From naked Oxford academics, roundabouts and how to cut children’s cycling deaths, to Scotland’s remarkable good news story, namely what may have been the biggest reduction in child poverty anywhere in Europe since 1989: Danny Dorling discusses his new book Shattered Nation: Inequality and the Geography of A Failing State (Verso), the UK, inequality and more at Topping Books in Edinburgh.
Why is the UK in danger of becoming a failing state? Dorling provides copious sobering examples. In England, he says, “We now have figures on hunger that we haven’t seen since the 1930s, and we’ve been building up to this since the 1990s. The average heights of our children are now falling. That takes quite some doing. That’s actually quite hard to achieve.”
In a Q&A session following his 30-minute talk, Professor Dorling covers everything from the unexpected increase in the number of “Nordic countries” in Europe – can there really be 15 of them now? – and why we have far too many podcasts made by white men chortling with satisfaction about their role in creating austerity.
This is an audio-only recording made on 7 December 2023.
https://www.toppingbooks.co.uk/events/edinburgh/danny-dorling-oxford-professor-of-geography-2023/
Find out more about Shattered Nation at his website at https://www.dannydorling.org/books/shatterednation/
Read his recent article on Ed Balls, George Osborne and right-wing white men making podcasts: https://www.dannydorling.org/?p=9881
Hello um good evening everybody thank you very much for coming tonight um for this top and complete event um if you’ve been here before to some of our events then you’ll be very familiar but just to remind you um please use your tickets tonight they will act as vouchers if
Youd like a copy of this very interesting book um so make sure you do that tonight if you want to wait listen to The Talk think about it you’ll be able to get it afterwards and one of my colleagues will do Book Sales here as
Well um we are also so just aware that this event is um sold out so it is quite uh tight tonight so thank you all for being very Cooperative as well with that just spacewise um so yeah I’m GNA now just introduce our guests so we’ve got all
The way from Oxford University the Halford mackinder professor of geography Danny dling he’s come to talk to us about his latest book which is shattered nation and it’s inequality and the geography of a failing State this book here um it’s at once time ly and poignant through use of meticulous
Research and hard-hitting facts he’s taking us across the foreign countries that make up the UK examining um issues from Hunger employment and fear charting how these things have changed from the time of William beverage for in the second world war bringing us all up from the co pandemic to the present day
Incisive and brutally honest shattered Nation calls for a rethink on how we do things through greater honesty and empathy so here to tell us a bit more can we all welcome Danny doring uh thank you ever so much for coming I’m amazed you’re here um not least because it’s very cold and very
Wet outside but uh also given the title of the book you know who who who wants to come and hear about a shattered Nation um what I’ve learned to do the book was published in September is to start off with some good news uh because otherwise honestly it is
I’m warning you it gets worse um and I’m going to just talk for half an hour by the way so we’ve got lots and lots of time uh to have a discussion uh you you did ask you wanted an auxa style lecture uh which would be a whiteboard uh and
Graphs uh no graphs we’re going to do it without that good news so if we were in Oxford the story I would start off was the story of the summer of 2023 and what happened in the city of Oxford in 23 and I would spend 10 minutes showing you pictures of an
Obscure place called Parson’s pleasure does anybody here no well I’ve got one okay so this wouldn’t work for you Parson’s pleasure was when I was a boy was where the lecturers male were allowed to bathe new it’s where I first got to see a lot of uh male
Genitalia which was very good for my mental health as a pubescent teenager because anyway I won’t go into go into that um but uh because of this bathing place which had existed right up until 1991 we couldn’t have a psychop paath across The Meadows to Oxford into the city avoiding a very dangerous
Roundabout uh people started to argue for a safe way into Oxford in the 1970s the university opposed it we finally got a path open in 1991 there were going to be two Bridges the two Bridges were going to be staggered because you couldn’t have young ladies going up a bridge too high
And looking and seeing the naked men and then at the last minute they decided the two brid just could be straight and the male nude flashing ended in my in my city um so there’s a kind of success but but the bad news is is that the city
Expands you get more and more people and the roundabout which had always been known to be dangerous becomes more dangerous uh the second most dangerous roundabout in the south of England three members of University staff in the last two years have died on bikes on that roundabout uh
The bad news is that the university decides one of the bridges needed to be repaired and it’s going to repair it starting on August the 10th no warning and it will be closed for 10 weeks now why does this matter it matters um because 10 weeks from August
The 10th I know you have different summer holidays here uh it’s last summer holiday still ongoing but for the children going to secondary school for the first time on the third of SE September they’re going to have to go around the second most dangerous roundabout in the south of Europe there was a
Campaign two days before the schools opened the university relented and allowed school children my University relented allowed school children to go through the parks if they pushed their bike and somebody monitored them but it was a success it was a victory and I always start off with a victory somewhere but
It has to mean something to the people I can do better for you um so the one I’ll give you let’s see this isn’t going to work but I’ll try it I did this at leads I’ve done it at nottingam uh there was a country and this country was dealing
With a pandemic as all countries were but the cost of living Crisis began during the pandemic it began to become evident that prices were starting to rise we put it down to the inability of companies to move Goods around the world food was get getting a bit more expensive heat was getting a
Bit more expensive the government of this country enacted its emergency committee looked at what it could do put some regulations in to stop landlords evicting people but also introduced a very small payment the payment was £10 a week for any children under the age of six if your parents
Received any kinds of benefits the payment was increased then increased again in November 2022 to £25 a week for any child under 16 um in a family receiving any benefits this was two out of all seven children um for a family of three by now this is over 44,000 in a
Year uh it’s untapered you get the money regardless um and the effect of that of course is huge on the families of the children getting this so I’m going to test out with you this be interesting the average audience takes 10 guesses to work out which country and the clue is
It’s in Europe so who knows which country this is in Europe go on Scot Scotland yes yes okay you should have get it first Scotland now that is the that is the first time this has happened to me I was hoping it would happen it would be highly upsetting if you didn’t
Know it’s normally Norway or Finland then it’s Finland and Norway the other way around then it’s Sweden then it’s the Netherlands then it’s Germany then it’s France then it’s Switzerland 10 always 10 before eventually and it’s not really a trick question I say country in Europe right in England they
Have no idea absolutely no no idea not reported at all uh the big uh study that was supposed to begin on this funded I think by nfield Foundation they haven’t got the money so we’re not even going to get the comp power to study because it makes sense if you’re a slightly
Disinterested social scientist you go hey we’ve got an natural experiment let’s set up a cohort down south the col in Scotland and see how they compare um but there are good news stories uh that particular one the Scottish child payment is possibly when I work it out
In the back of an envelope the biggest reduction in child poverty in a year anywhere in Europe since 1989 uh I haven’t done it properly I’ve just worked out I’m assuming 90% uptake uh but we’ll know soon because there are very very diligent slightly stayed civil servants here on this side
Of Scotland uh who who do things very properly and they will produce the results which will actually tell us but it’s not hard to do the maths and to actually work out you know 4,000 PS in a year and of course you already get child benefit on the third child because
You’re in Scotland um £4,000 extra without losing any of it means not going hungry and not going cold and it’s a choice has to be paid for more importantly you’re choosing not to pay for other things other age groups other people other services there’ll be all kinds of
Arguments which thankfully I’m back down on the train and I can leave you to it right all I can all I can do is say this is possible this has happened you can do things why does does it matter so here we get into the start of the shattering resolution Foundation released their
State of 2023 report at the start of this year and even at the start of this year we knew that 56% of children in the UK with uh two siblings were going hungry two or three times a month properly hungry not peckish um we now have figures on Hunger
That we haven’t seen since 1930 um Rising it it is just shocking it’s quite in some ways quite sudden um but in other ways this is what I argue in the book we’ve been building up to this since at least the 1990s um the average heights of our children are now
Falling right right they’re falling this is to publish in the Lancet that takes quite some doing that’s actually quite hard to achieve um the fall begins at least from birth in 2005 now that matters politically I’m going to upset any of you no matter which political party you like by the
Way at the end of this because this was in after seven years of new labor okay the supposed million children out of poverty it was a Chinese style millon out of poverty the Chinese style uh social stats are you find a group who are just above a line I they’re just in
Poverty and you find a way to give them money so they’re just below the line as far as they’re concerned nothing has changed but you can say we’ve got our first million to four million children why am I so confident about this because the Gen coefficient of income inequality didn’t alter uh by
1% not significantly in any single year from 1997 to 2010 um no improvement in fact it got worse for a few years but no fall in income inequality no actual fall in poverty uh in the new labor years you could say let me draw your graph with my
Hands okay inequality and poverty are very similar if we go right back to 60s we have have a relatively low rate of inequality down here uh just above Sweden better than France and Germany we are more equal we are essentially a Nordic country and it’s kind of hovering around there in the
60s and then in the early 70s our rate of inequality actually goes down slightly to the best year ever which was 1974 right we are dominated by these conservative historians led by Dominic sanbrook who were not even alive in the’ 70s I was there and I have no appreciation of realizing things were
Really really good 1974 we were competing with Finland we’re competing with Norway 1974 we’ve just democratized the schools we’ got rid of an apartheid in our education system the 11 plus has largely gone we’ve built the social housing it’s there the majority of parents at some point in their childhood lived in a
Council house the majority so I don’t want to annoy anybody who’s lived off I grew up in the council house but it just means you were normal we had we had we had the highest life expectancy in the world by six very small countries the lowest infant
Mortality rate we had the first baby incubators around the time I’m born inequality goes up slightly in the late 70s so strikes but pay goes up by more than inflation partly because of those strikes then we get the 80s so I won’t repeat the 80s because you know the 80s if
You’re young you’re going to have to Young in this corner you’re G to have to learn sorry GNA have to learn the 80s um you know dramatic year after year after year things get even worse Benjamin Zephaniah his death was announced today um his his writing is about a lot of it
Is about the 80s and what’s happened then and how often it was and in the 80s she kind of thought that this is a blip you know it’s terrible unbelievable but we’re not going to let that happen and then we discovered that you can actually have three nearer to four if you count
It properly million people unemployed ideally if they’re young and like in the 30s when they were middle-aged men but if you know young people unemployed you can get away with it because most people don’t know somebody’s unemployed with it’s three or four million and they will vote Tor in ‘
83 and in8 7 and even in 1992 and by then our inequality level is just below Portugal we’ve beaten the rest of Western Europe the top 30% of voed conservatives did really well out of it their living standards rose on average right loads of money era you
Carry right on to 1997 you get a new government finally in 1997 after 18 years of conservative rule they promis they kept their promise to keep conservative spending pledges for two years and you can see nothing happens in this graph but then they didn’t actually do anything to alter the
Inequality they helped some groups but not other groups so on average if you were in the bottom 10 for society you were no better off they put some double glazing into Council housing but they were embarrassed about this they didn’t tell anybody about it and they pay for
War so our public spending goes up 1999 2 2001 2002 this thing carries on but other countries are getting better in Europe so by about 26 only Bulgaria is more unequal than us now you might think oh well at least we held inequality up here didn’t go like
That even though we now have the highest in Europe we’re not as bad as South Africa or Brazil but High inequalities like high blood pressure right things get get worse and worse as you hold it there um it’s kind of stayed at that level since 210 except in 2008 we have a banking
Crisis we become poorer as a country our salaries and wages Begin to Fall in real terms and they still haven’t recovered to 2008 so grossly unequal and poorer absolute deprivation Rising uh IM miseration increasing it’s unbelievable it’s unbelievable by the comparisons um we get Tetons and then hundreds of thousands of people dying
Prematurely 2015 16 17 18 this is all blamed on the flu originally the first deaths that we saw were two2 women over 65 uh lost two weeks of Life their life expectancy fell by just two weeks sounds trivial but that hasn’t happened for a century and that was just the start why
Women over 65 first George Osborne and the big cuts George Osborne’s Cuts he had a competition if you could cut more than the next Minister you could be part of his gang in his Star Chamber he might not remember the competition of who can cut the most George Osborne’s Cuts decimated
Time and Time and Time Again decimation is a 10% loss local authorities many have lost over half of their income and their staff meals on Wheel Services just went Ral bus services went imagine you’re a woman over 65 say 75 80 and these things begin to go away that’s your welfare
State the difference between women over 65 and men over 65 is that on average for that age group a man over 65 will have a woman over 65 with him who on average will be five or four years younger than him that’s his welfare state right the women on average won’t
Because the man’s died before being on your own it is worse but that was just the start of it the government reaction I got a letter telling me to desist when we publish this in a new Statesman when I I said Public Health England as it was were getting it wrong
Uh the government reaction was to claim it was flu influenza special British flu one that wasn’t occurring in the rest of Europe I know and we we accepted it despite closing all those hospitals for all routine operations in January and February and the march of 2015 and
2018 um we actually did get some flu in 2019 by the way but flu doesn’t actually kill that many people so our life expects in 2019 finally returned to what it was in 2014 for a brief moment before a pandemic hit and then we reported a higher mortality rate per million than other
European countries despite having killed off so many of our old and frail before the pandemic hit we we we should have had a better record right if you oh sorry if I’ve spent my whole life working with mortality data so some of this comes over as un feeling but it was absolutely remarkable
That weren’t in the top third of European countries for the pandemic um given that we didn’t have that many old people left um you know our life expectancy haven’t been rising it’s many years lower than the life expectancy in other European countries uh the key thing about the pandemic was
Age my father who’s still around was a 100 times more likely to die if he caught Co than me I was 100 times more likely than my dad and 20y old son 10,000 fold difference in in odds we lost 15% of all our men over 90 and 10%
Of all our women uh in the pan pandemic it was handled badly more badly South of the Border it’s really interesting we got all the coverage by the way from Scotland during the pandemic because news 24 didn’t know what to do and Nicola kept on going on and for hours
And for some reason the BBC put Nicola up for like an hour and a half a day um in England uh and and she obviously cared Me Maybe too much um but you took it to heart whereas you knew what was going on in white you you just you know if you were
English and slightly clued in you know you could tell you could tell what the attitude was that’s health and I’ve got about seven minutes left so let’s W rattle through the rest of them but our health is now awful there are five countries in East e Europe which have a
Higher neonatal mortality rate than us just five and often when I say this people say why shouldn’t they be better which is finally but it will be soon uh infant mortality is rising in the last year it was rising in 2015 2016 it’s unheard of uh for this to
Occur uh depression all the other things are off the scale education and of course these things vary by country um to annoy you who who want to debate in Scotland I’m afraid you do come out at the top of the four countries uh but but not simply because of one political
Party actually ironically and this is from a long long away from coalitions and alliances which you may not notice here one there was a decision made this summer as far as I can see between labor in the SNP they wobbled about let’s fight over the Scottish child payment and then they
Seem to have both discon for it right but you don’t get things being Progressive without actually some agreements on some things it may not feel like it it always feels like you’re in the middle of argument that people absolutely hate each other viciously but but some things are
Education Bally South of the Border we privatize the schools we call it academized but they’re no longer under control this was partly for TUS because dozens of our local councils now gone bust of which the largest is Birmingham when they go bust like slow and there’s another 24 to go bust they
Have to sell all the assets off including the schools so at least they can’t sell the schools off because they privatized them so at least slow keeps it State schools this this is where we are um and there other kind of small mercies at least one government Minister
This summer decided that when she was told that the concrete could fall at any point she wasn’t going to have it the others if you look back the others were going oh we can risk it we can have an Aban um but we have all these schools and of course we’ve privatized our
Universities in effect almost fully in 2012 again more South of the Border but you are charging English and the overseas um so they’re out of control uh they’re one of our three surviving profit making Industries that’s where the profit is increasing and overseas students are export earners average uh graduate when I
Worked at Sheffield um you’d be making however many thousands on the fees but then another five grand on the graduation for what the hotel’s got there’s a university actually up here which I won’t name which has talked about holding a double graduation so now you can go with M and
Dad once then you can come and put the Hat on again and then another couple of relatives can come because it’ll do the local hotels really good I used to work at Sheffield the overseas earnings at Sheffield ham and Sheffield uni were a quar of a billion a year bigger than the
Metal work industry of South Yorkshire uh and you might think the metal work industry of South Yorkshire is bad it isn’t uh we have nice youth it’s an arms industry right where do you think that’s a tum are made and the manacles and all the other there places like South
Yorkshire just up from derby um but the universities make more money than the arms trade the other two are gambling uh we’re now the center for World gambling we have the largest gambling Market in the world bigger than the USA Gordon Brown bought the taxes down to near nearly zero you might say
That’s great somebody’s going to be running the world gambling industry but it’s kind of like not something to be proud of and a third is banking and by leaving the EU we left the regulations so we can have our Casino Banks although again very clever washing somebody came up to Edinburgh
Called them the Edinburgh cords to make it sound as if it was somehow Miss Jee Brody like um but it was essentially allowing uh things to go on which you wouldn’t allow in a normal Western Country done education done Health housing what a mess really
Um it was after 25 years of working on housing that I finally met a senior civil servant who told me in whiteall that our real aim is that London has the highest house prices in Europe because then we know we succeeded I felt so stupid felt so
Stupid um you but you wonder why our house prices so high because we’ve had governments who’ve actually tried to push them up help to buy and and things like like that terrible homelessness rates the second highest country in Europe for homelessness rates is Germany after Merkel allowed in 1.5 million syrians
And even then they had fewer people sleeping in tents under flyovers uh than we do and it’s staggering but we’ve become used to it it’s amazing how quickly you can adapt to do this and begin to see it as normal uh we are essentially an Eastern European
Country the bottom fifth of people in the UK have a lower standard of living than the bottom fifth in the average Eastern European country now that’s not me that’s Stephanie Flanders from Bloomberg economics saying it John John bur Murdoch from the Ft uh telling you this but we’re British
And we win lots of medals in the Olympics and we got a royal family still and if we just try a bit harder and we just aim for the sunlet up PLS and we increase our productivity somehow and all you know buckle up and stop those small boats
Arising in the in the South all will be okay and part of the shattering is your political parties falling apart labor lost its soul in a way labor somehow lost its soul in the late 90s um shifted thinking it was being ever so clever across to the right didn’t realize that one
Consequence of that would be to push the Tories way over so that in 2014 they left the European conservative group PPP and joined an alliance with alternative for Deutschland essentially with fascists when we left the EU the European Parliament lost its biggest block of farri Ms that it had
Ever had that’s ukip and the conservatives these are MEPS aligned with groups formly aligned you have to be in a group in the parliament formally aligned with complete and utter unmentionables in other countries the far right were left with Poland you know the Polish Emy peace would largest block the tufton street
The farri right think tanks had to use Warsaw where they’ve got an Adam Smith Institute but it’s not very big um I mean this is great news for EU and you know a country was probably going to leave a country had to leave it’s it’s it’s Democratic the EU you don’t have to
Be in we’ve proved that we’ve also helped point out what happens if you do leave so none of the farri right parties in the EU now want to leave right um and also P had an amazing election and done something different there are lots of good news stories out
There just not that many here although the bad news for you is that the best in the UK are here um Wales is trying to see if it can copy uh some of them Northern Ireland doesn’t do too badly because it sells affordable housing and because Tera May gave him a
1 billion pound bung to try and hold her government together uh which which isn’t great how do we get out of this what happens in my final two minutes because I’m keeping keeping to time it’s a realization that this is the reality okay there isn’t going to be a sun on The
Meadows in the future sunlet UPS I got a shock how many know where the the the the lyc the sun on the The Meadows comes from I won’t try and sing it no uh the song Tomorrow belongs to me from Cabaret Hitler Youth the sun on The
Meadows the Sun the tups yeah right um the sunlet Uplands appeared first of all in George Osborne’s policy of 2015 this is where our end which was if you follow my economic plan and George completely believed this then by the year 2030 we will have the
Highest GDP per capita in the world of any large country George believed it not only did George believe it but his secretary of state believed it was a young man called Matt Hancock Who Matt had to go out and defend it in Boris Johnson’s resignation speech he said whole firm keep with the
Plan and it was a slightly different we will have the highest grow for the G7 if you stick with my party K st’s summer speech get slightly altered each time the sun on The Meadows and the sun it up watered down slightly but just become more productive do more of this work harder
Don’t ask for more don’t complain that the governor Bank of England has paid that much make sure that the SK those who are Shing are dealt with harshly take away still in England the child benefit from the third or fourth child that’s now labor Poli policy be tougher be meaner be nastier
And will somehow rise there comes a point when it doesn’t wash anymore it comes a point when you’re telling people in the south of England with the highest rents they’ve ever paid Rising higher than they’ve Ever Raised again who are looking at paying rent into their 50s who have no
Pensions who have precarious jobs and you keep trying to sell them the same lie and it just is isn’t working now there are other things going on in the world which are not in the book uh so I won’t mention them that they’re big there’s climate of course which is large
And you can look at the kind of dwindling commitment of the parties on that but there’s a war two Wars and I partly think if you look at young people around where I know and I know universities and students what we’re currently seeing in the South and in London and in my own
University is very similar to what we saw in the 1960s with Vietnam where people of my age if you imagine a 50y old in the 60s were going what’s going on this isn’t terribly important why are they protesting and they’re going there’s something very very wrong with you lot
Right and this is yet a never level you know we’re burning the planet we don’t care about their future and then and then we’re supporting atrocities overseas um and it’s beginning to alter things but the what’s on offer at least in England which is what matters in terms of controlling
Westminster as yet isn’t great but the situation is getting worse every month because the cost of living crisis is now the longest since the one that began in 1798 which lasted 24 years right we’ve beaten every other cost of living crisis inflation will come down but
Still be high so it’s still going to cost you more the Heat next year than the year before and we still haven’t insulated the homes so they actually get worse so they lose more heat um I don’t know where it’s going to go but I’m absolutely sure that what the
Conservatives and what labor are offering doesn’t work however to end on a high point um something remarkable has happened another remarkable thing not in Scotland every single pay deal in the last 16 months that I can get hold of is all the public sector ones but also private sector ones like BT the
Commercial Workers Union they’re all Progressive for the first time again since around the 1930s 40s what I mean is in 2019 the Commercial Workers Union everybody got 3% if they was two you’ll get three sounds okay it’s not okay because you’re a 60y old man who’s a
Senior telephone engineer 3% is a lot more than a 3% of of a woman on a loway job right but the unions were fairly conservative they go for a flat percentage communications workers union deal to stop the going on strike uh this year is the most amazing tier deal so
That the lowest paid workers are not going to starve they have the biggest increase and people at the top don’t have one in the newspapers in the murdog newspapers you’re only getting a pay increase on your salary below a certain level above that nothing right constantiner Health
Service if you look at what the porters and the cleaners are getting in the nurses compared to the doctors civil servants Junior civil servants have had a 12% pay cut since 2008 in real terms senior civil servants 25% now that may feel terrible if you’re a
Civil servant but if you if you think being the most unequal country in Europe is a problem you need those two groups to come together every pay deal MPS have taken something like 2.9 they’re lowest ever and that’s not in real terms that’s 2.9 so they’ve been taking a pay cut of
About 7% but of course 2.9 of an MP salary is quite good uh lastly a prediction for you inflation’s falling MP salaries aren’t bad most of them couldn’t get a job that would pay them as much as an MP I don’t think the election is going to be until the Autumn
Of next year if not January 2025 why would the Tories do it now um why would they give up the gravy chain jobs they’ve got when they can be so sure many of them that they’re going to lose those jobs so I think we’re still quite a long
Way from a general election thank you for letting me talk at you you have experienced what an Oxford University lecture is like because nobody asks a single question or butts in at all uh they will sit there terrified taking notes because bless them they all think they shouldn’t be there and they’re not
Good enough which is better than I’m all thinking that they’re Superior um than that thank you very very [Applause] much and let’s do short questions first and I’ll do short answers go on anot I feel you just at social media certainly the last couple years it doesn’t feel
Like people are wanting to vote again just the minority of yeah but given how bad the situation is in the political parties because of the two part system what are we going to do you know if you don’t want Tor and and the next biggest
Party is is labor what do you do yeah what you what do you do of your choice um if you want to get it changed yeah well I the first thing is just realizing how weird this is because the mainland of Europe had PR for a century it’s undemocratic the only other two
Countries that spend less on the Public Services in Europe are Spain did in the past were Spain and Greece but only after Franco and after the generals so only undemocratic countries should say States I always trying to use country in the state different It’s tricky in the
UK um so we have Bishops in Our House of Lords it’s weird um the vote for brexit was partly you gave people a vote that for the first time in their life mattered and if you hated the way things were going and you’re worried about your
Grandchildren you what do you do do you vote the way you’re supposed to vote or do you vote and that’s just wasn’t just racism um be I would say be aware that you’re more free to vote in any way you wish now than you may ever have been uh if you’re
Tribal uh my family very tribal uh there was only one party for us for years and years and years might still be the same party uh but every other elected politician in my city as of last week this is just veral all all voted for ceasefire all labor both sides we lost
By the way Oxford we had 12 councilors of assigned now all liberals all the greens Al the West MP the only elected politician in my city who hasn’t is annaa dods who’s my mp no I’d like her to vote the right way then she can have
My vote if she doesn’t I’ve only ever voted for one party in my life right suddenly I’m free so you imagine your free liberal is going to pick up a hell of a lot of seats in England they’re second already they’re keeping very quiet uh they’re going to pick up seats
Labor May well not pick up as many as they think they’re going to get um Oxbridge we all paint that as being about low traffic neighborhoods the young didn’t bother coming out the young don’t care about low traffic neighborhoods they haven’t got cars or driving licenses they’re
Just not inspired the old in Selby can be convinced to vote labor so that happened there but in cities uh young people and cities with many mosques labor have lost it at the moment green party could get themselves Beyond one MP for the first time which European level it’s amazing we have the
Smallest green party in Europe um the other thing is supporting politicians who are trying to do the right thing and they’re still there like can’t often say they are uh my my most ridiculous fantasy is that sunak would actually like to win and be like Israeli and then
Thinks what do I have to do to win now part of it is to be nastier nastier immigration policy um nastier on the environment but the other would be to jump over Rachel re and Kier and say introduce a small Sovereign wealth attacks like Spain have get hunt to do that in his
Statement as Chancellor in the last one minute of the budget speech then sunak Rises and says we don’t believe in taxation but don’t worry I’m the only member of this house who has to pay this because none of you have enough wealth but pays now all kinds of things are
Possible uh when you’re in a crisis like this uh but it is it is ful that’s why we’ve gone through so many prime ministers that’s why if we need to borrow money as the UK we have to pay 5.5% for on 30-year borrowing the International Banks don’t trust us they
Think we may go insolvent as a country if the government wants to bung 75 million pounds to BMW in Oxford not to leave on the same day it has to cut 250 from government spending so that the interest rate doesn’t go up on our borrowing right we we’re that near the
Line um but that does mean you know that Things become possible but we’re going to be poor we are poor and we’re going to be poor um the question is can we be poor in a better way and can we get out of being poor um slowly and sensibly
Rather than thinking somehow we’re going to hit another jackpot new North Sea oil another kind of banking you know we we’ve sold almost every kind of thing we can sell other than Parliament itself which I’d sell is a liability it’s falling down um but no I I can’t give you optimism
Because it’s it’s that bad um I can argue with almost any other country in Europe’s in a better situation you do one at the back two half questions think okay one is you know you said 74 was the most equ we’ ever that was what 45 years almost 50 years
Now yeah how long would it take to reverse the direction or the Tom argument England is sorry the UK is in the position is never had a revolution would it take Independence or some other revolutionary thing to get that reversal and yeah take that as you they the same question I reckon
Um it’s almost always takes two or three generations to go from your most unequal height to the best position over over many different countries my favorite is Finland usually divided a hundred years ago uh really took a long time for Finland to to get to get where it is um
Revolutions tend to increase inequality but we haven’t had one for a long time uh the fastest way to become more equal is to lose a war you don’t necessarily want to fight one let alone lose one uh the ideal thing is that the Americans invade bomber City are petrify
That there’s going to be a Revolution take the land off the aristocracy distributed to equally and create the world’s most equal country which is Japan right right the Japanese economic Miracle wasn’t you know it was incredible change but Germany Finland was on the wrong side of a war uh
Whenever you lose a war you’re Elite replaced by a very different Bunch they’re always better um being invaded has a similar effect but not as the tanks rolling over but France um again your Elita altered a bit not as much but they normally collaborated or at least they certainly
Failed um so in a way we’re unlucky in that only Chanel was invaded um but when when the young men did come back um since it’s interesting what people told people here and then what they felt out there when they came back after the second world war we could have
Avoided they did for 30 years behave in a different way and not trust the old uh again um but it’ll take time I’ve made myself very unpopular for saying if you get independence you’ll be the most unequal Nordic country by a mile um and you can’t get out of your blood
And bones now certain feeling that just simply come from having grown up it’s not it’s it’s like being a really heavy smoker you know it’s there I’m afraid you you’ve had it look around us look at this part of Edinburgh look at the schools you know it’s not it’s not that
Different um but it’s about the children and the grandchildren um and we’re very rich still even after all of this not able to borrow um so you can make a utopian case for getting a bit poorer every year which is likely but very rapidly more equal we have more education buildings
Per head than anywhere else in Europe it’s just we don’t use them well 7% are um 7% of children are private that’s about 30% of the you know those School Ru rules falling down is not a problem we’ve got school buildings you just need to move them around uh we’ve got more
Empty bedrooms per person we’ve ever had we’ve got the housing stock you don’t need to build a single one um there’s a huge amount you can do uh but it isn’t about being top again while you’re still thinking that we’ve got to be number one uh that’s hard and all countries that have
Been the center of largest Empire in the world have all taken at least over a hundred years to get over it um so interest actually Inland and policies that we want we imagine in Scot now imag on the great they don’t like one policy no impementation yes there is
Impl on them I I’d say there I say there is an implementation Gap in austerity what what what George wanted baroness fary who I love baroness fary because she’s outspoken as on but I once saw her lecture a very large number of school children and they asked her why she was
Conservative and she said because our taxes are too high because in the Quran it actually says you should tax I think I’ll get this wrong but I think she said 2% but that was trying to bring taxes in from zero right not to get them
Down so um quite a lot of The Architects of austerity wanted it to be twice as big as it it has been there was Kickback we do not have children in the gutters um there’s a whole yeah some things haven’t haven’t gone um but the privatization of universities
Other than that they still got the cap at 9,250 there’s a lot to talk about that cap going bang suddenly £60,000 to come to my university somebody’ll pay it um so so that’s that’s still there um arms and defense you might say that they would like to spend more but I
Think we’re spending more than anywhere else in Europe um so so and there’s an obvious cough safing unless you you think those rusted old submarines are actually protecting anybody that we pay the Americans to maintain we don’t even know work which is quite good um the cruelty over benefits I think is
Working lowest benefits for single adults in Europe most effective sanction regime uh the fines in one year were hired than all the fines for all crimes committed um in Sheriff’s courts magistrates courts in England these were the sanctions for not doing everything correct to get your misly amount of benefit money um David
Freud David Freud was the minister under labor who carried on being Minister when the conservatives came in in 210 right so that’s one po if if your minister or advisor Remains the Same person then it can be really effective and the same with universities South of the Border uh Peter mandelson literally
Handed the B the Baton uh to David Willits and the policy remained the same um so where labor and theories have agreed with each other that’s when it’s been if you like the most vicious kind of cuts I want an altruistic thing where where your parties agree with each other
They do they do good things it does all swing at once so 100 years ago we were incredibly unequal we were in political disarray labor was a new party went all over the place the 30s were awful um but all your parties began to move to the left it was a Tory Health
Minister who was partly responsible for the NHS we’ like to pretend it wasn’t but but they were there beverage was a misogynist eugenesis liberal for his report in 1942 the serves build more Council houses and laboring 1950s they’re all moving all moving to the left together and then they all move
To the right together so that Merkel is far to the left of Jeremy Corbin in terms of policies a conservative in Germany um Corbin never said he’d let 1.5 million syrians in you might think he might have done um he had uh proposals in the manifestos of
2017 and 2019 which didn’t quite get us the German levels of redistribution under Merle um okay F in4 talking the housing crisis the next year you came back you talking about the inequality crisis well your talk has been just as depressing must have a wealth tax it’s the only way
Yeah for anything to do you can get somewhere you know new first new labor had that much money they were had two Wars and then course BRS final thing many builds it’s unbelievable so it has to be a wealth tax or nothing no I I agree we we we
Need a wealth tax now uh simply because we can’t borrow you know 5.5% over 30 years is simply too high and we need a wealth we’re going to have to bail temp’s water out when they go bust in a few months time you know just to get the
Sewage taken away from my house that’s my water company and because I I want drinking water you know it so so we need one I quite like wealth taxes anyway because I’m a lefty however the interesting thing is that those Nordic countries well all an interestingly there are five
Countries in the mainland of Europe that are now more equal than the five more Equitable than the five Nordic countries um which are Iceland Denmark Norway Sweden and Finland and five which are almost as equal were whisker including Germany and France so essentially we got 15 Nordic countries but in in those
Classic Nordic Nordic countries uh wealth inequalities are quite high but they do really well because income inequalities are low and the wealthy are really controlled which means they might own a big estate but they have to let people walk across it but they still own it they can’t own the
Newspapers that where the deal gets a bit dirty I think is with house prices when you look at the middle of Helsinki and Stockholm and Oslo and the quiet deal between the right and the left is we’ll let your houses big ably expensive in the middle of our Capital Cities as
Long as nobody is homeless and we have decent Council housing with saers in each one in Finland um so there’s a an accommodation there’s a really interesting political accommodation in what are currently the most income equator countries which is we’re going to tax you really highly you’re all going to go to school
Together uh we won’t have S but we’ll let you hold on to a little bit of your wealth as long as you don’t try and stop this now personally I don’t think wealth makes people very happy but it’s easy for me to say that see most people most
People think it would but wealth tax and imagine if the Tores brought one in and of course sunx one skill the only thing he actually knows the thing he’s been trained at since he was 22 is Is wealth tax avoidance that’s his that’s in a sense what he’s worked in
You know that they’re incredibly well equipped to bring a wealth tax in um properly in a fair way and you do it in the same way that income tax was first introduced it’s a temporary emergency um but how would I vote this is a game I’ve been playing with
Myself if the Tories said that they’re going to go for a wealth tax and labor wouldn’t how do I vote you know I I and it feels very very dirty but I would find it hard would find it very hard not to go let’s just give him a tick let’s just encourage it
Um totally ignore the promise of the yeah the 350 million on the side of the bus except that the promis in the manifesto would would have fed into the international interest rates so we’re not the only audience if you’re telling the people who are gambling money worldwide this is
What you’re going to do and they look at Britain and say oh finally they’re going to bring in a little wealth tax which other countries have they’re taking this seriously then you might say okay we’ll lend you at 5% rather than 5.5 but you don’t do it when you
Win well you’re completely untrustworthy then aren’t you six 7% interest so that they don’t have the leeway we’re not an independent sovereign country we can’t just print money do we print money the food’s not going to arrive um we w’t be to borrow and we have to borrow because
We’re in such a bad uh State um but I’m being you can’t predict the future it’s just what you can do is say that in the past but and always the place which is work almost always doesn’t end up being worse in five years time just by chance and
Randomness it takes a lot of effort to keep on making things as bad as this you know it’s really hard I said thater 30% of the population benefited right it’s it’s now really not all of the 1% are financially benefiting some older people who have got savings
Look like they’re getting better off but they got families um so we’re down to benefiting about three quarters of the 1% and it’s quite hard to get the population to carry on behaving like you want them to behave while they’re watching their living standards fall and actually and they’re gr and seeing their
Grandchildren and then what you do is you tell them oh the problem for your grandchildren is it’s all the immigrants taking their jobs their school places their houses you know if we only stop immigration it’ll all be fine for the grandchildren um and you can divert people for a few
Decades on hating immigrants but it doesn’t carry on working what do you think of the um Universal basic income I I think it’s the equivalent of suggesting unemployment benefit around 1888 so 1888 was when we first had unemployment being recognized as an issue and the first people to suggest
Unemployment benefit were laughed out of court this wouldn’t work um loads of experiments the latest one I saw is Kenya uh which was fairly successful some people really don’t like it um Wales has got a big one going on at the moment finland’s in the number you bring
It in at a low level uh you don’t have to bring it in at a level you can live off the EU could do this if you imagine I don’t know 3,000 Euros a year across for every adult in the EU that means a lot on the periphery of
Europe which is an encouragement to stay on that small island in the aan which is really nice but um it’s green because essentially it it tells you if you want to work less you can but you’re going to be worse off because it will never give you what work will give
You but you’re not going to starve so if we want to reduce consumption it it makes sense so there are there are lots of of reasons for it but it’ll have to come in as a low level and it’ll never cover the needs of anybody with additional needs if you’re disabled it
Doesn’t cover but but I think it makes as much sense as unemployment benefit makes sense and unemployment benefit makes makes sense we just don’t need everybody working we haven’t needed everybody working for quite a long time you know the the when I was young my dad
Took me to the car factory where 40,000 men worked to scare me into working hard at school uh now that car factory the one we’ve bunged BMW 75 million to keep has 1,200 beautiful robots they’re all of a particular size it’s the exact size you can fit in the back of an
Articulated Lorry so you can move the factory um and they’re silent and they’re making electric Minis and you can say oh we can get everybody to do another job but you you need people do less you’re making less so I’m I’m very very for it but it’s
It’s how it comes in who does it first how you how you and we have it also all you know pension credit guarantee for pensioners we child benefit for everybody was one and then we took it away from people have a certain salary um so there very is basic
Income s already but I’m yeah favorable sorry okay and it’s at Point do you think that there to keep in this forward oh yeah that’s great last question um so I’ve written an article on one of the podcasts I was commissioned by the conversation to do
It on um the one that Ed BS and George Osborne does and they asked me to write an article before it started and I said no I I’m going to make myself listen to the first three episodes uh so you can Google that just you know Danny ding podcast conversation
And see so that one’s terrible except that you have the two of them telling each other how wonderful they are uh and then it’s the same company it’s Gary liner’s company that does this you’ve got Tom Holland and Dominick sanbrook I think and then what’s the
Third one Alis Campbell and Ry okay it’s all men all tend to be fairly rightwing warmongering men all the GRE each other um generally private school um surviving Society Google surviving Society the podcast uh it’s three young people in London uh it’s much more realistic it’s quite funny but there are loads and
Loads none of them of course are as big as those three commercial ones um but there are there are lots they tend to be aimed at a market of people in their 30s and 20s they tend to fit jogging or other activities I don’t do um but but they’re there and there’s
A ple or you can listen to some in the states and they’re they’re wonderful um and different uh I was going to pitch one uh which is called the rest is geography uh which will be everything the planet green whatever but but my pitch to Gary Lin was it wouldn’t be me
Uh they’d be young for a start they’d both be women um and much more and they’d be talking about the environment but everything else on the planet and the whole point was that they’d be completely different from the big three uh podcasts of smoke self-serving men who were all in power
During this period where we really mucked everything up and they think we’re going to listen to them um so there are lots but surviving Society my last plug just Google surviving Society podcast uh because that’s my favorite one thank you thank you very much