The Caveman and That Dunsinking Feeling

0:00Coming up on the podcast today, cavemen. Who's a caveman? Cavemen are the people who are called C-A-V-E, citizens against virtually everything. We're looking at planning, we're looking at objections, we're looking at why Ireland and many parts of the world can't get their housing market right simply because we are tying ourselves up in knots. It's housing, it's prices, it's economics, sociology, but more importantly, it is the way in which centrist politicians are heading. Don't miss it. It's all coming up in a couple of minutes. You're a pro at running your life, at committing to your workout, at showing up every day.

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2:21How are you doing there? It is time for the podcast. And today is an auspicious day, John. It is an auspicious day. It is. Because today is the day that I turn 60. How the hell did that happen?

2:38David McWilliams: And I can just tell you, I can just have the state of me, John, right? Okay. Yeah, I could see it. There was a few late nights. And so heavy was last night that I woke up this morning and I must have looked so hungover that my face recognition on my banking app didn't recognize me. Which is... Does not confuse. Does not confuse. It's an absolute shocker. It was an absolute shocker. But anyway, yeah, just six decades. It's a long, long time. And the problem is I've known you for all six of them. for all six of them. Yes, we have. We have. There's a lot of living done in those 60 years. There's a lot of living.

3:19I'm telling you, I'm feeling every single second, minute, hour, day, week, month of that long thing. And you're obviously,

3:28David McWilliams: I do my usual for my celebrations. You, of course, put some thought into it because you're celebrating, you're 60, a little bit in advance, a couple of months in advance. But where are you going? Yeah. Well, I'm 60 in December, but I couldn't help myself. I've, like you, given myself a little present. So I'm heading off to Northern Spain to watch the eclipse tomorrow night. Woo! I can't wait. It's going to be great. You are such a nerd. That is fantastic. I know, I know. So Northern Spain is a total eclipse of the heart by Bonnie Tyler. I want you to belt it out like an old karaoke session. So is Northern Spain the place you're most likely to see the full thing?

4:09Absolutely. It comes down from earlier on the day. It comes down through Iceland, Greenland, and then through the middle of the Atlantic, and then comes in across northern Spain. So the total eclipse will be in the evening. So that could be kind of spectacular. But we're going to be in Guillaume, and it goes right across Guillaume, Oviedo, northern Spain, and out into the Balearics. And, oh, it's going to be great. So that's on. and then we're going to be doing a lot, a bit of walking and a bit of kayaking and that kind of stuff. So happy 60th to me.

4:43David McWilliams: That's Asturias, isn't it? Asturias. Asturias, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, happy 60th to me, happy 60th to John. And of course, what we should do is we should in fact invite some of our cherished Patreons to celebrate our 60th sometime in Dublin in and around October. That's a great idea. Or maybe after October. In fact, I've also been working as always, this is always, on Kilkenomics. The tickets go on sale on the 1st of September. it's going to be an absolute humdinger. But we might do something around then as well. That's a good idea. That's a great idea. To mark the fact that we're 120 years old combined.

5:16That is shocking.

5:18David McWilliams: Anyway. What are we talking about today? We may well be old, but there are things that are on our minds. There are things on our minds and the first thing that's on our mind this week is Done Sink. So this is going to be an Irish-focused podcast, but for our British and American and Australian and Canadian listeners, anybody in the anglospheric world will know that what we're talking about is housing, housing, and not being able to get housing right, which is something that we in Ireland are spectacularly bad at. Our British cousins aren't so good at it across the water. The Americans also have problems between red and blue states and which one builds more, which one builds less.

6:00David McWilliams: Canadian house prices have been falling dramatically after having gone through a massive surge. And in general, the feeling all around the English-speaking world is that housing can't be done. Now, one of the reasons housing can't be done, John, is there possibly too much democracy. Right. Okay. Too much planning restrictions, too many delays, too many residence committees. and what we see is people are constantly, constantly opposing, challenging, resorting to the legal framework, resorting to the planning laws, etc., etc., etc., to what seems to me to stop development. So I have an expression for these people, they are cavemen, John.

6:48David McWilliams: The caveman stands for the cave, which is the citizens against virtually everything. Right? These are professional objectives. Yeah. Down with democracy. That's what I say. Down with democracy, right? No, it's kind of banana-ism. You know, it's not Yimbyism, it's banana-ism. Build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything, right? And a great example of that is a big site called Dunn Sink, which is on the M50. John, I'll just give you a sense. If you're driving from, let's say, Eurnechlewoods to Lorgan out on the M50, it's a big, big site, big greenfield site. It used to be a dump. It's a big greenfield site just there around Finglas.

7:29David McWilliams: It's a huge, huge site. I'll just give you a sense of the proportions. Now, we know, just so dear listeners, Ireland needs to build, in order for our housing dilemma, just to stand still, not to fix it, just to stand still, between 60 ,000 and 70 ,000 homes every year. Now, to put that into context, to give you a visual or a geographical understanding of that number, That is a city bigger than Waterford every single year for the next 30 years. Only by achieving building at that scale will we put a material dent in the housing problem, right? So that gives you a sense of it. So this site, John, it's Fingal County Council.

8:14David McWilliams: But is that even possible? I think it's probably possible if you really accelerate. Just don't forget that we built 86 ,000 or 87 ,000 houses at the height of the Celtic Tiger boom in 2006, which was 20 years ago this year. Right, okay. So it is possible to do. I'm not saying that we should repeat that fiasco. It is possible to do, John. It is possible. And maybe in fairness, it was possible then when we had a building industry that was much, much bigger. What has happened in the building industry, John, is that as so many builders went bust, number one, they simply left the game. And number two, as the banks in Ireland got so badly burned due to their own over-lending, they are now under-lending.

9:01So you've got this weird confluence with a massive demand for houses, but developers and builders can't get their hands on sufficient finance in many cases. or they simply have left the business because they went bust. But all the while, another factor is oppositions and people oppose. So I'll just give you a sense of this land, 1 ,000 acres,

9:26David McWilliams: between Finglas, Ashtown, Castelnoc and Blanchestown. It's earmarked for up to 18 ,500 homes. That's a population projection of 46 ,000. It's huge. That would make it the single largest town in the state after. bigger than draw that and dock swords are navin okay now of course anything like this is going to require scrutiny i'm not saying you should not scrutinize plans but there's been almost 400 local resident submissions lodged against the plan already on what basis well just one more thing before we get into the meat and potatoes of this is it's important to note that it is within the M50.

10:07So for Irish people, everyone knows what the M50 is. For some of our foreign listeners, it is basically the semi-circular boundary of inner Dublin. It's a motorway that goes around Dublin, north to south, and it in effect constitutes the boundary of what will be inner Dublin. It's a bit like the M25 in London.

10:27David McWilliams: Yeah, exactly. It'd be the M25 in London, except on a much smaller scale. The M25 in London is just so huge, but the same idea. And of course, John, if you build within the M50, you get the benefits of density. You get the benefits of lower commutes, shorter commutes. You get the benefits of being close to where you work. One of the major dilemmas in Ireland is that people are not living close to where they work. They are commuting. This is adding to all sorts of social issues, emotional issues, psychological issues. And thankfully, they listen to podcasts in their cars, which is good for us. Okay, but the idea would be, you know, try and build close enough to the city center.

11:12Yeah. But the main problem, John, is here we are yet again in the biggest housing crisis in peacetime Europe, where residents are intent on obstructing a solution to the housing shortage, which is exposed to this contradiction at the heart of the politics of Irish housing. Most people want the housing crisis solved, and yet many people object to specific initiatives that would solve it. Because the more the community opposes supply or new supply, the more expensive existing houses become. And the less it opposes, the cheaper housing becomes. But in effect, the politics of Irish housing is now pitting the interests of those people who have homes against those people who do not.

12:00And that really is where the issues of fairness, the issues of decency, the issues of efficiency, the issues of how do we solve this thing, it's going to be almost inconceivable, John, to solve a problem where every time there's a big, big initiative like this, it gets hammered by the cavemen, the citizens against virtually everything, using the legal system, using the planning system to try and do it. slow things up, right? And so bizarrely, and this is the weird thing, John, that the state and the state institutions of Ireland have become a referee in this game. Right. As if the state only exists to monitor the rules.

12:44And I think this is a complete abdication of responsibility. The state is not the referee. The state is the player.

12:50David McWilliams: In fact, the state is the main player. And it should be setting the rules, not refereeing them, not sitting down and saying, well, what does this person say? What does that person say? Right? Because if in the real world, of builders. I spoke to a builder last week, you know, and they were just at the end of their theater. A big builder, right? But he's making the point, look, in the real world of supply and demand, when you restrict land use and you've drawn out consultation processes and you get this near automatic flurry of objections from existing residents, all this squeezes the supply of homes, usually in places where housing is needed most, close to urban centers, transport nodes, jobs, etc.

13:30So that's where we're at, John. And this, Dunsink, I think, is like a very brilliant microcosm of what is going on all over the country. And of course, the more house prices go up, the more our children emigrate, because they can't find a place to live, because they feel that there's no point being here, number one.

13:52David McWilliams: They look at the price of houses and they think, I can't afford that. I can never afford to live in this country. So they split. We now know there's a pattern of migration in Ireland where the kids are leaving in their 20s, working for about 10 years abroad, and then coming back in their 30s, in their late 30s. So we're losing the dynamism of those young people at a very crucial time when we need them. Because it's young people who start companies. It's young people who have ideas. It's young people who create the vibe. They create the culture, all that sort of thing. So they don't think, I'm not saying it's a fiasco because people are entitled to absolutely voice their objections to things, right?

14:32But the question is, are the rights of people who have homes senior to the rights of people who don't have homes. Is having a home the fact that emboldens and bolsters your opinion? Because in effect, most of these things are opinions, while the people who don't have a home do not have the organization. They tend to be diffuse. They tend not to necessarily be focused. They don't have a residence committee, etc. So of the 46 ,000 people who would find a home in Dünsink, and their lives will be changed materially for the better, they have no way of expressing their positivity towards the plan. And it's only the 400 people who are opposing it who can focus and can organize and have the wherewithal.

15:28And they, of course, will tend typically to be older, to be richer.

15:33David McWilliams: And they just, I understand, people don't want stuff beside them. That's really it, right? Like, I'm all right, Jack. I like this view, et cetera. But ultimately, every time we restrict supply, we impose a tax upon our children. And that we both seem to have figured out. So what are the main objections? Is it the fact that it's too dense? Is it the scale of it? Is it, you know, because as you said, you said it's a greenfield site, or albeit over an old dump, so it's probably considered a brownfield site. Yeah. So, I mean, obviously, there was a dump there. And some people are worried about the fact that, you know, once you start digging up stuff, once you start excavating, you know, there is a legitimate concern that maybe contaminated liquids are in there, from the landfill, there's landfill gas in there, etc.

16:27But that should be able to be fixed by engineers, John.

16:30David McWilliams: Do you know what I mean? Like an engineer could come in and say, well, we've done this before and we figured this out and we know what we're doing. Yes, you would think so. I would have thought so. Then the other people, a lot of people are saying, hold on a second, what about the transport links? And again, it's typical Ireland, right? You've got 40 ,000 new people, that's a hell of a lot of traffic. You've got to build schools, you've got to build all sorts of basic infrastructure. And this is so typical in Ireland. The bit about extending the Lewis to Dunsink. The Lewis is going to be expanded to Dunsink after it's built, not before.

17:03And many people would argue that in other countries, the critical infrastructure is put in first before you build. And then finally, there's this basic idea of, well, is it too dense? Is there too many people? All that sort of stuff. Well, it's interesting because I was actually speaking to an architect there a few days ago about Dunsync and about kind of planning stuff in general. And what did you point that? Well, he was explaining that when they built Tala, I can't remember the developer who built Tala, But anyway, apparently they lashed them up. So they're fine houses. They're solid houses.

17:41But they're really basic houses. Like an awful lot of the houses all around the country were kind of basic. There was no insulation, all those kind of things. There was less regulation. But he was also saying that they built them very quickly, very cheaply. And while they didn't have all the facilities, you know, the ancillary stuff like transport and schools and shops. and all that kind of stuff. All of that followed quite quickly afterwards, as seems to be, he was explaining, is usually the case or the best way of getting stuff done, up and running, rather than, you know, essentially don't let the perfect bully the good.

18:22David McWilliams: Yeah, well, I think that's, you're absolutely right, you know. I mean, Tala is home to 120 ,000 people. It is a huge part of Dublin. It was built, I remember going out to play football there in the 1970s, like really under sixes and under sevens, under eights leagues, right? And it was a building site. So it's a 70s, 80s and 90s development, Tala is. Yeah. And as you said, eventually over time, the infrastructure followed. But I think it would be much more important if you're looking at the world now, we have the money, we have a Lewis system, we could put the extension, just fast track the system, fast track the Lewis, do it all at once.

19:02Yeah. fast track the nimbyism fast track well i mean the problem is that the main problem is much more typical nimby classics right if you look at the objections right people are worried

19:14David McWilliams: about there's a golf center called ellen green golf center which council wants to redevelop right to put much more residential developments on it and of course people say oh my golf center is going to go one resident i read was just it was quite funny he said i personally this is a quote i personally don't want to be looking at high-rise buildings or apartments build them elsewhere Thinkless people are proud of their heritage. It's amazing. It's like he says, I don't want this ship to slide me. What does that mean? That's the traditional tension of nimbyism between people who already have a home attacking the chance of somebody else to have that home.

19:48I don't want to be looking at flats when I'm on the back nine.

19:52David McWilliams: Yes, exactly. That's exactly right. And the thing, of course, it is, John, right? When you talk to builders, they make the very simple point all the time is that when you build up, every home becomes cheaper. That's the key. If affordable homes is central to government strategy, then let the people who would like to buy an apartment in a 13-story building, let them be the arbiters of whether they should live there or not. Not somebody else who's not going to live there, right? And of course, what we're locking ourselves into is this battle between residents and their rights and the rights of others who would also like a normal life in this country, starting out with queuing a home.

20:31And we have to understand that the rights of owners cannot always be senior to the rights of those people who don't own but who would like to own because the objectors are automatically enriched. As we know, when you have housing shortage, that price of existing houses goes up.

20:56David McWilliams: So the people who are in existence are already enriched, right? And they get enriched even more. And the people who suffer are those out homes. And I think this is where governance should come in, right? We need to look after all the citizens, not just the people who already have homes. Can I just ask you a question? I know a lot of people object to kind of high-rise flats. And I wonder, are there two things going on there? Number one is just the fact that as a country, as a nation, We're not used to high rise buildings and high rise towns and cities. So we need to kind of get over that. But I wonder if the other thing, our probably only experience with high rise residential was Ballymun built back in the 60s, wasn't it?

21:3960s and 70s as well. Yeah. I mean, that turned out to be a disaster. And maybe there was a design flaw and all of that. But that is still kind of in the backs of people's heads. We don't want another Ballymun. Or like in London, there was the Broadwater Farm Estates.

21:56David McWilliams: Yes, Seven Sisters Road up around there. Yeah. Yeah, but that was a design flaw. There was too many nooks and crannies and it made it feel unsafe. So I wonder, is that kind of thing going through people's minds as well? Well, it's funny, you're going to attend Gijón tonight, right? In Asturias. Yes. And you will see that in Spain, Spain is the largest percentage of people who live in apartment blocks in the world, which is quite extraordinary. in the world, right? And the Spaniards have figured out how urban living works because it's dense. People live over shops. People live in apartment blocks.

22:33Therefore, the streets are vibrant. Therefore, there's a great culture on the street.

22:37David McWilliams: Now, of course, the weather is much better, etc. Yeah. Not that great where you're going in Asturias and Basque Country. Yeah, it's quite rainy, yeah. It's pretty wet, right? So I think there may well be some sort of fear of the Ballymunization, right? But if you talk to people from Ballymun, so for example, I was even listening to Glenn Hansard being interviewed and he was talking about the community in Ballymun, the fact that his mother had everyone around, the fact that people looked after each other. So I think there's, if you ask people from Ballymun themselves, they will say, look, you know, we live there.

23:12David McWilliams: We grew up there. We worked there. We went out to work. we moved on from there. I think the knocking down of the Ballymun Flats at the time of such an acute shortage of housing was completely mad. I think that was the act of real dereliction of responsibility rather than the building. But that's a different story. What I'm just saying is that builders will tell you, look, there's economies of scale as you build up. One of the reasons that Irish building costs are so high and Irish homes are so expensive is precisely because we refuse to build up. And therefore, every apartment doesn't have the economy to scale that you get in a block of 13 stories if you're only building four stories, right?

23:54Yeah. But hang on a second, Mac. You know, we have a new kind of housing department, don't we? We certainly have lots and lots of plans, John. Right. Lots of glossy brochures. But there is a housing policy. So that begs the question, what is the purpose of the housing policy? Now, I think you're focusing on something really fascinating here. I think this is much, much deeper and much more worrying, not just for Ireland, for all what I would call centrist English-speaking countries. What is happening in this microcosm is a reflection of the fact that the governments can't govern. And this, I think, is radicalizing people all over the place, right?

24:39That governments don't seem to be able to create the environment that allows builders to build houses. Let's just take this example, right? Or create the environment that allows railway builders to build railways or to build metros or whatever it happens to be. And that idea that in a way centrist governments are stuck and have no real muscular power over infrastructure is, I think, causing lots and lots of people to reject the center and to look for more extreme politics. Things will say, we will fix this tomorrow. We will fix this. We'll make this easy. Right. This is what I'm thinking. So one thing we're seeing all through the West is this inability of the states to do things that they used to be able to do, right?

25:36David McWilliams: That's the point. So you take your Tala example. It's a great example, right? You take Tala. It's built in the 70s when Ireland had consistent current account crisis, consistent budgetary crisis, consistent poverty, lots of emigration. But they built it. They got stuff done. That ability of the state to get stuff done seems to have, over the last 20 years, become mangled up in procedural issues, in process, in objections. And the state is no longer able to do the stuff that it used to do. And that, I think, is making people naturally really angry. So if you look at, for example, it's the interaction between local democracy and between, let's say, in this case, housing policy.

26:26So the way in which councillors have responded to the objections,

26:30David McWilliams: in this case, they've also, we're asking that for more time. It suggests to me that what's driving Irish housing policy is the imperative of keeping people who already have homes happy, not trying to provide housing for the people who don't have homes, and are even those people who are prepared to pay for them. And why is this? Because councillors and local politicians are terrified of residence committees. Well-financed, focused, angry residence committees are the most dangerous thing in Western politics. It's not the issue of race. It's not the issue of migration. It's not the issue of Russia.

27:11these resident committees are tying the state in knots they're using the legal system they're deploying their own money to do so and all the while what happens is, and I spoke to a builder about this they eventually just got pissed off

27:28David McWilliams: builders are just saying it's like the housing militia we've been waiting to go for two years just move on, life's too short you know all those builders are like those builders are like us, John, their lives are going quickly. And they're like, could I be arsed? Could I actually be arsed doing this? No. Let's do something else. Or somewhere else. Or go somewhere else. I'll give you a good example. Or even the developers who bought the land, who are now, because they're sitting on the land, and the interest rate has been clicking, clocking up all the time. Yeah. They are saying, well, look, we can only charge more money for the site.

28:07So basically the system, John, is clearly broken. And it is broken by our own people. And that, I think, is something you have to reiterate. But every time you object, it is not a victimless crime, right? Yes. There is a victim, but those victims can't be heard

28:27David McWilliams: because they are the first-time buyers. They are the kids living in the box room of their parents' house. They are the young couple who are saving and are constantly looking at the housing market and saying, why should I stay here? And many of them are not, John. This is obviously a big problem and it's an emergency, as we've said before. But is this actually fixable? Well, let's answer this question, John, after we take a few ads.

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31:00Max, so we're talking about Dunsync and it's going to be the biggest development or proposed to be the biggest development in the country, but it's facing lots of objections and stuff. So we clearly have a housing policy that's not working. Is that fixable? What do we do from here? How do we make it work? There's lots of different things going on here. One is that point I was making just there before the break of the inability of the state to do the things that the state used to be able to do. Right. And that is something that's manifest across many, many countries. And that is radicalizing politics, number one, but it's also causing a cynicism, number two, on the part of the citizens.

31:48They're like, what's the point? Yeah.

31:50David McWilliams: People involved in this, the builders and the developers, who in effect build houses. That's the whole thing. There's no point going to a sociology department and saying, what do you think we should do with housing? Builders, fellas to build, and they are largely fellas. They know the price. They know the problems. They know how quick they can do things. And they are the people who will solve this. So they have to be central. The builders have to be central to everything. Otherwise, it's a ludicrous conversation. But then there's this other factor, John. And I think the nimbyism and the yimbyism, so you've got nimbyism, not in my backyard.

32:26But you also have yimbyism. I think the Irish state has to get out of its own way, right? And I'm going to explain something here, right? There's a great counterfactual going on in Ireland because you have the IDA, which attracts in foreign investment. It is the most successful state agency in the world at doing its job. And what does it do? It does everything that the foreign investors ask for. It says, here's the rules.

32:56David McWilliams: They're clear. Here's the tax. Here's the infrastructure we have. Here's the infrastructure we don't have. Go for it, you guys, right? So you take, for example, very, very close to Dunsink, out in West Dublin, you're out in Leakslip. Take the idea of Intel, right? They are building fabs on time, on budget, using the same company that is tied up in knots in the children's hospital. The same company. Same company. Yet the fab is on time. Why? Because the specs are given and they don't change. Yimbyism in Ireland is evident in foreign direct investment, which has been so unbelievably successful. Why?

33:38Because the state got out of its own way. It streamlined the process. It actively encourages investors. It understands capital. It understands the concern of people who own capital. And it gets shit done. Side by side with this, we have this totally dysfunctional, NIMBY-driven housing market where every single impediment, obstacle, obstruction is put up at every stage of the process to everyone who's trying to fix the thing, who's trying to actually get shit done.

34:19David McWilliams: And I think it's a beautiful counterfactual because you have this, it's not that the Irish people can't do this. There's nothing genetically wrong with us, right? You just have one example of direct foreign investment, which is unbelievably successful because it is streamlined and because the state listens to the people who are making the investment. Yeah. The other side is the housing market, which is completely dysfunctional, which is completely, it's almost embarrassing now. Why? Because the state doesn't listen to the people who are actually going to do the building and puts the concerns and the rights of the people who want to object before the people who want to do.

35:04And if you consistently favor objectors and you don't penalize them for their objections, so it's a zero cost idea, and you put the cost of delays and the cost of renegotiation and the cost of new plans, and that all goes on to the builder.

35:23David McWilliams: Well, then eventually the builder either gets pissed off or decides, you know what I'm going to do? I'm not going to build houses. I'm going to build fabs for Intel. That's much easier, right? Same guys, right? That's a much easier deal. I'll build fabs, I'll build Google, I'll build this, that, and the other, right? So my point is, John, we have a beautiful counterfactual in Ireland. We have one highly successful state-influenced area called direct foreign investment. And we have one highly, highly dysfunction, state-driven area called development, house building, et cetera. take the best of the direct foreign investment model, streamline everything, make sure that the people who object are actually penalized for objecting.

36:10And that, I think, will get things done. I mean, after all, we're good at building shit.

36:16David McWilliams: Irish people, Irish companies have built stuff all over the world. We have huge ones. I'm sometimes amazed. I go over to London and I see, you know, that company Ballymore. Yeah. And you know, if you're ever going out around Canary Wharf, it seems to be building everything there. That's an Irish company. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? So what's basically happened is the Irish builders have just gone to the UK. Yeah. I'll give you one last statistic, John. I just mentioned the UK there. But in 2005, Eurostat had a report called Housing in Europe. And it found that Irish housing costs were 87 % above the EU average.

36:51Above, wow. 87. And this is up dramatically from just 17 % above the EU average in 2010. So just after the property market collapsed here. So we have become so expensive to build. If no other EU member state has seen a larger relative deterioration in house prices and house costs over the past decade and a half. And objections, although they're not the only problem, John. Yeah. They are part of the problem. and we are pitting older people against younger people. We are pitting owners against renters. And what we are doing is we are destroying for so many of our young people the prospect of ever living in our country.

37:37So what we're doing is we are penalizing our young, enriching our old, and biasing the concerns of the old against the rights of the young and in so doing, making the country unattractive for the very people who should inherit the country who are our children. Yeah.

37:59David McWilliams: I'm going for a scoop. Happy birthday, Mark. Happy birthday, Johnny Boyle. Well, listen, having a good time at the eclipse. Actually, send me a text. Send me a photo. Send me a photo. I will, I will, for sure. What we'll do is we'll put it up in the show notes, John. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Join us on Patreon. That's patreon.com forward slash David McWilliams if you want to have John's finest iPhone camera work right at the ready. And also, just to give you a heads up, I'm working away behind the scenes on the best Kilkenomics I've put together for many, many years. We've got some fab guests. They'll all be named on the 1st of September with just fingers on the buzzer, Kilkenomics.com.

38:35David McWilliams: I'm going off for a birthday scoop, John, and I will talk to you next week. Good man.

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