Civil Servants Triggered by British Flag & Is Trump Getting Impeached - Off The Fence

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to our weekly show breaking down the news with of course, Francis Foster, Winston Marshall and Tom Slater, editor of spiked. Welcome back, guys. Great to have everybody back. I didn't say welcome back to a name because we do have a new name. But I thought we just, you know, we got a lot of good feedback on names last week. I there was some there was a full range all the way from, you know, just nice and, and encouraging all the way through to outright hateful, and I liked all of them. So we had like the awesome, awesome, that was nice. The reality roundtable, nice and neutral, pretty good. Then sort of moving into the expendables, which I thought was interesting. And of course, my personal favorite, the centrist containment cuck circle jerk. It's got a ring to it, isn't it? That is, of course, from Twitter, if you hadn't guessed. So, but after much deliberation, we have come up with the name, which is, of course, off the fence. So welcome, everybody to off the fence. Off the fence starring Winston Marshall, I feel like name in life, featuring, featuring Winston Marshall. Indeed. Well, look, we've got lots to cover. This week, a lot has been going on in the news. I just want to give everybody a brief rundown of what we'll talk about. So first of all, civil servants in Britain are triggered by the England and now Britain British flag. We'll talk about Trump America renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America and are the Republicans on course to get crushed in the midterms. We'll talk about Cambridge, that august institution that continues its media self-destruction. We'll talk about various aspects of that. And of course, touch on my interview with Nathan Kofnas. And we'll talk about social media, child safety, and in the wake of the fact that we're in the middle of a crisis, we're in the that Meta, the owner of Facebook, has just agreed to settle for $18 billion for harm done to children on their platform. So let's start with the civil servant story. Stephen Edgington, who's an independent journalist and former guest on our show, he broke a story with leaked meeting audio, I think, but he published it as an article, which basically showed that when people around the country were putting up England and British flags, the Union Jacks on lampposts, the civil servants had a safe space meeting in which they were given 11 different mental health support services, which they could refer themselves to. They basically had a meeting in which they all confessed to being extremely triggered by these flags. What do we think? It sounds like a story that we made up to have something to talk about. It ticks all of the boxes, it's like the full woke 2020 bingo card. They actually used the phrase triggering in this meeting themselves. That's not something that Stephen Edgington has put on them. They did refer to it as a safe space and they did offer no less than 11 forms of mental health support to various people who work at the Home Office who would have been so terribly mentally injured by the presence of the flag of the nation in which they live, that they would need to avail themselves of those services. It's become a bit of a cliche, I suppose, to suggest that there's a certain type of person who runs the country who's on the liberal left, who lives in certain parts of North London, are so repelled by the England flag that per Orwell, they'd rather rip it down than sing the national anthem. But this is exactly what we've got here. And it's that weird mix of it being so painfully unpatriotic, also pathetic, which I suppose makes this particular story sing. But yet you couldn't have asked for a better story to kick off this week's discussion if we'd have asked ChatGPT, to make it up, was one of the initial responses. Well, Tom, I actually live in North London and quite proudly have a cross of St George flying above my home. And I have people, neighbours quietly coming up to me going, well done with the flag. My postman, they absolutely love it. I think people actually are quite proud when they see it. I certainly am. I think most people are. When I see the cross of St George, my heart flutters a little bit. It fills me with genuine pride and love of my country because I love my country. So when this story came up, I was actually myself extremely triggered because why are we being governed? Why are these people in the civil service and the Home Office who, when they see the flag, they should have the same reaction as me. Why are they having this kind of reaction? And I think I was trying to think about from their point of view. Yeah, right. So they presumably think this is some sort of continuation of, let's say, far-right stuff that makes a lot of sense, but I don't think it makes any sense. I don't think it makes any sense at all. I don't think it makes any sense. Let's say far-right stuff that may have happened decades ago, and they think it's the same sort of thing that's motivating it. I don't think that's what it is. I think the Raise the Colors movement that was started, I think his name is Ryan Bridges, and it started last year, 2025. It was a reaction. It's not a continuation of what happened decades ago. It's a reaction to years of the Palestine flag, the BLM flag, the trans flag, all of these other flags, except our flags being everywhere. And and us being exhausted by it, and us actually wanting to say, and by us, I mean, non-progressives, because those are the people who are putting it up, and those who are actually patriotic and actually love their country, putting up their flag, and it should be a unifying one. We should be governed by people who see the flag, and it fills them with joy. When they see it painted on roundabouts, when they see it on lampposts up and down the country, they should feel pride. That's who I want to be governed. It's a very simple test for me. I think, do you know, number one, was anybody surprised by this article, as Tom rightly pointed out? it goes, it self perpetuates. So that's their reaction. And then that encourages in turn, others who want to put up their flag, it gives them more motivation to do so, because if they see that's the reaction from our ruling elites or from the progressives, they're like, well, actually, even more I want to put up my flag, even more I want to, you know, show my pride and patriotism. And I also just think it speaks to a certain worldview where these people are, let's be frank, utterly delusional. If you think that you see an England flag and someone's flying it, and then your mixed race child is going to get beaten up, it's quite literally a fantasy in the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of places in this country. And the only reason you'd get beaten up round here is because somebody wants to steal your phone, not because they hate your race. Yeah. Well, and it's interesting, we talk about people being delusional, etc. But as some other stories this week have shown, these people aren't just, this isn't just a bunch of oversensitive snowflakes having a safe space, meeting somewhere in the bowels of the home office or whatever, of the Department for Work and Pensions. Birmingham City Council has now followed Oxfordshire County Council in seeking an injunction from the High Court to ban activists putting up flags. And according to some reports, I haven't been able to verify this. Potentially, if this is granted, the people who are putting up the flags could be jailed for up to two years. So this, my point being, this isn't just some, you know, woke millennial civil servants, you know, having a cry somewhere. This is people who are running not just the country, but running major cities in the country. Yeah, exactly. They dress it up in the language of health and safety, of course, that that was their only concern. That's the only reason they've looked to pursue this High Court injunction. And yet you read between lines, or even if you just read to the third or fourth line of the press release, it's quite clear that our offering of community cohesion is brought into it, which I think is such a fascinating point, because of if you are supposed to believe, as many of these people claim to in a multicultural society, you need something that you're going to share, you need something that you're going to rally under, presumably, and yet even the flag of the nation in which all of us live, if that's verboten, then what do you possibly have to sort of unite around? And the other thing, and this sort of points to the, as Winston was talking about, where the Operation Raise the Colours movement came from, it started in the south of Birmingham, as far as we can tell. And it was in response, depending on which report you read, to two things, one of which was the library in Birmingham being lit up in the colours of the Pakistani flag to celebrate Pakistan Independence Day. And the other one being in not too far away in rugby, that crazy story of the schoolgirl going to school in a Union Jack dress for a culture day and essentially being sent home because that's not what they meant. They said they wanted students to celebrate their culture. So in Aspect, you have the kind of asymmetric multiculturalism. That Eric Kaufman and others have discussed there, you have the sense in which all other national symbols are absolutely fine, even ones like the Palestine flag, which is genuinely divisive in this country at the moment, for obvious reasons. And yet the symbols that could actually be a point of unity, the ones that we all share, those are the ones that deem to be the most divisive. So it's, it's that asymmetric multiculturalism. And also, yeah, that is so clear where this has come from. And it's not this sort of, you know, the national front are coming back, this is marking territory, this is trying to intimidate people, I think it's actually quite a kind of quiet, almost quite resigned, muted form of protest. And the fact that even that's not allowed, I think it's like storing up even more problems for the future, if you're genuinely concerned about quote, community cohesion. There's an amping up from what happened in Oxford, just to be precise here, which is that at Oxford, they said it was health and safety, it was, you know, safety on the highway, they didn't want the flag somehow sort of affecting lorries or something like that. But this time, it's explicit, there's an injunction against the founders of Raise the Colours. So that's the Ryan Bridge. And that group of people, there's 67 of them have been specifically called out. So now they're unapologetically calling it what it is. You know, it's by that, I mean, they're unapologetically saying it's about that specific movement. It's about the England flags, it's about the union flags. And it's worth also noting, Birmingham is a minority white British city now. It's our second biggest city. And I think that's a component of it, you know, the conversation about being colonised. You remember Sir Jim Ratliff saying we've been colonised and that being a huge sort of furore story. At Birmingham, actually, you get a sense here that there's a side to the flags going up being like, we're still English. Now, I'm with Tom, that the England flag should be unifying for everyone who lives in England, and is English, and a citizen of England, and certainly the British flag should be, certainly the union flag should be unifying for everyone who lives in England. So that they're, that they're offended by in our second largest city. There's a there's a darker side to it as well. It's a sense of a collision of civilisations happening within our country a little bit. Well, it's a logical conclusion of that asymmetric multiculturalism that Tom talks about, which is that I am you guys know, I've been talking about this for a long time, which is, if you the reason multicultural multiculturalism is a problem. And most people don't understand this, because they don't understand what these words mean. Multi, they think when they hear multiculturalism, they think people of different races living in one place. That's what they hear, right? That's not multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is actually what we have at the moment, which is every culture is deemed as being valuable, except the host culture in which these cultures exist, instead of what we should have, which is monoculturalism, which says, you can retain aspects of your culture. As long as they're compatible with the host culture, but your primary culture, and the purpose of you being here, and what you should teach your children is to integrate into the host culture first and foremost. And then if you want to go back to Pakistan twice a year, or if you want to go back to Russia or Ukraine or wherever, and continue to speak your language with some of your relatives, etc. That's okay, as long as you're fully integrated, and speak the language and adopt the values and support the culture. The nation, etc. Right. But that's not what we have. What we have is effectively a culture of suppressing the host culture, saying the host culture either doesn't exist, and also is evil, probably. And at the same time, the celebration of others, i.e. celebrating Pakistan Independence Day. Go ahead, Francis. So I actually think they've got a point, right? When they say the England flag is deeply divisive. To them, it is. To them, it actually is deeply divisive. They hate this country. They don't like what it represents. They think that this country is an evil, colonialist, white supremacist nation, which used its empire to go around the world to dominate their countries, to drain resources. It's essentially a glorified parasite. And now what they want to do is they want to decolonize. So to them, it's completely fair in some ways that they see this as divisive. I don't agree with that worldview. But the question is, is what are you going to do when it's so deeply embedded with these people who run our councils? I really have no idea. And what it speaks to is a rot which lies at the heart of our society, where you have people in our culture, in our society, who openly despise and hate the country and everything it stands for. That's what we're really talking about here. I think you're right. I think it's actually worse. There's no attempt. So last week, Zeke Chowdhury, the Birmingham City Lord Mayor, made a statement about how Kashmir will be ours again. He's not referring, of course, to the British Empire. He means. There's no attempt. He means. there politically how the place has changed so on and so forth i mean have you been to birmingham from far away oh yeah actually quite a few times i've got a big soft spot for birmingham incidentally so it's um and i'm trying to work on a project out there because i think it's fascinating politically so that wasn't the gotcha you thought it would be francis but where i have been slightly more frequently and it's been run by for all intents and purposes a bangladeshi sectarian party since 2022 look for rahman who used to be in the labour party he got kicked out because of all manner of allegations which won't go into um sets up this party called aspire at various elections it's criticized because all of its candidates were bangladeshi um there was revelations last year that um it's some of its councillors were actually standing for election in bangladesh under the uh hilariously named bnp party over there so the sense of which this is and that was also a place in which the flag wars kicked off in a big way because surprise surprise after october 7th palestine flags everywhere i remember walking through Machetele Hamlets and every single lamppost, very high high up in the air, you saw a Palestine flag. It did feel a bit like you'd been occupied to a certain extent. And yet when Operation Raise the Colours begins, of course, there was a really concerted effort to take those flags down in a way that there wasn't when the Palestine flags went up. Actually, the council in Tower Hamlets fought a pretty hard battle against various groups who were trying to bring legal advice to get them to take the Palestine flags down. Yet as soon as it came to the England flags, it was totally different. And one final interesting thing is that whether it was Tower Hamlets or Birmingham or what have you, when there were attempts to, when there were pushes to take down the Palestine flag, the hesitancy came precisely because they were worried that taking them down would harm community relations, whereas when it comes to putting up the England flag, that is the threat to community relations. So how we got ourselves in this muddle is anyone's guess, but you see the seeds of it in a place like Birmingham and certainly in a place like Tower Hamlets. All right, let's move on to our next story, which is a story about patriotism in a very different way, which is, of course, President Trump and the United States. I don't know if you saw yesterday, the White House announced that Lake Ontario would be renamed to Lake America as part of the ongoing trade war with Canada. And it strikes me, I mean, there's a few different things going on here, but one thing that's probably worth highlighting is that partly due to the Iran war, but partly due to other things, President Trump's personal approval ratings are going down. Quite quickly. And more importantly, in the interim, the Democrats look set to win the House in the midterms, which are coming up in November. And the Republicans may just hold on to the Senate. But what this would mean, Dean, if you could show us the, there's the Kalshi, Kalshi have a great election hub, which you can see all this stuff. You can see Democrats have an 84% chance to control the House. And in President Trump's, own words, if they win the House, they will impeach him. I'm going to be impeached. They're going to impeach me. They have no idea why. I saw it today. A congressman said on one of the shows, we're going to impeach President Trump. We're going to impeach. Oh, really? Why? The person was asking. Neutral commentator for a change. I like neutral commentator. Oh, I see. You're going to impeach him. Why? Well, I don't know. i don't know you know what aside from the story he's such a stand-up comedian he does that thing that comedians do when they tell a joke and then walks away from the microphone for a bit milks the reaction and it comes back but anyway the other thing i wanted to say and it's worth including in this discussion is uh when we interviewed ted cruz francis when was it uh was it it was earlier this year wasn't it yeah so we interviewed ted cruz and it would have been late march early april right at that point he said if this was and he was a big advocate of the war big proponent of the war uh he said if this war is still ongoing uh by the time of the midterms we've really messed up here basically well if you look at the uh the calci odds for the war being wrapped up even by january it's third it's 30 percent and much more likely people are talking about middle next year there doesn't seem to be a way out and it's increasingly becoming very unpopular because of its economic impact so do winston do we think the wheels are coming off the trump bandwagon well in may he said he didn't care about the midterms so he's obviously come on quite a journey in uh in those months and i know here on trigonometry it's very pro ayatollah and this has been a private contention between me and the boys uh when we're off screen i'm always trying to argue you know you know the iranian regime you know they're they're killing their their people and you know we've got to get rid of them and you guys are saying no no no hear him out you know there's two sides so i know you like this what a grotesque misrepresentation listen how about right we actually argue the actual point what francis and i said from the beginning is ayatollah not a great guy i think we said that in in a more explicit terms than that but this war would be a disaster which would trap america for a long time and would have terrible economic consequences and your answer to that i'm going to quote you was well the ayatollah did talk a lot of shit to which it's not a good reason to bomb the shit out of a massive country carry on with your grotesque misrepresentation please i i i still think the war is a just war several attempts to kill trump and various americans uh not just in america across the world i still think that it's a legal war for a while i have conceded that it looks at best a stalemate and now it doesn't it doesn't seem clear to me the the best way out of this i i we have to paint the picture a little bit more so scott besant the treasury striker tree has launched operation uh it's called like economic choke or something like that what's the the name of it i've forgotten uh but you know it's they've identified 60 or 70 various assets and and um opponents across the world and he's targeting them this include chinese opponents so it seems like a another sort of attempt and when i see that i'm like oh so i i've sort of been hoping that the americans know stuff that we don't know because of course in a war the the we don't know everything so it'd be foolish for the belligerents to let the public know all of their uh potential and all the things they could do so i had hoped off the back of midnight hammer off the back of um operation um in venezuela that there's parts of this american operation that we don't know and i i they built my confidence up given the successes there but it seems now that the midterm game has won and one other positive you might argue against it is that there's the new mecca accord in in the middle east so the saudis the turks and the pakistanis have now got their sort of version of nato to check iran now at the surface of that i was initially excited because that you know iran is the circle of it's the head of the snake it's the it's the it's running the circle of fire it's just not just in the middle east that it's causing damage but all these terrorist organizations all over the world and the idea is that it's a circle of fire and it's a circle of fire and it's a circle of fire and it's a circle of fire and it's a circle of fire and it's a circle of fire and the idea that these countries would these nations would now organize around iran and check iran i was hopeful for but the downside is is there a new world order now where this middle east nato thing it starts off about being a bit iran and it will turn about being against you know could it be against a western alliance of some sort so what this might even be much worse than i had anticipated is what i'm trying to what this might even be much worse than i had anticipated is what i'm trying to say say say do you do you know what you remind me of do you do you know what you remind me of do you do you know what you remind me of winston you remind me of a blog winston you remind me of a blog winston you remind me of a blog whose message is just caught in receiving whose message is just caught in receiving whose message is just caught in receiving a text message from another woman a text message from another woman a text message from another woman and she's like and she's like and she's like well you know this is the thing we've got well you know this is the thing we've got well you know this is the thing we've got to look at the big picture here there's to look at the big picture here there's no other small picture there's other no other small picture there's other no other small picture there's other things going on things going on things going on and look let me just lay something out and look let me just lay something out and look let me just lay something out that i think is is worth facilitating that i think is is worth facilitating that i think is is worth facilitating the rest of our discussion the rest of our discussion the rest of our discussion the the francis and i were very on the the the francis and i were very on the the the francis and i were very on the fence ironically given the new name of fence ironically given the new name of fence ironically given the new name of the show about this conflict we were the show about this conflict we were the show about this conflict we were like let's wait and see and try and like let's wait and try and like let's wait and try and understand it but when we were in the understand it but when we were in the understand it but when we were in the us in the spring we talked to a lot of us in the spring we talked to a lot of us in the spring we talked to a lot of people and the the takeaway for us was people and the the takeaway for us was people and the the takeaway for us was structurally very simple iran has every structurally very simple iran has every structurally very simple iran has every tool tool tool to leverage in this situation to make to leverage in this situation to make to leverage in this situation to make trump and the united states as a country trump and the united states as a country trump and the united states as a country also suffer also suffer also suffer and it is not and it is not and it is not vulnerable to the things that the us can vulnerable to the things that the us can vulnerable to the things that the us can bring on the other side it's not bring on the other side it's not bring on the other side it's not vulnerable to vulnerable to vulnerable to uh them killing members of the regime uh them killing members of the regime uh them killing members of the regime because they don't care because they because they don't care because they because they don't care because they have others and the others are even more have others and the others are even more have others and the others are even more extreme extreme extreme winston is sort of looking into the winston is sort of looking into the winston is sort of looking into the window at this point so that's so so that's so so that's so on the one hand on the other hand they on the one hand on the other hand they have they're the ones that have the have they're the ones that have the have they're the ones that have the chokehold on the global economy you got chokehold on the global economy you got chokehold on the global economy you got to understand for them this is like the to understand for them this is like the to understand for them this is like the soviet union in 1941 soviet union in 1941 soviet union in 1941 we are up against an overwhelmingly uh we are up against an overwhelmingly uh we are up against an overwhelmingly uh powerful enemy and it's about survival powerful enemy and it's about survival powerful enemy and it's about survival and we will throw men and we will throw men and we will throw men economy everything at it and we will economy everything at it and we will economy everything at it and we will sacrifice everything we have to to win and they can hold out the united states is operating on a completely different clock it's like that famous saying in the in the west you have all the watches in the east we have all the time they can hold out for as long as they need to for trump to lose the midterms and then for the republicans to lose the presidency if they have to hold out for two years uh because they have the levers of control and if the united states escalates militarily they have other means of escalating too which is they will attack u.s allies in the region destroy saudi and uae desalination plants etc and so the point that we came away with was that effectively kind of what you're saying is that the the asymmetrical nature of the levers of power in this situation favors a run in such a way that there is only really one way out and that way out is for trump to take the l while pretending it's a w and that is effectively why this war hasn't ended so far because they haven't found a way to do it. do that that's kind of the perspective that we came away with which is why we've always been rather concerned about how this world would go and by the way in the meantime the entire world is suffering the economic consequences however the ayatollah did talk a lot of as which there's been all kinds of arguments against the iran war the nuclear capability kind of civilizational argument i haven't quite heard articulate as well the kind of chat get banged argument as the kids were saying here yeah not to be up on not to be up on winston but which i fear i'm in danger of doing but i think that was always the issue wasn't there there was so clearly a case to be made that the islamic republic was a malign force not just in its near abroad but the world over the way in which it's been targeting it's uh people in the diaspora the way in which it's been targeting people in britain the way in which you know everything from the fatwa onwards you could say that this was not a just a country that was going down its own islamist path it had these kind of bigger like imperial designs on the world and that needed to be checked at some point the idea of ever getting its hands on a nuclear weapon given the apocalyptic ideology that at least the very top tier of the kind of clerical regime they absolutely believe in it's a horror story knowledge you want to see just whether or not this conflict was going to actually deliver on those stated aims i mean there was a reason that even the neocons and the interventionists in the george w bush years and so on didn't go near this because it was always bound to make iraq look like a tea party not least and also give a pile on top of that the fact that it's clear that because of the american weariness with foreign conflicts and so on the hesitancy to kind of properly go to war as it were rather than just kind of focusing on we've now flipped from an air war to kind of economic pressure and economic sanctions meant that you were it just created a situation which um was probably beneficial if not to the iranian people and certainly the irgc which is that they just have to survive this war to win it and they could emerge out of it as it seems to have been the case with the straight up or moves with that ability and proven track record of being able to menace the global economy menace their near neighbors just by the threat of being able to lob weaponry and missiles and what have you into the straight um so it's it's one of those things where this was always going to be hung around trump's neck it was always going to be the most significant thing he did over his two terms the question was whether or not it's an albatross or a medal at the moment it seems like it's more going to be an albatross certainly when you look at those mid-term bombs and if i could just long term can i just make this one point winston because i think it's if we look at the long term for this conflict the longer it goes on the longer the straight of a mood does the hokey-cokey opens and it shuts and it opens and it shuts and it opens and it shuts the further we go down this path is the closer we get to a real economic catastrophe this could be catastrophic to numerous economies potentially potentially devastating taking years and years and years to recover from and the fact that it we haven't seemed to have had yet anybody proposing a solution or potential solution to actually solving this i find utterly terrifying if i'm being honest because we look at the depths of our our economies the uk's 2.9 trillion the the us is 40 trillion i mean we are not healthy economies just by looking at our deficits all we need is the slightest push towards the precipice and we're all going to be in desperate trouble and my real concern is is that the current crisis we're in is that the current crisis we're in is that the current crisis we're in is that the future of iran and the is that the current crisis we're in is that the future of iran and the straddle for moose is the straddle for moose is the nudge that our economies need into going into free fall before pushing back i'll just make paint the picture the things that are actually even worse still which is that the iranians i thought you were pro the war might the iranians are even it looks like that they're going to be and the new regime will be more hard line which i think you didn't predict uh the the viziers are around the new the the sort of younger gayer ayatollah apparently are more hardline and it's also the case that america's allies in the middle east uh have have lost confidence in america so the saudis their bases were were destroyed the american bases in saudi were destroyed the emiratis had these deals with the americans and yet they still got it didn't it didn't act as a defense having american alliance in fact it meant that they were subject of of the from Iran. But to you, the question has got to be, what do you do with an Iran, with a death call Iran, with enriched uranium? Perfect. I was going to bring this up. Perfect. I'm glad you bring this up. This is exactly the counter argument. Great. You actually have to come up with a good answer. And the situation before the war. No, you don't actually, for the reasons I'm happy to explain, you don't actually. But may I? The situation before the war was not tolerable. The terms of the JCPOA were only good for Iran. Iran was a menace and a threat to the world. And it was not acceptable to leave the situation as it was. You can't have Ayatollahs with nuclear weapons. Agreed. The problem with your argument, Winston, is that this. This war makes it far, far more likely that the Ayatollahs will get nuclear weapons. And the deal that Trump or whoever replaces him, if that's how long this war goes, does, will actually be worse than the JCPOA. Necessarily so, because by that point, America will have definitely lost the war. Well, the MOU is worse than the JCPOA. As far as I'm concerned. My point is that. Well, exactly. You're making my point. Except that the longer this war goes, the worse the deal will be, which is why I said Trump's only way out of this is to take an L and sell it as a W. And that's the only outcome. So you can't put this on us and say, well, you guys didn't support this war. So what would you have done about Iran's nuclear threat? Well, this war has only made that worse and more likely. So that's why, for example, I had not only no problem, I was delighted that the United States tried to take out Iran's nuclear facilities in the 12 day war, bombed the shit out of their nuclear installations all day, every day, twice a week, twice a day, whatever. I don't care. That's fine by me. The issue I have is once you escalate it in the way that you have, we've actually now made it far more likely that the Iranians will develop nuclear weapons. So do I have a solution sitting here in the podcast studio to the Iran nuclear problem? No, I don't. I don't think anybody does. The only argument is, was this war something that took us further away from that solution or closer to it? And I think my argument would be that it's actually taken us further away. It's made Iran's nuclear ambitions more real, more likely to be capitalized on. And Iran is more going to be, if you put yourself in the position of the Ayatollah, despite his alleged homosexuality, Winston, then what you might say is, what is the rationale for me now not to go for nuclear weapons? We were sort of playing footsie with nuclear material. We weren't quite going for it. We're just enriching a little bit. We didn't put it into missiles. No, no, no, no, no. Well, you've just killed my dad. You've killed all my mates, right? You've shown that you will keep killing us. What's the solution to all of this from my Ayatollah perspective? Well, my Ayatollah perspective is the only way for me to be safe is to do what North Korea did. There's a reason we're not bombing the shit out of North Korea. That's because they have nuclear weapons. There's a reason Ukraine was able to be invaded by Russia. It's because they didn't have nuclear weapons, which we made them give up, by the way. It's one of the things Bill Clinton has actually publicly conceded that forcing the Ukrainians to give up their nukes is one of the reasons Russia was able to invade. So if you're the Ayatollah, you are now way more determined and way more legitimized in the eyes of your own, but also lots of people around the world who don't support this war to go for nukes. So you can't put that on the critics of the war because the war has not advanced the cause that you think it has. But I think it's perfectly reasonable to have a conversation about how to deal with that problem, which is. Of course, you I think you guys might be an exception in the anti-Iran war crowd in that you're prepared to have that conversation. A lot of people just say everything America does is wrong. They would not have supported it. That's done. Well, I mean, I'm going to be more specific. They would not support it. They don't support what happened in Venezuela, whereas you guys don't have a de facto position like that. Either America is bad or that war is necessarily bad because there are worse things than war. Agreed. And that that is something that definitely needs to be called out. The desire for America or just the West to lose this conflict is a really concerning tendency that you see more and more across society now. And it's one of those things where it's quite clear that when. When a country like Iran funds proxies, menaces its near abroad, has an outsized role in the continuing kind of destabilization of a country like Iraq or whatever, that's just Iran doing its thing. But when you've got the US or Israel, whoever actually trying to protect against their own interests or trying to deal with a theocratic Islamist threat that doesn't just kill its own people. but also has designs on the world that's just american imperialism and something to be opposed to the hill so there is that of course complete double standard and and the the willingness for america to be given a bloody nose even at what consequence has been pretty striking the thing that struck me about this whole conflict from the off though was that even if you're kind of like paid up supporter of like the american empire even if you think on balance it's a better thing than not that it continues to be that hegemonic power i mean even on the most basic level forget nuclear proliferation but keeping the shipping lanes open that was like the least controversial aspect of the american empire and it was always based not just on kind of sheer military might but kind of implicit threat there are limits to american power um it had it cannot you know just by sheer warfare um get certain miscreant countries into line if you like the problem with this conflict certainly the way it's panned out is that it's demonstrated those limits and it's also given a country like iran that uh boot on the neck of global hydrocarbons in a way that it wouldn't have had previously because again the implicit threat has been sort of called out and it hasn't hasn't worked so there of course is the ridiculous sort of anti-western supposedly anti-imperious left opposition to any kind of conflict it seems like that might benefit the west in its interest but even amongst those people i think are in who would support you know america continuing to be the superpower riding high this is only weak in that position certainly in the way it's been prosecuted so and we also need to i'm sorry so i was just going to say look america has a democracy every four years there's an election if this drags on what's the next government going to do i mean if we have a democratic government what are they going to do i can tell you right now i mean i wouldn't pretend to be an expert on u.s politics but i don't think that they're going to be as hard line as trump has been and the real worry is that they're going to capitulate and they're going to give the iranians a very very soft very very favorable deal which then incentivizes these types of countries to do these types of behaviors it's a real worry and even if you we get somebody in we get for instance somebody from the republican party winning the election what's their position going to be are they going to be a fundamentally anti-war anti anti-interventionist party who are going to go you know what we're going to do we're going to we don't want anything to do with this it's nothing to do with us here have it and we're just going to go back and not get involved and there's plenty of people who share that view but in america on the left and on the right so this idea that this is a continuum that can you know that we can maintain unfortunately it's simply not going to happen and it's really worrying the other part of this story just to bring it back to our home that this week we had a cyber attack from iran of a power facility and it didn't affect the grid but we have been attacked and our response as far as as far unless there's something happening behind the scenes that we don't know about is that there hasn't been a response and i think zero response is also not acceptable what we have in our capabilities given our military assets or whatever it might be it's not entirely clear to me that we're going to have a cyber attack and it's not entirely clear to me because obviously the government knows more than we know that it's not in the public domain but to do nothing is also not an option as far as i'm concerned yeah i know i agree i i think tom made a very good point which is you don't have to be anti-western to be against this conflict and in fact i would argue you know my view has always been the same pax americana is the best pax there's ever been it's wonderful i'd like it to continue i'm very pro-america very pro-western and i think it's a very good point and i think it's a very good point to be anti-west and because of that very against this conflict because empires and america is an empire often achieve great success by conflict by using their force the the threats that you alluded to tom but they can also get into bad wars that cause them to go bankrupt that cause internal instability and that can cause a weakening of the image abroad and by the way there's so many conflicts you can be party to in the world all at once and losing at the same time i mean let's be honest there's so many conflicts you can be party to in the world all at once and losing at the same time partly because the west failed to provide them the support they needed to be able to do that so you've got two conflicts going on at the same time both of which america you might say is not winning to to put it gently and on top of that of course you have china which has its interests uh in taiwan and elsewhere um and other countries around the world which may be looking and going well this may be the time to challenge western hegemony which may be the time to challenge western hegemony in our region whatever region that may be so from that perspective uh i think you can be incredibly pro-western and pro-america and because of that oppose this conflict but it's great that we had this discussion speaking of hating the west cambridge that wonderful institution that's been rather in the news quite a bit lately and perhaps we'll touch on our interview with nathan coffness uh who of course helped to expose jason arder who was formerly at cambridge um cambridge has been in the news this week because they have hired uh let me just triple check correctly yes there we go assistant research professor uh farah ahmed who used to be a member of his but terria which has now been banned as a terrorist organization uh who now to be fair to her i will say this she did write all of this in 2002 so it was a very long time ago and look let's be honest we were all a bit jihad if you don't believe in holy war in the 20s are you really you know it's that famous churchill saying but you have no heart you have no heart i mean if you don't but she did say in 2002 in the hizb utah it was a good line it was a good line i'm pleased with it but anyway uh she was basically a member of what is now a terrorist organization to be fair to her it was not at the time but she did talk about the fact that basically muslims need to study engineering so they can further the jihad she was a member of what is now a terrorist organization to be fair to her it was not at the time but she did talk about the fact that basically muslims need to study engineering so they can further the jihad so they can further the jihad um and and allow islam to dominate um and they've just uh hired her do we know if she's radically changed her views or is this just the new policy at cambridge exactly maybe they hired her for that reason uh yeah the current evidence would suggest so i mean she claims that she she no longer agrees with everything that he's but said which is uh not the biggest reassurance is it not least because in that particular pamphlet which she co-authored where a lot of these quotes have been drawn from from andrew gilligan's reporting in the spectator over recent weeks that line about jihad is fascinating because basically says and you know considering the fact that education is her field that essentially the only reason to study something like engineering or computer science is the furtherance of jihad and explicitly mentions weaponry so there's no you know even attempt to deflect and suggest what she's talking about here is an inner spiritual struggle this is the full fat militaristic jihad which at one point at least in time she absolutely endorsed um given the fact that hizb ut-terrera is now a prescribed extremist group she couldn't legally express support for these for that organization anyway um at this point certainly wouldn't be advised to or well advised to but um the things that she's done since kind of holding conferences or being involved in projects at cambridge would suggest at the very least there's some resonances with her old slightly more adjacent self there was a project she was involved with at cambridge recently which was promoting kind of school materials to 12 year olds asking them to think about the israel palestine question describe the hostages as prisoners of war and encourage the kids in some of the kind of sample questions to think about the martyrdom of the children in gaza which i think would uh says a lot about where she's coming from shall we say um this whole story i mean we've taken to calling elite universities like woke madrasas i think cambridge have taken that far too literally certainly with the faculty of education uh i think we actually being a little bit too uh lenient on her here and by extension cambridge because yes hizb ut-tariya has only was only prescribed a year or two ago it was still an islamist organization it was still a jihadi organization 20 years ago when she she was uh saying this stuff and she was a part of it and cambridge thought they can't have not seen that i mean cambridge employed her and by the way she's in the same department as jason arday so i mean think about that you go to cambridge you got morning with jason arday where you're learning about uh i don't know what sort of uh woke nonsense and then jihadi lessons in the afternoon that's really crazy thing that's going on here that this is off the back of that literally the same department it's it's it's the islamist green alliance i guess we're seeing it now in in deep in our universities to be honest with you it sounds a lot better than some of the schools i taught in but let's not focus on that um were you a teacher francis but i i think what the fact that this was in the department of education makes this even more clear is that this is a department that trains teachers cambridge is the most prestigious place in the country to go and do your teaching qualification And if you go to Cambridge and you get trained to be a teacher, you are seen as the best of the best. And then you look at these professors who are actually teaching the teachers who are going to teach our children. And then you look at our schools and you look at what is happening. Then you think, well, no wonder we're in the situation that we're in when this is what we've produced. Number one. And number two, here's an interesting little thought experiment to play. Imagine somebody rocked up at Cambridge as a professor looking a bit like me, sounding a bit like me, and then going, yeah, you know what? Pro reform, everybody. Let's talk about let's talk about immigration. Let's talk about all of that good stuff. How long do you think I would last there? I give it about 12 and a half minutes. Mate, if you turned up at Cambridge looking and sounding the way you do, they'd be, oh, thank God the plumber's here. But but you make a good a very good point, actually. And this is something that particularly since I became a father and especially since I went to visit Catherine Burble Singh's school, Michaela, and had the opportunity to see that and also talk to her. She really, really showed me and kind of got me to really see what the importance of the point Francis just made. People find education a very boring subject, but these are literally the people who are training the people who teach your children. Is it then a surprise that your children become that there's that super famous meme of, you know, people before and after different drugs, before and after alcohol, before and after heroin? And the last one is college or university. And I think we we obviously we joke about it because that's what we do. But the education system is absolutely riddled and rife with all of this crap. And it needs to be stripped from it. There needs to be comprehensive reform. And by the way, you know, we need more people like Nathan Coughness coming out and exposing this stuff and exposing. And Andrew Gilligan, who covered this story, this stuff has to be exposed. The attention has to be brought to it in order that there is the rationale and the motivation to deal with it. And should there ever be a government that is actually actively hostile to it, they need to come in and find a way to basically burn all the shit out from the entire education system, because, you know, like I say, we joke and laugh and whatever. But this is literally the children of everyone watching this being taught by people who actively hate everything about our society and want to destroy it. And that's why they want to teach engineering. And look, I'm going to tell you right now, as somebody who has been who is who was trained in one of these institutions, I trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama. And when you handed in essays, I remember handing in an essay. I've always been a wind up and I've always been a bit of a prick. Surprise, surprise. And that we had to do an essay and about education systems or whatever else. And I handed in an essay on the case for grammar schools. Right. They put a line through the paper with it and just put the word no. Wow. Right. A line through the paper and the word no, because and very funny on one level, of course, hilarious. But on another level, what does that what does that tell you? What that tells you is they will not accept any type of thought, inquiry or argument that strays from their own ideology. And if you do do that, they're not going to engage with it. They're not going to push back. They're not going to say, well, how about this? How about that? You're going to get a literal pen line through the paper and the word no. And look at what their ideology is, is also even more terrifying, because in the kind of combination of your sort of Jason Arday style critical race theory and your Farah, Farah Ahmed, Islamist adjacent views on education, you see a view on education, which is completely antithetical to our entire tradition of education. I mean, one of these conferences that Ms. Ahmed was holding was about challenging science. It was about challenging science because it's colonial and because it is making claims to objectivity that might not be the case. It's so fascinating in the kind of Islamist politics as well as the woke politics, you see this kind of shared, complete flat out rejection of kind of pursuit of truth, of knowledge for its own sake. Everything is just to the ends of either social justice or the caliphate, presumably. And how can you have that at the heart of institutions which are supposedly devoted to precisely those old liberal enlightenment values? It's just I don't see how those things are going to mix. It's not even just that they reject certain political persuasions, although they absolutely do. But the whole edifice is something that they just don't accept. And yet they're going along doing that, you know, teaching the next generations of not just teachers, but people are going to lead the country, something that, as you say, we're only really at the beginning of getting to grips with, I guess. And trying to solve this problem, sorry. No, no, Winston, go for it and I'll make a point at the end. Trying to solve this problem as Constantine lays out, to me, is not so clear. So gut it all out, try and get rid of it. And I have actually been thinking about this because someone like Catherine Birbelsingh, who runs her school in North London, she is actually hated by the teachers across the country. She's hated by the National Teachers Union. She is enemy number one. And she's quite lonely, I think. And, you know, she's got people around her, but it's not like there are Michaela schools up and down the country. And the problem you've got, I think, Constantine, is that if you got all of these people out and they are actually the majority of teachers, you then have a situation where you don't have teachers and you've got an education system that you've got to continue maintaining. So, yeah, trying to devise a way in which those teachers are kept on board but deprogrammed somehow or shown the light or guided in a way that it's taken away from this anti-British, as you explored in some cases, slightly pro-Islamist. And by the way, pro-Islamist, I mean, it's you remember the Batley grammar school teacher who's still in hiding the cartoon of Mohammed up in Yorkshire. It's not actually that Islamism isn't in the schools. There's some suggestion it is. But to actually gut this all out and maintain an education system, it's not a clear idea how we do that. I don't know if you've got ideas to that, but. Yeah, I'm going to sound very Russian in answering this. But I mean, the way that the direction of societies has typically changed has very little to do with the broad mass of the people. It's about infighting within the elite circles. And ultimately, within the education system, like within any system, the overwhelming mass of people is rather bovine. These are people who will go along with whatever it is the herd is doing at the time. So what we're talking about is who is in charge, what their agenda is and what the explicit do's and don'ts and the implicit do's and don'ts of that society, that structure, that institution, those that community is. So if you change the overall setting and posture of an institution, most of the people will fall in line and the ones that don't have to be the heads on spikes that you use as the example of for everybody else, if you want to teach jihadism in our university, you get fired. Simple, right? This is not compatible, as Tom was saying, with the Western liberal educational tradition. By the way, we've got to we've got to start with what is education for? We've got to the point, I think, in the West where we sort of think that education is about teaching science and maths and whatever education is about that. It's about teaching information. It's about teaching ways of thinking, et cetera. But it's also about passing down the cultural traditions. Of that society. That's what it's about. And unless education does that, then education will inevitably be taken people over by people who will teach the cultural traditions of a different society. And so these indigenous ways of knowing and critical race theory and whatever, that's not just people coming in and taking over, it's people filling a vacuum when people step back and say, we're no longer going to teach the Western canon. We're no longer going to teach Western liberal values. Then, of course, other forms of thinking and being will be taught instead. And so that's why I say you have to restructure the whole thing up. But that doesn't mean you have to fire every single teacher who currently would respond in an anonymous survey saying, actually, I do support a bit of critical race theory. That's not how it works. The majority of people, as we have seen in the last 10 years, will go along with almost anything as long as the social incentive structure is for them to do that. And look, most people, if you actually ask them, and I include teachers in this, and teaching is a notoriously difficult job. If you ask most teachers, even very, very bright ones, what critical race theory is, most of them wouldn't even be able to tell you or explain to you because there's simply not enough time in the day to plan your lessons, teach the classes, mark the books, attend all the pointless meetings, do all the pointless paperwork and then dive into the critical race theory and what it is and the tenets of it. Yeah, but no, but there's a point that I want to make here, which is really, which is really important. Just, I don't think we've spoken enough about the fact that this is Cambridge University this isn't London South Bank University this isn't you know whatever Nottingham Trent or whatever sorry Dean you went to Nottingham Trent I'll produce and my apologies but this isn't a university of mid-ranking yeah Dean's gonna quit now I can just hear him on the other end no no he's not gonna quit he went to Nottingham Trent this is the best job he's ever gonna get mate yeah that is true Dean Dean you've got this job and you're fucking grateful for it all right mate no but the point is is this is the premier academic institution of this country when we were doing our A-levels we all dreamt about going to this university this is the academic equivalent of playing in the Premier League now just imagine if you're a footballer and you're looking at the Premier League and it's completely completely different from the Premier League and you're looking at the Premier League and corrupt the matches don't mean anything everything's a farce and a sham and it's completely rotten from the inside what does that say about you what does that say about your career your dreams your aspirations and what do you do in order to succeed do you stand out and sacrifice everything that you've worked for in order to essentially get ahead or do you basically take a stand and sacrifice your career and everything you've worked for I mean what do you do this is a tragedy yeah I just think as to your point about teachers not being able to spell out critical race theory I'm sure it's right most people can't spell out critical race theory who are woke but they are still woke and they still have that world view and as for them uh sort of gutting them out if you were to change even not trying to sack everyone but just try and change the the curriculum and try and change how education is done in our country I think that'd be a revolt I think a lot of teachers would protest that as they have done before so that that's why I just I don't I'm not convinced that it's as I mean we'll see what happens if if there can be any change from the top but I'm not convinced there'll be an easy process in no I don't I don't think no I don't think anyone's saying it will be easy and by the way the answer to all of this is politics right let's be honest the answer to all of this is people being elected who actively a understand this problem and b oppose what they're doing and b oppose what they're doing and b oppose what they're doing and b oppose what they're doing and b oppose what they're doing and b oppose what they're doing and there are lots of people within academia who would be prepared to facilitate the changes that are necessary if there was the political will and the political cover to actually go ahead with this so it starts with I mean this ultimately is about politics and unless we have a change not just of government because a lot of this was happening under the tories but a change of the world view of the people who run the country from the very top down this won't change and that's why you have to have uh election results that deliver a sound majority uh and a clear mandate for this to be reformed seeing as we've brought up the topic of what ideas are compatible with western liberal ideas I just thought I might do a little plug for my upcoming live event in London at the Emmanuel Center September 11th Majid Nawaz and Raymond Ibrahim friends of Trigonometry I think as much as my show is Islam compatible with the west lads I hope you'll join me I hope you'll see you there and if you want tickets it's winstermarshall.eventbrite.co.uk excellent well on that happy note let's move on to our final story of the week which is of course Meta the owner of Facebook has you just did mate Meta has agreed Meta has agreed to pay up to 18 billion dollars to settle claims uh that its platforms have harmed children uh this of course is to do with a number of different uh claims against Meta up to and including children who have committed suicide as a result of the of the content that they've watched and there are really well there are many sides to this story but it is uh you know I don't even know why I said that there are so many sides to this story actually it's a very complicated issue to to talk about um so let's get into it Tom what are your thoughts on this idea of social media companies now Meta I think has admitted no fault but you don't pay 18 billion dollars if you if there's no no fire to the smoke right um so I think there's an acknowledgement that at least I don't know about now but at least in the past there has been this uber Wild Wild West of social media the move fast and break things where they really I don't think understood the sorts of impact that their platforms would be having on the world you know down from little kids being affected by through to Civil War and in in the third world because people are getting ramped up over over uh different things so what do we think about this it's really complicated as you say I mean the fact that Meta have admitted no fault it's a bit like um you know Prince Andrew paying all that money to Virginia Dufresne of course but uh it's uh it's it's one it's a fascinating development I suppose one of the things is that it's so clear that despite all the conversations just by the buyer that we have in the UK about trying to regulate Big Tech trying to change the behaviors of these enormous Silicon Valley Giants that really it comes down to American regulation and American litigation which will affect how these platforms operate not just in the US but across the world basically that was always going to be you know the censorship controls got rolled back when these companies changed hands in America or when the Trump went back to the White House and it was clear and the message was sent to these companies that they needed to play ball on say censorship and roll that back otherwise they weren't necessarily going to be in as hospitable a climate so it comes down as ever to what goes on in America I think the difficult thing with the whole social media what impact is it having on society the youth and what have you is that there are clear ways in which it has affected that everyone can see it in their lives the way in which it's encouraged the kind of unsociability screen time just the way in which um people in their own social media usage let alone just talking about kids regret the amount of time they spend on it attention spans what have you where I think the ground is not actually as firm is the idea that it's having this drastic deleterious effect on mental health for instance because even if you look at a lot of the research that is supposedly there for that the the it's quite small and kind of um not particularly well measurable there's a big issue with trying to demonstrate um causation over correlation you know there are um quite um struggling a lot of struggling teenagers shall we say out there who happen to use social media a lot but that's not because the social media is the problem necessarily even if it might add to it so I do think we need to be a little bit careful about having a kind of moral panic about technology in the same way that we might have had about television or whatever in eras previously but clearly it is having an impact if it if it didn't then it wouldn't be such a successful product and in the same way that when something like the printing press came along we all think about the positives now in terms of literacy and the spreading of the written word and whatever but it was also genuinely destabilizing in a lot of ways politically and otherwise so I guess we're just starting to get to grits with this the one thing I I worry about slightly is that um the assumption that social media is just single-handedly rotting everyone's brains but I think there's probably a lot more blame to go around and it might not be quite as catastrophic as some people are making out I think it's very apt that you make the reference to the Andrew formerly known as Prince here because I think Meta have pulled an absolute blinder in this case they the reason they settled is because there was a whistleblower who revealed that they had a policy of don't ask don't tell when it came to harm done to children and so they got done with it and that's why I think it's very apt that they've done and this is really key I think for another sort of part of this story is it this is a civil case not a federal or criminal case and so uh they they've that that's important with regards to free speech in the first amendment which we can come to um but they have avoided what they Meta thought could have cost them 1.4 trillion dollars and that the states making the case against them could have cost 200 billion so they've settled for 17 billion but actually it's only about 12 billion the extra 5 billion comes if the states and this is the genius of whoever is representing Meta they have got it so that the states are now incentivized to go after Tick Tock YouTube and snap to get a similar deal and if they can get them they'll get more money those are the companies that have to pay more money and the new regulations on social media use for minors will be even harder than what Meta have agreed to but basically the story is that Meta have knowingly been created uh using addictive methods uh knowing it was doing harm for for children for years and they're not that that it's a light punishment but it's worse than that if you read the Meta statement that they put out which I've I've got I've pinged over as an asset for us to read because it is kind of gross but they they've spun the whole thing to turn themselves into the good guys so they do this open letter to TikTok and YouTube to join us to join in supporting teens we are announcing an agreement we have reached with a bipartisan group of 52 attorney generals across the states territories and building our long-standing efforts to empower parents and support teens i mean the whole thing they've turned they've spun the whole thing to so that they're the good guys when they they have very much been the villains in this story all along and it's a big deal about censorship and and we have to talk about what's going on in britain which is that not only for the online safety act which was also started by the way because of a young girl called molly howard who committed suicide and ended up being passed by the tory government and then kisama has added to it and banned social media use for under 16s but as with the case in meta and here in britain what it actually means is that all of us not just minors need some sort of digital id some sort of verification to use the internet to use youtube to use all of these other social media platforms youtube by the way which is the number one search engine not just the social media platform but categorized as a social media platform what that means is they those companies now have the power if they want to shut individuals out so what we saw revealed in the twitter files that slack channels of the government the american government the the white house approaching uh twitter as it was called then saying can you can you push down uh hide this hunter but close down this hunter biden story it everything we saw through covid about censoring individuals now we're all not just in britain where we're already there the americans that's exactly what's happening now so the america is the internet will no longer be be a free place and maybe 10 years ago it would have been taken quite a lot of imagination to think oh i'm not going to get banned or blocked from the internet but now after everything we've gone for over the last five years this is a serious a serious threat and a serious blow i think to american freedoms we also have to take and it's a great point you're making there winston we also have to take into consideration you know the effect that this is having on kids i mean i we interviewed Jonathan Haidt, I think it was around a year ago. And he said, this is one of the greatest acts of destruction of human capital that we have ever seen. What is being done to attention spans? What is being done to focus? What is being done to children's ability to learn? Look, let's just ask very simply, we can even go around the four people here today. How many of us still read books on a regular basis? Oh, look, Winston, I know your house is basically one large book. But for the vast majority of people, I mean, that joke is only funny if you've ever been to Winston's house. But for the vast majority. Great of you to play to your typical size of audience, mate, about 30 people. Exactly, mate. Listen, it's boutique. It's not small. Anyway. It's niche. Anyway. But my point is, we don't even read anymore, most of us. How many people, people used to read the classics as a way of enjoyment. I think that the amount of people who actually read the classics has shrunk hugely. You talk to university professors who say that kids, even in the most celebrated of institutions, I know they're all corrupted now and all cesspools or whatever else, but in places like Harvard, et cetera, you give them a copy of the Odyssey, and you ask them to read it cover to cover, and they look at you like you're asking to do a pilgrimage to Mecca. I mean, they'd probably be up for that knowing them, but you know what I mean? Well, exactly. Can I just say a few words in defense of the idea of responsibility and parental responsibility in these situations? Look, there are all sorts of things that are bad for your children that exist. Some of them are legal, some of them are illegal. They're illegal. If your 13-year-old is doing those things, it's kind of your job as a parent to protect them against it. Now, I appreciate this is new technology. Parents haven't necessarily fully grasped a lot of what's going on. But nonetheless, I mean, I've talked about this a lot. My wife is a complete screen Nazi with our kids, and I imagine that will continue for a long time. And the reason is, it's been very clear for a long time, even if you're not a researcher or someone who's paid much attention, the mere fact that most of the Silicon Valley people are not going to be able to use their phones, don't let their children use tablets and smartphones, et cetera, until a certain age, would tell you something about what your job is as a parent. So when we talk about, oh, you know, Meta has been really evil. Well, look, is McDonald's really evil in making food that people want to buy? If 13-year-olds become obese as a result of eating a cheeseburger every day, is that the fault of McDonald's? Yes. If we know, if McDonald's, if it's found that McDonald's were intentionally putting poisonous substances into their food, they're not going to be able to do that. They're not going to be able to put poisonous substances into their food. Yes, it is evil. And that's what the equivalent is here. But they're not poisonous substances. They're not poisonous, Winston. They are taste-enhancing substances, right? You can't prove a direct link between the shit McDonald's put in the burgers and people having cancer. But if you look objectively. No, I think that's incorrect. I think the reason why Meta have settled is because they saw that it's going to be. It's going to be improved, that what they were doing, they did knowingly, that it was detrimental and harmful to children, scientifically harmful to children. So, I think it is actually a. Well, we don't know that because they settled probably to confuse this line somewhat, right? So, we don't know if they really truly believe that, or if they just thought we're better off taking 18 billion as opposed to 180 billion down the line after lots of litigation. But my broader point. But that was the case brought against them by the. I understand. What I'm saying is, ultimately, protection of children is, first and foremost, the responsibility of the parents. And if you're giving your children a smartphone or a tablet and unsupervised internet access at the age of 12 or 13, you're a fucking idiot, with all respect. And it's your fault if anything happens to them at that point. It's your job as a parent to look after your kids and protect them from the overwhelmingly dangerous world in which we all live, in which we all live, in which we all live, in which there are lots and lots of harmful things that we can all engage in. And if you're a child, you have to be protected by that, from that, by your family, first and foremost. As for Meta, yes, of course, I think, you know, as Tom pointed out, it's new technology. New technology always has all these massive, unexpected, unpredictable side effects. And the social media companies do have to improve the way that they do this, especially when it comes to children. But as you said yourself, Winston, there's a massive flip side to this, which is, if you start regulating what children can do on the internet, necessarily, you have to establish who is a child and who isn't. And that means we have to verify everyone's IDs, and then there's no anonymity on the internet ever again. And that's one thing which, even if we park the social media issue, the sort of think of the children argument can often just have a knock-on impact for adults in general. I mean, we're in the United States, in this country, we're cracking down more and more on vaping because of the idea that it's been particularly picked up by young people. But the net impact of that is then becoming more expensive, less available, ultimately probably banned for everyone, essentially. And I think you're seeing that with social media. And it's much more pronounced where social media is concerned, because of the fact that the way in which our ability to access these apps just overlaps so perfectly with our ability to meaningfully exercise freedom of speech in the 21st century. And whilst I think it's understandable that there are so many anxieties around social media use, I do kind of go back to that kind of blame the parents, not having kids myself, it's very easy for me to do that. But in the same way, as you say, Constantine, that like, it's not the existence of McDonald's, per se, that is the problem. It's parents who would allow their children to eat it every single day. That seems to me a kind of much more straightforward to regulate, shall we say, young people's access to social media, rather than either getting the government involved, or via litigation, forcing Meta to change tack. And I just worry that this is going to become a kind of the beginning of just the increased regulation of social media, which I think, as we've found, already, from what we've experienced in this country, with the Online Safety Act doesn't really end well, even despite its stated intentions, I suppose. So I'm not even convinced that this is going to work for the kids, because I don't entirely believe social media is the only problem. I actually think the smartphones are the problem. So if you don't have the internet, you can't do anything about it. If you don't have access to social media, and you still have a smartphone, you'll end up on Candy Crush, or some other thing that you'll just be glued to your phone, because the screen is addictive, having the stimulation, everything you use on there is stimulant and designed to keep you on there. I actually think the problem is smartphones. So I would be more harsh, and say that there should be some sort of regulation about selling smartphones to minors, just like we have, you can't buy alcohol or tobacco. Certain other things, to your point about mothers and parents, rather, you know, having them having the responsibility, I actually have some sympathy for parents here, which is that life is hard. hard raising kids is hard and you've got to work and you've got to take your kids all over to school all over the place and actually sometimes giving them an ipad or an iphone to watch gives you a break and i i actually i understand that the instinct to do that and maybe that should be overcome uh but i'm i'm sympathetic for how how it's an easy solution so let's say the kids crying all night and you haven't slept for ages you need a break giving them an iphone or an ipad actually sorts that out so expecting the parents to not do that to change the culture around smartphones i i don't think it's going to happen organically well hold on but but that's also true sorry with francis as the only parent here let me just answer this right yeah that's true of everything you could say well you've got a busy life you've got bills to pay you've got work to go to you haven't got time to cook let's eat mcdonald's every day uh when i you know i had a neighbor in uzbekistan where i grew up uh who i later learned uh in order to keep her baby soothed she would chew poppy seeds and put it into like in the mixer with the breast milk and basically heroin giving the baby heroin to keep her calm parenting is always a trade-off between doing things that are convenient and doing things that are good uh and so uh there are parents who for example will give their children a tablet to solve fun mass problems right i'm not against that i'm not saying giving your children access to a screen-based device makes you an evil person what i'm saying is there's an age-appropriate thing and then there's the unsupervised thing and then there is what is it that they're actually doing on their thing and your job as a parent is to monitor across all those three areas and to make sure that what you are doing to give yourself a break one by the way look i've got two children under four i could do with a break i know exactly what you're talking about but the question is are you doing something that is harmful to your child in order to make your life easier and where you sit on that spectrum as a parent is up to you i'm just saying if you give your children unsupervised internet access unsupervised access to a smartphone when they're young you are irresponsible and you can't then blame the government and then people come in and say well we need government regulation well we've already talked about how dangerous that is because the the unexpected consequences unpredictable side effects of government regulation look at the online safety bill it was touted as this sort of anti-nancing bill but that's not remotely what it what it what it became look the part the problem here as well is there's a class component to this conversation that we haven't addressed and you can see it in the way everybody here is talking about parents but nobody has mentioned the word parent in that there is a significant portion of kids in this country who grew up in single-parent households many of whom that i've taught and if you're a single parent mum and you've got three jobs on the go in order to keep a roof over your heads and you've got kids with the best will in the world look you know you would want them sitting down you know maybe once they hit 10 11 years old cracking open a copy of jane air and getting stuck in school but the reality is that's not going to happen so what do you do with that generation of children who don't have a who don't have access to parents all of the time maybe just have one parent who for very good reasons aren't available and they have unfettered access to a screen i'm not pretending i know the answer but there are far more of those kids in this country than i am frankly i'm comfortable with and i have seen the very real world effects in a classroom of those children who stare at screens day in day out out for hours at a day because mum simply isn't around to be able to parent them all the time because she can't be well i've just depressed you haven't i anyway depressed and class shamed as well uh we are middle class snobs look well i am middle class snob looking down on on this on single mothers which actually is accurate anyway uh gentlemen uh great great show this week absolutely fantastic uh i am can't wait for uh next week if you've enjoyed this watching this listen to this make sure to subscribe to all three channels that's trigonometry the winston marshall show and of course spiked uh why can i just say the francis foster show as well please oh for sake anyone else got a plug go on subscribe to the just the right remind us september 11th yeah wait are you doing a debate on whether islam is compatible with the west on september 11th yes what what's wrong with that constant i don't know it just seems like a random random day just uh plucked out of the air anyway i hope that everyone enjoys it and it's uh uneventful uh gentlemen we will see you next week uh at off the fence uh as well as of course you watching and listening home take care and we'll see you in a week's time