Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast

Hello and welcome to another episode of Page 94.

My name's Andrew Hunter Murray, and I'm here in the private eye office with

Helen Lewis, Adam McQueen and Ian Hislop.

We are here as ever to discuss the stories of the week since the last

issue of the MAGAzine came out.

And it's obviously an enormous crunch week, uh, for Europe, capital E

capital everything... with various summits taking place over Ukraine.

And how the continent is gonna respond, how America has or has not responded.

And the thing I, I suppose we wanted to focus on this time, Helen, you've

been looking at a lot of this, is the increasing splits, particularly in the

world of the right as we go, Mega MAGA And

. Meghan Maggot.

Yeah, Meghan

MAGA.

Because

there have been a few

big get Moed

Uh, there have been a few huge conferences recently, which, uh, things like cpac Yes.

And in London, I believe it was the Arc, ARC: Alliance for Responsible Citizenship.

Mm-hmm . Which

does sound sinister Now I say it out loud , uh, and we'll see how sinister it is.

But these are things which don't really intrude on the lives of.

normal people, but which you've been spending a lot

of time with . Exactly.

but Very important to very

abnormal people.

Yes.

. Sorry, Helen, but I

mean.

mean,

people like me, they are a big deal.

Um, Politico described CPA, which is a Conservative Political Action Conference

as being like a kind of MAGA commenter.

Right.

Which

I think is a good way of saying Communist international, but it is, they are

these kind of great international gatherings of this very . Online, right.

CPAC's been around since the 1970s.

It used to be very mainstream.

Um, Ronald Reagan gave the keynote address at the first one.

Then it went very libertarian, very tea party.

And now it is essentially a kind of audition to be a Donald Trump clone.

So you get Georgie Maloney of Italy's spoken there, having a malai of

Argentina turned up with this chainsaw, which he takes to bureaucracy.

that is the kind of alliance of people who see themselves

very much as the coming thing.

However, rwy'n feel like in a way, a bit early to say that it's, it's peaked.

But I think in a way, the thing that's fascinating about 'em is

they don't have any real ability to deal with that having actual power.

Quite a lot of these people, they're so in love with the idea

of brand being anti-establishment, that they very much struggle with

the concept of actually governing.

Okay.

Which I think

I think is fascinating, but I also think that there is a danger with

a lot of this stuff, that these

people are drifting further away from the shores of sanity.

May I talk to you about Liz Trusts

briefly.

Of course.

As a parochial list.

I'm only interested in how this affects our patch.

Yeah.

And

Well, I'd always viewed CPAC as a bit like the doctor who conventional, one

of the international sci-fi things where people turn up in costume

Yeah.

Um, and Liz Truss seems to be the ultimate

delegate

' cause she'll, she'll appear in some sort of cosplay.

Um, and here she was again.

Yeah, I mean, her speech is just annals about how online things are.

Okay, so she brought

she brought out the Albanian chicken nugget story, which if you've

spent any time on the right wing internet, you'd be very familiar.

We should just say briefly what that is.

Uh,

The idea that someone couldn't be deported back to Albania because

of they're a family member.

There's liked chicken nuggets that they got here.

To be fair, the McNugget is one of the greatest inventions of human history.

But the idea was they couldn't be deported because

of it.

So the nugget thing, not not,

no, I think the nugget thing is, is true up to a point, but it's an

interesting one of these things that just becomes a, I mean, I've talked

about this before in the podcast.

You know, something that everybody in a certain bit of right wing politics

has heard of is actually axiomatic to them that this is an exemplar of the

failed state, and I don't think the left is quite as good at creating those

kind of memes.

Can I just say, you described that as a very, very online thing.

I think it originated on the front page of The Daily Telegraph,

which is its own batch it space.

but is very online now.

Right.

It's been eaten alive.

It is no longer When we had this conversation before the paper of

Colonel Buffin Tufton in the Shires, it

is now the pa, of very intense looking young men

The paper of Bufton 8 5 7 9 9 on Twitter, isn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

She also mentioned the abortion clinic protestor, if you remember

the man who was arrested for being in a buffer zone, which was

a big feature of JD Vance's speech to the Munich Security

Conference saying that Europe

no

longer has free speech.

That

was

apparently the main problem

with Europe.

Right, and it again, a story that is true.

He was arrested for praying in a buffer zone.

But the whole point of the buffer zone is that people being there is

intimidating to women seeking abortion

services.

And then this is the Apogee, I think, of the online list.

How online is this?

She then had to go about the fact that U-S-A-I-D funded, Rory Stewart's wife.

wife.

The charity run by Rory Stewart's wife, Shoshana.

And you just think that how many people in the world are in the market

for a story of basically Liz trusts having a beef with a podcaster.

presume she had to explain for that audience who Rory Stewart was

No, she didn't at all.

Just

She said they fund the BBC.

They fund the Tony Blair Institute and they fund Rory Stewart's wife.

And the crowd

did not go wild.

The crowd went . Who,

as a rule of three, you put the one people know at the end, um, you know,

I hate to give comedy tips to Liz Trust 'cause she's out shone all of us.

I mean, really over the years.

Is,

Yeah, it was, it was really interesting to watch, uh, somebody who has, has

just spent so much time on the internet that they don't, they just completely

lost touch with what a, a normal person would be interested in

and care about or might have

heard

about.

Yes.

I mean I'm obviously,

on

the internet

the whole

day,

. Um, but I mean, even I got Farage's speech, which again, as

a slightly um, older, um, reader, is absolutely extraordinary.

Farage turns up in a foreign capital and says, my country

is a complete hell hellhole.

everybody there is miserable.

If only we were like the United States, we'd be happy.

We've got an appalling, you know, left wing government and life is miserable.

Um, traditionally we didn't like people going abroad and

slagging off our country, and

I mean, to be honest, the writers made a lot of people slagging

off their country over the years being one of the major problems.

But to literally hear a man on a quite an agreeable weekend,

I mean, I did go out a bit

bit,

when I

wasn't on the internet.

It seemed to me there were a lot of people having very nice weekend

lots

of

of people engaged in activities that weren't being locked

up for

a failure of free speech.

I just thought you are now beginning just to sound like a mad person online.

Well, it just reminded me of all those, um, leftists in the twenties

and thirties who used to go over to Stalins Russia and go, isn't it amazing?

Everything just works here and everyone's so happy and like, we're

not like that back in Britain.

We'd love a bit of your Soviet communism back in Britain.

I wish we could have it.

And everyone back in Britain went, we

don't want

Soviet communism . That sounds terrible.

But it has got that same thing of sort of self-styled intellectuals going to a

foreign country and just sort of pandering

to

its

leaders.

Mm-hmm .That was very much . The tone Georgie Maloney, I think at least had some

mild sort of sense that actually she might be passing from Trump's line on Ukraine.

But realistically, it was, it was the giant Trump suck up

Ac I probably watched too much of this, but there was a sort of, again,

a competition in doing stupid salutes, um, because, Steve Bannon having, seen

Musk get vast amounts of publicity, then did his own version of a Nazi

salute, which he obviously said wasn't.

And then a Mexican actor who, you know, like all actors wants to be in

politics 'cause they've seen Trump do it.

He did the same thing.

that is why I, repeat the sci-fi analogy.

You do seem to see people acting up.

And copying each other in a rather sort of

nerdy,

fanboy

way.

I don't think these people want anyone to live long and prosper.

just to, to

Um,

Yes.

It was a quite a, a bleak moment when the leader of the French far

right party pulled out of doing his speech because he thought N Bannon had

done a n

Nazi

salute

bit far for him.

It was just, it was sort of a great sitcom we've done for the moments in a sort of

very heavily far right conference where people go a bit much, bit, much come on.

this is another strange thing.

I mean, if it's another thing that I suppose Europeans have

to look at and say, well, a

lot of

Europeans living do remember a time when Nazi salutes are being chucked around.

it probably has a bit more.

Meaning over there.

I mean, it's illegal in Germany, isn't it

To do the things that are being

thrown

Yes.

There's a, there's a, big row about Americans not understanding why Germany

might have quite strong rules about hate speech or why indeed the German parties

don't want to go into coalition for the AF with the a FD, the far right party.

And, and there's a sort of idea that that's illegitimate.

That's somehow by not working with the a FD or in some way kind of repressing

them rather than making your own active political choices about what, who you are

and aren't allowed to do business with.

They kind of want.

That's what I mean.

They want no guard rails, except occasionally someone does overstep.

Uh, Adam May be the only one who appreciates this.

Been 2017.

Guess who which Daily Telegraph aligned later internet

celebrity got banned from cpac,

I think Bleached hair.

hair, Milo

Opolis.

It was Miley Opolis who was exactly

spokesperson for Kanye

West.

Yeah, exactly.

In the most interesting

career

move

sort of inevitable career move I

Yes, from Daily Telegraph blogger to alt-right figure to

Christian evangelist, ex-gay to

Kanye West Burn, and maybe the most eclectic CV in human history.

But he was banned after he said, you know, I was abused as a

child and it didn't do many harm.

And actually, if it's fine to have sex with people as young as 13,

and again, there was this moment of suddenly lots of people who

said, oh, you can't say anything.

These days went, you

can't say that.

And I think this is the bit that they're consistently running into, is that.

Anyone who tries to enforce line is exactly you are saying is seen as being

a bit of a grownup, a bit of a buzzkill.

And I think it will just take them into

places that are obviously ugly

and

the

electorate

will not

follow.

So what's interesting then becomes who is going to follow, especially in weeks

like this one, where what happens with, for example, Ukraine is, is so important.

So we saw,

the a RC feels like a, a slightly vanilla version of uh, cpac, but

there's still plenty of craziness.

Doing the rounds

there,

Kimmy Badenoch made a speech there and, uh, she was later

interviewed by Jordan Peterson on his podcast, and I have to say, Helen.

.You are responsible now for my YouTube algorithm throwing up a lot

of really ripe stuff that I , I would.

it's really interrupting the heat pump videos that I like to be served

and that I'm comfortable with.

Instead,

I'm getting loads of Jordan Peterson just dished up to me on a daily

basis.

Tell, I mean, Tell, me about that.

you should try getting it dished up to you for 90 minutes live.

It's quite

thing.

but she, so Camry bock, uh, you know, ha has been trying to get in

on this a bit and, and clarify that Western civilization is in crisis

mm-hmm ..And

not because of people.

, let's say invading western countries and killing thousands of people there.

It's because of, uh, weakness

weakness and,

well, she's quite, she's plugged into, this sphere very heavily.

What she doesn't appear to be so plugged into, you've had

conservative local party association chairman complaining that she's

not doing the kind of hard work of the, what they call the rubber chicken

circuit, doing

that kind of

level

of

rebuilding,

and that's.

That's chicken you eat rather than the rubber chicken being

the stock comedy gag for

a

Yes.

Is that

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're reading Rubbery Chicken and a sort of mid-range, um, community hall.

Okay.

But yeah.

And so, you know,

uh,

also for our

non-online listeners, there was another row, uh, this week about the

fact that Fraser Nelson, formally edge for the Spectator went on

a podcast called Trigonometry.

And Stan k has been a, is a big speaker at the art conferences and

they had a a row about whether or not.

Rishi Sinna is English and constant Zen said, you can't call him English.

He's a brown Hindu.

And it was a ve it was a, a moment in which a lot of people sort of suddenly

went, oh my God, who are these people that we've been associating with?

How, you know, how could this possibly happen?

And it was another moment of people suddenly realizing that there

was a line that they hadn't been enforcing and they're feeling that

they, they really had to do it.

The interesting thing about that is who was on the week before Fraser Nelson?

Kemi Badnock was on trigonometry.

This is the sphere that she is plugged into having these Oh, so

spicy conversations does she want to be a podcaster or does she want to

be leader of the conservative party?

At the moment, she seems really rather happier being a spicy podcaster.

and the, you talk about, um, ordinary people realize that there

is a line they don't want to cross.

And I think the line is different in Europe because of our history.

And again, I mean this week and the number of people have been coming forward saying,

I used to work for Trump and he didn't know X. Um, we had John Kelly said he

wasn't sure that Trump knew who was on which side during the second World War.

I mean, and again, that is a funny, but b sort of explains why

That particular group of people in that sphere, they do not know any history.

So, um, the bits of it they choose to interpret, are not the ones that

people living in Europe, See as this is, um, where we don't go across and

that, I just feel that becomes really clear when , when you look at, Trump's

version of, of how the Second World War went, what happened during the

thirties, what dictatorship means.

What appeasement means, that narrative, which we've all internalized.

He doesn't have,

But I think Trump lives entirely in the moment, doesn't he?

And yeah, no, I don't.

There's no great ideology, by the way, and the big attack on

Zelensky last week and calling him a

dictator,

which

is the most

ridiculously historical bit of nonsense ever.

But that was just because he thought Zelensky had insulted him by saying

he lived in a disinformation space.

So it's just that Trump thing is, it's a personal insult and I will kick back

in the worst way I can think possible.

And then everyone else has to sort of go along with this and

turn this into some kind of

policy.

Yeah,

you're

right.

And the thing that's interesting is that this bit of the right loves to talk,

particularly when they talk about gender.

They love to say, oh, the left, you know, taking leave

its senses are so outta touch.

But if you look at the polling on things like, who was the

villain in the second World War?

Was it Churchill or Hitler?

Most people in in America are pretty clear on, I may able to call that one.

Or it was the same thing.

Who invaded?

Who did Ukraine, in fact bring it on themselves by wearing two shorter

a skirt Or did in fact Russia.

Invade them.

This is really like some of this stuff.

They have really drifted away from median public opinion

without seeming to realize it's

all care,

which is kind of fascinating to me.

And may, you know, they're obviously not all of these leaders are all

elected leaders at the moment.

They're not paying the electoral price

for it,

but

at some point

they might.

Yeah.

it's interesting seeing leaders like Farage who has managed to retain,

he does speak at these things.

But he has retained an era of relative nor normality.

It was interesting seeing him being forced into the grudging concession

that no zelensky is not a dictator.

Mm-hmm.

quite,

grudging, wasn't It

and

extremely

grudging.

I mean, Bo Boris Johnson did si similar gymnastics

by saying that you really mustn't take anything.

Trump

says

literally

Yeah.

But just

words,

to

any of

it.

Just

on your side.

side.

Yeah.

But

he's literally come around today and said, oh no.

It's entirely reasonable for Trump to be demanding all of the,

uh, the mineral wealth from, um,

uh, from Zelensky,

you know, in return for you.

Yeah, I was, that's absolutely fine.

You just think this was the one place where people still like,

chew Boris Johnson.

You knew you were, you were a hero.

They were like naming their kids after you and putting up weird

frescoes of you defeating dragons and things, and you, you lost that one.

Now you lost your audience.

That's quite sad.

'cause there're asked, aren't there, there were kids who were called Tony Blur in uh,

Kosovo.

Yeah, in

in Kosovo.

Yeah.

And on the generation of little Boris, the only ones left with the ones he

actually fathered.

Mind

you, if

you're in

Ukraine, you're called

Boris.

You

can

probably

know

this.

Implausible

deniability,

isn't it?

You can actually say no.

No,

it's not After

Johnson

Well,

he was there for a day or

two.

So

I suppose, the,

thing I'm interested in and is where does this go?

'cause the, the, this movement, the macca movement is.

Is in its pomp.

Mm-hmm . You know, Thousands of people are being sacked across

the

states and

and in the uk

it's,

it's

clearly the media landscape, the telegraph, the spectator.

Lots of these, uh, publications seem to be

drinking the Kool-Aid

very enthusiastically.

What comes

next?

I think the, death of stuff like this is when it becomes, begins to seem cringe.

And my wonder, our question is, is, is it, does it stay feeling dangerous enough

that it doesn't become, feel slightly

pathetic?

I mean, if you look at the way that, um.

You know, uh, like Woodhouse was writing about, uh, in the, in

the thirties about, you know, swanning around in his footer bags.

There was always an element that some of this stuff was, was laughable,

um, that protected people from it.

I do wonder if some of this stuff does seem quite laughable,

even as it seems very dangerous.

There's other stuff happening too.

So the German elections among young people, everybody in, uh, you know, the.

That German electorate has moved to the, to the right.

Definitely.

But women, uh, 1824 have moved to the left to de linker just in extraordinary

numbers, just the most obvious shift, which is again, is an anti-establishment

party and there's no reason that the left, the anti-establishment left couldn't

pick up on some of this energy too.

It's just at the moment, it's all, you know, the, the green party in various

countries

are picking up some of this energy.

So at that might be, you know, we might be looking at a broader dissolution of

kind of, you know, the center crumbling.

But it's always only presented as only being the, the right, because that's,

you know, that's where lots of the energy is and the ecosystem is of the media.

I think that's a really good point about being laughable.

And, uh, in the same way that Woodhouse's Spode, um, became ridiculous.

There was just a hint of it in a couple of Trump recent speeches of this

being no longer him being the bully who's making the jokes, but a slightly

pathetic figure.

Mm-hmm

. When he made up his own

ratings,

that didn't look so good.

I

I

find it hard to believe that we haven't reached the moment of Pete cringe.

I mean, I watched that bit where the Argentine president comes

on looking like something from

the comedians in the seventies.

The wheel tapper and shunters social club and hands are gleaming chainsaw Elon

Musk, who for some reason is dressed as

The Terminator, but sort of halfway through the bit

where he is melting into

the larva at

the end

of Terminator two, and then he waves it around and actually shouts

chainsaw, and you just think, oh God

Safe.

The my favorite thing about

cringe myself

inside

out.

yeah.

Is

the fact that

is, the fact the chainsaw

wasn't

on,

which was presumably

it had never been used.

It was

easy, but it was like health and safety and you were like,

come on man, if you are sure.

Truly, man.

Like that's the

interesting

that that truly manly

man

surely

uses

his

chainsaw,

right?

Yeah.

It should still have sawdust on it.

it's like all the people with the extremely impressive cars that have

never got seen a splash of mud.

'cause

they're exclusively used

around Knotting hill.

Right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's All this sort

of

North

Face

jacket

It's never been mountaineering has it?

It's only been to

W one.

There was a circus act called our chaos, which was French and

they were properly

mad and

they had the chainsaws

on and

they

juggled with them.

Yeah,

I mean if

you're

not

gonna

do

that,

I'm

not

going

to

your conference

, unless Elon

Musk gets one of those fire retardant suits, sets himself a

blaze and runs across the stage.

The next one.

Is

he even

a real

man

at all?

. Can, can I end with a Liz Trust quote that, that I thought

was absolutely fabulous.

She said, you want totally.

She said, we missed the first American Revolution

in 1776.

We want to be part of the second

I

know it looks

like

What?

Miss it?

No, no.

What?

What were we saying about people not knowing history?

Wow.

She

did this great parenthetical and she went in a way, it was against us,

in

way,

in

a

way,

in,

in in all ways.

We were

And ironically

now even madder than George ii.

So it comes full circle,

now we come to an enormous media news story.

I wanna say enormous.

I mean 15,000 words long, has been published in the New York Times.

Adam, you as the reading, everything that's ever written

about the Murdoch family and their media conglomerate correspondent

I've pearled through it.

I've read it so

you don't have

to

Yes indeed.

Not just 11 million words in the New

York Times,

but an equal number of words in the Atlantic as well.

So the last we heard of them, the Murdoch family, they were suing each

other in, I believe, a Nevada courtroom,

They were

indeed,

yes.

And

it's, it's Rupert and one of the sons.

A Slightly

right wing one and the other three principal children, there

are more children obviously along

the way.

Wow.

But they've

been suing each other over the control, over

empire after Rupert

dies.

In summary, yeah.

Rupert is trying to vary the, uh, the Murdoch family Trust, which was

set up in 1999 when he divorced, um, Murdoch, um, the mother of

three of his eldest children.

And there is also Pru

then the second three are Elizabeth, James and Lachlan.

And

I

know Laughlin.

Yeah,

Yeah.

We get in trouble.

We get letters when we call him Lachlan, even though we spell

Lachlan, but he is Lachlan, so

yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

that's cause his nickname was lackluster.

Um, uh, and probably given to him by his father, given how cruel they all are.

after his performance running one of the divisions.

So Lachlan, Lachlan, you know,

Okay.

it's

our fault.

. So this was the setup when he divorced Anna, who'd been married

to for a great many years.

She was entitled to half of the Empire, which you can imagine is an awful lot

when you're talking about Murdoch.

Addie Pom in 1999, and she sacrificed that in order that.

All of the adult children would have a say in the running of the business in future.

Uh, this is the point of course where, uh, Rupert was divorcing Anna and

marrying Wendy Dng, who was his wife, who definitely wasn't a Chinese spy as

opposed to Elena Kova, who is the new wife, who is definitely not a Russian spy.

So

we've got, say it again.

James Murdoch, who British listeners might remember a bit better 'cause of, uh, the,

the Levi set inquiry and

his walkon appearance there.

Lachlan, Elizabeth, Elizabeth and

per, per, there we go.

yeah,

if it helps that I do map on quite well to the kids

from succession?

Oh, thank God in

that Kean Calkins one is sort of Lachlan in that he's the kind of

bratty one super right wing maybe doesn't really believe anything.

He is quite happy to go along with the drift of the

empire.

James is sort of, uh, the eldest one.

Yep.

Remind me, the one who does the rap, what's his name?

. Jeremy Strong.

Kendall.

Kendall, And

that he had a kind of massive crisis of conscience and

walked out.

This itself

or so he says.

Yeah.

And then

Shiv is Elizabeth and then there is a as Pru, your fav is Connor who

wants to,

running for president.

Yeah.

. just, she's just vibing, but Yeah.

But they, but they do, don't they?

And there is a kind of one son who walked out, this was the Atlantic

piece, was an interview with James, who was, has, was really

kind of split.

He absolutely has.

So essentially the, the difference between, so the New York Times basically

has accessed all of the 3000 pages of legal documents, which were in

that secret courtroom in, in, in, in Reno, Nevada, which we talked about

on a podcast a little while back.

of this case was by the way that the judge ruled that, that Rupert

wasn't allowed to vary the, trust.

And so all four kids will still have a say in the running of

the company after Rupert dies.

And the reason that that matters

is that if

Rupert had got his way and given Lachlan Lachlan,

more control of the company, he would've been able to steer the.

Entire media empire in much more of Rupert direction, which is a bit further right

wing.

Whereas the other three children.

children are seen as being

a

bit more lived in woke.

The word is woke.

The word woke was came up

in the court cases.

Yeah.

No, no.

Um, Rupert is determined that Lachlan should be the one that carries the flame

on into the next century and beyond.

Uh, because, and I'm quoting here now from some of the court documents that were,

that were in the New York Times article.

Rupert says, Fox in our papers are the only faintly conservative voices

against the monolithic liberal media.

I believe maintaining this is vital to the future of the English speaking world.

So he's gone full bat, Knock on this.

Basically it's about Western civilization.

It's not just about who gets

to run Fox News, the TV channel

in the US unambitious.

Why

not the gala?

You know, it is just rid Western

civilization.

wild because there's already, um, OANN and NEWSMAX in, uh, America

that are to the writer of Fox News.

It may, and then there's YouTube channels that

makes Fox look like sort of hand wringing, like Andy style,

environmentalism.

Yeah.

Yeah,

But this is Rupert's view.

I mean, he's always talking about the papers as well as Fox.

So he's looking at, you know, the Sun

and the times in, in Britain and thinking, well, you know, all the others are, you

know, can all the pinko lefties, like the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph

,it's us that's fighting the good fight.

what else emerged during the course of this

MAD

trial?

All sorts of wonderful things, like the fact that he doesn't even

refer to James as James anymore.

He's referred to throughout the legal documents and by all the lawyers involved

as the troublesome beneficiary, or actually just troublesome, where they

could say, James, they just say, this will be a problem with troublesome

shorthand.

which I loved.

My other favorite detail in it was that, um, um, in the deal to hive off, um, 21st

Century Fox, which is the film studio side of the business in 2018, uh, to Disney.

one of the, uh, sub clauses of that was that, um, Lachlan got to

keep his climbing wall on the 21st century, um, studio lot in in, la.

Atlantic also had this great detail that once, um, they all played Monopoly

as a family and Rupert cheated,

and I thought, yep,

I believe it.

I absolutely believe it.

Just find him like a couple of hundred dollars bills under the.

Under the

board.

We've all been

there.

Another wonderful detail was in 2010, Rupert insisted they all go on

a family counseling retreat 'cause things were so bad within this family.

And I've gotta say, if

you think your family is screwed up, the details are particularly

in the Atlantic Police, you will.

You will just think you are absolutely

fine.

But that is an episode of succession

That literally

is, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That one went straight into succession.

we get onto that.

Everyone was absolutely convinced that all other members of

the family were leaking to

the script.

Writers of succession.

Uh, we've already heard that.

You know, one of the of.

Rupert's divorce from Jerry Hall was, she wasn't allowed to talk to Jesse Armstrong

and the other risers on succession.

James was convinced that Liz was, uh, briefing, uh, the,, the risers

of succession, but it turned out it was her ex-husband, Matthew

Freud, who was desperate to talk to Jesse Armstrong, give him ideas.

But, but Jesse Armstrong declines to talk to Matthew Freud as indeed

has ever the one thing that his family seems to be able to agree on.

They all hate each other, but they . Seem to hate Matthew Freud more.

They're, they're pretty much agreed that Liz's ex-husband,

Matthew Freud is,

is,

is,

is even worse than any of the Murdoch

I mean, I, you know, I know blurring fact and fiction is a big Murdoch thing,

but I mean, I find it impossible to listen to this story without seeing,

seeing

Matthew

McFadden.

be honest, the script writing was an awful lot better on succession because

the agreements that came out, the Murdoch principles, which were agreed at the end

of this, um, family canceling, retreat

sorry, just to

say

that's

a

funny

phrase.

principles.

Yeah.

Oh, it's, I haven't made

that up.

Mur.

This, and the, the Murdoch principles were drafted by Elizabeth Murdoch and

they said the top line of them was.

We commit to undertake active dialogue with each other at all

times and to relentlessly communicate openly with trust and humility.

Well, this is not what has been happening in the future.

There were all sorts of accusations about secret meetings at C Claridges

to discuss the possible demise of Rupert, uh, and what might happen next.

And this was brought up in the court case with Lachlan saying You

were clearly plotting against me.

You are plotting a palace co to get rid of him.

Why else would you have chosen a private dining room at Clarridge's?

Uh, to which Liz's lawyers pointed out there.

'cause we were sort of talking about our dad dying

and what, what, what was gonna happen about funerals and stuff.

And We didn't really want

anyone overhearing that.

You

wanna

go

Yeah.

It's not

. is, this is giving

me strong, strong whiffs of the telegraph, which was all the,

the,

the Barkley Brothers Feud was all about them eavesdropping

on each other in private dining

rooms.

Yes.

Was it the

I assume that's why

they

went for Clara's rather than the Ritz, which it turned out Yeah.

No, the Barclay family had rigged up their hotel, the Ritz, with,

uh, with bugging devices so they could all spy on each other.

I mean, they, these, these families are really quite weird.

These families that own media empires.

It has to be

And the Barclays were plotting against each other, and it did end up in court.

But, I had an awful feeling we wouldn't get to, to read about the

Murdoch version because they would have different rules in, in Reno.

cause we'd read all of it, um, in Britain and marvelously entertaining

it was too, but It's all out

there.

Yeah.

All,

So what happened to Murdoch's desire for privacy?

I thought you went to Reno so that no one

could

know what you were

up

Well, this is the big mystery.

So the Atlantic piece is based on a very long series of interviews

with James and his wife Catherine.

So it's absolutely their side of the story.

And unsurprisingly, it comes out extremely complimentary

of James all the way through.

And it turns out he was actually a bit of a

business genius.

He was completely underrated by his father all the way through.

the

New

York Times piece, as I said, is based on these 3000 pages of court

documents, which have been leaked by

someone.

it's, quite slightly hard to tell.

I mean, presumably not James, because James would've given them to the Atlantic

who he

was talking to.

I also played the fun game of speculating who leaked, and I presumed it was one of

the other children, one of the dissident children rather than the loyalist child.

Or at least rather, I want to say perhaps their camps.

But it's got to be one of the parties to the

litigation

to

access

to it, surely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I thought, um, it was my colleague McKay Coppins, who's

a really lovely guy and a super.

Che who did the Atlantic piece.

And I think one of the things he brought out of it that you don't

necessarily just get from the, documents is the kind of human aspect of it.

What you were talking about, that the way he frames it is Rupert wants

Lachlan to succeed because he seems Lachlan has being the most like him

and, and having his Murdoch principles, you know, that, that it's an,

it's a kind of, it's an old man's attempt not to die to some extent.

Right.

That he wants to know that his legacy is secure and he thinks that, and that

that does make it very . King Lish.

You know the idea that your children are gonna go and be their own

independent people, not carbon

copies of you.

Yeah.

I think is it most.

Yeah,

and I think it does, which, well, yeah, I did.

It really did remind me of that in the sense of just

that that's the tragedy of it.

Not that any of this stuff makes you particularly feel sorry for any of the

people involved who seem to be fighting that rats in the sack, but it is a very

human story about aging and death and the idea that you have to let go no

matter how powerful you were in life.

It

ends eventually.

It

absolutely is.

And one of the honest things about it is this is not about disinheriting the kids.

They all get the share of the business and the money whatsoever.

This is just about who gets to run the empire afterwards.

And you know, in the course of these two articles we go through the fact

that neither James or Lachlan have been.

Particularly impressive business record.

I mean, there's this weird thing with all the Murdoch kids that

they strike out on their own.

Liz, uh, had her own production company, very successful production

company.

It

was behind things like Master Chef, which you know, is franchised all around

the world, which was bought up by her dad for such a ridiculous amount of

money that the shareholders actually revolted at Fox and, and, and sued him.

Um, James went off and set up a hip hop

label.

He literally is candle

I mean, this

is

decision.

Yeah.

but

that too was brought in by his dad.

So his dad has this incredibly sort of, um.

He's, he's really very unpleasant to his kids.

That's what comes over very strongly in this.

But he's also quite indulgent, and he will buy up their businesses and

bring

them

back into the fold

it suits him.

But Lachlan, when he's, he's literally then taken over after James, James,

James screws up the phone hacking scandal completely, and the sky takeover and, and,

and

ends up

outta, the company.

Lachlan then goes on to such great victories, as you know, the

dominion voting systems lawsuit against, uh, against Fox News,

costs costs the company absolutely

billions.

I mean, neither of 'em have that impressive of a record.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's extraordinary.

But at no point in any of this, does anyone seem to consider

the possibility that the person

who could run the company successfully

after

death

might not have the surname Murdoch, you know, they could actually get someone

else in who could do it, and all the kids could just retire on the billions

they're gonna inherit anyway.

One of the questions that James was asked when on the stand was,

why did you not phone your dad to say Happy birthday on his 90th

Hwyl

birthday?

then he also sends over this passive aggressive note on top of a load of

legal documents to James that says ps. Love to see my grandchildren

sometimes.

the, playing off against each other is absolutely

hideous

in all of this It really, really is.

is.

it?

It's,

not

nice.

No, I do like the idea that you end up on the stand in Reno

saying, you forgot my birthday.

Yeah.

Well, I

might have done, but I

had a lot on that week.

And

how did this happen?

the buying of Shine.

Now reading this stuff from this lawsuit did make me rethink that.

And then I, in a sense, I wonder whether or not it was, like a

feeling of wanting to control all the children and not to have one

of them be successful on their own.

And actually, was it about saying, well, yeah, you've done very well

with your production company, but daddy's still the king.

what it also demonstrated was that Liz is the only one with

capability independently.

Uh, semi-independently.

She's never, never gonna not be a Nepo baby, but to run her own media business

and make it very, very successful.

And yet she seems to have not been considered in the sort of succession

plans at all, at any point.

And James makes it very clear that that's because his father is a

misogynist and he absolutely does not

trust

women at all.

And

Pru and Elizabeth were never given a trust.

But then of course, you got the great mystery of Rebecca Brooks.

Who absolutely, he's laid himself on the line for, you know, after the phone

hacking scandal, did his best not to have to sack her, but when, when he did

sack her, gave her an enormous payoff and brought her back into the company.

So that's another bizarre dynamic.

She's about the same age as his daughters and, and seems to be

trusted

infinitely more.

more.

But

what that, if I were a, you know, a psychoanalyst, I would say that is

the child that you never had and someone says, well, you did have children

you had all these

ones that you

didn't like and didn't work out.

So you find someone

outside the family

who you treat as a

child,

You just project

it

onto

them.

yeah.

So what happens?

all this amazing drama and fun.

What's the result?

The

result is that they're not allowed to vary.

The family trusts, uh, they are attempting to appeal the, um, decision of the judge

in Nevada, it's unlikely to succeed.

Everyone reckons, and in a way, all of this is slightly academic

anyway, because the Murdoch Family Trust, which was set up in 1999.

Expires

in 2030 anyway, this is only in five years time, at which point the kids are free to

do whatever they want with their legacy.

They can give it away, you know, they can sell it to anyone, they

can do what they want with it.

So this is quite technical.

Now.

There is a strong possibility that Rupert will still be with us in 2030.

So none of this will apply at that point, either.

His mother, I have to say, made it to 103.

Rupert will only be 98 in, um, in, in,

in, 2030.

Can I check, sorry.

When you say

this thing runs out in 2030.

the four children after that point, if Rupert is still with us then

and then dies after that, the four children still get the creative

creative control.

At

that point.

They would get, um, under the current terms, both the money, the share of

the company and the shared creative control over what happens to the

company, but they are not bound by the, the, the, the trust to keep

it within the family at that point.

By that point, they can sell to the highest bidder.

Well, at that point we'll get to see whether or not James Murdoch sort

of the rubber hits the road, right?

If he sells off his steak and gives it all to kind of, you know, pansexual dolphin

preservation, then we'll finally know

I hope he gets a good price of it.

'cause the other detail that came out was that, um, the first attempt at all,

this was when Lachlan, uh, Rupert urged Lachlan to buy buy out his siblings.

They all got $2.1 billion from the sale of, um, 21st Century Fox to Disney.

Uh, so at that point, they think could be sorted out.

He could've taken over the whole company.

Uh, but unfortunately he refused to pay more than half of the market

value of the company at that point, and refused to negotiate, which

was a tactic I, I discovered this.

Rupert also adopted with his own sisters and mother when he bought them out of

his father's empire back in the nineties.

He just said, there's the deal on the table, elderly

mother, you take it all your.

You don't . So it worked for him.

But unfortunately, uh, LA Lachlan, uh, lachlan's siblings refused

to, refused to play at that point.

So, uh, we, it all ended up in court

many

years

later.

Very unhappily.

Now for the second half of this week's show, we're going to be

talking to MD Privatized medical correspondent Phil Hammond, uh, a

regular visitor to this podcast.

And the last two times he's been on, he's been speaking about the trial.

And the conviction of Lucy Luby, a neonatal nurse who is currently serving

15 consecutive life sentences for multiple murders and attempted murders, uh,

of very young infants at the Countess of Chester Hospital where she worked.

Phil has been covering this case for about 18 months now, and there is a

growing body body of opinion and evidence that perhaps the trial was not handled

in the best possible way to put it mildly, and that raises question marks

over the actual convictions themselves.

the most recent edition of the MAGAzine, Phil, in part 15 of his story on Lucy

Luby, has been covering a, an assembly of experts who've been gathered

together to give their own expert view.

Here's Phil.

Yes.

I think the big change was she changed her barrister

and Mark McDonald took over his new barrister and when I

had, uh, interviewed him shortly after he'd taken over and I

said, what are you gonna do?

And he said, well, the various

tactics.

But my main tactic is probably I'm going to scour the world for the best experts

I can find.

You know, you need the people who have impeccable academic credentials

who know more of this than.

Anyone else.

And although the court of Appeal doesn't like games of expert top

trumps, it will be hard to ignore a global coalition of people.

Plus, I also want to get UK experts 'cause they understand the NHS.

So I want to get some practicing neonatologists.

Who do this at the highest level in the NHS to look at all these cases.

And I want to get international experts.

I want the two groups to look at these independently.

And I said to him, do you promise to publish the results

of their findings, whether they are in favor of let be or not?

And he said yes.

So I thought that was quite a clever approach.

I think the other advantage of getting international experts, is that they have.

Much less skin in the game.

It's very hard to be a UK neonatologist and not to express the

prior view on Le Be's conviction.

Whereas the vast majority of the international experts he found

who all agreed to work pro bono, as did the UK experts, , didn't

really know much about the case.

They might have seen the odd headline, but basically they were

looking at all the evidence of fresh.

So all the evidence that was presented at the trial, all the

clinical notes they had access to.

, and when McDonald said he was gonna make it public, I hadn't realized

he was gonna do it in two fairly inflammatory press conferences.

So we had one press conference, um, mid-December.

where some of the results of the UK neonatology analysis were reached, and,

and they'd looked, they've now looked at four cases in great detail and not

found any evidence of deliberate harm and have managed to explain all the

deaths and collapses that they've looked at in terms of, um, sick babies, some

of them receiving substandard care, some of them dying of natural causes.

Um.

They only looked at four cases in detail.

The international panel, uh, 14 experts, um, looked at all 17 cases

you were originally charged out in great detail pro bono, and they've

reached exactly the same conclusion.

They can't find any evidence of, uh, uh, deliberate harm by anyone.

However, they do find substantial, uh, evidence of substandard care to

the extent that when I asked the panel

Uh, the lead panel expert, Dr. Shoe Lee, what he would do if a

unit was performing like this in Canada, he said I'd close it down.

So they're very much in the camp of these deaths are entirely explained by

a unit having a, a above average number of sicker babies than it would normally

get, and not having the expertise to cope with it, which is what my

original hypothesis was 18 months ago.

But obviously you need, we needed this to happen.

We needed people who knew what they were talking about, looking at all the

notes, um, to reach that conclusion.

There's a slight complicating factor here in that there has been an inquiry

set up to investigate the events at the Countess of Chester Hospital.

Uh, the third wall inquiry, uh, which am I right in saying is ongoing.

it's ongoing.

Yes.

I mean, it was based on the premise that she was guilty, so it was

accepting her guilt and is predicated on trying to figure out whether she

could have been stopped earlier.

and again, I wrote to the thorough inquiry back

in May saying, I think this is misguided because, you know, one of the

reasons she wasn't stopped earlier

is perhaps, uh, she isn't guilty.

Um, and you shouldn't just consider the deaths and collapses that involved lbe.

There were plenty of others that didn't involve her, and you need to look at those

in its entirety, but they decided not to.

So all they've done is assume she's guilty, uh, and, uh, tried to,

to find ways to have stopped her.

Um.

It's now in a terrible fix because these experts have come and said, well,

actually, the basic, we're questioning that there was ever any homicidal act.

Um, certainly the means of murder have been strongly refuted.

So should it be paused until the Criminal Cases Review Commission has reached

its view on whether it's returning it back to the Court of appeal?

I mean, it's a, it could end up being a huge waste of public money, and

if it's based on a false premise, it could come up with recommendations

that are profoundly damaging.

I mean, it may say.

You know, we need to put CCTV in all hospitals, neonatal units,

maternity units, operating theaters to watch people all the time to

make sure they aren't murderers.

Well, if no murder ever occurred, uh, that might be overkill.

So my view is it probably should pause itself, uh, until the

CCRC has reached a view, but.

As you know, the CCC can take 10 years or more to reach a view.

There's no reason why Le Me's case should jump the queue.

There are plenty of other cases that are still being considered, and so

it may be at least a year before they go through all this very complicated

new evidence to reach a view.

and that is, we should say the CCRC is the Criminal Cases Review

Commission, which which looks at cases which have, I suppose.

Where, where evidence has emerged to suggest that maybe

another view should be taken.

Yes.

And they are in trouble themselves.

Their bosses resigned and they have lots of vacancies.

And it took, uh, them 10 years to turn over a rape conviction recently.

So a chap was wrongly

convicted, was in prison for 17 years.

Uh, and there were various others waiting in the wing.

So let me, is not the only

one.

And it would be unfair if she jumped the queue just

because there was loads of, um, you know.

Well now global, because of these press conferences, you're seeing, you

know, articles in Australia and New Zealand and America saying, have they

locked up the wrong person, et cetera.

You've got very established people like Joshua Rosenberg,

the BBC, um, legal correspondent who's now questioning conviction.

They've now been two articles in the economists, uh, the Church of

England Times, or even . Saying, have we locked up the wrong person?

It's an interesting tactic by Mark McDonald 'cause he's basically poking

the snake of his own profession.

He's basically saying, you could have got this really badly wrong.

What a, you know, an obedient compliant barrister would've done is just quietly

submit his evidence to the CCRC, not done to great big press conferences.

And it'll be interesting to see what effect it has on his profession.

Now, they might say, gosh, we need to expedite this because

there's lots of public concern.

Or they might say, this is now so profoundly embarrassing.

Uh, we will kick it into the long grass for as long as we can, so we

dunno which way it's going to go.

And I think the first time you.

Um,

spoke to this podcast about the Let Be Trial.

You were

quite equivocal about whether you, you said, I'm not saying

anything in particular about

Lucy Luby's guilt or ance.

You were more concerned with

how the trial itself might have been mishandled.

It feels like your opinion

has changed

since

Well, the thing that needed to happen was the very thing that has happened now,

which is . Really top end experts looking at all the clinical evidence and saying

there's no medical evidence of murder.

Now my argument going all the way back to the Bristol inquiry, which is

the first big scandal I exposed about babies going after heart surgery, is

that the two things the NHS needed one was mandatory safe staffing levels.

So if we are gonna do the incredibly complex operations, or you know, we're

gonna look after premature babies.

We need to have properly, safely staffed units and we don't.

And the second thing I said is you need a crash investigation team for the

NHS, a bit like the airline industry.

So when these things happen, people, independent, trained experts go in very

quickly, hard and fast, and they come up with the reasons why had this happened.

In the let be case, this would never have gone to court.

She'd have never been implicated.

If the experts are right and nobody would ever dug up a garden,

they'd have said, this is a failing unit with substandard care.

And we either needed . To, to, you know, take it down a notch or close it

or give it the staffing it requires.

So that's, you know, but I was reluctant to say she's guilty or innocent

because that's for the court to decide.

My feeling is she had an unfair trial for complicated reasons, but the person who

changed my mind at most was a chap called Dr. Mike Hall, who was the expert witness

for the defense, who was never called, and he contacted the eye very early on and

Said, I think she had an unfair trial.

I think the babies were sicker than the prosecution was alleg, uh, alleging.

And I think there were more plausible causes for death than murder.

But he wouldn't share any of his reports with us because he

said they're court documents.

So we've had to wait all this time, 18 months for other experts via her barrister

to be able to look at all the evidence.

So I was reluctant to reach a view until . Proper experts

had looked at all the evidence.

I now think it's far more likely she didn't do it.

But I still maintain it has to go through the correct legal process.

Um, but you know, if you, if the best experts in the world are saying we

can't find any evidence of deliberate harm, I, uh, and there isn't any

pathological evidence and all the coroners performing postmortems and the

pathologist couldn't find any evidence of deliberate harm, it all comes down to

The ex, the prosecution experts who appeared in the original trial

led by, uh, Dowey Evans, who with Characteristic Modesty has dismissed

all these international experts as, uh, talking absolute nonsense.

And I have no respect for them.

I mean, if he was sensible, he would've said, look, I'm standing.

My, my views, I.

They were tested in court.

These experts are entitled to their views and it has to go through the

correct legal process that would've been scientific and diplomatic.

Instead, he said, I don't respect these people.

I think they're talking nonsense.

Um, and it's just inflaming things even more.

So in the absence of the clinical evidence, there, there are other

things like circumstantial evidence, which were, were taken into account.

Things like notes that she may have written, uh, while these babies were real,

or the fact that she was looking them up online, looking at their families online,

I think all of that is

in your latest piece.

I think all of that is relevant and all of it matters.

However, there does also appear to be other plausible explanations

that the jury weren't aware of.

For example, the notes that she wrote saying, I'm evil and I'm

did this, which also included notes saying I didn't do this.

Um, were part of her counseling process where she was encouraged to

write down her feelings, and often you write down feelings of guilt.

That's a normal thing.

The jury wasn't appraised of the fact that this was a counseling process

that wasn't an admission of guilt.

Lots of neonatally nurses you speak to, say we look up patients on the internet,

including relatives of people who've, uh, patients who've died, their families.

We go to their funerals, we go to their christenings.

We do this and that, although a lot of them have said to me,

we've now backed off from doing that to avoid raising suspicion.

So her actions could have been seen in an innocent light.

She kept lots of handover notes, which are not clinical records.

They're bits you stroll on a piece of paper when you're handing over on a shift.

And again, that's not uncommon.

Now she might have collected more and put them under a bed

than, than other nurses did.

But you'd think if she's, if she really is a murderer, she's a genius.

So she's come up with methods that have evaded all the pathologists, um,

all the internal and external reviews in the hospital did, and now they've

evaded 16, uh, clinical experts, 14 international ones, and two from the uk.

Is she that clever to have been able to have done that?

There are loads of nurses who wrote to the thorough inquiry

saying, we think she's innocent.

We worked alongside her all this time.

We never saw her do anything wrong.

Do you think someone that brilliant and devious would be careless enough

to leave notes for the people to find, even though that she knew

she was under suspicion, mean?

It doesn't, I don't know what her motive was.

It, you know, there's lots of stuff that doesn't make sense, but the bottom line is

I don't think the science and statistics were fairly presented at her trial.

And for that reason alone, I think she deserves an appeal.

And from what you are saying about this team of 14 international

neonatologists, they have found that there were enough incidents that this might

have been described as a, a failing unit,

Yes.

even, even outside the deaths, uh, uh, of which levy was convicted.

Yes.

And that's always, always the most common thing.

If you look at the history of the NHS, we've had quite a few maternity scandals

and neonatal scandals, and they nearly always come down to the same thing.

A unit doesn't have the staffing or expertise or equipment to cope

with the volume and complexity of patients that it has.

And so this was a, a fluctuation that was

a sudden rise in the more complex cases.

The unit themselves, the consultants themselves have said,

we're woefully understaffed.

We're only doing two ward rounds a week, uh, on average.

Um, we don't have enough specialist, junior doctors

or nurses to cope with this.

And they raised those concerns.

I think what's interesting is that the consultants

themselves didn't seem to spot.

The babies could have been dying due to substandard care.

Uh, and that to me is interesting 'cause it,

it, well, it shows that you shouldn't really be investigating your own mistakes.

It's the reason we need a crash investigation team.

So when you investigate your own mistakes, you'll probably

have a certain amount of bias.

Towards not exposing yourself.

It's So what happened is that they were convinced that she was a murderer

and they sort of led the police in the direction that they had already

concluded, whereas actually want, what you wanted was somebody independent.

Now, the independent experts have spent hundreds of hours looking

at, um, uh, all the evidence according to, to Dr. Shoe Lee.

Whereas the prosecution lead expert, uh, Dowey Evans said he realized

it was murder within 10 minutes of looking at one set of notes.

And that, that really worries me in this.

He, he seemed to have reached a conclusion fairly quickly, whereas

others have taken a far longer and more detailed and measured approach

and reached a different conclusion.

So I think there are lots of lessons there.

The first is let's staff our unit safely, and this may never have happened.

B, let's have an independent investigation team that acts quickly.

And if we'd had those two things, this had never gone to court.

I, I hate to even estimate how much money we've spent on this, nevermind

the emotional harm that we've caused.

But in terms of all the investigations, all the litigation, the court cases,

the public inquiries, it is tens of million, possibly hundreds of millions

of pounds we could have spent on employing neonatal nurses for , you know,

these units, and to make them safer.

So it could be such a colossal disaster in so many ways.

Um, and I think the other thing that saddens me is that I've

spent a lot of time trying to grow up about patient safety.

And one of the things is that, you know, in a mature patient safety

culture, you own up to your mistakes, you explain them to Pat, et cetera.

Um, and there's much less litigation if you have an open, transparent culture

where people own up to stuff and, and this let be the whole let be case could set

back this patient safety culture decades.

'cause people are now just all, you know, we are back in a blame litigation.

A counter blame culture that I just think will be, you know, deeply

counterproductive to having a safer n hs.

So I think the ramifications will be huge, which whatever the criminal

cases Review Commission decides.

Um, so that alone has made it probably the most depressing case that I've.

Had to write about, but of course the advantage is privatize.

It allows you to go back to the same story.

The reason I've written 15 consecutive columns is that the

editor allows me to do so, and that's makes private eye quite unusual.

Um, but it, it has allowed me to immerse myself in the case fairly deeply.

And.

I keep waiting for the moment to hit me in the face saying,

oh no, she obviously did it.

Um, and it hasn't, after 18 months, I've got all the court transcripts.

I've spoken to experts on both sides.

I've spoken to Doy Evans, I've, I've corresponded with Ravi Jra, who's one of

the consultants who thinks she's guilty.

And it, it just more and more to me looks as if there were more

plausible causes for the deaths.

Um, but clearly the, the courts must decide that.

Phil Hammond there.

Thanks to him and to Helen, Ian and Adam, Phil, their insights earlier.

That's that's it for this episode of page 94.

We'll be back again in a fortnight with another one.

Until then, go and buy the MAGAzine private.co uk.

go there, get a subscription.

it's a fantastic MAGAzine.

It covers all this and more.

We will be back as always in another fortnight with three

more slabs of topicality or maybe even four if you're lucky.

Until then, thank you to you for listening and to Matt Hill of Rethink

Audio, as always for producing.

Bye for now.