Social Critic or Academic (2:03)

And this it's, it's the budget sheet, the budget line imaginary of doing politics of like, yeah, it might look all right for the next few months, but like state abandonment is an extremely expensive thing. Not even long term, just like next year.

Historian or Political Commentator (2:20)

God.

Social Critic or Academic (2:20)

Because when people get rickets, that tends to cost the economy. And this is a horrible way of putting it as well because like obviously people having rickets, inherently bad news flash. But nonetheless.

Historian or Political Commentator (2:29)

But also it's like, okay, you sort of the assumption that you guys are making where reform guys are making is like, oh, there'll be private sector kind of people coming in to sort of make up for the services that we're cutting, which presumably are mostly in transport and in house maintenance and stuff. Right. But it's just like, I don't know, again, going back to my time living in Kent, it's like nothing ever replaced the bus routes that ever got canceled. Right? Nothing replaced the buses that sort of got taken out of commission and we never saw them again.

Journalist or Political Commentator (2:58)

Well, hey, guess what? It's a shop window into what a reform government would look like. Much more of the same. Cutting capital projects. That's it.

Historian or Political Commentator (3:05)

Yeah, well, okay. Yeah, and that's what I'm going to say. And I'm just going to say it's really great. Like, you know, especially in a county where there's like a lot of people who are very, very elderly to be like, fuck them old people. You know, fuck your house, you know, go burn in your house. And yeah, you're not going to be able to get to the hospital because there's no transport to get there.

Political Analyst or Commentator (3:21)

Yeah, well this is the thing. Like those, those self. Same old people love that shit. They're perfectly willing to be like, yeah, you know what, maybe kill me because.

Historian or Political Commentator (3:29)

Maybe I am woke.

Political Analyst or Commentator (3:30)

I didn't think I was.

Historian or Political Commentator (3:31)

But you never know.

Journalist or Political Commentator (3:32)

They're doing relentless self criticism of like accidentally being woke.

Political Analyst or Commentator (3:37)

Y bombard the headquarters. Right, These are, these are kind of like we're doing some like far right Maoism things here.

Journalist or Political Commentator (3:45)

Oh, okay.

Historian or Political Commentator (3:46)

All right.

Journalist or Political Commentator (3:47)

I do want to move on. Jarring shift in tone now, of course I want to talk about the events of the last couple of weeks. First, an attack on a synagogue by what appears to have been an Internet radicalized isis.

Political Analyst or Commentator (3:58)

Just the most, the most usual piece of shit you can imagine in the sense of like was already on bail for sexual assault and just kind of self radicalized. Its seems like on the Internet at some point during COVID and it's just like ticking off all of the boxes of someone who has been like alienated from society for very good reasons. And just deciding, okay, yeah, sure, this is a kind of effective method of.

Social Critic or Academic (4:27)

Suicide by cop across declared political affiliations for this form of stochastic violence. One of the main commonalities is like, have I been an absolute fucking nightmare to every woman I've ever met? Because, like, being on bail for sexual assault is like a very high bar to clear. It's basically effectively decriminalized in this country. And yet he manages still to have been arrested prior. This is somewhat of a sidebar, but I think I want to kind of lay this out, not for the smallest part, to kind of put some clear water between what this horrible motherfucker did and just normal people who have been watching a livestream genocide and will never forget the vision of like parents holding the dismembered parts of their children in plastic bags. And like, it is fundamental. The whole thing is disgusting, of course, and people just people losing their lives on the any day, let alone the holiest day of the year, right? Disgusting. What is also part of that disgust for me is that this guy seemingly supposedly, from what we know act time recording piggybacked off, you know, the pro Palestine cause, to give himself the vague veneer of what he was doing, was anything other than like fundamentally evil.

Journalist or Political Commentator (5:49)

The ordinary sort of mass murder that might have happened in Christchurch, for example, Right?

Social Critic or Academic (5:53)

It's just. It's different fonts, right? It's different fonts of the same thing.

Journalist or Political Commentator (5:57)

This, of course, has not prevented the government from immediately conflating this attack that happened in Manchester with the broader Palestine solidarity movement and saying, well, now that this has happened, you mustn't, you absolutely mustn't under any circumstances show any public solidarity with Gaza.

Political Analyst or Commentator (6:15)

Because, yeah, there was this strange appeal to decency, right? As if it was indecent to protest a genocide or indeed as if it were decent to arm one. This idea that it was sort of like impolitic, it was inconsiderate to continue to protest to genocide in the wake of this attack, which I just was so nakedly cynical. And to see Starmer and Shaban Mahmud then go, okay, we're going to try and look at making protests even easier for the police to impose kind of ridiculous conditions on. So that if you want to protest anything the government is doing, you can have sort of a maximum allowed protest of three people, one dog, and it has to be 50 miles outside the centre of London.

Journalist or Political Commentator (6:59)

Hey, look, Nova, Nova, come on. You have the freedom to protest, but do you have to use It.

Political Analyst or Commentator (7:05)

Come on.

Journalist or Political Commentator (7:06)

Do you have to use it? Come on.

Political Analyst or Commentator (7:08)

Yeah, it's just this awkward sort of tightrope act of. Well, of course you have the freedom to do this. And of course I strongly disagree with you exercising that freedom. And that does mean that I'm going to be looking very strongly at how to curtail that. But you do have the freedom for the moment.

Historian or Political Commentator (7:22)

But you shouldn't. But you do.

Journalist or Political Commentator (7:23)

To be clear, Shabana Mahmoud, the new Home Secretary. And this is for Americans who might not have seen this. I think most British people probably have Shabana Mahmoud direct quote. I'm quoting her directly. Just because you have a freedom doesn't mean you have to use it at every moment of every day.

Political Analyst or Commentator (7:38)

Which I guess is a quote from John Locke, I think.

Journalist or Political Commentator (7:41)

I guess that's like, abstractly true.

Historian or Political Commentator (7:44)

Just because you can pee doesn't mean you should pee.

Political Analyst or Commentator (7:46)

If you're so into the freedom of speech, why aren't you speaking all the time? I noticed there are gaps between some of your words.

Historian or Political Commentator (7:53)

Yeah.

Journalist or Political Commentator (7:54)

Shabana Mahmoud, anytime we're recording the podcast, she's sitting in one of the other chairs, and anytime there's a little silence, she's mouthing dead air. Dead air to us.

Political Analyst or Commentator (8:04)

I was wondering who that was.

Historian or Political Commentator (8:05)

We should actually hire. We should actually hire someone to do that. Like, just to sit in the corner of our studio and just shaking their head whenever one of us goes too.

Journalist or Political Commentator (8:13)

Far as though we don't have an editor. Dead air. Doesn't matter. We can edit it out anyway. Anyway.

Social Critic or Academic (8:19)

It's obviously incredibly cynical. It's incredibly, incredibly hypocritical. It's deeply insulting to be like, you know, just presume to speak on behalf of, you know, every Jewish person. Like, I realize I select the people I hang out with for this reason, right? Expressly so. But, you know, no one I know who is Jewish is all right with people being slaughtered in their names. It's crazy idea, I realize, but, like, I don't really necessarily even want to center how fundamentally anti Semitic it is. Like, first off, I want to put this in the context that this is business as usual for the government. And I mean that as like an abstract gesture of the British government, Conservative versus Labour, both of them at the helm. Because the increasing criminalization of protest has been happening for many, many years now. Because this is a government strategy in response to its preferred tactic of economic management, AKA the state abandonment that we were just talking about. Because if you're not going to spend on people, if you're going to allow a managed decline. If you are going to let living standards collapse, if you are going to fan the flames of division and racism everywhere, you are going to get people kicking off about it. What are we going to do about this as a government? Well, of course, we're not going to solve any of the underlying causes. We're going to further empower the police and further expand definitions and strategies of policing further into civil life, such that we can cross crack down on any form of dissent wherever it arises. And we're seeing this particularly in spy cops, proximate strategies, surveilling, just stop oil surveilling, any kind of pro Palestine solidarity movements. Even before the genocide, the most recent genocide, I should say.