Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "Is the UK Falling Apart?" with Dominic Frisby
Transcript
- 0:00Get out of humans, welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas, here's a dangerous
- 0:09question for you, is it racist to be concerned that there are now more immigrants in London
- 0:18than there are white English people?
- 0:22Has the United Kingdom reached some kind of a tipping point in how it thinks about its
- 0:25own national identity, and if so, how should it wrestle through those issues without
- 0:30rioting in the streets and in a civilized and democratic way?
- 0:35We've seen race riots in the UK, we've seen migrant detention hotels being set ablaze,
- 0:41we saw number 10 downing streets publicly condemning Elon Musk for using what it called
- 0:47dangerous and inflammatory language at a national protest, which was hosted by the far right
- 0:53agitator Tommy Robinson, and today's guest was actually there at that protest, bemoaning
- 1:00what had become of the England of old, what had happened to teacups and crumpets and
- 1:05umbrellas and bowler hats.
- 1:08Dominic Frisbee is an English comedian, a musician, an author, a philosopher about issues
- 1:13of social justice and diversity, about finance and economics and bitcoin, all things cultural
- 1:19really.
- 1:20The smash hit song, after he was accused of being far right for raising questions about
- 1:27Britain's immigration policy, entitled, We're All Far Right Now, Elon Musk himself retweeted
- 1:33it, it got tens of millions of views, it sounded a little portion of it, a bit like this.
- 1:38So I wanted to understand what the point of view of I suppose a libertarian activist
- 1:56is by sitting down with Dominic to wrestle with the issues of knife crime in London, immigration,
- 2:02race, conspiracy theories, freedom of speech, and why China is secretly stashing bazillions
- 2:08of dollars in gold, I hope you enjoy as much as I did, the one on our neat Dominic Frisbee.
- 2:18Should we just start with the sort of burning question that many non-briots have about Britain
- 2:22at the moment, which is whether the UK is far.
- 2:25I mean, I don't think it's whether it's to what extent.
- 2:31But this has become such a meme and an obsession, especially among the Marga crowd in the States
- 2:36among Trump and Elon, that now the left is saying, and you see, I see Brits say it often
- 2:41on the left, they're like, this is all just a bunch of nonsense that people, it's sort
- 2:45of become, the UK has become a whipping boy for everything that ails the Western world,
- 2:51but actually you walk through London and it's certainly fine, you know, what's the big
- 2:55deal?
- 2:56Oh no, there really is a lot of crime in London.
- 3:00And I mean, obviously you can walk through London and not be the victim of a crime.
- 3:05I've done it many times.
- 3:07But there really is a lot of crime in London.
- 3:10And you know, I grew up in London, I'm in my 50s now and it's incredible.
- 3:18You know, you don't notice change when it's gradual every day, but if I was to just like
- 3:22stop 30 years ago and then come back 30 years later and compare the two places, they're
- 3:27just so very different.
- 3:30It really is incredible.
- 3:31And but this thing of knife crime, like it really is a thing and it's just so like it's
- 3:40insane.
- 3:41Like even when people had knives in the civil war, you know, in the 17th century or something
- 3:46and people actually had walked around with big swords, you know, it wasn't like it is
- 3:51now.
- 3:52They didn't use them on the bus.
- 3:53No.
- 3:54And it's like these incredibly sharp knives and like somebody, there's a there's a fried
- 4:01chicken shop about maybe 70 or 80 yards from my house.
- 4:06There's a fried chicken shop 70 or 80 yards from any point in the United Kingdom.
- 4:09Well, exactly.
- 4:10You know, we have in the same way that other nations have Irish pubs and Chinese restaurants,
- 4:15we have fried chicken shops.
- 4:17And but fried chicken shops are often the scene of the crime.
- 4:22Right.
- 4:23So some guy was I mean, it's a very good is a delicious delicacy and I can understand
- 4:27the way people would knife each other to get more fried chicken, but chicken is it could
- 4:31be the source, the problem that could be eradicated.
- 4:34You don't have a problem of knives crime or immigration, you have a problem of fried chicken
- 4:38dominant.
- 4:39We have an epidemic of deep fried fried in industrial oil chicken.
- 4:44But yeah, there was a guy who was stabbed in the fried chicken shop at the end of my
- 4:48road.
- 4:49And then or actually he was stabbed coming out of it and he made it across the road
- 4:53to the bus stop.
- 4:55And that's where you know, he shuffled off his mortal coil on the bus stop and and where
- 5:06you walk along the pavement where the bus stop is the road kind of narrow.
- 5:09So you can only kind of walk one abreast and he died.
- 5:13And so there was blood all over the pavement and the council just like obviously got rid
- 5:18of his body, but they just put some sand on the pavement, whether the dignity.
- 5:24So there was this sort of congealed sand and blood and it was just there for a week.
- 5:28And you either had the so you know, kids with their moms and stuff for the bus stop would
- 5:33like congeal blood.
- 5:35If you look at me, it's a raspberry snow cone.
- 5:38Yeah.
- 5:39And you would have to walk, you know, in order not to walk in the blood, you would have
- 5:44to walk out into the road and then risk getting run over and then of course adding to the
- 5:49blood.
- 5:50Yes.
- 5:51Then there'd be more sand.
- 5:52Yeah.
- 5:53So that's when the whole thing became really apparent and it and you know, I talked to
- 5:56my kids who go to sort of parties and have grown up and it's just so normal to them.
- 6:02And you just think, how is this possible?
- 6:05Where did it come from?
- 6:06I mean, there were a few things going on in that anecdote out there.
- 6:09There's the crime itself and then there's the kind of industrial indignity and carelessness.
- 6:14Like it's almost like when people were being attacked, we switchblade knives in the 1920s
- 6:20by gangsters in East London.
- 6:22There was a certain glamour, a certain debonairness to it.
- 6:26And the idea of being like knifeed in a chicken shop and dragged yourself to a bus stop and then
- 6:30having the local council workers pour sand on your entrails.
- 6:34It's not, it's not, nobody wants a TV show about this.
- 6:38It's not swashbuckling exactly.
- 6:40It's how the nation is fallen.
- 6:42And like I remember in the eight, I used to do a lot of voiceovers, but I'm sort of suffering
- 6:47slightly from wrong age, wrong age, wrong sexual color in that regard.
- 6:51But I used to do a lot and I narrated a lot of programs about football, who legalism
- 6:56and this was in the 80s and 90s.
- 6:59And football hoodigans, the big thing was they used to carry Stanley knives.
- 7:03You do not want to be by Stanley knives?
- 7:05It's a box cutter in American parlance.
- 7:07Yes, there you go.
- 7:09And this was like the great crime that all this sort of glamourized violence was committed
- 7:15with Stanley knives.
- 7:17And they just look pathetic compared to the knives of today, which are these, you know,
- 7:22proper, I don't know where they get them.
- 7:24It would be like an American soldier's knife specially designed for, you know, getting
- 7:31through the forests of Vietnam while defending yourself against martial artists or something.
- 7:37You know, these incredible, multiple, where it's just extraordinary, what's what's, where
- 7:42do they get the knives?
- 7:43That's what I don't understand.
- 7:44Well, probably on the dark web using Bitcoin, which you're such a fan of, don't they?
- 7:48Well, it's probably the, you know, I wondered where the middle-aged white man would end up
- 7:53being responsible for it all, but there we are.
- 7:55There you are.
- 7:56That's why.
- 7:57That's why.
- 7:58What voiceover?
- 7:59So that's, I'm interested in your voiceover career and because that's also where I started
- 8:05out before I went into radio, was turning out your voiceover.
- 8:08You're actually talking right now, Dominic, not to lauded over you to the official voice
- 8:14of Oli, the Cookabara mascot of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games when I was in my teens.
- 8:20I got that gig.
- 8:21Oh, my God.
- 8:22I'll let you, I'll let you sit on that for a moment.
- 8:24I'll let you sit on that and I will raise you.
- 8:27Yeah.
- 8:28I will raise you the voice of Harpick, Harpick for a new Lou every time.
- 8:38Get out.
- 8:40So for people, for Americans, Harpick is like one of those things that you'd dangle over
- 8:43the edge of the bleach system, always the bleach you spray around the edge, the blue,
- 8:49the blue goo that will, wow.
- 8:52Okay.
- 8:53You win this round, Frisbee, you win this round.
- 8:56I don't know.
- 8:57That was my trump card.
- 8:58I was like, did you play that three in the horse, expecting to play straight up the top?
- 9:02So is the problem essentially a law and order problem in which case if it's a law and order
- 9:07because the critique of the United Kingdom, the sort of UK has fallen argument seems to
- 9:12be a much deeper one about, I don't know, socialism, public spending, immigration, the
- 9:18integration of Muslim communities into the country that like, I don't know, the boats
- 9:23coming across from France, like there's a whole kind of Brexit.
- 9:27There's this whole bag of big meta complaints that seem quite intractable, but it strikes
- 9:34me that people wandering around the streets with sharp knives stabbing other people should
- 9:39be a pretty easy like if you brought in Rudy Giuliani from the 1990s, presumably someone
- 9:45could just do something about that bit, couldn't they?
- 9:48Well, it's interesting you say that because that makes you far right, like wanting this
- 9:57to be properly policed is a, is a like that just labels you far right, but you, you, you
- 10:04do, you do.
- 10:05But by whom?
- 10:06I mean, obviously there is a stupid people on Twitter who are going to shout at you and
- 10:09say that, you know, the unhoused have a right to stab people too.
- 10:15There, there be a large majority of Brits, presumably on both sides of the political aisle,
- 10:19who would be like, yeah, okay, let's fix up the law and order stuff, regardless of what
- 10:22we did might disagree about on immigration or whatever.
- 10:26All the things you cited before, you know, are contributing to the sort of the decline
- 10:34of the UK.
- 10:36And there is a, there is a whole other argument that, you know, we have better technology
- 10:42and better this and better that and our lives have never been so good.
- 10:45So you've got these sort of two things going on concurrently.
- 10:50But the problem with knife crime and is that it's probably, I mean, you know, I'm going
- 10:58to be called racist for saying this, but it, and it's, it's largely black kids doing
- 11:05it.
- 11:06Racist.
- 11:07There you go.
- 11:09There are, there are white kids, there are, it's kind of spread to everyone, but it,
- 11:13I think it's a sort of, and it's glamorized in all the music and so on.
- 11:17But if you target black kids, then with your stop and search and all that, black people
- 11:23complain that they're unreasonably targeted by the police and they probably are.
- 11:27And so then you go one stage further and then what you have is, it's very difficult to
- 11:31police a multicultural society.
- 11:34It's much easier to police a monocultural society.
- 11:38Because as soon as light, for example, a white guy stops a black guy, it becomes a color
- 11:41issue rather than a law issue.
- 11:44It should be just a simple law issue, but it becomes a color issue and there are loads
- 11:47of black guys like I used to drive a Ford Capri, which was a sort of, you tacky coming
- 11:54up in the world.
- 11:55Yeah.
- 11:56This is when I was much younger and it was literally every other time I drove that car,
- 12:01I got pulled over by the police and it was just exhausting and it was, it was just,
- 12:06it just drove you man.
- 12:07So in the end, I got rid of the car, actually I didn't crash it, but the same day if you
- 12:13did get rid of the car, I just started willingly.
- 12:15But yeah, it wasn't a choice, but anyway, the car was gotten rid of and I just, in whatever
- 12:22car I had next, I just never, I think I had a Mazda or something, you know, I just never
- 12:27got pulled over ever.
- 12:28And it's like, oh wow, you can't actually drive a journey without being pulled over.
- 12:32And so if you're a black guy who is just constantly being pulled over by the police, it is just,
- 12:37it drives you insane.
- 12:39So I get, I get all sides of it.
- 12:42And you do think that, you know, a common complaint is that police resources are being
- 12:47wasted, policing online, the online hate bill or whatever it's called, when they should
- 12:53be doing police knife crime.
- 12:56And you do think that this could be sold, I think a lot of knife criminals just get off.
- 13:01So for example, my daughter and son were at a New Year's Eve party and some kids tried
- 13:09to break into the party or something and then there was another kid who was at the party
- 13:12who got a knife from the kitchen and tried to defend the people trying to get into the
- 13:17party.
- 13:18This is like 16 year olds.
- 13:19This is how insane it is.
- 13:21And ended up, I think, someone nine times, how do you stab someone nine times?
- 13:28And anyway, the person who was stabbed somehow miraculously didn't die and didn't press
- 13:35charges.
- 13:36So the kid who did the crime never went to jail because the victim didn't press charges.
- 13:44I don't know why you why does the victim need to press charges?
- 13:47Like I don't quite get that.
- 13:49Like I don't know.
- 13:50Yeah.
- 13:51Like if your person's killed, the victim's family doesn't get to say, don't worry about it.
- 13:55Like murder is the crime.
- 13:56So the stabbing is the crime regardless of whether or not the victim is cool with it.
- 14:01I don't know.
- 14:02I don't know because I heard the story from my kids who were 16, 16, 17 at the time.
- 14:07Highly unreliable narrative.
- 14:08You know, there's holes in the story.
- 14:12But in any case, it's not uncommon for you see the sentences some of these guys get and
- 14:17you think they're so short, you just think, well, it's just not a big enough deterrent
- 14:23right?
- 14:24Right.
- 14:25So the crime continues.
- 14:26And there's probably also a narrative just to bring it back to left and right and race
- 14:29about community policing or what these communities actually need is more officers.
- 14:37Yeah.
- 14:38I think police officers or support in the community or they need more youth, I don't
- 14:42know, community groups or they need to, you know, better ways of spending their time
- 14:45or they need better education or they need to hunt or something.
- 14:49You might have changed now, but I used to live in Brixton, which was, I live in Brockly
- 14:53now, which is, you know, pretty mixed area, but Brixton was a very black area in the
- 14:57nineties and I used to live there then.
- 14:59And if you were a black guy and you became a police officer, you're often seen as a traitor.
- 15:06So you've got that issue as well, you know, on, you know, they had that expression choc ice,
- 15:11which would be a black on the outside, white on the inside.
- 15:13Right.
- 15:14It's, you know, there's just so many, it's just really difficult policing a multicultural
- 15:20society.
- 15:21It's much harder, yeah, but it was a multi, I'm not sure I, I mean, I'm sure it is more
- 15:26difficult, but it's only more, yeah, it's more difficult when you want to police a multicultural
- 15:31society and also be colorblind and sensitive to racial discrimination, right?
- 15:38It wouldn't be if the cops had their hands unshackled and were able to pursue ethnic groups
- 15:44on the basis of the probability that they're going to be guilty of crimes.
- 15:47And there are multi ethnic societies.
- 15:48I don't think Australia has, Australia is very multi, I think it doesn't have a
- 15:52tell of knife crime.
- 15:54Yeah.
- 15:55And you know, there are cities in the states, I'm thinking of, you know, huge Hispanic
- 16:00populations in Texas and stuff, which don't have huge crime.
- 16:03So I think I think I think I was a thing in the state.
- 16:06Well, no, I was also thinking that just, yeah, and all of those examples that you're
- 16:10talking about, the guy would have been shot instead of, uh, yeah, stamped.
- 16:14Yeah, I, I don't know the answer and, um, but I do know it's a massive problem and whatever
- 16:21we're doing now is not working on the question of metropolitan police being distracted
- 16:26by it because they're hunting for people online who've said mean things about migrants
- 16:30or something.
- 16:31To what extent is that a problem?
- 16:33And do you fear it at all given that you are perceived as being a polemicist who
- 16:37made rights offensive songs about things like in a climate where we see stories about
- 16:43Graham Linner and being arrested at the airport for being mean to trans people or, you
- 16:47know, comedians being arrested for making their pug dogs do Nazi salutes.
- 16:53Or, you know, I mean, it just seems, we've got the same problem in Australia, but to my,
- 16:57having lived in the states for a long time and given that I swim in fairly libertarianish
- 17:02free-speechy circles in the states, it seems absolutely bonkers.
- 17:06Yeah, the, I mean, it is a problem.
- 17:09And I read the stats and we have by far on the way the highest numbers of people being
- 17:14arrested for online stuff in the world.
- 17:16And it's such a total waste of resources.
- 17:19It's also so stupid like why would you send five police officers to arrest Graham Linner
- 17:23at an airport because you know that's going to backfire on you from a PR point of view.
- 17:30And, you know, the police looks stupid, whoever made the law looks stupid.
- 17:33I mean, it's just a terrible PR exercise, but, you know, maybe this is a journey we have
- 17:38to go through, but I think technically Graham, you know, we have this online hate crime act.
- 17:45And I think technically Graham was breaking the law.
- 17:50But that means that pretty much everyone, anybody says online any day is breaking the law.
- 17:57And for people who aren't as online as we are, Graham Linner and comedy writer who has
- 18:01become, I would say, somewhat deranged by his fixation on the trans issue.
- 18:07I certainly don't think he should be prosecuted for it.
- 18:09He's very, I mean, he would be what trans activists would call a turf.
- 18:13Someone who, you know, has been shouting from the rooftops for years about the importance
- 18:18of women having their own spaces, biological women, free from trans women.
- 18:23And when you say that he's in contravention of this law, what does the law say?
- 18:27And what would he have said that would have contravened it?
- 18:31Do you know what?
- 18:32I don't even know what the law says.
- 18:35Call yourself an economist.
- 18:37Call yourself a satirical musician.
- 18:39I don't know.
- 18:41I just know you're not allowed to say herty things.
- 18:43And I know, right?
- 18:44Yeah, the online hate crime.
- 18:45I mean, I can Google it, but I think it's a good, no, no, no, I mean, I guess
- 18:51I was in breach of it when you say that it's stupid because the police should know
- 18:56that they are going to cop some flack for it.
- 18:58Yeah.
- 18:59I'm not sure that they do cop flack from the people who they care about, which is the
- 19:04people who are convinced that they're on the right side of history and are very worried
- 19:08about social unrest and, you know, race riots and hatred and the bashings of trans people
- 19:17or whatever.
- 19:18And they think that the solution is simple, which is that we should just be nice to each
- 19:21other.
- 19:22And so anyone who says things that are obviously stirring people up or contravening
- 19:26what we all know to be a right way of thinking should be excluded from the public sphere.
- 19:31I think they earnestly believe that they're on the right side of this issue.
- 19:35I don't think they think that they're sensorious, right?
- 19:37Or they're sure they think they're on the right side.
- 19:39And one of the problems with dealing with people will call it the left, but that that
- 19:43worldview is that if you contradict them, that is in itself spreading hate and that is
- 19:51divisive.
- 19:53So to have a different opinion is blasphemous.
- 19:58And the problem is a lot of people do have a different opinion.
- 20:02But yeah, it's, I mean, there are so many problems.
- 20:10For me, one of the biggest problems is a lack of coherent philosophy that everyone can
- 20:16agree on is the right way to live.
- 20:19And if you could have that coherent philosophy, everyone agrees that this, for example, free
- 20:26markets are good or everyone agrees that we need a benevolent welfare state or everyone
- 20:32agrees.
- 20:33If you can find things that, and then it will be the government's duty to uphold that
- 20:39and live by that philosophy, then you would have first principles to fall back on.
- 20:44But we just have successive governments that have no coherent ideology, that have no
- 20:51first principles, that they aren't libertarian or they aren't socialist or they aren't even
- 20:57social democrats, that they're technocrats bureaucrat, each issue that arises is dealt
- 21:04with on the merits of that issue without coming back to first principles.
- 21:09And you know, with mass immigration, which by the way, is inevitable in the world and
- 21:14which we live, there are eight billion people in the world, seven billion, this is the
- 21:19thing that you never hear in the immigration arguments that is just the sheer mathematics
- 21:24of it, eight billion people in the world, seven billion, on less than $40 a day.
- 21:31And so that's seven billion people and almost, I think now more people have one of these,
- 21:37there's a smartphone that have a toilet around the world.
- 21:41And I mean, it's an incredible fact when you think about it.
- 21:45So there's seven billion people, on less than $40 a day, all of whom have a smartphone,
- 21:50all of whom, and if there's one thing smartphones do, it's give you FOMO.
- 21:56You know, you look at Instagram or you look at whatever it is Facebook doesn't matter,
- 22:01Google even.
- 22:02And you just see better lives, you know, you just, and you're just sharing an ordinary
- 22:06clip of you walking down the street in London to some guy in Sub-Saharan Africa.
- 22:12All he sees is these beautiful buildings in London, he doesn't even need to see what's
- 22:15going on and who thinks, well, that's better than, you know, where I am.
- 22:20So you have everyone with a smartphone, which is creating mass FOMO around the world about
- 22:27better lives to be had elsewhere.
- 22:30You then have better transport than we've ever had in history.
- 22:33So you can almost fly around the world in 24 hours now and never mind 80 days.
- 22:39And you know, better cars, better planes, better trains, better everything.
- 22:43So you have the means to get somewhere else.
- 22:46You're then, you have, because of the smartphone, you know, you can be put in contact with
- 22:51the people trafficker quite easily and you pay your money and you get traffic and you
- 22:55get, you know, a free, a lovely dinghy ride to wherever it is you want to go.
- 22:59And so you just have all these means.
- 23:02And so the mass migration of people is just inevitable.
- 23:05And, you know, you're protected from it in Australia because you've got these huge oceans.
- 23:11And so, well, I'm not sure that's true.
- 23:13No, I'm not sure that's true.
- 23:14That's the reason.
- 23:15I don't think that's the reason.
- 23:16Australia has, Australia has made a fast impact for decades, which is to deploy an
- 23:22extremely brutal, possibly illegal under international law, but very popular policy of that anybody
- 23:30who are right, it's not actually hard to get to Australia by boat, to get to the north
- 23:33of Australia by boat from Indonesia.
- 23:34And for years, there was a people smuggling trade from sort of Central Asia and South
- 23:41Asia through Indonesia into Australia.
- 23:44And the government just decided that they were going to intercept every boat and make
- 23:48a pledge that anyone who arrived illegally was never going to set foot in Australia.
- 23:52And we bribed South Pacific Island nations to take them and put them in open air concentration
- 23:56camps.
- 23:57And then we bribed other countries to take them.
- 23:59And we have a very orderly and very generous immigration policy, which works quite well
- 24:05because the buy-in that you need from, I mean, there was, I think there was an insight
- 24:09by Australia's first immigration minister who I think was Arthur Caldwell after World
- 24:13War II when the post was created, who told the prime minister that we need a lot more
- 24:20labor, we're going to need lots of migrants.
- 24:22And the Australian people are generous and will accept lots of migrants if they believe
- 24:26they have control over who's coming in.
- 24:29And that's what has made Australia, I think, one of the most successful immigrant countries
- 24:33with some of the least tensions because there is a sense that we will be ruthless at the
- 24:36border and then generous on policy.
- 24:39The UK could do it and could have done it.
- 24:42There's no reason why both should be able to cross the channel.
- 24:45I stand corrected on that front.
- 24:47And I knew about the ruthless Australian policies, but I didn't realise they were quite
- 24:54ruthless.
- 24:55Even so, even with all that said, the channel is easier to cross than the oceans to Australia.
- 25:01Yeah, but it's not beyond the capacity of her majesty's navy to policy.
- 25:05I agree.
- 25:07So you can focus your immigration policy at the airport.
- 25:11And it's maybe it's a tad easier to to to organise, but even so that it's, as you say,
- 25:17it's not beyond our capabilities to organise it, but because of this pathological fear of
- 25:24being labeled racist, we haven't even been able to have this conversation about immigration.
- 25:29If you said to, what is the right number of immigrants to have every year?
- 25:33If you, you know, every government is successively pledged to get the number down and the numbers
- 25:37increased.
- 25:38And I think we're on, we're on hundreds of thousands a year.
- 25:40I think, I think last year, net immigration was, I want to say 600,000 something like that.
- 25:50But total immigration was above a million.
- 25:53So 600,000 left and it's a foreigner, a high number given that we're only a pot country
- 25:59of 60 million.
- 26:01This is all to do with, you know, the decline of Christianity, not knowing who we are,
- 26:07not knowing what our national identity is, having a confused national identity, mixed messages,
- 26:13the fall of one culture without anything coherent, rising to replace it.
- 26:19The whole sort of diversity, inclusion, narrative, it is just full of holes.
- 26:25And we've tried to live by that to show that we're actually great guys.
- 26:29But, you know, it's been exposed for having, what about, what are the holes, Dominic?
- 26:36Well, what's happened into the, to the, to the whole of Western Europe?
- 26:40And, and, you know, we've sacrificed ourselves and, and our, and to an extent, our children.
- 26:48At the altar of, at the altar of, of this new religion, and,
- 26:53and it, what does that mean in practice? Because a lot of people will be watching this or listening
- 26:59to this and thinking, I went to Paris a couple of years ago. It was lovely. We, you know,
- 27:03wandered around. It's still pretty. It's still quaint. I go to London a lot. I love it. It's
- 27:07great city. These are thriving, bustling, multicultural, multi-ethnic cities, which are probably
- 27:13richer for being diverse. But you're talking about an underbelly or a double edged sword there.
- 27:21But paint a picture for what that means. Well, so white English has been a minority in London
- 27:29for more than 25 years now. And if you said 25, 50 years ago, in 25 years time white
- 27:35English people will be a minority in London. People are going, what? And white English is now
- 27:42a minority in pretty much every major city in England and even in Scotland. That's, it's going
- 27:49that way. And I look at the demography of primary schools, which would be the schools you go to
- 27:58from the age of four to 11. And because what the demography of the problem with so many of these
- 28:04numbers is that you don't know what the truth is. You know, how do you report accurately on
- 28:09numbers of illegal migration? If they're, you don't know they're here. If they're here illegally,
- 28:14it's very hard to get the actual numbers. And then you have the census, but people aren't
- 28:20honest to the census because people think the census is something else and you have double counting
- 28:24and census is just aren't that accurate. But everybody sends their kids to school or pretty much
- 28:30everybody. So if you look at the demography of primary schools, you get a very clear idea of
- 28:36what the demographics of the country will be in, in, you know, half a generation. And
- 28:45the demographics of primary schools are extremely telling in that this isn't just in cities,
- 28:51but across the country, even in remote rural areas, white English will be a minority by the early
- 28:572030s across the whole country. But what's the problem with that? I mean, that isn't a racist
- 29:04objection. You know what I mean? Like, I can sort of understand the objection to the issue is
- 29:09that we've totally changed the demography of our country. Now, you can say that's good. Or you
- 29:16can say that's bad. You can say diverse. You better will all have, you know, we've all got Indian
- 29:20food and Italian food. So it's great. But, you know, if you, the rest of the world looks at,
- 29:26you know, what an Englishman is and what the rest of the world's perception of who an Englishman
- 29:31is and what what is actually an Englishman are two quite different things. The rest of the world's
- 29:36perception of what an Englishman is probably dates back 20 years and, you know, the rest of the world
- 29:40probably thinks about Hugh Grant or James Bond or something like that. Whereas the nature of what
- 29:45an Englishman is has completely changed. Now, it's like it, it's like a, I wouldn't call it peaceful,
- 29:52it's not quite the right word, but we haven't been invaded in the way that, you know, the Nazis
- 29:56invaded other countries during World War II or, or the, you know, William the Conqueror, but,
- 30:01but the indigenous people have been replaced are being replaced. The other problem is, because
- 30:08of our ludicrously expensive housing, local people don't reproduce at high rates. This is across
- 30:15the whole of Western Europe. And the UK is not, I think Italy is the worst. And in Italy,
- 30:24the replacement rate is less than two, which is incredible, the Catholic country.
- 30:29Oh, it's well less than, it's well less than two everywhere, isn't it? I mean, with you
- 30:34exclude immigration, I think it's down to like 1.2 or something per couple in Italy,
- 30:39which is catastrophically low. It is, well, you use the word, why is it
- 30:44catastrophic? Why is it bad if you place it with people from another country?
- 30:48It's, it's kind of, it's catastrophic because there aren't going to be any Italians left.
- 30:51Well, it is. So if you're an Italian, no, but I think there's a, but there's a risk here,
- 30:57because there's a strong version. It's not just the, the, the, just to finish, and then I'll let
- 31:03you go. One is the, the, the, there won't be any English left in the way that they were known
- 31:12that you could perceive an English person to once be because we're replacing ourselves. We're,
- 31:18we're reproducing it barely the rate of survival, but immigrant people reproducing much,
- 31:24much higher rates. They have much, much bigger families. And so we're just changing our culture.
- 31:30Maybe that's good. Maybe it's normal. Maybe it's just the natural way of things.
- 31:33But it comes back to that original point I said is that we have to respect the fact that
- 31:38there are a lot more, you know, there's seven billion in people in the world, only 60 million in
- 31:42the UK or 65 million. We can't have everyone. Western Europe can't take everyone. It's just
- 31:48mathematically impossible, but everyone wants to come to Western Europe while we have a benevolent
- 31:52state and it's easy to get there and they can get welfare and so on and so forth. So we have to
- 31:58have an honest conversation about what is the right number? And because otherwise,
- 32:04you know, I wrote a song once it's gone, there's not a chance it's ever coming back. And that really
- 32:11is the case. Aren't we already there? I mean, the the Englishman with the cup of tea and the
- 32:16bowler hat and the umbrella is not, you know, that's not going to be the norm henceforth. But the
- 32:22question is, is that necessarily a bad thing in a big complicated globalised multi-ethnic world?
- 32:29Like, I think the strong version of the case for the problem of immigration in Western Europe and
- 32:35the UK would be that there's a failure to integrate certain communities, particularly ones that
- 32:42are religiously conservative and might be quite sexist and homophobic and have ideals that are
- 32:47quite antithetical to liberalism. And the ghettoisation of some of those communities in the
- 32:53Bollier of Paris or, you know, in pick your sort of decrepit third-tier English city
- 33:01with its with its woes is, you know, a problem that has been allowed to run out of control.
- 33:09There's also I think a legitimate question of the people will never consulted about this. This
- 33:14has just been a bipartisan thing that has just sort of kept happening and both parties have just
- 33:18kind of agreed that they should keep doing it. And as you say, to raise the question of whether
- 33:22it's a problem has been to code you as racist. But it does sound a little bit racist to fret too
- 33:28much about the, like you said, we'll lose our culture. And do you have to lose your culture just
- 33:33because people have darker skin? Like, I mean, I can imagine, do you, what if they take on,
- 33:41yeah, but what if they absorb the ethos of Britain? Well, they don't. But I could. Many do.
- 33:47Some do. But I mean, many do. Like Australia, you know, Australians in the Australians in the
- 33:54Australians in the 50s were all, you know, blonde head and blue-eyed surfers. And then we imported
- 34:01lots of Italians and Greeks and we became a bit swarthyar. And now we've got lots of Asians and
- 34:05it's a variation country. We're still not very African, but we could be and everyone kind of bangs
- 34:11around and gets on. Now, there are problems, I think, with culture. Like, it's extremely important
- 34:17to figure out how to integrate communities that have been traumatized in foreign civil wars or
- 34:23who are deeply conservative or religiously delusional with their islamists or jihadists or something.
- 34:29And you don't want those people coming in. But it doesn't strike me as obvious that just because
- 34:33a place looks like the population has slightly differently shaped faces and different colored
- 34:39skins that that necessarily means the end of what we love about the players. I don't agree.
- 34:47I think you different people, different culture. Get a human as well if you've listened to this much
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