Confronting everyday sexism

This is a Global Player original podcast Four minutes after ten is the time. There is a word that I only discovered well I knew the word before, but I didn't know its application in this context. and that word is mesh How closely have you been paying attention to this program over the last couple of years? Do you know in what context I discovered the correct usage of the word mesh I find this image that I'm about to create in your mind absolutely fascinating Um I'm talking about two cogs turning indpendently of each other or one cock turning. actuallyctually let me start again Are you still with me at the back? One cock is turning And the cog very, very nearr is not. Do you know why? because the cogs have not meshed. It's not bite or joined or melded or anything like that. The correct technical word to use and this could be your If you haven't heard me demonstrate a slightly bizarre enthusiasm for this work or indeed this fact. If you haven't heard me do that before, then This could be the thing you take away from today's program that you didn't have before. I like to think we learn something from each other every day. So two cocks mesh I am fascinated by that to as I said, a slightly bizarre degree because I see it in the news so often The things that mesh and the things that don't. So you've got a cog that's spinning furiously and it should have meshed the entire country should have responded to that story. That's the spinning cog. The rest of society is the other cog. And once those two cogs mesh then society wakes up to the importance of the story that set the first cog spinning That's all right. Isn't it? That works. That's pretty good, right H's one front page today plot to burn down Starmer's home linked to Russian mastermind I'm going to say that again. That's the front page of one of our newspapers this morning burn down Starmer's home linked to Russian mastermind. is a spinning coke My first band was called, No, forget it I've been banned from doing that joke by one of my children. My first band was called the spinning cog's Dad, No, no more. Eough. Eough. That cog should, well, that cog is, in my mind, spinning like a dervish plot to burn down Starmer's home linked to Russian mastermind. and there's more. Prime Minister also targeted by sex worker conspiracies straight from Putin's playbook My mate Gary Sent me a photograph the other day because I've told some of my friends, how fascinated I am by something I haven't been able to talk to you about on air. which is a conspiracy theory surrounding the A arson attack up Ponkeo Starmer and the prosecution which concluded successfully yesterday of the men responsible Growing up that they were male prostitutes or rent boys that were seeking revenge on Kia Stara for, I don't know, not paying them or something. Now, if this is the very first you've heard of this story Is it you? Is it the first you've heard of it? That's interesting because I notice these things in my inbox. Keith's too busy pressing buttons and second guessing my next mistake to pay much attention to what's in the inbox. And of course, if I don't read it out, Keith doesn't see it Keith doesn't know about it I can tell from my inbox when something very weird is happening And I noticed a few months ago The same sort of people that were telling me that phone masks call COVID cause COVID or that brown or black people are responsible for all the crime in this country, or that London is somehow not a nice place to visit, or that I think a little oddly about UleS quite a lot of them UleS quite a lot at the moment. I'll tell you why shortly, but precisely the same sort of people who thought that Ulez was going to be the end of civilization as we know it and then went absolutely and this sadly includes an awful lot of people in my profession. They were absolutely silent within about five minutes of it being introduced when it turned out that they were either bareface liars or gullible mugs who'd fallen for all manner of disinformation. Oh, something else useful for you to take away from today's show. I am spoiling you today. I'll be getting the Ferrero Rose out next. If you want to remember the difference Bet disinformation and misinformation, and a recent speech by the mayor of London suggests I should have given him this note last time he was in the studio. It's really easy, D for deliberate D for deliberate. So disinformation is deliberate lies designed to ferment U activity designed to create an actual response. So disinformation deliberate lies misinformation accident accidental lies. If you want to remember the difference between disinformation and misinformation My gift to you today is D four deliberate D for deliberate And then you'll remember, D for deliberate, D for disinformation. The disinformation is deliberate. So I don't know whether the people that were wanging on about Olez were indulging in disinformation or misinformation, whether they were just gullible mugs or whether they were dangerous agitators, trying to because the mayor is a Muslim and the mayor is brown and he was introducing something to improve the air that we all breathe Some people persuaded themselves that that was a bad thing to do. and that happened on the internet. that happened on social media. That happened more, I suspect than anywhere else U Elon Musk's perf My friend Gary was in Folkstone at the weekend, sent me a picture of some graffiti or if you prefer a graffito. Sent me a picture of a graffito. in bright red paint that is that contains emblazons the legend Kia S and then a heart. So Kia S Kir is speelt wrong. whichich is a shame, really, but you know, not the biggest element of this story. Kia S Loves Rnt boys with a big picture of a heart And the reason Gary saident me that is not because we're both weird But it's because last time I saw him, I was telling him, this is this is a really big story. This is a really big example Oh Um M for mistaken as well you can have. So D for deliberate M for mistaken. there's your perfect solution to disinformation and misinformation. But I was telling Gary last time I saw him that this is a really, really powerful example of how lord, and used an entirely inappropriate word there How vanjaxed we are, how absolutely Bamjxted we are So a process that for me probably began with people claiming that phone masks caused COVID has gathered pace with every passing year, hasn't it? since that moment. to a point where an arson attack upon properties owned by our own prime Mister have has its roots in Moscow a Russian Mastermind using a telegram account, a Russian speaking telegram account to promise payment inrypt cryptocurrency. There it is again, cryptocurrency. Who's the politician who took five million quids secretly from a cryptocurrency billionaire and then didn't tell anybody about it and shortly after accepting the money announced policies that would be I'll give you a clue. The policies have been removed from the website. I'll give you another clue. It's the same bloke that claims mainstream media somehow misrepresents his words by playing them out And reminding you it's the same bloke that took eightyQuid to promote the IRA, that bloke, who claims that his words are o, Nigel Farich, that's the fella. Another cryptocurrency angle to this story and another Moscow angle to this story. Isn't it weird How often those three points of the triangle pop into your mind? I say crypto, you say Farich. I say Moscow, you say Nigel As far as I know, he doesn't have anything to do with this story, but of course who knows becausecause he doesn't tell you when people have paid him money to get involved in certain things or not Two men found guilty of conspiring to carry out arson attacks on properties connected with our prime Minister Investigators now exploring suspected links to Moscow. Russian intelligence agents have previously commissioned attacks in Britain using similar methods That is huge to me. That is a cog that is spinning at about a million miles an hour cog should be meshing. I turn to my other front pages and it is U that guardian doesn't have it, the mail doesn't have it. I mean look, it gets good coverage. The telegraph, to be fair, which I' have often told you somehow manages to sustain a decent news operation while having an opinion desk that is absolutely crackers. they go in on it properly. Russian diplomat quotes linked to firebomb attack on PM's home. But it's the I newspaper that does the best job. on this story. and I'm not just saying that because I've recently signed up to write a column for them every week I'm saying it because they've got Lizz Didden as their security correspondent and she's absolutely brilliant on all of this stuff, whether misinformation or disinformation So I don't know if you knew about this. Keith didn't and he sits a few yards away from me every day. But I have been obsessed for a while. with the number of people messaging me to say I can't believe you're not talking. You're not going to talk about the Rnt boys are you? And I couldn't even tell you why I couldn't talk about it becausecause it was a live cat well, A because it was complete rollock be because it was a live case, it was a live criminal case. And it occurred to me that that becomes a sort of self fulfilling prophecy. So you read some utter bilge on the internet about your own prime Mister being promoted by people who wish harm upon our country, by foreign state actors wishing harm upon our country and being amplified by traitors. to the British cause Inevitably Yaxley Lennon's fingerprints are all over this story The idea that K Stama had been targeted by unhappy rent boys over A failure to pay bills for their services In a normal country, less than a nanosecond of attention And yet and yet I think it's pretty huge. I think it's pretty widespread, not just because of what I've seen in my inbox, not just because of what my friend Gary photographed under Folkone Pier last weekend, not just because of what came out in court yesterday, but also because of what we know about our country. What we know about people like Elon Musk and JD Vant are doing to our body politic, are infesting our national conversation with lies whether it's threats to freedom of speech, or whether it is claims that London is lawless And that's why I think about Ulez quite a lot The claim that Olez was designed, I can't even remember what they claimed when they sort of ran around the place, chopping down cameras and the lad from Louis, who wasn't Louis was shooting his mouth off all the time about something or other and how it was a grave threat to thisist that I mean, it was utter Rolex. It was Rollx then, it's Rolex now. Do you know that we have calls for celebration This week, the number of emergency hospital admissions with breathing related difficulties in this city that I call home plummeted In a normal country, we'd be celebrating that. But of course all the people that were railing against Lulez are the same people that brought you Brexit and brought you Boris Johnson and brought you Liz Truss and brought you austerity and told you Donald Trump was a genius and told you Benjamin Netanyahu who could be trusted All of those people were anti Ulez, so they're never going to turn around and say, o, sorry think Little Johns not going to be writing an article about how everybody owes Sadik Khan an apology because Olez has been a glorious success. They're just going to pretend it never happened, just like they're pretending that the debacle in Iran never happened and writing about other things instead It's almost like there's a pattern Isn't there? It's almost like there's a pattern But I don't actually know what to do about it. And as ever on the program is where you come in I I want to know three things So this is the story, right? A conspiracy theory that claimed that the arsonists convicted yesterday were male prostitutes seeking revenge on Kia Starma That is the story. That is the extraordinary context or subtext to the conviction yesterday of a Ukrainian construction worker who'd been tasked with setting three fires targeting Sir Kia Stahmer's former homes and a car also linked to him by a Russia linked online account working to foment political division in the UK. Do you see what I mean about the cog We had a phone in last week about what this threat is that we're all supposed to be animated by, the threat to our safety that prompted John Healley and then Al Kans to resign as defence ministers. What is this threat Of course it comes from Russia more than anywhere else. And of course the first signs of it emerged during the Brexit referendum. So of course the massive majority of our media can't go near it because they were either poo pooing the reality of what was going on or pretending not to believe it. Or if you're Andrew Neil issuing misogynistic abuse towards Carol Cadwaller for being one of the first people to blow the whistle on what Russia was doing to us. Do you think it was an accident that your Auntie Doris' Facebook page started filling up? with anti EU propaganda in the twenty four hours before she marched into the polling bost to vote to leave the European Union. Of course it flipping, wasn't it? Some of it was paid for by Dominic Cummings, and God only knows where the rest of it came from because the companies responsible for it subsequently disappear. So we are under threat from Russia. They are interfering with our democracy. Stephen Yaxley Lenin was in Moscow last week with his trotters up with Elon Musk's father, who is best known for having impregnated his own stepdaughter twice. hashtag Save our women, prrotect our girls So why is that cold not meshing How can that cog be spinning so fast And it's not meshing The country is not waking up to what is going on. I He's the son of a senior Russian operator, a senior Russian politician the lad that they've got on the hook for this They arere literally boasting about things that his dad gives him access to. It's got everything this. It could be a Mc Heron novel or a James Bond film And they are paying people in this country to set fire to our own prime Mister's property and then fomenting m disinformation Designed to make people believe that he has only been targeted because he doesn't pay his bills to male prostitutes Hello. Anyway, here's Nigel Farres to tell you why We should all be nicer to Russia and Vladimir Putin is the politician in the world he admires most. And also, what's his favourite biscuit? It's incredible, right? And it goes hand in hand with all the other stuff He also encouraged these people, these men who were living in London Alongside the orders to commit arson attacks, he also encouraged them to put up posters for a fake far right group and to spray anti Muslim graffiti around our country around our cabin Meshing yet spinning, not messhing. This might be the most important thing going on in our world at the moment. This might be the most important thing going on in our country at the moment Foreign sponsored, foreign state sponsored activists notot only trying to set fire to our Prime Minister's property I mean, nothing says patriotism, like being quiet about that while you're shinning up a lamppost to stick a nylon flag outside a house of somebody who doesn't want it there This is happening under our noses and it's happening on the platforms that the government has announced this week that it is going to Um address if you're under sixteen. But mum and dad, Mum and dad who believe that Kir Starmer's house was set on fire because he doesn't pay his rent booyys bills. They can still spend their lives scrolling through Twitter and Facebook and the rest of it. But the kids can't listen, I love the proposals announced yesterday. Don't get me wrong But the more I think about it, the more I can't help thinking that we should have extended it to anybody under a hundred Social media should be accessible only to people over a hundred years of age On just the conspiracy theory that falsely claimed that the arsonists who targeted Sakir Stara were male prostitutes seeking revenge on the Prime Minister was spread through Russian disinformation networks, Lizzy Durden. reports in the IPaper to date, Panorama have done it as well. The Fancial Times have covered it as well. But what do those three outlets have in common They're not read by idiots or watched by idiots. A comeome on, James. You've got to get a better word than idiot here. Who am I talking about That's the first topic this morning. Who am I talking about? Who do you know that believes this stuff. And what are they like? zero three four five sixzero sixzero nine seven three. So we did it with COVID and the phone masks and it was illuminating and heartbreaking in equal measure. You know people who believe that Kir Stammer's house was targeted because he didn't pay his rent boy bills. Who are they How widespread is this conspiracy theory? zero three four five, six zero sixzero nine seven three. Who do you know that believes it? ero three four five six zero sixzero nine seven three. And finally How do he battle it? How do we help caller yesterday Lovely call yesterday from A lad who was from Ipswich working in Nottingam, talking about how he couldn't get off social media. He turns it off and he comes back because he wanted to help. He wanted to do something. He wanted to sort of fight this tidal wave of filth and disinformation and lies and racism that's swamping all of us at the moment couldn't like, how you do? How do you do it? Someone who believes that Kir Starmer' Fer home was set on fire. I think his sister in law was inside at the time because he didn't pay his rent boy bills What are they like? Kelvin and Ipsswich I'm thinking of What is going on here? How widespread was? didid this conspiracy theory reach you? And if so, how? Was it a person or a platform that brought it into your life ero three four five, six z I'll stop saying the number. You know it by now So how did this conspiracy theory get into your life? How widespread is it Tell me about the person you know, or perhaps you are that person yourself How the hell did you end up believing such obvious and utter bilge And what can the rest of us do about it? Because I couldn't do anything until today. And some days when we're discussing stuff like this, I look away. I think, I can't be doing with that. But what do we do? How do you counter this level? How do you get the cogs to mesh? How do you get the cogs to mesh It's twenty five minutes after ten and it is frankly extraordinary that a story like this can reach to the very top of our society to our elected prrime Minister. property linked to him targeted by arsonists in the potential pay Oh state sponsored Russian actors That's a story in and of itself, but the online, the way that British people joined in with the attendant disinformation, the claim that He had been targeted by these men because they were disaffected or unpaid rent boys. is I mean, you can tell. I'm actually you wouldn't know it because I just did a twenty two minute monologue, but I am lost for words about what to say next How can we be so chuffing stupid How have we allowed our brains to be boiled to mush like this? And who am I talking about Am I talking about you Am I talking about Your mum Your mum said this to you? Oh yes, you know why that is, don't you do. Nice old mum. Nice old momum, greatreat with the grandkids. Oh, you know why that is, don't you? They're Rem booys and Kirstara didn't pay. That's the point. This isn't just the sort of ranting lunatics Anymore. This is your mum It's your uncle Keith. It's your Auntie Doris How do they end up believing it Helen's in bonus in Scotland. Helen, what would you like to say? Hi Jane. Hello. So this theory actually came to my attention a few weeks ago. So I want to be a bit careful because I do really like this guy. and he's really talented.ically he's a tattoo artist that I go to. he's like world class. don't give away I mean, just for your I don't care. You can name him if you want, but just terms if you're worried about that, don't give me too much details. Sure. So basically' been I've had a few day sessions with him, so you're talking seven eight hours at a time And from the first session, and this was a few years ago, we started a process of building a sort of sleeve. and he just started spilling off all these different conspiracy theories. I mean, about everything, like Paul McCartney being dead, you know all the classic. But my last session was a few weeks ago and this one came up And I was just, yeah, get I find I always know every time I go into see him now, I'm always like, okay, what's it going to be this time? you know, what's it going to be? And the reason I'm sort of calling is because I wouldn't put someone of his maybe profession and his world experience because he travels around the world doing what he does. He comes across all sorts of different people, you know, very inclusive, I would say. and suddenly this is coming out and it's not the sort of you know, you sort of typically associate this with You far voting name I don't anymore. Do you know, oddly, I'll tell you why and it's a really weird one Ian Duncan Smith with you Les, I think a lot of roads lead back to Ulez, but when Ian Duncan Smith essentially said that he's happy for residents to attack Ulez cameras or he understood residents that attacked OLleS cameras. I just found myself thinking this is not confined to the darker corners of the internet. Comments were reported of him saying he was happy for his constituents to quotes, cement up the cameras or put plastic bags over them because they are facing an imposition that no one wants and they have been lied to about it. He later told the Evening Standard that he does not condone law breaking of any kind, but of course, as typical politicians speak, putting plastic bags may not be probably is actually a crime, but cementing them up certainly is so this is the point I want to make this morning with your help and everybody else's This is not confined to any constituency of people anymore. I think everyone is vulnerable and susceptible to it. Everyone It's true, and it's really hard because you sit there and obviously you're in a vulnerable position because someone's got a needle in your arm and you know you don't want to upset them. How did he introduce the subject? What did he say? I think when we first as in this particular theory or conspiracy theories in general This one, the Rnt Boys Right, because I would say we set it up years ago when it was like, oh, I love a good conspiracy theory because I'm interested in them because I find of he believes it. it. But yeah, but then so since then he's kind of built up this idea that we're both in this world and we both you know What did he say? How did he say? see what does he do? Does he go o Oh, gosh, have you heard haveave you heard that kid? Yeah And he just doesn't question he never questions anything. How did you get through life not questioning anything like that? dont must be a radiohost It very much comes across more like we're the idiots are thinking It's not true. Yeah. You know, we're all going to find this out soon. you know, where it's all going to come out soon You know, and it's all yeah, it's very much like he's the one in the no Okay, I mean, I get that. and it applies to all of it. and it is very much, I think the first taste I got of it probably and I told you this at the time A lad was at school with in the nineteen eighties, early eighties even, got in touch, first time in forty years because he'd seen a video explaining that COVID was caused by phone masks and he said, you're the only person I know in the media And this looks real, Is it true? And I wrote straight back to him and I gave him chapter and verse and all the links that he needed. And I just said, No, of course it's not But it's the same thing, right? And I can't call them idiots. This is the point. That's why I told myself off a minute ago, It's the point Helen makes they They're not idots. It's your auntie Doris.'ve come up with some other name Y your uncle Jo Your uncool b. Your auntie Mary It it is it is a promise What do you do to help? How do How the hell do you help? And what if you're having a relationship with this person that goes further than them being your tattoo artist? which can be quite an intimate relationship as I understand it, partarticularly if you're having a full sleeve done. But what if it's your boyfriend? What if your wife says, you remember I haven't spoken about her in ages? I was obsessed with her for about six months last year when I did jewelry service in Isleworth and I'm sitting at the table Having a bit of a chat with some of my fellow non jurers I never got on a jury, I was there for nearly two weeks. Absolutely outrageous behaviour And at the table next to me, a woman who just arrived a second weeker jury service was telling everybody What was she telling everybody, Keith? She was telling everybody that Michelle Obama was a man whichich of course, was shouted by an idiot from and I think we can call him an idiot, but by a UFC fighter on the White House lawn at the weekend. and that Volodyy Zelensky was spending all the money that he was being sent on yachts and he owns the three biggest yachts in the world. And she was, you know, a twin set and pearl person. She was You know, a well turned out, well spoken All of those things that I think need to be highlighted to stress how widespread this nonsense is. And of course, That must have had some roots in Russia as well. Wh? Why would you be going after Volodyyr Zelensky Jh Stratford's got your headline ten thirty five is the time. So Russian sponsored conspiracy to set fire to property owned by the democratically elected British Prime Minister is on the front page of one newspaper today Where are all the patriots? Where are all the hashtags? Where are all the people who care deeply about this country? And obviously some of them are halfway up a lamppost with their knickers around their neck. But where are the rest of them Where are the rest of them? I mean, where are the people who care about this country care about its safety, care about its security Here is evidence of not only attacks directed personally at our elected Pime Minister but also of attempts to completely malign and misrepresent him as a victim of crime. this incredibly widespread conspiracy theory that the arsonists who targeted Seriia Stara were male prostitutes seeking revenge on a former customer And you know someone who believes that. You might not know that you know someone who believes it, but if you've got more than two hundred friends on Facebook, you probably know someone who believes it. It's so widespread Um, Tell me about the person you know who believes it, but also what do we do? How do we start to Be Kim led be to Joe Cox's sister and indeed her widower Brandon Cox talking about how the country is a lot more divided at the moment than it was even when Joe Cox was assassinated by a white supremacist murderer on the morning that Nigel Farrage unveiled his breaking point poster No real mystery as to why But you don't undo division and hideousness like this until you agree on the truth You have to agree on the truth. You can disagree about everything else, but you have to agree on the facts, you have to agree on the truth And this is so utterly outrageously false And so widely disseminated and believed of course it speaks directly to directly to and The the kind of division that we're talking about. ten thirty seven is the time. Matt's in Bradford, Matt, what do you want to say? Oh thanks so much for having me on. sorry, I'm a bit I' say a bit nervous I'm nervousreck. It's only me. You always say that and yes, still terrifying. Yeah, it's funny, you know, when you it really, really you hit a chord this morning, just I had to ring off. I just thought I've got a few friends from absute different groups who don't tend to socialize directly with each other, all of which have, when on occasion, we've discussed it gone into this rent boy thing. This has been going about for it must be well over a year now. It really must have. and O the occasions, I've bothered to challenge it because we do have differing stances on things, especially with me listening to you every day as well. C't Hug I know. It isn't, it is't, No, notot for my friendships. anyway. Yeah, I mean, in the way that I mean, I've been really astonished. And what I mean, as I just said to your colleague, then, just I think it enters into there's a homophobic streak to it. There's no doubt about it. L the definitely, I think therere where I'm not I wouldn't like to say how some of my mates talk about it, but they're very quick to adopt all sorts of sort of homophobic slurs, et cetera in regards to discussing this topic. I think that's a big part, but also pushing them towards a sort of right wing feel and agenda. I that's another I think that's a big part of it. I think that sits in the background. I mean, the way I challenged it was thinking, well I've never came I mean, I'm not on social media myself. I've never been on it. I knew about this one Because it breached the cordon Sanitire I get the message. I don't get many. I get the message saying U You know, why aren't you talking about this O the same people. I've got two messages today saying, Ohh, it's just like you believing Operation Midland when the police describe the allegations of Cole Beach as being credible and true.. And apparently it's exactly the same to think that the police are telling the truth about allegations of child sex abuse as it is to think that some Avatar on social media is telling the truth about Kistamma being attacked by disaffected RM booys. And if I click on the history of the kind of people that send in messages like that, it's all there. It's all there. They're farage fans, They're racists, they're homophobed. It's all there. They don't see it. I mean, one thing I always notice about it is they'll come out with homophobic stuff, they'll come out with racist stuff But they will always straightw away caveat it with, I'm not a racist or I'm not a homophobe or whatever. What do they think there are? What do they think get to the tagline? That's what I find so funny is they find the tagline offensive, yet constantly sort of engaging in something that would have anyone attribute that tagline to them I just think it's It's so difficult to comprehend. I mean my maze, I mean the way I put it, I said, L, do you really think the amount of people who'se resonetre as media outlets in some cases, I won't name them know is to see the Labour Party out of government as swiftly as possible, wouldouldn't be all over this like they had a cintilla of truth in it, a single cintilla of truth.'s what I said you're so foolish to think they wouldn't be indulging themselves l What they did with his field, bought a field for his disabled mother to look after donkeys and he accepted some free spectacles from a Labour partarty peer There's just always a distortion. There's always just something. I mean, to be honest, it brings tears to your eyes because you know these lads I refer to are my dear mates. Well, a lot of people are asking why they're still your dear mates, but I understand why They are because I've known them for twenty thirty just they're my boys Yeah, I mean, and you know, I can always set aside stuff like that because I see a person in other regards. All right. It's a nasty nasty sort of element of your personality to possess, but I can look past it when you're a decent honest, you're not a thief, you do ab genuinely care. And this has been done to them. I think this is a really important point, isn't it? This has been done to them. They're adamant. they've made theirinds up themselves There is No there is Exactly it. I mean, there's just I've tried so hard to sort of just try and dispel the theories, but o James, I tell you what, it's amazing how little they listen to your show but how quickly they are to start throwing your name in my direct. Well I have an extraordinary presence on social media which when I say it's amazing how you can I mean, honestly when they talk about you with viscal hatred and I'm like Do you listen to him? don't listen I' seen I've seen the clips. I've seen Well, you're obviously being fed as certain. I mean, you don't know what sort of clips they're being fed. It could be AI generated for all you're aware of what's going online. This is also true. but I mean I mean part of the reason for that is that there is there are hardly any offers. That's the mad thing about what is going on online is that you look at the people who I suppose they would describe as being on the right side of these sorts of stories, and the list is as long as your arm. And of course it includes the people who are dedicated to misleading the British public or radicalizing the British public or making everybody more racist. They can't see. I mean, that's what I said. I mean they just cannot see the destabilization that they're contributing to. I mean It beggars belief, I keep just thinking what is going on with these I mean some of these people in prominent like you know political life, etcetera are just they're riding a tiger that they won't be able to control. No hostages puts it well. It's almost as though illiberals and oligarchs use moral panics and false accusations to stigmatize their opponents while creating the impression that liberals, minorities, academics and trade unionists are part of a shadowy for secretly controlling society. And this is really good. whether it's Ulez, the Great Replacement, five G, the Great Ret, Eurrabia, cultural Marxism, gender ideology, woke or two tier policing, The pattern is remarkably consistent. They promote distrust and paranoia. they entice people with a promise of secret knowledge and then they watch as disorder unfolds. and you raised it. so just to address the reason why I'm such a hero to these people It's because there's only me and Carol Volderman left I think I think you are completely right and people just you know, I hear it. I hear so many people that I still think a decent What do you do Do you what do you do? Sorry, I'm interrupting you. do what do you give up? Do you just talk about the football instead? I I really do because it's not just that the discussion never goes in a in a sort of it becomes so heated. It becomes so I don't know, J just worrying. I mean, they are so sort of set in stone as far as their position on this matter. There's no tellion. And this won' change today. theyunatic? What will they do today? Will they just move on from it to something else like they have with OleE? So when the result came out and we now know where we are with it, we can discuss it more openly so tempted to send them a little screenshot of it, say no mention of Rent Bys in this particular report. And I just thought What am I getting from think we done that.'s just say annoyed That's okay. Don't worry donon't worry. Yeah, yeah, more annoyed, you know, they' they're more they they they find it almost funny that I'm sort of more guck Oh, it's upsetting all the right people That's upsetting. I always remember that call. I haven't mentioned it for years when Donald Trump was in London last time lying And he rang in to say, Ohh, I love it. I love it. I know he's lying, but he lo the fact that it upsets people like you and Sadi Khan. And Sadk Khan is a large part of this sort of conspiracy network, of course, because Ulez was one of the first real breakouts from the online world into the into the real world. and the evidence is there. So social media posts, YouTube videos and then on the twenty second of M, um a Russian news site sanctioned by the European Union last year for being quotes under the permanent control of the Russian leadership under the permanent control of the Russian leadership amplified conspiracy theory amplified And of course, inevitably the first example they found of it was an ex account that describes itself as a wait for it, a British patriot. claiming that it was an angry unpaid rent boy that had set fire to to Kistama's property. and there it goes, prominent far right activists, some of whose names you will know, some of whose names you won't know, amplifying all of it It's insane, right? And the reason why we have to talk about this is because Matt is not alone. In fact, Paul's already been in touch to say, this lad is exactly the same as me. I've got good mates who just can't see what's going Um, It's mad. I don't know what other word to use But they are normal people that just told andt rement They're just they're just normal men. They are. I know that the homophobic stuff isn't something you feel But you get pushed into these positions, you get manipulated into these positions. That is literally what disinformation is designed to do. It is deliberately designed. push you into bogus positions that then become dangerous because of the things that you will do because you believe I don't know that Henry Novak's killer was an immigrant or that the Southport murderer was a refugee. and even of course if they had been It wouldn't justify attacking completely innocent people instead What we saw on the streets of Belfast, what we've seen on the streets Oh South Ple what we've seen everywhere, fermented by all the same people who spread Quite all the same people, some of them still manag to walk a tightrope of bogus respectability So what do you do to it? do you do? Well how do you deal with this? Oho three, four five, six zero six zero nine seven three. And can we find the most unbigoted person who believes it. So like your mum who's not homophobic, you might be gay. Your uncle, your dad, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, who don't buy into all the other stuff. They're not racist, they're not, but they fell for the Rnt boy story. They fell for the male prostitute story And just have a little look at why Because I'll say it again, I don't think there's anything more important in the news today than this story notot just because of what it tells us, regarding what's gone on What it tells us about what's still going on ten forty eight It is ten fifty one and actually Lenin was shilling these Kremlin lies yesterday. on social media. I don't know whether he's back in the country, isn't it? He' finished holiday with Elon Musk's father, who is best known for impregnating his own stepdaughter twice hashtag, save our children, hashtag, prrotect our women. And he's back on social media. calling the arsonists who attacked our Prime Minister's property quotes, models end, quotes and Ferenting the idea. and I mean he's got some fans in my inbox, I can see, a couple, but it's so dispiriting to click on them. and see that they believe all the other stuff as well How hard is it to let go? Maybe we need to talk to more people who've managed to let go I mean, how liberating would it be? How often do you think of the bloke we spoke to ten years ago? Just under ten years ago, because it was in the immediate aftermath of Brexit and his wife had told him to put his laptop away That was it His wife did not like what he had become and he did not like what his wife was saying to him He did not like what he saw when he looked at himself through his wife's eyes. And he said, I just put it under the sofa, James. You ever do that, don't you? You lose your laptop because it just slides under the sofa so neatly. And if it slides a little bit further back, you can't reach it anymore and you have to lift the whole thing. But anyway, I digress. just put his laptop away and I said, What happened? Have we still got that call some make a list of the calls over the last twenty years that just reach parts that other callers never reached. It's impossible to predict. No algorithm could do it Sometimes they touch you, sometimes they don't. Two people could tell the same story using the same words, but in slightly different ways One of the million reasons why I love my job, why I love my job and And he just put his laptop away I didn't g on it for a week. I said, what happened? And he goes, I'm fine now I'm happy again I was Thinking of that yesterday when we spoke to Kelvin who's coming at it from a very different angle. He is an opponent of all the stuff that that other caller was accessing online, all of the invitations to hate, all of the lies, all of the bigotries. all of the Yaxy Lenin propaganda, all of the Kremlin sponsored disinformation, all of the farage friendly fetishization of flags and similar and demonization of all foreigners now. They've given up pretending that it was just European Union. People coming here under freedom of movement, they've certainly given up pretending that they were Quranic scholars who were profoundly concerned about Islamic doctrines and didn't have any problem at all with the people It was just theid given up on pretending that it had nothing to do with skin color or nothing to do with where you were born. They're full on racist now It's happened quite slowly. so they can announce as reform have done using honest Bob Genereick to announce it because Farage is still hiding from all but the most cozy and cuddderly of questioning. Generix announcing that firms are going to be taxed more if they hire people that weren't born here Presumably that means I can't give the Dems a Harby a seat in Parlient because he wasn't born here. Oh, and Farg's girlfriend won't able to work for the party. in the way that she worked for him when he was in Brussels, because she wasn't born here either. Nor was his last wife. It's just insane these laws, these ideas, these policies, but of course there's nothing sane about racism, but I think sayane people fall for some of these stories and This is Male prostitute story is an absolute peach of an example, one of the best examples tenen fifty four is the time. Why do people want to believe it is a message. I don't trust anything that two Tier says. I mean, there is someone who has removed their brain from its from their head and handed it to these people on social media who are demonstrably sponsored by Russian by Russian actors. Why? Why would you want to be on the side of your country's enemies because that means you are actually a traitor evenven as you wrap yourself in the flag and claim that other people are You are actually a traitor if you're doing the Kremlin's bidding. in a moment like this Regarding a story, you're a proper, fully paid up trador how do people end up There Darren's in Hamersmou, Darren, what would you like to say? Lorning Jobes? Hello mate And I'm got to be careful because I've called up enough time for people to know who I am at this point, but I have somebody in my life that's close enough for this to be a deeply upsetting topic.. And I first thing to highlight this person had this issue a few years ago around the Batlars Matter thing and came off with all social media in terms of like the Facebooks, the Instagram things, as a solution to realizing that he was getting bit out of control. As in he was becoming an opponent of Black Lives matter Yeah. Okay Yeah. Yeah, that's another thing that should have been on the list. Whil was having a mixed race in blended family. It was you it was it was a thing Anyway, this person then then decides to move just onlyumes YouTube videos now because that's and you and now I would say the situation is even worse. because the thing of these posts, you get sort posts that come across you, these YouTube videos become like, you know, ten, fifteen minutes sometimes of just biased bile, right on fact checked by apar. And I have this thing with this person in my life where I almost on a daily basis is now becoming a massive problem because I'm like, well, that's not fact, you know, Iort say that's not factory crit. Like what's source for that? Like me show me show me show me what show me what through what you've just said and to me They very That's a very simple answer to anything that you might have at work or in a social situation. But is these people are sort of living and dying by this thing. And that's just pause for a minute there because that is the bit that I don't understand or rather that's the bit I don't really get exposed. So I can click on a message from someone who is still clinging to the idea that this is true. and I can see vote reform and I can see I love Nigel and I can see thirird worldorld savages. and I can see someone whose entire diet is online propaganda But what I can't see is the reason for the ression The reason for the I mean, how can you so pass like religion, isn't it? You passionately believe. You'd give your life for something that is unprovable, and of course, in this case, untrue I think the key thing to know is that I think it's very difficult for people to admit that they might be wrong.. and I'll give you an example.'s I hope you could understand the link behind it. I know somebody who unfortunately try to starve themselves, commit suicide by starving themselves to death. When I then ask the question about like, you know why would they do that because it' qu a trouple of things to do Someone explained to me that this person was so was so religious and of the Christian fith was so devoutly religious. They had they had a mentalalth issue and they had fun with the book every part of it over and over again for the last forty years. And the book and through the book and through the community of the church, they were told that if they did all these things, then they were going to be healed from this thing that they have. And when they've done the book back to back and Jews was coming back and all these things that they believed so passionate because that is their whole life. Th things haven't happened The idea that the idea that you can devote your whole can't take it away from what So true. becomes reality that it's not true. the devastation that you would feel is just so acute that this person cann't carry on. Now I'm not saying that all people that believe conservatories are like that, but it's just this entrenchment and this refusal to believe that it could be in the opposite. and unfortunately, there are more people saying the things. There are more people that parrot these things than people like you. And I've long believed, so before you come back Ive very long believe the issue as we most issues that we find ourselves in the UK at the moment Well find us the Westtern at the moment is pundit We have we have this onslaught of People influencers and p, people that are that are not fact checked, they're not regulated by anybody. They come online and they make their business by giving an opinion on topic A, topic B. and it's just so dangerous and there are so many of them that suddenly is now they sort of their job. they're not like you. They're not they're not people but by definition you get in trouble with by definition dangerous. They have to say things that you wouldn't be able to say on a regulated platform By definition, they have to go further than Dick Littlejon goes with his attacks on trans people or they have to go further than Rod Liddittle goes with his attacks on everybody really. They have to go further than the people who are regulated and have got what I would once have called proper jobs. So they end up going down roads like this. So you're person that we're talking about has bought in fully to the Goy story. Yeah, and yeah and and it's and you know, it's I sort of I feel like sometimes I get a win whereby I break down what's been said and I say, well, give me the you know, I got told the other day about the about this about the number of you know of of child groomers blah blah, blah blah And I said the key word in there is the per capita but, you know, explain what per capita means And then explaining as to how you can skew a statistical figure the wider picture. And then you think I've got a win there. and then and you think, o okay, this is getting a bit better. And they go, o the l is what you say and you should show them. but you say, listen, I'm not going to tell you because I' just repeat I'm going to show you and then you think I've got a win. And then they turn around and say something else. and that's when you that's when you're going down thisad It's like the hydro. you cut one you cut one head off and to grow back. It's why I was right at the top of the show to bring five G mass causing COVID into it and all exactly the same All the rest of it. and I'm getting a lot of messages about somebody who used to be quite a well known politician who is Don't say any names because I haven't double checked it who is spreading this stuff as well as Crikei. So When when he ft when he or she first said to you, o, you know that these people in court were setting fire to Kiss Arma's old house. You know that their rent boys he didn't pay. What do you say in return? Just look if you can cast your mind back. What happened I said C what? And then sorry what then and then and then it was repeated again I said, whereere's that come from? S got say all the time. And the thing is you're jumping around again, you keep doing it. So what did they say? You said where did come from? I said they say whereere they come from? They said, Oh and thenave they gave me the channel that came from YouTube. And I said, Oh, okay. let's have a look at that channel because let's have a look at that channel and Let's have a look at maybe what else they've said What I said and then let's have a look at where it might be sourced. And then I said aill what you last call I said. I I said I said, do you not think that if this was this much of a thing thing, then this would be O of course it wouldn't because the mainstream media the mainstream media don't tell us's two tear. The mainstream media don't tell us about what's going on They keep it secret. That's that crucial bit of the equation, isn't it? The idea that you're party to privileged information only people who follow absolute I'll say that word on the radio, can I On people who follow absolute Merchant bankers on social Oh yeah, you've got to be basically like a spy. You've got to follow merchant bankers on social media. thenen you'll discover the real truth And it somehow gives people a kick, it gives people a hit. and we're back to that idea where Ulez or Ulez, I think I should say, the great replacement theory five G causing COVID, the great reset, cultural Marxism, wokeness, two ter policing, gender ideology, Eurrabia. It's a new one on me All of these people think that they are party to secret knowledge. And it is all being fed to them by the same characters The same institutions, some are doing it for money, some are doing it for much more malign and sinister reasons and some are doing it for a little bit of both Three minutes after eleven is the time. It is seven minutes after eleven, and you are listening to James O'Brien on LBC. We need to stay on that, don't we? We need to keep an eye on the next one that comes along If it doesn't involve criminal proceedings, we need to talk about it quite early on because this is part of the reason why the regulation of social media announced yesterday with regard to under sixteenens needs to be extended. I think that the safest thing you can say is that any platform that has an algorithm is a publisher having pect I've been giving it quite a lot of thought since yesterday because the big takeaway from our conversation was that it's an evolution. It's the beginning of a process, not the end of a process, yesterday's announcement. If it has an algorithm that means it is putting things into your site that you would not otherwise have seen, then it's a publisher And it needs to be held to the same account as publishers. So if YouTube is printing videos or publishing videos of people spreading these lies about Kir Stammer's forer home being attacked because he didn't pay male prostitutes, then that should be subject, I mean, for a start, there's libel involved there, but for a start the platform upon which it is published should be held to account. And if the platform is held to account, then the unemployed idiots grifting these lives around the place will be will just be shut out of discourse as they have to be because you're not allowed to go around the place, telling people to drink bleach or telling people to jump off buildings. There are laws against that sort of thing. So you shouldn't be allowed to go around the place telling milder but equally egregious lies. It's straightforward. and some of the solutions are not as complicated as some of the critics yesterday would have you believe But they're not looking at the adults yet Speaking of adults, we come next to one of those stories that seems that seem to come around with unring regularity so many elements to the tragedy of this little boy, Preston Davy's death seem to be familiar. I can't bear the photograph, you know? It's like that What's the word you would use? Whenever a child dies after a period of abuse and neglect, you can almost see the decline. And the picture that will be used is the picture before It began. so you have a fresh faced Beautiful little boy photographed featured on the front page of one or two newspapers today. and then you have the extxtraordinary litany of And now it depends what word you choose to use What word do you use? Because could say tragedy orr you could say failure And I think one of the most important things to remember at times like this is that sometimes the knee jerk reaction will be the right one sometometimes it will be the case that professionals could, not should clearly a should to, it could have done their jobs better I think we saw it with regards to Henry Novak's killing. I mean, there is a strong argument for why police officers behaved in the way that they did, but I would be incredibly surprised if the investigation doesn't conclude by stating that there was no justification and no rationale for handcuffing the poor boy. It wouldn't have changed anything, thats something else You may not know if you're relying upon social media grifters for your information. It wouldn't have changed anything The pathologist made that quite clear, but it would have changed the nature of his last moments on this earth. So the public servants there, the professionals could Not just should, but could done something better. The difference between could and should in this context is hindsight Yeah, I could have done something better. It means you could have known at the time that you should have done something better. I should have done something better is something you can only say with the benefit of hindsight because if you were there again in exactly the same circumstances you'd do the same. thing again and and you never quite know. You know that the Daily Mail will be unable to resist questions like this on its front page. Did political correctness play a role in failure to stop them I think we can all agree that when a baby is killed at the age of thirteen months, the best way to honor his memory is by trying to turn it into a conversation about political correctness quite extraordinary. It's like Farad's anti white racism, isn't it? And it's because the men who had adopted him and who One of whom then killed them, it's because they're gay. That's why political corate is such a great get out of jail free card for people who haven't done their job properly Why don't you take accusations of sex abuse seriously from fourteen year old girls in Oh, I was worried about being called racist Oh, okay, that's fine. We'll turn you into a hero rather than a disgrace Why didn't you properly I was worried about it being called homophobic? Oh that's fine then Shame the baby died, but oh gosh, ye political correctness is a real villain in the room here. It's insane. what's happening? But I'm saying that a little bit too often at the moment. The eight missed chances to save Baby Preston from evil adoptive fathers and the story is unbearable. The story is unbearable. And the eight chances are these. I will explain them to you briefly. And then you will tell me whether or not this is a story about institutional failure or whether this is a story about Fatalistic tragedy And you may need to be in the services that I'm about to describe. To answer that question correctly. The first was a nine hundred ninety nine call which I mean, what you've got here is a killer and a coward. One of the men was the killer and the other one was a coward. So Jamie Varley is the killer and John McGowan VZaki is the man who could and should have done much more to protect this little boy from his own sexually abused and murdered by the teacher that adopted him So Example number one of and that's all. I don't want to turn this into a witch hunt. We don't have names yet. I'm always reminded of when Ed Ballles jumped to the tabloid tune and called for the head of the woman that had been in charge of social services when When Baby P died, when Baby P was murdered, and subsequently she won a significant sum of money in compensation because it was a knee jerk reaction to a tabloid panic and it wasn't rooted in either facts or fairness. That doesn't matter to the tabloids, they'll do it anyway. Today, Is it political correctness that killed this bet? No, it's the scumbag that adopted him and abused him and murdered him. That's who killed Baby, It's not political I waste my breath on these ghouls U What a life taken from his birth mother at five days old because she was a convicted murderer. and placed quite quickly with this family, which is Usually the dream in the case of adoptions, get at getting a baby with a new family with the adoptive family quite early can minimize all sorts of problems further down the line but not on this occasion. So Chance number one is a nine hundred and ninety nine call. The operator picked it up, there's no response. You can hear Varley in the background telling his partner Mcowwan for Zaci to put it down, put the phone down They said that they had dialed by accident and really wanted to talk to the NHS line one hundred and ele When one one one rang back, the call went unanswered. So something had happened on may eleventh, twenty twenty three. Two weeks later, they rush an unresponsive baby to Blackpool Victoria Hospital and tell staff that he suffered a nosebleleed and had a suspected seizure A nurse spots two bruises on his forehead And the pair explained that Preston bumped his head learning to crawl Okay So far Do you think That sounds like reasonable accusation that that nurse should have known that he hadn't bumped his head learning to crawl I genuinely don't know. I want to know today what you think about these chances U A month after that, the couple take him back to A andE with a rash. a nurse points out a head bruise. so Varley shows her a video of the boy pulling a toy box onto himself by way of explanation. So he saidays, Oh yeah, I can show you how that happened and he's got a video of the baby pulling a toy box. So that's two months two bruises social worker who they name. finds the boy looking a little pale and not himself She puts the mood down to the fact that he's recently been unwell. That's chance number four. He looks a little pale and he's not been himself. What alarm bell was she supposed to press What alarmo was she supposed to press two days later they're back in hospital now for the third time because he's not moving his left arm properly Turns out he has a fractured elbow Vali explains that he twisted it accidentally laying him down in his cot So you've got two bruises and a fractured elbow beginning to think that a flag should have gone up in the hospital. pererhaps Another social worker visits for Oldham Counil. This is a child looked after review and she says they write letters for the baby to read in later life. She wrote, You had a few hospital admissions of late And this made me ponder as to whether there was a problem I decided there wasn't So he bumped his head while crawling. And he pulled a toy box down on top of himself. I've got video footage to prove it. and he fractured his elbow being laid down clumsily in a cot Then two more, which I think are really stretching it. He tells a colleague at his school because he's a teacher that he's having dark thoughts about drowning or suffocating the baby but lies to his colleague and says that the social worker knows about his mental state, so the colleague doesn't take it any further. How is that a missed chance? Is that? I don't know, I don't know Is that a mischildance? And then finally, the school's head teacher visits Vali at home because he's told colleagues he is feeling suicidal and she leaves no concern So I don't quite know why I am reading this in terms that make it sound as if the authorities failed the little boy Certainly the head teacher had nothing. not really have behaved any differently The colleague to whom he confessed his dark thoughts but also revealed that he'd spoken to social workers about those dark thoughts Could they have done anything differently? At no point here Does anybody seem to have had reasonable suspicion? except briefly the independent social worker who decided that there wasn't a problem. The third, the second visit. We did phone ins years ago, you know involve people complaining about being treated like abusers when they took their children to hospital with bruises I mean, it seem feels like a different age now, but we def I'm not dreaming it. We definitely did that So This story is unbearably horrible how do we know? If the authorities failed in stories like this, what should we be looking for? How do we know the ease, I'd also like to know what it's like to be a social worker at the moment, because the ease and it's a natural thing that listen, I think it's disgusting for the Daily Mail to try to bring political correctness into it. But I think it is absolutely natural to feel pure cold rage at stories like this, although I don't imagine that that particular politician will be fermenting or inciting any riots about this You never know because the culprit is gay, so there is room for at least one double standard there, but Generally speaking, it's natural to want vengeance and it's natural to want a target for these almost inarticulable emotions that we feel when we consider a story like this I feel curdled inside, partly, I think because the baby was adopted just as I was and it just adds a dimension of personal involvement to the story that's almost unbearable the fractured arm Maybe the fact but I'm not a medical professional. You are, you tell me. zero three, four, five, six zero sixzero nine seven three. If we form our conversation, if we build our conversation from the bottom up It has to be about ensuring that something like this doesn't happen again. and we can't do that You can't make it foolproof. No system will ever be infallible. People are sly and manipulative and they lie and evil people tell evil lies that persuade decent people that there's nothing going on. but I've read you the eight chances that the Daily Mail and others identify as examples of culpability and I don't for the record, I think there's only one there. that I think probably does merit someone hitting an alarm, someone hitting a someone raising a flag and it would be the fractured elbow caused by twisting it accidentally while laying him down in his cot, but I'm not a doctor or a nurse, so you can tell me How feasible you think that is.zero three four five, sixzero sixzer nine seven three is the number that you need. There is a great speed There's a great rush to conclude. the prorofessionals have failed. and that they could have avoided that failure. And it's a really ugly impulse that is fed by organs like the Daily Mail, because the massive, massive majority of people who do this for a living do it at least at the beginning of their careers out of a profound sense of decency and wanting to do good But you know, you'd say the same about teachers and this blke's a monster and he was a teacher. So there are obviously cases where people doing jobs that we should and usually do associate with decency I who don't deserve it But how do you tell? So what do you think as a midwife, as a social worker, as someone who works with potentially vulnerable children You've probably read this story as closely as I have. You've probably followed it as Horrified as I have, what do you think Only one person killed this baby. death have been prevented by people who find themselves in the firing line this morning. The social workers are both named, which I don't know how helpful that is and I'm not sure that used to be the case. It might have been a Legislative response to a previous tabloid panic. I don't know I mean, no one is going to be beating themselves up more than these two women who now face being beaten up by the Court of public opinion and by Normal media, God knows what social media is doing. That takes us back to the conversation in the last hour. So how do you know As someone in these various areas or even as someone who has encountered these various professionals and agencies and institutions How do we tell the difference between failure. and unavoidable tragedy It's important. and I'm not for a minute suggesting that this one was unavoidable tragedy. I am asking you what you think knowing now As much about the story as anybody else does. zero three four five, six z, six z nine seven three is the number you call. My amateurish reading of the situation would be The fractured elbow is the point at which I want to know more The fractured elbow is the point at which I think in conjunction with the bruises, which I wouldn't have raised a flag for, in their entirety, that might have been the moment that a button should have been pushed, a metaphorical button, but the nine hundred and ninety nine call The first two hospital visits, the social worker visits The independent social worker visit, the confession to the colleague and the head teacher's welfare visit, I don't think that they are Anything like what some outlets are describing them as today, but as ever be wrong Your thoughts, please. It's eleven twenty five It's twenty six minutes after eleven and you are listening to James O'Brien on LBC and a couple of people suggesting class may well have played a part in this, articular seemingly middle class professionals I mean, it's a tragedy. You know how obsessed I am with class in this country and the idea that if you are of a certain class, you're less likely to behave in certain ways than if you're not of that class. It's utter, utter, utter rubbish. Such an English lie. utter utter, utter rubbish. The way that you've got public school educated men swaning around the place at the moment claiming that Working class people are all racists. It's part of the same sort of problem. You think Cable Street was an upper class or a middle class rejection of racism and bigotry, this idea that you oh they can't be dodgy because they're posh I s just nonsense. Fall up toging cappped offing. That might be part of it. That might be part of it, but that wouldn't qualify as political correctness, would it S' in Manchester, S, what made you pick up the phone? Well, I work in the NHS and Ive said your colleague before I heard you say it. Y fractured elbow, I think, was the point with the red flag for me But the difficulty is this child is already under the umbrella of social care. So it's not like you're making a new referral So that's an issue. In terms of I mean, I would be the last person to criticise social care, I think they've got a thankless task Yeah I do too. The damned if they do and the damned if they don't. And you only ever hear about them when they when tragedies occur. You never hear about the successes. you never read on front pages about children rescued from hideous circumstances. A life. Ay a chance at life. And those those poor people that have been named Yeah Nobody's ever going to know anything about the wonderful work that we did They're only ever going to associate it with this terrible outcome. Parents of abused children are expert manipulors and the fault ultimately does line with them. There are some situations, obviously. I mean, when I did my training, it was all around the time of the ColumbBA report and everything. There are some situations that are just beer absolute belief But on the whole, you're also looking at people with workloads that are Asolutely unmanageable unmanageable in the best sense of the way you could it's just I know in my life and what I do If I had another two days a week, it'd be roundabout enough to get it all done properly U Everybody tries very hard. So I think that's an issue. But there's also, I mean, I don't know and like I say, the ins and outs of exactly what went on here. It also depends on the structure of the organisation that you working in and the confidence of that professional to challenge things. Maybe somebody did raise red flags then and have said, Oh no it's under social who knows Well that's what I was about to ask you. And that is something that you think is very feasible that the doctor who accepted the story about the elbow fracture would have would have thought, Well, the only people I can raise it with are people who are already involved in this child's case Yeah I hadn't even thought of that. I hadn't even thought of it And where where else do you go? Where else do you go? Can you answer that question? Where else do you go You can't go anywhere else. Social services are already involved. We're not happy with the father's explanation for this, but that's something that social I mean, can you phone the police You could do You could do, but you'd be putting yourself out on a limb there and you could potentially be causing an enormous amount of problems for your own career because then what you've got to remember is those parents that are doing harm seize on that as an absolute you know weapon to beat you with. And So that makes it very challenging. Personally, in my career, twice, I've done things, I've gone against the grain. Once I rang the NSPCC anonymously. because I wasn't getting the answer that I wanted from my superiors. And I was very junior at the time. I wasn't even qualified So I did that. What happened There was a baby you were a child you were worried about. It was a whole family, ye. It was a whole family and it was obviously there was a pregnant woman involved. and And You didn't think that she was safe or you didn't think that the unbonone of them none of them were safe. None of them were safe. Violence or sex abuse or sorry, God know God. I mean, certainly violence, there was emotional abuse. epic dysfunction. Absolutely, abbsolutely. And I think they were probably well known to service.. Now, I don't know what happened. I wasn't qualified at the time. So you're very much not privy to anything like All I know is I went to my qualified colleagues and said, this is what I've heard, this is what I've seen and There was no further discussion about it. It was very much like Yeah, yeah, everybody knows about that There's nothing we can do So I mean now we're going back twenty odd years. this is a long time ago. but I was so sickened by what I saw. I was heavily pregnant myself as well at the time. Right that the next time I was on duty, I got that person's details and made that anonymous call. And then another time and this is, again, not qualified. Yeah I'm I was typing letters for a child that had not been brought to an appointment, an EMT appointment follow in And A fractured nose. Three year old. Yeah er very unusual injury, that for a three year old. And again, at the time, you know, I had no I wasn't a mundatory reporter at the time. But then when I look seem that this child han't been have been sent I'm did not attend letters discharge and dischargeed back to the GP on five occasions over eighteen months parent doesn't bring the child to a follow up following a fracture. So I raised it with my senior colleague at this time. And again, this is not a qualified capacity. So this was like in an administrative role, which we're all still supposed to be trained in child protection and she said is the consultant's decision So So I really don't think the consultant may not have actually looked at this history. They may have just thought, Ohh, they've not brought them to this one appointment. And they might not have had time to see what I've seen, which is the five missed appointments. They're not on the same systems. they don't look at the same things necessarily. You're in the middle of a busy clinic. I can see how things like that get missed So I challenged it again. I went directly to the notes. I saw everything that had been written down, including the fact that the community Pediatric nurses had visited this child at home and failed to gain access twice and then discharge this child. Right. So you feel there that there were red flags and there were abolutely I mean that's fairly clear in ways that this case isn't really in quite the same way. And of course, presenting frequently at hospital is the opposite of not I mean, you know someomehow creates a false image of concern, doesn't it? Absolutely, of course it does. But everybody in that chain of eents has a part to play. But unfortunately the vast majority of people in that chain of events are managing such enormous workloads things are going to get missed. Now whether anything was missed to the point where it deserves to be named and shamed and you know at the end It just happens regardless, doesn't it, of whether there's any grounds for culpability? because abolutely. You've got one social worker unless there's a prosecution for some kind of misconduct or manghter corporate manslaughter then why on earth are we putting these people in a position where they are going to for the rest of their lives looking over the shoulder because of insane people that could do awful things to them just because they feel like it. Yeah. And I suppose we're back to the fact at Elbow and we may never know the full details of that, but I suspect everybody listening, you and me included both think that if there's anything here that constitutes grounds for further action and punishment for not taking further action, it would be that. The other seven things, I just don't see it. I just don't see it. And there are elements to the story that render it all even worse, taken into care because his mother had been jailed at the age of fourteen for the torture in nineteen eighty eight, torture and murder. of a pensioner. Um and and and her mother, the mother of the u the murderer It has been speaking to the media about how unhappy she is that no social workers had been dis disciplined or sacked in connection with the case. I mean begin to imagine what a rational and reasoned response to that collection of facts would be yay, here's John Stratord with your headlines. Thank you It is eleven thirty nine You aret listening to James O'Brien on LBC, where we are looking at the eight missed chances to save the life of A. yet yet another baby who's died at the hands of people who should have been caring for him. Preston Davy was thirteen months old and a what a miserable thirteen months a poor boy led. Taken away from his biological mother because she was a murderer H's Gild At the age of fourteen for the nineteen ninety eight torture and murder of a pensioner and put with an outwardly perfect adoptive family, unless you've got a problem with gay men, of course inwardly or privately, anything but I mean the polar opposite in fact, the sexual abuse and The physical abuse and subsequently the death. thirty visible bruises and serious internal injuries when he died. I don't know if you've seen the footage and I'd probably discourage you from watching it because it'll make you skin crawl of the murderer engaging in a sort of public display of u What would you call it? sort of keening and wailing at the hospital as the little baby was carried inside and writhing around the place I yees, I am not, as you know, I think by now. I'm not particularly What's the word that I want? I'm quite a peaceable person and I genuinely and generally believe. People end up in hideous situations sometimes as a consequence of things that have happened to them and places that they have been pushed. I uh I am not, however, made of stone, and there are some people who commit some crimes that remind me why Radio presenters and contributors to radio phoning shows don't make the laws and don't pass the judgments on cases. because I can think of no punishment vile enough for this and yet the reaction should not be different according to the innocence of the victim or according you see what I mean? You're going to feelit I mean, it's a bit like being a racist and getting much, much crosser about a black person attacking a white person than you do about a white person attacking a white person. It is not a rational position to adopt. but we're all guilty of something similar sometimes the murder of an innocent baby will hit us harder than the murder of I at somebody else And that's why we don't make the rules. why That's why you don't want the bigots making the laws But how do we know Whether it's a could have done better or should have done better. How on earth do we know? whether or not these eight missed chances are grounds for culpability. I'm suggesting not with that one caveat Doctors diagnosing a fractured elbow and being told that he twisted, being told by Vali that he twisted it accidentally laying him down in his cot, but as Sue just told us, There's every chance that the only agency to which you could have referred concerns at that point would be agencies that were already in play that were already in place eleven forty two at the time. Alex is in ho of, Alex, what would you like to say Well, very similar really to what you just said, James. I mean, there were always opportunities to intervene in cases like this. It's whether people take them. It's not just the broken elbow. It's also the teacher going to a colleague and s the head teacher And they should know under protection child protection they can make a phone call to social services. We're already involved. and so I've got concerns. and as's always things. I represented two social workers in a very similar situation, almost identical actually, an adopted child who was murdered by a couple And and and we knew before the verdict came out, we knew the verdict was going to be guilty at the time. we knew before they come out, the verde came out that it would be the social workers blamed. One was a senior social worker with thirty years child protection experience all are good that he did. He ended up having a breakdown. His employer wanted both of them sacked. media wanted them sac As a sort of public sacrifice, as it were. Yes. And yet there was the people involved as the adoption panel. Where were they? they approved the adoption placement. There was a health visitor. There were numerous people who were involved in the case who didn't pick up maybe should have picked up because there is always opportunities to do that But they were all overworked, mucifully overworked. Their caseeload was unbelievable And so you know, this is how things happen like this where, but they do happen and they will happen again. But we need to learn it's time You go, make the professionals make and take the time to link up and make their concerns trying I think that's partly what's happened in this case. Well would they what could they have done? I mean, these two examples the ones that you touch on, Varley telling a colleague that he's having dark thoughts about hurting Presson, about drowning or suffocate, but also telling the same colleague that social workers know. about his mental state, he's already spoken to them about it. But if you were approach with that and my background prior to the Troade Jion stuff was also in some child protection, when you get something like that, that information, you don't just keep it to yourself because you're told by the person to keep it to yourself. That's outside of the norm. No, someone comes to you, James and says, I've got these thoughts What do you do? I don't know. I've been thinking about that for the whole of this hour actually. I don't know what I'd do But If I knew you, I'm getting a couple of messages from people who say that they knew Vari and if I knew you, then I would take a judgment on whether or not I thought that these were just mad thoughts popping up in your head or whether I was actually Well that's the point I think we're both missing. I don't know you. You seem like a lovely bloke But I don't know you. If I'd worked with you for ten years and you said something to me, those ten years would be a large part of my response Yes, but it's the content of what you're being told and it's a live situation. It's not not some kind of theoretical thing, Oh I'm a bit depressed or something like that. But he's also told me that he's spoken to social services about this and why wouldn't I believe him because one should never and a professional should never believe what they're being told. It's a head teacher and a colleague teacher that he's telling these things to. The head teacher and I'm not trying to Well the head teacher was only concerned about his own suicidal feelings. There was nothing. The head teacher hadn't been made aware of anything to do with the child being at risk. So she reassured herself that He wasn't suicidal and left. So I think she's off the hook, isn't she? I'm not saying anyone No I forgive forgive my choice of word. Child protection guidelines are very clear. you get a concern, you pass it on to the people who can act on that concern. You don't take things on face value. She took it on face value. and ten years, twenty years, it doesn't matter. This is a situation where there's a child involved, you have to act Yes. But that act might may involve bringing the child to the attention of agencies that were already involved. I mean, so then you hit a culisac, don't you? thenen you hit a bit of a dead end. Well, then but the chances then that things go wrong are heightened if she doesn't act, which is sort No I get it. I get it, I get it. And of course there are profound concerns about the mandatory reporting legislation that the government has announced and I've read one article today suggesting that when it is introduced, it wouldn't make any difference. to a case like this, I suppose we want to live in an ideal world for about one day every two years where A multiple of the money currently dedicated to these agencies is dedicated to these agencies, where these people are better paid, have higher morale, have lower workloads. So every couple of years, a story comes along. Alex has been involved with one. I'm describing another to you. and everyone can pretend that it's really simple and that Preston would still be alive if only these people had reported their concerns, but what you're describing is systemic failure built upon almost every public service this is true of people who are doing more hours than they get paid for every single day, every single week, who are dealing with more than anybody can be reasonably expected to, who are being compelled and forced to do sub optimal work becausecause the alternative is not to do it at all. And yet none of that constitutes excuse. So we've got the difference between good could and should And we've also got the difference between excuse and explanation And Maybe the teacher shouldn't haveved him should have believed him when he said he was having dark thoughts about drowning and suffocating the baby, but shouldn't have believed him when he said he'd already spoken to his social worker about his mental state I don't know, but I'm fairly confident that most of these people will be torturing themselves with thoughts of what they could have done differently even before The Daily Mail turns up to start publishing their names and lobbing abuse at them. Don't take people's words for things seemems like a bleak conclusion to arrive at donon't trust anyone trust anyone weird. I mean, again, it takes some of my thoughts back to the Henry Novak case where I literally heard people suggest that if you ring in to report a crime, the first thing the police should do when they turn up at that crime is believe you to be the culprit So if someone's burgling your house and you phone the police, according to some of the coverage of the Henry Novak case, the first thing the police should do when they turn up is make sure you're not the burglar I mean it is ridiculous, but of course, in the crucible of tabloid self righteous fury, it's commonplace. time is eleven forty nine. eleven fifty three, is a little throwback to a conversation we had in the last hour. One of our contributors has contacted one of his friends that has fallen for the Starmer nonsense and shared the response with oth, which I shall share with you shortly, but we are dealing with I mean a hideous story at the moment and the idea that whenever a baby dies at the hands of parents who were under the Allpices of social services, then the social workers get a kicking. Listen, there are radio presenters who are rubbish and unprofessional and on caring and who promotal so that you don't last very long in a job like this if you're rubbage because you are judged by very easily accessible and achievable results But of course, you can be an absolute wrongan and get good results. You can be lazy, you can be incurious you can facilitate all sorts of hideous things from fascism downwards and get half decent audiences so you keep your job. So there's not a profession under the sun I don't imagine you could be a rubbish formula one driver. I think professional sport is probably an exception to this observation, but most jobs can accommodate awful that I And social work will be no different. no more than teaching will be. I mean, Cod, you know what happened at my school which was run by monks. You might have thought growing up that monk you can trust monk sounds very naive now. But u'm It's the speed with which the social workers are Judged and condemned in the Court of public opinion when there is no real voice for the defence in the Court of the public opinion,ust got a long queue of voices for the prosecution. And a lot of these people don't care particularly about the babies who've died or about the circumstances in which it happened. they just see an opportunity to give a kicking to quotes, authority end quotes. And yet they are authoritarians. They never give a kicking to the likes of Donald Trump or Boris Johnson, but a social worker. who may or may not have messed up at work? Yeah, they are absolutely ripe for kicking and And it's a weird mindset. but as I say, you know, there are people in this line of work. who might do that kind of thing And you and I will never be able to work out why. What I want to know is the difference between could and should And what we haven't done yet pin down the fractured elbow You take a baby to a hospital with a fractured elbow and the dad tells you or the carer tells you that he twisted it accidentally laying him down in his cop I think that's the point at which something different should have happened Of course, it doesn't involve social workers, so it doesn't lend itself to tabloid fury. in this quite the same way that it would do. John's in Brighton, John, what would you like to say I was just calling because while the first lady you had on and yourself were talking about where to go and only being able to refer to social care? Y Every borough, because of obviously some of the horrific cases that have happened in the past, one of the big things that every borough has done is they've introduced teams called mash teams, like potato mash It stands it stands for a multi agency safeguarding hub And the team that you that team someomeone in there who has access to all the police records, another person in that team has access to all the social care records Another one has education and another one has social care and stuff like like said all the teams are a part of one So all the things that happen to this child If everyone had reported it, When it went to that team, that team would have been able to build a bigger picture of it and then it might have actually related to where it should have gone But unfortunately not a lot of people know about Mash teeams. That right because I haven't seen it used in any of the coverage. I haven't seen any references to it in any of the coverage that I've followed or read. and yet Pumably, I mean, it has been instituted precisely so that these sort of things can happen Police, health, education, social care. I mean, you'd only really have got I don't think there's been any police involvement at any point. It was the nine hundred ninety nine call, but I don't know how many nine hundred and ninety nine calls end up going nowhere over the course of the year. I suspect it's quite a lot And then you've got the bruises in hospital, two occasions of bruises, both with plausible explanations offered And then the social worker concerned that he looks a little pale, but no one's ever runung an alarm bell because someone looks a little pale, have they? And then you've got the fractured arm. So in the event of Mash having being alerted to it, they'd have looked at the fractured elbow, they'd gone back to the that would be on the medical records anyway wouldn't it? Joh Yes. So even the nine hundred and ninety nine calls, although they may not have been actioned, would have still been on the same record Because the nine hundred and ny nine calls regardless of it is action, but it's still something that has been reported and been dealt you might somewhere have had somebody put these dots together and do what though Go aroundound, pay a visit as an independent social worker and reassure yourself that the boy is fine depends because it's very much a case of if it's So if that independent social worker went round and had the other parts of that information about the unusual bruising and about the nine hundred ninety nine calls and stuff like that. she did wrote you've had a few hospital admissions of late And this made me ponder as to whether there was a problem I decided there wasn't That's the child looked after you. I would say that that's where the ball kind of dropsed and it shouldn't have been unfortunately, becausecause when you've got that bigger picture That's where because in my profession, we have to report to Mash even if we have a gut feeling that something's not quite right And we can say to, unfortunately, this is just a gut feeling I have, but I'd rather report it than not report it What happens if you don't? So if you don't report that, and then But how would they prove that you had a gut feeling that you didn't report Oh, so they couldn't prove it. that's not a proable thing. There's something about Obviously that would be your own morals, but then you're f Al your own conscience as well. I mean, you'd sort of talk yourself out of it, wouldn't you? It's only a gut feeling. goodness. what happens if I report it? It's just it's anything that's human is imperfect, right? And these are human and human balances and they are imperfect because we are imperfect And the Mash team themselves, like there are times when I've called and said like this child has got unusual bruising or theyve got I've got a gut feeling something's just not quite right They've said to me, it doesn't meet the threshold for us to action it, but we will keep it on file if another report comes for. Yeah. And I mean that's not a million miles away from what happened albeit within the individual agencies rather than in the umbrella agency about which we should all clearly know more. And that includes, I think it's called an IRD in Scotland And it involves interagency referral discussion all the time, but I don't know if the numbers in Scotland are any better the numbers in England. Thank you, John. a lot of people knowing a lot more about these issues than I do, which is often the case on the programme. The time now is twelve noon, you're listening to James O'Brien on LBC wonder what we'll next Four minutes after twelve is the time and tying in a little with what you just heard Brendan Cox saying in the newsough. I've heard back from Matthew, one of the callers earlier who was sharing with us the experience of having friends who believe all of the nonsense that is now largely unchallenged on social media, especially since Elon Musk's bought Twitter. And here it is I'll read you both ends of the exchange. Morning, Steve, I bet you feel a bit silly today after believing that the Russian propaganda that the Prime Minister had his home set on fire by Rnt boys put LBC on now to which Ste has replied I hope you have got LBC on at the moment, Steve. Steve has replied, Morning, Matt, N, I don't trust Starmer or the judiciary in this country anymore, which he seems to be using as a means to propagate his own twisted fabian agenda Um I mean, it's a view Isn't it? You'd need to have a completely warped idea of what and who the Fabians are. but I've seen that, I think on a various posts, that the fabians are a threat. Just come up with anything. Cultural Marxism, which was deeply anti Semitic in its roots, didn't stop various editors of the Daily Mail to stick it in their editorials, But there it is. If someone believes something that is completely untrue, then all the proof in the world won't prize their prise their knuckles off that F, that thing they got to cling onto and what happens when you let go? your life gets better, Steve Not worse. Your life gets better And you cease to be a traitor. you cease to be helping the Russians undermine British democracy. But hey ho You're not even getting paid for it But I'm Of course the people who have pushed you into this position are handsomely Six minutes after twelve is the time. I'm staying in slightly Oh Well, there's two stories that I was considering doing next. One is my time one of my all time favorite strange stories which is cheap funerals. I'm going to talk myself into doing it, aren't I in the course of this introduction? The Daily Telegraph has a piece today about advising you on how to spend as little as possible on a funeral. But we're not going to talk about that today because I feel we've done it probably quite recently or certainly quite often I'm going to talk instead about something that is much less I mean you think it be death is pretty uncomfortable, but this is much more uncomfortable. conversation and it's one that I've been meaneting to have with you for a while, but the story does develop. Do you know who David Strd is? He became the first person ever to be sentenced under new legislation at Highbury Corner Magistrates last week I after being convicted of a A new crime, a crime that involved him harrassing a lone female passenger on a train to London, making sexual comments asking to kiss her, grabbing her hair. And while he was under caution, he told police that it was just I Banter. It's a crime it's called public sexual harassment U and He described it of Just Banther, and of course it turned out after he was arrested that he was already on bail for a separate twenty two month stalking campaign And subsequently, of course he was sentenced for both offences but wasn't sent to jail because I don't think that this country, this society, this system takes this stuff seriously Enough And I think part of the reason for that, and I want to choose my words quite carefully because I don't kind of want to prove my own point. as it were I don't want to be the proof of my own point as it were. but I think part of the problem here is I mean, I was going to say something bleedly obvious, which is part of the problem here is men. All of the problem here is men But I think part of the problem is men who don't realize the scale of the problem So men who are not part of the problem become part of the problem by dint of not realizing the scale of the problem Is that making sense? Am I making sense? So you have as a man, very, very little idea of what it is like to be a woman in public in this country, in most countries Possibly accepting countries where Berkers are commonplace? I don't know, but there is a rationale that justifies the wearing of a Berker by pointing out the hideous harassment that women undergo in countries that are quotes free end quote, like this one U How do we address that So I think all men will be guuilty Not of harassing women, but of not realizing how big the problem is or how widespread the problem I usually cite a story here from nineteen eighty eight This is because I'm such a paragon of virtue. It's the only thing I can think of when I experienced appalling behaviour that I thought was just banter And when I used to have conversations about this earlier in this Career, so called career of mine I used to hear from women who would insist that it was just bantter It up to and including women who told me that they enjoyed having their bottoms pinched when they were secretaries in the nineteen sixties or nineteen seventies because it was flattering And I can't argue with those women. canan I? That would be manplaining taken to an entirely ridiculous new degree. But I'd like to think that other women might step in and point out how you have been gaslit into thinking that that was A oK or B quite flattering when it was in fact the exact opposite And then when I was a less thoughtful man when I still had this job, I used to say things like, and if I'm brutally honest with you I still see some salience in this observation And that would be if a bloke that you found very, very attractive said or did something, identical to what a bloke who you found hideous and frightening said or did, then your reaction would be very different But guess what, Aads,'s that that that's that's her right That's her prerogative And you can't really be confused about it because you know that you're a bloke that she finds frightening and obnoxious. you're not a bloke that she finds irresistible. but there's something there. You just get that little nugget of What is it? Confusion? I don't know I don't know But I do know this. I am a husband and son and brother of women and father of young women. When these stories first started emerging. felt my head spinning. Because what it is and my wife does this or did this, I'm in a slightly different place now, knowledgeably, not least because I have young daughters. I always thought it was man by its dog territory. Forgive me for this because it's I mean it is pretty shameful on my part to have managed to have reached the age of about I don't know forty eight or something Thinking that a woman being harassed in public by a man was manan byes dog territory i. is. something remarkable, something notable, something that you really register when it happens and you respond accordingly As my daughters reached the age where it started happening to them, people making unwanted comments, people, I mean you can't stop, I don't think we'll ever be able to legislate for the way people look or leer or ogle other human beings. but once it is verbalized, once it is articulated, you can see how it's moved into the realms of legislation. It started happening to my own daughters. I had absolutely no idea how commonplace it was ike I'd rather not catch a train on my own at any time of day. I'd rather not get on the underground, on my own at any time of day And I realize that it is pure Um man by its dog territory. It is utterly, utterly commonplace and There's a part of me that still doesn't fully understand why this comes as a shock to men like me. Part of the reason for that is that we haven't been told enough And I think part of the reason for that is that for women like you, it's so utterly baked into your normal existence that you barely thought it worthy of mention. until you do mention it and the man in your life goes, What every day N. Three times a week. No. What when you were fourteen? No 's I can't think of a bigger dichotomy between people who are sympaticical with each other, people who if you are if you like, people who are on the same side I can't think of a bigger dichotomy than on this issue between men and women who might share a home or share a bed, share a family, share a life. and yet one of you knows this subject inside out intimately and personally And the other one is living in or was living in a state of borderline blissful ignorance. can you think of anything else that would fit into this category that you find out the people you love most in the world? are routinely and regularly and constantly Eiencing things that you find outrageous and repellent, but they are so used to it and have been conditioned to get used to it from the age of about eleven but they don't even think it's worthy of mention. Don't come home and say, Oh Bloke said something to me on the tube today they don't even do it and P'm pretty sure I'm not unique. Don't get me wrong, I'm unique in lots ways, but I'm pretty sure I'm not unique in this way. And I wonder I often wonder whenever these stories come around And this is a new story because it involves a bloke who thought that it was banter and feels he's been very badly treated and has described himself as being unlucky to be the first person convicted under the law. He's been made to appear like a monster W's tiniest violin please Keith The point is he's got no idea how obnoxious his behavior is I don't imagine And I don't want to make light of a serious issue, but I don't imagine any love stories ever begin in circumstances like this. So a bloke who may or may not be drunk and I mentioned that because part of his sentence involved a ninety day alcohol abstinence monitoring tag and fifteen days of mandatory rehabilitation. So a drunk bloke comes up to a woman on a train, starts pouring at her hair, telling she's beautiful and asking, And that twenty years from now, that's an origin story. How did you and mummy meet Daddy? Oh, I was a bit drunk. I got on a train and I started touching her inappropriately and telling her she was g. In the same way, I don't imagine anybody. I got a horrible feeling. I said this next bit on the radio once and I got a message saying, actually, James, that is how I met my husband But I don't think anybody has ever met her husband because he leant out of a van window at the traffic lights and complimented her on the size of her boobs Hey, call me an old romantic, if you must, but I don't think that that has ever happened And I also I also don't know where where society draws the line because women will draw the line in different places Women on one extreme will tell me that Um They enjoyed being sexually harassed at work because they took it as a compliment And the other extreme, they would tell me that they don't like men opening doors for them in the office because it's sexist I find both positions close to impenetrable I also know that when I start a conversation like this, a certain type of man will either start a moaning or be claiming that it's just as bad for men because I once got my bottom pinch when I was working at a waiter in the Brassy in Kiddminster in nineteen ninety. Oh hang on, that was the story I used to say. S. When we were having conversations like this, it was almost like a reluctance, more than a refusal to believe that things were as bad as they clearly were So how do we do it? How do we have the conversation? twelve seventeen is the time U I want you to tell me About the first time you remember it happening I want you to tell me how old you were and what happened and how it made you feel. That's all, because it's extraordinary, isn't it? that we can be sitting here in twenty twenty six contemplating legislation addressing public harassment And as men having an almost unbelievably different understanding of the reality behind this legislation than women have and it's our fault for not asking questions un knowowing more But I am now asking those questions in the hope of knowing more. Tell me about the first time I mean, if you want to get involved in a more philosophical discussion, we can try and draw the line between banter and harassment I mean, chatting somebody up public, I don't want calls from men, lads. comeome on, Graham, Darrel, Robert. I don't want I know you've got interesting things to say, but I don't want to talk to you yet Let's just clear the space, shall we? Let's clear the aisle, as it were, for women who have experienced what we are talking about. No offense, boys. but Come on do better. The first time it happen, the first time you remember it happening to you, when a bloke in public Sexualized you and I don't want to sound Naive. or idealistic Um, But I can't help imagining it involving a sort of loss of innocence. So you go in a moment from being a girl a young girl who is relatively carefree in public spaces. and I may be embarrassing myself with this observation. I may be completely misrepresenting your reality, but I'm always honest with you, even if I end up feeling like a prune for doing so. And you go in a moment from being an unsexualized human being to being a sexualized human being because some man takes it upon himself to say something to you. in public And I know that This may be also something that makes me sound stupid in retrospect, but the massive majority of men will not do that And many of us don't really have any idea of A, how often it happens to you and B how significant it is. So that's how we do it. okay? er three, four, five, sixz sixz nine seven three is the number that you need. As we're looking at calls for lessons to prevent harassment Let's talk about what it is from the perfect perspective B What has actually happened to you? You would call it harrassment, even if the bloke that did it might not. you would What happened? How old were you and how did it make you feel I think still in twenty twenty six, with the new legislation in place and conversations about meat two and similar or I still think this is going to shock. some of the men listening. precisely none of the women It's twenty past twelve is twenty Two minutes after twelve and you're listening to James O'Brien, there may be room later. I don't think this hour for slightly more. Philosophical conversations about what caused it or how you get rid of what you do. But today the question is fairly simple. As men convicted of public harassment or the first man conducted of public harassment claims that he was just bantering and he's unlucky and he's appearing like a monster and apparently believes it. If he still thinks he can use the excuse that it was just banter, then something's really not working and I want your stories. and maybe a nudge towards how you would make A Bloke realise that what he's doing is not just quotes banter but is in fact harassan Linda's in Litham, Stain. Anne', Linda, what would you like to say Hello, I was just telling your colleague that when I was fifteen, so it's quite a few years ago now, I was walking from school to see my grandparents. and there was a group of men surrounding a sort of local council van, there were sort of local I think road workers or something. And they started to make some very lewd gestures using fingers and tongues and all sorts And it really really, really shook me up. It was quite terrifying. I felt very vulnerable. It was during the middle of the day, so it wasn't that I was sort of walking in the n at nightime. but did feel very threatening. and I walked very quickly to my grandfathers and told him what happened. I burst into tears. And he was lovely. he was furious that it happened, but he also rang the council straight away and made a formal complaint. Wow We didn't hear anything from it after that, but I presume and I would hope that something was mentioned. Yeah I would hope, I wouldn't necessarily presume that depending partly on when it was I mean, some of the messages that are coming in via text involve the behaviour being dismissed by people who you would hope would know better and if it was commonplace at the time I don't know. So your granddad was made of different stuff from a lot of people of that generation who would have just said that's just men being men Yeah, I think to be honest, I feel that my grandfather was very much pro sort of by the time his a grandfather very much pro granddaughters because he had quite few of them.. But I don't think he had the same attitude when his sons were younger. It was quite a big family. There was my mother and about five, six brothers And I think some of the boys, although they were all lovely family, I think they probably would have displayed a little bit of chey behavior, as it was called And I think it was only because he saw it firsthand from a granddaughter's point of view. Oh sorry, my radio is dont. That's right..ry. I think because it was his granddaughter who was very vulnerable and obviously saw me visibly shaken, I think that It changes you completely. Yes, of course it does. And if it had been relayed to him third or fourth hand, he wouldn't have had that visceral personal reaction, but it wasn't. It was relayed to him first hand by his beloved granddaughter it's I mean, how did it change you? I don't want to sound sort of weird, but I'm struck by the idea that you go in a moment from ever being sexualized to being sexualized I think there was an awful lot of it in those days. and it's certainly at school. In fact, I found sort of correspondence from some boys at school very recently, so that's why it was quite topical And there was a lot of coercive language And I think when I was younger, I was of the generation where girls were sexualized and you wanted to be popular. And I feel that the whole sort of situation around then was tolerated. And I think it was only because it was strangers that did it in the street where I now felt more vulnerable that it did make me think very differently about how men's behaviour you know was targeted towards me. And no man will ever feel that. I mean, that is at the absolute heart of this issue and all of these conversations is that no man will ever feel that . There's nothing you could do to have that sense and I'm struck. More and more as I get older by the constant nature of it. it doesn't have to be happening now It's simply the knowledge that it could and will at some point probablybably soon Thank you, Linda. Sandy is in o, Angering? Agering ye. That's right. Well done. Thank you very much Sandy. What made you pick up the phone today? Oh, this is so timely and actually'm I'm still kind of Processing, what happened this morning? Oh gosh. So I was actually getting out of my car and there was a white van that had two men in it As I got out of my car, they shouted something at me about my anatomy, the top half of my anatomy And the challenge is that I wasn't wearing a bra today. the reason I wasn't wearing a braar is because I've recently had major surgery. and I have quite a lot of scar tissue and it makes wearing things like that quite uncomfortable But it's something that I'm actually conscious of every day if I'm allowed to say nipple on the radio. Well you have now. Anyway it's me that gets into trouble not you. Al How do you know Keith's nickname So yeah, so my nipples are often now on show because I can't wear the type of underwear I would have worn before. Okay. And it makes me incredibly anxious because I feel like I'm drawing unwanted attention to myself and it makes me feel somehow like it's my fault. So those men think it's an invitation Sure. andumbags. But I was shaking from that experience afterwards because I had been objectified and verbally abused And I had nowhere to go. and I somehow felt that this was that I drawwn attention to myself And I think this is what men can't possibly understand about women is when we get dressed in the morning There is a consciousness and these kind of complex thoughts about intentionality and attention and vulnerability and And as somebody, I've experienced a lot of sexual violence in my life, unfortunately. and There is a link, right? I mean, it's like the shallow end and the deep end. Sure And a lot of the men who engage in the behavior you witness today are never going to be sexually violent, but they're on the same graph Yeah, I I don't know I don't know about that because I think unfortunately, if we knew what type of men were sexually violent, we would be able to do something about that. And I think actually in my own experience, it's the men that you often don't think would be suspect. But I mean, I was listening to your previous caller and I think you know I too grew up in an age where if you went to a nightclub in a mini skirt You would very likely be assaulted, what we would consider assault now Yes And that was just commonplace. that was just normal. And you would look at these inappropriate men and you would say, excuse me But it but in your mind, in that time, you didn't see it as ass saalult in the way that, for instance, now, I educate my daughters that nobody has a right to touch any part of your body at any time. make any comment about it. completely unacceptable. And that's I mean, I'm optimistic Because if we've changed attitudes so completely and I know some women will still be assaulted and groped and victim of the kind of behiour you describe, but nobody would I don't think chalk it up as normal anymore. So we could probably do the same, we could probably do the same with the verbal equivalents if society takes it seriously enough I agree and sorry to link two stories, but with the conversation yesterday about the burning of social media I suppose one of my feelings and one of my fears is that girls are so good at advocating for themselves now because they learn so much from other women on platforms like social media. if their parents aren't informed enough, so if I hadn't have gone through that radical transformation of understanding that nobody has a right to see speak about or touch my body. If I hadn't gone through that transformation myself, perhaps I wouldn't be empowering my daughters and perhaps they would need platforms like that to learn. I also recognise there' the flip side with it being a setess pit where people do comment on other people's bies is But I do think it's a learning space. No. And of course the challenge the government currently faces is to find new homes for the good stuff or new ways to access the good stuff Hopefully excising the bad stuff from the discourse. Sandy I and many listeners who have got in touch and I'm sure hundreds of thousands more who haven't wish you a very, very full and speedy Recovery a horrible thing. twelve thirty one is the time. I'm not this is going to sound a little bit I don't know quite what the word is. This is about the verbal harrassment, the verbal public harassment more than anything else. So just that sort of entry level misogyny or the entry level at harassment as opposed to the more explicitly physical. So I do understand why those stories are incredibly important and and even more disturbing dimension of the entire conversation, but I think that it's easier to chalk you can't chalk up a physical assault as banter. even though this character may have tried to Panter is going to be verbal And so it's the verbals that I'm interested in at the moment U John Stratord's here now with the headlines. twelve thirty five is the time. I was a fourteen year old waitress and my approximately sixty year old boss whose wife also worked there. I touched my bump and said ' How do you like your eggs in the morning? writes Emily. I looked confused and he said the right answer is fertilized I was so uncomfortable I told another staff member I also told his wife and she said, Oh, that's just Dave. When my then twenty two year old daughter told her dad that her driving instructor had touched her and tried to groom her. A dad responded with laughter instead of sympathy My dad my daughter never told her dad her problems again My first public that was from Andrea This is from Lisa. My first public sexualized comment from a man It came when I was about fourteen and my friend's dad jokingly referred to me as top heavy. It was in front of his wife, his daughter and others. And it got a laugh, but it didn't register with me until much later in life that it was inappropriate I am inund date. stories like this and I just I want to continue the conversation so that The kind of men who are not ever going to do anything heinous realize that they're sort of paddling in the waters of heinousness. It's about what is acceptable and what is not I hope I'm right that the physical contact is now less commonplace than it was When you were younger, I think I am, but it's far from No What's the wor that I want far from excised, it's still real It's just how you How you explain to somebody who thinks it's Bana that it's not I don't actually know the answer to that question. so feel free to add that to your list of requests this hour. How do How do you really demonstrate to somebody? they honestly and Given them the benefit of the doubt they genuinely believe it is, quotes banter How do you how do you persuade them that it's not? How do you show them that it's not Sara is in Elstery, Sara, what would you like to say? Hi, James. How are you? Very well, thank you. How are you? I'm not bad, it's not bad. I've been listening to you for years. It' the first time I literally pulled the car over and thought, Oh my Godd, I've got to call. I get them all in the end, sah I know. I know Oh gosh. I don't know where to start.le the I have three daughters And I have three sons And my three daughters are first And my youngest daughter very recently in her school uniform and very evidently how school uniforms was standing at the station to catch the train home And across on the other side of the platform were a group of young men. Wh started commenting on how she looked and how beautiful she was? and you know would she like to come and talk to them? And you know she kept trying to ignore them and she smiled politely and said, No, thank you. I'd like to just get home please And one of the young men took a offense to it, took offense to her ignoring him and started being very aggressive. and said, oh, are we not good enough for you? Am I not good enough for you? Oh, you're so uppty, you're so frigid, you're so And mind you, my daughter' sixteen years old U and Now here's the thing. you know, you hear a lot about well, you know, when you're with a group of friends, you know, it's to friends as well. they should speak up. they should you know, try and correct friends. It's not just about, you know what you're doing, but if you see something wrong, speak, speak up. And she said to me that you know, his friends were telling him, Oh my God, can you just leave it? really? You're making her uncomfortable. W. And they were being very loud. And they were saying, willill you just stop it and leave her alone? And he just was not having it. he started running down the stairs to come down and cross over to her platform And as he was running up the stairs to her and literally aggressively saying, Wh don't you want to come back with her? She's terrifieding. She's terrified now. Of course. Now she's terrified and his friends have done more than many in similar circumstances, but they haven't flipping stopped him from L legging it towards your daughter? No. I mean, they tried very subtly and then, you know, The train came just at that second. Oh God. The doors open, she jumped in And just as the doors were closing, he was there banging on gass And now here's the thing. you know, she came home. She was shaking She was absolutely terrified. And I immediately said, let's go Let's go to the station. I ask for the CCTV Let's, you know, And she said, Mama, no, please because I go there every day and if they come there again, And if I've identified them or if I, you know bring something, you know to the police and I don't want to I don't want to accelerate the situation where it become worse Now Here's where it gets tricky So I've brought my daughters up to be warriors. Of course And I've told them, you shout You be the loudest person in the room and don't you ever, ever be a shrinking vioolence I've tried my best to bring them up as fierce women And I know a lot of people will say, oh, well,, that's not necessarily the best way, but do you know what? it's the only way only way I mean, I cannot tell you what it's like. Well, I mean, you will know. I'm sure when you're, you know, you have a daughter if I'm when she gets older. Yeah. No they're already, they're old enough Yeah. I mean, when they go out, even in the daytime. so Keep your phone near you, keepeep something in your bag. When you go out, try and take a friend. Don't have your AirPods in your ear. And you know what? It was a different form of advice but I was given the same advice when I was younger, as was my mother And the only thing that I can do now is that my three sons who are very young, My youngest is nine. I have made it a point that from D. goo everyvery single time something is mentioned or their sisters talk about something I make it a lesson for them. I make it a learning curve for them. And some of my friends have said, Oh, don't you think they're a bit young to hear them? I said, No, they're not. C can't be too young, but I don't know if there are any guarantees either, Saro. know peer pressure is an incredibly intoxicating thing and although things have clearly improved I don't know that any and I don't have sons, so I can say this, but I don't know that you can ever be a hundred percent confident that Alad, particularly with some of the influencers they may be exposed to online these days, that Alad may may fall into this sort of behavior. I'd forgotten about the online element because things got better for a while But now in a world where Andrew Tate is a finger flick away, things are going to get worse again. because I was struck by the fact that the boy harrising your daughter, the man harrising your daughter, is of a similar age to her, slightly older than her. He must have I mean, they must have been about eighteen, nineteen years. Exactly. So that is possibly a consequence of the manosphere undoing a lot of the work that was done by by some previous generations I mean, look, the thing is is that yes,, you know, they were young boys And I have no idea what influences they have or don't have all I can say for myself is that I've tried my best. I don't give my boys social media I just don't And I try my best. There are ways aroundound it for sure. And it should get easier now after yesterday's announcement It's easier to keep it that way. It is so funny because I have been laughing my head off and my boys have been like, no, no, no I'm like, o yeah. I'm so excited that I don't have to have this argument. There's one thing So In our home, what I've tried my best to do is that nothing is a conversation that can't be had. Nothing is off limits. Nothing is off limits. No question is stupid and come and talk to me about anything. So even if sometimes you feel something's inappropriate maybe for their age because I've got fourourteen, eleven, and nine for the boys. Right. Okay. Yeah, right on the money then. Yeah. yeah. and it can be sometimes inappropriate, but sometimes when they come and tell me things they've heard from school, I am absolutely horrified. But then I take it as a teaching lesson. So we sit down, we talk about it. and I have to keep reminding them that you understand that your Fast adversary is going to be me. If I ever hear that you have said something inappropriate, that you have harassed a girl, that you have looked at a girl, even sideways, mate. I'm behind you. Yes, more mums like that, less misogyny on the streets, I think, is a fairly clear equation. I can only hope whatever. And again, this is not blowing my own trumpet. This is not a feather in my cat. I know lots of moms who are doing this and all you can do is just Hammer it home as much as you can. And my boys are lucky because they have three elder sisters. Yes. Yes. Yeah,ope I mean you'd have to hope that made a difference because that's the thing I was thinking about with Regards to the the two men in the van earlier, just shouting comments unthinkingly is how would the women in their life respond if they knew what they were doing? So I mean the threat is real and The fear should be real as well of consequences, but But almost all of the men doing these kind of things will have women in their life, who may not have laid down the law quite as robustly as you have done, but they will have women in their life who would be shocked not to mention disgusted to discover that their men engaged in this sort of behaviour. Oh man. and I mean, what you've done, Sara, and I'm not going to thank you for it, but it's important that you did is remind me that the direction of traffic is not positive. It was for a long time as we undid the sort of nineteen sevententy style, what you could possibly describe as soft misogyny or entry level misogyny, you've now got. prorofessional misogynists, and once again we come back to social media. You've now got professional misogynists profiteering spreading precisely the kind of bile that would be a criminal act if you did it upon the streets, even before the new legislation. So how on earth do you explain to young women or rather young men that they can't do this kind of thing when they can point at someone who claims to have made millions out of essentially encouraging and teaching misogyny Oh, It's twelve forty seven twelve fifty is the time. Remember, racism, misogyny, and oddly climate change denial always go hand in hand. Let me show you what I mean. So this chap just listened to the same chordter you listened to, Sara talking about women being abused in the street and raising her sons to be better than that. And Rob's response is, this woman is unhinged towards herer sons I should say for Sara's benefit and if anyone else needs to hear it, every other message to come into the studio in response to that call was was praising and complimenting. So let's see what goes on in what passes for Rob's brain, shall we? What kind of character would resespond to a conversation about a mother encouraging her sonss not to be misogynistic. What might some of his other beliefs? involved Here's one from earlier today, in fact, it's not that I necessarily believe the Rnt Boy story. it's just that I don't believe anything when it comes to two tier There you go, two tier kid It's almost like a bingo sheet, isn't it? So not yet racist, but we found plenty of evidence of the misogyny Oh here's one. Here is a novel idea, James. Maybe Elon Musk wants to preserve Western culture from these thirird worldorld savages. Gs my vote So we've got the misogyny, we've got the racism. I suspect that he doesn't extend to climate change denial, and I haven't really got the patience or the energy to work my way through it. but Here's another one, this is from last week. Your condescending left wing whining doesn't cut through anymore, loveovely Mate, you've sent me about thirty messages in the last week, so something's cutting through, although I appreciate you've got a lot of time on your hand since you were stopped from seeing the kids. If not wanting third world savages attempting to behead innocent people on our streets make me right wing then that's a badge I'm glad to wear. I'm just going to have a little look for anything you've sent in to any presenters. condemning white criminals or white murderers Rob some There come on, you must have had something to say about a white criminal U Why are you referencing the latest news from Iran? Well because it' I suppose you don't want us to talk about Iran, given that it's very embarrassing for Donald Trump I was not very impressed by me pointing out that Nigel Farage was ignoring Henry Novak's family There you go, making Henry Novat's killing about race, despite the fact the judge and the prosecution lawyer and the family of Henry said it, Well, Rob, you're an absolute charmer, aren't you? Anyway, weird, you see you see the misogyny in the first message and then there's ten racisms in the next nine. And you think that I exaggerate, These people walk among us Jennifer is in Birmingham to take us back to what it's like to be on the receiving end of behaviour from men like Rob. Jennifer, what would you like to say? Hello Jane. Obsessive listener that second time caller. That's right. That's not a bad average. So' happened this week actually. I'd left some stuff at our holiday homes, some washing that I'd taken out the washer It wasn't quite dry, but it was almost So I just sort of left it out. Then we had a bit of a problem with holdy homes so I needed a handyman to go in and sort that out, whichich I did, and then was surprised to receive a photo of my underwear saying with a message saying this on WhatsApp, saying, didid you leave this out to tease me? Oh my Lord And I'm ashamed to say, I didn't actually call him out on it. I just ignored it. I didn't answer him in any way that I just it made me feel grubby. I It didn't make me feel I should have left my best underwear out. but it certainly made me feel grubby and horrible. and that somebody that I'd allowed into my home, not just into my home and into my bedroom to do a particular job, then ft it appropriate to not only notice but then to intimidate me by sending that message And I think the thing about this is that it's not, I mean I think he would say it with banter. But I don't think he realizes that this is a much deeper thing. This is about we don't matter. It doesn't matter what we think as women. We're there to be bantered at We are Yeah I mean that's took me a while to fully understand what the word objectification meant in these sort of contexts. but you are not a human being in that exchange. you are the sum of your private parts and or underwear. That's it. That's what he's kind of talking about Yes, And I've brought up three sons. They're all middle aged now. and I've fought this. I mean I get teased a lot within the family now. They tease me about being such a feminist, but they tease me because they sort of respect the fact I am and Ive brought them up properly. And we can have jokes between us that where one of them will say something sexist to me with his tongue in his cheek, because actually what we're all taking the mick out of O men is the belief that that sort of thing is okay Yes. So it's open enough that we can make those comments But it's this drip fed sexism that we get and those little things like what happened about this underwear this week? Well what do you say to someone who says if you don't call him out on that, he'll do it again and the next person he does it to may not be as as robust as you. I know, and I feel horrible about it. What would you say? would I mean, Be I don't think it's easy, I think it's easy for people to send in messages saying o why hasn't? I don't think what would you actually say What I do about I' pick this up is w What I say about racism and whatever to say, what do you actually want to say? What did you mean by that?? It's more difficult when it's a photo on a whatsap but you can still say sometimes I pretend I haven't heard properly When somebody makes a sexist comment M them commit to it? Yeah And you don't very often get it said the second time. make people explain a sexist comment or an inappropriate joke. and not only does any Supposed humour gets sucked out of the room at a rate of knots, but they end up so exposed, don't they Well, it's only because we've got a chip on our shoulder anyway. That's a thing in it with us wasn't it? We've got a chip on our shoulder and we've obviously had an argument with our husband and that's what's made us this way. Oh Lord, of course it is. Yeahah. notot to mention the race card. If you've got a chip on one shoulder, it's the race card in the other one on the other arm. But I mean, I mean, that guy is going to go away thinking that you know that you didn't mind, isn't he Yes, but the other thing is, James I'm going to call you out on this now. G on. Oh no. All hang on Sheila's here. Hello, that's a shame. Jennifer anyway, it's time end of the show. E the show No go What were you going to say? If somebody makes a sexist comment to me and I don't call them out, it could not my fault for not call in them out. No absolutely, it's not. and I didn't mean to even suggest seem to suggest that I was I was simply asking I was simply asking, I you may be sound like Nigel Farrs now, don'if And for that, I can never forgive you It's coming up to twelve fifty eight, you are listening to James O'Brien on LBC. I had an absolute peach of a missing word rout, and I completely forgot to do it with you, which But I'll do it now. So Dara White is the guy that runs the fighting stuff that they've just had on the White House lawn. The UFC event that ended with One of the fight one of the fighters got escorted off the premises. I don't know if you know that, because he's been a very outspoken critic of Donald Trump's friendship with Jeoffrey Epstein and the continuing failure to publish all of the appearances that Donald Trump makes in the so called Epstein files. But one of the ones that didn't get escorted off the premises shouted Michelle Obama is a man or something like that, which is what passes for Bana, actually in Donald Trump's universe. But the bllk who owns the whole thing, the bloke who runs the whole UFC thing And remember, we've discussed now at some length how there are echoes of UFC or wrestling in Donald Trump's politics He said something fantastic last month and I managed to miss it. So see if you can fill in the missing words here. Dner White is his name Darner White says Trump can't be racist because he was friends with dot dot dot Who would you slot into that space? So Donald Trump, according to his friend who runs the wrestling Donald Trump can't be racist because he was friends with .. who would you reach for first as an absolute reputation cleanser? He was friends with ot dot therefore he must be C cleaner than clean whiter than white if you pardon the pan Donna White says Donald Trump can't be racist because he was friends with Michael Jackson And that's it from me for another day. If you missed any of today's show, you can listen back on our free Global Player app or the LBC app where you can also stay up to date with all the latest news videos and opinions Podcasts galore, including James O'Brien Daily, the best bits of this show every day and full disclosure, my long form interview series. So download it now for free from your app store. Tom Strawbk will be with you at four, but now it's time for Sheilophobic. This has been a Gobal Player original production.