137: How Trump Ate The British Media

Ian, Helen, Adam and Andy discuss how the US president has thrown Britain's media off-kilter, and  the new 'Abundance' theory which will eventually give us all solar-powered hover cars (maybe). Plus, a valedictory interview with Tim Minogue looking back over 26 years of Rotten Boroughs. 

Episode Transcript

Maisie (00:00):
Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast

Andy (00:03):
Hello and welcome to another episode of Page 94.
My name is Andrew Hunter Murray, and I'mhere in the Private Eye office with Helen
Lewis, Adam MacQueen and Ian Hislop.
Later on in the show we're gonna betalking to Tim Minogue, the Eye's...
I think we can say 'veteran' RottenBoroughs correspondent about a lifetime
spent looking at dodgy local government,up and down and across the UK.
But for now we're gonna be talkinga little bit about... the media, as

(00:26):
we so often do, in particular abouthow the press has gone a bit bananas
over America and don't quite know whatto do now, that the only thing you
can talk about is America all day.

Adam (00:35):
Day.

Andy (00:35):
And there are lots of other things happening, but there is quite a lot of,
news about the fact that it's LiberationWeek or is it Liberation Week two?
is

Ian (00:43):
there a tariff on bananas?
I'm, pretty worried by this intro.

Andy (00:48):
So Adam, you, I'm afraid have to read a lot of The Telegraph.

Adam (00:53):
I do.
I read a lot of this, but thefunniest thing is you see one of
these few things where, the, pressare pretty much united on this one.
'cause there's not muchto say other than, whoa!
Blimey, and God knows we'll be bythe time this actually goes out
in terms of e indexes and things.
But there's a couple of columnistswho've had a valiant go.
Simon Jenkins tried to do one of hisslightly contrarian pieces where he said,

(01:13):
actually, this might be marvelous, butdidn't sound entirely convinced by it.
And,

Andy (01:18):
Nick Timothy, who's, happens among other things to be fresh ish conservative
mp, he's a telegraph correspondent.
His, piece was saying Trump is exposingthe utter incoherence of star's
economic agenda, which I thoughtwas a pretty fresh take to have.

Adam (01:32):
it's a long sort of way round to do that, isn't it?
It's,

Andy (01:38):
so there are people trying to fly the flag,

Adam (01:40):
his colleague Tim Stanley said this morning, we were
recording on Monday morning.
Am I alone in admiring what?
Trump's doing, it was justthat rarity, isn't it?
When there's a question mark in aheadline, usually the answer is no.
But actually in this case, yes,Tim, I'm afraid You pretty much are.
And even he had to admit, by theend of his fairly lengthy, column
in the Telegraph, that there's, hethinks there's about a 10% chance
that this will all turn out well.

(02:00):
at least Trump's trying to do something.

Helen (02:02):
It's a sort of systematic problem for columnists really, which is that the
take that is Trump is bad and tariffsare generally agreed by economists to
be a bad idea seems woefully basic.
So you can see people desperatelycasting round to go, Isn't
there a more exciting way?
And I just feel like we've had thisnow for the both of the Trump terms
is that lots of columnists have gone.
Hang on a minute.

(02:22):
I know in some ways he looks likean orange fascist, but stop for a
minute and think about whether ornot he's the shocker system needs.
And unfortunately he has just a habitof terribly, embarrassing those people.

Andy (02:34):
Yeah, a lot of your readers will be pensioners, on these papers,
and they pensioners traditionallyquite like the value of their pensions
remaining roughly where they are.

Ian (02:42):
I like the, people who dug up the, Smoot Hawley Tariff Act of 1930,
which again, I thought, this is good.
This is, at least worth a look at.
But, my American friends tell me thisused to be taught in American schools as
the worst congressional act ever, whichwas putting tariffs up to 20% in 1930.

(03:04):
Followed by something they alllearned about, which was called the
Great Depression, and which, he'sgonna make the depression great
again... as our cartoonist put it.
So great.
it's gonna be thegreatest depression ever.
You do have to dig quite deep tofind anyone who's got anything
other than... 'oh dear.'

Helen (03:22):
Elon Musk must have taken a particularly large dose of Kettamine,
because he's, found almost nothingto say about tariffs at all.
He did a, like a sort of video in whichhe said he hoped that one day there'd be
zero tariffs between Europe and America.
And You're like, yes, but the currentpolicy of the man who's, prime Minister
you're effectively acting for is,
It's 20% tariffs on the EU.

(03:43):
So it's.
very much not that, is it Elon?
Andrew Kaczinski of CNN had this quitegood joke, which was basically that Fox
News were desperately casting aroundfor transgender athletes to talk about,
rather than showing like everyoneelse a ticker of the stock market
just falling the thing that's obviousis that MAGA is a personality cult.
It's not a conventionalpolitical movement.
So whatever Dear Leader saystoday, you have to agree with.

(04:06):
And if in two weeks time he says,actually, I've made incredible deals
with everybody and now I'm callingoff the tariffs, then everyone then
immediately has to, it's like proper,like Chemical Ali stuff, right?
It Is, where you just have toagree with the latest thing the
party has told you to believe.

Ian (04:19):
Here, the, suddenly quite obscure awards events, it's the
Olivier's, the theatre awards for theWest End that does not usually make
the front page after the weekend?
This weekend?
Hello?
There's a huge feature on the OlivierAwards and not very much on plunging
stock markets... in particularpapers who do not want to cover it.

Adam (04:39):
It was fascinating 'cause there was a, definitely a thing in, in, in
more right wing papers here of afterTrump was unexpectedly reelected, last
November of going, hey, it was thatsort of, you talked before about that
bash the hippie thing on the left, butthis was if the lefties are unhappy
with this, must be a good thing.
And actually, there were a lot.
Papers were on, very much on boardwith the, kind of culture warry side

(04:59):
of it, and as you say, bashing transpeople and all, that kind of thing.
When it comes to the actual economics ofit on, on, newspaper companies that are
listed on stock markets and are, gonnasee their shares suffering with everything
else, I think gonna be a very differentview of these things, aren't there?

Helen (05:13):
it?
the absolute worst thing is thefact that lots of people are
affecting any level of surprise.
And I think it speaks to what the problemof Trumpism has been, which is the
assumption that he says batch it thingsjust to get people to vote for him.
But he doesn't really
believe them.
But he has always believed in tariff.
He was talking to Oprah about it inthe 1990s, the guy he appointed Peter
Navarro as his trade representative, asseems to have been the one who came up

(05:35):
with this sort of slightly mad formula,where you divide it by penguin and then
add on the number you first, in Guam.
and he said this repeatedlyon the campaign trail.
Kamala Harris said repeatedlyon the campaign trail, his
policies will make you poorer.
And that you've still got people like,bill Blackman, the venture capitalist,
who suddenly radicalized himselfinto, supporting Trump 'cause of
university's Palestine protests Suddenlygoing, I hope cooler heads prevail.

(05:58):
And you're like, no, you elect, the

Andy (06:00):
you're electing the hot head.

Helen (06:01):
was Donald Trump.
So it's fascinating

Adam (06:05):
there has been an effort to present it as well.
He's been saying this for 40 years, asif this was somehow a, a good take on.
And the last person I can remember whohadn't changed their politics for 40 years
was Jeremy Corbin and actually generallysaid, I, it might be an idea to look
at kind of world events and think aboutthings that have happened in the meantime
and may maybe some evidence, whichdefinitely isn't happening with Trump.
But,
but

Helen (06:23):
people are bringing up
Brexit now.
Did you hear this sad moment?
Mark Carney's now Prime Ministerof Canada saying, look, haven't we
learned something from Brexit thatinstituting trade barriers is bad?
And I like the fact that we havenow become a cautionary tale of
people who committed a mad act of
self harm.

Andy (06:38):
question.
Well,

Ian (06:38):
Helen has talked before about how all narratives start to merge now.
so that if you start off talkingabout tariffs and fairly specific
and you just end up in culturewars and somewhere else, and that's
been very convenient for Trump and.
a, failing of the media andactually to separate the issues and
say, can we talk about this bit?

(06:59):
And then can we talk about this bit?
Because, they're not the same.

Helen (07:02):
Yeah,
I think that's true.
The Brexit benefit, I think you can arguethat Trump is treating us differently,
but that's also to do with the factthat as an individual country, we don't
have a big trade deficit with the us.
And you could argue that ourvaccine procurement was actually
a lot more efficient than the eus.
But if you're going to do that, youare going to have to acknowledge
the other half of it, which is that.
Our economy generally would be in a betterstate if we hadn't unmoored ourselves

(07:23):
from our biggest trading partner.
And that's the bit, the otherside of the scale, that I'm not
seeing a lot of, acknowledgement

Andy (07:30):
We, we found some fantastic floating wood, in the wake of the shipwreck
that we all just put ourselves through.
Yeah.

Adam (07:36):
The other thing that a lot of our newspapers are doing now
is a transatlantic straddling act.
which is for two reasons, becausethe expansion of newspapers in
recent years has not been inthe form of printed newspapers.
It's been online, and a lotof that has been America.
both the Guardian and the male onlinehave had incredible success over there.
And also the reason that othernewspapers are piling in with the,
with a American investment and Americanfacing websites is that you get more

(07:59):
money for advertising over there.
So that's where the growth is.
no one is making any money offadvertising on this side of the

Helen (08:05):
that might solve itself.
'cause the reason is, theadverts on the Atlantic website,
for example, are beautiful.
They're just
that sort of net ofportrait and luxury watches.
And I think, God and then Iremember that's 'cause Americans
have got a lot of money.
So that may now resolve

Andy (08:15):
Not anymore.
Yeah.

Adam (08:17):
But also it means that there's a sort of editorial line about, 'cause the
increasing feeling I get when I read I'm,to bring it back to my, my, my obsession,
the telegraph is that a lot of it is beingdictated by kind of reader comments on
there that are not coming from people whowe think of as being telegraph readers.
They are coming from people.
Either across the Atlantic whoare mad Magis or Russian bots.
Very possibly.
But it's pushing thenewspaper in a direction.

(08:39):
I was thinking back 20 years to telegraphas the, the paper of Charles Moore and
Peregrine Worse to people like that.
It's a very different beast now, isn't it?
it looks the same the paper outlet.
But the thing I always thought you couldjudge The Daily Telegraph I was the reader
offers, which were absolutely accurate.
They knew who their readers were.
It was always shooting sticks or very,nice kind of cast iron garden furniture.

(09:02):
Yeah.
And you look at it now and you just thinkwhat paper is out there that is that it,
is selling and repeating the worldview of.
Of the guys in the red chords andthe Glas, where have they gone?
Because that's definitely not what the

Andy (09:15):
the red chords of all I'm afraid have been torn up to make red hats.
Okay.
That's

Adam (09:18):
enough.

Andy (09:18):
happened.
Yeah.

Adam (09:19):
but
Make Cordy great again.
That's where I wanna,

Helen (09:22):
you can't tell a huge amount about media consumption by the adverts.
Like I'm obsessed with, almostall YouTube podcasts are built
on crypto and supplements
as we previously discussed,
So it's not a surprise thatthey're all anti-establishment.
And so I think yeah.
There is a very basic economic analysisof British journalism has just become a,
an outcrop of American journalism for,not for ideological reasons, but just

(09:42):
for purely

Adam (09:43):
but it's literally across the board as well.
the Telegraph newspaper splash a couple ofweeks ago was, whether or not Mark Carney,
the new Canadian Prime Minister, had,committed plagiarism in his Oxford degree.
And you just think, this wouldsell very, well in Canada.
But who actually, especially sincethe story was kinda shot down in
about the fourth paragraph by someonefrom Oxford who said, no, this
isn't evidence of plagiarism at all.

(10:03):
It just seemed a very,odd agenda that's gone.
And part of that is down to thefact that paper is completely
rudderless at the moment.
it's.
Been in limbo since when?
How long?
We've been talking about the, thepossible sale of the telegraph

Andy (10:14):
or three years?

Adam (10:16):
June, 2023 was when?
when it first went on salewas snapped up by Redbird.
I, MI, who still own it.
And the latest twist in that I haveto update you is we did a podcast
about him a few months ago and said,farewell Then David Montgomery.
I ended that by warning.
He'll be back.
Don't worry.
He will be back.
Guess what?
He's back.
Potentially he's back in thebidding for the telegraph,

(10:36):
with the help of, Todd Boley.
Am I pronouncing that right?
The, the, owner of Chelsea FC?
they're possibly coming in.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Am I looking at my football experts here?

Andy (10:46):
there is one thing at The Telegraph that is properly consistent though,
in which I think they have shown as areal growth area, and that is headlines
with, a particular phrase in them.
can I just share a few of these with you?
So I thought, Be fair Andy.
only go back, let's say eight weeks orso, just see if you can spot the phrase,
Unless Labour acts first, Britain'sgrowth mission... is doomed to fail.

(11:08):
Labour's plans to drag sick Britainback to work are... doomed to fail.
Labour's benefits cutsplan is doomed to fail.
Europe's coalition of the willing.

Helen (11:17):
Is it doomed to?
It's

Andy (11:18):
doomed fail.
It's doomed to.
Starmer's peacekeepingplan: doomed to fail.
Europe's anti- Elon Muskspace challenger... quite a
long one... doomed to fail.

Wealth tax... doomed to fail (11:26):
in the seventies, and also again now.
And I just think this is a really, Ithink we're gonna be entering a phase
where every other headline in thetelegraph and eventually every single
one will, will start with those words.

Adam (11:37):
but it also demonstrates my point.
The, Telegraph these days just seemsto be telling you how awful Britain is.
I get the same feelingwhenever I tune into GB news.
It's just telling me thatBritain is this awful dreadful
how hellscape where everythingis going horribly wrong.
You think you've called cheapy news.
got a union jack in your master.
Are you not supposed to be patriotic?
It's the

Ian (11:57):
The part of being GB news is talking down Britain

Adam (12:01):
absolutely is.

Ian (12:01):
other people of talking it down.
It's essentially an expat's view.
I've always noticed this overthe years, you expect that people
who've
chosen not to
live in Britain anymore, but read
the daily Express and drink largeamounts of imported, British spirits.
by about midday.
They tend to tell you
that Britain is a terrible place to live.

(12:22):
They wouldn't know, they don't
live there.
Anymore
but they do listen.
and now in increasing toAmerican versions of what
Britain's

Helen (12:29):
Yes.
Richard Littlejohn was a real pioneerof this in retrospect, wasn't he?
When he took
to Florida to go, it'svery rainy in Britain.
I assume,

Ian (12:36):
Can I ask one question

Adam (12:38):
then?

Ian (12:38):
Can
I keep the confusion aboutbuying the telegraph going in the
joke section?

Adam (12:43):
Oh, that's
not going anywhere.
couple of months.
yeah.
Because the condition that, is obviouslyvery clear from Todd Boley and and
David Montgomery's possible bid isthat they ain't gonna pay 500 million,
which is what Redbird IMI want forit now, not unsurprisingly, redbird.
Who you'll remember with the, ArabEmirates backed, consortium who,
bought the Telegraph and then weretold that they couldn't have it.

(13:04):
Not surprisingly, they don'tget a newspaper for it.
They do at least want their moneyback, but everyone agrees that they
paid massively over the odds on it.
they, paid 600 million.
they've since made back a hundredmillion from, Paul Marshall, owner of
GB News as aforementioned who boughtthe spectator titles, which were part
of the Telegraph group before that.
There's still a 500 million bill, whichthey are determined to make that, and

(13:24):
this is the problem, is that no onethinks it's worth that no one is willing
to hand the money over and no one canforce red put to actually sell it either.
So we are lost in this weird limbo,which even people at the, Charles Moore
described it as being on the house arrest.
Chris Evans, the editor, hastalked about the inevitable
sense of drift at the paper.
He seems to have absented himselfentirely from editing duties to try
and sort out the future of the paper.

(13:46):
And it's left to his, deputy RobertWin, who's already tried to jump
ship, you might remember last year,and go to the Washington Post.
only for things to blow up thereand, that paper to be proved
to be in an even worse state.
Under former telegraph, editor Will Lewis.
so Robert Winnick came, back.
So basically the person that got incharge doesn't even wanna be there.

Ian (14:03):
our attempts to sell the Telegraph.
Doomed
to fail.

Andy (14:11):
Right now we're going to turn for our second section of this show, to a
story that deals a lot with America.
Oh, no, we've done it.
We've done it again.
It's

Helen (14:19):
gonna be Very British.
Very, those eeb speed spidersare gonna get mention.
Andy.

Andy (14:23):
Okay, let's talk about abundance Helen, What is it?

Helen (14:28):
this is a new book that is out from New York Times columnist ASRA Klein
and my Atlantic colleague Derek Thompson.
Which is about basically pickingan argument with liberals about the
fact that if you look in Americaat blue states and blue cities,
it's really hard to build anything.
Ezra Klein is originally from California,so this is their big flagship example.
They've been trying to buildhigh speed rail in California

(14:49):
for what, like a decade now.
Oh, To more than that.
and it's really hard.
I was in San Francisco, it's whereI wrote my, IUSI column from, and
it is almost impossible to build,a public affordable housing there.
the cost per unit isabout 700 to $800,000.
And why is that?
there's a load of things.
There's very tight construction unions.

(15:10):
Which won't even let youbuild modular housing.
when you get bits that are pre-packed,even though those factories are
unionized, they're really against that.
There are environmental regulations.
There are in America, there is zoning,which has an explicitly racist history.
Most of zoning comes from wealthywhite families who don't want houses
of multiple occupation, which theythink will be filled with minorities.
so you know, all of these things thatlook like they're left wing principles,

(15:34):
the idea that you'd have kind of quotasin the construction industry, all of
that, everything gets kinda hung on.
New buildings and infrastructure S thereare kind of Christmas tree, essentially.
Like all of these things that individuallyare quite good ideas, like strong
environmental protections, strong workerprotections, social justice initiatives.
But the end result is that people arestill living under bridges 'cause there

(15:55):
aren't any homes or whatever it might be.
Or people are still in theircars, belching out fossil fuels.
So they're basically at aninteresting moment for the Democratic
party while it's basically.
Sobbing in its room
alone.
trying to say, look, wouldn't it be greatif we had this A positive vision for what
we could offer to people that is not justabout us stopping stuff getting done?

(16:17):
And so Stan was really into this and it'sinteresting 'cause it comes I think mostly
outta the YIMBY movement, the Yes in mybackyard movement, which in Britain and
America has been much more cross partisan.
So this is fascinating.
It's a political tendencythat takes in everyone from.
Aaron Busi
Of luxury automated communism now allthe way through to a Sam Bowman who

(16:37):
used to be at the Adam Smith Institute.
So there is a cross party consensusin both Britain and America.
It's much too hard tobuild new rail lines.
It's much too hard to build new housing.
And we've ended up with this sortof sense that things are stuck

Ian (16:52):
But this is, this is followed by, shall we deregulate everything?

Helen (16:57):
that's the problem.
Why?
And that's why they've explicitlyaddressed this to the left because
there is a part of the, left liberalspace that just instantly hears this and
thinks what you are is like someone fromthe kind of, was it pro and chained?
Was
that terrible?
The book from Liz Trusts and quasiQuaye, saying, which is basically
let's make it really easy to firepeople and send children up chimneys.

(17:18):
Yeah.
Or the kind of Elon Musk do agenda, whichis, why don't I just go into government
and smash everything with a hammer?
then try and put togethersomething much smaller afterwards.
This is

Ian (17:26):
Dominic Cummings too.
Yes.
We can't entirely blame it
on,
the
American, do you think, but if itstarted in the States, is it coming here?
Is Starer gonna go with this?

Helen (17:35):
It's already come here.
If you listen to what, starer says, hesays, we want builders, not blockers.
He has explicitly referenced the EBSfleet spiders, which are for those.
of you not
intimately
familiar.
team.
With the distinguished
jumping spider, which is myfavorite thing about them.
They're distinguished, like they'vegot little monocles and hats
anyway,
so they've been trying for a reallylong time to build more housing

(17:58):
around EBS Fleet train station, whichwould be 17 minutes into London.
Brilliant.
Natural England has designated someof the area around the station a site
of special scientific interest, andthat prevents about something like
about a thousand houses being built.
It nukes the whole plan essentially.
And The reason they've done this isthat they've found this colony of
distinguished jumping spiders there,and also a lot of water beetles.

(18:20):
Now, the kind of YIMBYs say, theseonly moved in because you've left
this land derelict for so long.
basically the way it works is ifyou're a A wango like, natural
England, you don't have to take anykind of balancing account, right?
It is the same thing with a bat tunnel.
You know, that they, don't put avalue on the life of a spider versus.
All the people who will then use thetrain, who will get to live in a house,

(18:41):
all the people who won't use their car,which will improve air quality, which
will help all spiders and So the problemis you have all these individual agencies
that have their very narrow remit, whichthey execute really well, but they don't
have to take into consideration anykind of se like checks and balances.

Andy (18:57):
job is not to make HS two happen,

Helen (18:59):
I just find myself incredibly sympathetic to it because which, we just
can't build housing in this country.
It's been a real problem because allof, I had this rant before, the voices
of all the people who'd like housingare not represented in the system.
To the extent that thewho already have housing

Ian (19:15):
are, we just hear the developers.
Yeah.
And then we hear the objectives.
We never hear.
A queue of people saying,I would like a house.

Andy (19:21):
Yeah.
it's, it is impossible to, hear the viewsof people who would've got a house but
now won't 'cause they don't know it.

Helen (19:28):
There's another
really good example, which is the Matafood Market around Elephant and Castle.
Are you familiar with this?
And it, talks to the bias in how thereporting on this goes, which is, it's
all being reported as Beloved Food Haulto be demolished to make way for houses.
Actually, what's happening is thatwas a site that has been, they've
been trying to redevelop since 2016.
And Because it was otherwisegonna sit derelict.
They said, why don't youcome and put these temporary

(19:49):
pop-up food market into it?
So now what happens is they've beenagain, yeah, advantageous business rates,
for example, they'll have to move outfor a couple of years and then they'll,
in
the scheme, they are there to, atthe end of it, they'll move back in.
But you'll also have 900 homes of which300 are affordable or social housing.
But all the reports in likethe standard, the B, C are all

(20:11):
food hall to be demolished.

Ian (20:13):
we, like a beloved tradition
that goes back
to
last week
2016.

Andy (20:17):
and it's fantastic.
the, quotes you get out of peoplewho don't want something to
happen are invariably better.
I read a report in the papers last weekof this, projected Soler farm will turn
our village into a concentration camp.
And I thought, steady on will it thephrase that gets used is a veto where
lots of people get a veto, whether they'repeople who live in the area and, Naturally

(20:37):
don't want it to change, or whetherit's the, I think it's up to 27 bodies.
You might have to consult depending onwhether you are near a cricket pitch
or whether you are near some jumpingspiders or, whatever it might be.
There's

Helen (20:47):
a bill currently going through the commons to put swift bricks.
Have you heard of a swift brick?

Ian (20:52):
is a tribute to a popular singer.

Helen (20:54):
Yes.
a Taylor Swift brick in

Adam (20:56):
a popular satirist?
I think they're Jonathan Swift.
They're named after Yes.

Ian (21:00):
God,
I'm For it.

Helen (21:01):
it's
Jonathan Swift Can Nessun in your house.
as you always wanted.
no, but this is the idea that wewant to encourage Swifts to Nessun.
So shouldn't there be a regulationthat says every new House building
has gotta have a swift brick in it.
And already, Brighton has this fourbuildings over a certain number of,
stories told as well as bee bricksfor solitary bees, which I have
to say every time I say the firstsolitary bee, it makes my heart

(21:22):
break.
I

Andy (21:23):
a lot of them ran in cells.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.

Helen (21:29):
Try the honey.
so Brighton has had these regulationsfor a while, having a lot of green
counselors, and this bill hasbeen introduced by a green mp.
And the problem is that he had aprofessor, Quoting the guardian
in 2022 saying if you don't cleanout the B bricks, the a, the holes
aren't deep enough for the BS.
And also they can get infestedwith mites out competed.
So it's not like you can justput a B brick in and job done.

(21:51):
There needs to be a whole kindof suite of B brick maintenance
that you'd have to, do.
and I presume probablythe same thing is the.
is true of the swift bricks, but thereis this assumption that you can have,
single things that can be added ontobuilding regulations with zero cost.
But actually what you're doingis just adding hurdle and hurdle
and maybe, we should have somenationwide swift encouragement.

(22:13):
initiative.

Ian (22:14):
What's the
theory allow For civil actionas opposed to state action.
So does it say we should all putthrift boxes in because there's
a campaign to do it, not because.
it's legally required.
This is your Christmastree metaphor, isn't it?
Yeah.
there's too many ball balls.
It's gonna fall over.

Helen (22:29):
I think That's the thing.
It's about where the point of action is.
And the abundance agenda isabout, we need to remove barriers.
We need to have a much moreof a focus on outcomes.
And this is where they would say that
they distinguish themselves from,
Elon Musk or, his Trust.
Their end outcome is they want a greenerfuture, for example, they want to
decarbonize the economy, but in orderto do that, you cannot say that every

(22:50):
single vol along the high speed railtrack is gonna have to be preserved.
You are always letting theperfect be the enemy of the good.
It's a really big challenge andI think I've certainly change my
thinking on it because you're right.
It is a fundamentally right winghobby horse, the idea of deregulation.
But I don't think you can look atthe British property development and
housing market and say, what a triumphfor the left this is, haven't we got

(23:12):
incredibly green homes and everythingis working out really fantastically.

Andy (23:16):
I think there's one really interesting thing, which is that there
hasn't been a big national infrastructureupgrade for quite a while now.
So one of the more recent ones wasswitching from, , coal gas which
was in the sixties really, and thatshifted over from a much dirtier
source of fuel to a relatively clean,that's still fossil fuel one, but
that involved a, great deal of change.

(23:36):
The government had to take outa lot of adverts in newspapers
saying, you are being switched over.
This is going to be better.
But that was a long time ago, and I thinkpeople have forgotten that the state has
the capacity to do that kind of thing.
And the, state also feelslike it doesn't quite know.
But the new planning and infrastructurebill, just to bring it back to
what's being done here, does havea lot of quite, good measures.

(23:57):
If you like this kind of thing,if you, don't, you'll hate it.
But,

Helen (24:01):
yeah.
If you were going to write this bookin the uk, the people really you'd
wanna challenge with the liberal
Democrats,
Because the liberal Democratshave a huge variety of very worthy
environmental and social aims.
But what they mostly run campaignson in each constituency is
don't build any new houses here.
And that's the, kind of Aconstituency who are being
addressed by this abundance agenda.
the right already might believes inderegulation in a various number of

(24:24):
ways, but it's people who want theseparticular outcomes saying that actually
you are your local interests are oftenacting against the things you claim to
believe at the wider national level.

Andy (24:34):
the argument is always, yeah, but I'll definitely,
renewable, but not, here, not this.
no, Try over there.
Try those bastards overthere in the next village.
they could, Yeah.
but we used
to,

Ian (24:46):
that, Britain was alone incapable of doing this.
this isn't

Andy (24:50):
yeah, absolutely.

Ian (24:51):
And that France was marvelous And that the French National,
interests would always override.
So they're railways marvelous.
'cause they don't care what
anyone says.
nukes everywhere.
Nukes everywhere.
suburbs, wherever they feel like, it.
I'm guessing this argumentwas never terribly true.
but are we now saying Britainis worse than America?

Helen (25:11):
I think there's a big difference between blue states and red states.
So the obvious differences betweenCalifornia and Texas, which are very close
to each other, and Austin, where I waslast year, actually went through a phase
where imagine this house prices dropped.
They said It could never happen.
they have recovered again, but theywere actually at one point building
enough houses for all the peoplewho wanted a house to live in one.
Imagine such a thing.

(25:32):
And the building, this is weird thingabout this from your perspective is
Texas is building a load of renewable.
energies Just because you can getgovernment subsidies to build renewable,
but the only place you can actuallybuild them are in red states that
have very loose planning places.
So you ended up with all thisweird green investment going into
places that don't really believe in

Andy (25:49):
it.
It's not surprising at all.
It's cheap, And the housing thing,the brilliant move the lots of cities
in Texas have made on housing is.
They have instituted a rule whereyou can change your single massive,
the Simpsons style home, as long asit doesn't go over a certain height,
you can turn that into, I think it'sup to six flats, and that means you
get six families living on one spot.
And unless you're in a, very, unusualconservation area or anything, that

(26:12):
bit of deregulation has happenedand it massively increases housing
density, which is what you want near,say, places like train stations.
You know the place to haveyour dense housing is near
those bits of infrastructure.
and that's, what they've done.

Helen (26:24):
Yeah.
But the, that again goes backto the kind of racist history
of zoning in America because.
what The people who've been blockingthose kind of conversions are people
who say, we don't want, studentsor low income people living in our,
They'll change the character of the

Andy (26:37):
Her Nudge.
Nudge.
yeah, Which

Helen (26:38):
Which is often a somewhat of a dog whistle as you might imagine,

Andy (26:42):
So
is it gonna work?
Are we gonna get abundance here, Helen?

Helen (26:44):
the interesting thing is Angela Rena does seem to be doing a lot of stuff.
She's called in a lot ofprojects, that have been blocked
by local planning developers.
I, think it would unequivocally be.
A good thing.
I think it's, there's a huge amount ofresistance to it from very, from now
interest, which I, individually areusually things that I support, but I think
we have got an acute, if you think aboutthe fact of, the wages have stagnated

(27:07):
in the last 20 years, but housing hasbecome multiple times more expensive.
That is just not a sustainablesituation for a, democracy.
and you talked about France, andinterestingly enough, if you look
on places like TikTok, obviouslyowned by Chinese parent company.
You will see American influencesgoing to China and going, oh my God,

(27:27):
you've got a train that runs through abuilding, and like they put this city
up and it wasn't here five years ago.
And so what people are getting are a lotof CCP propaganda because it's if you
were 13 in China, you could buy a house.
And obviously if you were 13in China, you also couldn't
criticize the beloved leader that,
may also be case in America too,
See,

Adam (27:45):
it does also strike me as being one of the things that, I always
feel with this Labour governmentthat just what are they for?
New

Helen (27:51):
Towns and like expansion and opportunities and a
country that's growing again.
Tony said, I wanna makeBritney Young country again.
And I think that, again, that's, anactually an optimistic vision, which isn't
what we've had from Starr so far, whichis we've caught no money and everything's
terrible.
Which may
be true, but

Ian (28:08):
it's,
a good opener.
But I feel
you've,
then gotta
move on along a bit.
does sound a bit that Home ownership.

Adam (28:15):
I'm sure ki will go for it then in that case, won't it?

Helen (28:18):
But, or
Yeah.
Even the.
idea that Actually, renting doesn'ttake up half of your disposable income.
I think that's the point.
I think we have a, country that is ina rent, specifically a renting crisis.

Andy (28:29):
the recent story of a Labour MP who had to the scandal was Labour
MP has charged 900 quid for her.
cat, I think it was,no, it was Cockapoo dog.
Sorry.
actually it was that she rentssomewhere in London and her landlord
has charged her another a hundred quida month to have a dog in the home,
which, she's allowed to claim 'causeshe needs to rent a place in London
'cause it's not near her constituency.

Ian (28:48):
But the story was very much sold as how outrageous.
for the mp.
Whereas you read it as this rent

Andy (28:53):
landlord.
Yeah, exactly.
can I give you one last example ofthe, of what this reminded me of this
Christmas tree thing of yours, Helen?
Yeah.
because that in the Bri in Britaingets called everything is as well.
That's the other term that gets
given to it, is

Ian (29:07):
Everything is them.

Andy (29:08):
there is, the bad news is like, trains have to be good for
bats, can't they just be goodfor trains, as you were saying?
And what it really remindedme of is bleak house.
there's a character inthat, Mrs. Jelly Bee.
Yes.
Who has a She has a cause.
And the cause is Boria Bula, Gar,which is that she wants everyone, she
wants to move poor Londoners basicallyto Africa, where they will grow

(29:29):
coffee and that'll solve everything.
And she has got one cause in life and.
it overwhelms everything else in her life.
And when her daughter gets married,she says, what am I gonna do for a
secretary with my Boria boli scheme?
And she has a load of gruesomefriends who all also have one cause
and cannot see anything outside it.
I think that was Dickens predictingin a way, the way the internet allows

(29:50):
people to radicalize themselves.
he's writing about the way thatpeople can get really sucked into
something and lose all perspective.
But at the same time, how do you balancethat with the need to have people who know
a lot about a subject being enthusiastic,wanting to get things over the line,
you

Ian (30:05):
in, his own case, I mean he was an
advisor to various
philanthropists on
charity, including theBette Cos who was the most
richest woman in Britain and.
I once read a list of his charitiesout at a, in the attempt to
make People give some
money, and he supported just
about everything.
Oh, really?
Okay.

Andy (30:22):
Oh, really?
Okay.
He
was

Ian (30:23):
the opposite of that character.
And he was Phenomenally well informed.
She also is very, uncaringabout her own children.

Andy (30:32):
un

Ian (30:32):
which is another point he was making about people who are
very, keen on single Charities.

Helen (30:37):
Yeah, I think that's where I've landed on it, is that there's nothing
wrong with having environmental charitiesor Quang goes who care about their
specific things, but they should beinvited to input into something where
there is some level of overall sight.
That's where we cometo with the bat tunnel.
Right.
If I gave you a hundred millionpounds to make life better for
British bats would you spend it on.

(30:58):
Like a bat reserve, that'd be adorable.
Or would you spend it on a, tunnel thatwe don't think even necessarily works
next to a place where we don't know ifthe bats even are, and that's the problem.
Is that for, each individual actor inthis, they only have one set of interests.
What government is supposed to do isbalance a range of interests against each

Adam (31:16):
each other.
So what you're saying we need is somesort of equation or formula, aren't you?
Which would balance, bat lives againsthuman lives and homes and he's really good
at coming up with equations or formulas.
No, We could ask Donald to have
a go.
Couldn't we

Andy (31:31):
Now for the second half of today's podcast, we have a little bit of sad news,
which is that Tim and Oog friend of thispodcast and the man who has been writing
the Rotten Boroughs page all about localcouncil fraud and waste and mismanagement
and corruption for the last 26 years.
Tim very sadly, is retiring from full-timeduties on the rotten boroughs page.

(31:52):
He'll still be contributingplenty, but he's stepping back
from that particular beat.
And so this is a little bitof a victory lap for Tim.
It's about some of the greateststories he's ever covered.
It's about what he thinkscouncil should be doing.
It's about why you only seem tosee stories about councils being
completely broke these days.
so here's Tim.
I started off by asking him which storieshe was most proud of having covered.

Tim (32:14):
I suppose it's a rather strange one, and it's the story of, a publican called.
Jeff Monks, who was, persecuted,by the former East Northampton
District Council, which is no more.
his pub was called The Snooty Fox.
he had.
A row with a customer who claimed he hadbrought her the wrong bottle of wine.

(32:37):
And, he said to her, it didn't, don't,doesn't seem to have stopped you.
Drinking it madam.
And things got a bit heated.
She was barred from the pub.
then found himself beingprosecuted by the local council
for having, served at moldy ham.
it was alleged.
by him that the customer, hada, social relationship, at least

(33:01):
with the leader of the council.
or
Had friends on the council, at any rate.
this, resulted in this vindictiveprosecution so in 1999 there was a court
case at which magistrates imposed finesand costs totaling nearly, 32,000 pounds.

(33:22):
monks couldn't pay that he hadn't got it.
It was the largest amount forany offense such offense ever
brought against the sole trader.
So he, got banged up in prisonfor two months, he won at a
retrial of that case in 2015.
and then there were two other prosecutionsagainst him, evidence, one mouse

(33:43):
sighting and one cracked pane of glass.
they were quashed onappealing as far back as 2003.
And the judge noted the curious fact thatout of 7,000 inspections of food premises.
carried out by the council.
Over 10 years, only four hadresulted in prosecutions, three
of which were against Jeff Monks.

(34:04):
I'm proud that we stayed with the storyand it's in in that tradition that
private Eye has of nagging away at things.
And so we returned to thisstory many times but the credit
really goes to the tenacity of.
Mr. Monks or Dr. Monks as he now is,And in, 2022, he, he finally won an

(34:31):
apology from North Ants Council, thesuccessor of East North Ants and, was
awarded a very large sum of money.
we think about 4 million pounds.
which is less than he said he hadlost From losing his three pubs.
Three.
businesses.
But, I'm pretty pleased about that one.

(34:52):
I do the sort of human frailty stuff.
And, The
Tory Cabinet Minister forEconomic Development at Eden
District Council in Cumbria.
Who, we exposed in 2016'cause he'd attended, a
Buckingham Palace Garden Party.
he's very proud of his servicesto industry ob he'd got earlier.

(35:15):
but in fact he owed more than halfa million pounds in unpaid tax
to HMRC
And,

Andy (35:22):
could have paid it there, and then he did.
He was with

Tim (35:24):
He got, we gave him the cucumber sandwich award He did a thing which
is quite instructive, which is, peopleoften tell their local paper that,
they're suing private eye and they'regoing to take us to the cleaners and
all that sort of thing, which the localpapers usually dutifully report but of
course no legal letter is, forthcoming.

Andy (35:47):
You've heard of it?
Yeah.
And I should say, for many years you'vebeen doing the Rotten Boroughs awards.
At the start of each new year, you sum up.
the greatest examples of misbehaviorthat have crossed your desk in
the previous year, and it's alwaysan absolute highlight of the, the
years privat imy is that page of,just extraordinary malpractice

Tim (36:09):
we try and have a bit of fun.
with it 2018, we gave theaward of services to the ars.
Yes, you did hear that.
And CRO and council, which was Labourat the time They contributed 10 grand
and provided, the venue for an artsfestival, which featured performance
inserting butt plugs And it was intendedto demystify the anus, while others

(36:35):
consumed laxatives and diuretics untilthey lost control of their sphincters.
It wasn't in person as it were,but There were microphones
there so you could, oh gosh.
You, You could hear the results.

Andy (36:45):
Is this connected to CRO and now being the most bankrupt council

Tim (36:50):
It went in the debit, in the debits.

Andy (36:55):
part of that
billion quid they owe Now.
Is that

Tim (36:58):
didn't it?

Andy (36:59):
but we've all demystified the anus now, maybe it was worth it.

Tim (37:02):
we had a vintners award in 2012 for a man councilor Shira hack.
also known as the Brick Lane Curry King.
Who had bankrolled the successfulelection campaign of Tower Hamlet's?
Mayor looked for Ramen.
in 2010,

Andy (37:20):
old friend of, the Rotten Boroughs page.

Tim (37:23):
A great friend.
and Where would we have been without,
it?
empty.
columns.
But anyway, councilor Hark, lost his.
premises license after the, hisown council's trading standards.
Department caught him sellingcheap Italian plunk in his
restaurants, relabeled as topquality Australian Shiraz.

Andy (37:44):
The nice thing is it's all of this is Human behavior is very
much like the definition, isn't it?
Vice folly and Homburg of,what satire is meant to expose.
And it's all in this page, isn't it?
Yeah.
It's

Tim (37:54):
It's all

Andy (37:55):
people being naughty and normally you finding out about it.

Tim (37:59):
expenses are always.
An issue.
And, in 2018 we had the expenses King ofthe Year, a chap called Nathan Elvery, who
was the new Chief executive of West SussexCounty Council, and he accepted a 47 and
a half thousand pound permanent relocationallowance, for moving to Chichester.

(38:21):
but we found out, He hadn't moved outof his home in Surrey where he'd been
living for the previous 12 years.
Oh my goodness.
I think that sealed his fateand he, had to go after a while.
And then some of the other oneswe've done aren't so funny.
But I'm still proud.
We did, like last year, we exposedthe then conservative leader of

(38:46):
West Northamptonshire Council,
Who,
was a serial wife beater.
going back over, 30 years, his,
his first wife had tried to bring thisto the attention of the counselors.
And one counselor, one independentcounselor bravely tried to bring
this up at a council meeting andwas shut down officers, by the legal

(39:10):
officer and the chief executive.
we got hold of this story and wepublished it and the local BBC did a
very good report, following up where theyinterviewed all these women on camera
and the guy stood down as the councilleader, but having a lot of brass neck.

(39:31):
he stayed on as a Tory counselor andhe only quit as a Tory counselor.
After the then local MP one.
Andrea lead some, to her.
Great, credit, Said.
come on.
This isn't on.
but he went to last,Christmases, north an Tory party.
Lots of cheers slapping on the back,and he still sits as a counselor.

Andy (39:55):
Does that indicate there's a problem with accountability?

Tim (39:59):
I, you might, say that.
another one.
from the same part of the world, earlierthis year, we found out that a senior
Tory, counselor called Matt Binley,had admitted to his Tory colleagues.
Having had, underagesex, he wasn't underage.

(40:19):
the young woman concernedwas when he had been a police
officer back in 2008 or 2009.
And it just occurs to me there thatthree of these stories, the wife
beater, the underage sex man and, thepersecutor of, Jeff Monks, the publisher.
were all, it was, they wereall from Northamptonshire.
Now, what do we make of that?

Andy (40:41):
It's, it is just extraordinary, Tim, the number of councils and the number of
stories you, print each issue about theentire length and breadth of the country
and the bad behavior that goes on in eachof them, or the mismanagement, all of it.
one thing we've talked abouton the podcast before is when
councils start their own.
Energy company or starttheir own like Robin

(41:04):
housing
companies, energy companies, wars,I think there was a water Cup.
Just all sorts of these things andthen it goes slightly wrong and then
they end up in the whole, financiallythere's a big problem isn't there?
With councils not having the moneythey need and then doing slightly.
Risky things like this in anattempt to make that money
back and, deliver services.

Tim (41:23):
they are in desperate financial straits a few years ago.
there was a craze for selling stuff off.
You sell off buildings, sell off, land.
which of course, once you've soldthe family silver, you, that's it.
so some of them have had, the brightidea, and on paper, it's not too bad.

(41:43):
Why sell, 10 acres to a developerwho's then going to give you a fixed
sum for that And, Make a, ton ofmoney out of building houses on it.
the sensible thing might be consideredto, cut out the middleman, but as we have
found in, Croydon, which, it drove thecouncil into bankruptcy and Cambridge

(42:04):
Council is having, similar problems now.
you've suddenly discovered thathousing developers and builders, they
actually know what they're doing.
And if you haven't got the, theexpertise in house, it's, we,
can't all be experts in everything.
And, in just the report from, theirauditor's, KPMG, talking about

(42:30):
Cambridge here, couple of weeks ago,the auditors said the council does
not have the suitable skills andexperience to effectively manage the
risks associated with Their commercialprivate sector subsidiary, cause
they have a wholly owned buildingcompany called This Land which is now.

(42:50):
scores of millions of pounds in debt.
they got into the absurd situationwhere this land wasn't making enough
money on its projects to repaythe interest on the loans they had
from Cambridge account council.
So they borrowed.
More money from Cambridgeaccount Council in order to

(43:10):
repay the interest on the loans.
you know that, that's not good.
why is that?
it?
It's, not corruption.
It's certainly incompetence in someform or another, but you could say being
charitable that they've been driven todesperate measures by the fact that they

(43:30):
are in the financial crisis that allcouncils are to one degree or another,
and that is being caused by the parsimonyof central government over many years.

Andy (43:43):
I think we've probably got to the end now, Tim, and I'm very sorry.
And I'm also very irritated because I'mthinking of all the dodgy counselors up
and down the country who will sleep alittle easier in their beds as you won't
be on the rotten bearer's face anymore.

Tim (43:56):
I hope not because I hope the page will continue on Of course.
And go from strength to strength.

Andy (44:02):
Okay.
That's it for this episode of page 94.
Thank you so much for listening.
Thanks to Ian, Helen, Adam, and to Tim.
Of course.
We'll be back again in anotherfortnight with another episode.
And just to remind you, we havea live show coming up at the
Cambridge Literature Festival emailpodcast at Private hyphen eye.
Dot co uk send us your questions,your burning questions about

(44:24):
anything you want to know.
As long as it's about the news insome shape or form, we would love to
answer them and we'll be answeringthem live on stage in Cambridge.

Andrew (44:33):
it's sold out in the room, but you can buy a streaming ticket if
you like listening to this podcast.
But you think it needs to be more visual.

Andy (44:39):
You can get tickets, by going to the Cambridge Literature Festival website.
The show is called Page 94.
If you didn't know that alreadyuntil then, please go and buy
a subscription to the magazine.
Thanks to you for listening, and thanks toMatt Hill of Rethink Audio for producing.
Bye for now.