Mandelson Arrested, Greens In Gorton & Denton & BBC's BAFTAs - w/ Phin Harper

up under the radar. A weekly look at the stories in the news being overreported and the ones going completely under the radar and not being talked about enough. My co-hosts this week is the brilliant Phineas Harper, often. Then the writer, founder, cultural leader whose work spans criticism, curation, education, journalism and sculpture. Then was Chief Executive of Open City, Deputy Director of the Architecture Foundation, Deputy Editor of the Architectural Review and Chair of the Design Home Taskforce. I want to say that you're like multi-hyphen, but I don't really know what that word means. It just sounds fancy. Do you think you're a multi-hyphen? I wear many hats. You wear many hats. Many exciting hats. Thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for having me. You want to explain your professional background and how you ended up being a multi-hyphen. Yeah, I studied architecture and then I immediately ran away and became an architectural journalist. Then I relatively quickly ran away from that and became a curator. Now I'm a sculptor, I've been a Chief Executive, I'm still right for various places including the Guardian and the Opinion section. I love wearing many hats. It enables me to meet all sorts of interesting people and do all sorts of interesting things. Most importantly, you are a South Londoner. Crucially, I'm a South Londoner. I've brought some born and raised so it always has a strong bias. We're growing an event next week. Yes, the first is South. It's a strong conflict and it's sold out in 24 hours. Hardly was the name, I think. I had a very catchy name. It's quite a spicy name. Yeah, you can say it. It's called "Fuck North London." They're a mix of stand-up comedy and debate. They all start with this very polemical proposition that is then contested. There will be people arguing in favour of North London, but we thought we'd start from the position of the underdog. Who knows? Who knows what they'll say. Okay, so for people who don't aren't interested in the North-South London War, Ben and I have taken a look at the news agenda. We've both picked one story. We think the media has gone over the top on this week and one we think has flown under the radar and not been talked about enough. And, Ben, I think you're going to kick us off. Yeah, so my over the top is BBC censorship. It's back. Okay, so more, so more. The BAFTA was in the news this week. And one of the various stories that kind of came out of the BAFTA ceremony was the BBC censoring remarks by Anna Kurella Davis around Palestine and more broadly marks around solidarity with various people around the world. And we see this again and again and again. It feels like it's increasing and I'm so sick of it. The BBC wants. It feels to me. I mean, I'm not, you know, maybe it may be a sub-rosistented memory, but it feels like they were once in favour of unbiased journalism. I, I, the pursuit of truth, above all things, you know, we're going to figure out what's actually gone on here and then we will report that truthfully and accurately to our audience. And that's why they enjoy this renowned global reputation for sort of excellence in media. But increasingly in recent years, the focus seems to have shifted from unbiased journalism, the pursuit of truth, to maintaining the perception of unbiased, of, of, of nonbiased, which really is like a PR thing. It's about navigating the prejudices of your audience and anticipating the biases they have in order to maintain an idea of not being biased, which is a completely different thing. That's very meta, doesn't it? And so for people who, I feel like the BAFTAs have been, we've had so much news about the BAFTAs. The story you're talking about is so, first of all, the film in question, my father's shadow, I don't know if you've seen it, it's brilliant. See if you can. Really stunning film by two British Nigerian filmmakers. And it's two brothers that go up to give a speech and I've watched the edited version. I don't know if you've watched both. You would have no idea from watching the version that aired and that was on I player. They gave a political speech or the bit you get is, oh, thank you so much. Thank you to my brother, took a village to make this film. And then when you watch the full speech, which makes sense, given the identity of the filmmakers, Akheno and Devas says, talks about people whose parents migrated to obtain a better life for their children, specifically talks about the economic migrant, the conflict migrant, those on occupation dictatorship and name checks Nigeria, London, the Congo, Sudan and final two words, free Palestine. Yeah, I mean, there's probably a few, it also uses the G word genocide. What do you think, I like this idea of sort of the perception of not being biased? Like, there's a lot there that presumably made people nervous. Why do you think, like, what do you think the sort of BBC of your would have done and like, why do you think this was censored? I think it was censored because of this, the BBC is trying to cultivate an image of not saying, not being seen to broadcast anything that would reflect one or other side of various big debates in society and the world. But that is not a particularly journalistic reflex. Obviously, people in the world have different opinions on global conflicts, on political matters, and I think the role of journalism should be to accurately report what happens in the world, including accurately reporting when the Afro winners have a particular perspective on those. Yeah, and I think, yeah, I think it's a really good point because the BBC's meant to be impartial, but that doesn't mean it can't say anything controversial. It means there's meant to be balance and there's meant to be, you can't take an ideological position, but you're right, it just feels sort of cowardly. Well, it's also manipulating for truth, isn't it? Like, a BAFTA winner did say those things and said it in a calm, heartfelt, quite moving way, and the BBC tweaked reality a little bit in their broadcast to make it appear like a BAFTA winner didn't say those things. So in this idea of trying to appear impartial to their audiences, they are being extremely partial by choosing what to take out from the kind of truthful broadcast of what actually happened. I think what makes it what sort of supports your point of view, even more, is that when pushed, because the longer version did go out on social media and people spotted the discrepancy, in fact, I remember someone WhatsAppping me this beach and being like, "Oh, that isn't speech I saw on TV." The BBC's initial response was to say, "Oh, well, it's a really long show. We couldn't fit anything in." Which does make you think someone saw it and was like, "Oh, don't mind me, I'm not Palestine in it." I think it's hard, especially because at this point in time, with the genocide in Gaza and also with other issues, I think there is a sense that artists and musicians are some of the only people surfacing a different perspective and that a lot of media debate is quite shut down. And I guess, yeah, like, defanging and de-politicising artists does feel pretty sinister. And like, you do just get the sense it's that it feels like a headache. And so it's like, let's just take it out rather than this is important. How can we shed light on this and make sure we're still meeting our reporting obligations? I also think it's not working for them because the BBC is under attack from the left and the right. They have many political allies out there because it is impossible to make everybody simultaneously think that you're totally impartial or like that your views are neutral because no one in the real world is neutral. What could be neutral though is the pursuit of truth above all things because that is a kind of journalistic baseline which you can always defend. And it's not so, I feel if the BBC was able to be, or self-confident, be like, "Look, we don't have a view on this stuff, but we are going to report what is actually happening in the world," what people are actually saying, we're going to prioritise accuracy, then that would defend them from criticisms of bias from coming from the left, but it would also defend them from criticisms of bias coming from the right. They could sort of rise above the opinionated melee and say, "Look, we just care about the truth. That's our focus here." Often when this sort of thing happens, you always feel a bit like the BBC doesn't do itself any favours, like the early stuff with the Trump lawsuit that, because as much as the BBC does get attacked and a lot of those attacks are organised, concerted attacks from the right, people on the left are also unhappy with the BBC. But the actual facts and numbers show that there are high levels of trust in the BBC, generally speaking, BBC programming is very popular and it's a really credible global brand. So it's almost like you have the credibility and the power and the legitimacy to hold your ground, but it always feels like they're in a defensive crouch. Yeah, I think it's a good over because it's frustrating and also, as you say, it's not telling the real story when, as someone you had to sit through, well, had to, chose to sit through the bafters and watched a very painful scene of sort of someone dressed as Paddington Bear presenting on the ward, which honestly could have been edited down then it was way too long and it was very tokellingly awkward. Also, a lot of Americans in the audience, they were clearly like, what's going on here? The show was really long. We had to cut stuff. It's a cowards way out of not defending editorial decisions. No, they could be brave, couldn't they? And it's not the first time you know, it was the only recently that Rutger Bird, Gman had lines cut from his ref lectures that were considered to be critical of President Trump. Blast them very last year. They removed the entire set of Bob Villain. Bob Villain, the punk band, because the frontman gave some very strongly worded criticism of the Israeli army. 2023, the Guardian was told that the BBC was refusing to air an episode of a David Attenborough nature documentary because of concerns that might be seen as, that might draw criticism from the right. So you're right, there's this reflexive defensive crouch, which is not doing the BBC any favors. It's forcing them into making these editorial decisions out of fear of reprisal rather than out of confidence that they are pursuing the truth in all their journalism. Yeah. And it's almost a bit more sinister isn't it? Because if you watch Fox News, you expect it to be favorable to President Trump. Like no one's watching Fox News being like, I'm going to get the unbiased, unbarnished truth here. Just factually what happened. But yeah, that sort of sinister creep of, oh, we just don't want to deal with the fallout. Oh, don't want to have to have angry Republicans. So we're just not going to say this does feel in some ways more sinister because you're telling people that they're getting one thing that they're not. Whereas Fox, you know, doesn't lie about what it, well, Fox does lie. But Fox News, I think, you know, you need a low level of media literacy to know they have a political perspective. I don't really want to get into the Tourette stuff because I feel like that's had so much air time. But I guess for me, the, yeah, the cutting of this beach and the like censoring of a filmmaker did feel, yeah, just a bit scary and like how often is this happening? I think it also has a wider impact on civic society because because the BBC is so respected and revered, lots of other people and other organizations kind of take their cues about how to manage political disagreement from BBC editorial policy. And so you see this in the charity sector and you see it in like arts council funding decisions, the notion that political ideas are inherently bad that they should somehow remove from charitable work or removed from civic life becomes normalized to the point that a couple years ago, the arts council published new guidance for recipients of the National Portfolio grant, which is like their main grant giving program. And so essentially warning charities that if members of staff were seen to be taking political views in public, maybe their money might be taken away. This is like a really kind of calcifying, deadening, cooling impact on the entire arts sector as far as I can see. That is the bigger thing that sits beneath it. It's not a bad thing to be political. And there's a difference between speech that is harmful, speech that is like factually incorrect and speech that not everyone agrees with. And you're right, I mean charities, I've worked for a number of charities that like the sort of dead hand of what people think charity law is and the fact and what it means to be a charity, which has been weaponized, you know, lots of charity commission investigations triggered by right wing people saying there's charities too left way and all these charities in breach of charity law. You're right, it's like the creep beyond that. And I do think that we don't take something out because people might not agree or they might be pushed back. Isn't the kind of society want to live in? And the things, I think the thing that feels the saddest is that we hear so much about immigration and we get so much of one side of a debate. And then, you know, the thing I thought was powerful in this speech is talking about the economic migrant, the conflict migrant, talking about the different reasons people travel to other countries and sort of saying they're all valid. Meanwhile, we just have this hose pipe of kind of junk that we hear about immigration. So yeah, I think it's also what's political and what's mainstream and the BBC sort of deciding that I'm real time by addressing it. You are listening to the show, add free thanks to our Patreon community. A few hundred people support this podcast every month helping to cover our production costs and keep the show going. A special thank you to all of our brand new Patreon supporters Claire, Albert, Pat, Fiona, Liam and the mysterious cold as ice cream who have signed up to support the pod. I also want to shout out Shemari for upgrading their membership. No exaggeration to say we could not do this without you. To make the podcast sustainable, we need about 80 more supporters. So if you've been thinking about signing up, please do it today now is the time. When you join us on Patreon, you get a bonus episode every week. Behind the scenes newsletter, the chance to submit questions to our guests and access to the over under WhatsApp community to keep the conversation going between shows. You can join for as little as £3 a month at patreon.com/overthetop under the radar. My over the top for this week is pretty sure you'll have seen them. The rest of the question of Peter Mandelson and artist formerly known as Prince Andrew. So hard to miss either of these stories. Prince Andrew and Peter Mandelson have both been questioned by police. They have not been charged, which is important under suspicion of misconduct in public office. So both Prince Andrew and Peter Mandelson were in the recent Epstein files dump again, hard to have missed it. As a result of these emails, the police have not that's been brought them both in for questioning. And we've had, say, like, seven to ten days now of sort of very breathy 24 hour news coverage, you know, photographers and cameras camped outside of their homes. They're like one or two images we have of their purplocks. I mean, Andrew was in a car looking a bit sort of cuff-offlled. Peter Mandelson was not handcuffed, just kind of being walked in with police. This is obviously news and it should be covered. But I think we've seen media coverage go way, way, way over the top. The thing that's sort of driving me slightly bananas is this idea. Everyone's like, well, you know, justice applies to everyone. The King's made a statement. We have government minister saying this is proof that no one is above the law. And I think it's time to call bullshit on that. So a couple of things I don't like about this reporting. Number one, these, being arrested and questioned is a million miles away from being tried, found guilty and put in prison. I still don't believe either of these men are going to do a day of jail time for this offense or any of the other ones that looks possible they might have committed. So I think like, first of all, we're getting all this hype. It is very possible, maybe even probable, that this won't translate in charges or a trial. I think the second thing to say is, rather than seeing this as no one is above the law, it actually smacks him me of a bit like of people are of the law rich people. People who can afford good lawyers, people who are connected. There's this like story that's spun out of the Peter Mandel's and the rest of him texting various people at 3am indignantly being like people of, you know, I've been, I was going to go into the police. It was all fine someone, you know, someone spread a false rumor that I was planning to flee the country and I was a flight risk. That's why I've been hauled in for questioning. And it's like, okay, so first of all, I mean the entitlement and he risk of this man seems to know no bounds. Second of all, how does he know that the reason the police have caused men is that someone said he was a flight risk. He also, he correctly, he incorrectly identified the person that's broken to police. He wasn't that far off. So like, a) the fact that he's texting with his friends being like, this is ridiculous. B) the fact that he somehow found out why it was he was pulled in by police for questioning. And the only reason was that someone had said he's going to flee to the Virgin Islands. There's a long tangential story with Lindsey Hoyle about that, the Speaker of the Commons. Peter Mandelson thought it was the Speaker of the Lords that had shopped him to the cops. But like, everything about these arrests, the way that they happen, show two men who are incredibly well connected and do get to go through the VOP lane of life. And then I guess the sort of third and final thing which for me is just so infuriating is the only people who've seen jail time as a result of the Epstein's Gandal. So this sort of global sex trafficking, p-define ring, RGFRI Epstein in Gillayne Maxwell. There hasn't been a single other person put in prison, despite all of the emails, all of the files. And even now, Andrew and Peter Mandelson are being accused of misconduct in public office, not of sex trafficking, none of the allegations that Virginia Dufrey have leveled against Prince Andrew, many of which, you know, she alleged, took place in the UK, how a result is in him being arrested. And it just feels to me like there's a lot of circus and heat and light around something that isn't really that much news in terms of the story developing. I don't know what did you think, have you been watching the purplocks? Yeah, I mean, that purplock was the Mandelson purplock was interesting because the detective arrived in a, what looked like a silk tie to take this guy away and they put him in a car, you know, a plane car, not a squad car. Yeah, no car. Even in the, yeah, no car, even in the context of being like hauled off to the police station, they're affording him an awful lot of kind of glamour and stature and kind of farm good treatments. Same with Andrew, just in these like kind of, yeah, there are in these like unmarked cars, no cop cars, no sirens. Yeah, and then they've not been remanded in jail. Yeah, I guess they haven't been because they haven't been charged. But yeah, I mean, but like that you've also got, at the same time as that, you have a country where peaceful protesters get dragged into the back of police fans where nonviolent protesters get slammed in jail for months on end waiting for a trial that's going to happen in, you know, a year or two years. And that feels like the real part of, or at least part of the real stories is this deep hypocrisy in our justice system that people who are alleged to have leaked state secrets to billionaire sex criminals and that we have, I mean, it's alleged, I should say it's alleged and actually, once people have been brought in for questioning, there are even more restrictions on what media can say. But there are emails that we have all seen, yeah, where they've hit forward on something. But they're still getting a remarkably soft right, competitor, yeah, alleged to have committed, I would say far, far less severe crimes. And I think you've got a mind and who I've got in mind are the Palestine Action Activist, he would just give him bail. And to be clear, the circumstances are different, charges were brought, but they were remanded. So they were charged with something and they had to wait in prison until a bail hearing. So they didn't get to go back home, they were locked up until they could have their bail hearing at which point most of them were granted bail. But you're right, those people were just basically thrown in a police car and then thrown in a cell. The charges that we used to get some were terrorism charges, which we've recently learned were inappropriately applied. But you're right. And these are like really young people, people of all ages, people from around the country. And you're right, there is no world in which they are experiencing the justice system in the same way as Prince Andrew and Peter Mandelson. So yeah, it just smacks a bit of just like obliviousness and maybe just also complicity because a lot of the people reporting on this are also part of that same elite class. Maybe for them, like even the minimum amount of the justice system feels like they're experiencing parity with other people. But I just, yeah, I do not think it is the case that this means everyone's getting equal access to justice because there are no politicians that have been to prison for misconduct in public office. And there are even questions about so Peter Mandelson definitely helped public office several times for many years. But Prince Andrew was a trade envoy envoy. And so it's not even clear that that position qualifies for misconduct in public office charges. So it's by no means certain they're going to be able to bring up prosecution against these people. I mean, the only thing to say is there's a statement by King Charles saying, you know, Andrew Mountbatten has to face the, you know, has to face the full face of the law. Now I was like, oh my god, he's just, you know, he's saying he doesn't care if his brother goes to prison. And there's some really good stuff from one of Prince Andrews unofficial biographers. He wrote a book that came out. I think last August that cataloged a lot of wrong doing who has now, I hopefully his book will sell well now, but he's now sort of doing the media rounds being like, my book came out last August and loads of this stuff was in it and no one paid any attention to it. Like Prince Andrews, someone who's a nickname from his police protection officers was a fallout award beginning with C. This is a man whose ex wife in 2010 was exposed by the news of the world to have been selling access to him. So like, this isn't some, this isn't one of those, oh my, you know, you go to the neighbors and you're like, he was such a lovely man. We had no idea he was doing this. Everyone knew what Andrew was like. He was the queen's favorite son. He was like sketch AF. His nickname was Randy Andy. He like would routinely kind of mark that just style, do a business trip or do an official visit and then try and make a little cash for himself. So like, this is someone that we knew was on job. We knew a sketchy. And now years after like so many allegations and so many scandals, he finally had a day in the police station. It's not enough for me. And I think we should not go over the top on like how much this actually means. Permancafes, PermanJail, and you can talk to me. And you know, Mandelson, the Prince of Darkness. Yeah, no, no. Turns out the Prince of Darkness has got a dark side. Yeah, no one knew who, none of us knew who it's like loads of people knew. It was pretty like lots of people knew there was loads of stuff on record. That's not even, you know, it wasn't like these weren't secrets that were hushed up. These were things that were known about these people like Mandelson's first resignation was about a scant was about the indeed about the scandal about getting rich people past ports. Like these people have been behaving like this for years and they are now tasting the tiniest sort of soups on the justice system. And we really cannot overestimate like we cannot overreg how much like we cannot overreg that this is justice or that this is them facing consequences. I would love to be pretty drunk about this, but I don't think either of them really will face consequences. It's frustrating isn't it because, you know, I'm broadly a bit of an abolitionist sometimes on prison questions. And I think we should, I think this would tough on crime rhetoric has deeply failed our nation. It's failed to help people with addiction issues. It's failed to kind of support communities. And I think that the reflex that everybody should be like thrown in jail as soon as they're accused of something is really harmful. Actually, but what's frustrating is that the only people who seem to benefit from a more lenient justice system are these very wealthy, nefarious characters. And it's poorer people and more vulnerable people who get hit with really harsh treatment and long sentences. And it's almost like I want to take the treatment that Peter Mandelson is getting and be like, maybe maybe more people should get this, maybe more people should be allowed to get the talk time police officer. Yeah, you know, like maybe a more humane justice system. But why is it only going to these rich connected dudes? My under radar, comes from Ealing. Okay, West London, same or a whole bunch of half built houses are going to be knocked down rather than finished. Half built. Okay, give us more context. A construction company was appointed by the local authority to build a load of new houses. Okay, that construction company then went bust halfway through building these houses. And the council reckon it will be cheaper to knock them all down and start again than to just finish the job. Now, this opens up all sorts of issues with the British housing crisis, with our construction quality crisis, with the way that we endlessly outsource everything to the private sector and therefore make engaging kind of extremely risky projects with huge amounts of public money on the line and the way that at the end of the day, when the private sector fucks up, the public sector ends up carrying the can for that failure. Now, I don't want to sort of totally throw Ealing under the bus. They're in a difficult situation because they have been left with this kind of nightmare scenario of unbuilt homes that are costing a lot to just maintain the security around them. They're in a, you know, what are they meant to do? But it is crazy to me that this stuff happens at all. And it's under the radar because it's happening everywhere all the time. Stories like this are in the local press all over the country where demolishing houses that are built or totally built where leaving houses are not occupied. We're running a states down to the point that kind of demolition seems like the only option. I think it should be a bigger national conversation because housing is such a huge cost for so many of us. There are so many people in temporary accommodation. There are so many people who can't afford to start a family or start a business or do any of those things because housing has become this absolute dominant cost in their life. We need to be more strategic about how we're solving the housing crisis. And stories like this make my blood boil. It's flown completely under my radar. I don't think it's been picked up by any national papers. You sent me the link before the show. It was a local authority or construction weekly. It hasn't been picked up nationally but it is a pretty big chunk of change, something like 40 million pound contract. How does that even happen? How can you get awarded a contract and then go bankrupt? So they've pocketed money and then not built the homes. And why would it make sense to turn them down if they're half built? I just so so many questions. Yeah. So I mean, back in the day, local authorities used to have their own architects department, construction teams, planning team. They had a lot of resource in house and they could build their own stuff. They could build their own social housing estates. They could build their own bridges or schools or whatever. That has all been hollowed out essentially since Margaret Patches government and successive governments have put more and more cuts on to local authorities. They don't have any of that in-house skill anymore. So when you're doing something as a council trying to build some social housing, you have to outsource it and they do these big tendering contracts and big construction companies bid for the work and then they build it. But it's hugely risky because private sector companies take risks and sometimes fail. And so we saw this a few years ago with the collapse of Corillian, which was another big construction company that when they go under, you have all of these half finished or unfinished projects that then you're like, well, what do we do with these? Do we complete them? Do we not complete them? And with a half built structure and it's kind of two things to it. One is that if this company's gone out of business, maybe they kind of sucked, maybe they were cutting corners. Maybe there's problems with that frame. So it's very difficult for another company or the council itself to come in and be like, yeah, we're confident that these guys did a good job and we'll pick up where they left off. These people that couldn't manage their accounts, yeah, we sure they built. They were using good practices. Okay, that makes sense. Are we confident this is even a safe half built house? Now you could properly inspect it probably and you can mitigate that risk, but it's a huge risk to take over the work from a company that is just collapsed. The second part to it, I think, is that we are just a bit addicted to demolition in this country. We. So for example, we tax refurbishing buildings. We don't tax building things from scratch. So it is cheaper to knock down your home and start again than it is to repair it from a tax point of view. Right. It's a VAT thing. It's like VAT is not applied to new construction, but it is applied to fixing things. And so I don't quite know if that applies in this case of ealing, but in general, we have a very big demolition industry and we sort of reach for the racking ball quite a lot partly because we are incentivized through. incentivized to demolish buildings through our tax system. And so this is happening all over the country in Scotland since devolution. Over 77,000 houses have been demolished, it's estimated that Britain knocks down about 50,000 buildings a year. London has demolished a larger proportion of its social housing than any other part of the UK. We've got rid of at least 161 housing associations in a state since 1997. We're just. This is happening all the time everywhere. Just in the last few weeks, Blackpool has announced they're going to move hundreds of residents out of an area in order to knock it all down. And so they replace. Are they replacing the housing or no? Well, sometimes they get replaced and sometimes they don't. In Glasgow, the wind for the state was knocked down last year. That's a 600 home estate was knocked down. They're going to build some more houses, but a) those houses are going to be more expensive than the ones that were already there and b) there's going to be fewer of them. So they're only building some of our 400 houses to replace the 600 that they knocked down. Also in Glasgow, sort of famously, they knocked down the Red Row estate, which was 1,326 houses. That's still a pile of rubble. That happened back in 2014. They were going to do it as part of the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony. There was this idea that they were going to broadcast the demolition of a huge social housing estate like you would put on a firework show as part of the ceremony for this. for the Commonwealth Games. That estate has not been replaced. It's still there. You can go and look at it on Google Street View, just to barren empty field. Sometimes we knock things down in order to build better things, but quite often we're just knocking stuff down. Oh my gosh. I think it feels particularly relevant in a week where you'll be listening to this after the Gordon to the Denton by-election, but in a week where there's lots of conversation about, so the Reform UK Cancer Act that when it talks a lot about HMOs, so homes of multiple occupancy, and anyone who's been following the campaign in Gordon and Denton or just the news. So many people in the UK believe and have been told that immigrants, asylum seekers, people coming on small boats, other reason that they can't get a council house, that kids can't get a council house, that perfectly viable buildings are being turned into HMOs. Meanwhile, homes are being demolished and not being rebuilt. Companies like this, I think it's called like Henry or something, the construction company. Like what's happened to the money that they got paid? Do they pay anything back to the local authority? Do they just get to build half these things and walk away? Like there's so little profile of these companies that are literally making money from the housing sector, and it all gets pushed onto migrants, even though that's not true. Yeah, it's completely untrue. In fact, despite all this demolition and despite local authorities effectively retreating from housing construction themselves, we do still build houses in Britain faster than the population grows. So there are more houses per person now than there were 70 years ago. So why is there a shortage? Because the people that, because there are enough houses, but the people that own them, that own by a small, like if there are enough houses, then why are so many people struggling to, you know, into temporary accommodation? Yeah, I mean, it's a really complicated and difficult question. Some people argue there isn't actually a housing shortage. We just manage the houses that we've got really badly, and we distribute them really badly. So Nick Bano in his book, Against Landlords, kind of makes that argument that because we don't regulate rent like other European countries do, that drives the cost of housing up much more than a shortage of homes in any given area, because it's so profitable to be a landlord. Right. And then the case of temporary accommodation, because councils have this legal obligation to house people in need of, how much people in their area. The private sector knows this, and so they can charge councils enormous amounts of money to house people privately, because the councils don't have any of their own housing stock, so it's all been sold off through right to buy or knock down. But both in the kind of private rental sector and in the temporary accommodation sector, the fact that we're not, we're allowing landlords to kind of set out the terms of business, pushes these prices up and up and up. And that then needs to more homelessness, which means the even more demand for temporary accommodation. But if we were to simply move a whole load of housing that's currently in the private sector into the public sector, into social housing stock, that could immediately alleviate a lot of that take the heat out of that highly contested marketplace. So there's this sort of, I mean, I'm going to say parasitic sort of parasitic companies or individuals are massing housing. I don't know if you've ever been served those videos on social media, but with these sort of like sort of pseudo entrepreneurs being like, I've made loads of money by becoming a landlord, by like, you know, Airbnb and being properties or like buying properties in the north and renting them out. And basically we're paying because local authorities are on with our tax money for these companies to sort of fleece us either for temporary accommodation or to house people that should be housing council homes, but they all got sold off because they're right to buy and then we didn't replace them. And then I mean, the other danger then is that you have these companies that make money from local authorities make money out of the housing shortage. And then I'll also in the position to lobby government, right? And to say, I mean, anytime there's any additional regulations or tax put on landlords, you just hear people kind of squealing and wailing and gnashing their teeth. And yeah, I'm just conscious that then it's also then there are a bunch of people making money out of this system who are invested in it, staying as it is. Yeah, and lots of MPs are landlords, right? I mean, you shouldn't be able to be a landlord if you are making laws that will affect landlords. Yeah. I mean, it's a really obvious conflict of interest. You would think it is. So my under the radar, you've actually teed it up quite well because it is about Hannah Spencer, who's the green, right, as we record this is the Green Party candidate for the Gordon and Danden by election. But as you're listening to this, what either be an unsuccessful candidate or be the MP for the area. So Hannah Spencer is a plumber. She's also training to be a plasterer. So the thing I think is this by election has got lots of attention, lots of journalists in Gordon and Danden. I myself have been up for an article that I'm writing. So there's I wouldn't say Gordon and Danden has flown under the radar. But I think something that has flown under the radar is the attacks on the Green Party candidate and the Green Party more broadly. And so this week we saw a daily mail front page saying be where the Green Menace, who had people questioning whether she's a plumber, there have been rumours that she is married to. It began that she's like married to a wealthy scientist and he became the chief executive of AstraZeneca and then in kind of the way that misinformation warps, she's married to the guy that made the COVID vaccine cyborg. Hannah Spencer is not married. These like sort of grew from, so there's like a cluster of rumours. There was a daily mail on Sunday, hit piece about her property portfolio that she allegedly had with the husband she has that doesn't exist. So like lots of attacks on Hannah Spencer, those that same daily mail hit piece had. She says she's a green but she's been on all these foreign holidays. I mean, I think it was three foreign holidays in her defense. And yeah, over like 12 years. I mean, I in two times this week she didn't get on the plane for like until she was quite old because she didn't go up with a lot of money and she has actually stopped flying since she joined the Greens and became more politicized. So like really, really taken out of context, which anyone who's been the victim of a daily mail or sun hit piece will know there's some interesting contorting and twisting of the facts. But I think this is thrown a bit under the radar because I think the attacks on the Green Party, I mean, A, they're just like a horrible symptom of our politics and our tabloid culture. But B, I think it's a sign that the Green Party are being taken more seriously. And I wonder if like my senses, sure, he doesn't feel like this, but the exact plan to gain the Greens have had a bit of a honeymoon from the stuff. They haven't had the traditional like Tory and Labour attacks dogs and tabloid attacks, dogs trained on them so much. And I think now that they've got a chance of breaking through, you're starting to see that sort of traditional political attack leveled at them. So I think it's that's going to be under the radar. And I think the other thing that's going under the radar is the daily mail have really been leading the charge on this. So if you just Google hand the Spansell Daily Mail, you'll get lots of articles, all of which are negative. You know, she did a, she, Hannah was on Zack Polanski's podcast, bold politics and a Daily Mail journalist did a write-up of that. She had a grey hand that died, she cried about it on the podcast. We've got a whole piece about, you know, this shows that the Green Party can't run a country if they're going to cry about greyhound. Like some context that people might not be aware of is, the Lady Rodhamir, wife of the owner of the Daily Mail, Lord Rodhamir, go £50,000 to reform last year. So not only are we getting these like attacks on Hannah Spencer, on the Green Party, like there is, is public that Lady Rodhamir, go £50,000 to reform UK last year. So the people who own the paper are bringing attacks against the one of the main rivals of the party that they support. And like, maybe that's not shocking or surprising anymore, but it is a little bit sketchy and it feels like that's also flown a bit under the radar. Did you, did you ever see any of the attacks? Did you? Yeah, I found that like, you're not a real plumber one, really funny, because well, like, as anybody who works in construction knows, there is no protection of title around the term plumber. Anyone can call them self plumber. I really? Yeah, that's, you're not a plumber. Makes no sense. And there's a real giveaway to any, you know, to people you know, people like me who know a bit about how construction works in Britain that it's a fake attack. And a lot of these things seem like confected, totally confected and hypocritical and bizarre. I guess in a weird way, it's kind of encouraging that the Green Party are getting hit with these attacks because it shows they're being taken seriously and it shows that green politics is seen as a real threat to far right politics. And as you're listening, you will know how real that threat is whether you've got information in that we don't have that. However, it's turned out in Gorton and Denton, it's clearly a real threat. The counselors, there's, you know, Green Party's beating reform counselors in bi-elections elsewhere. I think Zack Plancky's way of vanishing it so far has been quite good where he just reposts all those kind of loony attacks, like the stuff about his teeth and, you know, he just like he owns it and he pumps it straight back out. And I kind of wish that we had, I don't know, had a bit more of that style of competitive rebuttal in the Corbin years when Jeremy Corbyn was leading the Labour Party. I think it might have played a little better than the tactic that the Labour Party took at that time. It's interesting, a few people have said that to me that they really like the fact that Zack just kind of takes a criticism, repeats it, takes the making out of it. I think his work so far, I worry that at a certain point, you don't want to be spending too much time on the attacks. I mean, I think the other thing that is worth saying is you sort of touched on a bit with it, she's not a real plumber. I mean, again, we just price it in, but she's getting a lot of sexist and classist attacks. Like, I mean, for me, it's epitomised by the fact that Matthew Goodwin and the reform candidate, he went through a divorce at the start of this year. I don't know anything about his divorce, I don't know anything about his ex-wife and that is probably as it should be. Meanwhile, Hannah Spencer, who is not married and has never been married, has got a fake husband that like is turning up in the who is now himself subject to online abuse and attacks. Hannah has spoken about that. They're still, it's an ex-boyfriend who she's still friendly with, but he isn't involved in politics and isn't running to be MP of Gordon and Denton. Again, Zack Plansky's talked about this, but the go-to of the right when press with the Greens is to be like, well, they were hypocrite. And Zack Plansky's spoken about this, like, he's a vegan, he doesn't fly and he's like, but I don't say you have to do that. He's like, I do that so that tabloid journalists can't attack me. And I do think that's sort of weird. The first line of attack is, well, they're just a hypocrite. People listening will know whether how excited to be, but I guess the attacks on the Greens does show that they are a serious political force now, which you know is interesting and exciting. Thank you so much for being a brilliant guest and co-host. Where can people find you in your work? I know it's the ground because I spent too much time on social media because I'm a normal person. A normal person with a social media addiction. At Fin Harper and I also write for the Guardian.