The Two Matts Q&A: Why tell ourselves lies about prison time? And what do we miss about the 70s?

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1:04Perhaps, you know, just as we've got a number 10 for the North, perhaps we need a UN for the East and stick something in Beijing. I would like there to be more clarity and explanation in sentencing, because I do think it is puzzling for most people who aren't read into the legal system that they hear on the telly that someone has been sentenced for 25 years and then discover that they're coming out after 10. Despite all the candles and the power cuts and the bloody inflation at 25 % and all of the madness that was going on, it was a great laugh living through the 70s. Hello and happy Sunday, everybody.

1:46Happy Sunday, one and all. Hope you're all having a great weekend. Here's the Two Mats Q &A brought to you by the wonderful subscribers of The New World magazine and you can join them at thenewworld.co.uk. forward slash two mats that's the number two m-a-t-t-s first question comes from liza in crystal palace every rational part of me says that trump's deranged idea that gianni infantino should be un secretary general is one of the craziest suggestions i've ever heard then again i also have a nagging feeling that what the un needs right now is a showman a serious operator and somebody willing to do jazz hands when necessary to get the world's attention.

2:27Do the Mats have any thoughts? Well, I must say, when I read that Trump was... This was in the New York Post. It wasn't a direct quote. It was attributed to him that someone told them that he said this. Trump's saying that Gianni Invantino was, quote, respected by everyone around the world, which is a bit of a warning. as we know he and Fantino gave Trump the first FIFA Peace Prize whatever that means and after a conversation between the two men FIFA overturned a red card suspension for Filar and following Trump's intervention so I guess though mad this isn't surprising but I think Liza it does raise a more interesting point which obviously Fantino can't be UN Secretary General That's ridiculous.

3:17But there is a problem in an era where the international rules based order is in such trouble. The secretary general of the UN has gone from being I mean, if you go back to, say, Dag Hammarskjöld, who was UN secretary general in the sort of late 50s, early 60s, he was a really consequential figure. You know, he's heavily involved in the Suez crisis management, setting up peacekeeping forces in the Congo crisis. a really active diplomat, you know, on the front foot. And then you go to Antonio Guterres, who runs the UN like, you know, it was a sort of big office for Thought for the Day. It's funny, but it's sort of it's a very alarming retreat from the world stage of an organisation that we need more than ever now that so many issues are global and the world is such a volatile place.

4:10I mean, I think there are lots of interesting points here. And one of them is that there's this it's not I checked it up, in fact, which is that at the moment, no one from one of the permanent members of the Security Council can be UN Secretary General. Yeah, it's a convention. It's not in the it's not in the UN Charter. But the argument is that they would favor, you know, one of the Security Council. all that and i think that convention has passed its time because one of the things that we're seeing is that you have these amazing figures and you know the obvious one is obama okay he's only 64 and i mean he left office in 2017 so imagine if he'd become un secretary general then or merkel or you know all these amazing people who are going to live a lot longer than their their predecessors would have and they are doing great things in charity and some in business and they have foundations but really you know imagine if the un secretary general was but obama i mean it would transform it would transform the organization an american pope and an american secretary general working in tandem for world peace amazing every time obama comes on social media or does an interview you just think wow you know the class of the guy the knowledge of the guy yeah his his experience and he's he has said on many occasions you know that you and i think Blair said the same thing about being prime minister the the irony of these big jobs is that you leave just when you've really got the handle on it and not to take advantage of those uh those abilities on the international stage um seems to me criminal um now you know we're always quite happy for ex-politicians to be heads of NATO um some people are talking about Keir Starmer as being head of NATO which doesn't seem to me to be a silly idea at all um but why can't the Secretary general be someone like that yeah um it's not easy yeah it's but it's definitely true to the point of the question is that the united nations has become when i can't remember the last time that the united nations did said made any kind of resolution that was of any consequence that anybody felt that needs to stick it on the on the front page it just doesn't happen anymore and if it's not doing that then what is the point of it yeah and you know when you think of the great conflicts we've seen in recent times in Ukraine, in the Middle East, and they've said plenty of things.

6:39And up to a point, they've tried to mitigate some of the harms through refugee work and through aid work. But what it lacks is authority. And so, you know, always talking about international law, which is, I know it's not the UN ICJ and so on, but these organisations no longer have heft they no longer have muscle and sinew and i think in a world that's so interconnected that is that is a problem and is it you know you don't have leaders is it an inevitable consequence though of the kind of deglobalization that that actually the united nations in its core represents some form of globalization and as we sort of withdraw to this sort of more hemispheric sense of of national identity and national influence is the united nations batting on a wicket that's so sticky it'll never really recover from it i mean you put your finger on it which is that um that's the question isn't it can it in a world where nationalism and and and blocks are seem to be more important than the world community what is the role of the un i would say it's too important an idea to to to to just be allowed to wither on the vine but that is what that is what is happening at the moment which is that the UN is turning into a secular version of the Holy See.

7:59You know, it's, you know, it does seem weird to me. And this is not far from attack on the Pope, who I quite like, you know. But, you know, it does seem weird to me that the biggest statement on AI in the world this year was made by the Pope. Yes. Rather than the UN Secretary General. Do you know what I mean? It's sort of, that's strange, isn't it? It's totally strange. I also think there is a geographical problem in the sense that the being based in the United States right now sends all of the wrong messages. You know, you have this wonderful Neumeier building, but perhaps, you know, just as we've got a number 10 for the north, perhaps we need a UN for the east and stick something in Beijing.

8:44You know, I would rather the UN was based in Beijing and Obama could be head of it. Exactly right. Which I think he would be fine with, by the way. You're so right. I mean, part of the problem, I suppose, is that the architecture of the global order that was set up after the war, and Dean Ashton's book, President of the Creation, tracks this brilliantly, was essentially an American order. To the point that really the World Bank is always headed by an American. why you know it's it's silly so i think a lot of the reason that it's always a non-american is because so many of these organizations are in america and the rest of the world thinks oh why should it be an american and i think yeah i think you're right i think isn't it interesting how many of these questions we're thinking about at the moment do actually boil down to where things are where things are so you know the sense of place here's a fun fact for you fun fact for you you You know, obviously the UN building is a towering skyscraper, notable for the fact that its short ends, the sides of it, are walls.

9:52They have no windows at all. All of the windows are on the wide side of the building. Do you know why that is? No, no idea. It's so that nobody can have a corner office with a better view than anybody. Everybody's got the same kind of window space. Yeah, exactly. Fantastic. So next question from Lawrence in Glencoe. I really enjoyed your special episode with James and Lucy, and I've started to listen to Touching Grass, which is great. Do you both believe in generation gaps? And if so, are they a good thing? It all feels a lot more complicated now as people live longer and middle aged folks stay interested in, for instance, pop, which used to be associated with youthful rebellion.

10:31Am I right to think it's a lot more complicated than it was when I was growing up? I'm still a keen hill climber at 64. Oh, well, brilliant to hear from somebody from absolutely magnificent Glencoe, one of my favorite. Lovely Glencoe, isn't it? One of the great, if people haven't done it, and if you drive a car, take your car and go north, young man, go north, go through Glencoe, through the astonishing ravine of mountains. And if you can do it when there's a bit of mist around, you will feel like you've been, you're back on the set of the Highlander. You know, it's absolutely stunning place. In the only two years that I haven't lived in London in my entire life.

11:09I lived in Scotland when my dad worked up there. And my best friend at school, his family had a little cottage in Glencoe. So I used to go there on the weekends. And part of the magical memories I have of childhood is of wonder. It's amazing. Slightly less magical is the reality we should face into, which is that Jimmy Savile also had a cottage in Glencoe. And there's a little kink in the road as you come to a sort of gap. I don't want to talk about that, Matt. But there's a white cottage, it's quite bizarre, because there's a white cottage which sort of sits on a dog leg of the road and you can't miss it.

11:44You see it for a long time as you drive towards it and then you go past it and then into the village of Glencoe. And that is where Jimmy Savile lived. And you'll see it now because I think unless anything's changed, it was run down and derelict and full of graffiti about, you know, pedo lives here and all of this stuff. Anyway. I don't remember that bit. let's um let's move on to the substance of um of lawrence's question uh yeah it's a weird one isn't it i've never been able to get my head around all of the i i can i can never remember what i am to your credit actually i think it's it gets out of hand the whole thing gen x gen y millennials gen a gen no idea what it means all i can tell you is that i think maybe the fundamental change in my lifetime is that we used to think of of three generations you know kids grown-ups granny and granddads and now i think there's at least four maybe five even because we've grown to live so long and i don't know about generation gaps but i think there's a sort of interesting generation blend you know where where we cross over um there's there's no question that people do have different attitudes to different things and that's part of growing up isn't it and you become a parent you realize that there are things that your kids do that you you find instinctively wrong um but that's that's the way they do it and it's actually incumbent on you if you don't want to be that miserable old twat which i occasionally is a role i i occasionally play i'm leaning into Yeah, it's incumbent on you to be the one that changes to adapt to the new generation.

13:26After all, they'll still be here when you're gone. But one interesting thing that I definitely think has come and gone, and this may be more of a force of social reality, is I noticed an attitude towards work from people. when I was in my early 40s the people who were in their 20s coming up so we're talking about you know 20 years ago they definitely had an attitude towards work which was I'll do my work and then I'll go out and I'll live my life and never the twain shall meet and there was a real change in emphasis as to as to how hard you had to put in the effort to climb the greasy pole and all of Now, I feel in the younger people that I meet now, including some who work for the New World, I definitely think that there's a work ethic has returned that I think had gone away for better or worse.

14:23And it may just be a consequence that the competition for good jobs is harder. But I actually find it quite encouraging that the people I see now are so willing to throw themselves into work in a way that perhaps the generation that came just before them, the edge had gone off that work ethic, I think. Yeah, so true. I'm a big fan of generation gaps in the sense that I think that they are the engines of social change. And I think, you know, the classic and maybe the greatest example is the 60s, you know, that drove the world out of the immediate post-war period. And it created women's rights, the peace and earth movement, sexual revolution and a cultural explosion like no other.

15:06And, you know, that's important. And of course, the new generation has a vote, not a veto. You know, we're not taking instruction from the young, but we should take wisdom from them as much as they do from us. in as much as any of them do um but i think i think there are lots of angles i think you're absolutely spot on to talk about blended generations because one of the things that's happened is you know consequence of longevity i was looking it up and if you go back to 1966 the year that revolver came out um men in the uk were living to 68 and women to 74 and now men in 2026 are living to 79 and 83 and that is amazing sorry mate just say that again so if you were in 66 the average lifespan of a male was 68 yeah good women women with 74.5 and now it's 79 and 83 and that's an average so you know um you know bluntly healthier people will be living a lot longer so so we're around a lot longer which means to your point there are four or five coexisting generations which has massive implications for property and social care and inheritance and all those big big big things that we were talking about on the Thursday podcast and I think another thing that is is just there is that and this is I think why touching grass is is so good and Lucy and James doing such a great job is that there's absolutely no doubt that the digital revolution is now a you know a massive force in this and it's not just sort of pre-imposed it's not oh you're a digital native and you're not um it's that the revolution is moving at such and i think this comes out in touching grass because lucy's gen gen z and james is millennial is that actually their relationship with the online world respectively is different yeah so So even within that, you know, it's not like they're the young ones, we're the old ones.

17:07You know, I suppose literally speaking, that's true. It's that within what we would have called in the past youth, there are these really very important differences and distinctions of behaviour and life and expectation. So I think the generation gaps will continue, but, you know, the cohorts are getting smaller and smaller and smaller. Yeah. Very interesting. Next question comes from Stan in Brighton. should prisoners be released early in any circumstances why not just sentence them to what they will serve and then add on a penalty if they don't behave inside isn't there a dishonesty running through the whole system it's a really interesting question and obviously has been made live by the terrible case of pc harper and the fact that under earlier the early release system to those who were involved in his killing in 2019 may be released later this year.

18:02So the background is that, and I think a lot of people still find this baffling, is that in England and Wales, anyway, the sentence announced in court is usually, not always, intended to not be the amount of time that the convicted person will actually spend in prison. it's the legal sentence but then there's a lot of discretion within that to how much time the person will actually spend behind bars and it's an incentive for good behavior because if you do well you you get your time spent in prison cut and to a lesser extent a recognition that the punishment continues after you leave prison because you're still on license and then and and I guess now we're at the bone, how to keep prison populations manageable.

18:50Right. So that, you know, an amazing statistic that's that, you know, has been made a lot of in the last week. But I think it's worth repeating is that between 2010 and 2024, the Tories only added 500 prison places, you know, and therefore the problem we're in, the structural problem we're in about early release, you know, does have a. So I'm not in favour of Labour always blaming the 14 years of Tory turmoil. But on this one, I think they do have a point. So there have been two emergency schemes announced since Labour came in. One was immediately after the election where it was just called the emergency scheme, which was cutting some of the tariffs that prisoners were serving.

19:34And then more systematically this year, the Sentencing Act meant that a lot of prisoners will now come out after they've served only a third of their custodial term and even some violent and sexual offenders will become eligible after only one half of their custodial term and i think this does raise questions about trust because the and by the way i do sympathize with ministers you know the prison estate is massively overpacked you know isn't and it isn't easier quick to build prisons but the fact is that um if you want people to trust government which is so central to what now the challenge is now facing burnham and the whole government and the state i think some degree of clarity and transparency in sentencing is at the heart of it um now in the states they have this thing called honest sentencing which basically means if the court sentences you to 10 years you're going to serve 10 years and there are corollary problems with that which is what well if that's the case what possible incentive do you have to behave well while you're behind bars it's not easy but i do think that we we may have over corrected here i mean i think if you have there's a very very uh disturbing uh harrowing case on news night last week of a survivor of a rape case talking to victoria derbyshire who um now thinks that you know her her rapist may be released early this year and that is that is that is a dreadful thing and i think burden is across it but i would i would like there to be more clarity and explanation in sentencing because i do think it is puzzling for most people who aren't read into the legal system that they hear on the telly that someone has been sentenced 25 years and then discover that they're coming out after 10.

21:25Yeah, no, I agree with you completely. And I think the word you use there is trust. And it's, it's symptomatic of a kind of erosion of trust that we have a system like this, because, you know, I do agree with the honest sentencing principle in the States, and all of the problems around incentivizing good behavior and all of that, they're all easily dealt with i think a judge should say you know be honest i'm sentencing you to serve three years in prison for this heinous crime not the 10 that you might have heard as a headline i'm sensing you to spend three years in prison and you will be on license for a further seven years and if you if you misbehave in prison then you will you will spend longer in prison and face other punishment but but then you know then the argument is on an honest footing isn't it and people can say what that guy's only going to do three years inside that's where the to do it in any other fashion is you know i heard david gork on um talking about you know and to be fair to him he because he was the prisons minister before in the in the last tories under the last tory government and he was saying it is difficult there are you know there is this crisis of places and it's is it's a it's it's an insoluble problem right now but he had um moved things to 40 for some prisoners and was not you know he was sitting there being interviewed and complaining about this new proposal that it's a third you know it's a it's utterly um unprincipled to to make the argument all we're all he's arguing about is the is the degree to which this dishonesty is is perpetrated i think people have got the right to know justice is meant to be open and transparent that's the whole yeah mantra around justice and this is opaque and and um deceitful to tell people someone's going away for 10 years if they're only going to serve three in a bit you know it's wrong agree and i think it it you know be honest honestly in radical candor more please you know yeah yeah yeah totally all right i'll tell you what let's calm down have a quick break and we'll We'll be back with more of your wonderful questions in just a minute, folks.

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25:51Hello and welcome back, dear listeners. This is the 2MATS Q &A brought to you by the subscribers of the New World magazine. Next question. Good question from Mark Grindley. Has Burnham made a mistake in sacking so many loyalists and appointing so many rebels? After all, never reward treachery used to be the second law of politics. What was the first law of politics? I was wondering this, actually. Mark, you'll have to phone in and tell it. Don't fuck it up, I suppose. It's the first law. ABO. Yeah. So, no, I don't think he has made a mistake, to be honest. I think he's, I was really relieved to see that he's clearly appointed exactly the people he wanted to see in place and he wasn't playing too much politics.

26:35You know, I think you've got to recognize that the loyalists were part of an insipid regime that failed abjectly, you know, and everybody has to bear a bit of culpability for that if you were hands on with that. But you also want people who are going to get with the programme and who are going to be on side. You know, none of these, you know, if I'm a editor in chief of a newspaper and I'm thinking about who do I want to, I've got one golden rule. I don't want any dickheads. Thank you. I've got a no dickhead policy. It's a good rule. And I want to work with people I like working with. Maybe that's the first law of politics.

27:16Yeah, don't employ dickheads. There was a great interview, Apropos Nothing, it was very, very funny about a guy, a businessman being, he was a South African, and he's been interviewed about how he's been successful in business. And the interviewer says, what's the number one secret to success? And he says, don't work with the kids, right? And the fellow said, don't work with the kids. He said, absolutely not. He said, that's a main word. So you keep your family life completely separate. no no don't work with dickheads this is this is a golden rule in anything the less time you spend with dickheads the the more successful you'll be but yeah no so i thought it was a i thought it was good and showed sort of determination i thought i think it's not a bad cabinet and and i think that uh it isn't i mean the the the the sacked are very keen to uh reframe it as loyalists versus rebels but i think it's more sort of those whom burn in regards as good in those he regards as not good, right?

28:18They're jobs. I mean, it's a different division. And by the way, he has kept, you know, Siobhan and Mahmood at the Home Office and Pat McFadden at Work and Pensions. And, you know, I think I've actually, the more I think about it, I'm quite enthused about Wes Streeting at Defence because he's clearly, he gets on well with John Healy. So, you know, that all goes well. I don't think this is a, I don't think this is a government that's been, you know, pick to sort of do Burnham's bidding just because he's Burnham, but because he's right. Yeah. And that maybe that will work, maybe it won't, but I don't think that's how he's selected it.

28:59I think, I think you're right. I think it's, it's much less to do with loyalty and it's much more to do with ability or his belief in your ability to execute. I don't think, I don't think he's, I don't think he's worried about loyalism and he's not that kind of a guy. Yeah. Okay. Great. Right. Right. Next question comes from from Sue. As we are about to enter a summer as dry as 1976, and as the Daily Heil keeps insisting Andy Burnham is about to take Britain back to the 70s, I wonder what, if anything, the Matts miss from the 70s and would bring back to the future. Well, I don't I think anyone who thinks this is like the 1970s didn't live through them.

29:38Right. I mean one of my memories of it which is not a fun one is doing homework by candlelight during the electricity candles under the sink it was wasn't it well I'm glad not to be living in them but a lot of the things that I love are from them so I mean just to run very quickly through things I love from the 70s my favourite music never mind the bollocks 77 by the Pistols Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division favorite movies godfathers one and two uh chinatown taxi driver apocalypse now all 70s movies and amongst many books just to take through the carla trilogy by the carrie tinker taylor the honorable schoolboy and smiley's people so there was lots of good stuff going on but i don't want to go back there no no i i would bring back i had a long hard think about this and i would bring back well two things that i want to mention one is and i think this fits into actually um into Andy Burnham's talk of place and community and and all of that I would bring local papers back in a and I mean yeah I mean paper I don't mean digital I mean a newspaper delivered it could just be once a month but a newspaper delivered through every door in the borough with with actual community news and there's so many great ex-journalists around now living long retirements who could get involved in that and put together local papers and there could be a government scheme to fund it and you know it would maybe be paid in part by the bbc but i do feel one of the things that's changed from the 70s to today is a lack of community cohesion that yeah that the kind of thing that a printed newspaper i'm sorry to all the digital gurus out there but a printed newspaper um would command reading about you know would give people a greater sense of what's going on in their community well you know talk about politics of place you know you yeah politics a place to work you need a democratic infrastructure and that's part of it and so i think you know i didn't be good for the local economies you could have you know focus on local advertising all of the you know i'm not saying we should go back to old media but i think that in And we've lost so much from local media through misadventure by bad digital strategies in big corporations that it barely exists in places now that we have we have local news deserts.

32:07And that is a catastrophe for local democracy and for community. So that's one. The other thing, counter to all of what I've just said, is the ability to be utterly uncontactable would be. I would absolutely love to be able to go back to a time where you could go away for days and the only way you could communicate with people back home would be to send a bloody postcard. You couldn't be contacted. I think we've changed as a, I'm absolutely certain we've changed as a species and not necessarily wholly for the better by the fact that anyone can get you at any time. You know, I'd love to go back to being just in isolation and not worrying about being in touch with people.

32:51I think it's it's changed everything in and not. I mean, it's good. Look, I'm very glad that I when when the kids were growing up and even now, you know, that you can get hold of them at two in the morning. And I remember when my parents were still alive, they were they were jealous because they said, you know, Christ, you know, when you were not not back from somewhere, it would have been great to have been able to contact you and i thought yeah that is true but generally speaking i mean i think one of the things it's it's changed is the nature of being at home because you know i'm old enough to you remember when people would begin if there was a work call to home they would begin with a polite apology sorry to bother you yes yes now that's impossible that's gone completely and it made me laugh but also think god things have changed i was looking at something today which was advertising what very expensive what we'll call digital retreats where maniacs spend tens of thousands of pounds to go somewhere you know in Papua New Guinea and then hand in their phone so that they can't be contacted and I thought there's something sad that people are so incapable of decoupling themselves from the global network that they have to pay through the nose to go somewhere remote where they literally can't be contacted yeah it's mad i'll tell you one thing a few of my jewish friends practice whether they're really big believers or not is they practice shabbat which is yes you know they will during sabbath jewish sabbath they'll turn off they'll turn off all their phones they'll they'll turn off the tv they'll completely they'll have that day of digital detox and i think yes that that's that's that's not a bad idea you know we could all take a bit from that there's a there's a kind of um there's there's a new sabbatarianism which is not connected to religious belief necessarily but and i i suspect it's doomed to fail but it's interesting that people are talking about it which is one day of the week really is yeah off yeah the problem is though that you can observe that one can observe that but the rest of the world won't that's unless you are recognized as you know being part of a faith i mean some denominations within christianity are very strict about the sabbath but you know as you say jews are particularly so where i know with my jewish friends there's no point in in texting them on the sabbath and so on but you know if you or i said right you know thursdays is the sabbath or sundays the sabbath no one would take any notice would they no that's right that's right okay so so the 70 by the way i should say despite all the candles and the power cuts and the the bloody inflation at 25 and all of the madness that was going on it was a great laugh living through the 70s it's always a great laugh yeah it was it was no but but actually you know what i mean one of the things that's funny about the difference between talking about decades and living through them is that the 70s were much more fun than people admit and the 80s were much harder than people admit that's right that's right and i suppose different being a kid yeah but also the 80s have now kind of curdled into this idea that everything everyone was rich and there was dallas and durand durand and brideshead and brilliant right yeah well yeah but maybe not so much if you're living in toxteth or brixton or you know orst paul's in in bristol no not much of that exactly yeah right anyway we got time for one more we have And it's a good one from Keris in Dublin.

36:27I realise that this may be heretical, but alone of all my friends, I have zero interest in the Odyssey, zero interest in reading long pieces or listening to long podcasts about it. And zero interest is very felt, zero interest in spending every night in the pub talking about it. Help. Can the Max recommend something cultural or diverting that I can immerse myself in until the mania has passed? I still joke of that. Right. Well, I have very cleverly put two things together here. And one is the Odyssey, but one is also Dublin. Oh, God. So my suggestion is that Caris does what I have promised myself I would do, but I've never managed to do it.

37:10I bet you have done it, Matt. I'm only guessing, is read Ulysses by James Truss. I have, but I didn't understand it. I've got to read it. I read it when I was, you know, an annoying teenager. And I didn't understand it, but I went around holding it. But I think if you want something that's challenging and is a diversion and will occupy your entire summer in a pointless exercise, but you live in Dublin, you live in Dublin, and of course Ulysses is the Roman word for Odysseus. And it's loosely, if anyone, what I have done is gone into the kind of the mechanism that Joyce used to create Ulysses. And there's a great graph, a chart he made of all of the Homeric adventures of Odysseus and how they relate to the adventures of this one man walking through Dublin on one day.

38:08Leopold Bloom. Leopold Bloom. So there's that. That's a brilliant idea. And of course, living in Dublin, you can do the Bloomsday Walk and all of that. Bloomsday Walk whenever you want, yeah. And have a great time. So there's my tip. No, well, I can't talk about that. Well, first of all, Caris, I'm sorry. Because I'm, as ever with a Christopher Nolan film, I am, you know, covered in guilt. I've been banging on about it for months, months, months. And, you know, the last couple of weeks have been insane. I've already seen it twice. I'm going to see it again on Sunday tonight. Gosh, have you really?

38:40No, but you know what I'm like with these films. But I do, I sympathise because one of my kind of beliefs about culture, about which I go on all the time, but I do think no cultural moment should be compulsory. And there is sometimes, especially in the digital era, this feeling that, you know, if you don't go and see The Odyssey, you're not somehow, you know, you shouldn't be allowed to vote. And I think that's ridiculous. It is only a movie. The internet has gone berserk over this. And I really, you know, I love the movie. I love talking about the movie. Had a great live last week with John Bleasdale talking about it.

39:18You've written a fantastically amusing piece on the money about Odyssey derangement syndrome on the New World. People have gone nuts. I mean, not in any way, nothing comparable to Ulysses by Joyce, but just instant relief, sort of first stage relief. is tonight, Sunday, a wonderful BBC series called The Rapture, based on a novelist I'm very keen on called Liz Jensen, who writes great dystopian sort of slightly supernatural fiction. It's out on the Beeb. It stars Liz Medley and Ruth Medley and Liz Jo and Ruth Jones. It's brilliant. And if you really want to go, going back to retro, on Tuesday, the finally released Wham!

40:0610 Days in China, which is really the great movie that was that was made by lindsey anderson of if fame no one knows why right but um they took wham you know they're early they're very young took lindsey anderson who was a grouchy old you know he hated them but for the money to china with them in china and it's not really been shown ever but uh mike christie a very good director has taken the footage and turned it into a film which the the estate and george michael estate and andrew originally are happy with and it's going to be a release so if nothing else it'll be a way of getting away from um you know people arguing about whether lupita nyonga should be helen and whether mac damon should be oh you know all that yeah no there's been some crazy crazy fights on on x it's people who really should know better yeah i love movies but you know come on guys yeah right excellent well um uh hope you've enjoyed the uh the podcast and um if you've got any questions for next sunday's podcast please fire them into two mats at tnepublishing.com better still subscribe to the new world magazine thenewworld.co.uk forward slash two mats and you can get a copy of a history of brexit in 256 disasters absolutely free when you sign up so so go ahead and do that and all it remains for me to do is to thank matt withers the third matt for producing the show and until next Thursday at latest, maybe sooner.

41:35Have a great week. Have a great week, folks.

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