Britain Could Face Food Crisis As Droughts Spread

Welcome to Navara Live. Coming up tonight, UK farmers have warned that food shortages are likely following very poor crop yields caused by droughts. Um, student loan holders face a ticking time bomb of debt and higher taxes. Alexandria Accassiocortez weighs in on woke 1.0, which she says was crazy. Um, and several football federations are calling for FIFA president Giani Infantino to resign. Um, I'm Michael Walker and today I'm joined by the original woke one was crazy [laughter] thinker. Um, Ash Saka. I don't know. Maybe maybe you don't like that description. >> You know what? I'm just so happy to be here. Call me what you like. Just call me. >> Perfect. Love it. Um, before we get started, oh, tickets are on sale for our next downstream IRL event at the Earth Theater in Hackne. Um Ash Sarakar and Aaron Bastani will be joined by cultural theorist Katherine Louu and writer Darren McGarvey um which is on the 21st of September. Darren McGarvey I understand is is the name of Loki >> L O K I. Um Ash, what can we expect from that event? >> Um basically this is going to be a mega blockbuster event digging into the commodification of trauma and the way in which institutions as well as sort of cultural changes and the attention economy and all this kind of stuff. um incentivizes a way for us to lead with the worst things ever happened to us in a sort of race for you know resources or funding or even just attention and status. So where Darren McGarvey is coming from and I think this is a really interesting thing is that he's looking at the way in which systems including um you know recovery rehabilitation welfare system the way in which it sort of makes you perform a certain kind of trauma in order to navigate access to care. Um and Katherine Lou is looking at it much more in terms of the way in which I suppose therapy speak um and a sort of uh you know misapplied culture of self diagnosis and this sort of like relentless interest in the self um is a part of neoliberalism. It's part of a way in which people navigate neoliberalism. So I'm really excited. Me and Aaron Bastani will be interviewing Katherine and Darren. Um, I had the the pleasure of speaking with Darren when I was on my first book tour and he's just he's a really rigorous thinker and Katherine's book is phenomenal. So, get your tickets. I think you can get tickets at Dice. >> I think I mean or there's presumably going to be a link in the description. Is there >> There will be a link in the description. >> Um, and the event is at Earth Hackne I believe on the 21st of September. So, get your tickets. I think it'll be good. >> Fantastic. It sounds brilliant. Britain is facing its fifth heat wave of the year with temperatures expected to peak at 35 degrees C on Thursday. Now, this year is already the first time ever that a temperature of 35° has been recorded somewhere in the UK in three consecutive months. So, obviously May, June, and July. All of them um had a a day that was 35° or more. First time ever. Um but of course, if we hit that threshold again this week, three in a row will become four in a row. So, completely unheard of. Um, of course, just as significant as the record temperatures is the drought across huge parts of England and Wales. Um, this afternoon the government's drought group have updated their analysis and declared that more than twothirds of England is now suffering from drought conditions about 70% I think. Um, we can all see just by looking out the window basically the consequences. This weekend drone footage showed uh parched parkland in Bristol. Um, and as well as the yellow grass, you can see the river Avon under the Clifton suspension bridge looking extraordinarily low. Um, this is something I hadn't even heard of before, let alone seen. So, it's it's called a dust devil, which is a small whirlwind visible because of the dust it picks up. Now, they're typically found in deserts and semiarid areas, but this was in Greenwich Park. It's kind of got crash bandicoot vibes. Um, meanwhile, over 120 firefighters have been deployed to tackle a fire in the New Forest in southern England. The fire was started when a van set a light and it has burned a section of Heathland the size of 140 football pitches. Police say 23 cars were abandoned on the A31 after the fire broke out on Sunday evening. What might have even longerlasting consequences though are the effects of this drought on food production. The National Farmers Union has warned food shortages are likely. Their president has said yields of wheat and oats were quote very very poor this year. Um they warned that livestock farmers have had to use their winter feed rations because they have been unable to grow grass. Um and because of difficulty planting in dry land this year. This is the key bit. Um the drought this year could affect food supplies next year. So in 2027 um for today's show I wanted to focus on the drought and food production because I think it's under discussed um and also because food prices have the potential to be so politically explosive. Um, and so I caught up with someone who has thought a lot about the impact of climate change on our food supply. Paul Barren is the British Academy Global Professor at the University of Oxford's Martin School where he studies food system transformations. I spoke to him earlier today and started by asking him to lay out the challenge this summer's drought poses to the UK's food supply. It's really a challenge for so many different farmers in different areas. So you've got the serial farmers who are really struggling with the drought making that harvest bringing it in. It's lower than we expected. The yields per hectare is much lower than we usually get. It's a struggle for the people growing fresh fruit and veg. We need lots of water for that and obviously that water is not there and that's one of the main reasons why we're seeing price prices increase now for things like potatoes uh for veg um and will continue to do so into the into the summer. And and it's also a struggle for the livestock farmers because there's been such little grass that's been growing. We're way down on what we normally have. And now the farmers are having to open up the stores that they normally feed their livestock during the winter. And they're doing that now. So they're storing up a huge problem for themselves in the future as well. So across the board, the lights are turning red. I'm also very worried about what this means for next year because actually a lot of arable and crop farmers should be bringing in and putting in their seed for next year's harvest for some crops and it's going to be so so dry it's going to be difficult to get that seed in. >> And is the problem the heat or the lack of rain? Cuz both of those have been exceptional this summer. >> It's actually both. It's the combination of both that really hurts the yields. Um so you know the the heat can cause damage to the plants themselves. things like the grass, they stop growing over about 29 30 degrees. Um, and then that drought, we really rely on water availability to get us through bad temperatures. So, that's one of the main ways in which we can help the crops out. It's like giving them a lifeline. But if you don't have that water in the soils, uh, if you don't have that water on the land even, because in the UK we don't do a lot of irrigation. We've not needed to do an awful lot of irrigation, then you're really in a sort of danger zone. And what are we talking about here in terms of the risk? Are we are we imagining supermarkets with empty shelves at some point down the line or are we talking an increase in in food prices but basically the supply holds up? It's just sort of eats into everyone's income predominantly eating into people's income. So prices will continue to go up and we know this is the case. This will continue with climate change. So the academic studies on this show that we will have acute sort of sort of and chronic inflation over time as as climate impacts hit around the world. I I think some areas of the shelves might get a little bit patchy, but we're not going to see empty shelves. And what we will see is we'll see smaller versions of the fresh fruit and veg, especially uh as that comes through to the stores because those plants won't have grown as much. >> And I'm not going to be able to offer a citation here, but I have a vague memory. um in the past of reading or hearing about people saying that actually climate change in Britain sort of a temperate climate might increase crop yield sort of increase temperatures increase carbon dioxide in the air. Am I imagining that or or is there something to that that people had imagined that climate change wouldn't be such a problem for for UK agriculture? >> Yeah, there were those studies looking further into sort of the higher latitudes in areas like the UK and northern uh Europe. The issue with those studies, there's a number of them. First of all, it turns out that we've been underestimating the damage from climate on food systems over time. So the crop models which were used to explore that have typically underestimated what what's actually happened. Uh and the community is very clear about that that that's something that the scientific community has underestimated. There's things like the idea that CO2 is plant food. So as CO2 levels go up, surely the plants are able to grow faster. Turns out that's not so true in practice either. There's other limit limitations for that. Also, the nutrients go down in the in the crops as the CO2 levels go up. So, you're sort of double whammy really. You're not getting the extra growth that you thought to the same amount, but you're also reducing the nutrients in the foods as well. So, for all those reasons really, there's been this underestimation of how much climate change can impact. And broadly it's because we typically estimated on annual averages sort of over countries in sort of big scale sort of uh models and then not realize quite how much seasonal impacts quite so much the climate impacts can act together to bring down yields. >> And in what sense is this a transitional problem? I know you said sort of to a previous question and you said we don't do much irrigation because we haven't needed to because we've we've we've generally had quite rainy summers. Now presumably there are lots of adaptations we could make now we have this different climate. I suppose more speculatively um there are countries which are much hotter than our own that do successfully grow crops. I presume they just grow slightly different crops. When you go to Spain it's full of olive trees and almonds. Um, I is it the case that farmers just need to get used to the fact that we now live in a different climate, change the types of crops they plant and invest a bit more in, well, as a society, we'll have to invest more in reservoirs, but then also invest a bit more in irrigation. I mean, that's part of it. We're going to have to get used to an ever changing climate. This idea of a new norm, you know, normal is one of the most upsetting to climate scientists that, you know, we hear because there is no new normal. It's a it's a new abnormal because every year gets stranger and stranger and harsher and harsher and it's a question of whether we're going to keep up with that. So to some extent farmers are already running to stand still if you like. So they're putting in more effort and more investment to try and deal with some of these effects. Um but then the climate impacts will get worse and worse. So definitely we need some of this. It's going to be very expensive. That's one of the issues. And ultimately, one of the biggest issues that I see is that as things get more expensive, you're going to have to bring cooling for livestock, for example. You're going to have to bring in those onfarmm reservoirs for the water. And they're, you know, the onfarmm reservoirs, that's an important intervention, but it's going to get very expensive. Now, one of the ways we can deal with this is actually thinking about food and farming in a bigger picture. And there we like to call talk about the great food transformation, which is not just about changing what happens on the farm. It's about changing what we eat, what we waste, and how we think about food as a whole. >> What is the food system revolution that you're talking about? Give us sort of the the basics. >> Yeah. So, there's there's there's four main pillars really. There's a a shift to eating far more plants in our diets. We're actually eating too many animal products for our own health and definitely for planetary health. It's reducing the waste uh that we have in the system, the food system. It's improving the production. So we talked about some of the things that you might want to bring in on the farm. You might also want to have precision agriculture. You might want to also have lots of different interventions on the farm itself in more nature bringing in multicropping intercropping where you bring in different crops to grow together and they all benefit from the diversity. And we really need to address this community resilience. So the food environment at very local levels so that people have good nutritious food available for them even when climate change hits and make these costs higher. >> And and I've watched a talk um today as part of your national emergency briefing which we'll actually talk about sort of a bit later in terms of what that is. But one of the things that stuck out to me there is you really do think that us moving to a more plant-based diet, not necessarily all becoming vegetarians or vegans, but eating much less meat is essential. Um I suppose because meat uses up so much land, so much water compared to to vegetables and grains and whatever. Um [snorts] yeah, >> that is you know there there doesn't seem to be any politician in the world actually that wants to stand up and say you guys need to eat less meat. It seems to be so politically toxic that no one will go there. I wonder what your analysis of of why that is. Why do you believe that this is something that no one wants to touch? Well, I I think first of all, it's important to sort of mention that it's not just myself. It's not just uh all sort of the consensus of the science out there about where we need to go. Um it's also people like MI5, MI6 and the joint intelligence committee report earlier this year that uh actually found that we could no longer feed ourselves with the amount of livestock in the country and that a wholesale change in consumer diets would be required. And when we do our modeling the just to sort of put that in perspective what kind of diet that looks like. That's a beef burger once every two weeks. It's a chicken fillet once a week. It's a bit of dairy a day. So, you know, we're not modeling any sort of vegan diet here. You know, we're modeling something that is a reduction a big reduction in red meat for sure. Um, but it's something that I think people can get their their heads around. And if we were to do that, we would reduce our dietary emissions about 61% in the UK. uh we would save an area almost the size of Scotland and we could bring that back to nature and then be able to absorb some of the climate impacts that we're seeing in terms of flooding, heat and drought. And really it's a little bit of a no-brainer except as you say the fact of the politics on this. Now one thing that I should also mention is this that these reductions in livestock are actually part of our carbon budget system. So we actually need these reductions as part of our climate targets as well. And so if you think about sort of the areas of the government talking about it, they're all talking about it except for the politicians. And I think there's a couple of reasons. Um one is that we seem to have this idea that the food system is providing food that we have some sort of free choice over that is down to personal choice. But I don't have the personal choice to go in and choose any one of the 150 types of potatoes for my chips in the evening. Like I've got the choice of maybe two types if I'm lucky at the at the supermarket. None of us have have free choice. That's never been true and it never will be true. And actually it's heavily shaped by all of the vested interests, the different groups that are involved in producing this food system. Uh and so when you think about that then the politicians are also having to grasp not only with what the political push back might be uh but they're also having to grasp with all these different interests in the system as well. So that's that's a real challenge. But what we do know report after report after report shows is that if we are able to grasp onto this to do some joined up assessment and a joined up policy across food and health and farming that we'd actually all be a lot healthier for it and actually the country could be more productive. I mean it would save us a huge amount of money if we were able to do this. >> Um and I want to go really big picture. I know you're at the Oxford Martin School and that's all about you know big picture global challenges sometimes from a historical perspective. I suppose food is one of the issues where if you look at the 20th century, it's a real success story. You know, there were lots of people were saying with this kind of population growth, we're not going to be able to feed anyone. Then what comes along? Um the revolution of sort of the industrial production of nitrogen. That was in the first half of the 20th century. In the second half, you get the green revolution um where more sort of productive productive plant types are being cultivated. And so there was often people sort of saying, "God, the future's going to be terrible." and then some kind of ingenuity comes along and makes it all okay. Um I suppose I want to know from you it's big question. Is that a reasonable assessment of what happened in the 20th century? And should we not sort of relax and hope that something comes along in the 21st as well? That is a that's a great question. Uh there's a lot to get into there. First of all, this is called this the green revolution. This idea that we were able to produce all of this food for a growing population. What we did there was yes uh remarkable um and in fact uh sort of roughly two out of every five of us are on the planet now because of this uh extra fertilizer often that was uh that was produced in terms of artificial fertilizer. What it has stored up for us is a number of different environmental problems later down the track though. So one is for example too much fertilizer on the soils which can run off and kill water life and land life. Uh, another one is the monocultures that we see in different cereals around the world. Treating the soil and the land like factories in terms of we're interested in massive outputs of yield as m maximum possible and then running down the soil quality, running down the foundations on which the food supply is based on. So actually what we've done is we've sort of cut away at at the foundations of these systems for us to sort of continue on as climate change as ecosystem collapse hit. So while I'm actually sort of pretty pro- technology, I think things like precision fermentation um basically where we used sort of genetic modification to produce uh foods in a sort of brewing type container a little bit like what we do with insulin today. I think there's huge opportunities for that. I think there's opportunities for technology in the fields. Um, but fundamentally we've driven this system whereby we are producing too much of the wrong stuff that's bad for us in very monocultural ways. And we're going to have to get around that. I mean, just to give you an example, all of that extra yield that's gone in and all of those extra crops that we've gone in, I mean, in this country, we feed about 50 50 to 60% of our cereals through to animals. And so, we're sort of losing the vast majority of those calories and nutrients by going through animals in the first place. So, I don't think that there's any way that we can really continue without rethinking what we're eating and the health of what we're eating as well. >> Um, and finally, you're part of the the national emergency briefing on climate change. Um, explain to the audience what that is. >> Yeah, so this is a event that we had in November last year. We had 1,200 people in Westminster Central Hall, leaders from across businesses. We had a couple of hundred MPs and peers there. And the idea was to have nine experts explain what it is that the UK is facing in terms of climate and ecosystem emergencies. And we had people talking about extreme weather economics. We had a general there talking about national security. We had an emergency room doctor and they all made points. I spoke on food. We all talked about what it is that we're facing. This has now been turned into a film that people can look up online and go and see in their local community. The interesting thing about this is you can't sit at home and be worried and concerned and just sit there and get really depressed. The idea is that you get to your local community center, your local church, wherever it be, and then you watch it together and then you talk about what's happening in your community and how to address it. And the ultimate call is to have a nationally televised briefing about exactly what we're facing. Because I think right now people are really worried, people are really concerned. And this idea that there's no hope, it's just doom and gloom is really disactivating. And what we really need to do is make sure that politicians come clean and talk about what it is we're facing. Talk about what some of the joint intelligence committee, the military establishment are talking about. Talk about what the people who are running the major supermarkets in the country are talking about. and then give people a plan by which they can be involved and they can be invested in addressing this problem because it will get so so much worse and we need to get ahead of this now so people know what we're facing, know what we need to do and we can start acting towards it and that's how you get hope. If you want to have parliament talk about this, then there's a petition online that you can sign to say, "Let's have a national emergency briefing. Let's have experts. Doesn't have to be the one we were part of. It can be anything. And let's have Parliament talk about this seriously and take people seriously because I think there's a lack of trust here. There's a sense that the public don't trust the politicians." But I think that goes both ways that the politicians don't trust the public with this information. And every single time we look at the surveys on this, we know that we underestimate one another and we underestimate the public. The public are often far far beyond where the politicians are at. And so what we need to be doing now is trusting the public and trusted then builds both ways. >> That was food systems expert Paul Baron speaking to me earlier today. We'll link the petition he mentioned there in the description. Um Ash, I want to come to you on the politics of this. I mean in Navara in our internal meetings on the show we've all been talking about climate change a lot more than usual >> I think because of the hot weather. Um in Westminster still not really happening. So this was what I wrote about in last Friday's Cortado which is Andy Burnham has said that he intends his government to be a cost of living government and we know that this you know heat wave upon heat wave that we've been experiencing has pretty big possible implications for the cost of living particularly with food. If you couple that with the interrupted shipping in the straight of Hormuz, what that means for fertilizer as well as the cost of energy overall, any medieval peasant can tell you price of food going up, baby. >> And yet the government has been remarkably quiet about this heat wave. So I did some looking into it first. I couldn't find direct comments from Andy Burnham himself. Um Angela Eagle went and met with the National Farmers Union, but there weren't any public policy announcements. In fact, you could see about it on the National Farmers Union website, but there wasn't really much public coms that was coming from uh DERA about the matter. And as of last week when I went to have a look at what Miata Fanbula had been saying who's the uh minister of state for net zero it was sort of look on the bright side of the heat wave because record levels of sunshine means record levels of solar power. So I think we can talk about you know the sort of dereliction of duty right that that implies right what you want is a government that's on the front foot that's treating this with the seriousness it deserves but for me that tells you that in so many ways Andy Burnham despite all of his sort of studied casualenness you know very buttoned down you know happy to chat just like a normal bloke it's a tightly controlled comm's operation it's a government which really doesn't want to stray very far from the grid. So his, you know, first however many days in office, you can tell that day by day plotted out is, you know, a calendar with optimistic little announcements being peppered all the way through. So you had uh bus fairs, you had uh the uh VAT on electricity bills being scrapped, and today you've got this thing about the subscription trap, which is I think also um nicked from some American progressive policies. Now, I'm not saying these are bad things. Um and I think that they contribute to um a change to mood music around this Labor government, but I think it's quite telling that we haven't seen Andy Burnham really tackle any big problems so far. And in fact, when it comes to the biggest problems facing the UK today, whether it's the sort of big geopolitical headwinds or whether it's this drought and the climate crisis, we've really got no idea of what he thinks. I mean, he's sort of left the door open to expanded u you know, North Sea drilling. His spokesperson today to the Guardian was saying, well, you know, we do want to encourage um more reservoirs. I think he said back new reservoirs. What does that mean? What does that mean practically about what you're going to do? So, in many ways, this question about who is Andy Burnham, who's the Andy Burnham that we've got as prime minister, we still don't know. [snorts] >> It's a good point about the subscriptions because the subscriptions policy, if you haven't sort of read about it yet. I mean, we're not really covering it on today's show because it doesn't seem that significant in the middle of a sort of record-breaking drought. >> Don't cancel your subscription to us, though, you know. >> Yeah. Well, I think we already make it easy enough to so so that the issue as far as I understand it is that there are some subscriptions and this has really frustrated me where you can sign up with one click. >> But to cancel your subscription, you have to call up the provider like on a real phone and have a real human conversation and then they say, "Well, what if we gave you half price?" Yada yada yada. >> I think Mani did this first actually. I think this is a Mandani policy that they've taken on. And again, not saying it's bad and I think that that feeling of, "Yeah, that is really annoying. You're doing something about it. That's exactly what Bernham's government wants. I just don't think it's the biggest issue facing us. So, it's it's it's clever in terms of strategic coms, but strategic coms alone won't won't >> Yeah. >> being mutually exclusive, I mean, we could maybe deal with the oncoming food crisis as well as making it easier to cancel your time subscription >> luxury. >> Yeah. Uh maybe we can have it all. Maybe we can have our cake and eat it. Thursday is Alevel results day, meaning university will be on the minds of hundreds of thousands of young people across the country as they find out how they've done. Um, but unless you're resident in Scotland and planning to go to a Scottish university, lucky you, um, the cost of your education will likely be weighing pretty heavily, too. Um, and that's with good reason. analysis for think tank, the intergenerational foundation, has suggested students face a ticking time bomb of debt and higher taxes with successive governments increasing the share of the cost of education that young people are expected to shoulder. All that's happening through student loans of course um there are two different post202 student loan plans in England um with important differences between them. So, if you started your degree between 2012 and 2023, you're on plan 2. Um, students starting degrees after 2023 are on what's called plan five. Um, I think three and four were variants on plan two that you paid at the same time, but if you sort of had different characteristics, um, both plans take 9% of your earnings. Um, so after a certain amount, but if you're on plan five, you start paying it off when you're earning £25,000 a year. Those who took out plan two loans in 2022 only started paying their loans off when they were earning a little over £27,000 a year. So the threshold has gone down. Um the interest on plan 5 is lower. So that's where plan 5 is a little bit better. It's pegged to the retail price index and that's a measure of inflation currently at 3%. So it's the higher measure of inflation which is um always very frustrating for students. Um, for plan two, that's the interest rate if you're below the threshold and but as soon as you start repaying the loan, the interest rate starts going up, rising to as much as 6% for those earning over £53,000. Um, crucially though, and this is a big difference between the two, plan two is written off after 30 years, whereas plan 5 isn't written off until after 40 years. So potentially on plan two you have a higher interest rate, but on plan five you will be paying it for longer. Now, the older plan twos were the ones that caused lots of controversy earlier this year. Um, that was because lots of young professionals, so potentially people on higher incomes, realized they were paying off lots of their student loans. All while the interest rate meant the total amount owed was going up because if you've got RPI inflation, which for a while was about 20 12%, wasn't it? Then you add 3% on it. Just your amount, your principal as it's called, is just going up um by extraordinary degrees. Um there was one positive aspect of that older system though. Um it meant that richer graduates paid much more than poorer ones. Um so you can see here that between 2012 and 2023, so that's people on the plan too. Um the cost of university education over one's lifetime was much higher for high earners. So in dark blue there and that was due to the higher interest rate on those um on high income. So an upper earner could expect to pay £80,000 over the course of their lifetime to pay down their loan. Um for those on lower incomes, they'd only pay £20,000. Um so very progressive even if it was very expensive. The introduction of plan five in 2023 radically changed things. So the cost of a higher earners degree suddenly dropped by around £20,000 to just under £60,000 whereas the cost to low earners um the brown line um rose by the same to just over £40,000. Um median earners in light blue saw the cost of their degree go up by around £15,000 making it actually slightly more expensive than high earners. Um, that's because the high earners will pay it off quicker. Um, and the key difference here is, as I said, because the interest rate is no longer progressive, meaning high earners um can pay less in total if they pay it off quickly. Um, and because the write off date has been extended, many more low earners than before will pay off their loans in full. So, when it was a 30-year cutoff, hell of a lot of people don't pay them off in full. I'm not even sure I'm going to pay mine off in full, actually. Um, but there are lots of people now. If you're paying for 40 years, you probably will. Um now when the current university fees were introduced by the coalition government in 2012 one argument for them was that graduates earn graduates sorry earned a significant premium as a result of their degree and so they should bear the cost of that education. You've got something which means you get a higher sort of income later in life. So you shouldn't force non-graduates to pay for it. Um that premium so the graduate premium does still exist um but it isn't nearly what it once was. So this is a graphic which sort of on first look looks very confusing from the FT but it's actually quite simple once you get um a hang of it. So in 1997 graduate salaries um in the UK had an 80% premium over non-graduates. Um back then though only around 20% of the workforce had degrees but as participation in higher education increased that premium dropped um to about 45% in 2022. Um so lots of people thought that's just because there's more graduates that means there's a lower premium. However, and that's why the other countries on this graph are sort of relevant is because the same pattern hasn't held in countries like France, Spain and the US. Um there the graduate premium has increased even though just like in the UK lots more people are going to university. So this is a John B Murdoch graph and he's sort of saying something else is going on um which is that there aren't the jobs there for graduates to do. Um the government is also paying a smaller portion of the cost of higher education than ever before. Before in 2015, the government's combined contribution was almost half of the total cost of a graduate's education. But now just 8% of that cost will be met by the government. So basically all of it is paid for by the students before a lot of it was paid for by the taxpayer. Um, student loans operate on terms as well that might make a payday lender blush. So according to the Telegraph, from 2017 onwards, interest began being added to loans faster than people were able to pay them off. And over the last two years, almost 30 billion pounds of interest has been added to the country's collective student debt um with those holding managing um to pay off only around 10 billion pounds in the same period. So the total amount owed is is constantly going up even though people are paying it off. Of course, the interest compounds over time. So it's no wonder students are starting to conclude it's just not worth it. In June, a survey conducted by the National Center for Social Research found that a third of people fought a university degree wasn't worth the time and money. Um that's a proportion that's just about doubled in the last 7 years alone. Um so all pretty depressing so far. Um for hope we're going to look to um a former education minister under Theresa May. Who would believe it? He was also a cabinet minister under Boris Johnson, a man called Lord Agnu. So referring to the student debt disaster, he's proposed banning the triple lock to abolish interest on student loans. At present, pensions rise annually at the rate of inflation, average wage growth, or 2.5% whichever is higher. Now, Agnu wants to get rid of the last option. Um, makes sense to me. Why should pensions go up by more than wages or prices in a given year? Um, he uses OBR projections to say this could save 15 billion pounds a year over the cost um of sort of a simple link. So, if if you move to just a link to wage rises, you save 15 billion pounds compared to the triple lock. Um, Agnu writes this, "Ending real interest would cancel nobody's loan. Of course, it would freeze the balance in place so that a graduate repays what they borrowed and no more. And no pensioner would be a penny worse off than today. Their pension would still rise every year at a slightly more sensible rate. I am on the winning side of the present settlement. It is my generation that pushed up house prices until our own children cannot buy." We then ran up the national debt and posted the bill to our grandchildren. And although I never went to university, I saw friends enjoy free education and free living grants provided by the local authority. Um, he goes on, "This isn't about pitting young against old, but about asking both to pay a fair price for a system neither of them designed. A double lock and a debt freeze would cost pensioners nothing and save a generation of graduates interest they can't escape." Ash, all seems very sensible to me. Are we in favor of Theresa May's education minister's plan? Well, look, it's it's a really interesting idea because the UK is pretty unique when it comes to the triple lock. So, most countries for the state pension will have some kind of indexing. So, tying state pension increases to inflation, sometimes to wages. But from what I can see, nobody has this sort of discretionary 2.5% no matter what increase, right? no matter what else is going on with the economy, no matter what else is going on with wages, no matter what else is going on with inflation, your pension will go up by this much. So, the UK is pretty unique in that regard. Um, I don't mind bringing in some sort of age-based redistribution because I do think that while it's a mistake to look at the economic settlement purely in terms of age because we do have really high rates of pensioner poverty in this country, you do have to admit that free education, house prices, um, you know, all of these things benefited certain age groups more than others. it doesn't mean that you don't have um you know ex pretty extreme forms of class inequality within those generations but but it exists. So I'm always in favor of thinking about you know what is the sweetener going the other way. So if you go okay you're going to get rid of a triple lock and you're going to go to a double lock but what you're going to then do is maybe have a social care system which is a lot better and less expensive. If you have um eradicated the role of private equity um in the social care system, you bring costs down that way. Maybe you have more of a prevention based model of um elderly social care, which is often what you find in East Asia. So you try and bring down costs by saying, "Okay, older people are going to have healthier lifestyles overall and we intervene early and so that's going to bring down the cost." Um you go, well, that's the that's the sweetener. You're going to have to spend less of your savings. you're not going to have to sell your house in order to be looked after when you're an older person. So I don't mind a bit of age- based redistribution because I think it is just a fact that if you are part of a post financial crisis generation and in particular if you're post 2012 so I'm pre202 cuz I started uni in 2010 but if you're post 2012 and you entered higher education you got royally and the higher education system and this is sort of separate from the points about being laden with debt and the state of the job market. Higher education system is in a state of collapse at the moment when it comes to the closure of departments, when it comes to um overcrowding of classes, when it comes to this quite like transactional relationship between um the students and their lecturers. It's you're being bled dry throughout your life for this experience of having gone to university, which is neither giving you the sort of passport to an echelon of higher paying jobs once you get into the labor market, but it's also not an inherently beneficial intellectual experience anymore. It's on both sides. I mean I I I think we have a weird >> sort of we kind of punish you for being young in this country and it's it's strange because you know my my uh student debt will run out after 30 years I think since I finished my degree which is like 2012. So when will that be 20 when will that be? Help me out. 2042 something like that. So, so at that point in time, I'll get this big boost to my income, but like I kind of need that now, you know, if I want to start a family, I want that money now. I don't want that. You know, I don't need to be a rich 50-year-old. I want to be a kind of guy in my mid30s who's able to pay my rent without worrying about it or maybe even buy a house. >> Well, and also this is the thing is that you need young workers in the labor market to pay for pensions. And what we have is a system which is extracting from young people at every single turn. So not just thinking about the interest on student loans, but you're thinking about rent, the cost of housing, cost of transport, when you think about the sort of um evisceration of entry level positions, when you think about um say you take the NHS, the reduction in paid training places. So it means that you've got your degree, you've got your qualifications, but you cannot progress uh through the NHS if you're a doctor. you you just sort of think do you want people to have kids or not? M >> because I I think that people have families for reasons which are both rational and irrational, right? So there are things which are sort of not to do with oh reason this out like fulfillment, love, etc., etc. It's not just the raw economics, but you can't pretend that the raw economics aren't important to when you have children, if you have children, how many children you have. >> Um and and it's no good having a generation of people who are squatting on, you know, million pound properties. um you know and and having their pensions protected in a way that wages never have been. >> Um if you end up just absolutely and and not to sound quite grim about it, killing off the flow of new blood into your welfare system, right? Because that's what workers are. >> Cuz also with inheritance, so they'll obviously the big problem with inheritance is is how unfair it is because some people get this windfall from their parents cuz they owned a home in a major city and some people don't. So sort of especially with house deposits and stuff that's huge. Um but then also even for people who will inherit at some point there's all these people who are going to get this windfall in their 50s and they're like oh I would have really used that in my 30s when I was you know again thinking of starting a family or something like that go on more holidays this way. >> That's why when I go to my mom's house and I go you doing all right are you well? And she goes yeah fizz a fiddle. you. No [laughter] I love you mom. But we should have a very high progressive property tax because obviously people will be watching this and say why are you pitting the state pension against university tuition fees which I think is quite right. You know this the it's the people with really good pensions aren't the people on the state pension. The people on really good pensions are the people with these um defined benefit schemes you know especially in the public sector but also if you work for like a a big company um which which are very generous compared to the pensions that sort of people of our generation will get. Um so sort of pitting the state pension against student loans is not ideal. Like ideally what you do is tax incomes you know including pension income when it's sort of from uh private pensions and massively tax property. I would just massive I would want to just massively tax property and pay for all of this. But if a choice is between the triple lock and this proposal when it comes to student loans 100% I would do that. Socialists are proving competitive in a number of Democratic primaries ahead of the US midterms. However, um some are taking heat because of their past lives, namely what they tweeted between the years 2020 and 2021. And Francesca Hong is the prime example here. She's currently running to be the Democratic candidate for governor of Wisconsin. Um, and networks like Fox News have been highlighting tweets of hers um, from 2020 and 2021 calling for the defunding of the police, the abolition of the police. And there's also one from 2026, so very recent, calling for the abolition of ICE. I think that policy she does still stand by. Um, Hong has also been criticized for calling for Thanksgiving to be cancelled because she had quite good reasons for doing it. You know, she saying it's celebrating the colonization of this continent, but not necessarily a populist position. Um, we'll look at how Hong herself has responded to these past tweets in this current campaign. However, first, um, it's another socialist politician whose response to this line of questioning has gone viral this weekend. >> What do you make of those controversial statements? I'm sure you've seen. I mean, she's, >> uh, you know, the the Thanksgiving dust up. She says she doesn't, you know, still believe that. But, uh, you know, uh, the abolish prisons, abolish police, which is also positions that have been taken by a lot of the progressive candidates who have won. >> Mhm. >> How do you how do you get around that? Those are not positions that are supported by, >> right? I mean, I think that a lot of these races, even right now, they'll have a tendency to be nationalized, >> but these races ultimately are local and all politics are local. My understanding is that um is is that Franchesca Hong has made clear her present stances to her election. >> Yeah, she's moved away from a lot of >> Right. She's moved away from it. And I have a local city councilman that has this uh >> uh saying woke one was crazy. [laughter] >> Uh so Ash, that clip has absolutely divided the internet. So there's sort of one group of people saying great, you know, this is showing that AOC has, you know, become, you know, she's grown up. Um she's abandoning some of the unpopular or, you know, not persuasive positions she once held. other people saying this is AOC selling out the BLM movement or people who you know believed in defunding the police. Other people saying which to be honest actually is the most common I think saying oh well it's easy enough to say this now um in the years 2020 to 2023 there were people losing their jobs for this and if you said what AOC is saying now >> 3 years ago then AOC might say that you're not someone who should be associated with. So I mean is it how what's your interpretation of this new position from AOC? >> Well look I I think that there is truth in the point that well it's easy enough to say it now but I don't think that that's a reason to necessarily dismiss someone. I think that tells you something about how a particular set of politics operated at that time. Now, I think it's something that you said, which is that when you look at positions like defund the police, and I'm sure that lots of people watching will agree with the sort of slogan and and proposition to defund the police, but even if you look at African-American voters at the height of BLM, it was a minority, a real minority of Africanameans who supported Defund the Police. And because of the way in which movements work, I don't think that um social movements do necessarily have to be super representative of the electorate. That's never been how they've worked. They're often sort of vanguardist in the in the fight for social change throughout history. Um but there was often this sense of invoking the broader interests and beliefs of black people in the US in the slogan defund the police. But actually there was always this remove. And what's most interesting about that isn't that um it was a minority of people saying something that was unrepresentative of the wider electorate. Again, that's movements. Is that there was never much interest in building any support for the proposition. There was as you've said before a sort of mechanism of raising the social costs of disagreement. So what you're talking about in terms of well you'd have you know some people lost their jobs or you know found themselves very intensely criticized in a way which um went beyond I really disagree with this or I think it's problematic and here's why and was sort of you're racist for for disagreeing with the premise is that that was the mechanism of trying to get people on board. And so I I think that it's a little bit it's you're not actually escaping from the Twitter mind vortex when you say, "Oh, I'm leaving woke 1.0 behind," right? Because that is an extremely online thing to say and to think about. Um like it's you're just you've got brain rot in a in a new uh flavor. Um, but I I do think that there is something important for movements to recognize which is the way in which things were done a few years ago. And I think that's because of that sort of like I don't know that like uh hotboxed sort of you know cauldron you know really intense crucible of politics where you had movements and then because of the sort of poorestness of the you know the Democrats and the primary system is that there were expectations to see that being reflected in um you know national political campaigning is that maybe there is a step in between which is if you say okay we're a street movement, right? We're a street movement that that are making demands. Maybe before you go and we want that those slogans, we want those demands to be represented by electoral officials. The thing in between is to go maybe we should start persuading people of it. But there was a jump without any of that persuasion happening. There was a jump in saying we want to see our elected representatives um you know out there fighting for this, which I think was was a tactical error. I'm I've got a lot to say about this, but let's actually first go to AOC expanding um on how she looks back at the demands made at the height of the BLM movement. >> Did the movement go too far with some of those positions? I mean, you you briefly supported the idea of defunding the police. >> Well, um >> you know, I think I think that during this time and during especially during COVID, there was a huge opening of the overtone window. We were shut down. there was some of the highest unemployment rates that we have seen because of those shutdowns. And I think that the the doors were really open in trying to entertain any and every policy that was going to get us to a better place. And I actually think that the discussions that had that were had in that time were quite fruitful. I think that when we talk about crime today, it's fundamentally different than the way that we talked about crime in bringing crime down, right? And I think that we all share in the goals of having as low a crime rate as possible. I think that, you know, during lockdown, of course, rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today. And I'm grateful that these candidates have the opportunity to present who they are to their electorate and what they're campaigning on in this moment. I suppose from what AOC says there and I don't you know I'm not going to make this about me [laughter] that would be ridiculous. >> Enough about you AOC. >> Uh but I I remember saying at the time like on Twitter, you know, like defund kind of makes sense if you're just saying there are other ways to deal with crime and that America should maybe be a bit more like a social democracy, a bit more European in sort of like how it deals with crime and punishment. Um, and it's good that people have moved away from abolish and they're going to defund because it seems a bit more reasonable. And the amount of people online that would be like, "What the hell are you talking about? You're speaking over activists. Um, it's defund as a route to abolish, yada yada yada." And obviously, you know, I didn't lose my job. My life is fine. I'm not really >> I tried to get rid of you, but I was overruled. >> Well, some people did. No, not anyone in the organization, but there were lots of people who were sort of like the number of quote tweets and da da da da da. And um and the main consequence for me, which wasn't a consequence, was was people sort of saying, you know, why why do you why do you need your voice to be heard on this issue? Duh. And so I just stopped tweeting about it, which is fine for me, but I feel like both on that debate and um I mean even more controversial one sort of some of the trans debates, the main consequence for I think lots of people was to just back out of all the discussion. And what that means is that the discussion is only ever dominated by people with quite specific views because everyone else thinks this is not worth it. Oh my god. >> Shall I risk getting in trouble? >> Go on. All right. So, >> better than me risking it. Something which I've I've changed my mind on is that you know I I would talk about abolition and abolition of prisons and abolition of the police because like a lot of people I was coming from that position of having seen the impacts of racist policing um like fairly close up having also seen the way in which prisons contribute to the social wheels that they purport to be solving because when you take someone out of their you know family unit out of their community, you put them in prison, you're sort of creating a tear, right? A tear in the social fabric which has all of these these different consequences. And something which changed my mind about it was actually an experience of incarceration within my own family where I actually thought this person needs to be in prison, right? There isn't an alternative to this person being in prison. And in a moral society, in in a just society, that's where they should be. And whenever I tried to bring this up with friends of mine who were still abolitionists, they just couldn't wrap their head around that part. And when I would say, "But hang on, like, aren't we proposing a society where prisons are eliminated?" Then it would get into these very semantic arguments of well no because whatever force we have to deprive people of their liberty or separate them off from society be so different from the police it would no longer be called police which I just think is a an argument about language. It's not an argument about content. Obviously, I want how policing operates and prisons work to be really different or it would be a setting of homework, right? Well, if you go and read Ruth Wilson Gilmore and so I would then started going, okay, but abolition had a really specific meaning. The abolition of slavery meant one day you didn't have slavery anymore, right? It wasn't, well, we're going towards a horizon where there is no more slavery. It's like, no, there will be no more slavery. Um, and so I I have since come to the conclusion that abolition is often invoked, and I'm not saying this about, you know, Ruth Wilson Gilmore or Angela Davis, who I'm sure have thought a lot about this, but it's often used by people in the movement to make reform sound spicier than it actually is. >> And I think that has got something to do with subculture. I think it's got something to do with the way people turn to politics when what they actually want is either subculture like you're not a real punk I'm a real punk or religion which is a certain form of certainty if this is right and this is wrong whereas politics is actually about negotiation and prioritization persuasion coalition building these things which have various forms of compromise kind of built into it because that's what it means to to negotiate something politically um and and again I just don't think that people. And there are good reasons for this. I think that when you watch the video of Eric Garner being choked to death or George Floyd being suffocated or you hear the 911 call, Trayvon Martin being killed by George Zimmerman. All of these things have very visceral effect, right? You don't really want to think politically and tactically. you do feel, you know, so morally outraged and offended, it is very right and it's very wrong. But if you're making political demands actually right or wrong is just one component of it. >> Well, I suppose I'd push back because I I never thought the problem with like defund or abolish was that they were politically unstrategic. I thought they were bad ideas. >> Well, it's both both, right? It's like you have to be open to having a discussion. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you have to be open to having that discussion. Then you can hash it out in an openminded way. >> You can't you can't just sort of be like um manan about it. There is good and there is evil and this idea is on the side of the good. But I can understand how you feel that way and how you feel that there is a very clear sense of good and evil when you watch a video where quite frankly evil is being done. >> Um let's look at how Francesca Hong is responding to the questions about her old tweets. >> That's not going to be an easy race. It's going to be very easy for people to put up on the board and say, "You said abolish the Senate, defund the police, abolish the police." And why should they not believe that you would want to do that? That you would try to do that if you became governor. >> I believe that people can evolve. We need Trump voters from previous elections who now would like to vote for me who have a sign in their yard. >> So, who needs to evolve? The voter cannot defund the police. And I won't defund the police. in the things we know prevent crime, like getting guns off of our street, making sure there is victims for justice, that there are, you know, places where our kids can go after school and thrive. You know, we can't be tough on causes. We have to be tough on causes if we would like to be tough on crime. And as governor, I cannot defund the police. And I've reminded folks that I won't defund the police. So, so her argument is basically it's unclear if I believe in it or not, but I don't have the power to do it anyway, so don't worry. >> I I mean this um you know, in a derogatory way. She sounds like a politician [laughter] both in terms of her delivery and the sense that she's trying to make you feel much better about some bad news that she's telling you. Um and also what feels like a lack of authenticity. I think it's perfectly legitimate to be like, "My views have changed and they've evolved. I've become older. I've spoken to more people. I understand that there are different solutions to social problems and that's what I'm committed to." But the slogans didn't didn't really tell us anything about them. So, I'm interested in these solutions. That's what I'm clear about. It's would also be fine or, you know, honest to be like, I still believe in this man. >> Like disco never died. I still believe that both of those things pull from a real human place, whereas I just don't think she was getting there. I I I I don't really mind in a way um and I think lots of people feel this way is that I've got more time for someone who holds a belief that I don't hold, but they're sincere in their holding of it than someone who is constantly triangulating. >> All right. Uh that uh primary is tomorrow. Um, >> may I set something right though because I saw something in the comments which is someone asked, >> "Am I that girl who said that air conditioning was racist?" No, [laughter] that was a different South Asian woman who I constantly get mixed up for. And I would actually say maybe not having air conditioning is racist because I look shinier than you, right? Shine shows up more on dark skin. So that's woke 2.0. Fit AC in the office. >> Have you heard I still look pretty shiny? Uh maybe the contrast is lower. I don't know. >> I think the contrast is lower. >> I was just some comments. I've been really liking some comments today. So So Michael went to Oxford and can't add 30 to 2012, which is fair enough. It did take me a few seconds. Um there was also a debate about why I'm not a vegan, and someone kindly pointed out that I had IBS, so I struggle with with pulses. So I love I love that you I [laughter] love that our viewers know about my dietary requirements. Makes me feel very careful. >> That you had IBS. Well, I've got I've got terri I'm actually going to I'm trying to get referred to an allergist because um pulses give like make me incredibly bloated. Now, I know they make everyone a bit bloated, but me really bloated and I have a kind of nut allergy. >> Oh, >> so I'm really struggling with the whole vegan proteins, but I am going to try and cut out well not try that's weak. I'm going to stop eating beef and lamb for a start because they are the ones that are really bad for the climate. Maybe cut down on cheese, chicken, fish, tofu. any advice you've got, uh, let them know in the comments. If you know a good allergist in the London area, uh, feel free to let me know. Or if you are an allergist, definitely let me know. >> If you want to join Michael's support group, Hot Boys with IBS, >> link in the description. >> Exactly. Today I feel uh, Qatari. Today I feel Arab. Today I feel African. Today I feel uh gay. Today I feel disabled. Today I feel a migrant worker. Today I feel out of a job. Uh that was Am I allowed to do that? Anyway, that was a head john and speaking at the guitar world cup in 2022. Obviously a memorable clip and the 2026 World Cup brought many more. Um but despite his masterful way with words, Infantino's days might be numbered. That's because several football federations, including those for Europe, North America, and the Caribbean and Asia, um have called for Infantino to quit while threatening to create um their own competitions to rival FIFA unless he goes. Um in an open letter, the free associations said this. Uh leadership in football is not a possession. It is not about holding or demanding power to be held. It is a duty of service to the football family that entrusts it. When trust is broken through deception, when an individual places himself above the collective that entrusted him with authority, that duty has been abandoned. Um, deception, broken trust, the dereliction of duty. This all stems from Infantino's plans revealed in July to spin off FIFA into a private company with billions of dollars in private investments. Um, the company would have allowed Infantino to claim a massive pay rise. Um, and the investment was going to be led by Joshua Kushner, brother-in-law, or sorry, brother to Trump's son-in-law. So, this all looked remarkably corrupt. Um, and it would have taken the World Cup even further um, from the wishes of genuine football fans. So, Infantino was already under pressure for the exorbitant prices charged at the 2026 World Cup. Investors would presumably want them even higher. And [snorts] Infantino had already proven his unaccountability to member associations by reversing a red card decision given to a star American player after a call from Donald Trump. um selling off the competition to a member of Trump's extended family would hardly provide reassurance that FIFA would act more properly in future tournaments. And amid this revolt from World Football Associations, Infantino now has another headache to contend with. Um, last week the Telegraph published an exclusive alleging that UEFA paid off Giani Infantino's lover, who also worked at the organization while Infantino was its boss, giving her a six-f figure payout when she left the organization and paying for her to do an MBA. UEFA has confirmed the payment to the junior employee, though Infantino strugg strongly denies the allegations. Um, now this is um I I think this is a bit shady from UEFA, frankly. I mean, Infantino obviously should resign. he should not be the head of FIFA. But like UEFA have obviously had this information for a very long time because they did it right and then now they've they want to remove Infantino. So they're like, "Oh, should we should we leak the whole thing about paying off the lady?" Like it's doesn't doesn't seem like a particularly, you know, honest and open way to behave. >> Why are you expecting honesty and ethics from UEFA? [laughter] >> That's fair enough. >> Like I'm sorry. Like do you go to Harold Shipman for a good bedside manner? [laughter] Um I I I sort of I interestingly this does reveal something about the internal politic and and how things work. It's not that um people are blind to corruption when it takes place. It's that people store information in their back pocket and I think it was Tom Wcans who says you know information is a broken bottle and you just have to shove it in their faces at the right time. You hold on to it, you tend it and that's clearly something that's happening now. um in terms of why is it that not every single um you know uh sort of regional um conglomeration of football associations has parted with infantino. I mean first thing to say is that there are levels of corruption and bribery in football the likes of which we can only imagine. All right. And so whether or not that might have something to do with um who's still in alignment and who isn't I can't say. I don't have that information. But just if you look at the history of FIFA, you'd say likely. Um the second thing is that when it comes to the commercialization of football and you go back to De Havalange, who was kind of the first big money guy who was the head of FIFA is that that went hand inhand with developing uh the sort of football infrastructure in global south countries. So to have avalanche is sort of, you know, I think that's kind of the original sin of FIFA. But don't forget in terms of his campaign to lead FIFA, he was partnered with Pelle. You know, really this was about why should the game be owned by Europe. Um so there's always been this thing that commercialization has been seen to be better for um regions outside of Europe when it comes to football. Um when it comes to UEFA specifically and you know the role of sep um I guess just clawing at infantino from the sidelines is that when I first got my head around this story I thought well this is about set blatter being um a different kind of crook shall we say which is yes he loves money but he also loves football. What I didn't realize is that actually Setlatter has beef with Johnny and Fantino going all the way back to 2015 2016 when he was ousted uh from his role over payments made to um MueL Platiny and he sort of described it as you know and Fentino told me one thing that you know I could always call him we ate dried meat and we had uh some wine together and then he said no no no only through my lawyers he blocked me he wouldn't even let me collect my belongings from the FIFA office and since then it has been like a divorce. >> Wow. >> So I don't think that people are necessarily insincere when they're saying that this is um a a horrendous attempt to bastardize the people's game. I also think that everyone's got their own agenda and that's what's coming to the four. >> Yeah. What's so like um I suppose frustrating about it is like if you run the World Cup, you've got like the easy it's the easiest job in the world because whatever you do, it's going to be a success. Like at this World Cup, the tickets were were way too expensive, right? Red cards were overturned, you know, that that there were adverts in the middle of a half. You know, you you could do so many fuckups that people hated, but then the World Cup is going to be brilliant. Like you can't really ruin it because like football is amazing and this is like the world football tournament. It's going to be brilliant. But but still like just just coast. Like I'm a big believer in coasting. You know, if you're getting if your salary is high enough, if the product is fine, just keep doing what you're doing. Like why does he need to get private investment so he can get an even higher salary so that Trump's son-in-law blah blah blah. just put on the World Cup every four years and people will love it and people will love you unless you do like obviously corrupt fuckups like this. >> I just I I think I think it's difficult. I think people that don't have this in them find it difficult to imagine greed. Rapacious greed. And I think it's because both me and you can imagine a level of money where you'd go, "God, I'd be happy with that." And that level of money for Journey and Fentina would seem embarrassingly low. He'd go, "Why end there?" >> You couldn't even pay off a office fling. No, with that amount, >> you know, like you can't even sexually harass one junior staffer on that kind of salary. >> I'm sure he's >> I'm sure I'm sure >> there's there isn't even a suggestion of sexual harassment. Okay. >> I'm sure it's wholly consensual. I'm just making a joke about how people in big corporate jokes uh big corporate jobs tend to conduct themselves. Um but yeah, you know, I I think it's difficult to get your head around that kind of greed if you don't have it, right? I could imagine a level of money that I'd be happy with. But I think what happens is is that you get that kind of money and then your your expectations change. The people whose lifestyle you're comparing yours to changes. Power changes. You think you're powerful on this kind of money. What was it? Again, I'm quoting succession a lot is that when um uh Tom is sort of deriding Greg for his poultry, $2 million inheritance, he says, "You're the poorest rich man in America." [laughter] >> That's a really good line. Um amazing. Okay. I need to raise my ambitions. >> No, [laughter] that's that is >> that's what I took from that I took from that. I'm coasting. Um Ash, pleasure to spend the evening with you. >> Pleasure as always. >> Um thank you everyone for tuning in. Uh thank you so much for I feel like there is some IBS advice coming through. We'll have to keep this stream up long enough that I can read them all, Alex, and make notes. Uh thank you guys for watching. Uh we'll be back tomorrow at 6 p.m. for now. You've been watching Navar Media. Good night.