Inflation trends and cost of living

This episode is sponsored by Nexfire, Investing in the UK's Digital Future. If you work in policy, public services or business, you know how critical digital infrastructure is. The quality of connectivity shapes what's possible for public services, for businesses, for the communities they serve. That's why NexFiber's proposed acquisition of Net omnia is vital. It's designed to accelerate the UK's digital progress. If approved, it will unlock three and a half billion pounds of international investment in the UK, expanding full fibre access to millions of premises by 2027, increasing wholesale choice and strengthening sustainable competition across the market. More investment, more coverage, more competition, more choice. That's what a scaled wholesale challenger looks like in practice This is Britain's broadband moment. Let's seize it. To find out more about Nexfire and its proposed acquisition of Natomnia, visit national wholesale challenger. co.uk This episode is brought to you by IG, the award-winning investment platform trusted by British investors for over 50 years. If you're paying commission on every invest Or watching platform fees eat into your returns, it's worth asking why. IG charges zero commission on all stocks, shares and ETFs, and zero platform fees too. Many investment platforms offer one or the other, but IG charges neither, so more of your money stays where it belongs, invested and working for you. Backed by over fifty years of heritage and nam ed Best Low Cost ICER at the twenty twenty six Boring Money Awards, IG is built for switched on investors who believe their money should go further. Search IG.com to find out more. I G, trade, invest , progress. Your capital is at risk. Other fees may apply the new statesman and you're listening to And I'm here with my colleague Will Dunn for our weekly roundup. Hi Will. Hello. Our first category is Bank Statement of the Week. And Will, you've written about this. Nigel Farage, who received five million pounds from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborn, who you've written very well about in the past, he failed to declare this money. And he says it's because it was personal gift and it that he didn't expect anything impressive. Yeah. Nice friends if you can get them . Yeah. Yeah. I mean also if you can pop round to their house in Thailand and Yeah. Even better. Um sit watch ing the the the waves roll in as uh as your bank account swells with patriotic fervor and and cash. Yeah, yeah. He said it was a gift and then he said it was a reward for campaigning for Brexit for for twenty seven years. Um but yeah, so Farage has um spent quite a lot of time uh doing uh well he did this he said was a gift and that's why he didn't have to declare it, but he has also declared a great deal of income from other sources since becoming an MP. Uh he spent more than fifteen hundred hours um working for people other than the people of Clacton. And um he yeah, so he's he's done a lot of work for things like uh uh gold companies, uh cryptocurrency companies, things like public speaking engagements. He makes a lot of money from from G B News. And um yeah, so I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the uh a potted history of Nigel Raj's bank account. Yeah. Um there's no money in politics. Um and I haven't actually watched the clip, but you said that it was with a bearded despot curious YouTube contrarian. I mean there's so many of them. Um I can picture of an amalgamation of all of these men in my head. When you're in politics, and people laugh at this. But there's no money in politics. Mm. There's no money i if you're straight. Right. If y if you're corrupt, there's probably politics. But there's no money in politics, you know, I'd four kids to bring up, dependence, etc. So for the first time in you know thirty years, I'm earning good money. I thought rather than giving the guy's name, because for British uh readers they might not have heard of him, it's very well known in America. But yeah, one of those guys. One of those guys. And he says if you're straight, if you're corrupt, dot dot dot and then he sort of laughs and and you don't get very much clarity from that. But clearly there is a lot of money to be made for Nigel Farage for being Nigel Farage, as you write in the piece that he said he's said that before, hasn't he? Justifying Yeah uh himself to the parliamentary authorities with the Yeah. Yeah, he said I'm making this money because I'm Nigel Farage. Yeah. Which um I think is you know , in a way, when you look at some of these entries in the register of interests, he'll say that he's made, you know, in some cases a six figure sum for working for four hours as a sort of brand ambassador or something like that. And in a way, that is money earned over a very long period because he's spent this career building up who he is and what he stands for. And then people obviously like that and just give him a ton of money to just be Nigel Farage . Yeah. Um And he is the highest paid MP in terms of second jobs now. And he has the most second jobs. Yeah. When do they stop being second jobs when you've got more than one second job. Well yeah. It's got the most non MP jobs of any MP. Yeah, yeah. Um but the I mean the second jobs thing is still going, it rumbles on. So in this parliament, MPs have earned getting on for 12 million, what declared so far. And um this is something that Keirstarmer said he was going to stop. Here is Keir Starmer in 202enty one saying ban all second jobs for MPs with very limited exceptions. But uh they haven't banned second jobs. Um also in its twenty twenty-four manifesto, Labour said they were going to um commit to uh an immediate ban on MPs from taking up paid advisory or consultancy roles. They're basically lobbying. Um, that hasn't really happened. They said they were going to ask the modernization committee, they were going to create this new committee, take forward urgent work on the restrictions that need to be put in place to prevent MPs from taking up roles that stopped them serving their constituents and the country. And um Lucy Powell, who was then leader of the House of Commons, she um became chair of this new committee. She said she was turning the page on that era of sleaze and scandal and cronyism and bad behaviour. So they were really going to draw a line between them and the Tories who were seen as being riddled with slea sleaze. And then in January 2025 that um moved over to the the standards committee. So it was actually the standards committee that started an inquiry into whether there should be changes to the rules in the MP's code of conduct. They haven't published anything, they haven't heard any evidence since July last year. Um the modern modernisation committee, I've been in touch with them this week just to double check that they definitely haven't done anything about this, and they definitely haven't. So it's all safely in the long grass. And MP s can still do outside work and and are doing it, as I said, to the tune of you know millions of pounds per year. Um voters really like the idea of banning second jobs. So when it's been polled, uh I think the last poll found sixty six percent of voters supported just a total ban on on MPs having second jobs and it's I think it's fairly easy to understand why because MPs get ninety eight thousand four hundred and ninety nine pounds a year. Um they get a defined benefit pension scheme. Um they get a fair bit more as their basic salary if they're a minister or a member of a committee. Um they get accommodation costs so um uh for them and their dependents, so if you are an MP and like a lot of MPs you're renting a flat in Westminster, which is an extremely expensive thing to do, you also get that paid for as well. You get uncapped travel and subsistence expenses. So they're being being paid a lot of money to um, you know, write things and make speeches. And then they're also moonlighting m writing spee uh writing things and making speeches um for other people . Um and I think it is the the speeches that particularly concern me. So j looking at the data this we ek, um just public speaking engagements MPs have made one point six million in this Parliament so far , declared so far. So it occurs to me that if you are say making a speech for say to say a a room full of uh crypto bros and they offer you forty thousand pounds to do that, is that really a speech or is it a donation from the from the crypto bros ? And I think that's an important question to ask for two reasons. So, firstly, political donations are not tax deductible in the UK, but a company paying an MP to do something would be . More importantly, though, foreign nationals aren't allowed to donate to UK political parties. So if you're a you know an, American cryptocurrency promoter and you want to donate to somebody, you might just ask somebody to give them to I'm I'm definitely not pointing any fingers here, but you might just say, hey, how about you pop over and um you know uh uh make a speech and and we'll we'll we'll g give you a really serious amount of money for that. And uh just you know, just to pick out one MP, uh from the list. Nigel Farage has made £4 31, 4 65 from employers in the US in this parliament. So I think there there could be a a bit of a look at the rules there because also I think you know when you look at the size of the fees that they are charging, so somebody like you know, even like so Suela Bre Suela Braverman, Jeremy Hunt, both around thirty grand for for speeches um in the current register of interest for those those for individual speeches. Wow. So yeah, go and find me somebody who wants to listen to Swella Braveman or Jeremy Hunt for a given amount of time. For any amount of time for £30,000 . But I don't know, maybe those people are out there, but okay, so what does it cost to get other really interesting people to speak to a room full of people? So I had a look through a load of after dinner speakers that you can hire. So for less than ten thousand pounds, Brian Blessed . How good would that be? Ray Mears the National Woodland Spirit. This is a dream dinner party. Yeah. Um TV's mustachio buffin Professor Robert Winston. I mean , less than ten grand. History's Alice Roberts. Uh, nineteen eighty four Olympic silver medallist Steve Cram. Less than ten thousand pounds, less than a third of the price of Jeremy Hunt. And he would definitely outrun Jeremy Hammond. Um a little bit over ten grand, but under fifteen, you could have the mellifluous tones of Sir Trevor Macdonald speaking to a roomful of people. Or Sue Lebreve Braverman for twice the price. So I don't know. These these speeches I think are I'm I'm not pointing any fingers, I'm not saying any individual speeches are concerning, but I think they don't give the right impression. And I think if you wanted to give a clearer, cleaner impression of how MPs earn their money, you could just say the taxpayer is already paying them to give speeches and write articles and all these things that they do for outside income and they don't need extra money to do that. Yeah, I agree. I think it's such a it's almost a no-brainer, isn't it there's a really interesting piece that um well, we did this big how to stop reform section in the last magazine and this ethnographer, I think, of X mining town, Sasha Hillhorst, wrote one of the um sections in it, and she made a really interesting case for just going really hard on political renewal in the sense of like, you know, we're to completely trying to clean up politics and anti corruption and all this and basically one of those provisions should be MPs should not be allowed to hold sec second jobs. Um and I think that would just be such an easy win for any new any potential new successor to Keirstarmer who might be coming down the line to just draw I know I know there's all these caveats that people make, but I think that's such a political class thing, saying, oh but those who are professionals should keep up their profession. Why? You don't do that in the normal world, do you? No. If you're a lawyer and you go to do a different job, you don't get to just randomly carry on doing the law usually. Unless the job is being an MP. Yeah, in which case you very much do. Um, you know, Jeffrey Cox is was the classic example of that, earning close to a million in a year for his legal services to a different country. Um and I just think it's a I think it's a bit of a no brainer, um and I don't understand why Keir's Dama didn't stick to that twenty twenty one Yeah, and yeah, like you say, an i an incoming, you know, new new broom, like it would be something that's set uh you know that said if you are going to do lots of other sort of continuity policies if for example you're going to stick to what Shabana Mahmood is proposing on immigration, um, if you are going to you know stick to lots of economic policies to reassure the bond market s. You need to do something to tell the voters that you are actually different from the person you've just opposed, right? Yeah. Yeah. And there's always soul searching about it, like in the Owen Patterson affair in twenty twenty one. So this was a Tory MP who was lobbying for a clinical diagnostics company called Randox, who he was also a paid consultant for. And this opened Pandora's box, didn't it? Every journalist who could click onto the register of interest. Clicked onto the register of interest. And you know, MPs were being asked about all of these different things they were making for money for for from. And it came to absolutely nothing. Like there's a stat now that um at least six MPs actually spend a a working day a week working a job that's not being an MP. Imagine if you or I would just do that . I'm just gonna go off and lobby for Randox now, Tom. Um my column will be late this week. I'm sure he wouldn't mind. Very understanding. He's a big fan of Randox, I heard . Yeah, but it's I and I mean the the job of an MP is we also hear a lot about the long hours. MPs, you know, like dedicated MPs who don't do a second job commonly work sixty hours a week. You know, that's the reason they also have all these expenses, why we the tax payers pay for them to have flat flats in Westminster so they can attend debates into the evening, to vote um whenever possible, and that kind of thing. And um yeah, and that you know, so that there's a system there to support them to work long hours and they have lots of staff and things like that. And if they are then spending that time out of parliament doing other stuff for other people, there's a complete waste of money Yeah. And just one last thing on Farage. There's an interesting diary in this week's issue by Kath Viner, the editor of The Guardian, and she writes um that they had the scoop on the five million from Harborn to Farage, their their city editor Anna Isaac, uncovered it and being the diligent journalist that she is, took it to reform and said, you know, what's your response to this? Gave them twenty-four hours to respond. And uh they actually were rather cheeky. Um and they sort of kept coming back and saying, give us a bit more time, give us a bit more time, and her being an honourable journalist gave them a bit more time. And in that time, they took the story to the telegraph, and that's how it came out, Nigel Farage um gave an interview to the telegraph telling them that he needed the money for his security and talked to them talked to them about his personal safety issues. Yeah. So it's quite interesting. Yeah, it's an interesting bit of I think it it lifts the lid a bit on what I guess a lot of readers and listeners might not know about the journalistic process, which is that when you are going to write something about somebody , you you have to try and get a response from them. I remember doing this with a conservative member of the House of Lords who had interests in companies that had received government contracts worth billions of pounds. And this person was not going to give me an answer. They were very much ignoring all of my emails and calls. You know, I, was I was going phoning up their house of Lord's switchboard and saying, Do you mind writing out a note and and taking it to the and I I never got a reply, but if then it came to a um a a legal process, if they were going to claim that you were defaming them, which is every journalist's nightmare, then you need to have shown that you've done everything you possibly can to um give them the the right to reply. And there is a bit of as you say, there's kind of a like a bit of an honour system between people who you contact the you wouldn't then expect them to go and try to, you know, it's a bit of a dark PR move to then go and try and take the story somewhere else. And it's not one that I suspect journalists reporting in future on reform, I would think, would see that and say, okay, that's what if I have something that's quite explosive about a member of the reform party, then I'm not gonna give them twenty four hours and I'm certainly not gonna give them more time if they ask for it. Yeah. And you there's no set amount of time you have to give them. There's no there's no Yeah. And I I would expect that in future certainly um people will look at that and say, Okay, if you've got something to report on form , you know, you probably say, Can we have an answer back in three hours and that'll be it. Yeah. We're going to take a quick break now. Remember, you can listen to the New Statesman podcast ad-free by downloading the New Statesman app. It's available on iOS and Android. Links to it are in the show notes. On this week's episode of the Exchange, we have our editor Tom McTague speaking at the Charleston Festival, looking at the UK's relationship with Europe ten years after the Brexit referendum. Subscribe to the New Statesman today and get your first six weeks for only six pounds. Go to NewStatesman.com forward slash six weeks to subscribe today. We'll be back after this. This episode is sponsored by NexFiber, investing in the UK's digital future. If you work in policy , public services or business, you know how critical digital infrastructure is. The quality of connectivity shapes what's possible for public services, for businesses, for the communities they serve. That's why NexFiber's proposed acquisition of Net omnia is vital. It's designed to accelerate the UK's digital progress. If approved, it will unlock three and a half billion pounds of international invest ment in the UK, expanding full fibre access to millions of premises by twenty twenty seven, increasing wholesale choice and strengthening sustainable competition across the market. More investment , more coverage, more competition, more choice. That's what a scaled wholesale challenger looks like in practice. This is Britain's broadband Moment Let's seize it . To find out more about NexFiber and its proposed acquisition of Natomnia, visit National Wholesale Challenger dot co dot UK This episode is brought to you by IG , the award-winning investment platform trusted by British investors for over 50 years. If you're paying commission on every investment or watching platform fees eat into your returns, it's worth asking why. IG charges zero commission on all stocks, shares and ETFs and zero platform fees too. Many investment platforms offer one or the other, but IG charges neither, so more of your money stays where it belongs, invested and working for you. Backed by over fifty years of heritage and named Best Low Cost ICER at the twenty twenty six Boring Money Awards, IG is built for switched on investors who believe their money should go further. Search IG.com to find out more. IG , trade, invest , progress. Your capital is at risk. Other fees may apply. Welcome back. Our next caskare is surprisingly good news of the week. So um it's not all doom and gloom, is it, Anoush? No. Things are slightly less shit than we feared. The irony is that on the same day that Wes Streeting was resigned as Health Secretary, Josh Symonds announced that he was going to give up his seat for Andy Burnham to be able to run in it. There were actually two pieces of good news that the government would usually have wanted to take up the day with. Um the first was the the economy seemed to have proved more resilient than we expected, even in the context of the war uh in Iran, um, with figures showing 0.3% growth in March. Woo-hoo. Um but actually But that was much better than forecasts suggested, I'm I'm told. Um and also it made the UK the fastest growing economy in the G seven, apparently. Absolutely smashing with the with the naught point three. Yeah, with the naught point three. Um but then there was also NHS data that came out the same day. I mean it's so unlucky that all of this happened for the government on the same day. Normally the government will wait until there's a a big news event and then they'll they'll shovel out a load of in the transparency and and uh freedom of information page on the gov.uk website, there'll suddenly be nine things that appear that are just like steaming bags of trash that they don't want anyone to look at. In this case it's the other way around, isn't it? In this case it it was a bad day to bury good news. Yeah, yeah. And the and the the good news is the subject of your excellent column this week. Thank you. Um yeah so, this was NHS data. It showed that hospitals are meeting their target to treat sixty five percent of patients within eighteen weeks and the backlog, you know, the infamous NHS backlog has actually shrunk by half a million since Labour came in. So there's all sorts of caveats to that about, you know, people being taken off the list whose treatment isn't actually finished and some fiddling with the numbers, but it it is unequivocally good news. And I'm sure you've um you've experienced this, Will, but I've heard a few more positive stories about the NHS than I was hearing, you know, a year ago, two years ago. Um, I, you know, I was called up for a scam that I wasn't expecting for five months, and I sort of suddenly felt like one of those people on question time who were complaining at Tony Blair in two thousand and five that they were being offered doctor's appointments too quickly. I can't make it three days or four days hence. I was told that's because they can meet their target that everybody gets it within forty eight hours. Why? Well I I'm I'm absolutely astonished at that A more innocent time that was. Yeah, what a what a problem to have. Yeah. Um so I wanted to look into this. So I spoke to because Wes Streeting was boasting about a number of things that he's improved in the NHS in his resignation letter. And when I started speaking to people who work in the NHS, like doctors, paramedic, GPs, they all sounded extremely gloomy. They were they they didn't deny that things were moving in the right direction, but they were just saying, you know, it's it's short-term fixes and there's not enough capital investment, and all of the things that were a problem when you know we were writing about the NHS being in crisis every season. Um, but also what's interesting is the public aren't creating the government with improvement in the NHS, even though they are citing examples of when they've had good experiences. And this is something called I've Been Lucky syndrome, which I hadn't heard about before, but I was told about by people who do focus group at Thinks Insight and Strategy, which is Deborah Matterson's um thing. She was Gordon Brown's chief polster and has advised Tony Blair and um Keir Starmer as well. She advised Keirstarmer. Um and this is the thing where someone in a focus group will say, Oh, well, I got the GP appointment really fast, and they really listen to me and you know, and I feel much better now and they've had a good experience. But then they say, I suppose I've just been lucky, you know, I I'm I and our our GP it just happens to be good, but I know everyone else is having a terrible time. And so unfortunately for Labour they don't seem to be making very much political capital from some of the things that they are getting right. Yeah. And it um I think that's what's I I really like um about your your reporting on this is that you know you're you're going to sort of to to to people about their experiences of politics rather than just talking about the politics itself, which is I don't know, it's it seems to be such a relentless sort of uh political position from all sides to talk about the NHS as being permanently in crisis. Yeah. Because it's this national symbol and a and every politician has to set themselves up as the person to to fix it um in various different ways. I mean I remember recently hearing J abrice Mogg talking about the need to fix the NHS. I mean presumably just by burning it to the ground because no one deserves it. But you know, there was the a fix was in mind that it had to be talked about . Whereas yeah, like you say, when you go that with sort of the the individual experience that um is as you say not being capitalized on is that you know people when they actually experience uh coming into contact with the social safety net. They're like, oh, that's brilliant. I can't believe I got a doctor for free. It's sort of part of that, isn't it? But I think there was one particular quote that really stood out, which seemed, I think I, think kind of spoke for the nation from an expert at the King's Fund think tank, which is a health-focused uh think tank. And um they say the first meeting I had with a government official after the election was all about was about the health mission. Honestly, I left that meeting more excited than I'd been in years. And then the next time we tried to get in touch. People working in government were saying we're not sure we'll still be in a job. Yeah, I know. It's a great anecdote. Absolutely. The universal experience of this Labour government. But there was other good news this week, wasn't there, Will? Yes, yes there was. Um so inflation all sorted. The rate of inflation fell from three point three percent um in March to two point eight per cent in April. Woo all done. Nothing done. So um the reason it fell, it's quite an interesting one this because first of all it's counterintuitive because you would think you're looking at um a a war that's Yeah, we keep being told about the cost of living crisis. Yeah. Producing an energy crisis.. Yeah And a f a new cost of living crisis. You've got the government this week um rolling out new policies to support the cost of living. Yeah. And that's all related to the the cost of energy. So how come inflation is falling ? And it's partly because of what you've reported on a fair bit um in recent weeks and months, going to supermarkets and talking to people about their inflation expectations. So it's partly to do with a drop in the cost of package holidays and airfares , which because jet fuel shortages have been in the headlines a lot, and because people are expecting holidays to cost a lot. Th'eres lower demand for them . And that means with people not booking holidays, companies are responding to that slump in demand by lowering prices, which has been part of the drop in inflation. That's so interesting. It is is also to do with a drop in the cost of energy because um the consumer prices index is a picture of how prices have risen um over the last 12 months and in the last 12 months um they have not risen as much as they did previously and also they have um we've had a a a lowering of the energy price cap , um which also is there there have been government policies to take out some of the um the green levies within energy bills. Not to get rid of them though, to move them into general taxation because this is Rachel Reeves we're talking about . Any chance at a stealth tax. Yeah, absolutely loves the stealth tax. Um so but that I don't think anyone really thinks like this drop in inflation is just you know, it it's not it's not all done. Um and the other statistics around prices don't indicate that that's gonna happen. So like producer input prices, so the kind of cost of materials going into factories, um, rows by seven point seven percent. Import prices um rose by um eight per cent in the year to April. So you and also I think people having experienced the inflation that came as a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. So that I mean that happened at a different time for inflation because it was already on the rise, like the war in Ukraine wasn't the only cause. Yeah, it was coming off the back of the pandemic and Yeah, yeah, it was very much on the way up already. But also that the peak um after the invasion of Ukraine, it took another six months. It didn't peak until October in inflationary terms. So we are going to see prices picking up and probably quite soon. So in July, um the the price cap will will rise and um Cornwall Insight, uh very much a national institution at this point , the country's favorite uh energy price forecaster says it's probably going to rise by thirteen percent in July, so from one thousand six hundred and forty one pounds to to eighteen fifty. So uh yeah that's thirteen percent or sixteen forty one to eighteen fifty is Charles the First to Queen Victoria if you're counting in monarchs which we do but the New York City. Yeah that is my favourite currency. Yeah, it's interesting because you can tell that they really think that that it's life is going to be very tough very quickly. You can tell from the policies that they're bringing in. So you know, even the thing of for free bus travel for children in August, you know, trying to make summer a bit more bearable for families is is an interesting tell, as well as all of this strange back and forth with the supermarkets. So a hint at you know, asking them to cap the prices of certain products, then pushing back and now it's more that they're going to cut import tariffs on certain products. Um we don't know which products yet, but they've suggested biscuits, chocolate, dried fruit and nuts, which is great news for me because most of my life is spent bribing a toddler. So they're clearly targeting a very particular demographic with that one. Yeah. Um but yes. That's the power of the New Statesman podcast. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Rachel Ree's listening thinking, oh she sounds tired. Yeah, but as I say they the I d I don't think anyone thinks prices are gonna you know continue to slow down in their in in rising and I won't start going on about the bond markets, but the bond cut bond markets very much indicate that, you know, that's why you don't see um bond yields coming down, because that's inflation expectations in financial markets, and that's why you don't see um mortgages coming down. So the day after this good news on inflation, um Nat West increased mortgage rates by by naught point two percent. So no one thinks it's gonna last. And um yeah, we'll we'll see where we are with um whatever the Americans and the Israelis and the Iranians start decide to do on the Strait of Hormuz. Great. This was supposed to be the positive section. Okay, let's take another quick break and we'll be back after this. This episode is sponsored by NexFiber Investing in the UK's digital future. If you work in policy, public services or business, you know how critical digital infrastructure is the quality of connectivity shapes what's possible for public services, for businesses, for the communities they serve. That's why NexFiber's proposed acquisition of Net omnia is vital. It's designed to accelerate the UK's digital progress. If approved, it will unlock three and a half billion pounds of international investment in the UK, expanding full fibre access to millions of premises by twenty twenty seven, increasing wholesale choice and strengthening sustainable competition across the market. More investment, more coverage, more competition, more choice. That's what a sc aled wholesale challenger looks like in practice. This is Britain's broadband moment. Let's seize it. To find out more about Nexfire and its proposed acquisition of Natomnia, visit national wholesalechallenger. co. uk by BetterHelp. Did I talk too much? I should have handled that better. Why can't I just let it go? Why did I wish we'd stop Take a breath. You're not alone. Counseling helps you sort through the noise with qualified professionals. Get matched with a therapist online based on your unique needs. And get help with everyday struggles like anxiety or managing tough emotions. Visit betterhelp.com forward slash random podcast for 10% off your first month of online therapy and let life feel better. Welcome back. We're on to our last category already, uh, which is a reprise of last week's suspended counsellor of the week because there's just so many to choose from. Will, who have you gone for? So um well actually I've cheated slightly. Um he's not actually been suspended, he has stepped down. Um okay. So just for for context . So uh there is a couple of other counsellors who have resigned um because they didn't realise they were inel ineligible. They were made ineligible by the jobs that they had. So these other two councillors, one reform and one Green , they both um worked as teachers and they worked for local authority schools. So what they didn't realize, thanks to the brilliant vetting processes that we talked about last week, they didn't because they already worked for the council, you can't be a councillor and have a job as a council employee. Now you can have a job as counsell or and also have another job as a taxi driver or a physicist or an actor in hardcore gay pornography. Or can you? This is the sad story of Stephen Mausdall, who was reforms counsellor in St. Helens, in Merseyside. He has resigned after reporting on um what has been described by LBC as his double life, in which um he was um described as having featured in an extensive catalogue of eye water ing gay porn videos. So I didn't realise eye watering was considered sexy. Crying . But anyway , um I think you know this is um somebody who it was it was all perfectly legal. Um and um I think there are some questions to be asked about who told him to step down because it so he told the Liverpool Echo Um this is a quote I was told to apologize to the public and stop doing what I was doing if I was in for a chance of staying being a counsellor, but I refuse because I've done no wrongdoing and I'm not lying just to stay in office. I am who I am. I'm proud of what I do. Um and um this is somebody who 's him. Yeah. Uh I I should add, uh Mr. Maelstall is a uh an upstanding citizen who received the Good Citizen Award in 2021 from the mayor of St. Helens after he spent a month of his spare time doing like planting flower boxes and replating planters and putting in arrangements of flowers across St Helens. And um so I think the questions to be asked here are not you know, not the usual questions about a reform councillor stepping down for questionable uh or indeed abhorrent social media posts. It's why is this guy stepping down for doing a job that obviously uh you know there are lots of people in the media clutching their pearls um over his job. But um But then yeah, we allow MPs to do all sorts of second jobs that we've just talked about. Exactly. And yeah, we have a problem with this somehow. I mean I'm sure one MP does, Danny Krueger, who