The Two Matts Q&A: Can’t we have welfare AND defence?

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0:40Hello and happy Sunday. Happy Sunday, one and all. Hope you're all having a wonderful weekend. This is the Two Mats Q &A brought to you by the subscribers of the New World magazine. Do join them. First question comes from Ken in Keswick. Wonderful Keswick. strong national defense or a strong welfare system seems to be becoming a binary choice in political debate can't we have both absolutely and um you know i thought andy burnham did well to make that point at the dispatch box on wednesday when kemi badenock who proposes to fund defense spending increases by welfare cuts you know because we don't we don't know what that is going to be in the budget so obviously it's it's very we are slightly flying blind on this but i do think that we have to get out of this idea of all these binary choices in political debate and look all fiscal policy in and all politics involves a certain amount of trade-offs but i also think that word has become too embedded into political discourse in other words if you want this you have to give up that yes right yeah and sometimes that's true you know some you know there are there are moments when that's the case but i don't think that um suggesting that somehow we can't have strong national defense and a strong and decent welfare system is one of them and it reminds me that i think framing and i think actually burnham is very good at framing one of the great ideas and the you know not implemented but it did it did travel a bit of the coalition government was to make the national security council kind of the beating heart of government and the thinking behind it was was very intelligent one actually which was very early days when the the coalition was still sort of moderate and you know all the good stuff and the idea was look actually more and more things are falling under the umbrella of security so steve hilton's idea you know how far he's traveled now you know he's the republican nominee for the governorship of california but in those days his thought was the way to get climate emergency to work is to put it into the bucket of security so that the national security council is discussing not just intelligence and military issues and civil emergencies, but also the ongoing question of climate emergency.

3:17And I would put, you know, I think that social security, you know, is aptly named because it is actually important to the, not just to the rights of individuals, which are desperately important, but also to the cohesion of a society that people are not, you know, living on the bread line or suddenly evicted and all these things and so i don't agree with kemi badenock that you know it's it's it's one thing or the other i don't think it's a zero sum gain yes of course welfare always has to be reformed but we know you know when was it not and i think that there's no doubt and we've alluded to this often on the podcast that the triple lock on the pension is sooner or later gonna have to go Yeah.

4:06But I really do. I agree with Ken that I don't think the either or approach to defence and welfare is a healthy way to frame this. You know, it's more that we're entering. We are in. We're well in. You know, we're now in the second quarter of a century where both things are going to be very, very costly. Yeah. And we have to pay for them somehow. And we should spend the money well and efficiently and all that good stuff. But we can't think about this like we did in the 1980s, you know, as one thing or the other. It's just that those times are gone. I think that's I think that's absolutely correct.

4:42And, you know, let's just take a little step back and say, you know, most sort of developed democracies do manage to do both. Yeah. You know, not to an imperfect degree, but we do manage to do both and we are managing to do both. And, you know, iterative change is always there. I thought there was a fact, was it Thursday? Emma Barnett. It was Thursday, yeah. Kemi Badenoch, a very tense. Well, that got testy, didn't it? I mean, I thought she did really well, Emma Barnett, I have to say. I thought she really, because Kemi Badenoch does have a tendency to just rabbit on and on and on over people and not let people get a word in.

5:27And, you know, I've said before that I thought she's, Badenock has improved dramatically as a leader as she's come on, you know, and she, there have been moments where she's been, where she's put on a good show, but I thought on this one, Barnett put it to her the inverse, which is always good, which was, you know, well, are you saying then that you are content to have families and children homeless in the name of national security? Is that what you're saying? I'm not saying, I'm not saying, I'm not saying that. And then she sort of rather hysterically blurted out, well, there's a NATO report saying that Russia's going to attack another NATO member by 20.

6:07What are we waiting for? What are we waiting for? And I thought Burnham's performance at PMQs on Wednesday this week was good and a sort of sign of things to come. And it's maybe it's less kind of, you know, kind of Tony Blair, take this mate, Bosh, knockout blows. But it's what I've seen consistently now in the short time he's been at that dispatch box is him saying, look, it'd be better if we better if we worked on this together. If we if we took this less this, if the framing, as you've just described it, Matt, that the framing is the binary thing on the table here. It's a political binary.

6:48It's not an economic binary. It's not a social binary. It's political. And if the framing is more collaborative, then we'll get to a solution. So, yeah, I think Ken is absolutely right. You can have both and we will have both. But I think Kemi Baden-Ock sees this as a political battle point that she's determined to make. Yeah, maybe. I'm not sure she'll find much dividend in it because I don't I don't think that, you know, you can't say to a family that's being kicked out of its, you know, private rental that it can no longer afford and is on the street looking for new accommodation. Well, don't worry, because we've got this great challenger tank.

7:31Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That is not a response. Exactly. All right. Good. Right. Thank you. on we go um from susanna i read the ai tweets about the possibility of total human annihilation with a combination of absolute dread and simultaneous disbelief that this is even a possibility what the actual fuck is going on what is going on matt susanna i i read those tweets with exactly the same emotion which was like i mean and so i should just explain the the tweets were from a former Anthropic employee? Yeah, Jacob Coxon. Who I'd never heard of before, no reason to. A senior guy at Anthropic who quit because basically he was saying there's a very good chance that very quickly, did he say before the end of the decade or within a decade, AI could possibly eradicate the human species.

8:30And then he went out to to lay out why and not quite how because that that's something that i've i mean obviously since this kind of clarion call i have done a little bit of work trying to work out exactly how this would happen yes um and it but it doesn't get any more comfortable when you when you do this you know about about how ai could contrive ways to eradicate oxygen in the atmosphere and stuff like this if it yes if it if ai just got to a point where it decided that human beings were just a pain in the arse and it was time to to move on and get more sensible you know um and i did think um what what what is going on and if the time scale is so compressed and if the potential downside is so enormous what what on earth is are we doing and and then of course the bigger question is how on earth could we stop this and that yes that unfortunately seems to be the great impossibility in the equation it is and you know if anyone um not that they need it but if anyone wants to read the the sort of great apocalyptic text on this is by another convert he was a a real ai will save us all dude tech guy called elisa yudkowsky who had a moment of um epiphany and he published a book called last last year called if anyone builds it everyone dies which is kind of in a sense you don't have to read it now right um so i think i think look yeah i mean that there are lots of aspects to this i mean i think one thing is that i think if we're the frogs then the water of ai is more like to be warming up slowly than boiling up in a way that will make us leap out reflexively and i think we're being suckered a bit because we're looking on the horizon having been prepped by popular culture for skynet and the terminator and you know the matrix and the mushroom cloud meanwhile llms are feasting greedily on our souls and quietly coaxing us into delegating huge chunks of our cognitive abilities into them and you know that that i think is the it's the whimper not the bang that worries me personally i mean that's on my mind having said that i am quite i'm cautiously pleased about especially in america but not just there the rebellion against the data centers and i i want to know more about it really I can't know enough about it because I think what there's a lot that these rebellions, these local rebellions, they differ everywhere.

11:23You know, sometimes it's local reasons, sometimes it's employment reasons. But what they all have in common is a sort of very wise, popular intuition that something transformative and potentially dangerous is being foisted upon them. and no one has asked them at all you know whether they want this but isn't this the history of of humankind i mean yes it is every every age change so no no one person says yes or no you know no exactly so so what you um you need if if technology is to be uh controlled or at least made the servant of humanity rather than vice versa. Yeah. It's a critical mass of people saying, hang on a minute, you know, not necessarily stop, but this ought to be for us.

12:16And so good, but not enough was, you know, the Pope doing Magnificat Humanitas in May, which, by the way, if anyone hasn't seen, the Penguin edition has a blurb, as he wrote, has a blurb from our very own Alastair Campbell. I thought when the Pope wants a reference, he goes to the New World's editor at large. I think he well, he didn't go to me. And I think he chose wisely because Alistair is, you know, people buy books on the back of Alistair's recommendation. But I thought that was a wonderful, you know, from the man who did. We don't do God to. Well, we do it sometimes. But I know I was actually in all seriousness, I thought I was impressed Alistair did that because he saw this was an important moment, you know.

13:01but you know we can't just be having religious leaders leading the debate on the future of AI that is not going to work and so oddly enough I think that the ground zero for potential progress is Australia so if you look at Anthony Albanese's government that led the charge on restricting social media access and phones for under 16s it's now the communications minister Annika Wells is getting and this really is important is getting into algorithms which no one in the world has had the guts to go for. And she's saying, look, you know, at the minimum, we ought to have the right to opt out of algorithms.

13:45There's not much to ask. And of course, the tech companies are going crazy because the algorithms are what drive their business model. But I would like to see. Tens of thousands of politicians like that daring to ask those questions. Now, the problem, which was dramatized by that ghastly scene at Trump's second inaugural in 2025, where you had all, you know, Zuckerberg and Musk and Bezos and, you know, the NVIDIA guy and Google and Apple CEO of the time, all lined up celebrating the fact that they were not going to be regulated at all. and that was the low point and i think the clock is ticking yeah you know yeah no i agree i mean it strikes me what's particular about this issue um and and and particularly worrying is that all of these transformational events and ages throughout humankind sort of follow a bit of a pattern where there's there's the change happens society is transformed there's quite often a huge number of negative consequences to that transformation exploitation and what have you and and then there's a corrective where over a period of time yeah you know so if you take the industrial revolution you know suddenly everybody's working in terrible factories it's hard you know urbanization rural uh life goes to shit that and then you get trade unions evolving to combat the problems that are inherent within um industrialization and industrialized society and the economy adapts over time and things start to equalize but it takes a great period of time we've you know i suppose in the age of the internet we're seeing you know loads of good things happen then loads of terrible things happen yeah we start legislating against it we start to understand it same with social media what's what seems to be specifically worrying about ai is the time frame that this guy is talking about that it could happen so quickly that yes that there won't be the opportunity for humankind right because to step in and address the damage there are two things that distinguish it from all previous iterations of technological advance which is one the gutenberg press and you know the automobile and electricity and factory work didn't reproduce itself yeah it was always people doing so unions could go up to the bosses and say if you don't take the following action we're out yeah right but the problem with ai is that it's not all human beings doing it ai is doing it itself and we've seen some very scary examples of ai escape recently yeah so who and also it is just you know that all the things we we are used to in technology hitherto have had some sort of location you can go to and data centers are the closest to that but the truth is that ai is hyper distributed everywhere yeah so who do you phone up you know who do you go to to say up with this we shall not put and what is your leverage i mean one of the things i was gonna say do you remember when we were kids there was a i suppose it must have been about 45 years ago there was a sort of kids kind of drama series i think it was on bbc and it was about i can't remember what it was called but it was about the sort of escape of electricity and electricity and pylons kind of humming the changes was it the changes right oh yeah and everybody kind of went to ground basically yes and and i guess people will be listening to this conversation and some people will be asking what might seem like a an obvious and maybe not so dumb question which is well at some point if if it looks like we're about to enter the world of the changes and we've lost control couldn't you just unplug this stuff yes i mean but that's why I majored on the frog in the heating up water, because what's happening is we're all doing this on two levels, right?

18:02Which is we're all having necessary and important discussions about AI as a sort of social phenomenon. And meanwhile, we're all signing up. And I do this. We're all signing up to ChatGPT and Claude and using it. So even as we say, you know, Lebowski style, this will not stand, dude, right? You know, we are very much letting it stand. And my worry is that by the time we've worked out precisely what we're going to do, it'll be over. Yes. No, that's what I also I sort of think, if not AI, without getting too bleak about it, there does seem to be a confluence of of significant challenges coming down the pipe which are unprecedented in human history unprecedented and the rate of acceleration that these things are coming down that's the case see will at some point we're not evolving as a species quick enough to combat these and that's and that's a that's another new thing yeah which is that if you go back to the i mean you know the history of in a way the history of the left certainly since the french revolution is to a certain extent the the capacity of collective action to deal with technological advance yes yeah you know and and and how it it at least gained some of the power of the collective back now the flip side well sorry sorry yeah go on Well, I was only going to say the flip side of this all and the converse and what obviously, because I think this is Pandora's box and it has been opened and we're just going to have to, we're going to have to reap the whirlwind.

19:50But the whirlwind might be all right. The whirlwind might be that actually AI is part and parcel of human evolution and that it leads to lots and lots of beneficial progress. Well, this is the you all know that you all know Harari analysis is that which is he says the organic is the algorithmic, which is a phrase that I find fucking chilling. Right. But anyway, that's what he says. But he also goes on to say a bit more without much apology. But he says, yeah, but it won't be evenly distributed. so some people surprise surprise will benefit a lot more from all these transhumanist you know super biotech developments and then a lot of other people won't benefit at all yeah yeah and that i don't like yeah um and i i kind of think that you know i'm burnham has said some good things on on on ai and and i'm not uh you know i think he's he's a very astute politician so i'm not ruling it out at all but it has to be to my mind anyway it has to be front and center of it now right now today of any government's action and i'd like to see the minister responsible have a full secretary of state job in the cabinet and cross government you know full spectrum power yeah agree and we're not there and you know the problem of course is that China doesn't care about any of this it just wants to win and certainly as long as Trump is in office he just I mean he doesn't even see the problem he just wants America to beat China and for the mega rich to get mega richer yeah yeah no there's no question there all right um anyway that will not be the last time we talk about no AI and the end of humanity I can guarantee it um next question comes from Gus Tardwood in Bedfordshire if as the Chancellor of the Exchequer claimed today I don't know when Gus was writing this Britain has been paying a quote trust penalty since her disastrous seven weeks tenure as PM shouldn't thick Lizzie's 100 ,000 plus per annum for life pension be redirected back into the public purse um well you nailed this matt so do you want to answer it because yeah well i did do a little so i did sort of say well let's get our facts right and liz just has not got a 100 000 pound plus per annum for life pension um what she has got though however is access to i think 115 000 pounds potential allowance plus up to 10 more for staff pension costs so basically once you quit as pm you uh you get you get this allowance and it doesn't matter whether you were pm for 10 years or 10 minutes you get this allowance and and you can claim claim that Now, so what has Liz Trust claimed in 2022 to 2023?

23:06Don't forget, she resigned in October. So we're talking about two months. She claimed£23 ,310. The following year,£23 ,24, she claimed£101 ,332. The following year, she claimed£97 ,152. pounds so the uk states the public we us you me every other taxpayer in the country has given list trusts two hundred and twenty one thousand six hundred and forty two pounds in expenses through the public duty costs allowance which is what this this uh fund is cost the pdc what did the lettuce get eh well honestly the the lettuce deserved a whole lot more but a lot more but my question is what has list trust contribute what she done of public service apart from parade herself well she did do that and and in truth that probably was worth a couple hundred grand but yeah but beyond that what she done that has been as you can take gordon brown who presumably benefit actually i think it was gordon brown who nilched the uh yes i mean there was a prime an historial pension and he said uh i'm gonna renounce it yeah um and so will everybody else and and and you never guess what happened next i'm renouncing it on behalf of everybody else but you know i mean i i was really he's written a very good book um called the future starts with us which is um you know i i'm again going back to ron williams thing yeah you know gordon has really we've talked about this before but he's sort of become a great figure of the realm and i I'd tremble at the thought of calling him a national treasure because he'd go crazy.

24:54But he is. Yeah. And this is a very, very I don't agree with everything in it, but it's a very sort of animated and optimistic book about what we can do and incredibly well read. Anyway, one of the things that emerged in one of the interviews he did, I think, for The Guardian, was that he he doesn't take his prime ministerial pension. And I get the feeling he doesn't really take very much from anything. You know, they fund their office out of what he does and that's it. And they lead quite a normal life up in five. So you're right. I mean, look, Liz Truss was the pits of the post Brexit era because it showed that anyone could become prime minister.

25:37you know all the others i mean i hesitate to say boris johnson but you know there was a kind of narrative from a that had been going on for 20 years that he might be prime minister and i didn't want him to become prime minister but there was always a risk that he might yeah but i but no way did i think liz truss was going to become prime minister and yet she did yeah yeah and and and And the consequences for I mean, this is why the question is whether or not, you know, you think that she should return the money or whatever. I mean, she won't. And, you know, you can't really retrospectively get people to repay money to which they're entitled, unfortunately.

26:18But that period was very, very consequential, both in its long term impact upon the economy. the bond markets you know one of the problems we have today yeah in in in dealing with the bond markets is the bond markets remember that and they look at us and think is this going to happen again yeah i mean that's why rachel reeves had to be deficiencies yeah stuck around for so long because the bond markets liked it but i do wait matt sorry go on no i was going to say what does your spidey sense tell you about the budget because i get the fee it's very hard to know because expectation management on the budget always you know there's always surprises but i do get the feeling it's not going to be the big swings that we perhaps hope for is that wrong well i don't know really i'm too early i think it is and i think the will be so my as as we know we've we've indulged ourselves for too long on the so-called kelly plan um which now no you can't indulge yourself too long that there'll be an early early election because it's never going to get better than this and so maybe i'm infecting my own judgment with with well why not then you know if i believe in that why wouldn't there be an early election and then the the plausible answer to that is that they are going to do something big and unpopular in the budget and just bite the bullet and get something out of the way.

27:56And I think, I do think they should bite the bullet. And I really hope so. And I think there'd be a lot of respect for him right now. He is, you know, people said honeymoon period will be non-existent, but I think he probably is still enjoying a honeymoon period. People like the cut of his jib. And I think now's the time for a straight honest talk well we talked on thursday about the you know and it was controversial the action uh against israel but i think that um or rather sorry that to to be more specific against the you know the settlers in the west bank you know it's important israeli government yeah yeah well actually you know specifically the the the you know even smaller um but i think one of the things that came out of that even amongst people who disagreed with it was well you know this is a dude that's prepared to do what he believes in yeah and in the round that's really important actually it really is i hope i mean you know i think healy i think if anybody can present But bad news with a straight face and a serious, hopeful message underpinning it.

29:12John Healy's the right guy to do that. He was a good selection. He really was. All right, listen, I'll tell you what. Let's take a very quick break and come back with some more of your wonderful questions, dear listeners.

29:26Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, email, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the Headline Hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work, around the work, and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini. That's G-O-O dot G-L-E slash workspace with Gemini.

30:03Welcome back, dear listeners. This is the Two Matt Q and A brought to you by the subscribers of the New World magazine. Okay, so this is a good one from Tim, friend of the show. Tim Bale, this is the professor of politics. I think we're allowed to say so, aren't we? Are we allowed to say so? I think so. Sorry, Tim, if we weren't, but anyway. Yeah, well, it's out now. sorry Tim but he's a great man listening to your always engrossing Q &A yesterday it reminded me to check out the difference between a sting and entrapment this was apropos of the the big channel 4 verbatim reform sting stroke entrapment which it seems to me we're all a little all of us a little hazy about googling gave me this googling so old fashioned A sting operation becomes this is him quoting a sting operation becomes entrapment when law enforcement square brackets or I think we can add an undercover journalist and square brackets convinces, coerces or pressures someone into committing a crime they otherwise had no intention or desire to commit.

31:14While a legitimate sting operation merely provides convenient opportunity for a person already predisposed to break the law, entrapment crosses the line by actively creating the criminal intent. As seasoned journalists, would you agree that this helpfully captures an important distinction? And if it does, isn't it pretty clear that Farage & Co's defensive entrapment is unlikely to fly? What do you reckon, Matt? Well, I agree entirely. And it was a super useful email to receive. wasn't it yeah from tim because it made me it did make me understand i have to say it's still a bit blurry right and i i come back to the case i cited the other day about um merseyside police who used to um i'm absolutely sure i'm correct in saying this in the 80s used to leave um unmarked cars with their door ajar and well maybe that was the point that the door wasn't actually ajar but there was a handbag on the yes on the passenger seat and that wouldn't be creating intent that's no so that so that basically passes the test but yeah that passes that's just a sting right um yeah and it's not entrapment and yet there was a big is this entrapment now and i'm yeah almost sure if somebody can remember from way back when in merseyside history in those days i'm sure those cases got nullified at court because is that right deemed to be entrapment but anyway to the point that that tim makes i think interesting i don't know whether farage is being this clever but i suppose if in the frame as tim's just framed it a really good defense to this from farage's point of view would be to say three things one um i didn't know they were doing it um two they were not part of the regular fundraising activities of reform and so they didn't know what they were doing and three if money had come to us we would have sent it back once we'd have done our due diligence all three of those things he has said publicly and and yet and yet the money did go to the polls the money went to the polls but what he said is that if but i think that is less it's that I think within that poll story, I think there's another layer of ambiguity about, well, who was paying for what and who understood what.

33:43But in the question of him saying, I think it was 30 ,000 quid, we'll pay this to you. And Farage saying, as I heard him say in the documentary, it's all above board. As he now claims to be saying, he said, is it all above board? But I think if he's being clever, it's in saying these guys didn't know what they were doing. And as soon as the money arrived, the people who do know what they were doing would have sent it back. So that, to me, seems like a clever, contrived defence for exactly what Tim's talking about. Yeah, maybe, although there were plenty of scenes in the amazing footage of people like James Orr and, you know, saying, you know, we can sort this so it looks OK.

34:36I mean, I certainly think that whatever happens in the criminal sphere, the public impact of this will be considerable. And I'm very interested. I don't know if you agree, but I think Suella Braverman is on manoeuvres. Because after the Dover and Portsmouth and then Daily Mail protests by the Patriot platform thugs of Danny Tomo. Amen. Yeah, exactly. Farage came out initially and said, it's deplorable. It's terrible. you know face masks are bad this is not what we're about so la braverman stormed straight i mean i think he's losing the dressing room she stormed straight out and said they're great they're brilliant you know who can blame them um and i think that um this is important because braverman has a very high opinion of herself i don't think by the way that she would win an election so i'm not saying watch out but i i do think this is a matter of sort of interest yeah if i think she's thinking maybe this is the end of farage and who who's going to take over well mate honestly i have to say i that all of that is music to my ears yeah yeah because if suella braverman takes over the reform party oh happy days well we can all just go home i mean we can just take laps this isn't a call for complacency but folks relax i think i think i think it is i mean i think you There are times when you have to yield to complacency.

36:07But I am not worried about Swell of Braverman turning us into, you know, a sort of Trump style, Auburn style country. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Right. All right. Very good. And thank you for the question, Tim. And the next question comes from Charlie in London. Following your brilliant interview with Paul Mason. And by the way, folks, we don't write these questions. This is from Charlie in London. He said it was brilliant. Not us, but it was. following your brilliant interview with Paul Mason I was reminded of the phrase you'll own nothing and you'll be happy popularized by Davos it's become a meme at this point albeit in danger of becoming a prophecy after all we own far less than previous generations we pay streaming services for a temporary license to watch films or tv shows rather than own copies ourselves fewer and fewer young people like me can afford to buy homes so they're forced to rent them indefinitely.

36:59Is this the future that Reds wanted? Reds is the title of Paul's book. Assuming not, what would a social democrat or even a communist argue for in favour of private property? I don't think it's what the communists wanted at all or want, because in as much as ownership continues to exist of the things that Charlie discusses, they are being owned by global mega corporations of a power that is becoming truly terrifying um uh i do think he's right though that that there is a very interesting change in habits of ownership and people generally own you know younger people own less stuff than they used to um and uh it's interesting actually this is a slight princess but i've just for something i'm i'm much for the new world for a few weeks time i i've i've been reading a novella by of all people em forster called the machine stops 1909 em forster how do you know about people living without property it's a dystopian novella about people living in standardized cells and receiving food and communication and knowledge and entertainment through a sort of all providing machine rather than owning stuff and i thought wow how did he enforce to see that one coming but he did um i think there's an interesting side and a menacing side to this.

38:26So I think the interesting side is, and we've talked about this a fair amount on the pod, which is we're going to need a new relationship with property. We grew up in the property-owning democracy, but now as we're living longer and there are more needs for public goods, we're going to have to accept a different relationship fiscally with our fixed assets. And so ownership is going to mean something much more social than it does now and I think that's that's a done deal really the question is what form it takes and how quickly the menacing side is what he alludes to in his question which I do worry about which is that everything goes into the cloud everything goes online everything's in the control of a tiny cartel of mega platforms you know we read that terrible story about I think it was open AI or perhaps it was Anthropic buying up loads of books which they then fed into their LLMs and then destroyed and I've I've joked about it a bit but I've become a bit of a cultural prepper which is you know I keep physical books and I especially keep blu-rays because I don't trust these people I don't you know I want my grandchildren still to be able to watch Casablanca as it was made rather than some you know uh ai version of it yeah yeah amazing i mean there's a there is a difference isn't there i mean in kind of sort of later socialist thought about ownership of property distinguishing personal property from yes um uh productive property call it right factories and the machinery of production and funnily enough i wonder whether or not you know harking back to our ai conversation that ai looking at it with you know a benevolent eye whether the consequences of that where there'll be less and less to do and there'll be more and more work done by um ai and by robots and all of this business that actually maybe we are edging towards some form of of communist kind of outlook which which is you know people talking very seriously now about universal basic incomes um to to replace wages that that from jobs that have have just been lost um the the books we've talked about endlessly about abundance of electricity and education and healthcare and all of these things and maybe there is a sort of well there is a path towards some sort of utopian society that marx himself might recognize uh maybe or they could never have conceptualized it because of course how could he have done in the absence of understanding the technologies involved but maybe that that is i mean i think you know the thing that's always screwed up communism and socialism is is venality and greed and yeah and the the wrinkles in the human tablecloth that always produce inequality that's always and it'll screw up anything that we can produce in the future i'm sure i mean what worries me about ubi is that it makes me think more of techno feudalism than techno utopianism which is most of us get enough to get by on and maybe have a few quid for you know entertainments and distractions and then an absolutely minuscule elite lives in unbelievable hyper palatial you know existence i don't believe i don't trust the people you see there's always people behind technology this is what one always forgets that it gets deeper so we talk about ai as a as if it was sort of a god or a you know kind of impersonal force it isn't you know it is a it is a technology that is um being owned and uh developed and and implemented by an absolutely tiny elite of self-appointed uh multi-billionaires many of them young many of them very strange and they are changing the world completely.

42:46And I mean, look, Rutger Bregman is a great believer in the utopian possibility of UBI and I take what he writes very seriously. But I also think that there's a danger in thinking that all this is heading towards a place where, I mean, most of us may all end up the same, but that's not the same as a utopia. Yes, yes, no. absolutely hell hell being other people exactly well or or you know 99.9 percent of people living what amounts to a materially indigent life on the bread line with a few you know with a big screen and yeah a hologram yeah um and then about 0.02 percent of the population actually living real lives you could call it the party on the proletariat couldn't you you might be able to do that and datchers would of course be on mars but hey you know all right i think we've got one more question and it's a good uh billy in sunderland if the buyer tapestry is so amazing and seeing it it is a generational event how do the maps explain away the fact that it's been on display in normandy a couple of hours travel away freely available for viewing at 12 euros a time walk-ins welcome for more than 40 years and nobody lost their mind about it very very good question and when this question landed i i did i did wonder why why am i now so desperate to see the bio tapestry and yet as billy does point out it's it's been in bio bio for bio thank you for 42 years i looked up yes 42 years well it's been in that it's been in that it's been there longer yeah and then i thought well maybe it's the way it's displayed is revolutionary no it was displayed brilliantly in bear with well it's flat right okay which makes a difference okay okay so but nevertheless yeah it's a huge difference and and so well it did make me think well what is is it the tapestry that we're so excited about or is it the event and i think i know i don't want to warble on too long about this because you've written a long and great piece about the excitement of the tapestry and why what it means but i i did think maybe there is it is as much testament to our our desire for experience now yeah real experience um in a digital age the coming together the excitement to come and commune together and also there is this aspect which i think is possibly a little oversold about it being returned to britain you know because i think the the last time anybody was this excited about a british museum exhibition was the mask of tutankhamun you know which yes which but it has the same sort of vibes monumental epic you must see its events it's going to be life-changing but then i did sorts of things well that that is really socially interesting and then i also thought well if i don't get to i know you've seen it matt but if if i don't manage to get tickets in this next release in october when it was coming i can in 2027 yes take across channel ferry take my way and wind through the lovely countryside of north normandy and see it for a tenner myself at my leisure so i it's a it's a legitimate question and actually it's been coming up a lot and i i addressed it in this week's uh culture newsletter which is now online if people want to have a look because it is i think there's an eye and you touched upon this man i think there's an idea that's becoming counter-cultural which is that actually the location of things and the pilgrimage to see them still matters and maybe it matters more now that we spend so much time in the matrix in cyberspace um because we live in an era where everything is everywhere um which is why burnham has gone so hard on the politics of place because he understands that And it's still and and why?

47:06And, you know, it's a lesser point, but why the great Wendell Berry, an American sage of Kentucky who died on August the 31st, is having such a moment because this was his thing. You know, it is where you where you live is and where you are is very important. Why? You know, I saw it last Monday. I'm going again tomorrow. Why is it so magical? Well, there is no doubt that the fact that it was almost certainly created here around the great scriptoria and monastic communities of Canterbury, which and it used their texts and their iconography, that does sort of hum from the from the linen. And we can't be certain of the tapestry's origins, but we do know that the Anglo-Saxons were renowned for manuscript illumination and embroidery tradition.

47:57So it kind of makes sense. And I think that that kind of gives it an extra sense of, you know, it's here. But also, to your point, it's only here for a bit. so that the experience of going to see it in Bayeux is one that will be resumed when it goes back after the museum in Bayeux is refurbished and the French have made it very clear that it's not going to be this is not going to be a regular thing this is it yeah and in a way that makes it even more special because for what 10 months it will be on display in the British Museum and I have to say they've done an absolutely amazing job it's very pared back it's very simple it is flat and that does make a difference because you can peer over and look at the colour and the detail and the extraordinary things going on in the borders and it's kind of amazing to see all these scenes that are sort of already in our heads because we've seen them since we were kids you know Harold being killed and Edward the Confessor being crowned and all that and suddenly there they are and they reclaim some of their originality so i do think place matters now you know of course if people want to go and sit and buy air then that's great but i'm not going to i suppose my my sort of pushback is that there is a slightly dreary tendency in contemporary culture to fight back against any expression of wonder and enchantment.

49:35The minute someone expresses simply that something is amazing, there is someone that goes, yeah, but I could get it at, you know, Sainsbury's for half the price, so why would I bother? That someone is normally me. No, it's not. No, but to be fair, hang on, wait. this reminds me a little bit and we are not going there dear listeners so relax of our artemis 2 spectacular row historic well historic row which is now in the smithsonian people still talk about it's in the smithsonian i hear bus stops and hear people chundering about it little group little children go and listen to it yeah but but but but yeah i i think um you have a wonderful appetite for event and I have perhaps a more jaded eye on what's driving the excitement.

50:28I saw you at Oasis. True. Well, that and the great Venn diagram of the Dancona-Kelly axes, that's where there was enormous crossover. And I've heard you discuss football matches that mean more to you than just a kick him out of a ball. It's true. I tell you mate you've got enchantment dripping from your soul you just don't like admitting it in public well listen anyway look I think you're right and I'm excited to see it you should if you can but the point is that thanks to Billy reminding me I'm more relaxed about seeing it I'll go and see it in the I'm sure they're going to do a wonderful job in the new Bayeux and if I don't see it in Holborn I'll go and see it in Bayou yeah I mean that is the I mean I think what I'm hoping is that the next tranche of tickets that comes out on October the 21st will be a lot easier to get hold of and I do know that they're sort of saying it's off the record but they're desperate to get everyone who wants to go through and I suspect I don't know for a fact but I suspect that if there's a kind of demand that isn't being met they'll start to run it hot late into the you know the night as as the exhibition of you know goes in its third act towards although they've got this isn't there a limitation on the yes there is and i think and i think that may lead to a difficult conversation with the french but i think that given that there is a sort of hard stop yeah when it has to that it's reasonable and and i also think but burnham has been excellent in saying we've got to get a lot of school kids through.

52:15Now, final thing before we sign off, on the same topic, what's your view on the Parthenon, the Elgin marbles? Oh, I've always been in favour of them. Well, I mean, whether they go back as a sort of indefinite loan or... But you think we should send them back, basically. Well, yes, because, I mean, what I... And do you remember when Rishi Sunak was incredibly rude to the great prime minister and cancelled the meeting because he was going to raise it? Yes, I do. There's no, I mean, any reading of, you know, the books about the marbles and the history of them and actually their aesthetic integrity can only lead.

52:58And this is not a sort of, you know, people say, oh, it's so woke. It just isn't. it's the best i can't remember who said it but it's like having the mona lisa in two halves right yeah and saying you can't have this half right yeah um clearly and if you go around the way they're displayed in in the walls are displayed in the british museum and then you look at the the stuff that's in athens they should obviously be together and they can't be in britain i mean that this might accelerate that. Yeah, I hope it does. And I'll tell you, my biggest reason that this should go back is that this argument about the British Museum being the great hub for international audiences.

53:46Well, I go to the British Museum, not a lot, but often enough. And I often, every time I go, I walk into the marvellous gallery where the marbles are displayed. and I don't think I've ever been in that gallery where there's been more than 10 people no you're right everybody's in the Egyptian section which is extra lapping up the amazing Egyptian stuff but nobody there's hardly anybody in there it's an absolute disgrace it's it's just not I mean look it's just to talk about place right um in a funny way we should have had the Parthenon marbles for a bit and then they should have gone home yes you know um limited time only folks you know it's a you know it's a it's a alone fine but but they and that's a really excellent point because i i agree every time i've been there it's been very very sparsely attended yeah it's it isn't part of other than for a sort of certain kind of you know john redwood like nationalist we shall not give up you know we shall not yield it really isn't part of the of english heritage it just isn't no no and i know people are writing and say we bought them off the turks and all of that but yeah come on but shut up you know yeah shut the fuck up yeah look you know they belong part of being part of being enlightened and not just a good european but also a good citizen and a good cultural curator collectively is to recognize that you know this obviously doesn't fucking belong in the british museum right in the way that in the way that the sutton who treasures which are i think very intelligently being loaned to france as a reciprocal part of the deal it's a great idea yeah but you know they're coming back because they are really important to British history they should be in the British Museum they those galleries are chock full of kids every time you go and visitors you know that's a difference that's right good okay we're totally agreed well folks from these two old relics it's time to say goodbye and I hope you enjoyed the show um subscribe uh to the new world go to thenewworld.co.uk forward slash two mats that's the number two m-a-t-t-s um and get the best magazine in Britain delivered to your door every week um thank you as ever to the third matt matt with us producing the show and um and do send in your emails please to twomats at tne publishing.com that's tne publishing.com um and we'll um see you again at latest the latest thursday on thursday have a great great week

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