Page 94: the Private Eye Podcast.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Page 94.
My name's Andrew Hunter Murray.
I'm in the Priva Eye Studio with Helen Lewis, Adam McQueen and Matt Muir.
And we are going to start off today by talking about social
media.
it's very exciting.
There's a new study out about this exciting phenomenon of social
media, which reveals everyone now hates it and has gone off it.
this is a report by Ofcom, isn't it, Matt?
Yeah, it's the latest.com data that was published last week,
into UK
media uses specifically
online
media, showed that, basically we all hate social media now,
or at least we are not engaging with it in the same way
that
we used to.
the numbers of people who are actually
going
online and
posting, for example, to Facebook
or
to Instagram,
commenting, liking
has dropped to just
under half of people.
And this has
led to a spate of articles that kind of hand ringing saying, is that it for
social media?
oh, now that we are banning it, are we all
just gonna stop using
it after all?
But that's not
quite what the data shows, I think it's important to, to push back.
Ever so slightly against this narrative because I dunno if you notice people,
still look at their phones a lot.
I dunno.
I like, I presume you still look at Instagram.
is it fair to say?
Well, I've
only just joined.
I'm a bit embarrassed about it.
Just as everyone else is leaving,
it's, not too late
to stop
No.
you can,
get out.
Andy's a proper content creator.
And isn't this current a part
of,
this?
What's happened Is that the casual How dare are you Oh, you are though.
I've seen you on there.
But the, kind of casual, like you might just post something for your
friends kind of stuff is dying away and it's becoming more professionalized.
part.
I think That's basically it.
there's,
a longstanding trope here.
The media, all media will eventually, in the same way that all life forms on earth
become krabs eventually.
So
all media,
what?
You just threw that one in
threw that one.
Is that true?
Hey, you can go look it up.
Ation is a real fact.
but all media eventually ends up being video and fundamentally social
media.
If
you think
that Facebook has been around for 20 years now, more or less,
And when
it started, it was a place
where you
went to connect with friends, to attempt to flirt with
people
that you went to
school with,
break up your marriage and post pictures of your holidays.
it is not that anymore.
it has
become a far larger, far
more complex platform series of platforms.
And effectively,
fundamentally, most social
media
platforms are now like television.
Whereas before they were lean
forward participatory things.
Now they simply tend to
be lean back.
So for example, you will log
onto Instagram and
rather than posting to your grid of pictures or seeing
the things that your friends have posted to their grid
of pictures,
you'll
instead be served a vast quantity of video content made by people that
you don't know that is designed to entertain you much like TikTok does,
which is exactly
what Snapchat does,
which is exactly what, YouTube shorts does.
Everything is basically now short term video.
And so it's not that people are using social media less, it's just the manner
in which they are engaging with it has
changed significantly
from being something, as I said, participatory to
something that is
fundamentally about
consumption.
we should say private.
I, as a traditional news organization, will never, ever pivot to video.
But your mention of TikTok iss interesting.
Because that is I think where the pivot really happened.
Everybody decided that the kind of the for you algorithm was just a much
infinitely superior way of content.
when it's
one of the, one
of the oddities of social
media, and whenever
you read people's surveyed about this, people always say
in conversations, you know
what?
I really
miss the old days of Instagram where I just
go on
there and it would be the
things
that my friend had posted.
And I would scroll through and it would go
backwards in time.
And
then there would be, and people always say this, but every single
study that has ever been undertaken by social media companies shows
that's bollocks.
And what
people actually is the algorithmic
feed
because they really,
being served this
continual
stream of infinite content that's tailored to their very specific desires.
And that
is basically a post TikTok, as you say, Helen thing, they
were the first people to perfect that.
And everybody's followed, suit
with this,
but people are posting a bit less, people are partly, because making video is
A faff as opposed to
words or
pictures
fundamentally that there's a slightly higher barrier to entry.
Not everybody
feels comfortable doing it.
And also we are now a little bit more attuned
to
the fact that having your face
all over the internet possibly isn't
a great thing for lots and lots of people.
Yeah.
women, it turns out, tend to have actually often quite a bad
time when they post pictures of themselves on the internet for a
variety of reasons, whether it be abuse or
whether
it be someone using Elon Musk's magical Uni unification tool.
to
turn them into
porn stars.
so you can see
why people might be
somewhat reticent,
and what are the other elements of the Ofcom study that was out last
week or the, their survey is the proportion of people saying social
media is good for their mental health.
That has come down to 36%, which I would say is,
still
who are these people?
remarkably
high.
if you use it a little bit and you just check in, see some funny videos.
most of my usage, apart from the dead Eyed brand extension
that
I'm up to is, just checking into seeing sketch comedy
and which I, don't mind, but.
two years ago, 42% of people said it was good for their mental health.
Now it's 36.
It does still seem very high, but it brings us onto one of the reasons we
wanted to talk to you today, Matt, which is of course, the chat about social
media bans, the huge lawsuits that have been happening against Meta and
YouTube, those are over in the States.
But here people are saying, do we need to regulate this quite firmly
and in particular stop children, under the age of 16 from using it?
So can you tell us law is on that, at the moment.
So
currently
the government is undertaking its one third of the way through
a three month consultation.
so there are soliciting
responses.
basically on the question of yes, should
there be a ban for under sixteens, what would be the
positive consequences of this?
What might be the potential negative
consequences of this?
so far they've had somewhere in the region, they've say they were
saying a couple of weeks ago of 30,000 responses, which by the
standards of government consultations
Is
a fairly big,
big uptake and
it's got another
two months left to
run.
There obviously, there's a lot of
interest behind this.
anyone respond to it?
Is it any member of the
any member of the public?
can do it.
There are three separate consultations.
One is
for parents, one is
for younger people, and one is for any other interested parties who
may have skin in the game for whatever reason, whether it
be professional or personal.
Exactly what's going to happen.
To what may well be a
hundred thousand responses.
How they're gonna be triaged and to what extent it's just going to
be fed into an LLM
because
that's
almost certainly what's going
to happen.
Yes, of
course.
Don't you think it'd be like, they'll do a sentiment analysis on it, essentially,
and they'll go, they'll, ask the LLM to say, what percentage of these said, I
hate social media and I want it banned,
if
get a word cloud, aren't we?
Yeah, Without,
a shadow of it.
doubt, a beautiful dashboard.
just a beautiful thing for showing you what it would've been like
if everyone said those words in a
different order and
and
I'll just say like in the middle of it, I'll just say feet.
What If I
don't like large language models, where do I express my views about that?
In a way that will mean someone reads it.
are really
not
going to like the future.
very
Okay.
Gosh.
Okay, so this consultation's running.
Am I right in thinking I've read that there are trials that are
happening in 300 homes, they're gonna actually experiment with.
Cutting social media
usage
for children.
That's absolutely right.
Yes.
So the, these are limited
trials that are
happening around the UK
simultaneously.
There's another study that was launched
last week, in Bradford, I
believe, which is an exceptionally large longitudinal study over
the course of a year that's going
to track
or seek
to track
the
impact
of social media usage on young people's, emotional wellbeing.
that's going
to run until
2027.
which does rather make one, wonder, okay, so we gonna take a
decision on this before we have all of this evidence,
because, it does feel possibly
slightly premature, But the interesting
thing
about this, and
one
of the really interesting things
about
the debate as a whole
is that
over the course of the 13 years
that I've been writing about these godawful companies
and the terrible things that they've done
to the world,
there
has been
a lot
of research that has
passed across my desk.
Debating the
impact of these technologies on
the mental wellbeing
of
both adults and
younger
people.
And what's been striking about it is the
complete lack of any
sort of consensus for every single piece
of research
that says,
these things are the worst thing for young people since we got
rid of
child
labor.
there's another that says actually they have no discernible
impact at all when you take
into account
all of the other things that are going
on in young people's lives.
And this
kind of comes to the
recent rulings
in
the states,
which while ostensibly
can be
seen as very, bad news for
social platforms, probably aren't
quite as definitive as the media has wanted to paint them,
We, we should say what those are.
There's, a case in California where Meta and YouTube were fined $6 million
for designing deliberately addictive, algorithms to get children in particular.
In, and the other was in New Mexico, which was a $375 million Fine.
Just, to
point
out Andy, that's
not
0.62%
of
meta's
income from
2025.
Okay.
It's a start.
that was over.
Claims that the products led to things like child sexual exploitation
Exactly.
And that the platforms weren't protecting children from being approached by
creeps or potential abusers online,
Exactly.
that kind of thing.
meta and YouTube are appealing those verdicts, but the aim is to try
and launch as many of the cases as possible to try and reign them in
basically,
yes.
the big one whilst the New Mexico one has a very big
headline figure.
meta themselves have laughed off defined frankly.
The one that's more significant
is the LA
case, primarily because
there are potentially thousands of
other cases
waiting in the wings that
were this verdict to be upheld after the inevitable appeal.
Would set obviously a precedent that
could then actually prove quite significant in
terms of potential liabilities
for the companies
and requirements on
them to modify their services to frankly, potentially avoid
any
sort
of huge long tail legal kickback.
The difficulty,
of course,
is that
a
meta is going to appeal and YouTube, has a very
strong ground
for appeal because I think they can make a reasonable
case that they're not actually
a social platform
in a meaningful
sense.
They are,
They really are just, they're
a video streaming platform and I think they can probably do that.
Meta is
a little
bit harder, but the case rests on
the fact that meta's
products are addictive
and
that's quite
a contentious
thing to prove.
So for example, there are literally
no studies
out there,
no studies whatsoever
that
show the technology products of any sort,
but specifically social media
have
the
same effects mentally.
As actually addictive
products, Like it is not the same as smoking or
doing heroin.
Right.
It does not
light
up the
it is, they are fundamentally designed to keep you looking at your screen and
keep you on that platform, aren't they?
I was talking to a, an anti-gambling campaign, or recently who made a
really interesting point, about even WhatsApp, which you think
of as being a sort of relatively innocent one, the two tick thing.
is designed to have you there, you've sent your message, you've
done whatever you're gonna do.
No, you're gonna stay there.
You're gonna keep looking if you're, oh, have they read it yet?
Has everyone in the group read it?
Has anyone, oh, someone's typing.
Everything is about keeping you on that path.
And you can feel that, I feel it myself when I'm scrolling through my phone.
There's a point where I just go
put
it down, Adam put it down and, I just There's A bit more.
you are entirely right.
They are designed specifically because fundamentally speaking,
that's what venture capitalists demanded when they invested very
heavily in these
services and they wanted to see user retention and all of
Interesting.
They're not very well designed for that these days.
I find, 'cause I'm, I was on Facebook for a long, time.
Left it last year.
Again,
exactly
the same problem coming up with Instagram.
Now that all I seem to be getting are sponsored posts.
About things which the algorithm is convinced that I'm interested
in, I'm, a bit of a geek, but I don't need to see 1 million posts
about those two episodes of Dr.
Who that turned
up
in someone's last week,
which seems to be all Instagram is giving me at the
Do you
also get heavily owned by the adverts?
I do.
'cause it's obviously clocked that I'm a woman between the ages of 40
and 50, so all it wants to talk to me about his hair loss and dry vaginas.
And you're just like,
Oh, Viagra.
Viagra.
I'm afraid.
Yeah.
Middle-aged men.
Yep.
Yeah, I'm
getting is Soler panels and
heat
pumps.
I had a
very
interesting experience last year where, for
reasons that I can't adequately explain, the algorithm on
Facebook
decided that
I was a gay
man for about a week.
And it was a genuinely fascinating insight
into a world that I
don't personally experience
lots of very beautiful, muscled men and incredibly handsome knitwear.
It was, Yeah,
It
was a nice time
Turn to at all, or
Not,
not yet.
I'll,
see
how it
limits, the powers of social media.
Can I, drag us back to the prospect of a ban, which would stop us seeing Australia
have just banned it for under sixteens.
They
and we
have, we've had our first kind of little glimpse of
how it's going.
It's
early, isn't it?
It's incredibly early.
It's been a couple of months effectively.
And
the first big
proper government mandated,
data on this is gonna come out, I believe in May
from Australia.
So
that's gonna be
the first proper official cut.
But,
anecdotal evidence, reports that
came out again last week
suggested that about 70% of Australian kids were
just swerving this.
The age verification stuff doesn't work particularly well.
It is actually quite easy to bypass.
And
we've all been teenagers
at various points
in the
distant past, and
we all know that there is nothing more powerful than a motivated
teenager that wants to do something you don't want them to do.
you always find a
way around and
social media bands are no exception.
So firstly, there's
the difficulty
in actually
enforcing this in any meaningful sort of
way.
secondly, there
isn't a coherent
evidence base that suggests that it is necessarily a factor
in young people's mental health Thirdly,
there's also an argument to suggest that by implementing a ban for under sixteens,
what you're effectively doing.
Is, letting these companies
off the hook slightly
because rather than requiring them to make meaningful changes
to the manner in which they operate, you're instead just cutting off a sway
of people from using them.
Whereas it could be argued, that it would make more sense to
attempt to make them change the
way in which, for example, algorithmic, content delivery
functions or the concept of an infinite scroll, which would theoretically
benefit all users rather
than simply
preventing one contingent from using the platforms.
I don't know how I feel about this.
'cause I think my analogy for this always is, tobacco and you are right there.
It is different in the sense that we just had ev straight up
and down evidence eventually by a certain point that was killing
people.
Yeah.
But you could say all the same things, which is that kids, would send their
mate, their older mate to the shop to buy,
cigarettes for them or or actually, should we ban it for kids or
should we try and drive the tobacco companies outta business altogether?
and I think all those things are true, but I think there is some social
power in saying we think these things are poisonous and we are against
them even if people get round that
this is completely fair.
And I
completely agree with you.
I suppose
the other point that I would make,
which is I think slightly ignored in this
debate, is the extent to which,
over the course of the past decade, these
platforms have become
infrastructural.
they're not
elective really anymore.
There is a certain extent to which.
Significant sways of modern life require
the
ability to navigate these
platforms,
whether it be for social reasons or increasingly for administrative reasons.
There's also
the fact that, okay, so
16 year olds are
going to be given the
vote, right?
Where, do most young people
currently get their news from?
Oh,
it's social media.
Do you
wanna, cut
off the place
that they are informed about the world, whilst at
the same
time giving them the power to
affect the movement of that world in
a more significant
sense?
I dunno,
it,
you're not being socialist enough here, Matt.
What you need to do is mandate them all to receive a copy of private
Eye state issued copy of Private
Are you somehow
telling me
that 15 year olds don't all private
eye?
Helen?
I hear there maybe some of them
don't,
they're not meant to, but you can send someone into the shop to get
for
you.
so
what,
happens next?
We wait for the
consultation to
end.
Although, the
Prime Minister
has been making increasing noises, about the likelihood of that
being a ban in some way, shape or
form.
the House of
Lords is obviously mad keen on this
Baroness Kidron keeps slapping amendments
onto every single bit of legislation
she seems
capable of doing.
Yeah.
she's she, this is
very much her hobby
horse
and
so this is be beam Kidd on the filmmaker
isn't it?
Who made a film
IRLA few
years
Yes, Exactly.
Which effectively radicalized her into believing that
all of
these companies should be
fundamentally torn apart.
so many
of these attempted amendments
there was one that was almost put through a couple of months ago
that would basically abandon under sixteens from using Wikipedia.
because it was so broadly written.
there's currently
one about
chatbots that
Barron's Kidron attempted to implement
into a piece of
legislation which would, I think seemingly ban, ban kids from using, any
sort of AI
related
thing, which if you consider how much AI has been injected
into all sorts of products becomes
problematic.
and this
was also in evidence at a common select committee the other week when, once
again the charming, I need to remember this ma name will Freda Fernandez,
who is, the spokesperson
for X on safety and
thankless job.
You
You know what?
I
get the impression
that he's very well remunerated.
and I think
he probably sleeps quite well
at night.
but he was
quizzed about,
X's algorithm and
whether or not
it's right wing or whatever,
and he gave
some very smooth
sounding
answer about the fact
that the algorithm was
transparent
and.
It wasn't challenged
by anyone.
And that's because
people don't really
unders, They use the word
algorithm as some sort of complexity thing as though they
actually know
what that means.
and in
most cases
they don't.
And so currently,
for example, the way the
algorithm on X
works is
that basically it, it throws stuff into
gr.
and ize, and no one knows how AI works.
So literally
nobody on the planet you can write, you can make that transparent.
But
there's a whole big black box in the middle that
nobody understands.
And lots of algorithms
are like
that now.
Like
the major social platforms are all built
on math.
recommendation maths that is so complex
that even
the people who built it can no longer really get a
comprehensive picture of exactly
how it functions in any given way.
we haven't really talked about
X
being now a. full of very euphemistic CSAM child sexual abuse material.
Which is, it's stuffed with it.
This is grok produced stuff.
Is
there any appetite to tackle that in a legislative way?
I presume this is in off comm's remit.
Because it's
AI services
Yeah.
That isn't
currently
under the terms of the
Online Safety
Act.
Come again.
Yeah.
Ai, AI
and chatbots don't currently fall within the remit
of the Online
Safety Act.
So
it'll require the online safety
Act to be tweaked.
which
even though they're within X
but it's a separate, it's, ai so it's different.
child sex abuse material is
illegal.
is that not just a fairly straightforward, should there not
be prosecutions under existing law?
Does it matter how it's produced?
One might, one might argue out the, you.
I'm, I'm very
to,
yeah.
I'm
very prepared to,
yes.
But, I suppose there
are also questions about, and without wishing to
get into.
Fairly unpleasant conversations about gravity of imagery and things like that.
There are questions about the extent to which it is
technically
falling foul of CSAM legislation as it is.
Whether it's a gray area, et cetera.
And that, is very
unclear.
It's also riven with code words, right?
It's all like
liter
or whatever it might be.
Like people make these arguments that what they're actually doing right.
It's like an ambiguous teenage person.
And I think that's something that the
AI thing is also quite bad for, 'cause people can argue that I never
prompted it to produce child sex.
I, I simply said, I want an extremely young looking girl, but of, legal
age.
It seems like there is an appetite in the UK to dish out a beating
to plenty of these companies.
It doesn't feel like it's a vote loser to say, certainly I
want these, things dealt with.
that's probably why Stama is leading on it.
it's something people
want to
It's, one of the few areas
where he can do
something that people seem to want and the difficulty of course is that,
and This is something we're gonna come
up against again and again, is
that there's an extent to which one could argue these companies are
fundamentally too big to regulate.
What meaningful sanction can
you place on
a company
that is worth literally trillions of dollars?
I hesitate
to say something
Polyannish, but I'm about to some sort of global coalition
that, where all the
world's countries
come together and
decide
to regulate
in
parallel.
And that's definitely not gonna happen.
When We've got a White House we've aligned themselves completely with any
sort of restriction on, social media.
Is a, is an attack on free
speech?
isn't it?
the
State Department and the decline of the
West.
The
State Department was quoted I think
a week ago.
Specifically calling out X as a positive vector in the war against
foreign influence and propaganda.
what are
you gonna do?
that's
oh, I'm depressed,
It's a cheering note to move us
it's Why you bring
me,
everyone?
Oh, am I going look at Instagram for a bit to cheer myself up.
Look at some cat
videos,
let's come now to the local elections, which are happening in a month's time.
I know anyone watching or listening to this would've been, excited already.
You'll have been watching all the launches, collecting all the pamphlets
you can get your hands on already.
But they are going to be very interesting and they're gonna be interesting partly
because this is, I think, the first big electoral test in a nationwide
sense of Reform UK and the Greens.
we had a little bit of it
in
the last general election, but since then their numbers have absolutely shot up.
we thought it might be worth finding out what reform and the greens
actually propose in policy terms.
obvious place to start on this is the fact that, reform have, said that they would
keep the triple lock on pensions, which is a kind of really interesting, move for
them because I, it was, I, thought it was a brave and good and therefore I couldn't
really understand why they had done it.
They'd said they would scrap the triple lock up till now.
Essentially the issue with triple lock, it was brought in 2010, As a
way of saying we think that pensions have not kept up with inflation.
We're gonna introduce these three measures by which it will always rise
It's whichever is highest out of inflation wage increases.
Or 2.5%.
Exactly.
So even if inflation and wage increases are both on the floor, it'll still go up
two and
a half
percent.
Yeah.
Then what happened is obviously the acts as a ratchet and not
quite often you can get two bumps in a row from the triple lock.
So one, one measure goes up one year and the next measure goes up next year.
Yeah.
And actually it goes up way above inflation.
So we have this post-financial crash situation in which, in real
terms, working people's incomes have been really stagnant, but
there has been this constant ratchet
effect.
And this, the triple up brought in for very good reasons.
Pension of poverty was, extremely high.
We've now got a situation actually where I think if you take into account
housing costs, pensioning comes, are on higher than working income.
So in one respect, what ev someone she should be going is, thank God no, many
fewer grannies are freezing in winter.
Well done the triple lock job
done.
Unfortunately there is a problem, which is that the older people who get the
triple log also vote in enormous numbers.
So no party is willing to put any expiration date on
this constant up rating.
Essentially that outpaces
inflation.
And it's the only benefit that's pegged that way, isn't it?
is that,
Yeah.
in fact, working age benefits were for a long time under the coalition were frozen.
They weren't even being uprated by, inflation.
So actually losing money in, real terms for those.
so
yeah.
Yeah.
So reform have just said within the last week, oh actually no, the triple lock is a
lovely,
is a good idea.
And it's, they're not the only party being dishonest on this.
See, also.
Labor, the Conservative party, the liberal Democrats,
the greens have been dangerously radical in that they propose only a double lock.
They proposed removing the two point a half percent, and I think it's gonna
be whichever is higher out of, earnings
increases
or inflation.
Has anyone gone for the quadruple
yet?
Is
it gonna be like razor blades
Just more
and
more.
I think there was something, wasn't
that the last general election?
I'm sure
Cak
proposed.
Yeah.
So it's giving me vibes.
I remember this.
The really interesting thing is, I know I'm addicted to sticking my hand in wall
sockets in terms of things I talk about that the amazing defensiveness about
this subject is really extraordinary to me because as soon as you say, maybe we
should have a double lock or a single lock, maybe it should just go up with
one measure of inflation and Yeah.
And track the economy in that way.
People say, I've worked hard all my life, I've paid in.
Why don't you take it off immigrants instead, like the level
of defensiveness that you might slightly tweak this benefit Yeah.
Is really extraordinary.
People clearly take it in a spirit of you don't value me.
Anymore if you say you're gonna take away the triple lock, like I see
one of those things where it feels like a very emotional response,
whereas
I think it sounds like you're saying is that it's just not sensible
to say for every square on this chess board, I will put on double
the number of grains of rice.
At some point that's gonna become an unsustainable thing
to
do.
Yeah.
If you follow the projection, there would be a point at which it would
consume a hundred percent of GDP.
Okay.
If we, we logically take
it I don't see a problem with that.
and I think it's pretty weird and a bit, age phobic that you do.
I'm just
as the eldest
in the room.
Sounds good to me.
Yeah,
I know.
the thing that's really interesting about it is actually it has good
support throughout all age categories.
This is not a situation in which absolutely.
Pensioners love it and young people think, sold you actually most
people are in favor of the idea of
the triple lock.
Okay.
But it's one of those things that obviously at some point it's gotta
end and it's really fascinating game of chicken to see who will
be the one who actually finally
does it.
Yeah.
and given the mess that we've talked about before in this podcast, that
labor got into with even means testing winter fuel payments or restricting
them.
still
that's now
in, that's now come no radioactive, completely toxic.
Yeah.
there have been various other kind of gimmicky, events from reform.
Nigel will pay all your electricity bills for a year.
Nigel will give you some cheap petrol, but just you, and it's
become a very lotfi event,
in exchange for lots of your data about your voting habits.
Which has been very
useful,
learned off Vote Leave, who did an incredible job where they had a,
essentially like a pools competition for predicting, I think it was a football
thing, and it was like the chances of anybody correctly predicting all of the
games was infinitesimal, but in order to sign up for it, you had to hand over yes,
very important, valuable data about your address and email and, then you could get
text messages from the campaign seen as one of the great campaigning innovations
of the 2010s then, because a lot of people who weren't really interested in politics,
but were the kind of people who might vote leave if they could be got to turn out
right, registered and signed up for it.
So clearly Nigel Farage has learned, a lot of stuff about
campaigning over the last decade
and a half.
That's learning from social media as well, isn't it?
To go back to our first
talk,
the,
the email address point is actually
a really interesting and important
one.
So if you run
adverts,
on social media platforms,
you can create what are effectively called lookalike audiences.
So the idea
is that
you
have a database of people.
You have their email addresses,
you feed them into for the sake of argument, what, let's
say meta.
so to advertise
across Facebook and Instagram.
Meta will look
at all
of these
email addresses it has data about all
of those people.
And you can say, find me people who
are like that.
So
if you have
a database of reform voters, you can give them to
meta and meta will go out and
find you people
who it thinks are like those people and who
therefore
are also likely to vote reform.
So it becomes an excellent way of multiplying your potential reach with
very,
highly targeted advertising.
which
is
also how MRP polling works, right?
Is you essentially correct for sampling binds by looking at the
type of people demographically that are in every constituency.
And then you can have more a sense of what those kind of people you, where you'd
expect them to vote to check your waiting.
Okay.
But this is, which was now I think, it's very hard to talk about how politics has
changed just due to the huge amounts of data that we have on people, but they,
those are two very obvious examples.
Yeah.
However, there is also still a place for the brute force, 'Would you
like some free money?' Approach to politics also still very popular.
Very
popular,
yeah.
But the problem that is still dogging reform is personnel.
related.
That's a bit of a euphemistic way of putting
It They will keep on recruiting
those Nazis.
do
you mean the Welsh candidate who did the Hitler
salute?
the one
I was thinking
Yep.
there's also Simon Dudley, the housing spokesperson, who told
a discussion of Grenfell Tower, that everyone dies in the end.
Do you know what I just because again, wall socket
Wow.
You're going to-
that wasn't, that comment was abhorent.
He shouldn't have said it.
It was a casual, flippant, cruel thing to say when lots of people lost their lives.
Yeah.
The point he was making, which is that post Grenfell housing regulations mean
that we haven't built a lot of housing and that has caused a lot of misery
and unhappiness from people who are stuck in moldy, horrible temporary
accommodation because of the missing houses that haven't been built.
Yeah.
Was a fair one.
Oh yeah.
And it annoyed.
The hell outta me that everyone got their free hit in on how terrible.
It's, we will never have the sensible conversation that actually, for
example, the staircase requirements and things like that Yeah.
Are stopping houses being built.
And that is a huge crisis.
That means kids are growing up in hotel rooms.
Anyway, so that's my, I'm
today I've defended a reform
Look spokesman.
I
at you're sticking forks into every socket.
you can find.
let's keep playing.
I love this.
but Hitler salute guy.
I'm against that just
for
clarification.
Interesting.
Okay.
but they, I mean they keep having these, they've got their, they've
got their grab bag of former Tories.
many of the, best and brightest
you're talking about Bobby J
aren't Zha wick Braman,
which set do you think puls, boas, voters the most, do you think
it's the sort of Nazi salutes and, Grenfell appalling tasters or the,
the many members of Boris Johnson's
cabinet?
I
I don't think either of those are winners
in
terms of
attracting voters.
so I read Matt Goodwin's book.
I've done my, I've done my Time in the Minds.
Yeah.
And one of the things that was really interesting to me about that
book a, it's terrible, it's just a, wine of white grievance and like
it is actually, it's x in book form
in that it's very poorly sourced, overtly racist, and actually just
dull.
Not even the interesting racism, Andy, that's what I really object to.
But what's interesting about that is he got absolutely slaughtered for that
book in the Spectator, in the critic, in Unheard in all of the GB news.
On GB news.
He did a debate with Andy.
12 as a guy came.
And I thought, that's fascinating that there is no solidarity
on the right for this guy who is, who's just run as a reform
suggesting to me that the most repellent figure in reform is
actually, it's Matt Goodwin.
Clearly other people who have people who agree with his
politics hate him personally.
And I think that's very
impressive.
Do you think we can expect to see Goodwin caping for restore.
no.
They really, hate
him.
Is he not
racist
enough
for that?
They think he's a liberal squish who's no.
'cause they think you were in 2016, which is true.
He was writing articles for The Guardian about how terrible Islamophobia was.
They think you are just, you are just, you've just switched for, a tension.
Astonishing unanimity across the right for the h Matt
Goodwin.
Very impressively
done.
So maybe it's something we can all agree on.
I, thought it was
a bad book
and it turns out people who agree with the politics thing's
a bad
book that, that's, but it's selling like the clappers Andy, Sold more than my book.
So who's the real winner
here?
Should we come to the Greens?
why
not come to
green?
Okay.
their policies are.
double lock on pensions.
Very exciting.
And they've got a range of other interesting proposals, haven't they?
Which
I went back and I read the Greens 2024 manifesto and the Reform 2024 manifesto.
And they are interesting mirror images of each other.
So the reform is basically, we'll have tax cuts, huge tax cuts for both individuals
and businesses and we'll pay for that by scrapping all this net zero bollocks.
So essentially let's have loads of carbon and that's how we make our sums work.
Also, they claim they were gonna get 50 billion of savings from waste,
which is one of those ones that I love.
It's like planks constant.
You just put it in there to make your sums work.
So their one is basically tax cuts for people we like funded by more carbon.
The Green manifesto was direct money transfers for people we
like; pay rises for doctors more money into the care system.
Teachers funded by a tax on carbon.
Huh.
So there there is like giveaway money in exchange for, I think they were talking
about 120 pounds a ton tax on carbon.
Okay.
And, obviously this wealth tax of 1% on people who have more than 10 million or
2% on people who have more than 1 billion.
Yeah.
Of whom they're only, they think 171.
So it's questionable.
But they were just very interesting of two big money giveaway packages in various
ways, either through tax cuts or direct spending funded for by things involving
carbon, which I thought you'd appreciate.
Yes.
That's very
interesting.
They've both got a, carbon based thesis of the, of the economy.
and the other thing that's really interesting is that
they've both now got podcasts.
the
so both reform and the
Greens.
I've listened to the new Reform UK podcast, which is fascinating to me.
The first one's out, it's about 30 minutes.
It is produced and sounds exactly like a Radio Four documentary.
So it follows Nigel Farage.
It even has some criticism of him.
It has protestors blocking him.
It's never really said quite what they object to about him, but
there's, but then Boo Protestors
and it follows him giving a speech at a venue where it's a 900 capacity venue
and there's 300 people in the overflow.
So he goes and gives a speech to those guys and does a q and a with them too.
So the message throughout it is, the thing that's also funny is it's voiced in A,
B,
the same.
thing.
The same thing happened after the Sermon on the Mount.
There was actually an overflow The mount.
yeah, Small
there was A spin room as
well.
the spin doctors told you what he actually went,
Why he'd come out.
Christ has done a terrific job tonight.
He's really shown that
the peacemakers
are gonna be blessed.
Yeah.
Big night for the
Meek.
but
the thing that was interesting about that was also the thing funny, if you
listen to it, you're waiting for it to turn into a kind of Look Around
You style spoof, because it sounds so exactly like a, BBC dock around you.
And he goes, 'Nigel is coming down the road.' You are waiting for it to
go, like 'he's got an enormous fish',
but something completely bizarre and random.
So that's one approach, which that it is not visualized.
So it's up on YouTube, but me's audio, imagine
old school podcasting,
whereas the Green's version of podcasting is Zack Polanski's Bold Politics.
And this is much more what you have come to expect
from
the world of vodka
casting.
So say bold, politics.
I'm sorry,
I
had bold like keys in a bowl
and I
thought, oh, that's another green
I'm
not totally sure about.
Okay.
Compulsory swinging.
Yeah.
It's bold, but I think it's got something.
Anyway, so it's, Zach Polanski interviewing people,
basically.
Which is the classic.
Matt, you've probably listened to a million of podcasts in this genre and
you see it in the Sphe a lot, right?
The same circulating group of people all just interview each other
And Endless Or Gavin
Newsome Yeah.
You
Is there a nice brick wall behind
him with Yeah.
the standard podcast
setting.
Yeah.
And the
kind of slightly oste and the Branded
microphone.
Yeah.
but, it's, what's fascinating about that is a, it puts him in a
slightly kind of beater role, right?
'cause he's the interviewer, whereas Nigel would never do that, Nigel is the star.
So it's a slightly more humble approach in that sense, but also
he has basically transplanted the Corbe Knight intelligentsia wholesale
lock stock, and burial into it.
So it is James Medway who advised John McDonald on economics, grace
Blakely, Rachel Shabby, Owen Jones.
the, failure of Your Party becomes even more stark in this context, right?
Because there was clearly an establishment there and a group of outriders and
thinkers and the Green Party has just got them like they are now, all of them,
much more into Zach Polanski than, and, essentially it's gonna be interesting,
we'll rerun this election with a Jeremy Corbin who doesn't complain all
time.
You know what I mean though,
but like you do.
Yeah.
In the same way that, that, Reform podcast is Nigel far going and speaking to people.
'cause he loves doing that.
He loves Jason.
People going, oh, the Guardian won't like this.
Zach Polanski loves going and talking to people saying, oh,
the Daily Mail won't like this.
Yeah.
Both of them
have got that always on content creator ability.
And David ppl, who ran the Obama campaigns and the ka the Harris campaign, wrote
an op-ed in the New York Times last week that said essentially this political
candidates now are content creators.
You need to have a studio, you need to be 24 7 pumping out your
messages, owning your audience.
Yeah.
Like on, And that is, to me, is what distinguishes Nigel Farra and Zack
Polanski from Chemi, badnock and Ki
it
all comes back to
social media again.
To square the
circle
slightly.
because
it's all about video now.
You need to
be punting out video because that is what fills these platforms, and
that is where people get
their news.
And that's cross demographic now.
Fine.
Okay.
So older audiences still go to mainstream media
first.
Yeah.
But
for
pretty much every other
Coterie 50
below,
like
it's, mostly
social based
discovery now.
It's,
it's in feed.
You see your headlines or people commenting on the headlines, or
podcasters pretending to podcast about the headlines that they might have read
yesterday or heard about from some other
podcaster.
It's, a soup,
basically.
Yeah.
And
the politicians that do well are the ones who are good talkers.
That is the kind of table stakes now to entry, which is why So
Angela Rain is going to launch a podcast, which is exactly what you
would do if you wanted to be labor
leader.
Is it her and gov?
the first
episode?
I wouldn't bet against that.
That sounds like the kind of thing that would happen.
It's very interesting.
This is a separate point really, but podcasting has a reputation
or a feeling of being authentic.
And that's why you often get people to say controversial things.
Stick their fingers in wool sockets on podcast is 'cause people think, no one's
listening.
Or
I
don't
mean that about, I don't mean that about
their, this
podcast, which gets terrific numbers, it's more conversational.
It's more intimate
a medium.
It's cozier.
I think
that's the
co thing.
So both the things interesting is that Nigel Fr was like a fake documentary.
that was essentially, it was, designed to sound like BBC content, but it was
all about how great Nigel Farage was.
Which is really interesting for that audience.
Yeah.
Whereas the, Zach Polanski one is basically look at all these
people who are terrific friends.
You are among friends.
being on the left is not a minority opinion.
Lots of us are socialists.
We should come out and say it.
And, creating that idea of a kind of here is a, gang that you can be part of,
I
think
is really, It's really interesting, again, it's, all things are
fundamentally tied together.
But what we were talking about with the changes in social media in the first part.
are Moving from a, social connection where it's your friends and you're
seeing what they've done and, what that and their holiday pictures to
a sort of parasocial one where you are following these, high profile,
celebrities or politicians, whoever.
And it's exactly the same thing with that, isn't it?
It's you are being invited into the gang and invited to, to, come along
with the person rather than it be the politician at the lecter and who's
just making speeches and things.
And it does well.
there is an Army out there of people, you will probably see
some of 'em in the comments under underneath this, this very podcast
as we speak, who are absolutely vehement a bit like they were with Jeremy Corbin.
they're fully signed up to the calls and will accept no criticism
I see even legitimate things.
and Zach Klan's been very good at this when there have been legitimate things
in, in the right winging press about, his stances and his background, absolutely
said, these are smears and I will not be cowed by, the right wing media.
And it's, that's a great narrative, isn't it?
I will not be cowed by the right wing.
Media is a very good phrase under almost any circumstance, no matter
what you've been caught doing.
and I, and my big criticism is Zach Lansky, I think he's incredibly
talented political performer in a lot of different ways, but that he has got a,
an appetite and a talent for reinvention.
Yes.
he
was
Lib Dem.
He was at Lib dem at the height of austerity.
Yeah.
His, he changed his name because he wanted to embrace his roots more authentically.
he's somebody who, he was an actor.
I think you find out all the criticisms that people made about
Tony Blair, he was a bit too
slick.
I feel like there's a journey of discovery that people are gonna be
gone when they, in 10 years time, they might go, oh yeah, that guy, he was a
bit too slick, but works very well now.
Works
very
well.
Can I give you my personal scoop on Zach Polanski?
Yes.
I was
in the same gay pub as him on Saturday
night.
Get out
out
that's what they said to me.
No
brilliantly
with my top investigative journalism hat on.
Didn't notice.
Hang a
minute.
He didn't notice
you?
no, you wouldn't
expect
him to
notice me.
Okay.
I didn't notice
him, We went in, had a look round thought.
Oh no.
It's all straight women.
It's all head nights.
We'll have one point
go
home.
Zach
Polanski was there on the dance floor the entire night.
Apparently.
The only scoop I can give you, 'cause of a friend of mine is very nice
shoes.
What was
he
dancing
to?
I do, I do not know.
I was, you're
Can you go away and do a journalism on
this, one.
It's
good playlist at the, food and Fruit.
Sam,
Island.
Free
drinks,
please.
Lovely.
There
we go.
We've entered this with Pon Con, so that's good that we brought this house
full
circle.
We're finally going the proper podcast.
route.
Yeah.
We've got a very exciting new format.
this week we are going to be doing a play.
Adam, you have been following.
The very convoluted, long Messi and expensive trial between Prince Harry and
colleagues and associated newspapers, the daily mails, publishers, and I
believe you have got a dramatic extract
us.
we've talked a lot about this on podcast three, so I'm not gonna go into all
the ins and outs of it, but essentially the story of this at the, end of the
trial last week, David Sherborne, who was the kind of inevitable barrister as
he is in all of these celebrity cases for the, the, claimants was reduced
to, a closing speech in which he said that he needed, although he couldn't
offer a lot of specific evidence for instances of, unlawful activities being
undertaken on behalf of Associated,
he asked the judge to extrapolate from what evidence he had been able to find.
his
on.
That's, not
allowed, is it?
this has been the ongoing argument in fact between, Mr. Justice Nicklin and
David Sherborne throughout the trial.
and I do mean argument though, have been, days I was in court, there was
some extremely, TSE words exchanged between the judge, and, the barristers
for Prince Harry and his pals.
what, Sherborn said in his, in, his final speech, and this lovely image,
but I'm not sure it's a winner.
It's
a bit like playing pin the tail on the donkey with us
being partially blindfolded.
That is happened.
the Tel donkey
traditionally
would well fully blindfold.
Yeah.
Partially,
it just becomes a
very
easy
game
a look
if you're
Very,
it's not the
it's backend
with us being partially blindfolded and there being very little donkey
left for us to pin the tail on.
which Does not sound like the best party game ever does it.
But what he was saying in that case was
that, that
they've been unable to, to find a lot of specific evidence
for instances of unlawful,
un unlawful information gathering.
Which he pins, if you like, on the fact that, there is very little paperwork
remaining from the period in question, which does initially look very, suspicious
until you remember that the period in question is going right back to the
1990s and, into the early noughties.
And
the point that Associated lawyers made, when they were on the stand was that, you
don't retain documents for all that long.
Can I ask you a question, which is,
were there perhaps any amazing emails or text messages between Prince
Harry and members of the press reveal
during this trial?
I see
what
you are doing.
Objection.
She's leading the
witness.
She absolutely is.
Harry's evidence right at the outset of this case, when, everyone was
taking a lot of, a, lot of notice of who was turning up at the high court,
was that, he said it was heartening.
He genuinely was on the verge of tears in the witness box on the 21st of January.
He said that the mail on Sunday had a campaign and obsession of having every
aspect of my life under surveillance so they could get the run on their
competitors and drive me paranoid beyond belief, isolating me, and
probably wanting to drive me to drugs and drinking to sell more of their
papers.
It was suggested to him at that point, actually back in the day, he was quite
keen on talking to, journalists himself and members of his social circle, his
kind of friends who he, he was ping about with back in the, early noughties.
were,
leaky that they,
were giving stuff to the press.
He, said, absolutely not insist they weren't leaky.
He said he would immediately cut off anyone he even suspected
of talking to the press.
"For the avoidance of doubt," he said, "I'm not friends with any of these
journalists and never have been".
Now in a sort of mic drop moment in the last week of the trial.
Yeah.
A tranche of Facebook messages we're back to Facebook and social media again were
revealed between Harry and Charlotte Griffiths, who was, the diary editor
on the Mail on Sunday, kind of high society diary that she used to run.
they did.
Appear to show quite a lot of evidence of him being friends with her, certainly
for a period the period in question
in December,
2011 to January, 2012.
Now
we have to specify, 'cause Harry is now recreate, he's the sinner that repented.
he's entirely a campaigner against the press.
he's very right on now him and Meghan supporting all
sorts of progressive causes.
This is not that Harry, this is Harry back in the days of, partying.
This is not long before those infamous pictures of in Las Vegas,
questionable, fancy
naked
billiards,
fancy dresses is a bit before
that.
This
is bu out Vegas.
har.
this is
Slightly
pre bu Mount Vegas, Harry.
This is when he is training to apply Apache helicopters, between two stores
of service in Afghanistan for the Army.
But specifically it's exactly the period of the frost
bitten
penis,
ah, frost nipped.
I think you'll find
technically
Frost nipped
penis,
which he revealed
a, a,
that sounds
wrong.
That sounds really, wrong.
he revealed the existence of his frost nipt penis in,
his autobiography spare a couple of years ago.
So we cannot say we
are
invading his
This is a privacy.
invasion.
he did himself with the peon detail that he treated it with Elizabeth
Arden cream, which was the
same,
smelled like his
mum, smelled like his mother.
Why Have you written this
down?
Is
Yeah.
Is
a point to
this
line of
of questioning?
There is.
I am merely, your honor, setting
the
context for which the following exchange of emails should be,
considered.
I
have for
you
a script.
Great.
Oh, would you oblige by being Charlotte Griffiths?
In this
scenario.
Should I go like 10%
posh.
I've highlighted.
Go.
I would p
posh
it
up?
I
would absolutely posh it up.
What she said was that, she got the bulk of her stories
from her high society friends.
Matt, this is very unusual.
We don't normally have dramatic
readings.
I'm, here for
the
Amra.
Yeah,
This is
great.
You've
got
a partner.
Hang
on.
Oh.
whoa.
Wow.
Sherlock Griff's
evidence in her witness statement on the 6th of March was that she had high
society contacts from school days, and she continued to socialize in high society
and with the, with the aristocracy, throughout her, journalistic career.
I am gonna take the part of Prince Harry in this, if that's all right.
Matt, appropriately can
you
take the role
of
Facebook
and, and give us the concept.
So we're reading from the bottom here.
This is the full exchange of messages.
I, really, emphasize it.
There isn't a role for
you.
You
just
have to sit
one out.
I'm sorry.
You?
be, if you wanna be Mr. Justice Nicklin.
You can simply sit there and huff and puff a bit at this
if
you
like.
Oh,
okay.
But I just do have to emphasize, this is not something we've made up.
This has not been written by the private eye jokes team.
Like the WhatsApp messages from the Prime Minister.
This, these are genuine.
I asked for these from, from, the lawyers last
week, right back to my school play where I didn't get a
good
job role in
that
either.
I was the narrator every year in the nativity.
Still,
Scott,
that's switch.
It's noble
profession.
No,
narrat.
No.
You don't get, no, it's just like you can read, but you're
at
acting.
it
prefigures a journalism career,
doesn't
it
No,
Yeah.
Source, yeah.
Okay.
Right far away.
I'm so excited.
And
action.
December 4th, 2011.
8:36 PM.
it's
h in case you're confused by name and picture.
kiss.
December 5th, 2011.
Hello, Mr. Ms. Shave was indeed confused by both effing.
Awesome pick.
Do you get home okay slash did you actually find your car and did
you beat Arthur down the motorway?
More importantly, what a fun weekend of naughtiness.
Can't we all get up to No good in the countryside every weekend?
Jam it smooches CG string
kiss
December 5th, 2011, 4:15
PM
Ha
It was
you and the blue girl that pulled over to let me and Arthur Pass know
I did beat him, but by accident, I think drove most of the way.
my eyes closed, I found myself eating pizza with Skip of all people.
Two exclamation marks
was
without doubt
the
best of those weekends I've been to what a crowd never lost.
So, much in 24 hours, Mr. Mischief.
How do I get that title?
I was surely no worse than anyone else.
Ooh.
Apparently a Cinderella shoe was found outside
that door,
so it can relax.
Please stop
panicking.
Three
exclamations.
You've got a bit.
Terry Thomas at the end of August,
terrible.
hour.
December
6th, 2011.
12:17
Yeah, that was me.
My windows were so steamed up and I'm afraid my little golf GTI was
just no match for your bloody Audi.
I had a children
of
moment.
This
is inexplicable.
Presumably by this she means she looked out the window and
saw Pam Ferriss being brutally
in
a refugee
camp
in
Beck
I
dunno, I
can't.
I think that's a bit where, yeah, where the car and that one continuous shot
where they're being shot at rather than, or she looked out the window and realized
there were no babies in the world anymore.
Who
can
say,
how did you not end up eating Chinese?
You must be mad.
I dominated a duck pancake or two or five.
Wow.
I respect that
Mr. Mischief is definitely a compliment.
By the way, you weren't worse than anyone else.
We were all competitively out, naughty each other, which is
why we all had so much fun.
Few about the shoe.
I was very worried you'd have to spend a fortune picking up the phone and ordering
a new pair of freebies from Amanda
Yes.
ps.
Speaking of which did you manage to get your new phone number organized?
Good that she's doing the journalism.
I respect that she slipped
that
in
December 6th, 2011, 2:29 PM
Wish
it
had been Chinese, but
Skip
wouldn't allow
it
sadly
emoji.
No new phone number yet,
but sticking
with
redacted
phone number, but yet handed
over
for
now
serious
withdrawal symptoms.
Still had to make polite conversation with strange people at a dinner
last night begging them for money
for charity.
Really
fun.
Not reunion with Josh.
Sounds fun.
Hope work wasn't too dull.
Wherever you are.
Just
to specify at this point.
He said he was completely unaware that Charlotte Griffith was a journalist
when he first met her and wanted nothing more to do with her when
he
found out
at
that
point.
December
7th, 2011, 6:57
PM
we
have been missing out on some serious bans on the group email front.
I'm gonna go in big with an amazing Marco Snapped to make up for lost time.
Few this week.
Hibernating in the frozen waste under Parson's Green is, it would
be Parsons Green, wouldn't it?
New Ham was heading towards this conversation.
Almost thirsty Thursday though.
Sounds good.
Josh is such a ledge.
Oh my
God.
This
is
like
just a, you get his flashback.
Purest
infernos in 2011.
calming any of anything to make anything better, but January's oh, so far away.
I think a team reunite might be an origin before the weeks' out,
non
December
14th, 2011.
7:34
PM.
Okay, I'm very unimpressed.
Your Skippy surfing seems to have inadvertently trumped all
of the scandal on our weekend.
Damn, you bloody maverick.
And now you are all heading to BVI.
British Virgin Islands.
Double trumped.
Double hump.
Thirsty Thursday.
Plans kiss
December
15th, 2011.
3:00 PM I win right
me.
New heading to the B thes.
eyes
Got too
much shit to
do.
Got dinner with some friends.
Gonna be hung over again for the third
day running.
You missed a good party Last night, Skippy was
on great
form
Ma.
January
22nd, 2012.
11:00
PM
hbo,
bomb.
we missed you so much at Arthur's last week.
Skip cracked out some serious moves, but I did pack for my three week
skiing holiday after a night with him at the box and forgot to pack
skis, boots, jumpers basically.
I've been very cold since.
God damn drunken packing.
Any who after some chirping in Valdi and Maribel.
Yeah.
Casual whatever.
No.
What
Eves,
sorry.
important.
Yeah.
I've arrived in clusters and been watching some center barley snow polo.
Does that mean you are here and I can dominate you off the black
runs slash steal one of your ski boots and feel tres non guilty.
Is
there much more
of
that?
You got
one more
message?
and
it's
a goodie
January 22nd, 2012,
11:00
PM
Haha.
Charlie.
I wish I was there.
Sugar but unfortunately stuck in Cornwall doing Army stuff.
Sad face emoji.
Otherwise I would've been there playing and
then drinking you under the table of
three exclamation marks.
The whole thing raised a load of money, so I'm pretty happy.
Just wish I could have been there, especially now that you are there.
Do you ever work?
Double exclamation mark, question mark.
Bummed beyond belief to have missed authors as well.
I've been seriously busy since I last saw you, but plan on getting back in
the mix for Feb. You best be around hope you're really well Griff, miss arm movie,
snuggles.
I'm off comms all week in case you think I'm being rude,
but
keep
posted.
kiss,
kiss, kiss,
kiss.
Wow.
And
we
have it.
Little
insight
A tour de
force.
So what you're saying, Adam, is he, did hang out with journalists
and he was communicating and having
movie
snuggles
with
them.
This
would certainly appear to suggest that at that point in his life, he had a, we
could go so far as, say, quite intimate relationship with certain journalists?
I
think
who among us has not had movie snuggles
for the
journalist,
so
that he
was without sin cast the first
another, And so now
the case
has ended.
the.
The.
what's the
upshot?
Mrs. Justin Nichol has retired to, consider his verdict.
he said it's
gonna take him
some time
Betty wishes he could
We're expecting it at some point in the summer.
In the end of it, I come back to the point which, we made on this podcast the outset
of the trial in January, when Ian said,
can't
they both
lose?
and after
that, that dramatic rendition, I
really
would
quite
like them
to,
essentially I would be very surprised if the case goes in,
Harry and the others direction.
And there is, beyond all this, there is a really, serious issue in
this, which is Baroness Lawrence, which a part of this case.
, the evidence on which her part of the case was based largely came from
Jonathan Reese and Gavin Burrows to very discredited, private detectives.
There
were, there are rumors, certainly within the mail camp that she was not
keen to, as she was trying right up to the last minute to drop out of this
this
litigation.
She was the, imp premature on this, the, bit that made it serious, if you like.
this, was the, just as with the original phone hacking scandal, which Les
we forget,
did start off with royals.
It was the hacking of Harry and Williams, Royal household at that point, and,
their, and their kind of communication secretaries and, and senior staff
that kicked
the whole thing off with the news of the world in 2006.
No one got really, excited about that scandal in 20 until 2011
when it emerged that news of the world journalists were also
hacking
the
of
Millie Dowler, the Missing School, G, who later
turned
out
to
been murdered.
The
hacking and illegal activities.
and taking to target, Doreen Lawrence would be of a similar
kind of, gravity, I think.
if
that verdict goes
against
Doreen Lawrence.
And it's discovered that the male were not doing that.
Not only is it completely destroyed a relationship which was extremely
strong between the daily Mail, and the Lawrence family, who,
the male famously championed them right the way through in a way that
surprised quite a lot of people.
that, that, front page that said, murderers, it names the, five
suspects, two of whom have since been found guilty and sent to prison for
Stephen Lawrence's
murder.
Yeah.
I've said before that Paul Daker literally had that front page in
his office, To him, that was the c
crowning pinnacle of his
editorship.
He stood up for a young black guy who got murdered by, as he saw it, thugs and
and like to, to him.
So I think this case was
extremely
personal.
the
result of that one, I think is the really interesting one to watch.
'cause that's outside of the sort of realm of celebrity tittle tattle,
however, upsetting these people may have found intrusions in their privacy.
So there is quite a lot at stake within this, and it will be very
interesting to see, that judgment
when it
finally
comes
through.
Yeah.
Okay, we'll wait and see.
And of course it's gonna be in private eye when it happens.
That's it for
this episode
of page 94.
We'll be back in a fortnight with another one.
Until then, thank you to Helen, Adam, and Matt.
Thank you to you for listening.
If you would like to get more jokes, stories, journalism, cartoons, all
of that private eye is available now.
If you would like to subscribe, you can Do so@privatehyen.co.uk.
that's it for now.
Until next time, the only remaining, thanks, go to Matt Hill
of Rethink Audio for producing.
Bye for now.