Trump Promises Hunk Of Cash At Republican Convention

Welcome to Novara Live. Coming up tonight, Donald Trump has promised a $5,000 check to every American if the Republicans win the midterms. Kate Bnok defends massive proposed cuts to benefits. We speak to a Palestine Action activist's mother who's been denied a mortgage by her bank. And two of the cast of the Inbetweeners appear to have declared intergenerational war. I'm no Justice MTG. My name is Helena, as you all know. And tonight, I'm joined by Dalia Gabriel. Dalia, how you doing? >> I'm doing good. I didn't know that the guys from the Between Us had a podcast. I didn't know they had either. You know, >> maybe I'll be tuning into that [ __ ] >> Appeared on my Tik Tok feed. I was just like, "Oh, they have opinions as well as action." >> And they were the two best ones. I forgotten their names. Jay, >> it's true. Joe Thomas and James B. >> They were the best like >> characters and actors, I think, things to look forward to for the last story of the show tonight. As always, if you'd like to support our work, you can sign up at novaria.com/support. You can also listen to the show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. And as always, make sure you like the video, subscribe to the channel if you haven't already, and let us know what you think in the comments section down below as well. The first ever Republican midterm convention is underway. It's a first because the US parties usually only hold their national convention in presidential election years. But November's midterms, where seats will be decided in both the US Senate and the House of Representatives, really matter to the Republicans, who currently control both houses, but only just. And that's why the party of current American power has congregated in Dallas to celebrate what some people are calling Trump a palooa. And giving the keynote speech at the convention last night, US President Donald Trump was keen to make it a Trump palooa for voters as well. If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them because of our economic tremendous economic success like in in history, we've never had anything like what's happening, but because of our tremendous strength and success economically, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000. Now, a $5,000 bung to every American voter would certainly be an enticing offer. It would also be a very expensive one. With 270 million American adults in the country, that would come to a total of $1.35 trillion. Quite a lot of money for a country that's up to its neck in debt. Last month, US national debt passed $40 trillion for the first time, having doubled in the last decade. That's around 125% of its GDP and it comes a monthly interest rate payment of $95 billion. Yes, you heard that right. The US spends more than a trillion dollars a year servicing its debt. Now, Trump has very carefully phrased the bung as a quote dividend. In other words, a reward for a reward for the supposed economic revolution that the MAGA administration has brought about. And it's not the first time that he's made this kind of promise. Back in November last year, Trump promised to pay $2,000 to every American citizen other than high earners, a dividend, he said, from the riches his tariffs had netted. That didn't happen. He also said that new wealth would soon start paying down America's at the time $37 trillion debt, another fantasy. It borrowed 3 trillion more instead. So, whatever happens in November's midterms, ordinary Americans aren't likely to suddenly get $5,000 richer. But it could be a sign that Trump knows there is an electoral disaster on the horizon for Republicans. Most polls put the Democrats modestly ahead overall, which given the state of things is a pretty telling indictment of a party that can't make real gains even as Trump causes chaos at home and abroad. But perhaps more annoyingly for the president, voters think Republican candidates would have a better chance if he doesn't even get involved. asked whether they thought Trump was making it easier or harder for Republican candidates in the midterms. 46% of all those pled thought he was making it harder. But strikingly, a third of Republicans thought he was the problem, too. That didn't stop Trump trying to insert himself into their races. However, >> but I say, why is it that no matter how well you're doing, we seem not a president, Democrat or Republican, almost never wins the midterms? We've got to change that because we have something going that's so good. We can't let that string be broken. SO, I'M ASKING YOU TO PRETEND THAT I'M ON THE BALLOT. I'm on the ballot. >> I'm on the just one more time because if we lose, you're going to lose your border. You're going to lose your tax cuts. You're going to lose your safety. and security. You're going to lose your wealth. Our country is going through hell. You will be going through hell just like you did just two years ago. We went through hell. We were a laughingstock all over the world. We were laughing. They don't laugh at us anymore, do they? >> I mean, they mostly cringe and or are terrified about what the insane [ __ ] that Donald Trump might do next will be. That's mostly how people look at America nowadays. Although we do laugh at the fact that a man who is as ridiculous as Donald Trump is the president of the most powerful country in the history of the world. It is kind of a damning indictment on his time as president of the United States of America. But when he says people will lose their tax cuts, I mean I'm assuming he's speaking to like the like 20 incredibly super rich people who got huge tax cuts as part of the big beautiful bill supposedly rather the regular Americans probably didn't get that much in terms of tax cuts. Although what he didn't say there was what he said previously a couple of weeks ago which was that if he doesn't win the midterms transgender will never end. And I'm just like well if that's a better reason to continue voting Democrat I don't know what would be otherwise where else would I go now promising checks you will never deliver won't go down well. But of course that will only be after the midterms have already happened at the convention. US Vice President JD Vance went on Fox to talk about that plan. >> $5,000 for every adult citizen if the House wins. Wait, it raised my eyebrows. Both hands went up at the same time. >> But if Republicans don't need it, this is for the American middle class. >> All right. But if Republicans win the House, $5,000 for every adult citizen. So you do the quick math, that's about $1.3 trillion. I can hear the critics heads exploding. They're saying out loud, I guarantee you, president is bribing voters to vote for Republicans to take over the House and then he's bankrupting the country because the deficit and debt is huge and inflation would come back if this comes into play. So, how do you answer those criticisms? >> Well, I say first of all, what the president's talking about is fundamentally a dividend for American workers. We're taking in an extraordinary amount of revenue because the president of the United States is actually standing up to both foreign companies but also foreign countries who've been taking advantage of America's workers for pretty much my entire life. All of these tariffs, what is a tariff, Brett? A tariff is when the president of the United States says, "If you want to undercut the wages of American workers, if you want to ship American jobs overseas, you're going to pay a big fat penalty when you try to bring that stuff back into the United States of America." Those penalties have generated a lot of revenues. They've helped us pay down debt. What the president is just saying is if you keep it going to the American people, if you keep us in power and allow us to continue to do these things, then you're going to share in some of the benefit of this incredible wealth that that we're we're creating in the United States of America. I I don't think it's a controversial idea. It's actually the president of the United States saying, "We're all working together. We're all on the same team, and if we continue to create wealth, that wealth is going to go back to the American people." >> Sorry about the soundtrack there. It wasn't us. And also, a reminder, tariffs are paid by the citizens of the United States. It's not a punishment in other countries. Now, that was Vance there, carefully avoiding the question of checks and pivoting to a more much establishment right understanding of wealth distribution. Don't worry, it'll get to you eventually. Vance mentioned the tariffs as being the source of the profound new wealth that would hit Americans soon. But according to the bipartisan policy center, they've so far brought in just $210 billion. That's just a couple of months worth of national debt interest payments. And if it were to be turned into checks, it would amount to around $780 per person. Uh Dalia, the GOP's internal polling must be absolutely dreadful if this is what they're resorting to. >> Yeah. I mean, it's obviously regardless of the qualifications around dividends and all that, which was probably there to protect them legally. I mean, the the intended feeling or the intended interpretation is for people to interpret this as effectively a bribe. has the spirit of the bribe. Um, and you know, it kind of reminds me of when Elon Musk uh was giving offered to give a million dollars to select voters um in Wisconsin for the state supreme court election. >> Yes. And um obviously that was found to be illegal, but what is legality to a man like Elon Musk? Um so it's very much, you know, it's it's it's a spectacle. It's ridiculous. you know, if we are to take this seriously, which I don't, the thing that we could obviously say here is that how can the the uh government, the party that has been so committed to cutting any kind of benefits, any kind of welfare, you know, the whole Doge ransacking of the social security state, how can they also be committing to the idea of giving £5,000 to every American citizen? I thought they were against handouts. Um, but it just kind of goes to show that this whole myth that the state can't possibly spend, the state is in debt, the state is unable to kind of give back to ordinary workers is a complete fast. You know, there is no fiscal black hole because apparently at the drop of a hat, you can raise enough money to give everyone five grand and you can raise enough money to send to Israel, you know, a million times over. But for me, what this is kind of more indicative of, other than it obviously just being a kind of a hailmary, ridiculous attempt to try and uh not necessarily win the midterms, but like at least manage the loss of the midterms. I actually think it's incredibly sad because Trump has made the calculation that $5,000 per person would be enough to buy someone's vote. Now, when you think about it, $5,000 in the grand scheme of the cost of living crisis, in the grand scheme of like housing insecurity, that's really not that doesn't actually get you that far. Like, that's actually not a lot of money. But when you look at it in the context of the fact that more than 50% of Americans live paycheck pay paycheck to paycheck and that, you know, the median American family has just $6,000 in savings. $5,000 is like almost double what your median American family has in in their savings. So the idea that like he would have made the the calculation that the vote of an American person is so cheap because they are doing financially so poorly that it would just take $5,000 to buy their vote. that is kind of almost more depressing and it kind of has this suggest he's also made a calculation that I don't necessarily even think is that wrong which is that people are so used to getting nothing from the government that they would be willing to spend their vote just to get five grand just to get $5,000 even though that's not going to radically change your class position it's not a life-changing amount of money it might just get you to the next month without being really really stressed >> I my assumption again from to trying to you know steel man the position My assumption is from their position is that this will be a motivating factor for low propensity voters potentially people who otherwise would never turn up to the midterms because Republicans now do worse in low turnouts. It used to be that low turnouts favor Republicans but that's not true anymore because the politically motivated are the people who really really detest Trump in terms of like the Democratic supporter base. They're very very engaged. the level to which the support for the right in America now correlates with an a lack of attention to politics is really stuck. And it's the same in the UK too. Like rightwing parties now cultivate votes from people who don't pay as much attention. So trying to drive those turnouts when again current polling shows them losing Texas. It shows them so some polls show them losing Iowa Maine with Susan Collins who's been overperforming most people for ages. And I saw a poll showing that they may even lose Kansas. This is the the level to which it is an absolute kind of defcon one moment for the Republican party. There's an independent that might make them lose Nebraska. Some people have even said they might the Democrats might put money into Mississippi. This is an a situation the Republicans never expect to find themselves in. >> Yeah. Because obviously it's normal to lose the midterms, but it's not normal to lose the sort of jewels in your electoral crown. But I think it's a really interesting point that you raised, Helena, because a lot of the times on the left, we have this idea that if we ape the right on certain things, if we copy the right on certain things, then we can win in the way that the right is winning. And I think a lot of the time that is a politically bad because it's like, oh, um, the right are winning by being really racist. So maybe if we just do a little bit of racism, we can like recover some of those v votes cuz that works. or it ends up us, you know, thinking that we can play the same game with the as the right wing does without having the kind of resources that the right wing has. But the one thing that the right has done well that I have always said has been the thing that the left should be doing is bringing out the at-ome vote, creating new coalitions. Um, ever since Corbyn, I was saying this, you know, there was this constant sense that like, you know, there is there are the people who vote and we have got to be acceptable to the people who vote. And I always felt like this is not going to be the way that an insurgent party wins or an insurgent kind of politics wins. You have got to tap into the people who have been disillusioned by the political system because it's not it's not like there's something inherent to those people that mean that they'll never vote. It's not like they're inherently, you know, too stupid or too uninterested or too passive to vote. It's that nothing has brought them to the polls. So we have to organize and have a political messaging that connects with those people and the right have their version of that. The left have their version of that and I think it's much much bigger. Um so that is what we should really be taking I think from looking at the way that the right has succeeded um around the world is is not having this really narrow fixed idea in our minds of what a voter is and what a voter will accept or what a voter wants but actually looking at where are who are the people who have not been voting. What are the coalitions that have not come to the polls and how can we activate them because those are our political base. you know, we are our politics is the politics of, you know, that is meant to appeal to people who have been left behind. So, it's actually a very, you know, organic kind of strategy for us to go down. But I think we've been very sheepish with that because we've internalized the, you know, the pundit class's idea of what it takes to be successful in the existing political system. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, fun fact, in 2024, Joe Biden was the first president in decades, in decades and decades to get more votes than people who didn't vote. >> Interesting fact that again, probably co motivating voters in my mind. Anyway, back to the Republican convention. Now, they're usually never short of surprises, but pure cinema is much less common. On Wednesday, Dallas and indeed the entire world were gifted with a film that truly had jaws dropping. Thousands of years, you've always said socialism and communism. It's never ever worked. It's not going to work this time. >> It has moved away from Democrats in its own party. >> I am not going to be the same party. >> No, you weren't imagining things. That was an image of a very muscular Hassan [ __ ] almost naked and looking objectively extremely hot. And I just want to point out they've blurred out his underwear. The the ghost of Lindsey Graham does not approve. Sorry. >> Now, Per was on his stream commenting on the convention when the literal unveil occurred. >> There is no Oh. Oh my god. What is going on? No, no, no, no, no, no, no [ __ ] shot. Oh. Oh. Oh my god. The Republicans nicked Hassan's thirst trap from his Instagram and included him what was supposed to be an antisocialist propaganda reel. But did it potentially have the opposite effect? and many appear to have been converted, though not necessarily to the left. Gay Hookup app Grinder reported a severe intensification of user reports showing problems with the app in Dallas, shown by the biggest reddest dot on the map. Perhaps the network was uh overheated potentially. Now, this could just be Grinder messing around, but underestimate the power of a socialist baddy at your peril. Dalia, I'm I'm assuming you're you're a fan of their inclusion there. >> I'm erotically confused right now. You've been turned on by the Republican midterm convention. What what's going to this is unprecedented? >> I like clearly a homosexual intern somewhere got confused and was like, "Wait a sec." Cuz I am literally like, "What was the purpose of?" And also, it's not just that picture that like he looked really hot in. He looked hot in all of those pictures. Little Mau collar. Like you can't, you know, you can't deny that that's a little uh something something for the girls and the gays, >> you know. >> That is unbelievable. >> Cuz I just like also it kind was it like a way of saying like this man is like grooming like you know the the the country. He's like he's like bringing them in with his good looks and then like radicalizing cuz that just makes him even hotter. It reminds me I think there was there was a meme going around Twitter and it was like a right-winger saying socialists will suck you dry and I'm like I mean they mean taxation but I'm sure most people interpreted that differently. No, there is a serious case of like Hassan Per derangement syndrome happening in the US right now across the Democrats and the Republicans and it's like they just it's like he's a force that they don't feel able to stop and I don't say this as someone who is like necessarily like a massive super fan of Hassan Parker. I actually don't know a huge amount about like his I don't watch his streams the various things that I've heard from him. I'm like, okay, he seems like he's, you know, considerably to the left of the Democrat party, but it's like you are so shaken by this one, like with all of your resources, with all of your money, with all of your investments, like you have a guy who streams for eight hours a day, so clearly isn't doing that much organizing outside of that, but like a guy who streams eight hours a day has you shaking in your boots for multiple reasons, apparently. Well, if there's any way of being able to radicalize the liberal wine mums in America, maybe that's what they needed. Maybe that's what they needed. Maybe that's what we need in the UK potentially. In parliament this week, Prime Minister Andy Bernham was answering questions over how he planned to reach the NATO target of 3 and a half% of GDP being spent on defense. And Tory leader Kimmy Bedno repeatedly pressed him on whether he was even serious about the topic. Yes, we do everything to support our national security, but it can't come at the expense of social security. >> Having strong national security also also depends upon having resilience in our communities. This side of the house will not be forced to choose between the two and we will set out a plan to get to 3.5% by 2035 at the spending review. >> That was a reference to the Tories pledge to fund new defense spending through welfare cuts. Bay wasn't happy with the answer, however, and she took to Tik Tok to express her displeasure. I can't believe what I just heard. Andy Bernham said the quiet part out loud. Labor are too weak to cut welfare to pay for our defense. >> Yes, we do everything to support our national security. But it can't come at the expense of social security. >> They're putting our national security at risk. They are not the Labor Party anymore. They're just the welfare party. >> Now, the Labor in the party's name is supposed to refer to the Labor movement to whom we all owe the existence of the welfare state to. is not actually supposed to reference the Protestant work ethic as Kem seems to imply here or as Kia Starama had previously described it. Now what the tries are planning to cut is4 billion pounds from the housing benefit bill by reducing the local housing allowance from its current rate of the 30th percentile of rental market rates to just 10th percentile. After her bust up with Burnham in the Commons on Wednesday, she was quitted on her plans the next morning by Emma Bar on the Today program. >> Are you willing to make people homeless in the name of national defense? Well, actually what we're doing is making sure that people are protected but capping the amount uh that people get on benefits because we need to look after our national security. Without national security, there are going to be any benefits. Uh we're all going to be in danger. Far more people will be homeless and the government's first duty is defense of the realm. It's the safety of the citizens and saying that benefits uh effectively are more important I find quite worrying. >> But that's not what was said. And there are 1.5 million. >> That's what it means. >> Not necessarily. And and and taking those words out of context when I'm not taking the prime minister simply disagree with that. I have a different interpretation. He said national security cannot come at the expense of social security. That means we will not cut welfare to pay for national security. >> That's your interpretation. It doesn't necessarily mean that. Sorry. If I may, if I may reply, he then went on to talk about how national security was a priority and he'll fund defense. I mean, yeah, it is kind of cheeky for Chem Bay not to go, well, I'm just pretending that I know what he meant better than he knew what he meant there because he quite literally said that in the spending review they would be committing to that extra investment into the defense sector. We'll come on to whether that's a good idea at all at some point, right, later on. But when it comes to her interpretation of the meaning of his words, she just like is totally incorrect from the actual basis point. It wasn't that they're not going to increase in defense because they refused to cut welfare. is they're going to find another way to do it. Maybe increasing taxes, maybe some rearranging of government finance elsewhere. Again, whether that's good or not, we'll come to. But she was just wrong. She was just wrong in what he was saying. Now, Kimmy was then pressed further on the material impact of her plans to slash welfare. But you didn't answer my question. Are you willing to make people homeless in the name of national defense? Nobody knows what protecting people and capping benefits really means, especially when there is the concern of thousands of children being put into temporary accommodation. >> Well, that's not our policy. Our policy is to cap the uh local housing allowance, something Labor did in 2009. Uh we're not uh this is not going to impact pensioners. We're not asking anyone to move out of their homes. I think that's quite reasonable. But if you can't if you can't make the rent and then we know there is a significant gap for a lot of people, you will be turfed out. There's nothing you can do about that. >> What we are saying is that where people are living in areas where it's too expensive, they'll have to move somewhere cheaper. Moving somewhere cheaper is what everybody else does. I have staff in my office. >> You are willing to make people homeless because they'll have to move homeless. That's not what homelessness is, Emma. And quite frankly, if you're if you're not able to stay where you are, you are by definition. >> You asked me a question. I would like to be able to answer the question. >> If we h are attacked in this country, far more people will be homeless. The prime minister says that he wants to fund defense, but he is not funding it. John Healey resigned over this issue. Why has the issue disappeared? It's my job to hold him to account. I have explained how we would get to 3% by 2030. The public can decide whether they think that that is the right way or the wrong way. But >> I'm trying to help them. I'm trying to help the public. But I've answered your question. No, you've not actually. No, you're trying to pretend that I'm I want to make this. I said we will cap the local housing allowance. No, you said something else. You said uh from the National Wealth Fund and and other things. >> Sorry, there was a really key detail in there that you you glossed over very quickly, which is if people need to move because they can't afford where they live, they will have to move. That is by definition getting people out of their homes, changing where their children go to school. I literally just said, Emma, that we're protecting existing tenants. >> So, no, that's not the case. We're talking the the the the housing benefit bill was30 billion when we left office 2 years ago. It is now because I'm explaining that it was30 billion just two years ago when we left office. It's now set to get to 40 billion. We should be able to find44 billion pounds out of that 10 billion. Come on. What is it that we're saying that there's absolutely nothing we can do and we should all sit back and spend more and more money on benefits until the entire country is bankrupt? A couple of notes on what Kem said there. To start with, a huge number of housing policy experts immediately came out to say that her plans would increase the level of homelessness. This included representatives from shelter, the center for homelessness impact, and in particular Rachel Williamson from the Chartered Institute of Housing, who said this, "At a time when record numbers of households already struggling with housing costs, this would almost certainly increase financial hardship and homelessness. Any short-term savings to the welfare bill could quickly be outweighed by higher costs to councils, the NHS, and other public services dealing with the consequences of people losing their homes. So yet another red meat policy for the welfare hawks that would cause more problems than it solves and not only in lost productivity from those having to reorganize their lives around being turfed out of their homes which Keith said wouldn't happen and then seconds later admitted would have to happen and then changed her mind again but also in terms of the negative externalities that's associated with increased homelessness such as an increased spend on temporary accommodation or higher burden on the NHS and on the police and other public services. She also claimed that welfare went up during the conservative government. It's actually still lower as a percentage of GDP now than it was in 2010 and it's pensioner benefits that now make up the majority because of the triple lock instituted by the coalition government and of course the rising dependency ratio. On top of this, she claims that if the nation isn't secure, it will lead to more homeless people. She's essentially claiming that the difference between 2.7% and 3% of GDP being spent on defense is somehow like the point of inflection where we cease being supposedly insecure. How on earth is that quantifiable? The defense investment plan commits to spending within the current 2.7% budget. What else does she want to spend the money on? The overall NATO target 3.5% is not one that has any specific appraise of what that even means in terms of defense. It's just how much the US currently spends. And Donald Trump got upset that his vassal states don't spend as much as he does. It would take our military expenditure to more than double what China spended last year in GDP terms just to appease the US president. This also doesn't account for the fact that the military is one of the most inefficient government departments. Not only is there plenty of waste in the private sector subcontracting, they also have a poor record of auditing their budgets. In every single year between 2010 and 2022, the National Audit Office did not give a clean report on the MOD's expenditure, leading the Labour Party to point out in 2022 when they were in opposition that 13 billion pounds had been wasted in 67 confirmed cases of MOD waste whilst the Tories were in office. In fact, this year's audit in July was the first time since 1989 that the audit came back clean. That's on top of operational defense spending having one of the lowest keyn multipliers of any department. You compare that to housing benefits that go straight into the pockets of those with the highest propensity to consume which is the best way to boost the economy. The reality is that the military chiefs always agitate for more funding and the tourists are more than happy to acquies to them and the media always fails to scrutinize the trade-offs that get made to fund such increases. Daria, like there's two parts to this. There's like the defense spending argument and then there is whether or not we can justify a cut to housing benefit given that the housing crisis is part pass of the Tories failure to build houses to regulate the private rented sector and the failure of broadly us to deal with the commodification of housing in this country. All of those negative externalities would also be the fault of the Conservative government that failed during their time in office. Uh do you think it's ever sustainable to ever cut the welfare budget on housing? I mean, I think it's an unbelievable thing to to argue for now. It's like, girl, cut what? The thing has been it's been cut to the bone. I mean, actually, I did a podcast about this with Kojo that was published on Navara. It was called Death in Westminster, and it was about investigating how a man died from homelessness while surrounded by the most dense population of empty homes um in Westminster. And in that you really see the thing that I remember really really like came out to me was the way in which being pul because I don't even think people fall into homelessness. people are pulled into it by so many like so many different factors and historically homelessness had all and I don't think that this was right but I think you know it is the case that homelessness historically has been something that people were pulled into if things went really really really bad like there were a lot of really deep co- kind of comorbidities that led to someone being homeless what we have now is people can be like one missed bill away or like one very very small crisis away from being made homeless. I mean a lot of women who uh get divorced who separate from their husbands and then maybe if you lo if you like if you go through a divorce if you have children and you go through a divorce and then you separate from your if you go through through a divorce and then you lose your job you are on the br you will be in this current system on the brink of homelessness and that is because of the slashes to housing benefit and the idea that Kevin Bnock is so like cavalerely talking about this idea that well if you can't afford to to live where you want to live then you should have to move and like it's just like don't you understand that like uprooting someone from their place of from their community from their home from somewhere that's accessible to work that's accessible to their kids schools like that is such a violation it is so disregulating so difficult for someone to be uprooted in that way but I think the question of the defense spending that was actually quite an interesting thing to me I think Andy Bernham coming out and saying like look defense spending is important but like There are also other things that are really really important and some things that I would argue are, you know, should still be sacred um when it comes to to where we find the money for for defense spending. That has been an unsayable thing in British politics for a really long time. The press has made it so that unless you are basically get on board with this idea that defense spending should be this blank check and it's this like bottomless uh bottomless pockets need to be used to pay for defense spending that you have to do that to be elected. You have to be uncritical um about the scale of defense spending um that is needed. And it's also at the same time been unsable in British politics to not like by default accept that cutting government spending is a good thing. You know the it's always been oh yeah cutting government spending is a good thing. The question is who is able to do it most aggressively and most effectively and most efficiently. So Andy Burnham has like represented a little bit of a discursive um shift in there. And you know, I don't buy this idea that defense spending in the way that we do it is what keeps us safe. I think that the reason we spend so much on defense is because unfortunately our economy has been tied to the military-industrial complex. People's pensions are invested in the military-industrial complex. And so we're in this cycle where like in order to keep the economy going, we have to constantly manufacture this idea that like we're on the brink of being nuked. And so like we have to put everything into into defense and nothing can can be can be above that. But and I also actually think that a lot of people have sort of become a bit more critical about this idea of what it takes to keep Britain safe. I think a lot of people with what's happened in in Israel have said, well, you've told us that we need to uncritically support Israel um because it keeps us safe. And now that we've become a bit more educated on this topic, we're realizing that actually a lot of this stuff is not actually about keeping us safe. It's about, you know, securing particular kinds of allies and it's about kind of fueling a particular industry. But even if we were to accept the idea that, you know, defense spending has got to be at the level it's at and it has to increase, which Andy Bham does accept, you know, he doesn't say that we should cut defense spending. He just says we shouldn't get defense spending from the welfare budget or from the the housing benefit budget. My question is, why do poor people always have to pay for that defense budget? Why does that always have to come out of the pockets of disabled people, of people who can't get jobs for whatever reason, of people who are unwell, whatever, for whatever reason, of people whose whose wages don't cover their basic living expenses? Why are they the ones that always have to pay for the for the defense budget and not the super rich? It's so important and such an unquestionable expense that we a bill that we simply have to foot otherwise you know tomorrow we're going to wake up and it's going to be like the blitz then why can't we tax the rich to find that >> I mean it's especially gling right since the rich own our [ __ ] country they own all of the stuff they own all of the infrastructure we sold off houses we sold off huge parts of our kind of public services to these rich people to oligarchs billionaires right they're the one who own the things that are being defended, right? Let all me and you are pottering about buying things from international mega corporations where very few actual assets our own names. Like the assets of the country is what's being defended. I think the people who own the assets that are being defended should pay to have those things defended rather than those who don't have a pot to piss in. Like that's my opinion when it comes to this. I agree that there's some necessary defense spending that probably does require an increase. We're currently dealing with hybrid warfare. We're seeing what's happening in terms of like Russia interference all across Europe when we saw like drone attacks. We saw um sabotage operations, right? Not necessarily an invasion, which people tend to think like somehow Russia's going to invade our nuclear armed island nation. Don't believe that for a second, but there are definitely hybrid warfare things that we need to be fighting against. Israeli interference with our elections in Scotland. That was shown by um someone in France that that was happening. So there there isn't when it comes to cyber security kind of retooling away from these big infrastructure projects towards like drone um manufacturing which can be retooling existing factories. These are things that I think are good, but that's already in the defense investment plan. The 3.5% number is totally kind of illusory because it doesn't actually predicate on any specific kind of spending. It's just make Donald Trump's feelings good because we're spending as much as they are. Like we would spend more than Estonia spends as a percentage of GDP on defense and they're quite literally a neighbor of Russia. >> Yeah. And also I think that there is a kind of broader like point to be made here that a lot of the because our economy and like wealth in this country is so tethered to the military-industrial complex. There is also this constant political backing behind militaristic solutions to problems that then create the need for further defense spending. You know, maybe we wouldn't need so much defense spending if we didn't invade Iraq and make the entire world less safe. Do you know what I mean? >> If we didn't allow the US to use our bases to attack Iran, then we wouldn't be getting we would be being threatened by Iran in retaliation for what is again was a totally belligerent action by the US and Israel. >> Yeah. and and like maybe if we didn't say that the solution to the climate crisis has to be a militaristic solution. Maybe if we thought about other ways of resolving or approaching that problem then we wouldn't have to to perpetuate this need or this sense that there is a need for constant extra defense spending like we live in it and this is what it means by like the the military-industrial complex. It's not just the kind of the money that is floating around in between arms companies and the state. It's also this entire framework of existence that is like the solution to everything is violence and the solution to everything is militaristic. What that does is it breeds further violence which then breeds further need to believe that you have to like defend against the violence that in many ways the foreign policy of this country has created you know a lot of this the the security threats that we're talking about right now are a result of hawkish British and US foreign policy. 100% 100% one last point I'll make when it comes to housing benefit quite funny that Kimmy Badel wants to cut the landlord subsidy that her voters depend on quite amusing and what I will say as well is that when it comes to plans to reduce welfare which is what Bernham said he wanted to do he said we'd build more council houses you have to pay significantly less housing benefit there and more council houses built and that yeah that's basically true we all rely on banks whether we like it or not you can't get paid you can't pay bills and most people can't borrow the funds to buy a house start a business or manage their debts without one but banks are far from our friends. They're ruthless businesses that can turn on you at any time. That's what appears to have happened to Emma Camo, the mother of jailed Palestine action activist Ellie Cameo, who has been denied a financial service from her longtime bank Lloyds of what they call adverse media. That report is by Novara Media's Harriet Williamson. You can find the link in the description who writes this. Ellie's mom, Emma Camo, a small business owner in South Wales and mother of three, applied for a new mortgage with Lloyds on her commercial properties in April. Her mortgage broker had made the High Street Bank aware of the legal process affecting the family prior to the application. However, Emma's broker was told by a Lloyd's business development manager in early June, "We've now assessed the deal and consulted with our credit sanction team. Unfortunately, due to the adverse media, it's not something they are comfortable supporting at this time." Adverse media about someone's daughter rather than the applicant herself seems a strange reason to turn down a mortgage product for a business. And at the beginning of June when Emma's application was rejected, Ellie Cameo had along with the rest of the Filton 4 only b been found guilty of criminal damage in the 2024 raid on an Elbert site near Bristol. But she hadn't yet been sentenced as a terrorist. That would only happen later that month. In fact, a lot of the adverse media at the time was about the fact that the possibility of a terror connection being found in the case had been concealed from both the jury and the wider public by a court order and also about the fact that ter counter terror law was about to be used for the very first time against people protesting in the tradition of the suffragettes. Emma cameo even tried going back to the bank with another option with Harry reporting this. Emma's broker then offered an alternative plan, transferring the properties into her sister's ownership, but Lloyd still refused to proceed with the mortgage application. While Emma was refused perfectly ordinary banking services, Lloyds went ever further with her daughter Ellie. Harry also reports this. Ellie was sent a letter notifying her of Lloyd's decision to close her bank account in February 25 while she was held on remand that had not been convicted of any crime. The letter sent to an address Ellie no longer lived at and seen by Novara Media states, "Following a recent review of your account, we are writing to let you know that unfortunately we're unable to maintain a banking relationship with you. No explanation of why Lloyds was unable to maintain a banking relationship with Ellie was provided." So that's Ellie losing her bank account almost a year and a half before she's been convicted of any crime. and when the question of a terror connection was nowhere near the public consciousness either. Asked for comment on both of these stories, Lloyds provided Lavaro with a statement. We do not close customer accounts or make lending decisions based on political or personal beliefs. Our decisions are based on relevant laws, regulation, account conditions, or lending requirements. We're unable to comment on individual cases. Early today, I was joined by Emma Camo, the mom of Ellie Cameo, and I began by asking how Ellie is doing. Well, she's just been moved to uh back to Gloucester. She after sentencing she was in Bronzefield in London and um they've now sent her to Gloucester which isn't where she wanted to go. So, it's been a bit of a um a struggle, bit of a any move. Takes about two weeks to settle into the new prison, new regime. It's not as straightforward as everything goes with them. It's nothing would be far too simple. Um but she's just coming through the other side of that and I spoke to her I think it was not last night the night before and she had a really good day. She's just been um given a blue pass which is what she they would never allow her before. It's all none of it makes sense. Um a blue pass allows her to be um moving around the prison without being escorted and she needed one of those to get a gardening job which is what she really wanted. um they wouldn't give her it to her in uh Glouester prison last time, but they have now just given it and she's she's got a gardening job, so she's just trying to settle into it. And she said she's beginning to process the sentence. Um I think she said, "I allow myself to go there for a little while." Um then pulls herself back and says, "Okay, that's enough for today." Um yes, we've got the appeal coming up, but you know, she's she's prepared. She's she's a survivor. So, she um you know, we're looking all around us on how you're going to survive and it's about settling into this new environment and getting ready for the long haul. >> So, now Lloyd's refused to reorgge some properties associated with your business over what it calls adverse publicity. What do you take them to mean by that and why do you think it impacted their decision? >> Well, I have no idea. I never gave it any thought whatsoever. Um I was uh the remortgage application. Um I went I went through all the details with the broker and um he asked me a list of you know normal questions. Have I got any criminal convictions and I told him that I hadn't but I did give him the history that I'd been wrongfully arrested and why, you know, with my daughter's case. Um, and then I said I did a protest um to protest the prescription of Palestine action, but that I'd since had my court case and that I was found not guilty. He then relayed that to the lender, who I didn't actually know was Lloyd's Bank at that time. Um, it was just whatever lender he'd come up with. Um, and he came back and he said, "Yeah, it's okay. They'veed everything. Let's set to go." So, um, then you start all the documentation that they need and etc. And and that went in. Now, don't forget I was juggling a second court case with Ellie. You know, this was just something that was going on in the side and and I left them to it and it was approximately six weeks into it when he came back and said on the phone to me, um he said, "I've got some bad news." He said, "They" He said, "I only found out two days ago, but I've been I haven't told you straight away because I've been trying to challenge it." He said, "Because I gave them all the information before we went into it." Um, and he said, "All I can tell you is that it's something to do with something that happened on the 12th of June." And I went, "That was my daughter's sentencing." I said, "She was sentenced as a terrorist." And I said, "But what does that got to do with me?" Um, and he said, "So uh so that was his his feedback to me." And then I asked him, could I uh could he tell me what grounds they gave for not for taking me this far down the road before before denying me? and he said his words over the phone were they said reputational risk, but I haven't seen that in writing. Um all all I've seen in writing because I then asked him for the email thread um which he did later send to me and that was um all it said was for adverse media. So make of that what you will. >> So what will this mean for your businesses and your livelihood? >> I've got three businesses um and um it's that sounds big but it's not. I'm a very small business owner where I run a small Pilates studio and I'm a homeopath. The commercial property is just something my sister and I had on the side. Um, and because the last two years, I mean, I haven't looked up. I've just looked forward and um, and have been fighting Ellie's campaign. Um, and my business, I've got a small team of instructors that that work for me and they've carried my load hugely all the way through the court. You know, the first trial was three months long um in London and I'm in Wales. So, um you know, the team have carried me for long enough. My patients have been patient with me. Um I've had to see a lot of them online, but it it it hasn't been anything drastic, but a slow I've certainly I'm certainly not growing in the trajectory that I was before this uh whole thing. Um I then sort of plateaued for a little while and then you can just see little and and I was worried. Um, so we remortgaged um, so that I could help buffer buffer that, but um, as a result, I mean, it it's a culmination of a lot of things. My health has taken its toll. Um, and my sister that I was in business with, um, we've both lost another sister about 20 years ago, and she just said to me, I I'm taking it off your hands. She said, you've got enough stress going on. Um, so I'm going to take it off you. So she is now currently uh taking the mortgage on and um and the reortgage rather not the mortgage the remortgage um with another company which haven't got such attractive rates but um but yeah my sister's going to carry the can for me. >> Now you've been very actively campaigning for Ellie. Has this had any impact on your businesses as well? I don't teach that many Pilates classes these days and the ones that I do have been with me for so long that um I took a long time to tell them. Um I could tell that some of them knew. Some of them had seen the media but you know Swansea is a small town. um a it it isn't aware of what's going on in the rest of the world and b it's a small town so if somebody knows everybody knows um I've played I think um a great professional game throughout this two years and you know um I'm on this side of the camera one minute in London and and campaigning with horror and then you know Thursday night 7 o'clock dinner you know Pilates time and um they have admitted to me that they could see, you know, this was early on before it was openly spoken about. Um, but they could tell that I was under stress and they didn't know why, but um, you know, they're all incredibly loyal and, um, and my team are are incredible as well. They carry the can a lot. Um, and and I just don't look I don't look too far forward. I just deal with the here and the now and what I've got to, you know, what I've got to do. So, yeah, it is what it is and we shall see how how long I survive. >> Now, Ellie's debing long before she'd been convicted of anything. It's also pretty shocking. According to charity unlock, which works to make financial services fairer for people with criminal records, people on remand as Ellie was should still have access to their bank accounts. So, what happened there? >> Well, that was a long time ago now. Um honestly I I was in an interview yesterday with Fatima Neb's mother and there is just so much to cover in the last two years that we haven't been either able to talk about um openly you know whilst the trial was going on and and then once it is all over and you can talk about it you're exhausted and and you can't remember all the details along as the way as you go but Ellie was living in London before her arrest and um when she was first arrested we I just said to her, "Have you got enough money in your because she wasn't expecting any anything of what happened, you know, she thought she may do, you know, maybe a month at worst." Um, so it was all a big surprise and she said, "Yeah, yeah, my bank account is okay. I've left enough money to pay my um, you know, she canceled certain things." She's incredibly organized and she canceled certain things and then made sure there was enough money to cover direct debits. And so we were along, I think, if I remember correctly, from sending Harriet the paperwork. I think it was last March I I believe when maybe they sent it. I think that was it. But we didn't get it then because they sent a letter to her old address and they never gave any reason. So I can only summize that she will have been flagged up on some system somewhere as having a terror connection even though the public didn't know, the jury didn't know. We might have known and clearly the banks have access to that knowledge. Uh because there is no other reason. You know myself and three children have all banked with Lloyds our entire lives. collectively it makes something like 87 years um that we've been banking with Lloyds and there is absolutely no reason for them to to you know to debank her. Um but we didn't know about it. Uh luckily one of her direct debits was a I think it was a mobile phone or a TV license. I can't remember what it was. It was something Sky so that's why I think it might be the mobile. Um, and she uh she had when she'd set that up, it was using my address before she'd gone to London. And that is the only reason that I found out because Sky was suddenly not getting their direct debit payments and sent a letter addressed to her at my address. So, I opened it and it said that, you know, she was in debt. So, um, I then tried to get back into her bank account and I couldn't. Um, and then I contacted the house that she was in and I said, "Is there any mail there?" and they said yes, there's a a pile sitting here waiting for her. So, they sent it to me and that's when I discovered that um they'd debanked her, closed her account and all the fund with no it says no, you know, no reason. It did. They didn't give a reason and um a check for the contents contents of it. So then there was this whole escapade in trying to there was a a credit card from another bank that she was paying monthly um a couple of other direct debits and in order for me to continue those payments or to to see they they they won't deal with me because I'm not her obviously. So you know it causes incredible stress and and no end of you know that on top of the prison system you know you'd need a whole show on it but um you know it wasn't simple. I say we don't have any information showing whether or not the banks did any have any information regarding the potential terror connection on that issue. Now when it comes to the recent coverage that we've done there was the announcement that the Filton for would be appealing the extraordinary sentencing as terrorists which you mentioned earlier. How are you feeling about that? >> Well you know I am somebody that sees the glass half full my entire life. I am an incredibly positive person and very hopeful. Now I'm not religious but I am spiritual and I do believe this whole thing is you know has got to come for count for something and be a part of something. Um that that is for the greater good of mankind. But but in all honesty uh the amount of corruption that I have seen unfold in front of my very eyes in the last two years um you know it's I'm I'm not expecting justice to be done but it would be nice. Um she's the we're appealing the terror connection and from what I've understood God I've gone from a lay person I'm still a lay person but I've learned an an enormous amount in the past two years and um the for there to be a terror connection I think you have to tick two of three boxes and one is a financial bracket which doesn't quote a particular amount so that's odd in itself um but staying on that on that thing that they said that they did 1.2 million pounds worth of damage, but all they've got for that, which was never scrutinized in um in court, was um an insurance claim. Um now, Elbert were never enforced to turn up in court to answer any questions uh during the trial and so the the insurance claim was never um scrutinized. It was just accepted by the judge. Um, so that's the one thing that they'll be um I don't know what exactly they're they're appealing with that, but I know it's something to do with the finances. And the other one was influence in a government, which they quite clearly they they spoke for themselves during their case and said that, you know, they had no hope in influence in a government. They tried that before they took direct action. You know, they did the marches, they wrote to MPs, they they did encampments. See, they did all sorts of things um to try and influence the government to stop arming Israel. Um, and it simply didn't work, which is why they took direct action. >> That was Emma Cameo speaking with me earlier today. And remember, you can find Harriet Williamson's full article in the link below. Joe Thomas and James Buckley, better known as Simon and Jay from The Inbetweeners, aren't known for their political takes, but a clip on one of their recent podcast episodes, which they have, went viral recently for making a couple of pretty wide generalizations about the older generation. There was an old woman on the on my train on the way in today >> and she had a massive problem with me uh sat sat in front. She was sitting with her legs >> quite stretched out and I wanted I needed the seat that was in front of her. >> Yeah. >> And I sort of gave her the sort of >> Yeah. >> the look, you know. >> Is it all right if I sit in that seat? >> I'm just going to have to sit down here. >> Got nothing from her. Arrogant. >> Yeah, they are arrogant. Yeah. And um then when I did sit down, she still wouldn't move her legs. I had to straddle her. I basically straddled an old woman on the way into work today. >> I had to sit there with my legs open so that her legs could go. >> Yeah. That's >> And I was a bit eventually she did move it. >> Yeah. >> And I um again, I'm not aggressive. I'm not going to I'm not going to vocalize, but I did give a little eyes like >> like a sort of >> That's nice of you. >> Thank you. Sar, but I'm being sarcastic. >> No, I know. I know. I mean, it's it's um >> But old people are >> get booked for that. It's a booking. >> Old people are are entitled. >> 15 20 years ago, I would never have complained about an old person wanting to stretch their legs out on a train >> cuz old old people had won wars and [ __ ] like that. >> Yeah. Now, >> that's where that's where the respect your elders thing comes through. And I was always brought up to respect my elders. My my grandparents were uh in the war. >> Yeah. >> Um I also knew my great-grandparents as well. and they were heavily involved in the war >> when I was growing up. So I'd always I I always grew up respecting the elderly. >> Yeah. >> Giving them a letting them take their time. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> They can do whatever they want to do as far as I'm concerned. >> Yeah. >> But today's old people >> Yeah. >> All you did was get born after the war >> um see the end of rationing and [ __ ] a load of people in the 60s. >> Yeah. >> And take a load of drugs and [ __ ] >> Bought a house for about a pound. >> Yeah. Exactly. And now you now you're sitting on the train going, "Oh, no. I you owe me. Oh, you [ __ ] all, love." >> Yeah. >> They have this attitude of like, >> "No, I'm old, so you should respect me." >> But I want to be like, "But what have you done, though?" >> Yeah. >> You're not the same as the old old people. The old people when I was growing up, they'd been through some [ __ ] And you go, "Fucking hell." >> Yeah. We should send them back to war now. We'll get a battalian. send all the anyone 73 plus right now >> off they go >> they should send to Ukraine >> they go to Ukraine and they stretch out their legs >> they and then when and then if they if they liberate Ukraine >> and then if Russia tries to come in they're like >> if they liberate Ukraine >> for freedom and democracy and then they want to stretch the legs on the train then I'll go thank you very much >> but what I will say is if James wants to find some older people with a social conscience he should look at Navar media's metrics which shows that we have plenty of older people in our audience who enjoy our journalism. And obviously I think broad strokes always really bad. Huge wild generalizations about entire groups of people are never really helpful saying well all old people are like entitled or they're all expecting of respect that they've not earned right. And I broadly agree with the idea that everyone deserves some level of respect in this country. You should always be treating other people with some level of respect. But as soon as people start treating you with disrespect or have an expectation of your own behavior towards them, that's when I start having a problem. And I do think that there is at least somewhat of an issue with some sectors of the older generation who don't treat young people with a level of respect that, you know, most people would expect that everyone in society should deserve on the grounds of they've not done anything to be able to deserve it. Much like James in that clip said about the elderly. I don't know if anyone here has worked in retail. anyone in the audience has worked in retail but it's my experience that the worst kind of customers unfortunately nowadays usually tends to be the older generation and again I'm saying tends to be not all cases of course not again this is like a minority here is what I'm talking about but I'm talking about a personal experience of what it's like being in their situation and dealing with a lot of the lack of respect and a lot of talking down towards young people that you get from all generations today like the discussion around needs for example young people who are on welfare who are not in education employment or training that of mental health issues amongst young people and you usually get hit with cannards such as the youth don't want to work. The youth are too lazy. The youth are faking their illnesses. The youth just don't have the get up and go and the gumption and the desire to succeed that the old generation had and we had it hard and young people have it easy because there's iPhones. But there's a point that Joe Thomas made there where he was like, well actually these people bought houses relatively cheaply compared to young people and we don't have access to any of that right now. Now, on the subject as well of going to war to protect freedom and democracy, the polls show that the older generations don't quite share the two comedians viewpoint. When Rishi Sunnak announced a plan for a mandatory national service for young people before the 2024 election, a Yugaf poll show that over 65s supported such a move by 63 to 31%. This is despite most of them never having been subject to national service themselves. It having been abolished in 1960 when you'd now have to be a man of at least 84 years old to have ever done it. And it's not just national service that they fully support despite it not affecting them in the slightest. When it comes to public spending, the polls show that that demographic has a broadly similar opinion. When pled by Yugav earlier this year, over 65 supported an increase in defense spending, for example, at 706% with only 17% thinking that it should decrease or stay the same. This plus 59 point margin compares to minus5 for the 18 to 24s and plus4 for the 25 to 49s. Yet, in one of the follow-up questions, the same sample was asked whether or not they would support the triple lock being scrapped to help fund an increase in defense spending. And the 59 point positive margin becomes a minus 62 point margin as a whopping 77% of over 65s opposed such a measure with only 14% in support. And worth noting, however, every age cohort opposed such a move, showing that maybe belief in the social contract could potentially only go one way when it comes to certain sectors of the electorate. And also caveats like that's not going to be a clean way in which you divide those people up. It's not all the same people who said we support increasing defense spending say well I wouldn't want to lose the triple lock to be able to pay for that. But it broadly shows the direction of travel. And there are other polls that show similar things like this when it comes to free bus passes for young people. Older generations who do have bus passes tended to not support it for young people and young people supported it for both. Young people also when they'd come to caring for their elders, they actually broadly supported keeping the universality of the winter fuel allowance for example rather than it being means tested like the government wanted to. So there's not this level to which you want to see welfare cuts and reductions in provisions for the older generation coming from the younger generation that there is in the other direction. And again just want to make sure there's expertly caveed here that this is only about polling samples and how these things poll. It's not talking about everybody, just the majority of those that do hold those opinions that again I think unfairly disadvantages young people in this country. Dalia, what did you make of the clip? What do you make of like the polling that coming from older generations? Is it ever fair? Is it ever fair to make such wide generalizations off of like individual moments on a train, for example? >> Yeah, I mean obviously obviously not. I mean, firstly, I love the idea that millennials are like the old people of today. They don't know they're born. They're nothing like they used to be. Like I just think that's quite funny. But also, I think it's not so much about I don't care if if older people want to, you know, be a little bit condescending or whatever. It's kind of part of the of getting older as you complain about young people, whatever. My problem is, why do older generations keep voting to remove the conditions that they had that they succeeded in? Why do they keep voting to take those conditions away for younger people on a macro level? Um, and you know, I I often find that um these kind I'm always surprised by this kind of polling because a lot of the boomers in in my life are actually very disturbed with how things are going in the sense that they, you know, look at their kids and they say, "Well, my kids kind of did did everything ostensibly right. You know, they went to school, they got an education, they did a degree, they got work experience, they, you know, apply for jobs all the time. and they don't seem to be able to get on the ladder of adulthood. And a lot of boomers in my life are like very kind of frustrated about that. But then when I look at the polling, I'm like, okay, well, clearly on a kind of national scale that is not representative. But obviously some of it is is kind of ego and the sense of oh well you know I don't want to ascribe the fact that I am materially secure and that I was able to have you know a decent job that paid wages that allowed me to cover my own you know to live a dignified life. I want to believe that that was all me and that was just my good decision- making and my, you know, savvy saving that did that rather than there was actually a broader environment that meant that my hard work was I got something back from society for that. But I also think another issue is sometimes like a mistransation of what poverty is across the generations. I was um in a rural part of the country a few months ago and I got talking to this guy who I would say is probably like Gen X boomer cusp and he's a farmer and he's a farmer who like he has a hard life like his work is like manually intensive like it's very physically demanding he's not and he's not making loads of money from it he's not a farmer >> especially post Brexit when they lost all the >> subsidies he's not a farmer in the way that like a Jeremy Clarkson is a farmer like he is like you know he's not doesn't live an easy life, but you know, he has secure housing. He's always had secure housing. He was able to, you know, give his kids a good life. His kids went to university and all of this. And we were talking and he sort of said, you know, that classic thing where he was like, you know, people are people think that they're poor now, but they don't know what poverty is. Like, if you saw what poverty looked like in the ' 70s, you wouldn't think that people are poor now. And um you know, you see he's like my my friend um he said that you know, his friend was a bin man. and he's like all their bins are full of takeaways. Like they're just eating takeaways all the time. You know, if my mom could look at what poverty looks like now, she would say, "Oh, you you know, that's like basically a luxury compared to what poverty was like in the ' 70s." And I said to him, I was like, I think that what has happened is that what poverty looks like has changed. So back in the day if you were poor you still and you know under the welfare state you still had like the basic things that you need to survive like you still had stable housing you had access to a decent health care service. You could send your kids to decent schools. Um you often lived like locally to your community so you could kind of share the burden of care work. So you had the basics and the essentials of a good dignified life. You just didn't have the luxuries you know. So maybe like that's what it meant to be poor. And what happened in the ' 70s with neoliberalism is basically there was like this Fouian bargain that was kind of made for us which said we're going to take away all of those guarantees. So you're not nothing is guaranteed. Housing isn't guaranteed. Health care isn't guaranteed. You know, good healthare isn't guaranteed. All of the kind of basic infrastructure of a decent life will not be guaranteed. but what we will give you instead is access to cheap consumer goods. So that was kind of the the the the cell the promise of of neoliberalism. So what you have now is a generation of people in poverty who might be able to like afford you know a new outfit once in a while because they can buy it really cheaply off the internet because of you know neoliberal globalization but they can't make their rent. And so on the outside you look, you know, you might look at it as, you know, someone in their 70s and say, well, how could you be poor if you have a new pair of trainers and it's like, well, if I if all I can do if if after I pay all my bills, I have 50 quid left at the end of my paycheck each month, I can't ever save enough of that to buy a home or to get private health insurance now that, you know, the NHS is on its knees. But what I can do is I can take out a microloan and, you know, buy a new pair of trainers on that in three installments. So I think there's also kind of a a problem of translation between the generations of like what poverty means now. Poverty back in the day meant you could have the basics but you didn't have the luxuries. Now it's like the luxuries are kind of cheap enough that you might be able to afford them but the basics have become the preserve of the very very wealthy. >> 100% 100% I agree with that. And I mean it's interesting and I just again personal experience here >> and I think he kind of saw that as like I think he was like oh that makes sense you know >> I think what I hear the kind of discussion about how there can be impovery it is always the kind of food people eat that's something to eat so often not just takeaways but also oh well they're they're eating avocados they're eating these imported Moroccan blueberries and like avocados are 50p and little they're not expensive I hate avocados for what it's worth but like these things are cheap these imported like what would be seen as luxury food stuffs in ' 60s, '7s, whatever it is. They're incredibly cheap nowadays. They are just the same price as you know, meat and potato pie like you would be able to make at home. It's it's not a luxury good anymore, but there's that again there's that cultural signifier that doesn't exist there. And on back to the original point about you having some one generation having fought in the war and then a generation that comes after that hasn't gone through that same struggle because you know the silent generation they not only like were there for the war they also post war built the welfare state built the NHS built the same institutions that then got voted away >> by the Yeah people who voted for that ever want to that to [ __ ] happen again. They were like that was gnarly that like the war was awful. I want to make sure that my kids never have to do that >> for there's a reason like it was it it was horrific you know it was horrific at home and also for people who served and so that's why they built all these institutions that were explicitly about making sure that we don't have wars again you know that's why a lot of that generation was involved in Vietn the antivietnam war protests because they were like we're not doing this [ __ ] no more >> you know 100% again it's really worth pointing out by the way that This is just in terms of like broader trends. No one's trying to say everybody. No one's trying to Again, we have made the point specifically that we don't want to talk in in wise generalizations because of course we at Invar Media, we have loads of older people in our audience who are socialist. They've been socialists their whole lives, right? And they've been frustrated watching the Thatcher consensus destroy everything that was built in the post-war period and they want to go back to that way. They want to find a way of preserving that. But of course the it was a generation that voted for thatcher that voted a lot of that away in plurality not in in as a wide to kind of entire group of people uh that that that would apply to >> and also like crucially when I talk about that kind of fouian pact where it was like we're going to take away you know the welfare state and instead we're going to give you like cheap consumer goods. Young people are constantly voting to be like, "Please, we want it the other way around." Like, "We don't want this [ __ ] no more." >> Exactly. Please, we want to give you a good pension. We want to give you a winter fuel allowance. We want to make sure that you have your dignity in your own. >> We just want it as well. >> We just want, you know, to be able to not have to spend 50% of our wages in rent mostly to a landlord who's of the generation who's getting the triple state pension, right? Like that's mostly, I think, what young people look at when it comes to that kind of stuff. As always, thank you very much for joining me tonight, Dalia. >> Thanks for having me, Helena. >> As always for Ladies Night Honor Thursday, and thank you everyone at home for tuning in. Come back tomorrow for another show from 6 p.m. For now, you've been watching Nvara Media. Good night.