Episode 10 – Labour’s Immigration Crisis & Free Speech Under Attack

GT (00:05)
Justine, it’s good to see you. There’s plenty of stuff that I want to talk about this week. There’s a lot happened just off the top of my head. There’s the one in, one out. There’s the Trump visit. Even though I’m looking down, this is all off the top of my head. There’s the Trump visit. There’s UK is going to recognise Palestine as a state.

there’s the trans rights issue, free speech, all sorts happening. Why don’t you fire away and start us off?

Justine Thomas (00:30)
my gosh, I can’t, I’m absolutely exhausted. I don’t even know where to start. I think you’ll find that Palestine has now officially been recognized. That was breaking news. I’ve just seen Stammer in front of a flag. I haven’t actually watched what he said, but I’ve seen the headline. So the state of Palestine has now been recognized, apparently. We’re not giving into Hamas. It’s not rewarding Hamas. And my question is, I am not an expert. ⁓

on the Arab-Israeli conflicts and the history. However, I do believe that the line of a two-state solution is not actually possible given that one of the states involved, I believe, doesn’t want a two-state solution. So, yeah, so I think actually you’ll find Palestine has now been recognized. I think that’s ahead of a UN meeting, isn’t it? Nothing’s changed. That’s the headline.

Let’s move on to the next topic because it’s all completely meaningless.

GT (01:28)
OK.

Fair. Well, not necessarily meaningless. Look, we don’t want to talk about the conflict. Like I’ve said before, if you haven’t got skin in the game, you shouldn’t be talking about the conflict. All I would say is very briefly on the Palestine thing is what are they actually recognising? Like no one knows where the borders start, where they stop, what’s happening with Gaza. You’ve got settlements in the West Bank. I mean, what are they actually recognising? Are they recognising actual borders?

or they just recognizing that a state of Palestine exists. It just seems a bit hairy fairy. And also, are we not rewarding the terrorists for invading Israel on October the 7th? If they’ve actually invaded Israel and from that, the UK says, well, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We’re now going to recognize your goal of getting a state called Palestine. They’ve not even released the hostages yet. So I would say it’s a bit short-sighted. It’s a bit reckless.

I’m not sure if it’s the right thing to do or not, but there you go. I think we should stay out of that one, I’m not sure that we know enough. Does anyone?

Justine Thomas (02:34)
You are very,

I know and anybody who’s watched this or listened to this will never have heard us discuss this topic before, but you and I have discussed it privately a lot and I know that you are incredibly academic when it comes to this subject and you’ve actually studied it to the nth degree. So if I was going to talk about it with anybody, I’d be very, very happy to talk to it about you because I do believe you have a lot of academic and intelligent insights to bring to the table.

GT (02:51)
You’ve gotta be kidding me.

Justine Thomas (03:01)
But I don’t have a huge amount to offer on this subject in the global sense of it. this conflict, that the nature of the relations between this now state and Israel is something that is coming onto our streets in our country. And I’m deeply concerned at the way

GT (03:08)
I mean, how much stuff can go wrong?

Justine Thomas (03:24)
that ⁓ support for a state of Palestine is being used in so many ways in our country to basically be divisive and to be hateful. it’s ironic really given that so many of these people, know, the Greta Thunberg, LBTQ, dot dot ABC, XYZ, forward slash Gaza people.

You know, they all, it’s the Omnicorps as we spoke about before. And the thing that bothers me is that people in our country are using this to just whip up hate and division. And it’s ironic, given the way that people who went out on those marches, ⁓ or have been out on marches, people have been protesting against migrant hotels, the Unite the Kingdom rally, which we mentioned last week, which took place on the 13th of September week last Saturday.

that people on the left are saying that those people are full of hate, that they are divisive, they are outrageous. And actually it’s the people on the left who are whipping up division and they are the ones that I see as being very hateful. Not everybody on the list on the left, but there is a lot of left-wing extremism and this Palestine cause seems to become part of what

gives them of what feeds them in all of their doctrines that they want to impose onto everybody else. they are not democratic. They’re not in any way in favor, it seems to me, in favor of free speech. What they’re in favor of, absolutely totalitarianism, telling everybody what is the right and just cause and expecting everybody else to go along with it. And if you don’t go along with it, then you get canceled.

Justine Thomas (05:12)
what do you think about it all?

GT (05:16)
Well, I think it’s pretty confusing. So when they say they’re going to recognize a Palestinian state, what are they recognizing? I mean, you’ve got the original borders from 1947 or whatever it was. Obviously, you’ve had multiple wars where Israel have taken territory. So what part of Palestine are they are they recognizing? So you’ve got Gaza, you’ve got the West Bank. Israel are now occupying Gaza again. You’ve got the settlements in the West Bank. So where is Palestine?

And what are we actually recognizing? And then on top of that, the only reason we’re recognizing Palestine is because Hamas invaded Israel on October the 7th. They haven’t even released the hostages yet. So why are we, I’m just struggling to see why we’re rewarding them. The war aside, the war is terrible. We don’t want to really talk about the war and get into all that. That’s a separate subject. But in terms of the UK, what…

are they recognizing when they say we’re going to recognize a Palestinian state? I just think it’s very tricky. I’m not sure it means anything. And ultimately, until Israel want to recognize a Palestinian state, it doesn’t really matter what the UK thinks anyway. So I don’t know. It’s a bit weird, isn’t it? But yeah, that’s where I am on it, to be fair.

Justine Thomas (06:31)
think ⁓ my main thought on it is from a UK point of view that Labour is doing this to appeal to its more left-wing base of the parliamentary Labour Party. So to its MPs who support this move, think Labour’s just doing it as a sop to them, to be honest. I’m not sure whether Keir Starmer believe… Yeah, and I don’t know if…

GT (06:54)
It’s like a gesture.

Justine Thomas (06:58)
Kirstama actually believes in this himself, but we do know that Kirstama can only believe in anything or purport to believe in anything if it’s come across his desk in a briefing paper. mean, one thing that we do know is that Kirstama is a globalist. He believes in open borders. He does not believe in a nation state. He’s not a patriot of the UK, you know, despite all these protestations about flags.

He’s not bothered about the UK. He just fundamentally does not believe in Britain as a nation state and he doesn’t believe in that. So it’s actually, again, quite ironic that he wants to create a nation state of Palestine. yeah, think we’re both on the same page. think everybody agrees. There’s not going to be a two state solution because Israel is not going to agree to a two state solution. And I’m reading in the…

read in the paper in the Telegraph earlier today, the son of the one of the founders of Hamas has said that there will never be a Palestine state. So yeah, I think it’s all a bit of hiding to nothing. It’s gesture politics. It’s completely and utterly meaningless. And I think it’s piggybacking on, ⁓ you know, his relationship with Macron. think Macron wants to try and deliver peace in the Middle East as one of his sort of legacies and parting shots because he’s completely on his

bottom, isn’t he, in terms of his ratings ⁓ with the French voting public?

I mean, the same as Stammer’s actually, was just as an aside, there was ⁓ a poll that came out a couple of days ago saying that putting reform on 34 % and putting Labour and the Conservatives on 16 % each, I think the question that was asked was if there was a general election tomorrow, who would you vote for?

So that means that more than double the amount of voters of Labour and Conservative combined would vote for Reform UK, which is an extremely interesting statistic, whether that will hold out for four years or not, I don’t know. But I would imagine that most of the people who… It might get bigger, indeed, indeed. I would imagine… Yeah, well, yeah.

GT (09:09)
might get bigger.

At this rate.

Justine Thomas (09:16)
I don’t know that labours can get much smaller, they’re only on 16%, but of course that will get smaller, won’t it? Because of your party, also known as, I think lovingly known as Jez Blah, it’s been known as, or the Fruit and Nut Party. So again, we’ve spoken about them before. Well, they’ve had a falling out this week, haven’t they? I don’t know if you’ve seen that.

GT (09:43)
I was just trying to think what you meant, Jez Belor. Yes, yeah, yeah. ⁓ I was going to say when you said my party, I was like, I’m not part of that party. At least I don’t think I am. No, I wasn’t. No.

Justine Thomas (09:47)
That’s not my invention, I heard it elsewhere. I can’t lay claim to that.

Well, it’s called

your party, but I still don’t think they’re sure. don’t, I still don’t think they’re sure.

GT (09:59)
I thought you meant me. Right. OK.

I was going to say what you accusing me of here. Yeah, they, they, they, I’ve read briefly about they, they haven’t got the same vision. I’m not sure why they even got into bed with each other figuratively. I’m not even sure why they decided to make this party together, because I don’t think they’ve actually agreed on anything, have they? Since they actually, they can’t agree on the name. They can’t agree what it stands for. Why did you even team up?

Justine Thomas (10:20)
Well, I think…

GT (10:27)
You obviously don’t like each other.

Justine Thomas (10:27)
think the idea

was it’s supposed to be like a super grassroots movement, you know, of the people, by the people, for the people, blah, blah, blah. they’re claiming they’ve had 800, the latest I heard was they were claiming they had 800,000 people who’d sign up. what seems to have happened this week is that Zahara Sultana has basically now issued

proceedings, she said, actually, I don’t think that’s true. think Zahara Sultana has said that she’s instructed lawyers with the idea of ⁓ instigating proceedings for defamation because she had set up a website, driven followers to the website to get them to pay, I think it’s 55 pounds a year, so it’s not cheap. 55 pounds a year to join the party. And when she did this,

within about a day, Jeremy Corbyn and the others from that group issued an emergency statement that they put out on social media saying that this website was incorrect and people shouldn’t give money and this was not the case. And then she’s come back saying, this is outrageous. They’re just, and I quote, a sexist boys club, unquote. now she’s instructed solicitors

because she said there’s some very defamatory things being written about her. ⁓ I mean, I guess it’s a little bit of a case of live by the sword, die by the sword. mean, she’s not exactly a shrinking violet, is she, in terms of the comments that she’s made either in parliament? I one of the most recent things was, we are all Palestine action, I believe she said, just disclaimer, I am not Palestine action, and I don’t think you are either. ⁓

anybody who can stand up and say that in the Commons is hardly representing or representative of most of the UK voting populace, I would think. But yeah, they clearly can’t hold it together. So it’s just very interesting. And then, of course, all the Greens are coming out now saying, ⁓ yes, the Labour’s all falling out. Give us a vote for Zach Polanski. The Greens are the only people now, apparently, who can save Britain. Well, yeah, good luck with that.

GT (12:48)
Yeah, well, it’s like a more beige version of Love Island, isn’t it? It’s like literally none of these parties actually seem to represent anything other than themselves. It’s like if you look at the conservatives, they were in power for 14 years. All they seem to do when someone got in power was to try and overthrow the person in power and put someone else in in order to then overthrow them. was like, you know, in Big Brother where someone gets to be the king of the house for a week. It’s kind of like that.

And it’s the same thing with Jeremy Corbyn and and Sultana, like literally, they’ve literally just made this party together and just can’t agree on anything. Can it makes you wonder what they are actually, what do they represent? Do they actually represent the people or who do they represent? I would argue that they just represent themselves. And it’s just, it’s just this constant infighting is the reason that people are kind of

repelled from the main parties because it just isn’t a good look. know, constituents don’t want to just see the party that they support constantly in fighting. They just want a bit of unity. I mean, they take diversity to the next level, know, diversity of opinion. No one can agree on anything. mean, just I don’t know. Maybe they should just all splinter off and just go or go independent. And then maybe we get some more sense out of everybody. I don’t know.

But it is, it’s a bit of a mess, isn’t it? It’s all a bit of a mess. They’re the only party that can see that’s got any kind of unity under one leader, or even a leader and a deputy leader is probably Reform. I mean, they seem to be getting more organized. Nigel Farage seems to have the backing of his members, of the people that he surrounds himself with. And I think that’s why they are, at the moment for me, the most appealing party, because they’re the only one that seems to have a common cause and any unity.

mean, look at the conservatives. The conservatives are turning on Badenock already. I mean, they’re looking whether to get rid of her. Keir Starmer, the backbenchers are looking to get rid of him. Andy Burnham, he’s plotting that maybe he’s just going to slide into the role of MP and take over the party. You’ve got Corbyn and Sultana. It’s just an absolute cluster… something. ⁓ A cluster.

Justine Thomas (15:03)
You know what? It’s,

yeah, I mean, it’s, it is interesting because every party is going to have in-fighting and, you know, in every group of people, you’re always going to get somebody who wants to be in charge. That’s just the nature of human beings. You know, if you’ve got an organization with quarter of a million people in it, you are going to have some people who think actually I’d like to run this. I think

You know, with a political party, first and foremost, you’ve got to be politically aligned on your, you know, you’ve got to be fundamentally aligned in your political belief system. And I think there are certain core values that a party has to have, and they are the core values that if you do not subscribe to them, you just shouldn’t be a member of that party anymore. And I’ve mentioned it several times when I…

GT (15:57)
Well isn’t that the point of having a party?

Surely that’s the fundamental point of it, isn’t it? That you all rally behind a common cause.

Justine Thomas (16:05)
Yeah, but you’ve got to, know, a common cause could be, okay, we mentioned before, make Britain great again. You know, a common cause could be make Britain the most welcoming to refugees in the world. It could be a common cause, but actually a common cause is not necessarily a fundamental principle. you know, fundamentally as a conservative with the small c, I believe in low taxation.

personal responsibility and that I should be able to earn money and spend my money in the way that I see fit. Now off the back of that, in terms of true conservatism, to me what goes hand in hand with that is philanthropy, which is what we’ve had for hundreds of years in our country. But what we’ve done now over time as a nation politically is we’ve put philanthropy, we’ve changed that and we’ve turned that into a welfare state.

For me, yes, low taxation, I should keep more of the money that I earn as an entrepreneur, but somebody on the labor side of the equation will fundamentally believe that I shouldn’t keep very much of my money, that I work for the state essentially, and that, you know, from everybody according to his ability to everybody according to his needs, you know, that is the fundamental difference. If I’m able…

to get up and go out and earn gazillions of pounds. Well, I should do that, but fundamentally I should be prepared to give that money to other people, which I guess in a utopia all sounds very well. The problem is that there are plenty of people who would seek to take advantage of that. So I think fundamentally, if you look at the left, you have got a problem where in the Labour Party, you have got people who are very interested in…

promoting businesses and want to grow the economy, but you’ve got the harder left of the Labour Party. ⁓ you’re Richard Bergen types who just fundamentally believe that anybody who earns anything who looks to be successful in any way, that they should just be taxed. Everything is tax, tax, tax, tax, tax. But the problem is, is they’re unable to say to me, or they’re able to describe to me how they can…

transpose that into something that actually makes the lives of everybody better. And I just don’t see how that works because what I see in the welfare state and in the public bodies is just huge amounts of waste. So not only do I not fundamentally believe that I don’t want to hand my hard-earned cash over to the state, or I want to hand over as little of it as possible, what I do hand over, I do actually be grudge handing a lot of it over because it feels to me like it’s being wasted.

GT (18:54)
Well, yeah, but that’s the thing is if taxes weren’t so high and you had more of your money to keep, you could choose where you want to spend it. But the government, it’s like the government want to take your money and they want to choose where to spend it. And that’s where the problem is. They spend it on vanity problems. They spend it on on these kind of publicly owned assets that don’t actually make any money. If you just let if like you said, if government was smaller.

Justine Thomas (19:09)
Exactly.

GT (19:21)
and were able to spend our own money. I mean, don’t forget when you spend your money with another business, they then have to pay tax. You have to pay VAT. You if you go into the into the local shop and buy a of beer or pack of fags, you’re paying VAT on that money. So the more money there is to slosh about in the economy, the more the more that money moves around, the more tax the government will make. But like you said, if you’re taxing the heck out of everybody,

and then spending that on, I don’t know, operating 800 hotels that don’t actually make any money for anyone in this country, we’re not producing things, are we? We’re not producing wealth. We’re just spending money, if that makes sense. You know, there’s no innovation. If companies can’t spend money on innovating because they haven’t got any money, then you kind of…

Justine Thomas (20:03)
No, no.

And

there’s no incentive for small and medium businesses to innovate because they are caught in a different situation to larger companies. And also it depends what type of industry that you’re in. If you’re in a business where like a low margin business, like, I don’t know, you sell butter or cheese ⁓ or I don’t know, hair clips, that’s very different to somebody who’s selling a supercar, a Bentley or something like that.

So every tiny cost increase on your base is massively impacting the profit percentages and all of the ratios in your business. So there’s also, you know, it depends what sector you’re in. So if you’re a small business, if you’re, say a butter manufacturer, you know, if you’re making on every liter of butter, I mean, I guess it’s not sold in liters. I think it’s sold by weight, isn’t it? I eat a lot of butter, I should know. 250 gram packs. So I’m definitely a butter expert.

GT (21:05)
I’m not a butter expert.

I’m

not butter expert.

Justine Thomas (21:10)
So a

kilo of butter, if you’re making, you know, one pound gross profit on a kilo of butter, if your cost base increases and that reduces down to 80 pence or 70%, you’re not going to turn around, are you? suddenly think, I know, I’ll invest in some new machinery. That would be a brilliant idea because I can make some more money. You’re just not going to be interested.

But you can absorb those costs if you’re producing supercars. If you’re producing a car where you make a hundred thousand pound profit on each vehicle, well, yeah, you can probably absorb an extra hundred quid a year in fuel, know, energy costs or whatever. So I think, you know, back to the whole thing of political parties and what the fundamentals are, you know, again, it’s interesting seeing the Green Party, which seem to be, you know, lot of people online are encouraging.

former Labour Party or current Labour Party members to ditch the your party, ditch the Labour Party, join the Green Party, they’re the only viable alternative. you know, the Greens again, just a party of waste. Bristol City Council just recently has been exposed that it’s spent over £4,000 a year on tap water for public meetings.

And one of the councillors there defended it as basically, I paraphrase, just a drop in the ocean in the grand scheme of things. So I’m sorry, this sort of disgusting way, drop in the ocean is my terminology, but yeah, a trickle or something he called it. But the problem is, you know, fundamentally, do I want to support a party that just thinks that four grand is a drop in the ocean? Well, it isn’t a drop in the ocean. And who the hell…

GT (22:42)
I was saying.

Justine Thomas (22:57)
You know, the Green Party, you know, it’s definitely on the left of the political spectrum. So on the one hand, they’re saying that, you know, we need to, you know, they can be quite sort of militant and socialist in terms of a lot of their beliefs and what they want to impose on people. But they’re more than happy to pay over four grand to a private company for tap water, tap water, which would just come out of the tap. So the councillors in their meetings, et cetera, quite frankly, could have walked to the tap.

with a cup and got the water themselves and saved four grand but that councillor seems to think well you know it’s I don’t know I don’t know and quite frankly I don’t care I don’t know I think councillor Ed Fraser from Bristol City Council I think he needs to be filtered quite frankly needs to be filtered out of the council.

GT (23:31)
Is the tap water filtered? Is it filtered? Well, we need to know. We need to know this.

They must have a

lot of liquidity.

Justine Thomas (23:50)
⁓ ha ha ha ha, more taxpayer money going down the drain, bum bum. But yeah, that just goes to show. So going back to that whole thing of, you know, party politics, we know what, who do you believe, all of that stuff. think, you know, you have to unite around common fundamental belief systems. I don’t agree with you that you have to unite around a cause because there will be

people, I’m sure in the Conservative Party, who believe that Palestine should be recognised as a state, and there will be some that think it doesn’t, and they will, that is a cause at the end of the day, and they won’t unite around that, but fundamentally, their basic political principles, one would expect would be the same. But again, that’s where you get the problem, you know, with these parties, especially with, well, not even just with established parties, but we’ve seen the splintering with established parties, because there hasn’t been an alternative.

So, you know, we’ve got alternatives now, we’ve got the rise of reform, we’ve got, you know, the Green Party, I think, has got about 75,000 members. But what you’re actually seeing now, people are seeing that there are viable alternatives. And that now is what’s causing the chaos in the established parties, because for too long, they’ve just had a monopoly on an everyman type of approach to their politics, and they can’t get away with it now. So they naturally don’t know how to organise themselves to deal with that.

GT (25:15)
Well, there’s a lot to unpack there, Justine. I mean, I’m still hanging on to my joke on the butter factory, which was, how are they spreading the wealth? mean, there’s a lot to unpack there, Justine, if I’m honest. I you just put the whole political establishment, Bagnum Ulta rights there. I’m not sure where to go with it all. Yeah, they’re just all assholes, basically. Yeah, they’ve all had it. No.

think you’ve pretty much summarised. Yeah, mean, like I say, I mean, if you’re a party, you know, I believe, you know, a party is having, you know, in its most simplest, common man speak, a party should have a goal in some kind of direction. And I think all the members need to get behind it. And I think in summary, lot of all we’re seeing as the electorate now, all we are seeing is just parties constantly in fighting. It’s not a good look. It’s not what we want to see. It’s not what it’s what it’s what’s the word?

disenfranchises people from the whole thing. just people just don’t want to engage in it or get involved in it because it just seems so petty, immature. And people see it for what it is. It’s just a load of a load of elitists just squabbling amongst themselves vying for power. And yeah, I don’t know. Three more years and we’ll see what happens.

Justine Thomas (26:36)
Well, and again, look at those polls, what’s going to happen in three years, four years, it could be before three years, have a general election. you’ve got to have people, if you want change, you’ve got to have people who can affect change, but you’ve actually got to have a system where change is possible. And I’m afraid…

GT (26:38)
Right.

Justine Thomas (26:57)
You know, we could probably have a ⁓ separate special episode on it, but the next party that comes into power, you know, I would hope it’s not the labor of the conservatives. I strongly hope it is an alternative. You know, we’re looking for a party that is really, really committed to delivering on, you know, scrapping net zero, delivering on immigration, stopping the small boats.

GT (27:12)
Wow.

Justine Thomas (27:25)
improving the economy, putting more money in people’s pockets, tackling the debt crisis. But ultimately, you’ve got to have very intelligent people, you’ve got to have bright people. touched on the Danny Kruger defection to reform UK last week. Ultimately, you’ve got to have parliamentarians, we spoke about that, who can actually do the job and deliver. But you’ve got to have bright people. Look at the front bench of the Labour Party, have any of those people.

ever been in a business? I don’t believe that they have. Have they ever started a business? No, look at the back benches. remember a ⁓ comment, well, exactly, other people’s money. But as Margaret Thatcher said, the problem with socialism is you tend to run out of other people’s money. So ultimately, you’ve got to have a vision. You’ve got to have a mission. You’ve got to have your core values. You’ve got to have people who can deliver.

GT (27:59)
I don’t believe they have either.

it’s spending money.

Justine Thomas (28:22)
But ultimately, you’ve also got to dismantle the apparatus of the state that we’ve got now that’s been in place since Blair’s times, you know, how we fundamentally changed our constitution and fundamentally changed the way in which our country operates. Unless you have a party that is prepared to start dismantling that from day one, then you’ll never see any change and you won’t see any improvements.

because ministers are just puppets of the cabinet office, puppets of the civil service. They don’t make decisions. you know, I just don’t know who makes actually politicians just don’t make decisions anymore. They’re not accountable. And the problem is the country is run by people who are not accountable. So for me, my fundamental core belief is any party that I vote for at the next general election, the core value to me has to be

a commitment to constitutional reform, to parliamentary reform, getting rid of all the quangos, getting rid of the Supreme Court, bring back the lawlords. You know, there’s all sorts of things that need to be done to ensure that we can operate our country in a way where our politicians are held to account by the electorate properly for the decisions that they actually make rather than not being held to account for decisions that civil servants make.

GT (29:50)
Well, in that case, talking about vision, what about ⁓ Keir Starmer, his vision of and his his one in one out. I mean, how do you think that’s going at the moment? Then let’s talk about that. What do you think about how’s it? How’s that vision turning out? One vision.

Justine Thomas (30:05)
It was 1089. There was 1089.

GT (30:13)
It’s kind of immigrant hokey-cokey at the moment, isn’t it? It’s like you get a migrant in, a migrant out, but the thing is, he did say it was going to be a pilot scheme. I think the only person that’s actually been involved in it at the moment is the pilot, because I think the pilot is the only person that’s actually flown to France at the moment. don’t think, what is it? Have they had about two people leave? How much have we spent actually? I mean, just…

Side track as well. go on about, you got crazy Ed Miliband, he’s always going about the green agenda. I we’re literally flying ⁓ a 747 jet over to France with one guy on it, who were actually deporting to France so that they can do the work for us to deport him back to India. It’s craziness, isn’t it? It is crazy.

Justine Thomas (30:59)
It’s insane. It’s insane.

So official figures on the 19th of September, official government statistics, 1,072 people entered our country on 13 boats. And then on the 20th of December, 85 people entered on one boat. That was yesterday. And I saw some images.

just amazing of these guys on a boat just sailing down the river on the way out. I it’s just utterly bonkers, but you’re right. This dispatched one guy. Eventually they got him off to France, but he’s going off to India anyway. Well, why couldn’t we have just deported him to India?

GT (31:45)
And haven’t we paid him?

Justine Thomas (31:47)
Yeah, why couldn’t we have just deported him to India ourselves? And that little credit we’ve got, you know, like little tokens you got that you win on the fair. It’s like tokens at the fair, isn’t it? You know, and you put your money in and you’ve got five shiny tokens, you can spend them on what you want. So our like little credits or tokens for sending these illegal migrants back, we’re using them for France to send them somewhere else. So we’ve got the guys gone out. So we’ve got

1157 people have come in in the last two days. We’ve got two or three of them have gone out, but don’t forget, we’ve got to have two or three back in. So net benefit is zero.

GT (32:27)
Well,

well done. Let me ask. Let me ask. we may have said we want to send ex people back to France. Now, just because the lefty lawyers get them taken off the plane at the last minute, because what they say is when they’re getting on the plane, they go, oh, by the way, I’m gay. I can’t go back. So all of a sudden, this whole procedure kind of goes into effect where they then have to go, right, get off the plane. But the thing is, are France going to go, oh, well, I’m sorry. I know you had 320 people booked to come to us.

But it’s your problem that you can send them. We’ve got 320 people at the boarding gate here. they’re all coming. So potentially we could be getting all those immigrants. I mean, in what reality are Britain going to say, no, no, no, those 320 people can’t come into our country. We’re just going to go, let them all in, let everyone in. it’s going to be not only the one in one out was kind of like, wasn’t going to lower immigration at all. It was just like, you know,

Justine Thomas (33:03)
Exactly!

GT (33:26)
plus one, minus one. But on top of that, we’re probably going to be getting them not only on the boats now, but on the planes over from France as well. So we’re going to end up with even more. But we’re probably going to be like plus, plus migration now. So it’s not one in, one out. It’s going to be like a thousand in, one out, three hundred in.

Justine Thomas (33:46)
The whole thing, even to a child, is just completely and utterly bonkers. It’s just completely and utterly mental. It makes no sense whatsoever.

GT (33:54)
It makes no sense. And don’t get me wrong, I’m talking about money.

I’m talking about money here. I’m not talking about, God, we hate him. People have got to get past this stupid argument. I’m talking about money. I’m talking about, I don’t see how we can afford to keep paying for this. This is about money. This isn’t about our race and we’re nasty. ⁓ This is about money. People are skin. ⁓ This country is skin.

I’m hearing rumors, well, not rumors like I’m connected in the Bank of England or what, you know, the rumors in the news and stuff like that, know, I ring up what’s his face. I was going to say Mark Carney, but he’s president of Canada now, isn’t he? Or prime minister, whatever they are in Canada. Yeah, but there’s chatterings now that we’re going to have to go for a bailout because literally we’ve got zero growth.

Justine Thomas (34:37)
Andrew Bailey, I think it’s Andrew Bailey is the governor of the Bank of England, isn’t it?

GT (34:48)
which is what Labour like bet the farm on, didn’t they? Can remember when Rachel Reeves, I know I’m going off topic here, sorry, but when Rachel Reeves was like, we’re going to get growth. When Labour gets into power, we’re going to stimulate growth and that’s how we’re to pay for this. You’ve destroyed growth. We’re like literally at 0 % growth. They’re taxing the balls off everybody.

Justine Thomas (35:04)
Yeah. Well, and they actually think the problem

with labour is they think if they just say something, then that will actually happen. You know, they’re that dim that they don’t understand that, you you get into power and you go, right, I’m here now. Okay, treasury people, I said I was going to have growth. Where is it? Well, we’ve been working here a long time, actually, and we haven’t figured that out yet. I mean, the whole thing’s just ridiculous.

GT (35:25)
Where’s my growth?

Give me that growth!

Well, that’s what I’m saying.

But to go back, sorry, that’s what I’m saying. There’s other factors that are happening here, you know. But what I’m saying is, where is the money coming from? Let’s just say this rolls on. And by the way, there doesn’t seem like any compulsion to solve this problem, which I find very strange. I mean, I’m no tin hat kind of wearing person, but I’m starting to think to myself, why doesn’t anyone want to solve this crisis? This isn’t an actual crisis. We’re in crisis territory here.

Justine Thomas (35:45)
borrowing.

GT (36:03)
But who’s paying? I’m more than here’s what I would say. I’m more than happy to have as many immigrants come to this country as you want. Right. But I don’t want to pay for the whole world to come to Great Britain. OK, I’m sorry. And I apologize. I don’t want to be mean, but I can’t we can’t afford it. But I’m happy because I’m not a racist. I’m happy that everyone if everyone wants to sign up to like a separate tax code.

where all your money goes to pay for these people coming over in boats, then fine, not a problem at all. Do that. But I just don’t want to pay for it all. Where does it end? Where does it end?

Justine Thomas (36:41)
Yeah, well,

I think we can’t afford it ultimately. there was, saw Zach Polanski, who is the leader of the Green Party. He’d put a video out saying, people saying that comparing our national debt to credit card debt are just naive. I mean, I’m sorry. How patronizing can you get? This is ultimate ridiculous patronization. The fact of the matter is,

you have an amount of money coming in, you have an amount of money going out, and you have an amount of debt. And ultimately, the amount of interest that we are paying on our debt has become completely and utterly obscene, and it’s absolutely not sustainable. And where this mindset comes that you could just keep spend, spend, spend, spend, spend, know, you see it in, it’s endemic, isn’t it, with these people, it’s their politics, you your man from Bristol City Council,

who said, well, four grand, it’s just a trickle. Well, it is a trickle, quite frankly, compared to all the other costs, but how many trickles? Exactly, it’s easy when you’re not paying for it. And these people, they’re just so smug. What does he do for a living? I’ve got no idea. He’s a counsellor. I’m assuming he’s got another job. If he hasn’t got another job, he’s either retired or he’s claiming some benefits or he’s, I don’t know, supported by somebody else. I’ve no idea what this man does for a living.

GT (37:46)
When you’re not paying.

Justine Thomas (38:08)
But all I know is that the salary slash allowances that you get from being a councillor does not equate to a full-time salary. It’s not enough for a person to live on independently just to qualify, put it that way. But it’s easy for him to say, isn’t it? Because having all of these noble lofty ideals are all very well when you think you can just turn around and make everybody else pay for it. But it doesn’t work. I think since Labour came to power, the figure is 16,000 millionaires.

have left the UK. These are all the people that they want to tax. So where are it?

GT (38:43)
The is,

the problem is, like MP salaries and council salaries, public sector salaries, a lot of the time are linked to inflation. So when the government’s getting themselves in trouble, you know, this is my simplistic view, the government gets themselves in trouble, then they start doing all this quantitative easing. So what they’ll do is they’ll say, well, I’ll tell you what, we’ll just print 10 billion pounds, sod it. But what that does, it just creates inflation.

everything gets more expensive and then when everything gets more expensive who picks up the bill? Who picks up the bill for it? The normal working man. That’s the guy, they’re the people that have to pay. But the MPs wages keep going up to match inflation like doctors. You know when doctors go on strike and they go well we haven’t had an inflation busting pay rise for 10 years. Oh well it’s all right for you but you know when you work in the public sector you don’t have to generate wealth and that’s my issue.

Justine Thomas (39:18)
Poor people. Well, and actually the poorest people. The poorest people. Yeah. Well, and it’s…

Well, it’s

exactly, it’s like, you know, and it’s like train drivers, doctors, all of these people, but they don’t want to chip in and do their bit, do they? But they expect every, you know, small businesses, well, you can afford it. It’s this whole attitude of you can afford it. And it’s just, you know, you just see these people and they just, to me, they just live in la la land. I mean, the other thing is look at, you know, considering pensions.

thinking about the triple lock, I think next year the average UK pension is going to go up by about five and a half hundred pounds. I think the figures 4.7%. I mean, that’s a lot of money. Yeah, well, it’s linked, it goes up. Yeah, the triple lock means there’s three things, isn’t there? And it goes up by the highest.

GT (40:13)
Is it linked to inflation? Is it linked to inflation? But this is a point, it’s inflationary, the whole thing.

The whole thing’s inflationary, isn’t it? So you borrow more money, then you’re printing more money, and then you’re doing things that are making inflation go up. And then when you make inflation go up, then what you’re doing is then making pensions go up, public sector workers’ wages go up.

Then you go, then the government has this smart idea and goes, well, what we’re going to do, we’re going to do something great. We’re going to, we’re going to hire the minimum wage. We’re paying you more. No, it’s not you that’s paying more. So then you’re forcing the private sector to put wages up, which means they have to put their own prices up, squeeze profit margins and then raise taxes on those small margins and cripple the people who are generating. It’s like a death loop, isn’t it?

Justine Thomas (40:52)
and put prices up.

And raise less taxes.

And the government doesn’t raise as much in tax. So let’s say you have a business, you’re turning over a million pounds a year. Ultimately, if your cost base is 800,000, you pay tax on your 200,000. Well, if you’ve got to pay more in NI, if you’ve got to pay more in wages, then your cost base is 900,000. So now you’re only paying tax on 100,000. OK, yeah, you’ve got some more money going into the tax system via NI.

And your ⁓ employees, if you’re paying them more, will be paying more in PAYE. But whether that equates or not to just straightforward taxing corporations more, but ultimately you’ve lost the incentive for the company to try and earn more money. they just, yeah, these sort of lefties just seem to think that people who are entrepreneurial.

will just carry on the whole time, just going out constantly trying to try new things, take more risks and earn money. And, you know, they see it as being, you know, the big James Dyson’s of this world or, you know, the bigger companies, but they forget about the companies like you and I have got, you know, the small businesses or the micro businesses, they are the businesses that just can’t survive extra red tape, all of this tax. They just can’t.

GT (42:07)
the micro businesses.

Well, they are the generators of wealth.

Justine Thomas (42:21)
big companies were saying companies are saying they’re going to cut back on staff, etc. Not give people overtime, know, those sorts of measures to mitigate.

GT (42:28)
Well hasn’t pay why he gone down as well.

Justine Thomas (42:33)
The government receipts on PAYE.

GT (42:35)
The revenue from pay way? Yeah, yeah, because people

are employing and the lame people. I don’t know if they’re lame people. So, for example, I to take someone on and because of the raise, the raising the minimum wage now, because don’t forget when you you raise the minimum wage, you’re not just raising. I won’t call it the minimum wage anymore, actually. I just call it. Well, I don’t call it anything, but I refuse to call it the minimum wage because what it does, it it kind of makes it sound like it’s a pitiful amount. Well, I’ll tell you what, when you have to pay anyone

that walks into your business, 12 pound, what is it, 12 pound 40 an hour now, for literally, any job that you want them to do, you’ve got to pay these guys in excess of 500 pound a week now. It’s not just a pitiful minimum wage. And now when you have to put the minimum wage up, anyone who’s like a pound or two pound above that minimum wage, well, they’ll come to you and go, ⁓ we’re nearly on minimum wage now. We want more money.

So it’s not just the minimum wage that it has an effect on. It has a knock on effect through your whole business because what the government are doing is just pushing yearly salaries up and up and up and up and up. And everyone else that works in the business now wants a pay rise to go with it. So you may have, if you’re a tiny business, you may have five or six workers. But if each one of those five or six workers now wants a thousand pound pay rise, well, that’s five or six thousand pounds off your profits.

Justine Thomas (43:35)
Yeah.

GT (43:59)
What if you’re making 20 grand profit a year? Some businesses don’t make a lot of after they’ve took the wages out for themselves. Some businesses don’t make a lot of profit. So actually, to bring it back around, because we strayed off there, but I can see why the UK is at zero growth. But going back to the original point of one in one out, mean, where do you think that way? So yes, that’s my view on it. We can’t afford it. And for all the things we were just talking about, that’s why we can’t afford it, because we’re in our own

Justine Thomas (44:03)
Exactly.

No.

GT (44:29)
kind of death loop here. You know, we have got our own problems as well in this country. But I mean, where do you think the one in one out is going long term? Is it ever going to get out the pilot stage?

Justine Thomas (44:40)
I think it was a three month pilot. Well, it wasn’t just a three month pilot. Isn’t that up now? I think we’ve about got to… No, no, it’s not going anywhere. It was predicted to never go anywhere.

GT (44:41)
As in the pilot just flying.

Well, I don’t know, have you actually heard much about it?

Justine Thomas (44:57)
The activist judiciary is going to use every single lever at its disposal to ensure that these people do not leave the country. And fine, we’ve had three, we’ve had two, I don’t know. Reports may vary, but quite frankly, it’s just a trickle. It’s just a drop in the ocean compared to what’s coming inward, the numbers coming inward. I don’t think it’s ever.

GT (45:15)
Hehe.

Justine Thomas (45:23)
ever going to go anywhere because quite frankly, if you can’t as a nation, know, if France as a nation can’t get its act together enough to stop people leaving its shores and they stand there smoking their jitane whilst, you know, sopping on a calvados, I can’t believe how they’re going to have the nows to invest in very quickly.

figure out large numbers of people who they say are vetted and are safe to come to the UK and are credible people who should be allowed asylum via this safe route. I just don’t see. It’s just it’s not credible. It just is not credible and it’s not going to happen. And everybody knows it’s not going to happen. And anybody anywhere who is saying that it is and we’re moving forward and isn’t this all marvellous? I’m sorry.

You’re just going to have to accept, dear person, that you are one of the… You’re just thick. You’re just one of the dim people. And this is part of the problem with social media, because social media has enabled people who are just dim. They weren’t in the fast streams at school. They’re not economically bright. They’re not great thinkers. Maybe they’re very good at… Maybe they’re skilled people. Maybe they’re good with the hands. I don’t know.

But those are not people who would ever have written an essay and got an A or even a B for it. But these are people who write all these grandstanding, sweeping one liners on Twitter, have gazillions of followers and think that they’re terribly popular and terribly academic, terribly important and intelligent. And they’re not. They’re just silly. They’re just a bit dim. And I’m afraid they are wrong.

GT (46:47)
You

You silly bellies. You silly belly.

Justine Thomas (47:04)
They are just silly. just, mean, take a look at them. They think they’re really important. It’s quite funny. If any of those people on social media actually had to sit down and write a letter on a piece of paper with a pen, with an ink pen, and actually write to people and try and persuade people of anything, they wouldn’t. They’d all go back to watching EastEnders. That’s what they’d do. They’d just sit watching TV because they wouldn’t be able to do it.

GT (47:05)
Well, if you think, if you think.

Well, if it

if you think about like the 90s, if you wanted to get something out in the open, you’d have to write to a newspaper, wouldn’t you? Something like that. And you’d have you’d have an editor who would look at your letter and go, this person’s talking out their ass. So I’m not going to print it. But like you say, the Internet has given like the power. Yes.

Justine Thomas (47:35)
Exactly.

Silly person, get rid of them.

GT (47:47)
Silly people, would, wouldn’t you? If someone said, for example, well, a woman could have a penis back in the 90s, the guy would go this way, obviously, their trolley and not print it. But like you say, everybody has a voice now, don’t they? And maybe some people shouldn’t have it. You’re not allowed to say that. You’re not allowed to think that. maybe not. not. Some people shouldn’t have a voice.

Justine Thomas (47:59)
Yeah.

And it’s wrong. They shouldn’t. Give them…

They shouldn’t have a voice. Give people a voice at the ballot box, no postal votes. Go there with a paper and go there with your pencil. Use a pencil. You get your vote at the ballot box unless you’re desperately in firm or in hospital or something, which case you get a postal vote, but only certain people get postal votes and you get your time at the ballot box because I’m sorry, we want…

GT (48:12)
Glad course.

Justine Thomas (48:33)
People who are very clever to solve the problems of our country. And we’ve let ourselves get into a situation where people who aren’t clever get so much airtime on social media and they are distorting the way that the country is being run, in my opinion. They are distorting mob culture. Yeah.

GT (48:51)
And it’s the mob culture. It’s the mob culture, isn’t it? It’s the hashtag hashtag. I’ve

just invented that in my head now. Hashtag culture. You know, a hashtag, a hashtag can change the world. mean, the hashtags have done good for the world as well on Twitter. You know, you think about the average spring and all that. like, you know, the me too, maybe all that kind of stuff. But you you get a hashtag which like promotes, you know, violence or this kind of weird ideology. It’s got the power to like mobilize lots of

people that have weird outlooks in the world, get them all together and create a lot of havoc. Do you know what mean? The left seem to be really good at that.

Justine Thomas (49:27)
Yeah, and sit down.

Yeah, and I don’t mind people have your opinions, express your opinions. But for me, the test is if you offered that person, if you said there’s a piece of paper and a pen, can you sit down and enunciate what you’re feeling and write something that’s persuasive to other people? They might think that they could. I half of them, you wouldn’t probably be able to read their handwriting, but that’s not their fault. They’ve grown up in a keyboard world.

But, you know, they would probably think half of them that they could be quite persuasive. But actually, then if you put those letters in front of average 20 people, they’d probably get laughed out of the room because they wouldn’t be persuasive at all. So we give people this overinflated sense of importance. you know, people might say, well, here’s, know, who are you two? You’re sat there. Who are you with your over sense, over, you know, overblown sense of self-importance? But we’re not. We’ve got internet.

GT (50:15)
We’ve got the internet. We’ve got the internet as well.

Justine Thomas (50:22)
We’ve got the internet as well. Yeah, exactly. you know, and when you’ve, it’s just, you’re saying about, the editor would say a woman with a, can’t have a penis. I mean, just recently, I don’t know if you saw that clip, Ed Davey was on Piers Morgan’s show this week and he was asked 10 times to say that women cannot have a penis and he refused to say it. I mean, this is literally,

This is the stuff of, know, as Julie Bindle said, you can chuck your penis off, that doesn’t make you a woman. It’s as simple as that. And all this nonsense about self ID. I mean, the Lib Dems are just complete nutter. I mean, I don’t know. They’re good at leafleting. They’re good at getting out their vote. They’re very good at campaigning. But in terms of what Lib Dems even think, I’ve actually got no idea. I mean, I’ve just seen a Davey walking into the Lib Dem conference in front of a marching band.

I mean, the guy is a complete, not a clown, it’s a clown.

GT (51:24)
Well, it’s just more example of the mob mentality, isn’t it? It’s like, look, I would, I mean, I don’t know the guy very well and I don’t know him personally. I don’t look at him much because it’s, you know, the Lib Dems. But I can almost guarantee you that he knows the answer to the question. He knows the answer to the question. I mean, how old is he, roughly? He’s a middle-aged man, isn’t he? He’s in his late 40s, his 50s. Yeah. He’s from an era where he knows

Justine Thomas (51:52)
I think he’s about 60.

GT (51:54)
is he? Well, he know. I know he did the old bungee jump and falling off the surfboard. So I thought he was a bit younger. But the problem is he knows he knows what a woman is and he knows what a man is. The problem is he’s just too scared to say it because he knows if he says it, the mob will come for him. And that’s the problem. Everyone’s so scared of these mobs. People need to have an opinion and stick to it and have the conviction of their opinion. And if they believe that a woman

Justine Thomas (51:56)
I think so.

GT (52:24)
can have a penis, fair enough. But if you genuinely don’t believe a woman can have a penis, you’re just going to have to grow some balls and admit it, that a woman does not have a penis. And if you’re too scared to do it, then maybe you’re in the wrong job.

Justine Thomas (52:34)
Well, he was asked in that interview if he’d…

Well, he was asked in the interview, had he ever met a woman with a penis, he sort of laughed it off. But the intriguing thing is somebody like Ed Davey probably has met, in inverted commas, a woman with a penis. You know, if anybody’s met a man in a frock, it’s going to be him, isn’t it? Because of the nature of the political party that he’s the leader of. you know, again, it’s just obfuscation. It’s just avoiding the real issue. And like you say,

He just doesn’t want to offend part of his base. But ultimately, he’s drawn a line in the sand. I’ve no idea what he drew it with. I don’t even want to think about it. But he’s drawn that.

GT (53:17)
But again, is it anything to do with offense? mean,

I don’t want to offend anyone. I don’t want to purposely go out my way to offend anyone. But I, I know it’s not even a belief. I know that a woman can’t have a penis. I mean, it’s just like year one science. I mean, we know this. It’s so, but we’ve allowed this like weird argument. it’s a social construct and you know, gender and sex are different. I mean, we’ve allowed this kind of weird logic to infest.

every part of our society. It’s weird. I know that a woman cannot have a being. Look, you can pretend to be a woman. And if you feel better in your own skin, if you’re wearing a dress and you want to wear makeup and go out and dress as a woman, well, more power to you. But you can’t force me to believe the same. You can’t force me to believe your delusion or play along with you. I know that if you’re not, if you’ve got a penis, you’re not a woman. I’m sorry.

Justine Thomas (53:58)
Fine, who cares?

GT (54:13)
That doesn’t mean I want to be nasty to you or bully you. mean, if you’ve got gender dysphoria, which is a real thing, you know, I accept that gender, but not in the numbers that we see in today’s, you know, in today. But if you’re genuinely confused about your sexuality or whatever, fine. But don’t ask me to believe or force me or make it that I just can’t say what I believe, what I know to be the truth. And that’s where he is.

That’s the worrying thing that even political leaders, someone who would put himself forward to say, can run this country, cannot sit there and just say the obvious. It’s like the King’s New Clothes scenario, isn’t it?

Justine Thomas (54:55)
Well, that’s, yeah, but that’s, and again, you know, and that’s where you’re getting into also, these people seem to want to compel you, you know, you must use these pronouns. You know, and this is this whole thing of, you know, compelled speech, isn’t it? And, you know, free speech is dangerously under threat in this country, but not only, you know, we want to be able to say what we think.

GT (55:07)
It’s ridiculous.

Justine Thomas (55:20)
Obviously nobody wants to be inciting anybody to go and injure anybody else or commit any ⁓ harm to anybody else. But pretty much other than that, I believe people should be able to say what they think, even if it’s offensive. It’s like that guy ⁓ from the Oxford Union, George, is it Abedarwe? I can’t remember his surname, sorry. ⁓ The guy from the Oxford Union, well, pretty vile. ⁓

pretty vile thing to say, an awful thing to say, but everybody’s going on about, well, you know, right-wingers, said, you know, freedom of speech, that’s where we want. But that’s not even about freedom of speech. That’s about saying, why would you want somebody representing you who actually believes that the only way that you can deal with your critics is to silence them with a bullet and that that’s okay. So for me, that’s more of the issue with him, not what he actually said. It’s the fact that what sort of person actually believes

you know, that sort of way of dealing with your political opponents or your ideological opponents. that, you know, it’s like the whole Charlie Kirk thing, which we mentioned before, and you just see that more from the left.

GT (56:30)
His opinion was vile, that’s why needs to go.

His opinion was vile. Although he’s got the right to say it, and again, you don’t hear people from the right going, you must silence this person. I mean, at end of the day, he’s got every right to have any kind of horrible, vile opinion that he’s got, but surely he’s bringing the whole Oxford University into disrepute by having that opinion. I mean, if you were literally trying to justify some guy being murdered.

Justine Thomas (56:35)
Sorry.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

GT (56:56)
for just saying what he believes, then you shouldn’t be in that position. It’s not about the words that he said. It’s just having that… You believed, in your heart of hearts, you believed that it was a good thing that this guy got shot because his opinion differed from yours. mean, someone of that opinion shouldn’t be in that position of responsibility. It’s got nothing to do with the speech. It’s his actual mentality.

Justine Thomas (57:02)
Yes, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, but you know, it’s just, I think, know, back on what we’re saying about compelled speech, there was ⁓ a Facebook group this week. It’s got 57,000 members in, and they tried to ban gendered ⁓ language in the group. This is a group that promotes breastfeeding. And ⁓ there was an article, a post in the group.

And it says, we’ll not be accepting posts that start with things along the lines of, ladies or hey mamas. And if you don’t agree to this, please leave quietly and respectfully. You have to use non-gendered language to address the entire group, such as a hey all. And we aren’t going to keep debating the validity of people’s existence. So this is the breastfeeding and lactation support UK Facebook group.

that doesn’t want to use the word lady or mama in its group because it feels it’s inappropriate, because it might offend somebody’s right to exist. I mean, how ridiculous. That group should just, I mean, you know, to me, that group should just be banned. I mean, how pathetic. I hope anybody with half a brain leaves it.

GT (58:28)
Well, same as the NHS.

same as the NHS where they did the, what was it, the people with a cervix. What was it? I can’t remember. When women were going to have a smear test. Yeah, people were going to have a smear test.

Justine Thomas (58:46)
That was me. Yeah, that was me. I’m still waiting. Yeah, I’m

still waiting for the results of my freedom of freedom with people with cervixes. I mean, it’s just ridiculous.

GT (58:54)
People with acervix. It is just ridiculous. But it’s ridiculous.

It is ridiculous. But in terms of free speech, in terms of free speech, like you say, we’re getting to the point now where police are actually attending people’s houses to tell that there was a news story the other day, which you’ve probably seen, where there was a woman with stage four cancer, I think, and she posted something on social media which actually offended somebody.

Justine Thomas (59:00)
Did you see?

Yeah, I’ve got the clip, yeah.

GT (59:22)
and the police had come round to ask them apologize. They weren’t even going to charge you with anything. It’s like, say sorry. I laugh. It’s not funny, but it’s ridiculous.

Justine Thomas (59:26)
Yeah, but what?

Yeah, but do know what’s quite

Yeah, but do you know what’s chilling, if you like, about that is the fact that they wouldn’t tell her what it was. And I actually think that’s what happened with Alison Pearson when she got arrested or when they wanted to arrest her, the Telegraph columnist, they wouldn’t actually tell her what the tweet was in the first instance. But the police officer actually said before explaining what it was, had already said to her, if you apologize, we can make it go away.

GT (59:53)
Yeah. Say sorry.

Justine Thomas (1:00:03)
But if you don’t want to apologise, then we’ll escalate it and you’re looking at, you know, formal formal proceedings. But how can you do that? How can you do that without? So now what we’re saying is in this country, the police can come to your house and demand that you take some kind of restorative or reparative action against an alleged victim of a crime and they won’t tell you what the crime is.

GT (1:00:12)
Weird, isn’t it?

Justine Thomas (1:00:33)
And if you refuse to take that action, then you will potentially be arrested and taken to a police station where you’ll be interviewed under caution. That is completely and utterly outrageous. And I hope that whoever sent that police officer to that address faces a disciplinary hearing. And quite frankly, they deserve to get the sack.