The Parasocial Bookie feat. Emiliano Mellino

Summary

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TRASHFUTURE — "The Parasocial Bookie" feat. Emiliano Mellino

Release Date: October 28, 2025
Guests/Hosts: Rob, Nova, Sam, Emiliano Mellino (Bureau of Investigative Journalism)

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Overview

This episode explores two intertwined threads of psychic injury in late capitalism: the collapse of state capacity to protect ordinary people—embodied in the UK’s failing employment tribunal system—and the rise of increasingly immersive, addictive gambling startups in a world where “the economy is a casino.” The show moves with its usual sardonic wit from lampooning gaudy state-corporate spectacles (the new White House ballroom, Saudi megaprojects) to serious investigative reporting on workers’ rights with Emiliano Mellino, revealing why even formal victories in employment tribunals often amount to nothing.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Satire: State, Tech, and Absurd Wealth

• [00:15—05:12]
  The episode opens with a mock announcement: TRASHFUTURE is "sponsoring a pillar" in a fanciful new White House ballroom alongside big tech firms—lampooning the merger of state and corporate spectacle and the performative nature of modern power.
• Hosts riff on the backwardness of UK reform attempts (“flaccid useless dolge”) versus the ruthless, calculated MAGA turn in the US, emphasizing optimism is often unwarranted in British politics.
• Business Model Parody:
  Jokes about starting a podcast endowment and owning Canterbury Cathedral, swans, and swan-hunting rights—poking fun at elite institutional endowments and absurd British legal relics.
  • “Only we are allowed to hunt swans using a satellite that drops tungsten rods from space.” — Rob ([07:21])
  • “Self-care is just using a powerful laser to ablate a swan out of existence.” — Nova ([07:38])

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2. Saudi Megaprojects and the Cycle of Futility

• [09:34—24:31]
  • The hosts discuss the Saudi Future Investment Initiative's move away from the failed Neom megaproject toward new AI and tech investments. Saudi Arabia is now “pretending Neom doesn’t exist.”
  • The show unpacks how Western consultancies and contractors—especially firms like McKinsey—were propped up by Saudi megaproject money despite labor abuses and disastrous working conditions.
  • Notable Moment:
    Emiliano explains how Gulf states intentionally diversify their migrant workforce to minimize the ability of any group to assert rights or organize, leading to brutal, unaccountable labor exploitation ([16:30–18:19]).
  • Quotes:
    • “It's a perfect kind of globalization thing to have like a Filipino guy fall off a construction site and die at the behest of ultimately a British or an American contractor to fulfill a Saudi project.” — Nova ([17:14])
    • “The point of it is the imagination as well. It's just absolute sort of exercise in futility that killed a lot of people for no reason.” — Nova ([24:14])
    • “An absolute exercise in futility that killed a lot of people, but at least it enriched McKinsey for a while.” — Rob ([24:23])

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3. The Rise of 'Parasocial Bookies': Gambling Startups as Social Media

• [25:14—38:01]
  • The hosts introduce “Cheddar,” a new Andreessen Horowitz-backed gambling startup that fuses endless, TikTok-like streams of real-time betting with social mechanics, targeting a hyper-online, socially isolated youth.
  • Gambling today is reframed as “immersive” and “playful,” engineered to blur the line between social engagement and self-destructive risk—fueled by university sports sponsorship and influencer-driven norm-shaping.
  • Concerns raised about the normalization of gambling, its targeting of young men, and its connection to the broader financialization of everything.
  • Notable Quotes:
    • “This is the TikTok of sports gambling… an endless algorithmic stream of bets that you can make or you cannot make. The number of bets you can make will never end. That is terrifying.” — Rob ([37:19])
    • “All the innovations in gambling… have made it smaller, more inescapable and micro-targeted and universal.” — Rob ([29:15])
    • “You’re not even dealing with a guy who might kneecap you anymore. Now it’s all impersonal. It’s just things being thrown at you endlessly.” — Sam ([30:03])

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4. Deep Dive: The UK’s Broken Employment Tribunal System

With Emiliano Mellino, Bureau of Investigative Journalism

• [38:01—1:00:00+]
  • Core Investigation:
    Only half of UK workers who win employment tribunal cases ever receive their award; enforcement is so lax it's likened to mafia-era Sicily.
  • How It Fails:
    • After winning a judgment, employees must enforce it themselves—through a patchwork of pay-to-access county courts, ineffective penalty schemes, and “fast track” bailiffs which rarely deliver results.
    • Shocking Stat:
      “Since 2016, they’ve issued £9.6m worth of fines, and of those, only £95,000 has been paid… less than 1%.” — Emiliano ([41:57])
    • The government promises “naming and shaming” of employers who refuse to pay, but out of ~4,000 requests, zero companies have been named ([43:21]).
  • Legal Loopholes & Repercussions:
    • Company directors frequently evade liability by dissolving the original firm and re-launching under a new name; state capacity to track or penalize this is essentially nonexistent.
    • Regulatory focus (and enforcement resources) are instead directed at immigration violations, never at abusive employers.
    • Quote:
      • “If you hire someone who does not have the right to work in the UK, the state will go after you as an individual… But if you have a judgment against you for breaching employment law… if you don’t pay, you face no consequences.” — Emiliano ([55:02])
    • British Satire:
      • “What if they get shamed into closing up their operations and then we lose valuable tax revenue?” — Rob ([43:48])
  • Bigger Picture:
    The new Employment Rights Bill risks baking all these flaws into law—expanding workers’ rights in theory, but leaving enforcement dependent on the same toothless processes. Massive systemic failure is, as ever, disguised beneath the veneer of progressive policy.
    • “When you substitute process for justice, that always works, right?” — Rob ([57:55])
    • “If most of the rights require employment tribunals to be enforced—well, if tribunals don’t have capacity, then what rights do we really have?” — Emiliano ([47:18])

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Notable Quotes & Moments

1. On Disappearing Labor Rights:
   • “Our employment rights are really important to us. But half of people who go to an employment tribunal and win… don’t get paid what the tribunal says they should be getting.” — Emiliano ([38:44])
2. On Tech, Capital, and Casinos:
   • “What you’re doing is trying to run a capitalist system without any of the things capitalists realized they needed to make it work for people who aren’t connected and can’t bias the wheel. It’s just the casino from Casino.” — Rob ([37:19])
3. On Futurist Dystopias:
   • “They will turn the economy into a casino and half the economy into the mafia guys that run the casino.” — Rob ([24:43])
4. On Absurd State Priorities:
   • “We can’t name [exploitative employers] because someone might shame them. Don’t you understand?” — Rob ([45:02])

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Important Timestamps

• [09:56] — Discussion of Saudi investment pivot & labor abuses at Neom
• [16:23–18:41] — Exploitation of migrant labor in the Gulf, intentional disempowerment
• [25:14–38:01] — Cheddar, the “parasocial bookie”/TikTok gambling startup
• [38:44] — Start of employment tribunal deep dive
• [41:57] — Only 2% (by number, <1% by value) of tribunal fines collected
• [43:21–43:45] — Zero employers have been named or shamed
• [47:18–49:46] — Structural loopholes and limits of legal recourse for employees
• [55:02] — Sharp contrast: vigorous state enforcement of immigration law vs. employment law
• [57:55] — The “process for justice” satire, summing up the UK’s impotence

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Tone & Language

The TRASHFUTURE team blends biting satire, dark humor, and journalistic rigor—skewering British and global capitalism’s hypocrisies while giving deeply informed, unsparing accounts of state dysfunction. Emiliano Mellino's contributions are clear, precise, and devastating in their implications, while the hosts’ jokes drive home the surreal, cruel absurdity of contemporary economic life.

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Summary

This episode crystallizes two pillars of what the hosts term "psychic trauma capitalism":

• The UK government’s apparent indifference to enforcing even minimal worker protections, creating a theater of rights for the powerless;
• The seamless absorption of human connection, sports, and play into algorithmic gambling products—turning life itself into an addictive casino.

Interventions and reforms, the hosts suggest, are both urgently needed and chronically unlikely—at least until political will matches the scale of the problem.
As always, things are “going to be fine... probably.”

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For further details, find Emiliano Mellino's investigative pieces at tbij.com, and stay tuned to TRASHFUTURE’s Patreon for more.

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Transcript

[Sam]

Foreign.

[Rob]

Hello, everybody. Welcome to this free episode of tf. I am very pleased to announce that we are joining Apple, Google, hp, Meta, Palantir and and other leading companies in the technology space. We are sponsoring one pillar in the new White House ballroom.

[Nova]

Yeah, there'll be a trash future pillar. You'll be able to go and see the logo on it in tasteful gold.

[Emiliano Molino]

Yeah.

[Sam]

One of the five pillars of Trumpism.

[Rob]

Yeah. Tf, Apple, Google.

[Nova]

Is it good that the whole ballroom is held up by five pillars? Who can say? But it expresses a lot of piety, is the main thing.

[Sam]

Isn't it, like, based on the design, it's supposed to be bigger than the White. The ballroom is bigger than the White House itself.

[Rob]

Right.

[Sam]

Based on the direction.

[Nova]

Wait until he kills himself in there when the sort of like invading troops are about to kick the door in.

[Rob]

That's the one thing that Alex Garland, Captain Civil War, didn't predict, is that it would be much gaudier.

[Sam]

Well, there's actually a scene at the end of that film if you say half of the credits where like they do like the big villain reveal for Civil War ii and it happens to actually be Zoran Mundani.

[Nova]

Have you ever heard of the free fast buses initiative?

[Sam]

And he says directly to the camera, I am initiating Woke2. And that's where Civil War II kind of will begin. They're gonna like, camp out in the ballroom and take over America from there.

[Rob]

Yeah, there's the ballroom. All of the sort of Google translated Latin that they're gonna throw up all over the sides of the ballroom. He's gonna replace it with a land acknowledgement. The ultimate humiliation. Yeah, no, pretty. Pretty funny that from over the ocean we're watching the American state be just fully overtly the last bits of it that weren't overtly privat time.

[Nova]

I hope nothing like that happens to our state.

[Rob]

That would be terrible. Heavens no. I would hate that. Although to be fair, what's very useful is that I think the MAGA move. And look, I really. I'm going to say something almost optimistic and I'm very cautious about saying something almost optimistic.

[Nova]

Yeah, don't do that. Every time we do that, we get fucked in a different way.

[Rob]

Okay, well, okay, I'm going to hedge it.

[Nova]

Pessimism of the optimism, pessimism of the will. That's the secret.

You have to lock in on. Everything is terrible and will stay terrible forever. Do not get excited about Zach Polanski. Don't get excited about anything. Stay miserable. And that way, when something good Happens he'll go, oh, that's unexpected.

[Rob]

You know, I think that was in the Grundrisse. But the one thing is, because of the nature of British elections, and I still don't think this is gonna change the outcome, right, Unless something big changes there. I'm following the reform in local government updates, right, and their attempts to sort of try to rewire the British and because of the nature of professional party affiliations between the two countries, right, because the US has now spent probably the better part of a decade from Trump one building up, it's like Russell Vaught psychos to create its like actually thought through methodology for like a sort of fascist state takeover. They're like sort of better at it. Whereas I'm sort of closely following what reform is doing. And much like any major British political project, it seems to be undertaken by enthusiastic amateurs. In as much as new reports have come out that dolge has not audited a single council yet, which.

[Nova]

A useless dolge, I'm afraid.

[Rob]

It's a dolge that is purely ornamental.

[Nova]

Flaccid. A flaccid useless dolge.

[Rob]

Depressing.

[Sam]

Awful.

[Rob]

Anyway, anyway, look. Hi, everybody, it's us. We're not actually sponsoring a pillar in the new ballroom. That was just. Hey, I was just kidding. Just kidding. Can't get mad at me. However, welcome to the first half of the episode. There's going to be a second half. In the second half we're going to be rejoined by periodic and indeed perennial guest Emiliano Molino from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. And we're going to be talking all about, hey, if you get fired in the UK and your boss is unfairly dismisses you, you can't get a tribunal decision. Apparently you have no access to the law. And the TBIJ has done a lot of great reporting on exactly how unethical bosses or all bosses really are using that much to their advantage. Because, hey, crazy, I don't know if you expected this, but apparently one of the bits of the British state meant to protect people who don't have lots of power otherwise is an easily certain circumscribed hodgepodge of rules that you can really slip through if you have like ten pounds worth of power.

[Nova]

Well, I mean, this is the thing, like employment tribunals are just sort of one of many parts that have been thrown over the side of the ship of states to try and sort of like make the water coming in come in a bit slower. So to be honest, I didn't notice that one as it went amidst all of the Kind of other flotsam of stuff that, you know, protect people. But I'm excited to hear about it. I think it's going to be a real, kind of like a real boost to my position of pessimism of the optim of the intellect and pessimism of the will.

[Rob]

Yeah, pessimism of everything. No, just kidding.

[Sam]

Have.

[Rob]

Hey, you know what? However much optimism you need to stay alive until the next episode comes, crucially.

[Nova]

Keep subscribing to the Patreon.

[Sam]

Look, our business model does rely on people staying alive. That's what.

[Nova]

Yeah, it would be weird if we took a kind of like Heaven's Gate business plan.

[Sam]

They don't tell you about a Harvard business school, but you do need people to stay alive in order for your business to function.

[Rob]

Yeah. Or, hey, endowment. What if you endowed us?

[Sam]

Yeah.

[Nova]

You could bequeath. You could bequest some shit to us. I thought it'd be really funny if we had like a university level endowment where we just had like, pick a subscriber name at random. Right. Like, I don't know, I don't know what else subscribers are named, but like the X and Y family, like podcasting wing, and they've got their names over the door. I think that would be very nice. I think it'll be wholesome.

[Rob]

Maybe like sort of shrewd economic critics can be like, TF actually looks like a podcast. Most people think of it that way, but it's more of a real estate investment fund.

[Nova]

Yeah, people don't know this, but, like, did you know the trash future actually owns Canterbury Cathedral?

[Rob]

It's one of our ancient rights. Yeah, we technically own the whole Aldwitch, but we're only allowed to rent it to the LSE for a pound a year. It's like an old thing.

[Nova]

We also own certain swans as well.

[Rob]

It's us and the Queen are allowed to kill swans, but only we're allowed to do it recreationally.

[Nova]

Yeah, we're the only ones allowed to do it from a technical. You better believe the Queen was fuming about that in her day.

[Rob]

Look, it's like when the law first came in. No one thought that would be a big deal, but it was to do with horse archery. And apparently a technical is the most up to date version of a horse Archer.

[Nova]

Yeah, it's the thing. Do you think podcasting has gone to our heads? And I reflect on this as I sight up the swan with my recoilless rifle mounted on the back of the Toyota Hilux, and I'm like, no, I don't think so.

[Rob]

Sorry, sorry. Wouldn't a recoilless rifle, like, turn a swan into, like, atoms?

[Nova]

Oh, I'm sorry. Look at Mr. Pussy here, who wants to under kill his swan.

[Rob]

Only we are allowed to hunt swans using a satellite that drops tungsten rods from space.

[Nova]

Listen, it's a sort of policy of the show. Total swan obliteration just at whim.

[Rob]

Yeah, only we allowed to use the golden eye satellite on swans.

[Nova]

When I've been having a rough day at work, one of the things that's really essential I found for me to do as self care is to use a kind of, like, powerful laser to physically ablate a swan out of existence.

As self help.

[Rob]

The only way I really know how to unwind is to flush a bunch of swans across a minefield.

To divert them across an active minefield.

[Nova]

I'm allowed to lay testing railgun on signet. This is, this is just, you know, I'm sorry to tell you, this is how the whole podcasting industry works. And if you think this is bad, you should see what the rest is. Politics. People are up to.

[Rob]

Oh, well, what they're up to is real sick shit.

[Nova]

The starlings, you know.

[Rob]

Oh, and who walks in it is guest for the second half, Emiliano Molino here a little bit early. Emiliano, we've just been talking about how we should be allowed to obliterate any swan we see. What do you think of that? What does the bureau of investigative journalism think about that?

[Emiliano Molino]

This is one of those. My views are not reflected by my employer. Well, you know, because I'm a journalist, we have to kind of give a right of reply to the swans. You know, this is a standard thing. You know, I can't start libeling, go.

[Nova]

Out there with a microphone in a sort of like, in a sort of like punt or something, extending a boom mic out to the swans.

[Emiliano Molino]

That's right. I'm like the John Harris of swans.

Why are you so racist, Mr. Swan?

[Rob]

Why are you so racist, Mr. Swan? And do remember that there is a railgun pointed at you from a kilometer away.

[Emiliano Molino]

I do, I do feel.

[Nova]

I feel like swan interviewer has to be one of the more hazardous ends physically of journalism. Like, you're getting a lot of broken arms in that line of work.

[Sam]

Yeah, I mean, it is like one of those kind of stories you sort of give to like, you know, your starting journalist. And the whole point of it is that, like, they get chased by the swan.

[Rob]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Nova]

I went to work for a local newspaper, started my career in like 1987. And they sent me out to like interview a swan, which then put me in hospital kind of anecdote. Yeah, absolutely.

[Rob]

So then I've been campaigning for the rights of a few plucky Internet content creators to be able to atomize them. Look, we're going to be talking all about employment tribunals and their discontents, the Miliano in a little bit. But I thought we could first look at a few classics of our genre because of course, any, any Saudi heads will know that the Future Investment Initiative begins today.

[Nova]

Oh, wow.

[Sam]

Saudi heads is a very interesting choice of words, but yes, please continue.

[Nova]

This is like my phase whatever of the mcu, you know, I'm really excited to see what MBS is going to get up there and announce. Maybe they're going to do like another Captain America. Maybe they're going to buy some more football clubs.

[Emiliano Molino]

Cool.

[Rob]

Well, in this case, you'll never guess. They're sort of pretending Neom doesn't exist.

[Nova]

Oh, that's rough. I mean, difficult breakup to sort of like spend all that money and then just ghost them, you know?

[Rob]

Yeah, yeah, they basically, they love bombed the glasses guys. It's a form of gaslighting.

[Nova]

I mean, I kind of. What I hope happens is if they're determined to kind of bury this as they do their other mistakes, is just to shovel a bunch of sand over it and just call it good, or.

[Rob]

If not bury it, suitcase it.

[Emiliano Molino]

Yeah.

[Nova]

And so a bunch of glasses guys are going to get immured in the ruins of the line.

[Sam]

Yeah. And are they just sort of going to be left there for like the rest of the time?

[Rob]

Yeah, what's going to happen is more and more open, abandoned Mercedes are going to be showing up at different airports.

They call it long term parking, Saudi style. Anyway, in 2017, Neom was unveiled at the Future Investment Initiative.

[Nova]

And now it's being veiled. Yeah, exactly. Which to be fair, the Saudis love to do.

[Rob]

Yeah, that's right. It was too good. So as the titans of global finance head to Riyadh for this year's Future Investment Initiative, the kingdom is surprisingly pivoting away from what would have been one of the world's largest construction projects.

[Nova]

You can't pivot away from a line that's just a tangent.

[Rob]

They're signing away from it, but oh no, they're coming right on back. Instead it's thank you. That was exactly what that deserved. Instead, it's preparing to pour billions more into areas like its artificial intelligence company, Humane, which is a Saudi competitor to OpenAI.

[Nova]

That's beautiful to be like, okay, so we got wallet inspected one time, but this next wallet inspector, I mean he's looking at a completely different wallet. So feeling pretty good about this one. Maybe they'll get into NFTS again next, you know.

[Rob]

Well remember Neon was supposed to have all that shit and then they forgot about it and then they said it was going to have AI and then they said it was going have nothing.

[Nova]

Cool.

[Rob]

So also their purchase of electronic cars, basically they're just trying to buy lots of other stuff.

[Nova]

Listen, when I'm going through it I also buy a lot of Sims dlc. That's fine, you know.

[Rob]

So apparently new contracts for NEOM have not been issued in months and the project received no mention in the country's pre budget statement for 2026. Work has slowed to a crawl and other plans like Sindalah and Trojena are paused.

[Nova]

Oh, we're not going to get the like theme park built on an oil rig anymore. We're not going to get all of our fun like Google's Ye.

[Rob]

So Nova, you weren't actually on for the one where we did a deep dive on Trojena. I think that was, that was me, Hussein and Maddy.

[Sam]

Yeah, I don't recall.

[Nova]

Trojena sounds like a kind of acne.

[Rob]

Cream vertical ski village in the desert. But they couldn't get snow and so they had to try to build a giant lake they would make snow of. But they couldn't build a pipe big enough to fill the lake and so they had to drive a bunch of trucks with water up to fill this giant fake lake so they could get snow. But they only had one tiny one track road up this mountain and so the trucks kept getting in giant traffic jam.

[Sam]

I.

[Emiliano Molino]

This is the opposite of selling snow to Eskimos. What is?

[Sam]

What is.

[Nova]

I might have also called that a bad idea had I been on. But listen, that's why I'm not a Saudi royal. There's one reason.

[Rob]

So apparently the shifts underway of Saudi mega project prioritization are already rippling through the global economy because like a bunch of consultancies are losing fuck tons of revenue because this was basically propping up McKinsey.

[Nova]

Did you see the, the little award, the little plaque that OpenAI gave McKinsey for like most use of a by an individual company.

[Rob]

Oh my God. That's not really an Award for McKinsey. That is a fell for it again award to all of McKinsey's clients. That's what that is. Oh my God. If I was McKinsey. And I was given that award by OpenAI. I would send it back and be like, this is the wrong address. You don't know us.

[Emiliano Molino]

No one.

[Rob]

No one by that name lives here. Please keep this. Destroy it.

[Nova]

Yeah, this is. This is sort of like Ed Miliband Stone pledges level of like, embarrassing object.

[Rob]

So at least one other Saudi construction firm has had all NEOM work put on hold, and others are keeping operations at a bare minimum. But the $55 billion EA deal, it will generate half a billion in fees for Wall street banks.

[Nova]

Yeah, it's gonna. That's. That's gonna be cool. You know, like, they're gonna do like a new Mass Effect with all the gay shit cut out of it that no one's gonna buy, I guess. And then as a result of that, everybody's gonna be distracted from neom and the sort of cultural, like, laundry will go on. Fantastic.

[Rob]

But this is actually, this is also considering, like, what we tend to talk to Emiliano about, which is. Tends to be things like workers rights and different elements of it. Whenever I talk about neom, I always want to include other things as well about the sort of actual work conditions at neom.

[Emiliano Molino]

I assume they're great. Yeah, I assume, you know, paid holidays, maternity leave, you know, all the basics and. And then some. Right. Yeah.

[Nova]

Your boss never pulls a gun on you.

[Emiliano Molino]

You definitely get to keep your passport. Definitely.

[Rob]

No.

[Emiliano Molino]

And you're 100% not put in a camp. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

[Rob]

It was a recent report by the Business Human Rights Resource center, and the report was entitled Migrant Workers Powering Saudi Arabia's Energy Transition. And again, like so many things with Saudi Arabia and the megaprojects, these things get released days or weeks before all the leaders of the business world converge on Saudi Arabia. Before Rachel Reeves also comes to Saudi Arabia, which she's doing, I believe, tomorrow as of the day of recording. She's going to Saudi Arabia tomorrow for the Future Investment Initiative, right?

[Nova]

Well, she thinks she is. They may be organizing a separate future Investment Initiative that excludes her. You know.

[Rob]

She'S going to one where it's just like, oh, there are quite a few cardboard take shakes at this one.

[Nova]

Angela Rayner and Ellie Reeves passing down at the Real Future Investment Forum for, like, people who know how to hang.

[Rob]

But remember that all of these people are flocking to Saudi to, like, do the. To listen to these presentations and speak to everybody about these things, you know, And I think it's important to note that the abuses of migrant workers happening in Neom are not coming from like high hand Saudi royals which I think is what a lot of people think when they're told that like so many like construction workers have like been injured or killed while building this thing. But it's a lot of, I mean I think once I say it's a lot of the Western contractors too, all of which have their modern slavery statements or might also work with Western governments who might say oh no, we're auditing for this thing.

[Nova]

No, it's, it's been the same in the Gulf for ages. Like anything with like for instance the World cup and Kato was like the exact same.

[Emiliano Molino]

You know, I mean this is actually pop by design as well, right? I mean there if you. About 30 years ago or so, maybe 40 years ago, most of the migrant workers in the Gulf states came from other Arab countries and you know, Palestine, Egypt, so on and so forth. But like the Gulf states realized like hey, you know, this could be a problem for us because people speak the same language, it's roughly the same language. They're going to want to come and bring their, they're going to want to bring their families, they're going to want to integrate and that could be a huge problem for us. So. And they're going to want more rights. So what we're going to do instead is, is we're going to have less homogenous workforce that's going to come from further and further away. And that's when they started bringing workers from Nepal and so on with this is by design that they want workers that wouldn't be, have as much power to agitate, that wouldn't be able to bring their families and so on to get these sorts of results.

[Nova]

And it's a perfect kind of globalization thing to have like a Filipino guy like fall off a construction site and die at the behest of like a ultimately a British or an American contractor to fulfill a Saudi project. You know.

[Emiliano Molino]

Exactly. And you see like there's like some real horror stories that were written by, I think by the Guardian about the Nepali workers and they're like, you know, going back talk to the families of some of these guys that died and you know, not getting compensation still waiting years later. I think there was a story about Amazon months back as well in the Guardian where they exposed like, you know, how Amazon workers in Saudi Arabia faced all kinds of abuses. And then they know obviously there was a lot of talk about oh yeah, we're going to reimburse, you know, we're going to reimburse for Recruitment fees and it turns out a few weeks back, guardian rights. Again, no one's gotten the reimbursements, you know, no one's gotten the compensation for all this abuse.

[Nova]

It's the same as the modern, modern slavery statement, right? Where it's like pretty clear as it is with all of this stuff really, but it's just more naked that like the, the sort of function of all of this is you, you say something good is going to happen, right? Or you, you say that you're aware of the problem and you're looking into it and then you just keep on keeping on, you know, 100%.

[Emiliano Molino]

It's what happens with the supermarkets here as well, right? Like they all of them have fantastic, fantastic modern slavery policies. They look great on paper, but then actually to execute them, nobody actually executes, nobody actually looks at. Because no one's actually paying attention for long enough. You know, our attention spans are. And considering the level of abuses that there are, there's very little journalistic coverage going on, right? So they know people's short attention, they can work on people's short attention span.

[Rob]

Hey, I wonder if this is going to somehow, let's say be repeated in our second segment where we talk about employment tribunals, this theme. No. So this is what the report says, right? So migrant workers powering Saudi Arabia's energy transition. Because of course green energy and green energy generation is a big part of the whole NEOM story, which is like we're actually going to make all this like lovely ammonia, we're going to ship it all over the place. It's going to be great. We're going to export green energy. And so this is an example of the 6.8 billion pound work on the green hydrogen project that's part of Neom's Oxagon, their floating port city on the constellation of decommissioned oil rigs that are going to be moved to the Gulf of the Red Sea. And they say the plant, which is expected to be fully operational in 2026, LOL, and 100% of the green hydrogen produced there will be able for export in the form of ammonia via long term agreement with a company called Air Products and largely exported to the UK via a new terminal being built on the Humber. So far so good. But numerous workers suffered injury or death because contractors, yeah, ammonia is a great.

[Nova]

Substance to work with, right?

[Rob]

Oh yeah. Especially in the desert. Yeah. So they suffer injury and death because contractors don't care. These are things like heart attacks from heat exposure, severe injuries from like working with backhoes and ducts, dust storms and so on. So the report names 41 companies that have links to these renewable projects. 25 are banks, 11 are civil engineering, some are project developers.

[Nova]

It's also like that in itself is part of why this feels so overwhelming is you haven't seen the list. I get the impression that that's just going to be. Hey, the whole sector basically, you know, like, nobody's turning these down.

[Rob]

Oh, no, not at all. Like, this is for. This is also for welders, your problem listeners as well as Larson, Tubro, Al Mazal, Al Balad Group, Arkiradron, Dinora, which is a big one. Hitachi Energy, huge one Man Enterprise Power, China, Saudi Services, Electro Electromechanic Works, the Saudi Electricity Company, spg, Steiner and Tissen Cross.

[Sam]

Just.

[Nova]

Just everyone, you know, playing I'm surprised.

[Rob]

Fucking SNC Lavalin's not there, but I guess maybe they're slightly too cr. Um, so just like we don't, we.

[Nova]

Don'T want you sort of like lowering the tone of the ammonia burns factory.

[Rob]

Yeah. A dejected guy from Laval just closes a briefcase full of US dollars and just sort of walks away like Charlie Brown.

[Nova]

Oh, like they would be dejected. It'd be like that one scene in the BlackBerry movie.

[Rob]

So a Thyssenkrupp spokesperson, right? So Thyssenkrupp was in charge of one of these projects where like someone is sort of injured for life by a backloader that kept working during a dust storm because they were specifically told to. Despite the. Everyone's like, we have to stop working. So a Thyssen Krupp spokesperson told New Civil Engineer, respect for human rights is and remains a core value at Thyssen Krupp. Which I think given the history of Thyssen Krupp is pretty fucking ironic.

[Nova]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hundreds of years of uninterrupted respect for human life.

[Rob]

Yeah, look, we might have defined it differently for some of those years, but of course they did their usual thing where all of them are saying it's everyone else's responsibility, it's the on site contractor's responsibility to oversee safety or no, well, it's your responsibility to oversee, you know, auditing and so on and so on. And what happens is while everyone is just like Emiliano was saying, well, everyone's passing the ball around of these long drawn out legal process of figuring out who to blame eventually the ability of these migrant workers to seek any kind of justice for what's happening to them at NEOM is completely eroded. If it was ever there in the first place. It's the same thing.

[Nova]

How mysterious. How surprising.

[Rob]

Yeah. And the reason I wanted to talk about this as well as what we're going to talk about later is that it's like these are not just two sides of the same coin. These are the same sides of the same coin, just geographically distributed, basically. So also what I enjoyed was the final line of the article, new civil engineer, which is none of the other companies approach provided comment, although Hitachi Energy offered an interview to a new civil engineer about an unrelated matter.

[Nova]

Cool. They're like, would you like to see our memes about like, oh, I need to buy a sort of like high speed electric train. Have I got the company for you. I need to buy an excavator. I need to kill a guy with ammonia.

[Rob]

I'm just so horny.

[Sam]

Okay. Yeah, we're all in the same.

[Rob]

What am I going to do? Yeah, look, love a zaibatsu when they do that kind of thing. That's funny. But you know, that's. Hey, maybe there's a dark side to these. Some of these Japanese mega conglomerates.

[Nova]

Maybe.

[Rob]

Anyway, if only someone would create a genre of noir fiction about that. Anyway, I'm sure it would never happen. Regardless, it seems as though Neom is now being Demnatio memorialized. The only real downside of which is.

[Nova]

That it can stay, you know.

[Rob]

Well, and it also looks like the like industrial scale labor abuse that was undertaken not just by the Saudi state, but by western contractors who either participated directly or eagerly turned a blind eye or, you know, removed their square glasses and cleaned them so they couldn't see is just going to be forgotten.

[Nova]

Well, this is the other thing is that like occasionally if you pushed through this first narrative of like, obviously we all care tremendously about human life here at IG Farben or whatever, that like you would get somewhat quieter the version of like, okay, well sometimes you have to make some sacrifices for progress and this is how you do stuff. And this is why we in the west can't do stuff. Right. This is the kind of unspoken bit of a lot of abundance and Yimby stuff as well is we got to have more people falling off of building sites so that we can build the megastructures. But like not to do the kind of reverse the Walmart tweet, but people will literally say this and then not build the megastructures, which really makes it feel like all of the point of this was really just the suffering, you know?

[Rob]

Yeah. The point of it is the imagination as well.

[Nova]

It's just Absolute sort of exercise in futility that killed a lot of people for no reason.

[Rob]

Yeah, well, it's an absolute exercise in futility that killed a lot of people, but at least it enriched McKinsey for a while, basically.

[Emiliano Molino]

I mean, let's be honest, like the Cosa Nostra thought of this first.

[Sam]

Okay.

[Emiliano Molino]

Of like, not delivering an infrastructure project, making a bunch of money and killing a bunch of people. You know, that was. That's been done already. Italians were. Were ahead of the curve on that one.

[Rob]

Yeah, well, it's the. Just like. I mean, you know, on a long enough timeline, it seems like the. The actions of the powerful unrestrained by any kind of institution, and any kind of institution not backed actual mass political power will inevitably crumble in front of the power of the powerful. They will. They will turn the economy into a casino and turn half the economy into a casino and half the economy into the mafia guys that run the casino. Which, of course brings me to today's startup, before we move on to our main segment. Yes, we're doing a startup today.

[Nova]

Oh, beautiful. I've missed our little startup segment.

[Sam]

Well, you kind of forget that startups still exist. Oh, well, I often forget that they still exist, but I guess you're the only ones that are paying attention to them.

[Rob]

Oh, I'm paying attention. Look, some people. Some people get email updates from Andreessen Horowitz when they invest in a new thing. I am one of those people. I may be one of the only people who is not.

[Nova]

You're the only person with a normally shaped head who's subscribed to the Andreessen Horowitz newsletter.

[Emiliano Molino]

Yes.

[Rob]

Yes, that's right. So the company is called Cheddar. And I'm not going to spoil it for you. There's no way. It's just like it's 2015 again.

[Nova]

I want to order my cheese from a quadcopter.

[Rob]

Yeah, that's right. Or at least like some kind of a mortar.

[Nova]

This is going to be like cheddar, as in cash, right?

[Rob]

Yes, yes.

[Nova]

Okay. But that's a curiously irreverent way to refer to cash for a startup which loves cash. So the only people who are that flippant about it are gambling companies. This is a gambling company.

[Rob]

Okay.

[Nova]

Yeah, let's fucking go. Okay. On the one hand, I've been doing this too long. On the other, I'm really good at it.

[Emiliano Molino]

This is like.

[Sam]

Also, there was a. Like, if we were Talking about this pre2019, I would probably. Or like, pre pandemic, I Would have said, yeah, it's like a weird synthetic cheese. Like, but now, like, because every startup has to be a gambling company.

[Rob]

Yeah.

[Sam]

There are no other, like, options.

[Nova]

Like, yeah. Plus, like, all gambling companies are like, oh, it's just. It's a flutter. It's some, like, as money's not real, this is gonna be some shit that, like, targets sports betting more effectively to children or something.

[Rob]

Isn't it interesting? I don't know if you. If you knew this. You say, it's a flutter. Flutter is the company that owns FanDuel and Betfair.

[Nova]

It's literally on Tubi.

[Rob]

It's words.

[Sam]

Words that are not in any of the holy books.

[Rob]

You can. You can bet on it. You can bet on it on FanDuel, wager on Tubi. Everyone, you know, is losing their life savings on Flutter. Yeah. No. So it's the future of sports gaming. Cheddar, they say in their press release, is not your grandfather's sports book. And it's like, yeah, because your grandfather's sports book was run by a guy who broke his knees.

[Nova]

Again, Italian innovation.

[Sam]

There you go.

[Rob]

We're a modern sports gaming and entertainment company reshaping how people play, engage, and win. Because the current industry is stuck in the past, we're building an experience that's dynamic, social, and rewarding. With product at the center, our platform blends game mechanics, community, and culture to make watching live sports feel more immersive and interactive than ever.

[Nova]

Oh, okay. So what if. What if we, like, gamified. What if we kind of Twitch stream ified your, like, sports gambling.

[Rob]

Ah, so this is the one place you've taken a slight wrong turn, which is. You said, hey, Sports Gambling plus Twitch. It's Sports gambling plus another social media website that begins with a T. Tumblr.

[Nova]

T. No, I like my idea better. Oh, fuck.

[Rob]

Okay, okay, wait, let's pause and do sports gambling plus Tumblr. Sports gambling plus AO3. What's that?

[Emiliano Molino]

Like?

[Nova]

Lot of discourse.

[Rob]

Lot of discourse. We're gonna bet on, like, whether or not Russell Simmons is a generous lover.

[Nova]

You know, this is the kind that they used to be making in, like, London gentlemen's clubs back in the day. And I think maybe if we have to have gambling, as it really seems like we do, maybe that's the kind we should bring back. Like, not. Not like, oh, I bet the fucking karaoke.

[Rob]

I said Russell Simmons. I meant Russell Westbrook. Sorry, sorry, everybody.

[Sam]

Russell Simmons. Yeah, very, like, odd choice, but nevertheless.

[Emiliano Molino]

Not, like, not well.

[Rob]

Still bet on it.

[Sam]

Yeah, you could still Bet on it. Although I do think Russell Simmons is a bit, is a bit dodgy.

[Nova]

I don't, but like, I don't, I don't. If we have bet. If you make me gamble, right. If you physically hold a gun to my head and make me gamble, I don't want to bet on like how many points fucking Victor Wembanyana is going to get. I want to, I want to do like, meet me in Istanbul in a week and the second one there owes the winner like a steak dinner or something, you know?

[Rob]

Yeah. You want to bring back like sort of Victorian whimsy to wager again.

[Nova]

Around the world in 80 days.

[Rob]

Oh, yeah, yeah. This is like, that's the. All of this. All the innovations in gambling that have happened have made it smaller, more inescapable and micro targeted and universal.

[Nova]

Oh, just like everything else you do.

[Sam]

Like, this is it. Because their whole tagline is like, this isn't like your grandfather's sports book.

[Rob]

This isn't your great grandfather.

[Sam]

This isn't the way that your grandfather, your parents used to gamble. And it was like, well, for all the issues that I imagine that it might have, at least the guy who was setting up the bets in the sportsbook, probably, they probably had a relationship if he was gonna kneecap your grandfather.

[Nova]

Relationship with my bookie.

[Sam]

Well, you know, it's very. And like, if you go get kneecapped, at least, you know, there is some degree of like having to show respect, you know, and like a sort of demarcation of the relationship between the bookkeeper.

[Rob]

Yeah.

[Sam]

And now it's just completely impersonalized. Right. It's now it's just sort of like things being thrown at you. And like, I have seen like, you know, I will not disclose what websites I go on or for what reasons I go. No, I try to like get streams of like certain obscure films. And it does mean I have to. To watch the odd steak advert every so often. And they're fucking weird, man. They're like really kind of. They remind me a lot of like the kids cartoons that I'm trying to sort of really desperately not let my son watch because they're just too smooth and they're too fast and they're like, the colors are too bright and like, it's very, it's very, very odd. But there's no sort of sense of like, I think you can get really lost in most things and it's very difficult to actually the thing that this sort of new gambling technologies I think have been very good at. Had been to obscure the fact that this is actually gambling.

[Emiliano Molino]

Right.

[Sam]

And even in the language that they use, it's like, no, this is just like you're playing a video game, right?

[Rob]

You're like social network. Let's look at that. Our platform blends game mechanics, community and culture to make watching live sports feel more immersive and interactive than ever.

[Sam]

You're like, you're involved in like this type of social experience. Like, they'll sort of say that it is everything except for what it is, which is a gambling, like, platform, right. And like, I imagine probably part of that is for like regulatory reasons, but another part of it is also just to do with the fact that like in a time when there are sort of like, like various epidemics of loneliness and everyone is still very isolated and very atomized, and we found it very. And also very, very much more susceptible to being exploited psychologically as well as financially. These companies have sort of realized that you can basically merge all these things together to create something that is absolutely accelerated gambling where no one wins. Because you're not even sort of dealing with, with like, you know, to go back to like the grandfather's bookkeeping thing, right? That sort of. It doesn't. It's not necessarily like that you have a more likely chance to win, but you are sort of like dealing with just like one guy or one set of guys with this. Now you're trying to like beat various computers.

[Rob]

You're also making one. You're making wagers on things that happen in the next 10 seconds often, because that's the other thing about this. This is the TikTok of sports gambling. And again, this is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, the company that has all these stories about how they're going to restore dynamism to the right. The techno optimist manifesto. And what is it that they do? They, they're like, hey, let's, let's make the dopamine slot machine.

[Sam]

Every moment can be monetized. Every moment can be like turned into a bet. Everything can be used to sort of like generate like fake money.

[Rob]

So they say from real time predictions to playful competition, we're tackling some of the toughest UX challenges in a heavily regulated space. So this is from a 16 Zed speedrun. Cheddar is a real money sports wagering app built for the mass market, operating literally legally. I love when they say legally.

[Nova]

You don't have that out first, you know.

[Rob]

Yeah, you want to say opera. We're a new kind of innovative sports Book operating illegally.

So they say a staggering 25% of adults. And let's look at this. 82% of male college students place bets each year. How 82%?

[Nova]

Jesus, that can't be.

[Emiliano Molino]

How much dispositional income do American college.

[Rob]

Students have for people who got their brains pickled by being on the Internet during COVID in like whatever format? If you're apparently we're between like two particular formative ages and you're late teens and early 20s during COVID your brain got irreparably scrambled, I guess. And a lot of how that shook out for young men, especially young American men, especially young white American men, is a sort of quite extreme and lackadaisical attitude towards risk taking where it's okay, well, nothing matters. There's no future here except for gambling, which is true by the way.

[Nova]

You're also being being preyed on by various like streamers and podcasters and stuff who are going to tell you that it's normal.

[Sam]

A lot of the sort of gamer adjacent streamers will also do deals and partnerships with stakes and stake adjacent companies and they'll be like, oh, if you sort of put this code in, you get two free bets or something like that. And so a lot of those bets I imagine are just people who are like, oh, I'm getting this technically free thing, so I'll just sort of place it. And I don't know how that translates to people who sort of continue on those platforms or who continue to do bets. But like it is very easy. It's much easier I think, to actually make a bet without the feeling of like needing to do any buy ins with that.

[Rob]

And college a universities, especially university sports programs are also heavily sponsored by gambling companies.

[Nova]

Right?

[Rob]

It's. And so this is. But also you're not wrong if you say, well, the only way to get ahead is to gamble because there's no point to do anything else. I mean, think about this, right? If you're, if you're like a college student right now in, in the States, but also in Britain, right? How many, how much of your parents for a 1k which has been like probably flat unless it's invested in AI companies for the last several years they haven't had a raise, how much of what there is is invested in like Bond, that tracks future data center revenue, right? How much of that is just another element of the giant leverage bet on AI that's the entire sort of North Atlantic say economy right now, right?

[Nova]

We accidentally listened to too many streamers and we bet the entire economy on AI.

[Sam]

Yeah.

[Rob]

Whoopsie daisy.

[Nova]

Doing the kind of like uncut gems 27 way parlay, but it's just on data center water consumption.

[Sam]

God.

[Rob]

I think we could actually make. No, no. Or even now, right. Like platforms like kals, which is just a. One of the few actual use cases of crypto is these, these prediction markets, right. Where you can just bet on anything is now being incorporated into Robinhood, which is where all that other gambling happens. Right. So you can, with your Robinhood account that you used to be able to yolo everything into GameStop. Now you can YOLO everything into speculating, like is Donald Trump satoshi. You know, you can do that on the.

[Nova]

I could, I could kind of see it maybe. I don't know.

[Sam]

Yeah. The other thing I see, I think as you mentioned is like these things are also like, like operate like they are kind of presented also as memes. And so like, even if you sort of lose a bet per se, it's like, well, you, you've kind of won in the sense of like you've participated.

[Rob]

Like you're in.

[Sam]

It's not, it's not that different to like, you know, meme coins and shitcoins during like the pandemic. And just the idea of like being part of something or feeling like you're part of something.

[Rob]

Yeah. And I mean, if you think also like ultimately, right. There's the huge bets on increasingly distant possibilities, the sort of absolute demolition of regulators, sources, sources of information. Right. Like again, this is happening in the US but they're also the, you know, they're the center of the global economy. So we went on to talk about the economy. We kind of have to talk about it, like dismantling things like the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Right. These are things that allow people to allocate capital in such a way that it is more of an informed bet rather than a speculative roulette wheel, you know, and again, not saying that's good and it should happen, but what you're doing is you're trying to run a capitalist system without any of the things that capitalists realized they needed to build in order to make the capitalist system work for people who are. Are not necessarily, for example, directly politically connected or who don't just want to gamble on a roulette wheel or more accurately, people who want to gamble on a roulette wheel because they're politically connected and can bias the wheel. Right. This is just the quite rapid transformation of the center of the North Atlantic economy turning into the casino from casino basically.

[Nova]

Oh, cool. Okay, so.

[Rob]

And this is just another element of that, right? This is a small facet, right, the sort of the preeminence of sports betting and the drive to make sports. Sports betting as addictive as possible to as many people as it possibly can reach. Because imagine that actual, like ux, right? The form here is you open up your cheddar app, right? You open it up and then it's. You get one bet and you can either make a wager or you can swipe left, and then another bet comes up and it's just this endless algorithmic stream of bets that you can make or you cannot make. You can choose to wager or you can choose to pass, and it will never end. The number of bets you can make will never end. That is terrifying.

[Nova]

Yeah, I'm sure it would be fine.

[Rob]

Yeah, it'd be fine. Doesn't matter. Yeah, okay. Anyway, we're moving on. We're moving on. It's time to talk about employment tribunals. So, Emiliano, you've written a series of articles recently, along with your colleagues from tbij, on how British workers are getting frequent awards from employment tribunals that they often, sometimes in the tens of thousands of pounds, after having been dismissed or mistreated by, I believe, what you called some of Britain's most notorious wide boys, and then find themselves, shock, horror, utterly unable to actually claim any of that compensation or have it land in their bank accounts. Can you give us just a little bit of background on what these things are supposed to do and why they're not working?

[Emiliano Molino]

Right, yeah. I mean, that's pretty much it. What you said is pretty much what the story is, which is quite extraordinary when you think about it now. You know, I've been doing stuff on employment rights for a while, and I've always been interested in this, the gap between, like, the rights we have on paper and the rights we have in practice. And sometimes, you know, the rights you have, you can't exercise your rights because, you know, you have visa restrictions. Like what we talked in the other episodes and what I found here when I was looking to this story is that actually, this problem of not actually having the rights that we have on paper extends far wider than that, and it's rarely talked about because I think we have very few journalists in the UK that cover employment rights. We have very few journalists that cover, if any, that cover unions. So there's a lot of ignorance about how the system actually works. I mean, it's not seen as a really particularly sexy, sexy topic. But, you know, the reality is most of us work for a living and our employment rights are really important to us. So I started looking at this and because someone had pointed me to a report from like 15 years ago, there was like a government study that found that around half of people, half of people who won employment tribunal cases didn't get the, didn't get the rewards or didn't get their, they didn't get paid their award in full, right? So only half of, half of everyone went to an employment tribunal and one actually got paid the money that the tribunal said they should be getting paid or the full amount of the money.

[Nova]

So if you're an employer and you get a sort of employment tribunal judgment against you that you have, have to pay an ex employee, you know, however much money, you can just be like, oh, no thanks, I don't believe in any of that.

[Emiliano Molino]

Well, I mean, to an extent that is what a lot of employers are doing. And I think for a lot of people, you think that, you know, you get this, this, this judgment from the tribunal and then the tribunal will compel, you know, the MOJ will compel the employer to pay, but it's actually left on your lap. You are supposed as the person. All the tribunal gives you is a piece of paper saying the company has to create that amount. Then it's up to you to enforce that.

[Nova]

Right?

[Emiliano Molino]

And what's also crazy about this is that there isn't one way of enforcing it. The government has a number of different ways of enforcing tribunal awards that they leave to you to do, right? But none of them really work or none of them work fully. So, you know, just to just, just to list you a few, you can go to the county court and get an order for debt. So after you go to the employment tribunal, then you have to go to the county court and go through another legal process. You can get an order for debt and then hire some bailiffs yourself or get the county court to hire some bailiffs. You can go through something that's called the fast Track scheme and they'll send high court enforcement enforcement officers. That's for England and Wales. If you're in Scotland, there's a different system. And then finally there's this system that the government introduced in 2016 called the penalty Enforcement Scheme, which was the one they introduced to try to fix the problem that they found when they did this report and found that all these people weren't getting paid their awards. They introduced this penalty enforcement scheme which was supposed to fix these problems. And as we found, it hasn't fixed these problems. And what was different about the penalty enforcement scheme is the penalty enforcement scheme was free. The other methods, if you go to the county court or if you go to the high court enforcement officer, through the fast track scheme, you actually have to pay. So after winning your case, you have to pay some more money. So for the government to then enforce your award. Right. So a lot of people will go through this whole process, pay some extra money and actually end up poor as a result of winning an employment tribunal claim.

[Rob]

And just some of the numbers behind this that you've reported include, I believe, 2% of the fines issued by the Employment Tribunal penalty enforcement scheme have actually been paid.

[Emiliano Molino]

Yeah, it's called crazy. So since the enforcement scheme's been around, it was created in 2016, so the enforcement scheme, the way it works, the way it's supposed to compel employers to pay, is that they'll tell employers, well, if you don't pay up within 28 days, we're going to fine you. Right. And since 2016, they've issued £9.6 million worth of fines, and of those, only 95 grand has been paid. So, yeah, it's 2% of all fines, but actually by value, it's less than 1% that's actually been paid of the fines they issued.

[Nova]

That's a really bad level of state capacity that you can't collect. That's like one step down from. Oh, yeah, okay, you don't want to pay your taxes, fine. Well, I guess we can't chase you. Jesus Christ.

[Rob]

Yeah, that's like the level of state capacity that like Italy had in Sicily in 1947, basically. That is astonishingly bad.

[Nova]

Yeah.

[Emiliano Molino]

Well, and of course. And this means, obviously, that awards aren't being paid. Right. The fact that the scheme has no teeth whatsoever. Right. I mean, sorry, I should also add the other threat. So in 2018, they expanded it and they said, you know what? We'll also name and shame if you don't pay up. We can name and shame the employers that don't pay up. Right. That was the other tool. What, and 4,000 requests, that's it. Well, but get this. 4,000 requests were made by employees for their employer to be named. Of those 4000, nearly 4000. Of those 4000, nearly 4000 requests, how many of those employers have actually been named by the government?

[Sam]

Oh, God.

[Rob]

I have the number in front of me. So I leave it to you, too.

[Nova]

To guess it's going to be none, isn't it?

[Emiliano Molino]

Yeah, I mean, you know, you know, your government. Government Too well. You know how the UK works way too well. Yeah.

[Sam]

Well, it's either like none, or it's like one group that is just completely useless but, like, has enough government contacts to, like, sort of stay in the books. But, yeah, zero. Zero seems like a reasonable number.

[Nova]

Zero is the number. Shaming in itself. And then in the end, neither naming nor shaming.

[Emiliano Molino]

No, no, no, no, no. It's shameless.

[Rob]

What if they get shamed into closing up their operations and then we lose valuable tax revenue? What about that?

[Emiliano Molino]

Well, actually, it's funny you say that because that's one of the ways they avoid paying. So.

But we' that actually. Because the other thing I wanted to mention about the name and shame is that we. We FOI the government, we did send so many FOI requests to try to get information. What was going on. And most of the time the government said, well, we don't know. That was. That was one of the most common answers we have. In fact, the government doesn't actually track if people get or do not get their awards. We only have the data. The only data we were able to get was about the Penalty Enforcement scheme. So the people that go through other schemes, we don't know if they get their awards. And the people who, you know, just give up because they're so burnt out by the system, which happens a lot because cases take forever and you have no legal aid, so. So you're often representing yourself in front of a barrister. I mean, people really burn out. But one of the fois we did was to say, okay, Give us the 4,000 names. Give us the 4,000 names of the company that didn't pay and where people asked for the companies to be named and the government said, we can't give you those names. And one of the reasons we can't give you those names is for health and safety reasons, because, and I quote, if we give you those names, it could provide sensitive information to, quote, hostile actors who may pose a threat to the health and safety of employers.

[Sam]

Wow.

[Nova]

Okay, Right.

[Emiliano Molino]

So, Jesus, we gotta.

[Nova]

We gotta protect those employers so we.

[Rob]

Can'T name them because someone might shame them. Don't you understand?

[Emiliano Molino]

Exactly. We can't hurt their feelings. Right.

[Sam]

Not even in a kinky way.

[Nova]

Well, hurting their feelings is like a national security threat, you know, Evidently.

[Rob]

God, I would.

[Nova]

I would love to have my feelings be a kind of national security asset, you know, that would help me in daily life so much if it was like, oh, actually, this is really hurting my feelings. Therefore, we will be taking your passport away.

[Rob]

Yeah. Or we've issued a countrywide red notice. Everybody has to inform November they're not mad at her.

[Nova]

If you get mad at me on Twitter, you get sent to Belmarsh.

[Rob]

What do you think happened to Graham Linehan?

[Sam]

Not enough.

[Rob]

Well, they have it to beef up the law still. Anyway. So many things that are about protecting the dignity of people in Britain who aren't conglomerates or, you know, who aren't like, you know, oil barons. This is sort of a fake thing. Just like all of the protections for, like, migrant farm workers or migrant care workers that we've talked about with Emiliano before, they're not real. They're. There are lots of institutions that are set up so the government can say that there's something. But the actual desire to create and build state capacity in the area of regulating employer behavior towards employees, unless those employees are already very well protected by unions. Right, this is the classic labor rights stuff, right, which is favoring already protected workers who are already unionized at the expense of, like, you know, gig workers and stuff, or the expense of, like, people who aren't employed or the sick or whatever, you know, creating real hierarchies of people. This is just more in that same tradition. And it's. And even now, right, the Employment Rights Scheme is looking at this model, this employee employment tribunal model, where it is toothless. There's little state capacity, no enforcement mechanism to speak speak of, regularly ignored and not even looked at. Not even without even sort of the government having an interest or not just the government, but the state really having an interest in evaluating whether or not it's effective. That's the main centerpiece of how you will interact with the new Employment Rights Bill that is currently working its way through Parliament that is already begging to be watered down by groups lobbying the House of Lords.

[Emiliano Molino]

Right? So a lot. Most of the new rights introduced by the Employment Rights Bill require you to enforce them through the Employment tribunal. Now, I gotta say, there's a lot of good stuff in the Employment Rights Bill. A lot of the expansion of rights in a lot of areas, that is definitely a step forward. And it's also the expansion of trade union rights, which is definitely a strict step forward. Right. But the risk here is that, you know, the UK has a low and declining trade union membership. And if most of the rights require employment tribunals to be enforced. Well, if tribunals don't have capacity, then what rights do we really have? And what I mean by capacity, I mean, it's not just this problem about tribunal awards not being Enforced, Right. And I should have said, I should have mentioned this number earlier. So the number we did get from the Penalty Enforcement Scheme was that more than 7,000 people approached the scheme and to have their awards enforced, 3/4 of them, even after approaching the scheme, didn't get anything.

[Sam]

Right?

[Emiliano Molino]

Most people who approached the scheme didn't get anything. That's around 30, if I remember correctly, that's around 38 million pounds. Sorry, 36 million pounds worth of awards that weren't paid, right? So if these awards are being paid, then you have, you know, then what is the point of these rights, right? And, and, but the other problem is that the tribunals are already overstretched. You know, the people we spoke to through this investigation, they'd spent months trying to get their claim heard, right? I know now from speaking to some lawyers that it can take as long as two years to be given a hearing tape, right? In that time, you know, who's got the endurance to spend two years to get a hearing heard? Also, there's no legal aid, right? So most, a huge proportion portion of people represent themselves. And like the people we spoke to for this investigation, many of them basically had to teach themselves employment law. To be able to go up against a company that had a barrister being.

[Nova]

A kind of like unpaid lawyer for two years in order to maybe win a judgment that you then won't get is. I know everything in this country is a kind of humiliation ritual, but Jesus Christ.

[Rob]

And some of the best ways that you can not get it were, let's say you do, you do this. You basically take yourself to school, my Cousin Vinny style. You like, become very good at being a lawy. You get the wig and all sorts, right? You win your judgment. What will usually happen is, once the writing's on the wall, if the owner of the business that is owing you really still doesn't want to pay you, they will just go through insolvency. They'll just, they'll take the assets of the business that they want to keep, trans them into another business and then the organization you have the legal relationship with will fold.

[Nova]

None of its sort of directors or employees would ever be personally liable for it either.

[Rob]

No, none them of. Not only that, but because the other place where the UK has incredibly small amount of state capacity is regulating and knowing even who the beneficial owners of different companies are, what they own and who are different related parties in certain transactions, right? Because Companies House is basically a free for all. It's one of the reasons why the UK is one of the Premier destinations for starting fraudulent businesses. That's like, that's what we're now a world leader in, is fraudulent business. The place to headquarters that, well, it's.

[Nova]

Nice to see we're good at something.

[Rob]

Well, quite right. So you might say, okay, you know, I'm. In fact, I'll quote from one of your articles, Emiliano. In another case, a High Court enforcement officer wrote to the home address of an employer and received a letter back to say someone else was living there. The worker who's been unable to claim her compensation is certain the director lives there. Another worker enlisted an enforcement officer to recover 35 grand that he's owed from a consultancy company, only to find out that it emptied his business account. An advisor in London told TBIJ that on multiple occasions he sent enforcement officers to restaurants only for someone to bruise. Evidence saying the premises are now rented by a different business. However, usually it is a director of the old companies showing the new documentation to the officers. But in each of those three cases, it's really the same problem, which is you can start close transfer companies, you can baffle overstretched enforcement officers just by saying, nope, not me. I mean, this is the thing, it.

[Emiliano Molino]

Seems that this stuff also is legal, right? One of the issues here is that the whole issue of limited liability, right? So the whole point of limited liability stretching back to, you know, the East India Company is that the liability is limited to the company and it doesn't stretch to the director. And this is something we found over and over when speaking to people. Right? So I don't know if we're gonna. You know, there's one of the people we spoke to, Rosie, she was employed by a motorsport production company. When her boss hired her, he set up a separate business company to hire her. So the initial company is called Motorsport. He set up a separate company called Motorsport Media Ltd. And that was an entity through which she was hired. So when she brought her employment tribunal claim, she brought it against the company that hired her, Motorsport Media Limited. But then when the bailiff showed up at the address, the guy said, well, actually, Motorsport Media Limited doesn't own anything. It doesn't have assets, so there's nothing for you to collect, even though the other company does have assets, because he set up a separate company. Well, that was fine.

[Rob]

And it would be very easy, right? Well, theoretically easy, if you were ideologically committed to doing so. Be very easy to say, okay, Companies House, you now have a budget to identify where there is a situation like this, where there are like two companies where the owner is clearly using them as a shell game to keep people from making sort of reasonable and legal claims on assets. You could draw connections between those and say, hey, this is the same guy, these are the same company, they're doing the same thing. But it's another place we don't have state capacity because we're not interested in what small business tyrants are doing. We're just want to make sure that they're doing stuff.

[Sam]

Yeah. There's also like a broader question about, like, what people who work in HMRC think they're doing, or I guess, like what the position, what the job of HMRC actually kind of is. And this is like more of a question than like an observation, but it is. Is just like, well, I wonder whether there is this kind of element of internal departments kind of turning a blind eye because of the kind of demand for economic growth at all costs, which then sort of allows a lot of companies to kind of get away with quite a lot on the basis of like, well, we can't afford to lose you. And in theory you're sort of contributing to the necessity of the line going up. But as we've sort of spoken about both on this episode and in general, it's like, well, the way in which the British economy works isn't really that companies make money or they are necessarily productive. They basically just get involved in lots of schemes that sort of look either oddly pyramidal or more like matryoshkas. The whole point is being that, well, what we're very good at in terms of a structure is the ability to hide money. Whether we hide money in property or whether we hide them in shell companies and so on and so on, that's the way in which we sort of attract business to this country and how we sort of maintain business in the country. And until you sort of get to a point where it's just like, well, no, we do need to sort of have an equipment economy that is sort of more fairer to the people who participate inside of it. And in order to do that, I guess it goes back to that thing about, well, it's not even necessarily the pursuit of equality, but it is the sense of, well, we actually do need the economy to work for people who actually exist within here. And I don't know, I'm not an economist. I'm not someone who is necessarily knowledgeable about kind of the sort of ins and outs of economics as some of you on here. What it does kind of feel like, from my reading and just my observations, is like, you are trying to sort of make an economy work, but one that is designed to. Not really. Yeah, it's not really designed to work for people. And this is a very human result of that, which is like you have workers who, whatever compensation they may try to seek for bad behavior or even just out of a sense of unfair dismissal, only to be told that, yeah, the company that you work for actually never existed in the first place.

[Rob]

You hallucinated it, actually. The official position of the British company here.

[Nova]

And there never was.

[Rob]

Yeah, exactly.

[Emiliano Molino]

I mean, there's another element here though, right, which is that it's just the chronic underfunding of enforcement of, of, of any kind of enforcement in the uk, you know, over the last set.

[Rob]

Immigration enforcement.

[Emiliano Molino]

Well, exactly. Interesting. You say that immigration enforcement actually because. Okay, well, everything. But all other enforcement's been sort of gutted from health and safety to employment rights and so on. And like we say there's. There's no liability for directors here, right? Like company directors that do this, that will shut down a company and then open it up again to avoid playing a tribunal award under a slightly different name. There's no penalty for them to do that. Right. The liability doesn't extend to them. Right. But you know what's interesting, because with immigration enforcement, if you hire somebody who does not have the right to work in the uk, then the state will go after you as an individual because then there's criminal liability. Right? So if you hire someone who does not, you know, who maybe has a working visa but doesn't have a working visa for your sector, it's a care worker who's now working in a shop, right? And therefore it falls within the state. The state considers that illegal working. Well, you could face five years in prison as a director. But these directors that have these judgments against them for breaching employment law, if they don't pay these awards, they face no consequences. And so it's kind of how the British state sees different areas of the law, right, and what it actually prioritizes. And enforcement of employment rights has been chronically underfunded for many years. Right. We maybe talked to you guys before about how the gang masses labor abuse authority, which deals with modern slavery and agriculture recruitment, has a budget of 6,7 million pounds, right. Which is less than what the Home Office spends on. On stationary and printing. And now it's important to talk about these things because with the Employment Rights Bill, they're going to create this Fair Work Agency, right? And this Fair Work Agency is supposed to bring together a lot of the different employment enforcement functions. But the question is, will the fair. If we don't know right now what the funding of the Fair Work Agency will be, what kind of resources it will have. Right. So it will only work to the extent that it will be properly funded and it will have somebody who is leading it, who's sufficiently committed to holding employers to account. And that's still a question as to whether that will happen. Because while the Employment Rights bill will now complete in the next few weeks, it should be coming to an end all the debate. Right. And I think, yeah, even, even, maybe in, maybe even this week, there'll be like a two year implementation period for a lot of things. So a lot of things in the bill, including the Fair Work Agency, are kind of yet to be seen how it's going to really play out in practice.

[Rob]

Well, you know what? I think probably based on our understanding of this government's, let's say, commitment to making change for the ordinary people of.

[Nova]

This country, it's stability, its predict, its ability to deliver on policy outcomes.

[Rob]

Yep. I think we're gonna, we can, I think we can be pretty confident. You know what we say, optimism of the will, optimism of the intellect.

That's what we always say here. That this isn't just going to be, you know, again, that a lot of the good things in the bill aren't going to just be undermined by over reliance on tribunals, which is kind of.

[Nova]

Just sprinkle some tribunals on it, you know. It'll be fine.

[Rob]

There's a process, hey, crazy. When you substitute process for justice, that always works, right? I think so. That's good. It's good when you do that. Pretty certain anyway. Anyway. Well, I'm pretty certain. It's going to be fine. Welcome to It's Always Gonna Be Fine, the podcast where things are gonna be fine.

[Emiliano Molino]

Happy Future Podcast Functioning future.

[Rob]

That's right. Look, I think that's probably all the time we have for today, but Emiliano, it is, as I often say to so many of our guests, pleasure to talk to you. Wish it was about something else.

[Emiliano Molino]

I'll come back in a few months time to tell you how employment tribunals are functioning perfectly.

[Rob]

Oh, perfect.

[Nova]

That's. I'll look forward to that.

[Rob]

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's a machine that. Take that. That turns like filings into seized Bentleys. I'm certain of it. Anyway, so where can people find and support your work on the Bureau of investigative journalism?

[Emiliano Molino]

So tbij.com look it up or just look me up on any of the socials if you guys can add the articles in the show notes, that'd be great and certainly can, I would just say also finally, you know, this is an issue that I think we're just scratching the surface. My feeling is that, you know, the 5,000 odd people, the 36,000 million pounds of unpaid awards is just a fraction of the actual awards that are being unpaid. And the huge damage that is being done to people's lives, we're only just beginning to understand this is a scandal of potentially epic proportions. So I would encourage any listeners who have friends that have been to the employment tribunal and not gotten their money or think they might know somebody or people who are in the unions to ask around to find out if people have faced this and to get in touch. We're going to keep on looking into. We're going to, you know, we have a bunch of other people that have approached us since we published that we're talking to and yeah, we think that it's important to keep this on the agenda so that the government hopefully maybe does something addresses this and if not, one of the many opposition parties, now that we have a multi party system in the UK picks this issue up as well. Right. We don't want to leave it there.

[Rob]

Let's just not reform. Not reform. Yeah, fuck it. Maybe reform. Who cares? Someone.

[Emiliano Molino]

You know what, it's funny because it's the kind of thing maybe, I mean I'm not obviously I'm not pro reform in any way shape or form being an immigrant to this country especially. But you know, I think it's the kind of thing that especially their voters care about as well, you know.

[Rob]

Oh yeah, that's that. Because they're concerned with like broad concepts of justice. They've just been, you know, it's been directed in a certain way in some cases anyway. I'm going to say check out tbij, talk to people who may be experiencing an unfair dismissal and also check out TF on Patreon. Once you've done all of that. This is a free episode. There's going to be a paid episode in a few short days. We are going to be talking with our old friend Rob Smith all about some hilarious japes and flim flams that have been happening in high finance recently. It's been quite chaos. I'm gonna surprise you.

[Nova]

Oh, those wacky guys in high finances.

[Rob]

I mean, kinda. Yeah, true. Anyway, so that's all coming on Thursday and we will see you on that show then. Bye everyone.

[Nova]

Bye.

Sam.