Mike Graham On The Unfiltered Truth on the Death of Free Speech and the Chaos of Modern Britain

12:54Rob:Because Starmer threatened to shut down X, which when you think about it is quite chilling as well. Because X for me is the place where I do most of my kind of business, if you like, in terms of not money, but in terms of ideas and shaping opinions and getting other people's opinions. You know, that's for me, that's the most, and I know it's not for everybody because younger people prefer TikTok or they use Snapchat or something like that, you know. But for my business model anyway, X is kind of the place where the news breaks first, where you can get people's reactions to things quicker, where, you know, relatively famous people and important people have accounts and so you can find out

13:34Mike Graham:what they think, you know. But it was only the images part, wasn't it? I don't think he's going to bend over on the speech. Well, yeah, well, you say that.

13:44Rob:Well, I hope. Well, this is the thing. I mean, I didn't think he would bend over on any of it because, you know, Elon Musk, I suppose, like many of us on Twitter, is a much more punchy and sort of vivacious guy. You know, he's always putting up these tweets.

13:59Mike Graham:Yeah, he's aggressive.

14:00Rob:Yeah, he's quite aggressive. He's got tweets about, you know, how Britain's finished and it's screwed and it's buggered and all the rest of it. So I really didn't think, at least I thought it would take him longer to come to that conclusion. Yeah. but you know it's not like he needs the money i don't really get why he did it you know again there's a problem with taste and decency i mean i used to say in the old days when football hooliganism was a thing and football chants were a thing and they still are to some extent you know they some football chants are pretty horrible you know um when manchester united play liverpool the man united fans make jokes about hillsborough you know um the liverpool fans make jokes about the Munich air disaster.

14:43Rob:It's not very nice. And I wish they wouldn't do it. But can you stop them doing it? I don't know. Can you arrest people for doing it? They had this problem in Scotland, actually, when I was up there, because the SNP, when Alex Salmond was first minister, decided that they wanted to crack down on sectarian chanting and sectarian imaging football between Celtic and Rangers. But they ended up getting themselves into a sort of cul-de-sac because it ended up, by their definition, somebody waving a Union Jack was committing a sectarian offence. And somebody waving an Irish tricolor, which is a sort of Celtic mode of support, was also doing that.

15:27Rob:And they thought, well, we can't arrest 50 ,000 people chanting up to my knees in Fenian blood. You know, and again, it's not very nice. But what do you do about it? And do you give the state the power to say, you can't say that. You can't sing that song. Well, where does that end then? Well, where we're going, which I think is not a good place. I mean, I've always believed that Britain has never had free speech. Seems to be worse now just because there's social media. But I lived in America for 10 years where you literally do have free speech. You can say anything you like. I remember one night, funnily enough, it was, now I'm going to struggle to remember his name, a Spurs player who had a heart attack, if you remember what he was playing.

16:17Rob:No, not him. It was earlier than that. It was in a club game. Right. I can't remember his name. He was a black guy anyway. Yeah. And he had a heart attack on the pitch. Luckily, there was a doctor in the house, and they managed to save him, and they defibrillated him and all the rest of it. Yeah. And obviously it was a big story and people were tweeting about it and, you know, how brave he was and how great he was. And there was this one particular guy I remember, and he was in Texas, making really horrible kind of racist posts about, you know, I wish he died and all this kind of stuff, you know.

16:49Rob:And people were like, you know, mate, you've got to stop this. You know, we're going to send the police, they're going to come around. And the guy just went, police aren't coming to my house in America. They don't have control over what I say. I can say what I like. And he's right. And what do you think about that? Again, it's not pleasant, but I don't think the state should have a role, unless you're breaking the law, and you might argue that he was breaking a law here if he was saying racist things, but you're not going to go halfway across the world to arrest somebody for breaking the law in your country.

17:22For example, I know a lot of people have re-registered their Twitter accounts in Germany

17:27Rob:for some reason. Apparently, you get more protection if you do that. Right. I'm not quite sure why. Yeah. I'm not aware of the ins and outs of all that. But so it's a very complicated kind of area. You know what I mean? Yeah. And because of what we could see happening, it seems to me that you're much more free to speak out whatever your opinion is in America than you are here. And what do you think the motives of the government,

17:58Mike Graham:the Labour government are at the moment?

17:59Rob:I think they are nasty. I think they are suppressive. I think they're oppressive. I think they're holier than thou. I think they want to sort of shape Britain in a way that it isn't at the moment. You know, they want to make it into a place where, in their eyes, it's a bit like a sort of jumped up council. You know, making it illegal for you to say certain things, making it illegal for you to do certain things. you know making you pay more for for things that you never were asked to pay for um i think they'd like to stay in power for as long as they possibly can i think they know the game is up i think they know that if they have if for some reason which i hope does happen before uh 2029 if they have an election they're toast they're not going to win it um and the way things are going i was talking to somebody today on my way over here um the wheels have just come off starmer now you know He has no authority.

18:58Rob:He has no power over his own cabinet. And the guy I was talking to, who's quite an important sort of media figure, said, you know, he's going to have to start sacking people because it's the only way he can regain any kind of authority. And if he doesn't do that and somebody resigns, then that's the sort of beginning of the end. And I think, despite that, when we saw his performance this week at Prime Minister's Questions, he's getting more aggressive, you know? he's getting defensive you know he's he's making out that um you know it was just an oversight that he happened to promote somebody to the house of lords who was a supporter of a pedophile convicted pedophile in the same way that he knew about mandelson but for him that's no worse than partygate for example you know it's no worse than a bullying allegation well it's a lot bloody worse actually you know and they have this kind of um assuredness that they're doing the right thing which is always very dangerous i think you know they think they're morally superior to people on the right who disagree with them and they think that therefore in the name of whatever it is goodness or you know morality they are allowed to do whatever they want and they're allowed to tell you and I what we should do.

20:18Rob:But, of course, they're less morally authoritative than anyone because they're all up to their necks in sleaze and corruption and greed, like all kind of champagne socialists. People have been forgetting, I was talking about this week, that, you know, less than a month in when he was Prime Minister first in July of 24, you know we discovered that he's having all this sort of largesse given to him by lord alley you know letting him use his flat letting him use his house letting him you know um buying letting lord alley buy his clothes buy his wife's clothes you know getting freebies to to taylor swift concerts i mean you know it just didn't stop and it took him a long time to kind of understand that that was wrong so you think well you know where's where is your moral compass exactly you know you don't just take freebies from people and not give them anything in return and we never really did find out what lord alley's role was inside of downing street where he had a pass to go in and do whatever he wanted you know wow i think they're dangerous yeah well back to

21:26Mike Graham:labour in a moment what opinion today would get you cancelled tomorrow I'm not sure I can get

21:34Rob:cancelled but again I mean YouTube has rules it's not a completely sort of open arena they have words that I mean I'm still learning about YouTube you know it's not something I know an awful lot about um but I know there are certain words that if you say them uh you can certainly be demonetized if you have certain opinions. And it happened, in fact, to talk when I was there during COVID. They cancelled the channel because of some things that were being said.

22:02Mike Graham:Right.

22:04Rob:Without any kind of reference to the management, without any reference to the talent on air, just came in one day and the channel was gone. Wow. You know? No warnings? None. And it was three strikes and you're out, I think. but I don't I'm pretty sure on this that nobody got you know a note from anybody or an email from anybody because probably a lot of these social media companies Facebook Twitter I guess TikTok as well you know you can't find anybody to talk to no no they don't care it's really difficult no matter how much you spend with them yeah they don't care I had in my early days I had an overnight show on TalkSport called the Independent Republic of Mike Graham and we had a Facebook page which somebody started up and I'd actually it got quite busy and it was quite lively and I actually gave it to one of the guys who started it up and said, would you mind monitoring this and moderating it because I haven't really got time because it got too big.

22:58Rob:And I woke up one morning and it was gone and Facebook had cancelled it because somebody had said something that they didn't like. Wow. And I tried to find somebody to even email to ask them about what was the reasoning, what was said, what can we do about it, can we resurrect it, la-di-la. Couldn't find anyone to talk to. So, you know, once you're in that space, but you're not sure whether they can cancel you, I mean, I don't know. I think straight out racism, probably. I mean, that's what I was accused of, you know, can probably get you canceled from the mainstream, if you like. I mean, you saw what's up.

23:43Rob:I mean, David Walliams has been cancelled pretty much now by HarperCollins because of his behaviour, which again is... Do you think that was fair? I mean, at the end of the day, they're a private company. They can do what they like, I suppose. The question is whether companies have a duty of care to the person who they're cancelling to check out whether, you know, what they're being accused of is actually right.

24:08Mike Graham:Well, it doesn't seem like people get that grace anymore. Not really. It's trial by social media.

24:14Rob:Yeah.

24:15Mike Graham:It's cancelled first. Ask questions later.

24:18Rob:Well, it's now prove yourself to have been pure rather than the person accusing you. So the burden of proof is now on the cancellee, if you like, right? In the same way that Russell Brand, I was talking to somebody who knows him quite well and is a friend of his, who says, you know, no matter what happens to Russell Brand in a court of law, he will always be now known as a rapist yeah whether he's ever raped anybody i have no idea i haven't asked him i don't know um friends of his say that you know it's not something that he would do but the point is that the damage is now done i mean he's been able to carry on and he has a very successful business and a show on rumble became independent became independent yeah um and as long as there's still those places to go and i believe rumble is is it's not again something I know much about, but I believe Rumble to be a relatively kind of safe space, if you like, for people who want to say controversial things.

25:15Rob:But I think it's quite easy now to be cancelled by, you know, what you would call the mainstream media and, you know, the film world, you know, the theatre world, you know, comedy clubs. I mean, we've seen it happening with Graham Linehan. and we've seen it happening with quite a lot of people up at the Edinburgh Fringe. I think there was two comedians I spoke to who were cancelled for being Jewish, for example, weren't allowed to come perform because people were complaining. And one of the things that gets used a lot, particularly with live events, is, oh, you know, we've had a threat of, you know, demonstration.

25:55Rob:We've had a threat of disruption. We can't afford the security. You know, there's a myriad of different ways of saying, you know, sorry, you can't come here.

26:02Mike Graham:I guess that feels like a bit of a paradox because like you said about HarperCollins, they're a private company. YouTube are a private company. It's their channel. If there's a comedy show, it's their gig.

26:17Rob:Yeah. I mean, nobody has, I suppose, the absolute human right to say whatever they want on somebody else's platform. And I guess that is just kind of common sense in a way that the person who runs the platform is going to make the rules, whether it happens to be the BBC or whether it happens to be Talk Sport or whether it happens to be, I don't know, the O2 networks of theatres. Unless you're actually so independent that you can do it yourself, we're all at risk, I guess.

26:51Mike Graham:Yeah.

26:52Rob:You know?

26:53Mike Graham:I remember when lockdown happened. That C word you couldn't say on YouTube for quite a while. What, COVID? Yeah, couldn't get that out.

27:02Rob:Right. Well, I think that was part of the problem with talk being banned because it was always conversations about those kinds of issues and about masks and about vaccines.

27:12Mike Graham:Yeah, you couldn't say that word. No. You couldn't say the V word. And you couldn't say them on Facebook because I was talking about it was blowing up, as others were, and then all of a sudden, everything's gone. You can't get a video up. You can't. Nothing's getting any views. And I remember just thinking, this has been engineered. Yeah. And no, no, no, no, no. And then as soon as Trump comes into power, Mark Zuckerberg's like, oh, yeah, you know. He's literally lying on his back. Yeah. The government told me to. Yeah. And admitted that they suppressed a load of content.

27:48Rob:Well, I used to get, you know, because I used to quite often post from YouTube in the early days when Peter Hitchens was there. And he was always very robust against the lockdown and, you know, sending people to work from home and all of that. At the beginning, we used to have quite good rounds about it because I was like, at the beginning, I said, come on, Peter, you know, it's four weeks. You know, just kill your jets and, you know, we'll be fine. As time went on, obviously, I kind of came around to his way of thinking. But I would post our interviews on Facebook, and they'd put a kind of explainer on it to say that, you know, some of the information in this interview, whatever they called it, is not verifiable, is speculative.

28:33Rob:And none of it was. And I'm like, hang on a minute. Between us, we've got about, you know, 80 years of journalistic integrity and experience. Who the hell are you? some spotty, you know, intern from Silicon Valley telling us that we don't know what we're talking about. Well, we do, actually. And as it turned out, we did. But it used to really irritate me that they would do that.

28:57Mike Graham:Yeah.

28:58Rob:You know?

28:58Mike Graham:Yeah, well, I think this verify, BBC verify feels a bit ironic.

29:04Rob:Very ironic, particularly given that the woman who runs it, Mariana Spring, I think her name is, faked her own CV to get the job. You know, and you kind of go, sorry, how does that work? It's ridiculous. And the only thing they don't verify are stories on the BBC which are all wrong. They only verify other people's stories. And you kind of go, what exactly is your seal of approval here? Who gave, you know, who died and made you boss, you know? So the BBC are in terrible trouble.

29:38Mike Graham:Wow. I want to come back to the BBC. Yeah. But I'd like your version, the truth of why you got fired from Talk TV. Yeah.

29:47Rob:Well, people keep asking me to tell them the truth. And I mean, I have told it quite a few times. And I'm hoping at some point or other it will go away. But, you know, I appreciate you have to ask me. The truth is that I was fired because I wouldn't cooperate with their request, which was to take my phone and forensically examine it for a very long period of time where it would be out of my control, which I wasn't willing to give them permission to do, right? Because I had been hacked as far as best I could tell. I couldn't prove it. And again, it came back to me having to prove my innocence rather than them having to prove my guilt, you know?

30:28Rob:And it started off friendly enough. They said, look, we just need to... I showed them the phone. I showed them that the Facebook log showed that I hadn't posted it I showed them that the picture that appeared wasn't on my phone either and they said okay well just to kind of satisfy ourselves we'd like to see the phone because you can check a phone for its history you know there are there are software programs you can run it through and then they could find out if something was deleted or if it was taken and then disappeared, you know, they could have done all that. But it then became a kind of a legal battle because we couldn't agree the terms of how they would do it, first of all.

31:11Rob:We couldn't agree the terms of who would do it. They initially wanted their own law firm to do it. And the law firm was only a law firm that they used. It wasn't like a law firm that was used for anybody else. They were the only client. So I felt a bit, you know, uneasy about that. So I had spoken to a cybersecurity specialist who helped me to kind of look through the phone and see if there was any clues as to what could have happened. And there were one or two, but nothing conclusive. And he suggested I talk to some lawyers because, you know, at one point I asked the management, you know, do I need to get a lawyer here?

31:47Rob:And they were like, no, no, that's fine. And I went, right. And as soon as I spoke to lawyers, they said, under no circumstances, give me your phone. you know because they're asking to see into your life basically i mean i've had an iphone since the iphone 4 came out and everything that's ever happened to me is on it right including pictures of my kids my dog you know maybe my girlfriends you know um it's not something that you want to immediately give up and and they said oh we only want to look at two specific time periods you know and we won't look at anything else and i'm thinking well you say that but how do i know they wanted to physically take the phone and my ipad and investigate it for overnight for nine hours right and mirror it so they would have had everything and by the end of the conversation they were then asking for access to my emails access to my whatsapp conversations of which there were 303 000 i think wow whatsapp messages right yeah and i've talked to i'm a journalist you know i talk to a lot of people that I don't necessarily want anyone to know who I'm talking to I have apart from anything else confidentiality comes into it you know so we basically went backwards and forwards and it took quite a long time because quite often my lawyers would write to them and say you know can we do this they would wait two days before they come back so I said at one point to my lawyers I said well why don't I do a forensic investigation of my own phone and what I'll do is I'll hire a company.

33:16Rob:You can be involved in it, which is completely neutral, which is a very respectable company, which is what I did. And they did a report, which again showed that I hadn't made the post. The picture had never been there, was never deleted. You know, the phone was clean. And we gave them the report and they said it's not good enough. They refused to accept it. So, you know, so. So do you think they wanted you out? I think so. I think there were two things going on. And I think, you know, what subsequently emerged was that the people had been apparently complaining about some of the things I'd been saying on the air.

33:52Rob:They didn't like some of my views, you know, because there's quite a lot of woke people in the news building who work for different outfits, you know. I've said this before, HarperCollins, when they all came back from being off for 18 months for COVID, when I'd been in there every day, asked for my show not to be broadcast in the lift, which used to happen. because, you know, I was always going on about migrants and how terrible it all was. So I think there were two schools of thought. One was the people who knew that I was very valuable to the station and they didn't think I should be let go.

34:28Rob:But I think their voices were drowned out by those who thought that I was a bit controversial and I was a bit, you know, right-wing and maybe a bit unpleasant. Do you feel any resentment? No. Not really, because I'm not like that, you know. I've been fired five times in my life. Never for being useless at my job, by the way. Usually for, in newspapers in particular, usually because I was part of a regime and then the editor would get fired and then you'd kind of all get swept out alongside it. When I was at the Mirror, I was working for Piers Morgan, he got fired and then they sort of came for all of his lieutenants one way or another.

35:07Rob:The same thing happened at the Express when I was there. I got fired up in Scotland and taught 107, which was a radio station that I was running because I was basically just costing too much money. Not in fines. No, not in fines, funnily enough. I don't think we ever got done. But more in terms of just, I was like, we're running a new station here. We need to get decent people in, pay them a reasonable amount of money, have reporters, do all the things that you want to do. And in the end, after I left, they turned it into a kind of a, what I would call a music station without the music. And they would talk about, what's your favourite?

35:43Rob:biscuit and stuff like that you know people shy away from controversy then politics and you know that was the beginning of what i could see was a kind of um just a suppression of some ideas you know yeah like tommy there's a guy called tommy sheridan i don't know if you're familiar with him he used to be uh the leader of a socialist scottish socialist party right and he was a good mate of mine we we you know i'd given him a column on the on the Scottish Daily Mirror. And so when I, and then he got embroiled in a lawsuit with the News of the World. He got accused of being involved in all sorts of shenanigans, threesomes, hotel sex, blah, blah, blah.

36:21Rob:I hired him and we got ourselves right on the front page of the Edinburgh Evening News as a result of hiring him and a picture of him with a mug that said talk 107 on it. But he was a very controversial character and he would say some things that people didn't like. George Galloway, similarly, was a guy who used to do a show and talk sport, funnily enough. and then he would do other stuff in Scotland, you know. So they just, I think they wanted an anodyne sort of, you know, and it's really hard to grow an audience with talk radio and speech radio as well. It's really difficult because advertisers don't like it.

36:52Mike Graham:Right.

36:53Rob:And advertisers won't come in if you're too controversial. So in the commercial sector, that makes life very difficult because you can never really make any money. Right. You know, it's a bit different now because you can start making money from YouTube and other places. But back then, there was none of that. So, yeah, so I don't feel resentment. I mean, I think that the difficulty at talk was that, you know, there was always pressure from inside the building, you know. It was the sort of bad boy of the organization, you know. People would kind of go, you know, here come the talk guys, you know.

37:29Rob:They're all a bit right wing. Because let's face it, the media class now is a bit like the establishment. is pretty sort of woke and pretty left-wing and you know they've all been to university and they've all been to nice schools and most of them are quite well off and they come from nice homes and they can afford to be uh shall we say less concerned about their lives and less concerned about how their lives are being altered and being affected by what's going on around them you know so what do you think the word woke means i think it's i think it actually is a word that i mean because it doesn't happen so much now but when we first started using it as an insult people who on the left would say oh yeah but i'd rather be woke and be regarded as a nice person and a kind person and somebody who cares about compassion and you know um sharing and and you know tolerance and all of that and all those nice words whereas i think a lot of people would identify themselves as that because they they think it's it's it's a better way to be they think that if they say they're they're nice that means they're nice but of course it doesn't because an awful lot of them are bloody horrible you know i mean look at the what was happening in um brighton at the weekend where people were going around um knocking on people's doors to see whether there were any jewish people living there you know and this is the kind of the be kind you know pro-palestine people are always demanding rights for you know human beings and you know treat people humanely and they're literally carrying out a sort of you know version of kristallnacht in in a british city you know yeah um and i think that we can see from the way that the labor government's operating there's some pretty horrible people in there you know and i find the right tend to be more tolerant and just more actually inclusive, you know?

39:30So I think woke is a bad word.

39:34Rob:It's an insulting word. And I think the people who would identify as being woke do it because they think other people will see them in a good light as opposed to actually what the truth is. And now you're independent. How's life changed? It's great, actually. I'm really happy. I don't know why. I was quite grumpy towards the end when I was at talk and I can't explain it and it's not because I didn't enjoy the job because I did and I worked with some great people many of whom are still my friends you know um but there's something about building a business which really appeals to me you know when I first started out in journalism um I was doing a few shifts in Fleet Street when I was about 21 22 and there was nothing going on there were no jobs you know there was still printing unions who would occasionally just not print the paper um and so you would think i won't get a byline in the papers and then the paper wouldn't come out times was on strike for like a year nearly so i went to america at 23 and started my own business actually no i tell a lie i started working for a magazine then got fired but that's because i crashed a car um i was only 23.

40:45Rob:that's an idiot um and uh i wasn't supposed to be working for that company because I didn't have the right visa and all that sort of thing. And I'd gone there because I had a girlfriend who was American. And so I thought, well, I'm not going back to Britain with my tail between my legs, having only been in nine months. So I thought I'll start a freelance news agency, which is what I did. So I ran my own business. And sort of in those days, it was easy because there was no internet. So, I mean, I could get the New York Post on a sort of, you know, Monday night at seven o 'clock or something. And then there'd be a great story.

41:17Rob:And I'd just ring the newspapers in London and sell it to them.

41:20Mike Graham:Yeah. so i've kind of gone full circle because now i'm running my own business again

41:26Rob:and it's really satisfying it's really amazing to watch it grow we've we've had some great figures much more so than we thought we've only been going like just over a month we've got like 136 000 subscribers we've got um i think we're just about to surpass 7 million views and we're making money and it's like this is amazing you know and also the shows are really good the reaction to them is really good the people who've followed me over from from talk love it you know they say it's actually a better show it's more relaxed it's funnier you know so I'm not you know a lot of people have said to me and you probably will ask me the question I don't know but you know there are some people that you don't get on with in on the right you know there are people that you have rounds with you know now that you're independent you know you should all be on the same side and I'm like well no that's not what independent means independent means independent which means i have my own thoughts i have my own opinions i have my own motivations i don't have to be in a box with somebody else that's why i've left you know because in the end with with talk i kind of we kind of pushed them to make a decision because for a month i didn't know what they were going to do and i wasn't making any money you know um and i have quite an expensive lifestyle and i was like i can't afford not to work so um so yeah so i i say to people i don't have to agree with everybody on the right i mean everybody on the right doesn't agree on everything anyway and it's surely much more healthy for us to have a disagreement about something and to talk about it that's where i am you know so um so yeah life has has changed in as much as i'm not getting up quite so early as i used to i used to get up at twenty past four I get up at five now because the studio is quite close to where I live um and yeah it's just it's just a very it's so far it's been a very enjoyable experience slightly nerve-wracking at times you know at the beginning because you're kind of going well what happens if you know we don't make any money and what happens if we get demonetized I mean we had a problem last week because the original setup of the channel was done by my producer a guy called pooch um and so it was all in his name but then we formed a company and we had to change it so having got it monetized in i guess december um they suddenly started all over again and they said well now we have to demonetize you and you know move it all across to the new company and we were like well can you not we managed to find somebody to talk to youtube in america well can you not just switch it all over no no we have to you know leave it so we had a few days where we didn't make anything right and you kind of go at some points i was thinking what if what if they don't ever make it monetized again what happens then you know and so there's there's those kinds of sort of issues i suppose bumps in the road do you feel more free to speak freely yeah i think so you think so i think so yeah i mean like i said i was quite outspoken anyway.

44:35Rob:I mean, this morning, for example, I called Keir Starmer a wanker, which he is. Aren't they singing that in the football stands? They're singing it in the football stands. They're having to block it out of the darts coverage because they're doing it there, you know. I think he's playing in my head right now. Yeah, you can't help it. And, you know, you know as well as I am, when you're speaking, sometimes, particularly on a live show, I, and this is what I, I never said that word on talk because I knew it was a bad word, but I think I called him a twat once. And I sort of got a call from the boss to say, you know, can you rein it in a bit?

45:11Rob:Because Ofcom could come after you for something like that. Whereas this morning I said, and I said it in a way which was kind of, I said, you know, he's just, I don't know why he's such a, I know I shouldn't say this, I shouldn't say it, but I'm going to say he's a wanker. And everyone kind of laughed and the audience reaction was great. and then they started sending in messages with the same word in it to make me read it out again. So, I mean, you know that. But I'm a great believer in Howard Stern's approach to life, who when he sort of became independent working for Sirius and he got taken off mainstream kind of radio, he said after a while we kind of stopped swearing because there was nobody to rebel against in a way.

45:53Rob:So when there's nobody to upset, and I think there's a part of me that quite likes upsetting people. you know, because you get a better reaction. Yeah. And, you know, the one way to find out what somebody really thinks is to make them angry. Right. And then they suddenly say what they really think of you, right? And I'm quite good at it.

46:11Mike Graham:Yeah.

46:12Rob:I'm quite annoying.

46:16Rob:And so I think I felt somehow when I was at talk, I felt myself more kind of angry and I don't know why. And I'm not sure if it was just that I was there too long because I'd worked for the company for like 18 years in all sorts of different varieties, you know. Yeah. Having joined TalkSport, working overnights, weekends. I'd done pretty much every slot. Then Talk Radio started, you know. And I just feel more relaxed now. Right. Just generally. Yeah. And sort of generally happier, which, again, I can't really explain it. Why do you think Keir Starman's a wanker? Well, he's a liar for a start. He tells absolute outright lies.

46:54Rob:I mean, they all do. They keep going on about the fact that they're reducing hospital waiting lists, which they're not doing. You know, we've got proof that they're actually paying hospitals to remove people's names from the lists.

47:05Mike Graham:Wow.

47:06Rob:Who have either died because they've waited so bloody long for the operation or they've gone private or they simply, you know, have just given up. And they're actively paying hospitals for that. They talk about, you know, turning the corner and making you feel wealthier and, you know, putting more money in your pocket. and it's all bollocks at the end of the day. And I think he might be pathologically kind of mentally quite unwell because he must know that he's not telling the truth. I mean, you know, even just look at the Mandelson situation. You know, he made out that he didn't know all of the things that he now knows about Mandelson's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein when in fact he did know.

47:49Rob:And it's now been proven that he knew. And it's now been proven that he was briefed about it all. And yet he did the thing that he did. And then he didn't even stand over it. He denied it. And the same with this latest mate of the paedophile in Scotland, you know, this Lord, what's his face? Byrne, is it? No, it's not Byrne. The guy who's, you know, he's in the papers today because at Prime Minister's question yesterday, he was again saying, well, he misled me, you know. And this is the guy who's supposed to have been the premier prosecutor in britain you know head of the crime crime prosecution service and apparently he's more gullible than anyone you've ever met and if people lie to him he doesn't know they're lying and i said the other day it's a bit like him admitting that you know he's now sent a million pounds to some guy in nigeria who sent him an email and said you know please send me a million pounds i will immediately return it to your bank account with interest you know he's almost he's trying to convince us that he's that gullible and i think he i think he genuinely doesn't like what i would regard as the britain that i want britain to be i think he doesn't like it no he doesn't he doesn't have any time for he's quite arrogant he doesn't have any time for people who disagree with him um he got very um defensive enough and and worked up when he was attacked by kemi badenock yesterday and i think he's just he's not somebody who comes across as in any way genuine nobody knows what's going on in his head really or what he believes in you know we had a we had a reel the other day of all of his flip-flopping around everything from we want freedom of movement to we don't want freedom of movement to you know we're not going to put more taxes up well we have to put more taxes up you know there's so many uh instances of that And I don't think you or I would have the brass neck to do that.

49:45Rob:You know? You have to surely have some belief system. There must be things that you want to do. He's the prime minister of the country. He's got a great deal of power. But he doesn't seem to understand Britain or British people.

50:00Mike Graham:Well, I want to come back to your vision for Britain. But first, where do you – what is the honest state of the UK right now? Can I swear? You can say whatever you want. Fucked. Is it fucked? Yeah. Is it that fucked? Is it as fucked as a lot of people are saying it's fucked?

50:17Rob:Yes. I think it's not irredeemably fucked, but it really is in about as bad a place as I can ever remember it. I'm a bit older than you, and I lived through the 70s, right? And the 70s was a very different time to where we are now. But it was a very different country as well. You know, we had the three-day week. I used to go to school one morning a week, and that was it. for a whole term. We had power cuts every day. You'd have an hour of electricity in the morning to have breakfast, an hour in the evening. The rest of the time, you sat around in candlelight. There wasn't really anything to do.

50:51Rob:It was quite a poor country. There were strikes. They weren't burying bodies because the gravediggers were on strike. The bloody bin men were on strike. So there was piles of rubbish everywhere, rats running around. Like in Birmingham now. Yeah, like in Birmingham now. but it was a much more um what i would call sort of together country it was a much more um homogenous country for want of a better word you know yes there were people who had come from other from other from other countries and other nations we've always had immigration but nothing like it's got that it's got to now you know where now i don't think there is a kind of a single unifying force in Britain.

51:37I think there's an awful lot of divided forces going on

51:41Rob:and there's a lot of people who are very upset and angry at what's happened to their country. And so with all of the kind of similarities with the 70s in terms of the fiscal situation, the money. High taxes, you mean? High taxes. But also just the general kind of debt, you know, because that was last time we had to go to the IMF to ask for a handout to stop the country from literally going bankrupt. I was talking to Liam Halligan the other day, the economist, and he said if we went to the IMF now for a bailout, they haven't got enough money because we're in that much debt. And I just don't think that's – you can't continue like that.

52:20Rob:You know, if you were running your household like that, you'd be in debtors' prison. You can't just keep going, I'll just borrow another 20 grand, which is what they're doing.

52:28Mike Graham:Yeah.

52:28Rob:You know, except it's 20 billion every month. And I think people genuinely feel, not in all parts of Britain, but in a lot of parts of Britain, that it's not a Britain that they recognize for all sorts of reasons, you know, because it's kind of unfashionable in the establishment to be proud of it. I mean, look at the way people act around flags. Look at the way people act around, you know, anyone who speaks up for British tradition, you know, or speaks up for what happened during the British Empire. You know, all of those things that we should be proud of. I was talking to someone the other day.

53:09Rob:They were taking part in, I think it was Leila Cunningham. She was talking about how she went up to the Oxford Union and had a debate, and the debate was about whether Churchill was a hero or not. and she said, of course, the debate result was that he wasn't. And you sort of go, so that's the prevailing view now, that Churchill was a monster and that he didn't save the country from a horrible fate at the hands of the Nazis, you know. And I think it's going to take an awful lot to get it back, really.

53:44Mike Graham:Well, I want to finish on solutions. Okay. But first, what are the three biggest problems in the UK right now?

53:49Rob:Number one, immigration. It's number one. Yeah, absolutely no question, because from that, everything else flows. For example, there was a stat that came out the other day that something like 750 ,000 people have registered with the NHS in all sorts of different parts of the country in the most recent times. And one of the reasons why the NHS is failing, for example, is that there's too many people here and there's too many people accessing. And again, all of that is flowing from the fact that we've got too many people coming into the country because it's been completely and utterly unchecked for years.

54:30Rob:You know, immigration is also leading to other problems with integration. Some parts of Britain have become ghettoized to a point where, you know, what you might call traditional British families have moved away. you know and again that was never the case in in you know people say oh the east end used to be very jewish or it used to be very irish and you know yeah but not to the point where hardly anybody else lived there you know whereas now you go to the east end you got a white chapel you know they've got the underground signs in urdu as well as in english yeah and there's a huge mosque there and again we've been a very tolerant nation for a very long time and and when the first i remember of the first mosques that went up in London was Regent's Park Mosque when I was a kid in the 70s and it was a kind of curiosity and you would watch and I used to go to school near there and you'd watch the people the men going there on a Friday because they're not allowed to drive a car so they're all walking up Finchley Road effectively by Lord's Cricket Ground and it was you know nobody had a problem with it everyone was like oh it's kind of interesting beautiful building you know great big dome never seen anything like it now you know they're talking about putting a mosque in the Lake District because not enough Muslims go to the countryside.

55:45Rob:You know, so there's a criminal problem. There's a health service problem. There's a housing problem. There's a fiscal problem with councils, for example, because we saw a story again the other day that social care, which is not just for immigration purposes, but social care is a problem for all councils because they haven't got enough money to look after people. But on top of that, they're also having to look after vulnerable children who are coming in from other countries who are declaring themselves to be children who might not be. There was one case, I think it's Hampshire, who in 2021 was spending nothing on social care for immigrants.

56:25Rob:Now they're spending 24 million a year. Wow. And you just think, well, again, that's unsustainable. So the economy is, I suppose, the second thing. But again, it all flows from the first thing, you know. And I think actually because of who's in power at the moment, I think socialism is a real problem because socialism doesn't work and it doesn't and has never worked anywhere, you know. They run out of other people's money. They do. And it's a hackneyed old phrase, but it's true. It is. But, you know, look at people like Zach Polanski, you know, who I think is a total clown. I had a question on here about him.

57:04I think something weird is going to come out about him.

57:07Rob:I've just got a feeling. Well, it already has. It already is weird, his pastimes. It certainly is, although he, of course, denies the whole breast enhancement thing, says that, you know, that was a newspaper taking him out of context. I'm not sure about that. But they want to abolish landlords.

57:21Mike Graham:They want completely open borders. Like, where did this guy come from? Where's his political history? Is that a reaction to maybe some far right?

57:35Rob:Well, I don't understand, but it seems to be a lot of young people who have been radicalised by education, by university, by hanging around with their friends only, like Gen Sears or Gen Zedders, whatever you want to call them, apparently struggle with having friendships with people who disagree with them. That was a stat that came out the other day. Wow. And so they've been kind of, they've literally been brainwashed, these young people who are now early 20s. You know, funnily enough, slightly younger people, like my youngest son who's 19 is quite right wing because they've kind of rebelled against that.

58:13Rob:Yeah. You know, but the sort of, the world that has been created where it's almost impossible to approach a woman in a bar and ask her if she wants to drink. you know i mean if you did that now i mean i don't do it anymore because when i'm a bit too old for that sort of stuff but you know that was you know so you used to meet people you'd go up to a woman in a bar and talk to her and say or a man how you doing you know would you like a drink or you know something like that um or can i have a cigarette you know that's all you know you can't do that anymore um they've sort of created this problem for for an awful lot of young men i think who don't know what to do about their sexuality, don't know what to do about how they're supposed to be interacting with other people.

59:02Rob:And apparently, for example, a lot of young people don't have kids anymore and don't want them. A lot of them not having sex. And so again, back to immigration, you've got a whole lot of people coming into the country from elsewhere who are having loads of kids. And again, that will only have a bad effect, I think, on traditional what you might call Britain, which again is a sort of, it's a dirty phrase, you know?

59:28Mike Graham:Yeah.

59:29Rob:People, I mean, you talked earlier about people being frightened. People are frightened to talk about, you know, what's traditional British values. You know, people, like if you watch Question Time, which I don't very often, you know, there's this kind of intake of breath every time anybody says something which is considered to be, you know, off-piste and, you know, oh, goodness me. You know, you've said something a bit racist there. I think it's a terrible state of affairs.

59:57Mike Graham:And how about Sadiq Khan? How is he being the mayor of London? Terrible.

1:00:02Rob:Do you live here, do you? Yeah, I live in London. I was born in London. So you've seen it. I've lived through, you know, like I said, the 60s, the 70s, the 80s. I moved to America in the 80s. What's going wrong in London? Well, so much. How long you got? I mean, the transportation systems are terrible. The tube trains have not been properly invested in for years. You know, the central line now is the worst of all, where it's covered in graffiti. I mean, in New York subways, they only graffitied the outside of the trains. Here they now do the inside of the trains. Right, wow. There's a massive problem with traffic.

1:00:40Rob:You know, he's trying to convince everybody that he's making the air cleaner, but he's not.

1:00:44Mike Graham:Yeah.

1:00:44Rob:You know, the road system is absolutely screwed. He's got cycle lanes, bus lanes. um crime massively up even though he pretends that it's down you know homicide went down slightly I think this year so they were all crying about it but everything else you know knife crime sexual assaults um shoplifting theft of mobile phones I think something ridiculous like 60 ,000 mobile phones a year gets stolen wow I had back window and my car smashed in for no apparent reason um about a month before I got fired I still don't know whether that had something to do with what happened um it's dangerous london now you know um you see gangs of kids roaming the streets you know i go to oxford street quite a bit i go to a gym there around about selfridges and you see these kids on bikes you know riding them you know we're doing wheelies on them really intimidating drivers you know kind of going right up to taxi drivers and swerving around them there's a kind of lawlessness about it all and you never see any police really to speak of um and my daughter lives in dubai she's she's a bit older than than my two young sons but you know i have to say to her when she comes home or comes back to london i said just be really careful because she's used to just putting her phone down on the bar or you know putting her handbag over there or you know people are getting stuff nicked all the time yeah and i think he has completely in a way actually caused more division than he's than he's than he's solved if you like because he's so objectionable um he's deliberately um obstructive he doesn't answer questions when he has his sessions of you know mayor's questions he gets asked all the time by susan hall the leader or who was the leader of the Tories and also by the Reform Assembly member, you know, to account for whatever it is.

1:02:44Rob:And he just never answers. And so I remember there was an exchange, you might have seen it, between her and him, Susan Hall, where she was asking him, how is it possible that with all these, you know, Pakistani grooming gangs up and down the country, there's never been any in London? And I don't think she actually used the word Pakistani. And he started goading her to say, why are you asking me that question? why and it's obvious why she's asking the question she just wants an answer and he was trying to make it sound as though she was some kind of racist for even posing the question you know and he makes it very clear that he doesn't really like white people very much you know they have a an event at uh in trafalgar square every year for black history month or something like that you know can you imagine having one for white history month they wouldn't have one that would be considered racist but black history month's fine apparently it's weird yeah you know but that's considered normal and he's considered to be i mean until relatively recently he was thought of as maybe a candidate for prime minister by the people in the labor movement you know but i think he's ruined london and i don't understand how he keeps getting re-elected i've never met anyone that voted for him.

1:03:59Rob:Right. Not met anyone. No. And, you know, there are many allegations around sort of, you know, shall we say, irregularities in sort of postal voting and that kind of thing. Wow. I can't say because nobody knows, but it seems a bit unusual that, you know, you get in every black cab. And if you ask the cab drivers, have you ever had anyone in the cab that voted for a stick car? And they go, no. Nobody knows anyone.

1:04:25Mike Graham:No.

1:04:27Rob:So it's all a bit strange.

1:04:29Mike Graham:What would you say the biggest cover-up in the UK is right now? That's a good question.

1:04:37Rob:I think it might be the Labour kind of situation now with Mandelson and the whole kind of Epstein files, the Andrew stuff as well, because I've spoken to a few royal sort of experts who say this is a lot worse than you think. Wow. You know, in terms of, and some people make the argument, you know, Andrew may not have done anything illegal. He might be a sleazy son of a bitch, but, you know, what did he actually do, you know, if Virginia Giffray was in Britain? That wasn't an illegal act that he committed because she's not underage in Britain, but she was underage in New York. I just get the feeling that whatever part Mandelson played in the Epstein world, and he seems to have been involved in it for a long time.

1:05:29Rob:I think that that will turn out to be a devastating story for an awful lot of people who will not only lose their livelihoods, but their reputations as well. And obviously, the massive cover-up is the grooming gangs because of what we know the police didn't do and because of what we now know the police did do in some cases, where they actually not only didn't help the girls, actually also helped to abuse them in some parts of the north of England, you know, because it was all done in cahoots with the councils and the police and, you know, they were all sort of in league with each other.

1:06:09Mike Graham:My wife scratches her head on a daily basis because she just says to me all the time, why can't we just have a decent leader? Why can't we just have a good human, you know, Someone who cares, who isn't careerist, who has good values. Yeah. And we chat about this. I just wonder if someone like that would just get eaten alive by the political system.

1:06:29Rob:Yeah, I think the system has become so corrupted by the way that it's been kind of... I mean, the Tories are no better, by the way. I mean, don't get me wrong.

1:06:38Mike Graham:They started it all. You've got to... Yeah. You know, I would have voted for them before, but they definitely started the decline. Yeah.

1:06:44Rob:No question. Yeah. I mean, ever since the days of David Cameron, and well Tony Blair really I mean you want to go all the way back to where it all went wrong I think it was the Blair government which initially in 97 a lot of people had a lot of hope for you know they saw it as a sort of new beginning John Major was finally kicked out he was a bit old and tired and gray like a spitting image puppet and suddenly Tony Blair was this young guy with a young family children running around you know in Downing Street and it all sounded very kind of wholesome in a way but we now know things about tony blair that would suggest that he's very far from wholesome um like what well like him having an affair supposedly with rupert murdoch's wife wendy deng and supposedly you know not being very discreet about it um even while he was being friends with with with rupert you know um and just his general redefining of britain because he started a lot of that you know the creation of the supreme court you know the whole kind of defenestration of what you might have known as the civil service because again back in the day in the 70s civil service was kind of small c conservative it was run by probably what you might describe as old fogies you know but who were very kind of sensible and and stable but we've now got you know this mad collection of again brainwashed individuals who have come out of the education system in this country who care more about um diversity and inclusion and all of that than they do about the actual job you know and we've got more people working in the civil service now than we've ever had.

1:08:31Rob:And there are some who say they're the real problem because they control everything. Right. And even if reform do get in, will they really be able to do anything about that? I don't know.

1:08:41Mike Graham:Well, I want to come to them in a moment. Let's go positive now. Okay. How do we restore broken Britain?

1:08:48Rob:Well, I think, well, let's start with the civil service. You know, I think you have to put people in charge of things who will fix the problems, right? So you have to start by identifying what the problems are. If the problem in, for example, the Ministry of Defence is that they haven't got enough money and they're not spending the money right, then look at where they're spending the money. You know, I've told this story before, but a veteran that I know who speaks to people who are still in the forces said, you know, they're obsessed with things like language. which they're obsessed with, you know, training.

1:09:26Rob:They're obsessed with, but not in a good way. They're obsessed with, you know, making sure that everybody kind of passes muster. So it doesn't really matter if you're a bit overweight. It doesn't really matter if your eyesight's not that great. If you've got flat feet, you can still come into the army. And they don't mind if you identify as, you know, some kind of non-binary gender. You know, it's all about that. It's not about fighting people. It's about making sure that words like manpower don't appear in, in sort of, you know, service manuals. and every barracks is kind of, what's the word, inclusive and welcoming and, you know, everybody should be treated with respect.

1:10:04Rob:And it's like your job is to go out and kill people, you know. Let's start with that, right, and maybe give you some decent boots and some decent guns and enough bullets so you can defend yourself, you know. That kind of thing, the Home Office, you know, riddled with people who will hold up and probably deny justice to people and who will vigorously fight to kind of ensure that government policy isn't carried out. You know, whenever anybody, you know, we've got a case this week, I talked about this morning, Shibana Mahmood was taken to court this week by 16 asylum seekers, illegal migrants, who are fighting against the one-in-one-out scheme.

1:10:44Rob:and they'll probably win because it turns out that despite her supposed knowledge of the law what she's attempting to do is illegal and so they'll probably win compensation they'll probably get to stay in the country for the rest of their lives and we'll probably have to pay for a house for them you know fix the problems you know start deporting people as soon as they arrive illegally you know stop allowing people to come into the country on business visas and work visas and then let them overstay. You know, it's not like we haven't got enough people to do all that. We've got thousands. There's something like 27 ,000 PRs in civil service.

1:11:20Rob:Wow. Doing what, exactly?

1:11:23Mike Graham:You know? The thing is, turkeys don't vote for Christmas. No.

1:11:26Rob:It's not going to be easy to get them all out, is it? No. And they've proven that they can be very difficult. Well, Liz Truss said they pretty much ran the country, didn't she? Yeah. Yeah, and I think she's probably right. There's no reason to disbelieve what she says. I mean, Dominic Cummings came in and said he was going to cut a swathe through Whitehall, and look what happened to him. He didn't get anywhere near them. Last seen running out of Downing Street with a box, which was one of the more strange sort of images from the COVID days. I just think we've somehow allowed them who work for us to think that they're in charge of us.

1:12:02Rob:And that goes for local councils as well as national government. You know, they all seem to think that they know better, that they're entitled. You know, it's all our money that they're spending.

1:12:13Mike Graham:Yeah, I don't like it. I find it ironic when you see government spending, you know, government money. There is no government money.

1:12:21Rob:No, no. No, it's all our money. Yeah. And they kind of make out that they're doing us a favour when they, you know, oh, we're handing pay rise to doctors. Why? Yeah. Exactly, you know? Oh, well, you know, they feel as though they haven't been treated properly and inflation's been going up. Well, inflation's been going back down, but yet now they want another 26%. You know, I read a story the other day, teachers, there's something like 1 ,100 teachers in this country getting paid more than$125 ,000 a year. Again, it's our money. I'm sorry. You know, I don't think, I'm sure there are many great things about being a teacher, but I don't think the job is worth$125 ,000.

1:13:02Rob:We shouldn't be paying that kind of money to people like that.

1:13:04Mike Graham:No, and is this back to your point about socialism being the problem? Is this the fundamental problem? That socialism believes that the government financed the state as opposed to understanding that the workers, the employers, the entrepreneurs and the builders actually financed the state.

1:13:25Rob:Well, they clearly don't understand the principle of growth, economic growth. They don't understand it. They think, they call it investment in the economy, you know, when they give a bunch of money to some eco-friendly, you know, wind farm company who are just literally creaming the money off the top and paying it to their shareholders. Wow. But they're apparently doing something good because they're investing in the green economy. No, they're not. They're taking our money and throwing it in a bin, literally, because all that's going to happen is that we are then going to be asked to subsidize that business.

1:14:00Rob:either by direct injection of government money, i.e. our money, or we're going to be charged another surcharge on an electricity bill in order to let these guys get wealthy. And meanwhile, they're generating nothing in terms of actual wealth, in terms of, you know, they're only getting free money from the government. And I've always said, if the government has to subsidize something, then it's not a viable business. So let it die. You know, I think they should have let the banks go back in 2009, You know, when old Mandelson was busy tapping away to Epstein about what the latest monetary policy was going to be coming out of the Treasury.

1:14:36Rob:You know, they should have let the Bank of Scotland die. They should have let Northern Rock die. Well, this is how capitalism works. You know, you get the best rise to the top. We shouldn't be subsidising banks who later turned around and basically schdupped us for it.

1:14:52Mike Graham:Yeah, who are for-profit corporations anyway. Yeah, I know. You know, sometimes we all need a bit of a lesson. If we lose a little bit of money in a bank account, well, then that's our lesson. We choose our bank more wisely next time. Or we don't choose a bank.

1:15:05Rob:Right. You know, some investments may go down as well as up, as they say on the TV ads, you know? But why are we bankrolling it? Yeah. You know, it doesn't make any sense.

1:15:16Mike Graham:No, well, will Reform and Nigel Farage win the next election?

1:15:21Rob:I think so.

1:15:21Mike Graham:Do you want them to?

1:15:22Rob:Yes. Yes, because I think we have to break the cycle.

1:15:27Mike Graham:The two-party system.

1:15:28Rob:The two-party system. I mean, I talked to a lot of former Tory voters who said they'll never vote Tory again. I think Labour are, you know, basically shooting themselves in the head. And they're, you know, going to do very badly, I think, in May in the local elections. They're going to do... I don't think they've got a chance of winning. Although some people say that they shouldn't be underestimated in Gorton, in Manchester. But I think, you know, by the looks of things, they might not even come third. the Labour government. And I think people are sick to death of being lied to. And I know that there are those on the right who say that reform aren't any different.

1:16:00Rob:You know, they're just the same. You know, Farage is having to kind of taper his original views and he's having to become more mainstream. And he kind of is, and I get that. But I think he understands that, you know, there's a huge tranche of people in this country who are in the middle somewhere, you know. They don't want to be intolerant. They don't want to be horrible. but they also want to get their country back on an even keel and if he goes too far to the right I don't think they'll vote for him and so I think he has to kind of balance that somehow um and I think he's a very good uh orator I think he's a very good politician and um you know some would argue and I'd probably be one of them that he's had a huge influence on British politics ever since he's been involved in it.

1:16:51Rob:People say, people used to say, you know, oh, he's never won an election. Well, he has now. And they've now got eight MPs. And I think they need to, I mean, their big problem is going to be finding enough decent people and not any nutters, you know, making sure that, you know, they haven't got any kind of former members of the BNP standing for. You know, that's an issue, definitely. And also their policy on lots of other things maybe needs to be fleshed out a bit. But I think it would be good for the country. if they got in. But the trouble is, again, you've got this left blob of people. I mean, I think one of the civil service unions has come out and said, you know, reform, win the next election, we're all going to just go out and strike, which is not going to work for them.

1:17:36And there are still people who think they're a racist party,

1:17:40Rob:who think they're far right and all of that, you know, the media establishment. So they've got to win them over as well. But in a way, it's kind of what Tony Blair did in 97. You know, they were very clever at the Labour Party. You know, they went to the newspapers. They got the Daily Mail on side. They got the Sun on side. They presented their kind of plan of action. And as a government machine, Blair's government was actually pretty efficient. I mean, it was really too efficient in a way.

1:18:09Mike Graham:Yeah.

1:18:10Rob:But they had always previously had a reputation, Labour, of being kind of irresponsible with money. a bit kind of you know a bit too socialist a bit too left-wing Blair kind of did got rid of all that they got rid of clause four they got rid of the kind of the militant section of of the party and expelled a lot of people so they've got to kind of take on that kind of scale of of revolution in a way yeah and if they can do that I think I think that'd be good

1:18:35Mike Graham:right what's one law in the UK if you could change it yourself you would hmm that's a good question one law

1:18:49i think it's the um i want to say something about recycling but i don't know that there's

1:18:56Rob:really laws in play but i mean people have been prosecuted for recycling stuff wrong right which is part of this kind of mad local council agenda you know down in um sussex where my kids lived with their mother. The council got so spiteful about people misusing the bins. They took them all away. So now you have to go to the dump. This probably sounds really trivial to you, right? But this is the kind of thing that really pisses people off. You now have to go to the local dump. And you're probably paying five, six grand a year for your council tax. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And it's going up, you know.

1:19:33They said it would go up if they didn't get a loan.

1:19:36Rob:And I think down in Sussex particularly, they've taken out a£70 million loan or something because they said if they didn't do that, the council's actually going to have to go up 10%. You have to book a place at the dump. If you get to the dump and you haven't booked a place, they won't let you in. And if you're a tradesman, you have to pay to go in and dump stuff, which is why there's so much fly tipping going on because we've got a very untidy country, I think. And I would like to see that change. I would like to see that clean up somehow. And I know even as I'm saying it, it's starting to sound a bit trivial.

1:20:07Rob:But it's quite important. I mean, the standard of living and the way we live, I think, is important. Yeah. And you mentioned the Birmingham bin strike. I mean, it's horrendous. Isn't that the way, was it the New York mayor,

1:20:22Mike Graham:the broken windows? Yeah, Giuliani. Yeah, Giuliani started with, get rid of the graffiti, get started the small bits, tidy up all the low-level crime.

1:20:32Rob:Definitely. And make people proud of their community again. And, you know, we've always had a litter problem in this country. People just, I mean, it drives me insane. You get people throwing things out of cars. You know, you drive down the side of motorways and there's just litter everywhere. It's horrible.

1:20:46Mike Graham:Yeah.

1:20:46Rob:You know. So I haven't really answered the question very well. It's okay. It's your answer. Yeah. I think something in that area, you know, stop going after people for trying to do the right thing. Yeah. And go after the right people who are doing the wrong thing. And that would improve a lot of people's lives, I think. You know.

1:21:06Mike Graham:what's a secret you've never shared or a story you've never told?

1:21:11Rob:There's a lot of those.

1:21:15Rob:There's a story that I have told that not many people know. So unless you really become a bit obsessed with me, you probably would know. I've only ever voted once in my life. And that was in 1979 when Thatcher swept to power. And I voted Labour. Wow. So I got that wrong massively. And it was partly because I then moved to America and I lived there for a while. And then when I came back, I constantly was living in places where it was such a massive majority. It didn't seem worthwhile. Right. And then as time went on and I became a bit more of a kind of maverick columnist and broadcaster, I actually thought to myself, you know, it's actually better not to vote for me because I can feel less affiliated to anyone.

1:22:03Rob:Right. You know, it's a bit like not having a football team. I was a talk sport. People used to go, who do you support? And I was like, don't really support anyone. Well, how can you be a football commentator then? I went, because I can be forensically clean. I'm not tainted by loving Arsenal or Tottenham. Yeah. You know, and I go the same way with political parties. I don't want to be affiliated with any particular party, so I don't want to vote for any of them. And that way I feel as though I can be more critical and I can be more kind of honest.

1:22:31Mike Graham:Even with what you just said about reform and how bad you think Labour are doing, you still wouldn't vote. No. Right.

1:22:38Rob:Wouldn't vote. PJ O 'Rourke is one of my favourite writers in America, satirist, kind of libertarian, said don't vote only encourages them. You know? Yeah. And some might say that I'm wrong about that, because the fact that few people vote now, particularly in local elections, is maybe how we ended up where we are. Yeah. Because if more people voted and actually bothered, it might be better. but I don't know. What would you say is your biggest mistake or regret?

1:23:09Mike Graham:Do you know, I don't really have any regrets. We all do. I don't really. We all say we don't, but there's always one. I mean, there'd be something you'd change or something that hangs over you. I don't think so. Because, I mean, even when it all happened last October at talk, you know, and I thought, well,

1:23:31Rob:there's not really much I could have changed about that.

1:23:33Mike Graham:There's not much I could have done. But that was so obviously better for you. I mean, I've had lots of people like Lawrence Fox and Dan Wootten who went through it all and it was horrible. And their life's so much better now. They're independent. Look how well Dan's doing. Oh, I know.

1:23:47Rob:Amazing.

1:23:48Mike Graham:Amazing.

1:23:48Rob:And he was really helpful to me, actually, during that period, which is why I went and did the interview with him, you know, because I've known Dan a long time. And, yeah, he's been very encouraging and been great. But I genuinely, you know, I'm generally pretty happy. I've got four kids who are all brilliant, who are all wonderful. I got divorced. I got divorced. Is that a regret or a mistake? It was probably, if there's anything to regret, I regret if I caused anybody any pain as a result, you know. But, you know, shit happens. And I'm a believer in fate to some extent and making the best of things.

1:24:30Rob:and I wasn't a very good husband you know to my first I've only been married once but I had two kids with her and then I've had two younger ones with somebody else and I've not been a very well-behaved partner basically you know um is that a regret but it's not really a regret it's just the way I am but if I've ever caused anybody pain which I know I have I suppose that's a regret Because I don't ever wish to do that And I've always been reasonably honourable About the financial side of all of that You know But again It's not I wouldn't change it Because I am who I am Because of what's happened to me And because of what experiences I've had in life You know

1:25:14Mike Graham:Yeah So this show is called Disrupt Us We've been disrupting for 10 years Mike Have you really? Yeah we have Wow Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm ashamed of myself then because I didn't know that. Well, I'm ashamed of myself that you didn't know that. You don't look old enough, to be honest. Yeah, so 1 ,350-ish episodes now. So you must be doing pretty well too. I mean, it's all relative, isn't it, compared to who and what. Yeah. But, yeah, we've had a few billion views and listens. Amazing. See, that puts my whole kind of excitement to shame, doesn't it? No.

1:25:49Rob:Because I'm going, we've got 7 million.

1:25:51Mike Graham:No, no, no, but how quickly you've done it. It's like, you know, I follow you, obviously, and how quickly you've done it. And that's like, it's easier, but it's harder. Harder in the sense that there's a lot of competition and there's a lot of things you need to do. But the algorithms are a bit more kind to the new channels. But no, I mean, I've only ever been doing this kind of 10 % to 15 % of my time. Right. And, you know, I felt like I might be dangerous if I put all my time into it, I have my property portfolio and I have my other business interests, which need my attention. Yeah, so this show is called Disruptors.

1:26:25Mike Graham:What does the word disruptive mean to you? Disruptive means it's a good thing to me.

1:26:30Rob:Are you disruptive? I am disruptive. I mean, I often say to people the reason I got into journalism, and one of my pet hates, actually, is the way that journalism has now kind of deteriorated in this country, where people are no longer curious, you know? particularly the Westminster sort of bubble lot you know the people who cover politics on a daily basis there's with with one or two notable exceptions um they're all kind of in the same club and they don't really want to disrupt anybody and they don't really want to have to be told sorry you can't come on the prime minister's plane because you know he wrote that piece that wasn't very nice and they don't really want to be shoved out of the um you know the garden press conference because you know they've fallen out of favor and i got into journalism because i like being a bloody awkward you know i like going up to people who don't want to see me and asking them questions they don't want to be asked you know that's my thing so disruption is great as far as i'm concerned you know immediately one of the things i used to love to do is just interrupt people particularly you know on radio shows you know because it really it really puts them off yeah um they don't like you know they really don't like it let me finish you know and i just keep doing it and because i find it funny i find it amusing i know the audience does as well yeah so yeah disrupt as much as you can yeah definitely because it's it's it's our duty i think because otherwise we end up with people like starmer and his band of you know gits who think they can tell us how to how to run our lives and tell us what we can do what we can't do yeah you know we we He didn't give him permission for that.

1:28:05Rob:So, you know, disrupt them all you can. Mike, thanks a lot for coming on the show.

1:28:11Mike Graham:My pleasure. Really enjoyed it. Really enjoyed it.

1:28:13Rob:Thank you very much.

1:28:45Mike Graham:This episode was brought to you by Disruptive Media, helping bold entrepreneurs stand out through podcasting, video, and social content. Visit disruptivemedia.co.uk to learn more.

1:29:03You