Nothing to say, yet
Transcription
The speaker is discussing the concept of the social contract, which refers to a set of acceptable behaviors and rules that individuals and society collectively agree upon. They talk about how this contract has started to break down in the UK, with a divide between the wealthy and the rest of the population. The speaker mentions examples such as the state of the NHS and the privatization of services. They also highlight the influence of vested interests in making the system private. The conversation touches on the impact of wealth on access to healthcare and the quality of services. The speaker emphasizes the need to avoid a healthcare system similar to the one in the US. So we are here, aren't we, in the posh bit of Leeds, which is a bit of an oxymoron, let's be honest. And I'm starting to wonder now whether or not we've committed ourselves to a Leeds-based podcast, which, given that I live four and a half hours away, is a bit of a schoolboy era. So this is the second time we've sat down to have this conversation about the podcast that doesn't have a name. And we'll talk a bit about what we covered in the first one, because for us, actually, it probably feels like a little while ago, probably about five, six weeks ago. But for anybody who's listening to this, it might have been 10 minutes ago, because they just listened to the last one, and then they're coming straight into listening to this one. So last time, we had a conversation about this concept of the social contract, and what does it mean to behave, and how should we behave towards one another, and what does that mean in terms of what's acceptable and not acceptable. And the range of things that we talked about were from some of the slightly more serious, and we might get a bit more serious today, to some of the utterly ridiculous stories from our lives growing up, whether it was toenails, or bits in drinks, or showers, or flights to Tenerife. I don't want to spoil it for anybody who hasn't yet listened to the previous version. So today, as well as ultimately trying to spend a few minutes working out what the title of the podcast actually might be, because we do have a few different options, I'm not sure all of them would be socially acceptable, I thought we might get into a little bit of politics. Paul, can I just say, right, before we start, because actually, we are in a very posh part of Leeds, this is where Paul lives, and for those that know Paul, he's quite a large estate, and we're in his kind of media studio, and as we're sat in his media studio, with him on a beanbag, pretty much on the floor, me sat with a cup of tea, but interestingly, not getting off at a biscuit, go with my cup of tea. Yeah, Paul, is this where your genius ideas come together for these type of moments? This is where dreams are made. This is where dreams are made. This is where you sleep when you get a picture up. We don't live in a posh part of Leeds, it's certainly not a media studio, and we don't have any ultra-processed foods in this house, so that's why there's no biscuits. Well, very nice talk to make, I enjoyed that, it was good. You're welcome to visit the north, is where things happen, you know, people down south need to maybe realise that a little bit, which maybe links perfectly into the political agenda. Yeah, maybe. Talk about north versus south. Yeah, maybe, yeah, got an hour. So, right, let's start with the idea of the social contract. So, I think we touched on this before, lots of different ways that you could describe it, but in my simple language, this is the idea that there's a set of acceptable behaviours and rules and expectations that all of us as individuals and then as a society collectively buy into. We commit to put things into society for the benefit of all of us, and if we put in, then obviously there's an expectation that we'll get something back out. So, we pay our taxes, we put that into the government, that allows the benefit of that collective investment of our taxes to be then spent in a way that makes the society that we live in better, more sustainable, and frankly, more enjoyable, and that's the obvious first example of the social contract. But actually, it's also about how we interact with each other on a daily basis, whether in the workplace, in a social environment, with our friends, with our families, what's the acceptable level of behaviour? So, it feels quite interesting to potentially start it through the lens of politics, given where we are politically in the UK at the moment, and it's probably worth just summarising that a little bit. So, right now, 14 years of a particular government, the highest tax burden that any generation has kind of carried since the war, and yet in so many ways we look around ourselves and you think this isn't looking in particularly good shape in terms of our roads, in terms of our NHS, in terms of our infrastructure, in terms of, you know, so many things that we effectively say, yeah, we're committed to pay our tax, and in return that tax is going to be spent and invested in a way that actually benefits us all. So, it's quite interesting to think why has that social contract started to break down? Why has that social contract started to break down, Paul? Yeah, well, we've said a few times, haven't we, we're maybe not the best qualified people to give any kind of academic or professional response, but I mean, you know, I think we touched on this last time, it just feels like there's a real divide that's getting wider and wider. I mean, I just joked about the North versus South, which is a bit of a cliche, I guess, because there's obviously lots of wealthy people in the North, aren't they? But there does appear to be a divide where a small percentage of people in the country seem to be getting richer, and yet more and more people seem to be dropping below a particular line, whether whatever that is, the poverty line or cost of living, etc. And yet those people seem to be needing to work harder and harder to get more money or to get things that they need, potentially striking and doing various things that are potentially unpalatable for the values that they have. And yet this sort of hidden face of whatever it is, I don't know, top end of politics, industry, maybe it's, you know, I don't know, inherited wealth, I don't know. But there seems to be a group of people who who, yeah, seem to be ducking the principle of the social contract. Well, yeah, and this idea that we all put in, that we all pay our tax. And obviously, there's a big difference. If you have a job, you very, very clearly pay tax. If you don't earn your wealth or income through that kind of salary, then actually, the tax regime is very, very favourable and very, very different. And so the amount of potential money that you're investing back into society for all the things that you're benefiting from the roads, the health system, whatever it might be, is, is completely out of kilter, completely out of balance. And that that in itself, then drives a question, which is, well, if they're not doing it, why should I? My brain immediately goes to your NHS reference. And I'm not sure whether I can articulate this properly. But what we also see, or what I see, is people in those maybe positions of wealth, not being overly bothered about what they get from the state, because they can afford to pay for it privately. So if you take the NHS, for example, and we've had lots of experiences that maybe over a period of time, the NHS is fantastic, isn't it? The people who work there are unbelievable and do an immense amount of stuff. But if you've got a bit of cash in your pocket, you don't need to worry about waiting times, you don't need to worry about the quality of the care that you get, because you can go private. And so then what we're also kind of seeing, I guess, is a group of people who actually aren't that bothered if things don't happen in the state run scenarios. You know, if you live in a gated community, you're not really worried about, you know, the council coming and picking your bins, partly because you've probably got a contract with somebody as part of that community. So there's almost this other side of things now where, you know, if you haven't got a bit of cash, you don't have to get involved with the state of the state, where there's problems with trains and NHS waiting times and council services needing to be cut. The people who are maybe making decisions, they don't use those services. I mean, I don't know that for true. But I think there's a couple of things, isn't there? So you take the NHS, which is a really good example, because you only have to look across the Atlantic at a model that's clearly not sustainable and clearly not accessible by people below a certain level of income or certain level of wealth. And even those that maybe are relatively well off can be very quickly bankrupted by the cost of medical care and medical health. When you look at the US model in the UK, though, there's still a finite number of doctors in the system, and many of the doctors that provide the private care are actually doctors that are also employed by the NHS. And they're quite rightly taking their skills and saying, well, the state doesn't seem to care hugely about the contribution that I'm making. You see that with the junior doctors. And yet there's more wealth that I can make myself, and everybody else seems to be looking after themselves. So maybe, you know, I have to think about that from my perspective and taking my skills and getting paid a market rate for the skills that I bring. And that in itself, then, is creating this vicious cycle, which is then there's less capacity to support the national health system. And then there's more of a, well, it's not working, so I'll go private, which then encourages more and more privatisation, which then creates the system that we definitely want to avoid, which is the one that we see over the pond. The other side to that is, there's a lot of vested interest to make the system private, whether it's the pharmaceutical companies, whether it's their private medical insurers, because frankly, there's a lot of then accessible, you know, revenue opportunities that they can't access when quite a lot of things are provided by the NHS. And even people who want to go private, while the ultra wealthy that pay for their own doctors, they still have to go to the NHS to get a referral letter to access their private medical. You know, similarly with the trains, I've just travelled and it's stark. If a train is going from anywhere to London, it's pretty pristine and it's pretty chuffing massive in terms of the number of carriages and the services on board. But if you try and travel across this country in any direction that's not via London, it's just stark there. And it's not because there's less people travelling, because the trains are full, but they're just not of a quality and they're just not, you know, of a level of investment. Even people who have pretty reasonable means, a lot of them are travelling on trains, but maybe they're travelling into London and therefore they're not feeling the pain of limited infrastructure, because the infrastructure is being invested, but only in pockets of the country. Same with the roads. You know this story from literally a week ago, Louise and I were going to, coming back from my son's football training, nine o'clock at night, driving along one of the dual carriageways near where we live. Potholes all over the place and we hit one so hard, it basically rips the tyre to pieces. You know, we hit it at 70 miles an hour, obviously because that's the speed limit. Very important that we're following the speed limit. And the point there is, so that cost us obviously a lot of money to repair a tyre, but it could have been a hell of a lot worse, given the speed we were going, if it had thrown the vehicle, the car off track and we'd hit somebody else. And these are things that you would just basically expect are part of that investment, but that investment is not getting there, because it's clearly disappearing into other areas of government or indeed into wasted projects like Rwanda or, you know, whatever the kind of the example is, there's a lot of poorly managed, you know, kind of infrastructure and government. So the contract's breaking down. Lots of people are putting in, but not getting much out. And quite a lot of people are just taking out, without having put very much in. And then that's where it starts to break down in terms of, well, this is all about looking after yourself. I think that's a really challenging position for everybody, isn't it, with the social contract situation, because if you desperately need some care from an NHS perspective, from a health perspective, and you, maybe you can't afford to go private, but you can find the money, prioritise, then you are going to have to go private. And I think that's one of the things, if you can't afford to go private, but you can find the money, prioritise, then you are stuck in that cycle, because then you sit there and think, well, everyone else is doing it, so why don't I try and do it? And I've got a close to home example, my parents have done that, and I said to them, listen, go private. And I made a phone call to the consultant when they told me, you know, my mother, I guess, allegedly had a heart attack of some description, that sounds worse than it is, and she fed back to me, the consultant said it's going to be six weeks before we can see her. And I got the name of the consultant, phoned them at the private practice, and they said they could see her that afternoon. So my answer was, it's 250 quid to get you backside there now. Now, your point is right, they had to still go through the NHS to get all of those different access for functions, etc, but they were able to get that treatment immediately and that medication and that support and that advice for 250 quid. Now, that might seem a bit flippant, you know, 250 quid isn't, it's not just a fly-by-night amount of cash, and not everybody can afford that. But you're right, almost what I would say, working people are having to make those types of choices, which then create almost like a justification for the process, because then it creates demand, and then people look at the pound signs and then think, well, actually, if we do this more, there's going to be more people getting involved, and that shortens the times in the waiting list. You're right, it just spirals, and I guess that's the principle we've been talking about, isn't it, whatever that is, somebody looking at somebody else's behaviour and going, well, if they're going to do it. Well, here's the classic, right, so in Britain, we've historically been famous for liking queuing, yeah, and being quite happy to queue up for things. But we also know that when we see somebody jump the queue, yeah, we used to go, whoa, whoa, whoa, where are you going? There's a queue. Increasingly now, if nobody calls that behaviour out, there's a lot of people worried about calling out other people's behaviour generally, because how is it perceived, how is that twisted and turned back on somebody for holding somebody else's accountable to the right behaviour. Everyone goes, well, if they're doing it, I'll do it. So it's effectively the proverbial, you know, solve the queue, I'm just going to find a way to get what I need for myself right now in the best way that I can, and that's a downward spiral exactly as you said, right. The same when you're on the road, right, we can clearly see that the traffic is going to merge, and so we're using the lane, but at some point we kind of go, wait a minute, this isn't right, because these people are taking the mickey, they're trying to push in, we've all been queuing patiently, and then you start to get these kind of issues of resentment and negative behaviour, and then that can only go one way, which is, well, I'll just look after myself, I'm all right. You've just sparked a memory in my grey matter, and I always remember as a kid we used to go on, we were lucky enough, my dad used to drive us to France and Italy for our holidays, and I remember being on a French motorway once, I can't remember, maybe I was about 10 years old, and there was a said queue as you've just described, and I remember my dad being really irritated and pulling over into the lane to stop other cars from getting past, and this lorry turned up, it's like a French lorry, I remember looking in the back window and this lorry basically just mounted the paving sort of like middle, central reservation and just flew straight past him, and I think my dad just gently pulled back in. So you're absolutely right, you can try and take into your own hands, can't you, and challenge things, but actually what then usually happens, yeah, people would then potentially raise the aggression or the tension, so how dare you challenge me, and who do you think you are to challenge me? It's a good example, because in that situation, you know, it's hard to resist. And also, it's hard to be the one that stands out from the crowd and goes, no, that's not okay, because I was thinking about this as I was coming out, you know, what are all the different examples of the do as I say, not as I do, we were talking just before this about, you know, the story of Rishi Sunak in the back of the car without his seatbelt on, recording a social media video, and just not having the wherewithal to recognise that that was a pretty obvious own goal. I've always had a problem with that. Daddy pig gives everybody a bad name. But, you know, and then, you know, this week, we've seen it in the paper, haven't we, that goldsmith banned from driving, he's been caught speeding seven times in a period of time, so he's been banned from driving. You know, there's lots and lots of these examples of, well, I know that's generally the rule, but that rule doesn't really apply to me, so I'm just going to do my own thing, we've seen it again in the stories this week about what's acceptable behaviour from donors to political parties. Well, by all accounts, as long as the money is big enough, it doesn't really matter. So, then it's again this question of, well, if I can see that there's something in it for me, I'll turn a blind eye, and it's OK, and it's kind of acceptable. But actually, we all know that that's just, that's now starting to lose a sense of what's right or wrong. I saw a video, I think it's Dave Chappelle in the US, famous comedian, and he goes, the problem with the world today is that we don't talk about what is right or wrong, or what's good or bad, we start to pass it off now as what's better or worse. And actually, as soon as you start talking about better or worse, and you lose the fundamental principle of right or wrong, or good or bad, you can find much easier ways to justify your behaviour, because at least this is better than that, or that's no worse than X. And all of a sudden, the blurred lines of, well, wait a minute, what's the contract of how we should behave with one another, how we should conduct ourselves in public spaces, and in work, in our contribution to the world around us, suddenly starts to have much more grey areas, because at least it's better than that, or at least it's not as bad, or as worse as that could have been. I think that's where maybe if we try and challenge ourselves a little bit, I guess we could potentially come across as being a bit holier than thou. And when it comes to the driving example, if you stick with that for a minute, you know, speeding, I'm pretty happy to say on here that I'd be surprised if there isn't, if there's many people in this country who drive, who haven't sped at some point. I mean, I've definitely not, I've definitely not sped in a year or whatever. I reject that. So I guess that's the challenge, isn't it? And then when we have maybe, you know, gone over the speed limit at any point in time, you're absolutely right, we've probably all been able to justify it in our own minds as to why we've done that. And that could be anything from, well actually, it's late, there's no one around, I need to get home, or I'm late and I need to go a bit quicker to get somewhere. And we all sort of start to make our own judgments as to what is acceptable or not. And actually, in this country, you know, Germany is a bit different, or maybe variable speed limits are a bit different, aren't they, in some parts of the motorways. But, you know, generally in and around roads, the speed limit is the speed limit, isn't it? That's the end of it. And, you know, I've been caught speeding, you know, over my time, whatever. But we've all made justifications for it, haven't we? Which was, you know, one time I was caught speeding because I wasn't concentrating, which is terrible, because I didn't see the camera and didn't want it to slow down. I think this podcast has turned into the confessions of Paul. It's a bit of a speeding anonymous. But no, I'm happy to kind of say that, because I think it's important that we recognise that we're not trying to suggest that everybody's got to be perfect all the time. But I think we have to question it and take responsibility for it. And that's what we've kind of spoke about. So at the end of the day, I can't bemoan the fact that I didn't see a speed limit. Listen, I haven't been caught speeding for 10 years. Yeah, it was ages ago. But, you know, you're trying to justify it. But I think it's such a simplistic principle, isn't it, that you're right. We find rationale for why something is acceptable, even though we know that it's against a particular rule. And we can sit there and say, well, why is this road a 20? That's ridiculous, it's a 20. It should be a 30. That's why I was driving 30. And almost feel like that's OK, or it was late or whatever. But we have to also accept that there are probably occasions where, well actually I'll ask you the question, are there occasions where doing something that's slightly outside of the rules is acceptable because of the circumstance that it's under? And I think that's where it becomes alert. We touched on this last time a little bit in the context of we don't know what's going on in somebody else's life when we see a particular behaviour. And actually the example was me driving, trying to get up to see my dad. And, you know, for me in that moment, that was the justification. It was genuinely a life or death situation for I just need to get there as quickly as possible because, you know, the consequences of not getting there would live with me for the rest of my life. Now, equally, frankly, if I'd had an accident, the consequences of that would live with me for the rest of my life. So I think you're absolutely spot on. Fundamentally, we can all look at and judge and assume what other people are doing. But we never really know what's going on in their lives. But the one thing we absolutely can do is be accountable for ourselves. And the problem I think increasingly that happens is we see a behaviour and then a justification for that behaviour that then tries to blame everybody else for why that thing happened or why that was an OK way to react or why that was an appropriate way to behave or why that was an appropriate thing to vandalise or, you know, whatever it may be. And we're seeing this all the time, this kind of justification. I wonder sometimes how much of it is because it's really hard to just speak to yourself and say, you know what, maybe that wasn't the way that I should have handled that situation. Maybe I could have done that better. Maybe I should be a bit more accountable for why I chose to do that rather than post justification. Oh, yeah, but I did it because. And I think there's a hell of a lot in that. There's some really good books written on this topic. There's a couple of books by an organisation called the Arbinger Institute. And I would encourage anybody to read those because it talks to this point of how we're going to justify behaviour. I was thinking, and it's not on the political lines, and this might be the subject of our next podcast, which is more about how does a social contract show up in sport? But the thing that was interesting over the weekend was the Coventry Wolves game, where you had the ball boy, the Wolves, trying to, you know, effectively trying to slow the game down and keep the ball. And then obviously Mark Robbins, the Coventry manager, reacting to that in the moment where, let's put it, unbelievable finish to that game. But in the moment, what's happened is the emotions have got the better of people. There's been a behaviour. And then the question is, do you own it and be accountable for it in fair play? Yeah, he's owned it. How often do we own it? Well, I think you're right. I think there's a piece of the time on itself where we could discuss this, actually, because I think it's quite an interesting concept. It's an emotional reaction to a situation, which is no different to an emotional reaction to somebody pushing in in a cue, is it? It just has a different outcome. One of them potentially is aggression. The other is, I don't know, sort of, yeah, aggression, but in a, I'm rubbing this back in your face type of thing. So if you turn around in a supermarket and got to the cue first, the other guy was, would you turn around and go, get in there! I'm so high, pal! I'm pretty sure we used to do that too. I'm off, I'm in the car, see? And then pull in front of him, at speed. Perfect. That would be the perfect day. Jump the cue at Tesco, jump in a car, speed off, happy day, social contract. Just, it is a really interesting point and I just think, to come back to politics then, what's the emotion or the behaviour that's driving some of the things that we see? The obvious kind of behaviour that people would focus on is greed, you know, so this kind of sense of, well, this is going to help me because I can do this or take that and it benefits me personally, you know, from a wealth perspective, we've seen that with, um, what's her title in the tabloid, Baroness Mone? It'll come to me. Michelle Mone. Yeah, so, but you know, the idea that she saw an opportunity, she grabbed it, what was she really interested in? Was she genuinely interested in the provision of safety equipment to help the country deal with a pandemic or did she see pound signs and therefore huge opportunity for me personally to profit? You know, no one will honestly know except her, and then that kind of self-reflection of, well, what was really the motivation here, what was really driving this behaviour? And I think when you see the politics and the policies that we're rolling out, when you see some of the justification for investments and the way that money has been, you know, the government has no money, literally zero money, unless people pay tax. And I think sometimes people forget that the government is sponsored 100% by people paying taxes and their responsibility then is to use your money wisely. And how often is that really happening versus being exploited for the benefit of personal gain or kind of gain of a smaller minority? And even worse, and you see this right now, when a government decides that they're going to spend more money than the taxes they've raised, in effect what they're saying is, I'm borrowing some more of your money and you're going to pay for that. I'm not really asking your permission, I'm just telling you, I know you gave me X, but you now need to give me Y because I've already spent more than you've given me. It's like a gambler, you know, with a bad habit that they can't shake. They're always going to, you know, justify a reason to spend more and that's what you spent. You're effectively sponsoring people, sponsoring people. You'll have to explain why. Yeah, I've just, we've just had a, our cat has just decided to come into the media suite, as you described it earlier, and she's possibly the most timid thing in the world and normally would run a mile, but for whatever reason she's decided to rock up today and join into the conversation. She's wondering why we're sitting basically on her bed. Yeah, I think so. But yeah, I mean, back to what you're saying and I think that's the challenge, isn't it? We're back again to that point, it's about consequences, isn't it? You know, what, if that's my money and I know that if I go and, I don't know, I mean, go on a big night out and spend it all in one go and then I haven't got enough money left for the food at the end of the week or whatever, then, you know, I've got to take responsibility for that, haven't I? But if I'm just kind of spending somebody else's money and I'm still able to eat, then actually there's no consequence for me, isn't there? There's no pain because I can just still carry on spending my money and, but yeah, I still get the enjoyment of spending someone else's money and that kind of doesn't sit right with me. And look, I get there's probably lots of difficult decisions governments have to make and, you know, things that they have to maybe let down, but I think, for me, the pandemic just, I don't know whether it's always been there or whether it changed, but it just exposed a lot of decisions that felt like they were made for people's individual benefits and not for the greater good of the organisation. And to me, making money off something like PPE that couldn't even be used in the country, or worse than we are getting a bit too politically, those people who like took grants, you know, people in this country who got COVID grants when they knew they didn't need them, were just blagging it and then never paid them back. Wasn't there some figure of like millions that we just want to see or know where it is because people just took these grants. So it isn't just the government, is it? There's people across this whole country. That's the point. What happens there is people say, well, they're doing it. But frankly, why can't I? This is an opportunity. And I think your consequence, the difference is if you and I spend more money than we have, well, there's no more money coming in or you're trying to live till the next payday. Well, from a government perspective, there's a constant payday because the tax revenues are constantly rolling in. And so you're effectively always borrowing against that future earnings, which is, you know, infinite because, you know, at what point is anyone going to say, oh, suddenly there's not going to be any tax revenue this year. And so it does, it drives that. Well, if I'm not, if I don't need to be or if I'm not being held accountable, then I can do more and more things and I can find ways to make it, you know, personally gain, a personal gain for me and therefore then this strata is behaving. And then I think, and I think the sort of bit that finishes that off is that once you've got used to doing all of that as well, it becomes even harder to stop doing it. So I love to quote Eddie Murphy Raw from many years ago. And if you get a chance to listen to or watch Eddie Murphy Raw, watch it because it's a fantastic piece of comedy. You know, he talks about the, if you have a piece of steak every night, it becomes a piece of regular old steak. And I needed to get that reference in because it's not about money. But, but that's the point, isn't it? Is, is then after a while it becomes boring. It becomes, it becomes the same taking that amount of money. It was then the thirst for more and more. And so actually, if you then take that away from that person and say, hang on a second, you need to stop taking all that cash and go back to this kind of salary or this kind of normal income. And that feels like hurtful. It feels like a hardship. There's a really, there's a really, and I'll, I'll, I'm pretty butch now, but there's a really good lecturer that talks about the fact that things, when they're first given to people, are appreciated. But then if it happens a second time, they start to become dependent and ultimately it becomes an expectation. And if that expectation is not fulfilled, then it actually becomes a frustration rather than, rather than being appreciated. And as I said, I would, I've completely butchered that. But the point, the point being that in the first instance, oh, thanks, mate. That's really nice. You know, we've gone out for dinner. All right. The second time we go, oh, all right. All right. You're paying again. Oh, well, he's paid the last two times. Maybe the third time he's going to pay again. Oh, well, why aren't you paying for the meal? Oh, no chance. Well, you should be paying for this. And that's how the kind of the story transitions. And I think that happens at both ends. People try and use that story for people on benefits. Oh, well, you're just making them dependent on the benefits. But I think it works at the other end of the spectrum as well, which is, oh, I keep getting away with this. And actually this is paying off quite handsomely and I'm doing very well. So why don't I just keep pushing the limit and trying to do more? Isn't that how they catch? I don't know again why my brain's gone to this, but isn't that often why they catch people who are maybe committing fraud or things like that? Yeah. Because they get greedy. Yeah. I always remember that case where I might get this wrong with people like stealing money from the Royal Mint. They were working in the Royal Mint, weren't they? And they were maybe the job was to sort of dispose of the five pound notes or whatever. And they were taking the five pound notes and kind of marking that they were destroyed and then pocketing them. Yeah. And what a genius idea. They were getting them out like an ITV thing. I think they got caught because someone tried to buy a car, didn't they? And it's like, you know, so that's it, isn't it? That is that concept of you can't just settle for what you've taken. You want more and you want to. The behaviour becomes normalised, doesn't it? Yeah. And then you don't see that actually what you're doing is wrong. There's quite a good, not story, but it's quite well known, I think, that there are a number of people that used to work on the Dartford Crossing that now have very nice houses in the Mediterranean paid for because for those who have ever crossed the Dartford Bridge or gone through the tunnel or over the bridge, you used to have to put a pound into the into the trade. So it was all cash. Everything was cash and it was all paid for by cash. And obviously the reason that was set up was to pay for the bridge. I think they paid for it about 10 times over. They didn't have cash as my wife once didn't have cash. She had to stop and write a cheque for a pound at the barriers, which with the flow of traffic was pretty. And the point is people were finding ways because I think human beings will always find a way when that temptation is potentially there or too great or there's no consequence. And people are finding ways to actually take quite a lot of the revenue from a personal perspective. So I think this is the point, which is where's the consequence? And the consequence has got to be either self-accountability or something systematically that does that and where people feel like they can get around the system. Well, then they've only actually got to justify it to themselves. And if the offset of, well, yeah, I do feel a bit bad, but my house looks amazing and look at me. I think I think that's where people struggle. So the consequence of all of this conversation sounds to me like really we should blame the politicians because it all starts with them. And clearly, if we just had better politicians with greater morals and they set the example for the top, we'd all feel more inclined to follow the same example. And that feels like quite a nice way to finish our podcast on politics without massively sensationalising the conclusion of that. Except we're not quite finished because we did say that the podcast that currently has no name we should probably share some potential options and names and maybe use that as a way to get different people's thoughts. So we had a couple, didn't we? So the obvious slightly more dry and serious one is the social contract and what that stands for. The other one we had that was slightly more probably at our level, Paul, was don't be a dickhead. Yeah, yeah, which is where it started from, I guess, because that was the principle, wasn't it? Which was if everybody just behaved in a normal way, then everything would be all right, wouldn't it? Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, I'm not quite sure where this is going to go. I was because we probably did an AI job and tried to see what it came up with and most of them are all pretty similar, aren't they? But I think I just liked the very simple one. Why did you think that was okay? What were you thinking? Yeah, well, I guess I'm not sure a title necessarily gives expression. It probably needs somebody to be able to say it because if somebody just read it as what are you doing? Yeah, essentially, it sounds a bit boring. I do. I do like the idea, though, because some, you know, we can all hopefully embrace these conversations and recognise that from time to time we'll sit exactly like we're sitting, maybe not quite with a fold out bed and a beanbag in there and a cat in the background. Sorry, it's fabulous. Imagine Gary Neville stick to football studio. All right. It's the exact opposite of that. There isn't even a biscuit with the tea in this studio. All right. But I quite like the idea that a lot of the conversations we're having and we've said before, whilst at times we're sometimes a bit serious, we said this isn't supposed to be that serious. We're not political commentators. We're not, you know, career philosophers. We're just normal people who have a point of view and are trying to make sense of the world around us. And I liken that to the conversation you have in the pub with your mates. So the other idea that quite resonates with me is last orders, please. Yeah. Because some of the conversation feels like we're right at the end of the night. We've had a few too many cups of tea with no biscuits. Sorry, beers. And everyone's going, maybe it's time to stop. I think that's a really scandalously inappropriate place and to stop. But I've enjoyed that. That's been good. It's been quite serious at points talking about politics, which is always a bit of a dry and difficult subject to get into. But hopefully we try to make it feel a bit more relevant to people on an individual and on a personal basis without getting too much into party, political broadcast. And hopefully people will challenge, question, not like some of the commentary and have their own view, which I guess is what hopefully this podcast will generate. We'll leave it to you. Let us know. Thanks, everyone.
