The Two Matts Q&A: is the Kelly Plan dead? And TURN OFF YOUR BLOODY SPEAKER PHONE!

0:02I can't see how he does any of the things he needs to do, social care and the climate measures that need to be taken urgently, without a new mandate. There is probably an urgency in the way Baden-Württemberg is thinking about how am I presenting the Conservative Party at the next general election. It can't afford to be too broad spectrum. It needs to appeal to quite a right-wing cohort if it's got a cat in hell's chance against reform. I think Farage could have got away with that in certain circumstances because he has this twinkle, oh, I don't really mean it, aren't I? You know, a bit of a geezer, a bit of a lad, right?

0:44Tice comes across as what he is, which is a man with a Christmas tree six feet up his arse, right? Hello and happy Sunday everybody. Happy Sunday one and all. Hope you're all having a great weekend so far. This is the Two Mats Q &A session brought to you by the subscribers of the New World magazine. First question comes in from Jane McShane, who describes herself as a long-time listener and subscriber. Thank you, Jane. And first-time caller. Welcome. Welcome, Jane. I couldn't disagree more with the Kelly plan. Yes, reform are in a worse position than they have been recently, but as the result in Clacton shows, there are plenty who are still willing to stick with them.

1:25The main reasons though revolve around Labour. They have not had a good couple of years in government, there have been plenty of mistakes, the good things they have done they haven't managed to communicate. For a large part of the electorate they are no more effective than the Tories were before them. Burnham needs to show, not tell, that he can improve things for people and he should take the full remainder of the parliament to do this well well having named the kelly plan after you outlined it i feel on abound and having sworn a constitutional oath to protect it i feel on abound to defend it thank you for your loyalty ah always always a president um so of course look this is this issue is going to keep i mean it is actually i suspect going to become the issue and i labor conference I bet you it'll be, you know, one of the main themes.

2:21And of course, the argument Jane makes is a cogent one. And it's one one hears a lot of. I still support the I mean, seriously, I do support the Kelly plan. And I'll tell you why. Reform is on the floor. You know, Farage is in real trouble. The Clackton by-election was made him look like an idiot. And there's probably going to be another one which will also make him look like an idiot, even if he wins. You know, it's it. He is now looking smaller and smaller and smaller, but it might he might not be forever. You know, Farage is is, you know, I made a big mistake years back in underestimating him.

3:00And I'll never make that mistake again. You know, he is resilient. He's the only one of them really has that. You know, it is it is a one person show reform in that respect, which is a massive weakness. but he does have it and he's still there i don't so i i feel nervous in relying on the gradient of the decline just carrying on yeah second thing is yes it's important that burnham show not tell but it will get harder for him the public will start to resent him just because incumbents in the modern world gather resentment like ivy and also because i think he you know he intends to do things but at least I hope he does which will be challenging and will necessarily involve controversy and related to that and this is I think the kind of settler for me is that I can't see how he does any of the things he needs to do and we talked on the Wednesday pod about social care and the climate measures that need to be taken urgently without a new mandate the straight jacket of the 2024 manifesto is just which was came from a good place because Keir Starmer wanted to get Labour back into office fair enough but it is no longer fit for purpose and unfortunately because and we've talked about this before you know manifestos are still binding maybe they shouldn't be but they are and so I think he needs a new mandate and therefore I'm I don't have a timeline in mind.

4:33There's no sort of terminus in my head. But sooner rather than later is my strong predisposition because he's got energy, he's got the attention of people, he's got reform on the floor. Things might not get better necessarily for him. Yeah, no, listen, I think that argument is totally sound and I still believe that if he goes sooner than later, then he'll win. And so as we've said in previous podcasts, you know, there is it's not as simple as that. There are there will be, you know, he'll win, but he certainly won't have the majority he's got. Oh, no, no, no. So then he's got to present an argument to his parliamentary Labour Party to say, I'm sorry, folks, but I know for a fact that 40, 50, 60, 70 of you are going to lose your seats and your jobs for the next election.

5:21So that's unpalatable. I was told last week by somebody who is pretty much in the room at number 10 that it's been, because Andy Burnham answered, I think, Laura Koonsberg and said that there is no plan. There is no plan. It was very carefully worded. It was all very present tense. I was told that he's been much more categorical about that in the room. In the room. And that they're not even taught, it's not a topic for conversation. they're not working it's not it's not like gordon brown in it's not there well there is definitely no hive of activity around do we do this do we not do this yeah yeah yeah but notwithstanding that i think you're only ever in modern day politics you're only ever a couple of events away from utter seismic change in thinking yes and i still wouldn't rule it out completely i think positive polling combined with one or two reform missteps which are all you know reliable as buses right then yeah you may decide he may decide do you know what let's go for it the mood is with me because above all he is an instinct politician and at some point yeah at some point his instinct is going to say gosh do you know i think i think it is on i think the game is on and he might go for it but he might not he might not and um and jane uh thank you again for writing um you might be absolutely right and you're certainly certainly right to to to disagree with it a lot i mean most people do disagree with it to be fair although i have been encouraged in my that i'm not a complete buffoon in seeing the same idea touted in the ft amongst others yeah you know you've arrived when the ft without without attribution financial times people how dare you not mention Lord Kelly of Islington.

7:16How dare you? Could you imagine if it actually got called the Kelly Plan? Well, that'd be great. I think people should start with it. It is called the Kelly Plan. What are you talking about, Boz? Come on. Do you remember the Kelly election of 2027? The Kelly election of 2027. Total disaster for Labour. They were out for 25 years after that. Right, all right. Enough of that. Next question. Next question. From Libby in Edinburgh. I see that Kim Bader-Knox is keeping Tory grandees like Penny Mordent waiting over their chances. It is funny, their chances of being parliamentary candidates. I admit that it does make me chuckle, but I also wonder if the party can really afford to drive away the handful of experienced centrist figures it still has.

8:03Bloody small handful. Is Kemi conducting a purge or making a fresh start? What do you think, Matt? Well, I have to say, there are things about kemi badenock that i really like right and yeah but none of them involve policy or yeah yeah or politics but i do quite like her attitude which is you know she is she is gutsy and she is she's totally unafraid you know and she and she's you know she's sharp she's she she's definitely got better at the at the sort of the articulation of politics in in our age there's no question about that and i loved that she just knocked grant shaps off and said you're well that was that was that wasn't just chuckle that was a i mean that was just that was just the hubris you know hubris and nemesis as somebody that was worth three tory seats you know but penny mordaunt um well it's it's more than just uh ruling out somebody who is clearly not a net asset because penny mordaunt I mean she was listen find me something that anyone can remember about Penny Mordaunt apart from holding that sword up I'll tell you something that might appeal to this because she was a very strong supporter of trans rights she came out very strongly about trans men are men trans women are women she was unequivocal about that which was very interesting I think she had seven or eight ministerial posts I mean to be fair to to anybody in that situation how can anybody create a legacy when you're being shuffled around from post to post in that and i i had a couple of interactions with her uh one-to-one and she always struck me as you know perfectly nice i liked her backstory i liked the fact that she represented a place like portsmouth you know um yeah um and she was she was nice but never anybody that you thought my god i'm in the presence of electricity here you know she was she was fair i was i found a fairly humdrum but to to the points of the question i think kemi badenock has i read somewhere you know this is the most the most right-wing tory party since thatcher and i think that's true you know and that's certainly there is probably an urgency in the way badenock is thinking about how am I presenting the Conservative Party at the next general election?

10:30It can't afford to be too broad spectrum. It needs to appeal to quite a right-wing cohort if it's got a cat in hell's chance against reform. So I suspect it is a bit of a purge, you know, if a gentle one. I think the problem is, I mean, the Tory party's been in purge mode since Boris Johnson took the whip away from the 21. in September 2019. And it is not fair that, you know, I mean, he won the 2019 election, but that kind of carving out of those people who represented the One Nation tradition, well, you know, some could say that they brought it upon themselves by being so sort of flabby in their role in the party.

11:17But I don't think the Conservative Party stands a prayer of getting back into power without some offer to the centre as well as to its reform flank. Now, OK, to the question, I'm not sure. And this picks up on what you just said, Matt. I'm not sure. I mean, I think Kemi Baden-Opp, I quite like her personally, and I think she's interesting and she's grown in confidence and all the rest of it. But she's not a fresh start leader. She's not. I mean, there's absolutely nothing new in what she's saying. there's no fresh offer on what a centre-right party might be and would do distinctive from you know Burnham's Labour or Farage's reform that you know we saw what happened to Starmer when he tried to be reformed light and none of it was good right so although I understand she has to be you know robustly conservative on things like immigration just getting rid of all the remaining centrists and we're talking about by the way literally you could count them on your one hand So in a sense, it's a long discussion.

12:20I have a slightly higher opinion of Morden than you do. I know her fairly well. And I think, you know, she does think about this. And I think she's, you know, I also think that it's not like she has a it's not like Bader not has a surplus of talent, is it? I mean, how many front benches can you name? Don't worry, I'll wait. You know, it's maybe Mel Stride, maybe James. No, it's true when they line up at PMQs quite often. I've got no idea who they are. You know, and she's got 118 MPs. Right. I mean, she is facing an extinction level event for all of the you know, it's quite fashionable at the moment to say the Baden-Occlescence, you know, that she's kind of well, you know, she's a little bit higher in the polls, but she's still, you know, she's still looking down the barrel of a reform.

13:11I mean, it's quite possible that the reform could just wipe them out in the next election and still lose to Labour. So I think she's not in a luxury position. I mean, I'm not saying Penny, Penny Morton hasn't. By the way, Penny Morton has no entitlement to a plum seat, if there is such a thing, than anyone else. But I think Bednock just has to exercise a bit of care in being very pleased and getting, you know, she's not in a strong position. yeah interesting anyway you know listen you know the Tory party much much better than I do I don't no no no I mean this is the thing that the Tory party now has zero to do with the Tory party I used to write about well that's fascinating isn't it in itself how much it's changed it's it's I don't know what it is I mean I know what reform is and I hate it yeah and I know what Burnham's labour is and I'm cautiously optimistic we'll see do you think that's Matt do you think that's more Is that only true of the Tories then?

14:09Or has Labour also changed out of all recognition in that period? I felt during the Starmer era that it was in real danger. Because it was becoming so technocratic. But God knows early days. But I am, you know, he's only just past the, where are we now? Just past the one month. But I think Burnham does represent a change. And, you know, we may see something very different around Christmas time. Who knows? But I kind of feel now I know what Labour is. I know, you know, I can vote for it with not just kind of out of I want to stop reform, but there are things they would do that I like. Yeah. And I know I, you know, I say this again and again, and I will keep saying until Election Day and beyond, you know, mission number one is keep reform out of office.

14:53Right. I don't really see how the Tories fit into that. Interesting. Or any or anything, to be honest. Yeah. What are they for? What's the point of them? Yeah. Well, that's got to be question number one, isn't it? Right. Absolutely. Next question comes from Mark in Surrey. Do the Mats think that Richard Tice's outrageous remark that Brits should enjoy the heat wave will assist reform's welcome decline? Oh, God, I hope so. I mean, look, listen, I'm actually a massive fan of Richard Tice. Not in the way that might sound. Explain yourself. I really want him to be on every channel at the time, right?

15:34Because every time he says anything, right, every time he reads out the phone book, right, people go, do I really want to vote reform? He is really yucky, right? He's their weak link, isn't he? He is. I mean, Generic is just a sort of terrible opportunist, and we all know where we are with him and, you know, whatever. But Tice is, like, actively a sort of pantomime idiot villain, right? Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, I'm all for it. Yeah, great. when he says stuff like that and the interesting thing about it is that i think farage could have got away with that in certain circumstances because he has this twinkle oh i don't really mean it aren't i you know a bit of a geez a bit of a lad right tice comes across as what he is which is a man with a christmas tree six feet up his ass right yeah who is incredibly pleased with himself lives in dubai or i don't know where the fuck he lives now yeah um and i don't think he gets away with idiotic remarks like that so um while farage is busy spending more time with his by-elections i'm really really hoping that tice will be on every bulletin and in every podcast and just saying stupid stuff because it's it's the lord's work it really is yeah no i agree completely i think he is and i think the thing is that i i'm pretty sure and that farage knows that tice is the weak so much yeah you can tell it's like oh for christ's sake it is interesting the little triumvirate of Farage, Tyson, Zia Yusuf.

17:01Aren't they fun? I mean, two of them are, I think, are liabilities. And I suspect that Farage kind of does despair a little bit when he thinks about, because obviously when you're a leader, you need people around you, don't you? Good people, a good team. And I don't get the sense that Farage believes he's got a good team around him which is what causes these wobbles from time to time you know and you can you can tell that by how often they deploy layla cunningham right right exactly it's actually only you know only but you know she's their mayoral candidate for london well you know it's an important role but she's actually used as if she was sort of number three or four in the party which she isn't she's often caught out because you know she's she's um you know she's very sort of she's articulate but she's not fantastically well briefed.

17:53No, that's right. Her problem is often that, you know, good interviewers will just say something and she doesn't know the answer. That's right. And I think the fact that Farage uses her so often is interesting. What happened to Sarah poaching? Well, you see, that's a really good question. And I think that, again, speaks to the point you made, which is that I think he had very high hopes of her in this respect. And then she started saying stuff about, do you remember sort of putting asylum seekers under canvas and stuff like that and Farage for all of his horrificness does have a line not made from morality but made from political instinct which he's developed exactly and you know this is why he left UKIP because they had employed Tommy Robinson not because I think he's sort of more virtuous than Tommy Robinson but because he thought that, you know, it brings in lots of people who support Tommy Robinson, but it also contaminates my brand as a prospective prime minister, big time.

18:57I'm not going to have that. And I think Sarah Pochin started to say stuff that, that, that, so he, I mean, this is why reform is so beatable. Cause she's, isn't she the shadow home secretary? I think, you know, Yusuf is the shadow home secretary. She's got some role. Is it a good choice? A little home affairs spokesperson. Right, okay, okay, same idea. He comes out occasionally to say that we're not doing enough for Christian heritage. That's right. Very, very strange guy. Honestly, honestly. Very strange. Somewhat, yeah. I'd love to get him on the psychiatrist's couch and try and work him out anyway.

19:33He's probably already there. Yes, as we speak. Hello, see you, are you in there? Right, should we move on? Yes. So from Pete, increasingly, I find myself using AI in my day to day life and also in my work. I'm a technical engineer and the latest models of AI can achieve results in an instant. It would have taken many days of effort. Yet it strikes me that much of the press coverage I read around AI has a negative tone. Shouldn't we focus more on the upsides of AI rather than obsess on the challenging aspects? Who knows? Maybe it will lead to that world of abundance you chaps keep speculating about.

20:11Well, I think you can do both. But I do agree. I do agree that there probably is a preponderance of negativity around AI right now in the press. And I've got a theory on why that might be. And it's because I think publishing is particularly vulnerable to the things that AI can be particularly good at, although probably some of that ability is illusory. But I mean, there are astonishing stories about bookshops in Wales, you know, being rare and obscure books, shops that specialise in that being sent vast orders from, you know, ChatGPT. And to their credit, I think the bookshop has said we want nothing to do with it.

21:05But the ones they get, they pulp. but they yeah they they destroy the books okay all right that's got a sort of um taboo about it but they destroy the books and they absorb all of the knowledge within the books and i was somebody explained to me it's because there is an incessant demand within the language learning model for new content you know it it needs to be fed if it's going to keep growing you know you know on x that Elon Musk introduced this new ability to do long form which is why Will Self has been able to do his very engaging columns on this right well the reason for that is that Musk worked out that his AI system and others were running out of stuff to read and that long form that he owned that would be a good way of encouraging it it wasn't because he wanted to Will Self will definitely expand AI's vocabulary.

22:09He certainly will. No question about that. Imagine chat TVT. I don't know what you mean, Matt. But that is such a great example, isn't it, about why something apparently irrelevant, inconsequential, actually can have a material effect on how AI develops. So I think to answer Pete's question, I think publishing is very worried about AI, disproportionately so. And that's why maybe in the media you do get this overall negative tone. But you're also right. I do think there are things within AI that could generate enormous positive benefits to society. You know, I mean, not, you know, at a basic and obvious level, you know, curing things that are beyond the wit of just researchers.

22:59But also productivity, which is our great challenge in the UK, you know, we've got very poor productivity rate. If we could harness AI productively and increase the productivity of the, you know, the economy could quite feasibly grow quite quickly. And I think, you know, this is this the thing that's always mystified me is if AI comes in and takes over and makes things more productive and takes away more mundane jobs and people are laid off and you get then this universal basic income, which is one theory about how we'll all be paid in the future. we won't have to work so much but the government will basically pay us all the currency we need to get day by day and to enjoy our lives where does that money actually come from that's what that's what i can't get my head where it comes from is that basically you abolish labor but you retain capital right and and you you get you people who own capital and own things disperse as and when they please and trade money that as you point out doesn't really mean anything but that's that's that's the worry with ubi i mean i think the the point of the question is really good which is we sort of oscillate between utopianism and doomsterism on on ai and that and that and that's silly and certainly you hear all the time anecdotally that it's helping with workflows and that's great and as you say you know the health tech stuff has already been amazing i mean there's open there was um uh deep minds uh alpha fold breakthrough which is you know absolutely game changer there's been massive changes on breast cancer screening so that's just unarguably fantastic i mean my own sort of hang up is that i do think that we are slowly delegating huge chunks of our cognitive function out yes without care or thought and we need to explain to people we need ai literacy i suppose which is we need to explain to people of all generations that LLMs first of all are not reliable and they're not real people and that the art of critical thinking and being an active citizen which god knows we need depends upon mental fitness like physical fitness and you are basically saying I never go to the mind gym if you delegate everything to AI and I think that is an issue the other reason I think that one has to be not alarmist but vigilant is that the big lesson of the social media era was do the hard thinking and the regulation at the start because in the beginning everyone was super utopian i remember people at google and facebook and then and then as twitter was twitter saying it's going to be great this is going to you know end tyrannies and everyone will speak to one another and you know nations will will speak in harmony and you know imagine all the people and everything and it didn't really work out that way yeah you know now we're worried you know there's a case been this week in California over the impact it's having upon uh young people's mental health and we know all the cases of suicide and so on so I think you know the message with AI is don't stop it don't stop the dynamism don't stop it in its tracks you can't anyway right but let if you know there is a reason societies and governments exist and that's to negotiate you know government businesses need the rule of law to operate right they pretend nowadays that they don't tech tycoons act as if they don't need government right they exist on a planet it's bollocks right they need the rule of law that governments therefore there is a democratic power there which is why by the way all the uh trump maga tech tycoons are so scared of europe because it it's offering a regulatory structure that they hate and i think that we should be on the front foot about that which is yes we're in favor of ai yep we want lots of innovation but you know human beings come first and i i think that's fine um that's not doomsterish it's just how you adapt to a new and radically new technology yeah i agree with all of that all right i'll tell you what let's take a very quick break and then come back with some more of your wonderful questions dear listeners welcome back dear listeners this is the two matt q a brought to you by the subscribers of the new world magazine and the next question comes from sue and sue says watching on matt dancona's recommendation the early life of anthony bourdain in the film tony i find myself enjoying his story thoroughly only for it to be tempered by knowledge of how his life was ended and of course we have the dreadful tragedy of Jason Arday in recent days.

27:47I investigated the statistics and was shocked to discover that around 20 people a day take their own lives in the UK. Men account for three quarters of all those deaths and it's the biggest killer of men under 50 in the UK. Sorry to ask such a depressing question but why is this not being treated as a national emergency? well thank you sir and i'm glad i'm glad you like the movie because it's i think it's an absolute gem um and dominic sessa playing the young still called tony bourdain and since the uh the title of the film is i think you know if he doesn't get an oscar nomination it will be a crime he's just brilliant and lots of other people are great in it like leo woodall and antonio bandera anyway but it's true that permeating the film and and you know deliberately so and with some quite one particular moment where the sort of shiver of recognition goes through of what lies ahead is that the fact that Bourdain's life ended tragically young you know 2018 I think he was only 61 and you're sort of aware that there's this sense of this golden person emerging as a chef who has a kind of passion and but it's going to end badly so that does lead to the point that Sue makes and it is a great one and I think the problem with this issue is that it often gets conflated and tangled up with the whole sort of poison and idiocy of the manosphere as if it was somehow all the fault of feminists and women that men are taking their own lives right and that's ridiculous and silly and gets us nowhere and and sort of terminates a really important argument so for me anyway the best source of ideas on this issue that i've found is is is there's an organization called the american institute for boys and men which sounds like something out of right but absolutely is the opposite which is it was founded by a guy called richard reeves very liberal man who is he used to be nick clegg's chief advisor and in government and richard went to america and founded this institute and it does really really good work on this issue but not from the sort of you know jordan peterson andrew tate side of the house at all it's all about policy what's really going wrong and you know he's found a lot of things which is that you know a lot of working class men in particular disproportionately have borne the brunt of recent economic and social dislocation in the last 20 years it's not stagnant and sluggish wage growth being made redundant and not really having much of a prospect of being employed ever again and also the decline in family stability um in america i was really astonished by this only one in two working class men aged 30 to 50 now lives with children that's a big big change in what it means to be a man so the feeling that they are surplus in the workplace and in their families is is really what underpins this and it's hard to generalize but that's the sort of pattern that richard has found and he but to his credit he talks about specific and quite targeted strategies which is okay we're dealing with the real world how do you help men specifically with the problem when they lose their jobs or specifically when they get divorced and they're trying to find a new way to build a relationship with their kids yeah you know let's not you know stop saying it's all the fault of third wave feminism because that's a ridiculous way of approaching the problem The problem is, the question is, how do you actually help people?

31:24And I think it's a really, it's one of those web pages I go to, oddly enough, to cheer myself up because he's one of the few people, I think James Bloodworth, who we had on the podcast, is very good on this. I think Richard is superb. yeah well thank you for that that's a really good answer i mean the there is a there is a definite connection to deprivation and geography yeah that that the government can take tangible action on you know and obviously there were those things and by the way we should say you know there are places if people are um struggling um there are places to go and talk confidentially to people you know the samaritans um and there's also nhs help for suicidal thoughts page which um you know um there are places where you can go for confidential support 24 7 so you're absolutely not alone and people will um people do feel um despair like this but so you can treat and and you can hope i there's a government strategy i think it was led by our friend stephen kinnick uh under starmer before that's right who went to who was care minister you know to try and the goal is to try and reduce by 10 you know the suicide rate but you're still talking about thousands and thousands of people i think let me get the numbers up here 7 000 in 2024 7 147 registered deaths from suicide across the uk which is you know that is 20 a day it's it is staggering that's um and it's worse in the northeast and the northwest um it's lowest in london um i think it's highest in scotland you know so anyway when you start digging into the data you can start to see well okay well here are clues as to where the problems might be politics of place the politics of place exactly that and it's about ultimately you know as we've said you know in the terrible case of jason our day you know there are no you know these are not um easily understood um events but you can you can you can go to work on the known factors that that you can affect and uh and i think you know I think the point of the question is a really good one is that it's such a big killer and yet it's still sort of if it was a disease, which, you know, you might argue it is in some ways, you know, but if it was a disease like a cancer or something like this, then you'd probably be able to point to huge research facilities and huge charities and grants and stuff like this to a greater degree than those that do exist.

34:19around um uh suicide um but um it isn't and you know i think i think what i'm trying to say is that making the whole picture making the underlying causes uh better improving yes poverty and um you know relationships and taking the stress out of people that is unavoidable when you're in economic decline you know that that will be a longer term solution yeah absolutely and i think you know you you you have to address the problems as they are so it seems to me that you know violence against women and girls male violence against women and girls is is an is a national emergency manny reed the former leader of the women's equality party used to call it you know a form of domestic terrorism and i thought that was not an exaggeration right that needs to be you know there and the male suicide issue needs to be there on the other side and these objectives are not in conflict you know they're not not at all it's not a zero-sum game this is it's a it's about developing a real sense of a functional reasonably contented society good okay good stuff um right question one more question and it's a belter um from mick in essex weather spoons spoons have banned people taking calls on their mobiles on speaker mode should this be extended nationwide or better still should the government legislate to force apple samsung and the rest to remove this infernal capability entirely what do you reckon matt yes a hundred percent honestly i never i never thought i'd have cause to give praise to tim martin who's the brexit loving boss of weather spoons but he's a this is absolutely right it is a bloody menace people walking around i mean it's bad enough people talk loudly anyway on their phones but when you can hear the bloody response on the speaker which and the way people hold their phones and i've got to say someone near and dear to me does this all the time my my wife and holds the phone about half a meter away from her voice her mouth and talks at it and the voices blare back on these tinny little speakers and it's it's absolutely noxious behavior when you get two or three people doing it on a train i want to get off it's awful and i think um i can't for the life of me understand why you can't just put the bloody phone next to your ear i remember you know when phones came out everybody said oh it gives you brain cancer you know or it boils you you you know your inner cortex and i remember on the daily mirror somebody i think the one of the one of the photos where this has got one of these two of these nokia phones with elastic bands put them either side of a fresh egg in in the expectation that if they left them on all day this egg would get boiled and of course and of course at the end of the day they cracked the egg open it was stone cold and absolutely fresh so but but yeah no i just think i think it's utterly anti-social behavior to inflict these these phone conversations on on the rest of us so if you do this and obviously i've been now stop it now stop it now well i'm a crawler so i i propose to carve out an exemption for mrs presidenti right because i because that's that's how i rolled eddie oh um i was rather hoping you'd be the one to tell her because i certainly haven't got the courage but anyway you must be kidding um you're very mad um look i don't know about removing the capability altogether because um i've sort of seen it used nicely when families are talking to elderly relative and whatnot but i think the the broader point is 100 on on on target uh especially in public places and you know on trains and buses this is where i found myself i find myself reluctantly being dragged into the grumpy old man category that's always going to be my my natural silo because you know people shouting into their phones or playing music and you just the question that always crosses my mind is do you you know we can hear you yes yes are you is it that you just don't care probably or is it that you exist in some such a strange little digital enclave of your own manifestation that you actually it doesn't occur to you that the rest of us we can hear you know sound does travel so even worse you think we're interested oh yeah which is of course the craziest which is oh you know i must know what derogated on saturday night tell me no no no detail too small um and this is where but i also think there's a it's a sort of the anti-social point you make is really interesting because as you know one of my big hang-ups is people talking at the movies right yes oh totally which is now standard and i think obviously you know there's part of me that wants to say you know it wasn't like that in my day type of thing and you know the younger generation etc but i think it's deeper than that which is i think that the idea that there are certain spaces like on the train or on the bus you kind of if you're talking that's fine or if you know if you're listening to something you use some headphones that's how you do it and if you're at the cinema you shut the fuck up right yeah yeah those i thought that was kind of all agreed right yeah but i think that the gap that because the public private thing has been so so melted yeah it actually doesn't occur to people that when they go to the movies talking all the way through is weird you know it's not only incredibly annoying it's actually very strange listen mate you've just reminded me of something which i think might give us a clue to what's going on in that it is a cultural phenomenon because nadia and me my wife and i we went to um we went to china in about the year 2000 and um it was an amazing trip and we went to uh hong kong then we took the train to beijing which was like 32 hours on one train it was a it was fantastic we ended up in shanghai and went to went to the shanghai opera house which i might be talking nonsense here but i got the impression it was a fairly new building at that time it hadn't just opened it was it was new you're right it was very very impressive building and they were putting on really great opera right and And we sat down and the opera begins.

40:55And then after about 10 minutes, a phone goes, right, a mobile phone. And I swivel around, you know, like a Karen and sort of glared at this person expecting to see somebody mortified, you know, grabbing for their phone to turn it off. But the person picked up the phone from their pocket, answered it and started having a conversation. Amazing. well well and and what was really amazing was that nobody else apart from me was thought anything they were just the phone had gone they were having a chat and they just happened to be in the middle of an opera in shanghai opera house yeah and i do think there's there is an element of that where if if you if you explain to people uh or said to somebody can you turn off a younger person can you turn your phone off speaker they'd think you were mad they'd like what on earth is your problem So maybe it is generational.

41:46I think it is partly, but I think it's also, it's just like different perspectives. So you've met my younger son and we were at the movies about a month ago. And as you know, he takes his movies very seriously. It's what he's studying. And there were a couple of guys next to us who were just talking all the way through the film. And my boy, he's, you know, he's a very amiable fellow, you know, but this rubs him wrong, right? Totally, yeah. And so he turned to this guy and said, stop talking now. Yeah. And the guy was so fascinating was, first of all, I thought this is going to end up with me being beaten up.

42:22Right. That's the normal procedure in these. Right. But also what was much more interesting was the guy was genuinely startled. Yeah. To have been admonished. Yeah. Of his age cohort. i think if i right right right i just have got shift there and then right yeah but um but the fact that my son said what are you doing you know you're at the movies he was like what are you talking about you know it's incredible it's incredible the way that this is why i'm reluctant to go sometimes to the cinema because yeah i honestly it's got worse and worse and what of all the bloody things to serve people in a cinema who thought of popcorn for christ's sake literally the very important point literally the noisiest thing anyone can eat i would like i think we should do a piece because i'm sure there's a reason for this because the history all the things in the history of the cinema yeah have a have a commercial an origin story right yeah it won't be an accident that popcorn was chosen it'll have been high high yield you know low cost you know and it goes back a long way yeah well we must find out who is responsible for this social atrocity right yeah yeah yeah we'll do relax we'll find out dear listeners we'll come back next sunday we'll we'll we'll have found out why why is it that popcorn is a thing at cinemas yes interesting why do people why do people pay 25 quid to go to the everyman cinema on the day right each ticket you know very nice plush things and then sit down and the minute it starts someone says is he gonna die right you know why what are you doing oh god right okay right it's a sunday go to the cinema and take some popcorn with you and ruin everybody's film that's what you can do today um send in your questions for next sunday's q a anything um that's on your mind any feedback uh we'd love to hear from you dear listeners send it into to Matt TNE publishing.com.

44:28The most important thing you can do this Sunday, subscribe to the new world magazine. If you don't already do that at the new world.co.uk forward slash to Matt's that's the new world.co.uk forward slash to Matt's. Thank you as ever to the third Matt, Matt with us for producing the show. And until at latest next Thursday, we'll be back. We'll see you there. Have a great week.

44:56Thank you.