepaper to a pretty dicey prospect.
And that taught us is a startupand has relied on funding rounds
and there was a feeling that TheObserver was therefore gonna back.
This startup by saying, look,we'll give them a cash injection.
they're much more likely to survive that.
The kind of the, the, anger fromThe Observer staff came from the
(20:52):
kind of, this is essentially softlyshutting the observer because, it
staff has been run down for a while.
It hasn't had its own web presence.
So I think their feeling was that thisis a kind of, this is you offloading
it, getting off your hands and youdon't really care what happens to it.
In order to assuage that, the ScotTrust said, look, we're gonna, we
are willing to put some money in.
It makes it much more likely thatthis brand will survive long term.
(21:12):
I think that feeling was probably bestexpressed in the meeting, last week
by Charles Garsa, who's the chair ofthe, Guardian Media Group who used a
really weird passive voice construction.
He said The reserve a much smallerbrand and it's found it much more
difficult to obtain the investmentit requires in recent years.
Which why it then has to be, whichis a bit like staffing someone for a
few years and they say, gosh, you'relooking terribly thin, aren't you?
(21:33):
It's just, okay.
Do you want to know who some ofthe other investors are who are
piling in two tortoise to put footup the money for the observer?
Of course.
one is, yellow Wood, which is privateequity company, which as far as
I can see, specializes mostly ininvesting in shower gels and makeup.
And as we all
know.
Private equity makes everybusiness that invest in better.
Oh
yeah, Lovely stuff.
standard investment, who do have some,some media investments, they're behind.
(21:55):
grad cart, remember it?
Vanity Fair Editors Air Mail thing,which is like a weekly newsletter.
That's a newsletter.
Yeah.
he sent out, yeah.
And a few other things.
Malcolm Gladwell'spodcast company as well.
They've invested quite heavily.
Kin
Industries.
That's the one.
yep, So there is somereasoning behind that.
This day, which turns out not tobe private equity, it's actually
a charitable foundation set up by.
Gary Luner, who is a big,donor to the Labor Party.
(22:16):
And also the last one I've goton my list is Fillion capital,
So all of this money is going intotortoise, is going through the tortoise
actually, and coming out the other endof it through the tortoise to grab.
Okay.
what is the prospect for the actualObserver hacks who are gonna be parceled
up and transported over to Tortoise?
(22:37):
this was the other big developmentof last week because they are not
necessarily all going to be parceled up.
You'll remember from our last podcast,listeners that we were talking
about the amazing deal that allGuardian Observer staff have with.
Between their union and managementthere, where there can be no
compulsory redundancies whatsoever.
So they run a, that's a fantasticallycushy agreement, which is,
unusual for most workplaces.
They have managed to getwritten in as part of this deal.
(22:59):
the fact that all existing termsand conditions of employment will be
honored by Tortoise, but also the anyObserver staff who don't wish to go,
and, work for Tortoise will be offeredvoluntary redundancy on enhanced terms.
And that was one of thethings that was causing.
Particular fury at the Observer because,there was a voluntary redundancy round
earlier this year, which quite a lot ofhigh profile people took and jumped ship
(23:22):
closed just before they discovered that.
In fact, their management had beenin negotiations to flog off their
paper for some months before that.
that makes, to me, makes a lot of sense.
I think that's, again, Ithink torts have got a really.
Brilliant deal outta this in terms ofwhat they got from The Guardian, because
you have to think if you are a nimblestartup, you might not necessarily need
absolutely everybody, particularly,long established and therefore quite
(23:43):
well paid writers and columnists.
And if they can.
if they can get, if they can, what theyseem to actually want is the branding and
the news, like the newsprint presence.
They don't necessarily want Absolutely.
All of the staff, although they'veagreed to take them on in principle.
So that bit looks slightly goodand, as you say, good for the
staff that they can also exit onpretty decent, generous terms.
(24:07):
the people I'd be a bit worried aboutas well is the existing Tortoise staff,
because it does seem that tortoise,which has already pivoted from being
a slow news organization, which wasthe idea behind the name Tortoise.
Yeah.
To a kind of podcast producernow seems to be flipping over
completely to being, uniquely, thepublisher of a weekly newspaper.
So all of those people who joinedthinking it was gonna be one of those
things before in a slightly odd position.
(24:28):
Now, do we have any feel
for how readers of the Observer might.
Feel these changes.
We know
we, have a little, and we have thatfrom the edition of The Guardian,
which, which came out the day afterthe two days of strikes last week.
for those people who are stillbuying a paper, they may have felt
rather shortchanged by two very thineditions of The Guardian last, last
Wednesday and Thursday, which, Theymanaged to fill out the entire feature
(24:49):
section with just a very difficultquiz from some school in the island.
Man.
Nice.
That they publish every year.
I never get any of those right.
No, it's impossible, isn't it?
Completely and
utterly impossible.
but, most other things were missing andalmost every byline in there brilliantly.
We just said guardian staff.
Guardian staff, which I guess wasjust cath finer and, oh, I was gonna
(25:10):
say, and her husband, but even AdrianGiles did not turn up for work.
He was absent from the pagesof the Guardian, last Thursday.
So, that was yet another delight thatGuardian readers was missing out on.
But on Saturday there was, a letterspage, and that did have some fairly
excoriating letters from readers saying,if you think it's such a great case to
be made for selling off the Observer,why don't you tell us what it is?
(25:31):
And certainly in that meeting last week,the council I, I hear from speaking
to various Observer and Guardianpeople, is that they remain very,
unconvinced and extremely angry as well.
So it's not a happy Christmas comingup over at the Guardian and Observer.
our third section today is aboutsomething called the ZEV mandate, and
(25:52):
this is something that was actuallyin the latest issue of the MAG.
It's a piece by Hedgehog, who is oneof our most secret correspondents.
Hedgehog writes all about mattersof road transportation, and this
piece was about the very confused andconflicting signals that are being sent
on the matter of electric vehicles.
Not only the signals beingsent To the British car
industry, but also to customers.
(26:13):
And firstly, what is the ZEV mandate?
Earlier on I said those wordsto Helen and Adam, and they both
looked at me like I'd grown horns.
I think that's fair to say.
I
thought it was a sanctioned oligarch.
Genuinely, I
just assumed it was another Bitcoin.
So
well, so the Zev mandate, zero emissionvehicles mandate Is the mechanism by
which the government is trying to getBritain to switch over from petrol and
(26:36):
diesel, two electric cars, and they'retrying to do it in relatively short order.
And there has been a lot of discussionin the press recently about whether
this is feasible, whether thetimescale is reasonable, whether the
mechanisms being used are reasonable.
Am I right in thinking that itwas supposed to be by 2030 and
it's been pushed back to 2035?
you'll be staggered to hear it'sbeen completely hashed around
(26:57):
with it almost every stage.
Theresa May, who let's not forget,introduced, the, idea of, net zero
by 2050 and brought it into law inone of her final acts in Parliament.
She said, let's do 2040.
And to be clear, that data is, all newcars being sold will be electric, right?
It's not to do with, you won't be,you'll be able to drive your petrol car.
(27:18):
You'll be able to drive a secondhandand buy a secondhand petrol car.
It's about new cars all beingswitched over, Cleaned up, on dirty
tap off by that point, 2040 fine.
Boris Johnson then said, Ithink we can do it by 2030.
Have a crack.
You'll be staggered.
You'll be staggered to hear that.
Might not have been completely workedout, often an ambitious target will get
(27:39):
to the moon by the end of this decade.
That kind of thing.
Spurs action and innovation.
Fine.
Rishi Sak then said, no, let's do 2035.
Actually, it's all been going a bitfast and it was all looking a bit
difficult, so let's not do that.
Car manufacturers must be fuming.
They have,
yeah.
Literally
that fuming is, good
for not for very much longer.
They'll just be overheating time.
(28:00):
They'll
just be gently buzzing.
They are because they have put a lotof effort and energy, although maybe
not as much as a lot of people saythey should into this transition, and
they keep getting different signals.
Labor was elected saying wewill bring it back to 2030.
Reestablishing Boris Johnson's initialvery ambitious goal, they have not
(28:21):
yet confirmed, in a legislative sense.
That's definitely what's gonna happen.
But what they have saidis, we are keeping.
We're back to the sanction, oligo, theZev mandate, and that is the ratchet
mechanism by which you get more and moreelectric cars sold each year up to the
point of which it's, a hundred percent.
So this year all car manufacturershave to sell 22% of cars.
(28:44):
The cars they sell have to be electric.
Do car manufacturers not like this?
'cause my impression was thatactually building electric cars is
good and people do, when they getthem, like them, that, people tend to
be worried about the range of them.
people do tend to like them when they'vegot 'em and say, oh, I wouldn't go
back to petrol, like sort of 97% Carmanufacturers have had a nightmarish
(29:04):
time, but it depends how quicklythey've invested or haven't invested.
So the cars which have, like Tesla, veryhappy with the Zev mandate 'cause they
sell a hundred percent electric cars
by contrast.
Yeah.
having famously, recentlyrebranded and yeah.
With its commitments, goal Electrichasn't, which is one of the
reasons why it's had to pivot.
Exactly.
Okay.
Yeah, And, Stellantis, which is a giantumbrella, which has, Fiat, Pergo, voxel
(29:29):
load loads of different brands under it.
They have been really slow.
So they have been frantically lobbyingto go slower and say, oh, we think
this ZMA is a bit, much, bit soon.
But it completely depends howmuch they have or haven't done.
And how much manufacturinghave they got based in Britain?
Presumably that allties into the political
well,
with SM port has to go all electrical.
That's quite a big deal up in the, Yes.
(29:50):
So Stellantis have said, we're gonnaclose our voxel plant in Luum, which is
one of their two big plants in the uk.
And they've been tryingto link it to the mandate.
They've been trying to say,this is actually thanks to us
being forced to go electric.
And what the problem is, that it'snot really, 'cause globally they've
been having a nightmarish time.
They've just had an awful, they'vehad to recall like 400,000.
Petrol cars in America.
'cause the steering wheels werefaulty that like they were, yeah.
(30:13):
They were never, they weren'tdoing tremendously and
haven't been for some years.
And the sort of shadow underall of this is Chinese cars,
which are increasingly electric.
I think it's half of all new cars now inChina are electric, which are quite cheap.
And they're pretty good.
And Western car manufacturers are really.
They haven't responded fast enough.
And so they're now having to rely eitheron tariffs, which are double-edged because
(30:36):
it means that they can't sell their carsto China if the tariffs are raised on
both sides or, they're having to relyon, very expensive cars that people
buy, but they're buying fewer numbers.
The reason this is on the news atthe moment is the big lobbying going
on, seeing will the new governmentstick to the guns, that it was
handed by the outgoing conservativesor will they water things down?
(30:57):
And Louise Hague, the transportsecretary, was one of the two
big voices in the room on that.
RRIP.
RIP
and the other is, Jonathan Reynolds,who's the business secretary.
so the one thing that I keep on seeingsaid in certain corners of the web about
electric cars is that one mustn't ever buyone because if one does, the battery is
liable to explode and burst into flamesat any given moment, and you will be
(31:18):
mated as though you were driving a Tesla.
Is this true?
Mine
has caught fire every single day.
I've had it so far and it'sbeen a flipping nightmare,
but this is why I think to go back to it,is the involvement of Elon Musk in the
Trump and being first body is fascinating.
'cause I know I've said this before,but the Trump speech that I watched
at the rally, he had to reverse outof saying that electric vehicles
were bad when in the late, A neuronsparked somewhere at the back of
(31:39):
course, for people who want them.
They're great.
Yes.
And so I think there is a reallyinteresting counter pressure,
which is obviously that yeah.
That Elon Musky is hanging around theUS president lobbying constantly for
his electric car companies completely.
So that of all the bits of theenergy transition that I think
might very well happen on schedulethis one is, this one's a goer.
Yeah.
But, and environmentally, Andy, what'sthe, what are there issues with, because
(32:01):
it's lithium batteries, isn't it?
Yeah.
Where are they getting the lithium from?
Oh,
there are a few differentbattery technologies basically.
There's no way of making a carthat it doesn't involve extracting
something from the ground.
The advantage of, I think the electricthing is that you don't have to keep
extracting several billion tons a year ofoil to refine and turn into your petrols.
Once you've got the chemicalsin your car's battery.
You should be able to recyclethose pretty efficiently.
(32:22):
'cause at the moment, not many carsare being recycled electric cars
because they last a very long time.
But once they start being recycled,the idea is that eventually your
car, at the moment, which you'vegot, you run it for 10 years, you
wanna change it, you recycle it.
The chemicals in there will makea slightly more efficient battery
next time round the same quantityof chemicals 'cause battery
technology would've improved.
So that's the bigadvantage, which is great.
(32:43):
And the other big advantage isyou don't have to keep on buying
petrol for it all the time.
in terms of where those chemicals comefrom, what are the interesting things
about, to go back to the point aboutChina and the increasing Chinese dominance
of the electrical market, one of thereasons for that is that they have a.
I wouldn't say a monopoly, but they havesignificant hands on the world's supply
of the rare metals that are required tomake these batteries as a result of the
(33:05):
Belt and Road initiative that basicallysaw them buy up large swathes of Africa.
In exchange for miningrights and things like that.
Which means that now the Chinese market isable to produce batteries scale that Yeah.
Simply isn't possible toother manufacturing bases.
Yeah.
is
that the geopolitics I think are gonna bereally fascinating 'cause we're talking
in a week, it has not been a good weekfor the kind of other block of power.
(33:28):
The kind of Russia, Iran, Syrian access.
Yeah.
Some of which is, backed by, China.
But it's really interesting that youhave to, hive off China as being in
a very different situation to all theother bits of the world economy that are
opposed to essentially American interests.
Still, the Chinese economy sloweddown, but still in a pretty good place.
But other bits of that axisare not looking so fresh.
(33:50):
No, they're not just thinking
about the knock on effects our economy,we're gonna lose petrol stations.
The wellbeing cafe will be no more.
Where will you
be able to buy?
Where will you able to veryenter present for your wife on
Christmas Eve when the pub
closes,
but you still get superchargers thataren't significantly better than
charging your car from your main at home.
And it'll be a long time before you cancharge as efficiently at home as you can.
So the, yeah, elsewhere, andthis is the thing that actually.
(34:12):
The government really needs toget a grip on because chargers on
a motorway are really expensivecompared with charging a home.
They cost 10 times as much.
In a lot of cases, you can chargea car at a on a home supply if
you have a charger for a Fiverr.
And if you get a car that goes 300miles for a Fiverr, that's nice.
That's good.
People are gonna want that.
Yeah.
Can take advantage of that.
Yeah.
But.
30 or 40% of people in the UKdon't have off street access.
(34:35):
I try and get the green Ubersaround the place and I always
talk to the driver 'cause I'm anerd about this kind of stuff.
And they also, yeah, I chargeon the expensive rapid chargers.
'cause they don't, they livein flats or they live in places
which don't have their own drives.
So they have to use this system, which isvery expensive, so the, government hasn't
really announced what they're going todo on really liberalizing the charging
(34:55):
infrastructure, making it easy foranyone to just bang in charges anywhere.
It's such an interesting storybecause, so part of it is that
kind of very musk guy, let the freemarket reign break free or renovated.
Yeah.
But then it's all has to be backedup by essentially infrastructure
that only the government has gotthe ability to really invest in.
Yeah.
It's gonna be a hassle to do.
Can I just offer a solution?
Yeah.
Milk float.
You don't see them aroundanymore, so there must be a
(35:16):
load of secondhand milk float.
It's not gonna matter.
The
Sinclair C five,
it's durable.
It's also good.
yeah.
Clive Sinclair and Benny Hill has thefastest moment in the west, I think.
Other way forward here.
that's what we've got time on.
The oldest podcast in the world.
You call me your dad.
Super.
Just going with it.
okay.
That's it for this episode of page 94.
Thank you so much for listening,and thank you to Helen, Adam, and
(35:38):
Matt for being here in the room.
We hope you've enjoyed it.
If you have and you'd like themagazine, go to private hyphen.co
uk and buy a subscription.
We'll be back in a week's time.
and actually none of us willbe back in, in a week's time.
Even better
than
but Ian and an All Star cast will beback in a week's time with, the Eyes
Annual Christmas Show, which is live.
It's recorded in frontof a delighted audience.
(35:59):
It's all the best bits ofthe gags from the year.
it's really great.
And that is going out in a week's timeas a little bonus Christmas treat.
And then a little while after that,we will be doing our end of year
Christmas quiz, hotly anticipated.
You won't believe what the scoreshave been like for this year.
It's striking.
so do tune in then.
That's all.
Thank you again for listeningand as always, to Matt Hill of
Rethink Audio for producing.
(36:20):
Bye for now.
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