Page 94: the Private Eye Podcast.
Andy: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Page 94.
My name is Andrew Hunter Murray and we're here to discuss all the latest
goings on, in and out of the magazine and in the news over the last fortnight.
I'm here with Helen Lewis, Richard Brooks and Ian Hislop.
. Helen, we we turn to you.
Yes.
Uh, because we look to you, our society correspondent to find out what's
been going on with the royal family.
Any news of them recently or have they been maintaining
their usual monastic silence?
Helen: Do you know the worst thing is it for quite a long time when I,
particularly when I worked at the Daily Mail, everyone used to say
that I looked like Princess Beatrice.
In fact, my leaving page from the Daily Mail is, I'll be off anyway.
The worst thing about it now is that my poor brother turns out he looks
like quite a lot like Prince Andrew.
Luckily he's in New Zealand, so it's fine.
They don't have the newspapers there.
Um, anyway, so I feel the personal involvement in
this Absolutely.
As a satellite branch of the Yorks, he's now of course, uh,
Andrew Mount Batten Windsor.
He's given up the night of the Garter.
He's given up the Princeton.
He's agreed not to use the titles.
Would you like to know when the leg relevant legislation for this comes
from for giving up your, for having your Princeton taken away or your titles?
1917, because of course quite a lot of Queen Victoria's grandchildren
had got British Juel or Princely titles and they had ended up on the
wrong side of the First World War.
And so there were quite a few people called Ernst and
various like variations of that.
Who got D Prince during the first world?
I
So that's the legislation that they will be used as a, as a template Yeah.
To kind of, uh, I mean, and that's, you know, the previous version he
had just agreed not to use them.
Yeah.
But the statement from the king and queen seemed to imply that they
were actually going to move forward with an official debugging and de
Andy: Yes.
That's still, if you agree not to use them, but you still got them.
That seems like a bit of a fudge.
Helen: he, he wrote this email, the, you know, the famous email to Epstein,
I think really did for him, which proved that he had lied to Emily Mala, you know,
this one he'd wrote in 2011 that said
Ian: is that officially unacceptable.
Helen: Yeah.
Right.
That he had, uh, he, he said, you know, we, we are in this together.
He'd said, um, about the photo of Virginia, um, Roberts Gire coming out
and, you know, wins this together.
And it, one was the one that ended, I hope we'll play again soon, but
kind of more importantly to our purposes, it also was signed off.
Andrew, you know, your kg right.
H hrh, Andrew Kg. So he had even in a casual email at that point, Andrew
liked to put all of his titles in it.
Right.
So I do feel that this is a fairly fitting.
Punishment in lieu of any actual other consequences?
Andy: Yes.
I did read that the, one of the last people to lose the order of the
garter was Ember Hirohito, , just after the Second World War.
Which
gives you an idea of the scale of the offense.
that this is being ranked alongside, so we know he'll be moving house.
Mm-hmm.
Um, I mean, he may be moving to New Zealand.
It's possible your brother will be getting some, some lookalike work before too long.
I Dunno how much in demand that's
gonna be
Helen: for what party, what corporate event?
Ian: Well,
Halloween.
Helen: Halloween.
Andy: Um, but he's gonna be plain old Andrew, Mount Batten Windsor.
Mm-hmm.
Helen: Mm-hmm.
Andy: and I would just say to him, it's dangerous putting a middle
name in your name 'cause people think you're p than you are.
Um, but that probably won't be a problem for him.
Um,
now
the reason, the reason we're still talking about this is,
largely of Virginia Dre's book.
Nobody's girl.
Uh, and she took her own life, uh, earlier this year Before the book came out.
And it details Uh,
her life,
as she put it being a, a sex slave for Jeffrey Epstein, uh, procured by Ghislaine
Maxwell, now in prison serving 20 years.
, she says in the book that she had sex with Andrew three times claim.
He's always denied.
but the details that have come out in the book and the details that have come
out and other things like the emails of him sending his Royal protection
officer, her name and social security number, whether that's to discredit
her account or dig up dirt on her, I think is not completely clear.
But it, it just became clear this was no longer a sustainable situation.
but it hasn't been for years.
And is, is there ever a way this can be put on sustainable
footing short of Andrew?
cooperating
fully with prosecutors in the America or whatever that might
Helen: be.
I mean, the interesting thing is lots of it has come out through either
court, um, discovery or, uh, records being submitted to, to Congress.
So for example, her memoir is, was co-written with a journalist.
However bits of it are taken from a previous fictionalized account
that she wrote that's called the Billionaires Playboy Cup.
Now, this has become quite controversial because that wasn't fact checked.
She herself says in the book that some, the details in that were wrong
'cause she was trying to disguise them.
But it has become, you're right, there has been a kind of.
Not exactly full court press, but there have been a lot of people kind
of questioning the whole content of her story just because of the fact that she
has, she made mistakes along the way.
For example, she she accused Alan Dershowitz of, of sexually assaulting it.
They then settled that out of court.
the American lawyer, Alan Dershowitz.
she accepted that, uh, she had never been abused by him.
He accepted that she'd made an honest mistake.
And if you read the memoir, it's a very difficult read for a number of reasons.
One of which is that between it being submitted to the publishers
and it coming out, she accused her husband, of domestic violence.
He denies that, uh, there's litigation ongoing about the estate.
But there were kind of clues in the, in the narrative that the
relationship wasn't all that happy.
There's lots of, you know, very volatile arguments.
And of course, the other thing that comes out is that there's,
there's money involved in this.
You know, there's a lot of debate about the her, um, settling her estate, for
example, and who's entitled to that.
In the book, she writes about the fact that she, you know, she was
living really scratchy existence in Australia until she got the settlement
from Epstein, uh, the initial one, and then the settlement from Andrew.
So that, you know, this really complicates it.
And I think as you know, she also is like many abuse victims,
obviously deeply traumatized by it.
That's what emerges from, uh, the narrative and hasn't actually always
made her case in a kind of completely cast iron compelling way, which
again, is not unusual in abuse cases.
Ian: the people who are accusing her, um, there are other victims who
are saying and who are suing her, and
then halfway through their narrative, you realize they've
been given $50,000 by a fund.
they've lived their lives
on the basis of, of
a settlement,
and so accusing
each other of being
abusers rather than victim, it turns into an incredibly sort of Messi story.
Helen: That's one of the really Messi things.
The Sunday Times had a piece by Rena o, who's another, um, Epstein
victim, in which she said, you know, she's suing, um, the Gire estate.
And she said, you know, I've been accused of, um, you know,
procuring girls for Epstein.
Now actually within the same piece, she admits that she did do that.
This is one of the things that Epstein would do to women.
He would encourage them to go out and recruit more women.
Gire writes about that, a book and says she regrets it.
And Rena o did the same thing.
And obviously she says, that doesn't make me any less of a, of a victim.
She says she was raped by Epstein.
But it does really complicate that picture.
Everybody needs to be very firmly for moral and financial reasons,
end up in the kind of victim rather than collaborate to camp.
And there was an attempt, I think, even to do that with Ghislaine Maxwell.
So one of the more bizarre reviews of the book was the Spectator got Ian
Maxwell Ghis Laine's brother to review it under the headline, don't Take
Virginia Jeffery's memoir at Face Value.
Mm. And I thought, I mean, okay, always a good thing to do in cases like
this, but I feel like you may have a certain personal interest in this one.
And, uh, you know, as we've written about in the magazine, the, the very strategic
leaks ahead of the, um, the manuscript kind of coming out do all point back to
a journalist who was one, the very few who has interviewed Maxwell in prison,
and she got transferred from a Florida jail to one, a low security minimum
security one in, in Texas, some point after having a conversation with a senior
official at Trump's Department of Justice.
So there is a kind of semi conspiracy theory, but I don't think it's a
completely ridiculous one that actually all of this becoming a Prince Andrew
story is actually very helpful for former friend of Jeffrey Epstein and
current president of the US Donald Trump.
Andy: Yes.
Where was, where was Virginia Giuffre working when she was
first picked up by Maxwell
Helen: Maa Largo?
She was working in the spa in Maa Largo as, as a very young teenager.
Um, yeah, so I mean, this is.
This is a Trump story and I've, I've covered it in the US column before because
it's been kind of fascinating how it was the massive conspiracy story and obsession
of the MAGA Wright released the Epstein files and then Donald Trump, first of
all, tried releasing some old fight logs that everyone had seen already, and
then said, I've actually looked at it.
There's nothing really to, to see, and certainly swivel Eyed FBI Director Cash
Patel out to say, well, actually, I've looked at it and it's all completely fine.
Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a very mysterious and murky story.
Another complication that comes out in the book is that Virginia Giuffre
hired as a lawyer, David Boce.
Now you may know he's an incredibly aggressive New York litigator and his
other thing you might know of him, he's on the board of Theranos, which if you're
interested in money stories, fraudulent blood testing, company collapsed.
Also had Rupert Murdoch on the board.
It was a real government of all the talents, that one, but, um,
uh,
but also acted for Harvey Weinstein.
In which capacity he renegotiated a contract with a spying agency to
essentially do background checks on all of Harvey Weinstein's accusers and
also the journalists who are working on the story for the New York Times.
So you have all of this, this is, this is kind of speaks to the Andrews
protection officer.
Yeah.
If you want to, you know, realistically, to get justice in a lot of these cases,
you have to hook up with a very aggressive civil litigator because it doesn't end up
in a criminal court before Epstein died.
Right.
He got those that very, very sweet plea deal in Florida, um, and then
died in prison before seeing the inside of a, a proper criminal trial.
So, you know, these are, these are really mucky and contested waters in which often
there is a lot of reputation management or reputation kind of besmirching
going on through PRS behind the scenes.
Ian: the idea that there's unreliable narrators around in anything to do
with the Maxwell family is hysterical.
Helen: I do genuinely think that that was the Ghislaine, original
Ghislaine play was, I've been sucked into this terrible web of sin.
I, I didn't know, and then it just became, unfortunately it teetered over
in the face of the overwhelming evidence that, that she did know everything
that Epstein was going on doing, and therefore that's why she's now in prison.
Andy: Do you think, this is really hypothetical, do you think this would've
happened,
the Prince Andrew element of it?
If that photo had not existed and been made public of him?
Age 41 with Giuffre, then age 17?
Helen: No, I think you are right.
I think that concretized it in a way.
He has always denied that that photo is, he sort of sort of vaguely talked
about Photoshop and all this kind of stuff or you know, whatever.
But I think people just went, oh no, you are standing next to her.
She looks like a teenager.
She's dressed, she talks in the book about where she's wearing these
trousers with like horse print on.
She's wearing the kind of things that young girls would wear, right?
She's not a sophisticated adult at that point.
And I think at that point people went, Ugh.
And then in a very concrete way, it's about that photo coming out that he
sends that absolutely killer email to Epstein that ends, let's place some more.
We're in this together, Andy, KG, you know, so it, I
think that photo absolutely.
Precipitated the downfall.
And, and, and she talks in the book, you know, she just had gone to grab, uh, an
instant camera 'cause she wanted to record the fact she was with a, with a Prince.
I mean, it's before the advent of the smartphone.
So the survival of that, that photo is also quite, quite fragile.
But I think you're right because that is the image that's used to illustrate
every news story of it really.
Or her holding as an adult holding that photo.
Up
Richard: he
hadn't he
until then he'd said he hadn't met her.
And, And then after that he had to say, oh, well, I just can't remember it.
Helen: I think that's the problem is that his story has.
Evolved, shall we say.
Mm-hmm.
and also just his unbelievable tone deafness.
I went back, did you watch when the b BBC News were covering his story?
Obviously they're delighted to have all the clips of the,
uh, news night interview.
So they aired as many of them as possible.
And then Meatless asked him, Emily Meatless asks him, do you
regret meeting Jeffrey Epstein?
And he thinks about it from, he thinks about it and then he says, on
balance, no, because all the things I learned of the people that I met,
it's the most unbelievably tone deaf performance you've ever seen.
And actually watching it in retrospect, it's even more boggling
now than it was at the time.
Richard: That's up
there with the honorable comment, isn't it?
That it was he was doing the honorable
Helen: So many great.
I mean, the, the simple Shooting weekend is an incredible, the I
don't Sweat anymore is an also an incredible, I mean, every,
Ian: but he tried the Honorable thing again, when, he
said
he would voluntarily relinquish the titles and I think the Turning Point
came.
that, you know,
The royals may be turned deaf, but Charles can hear someone
shouting at him in public.
And he's not used to
turning up at an, uh, an ordinary event and someone shouting,
how much did you know then?
it was really fast
after that.
And if I, if I was pushed, I would say
he decided then
this process of slowly acting, which, you know, the royal family
tends to do,
doesn't work anymore.
flunky, who's our royal correspondent, pointed out last issue.
a lot of royal correspondence say, no, it's incredibly difficult for him to strip
away these titles.
And
you'd need a, a huge amount of parliamentary time.
and We can't
possibly do that.
We actually deked
someone once
in the abdication.
And
the amount of parliamentary time was one morning.
We, we can do this stuff if we want to.
Andy: should say, that's the second time we've deked someone.
And the first time was actually even faster than that in 1649.
Helen: Oh yeah.
I thought we were doing Charles the first.
But you're right, we're doing it with the eighth.
Yes.
Andy: Okay.
Right.
Good.
Richard: But it, but it's the same, you know, like the post office story
not that that couldn't really be dealt with and it was all very slow.
until People's in Power's reputation was on the line, then
we can act incredibly quickly.
You know, and we can exonerate hundreds of people at one, Phil
Helen: but this is my dicta, this is my theory of why people like dictators.
They just like the idea that one person might be able to make a decision and
it would actually happen and that you might have to bribe that one person,
but at least you know the who the one person is who could make that
Andy: decision
Right.
Are you saying it's anyone who's got experience of a meeting
and
what it's
like is more prone to accept dictatorial rule.
Helen: But I do, but I do, I do think there is a feeling that, you know,
everything in modern life is so sclerotic and turd and I think it's why people
like Trump are appealing to their base because his promise is action.
Right?
And, and, and actually what does, what does key star's labor offer you?
But all we're gonna do, pip.
No, we're not gonna do pip or we're gonna do with flu, or
we're not gonna do winter all.
We've got these taxes or we're not gonna do taxes.
And that's why I think people just go, I wish something would happen.
Unfortunately, when it does happen, it's often bad.
Andy: Right
now let's come to, very excitingly.
There is a new column in private eye.
It's in the back of the magazine, confusingly just
after the, In The Back section.
, and it's In The Money and it comes after the, , very, very long running, , in
the city Column, has ended and that was written by Slicker for many years.
This new one is written by Gold Digger.
And Richard, I understand that Gold Digger is you, et al,
Richard: Yeah.
Uh,
I didn't realize I'd be outed after one issue,
but yeah.
Sorry.
Yes,
it's,
um, collection
of financial stories that I'll be writing and pulling together
from other people as well.
Andy: The lead story in the latest, issue of the mag was about, uh, sanctions on
Russian firms or on Russian Shipping and how often they're actually enforced.
And what kind of fines are dished out even on the rare occasions that people
are found guilty of, this kind of thing.
And it's kind of staggering the, the scale of the sums that are
dipped out in fines compared with the scale of the, the offense.
Richard: Yeah.
I mean, I mean, like a lot of the stuff we do elsewhere in the
mag, it's, it's about showing the reality uh, against what we're told.
Is happening.
So with sanctions, we've been told several times that we're, we're
stopping the, the Putin war machine, he won't have any money to spend.
And then, years on you find that, oh, we've, we've gotta do something else.
You know, that machine we stopped 18 months ago, we're gonna stop it again.
You know,
so that kind of, that's where we are with sanctions
Andy: and we should say, you have a lot of experience of this because of your,
c can we
call it a dark past
Helen: as a
Richard: Yeah, you can.
shady, which part?
Andy: shady
Richard: history
Helen: as a bank robber.
Yeah.
Andy: Working for HMRC.
Richard: Yeah.
Until, uh, 20 years ago.
Ian: I mean, you were part of the blob, weren't you?
Richard: Well, I think I'm part of a smaller blob
now.
slightly,
Helen: Let a more of a puddle,
Ian: I always felt that put you in quite a strong position as a journalist.
cause you know how it works or it doesn't work in so many cases.
Richard: back then when I stopped being a tax inspector, and started
working for the eye, there was a sort of prevailing mood and attempt really
to stop tax collection working almost.
It was sort of politically unpopular.
It was, you know, it wasn't very nice to to people who were dodging their taxes.
It wasn't, wasn't in the sort of partnership spirit of the day.
so there were a lot of, um, cushy deals for big companies, and people hiding their
money in Switzerland and places like that.
and without going into too many details and getting into any
trouble, uh, it was that kind of thing that led to me, changing job.
Helen: can I ask you a question about tax, which is not
actually a bit a help on my VAT
Richard: this could be difficult.
It is 20
Helen: years ago.
Oh, no, no.
no.
I. About our tax code now, actually.
Yeah.
Is it too complicated?
'cause one of the things I think that happened, Rachel Reeves, as
we're talking, has just got in trouble with her registration as a
landlord for renting out her property.
Yeah.
Obviously Angela Aina previously in trouble about council
tax on her second home.
Nan Howie was in, you know, had to settle a very large bill with HMRC.
Should we have any kind of sympathy with politicians who run into
tax problems or are you, are you cold hearted about all of this
Richard: No, I'm, No, I, I think, you know, there is room for some sympathy.
administratively, it is, it is complicated.
one of those I wouldn't have any sympathy with Nadine
Zahar.
We, I mean, I'd draw the line there.
Um, and you know, and also Rachel Reeves, I think, you know, she should
probably have been a bit more careful.
She should be saying, look, I'm chancellor, are we sure
we've got all this right?
her husband found some emails and she probably should have been saying.
are we sure We've, we've done everything we need to.
'cause it's,
it's not
the first little mistake that she's made.
Is it?
You know, when you look at her,
uh,
the book she wrote
Helen: and the slightly puffed up cv.
Richard: the puffed up cv.
You know, there's a kind of string of these now
Ian: and it's a bit rich,
you know, post Boris, who we all had to go at about detail to say, look, we're
in government, we're detail this I mean, that, that's what we wanted this time
Richard: isn't it?
Yeah.
And the question to detail Yeah.
And the question for them is, how would you have reacted if
Boris Johnson had done this?
You know, I think that's a valid question.
Andy: we've got this budget coming up,
and lots of people are getting their defenses in early.
All sorts
of special pleading articles and columns are being written, why
you cannot possibly tax blah.
Yeah.
Small sector.
But I saw a piece of the weekend, which was all about how.
Actually, if you tax the gambling industry anymore, betting shops will have to close.
And they are an absolute lifeline for, elderly, vulnerable,
often very lonely, frequently
men.
Helen: saw that article, it was like they were running some kind
of like rotary club or something.
I was like, what you do is you get these people in and then you
keep them in as much as you can in order for them to spend money.
Like come off it.
Andy: It's a kind of like, and I'm sure a lot of people who've been
going there every day for 20 years do find it really valuable and would be
incredibly sad if it was closed down.
But that's not really the point of the gambling industry or paying tax.
So
Ian: you're gonna say that about
Andy: pubs,
right?
given the incredibly complicated tax system that we do have, 'cause there
are, it, it is complicated and there are lots of different loopholes.
Is it possible for a radical change to happen in the budget that's
coming up in a few weeks time?
Richard: No, it's not possible in the budget.
That's, It's a longer term job.
Right.
the problem with the budget, as with, you know, every budget for, for decades
now, is that they're very constrained.
Rachel Reeves and uh, predecessors are working with the office of
budget responsibility, which takes a very conservative view of the
effects of, economic measures.
So it sort of hems her in and she, she's left tinkering, you know, looking at
Differences of 10 billion here, 5 billion here.
What's gonna raise this, what's gonna give away that over a pretty short term, over
a forecast
period that's four or five years.
so it's very difficult to take the kind of steps that you would need to transform
the system and which might pay off.
in 10, 20 years.
Um, but, you know, and this not just in terms of the tax system itself, but
the whole, you know, economic system.
So it's very difficult to
launch a big investment program and expect credit from that because the,
the o B's gonna say, well, we can't be sure for the next three or four years.
you look at changes to employment rights, there's a very good argument
that stronger employment rights in the long run will be good for growth.
You'll have a higher wage economy,
better industrial relations and so on.
Yeah, there are people lobbying and then they might have the way
the tour is lobbying to say no.
The OBR has to say that's gonna hit growth.
And, and it may well do in the next two or three years.
Ian: But the office of budget responsibility is
presumably
advisory.
Um, it's not an entirely democratic institution, is it?
we don't have to do what they say on the grounds
that,
Richard: well,
they've, it,
it
Ian: vote for them, did
Richard: we?
It should be, but we've given them so much power.
and if you don't do what, conforms to, to, to what they think, uh, then
you end up in a Liz Trust position.
Yes.
Ian: Um,
I'm not entirely
advocating
that,
but,
but there
is, I'm just questioning its
role
Richard: That's right.
It has been given a really central role, and Rachel Reeves has made it even more
important by putting in law that you must consult whenever you have a big
announcement, you must consult the OBR.
You probably should do that anyway, but you should also
recognize it's not the only view.
And, and then, and there's probably a case for not leaving it just to
the OBR to do the fiscal and economic forecasts, the official ones to,
to have the treasury do them again.
Of course they're going to be politicized, but have them have the opposition to them.
right.
Have a range of views.
So you you can say, well look, this is our view and we think these
longer term measures we're taking, whether it's on investment education,
simplifying
the tax system, we think they will work over 10, 20 years.
, and then let somebody else make the, the opposing argument.
But at the moment, having one very
small C conservative body hold sway,
you know, he is, he is given us this sort of sclerotic system where
we can't actually do anything.
Helen: do you think this has been one of the most frenetic pre-budget
periods that you can remember?
I'm just trying to think whether or not I've just dipped outta British politics
for the last couple of years and therefore I've kind of forgotten the horror of it.
But this one seems to have been really.
Really frenetic, you know, all the things that have been floated, like
doubling the top two bands of council tax, you know, deciding that working
people ca is only people earning 45,000 pounds or under a year.
So you can put tax over that swapping, you know, national
insurance and income tax burdens.
Uh, what else have they, they've talked about an exit tax for, high income,
you know, but it's just, it just feels like there's, they always say, they say
there's kind of kite fly, they all the, like the big budget cliches, right?
You move from kite flying to rolling the pitch to the rabbit.
Like that's so that's the usual way that it proceeds, but it just seems
to me that there seems to be something very torrid going on this year.
Richard: It's got that feeling, you know, like Christmas getting earlier every year.
hasn't it?
You know, pre-budget, everybody's trying out their pet idea.
Yeah.
And it's, the media have a big part.
in it As well.
You know,
Helen: well, it's like football transfer system, isn't it?
For nerds, basically.
And that you, it's Unfalsifiable that may, like Rachel Ree may be
considering any number of things, and no one can her say she's
Andy: but
Richard: You're, you're in a sort of state of almost constant speculation, which
isn't good for, economic decisions, people investing, people employing, people.
It's, you know, this uncertainty,
Ian: This was the point of the Perder system.
Yeah.
You know, which is when some of us were growing up, obviously,
um, that nothing was said about it and then it was announced.
Yeah.
Then you could criticize it or you could not like it.
Now we have a system where you seem to be saying, let's, get public
opinion to all these Yeah, yeah.
Um, ideas for months beforehand.
And there was a
Joke piece in the last
issue.
And if, if you want public
opinion, it's that nobody wants to pay any more
tax.
Thank
you very much.
They want everyone else to pay more tax.
That is acceptable.
Yeah.
But you can't make policy on the grounds that everybody else should pay more.
Um, and if you float those ideas,
and
particularly with the press and the media at the moment, you will get
everyone saying, no, that won't work.
Before
they've listened to the idea, any amount of tax raising will be followed
by someone saying, I don't want
this.
So
what I don't understand is why you
don't
get to a system where the chancellor says, this is what we're doing.
That's it for a
Andy: year.
But this happened, this happened last time with the, Rachel Reeves ICER grab.
Which turned out to be largely a US three, but it was proceeded by
weeks and weeks of people saying, well, this is how to, you know, save
yourself from Rachel Reeves', ICER tax.
Richard: ICER
we've got that's going on.
Now again,
Andy: yeah.
But it happened last year.
and It was Move all your money out of ISIS now immediately, and then,
Richard: Either you do what Ian says and you have per, and you
just make the announcement on budget day or six weeks in advance.
You have a proper discussion about what's possible and get people's views.
what we have now is this sort of leaks and oh, let's float this idea.
And then the minister goes on, the.
Coonsburg show, says, oh, I couldn't possibly comment on the budget, you know,
having leaked umpteen possible ideas.
Yeah.
Helen: Yes.
The words refuses to rule out, suddenly start appearing a news copy with
horrifying frequency, don't they?
Yeah.
But I also think it's a reflection of the fact that the, the media
is only representative of one particularly quite small slice
of British public opinion, right?
I mean, I like you, I've read a lot of pieces about isis.
I've read a lot of pieces about the a hundred grand cliff edge, you
know, all of this kind of stuff.
But I haven't read so much stuff about the fact that one of the big economic stories
of the last couple of years is the fact of wage compression at the bottom end.
That the minimum wage has now, you know, been raised so high that it now basically
is the same as a graduate starting salary.
So there's almost no benefit really for those people and
having gone to university.
So they're starting on essentially minimum wage, but with a huge debt.
And you don't get that written a lot because those, those people foolishly
are watching TikTok rather than buying the Times and the telegraph.
Andy: there's this other thing, the sort of tinkering with smaller.
Ingredients of, of the overall tax pie.
Bad analogy.
Helen: Um,
' well, no, cause a tax pasty, that's, that's
where, that's
Andy: God.
Don't, we can't get back into pasties.
Um, but this, so one example of it is the, the now ancient tradition of freezing fuel
duty.
Yeah, yeah.
Which has been going on, I think it's 14 years in a row.
The chancellor sort of said,
I'm
freezing fuel duty and everyone cheers.
And, you know, huge relief, which is basically to keep drivers on
side 'cause they're an important part of the electorate, whatever.
Richard: but it's a fiddle,
it's part of the fiddle because the projections assume that it will be
increased in line with inflation.
But of course it isn't going to be, it's just, it's just a fiddle for
the chancellor of the day and none of them have been able to, to resist
Andy: it.
Right.
But it's
gonna break down at some point because if the, if you know, if cars do increasingly
go electric, you won't get nearly as much fuel duty even at the frozen rate.
At some point you're gonna need to change that system over and
be a bit radical and reform it.
To move to some kind of, like, Yeah.
if you're using the road per mile, that's the tax you pay.
Yeah.
There just
seems to be no
appetite for a kind of bigger
Richard: change.
that, that's,
why
this short term view is, is so dangerous.
because you, can't deal with bigger changes in the world.
Right.
You know, like the change to electric vehicles or increasing
value of property, for example.
You know, which ought to be taxed more when it's not used.
We can't sort of deal with that.
Yeah.
Ian: Rising property,
prices is.
It's not that recent, is it?
No.
Well,
I mean we've had a few decades to, to tweak this one.
Helen: but then you get the story about the pension who lives alone in a million
pound house and is, what's the phrase?
It's always asset rich and cash poor.
My big moan about the lack of the fancy economics of the budget is,
is about fiscal drag, which is the fact that the rates for higher and
additional rate tax have remained in place for a really long time, even
though inflation has, has massively eroded the value of those salaries.
So people are now paying those higher tax rates at the equivalent of like
a mid to senior range nurse is now a higher rate taxpayer in Britain.
If they had moved up with inflation, Rachel Reeves would be looking at
finding billions and billions more so we can sort of say, you know, about
the income tax thresholds essentially.
Lots of people are paying way more income tax than they were a decade
ago just because of fiscal drag.
Richard: but that goes back to how, you, what you have to say to get.
elected Or what they think you have to say to get elected.
I won't raise the rate of income tax.
And you know, you raise the same money with this fiscal drag thing,
Um, but you I'd just be interested to know what would, if somebody actually
tried as an experiment, being a bit more honest about what they were gonna do and
said, you know what, if we need to, I'll put a penny on the rate of income tax.
Or, Or it might even be two p. would that be electoral suicide?
Helen: I would say didn't someone do it in a penny on ash insurance ated for the NHS?
I can't remember whether that was, I wanna say Gordon Brown, but I dunno if
I, but I think when there's a tax rise for a thing, and I think one of the ways
that they probably could have done it is coming out of COVID Gone, my goal, we
spent a lot of money on all of that, and actually we are just gonna need to pay.
Here's a time limited measure with the sunset clause to pay back some of that.
But there was a kind of, that was one of the things that has baffled me about
economics in the last couple of years is that we came out of COVID having
borrowed all this money, but not.
At any point recognizing that there was a bill for that.
Right.
That it was just seems that that could be, all this talk about the benefits
bill and the number of people that have worked, that is a really, really
a big spike of people, particularly mental health conditions post COVID.
And again, I think you can see that as a legacy of COVID.
Lots of people had a really tough time and they've really struggled coming out of it.
But we haven't treated this as kind of extraordinary times.
We haven't treated the war in Ukraine as extraordinary times.
Ian: No.
And nobody has, as you say, suggested, um, we have to put up income tax to pay for
COVID.
Yeah.
For all the damage that was done then.
I think we should maybe
have an
office
of political responsibility, that
says during, um, the election period, I'm afraid you have to say
that you're gonna put taxes up.
otherwise, um, you're not being honest.
So, uh, the OPR demands, that you all say two p straight away.
I mean, these things
are not, impossible.
Richard: Would You wanna chair
that?
body Ian?
Helen: Be
Ian: Well, that's
very kind of you.
Richard.
Thank
you.
Helen: That's
Ian: a great
Andy: now.
We should move, uh, north to T side, Now regular listeners of
the podcast will know we have covered T side once or twice in the
past.
Mm-hmm.
but I think it's probably worth just restating Richard, what has been going
on at the immensely valuable X industrial site, uh, around the port in T side.
Richard: T
side,
Um, had a big knockback about a decade ago when the steelworks closed finally.
Michael Hessel time was sent up there, to, pronounce what could be done.
Said we need a, a development corporation, which they got trees and
may unveil this development corporation.
The idea was to regenerate the area to reinvent it as
a, center of green industry.
to do that, the idea was that, it
would get a lot of money from Whitehall.
raise money locally, borrow money, create a fund, um, develop the area,
lease it to industries who would.
then.
Pay the rent to the public sector plus the rates and that would
fund more regeneration and so on.
so you
Get this kind of virtuous circle.
Um, what actually happened was they brought in a couple of local businessmen
who were still not clear exactly why, but they invented some cock and Boulogne
reason as to why they had come in.
and they were given, options to buy the land, which very soon were
repriced to one pound per acre.
Oh, bad.
So
they could, buy the land whenever they wanted for one pound an acre,
and of course they would want to buy it once a particular patch of it had
been remediated at taxpayer's expense.
Um, and was then very valuable.
they'd exercised their option, uh, get this land for next to nothing
and rent it out to a big company that was coming onto the site.
Um, and then they could sell that income.
In return for a lump sum for themselves.
They did, they'd done that once already
and
made about 65 million pound profit instantly on a 90 acre site.
You
know, and there's sort of 1600 acres or so
To cash
Andy: it on.
So the whole
Richard: story
is, that's just
one strand of the ripoff,
Andy: Yeah.
but it's, it's a huge transfer of public assets to private businessmen.
Yeah.
not a very well explained reason why
Richard: No, and, and, crucially with nothing from them.
you know, we, we wrote about the private finance initiative for
decades and what a rip off that was.
that involved businesses investing money and then taking profits out.
And they were taking too much in profit, but at least they put some investment in.
This is, you know, there's no investment coming in.
It's just all profit going out, it's really quite
Andy: So,
which genius thought of this then, which political.
you know, Brilliant thinker came up with this model of, of how to redevelop T side.
Richard: I,
I think you've gotta pin it really on Lord Houchin.
this
Ian: is
Houchin.
So
it's
public risk, private profit.
Helen: But that happens everywhere, doesn't it?
I mean, I remember Peter Thiel, the venture capitalist, essentially saying,
you know, competition is for losers.
The best thing you can possibly do is get a monopoly, right?
Which is why Palant has so many defense contracts.
The best thing you can do is have a kind of government contract because
you can be the only one that supplies it, and there is zero risk to you.
Whereas the whole point of capitalism is that it's supposed to, like a market, is
supposed to weed out the best possible people and find prices within it.
Weirdly, the same thing happening in the Eni energy industry at the moment, right?
Where we're gonna write off a lot of people's energy debt that is just
not functioning as a market, right?
We just won't quite understand being, we're not gonna let people freeze
to death in their homes in winter.
So we end up banging loads of money into it, but then you've lost the whole
point of capitalism at that point.
You might as well just be honest
Richard: it.
Well, that how this project started out.
There was no competition for the deal.
If you had said, right, this is the deal,
you've gotta
sort of help us remediate a bit, but you don't have to put any money in and
you'll be able to buy the land for a pound, an acre, whichever bit you want.
Let's have some bids.
You'd have big companies companies saying, well, we'll pay you, you
know,
billion
Andy: everyone, everyone
Richard: Everyone would've
bid
for
that.
you would've raised a lot of money if you'd opened it up, but
there was no open competition.
It was just a, just a gift.
Ian: Can
I just recommend our readers?
um, Who as usual have got the best views on
this?
One of them
noticed that, um, Lord Houchin made mention in his House of Lord's
speech of the 200th anniversary of
the Stockton Darlington Railway um,
it's Martin McLean, um, from Darlington, and he said the motto of
the Stockton Darlington Railway Company
was, Preva
util Publica, which translates
as at private risk.
For public good, which appears to be the complete opposite of events
detailed in the report on T side.
Andy: Brilliant.
Richard: in one
in Unum
or
Andy: or whatever.
It's,
Richard: I
Helen: I was gonna say, I'm only surprised if people, I'm written in
this week offering their own Latin translations to the other way round.
I'd be very private.
I read
Andy: so, so Ben Hesen, conservative mayor of the area, and recently
elected and sort of Disconcertingly young, I mean, I think he's about
Richard: he's
think he's 40 now or coming up to 40.
Andy: He's roughly my age, which is, you know, you do think, God, I could
have made so much for myself by now.
You know, I
Richard: could
Andy: have
Richard: you could have given, you
Andy: could've
given
away
billion, tens, hundreds of millions of quid to my mates.
Were they, were they his mates?
Were they, I mean, how did they meet?
Do we know?
Is that lost in the midst of time?
Richard: one of them he'd had some dealings with when he
was a counselor locally, there are two property developers.
One of them, he'd had some dealings with the other, he says he'd had no dealings
with, I, I don't think they were mates.
I think these people were very influential in the area.
And somehow they got this deal.
And there was no competition, as we've discussed.
So, you know, it is all that is all a bit murky, right.
I think.
but
as
far
as you, I can see they weren't mates in the way you put it, although they
seem to be becoming a fair bit You know, we had a story in the, in, the,
in the current issue actually about, uh, how and going to the wedding
of the son of one of developers,
the son who also runs a, uh, a,
a,
plant hire company,
which
is making money from the development that his father's controlling.
Um, and which makes huge profits
stupid.
profits On for, for having a relatively small amount of kit,
Andy: which is a plant higher, like heavy machinery, not
Richard: Yeah.
Andy: yeah,
Just, yeah.
Richard: I reckon they
could make
money from, Haring out
Helen: but Richard isn't the important thing to remember here that there
was a report into all this, which completely exonerated Ben Houchin and
said he'd done absolutely nothing wrong.
And he was in fact the bestest boy in the world and you were very wrong.
I
think that's broadly what it
Richard: I think that
Helen: The
times
are,
Richard: you were put.
Um, no.
there was a, a review, a
couple of years ago when we sort of got this stuff out about the land transactions
and the pound an acre, Michael Gove was forced to Asked for a review and,
a chief executive of Lancaster Council at the time, Angie Ridgewell, did a
review with a couple of other people.
and It was a very, very good review with limited powers, you know, no
real powers to call for information and so on, She, she sort of confirmed
the things we'd written and found some more that, you know, that,
that they were, there was no risk.
They were taking on that they hadn't invested a penny.
that, um, the deals with friends and family were questionable.
that there wasn't proper procurement, all that kind of stuff.
Um, so it was really damning, but it had one line in there.
One of the triggers for, for that review was that the local, local Middlesborough
mp, Andy McDonald, had said that this was industrial scale corruption.
He said that in Parliament.
and so part of her remit was to look at that and she said she, based on
what she'd seen, and she also said that they didn't cooperate with her,
providing information, but based on what she'd seen, she hadn't, she hadn't
found any corruption, anything illegal.
Uh, and that one line was latched onto by Ben, Houchin in a, in a pretty smart PR
operation, made sure everyone was briefed on it well before the report came out and
could see how bad the content of it was.
So everybody ran with that line and now he just repeats ad nauseum that she found
nothing wrong, which is completely untrue.
And he, he has completely, uh, misrepresented and lied about that
report in quite important settings.
You know, in a, in a hustings for reelection in 24, he said that
the report found it was value for money when it explicitly said
she could not find value for money based on what
she'd seen.
She didn't say it
wasn't, but she said she couldn't find it.
so it's being misrepresented, but people are still swallowing it and, um, Houchin
is treated as if, you know, there's nothing to see here he's sort of occupied
this place in the political narrative as the future of the Tory party.
You know, this Tory party that's completely useless.
What do they have to do?
Oh, we need someone like Houchin who can deliver?
That's the way, that's the future of tourism.
and everybody sort of goes along with it 'cause it fits and it makes
a good slot on a political panel.
Andy: Does the change in government not change the appetite for
actually finding out what's been going on here or officially
recognizing
Richard: Um, no.
It should have done because Kir starer in, in opposition in 24
said it cries out for an inquiry.
Angela Rayner promised one.
but it just hasn't happened.
Right.
You
know, um, they're just spineless
Ian: and he's not reform.
I mean, Satori, who cares
about them anymore,
I mean, they've got other things to
Helen: I mean, give it a
Richard: I mean, I think, I think if it was a labor Mayor
Starman might have done something.
I think he's kind of
just
too
scared of appearing to, you know, opening up that challenge because the answer
would be if he went in and, con, you know, demanded a full audit, what you need
is a full audit with statutory powers.
if he instituted that, you know, he, he, the response
would be, oh, he's anti-growth.
you know, he's trying to kill anything good that's happening in the north.
I don't think he's got the stomach
to fight that.
Andy: hard.
spiriting
Any, any good, any, any good, news that we can, um,
you've
been covering the post office as well.
Are you about to tell us that that's, um, that's been going terrifically in
the last year or so since we covered it,
on
this
Richard: pod the
last
oh, There
are some terrific things.
Mostly thanks to the post masters, not the post office and certainly not Fujitsu
Ian: know, remind us of the total that
they've paid
out
to date.
Richard: yeah.
Zero.
Absolutely.
Helen: right.
I thought it was gonna be like 30 quid, but No, it's absolutely nothing.
All right.
Okay.
Richard: Okay.
Fattest zero ever.
Uh, they, they promised, uh, it's now getting on for two years ago that Paul
Patterson, their European boss, sat in parliament, told a committee, yes, we,
we have a moral obligation to chip in.
and he promised, you know, a particularly,
uh,
deserving group, the children of Subpostmasters who weren't entitled to
any compensation but suffered, major
consequences.
Uh, he
promised them that he would fund a, a program, uh, to support them
and absolutely nothing's happened,
which is disgraceful.
And, And I can't quite believe it.
even
even on a sort of PR level, it seems pretty.
stupid.
Ian: Does a moral
responsibility mean you,
you don't ever have to pay.
Richard: Well, it's a crafted PR line.
Um, you, you confess moral but not legal responsibility.
And I think it was first used by
Union
Carbide
after the Bo Powell disaster.
Ian: Yeah.
Richard: but I mean, there's some, some sort of good news.
The government's moved a bit recently, um, announced that those children of sub
supposes will get some financial help.
Andy: Right.
Richard: Compensation is moving along, but for some still far too slowly,
you
know, there's, there's still a couple of hundred at least
claimants from sort of original claimants who were bogged
down in legal arguments and,
Andy: or were being offered substantially smaller amounts.
Richard: That
kind
of
thing.
Yeah.
A Kind
of fraction of what they asked for.
And then they're having to go back and offered a bit more and go back again.
but, you know, the, the whole setup, that whole system for calculating
redress has been wrong from the
start.
they've always talked about putting Subpostmasters in the
position they would've been if they'd never come across Horizon,
And it's just nowhere
near that.
How did you calculate Well, yeah, you, of course, it would always be impossible
to calculate that, but they're doing it on, or have done it on, principles
normally apply to more routine for unfair dismissal sort of cases.
Well we'll give you a couple of years pay
lost Pay,
right?
And,
oh, did you really have a nervous breakdown?
Oh, well, can you prove that?
You know, um, shows the paperwork kind of thing.
Um, Ruth, this is
more like
your whole
life
Yeah, exactly.
And your
Andy: if you're prosecuted over it.
Richard: Yeah.
Ian: And as you keep pointing out, I mean, Fujitsu's profit
margins are very, very large.
Yeah.
Um, and even I remember going on, um, Peston and, and being asked how
much I thought Fujitsu should pay.
And I said, a billion uh, pounds.
Um, off the top of my head, they wouldn't even notice
I mean, it is ridiculous.
Richard: that might be about a year's profit, but they should be
on, this is more than a year's,
um, kind of persecution.
Yes.
Ian: Yeah.
Andy: Is there anywhere that readers can find out a little
more about the post office story?
Uh, maybe a, a sort of book length summary of it?
Richard: Oh, we how to plug
I,
we'll
Andy: depends
how gracefully and subtly it's done.
I suppose it
Ian: just
and the
less so, the more
Richard: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Well, our, um, account of the whole story is called Postmortem
A Book is being published at the end of this month by private Eye.
Some book sellers have seen the cover, I'm sad to report in.
And, um, because it's got private eye as a banner and then the title
post-mortem and some are billing it as privat Eye Post-Mortem.
Helen: Oh.
Ian: Well, that's cheery
Richard: for
all
of us.
Andy: Well, it's good to work out finally.
where, where it all went wrong.
Richard: maybe.
Andy: We should wrap it up there.
But, uh, if you have enjoyed this episode and you'd like more page 94,
but in a text version, than just go into your local news agent or supermarket
and buy a copy of Private Eye.
It's a terrific magazine.
It's got a new columnist, gold Digger.
Very exciting.
Uh, it is got revelations about the post office, about T side,
everything we've been talking
Ian: about
And It's got a cover that is literally prophetic.
Helen: Yeah.
Are, uh, are Christmas gift subscriptions available, Andy, for, for a loved
one, perhaps there festive season?
Andy: you know?
I think they might be.
I think they might.
Well, so that is all available locally or at private NY dot co uk.
Until then, Thanks very much.
We'll see you next time.
Bye for now.