Episode 03 – Afghan Data Leak + Facial Recognition & Privacy

Justine Thomas (00:00)
Have you heard this news about the Afghan migrants? Why have we got 18,000 people coming to live in the UK because of a data leak?

that put loads of people on a list, but many of them are not actually people who work for the British government when they were helping us in the war in Afghanistan, but we’ve brought a lot more people over. So why are we bringing people over to the UK that didn’t help the armed forces in the war in Afghanistan? How have these people slipped through the net, which allegedly they have done?

Why are we paying for this? What is that all about? And why has somebody been able to bring 22 members of their family into the UK under this scheme? Because the judge wanted to make a loose definition of the word, took a loose definition of the word family and said, this is not a direct quote, but words to the effect of.

It didn’t necessarily have to be a blood or marriage relationship that made somebody part of your family, that that could mean different things. So why are we doing this? What kind of lunacy in our judiciary and in the executive, in our government is allowing this to happen? What is going on? Because this is starting to feel like the mad…

conspiracy theory, the mad replacement theory is starting to feel like less and less of a conspiracy with every week that another story hits the news. So I don’t know what you think, but I’m starting to think there’s something much more sinister going on here. But logically, I don’t want to think that because it just sounds, I feel like I sound like a complete lunatic. ⁓ But what do you think is going on? Because I just can’t, I can’t make sense of it.

GT (02:02)
Well, the short answer is, don’t think anyone knows what’s going on. So I look back at some other incidents that have happened in the past. obviously, you know, we had stuff like the Iraq War documents that were released by the, who was it? Julia Assange, WikiLeaks. So we had thousands and thousands of…

reports and leaked documents from the Iraq war that exposed collaborators and people that are working with the British government. We also had an Afghanistan biometric leak. When we left Afghanistan, the US government left a load of biometric readers that the Afghans could use to track down people who collaborated with US and British forces. At no point

Did anyone say we need to rehouse everyone in the WikiLeaks documents because someone might get hurt or killed? And at no point did anyone say it when it happened with these biometric scanners. So I’m not sure the reason why this particular case is any different other than it just means that we import more people into the UK that are not originally from here.

I’m starting to think that Ben Wallace sees himself as someone like Schindler. Do know what mean? I think they’re going to, he thinks they’re going to make a film out of him like Schindler’s List, how he got 18, 20 million Afghans brought over to this country and saved their lives. I I genuinely believe he thinks they’re going to make a film called Wallace’s List. But I think it’s going to be more like Wallace and Gromit because literally he ain’t got frigging clear what he’s doing.

Justine Thomas (03:32)
Hmm.

This is list.

GT (03:50)
So what I don’t understand is why have we, I’m not saying this is a good thing, but there’s a lot to go through as well. So apparently there was like a hundred thousand people on this list. Now, this isn’t a list that was put together of collaborators. I think that’s the right word, collaborators, people who collaborated with the UK and US forces. You know, this wasn’t a list of this person has done this job for us. They’ve done a fantastic job and they’ve put themselves at risk. This was a list.

Justine Thomas (04:02)
Mm-hmm.

GT (04:20)
of not only people that helped the UK forces, but at the same time were putting themselves on this list to be taken out of Afghanistan because they wanted to come to the UK. So they claimed, a lot of these people have claimed that they helped us, but I think it worked out if there was a hundred thousand people that had helped the UK forces, that would have been like five people for every soldier. So I’m not sure these figures are even real, if I’m honest, and they’re touting it as a kill list. So this is an app.

This is a kill list. This is an absolute kill list. We’re to kill everyone on this list. Well, just to put it in perspective, if the Taliban were to kill everyone on this list, it would be on the same level as Bosnia or the Rwandan genocide if they’d gone out and set out to kill everyone on this list. So I feel like, we have got a certain responsibility to protect people that helped us. But at the same time,

That doesn’t mean bringing them to the UK necessarily. I mean, we could have sent them to neighbouring countries, people where socially, demographically, they would fit in better. I mean, we have literally brought 18,000, well, some people say 18,000 people, some people might say it’s more. But, you know, these people are coming out and they’ve been told they don’t have to work. They never

Justine Thomas (05:23)
Well…

GT (05:41)
to work ever again. you…

Justine Thomas (05:43)
Well, nobody

who comes here in these circumstances has to work because we’re paying for them, the taxpayers paying for them, the taxpayer being a dwindling number of people ⁓ who are going to be able to fund people coming here. I think there’s two things at play here. So yes, people who support our armed forces and if our armed forces are in action in another country, they are acting.

on behalf of our nation, because ultimately if we’re part of NATO or whatever collaborative ⁓ defence activity we’re taking with other nations, we’re involved in that because fundamentally it comes down to protecting our nation. these people were the people who were helping the British soldiers ⁓ down the end of the line, ultimately they’re helping Britain, aren’t they? They’re helping the UK. So, okay.

They’re people who are helping the UK. If then because they’ve tried to help the UK, their lives are at risk, then I do believe that we should do what we can to secure the safety of those people. But as you rightly point out, the people who were on the list were not all people who were helping our forces. They were all sorts of different people. And I don’t understand and we don’t know yet because of this super injunction, which is the second thing I want to come to. The first thing for me is,

We should be supporting people who help us. To your point though, we can’t bring anybody who supports us in any armed conflict or any conflict. We can’t bring them all to the UK. It’s absolutely ridiculous. It’s just nonsensical. It’s just not, it’s not doable. We can’t afford to do it where we keep getting the money from. But to the second point, which is the actual thing of the super injunction. And you mentioned Ben Wallace.

Now he said that originally he asked for it to be, it was three or four months that he asked for this injunction for, but then it was extended. Now, I kind of get in the first instance, having a 12, 16 week injunction on the data because you want to actually be able to analyze the data and as a government decide what your next step is before it all gets splashed over the newspapers. But two years.

I think there’s a question about government secrecy. think obviously the amount that this is going to cost us, not just now, but in the future is massive. But more fundamentally, there is a question of government secrecy. And since this super injunction came to light, the government has not said that it wouldn’t ever seek to have a super injunction again. Super injunctions are for footballers and people having affairs as far as I’m concerned.

Super injunctions are not to be used by governments. It’s wrong. And we’ve got, we’ve already got mechanisms like the Official Secrets Act. So if things need to be kept secret, they should fall under the ambit of the Official Secrets Act. Anything else is outside the ambit of that and therefore shouldn’t be subject to super injunctions as far as I’m concerned. I don’t know what you think about that.

GT (08:55)
Well, at end of the day, you only need a super injunction to keep it from the press. And the only reason that it was in the press is because obviously they gave access to this extremely sensitive data to some dimwit. mean, you’ve essentially, from what it sounds like, you’ve got some idiot who can’t even use Microsoft, all these names essentially on some kind of Microsoft Excel database. Yeah, there’s… ⁓

Justine Thomas (09:21)
was on the spreadsheet. Yeah, was on the Excel spreadsheet.

GT (09:24)
that’s been filtered and you’re telling me you’ve got the lives of a hundred thousand people in your hands. You can’t even clear a frigging filter on Excel. And then on top of that, you’re going to email it out to every man and his dog. mean, literally it is just one particular bozo who’s, who cannot use Microsoft. But again, this just, this just shows us where we are, you know, where are our armed forces at? That’s a tongue twister.

But it’s like at the end of the day, you know, you are literally giving this sensitive information to people who have not got the mental capacity to even deal with it. It’s embarrassing. And then on top of that as well, ⁓ and like I say, if it was so secret that you would need a super injunction for it not to get out in the public domain, then maybe you should have concentrated a bit more on keeping it secret. Obviously they didn’t. Obviously they didn’t care.

Justine Thomas (10:14)
Yeah.

GT (10:16)
But, the thing is you’re moving 18,000 plus people to this country. And for what I can see, it’s only crossed the desk really of two major people, which was Liz Truss.

and Ben Wallace and they’ve kind of decided, well, we’re going to do the right thing. We’re by who? Right thing by who is my question. You haven’t done the right thing by me because I would say for each person that comes across wasn’t the last estimate for an immigrant 42,000 pound a year. So I don’t know if we’ve, you know, anyone who’s good at math, 18 times 42,000, 18,000 times 42,000. Well, they did say it was going to be about seven or 8 billion, but who cares? It’s just another billion. Add it to the pile.

Add it to the pile, set fire to it. Add it to the pile. I mean, there’s just billions. Can remember when we used to talk in terms of millions for everything? We don’t say millions anymore, do we? It’s just billions. A few billion.

Justine Thomas (10:58)
Well, I think, I think…

Billions and trillions.

But I think you do raise an important point about data security. How on earth can all of this sensitive information, according to them, it’s top secret and sensitive. It must have been because otherwise they wouldn’t have been bothered that it got leaked onto Facebook, which is where the leak first happened. So why is the government not controlling sensitive information properly? Why on earth is all this on the spreadsheet?

GT (11:36)
And

not only that…

Justine Thomas (11:37)
that literally

could just be emailed. The whole thing is just ridiculous. I just applied for some car insurance. I had to do an online thing where I had to do facial recognition. I had to take a photo of my driving license. I had to go through a whole ⁓ verification process just to get some car insurance. So I had to do that to get car insurance, but somebody can send a spreadsheet, this top secret, out to the wrong person and then it can end up on Facebook. So I think there’s a bigger question.

GT (12:03)
Well, it wasn’t just that.

Justine Thomas (12:05)
There’s a bigger question to answer on government security and how they are protecting important data.

GT (12:13)
It was the fact that he was meant to be BCC, all the contacts that they were meant to send it to. Not only could he not clear the filter on an Excel spreadsheet, he put it in the to column and emailed everyone so everyone else knew who else had been emailed. So it was like a double whammy of absolute moronicness. If that’s the word, it’s just crazy.

Justine Thomas (12:36)
Yeah, that can go in your favour

because I always remember that once one of my suppliers sent an email out to all of their customers and they put them all in the two field rather than the BCC, which was great because I got to find out about loads of other companies who were trading with them. So it was quite useful.

GT (12:52)
Oh yeah, in this case the customer is the Taliban. In this case the

customer is the Taliban.

Justine Thomas (12:57)
And the other thing is if the names had already been released, where was the risk, quite frankly? Why did they need a super injunction? Because the names were already out there. So trying to prevent its publication elsewhere was a bit daft given that the Taliban probably had it. Because the Taliban’s probably more switched on with the government and have probably already found it on Facebook.

So, yeah, mean, in terms of that, I think there’s a lot more going to come out of that and we will see more stories emerging. And what other super injunctions are there? That is the other question, because we only know about this one, don’t we? And, you know, there could be more. the bigger issue, the fundamental question here is what is happening in secret that’s outside of the scope of the ordinary mechanisms that as citizens

GT (13:31)
Well, that’s the question.

Justine Thomas (13:46)
we should be expecting our government should be deploying to keep things secret in the interests of the state, which is the interests of the British people, British citizens. And we and our interests as British citizens should come before the interests of foreign nationals, regardless really of what they’ve done to help us and to help our country, even though obviously that goes without saying that is very important and we should try and protect those people.

GT (14:10)
Well, especially

the UK and US forces in Afghanistan, most of them didn’t do it out of the kindness of their own hearts. A lot of them did it for financial gain. A lot of them did it for protection. A lot of them did it because they did want to get asylum in the UK.

So it wasn’t just a case of the UK soldiers went banging on people’s doors and said, you must translate for us. You translate for us or we’re going to shoot you. A lot of these people did it willingly and we’re talking in a war scenario as well. So, you know, there are risks in law. And like I say, we’re so risk averse to everything. The fact that anyone took a chance to support the UK government for whatever reason out there, ⁓ you know…

There’s always a risk associated with that, but it seems like the UK government is saying no matter how small a risk you took to support UK forces, even selling them food or vegetables, we will now bring you over to the UK. But if we’re to do that every time we get into a conflict with anyone, then we are literally going to have to import a third of the world.

Justine Thomas (15:19)
Well, I think what will come out of it all are obviously there’ll be calls for reform around secrecy and public interest tests in law for these injunctions. I think that will come out of it, but in a similar way. So I don’t know if you’ve heard this week that they’re saying that for the Notting Hill Carnival, they’re going to deploy facial recognition cameras.

So I was watching a news program or a discussion program a couple of nights ago on the TV and they were talking about it, but they didn’t actually go into detail about what these facial recognition cameras ⁓ are going to do. I believe I’ve got an understanding of what that is, but what’s your gut feel if I tell you that they’re going to be deploying facial recognition technology at large public events? What’s your sort of immediate take on that? Do you automatically think, my God, civil liberties,

that’s outrageous or do you think that actually if that’s a way of protecting people against criminal activity that that’s a good thing?

GT (16:28)
I’d say it’s already happening on a day-to-day basis. think the majority of people don’t even understand where we are with biometrics. think we’re at the stage now where if you go and fill up fuel in the local petrol station, a camera can assess your age, gender and ethnicity and show you adverts based on what it thinks you’ll want to see. I mean, we’ve got these cameras that are in shops now.

like Sainsbury’s and Tesco are using facial recognition and they’re collecting people’s faces on massive nationwide databases. ⁓ So they can quickly identify when a shoplifter comes into a store. ⁓ And I think day to day people’s biometric data has just been collected. mean, look at your iPhone, you want to sign into your iPhone, it’ll scan your face. If you want a mortgage, you’ve got to scan your face and send a picture of your passport and it will cross check you against the database.

of millions of other people. in terms of scanning people’s faces when they’re going in and out of Notting Hill Carnival, probably will be a good thing because, you know, there’s a lot of crime. mean, in terms of where we’re going as a nation, that’s where we’re going. I think like it or lump it, that is where we’re going to be going long term. Everyone’s face is going to be registered and the government will have records of everything in the same way as fingerprints if you’ve, you know, committed a crime.

But in terms of what happens at Notting Hill Carnival, from what I hear, it’s just getting worse and worse and worse every year. You’ve got people defecating in people’s gardens, urinating everywhere. You’re getting people stabbed, just rampant drug use.

Justine Thomas (18:11)
I mean, there’s a lot, you know,

there’s a huge number of people. I think it’s about a million and half people go to that carnival. So I mean, it’s a massive, massive number of people, but the crime rate in London compared to what it was 10 years ago is just off the scale. I think the issue around facial recognition, these cameras is, and I was talking to a friend the other day, he was very, very anti this and saying that I don’t want my movements recorded because the next thing,

GT (18:16)
Yeah, it’s massive.

Justine Thomas (18:38)
they’ll have all these cameras up and they’ll be saying, I’m going to, if you, it’d be like a social credit system. So if you want to go from where I live, say to Birmingham, but then they’ll be able to track me going to Birmingham. And then maybe they’ll want to charge me because they’ll say, to leave your city, you’re creating X amount of carbon. So therefore you need to be charged two pounds a day or two pounds an hour or whatever it is. And they’ll use the technology for that.

But think you’re right. I all of this technology, I mean, it’s everywhere. think London is the CCTV capital of the world. I think there’s more CCTV cameras there per square centimeter than there is anywhere else on earth ⁓ or any other city in the world. So we’re being captured and recorded all the time.

All that data is being recorded. think the way that police are deploying or have deployed facial recognition cameras, and my understanding is the Met Police have actually done this really quite well, is that they have put cameras up in certain places and what the technology is doing is it’s actually linked into a database of people who are wanted.

So there are people who are wanted, who are suspected of offences and they’re trying to arrest these people. Maybe there could be like a warrant out for their arrest. It could be people who’ve been released on bail, who haven’t attended court. People who’ve been released on bail, who maybe have been told they’re not allowed to go into a particular area or they’re supposed to be on some kind of curfew. And actually what the recognition camera does is actually live there and then.

It looks at the person, it cross references the face with the database. And if they fit one of the criteria, they actually have police officers local to where the camera is, basically go and arrest the individual. ⁓ Which does sound a bit extreme, but quite frankly, when we’ve got people who are jumping bail, not turning up to court, who potentially have committed violent offences and the police can’t find them to arrest them.

I’m prepared to sacrifice a little bit of my civil liberty and be recorded on yet another camera to enable violent offenders to be caught. So, I mean, I’m quite happy with it in that way. So it seems like you don’t have a massive problem with it either, but how is it all stored? And then you’re into the whole data breach thing again, aren’t you? Who’s, you know, I think it’s just the world we live in. I think it’s just the era that we’re living in now.

GT (20:56)
No, because you-

doesn’t necessarily mean that every camera in the UK is automatically going to be converted into a facial recognition camera. mean, at end of the day, like any normal camera that’s up on a wall or high up in the air isn’t going to be able to use for that purpose. It is still a kind of specialized technology. You you’ve got to have a certain amount of your head that’s going to fill up. So they’ll probably have strategically placed cameras that will just be scanning faces, which they can do, but…

Justine Thomas (21:12)
Yeah.

GT (21:32)
the of day, most of the people wear these balaclavas anyway. So if you don’t want to get seen, wear a balaclava. They’re not illegal. I mean, I need to…

Justine Thomas (21:38)
Funny

how all the people who, after COVID, who suddenly wants to wear face masks all the time, don’t seem to be the sort of nicest, most law-abiding people, do they? They’re wanting to carry on following that particular edict even when it’s over, but they don’t want to follow the rest of the… ⁓

GT (21:51)
No.

And it’s gross. Have you ever worn a balaclava for

an extended period of time? Your own breath, your own breath, your own breath starts to… No, I can’t remember what… Your own… Like a scarf and also you can smell your own breath. And it’s like… And then if you’ve got glasses on as well, it like steams up your glasses. I mean, they’re not… And then in terms of being trapped where you’re driving and things like that, I mean, at end of the day, again, people don’t realize AMPR, automatic number plate recognition,

Justine Thomas (22:02)
I’ve never, not really, I don’t know. Why are you wearing a balaclava?

GT (22:27)
That’s everywhere in every city. You you drive your car from A to B. The chances are you’ve been clocked on multiple, multiple AMPR cameras. know, everything is tracked. Absolutely everything is tracked. You don’t pay your BBC license. That’s tracked. You’re having, you know, they’re going to have you on that. You know, you don’t pay your taxes. That’s tracked. You don’t pay your Stunt Duty. That everything is tracked. You’re tracked. Whatever you’re doing now, you’re tracked. Your internet usage. That’s tracked.

Justine Thomas (22:28)
Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, So I don’t know if you saw the, ⁓ there’s two people at a Coldplay concert who I think probably deeply regret they ever went to that concert. So this guy, he was the CEO of a tech company, Andy Byron, that was it.

GT (22:56)
Just name anything can extract.

Justine Thomas (23:16)
He was with a woman at a Coldplay concert and you know those kiss cams that you have in the sports stadiums? And he was with somebody who was not his wife in an embrace that probably one wouldn’t usually adopt with one’s work colleague, not for any particular extended period of time anyway. And they were caught on this kiss cam and apparently Chris Martin actually said something from the stage, something along the lines of,

they’re either really embarrassed or they’re not supposed to be together and made a little joke. And they weren’t supposed to be together because he has actually got a wife and it’s not her. So that actually is an example of where your privacy and inverted commas can be invaded by a camera. I I don’t know, what do you think about those cameras? Do you think in that environment, you’re just asking for it? If you know that that camera’s there anyway.

GT (24:08)
Huh.

Justine Thomas (24:13)
I guess you should just expect that you might be on it. I don’t know. I mean, I suppose you’ve got to in that environment.

GT (24:17)
Well, if

you’re having an affair, mean, you know, there’s one thing having a covert, what would you call it? A covert romantic rendezvous, you know, in a quiet restaurant, you know, with dim lighting and, you know, off to a hotel where you both sneak to some, you know, place that’s out in the middle of nowhere where you can both be together and, you know, have a night of…

unrivaled passion with each other. Or you can just go to a Coldplay concert where there’s thousands and thousands of people you could run into your aunt Jenny, know, uncle Phil or whoever it is, you know, if you’re going to have an affair and, you know, a secret affair, don’t go to a humongous public event. And at the same time, I mean, you know, maybe there’s a little bit of arrogance there because I’ve looked for this video myself and the only thing you can see is the video where they’re snapped.

And then there’s a couple of bananas afterwards, but there’s no video of before. So again, if you’re looking out into this stadium and can see that the kiss cam is then zooming in on people strikes me as a little bit arrogant. If you’re just going to stand there, you know, you kind of tempting fate, aren’t you? If you’re just going to stand there and not prepare for it. So, you know, actions have consequences. you know,

Justine Thomas (25:35)
Yes, yeah.

But

hasn’t he, he’s lost his, he’s lost his job. I believe he’s, or he’s left the company. But if, ⁓ is that, yeah, that is correct. He’s left the company. So, but would you not say that now he’s being held accountable by his workplace for something that happened in private? Is it right? He should have left his job. I mean, I’m not advocating cheating on your wife or your husband or your partner, but ultimately.

Is it the, is it, should you lose your job? I mean, it seems, that seems a bit extreme to me, but did he lose his job or did he resign? I don’t know. Do you know?

GT (26:15)
Well, I suppose it’s…

No, I don’t, but he’s the CEO of companies. So he’s obviously not, you know, a plonker. He must be a mildly intelligent person. I mean, there’s obvious consequences if you’re to behave like this. And at end of the day, everyone has mastery over their own actions. If you’re going to do something like this, you must be able to accept that there are potential consequences. You know, if you don’t want people to know what you’re doing, don’t go to a live event and do it.

You know, it’s just common sense really, isn’t it? And unfortunately Coldplay are a group that is known worldwide. So if you do something crazy like that at one of their concerts, it is going to go worldwide. It’s unfortunate. What they should have done, just styled it out and not done anything. They should have just been stone cold and styled it out. But you know, if you don’t want something to go viral or worldwide, don’t do something crazy on that stage.

Justine Thomas (27:19)
So basically.

GT (27:19)
But essentially,

time is a great healer, though. People will forget about it. ⁓ You know, and.

Justine Thomas (27:26)
I think everyone

will have forgotten about it by tomorrow. I don’t know that his wife will have done, but I she’s already changed her name online. So maybe, maybe, maybe she’s happy for the big divorce package. Maybe it was what she was waiting for. So who knows?

GT (27:29)
And now.

There you go. No one.

I mean,

who remembers Kinga from Big Brother?

Justine Thomas (27:43)
No, never heard of her. What’s Big Brother? I barely even remember Big Brother.

GT (27:48)
Exactly. I mean, you know, if you don’t know who she is, I’m sure their little extramarital affair will blow over quite quickly. I won’t tell you who Kinga is right now. We’ll wait till the podcast finishes. By all means, email in your Kinga stories.

Justine Thomas (28:01)
Okay.

GT (28:08)
so there’s been a few polls done nationally over the last few days. So I don’t know how you feel, Justine, but I feel a lot of people have the same opinion that Britain is, you know, changing and not necessarily for the better when it comes to crime. I can definitely feel like there’s fewer police on the streets, not as much visible signs of law enforcement about. So there has been a poll where 48.8 % of people

believe that Britain is becoming lawless. And even more kind of shockingly, only 18 % of people believe that Keir Starmer is the man to tackle it. ⁓ Funnily enough, 31 % feel that Nigel Farage is the man to tackle it. I know obviously we have spoken a lot about immigration, but again, there are statistics that do indicate that in a lot of places where there’s been a lot of immigration into certain, you know,

working class neighborhoods. ⁓ The crime has significantly risen. And obviously we did see the riots in Southport last year. And there was a report out that suggested that the main source of violence had been in places where immigration had been high.

But aside from that, I think everyone’s got a story to tell about crime. think most people that you talk to have probably been a victim of crime at some point.

I mean, I do go into London now and again. I don’t feel safe in London, for example. I live near Leeds. I go into Leeds and I don’t necessarily feel very safe when I’m in the town centers. I definitely won’t wear a nice watch or…

And I’d be very cautious if I was using my phone out in public as well. You know, I’d always be conscious that that my phone might get snatched or something might get stolen off me. So and it’s not it’s not a way that I felt 20 years ago. I don’t know if you feel the kind of same or have noticed the same kind of things as me.

Justine Thomas (30:11)
Yeah, think, ⁓ I mean, I’m not that bothered about circling around back onto the immigration thing. There’s definitely statistics around immigrants and them committing more crime or having a higher propensity to commit crime as a proportion of the number of the people who are in the country. That’s a thing. That’s not good. We don’t want that. we don’t want to let people live here.

who are abusing our country by committing crime. We’re being hospitable to people who are coming here illegally and then they’re committing crimes. We’re being hospitable to people who’ve legitimately claimed asylum and then they’re committing crimes. People should not be committing crime and we’re not just talking low-level stuff. We’re talking people, you know, they just had a PowerPoint in an asylum hotel.

because the police put the PowerPoint in there to tell the asylum seekers how they should behave towards women in this country. If you don’t have an understanding of how you should behave towards a woman at a basic level, I just don’t think these people are people that we want in our country, regardless of any type of immigration law, asylum law, whatever. But that aside, there has always been crime in our country and our country is getting more lawless.

not because of immigration, our country is getting more lawless because there is, for the first thing, there is a complete nutter lack of ⁓ investment in the criminal justice system. So the ⁓ police have less money to do what they need to do. The court system is crumbling. There’s no investment in that. They’ve shut down lots of magistrates courts, probation services stretched to its limit, prisons are overcrowded.

so I think there’s a big problem with investment in the justice system. And I spoke to my ⁓ hairdresser ⁓ not long ago and ⁓ we always have a very ⁓ full on conversation about politics. She loves talking about politics and ⁓

She said, she lived in London, she worked for a big massive hairdressing brand. used to all the fashion shows. She’s older now to say she’s in her early to mid sixties. And ⁓ she came to live in Norfolk, nice, quiet, which is where I live, ⁓ nice, quiet place to live. And she said,

that London now is just awful compared to when she was there 20, 30 years ago. She said it’s an absolutely vile place to go back to, that crime is out of control. But she said in terms of society, she sees, her argument is that there’s a greater societal breakdown. ⁓ And the last time I spoke to her on this issue, she said there are three things that children aren’t scared of anymore.

GT (32:56)
you

Justine Thomas (33:03)
They’re not scared of their vicar. They’re not scared of the police. And they’re not scared of their dad. And I thought that was really interesting. Now, nobody wants to think that children should only be behaving because they think they’re going to get beaten by their father or that they’re going to get arrested or clipped around the ear by a police officer or condemned to ⁓ hell and damnation by their priest. But she is speaking to a wider sense.

GT (33:09)
Ahem.

Justine Thomas (33:33)
of our community and our society and actually children when they are being brought up and a lot of children are not being brought up, they’re actually bringing themselves up. But actually, what about cohesiveness in our society and the breakdown of cohesiveness in our society and the breakdown of community and

You know, I live in a place where there’s lots of little micro communities and I’m sure, you know, all over the country there is people of all different backgrounds getting together, doing all sorts of different things for different reasons and being very cohesive in their own way. But there are many places that I would drive through or I would visit and I would think, blimey, I just would not want to live here because the communities there have quite clearly

broken down, there’ll be a lot of people who are out of work, there may be lot of single parent families. Again, not interested in bashing single parent families. I was a single parent for a very long time. But ultimately, I’ll always make the example, if you’re a single parent, it is very, very difficult being a single parent. It is not easy. And often what happens as well is you’ve got people who are single parents and they may live in a place where their extended family don’t live. So it’s that kind of…

old sense of community and families who live near to each other. We’ve lost a lot of that because people travel all over to work, people move around more, they’re more mobile. Now we’re never going to, we’re not going to go back to the 1940s when everybody lived in the same village, but I do believe that that is the sort of thing that she’s talking about. And ultimately, I’m not sure I’ve got all the answers, but I do believe that is a reason why we’re seeing

increase crime because there’s more children are growing up without respect for the law. So that’s one issue. The other thing is we seem to have, if not decriminalized, but we seem to be as a society choosing to ignore low level offending. And my argument around that is that this is a very bad way to go because ultimately when you say that low level offending is

does not have any consequence either to you as the offender or as a victim of the crime, to you as the victim, you’re actually creating a sense of, it doesn’t matter if I just do that little offence or it doesn’t matter if I just do that because there’s just no consequence. And when you’re living in a society where there are no consequences, you are by virtue of that going to lead into a situation where society becomes more and more lawless. So

I think the issue with low level offending and what I hear a lot from people is that low level offending isn’t arrested by the police. So yeah, I guess police resources are very, very stretched. know, there’s a shortage of police officers. We need more police officers. We need to invest money in those police officers. Instead of investing money in people who are coming here who don’t need to be here, we should be spending that money.

on our criminal justice system. We can find the money to bring in the Afghan refugees and we’re not really quite sure if they’re the right ones, but we can find money and bring them in on flights into Stansted in the dead of night when nobody knows, but we can’t find money to invest in a probation service or youth services. You know, I’m really, really interested in, ⁓ you know, getting involved early intervention projects. So there’s some fabulous early intervention projects, particularly in inner cities.

where they’ve got people who try and get involved with children at an early age, who they identify as being at risk of offending behavior and try and take those children out of potential offending behavior patterns. That’s what we should be investing money in, know, taking kids out of gangs. mean, ultimately, if you’re a young, I’m going off on a bit the young person in crime thing here, because it’s just a subject matter that really interests me.

And I just think it’s very, very important because the young criminals of today are the master criminals of tomorrow. But, you know, a lot of it as well, you know, when you’ve got kids, so what they’re going to do, go out and do a paper round and earn five quid an hour delivering 50 papers or some guy comes along and says, I tell you what, go and take these into this bloke for me and do that on your bike and I’ll give you 50 quid a pop. I mean, what are you going to do if you’re a young person? It’s all exacerbated by…

social media as well, that plays into it. So I think, yeah, there is, the crime is rampant, low level crime is rampant. ⁓ I think there are about 80,000 mobile phones stolen in London last year. How many of those people had a policeman at the door?

I’ve heard stories of people who’ve contacted the police and said something’s been stolen. They had an Apple tag with the product and they said, I can see where it is. I know where this thing is, a bag or whatever. And ⁓ the police wouldn’t attend to go and find the item because it’s just deemed to be not worthy. So I think we’re letting, part of the problem is we’re letting people get away with so-called low level offending and it just emboldens them.

to go out and commit more of that type of offense because they know they will get away with it. And also then they think, well, you know, it’s a bit of a gateway crime, isn’t it? If you start shoplifting and you keep, you know, steal the odd ham sandwich, then, you know, next thing, what are you going to do? Start throwing things into a bag, aren’t you? You know, it’s like a gateway to basically going and you’re taking a hold of the gateway crime. The great, yeah. Well, yeah.

GT (39:20)
ham sandwiches are the gateway drug, ham sandwiches are the gateway drug to mass murder.

Justine Thomas (39:26)
But they are because if people get away with things, if people think they can get away with it, then they will.

GT (39:27)
Just to take you back though, to the point you made, ⁓ I wasn’t saying that immigrants are solely responsible for the rising crime, more that it’s a contributing factor, with masses of mass immigration, that is a contributing factor.

I think one of the biggest things is like the generational breakdown, like you just said, in family values. Just as an example, I mean, I live on a council estate, you know, and I was walking out of my house the other day and I saw some guy, must have been the same age as me in his forties, and he opened up a bag of crisps. He was eating his bag of crisps and after he’d finished, he just threw the bag of crisps over his shoulder. I mean, this guy, this…

Justine Thomas (40:13)
What?

GT (40:15)
No, ⁓ obviously, littering is a crime. But what I’m saying is like social breakdown, respect for the community that you live in. mean, this guy’s got like five kids. mean, you know, but the thing is generationally, you are setting the example, but it’s not just about that. It’s about respect in the community. And I think we’ve kind of lost a lot of respect and lost a lot of respect for authority. I mean, when I was at school,

Justine Thomas (40:22)
Yes, that’s outrageous.

GT (40:42)
mean, they didn’t have the cane, but my teacher slapped me around the head a few times, you know, in my maths lesson, if I want concentrating, throw the chalk at your head. Any lesson? Well, ⁓ a couple, a couple. But again, you know, you had respect, you had had respect. And, and I think a lot of that’s gone. And like you say, kids don’t respect the police, the kids will just go, but what can the police do?

Justine Thomas (40:50)
Did you go to any, I didn’t know you went to any lessons. That’s revelation right there.

GT (41:07)
What can the police do now if a kid tells them to f off or doesn’t want to listen to him back in the day? They’d slap around. They used to be terrified of the police. Now the police have a joke. The police have a joke. So and I think you’ve pretty much covered the whole the whole topic there. Like you say, from funding to respect and not spending money in the right places. You’ve got these diversity people in police force. You’ve got police turning up. ⁓

Justine Thomas (41:15)
Yes. Yeah. They taunt the police.

GT (41:33)
because someone’s posted something on Facebook and you’ve got six police officers go around some. I mean, it feels like we’ve got all the priorities wrong. There’s no visual deterrent anymore. And, you know, it it covers all ages. know, crime covers all ages and it does feel rampant. I don’t know what the what the answer is other than invest more money and be a bit more common sense about everything. And maybe I have Bobbies on the beat again and maybe maybe start clipping kids around the ear all again. I don’t know.

Justine Thomas (41:41)
Yeah.

Well,

think, and I think the thing about Bob is on the beat. So I think that the police forces, the police service would argue that that actually doesn’t do a lot in terms of impacting crime rates. But actually what it does is it makes people feel safer. It’s a visual thing. you know, I would be surprised, you know, if there’s a police officer stood outside the local little express supermarket.

I would really be surprised if the guy or gal who was going to go and steal a ham sandwich suddenly opened up a big hold all, you know, and put in 18 bottles of vodka and skulked out with it over their shoulder like a swag bag. I would be surprised if they would do that if a police officer was stood outside. Now you can’t put a police officer outside every single, every single shop. So it’s a bit of an extreme example, but to see my point, my point is that if there’s a, if there’s a presence. Yeah.

GT (42:55)
Yeah, but the problem is we’ve let standards slip. We’ve let our standards

slip as a society. And that’s the thing. We’re going down this slippery slope. you know, the sooner we try and get our way back up, the better. But the longer you let it slip, the harder it is to bring those standards back up to what they were. So, yeah, you can’t have a police officer outside of the shop. But there was a time when people wouldn’t commit crime because there might be a policeman nearby and you’re getting a lot of trouble. Like you said, you can’t.

You can just go into a shop and steal under £200 and it’s literally legalised. They just go in and steal all the booze and walk out. That’s how far we’ve slipped as a society. So I think it’s a societal issue in terms of crime, along with a lot of other things. But I mean, that’s one of the big ones. It’s just…

Justine Thomas (43:29)
Yeah.

So what

would you do then? If you could do one thing to improve it, given that it seems like we’ve got common ground on what the problems are, but then what are the singular things that can be done? Does it come down to money? I think it comes down to investment, but what do you think?

GT (43:56)
No, I-

Well, it’s not it’s not just how much money you throw at a problem. It’s how wisely you spend the money. So at end of the day, you know, it used to be where coppers would be, you know, you’d have to have. mean, I don’t want to be offensive here, but you’d back in the 80s, you’d need to be six foot tall. I’m pretty sure, you know, you’d have a bent nose. You’d be like X-Forces or something like that. And you’d look like a right head stomper. Now you’ve got guys that are like 18 years old and five foot three.

Justine Thomas (44:05)
Yeah.

GT (44:28)
Look like umpalumpas patrolling. It’s like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. We’ve got umpalumpas walking around like trying to chase. You’ve got middle-aged women that are about 18 stone trying to chase offenders down the street. It’s embarrassing. It’s like what they did with nurses, isn’t it? Where you’ve now got to have a degree to be in the police force. Look, just because you’ve got a degree, it doesn’t necessarily write from wrong or have a passion for helping people.

Justine Thomas (44:49)
Mmm.

GT (44:57)
you know, that may be the victims of crime. If you’re an ex special forces, you’ve got an ingrained sense of responsibility, chain of command, respect ingrained into you. And they’re the kind of people we want. We don’t want these people who’ve got a degree and that can, you know, they could have a debate with you on politics on the side of the road, but can’t arrest someone when they’re robbing an old granny. Do you know what I mean? So I do feel like, you know, we need to toughen up the police force. The police force need to have more powers.

Justine Thomas (45:21)
Yeah.

GT (45:26)
Stop and search for God’s, I mean, how many years has this stupid argument been going on about stop and search and how it’s racist and, know, they have to be really selective of who they’re stopping and thinking, look, if you’ve got nothing to hide and a policeman wants to stop you, just show him your pockets and move on and go about your day and live your life. You know, we all, it’s like, we always have to make a big song and dance about everything, you know, literally in London, they won’t stop and search people.

because they’re going to offend the people that they’re stopping and searching. tens of people are being murdered every week with knives. Yet you just won’t do the simple things to stop the problem because again, we might offend someone. it’s just very strange the way that we think in this modern age really is.

Justine Thomas (46:03)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, and I guess you could choose to, yeah, you could change that law, you could vote for it. mean, now at the age of 16, the whole thing about knives and young people. So here we go then. So at the age of 18, you can’t buy a knife, you can’t get married without permit, you can’t buy super glue, ⁓ but you can, and in fact, you can’t buy booze in a supermarket unless you look over 25. ⁓

GT (46:38)
could steal it.

Justine Thomas (46:39)
But now they’re saying that you’ll be able to go out and vote. So I think that voting thing is really, really interesting. So Labour put this in their manifesto that they were going to introduce this. I believe I’m right in saying it did not make the King’s speech. And it didn’t make the King’s speech. And people in the background were sort of saying, well, maybe that will just get canned. They’re just kicking the can down the road on that one because it’s not really a priority.

So there’s a whole question around this voting for 16 year olds and why they’re doing it, whatever. I mean, I think the reasons why they’re doing it are sort of fairly obvious. The thing I can’t get my head round, this is the deeper point is how can you with a straight, I get that with a straight face, you can be saying, yes, yes, it’s really important that we open up voting because we want to, know, voter engagement, young people’s engagement in politics.

All right, if you want to give me all that drivel and try and do it with a straight face and try and convince me that’s what you believe, that’s absolutely fine. That’s your opinion. However, what anybody is going to struggle to convince me of is how this policy does not defy logic when you consider what the age of majority, in a few air quotes, is.

for all of these other things. know, things I’ve just mentioned, smoking, drinking, know, buying alcohol, et cetera. So how can you reconcile those two things? To me, the logical subsequent action of any government that says we are going to extend the voting age to 16, the logical consequence has to be that if you’re saying that 16 year olds

are old enough to participate in making decisions around the government of the country, therefore you have to reduce the age of all of the other things that you have to be 18 to do. That to me is the only logical consequence of that because by saying you can vote in an election but you can’t buy a knife or you can’t go into a pub and buy a drink without a meal.

or all of these other things you can do, it just doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. You’re either old enough to do these things or you’re not. You’re either an adult or you are not. And for me, voting in an election, which then determines the government of the country, is a very adult thing to do. And I would love to know what you think, but by the way, my view on this is probably quite extreme compared to most people. I have been saying for a very long time,

I would like to raise the age of voting to 25 because I think that’s about the right age at which you are in a position where you’ve had enough life experience and you can understand the consequences of what you’re doing when you are voting for ⁓ a political party or for a person. You mightn’t be wrong, but I think your judgment is very different when you’re 25 compared to when you’re 16. And I actually think as well, a little side question.

I actually think that the human brain doesn’t stop developing until around you are in your mid-twenties. I think that’s right. I don’t know. But what do you think about the whole voting saga? What do you think?

GT (50:00)
Well, yeah, I think essentially, to put it less eloquently than you, when you’re 16, you don’t know anything. You know nothing. I mean, at the end of the day, you can play at politics and I suppose student politics is very different from real world politics, isn’t it? You can have these kind of these ideas of how you think the world should run. But when you’ve got no experience in the real world or any experience about how things do run, then it’s a bit stupid for you to be able to have an opinion on it. I mean, I don’t mean that disrespectfully, but

Like you said, how can you be able to vote on policies you’re not old enough to even take part in? So, you you can’t buy pornography, but you might be able to vote on a party that wants to ban it. I don’t know, but you know, not…

Justine Thomas (50:44)
Yes, that’s a great point. That’s a great point.

How would you know whether or not that party’s position that pornography say should be legal, hardcore pornography with animals and children, let’s say a party, the XYZ party wants to legalise that. Well, if you’ve never seen it because you’re not old enough to, how would you know that that’s a good or a bad thing? So it makes again, there’s no logic to it, is there?

GT (51:04)
Exactly. What if there

isn’t? No. What if there’s a party that wants to abolish your speed cameras? Well, you wouldn’t know. You’ve never had an opportunity to drive. You don’t always like to be on the road. You know, you’ve never paid a bill. You’ve never felt pressures of life. You’ve never experienced, you know, most 16 year olds have never experienced, ⁓ you know, massive emotional trauma.

you know, that comes from the real world, like the breakup of a marriage or the breakup of a long term relationship or, or, you know, or, or driving in London, there’s another one. Do you know what mean? You know, like you saying before, we can’t arrest anyone for burglarizing, but we can, you know, one of your wheel strays into a bus lane in London and you’ve got 200 pound fine. But that’s the thing. You would never know these things because you’ve not had enough life.

Justine Thomas (51:36)
I don’t know, think we could do a whole separate section on that one.

Yeah, 100 quid fine.

GT (52:01)
to get the experience to be able to make decisions. All you know is what you’ve been taught at school. All you know is what you’ve been preached at by, you know, predominantly left-wing teachers. So I can understand why Labour would want to give the vote to 16-year-olds, but it does seem a bit stupid. You’re not mature enough. I’m sorry, you know, you’re not mature enough to make decisions like that at 16.

You’re not mature enough to take part in many of the things that you would be voting on. So like you said, we make absolutely no sense. you know, pay some council tax, go and explore the world actually. Go out. mean, when I was 17, I went to live in South Africa for a year. You know, by the time I came home from South Africa at 18, 19 years old, I was a completely different person. I’ve matured a bit, but I didn’t fully mature until I was about 30 years old.

Justine Thomas (52:50)
You weren’t

nearly killed in a tragic armed robbery, Karen.

GT (52:53)
I was. Yes,

exactly. Held hostage. But, you know, you know, I.

Justine Thomas (52:57)
When somebody ties

your hands with duct tape and puts a pillowcase over your head, that’s pretty… You earned the right to vote then by the time you came back.

GT (53:03)
Yes, that can

be, but not in South Africa. No, but what I’m saying is, go out and live a little. But I tend to agree with you. You did kind of steal my idea because I was going to say, actually, I think that the age of voting should be 21. But just my final thought is that, again, these people who want to put these policies in place are the type of people that might mingle with people whose kids go to Eton.

Justine Thomas (53:08)
Bye.

GT (53:32)
or Oxford and these posh schools where maybe 16 year olds are slightly engaged. I’d invite people to come down to where I live and talk to the local 16 year old and see if they’re engaged in politics in any way, or form. And they’ll tell you, off. Like the majority of 16 year olds. And this is why these guys come out with these ridiculous policies because they’re all trapped in this little bubble that they’re in.

They don’t go out and see what normal 16 year olds want to talk about, want to do, how they feel. 16 year olds don’t want to vote. Yes, maybe a few percent, a few percent will. But on the big scheme of things, I don’t think it matters. And I tell you what, a lot of 16 year olds, even if they had to vote, they wouldn’t even know what they were voting for. They don’t care. Who cares about politics when you’re 16? You care about girls. They’re chasing girls. They’re not… Well, yeah, girls or guys. From a male perspective.

Justine Thomas (54:12)
You may, you may…

Yeah.

Or guys, or guys. You make,

well no, from a straight male perspective. ⁓ yeah. But no, I actually, but you do make a really good point because I’m guessing that people who write these manifestos who come up with these policies, their kids or the kids that they are meeting who are 16 year olds in the main, you know, the ones who are coming round for supper.

GT (54:32)
Yes, yes, very much.

Justine Thomas (54:50)
⁓ or coming around to hang out after football or whatever. They’re probably all terribly nice, terribly sensible, terribly engaged in politics or able to have a nice conversation and speak reasonably eloquently on a few topics. But yes, as you say, go out into the wider world. The average 16-year-old may be not like that, but then probably the average 18-year-old isn’t either, hence my argument for people voting later. And there’s loads of people who are

GT (55:13)
No, definitely not. there was a poll that’s…

Justine Thomas (55:18)
You know, the point of the math, the fundamental thing is we give people the right to vote, but we don’t do it based on intelligence. We actually do it on you’ve achieved that age, you are a British citizen or there are some other criteria and therefore you were allowed to vote. So if not 18, when? I I think Angela Rayner made an argument about, or somebody said about people about paying taxes. You know, if you pay tax, you should be able to vote.

Well, there’s child stars. I’m sure Macaulay Culkin, when he did Home Alone, I’m sure he had to pay some tax from what he earned out of that. How old was he? Eight? ⁓ So I’m sure he had to pay tax. Would we have given him the right to vote? Not really sure about that. And quite frankly, well, all right, he was the first child star that came to mind. ⁓ But also, ⁓ why is it to do with paying taxes? So, okay, well, here’s one for you then. Let’s say that people who don’t work, they don’t get to vote then.

GT (56:00)
No, he’s American.

Justine Thomas (56:16)
So only the people who pay tax can vote. And I’ll tell you a very quick story. ⁓

GT (56:22)
Don’t you pay tax

every time you buy something? Buy back a sweets, you pay tax.

Justine Thomas (56:25)
Well, you do, you do. But I will tell you a very quick story. I was with a group of people not so long ago and some alcohol had been consumed and I actually hadn’t had anything to drink because I was the driver. And I went to pick somebody up from the party and I got talking to a chap and he was talking about voting. And he said about Brexit. He was talking about the Brexit vote and the referendum, et cetera.

And he said, yes, yes. said, the thing is, he said, I don’t believe that all these thick people should have the right to vote anyway. He said, really, it’s only people like us who should be able to vote. And if only that had been the case, then people wouldn’t have voted for Brexit, would they? And I thought that was really amusing because obviously I voted for Brexit, absolute staunch Brexiteer. And it was just the arrogance of the guy. We don’t want to get into the whole Brexit thing.

But was just the arrogance of the guy that he just assumed that somebody that he obviously thought was as intelligent as him would clearly have voted the same way that he would have voted. But yeah, he’s a lefty. He’s very extreme. His idea is, only intelligent people should be able to vote, which I found was pretty interesting viewpoint. I’m not sure I’m going down that road.

GT (57:49)
What I was going to say was there was a poll, where the result was that a ⁓ lot of 16 year olds would vote reform anyway. There’s a lot of 16 year olds that would actually follow.

Justine Thomas (57:52)
Paul, Luke, you lurk, you Luke.

Yeah.

GT (58:05)
Nigel Farage. And again, it goes back to the immaturity because Nigel Farage was on I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here. He really did appeal to the youth as well because he, you know, he took all those challenges like a boss. Everyone tried to stitch him up and make him eat all the bugs all the time and everything. But he got a lot of support from the younger, from younger, well, would-be voters. But again, just because you can eat a witchy-tea grub on I’m a Celebrity, that doesn’t mean you should win a vote from a 16-year-old. So I just think…

you know, careful what you wish for, Labour, because they might, you know, want 16-year-olds to have the vote, but, you know, it won’t necessarily go in their favour.

Justine Thomas (58:44)
No, I don’t think it will. And Mr. Corbyn and ⁓ Miss, what’s her name? Zahara Sultana? I think that’s her name. I always, I think I get the name wrong, but apologies if I did. ⁓ But yeah, they’re setting up a joint party. Well, I think she set up a joint party with him and didn’t tell him. There was some, it’s a bit dubious as to who set up this party. But I saw a poll that said a lot, 15 % of young people would vote for Jeremy Corbyn.

GT (58:54)
Yeah.

Summulana.

Justine Thomas (59:12)
for his party, whatever party that would, but they said they would vote for him, which is really fascinating. So that will split all that Labour vote anyway. yeah, so I think we’re both on the same page that actually, it’s a no ⁓ from us on voting for 16 year olds. And yes, and I think if I have a political party in my manifesto, I’m definitely going to be suggesting to my co-conspirators that we’re increasing the…

GT (59:28)
It’s snow, for most.

Justine Thomas (59:38)
Increase the voting age. Hell, increase it to 50, who cares?

GT (59:43)
No, I agree. I

Justine Thomas (59:46)
So you do make an interesting point though about how money is utilised because it seems to me that the police just spend money on silly projects that are actually nothing to do with law and order and they’d probably call it community engagement but Northumbria police

GT (1:00:01)
you

Justine Thomas (1:00:05)
have just been told by a court that they should remove the pride decals from their vehicles because the court was questioning the impartiality of those displays. So why are we paying to decorate police vehicles in pride flags? Surely that is just undermining

public’s confidence in the police further. The police don’t think that anybody’s going to come and help them out if they get, you know, raped or robbed or anything. But the police are able to, and they haven’t got the resource to do that, but then the police are able to spend money on dressing up in pride flags or putting pride flags on their cars. So how does that help anybody? And why are the police…

making displays and showing support for social causes. We actually want the police, well, I want the police to just get out there and actually do what they’re supposed to do, which in my mind is investigate crime. It is arrest criminals. It is prepare cases for the prosecution in a solid way so that criminals can be prosecuted. And that’s what the police should be doing. They shouldn’t be twerking. They shouldn’t be going out.

at national days for whoever, they should be focusing on catching criminals. That is the job of the police.

GT (1:01:30)
Well, I’d agree with you. I would say that how seriously are you taking policing if you’re concentrating more on putting rainbow flags on your cars? And why would you be so against taking them off? mean, are you saying that there’s a police chief somewhere going, I refuse, I refuse to remove this flag. People have died for this flag. I don’t understand myself. It’s like, you know, just take them off. I mean, where does it stop? Do we start putting it on tanks? Do we start putting rainbow flags on tanks?

You know, what about the shit? I we used to fly pirate flags back in the day. Are we just going to do big rainbow flags now on, on Navy battle destroyers? I don’t know. It just seems a bit strange that a court and hey, how much money is being spent? If it’s someone’s going to court, that means there’s judges, lawyers and time and effort being put into this. Why is it even a subject? I don’t understand. It’s kind of like, the flag represents a way of life.

You know, there’s more than one way of life in this country. You know, we’re very diverse. So I don’t understand why that needs.

Justine Thomas (1:02:32)
Well, that’s what that’s that.

Well, and the answer to your question actually is that’s where it came from, because a woman objected to uniformed officers actually being in a Pride march, and she said it was an ideology and she disagreed with it and she didn’t think the public money should have been spent on it. And the court agreed with her. And I think the court is very sensible. So other police forces take note because you shouldn’t be spending money sending uniformed officers.

to a Pride march, they should be out catching criminals. End of.

GT (1:03:03)
Well,

they should be dressed properly. They should be dressed properly. Unlike, unlike to move forward, Greg Wallace, who apparently very recently or not very recently, but he’s just been found that he had ⁓ dressed his penis in a sock and ran about the master, ran about the master show. Stop laughing at his penis. That’s offensive. That’s offensive.

Justine Thomas (1:03:21)
I shouldn’t laugh. How do we even do that? I mean…

Is that physically

possible? I mean, I’ve never been in a situation where somebody attempted to do that. Do have to have a strap? How would you physically, do have to have like those little crocodile clips and attach it around your waist? You know those little crocodile clips that you had at school when you were doing electronics and things and you had to make a little light bulb and have a battery and you have the little clips. Perhaps you could do that with a piece of string, like a thong.

GT (1:03:41)
Was it? Was it? I thought he was going to say crocs. I thought he was going say, did he put a croc on it? ⁓ Well.

I think people… There are people

that do that. There are people that put crocodile clips on their family jewels, not for any kind of fancy dress reasons. But yeah, I mean, think he’s just been… They’ve banged him to rights for half of the accusations that were put against him for inappropriate…

Justine Thomas (1:04:03)
⁓ my god

GT (1:04:19)
behavior and I’m sure like running around the MasterChef studio naked was one of them, which probably isn’t very sanitary. ⁓ know, especially when you’re trying to whip up a meringue. ⁓ But yeah, it just it just kind of shows where the BBC’s at the moment. I think that, you know, there’s quite a few scandals at the moment and the BBC aren’t really painting themselves in the best light. I don’t know if you would agree with that. I don’t know if BBC’s top of your channel list. I know it is Channel One.

historically, but is it, it on your, your, your top of the charts?

Justine Thomas (1:04:51)
can’t

remember the last time I even watched the BBC and I’m trying to persuade the rest of my household to ditch the TV license, but they don’t want to because they like watching the Antiques Roadshow on Sunday. So I am paying, what is it? £180 a year to watch the Antiques Roadshow. What a joke. We might as well go and sit in one of the, I don’t know, cafe somewhere and watch it. Well, he might as well.

GT (1:05:05)
Well, that’s classic though.

Justine Thomas (1:05:21)
So no, I don’t watch the BBC. I don’t engage with the BBC. The BBC has gone way beyond what its scope and remit should be. I mean, it does make some fabulous programmes, but I mean, it’s selling them all over the world. Why? That should be the job of a private company. You know, and, you know, I was just about to say actually the BBC should be there to give us impartial news. I’m not opposed to having a state broadcaster, for example.

But there’s whole questions around impartiality anyway. And I think all of these scandals just goes to show that the whole idea of impartiality, absolutely fabulous on paper, but in principle, it’s not very easy to deliver because I don’t think the BBC, the editors at the BBC, people who are at the top understand what impartiality is.

And you only have to look at that, you we don’t need to go over the whole Glastonbury thing. We all know what happened, but you only need to look at that. You know, is that appropriate for our national broadcaster to be putting that out? I just don’t, I don’t think it is. I don’t even know why we’re paying. I mean, it must cost. How many millions does it cost for the BBC to cover Glastonbury? Why? Why is the BBC, why are we paying for that? I Glastonbury, they make a fortune from that event themselves. ⁓

GT (1:06:29)
Hmm.

Justine Thomas (1:06:37)
Do they not cover it themselves? Why don’t they cover it? And why sell the license to somebody else, a streaming service who can charge people to watch it? Why am I paying for it? I’ve got no interest in Glastonbury. Who wants to see 80 year old Rod Stewart prancing around, singing, you think I’m sexy? Not really. I don’t really want to watch that. I mean, I’m he’s a lovely chap, but you know, who wants to watch this? I don’t, and I don’t want to pay for it either.

GT (1:06:47)
Well, so-

Talking of covering things, a lot of people will say, when these news stations go to, I don’t know, COP or whatever they go to, ITN will send a few reporters and the BBC reporters will have a hundred people there. It’s like literally they throw staff and money at everything. And one of the other issues that there was not long ago was a couple of months ago was the fact that they’d paid

the son of a Hamas terrorist to do a documentary about what life was like for children in the Gaza Strip. And you’ve got to think to yourself, when you hear stories about, you know, hundreds of staff attending events and reporting on even minor news stories, how they could be so irresponsible as to let that seemingly just go through undetected, unless they actually knew.

Justine Thomas (1:07:38)
Yes. Yes.

GT (1:08:04)
I mean, they won’t even call Hamas ⁓ a terrorist group, even though they are prescribed terrorists by the UK government. And then also you’d got, I forget the name, I’ve got it written down, Deborah Turnis. She was just caught on camera trying to distinguish between the political side of Hamas and the military side of Hamas saying they were completely different when they’re all just Hamas. They’re a terrorist group. So it just seems strange, you know, how

how they seem to get things so wrong and how they seem to make so many bad decisions at the BBC and always seem to get away with it and still force us to pay the licence fee.

Justine Thomas (1:08:41)
Well, we’re just,

the whole thing needs a shake up and it will have a shake up in the next couple of years because they’re having their, ⁓ what do they call it? I can’t think of the word, their license or their mandate, whatever it is. It’s all being reviewed, isn’t it? think Lisa Nandy, she’s the culture secretary. She’s in charge of that. ⁓

But yeah, I just think what they do, they’re way beyond the scope of what they’re ever supposed to do. And ultimately, we live in a different world. We live in an era where most of us are not getting our data and our information from the BBC. We’re looking at non-mainstream media sources, alternative media, new media, whatever you want to call it. That’s where many, many people are going to consume their content. And people are trusting that content a lot more than what they’re actually trusting state broadcasters and old school media, because

I think people have lost faith in it because they are now seeing alternative sources that are giving them alternative facts and opinions.

GT (1:09:39)
And is EastEnders worth £140 a ⁓ year?

Justine Thomas (1:09:42)
I wouldn’t know. don’t watch it. No idea. Years ago. Yeah, when it was Angie and Den. When it was Angie and Den.

GT (1:09:43)
I’m not so sure. Get out. You’ve watched it. You’ve watched it. You. Yeah. There you go. Was it back then? yeah. That’s

when 17 million people were tuning in. But I’m.

Justine Thomas (1:09:55)
Well, there you go. There you go. I mean, who doesn’t

want a bit of Angie and Den?

GT (1:10:00)
I’m not sure who doesn’t want a bit of angina then.

Justine Thomas (1:10:02)
I wouldn’t

watch it now, but yeah, no, think that BBC’s had its day personally. think it needs its, its remit. Exactly. Exactly.

GT (1:10:08)
Well if it’s that good it should go into streaming. mean if everyone loves the BBC so much and everyone’s like,

it’s such good value for money, well then let it stand on its own merit is what I would say.

Justine Thomas (1:10:17)
Have a small amount

of money for news ⁓ programming and global, you know, BBC, the global BBC. And yeah, have a small amount of money for that. Have a single channel for news, rolling news, and that’s it. That’s what it should do. don’t see why it does anything else.

GT (1:10:33)
mean, what’s their budget? What’s

their yearly budget? It’s something like two billion pounds. mean, again, a billion pounds is a thousand million. That’s going to be my catchphrase. A billion pounds is a thousand million. mean, if you’re spending like a billion, a billion pound a year, it’s ridiculous the amount of budget they have. And what do they actually pump out apart from Blue Planet?

Justine Thomas (1:10:37)
No idea.

GT (1:11:00)
Blue Planet or The Ocean? What are they actually pumping out? And obviously, what’s that program you like? The Antiques Roadshow. I mean, apart from them three, can you think of anything that these guys are pumping out that isn’t even repeated? Well, yeah.

Justine Thomas (1:11:08)
The Antiques Roadshow.

No, because I don’t watch it. No, I don’t. I don’t watch it. I’m not interested in it. I think it should be gone. think have some news pro have some news programming

and the rest of it. You’re right. Actually make it stand on its own two feet, sling them to the wolves, just see if they survive. You know, they’ll have to survive in a proper commercial reality. Look at Meghan Markle.

She’s tried to survive in a commercial reality and she just keeps getting canned all the time because nobody wants to watch her program. So that’s what the BBC has to face up to. You know, if the BBC had its way, it would probably be making as ever or whatever it’s called and we’d all be paying the bill for it. So no, I don’t want all of this. I don’t want this programming. I don’t think the BBC should do it. I want a shot of it and I want a shot of the license fee. Get rid of it.

GT (1:12:03)
Yeah, forget the BBC, just watch the T-word.