Maisie: Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast.
Andy: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Page 94.
My name's Andrew Hunter Murray, and I'm here in the Private Eye office.
Joined as ever by Ian Hislop, Adam McQueen and Helen Lewis.
We're here to talk about the events of the last weeks and who
knows, maybe the next week's two.
And one event that, uh, Helen, you've been looking into recently is, uh,
a change in the laws in Scotland.
And I won't say any more than
Helen: that.
Okay.
Uh, well this is obviously blown up on, uh, the 1st of April when
the law came into force, but it was actually passed in 2021.
It's called the Hate Crime of Public Order Bill.
Mm-Hmm.
And essentially the aim of it was to consolidate all, um, existing
hate crime legislation into one easy to swallow package, as it were.
Um, but the controversial thing that it did, which was extremely
controversial, even as it went through the Scottish Parliament was introduced
this new offense of stirring up hatred.
Even then it got watered down.
There was original proposal was that libraries and bookshops, would've
been able to be prosecuted for selling offensive or loaning offense material.
So things like that got watered down.
But all the way through there were concerns that this was a very
illiberal law, and sure enough, now it's finally come into force.
Those concerns have come up again.
What
Andy: is stirring up?
Helen: Well, it's, it's basically trying to say that if you, so
there was a lot of discussion about whether or not intention mattered.
Did you need to intend to be offensive on this and does it need to have an
objective effect or in hate rums, or, there's always a question about is
it just as experienced by the person?
And as, as I can see, your eyes are already slightly mist and you
are getting No, no, I wouldn't, I, but you're getting the point...
this stuff is really difficult.
It's hard.
Yeah.
It's effectively based on personal conceptions of, of what is offensiveness.
Right.
In the same way that I'm sure you know this in like libel, there's
always, you know, it's the idea of a kind of reasonable person.
There are obviously a very large spectrum of beliefs about what
constitutes hateful behavior or is merely abusive behavior, and so it has
to some respect, you have to say, well, who gets to decide what's hateful?
And that's part of what's at issue here.
The problem as I see it seems to be that they've said that.
Will Police Scotland get to decide?
Because, , usually legislators don't say this, but they're essentially
saying, yes, you are right.
This is a very badly drawn up law and it's very imprecise,
and who knows what it means?
Let's ask the police now.
, for those of us who've been rather more skeptical about the
entire Scottish establishment over the years than say the SNP.
It might be argued that Police Scotland have been attached too close to
those in power, , over the years, and their definition may just be whatever
pleases, um, the party in power.
I'm not gonna be so cheap as to say, why don't they look into real crimes?
Like who nicked that camper van?
Um, because that would be pathetic.
That would be beneath you.
But you are right.
There is a problem.
A couple of months ago, police got and said, we're not gonna be able to
investigate all level low level crime, including some things like theft.
But they have pledged, they will investigate every single thing
that's reported under this law.
Andy: I'm, I'm sorry to be really thick about it.
Uhhuh, what am I going to be banged up for?
in Sterling, right, that I won't be in Sunderland
Unless you could pick a
flit
Helen: across the border.
Uh, so added age, , disability, transgender status, intersex
status, and religion.
Now, there were already provisions on race and ethnicity, uh, for staring up
hatred on those grounds so that that's.
That was already covered.
However, we'll notice the one characteristic missing
from that list is sex.
So that's supposedly because there is going to be a separate
misogyny bill coming down the track.
However, Ash Reagan, who was in the Scottish government as a junior justice
minister is now defected to Alba said.
I actually feel like I was misled on that.
I was told that all the women's groups didn't want misogyny, they wanted a
separate bill, and I don't actually now think that that was was true.
My hunch and suspicion is that misogyny is a very difficult thing to prosecute.
It's also not in the equality Act.
because, you know, it's, it's calling someone a bitch.
Misogynistic abuse.
Yes, it is.
But it is also extremely common and there is a kind of point in which
the police cannot be expected to get involved in absolutely everything.
Ian: Someone actually said, I mean, read the bill.
They said the reason we didn't include women, um, in the bill, the sex in the
bill is because we didn't feel the bill would really work very well for them.
and we're gonna do a better one later.
Well, if you're gonna do a better one later, could you do a better one for
all the other, these categories seem
Adam: like quite a lot of arguments that this is not the bill to put
through at the moment, isn't it?
It is
Ian: not.
What the political thing I don't understand is why does, hum Yusef,
who's, who's not having a great time as leader, why did he go ahead
Helen: with this?
It's really interesting.
It wasn't in the 2016 Hollywood Manifesto from the SNP.
It was something that they kind of came off with on their own bat, and
it was a time when they were, I think on slightly on the back foot because
of Jeremy Corbyn's leadership had just spent, they'd spent a whole lot of
time saying, we are much further to the left than labour, you know, where the
true voice of what a progressivism is.
Then the Corbyn era slightly challenged 'em on that, so they pivoted to saying,
we're actually much more competent.
And so I think they were in the.
In their post, you know, Corbyn era of, of, of opposing labour in Scotland.
They were trying to look for a new identity again, and I think they looked
at this as something that was very distinctive and could be very SNP focused.
The same thing with Gender Recognition Reform Bill.
This was a progressive country and they were a progressive party
and therefore this was the kind of legislation they wanted to pass.
The problem being, I think the Scottish Civil Society is.
Very small and lots of the groups and charities they were asking for input on
this were people who received grants from the SNP, you know, and they have been
in Power now from Scotland for, for more than a decade, not very seriously changed
by the labour or the conservatives who were both in the minority at Hollywood.
So I think what it was, was a sort of initially interesting idea.
That just did not receive sufficient scrutiny throughout
the legislative process.
And once it's passed, it's passed, it
Adam: comes in.
One of the things I found most fascinating about this is this is replacing the
blasphemy law, however many hundred years we are now after the Scottish
Enlightenment, I found extraordinary, the blasphemy law while still on the statue
book, but religious, um, in discrimination or stirling up hatred on bound of religion
is, is is one of the measures in this bill that's perhaps had slightly less scrutiny.
But, um, I was thinking back to when we, when something similar, um, was,
was introduced in, in, in Britain.
Do you remember the, uh, Racial and Religious Hatred Act,
which finally came in 2007.
That was on the third go.
It was stymied by the Lords a couple of times.
It was stymied by Rowan Atkinson.
Do you remember leading a campaign popping up saying, um.
But I do vicars.
That's one of the comedy things I do.
I may be slightly simplifying his argument there.
Ian: Actually, no, and it's perfectly ruined.
There's an incredibly long tradition of laughing at vicars in British
humour and it's, it's many hundreds of years old, and this was taken
as one of our rights, whether one is allowed to laugh at Imams...
is another thing.
And Rowan Atkinson...
and he didn't have an equivalent, but in Scotland.
That will be an issue.
Helen: and that's something that you have to, in all hate crimes legislation
tries to do, is what's the difference between an ideology and a person?
And sometimes that's very clear cut and sometimes it's not.
So the one that has obviously become a very high profile is the fact that
JK Rowling has basically dared people.
She's called a load of trans women, men, essentially, and use
male pronouns for them and said, you know, come and lock me up.
And that is the, the debate that is now gonna be forced into
the open about is that actually hateful to people as individuals?
Or are you opposing a particular ways of thinking about gender?
Andy: Well, it goes back to stirring up, doesn't it?
If I'm insulting someone in their home based on these newly
protected characteristics when, let's say age for example.
'cause that's one of these five new ones, isn't it?
Helen: Yeah.
So I mean, if you say, call someone a silly old sod, and as you shove them
out of the way on the, you know, and, and is that become an aggravating,
is that worth the police's time to add that as an aggravating factor?
Ian: But from a, a personal and, and professional point of view, um, there's
some debate about whether, um, satire and comedy comes under this bill.
So most of the jokes about Biden that have been in, in the publication
recently haven't been policy based.
A number of them, I would say, have been directed to the
fact that he's very, very old.
are you saying
Andy: we're gonna have to smuggle.
Copies of the magazine over the border.
I think this is quite romantic.
And Bonnie Prince, Charlie ish.
And I, I like the sound.
Sam is
Helen: that copies of the eye.
He's very old.
You know, he sometimes speaks quite slowly.
Ian: It's a Walter Scott novel.
Adam: They'll be cutting, cutting sections outta the joke pages at the border.
I won't that be like Fahrenheit 4 5 1.
People will be memorizing jokes and telling them quietly
in in pubs in Edinburgh.
But that does make
Helen: sense because there are people who don't want you to
make jokes about Biden's age.
I wrote a piece about his age and people said, this is very offensive.
It doesn't say anything about its cognitive capacity.
You shouldn't, this isn't, you know, you're attacking someone's personal life.
And that's, you know, that is an argument that people do make.
Ian: And again, they didn't make it clear.
So one spokesman says, obviously this doesn't apply to comedians
and, and satirists and performers.
And then another person says, well, it might, and it seems
to be up to the police again.
So say your one hour act, Edinburgh is entirely devoted
to the failings of the police.
Scotland.
Is that stirring up hatred?
It's such a vague
Adam: term, isn't it?
So it seems a very un legalese term to me stirring up that it can be.
I mean, it's if you're drawing attention to someone else's, um, stuff online about
this stuff, or, or, or, or writing a.
Story about a neo-Nazi group that then ends up, you know, in, in a
backlash, lots more people join that.
I mean, does, would that count as stirring up?
, Helen: So I think the language is exactly, is abuse or threatening or insulting.
And, and I, I, I, the word use, the word insulting is slightly alarming to me
because I, like, I quite enjoy insulting a number of people on all kinds of grounds.
But the defense is about being, you have to prove that it's reasonable.
And it's one of those things where it's just, well, what my version of reasonable
you, version of reasonable maybe entirely different, who's the arbiter here?
It does seem
Adam: to me that JK Rowling has, um, has, is kind of um, and she seems to be
absolutely determined to become a martyr.
Free speech martyr on this particular topic, but she was going on mean
there's very much an intent now.
I mean, 'cause you, you, you, you said she, misgendered,
uh, several trans people.
But actually, I mean, what she did was list a load of,
um, convicted sex offenders.
Chuck in Monroe Bergoff, who is someone she has a problem with,
and India Willoughby, who's a, you know, a former news reader.
Right.
But it was very deliberately done as a...
as a provocation, wasn't it?
So I mean, that, that, in that case, intent was very definitely there.
Yeah.
Where it maybe didn't even need to be.
Helen: Well, I think the interesting thing is the question about whether
or not has she created a shield about this, um, law ever being used, right.
In the sense that people could go home.
Why are you coming after me and not JK Rowling or I, I know, I just thought about
the, um, equivalence with abortion laws.
I, you know, I think when you cover them in Northern Ireland, for example, they
did, they would go after people who were kind of slightly defenseless and say, just
plead guilty and we can make this go away.
And I think that's my slight worry about it, is if you have somebody who
say mentally ill does some very bad tweets, but they're, you know, they're
not in a position to, defend themselves, really, what are the, you know, are they
just gonna go after people like that?
And actually, is that a good use of police time?
Are those people really going to learn anything from the experience or is it
just gonna compound an existing problem?
That's my question about
Andy: it.
And are we now waiting to see.
Exactly that.
What does happen next and, and how it's used.
And there
Helen: are people who think it's overblown.
So Adam Tompkins, who has a voice I respect, he was a Conservative MSP
and a law professor said, you know, actually now that we put in some of
the more safeguards in it, some of the provisions have been watered down.
I'm not so worried about it.
So I, I think there is a case where it doesn't actually
necessarily lead to anything.
I'm just.
In principle opposed to laws on statute books that the police can use against
political opponents of the regime.
Right.
If this was happening somewhere else, that's how you would describe it.
Ian: Yeah.
And there seems to be two things that worry.
One is specifically because it happens all the time, the Eyes is, this
is idea of third party reporting.
Um, if someone else says, I was really offended by this piece on your behalf
and then reports you as people often do to regulatory bosses, is that okay?
, usually you are saying, well.
Shouldn't the person doing the reporting be the person who
was supposedly harmed by it?
And that strikes me as, you know, given uh, lobby groups and groups of people who
band together to do third party reporting in um, occasions, which are not always
justifiable, that strike me as a problem.
The other is this, I mean, it is pure all world.
Now.
We, we've now got.
If the police decide this hate incident isn't criminal, it's a
noncrime hate incident and it's logged.
So the fact that someone said you were up to no good, the police say it's not
a crime, but it is a hate incident.
So what does that mean?
It's very
Andy: like the old Scottish verdict of not proven, isn't it?
Which means not guilty, but don't do it again.
Yeah.
That's
Adam: kind of it, isn't
Helen: it?
Yeah.
The noncrime hate incidents are, I think, really troublesome.
I'm not quite sure how they kind of just sort of, I don't remember there
being a big backlash than when they were brought in, but every time I've heard
about one of them, essentially, if you get someone complains against you, you
don't often even get notified of it.
So you didn't get a chance to go, well, that's the person's mad, or, we've had
an argument over our lay landy eye, and then that's what, you know, all the things
you'd expect of, of kind of due process.
Yeah, so there's an instance in Scotland murder Fraser, who's a.
Conservative MSP was reported for noncrime hate incident for comparing,
saying that being non-binary was like identifying as a cat.
And he only found out about it 'cause it got reported to the authorities in
the Scottish parliament who then told him, but that ping had been on his
record and without him having a chance to contest it or argue the point.
Right.
And what,
Ian: and is there no charge of being just lame?
Which again, I would probably be, yeah, you argue for pro
Adam: prosecution.
Crap jokes now I think, I dunno that that's gonna help us out very much.
This is great.
Helen: I love this
Ian: powerful more definition.
I wasn't suggesting it was
Adam: illegal, so we
Helen: should have a, we should.
Adam thinks the internet should be switched off for a couple of
hours to give everyone a shot.
To calm
Adam: though solution to absolutely everything is we
just switch the internet off.
For several hours every day and we all have to go out in the fresh air.
I think that would sort, sort most of the problems in the world.
Right.
Good.
Helen: That's our
Adam: policy platform for the next exhibition.
That's good.
It's good.
But I mean, I think I can predict certainly some of what is gonna
happen next, which is going to be that there will be a load of free
speech Marty, who are absolutely determined to be charged on this.
There'll be a load of people on the other side who are absolutely determined to
continually report them to the police and, and, and demand that they do get charged.
There'll be an awful lot of police time wasted on, on something.
We'll, we will finally never end up in anything and you know, in the end of it.
All sorts of other stuff that the police should be investigating, not
getting investigated in Scotland, be that, be that, um, very expensive
camper vans or, or rapes and murders.
Ian: Do you think, um, JK Rowling enjoys.
The support of, um, the publications that previously labeled her as Boring Old Lefty
who goes on about, um, wealth inequality and writes these terrible novels that
are, uh, a little bitter on the side of Redistribution of Wealth is, is.
Do you think it's just par for the course?
My enemy's enemy?
It
Helen: is very funny that she has become a total hero to The Telegraph,
despite all of her career up until that point, basically standing against
everything that they, they supported.
I think you're right there is, I think, Adam, you bring up something, which I do,
I think I do worry about in the backlash to this, which is people now feeling
that need to say deliberately offensive things just to prove that you can.
Mm-Hmm.
And I can understand the impulse behind it, but actually I think, you know,
saying that you should be respectful and courteous to people is better done as a.
Here's politeness of society rather than as a illegally enforced
demand that is obviously gonna make people wanna kick against it.
And that's again, that's not what we want to happen.
And this so deliberate
Adam: misgendering just seems.
putting aside the cases of, of, of convicted sex offenders who've
obviously been trying to pull a fast one and get into women's prisons.
I'm not denying that they were there, but it's a tiny and unrepresented,
you know, it's like taking the men who were arrested in Operation Spanner over
say Sader massacre sex in the eighties as representative of all gay men.
Or it's like taking Wayne cousins as, as, as, as representative of all straight men,
Ian: it is a different tone.
And, you were wondering whether the JK was meant to be a shield, but if so,
it's, it was as badly drafted a tweet as the actual law is because sticking
in two people on the end of whatever you think about Monroe or sticking
in your will is not the same as the rapists and putting them all in a thing.
It's not very clever, is it?
Helen: I probably have more sympathy from jk Well, probably having faced some of
the same people telling me I'm a bigot too, but I, I agree with you about the
fact that it's maybe not helpful to lump in disparate concerns in that way.
And I like the one thing I would always say about JK Rowling is
she absolutely loves a rock.
Mm.
Um, and I think that she's decided this is an issue in which she's going
to make some noise, and therefore that comes with a lot of people
disagreeing with you in, in terms that range from the abusive to the polite.
Um, but that is a kind of function of being a kind of campaigner in
the way that, that she's done it.
I mean, I, I think for me, fundamentally, I come down to the fact that I
basically agree with her and I, and so I'm, I'm happy to say that even
while saying I probably wouldn't have.
Phrased it in those terms.
I'm, of which bit . So, hum.
Yusef for example, during the drafting of this wouldn't answer whether or not
it was hateful to say there are only two sexes and that that's the kind of
thing perhaps we should have clarified somewhere along the way that would
help the police certainly, wouldn't it?
Yeah.
And the victims minister couldn't say whether or not misgendering was prima
faia hate crime of face hate crime again.
That's the kind of thing, you just need some clarity about
how much wiggle room is there.
I think there's a huge difference between following someone down the.
Streets screaming abuse at them and saying something as a generalized
statement about an ideology.
And I don't think that the legislation clarifies really
the difference between those
Ian: two things.
Well, that, that's exactly, uh, Sensibly argued Tony, as opposed to
saying, look at all these people.
Some of 'em are murderers, um, some of them aren't, and
some of them are presenters.
I'm not sure that's hugely helpful.
Adam: I don't want
Andy: to, uh, I don't wanna alarm you all, but I found a segue to
what we're gonna talk about next.
Okay, cool.
Speaking of.
The internet being turned off and things being taken offline.
Something else has been taken offline.
It's a long run up I've taken.
It's very good.
Very good.
I'm ready.
I'm braced.
You can see where I've got.
Yep.
This is the second thing we wanted to talk about today, which is talk tv.
Adam: That's almost a brilliant segue, except that it's not, it's
been taken off air and put online.
Andy: That's the problem.
It's going offline, which confusingly means it's going online only.
Adam: Yeah, but it's been taken off and it hasn't yet either.
It's gonna happen in a couple of months, but other than that, it was
definitely worthy of the one show.
It was good.
I
Andy: don't like these mid show segue critiques at all, so talk tv.
Is going online only it's being take taken off air.
so Piers Morgan Show I think has already
Adam: done that.
Yep.
He, he was the early adopter.
He migrated already?
Andy: Yes.
And there was a, there was, this was announced, uh, quite recently
and you know, we've covered GB news a fair bit on this podcast
before, but talk to a bit less so.
And I just wanted to kick us off with a quote from Scott Taunton.
Scott, and we've just been talking about Scott Taunton in a way.
Scott Scottish taunting.
Scott Taunton.
Nevermind.
And they get worse.
He's simply, yeah.
Aren't we glad I didn't go with that one.
He's the president of broadcasting and he told staff in a briefing.
I just wanted to see what you thought of this as a reason for moving Talk TV
online only "two years ago" he said "we would not have been brave enough to launch
a channel without a linear presence.
"But audiences of all ages have moved fast and smartphones, and now
the primary device, uh, as far as news is concerned, we are therefore
intending that Talk TV comes off linear television from early summer."
Do you buy that?
Hang, hang on a minute.
So two years ago in 2022, no one had heard of the smartphone, no one was using them.
Very niche technology.
Adam: Well, what, what, what's gone to is actually doing that is, um, to use
a technical, um, uh, broadcasting term, talking complete bo because actually
news UK who, uh, run talk TV company, put an awful lot of money and an
awful lot of time into seeing weather.
There was any appetite for a linear tv, TV channel.
And they concluded many years ago that there wasn't, and they would
be much better off doing some kind of, uh, programming on demand.
There was talk about, and actually this is a way that technology has moved on, but
about fire sticks and people having little things they would be able to plug into a
port on the side of their tele Oh yeah.
Able to, able to watch, um, Murdoch TV on that.
And there were all sorts of things that were explored, but it was
very definitively concluded.
And, um, the news was.
Expressed to all staff by, uh, by Rebecca Brooks, the CEO of News uk, that there was
not a viable financial future for any sort of linear TV channel, at which point she
was overall by Rupert who said he likes TV channels and he wanted one anyway.
So they did it and it crashed and burned exactly as they had predicted it would.
And now they're going back to, uh, it's sort of plan a, it's
plan a and a half, I suppose.
Where, where, where they're gonna have this weird sort of, it was
always a bizarre hybrid anyway, because basically it's a radio station
for most of the hours of the day.
It's just talk radio with a camera pointed at it.
And talk radio is a pretty successful radio station.
But then they decided to do this primetime thing where they would
have Piers Morgan and they would have Tom Newton Dunn no longer there.
They would have Sharon Osborne, who barely ever turned up for her show anyway.
Um, and it would be this sort of all singing, all dancing TV station,
but no one watched that at all.
Ian: Yeah, it's the old motto, isn't it?
Go non woke, go broke.
There's two channels now we've had, I just can't wait for the rest
Helen: of them.
But it also suggests what does success look like in that space?
Right?
So I think it GB news, correct me if I'm wrong, hasn't done amazingly well
financially, but as a means of influencing the direction of the conservative
party seems to be incredibly good.
Right.
So you're saying we
Ian: should be grateful?
Well, because it's taken them to its lowest fault rate together.
And no to disappear,
Helen: right?
As it nose dives the Tory party into the ground, the only people crawling outta
the rubble will be presenters on GB news.
But you know what I mean?
I think it's very popular with the electorate who
picked the next Tory leader.
If you think these, a group of people who voted for Liz Trust
freely out of their own, you know, without any coercion at all, all GB
Adam: news gets talked about is completely disproportionate to the
number of people who are watching it.
And it's not just on the right, it's not just the Tory's electorate
because he winds up lefties as well.
I mean, he, he, he has this extraordinary profile and
they're pretty good on the stuff.
They put out on social media and they, they, they get, so if you are
not looking to make a profit and it's very, very far from making a profit,
it's hemorrhaging money, GB news, but that isn't what it's there for.
It's there so that Paul Marshall and the other investors can have
their say in, in the political sphere and in the culture wars.
And it's been extremely effective as that talk.
Never quite managed that.
Mm-Hmm.
I mean, it was actually much more professionally run in
terms of off com complaints.
I'm, I'm not sure that there've actually been any I, GB
News has done multiple ones.
If they have, no one watched it.
No problem.
Well, it probably is.
I mean, they could be doing absolutely anything and no one would know it.
We did say, before we came into this podcast, he said to me.
I don't really know much about talk TV to be honest.
That's fine.
We can say whatever we want.
No one does.
No one's ever seen it.
I It's Bigfoot or the Yeti.
It's, it's rumored to be out there somewhere.
People have, have heard things and seen footprints, but no one
actually knows whether it is or not.
But
Andy: that's a weird thing about talk TV and GB and how G has been so influential.
It is in a, it's in a TV space that is quite similar to the mail.
'cause one of the.
Elements of this discussion is how much, or how quickly or which papers
are gonna switch to supporting Labour before the next election.
And whether they're doing so because they can see the writing on the
wall and they're trying to get out ahead of public opinion, you know,
they're not actually leading it.
And most papers have much smaller readerships than they did 30 years ago.
So they are much less influential than they were even back then.
They were probably following.
Public opinion as much as leading it.
Mm-Hmm.
But one point made recently, I think there was a piece, uh, in the Guardian
about this that is that, you know, the BBC is still obsessed with reading the
papers and takes a lot of its lines and discussion points from there.
And GB News has done exactly that for Paul Marshall, whereas talk TV hasn't really.
Right.
Helen: There's a commercial version of you just wanna run a TV station
with a load of adverts on it that makes you a load of money.
Yeah.
And that in the cable news era was a, a really good thing to do.
You just had a mass viewership thing.
Now, as you say, with um, TVB News, it's much more like the traditional
reason for owning a newspaper.
You wanted to be a kind of player.
But Yeah, I, I mean, I, I have to say, I, the only things I ever
consumed of talk TV were clips of.
P Morgan shouting at sort of 20 year olds who'd ill advisedly wandered onto his
Adam: show.
Uh, those are still going, that has to be said, even though he is no longer
going out on, on the channel every night.
Uh, uh, uh, uh, at eight o'clock.
Um, that's still, I, I mean, it's very old hybrid now because as I say, it
hasn't shut down the linear TV channel.
But I look at their website just before we came in and it's, it's flogging a lot of,
um, you know, catch up and listen again.
But most of it for talk radio shows.
A lot of it for Piers Morgan, who doesn't go out on the channel
at all, but is just branded as himself as Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Now on YouTube and also this new thing, which we've written about in
the last couple of eyes called Sun tv, which appears to be possibly
the replacement for talk tv.
No one's quite sure at the moment.
It consists of one show, one weekly show.
Called, nevermind the ballots.
Do you see what they've done there with, uh, Harry Cole, the son's
political editor, and Kate McCann, who is the, um, now the, the, uh,
political editor of Times Radio, having been the political editor of Talk tv.
So they're shuffling people around between all of these different outlets
and they don't seem to be sure which, how to distinguish between them themselves.
So that's all part of the Talk TV offering now.
So I, I, I would say that.
Does seem to be an awful lot of confusion at News UK at the moment about exactly
what, what, what, what's going on with it and what they're going to do with it.
Less confusion about who's being blamed for it, because of course, when it comes
to the actual job losses, which are gonna result from the shutdown of Talk Tv.
Do you think it's any of the senior executives who are responsible for this
debacle going, go on, have a wild guess?
Ian: Uh, no.
And I mean, the pieces in the eye, um, have repeatedly suggested
that it's all Rupert's fault.
Um, 'cause he was told not to do this and he did it anyway.
Yeah.
So the chances of him taking the blame are.
Fairly
Adam: slight.
This is Rupert, who you will recall retired from the day-to-Day running of, of
News UK about six months ago, didn't he?
Yeah, but I think he's still having quite a big say in what goes on there.
Well
Ian: explain this then, which Helen brought up is when it comes
to the Sun Newspaper, uh, Rupert is, um, I say Rupert 'cause we're
obviously incredibly friendly.
Um, He is always willing to say it's The Son what won it.
Usually if he's changed sides the day before the election or even
after if necessary, so he will always shift his television output.
Is always right wing.
Why is that?
It's Rupert.
I told you.
Not in the office sake.
So embarrassing if they knew that I was in daily contact.
Helen: You, you say that it's always right wing, but I, um, I consumed a bit of,
nevermind the ballots, which I have to say if they bring in your anti lameness law is
gonna be in serious stage of prosecution, along with the sky's Electile Dysfunction.
And I thought, you see Andy, I hope you feel better about some of your puns now.
Um, it's wild out there.
But the Sun TV did an interview with Ki Stama that was, I thought, very
notable in the fact that it took him very seriously, the subsequent coverage.
And the thing said, oh, I just gotta look actually this kma guy.
He's not the kind of terrible communist
Adam: you might have thought.
A front page splash, which is a, is in a way more of an endorsement first
episode of this new new politics show and front page splash, which I would
say in terms of actually getting in front of, uh, viewers and readers
eyes is, is a lot more important than anything in the editorial column.
That's really interesting.
And wasn't it
Andy: Harry Cole conducting the interview with him?
It was indeed the Indeed Son's political.
Yeah.
So he was last seen.
I mean, his last encounter with Starer was putting him in a front page story
saying Starer traveled around the world, freeing monsters and, and rapists
and killers and pedos, and when they were all on death row and what, you
know, what an awful thing that was
Adam: to do at the moment, they are very much trying to have it both ways.
The son, so we have a very, very approving interview with Rachel
Reeves and I think they mocked her up in a Thatcher wig to say she is the
new Thatcher a couple of weeks ago.
True cyber approval.
And, and then you get Trevor, Trevor Kavanaugh saying,
ah, no, they're all used.
They're all terrible.
They're all lefty.
So at the moment they're kind of looking which way to go.
I mean, they will, the sun al it.
It's never the sun what won it, but it's always the, the winners what won the sun.
I mean, Rupert always, always backs a winner and, and sun editors as
well who are allowed a bit of a say of their own, I believe, uh, are
always want to back a winner as well.
But the idea that it's some long term endorse, I have
to do whatever Rupert said.
I mean, there's this great myth that's kind of grown up around 1997 and the
idea that , the sun swung behind black.
Well, they did do that, but do you know when they did it?
Helen: Was it the 4th of May, 1997?
Adam: Not quite that, but the polling day was May the first.
It was.
It was March the 18th.
Wow.
So it's really, really late on in things that they, and everyone was says, and
it's because of course he went over to Haman Island and he went to the Murdoch
conference and he sucked up to money.
It was two years after that.
I mean, there was two years, a lot, a lot more work going into it as well,
which I'm sure is going on in the Labour Party at the moment because they will
be working as hard to very, very hard to get the endorsement of, um, both.
Both the Sun and the Times because there is still this tradition that that
newspaper endorsements matter in some way.
I, I'm not sure that's ever actually been true, I mean, the male at the moment
seems to be sort of equi, distantly hostile to the Tories and Labour.
So there's gonna be some interesting triangulation that goes on when
this election does get called.
Ian: it strikes me the, Tory supporting newspapers support, not the Tory.
Party as it currently is in government, but a Tory party in their
own heads consisting of Sue Ella Braman and Nigel Farage, who isn't
even in the party and a few others.
So they are, they're not traditionally Tory supporting.
And I'm interested that once we get past the election, will papers like
the Telegraph, the express, the mail, will they know anyone left
in mainstream politics or will they focus entirely on um, the fringe?
Are we gonna have our first
Andy: reform supporting paper?
Ian: That would be
Adam: interesting.
I mean, Richard is gone.
That is the direction, direction that the Telegraph is going in Inana.
I mean, if you look at all of their coverage, they are way to the
right of where the Tory party are.
I they've just signed up Sowell Braman as a columnist.
So that gives you an idea of where they're at in the, in, in, in the Tory party
as she, she barely is these days, but.
It's possible, you know, stranger things have happened.
But there's also
Helen: a problem between the kind of Liz Trust libertarianism and the kind of what
the Yip offer was, which was yes, very right wing on things like immigration,
you might say, but also very strongly in favor of a social security welfare.
Now, as you say, Adam, the triple lock on pensions, I think it would be suicidal
for anyone to re repeal against that.
So there is a kind of space for a party that is.
Socially conservative, but actually fiscally is more in the place where labour
is, and I think that's where reform is, is probably trending well, don't reform
Andy: support nationalization of various key industries.
Mm-Hmm.
It sounds like you know who
Adam: you're voting for.
Helen: But they're polling pretty.
Pretty well as far as we can see.
I think reformer ahead
Andy: among men,
Helen: all men.
And now only men can vote.
Thank God.
Adam: Men.
Not all.
Men and men.
Let's come back to all men.
The express, by the way, um, on Tuesday morning this week was calling
for a referendum on immigration.
Just sort of a Yes.
Do you like it?
Do you want it?
We have, we, right?
We have in 2016.
Yeah.
We were pretending that was about something else.
Andy: Ian, who's the I gonna
Adam: endorse?
Um, I'll just check Ruper,
Ian: it's still unsure.
Sorry.
Andy: talking of things that men
Ian: like.
Andy: Let's go finally to the Garrick.
Well, three of us can go to the Garrick Actually.
Matt, Matt, the producer, you're also welcome to come to the Garrick.
Oh,
Adam: thanks guys.
It's very supportive.
Can I not come?
Is that
Andy: alright?
Right.
This is the Garrick Club founded in 1831 named after the great actor David Garrick.
Who was no longer alive at that time.
But the club's state of purpose was to be somewhere that actors and men of
refinement could meet on equal terms.
And, and I'm quoting here, tend to the regeneration of the drama.
And that is something that Garrick has been doing in the last few weeks.
'cause there have been all sorts of, um, there have been resignations,
there has been bruhaha over the fact that it's a man only club.
You know, very high profile membership.
Ka bash Bonneville.
Suge at gov.
You name it, all the
Adam: great actors, every age,
Andy: the great shapeshifters of our time.
Um, and there has been this long running campaign to change the rules
and allow women in, which has not so far proved successful despite.
You know, loads of the members clearly really being absolutely
desperate to make this change.
For some reason, it just hasn't happened.
Helen: the sad thing is, last time when they had a referendum,
there was a majority in favor of changing the rules to admit women.
It was, but it's just, you have to have a two thirds majority.
It was
Andy: pretty ni it was 50.5%.
Ian: Yes.
Come all bricks.
Tea, Andy?
Yeah.
If you, if you don't like a two thirds majority, you
would've liked one over Brexit.
I bet.
Andy: Ah.
Ah, there was an overwhelming mandate from the Garrick members to keep it men only.
And, uh, this has blown up recently, partly because the guardian have printed
a, a, a large number of the members' names, which have included all these
pillars of civil society as well, and it
Ian: was a huge scoop.
it was written by Amelia Gentleman, which given that it was about
gentleman's clubs was incredibly funny.
Um, and the list itself, um, was, uh, revealing, I mean, partly
because of the names that didn't appear, but I gather there was, they
had to go through some procedure.
Is that right,
Helen?
Helen: What I understand is that because of privacy concerns, you can't just.
Blast out the entire email list.
So there has to be a public interest justification for making someone's
private club affiliation public.
So that's why I think the list is very much focused on senior civil
servants judges, you know, people who have a role in shaping laws or shaping
policy, and therefore their mem, you know, their membership of an exclusive
club is therefore a matter of public
Adam: interest.
So it was decided at a high level at the Guardian that there was
no public interest in naming.
For instance, Amelia Gentleman's Father-in-Law, Stanley Johnson.
Yes.
Who's very, very keen on women from a lot of things we've heard about.
So I, I, I
Helen: really respect Mia for this because she must have known the massive amount
of piss taking that was gonna flow.
She went and did the story anyway, and I sort of respect that,
Adam: hey, we had to phone up Simon Jenkins last week and say they're
not naming you either, are they?
And he, it turns out very supportive of women members as well.
So many of us working so hard.
Yes.
You
Helen: wrote a column on that.
Um, can you, you gimme the gossip, Adam, who am I in?
Flute Street is a member.
Adam: Uh, well, uh, there in the Guardian's cover Rogert, but
not in the males coverage of it.
Paul Daker, editor in Chief of Associated Newspapers, uh, very much in the males
coverage of it, but not in the Guardian's.
Former member Alan Berger, ex-Ed Editor-in-Chief of the Guardian who
resigned in 2010, uh, shortly after.
He tried to get Lord Miners appointed Lord Miners.
Yeah, yeah.
Who was, who had been boss of the Guardian Leader Group.
Uh, and then went on to be city minister and there was a lot of questions
over tax and things weren't there.
Oh, really?
Was some dodginess.
Yeah.
He was blackballed.
Uh, and Alan Berger resigned that year, which he's probably
quite grateful about now.
'cause that would've been a bit embarrassing, wouldn't it?
It would.
I
Ian: mean, I, again, I'm, I think the Garrick, we should say that it's always
been the source of enormous amusement.
Francis Ween, uh, former eye journalist found some coverage of the, of the
Garrick in, uh, Reynolds newspaper from the 1st of August, 1858.
And this is what Francis Ween reeds over his breakfast.
But it does say the Garrick Club is "one of those snob
snuggies that abound in London.
He consists for the greater part of comic authors wig
journalists, 10th rate artists.
and he goes on, uh, fast barristers, faded, dandies, Irish and Ethiopian
melodies, unspeakable mps, Rue nobleman, impedance showman.
It just goes on and on with this extraordinary list, and it says, the
point of the Garrick Club has its job, the cultivation of cism, and is
a place for inveterate tough hunters.
Mm.
What's a tough hunter?
A tough
Andy: hunter is someone who's a snob, is a sort of a social climber or a snob.
And I know that's through personal experience.
Yeah.
I was actually tough Hunter of the year.
Uh, when I at school, I like, I mean as a comic author and I would
say 10th rate artist, I quite like the sound of the Garrick.
I've never, I used to walk past it all the time.
'cause where is it?
It's on, um, it's in Cove Garden.
Helen: I'm not even allowed to look at it.
As a woman.
I,
Andy: I sure you have
Ian: to.
No, you are allowed in on a ladies night.
Oh, ladies night.
Ladies night.
I dunno if I've got the lot of Peter behind
Helen: the bar.
There's a male stripper, which unfortunately is an actor over 70,
Adam: but he's not.
I was quite surprised.
Find it's not the only all male club in London, is it?
There are still several women that don't have met women.
Helen: Whites I know is one of them because I think the male used to
have its Christmas back bench dinner there, and I always thought, what if,
what if a woman needs to be invited?
But luckily it never came up.
Adam: I, I, I have been to several clubs that Foot of Men and they're all
generally dancing with their tops socks.
So I mean, this is the image I have Paul and Simon Heifer
and Time Jenkin getting there.
And it's off with the salmon and cucumber ties and up on the podium.
Is
Ian: that what goes up?
I think it's a different sort of men's club out of heaven.
Andy: No, The names are extraordinary.
So the other all male clubs, as far as I can tell, uh, the beef steak.
Mm-hmm.
The travelers, Brooks Booles and Whites, which did allow the queen in.
I think under sance, long as she promises not to act up.
Helen: there is, I should say at one WO women's only club, which is the University
Women's Club, which over in Mayfair.
So there is a, there is a, a total terrible discrimination against
men is perpetuated in that one.
But do you have to
Adam: be a university to go to that one?
Yes.
Or a specific university?
Helen: I think so.
I think it's
Adam: just
Andy: generally right because all of these clubs do have quite a strong financial
discrimination in the structure, which is.
You gotta be rich.
You've gotta be rich.
Mm.
It's really expensive.
And the
Ian: Garrick, as perhaps I pointed out early in the eighties, it's balls only.
Um, and generations of non boring people have tried to get in as
members, but every time they're out voted and the balls win again.
We have found the Gar Club immensely funny for the entire, um,
longevity of the magazine and we.
We ran a fantastically successful ad for a new Barbie doll, which is the Gar
Club Barbie, which has a wine stain tie and a blazer and soup, stain trousers.
the point about this doll was you pull the cord and she
reminisces about meeting Kingsley.
Amen.
And the master of the rolls and house of John Gil Good had spotted
dick and custard, It is one of the mysteries as to why women would
actually want to belong to this club.
Yeah, and I think that's where the judges came in, isn't it?
Helen: Yeah.
I think if you were, for example, um, Lady Hale, who was the Supreme Court
Justice, I think she once spoke about it because she said basically all, everyone,
all of my colleagues are all going and hanging out together all the time.
And there is a whole thing.
Oh, one doesn't discuss work at the Garrick, but it is a bit like the way
that there was a big feminist backlash against, you know, people gonna strip
clubs after work and that, or golf clubs, you know, and those being the kind of
way where the lads all did their deals together, that that is very exclusionary.
And if you are the only woman in a male dominated field.
I dunno.
I've got friends who aggressively don't care about this issue at all.
Um, that's
Ian: fair enough.
But I think in the gallery, which is he was meant to be an actor's club,
and the reason everyone writes about it rather than whites or bootles is because
it's not full of boring old judges.
It's full of supposedly glamorous actors.
and that's meant to be the draw.
And the funny thing is, if you go in and you look at the wall, it's entirely
pictures of actresses who obviously aren't, aren't allowed to be members.
Uh, so fabulous pictures of, you know, all the greats and then, uh,
oh, no, but they can't come in.
How weird have you been in, have you been in it?
I'm, I'm, I'm always in there and I go in with Rupert Murdoch,
we talk about who we're gonna marry next.
And I again, that you just couldn't do that if there were women around.
Andy: I just, one piece of coverage of this, there was a, in one of a
Gentleman's pieces in the Guardian, , she was speaking to one member of the
clergy who was a member and said, said to her, the resistance is crumbling.
It feels like 1989 when chunks started to be knocked out of the Berlin wall.
Helen: Except it's a wall of bloke pastry beef, Wellington.
Oh, it's very moving.
I
Adam: know.
It is.
Sort mind that women have been deprived of their basic human rights
and listened into by the stary on the other side of the carrot walls.
Helen: What about my human right to drink a great claret at lunchtime?
Ian: Come on.
But there is, there is a, a good bit of news is that they've been looking
at the legislation and, uh, the club rules, it's not actually legally,
but the Club Association rules and they've brought in Lord panic.
If you remember, he very successfully, , defended Boris Johnson during Party Gate.
So, so good luck, Ned.
Um, uh, and he's noticed that in the original wording, it's
the word he is continually used.
Remember, but this doesn't mean that he is a man.
He
Adam: can apparently now Lord Panic, has agreed with Michael Bell off qc, uh, that
he can apply equally to men and women.
Which is sort of bringing us around full circle in terms of segues right
to where we began this conversation.
Helen: I mean that, is there a hoist on their own petard there?
'cause I remember doing feminist language theory all the way through and it was
always kind of like, actually if we just saying the A man, the hunter, that's
fine because that actually means humans.
So I think in a way it's kind of, of all the brutal things to be brought
down and saying that he applies equally to everybody was a very
fashionable position if you were a reactionary in 19, in the 1980s.
So if that's now gonna screw them over and let women in
sort of poetic justice, I think
Ian: I'm just thinking about.
JK Row applying to become a member.
Is this going to make people's heads explode?
I, I think it
Adam: is.
She can just bore on about her favorite pet subjects, can't you?
She'd be very welcome,
Andy: and that's it for this episode of page 94.
Thank you very much for listening.
We'll be back again in a fortnight with another one.
And if you would like to drop us a line about any of these things, you
can get to us on podcast@private.co uk.
We welcome your questions, comments, do right in podcast at private.
Hi for night.co uk.
We love hearing from you.
This episode as so many of them are, was produced by Matt Hill of Rethink Audio.
Thanks for listening.
Bye for now.