Maisie: Page 94: the Private Eye Podcast.
Andy: Hello and welcome to another episode of Page 94.
My name's Andrew Hunter Murray, and I'm here in the Eye's Summer Studio with
Adam Macqueen, Ian Hislop and Matt Muir.
We're here to discuss the events of the last week since the last
edition of the magazine came out.
And we thought we'd start off with one, which has been all over the news.
It's the story of the Crewkerne Gazette, and the personal people behind it.
So this is an online, comedy account, which is mostly consisting of AI
videos, and the people behind it have been in the news, but it turns out
we are already familiar with them.
aren't we, Matt?
We are.
Matt: So I got interested in the Crewkerne Gazette in, November
of, during the summer last year.
And, mainly because I kept on seeing these videos floating around and various
elements of the right wing press saying laudatory things about, as you point
out, this new frontier of satire.
And I was just curious to what was going on, who the people behind it were, and
questions of that Ill, and I, dropped them a line in November asking if they'd
be willing to answer some questions, and they responded saying they would be
perfectly happy to answer questions, but they were very keen on preserving their
anonymity because we live in a climate that is dangerous for free speech in
Britain, as I'm sure we can all attest to.
Andy: Private Eye, anonymous.
Fair enough.
You
Matt: exactly.
You can't, you are absolutely fine to be anonymous if you so desire, but sure.
I was curious as to the motivation behind it and also fundamentally
how they were funding a lot of this, because, making AI videos isn't free,
and the better they are, the more they cost, the tokens cost money, et cetera.
And so I just wanted to get a bit insight into that.
And over the course of these conversations, I,
got the vague impression.
There was something a little bit odd about the whole operation.
I couldn't necessarily pinpoint exactly why, but, the man behind
the accounter who styled himself, Crewkerne man, and who appeared in
various videos wearing a sort of Make America Great Again style cap, okay.
With a very heavy bid and aviator sunglasses, often AI
generated videos themselves.
he had spoken about having spent time in America getting in with a crypto crowd.
And I was getting curious as to what his beliefs were and why exactly.
Despite the fact that he said that he was very much in terms of, in favour of
satire and making fun of everybody, why specifically all of the videos that he
put out were pro reform and Tories and very much knocking anybody on the left.
And I'm just curious as to what all that was about.
Anyway, digging around and then over Christmas we completely coincidentally
got a tip off from somebody who lived in Crewkerne and saying that, oh, by
the way, this blokes a convicted Nazi.
Adam, I believe, has the full rap sheet over there.
Adam: Yeah, it's quite a long one.
yeah, it involved, you can read actually, if you just Google this, the, the
sentencing remarks from his, the last time he was, sent to prison on the 8th
of December, 2016 by Mr. Justice Spencer.
that was for the "cruel campaign, viral racist abuse, against, Luciana Berger,
the Labour MP", but it was also was on top of, six offences of sending malicious
communications and offensive harassment, all arising from false and hateful
allegations against innocent members of the public that they were paedophiles.
And there was an incident as well where he effectively made
up a story about a pub, which was banning members of the armed forces.
and that resulted in that pub having to close and then death threats and ars
and threats being made against that pub.
It was just fantasy in his head now, which would probably say at this
point that Joshua Bonehill-Paine says he's now a reformed character
and he greatly regrets all of this, and he has done his time in prison.
But, you actually put a question directly to him, didn't you?
In December?
Matt: I did.
Yeah.
so we got this tip off and, I sent to the person to whom I'd been corresponding
the self-styled Crewkerne Man, who has said that he'd been, communicating
with me throughout this time.
Are you Joshua Bonehill-Paine?
Because we have received reports that you are, and he said that he categorically
denied that the person I was corresponding with was Joshua Bonehill-Paine.
Which obviously wasn't true or hadn't been true previously
Adam: and hence I had correct you on your own question.
What you actually asked him, 'cause this is gonna be important, was we have heard
that person behind the Crewkerne Gazette is one Joshua Bonehill-Paine previously
convicted of assignment to racial hatred and racially aggravated harassment.
But you, were, you, were conversing with the Crewkerne Man.
You asked if the person behind the website who identified as the Crewkerne Man.
Matt: Yes.
He said that he categorically denied that he was that person.
And so therefore, when we published the story, having myself gone down
to Crewkerne and received, multiple confirmation from drunk people in
pubs late one evening, the, the person behind these videos very much was
the same man that had been convicted twice, racially aggravated hatred.
we printed the story, which point we were subject to, what,
our legal counsel described as a wonderful bit of Chat GPT work.
so yeah, this was a letter suggesting that the eye had fundamentally misrepresented
the facts of the case because the person who had been corresponding with me was
not in fact, Joshua Bonehill-Paine.
It was the other person behind the Crewkerne 'cause that's also
Adam: anonymous.
Matt: Also anonymous,
Adam: and offering no name or any evidence this person ever
Matt: existed.
But therefore that made our whole story completely unviable and
therefore we owed him damages.
I, I think we, went back to him with, a polite response, if I remember correctly.
I think it wasn't AR versus press str.
It was
Ian: No, it was a moderate version.
Matt: Yeah, exactly.
I thought
Ian: so of that.
It, was not a convincing legal letter.
Matt: It was not a convincing legal letter.
And, fundamentally speaking, I think what's been interesting about the
whole story and the subsequent he's going to become a counsellor, oh no,
he's not going to become a counsellor, is that there is very little about
the man in my correspondence with him that struck me as convincing the
arguments as to why he was doing satire.
Were not convincing his explanation as to the rationale for the satirical
direction he was taking was not convincing his subsequent video that he made when
he knew he was about to be a must.
And he put a video on his YouTube channel saying, who is the crew?
Kern man and voluntarily unmasking himself in what?
And I encourage readers to look this up 'cause it's quite interesting.
What's a very, bizarre AI generated q and a between an AI version of
himself and an AI interlocutor.
God knows why he chose to do that.
Anyway, he did.
it features multiple instances of him talking about how he was de radicalised
in prison and how he underwent a variety of different home office mandated
courses and has gone on to do training and workshops to speak about his own
deradicalization journey, which let's be clear, is a good and positive thing.
In the video that he put up explaining this, he illustrated these with
completely AI generated images of him standing in front of a lectern reading.
basically it, misspelt the word antisemitism.
It was that poor of an AI thing.
It used the logo of, an organisation which doesn't appear to exist anywhere.
I contacted the home office about this citing that specific
organisation that was in this video.
Never heard of it.
We have never done any work with them.
I'm not suggesting that he hasn't done these courses.
In fact, he's demonstrated proof of having certificates from Prevent.
The certificates are from e-learning courses, which are
an introduction to Prevent.
There's, a lot of stuff here that I just find
Ian: Yes,
Matt: curious.
I think it's probably fair to say
Ian: Yes.
and, our first response was.
If you question a man and his first response is to send you a legal
letter, then maybe being an, an elected representative of the people, in which
you're supposedly accountable to the general public is not a good idea for you.
Because even rehabilitated, the first thing you want to do is shut
down any questions about yourself.
And that isn't good for local government or for a wider role, such as he now has.
Andy: I completely,
Adam: we are in an extraordinary situation where we can say, putting aside the
neo-Nazis, this man is still massively unsuitable for public office, aren't we?
But I think, that's not apparently the conclusion that gave Bang Knock has got to
Andy: this is the thing because Kemi Badenoch has a, different
opinion, I think of all of us.
I think all of us acknowledge that counsellors do a good and important job.
Kemi Badenoch said he would just be sorting out parking, looking at bins,
Nevermind the fact that this is what most people care about in their most immediate
lives, and it's a sign of where the government is working with the actual bins
have been taken away and empty dinner.
That is, that's the point.
that's what people get most angry about.
So she has decided no, the bar for being a counsellor is, different to being an MP.
She
Adam: specific said, I have much higher threshold for what it takes to
be a Conservative MP, but apparently not for a special advisor on
rehabilitation and race issues, which is what he's now been appointed to.
Andy: And the interest, what, there are lots of interesting aspects here,
but the Times piece, which was about the Crewkerne Gazette saying how
good the videos were from February.
Yeah, I'm sure the times were not aware of any of the prison history
and the neo-Nazi stuff, but they pointed out that, he had just had
a Christmas card from Kemi Badenoch.
Yeah.
So she clearly, I think, has questions to answer about her opinions on
rehabilitation because they seem to be absolutely all over the place.
her, main charge was that what people don't like is, I'm quoting
here, "hypocrisy where politicians ask for selective forgiveness for
their own side while demanding tougher rules for their opponents.
We should be tough enough to stand by our beliefs, even when there are politically
inconvenient, wise enough to recognise rehabilitation and consistent enough
to apply the same principles to friend and foe." But I think the problem with
this is that she has quite clearly shown a bit of favouritism towards someone
on the Christmas card list, or, if you remember the story of, Frank Hester,
who made some really, appalling, racist comments about Diane Abbott, who had also
donated 10 million quid to the Tories.
When that story came up, she said, look, let's not go around
looking for racism everywhere.
The important thing is what's in someone's heart, whatever.
it's got no internal logic to it, unfortunately.
I think
Matt: it's also worth pointing out that Kemi Badenoch is a terribly
horribly online human being.
I would be willing to bet, thinks that the output of the Crewkerne Gazette is
exactly the sort of fast-paced satirical communications appealing to young
online people that the Conservative party ought to be doing more of.
and obviously I don't want to suggest that the popularity of that channel
its content may have had any bearing on her and the party's decision to bring
this man back into the fold again.
But I'm also not, saying that
Ian: making a, a passionate and earnest and committed case for rehabilitation
is fine, but, rehabilitation straight into public office, slightly different.
No one is saying never give this man a job again, he shouldn't be
allowed to go around telling people that antisemitism is a bad thing.
All for all that.
Do we have to have him as an official at a local level?
Probably not.
If then he resigns under pressure, not saying, everyone's got this all wrong.
I really am, a better human being.
I would like to, help.
He resigns under pressure.
You then appoint him as an advisor At a higher level.
there are lots of jobs he could do.
I am sure.
Does it have to be to do with the offences he committed long term?
They are quite serious.
and there are a lot of them and they do involve violence,
Is there not a job centre?
does it have to be the Conservative Party?
Andy: I'm afraid it's the last resort for the totally unemployable.
That's the problem.
Adam: This just seems like, you think all those, those many people who are
lined up to be conservative candidates for the next set of local elections,
and who haven't yet had to step down, what are they gonna make of that?
It's ahead of a kick of the teeth from all the people that are actually gonna be out
and shoving the leaflets through boxes.
Yeah.
And campaigning for you, isn't it?
It's such an extraordinary way to treat your own supporters.
Matt: so if you go back and look at the videos that the Crewkerne Gazette has
put out and which unfortunately I have done, it's only been going for a year.
it started, producing these AI generated satirical pieces in about May of 2025.
And over the course of last summer, it was featured lots and lots
of very pro Nigel Farage videos making Nigel Farage look very cool.
lots of stop the boats rhetoric and narrative, lots of stuff
about corruption under Labour and how Keir Starmer was weak and.
ineffectual.
And then basically since about February there has been a fairly, big shift towards
pro Kemi Badenoch pro conservatism but apparently he was also being courted
last year by reform because he had previously applied to them to be a
counsellor and they got back in touch with him saying, we've got spaces.
He apparently went through vetting and in November of last year, Reform, Reforming
Reform vetting, it's a big thing.
Yeah.
So
Ian: It can be better.
Not did say that the, vetting procedure that, that, the other parties were using.
The green party reform party is very, poor and there was a higher standard.
So it doesn't look like it does it.
Matt: there are questions to be asked.
I suppose the, thing that, I find particularly interesting
about this in terms of extremism now just be very, clear.
Antisemitism is a terrible thing and it is good and proper to
be stood up to and stamped out.
What I do find curious though, is that throughout all of this, obviously he
has his, he served jail time for insight to racial hatred and antisemitism.
He's also done been convicted twice and served community service for other.
Racially aggregated defences.
Adam mentioned the full story about the pub banning service people.
The coded to that story was that the pub allegedly banned service people because
they didn't want to offend migrants.
that was specifically
Andy: That's what, that's the version he was putting
Matt: that the version that he was putting out.
this man has a long and storied track record of being an all purposes troll and
specifically has also directed quite a lot of fairly vile racism and misinformation
towards, the Muslim community.
And again, after he was a master, he did, a surprisingly long and surprisingly
in-depth interview with the Times of Israel, which by the way also called him
Britain's premier satirists, sorry, Ian.
Quite, where as evidence of his increasingly philos Semitic views, he
posited that, a lot of the evidence that has been cited by organisations such as
the UN for Israeli war crimes, in Gaza, was the result of Hamas, manufacturing
evidence using artificial intelligence.
And he would know because he is an AI specialist.
Again, I would question whether or not that statements of that ilk make someone
suitable to be, an elected counsellor and
Ian: on a general issue of rehabilitation, can about not, is unforgiving of
those who, have suggested that net zero might eventually be a good idea.
They're not allowed in the party.
Adam: they're not to be forgive just referenced all figures such as
Grant Shapps who was in the cabinet until, the last election and,
it was to Gavin Barwell as well.
Theresa Bar, Theresa May's, top advisor.
They're now not welcome in the conservative fold 'cause they're, they
don't agree with things that came from us.
Ian: for those of us with a slightly longer memory, you think of Profumo, his
rehabilitation was doing charity work in the East End for about four decades.
And he was eventually allowed back.
There was some, long-term evidence, that, he regretted his actions and
he wanted to be a better person.
I think it's quite quick, to allow someone to run for public office
after crimes of this magnitude.
Matt: I think that is not unfair.
There are also some remarkable inconsistencies in some of the
accounts that he's given over the course of the past week
about his rehabilitative journey.
There's, there was one interview, he was quoted in the BBC as saying that it
was the murder of Jo Cox that first set him on the path to de-radicalization.
'cause he realised that, fermenting hate had potentially
very serious cons, consequences.
Jo Cox was murdered in the summer of 2016.
He was then tried for the Luciana Berger offences in and sentenced
in December of 2016, during which sentencing the judge remarked upon
him smirking throughout the trial.
And Luciana Berger herself has said that he directed an anti-Semitic gesture
towards the public gallery during that trial, which suggest that maybe that
Dames scene moment post the murder of Joe Cox possibly wasn't necessarily
strictly accurate or that he has misremembered the chronology that's there.
There you go.
That's a fair, interpretation.
Andy: so section two of the podcast, Ian has regenerated as Helen.
Hello Helen.
Hello, Helen Lewis.
Helen, you've seen the internet this in the last week, this study.
Helen: I stared into the dark heart of the
Andy: internet.
You've actually been to one of the physical bits of the internet.
Can you tell us what's going on?
Helen: Yeah.
Since we last spoke, I've been in, Michigan and Wisconsin, which are ground
zero for the resistance to data centres.
essentially, particularly the big AI companies and cloud computer companies
need rack after rack of server and these very high, spec chips, and they have
to be single story buildings, which means that the campuses are massive.
The one that I went to in Eastern Michigan is 250 acres.
Just huge, over a million square feet when it's, when it's finished.
It's a
Adam: single building.
Helen: Single building.
That's a, kind of campus.
There's a couple of, I think there's three main buildings, but it's just
these huge, luckily America's very big, but, otherwise there'd be real problems.
Adam: All the insights on this podcast.
America is very big.
Peter,
Helen: I was mention this before,
Andy: I wanna check, I wanna break it down even more when I ask chat
GPT to make me a, a dreadful video.
Helen: Yes.
Andy: Is this the building where it gets made
Helen: really?
Yes.
Your request will probably get sent to the, the one, this particular
one, is being used for Oracle, which is Larry Ellison's company, and
then open ai, Sam Oldman's company.
So yeah, when you ask chat GPT, you know how magnet work, then it will go
and then it'll come back to you here.
And it, we use also, about as much energy as one nuclear reactor can supply.
That's the other thing about these, the water usage of them
used to be a huge problem.
It's become a smaller problem, but the energy usage is huge.
The demand on the grid, some of these, are using like 10% of the grid demand
in the place where they currently are.
So they're these huge infrastructure projects.
They become a huge issue in the midterm elections, which are coming
up in November, because essentially about 70% of people are against them.
Nimbyism is very potent force in politics as we previously discussed.
And there are lots of farmers who basically say, I don't want a possibly
noisy, not very many jobs, very energy draining eyesore on my land.
And then there's this other thing going on too, which is these are,
as you say, the first physical manifestation of the modern internet.
And it turns out that a lot of people don't like the modern internet, and
they certainly don't like the big men who are behind the modern internet.
And this is a kind of physical way of saying, no, I don't like it.
I don't trust you.
and so the resistance to them has been huge.
A couple of states have already declared moratoriums one, candidate for governor
in Wisconsin's running on a, moratorium.
and even Vive Ramos Swami, who you may remember, he was going to be the other
half of Doge until Elon Musk went mine.
Het.
Matt: He lasted about a week.
Helen: Didn't he think?
He, not even, he was almost trust, like in his, is
Adam: he the first thing that Elon Musk decided the government
could do without the Spencer?
Helen: he's running for governor of Ohio's Republican and he's now come
to this thing saying, actually, these day centres, until they give everyone
around them free electricity, we should have a moratorium on them.
It's very difficult now in lots of states where they're being built
about 1400 built in the US last year.
Matt: Yeah.
There's a story this morning I saw there, there are I think 500 bans now currently
in operation across different states in the us different counties deciding
unilaterally that they're going to try and put limits on the construction, whether
banning them outright or stipulating that there have to be certain kickbacks.
Helen: Yeah.
Yeah.
Andy: it is hard to work out sometimes whether the numbers are large or
small, as in 1400 of them being built sounds like an enormous number.
But in terms of.
Overall electricity usage, I think it's gonna be about 1.5%, but then in America
it could be going from 5% of electricity to 10% by 2030, which suddenly does
sound like quite a substantial number.
Helen: for something that didn't functionally exist.
Andy: Yeah.
Helen: Five years ago.
It's extraordinary like the footprint of these is enormous, and the
fact is that essentially the seven big tech companies have been with
their capital expenditure on these.
That's… all those stock market prices you've seen that has been driven by this.
They're spending billions.
actually possibly, maybe even trillions on this in the next couple of years.
Matt: I think one of the things that's important to remember is that we dunno
how much energy these things use, but we simply don't because none of these
companies have a duty to sell us.
there are figures buried in projection.
So for example, Google has said that it is unlikely to be able to meet
environmental commitments that it made a decade ago because year on year as
energy consumption has gone up by 38%.
Now they don't have to specify that's because of AI or how much of
that, the likelihood is et cetera.
Andy: But it's not because of making those extra Google of the Day thing.
Matt: No, it's all about that.
Every time you click on the funny logo and you see the nice animation,
it screws so it kills a tree.
but, and again, the same thing for water.
So there were no official statements for how much water these things
require because obviously the technology changes and it's improving.
And this is less than it used to be.
But there were court documents filed in Virginia earlier this year
between Google and this particular county for the potential construction
of a set non-specified number of data centres, which projected water
usage of between two and 8 million gallons a day of drinking water lot.
Adam: And this is a huge deal in America, but particularly the sort of western parts
of America, which are basically desert.
there are legal battles that have been going on for decades over whether
California is stealing Nevada's water and,
Helen: yeah.
And the Colorado River level has been falling and falling.
That water politics is, a huge, isn't it?
Yeah.
A deal in, America.
But you're right.
And they're spread out often across more permissive states
or more farm-based states.
But essentially there have been lots of pockets of local resistance.
And because is this America, this is playing out through lawsuits, which is
good news for journalists because it means there are lots of documents to look at.
The New York Times had a, great story from Louisiana, and this actually
reminded me of like a big steroidal American version of Tea side.
The great private eye story of Richard Brooks because their Facebook's parent
company was asking that local officials not only for a tax break to be smuggled
through in a bill that was about fibre optic, cables, but also making local
officials sign non-disclosure agreements.
Ooh.
'cause essentially the, bet from all of these tech companies, and correct
me if I'm wrong on this, is that there aren't gonna be that many winners, right?
Yeah.
And they're particularly worried about the China will be the winner.
So everybody is racing to build as much computer as they can, as quickly as they
can and trying to just ram things through.
Which is funny to me 'cause I went and thought, I wonder if
this is happening in Britain.
And all of our ones are like, we are gonna have a 10 billion pound one that's
going to start building next year, and you're, and be finished by 2030.
And you're like, who knows if they'll even be an internet or human race by,
that's the American calculation, right?
Build it now.
Now,
Matt: there's, Zuckerberg Point is interesting.
He published an open letter about his vision for the future of AI overnight,
which is basically him saying, no, it's all gonna be open source because
he doesn't think that meta is going to win the frontier model battle.
And so now he's going, no, we're gonna make it open to everyone because this is
a, a good, that has to recruit a humanity.
How, yes.
Helen: I don't wanna compete with open eye and anthropic because I think they'll win.
Matt: Yes,
Helen: exactly.
Why do we all just play nicely together?
Matt: But there was a largest sway of that, which is about data centres.
And he speaks about them as a public good that we should all embrace and
posits that in the future, they'll be great for people because, local areas,
whether it be counties or states in the US will be able to extract rate
to tax revenue from tech companies.
So that'll make it okay.
And he also commits that by 2030, all of Meta's data centres will put more
water back into the system than it will extract, which I'm guessing is
gonna be via the purchasing of water credits, which are probably gonna be
like carbon credits, which as we all know, are definitely not bollocks.
Helen: technically they could do that by just being neutral
and then Mark Zuckerberg having a whittle in a local river.
It's just, that's a free one out there for you.
Mark, if you wanna take that
Andy: also.
Sorry, going on about the tax revenue.
Facebook famously, they're so keen to pay more tax, aren't they?
They constantly lobbying the government to pay more tax.
It's
Helen: property taxes.
And that's the way most of these things work.
So the one I was reporting on in Michigan has pledged a load of upfront
money for the local fire department, for example, $7 million for that.
But also they reckon we'll be paying even with the very healthy tax break,
they've been after about a hundred million dollars a year in property taxes.
a What's interesting to me about is that people don't believe
that money will ever come.
It's not like they've just gone, that sounds a lot of money.
Yes, please.
Andy: Yeah,
Helen: They're like, hang a minute.
you wouldn't be offering us that much money unless you're about
to do something really shady.
And just this low level of institutional trust that they'll ever see the money.
Or if something goes wrong, as you say with the water table,
but they have any recourse.
So it has become this very physical manifestations of people's feeling
that there are these huge, almost supernational organisations that are
basically unaccountable to anybody.
Adam: And what they also don't have is the usual payoff with this, this kind
of thing, which is employment locally.
Is it because, if you get an enormous Amazon warehouse or a mine or something
else that's gonna blight your landscape, you do get an awful lot of local jobs.
And that's not the case with these, they're, pretty much self sustaining
once they're up and running, aren't they?
Helen: They talk a lot about the construction jobs that
will be, And that's true.
The one in Michigan say it's claiming thousands of construction jobs
and then they say about 450 jobs.
But it's very hard to see long term given that the problem is that the AI
industry has been ruined by its own rhetoric, which was like jobs, you won't
need jobs, there won't be any jobs.
We'll just be robots.
So understandably people think, maybe you'll have a night watchman and someone
like dusting, but it's not going to be highly skilled, well paid jobs.
it's interesting, some places have accepted them.
There's a town in Maine that has basically ruined the democratic
governor's plant of like for a moratorium because they want one in their town.
And the reason they want one is because there used to be a paper mill
there that exploded accidentally.
And this is now gonna be redeveloped, as an AI data centre.
But that's another part of the story that you're talking about.
Bits of America that de-industrialized in ways, particularly in the
Midwest that were really painful.
There was a car plant that employed loads of people and that was gone.
They wonder whether or not is this like the phoenix rising from the
flames or is this just another thing that's gonna come along and
then leave us in the lurch again?
So I just think it's become this real rallying cry in, in, in,
quite a lot of states actually.
Andy: would anyone like to put the, the Boulogne case for these things?
Matt: okay, so a Boulogne case, if you listen to Google, the reason that we
need the ai and the reason we don't have to worry about the environmental
impact of the AI is because the environmental problem is gonna be sold by
Andy: the ai.
Matt: The ai.
Oh,
Andy: wonderful.
Helen: the other Boulogne case is that your pension, if you have
one, has gone up extraordinarily on the back of the US stock market.
And that these companies, the, the tech firms are really the only big growth area.
Matt: although it's also entirely possible that a good two thirds of
them are going to fall very, flat.
Is there is, it does
Adam: feel very much like the.com bubble of sort the 2000,
Helen: doesn't it?
It's interesting.
I've gone back and forth on AI as a bubble.
I dunno if you have, and I think it's both incredibly useful and there
are bits of it that are very bubbly.
I
Matt: think, I think there are two things that are parallel, true in parallel here.
Firstly, that the technology is transformative.
It does work and it is going to change the world and it's going to disrupt it
in ways that we can't possibly foresee.
And also that is not going away.
And secondly, that a lot of the financing around it is dodgy as all hell.
And a lot of it is going to fall apart, leaving a lot of very, very burnt
fingers significantly in investment and pension funds potentially.
Andy: Yes.
Isn't this part of what happened with the.com bubble?
a lot of people lost a lot of money.
We all still use the internet now,
Matt: The dotcom bubble was built on technology that was fundamentally
good, it's just that people got over excited about it, utility and right.
Mischaracterized it.
And that kind of to a certain extent, parallel to what is happening now,
the difference being that one might argue that AI is significant and
transformative in ways far beyond that, which the internet was.
Andy: there we go.
If it's coming to the uk the good news is the UK has plenty of water to spare
at the moment, so that's at least one worry we can take off the table.
right now, let's come to the final story of this week.
Weirdly, it slightly echoes, the first story we did today about the Crewkerne
Gazette, but this one is about Jason Aday, who was Cambridge's youngest
black professor when he was appointed in 2023, has just resigned, over
accusations of plagiarism and plenty more.
Besides, this has become an enormous story, partly because
it's August it's a slight,
Helen: it's a rollicking good yarn though, as Well, I just think,
Adam: it's got some extraordinary detail in there, hasn't it?
Andy: Okay.
Helen: You were, so the moment that Carter Ruck entered the
equation, I see all you, the
Adam: ears
Helen: pricked
Adam: up, gloriously.
At last we had Carter Ruck and, jolly and Mormon, the Good Law
project on the same side, which is the point at which I thought, oh
Andy: dear, then assemble.
but also because it fits a narrative that.
Is very popular, particularly on the right, that academic
standards have somehow been sacrificed on the altar of woke.
And, DEI, this quite American phrase that's been creeping in here.
Diversity, equity and inclusion.
so that has, that is what's given the story such, play.
normally a Cambridge professor resigning over plagiarism would be interesting.
It would get maybe a day's headlines, but then not much more than that.
Helen: yeah, I think that's the thing that has turbocharged this story is the fact
that he, all his work is in the sociology of education and a lot of it is semi
autoethnography, by which I mean, he goes and interviews other black professors and
people about their experiences of racism.
So there is a feeling, which I think is probably justified in this case,
that in this kind of post awoken time, Cambridge was very keen to have
somebody researching these issues.
And they maybe didn't ask as hard questions as they should
have done about whether or not the research really stood up.
There's also the, complication that really, the person who broke this
was a blogger called Nathan Kauf, who is very big into the hereditary
account of IQ and racial differences.
And he has a quote, here we go, "in a meritocracy, Harvard faculty would
be recruited from the best of the best students, which means the number
of black professors would approach 0%. ' Blacks' would disappear from
almost all high profile positions outside sports and entertainment".
So when that's the guy having a go, the black professor, a lot of people
are like, just switch their brains off.
'cause they go, oh, okay, I see what's happening.
And
Adam: Kaufman's has already been kicked outta Cambridge University,
hasn't he, for expressing
Helen: things
Adam: like that.
he
Helen: through a tribune, he's now in gen. Yeah.
So I think there was a, a lot of people were just assuming that this was a, an
unfair attack on a black, a academic.
Now as it turns out, the guy is, I've I a lot theism
Adam: and the academic stuff is the least interesting bit of it.
Isn't it mean
Matt: that, I mean the the stuff in the autobiography
Adam: running is just amazing.
600 miles in six days on a broken leg.
That was one of them, wasn't it?
Helen: 600 miles in six days.
He then said, actually I had a rest day in between them.
'cause people who pointed out this were making one of the greatest
endurant athletes of our age.
Adam: It's just thing you might have heard about, isn't it?
Helen: He ran a kind of Eddie Izard style level of marathons.
In which he claimed that at some point he fractured his leg and
nonetheless he kept on running.
Which again, people who run marathons are obviously mad in my view.
My husband here.
But, but doing so on a, yeah, there was, he claimed he had epilepsy.
He claimed he had a brain tumour.
He claimed in a proposal for the book, he had testicular cancer.
He either had, he was either the un luckiest man in the world or.
He'd made it all up.
Adam: And it was extraordinary because the, the pitch for the book carried a,
a set of extraordinary, amazing stories.
And then the book manuscript, when it arrived.
Harried a totally different set of extraordinary stories
in many cases, didn't it?
there were whole bits that were missing and
Helen: Yeah.
Adam: Yeah.
Helen: But the thing that's interesting to me is first of all, the fact that it was
a real lesson in where pe on what basis people make their judgements about whether
a story is true or not, which is often about the messenger as much as a message.
And the second was that this, one of our, poor Foot award nominees this show was the
Salt Path investigation by the Observer.
Yet another sign that actually you can write any bollocks in a memoir.
And that was interesting.
We talked about the salt path at a time, moth in that he's claimed to
have a really unpleasant degenerative disease, which nonetheless,
Adam: with cobe
Helen: or degeneration.
Yeah.
Which nonetheless, a decade later he's has not died from.
And, but that's the kind of thing you can't, how many people have
really got the coons to go, is your terminal illness actually that bad?
And I think that's the case that's happened with him.
There is an enormous taboo on questioning people's very
painful personal experiences.
And there must have been a million stories you've done in the eye of
about people like child abuse victims where people do not want to say.
At this point, has this detail crossed into the land of fiction,
like Carl Beach, for example?
Adam: the Carl Beach was originally known as Nick.
He was the anonymous at that point, person who made a load of claims through, a
very dodgy news agency called Zaro, which one by a strange man called Mark Watt.
it was in the wake of kind of Jimmy Sil and all of those kind
of things coming tumbling out of, of various dark cupboards.
And, there was a kind of public mood that was ready to accept the idea of Defiles
is what they were called at the time.
That's
Helen: a great phrase.
Adam: and, and Cole Beach gave them the most vi of, paedophiles.
he really, Edward Heath was in there, Harvey Proctor was in there, Lord
Phil Marshall, Bram, or, Leon, Brit, all sorts of names, which he seemed
to pluck from various corners of the internet and extraordinary claims,
not just about sexual abuse, it was routine sexual abuse of children, but
murders to order, and people being castrated and strangled and extraordinary
things, none of which were true at all.
And actually turned out to be the complete fantasies of Carl Beach, who himself,
went to prison for, for possession of, of, of child abuse material himself.
there is this extraordinary thing sometimes where claims become
too extraordinary to check.
in that case, one, one of the basic things which b BBC News Night managed
to knock down was one, one of Carl Beach's claims was that a child had
been, deliberately run over in Kingston on Thames as a, as, as revenge for
speaking out against this Peter Fall ring.
And they did the basic checks of going back, the year and I think two years
to either side of, when he claimed this had happened, to find out whether
any small children had been killed in road accidents in Kingston, on Thas.
No, nothing.
Nothing on the record.
So that's the sort of basic, like grunt work you have to do.
And we do that as journalists, but I don't think publishers of nonfiction
, put the hours in on, on, and maybe they will have to start doing.
So now, I don't know.
Andy: What about universities?
What about Cambridge University in this case, do they have a responsibility
to check out these claims?
Helen: What's really fascinating is that he got his PhD from, Liverpool,
John Moore's University, and now it looks as though there are some
very, Similar segments in that.
Two things that have previously been published, and I'm surprised, every
undergraduate essay is run through a programme called Turn It In.
A plagiarism checker.
Now, you'd imagine that everybody's running everything through pangram,
which is the most well known of the AI checker tools, but they
don't seem to have done that.
They issued a statement saying, we had a, we had investigated it
confidentially, and his PhD still stands.
The, moment that really kind of tiptoed there was that Cambridge
said that they were doing a formal investigation, and that's the point
in which he released via the Good Law Project, an extraordinary statement that
basically admitted absolutely nothing.
But said, these attacks have been so vile that I'm withdrawing from public
life, which to me just says that he doesn't have a great deal of insight
into his, his condition as it were.
Matt: I think it's possible that, multiple things can be true.
That, Jason Ade is a, strange, possibly fantastical individual with an odd
sense of his own life and his own achievements that doesn't necessarily
match up to accepted reality.
And also that certain sections of the press have had an absolute field day
with this and have used it to run an agenda that is, coincidentally and
conveniently very close to the one that they like to run about non-white
people for the rest of the year as well, even when it's not August.
Andy: Yeah.
we had this with the police recently.
Yeah.
the, the idea that the police are somehow institutionally, hostile to
white people was, a narrative earlier on.
And the, and there are, plenty of examples where that is simply not the case.
Helen: Yes.
And it's not purely, this isn't like a purely left wing sin.
It's just always interesting to me to ask what are the narratives that are
very hard to question any society.
You mentioned Carl Beach, the podcast a couple of times ago.
We were talking about Rupert Lowe's grooming, independent
grooming gang inquiry.
Yes.
Which, contained alongside things I'm sure absolutely did happen, extremely
fantastical snuff elements that could have been checked by saying, did
someone die at this time in this place?
Yeah.
So the problem is again, it's like, what do people want to believe?
What's the narrative that people have already accepted?
And then the facts are always secondary.
Someone once to described to me that journalism is the war
of facts against narrative.
And I think that's, that is of something that you should
really always bear in mind.
Adam: There does appear to be some very basic stuff.
Again, in the case of Jason Ndo, that Cambridge could have checked
at the time of employing him.
It was professorships that were claimed links to o other institutions as well,
which would seem like your sort of pretty basic due diligence that you
might pick up the phone to someone if you were giving them a professorship.
I,
Helen: I think everybody always assumes that someone else will have checked.
And I think that's the kind of thing that we have to fight against.
Adam: you also don't naturally, as a human being, as, as a journalist or as
an academic or anything, assume that someone is telling you a massive great
whopper every time they speak to you.
Do you we're programmed
Helen: to
Adam: accept
Helen: Yeah.
Matt: This, has anyone ever checked for your degree?
Certificates?
Has anyone ever asked you to provide them?
Have, have.
I didn't even know if
Andy: I've got the certificate still.
I wouldn't
Helen: don't where to look for it.
I did because when I applied for my American Visa, you
have to go and find them.
So I had to be like, do I remember really what I did for my A Levels?
Adam: I've got one.
'cause proudly, like my first ever published byline in journalism,
Macqueen is spelled wrong, so ah, great.
Helen: But there's loads of this stuff about isn't there, do you
remember Ian Duncan Smith claimed in a university degree, its, he'd
done a short course, Jeffrey Archer.
Adam: the absolute classic is Jeffrey Archer, who, yeah, I mean if you just
say things confidently enough you can get away with, went to a different
school to the one he implies everyone went to two different universities.
he claimed to have attended as, a student when he hadn't.
And my favourite one, Jeffrey Arch, was when he was elected
as an MP at 29, for LAX in 1969.
He went around claiming that he was the youngest MP in the Commons in the
very same year that Berna Devlin had very famously been elected as an MP
in Northern Ireland at the age of 21.
And it just it was just people just wrote it down and Karen, and he sustained an
entire career on that right up until the point he was jailed for perjury.
Helen: right up.
And that's the thing
Adam: Muhammad fired was a man who couldn't be honest about anything.
He couldn't his name, his age, the source of his fortune.
Absolutely anything.
and was using that as a way of kind of bla with that and legal threats as well.
Which again, we come back to Jason Harvey immediately calling in Carter Ruck.
It was certainly something that Jeffrey Archer was prone to throughout
his su his political career.
f Fayed was using it as cover for the most egregiously disgusting
behaviour, rapes and sexual assaults as well as all the other
criminalities he was responsible for.
Helen: I think you are right.
I think there has been an agenda behind it, but there are also things that the
right has raised here that we should acknowledge were correct and true.
One of which is the fact that a journalist tried to look into him
and was warned off by the police.
Yeah.
And what are the police doing?
So he put his right to reply in essentially, and the police were
like, please stop harassing this man.
Which is just, and
Adam: it was the Times higher educational supplement, it wasn't racistly or acting
Helen: Storm Front or the National Enquirer.
No.
not to be like pleading in, service of journalism, but the world is often
quite hostile to the being told that the emperor has no clothes and they're
often very good reasons not to point out the emperor has no clothes.
And I think this story has suggested some of the dynamics that underlie that.
Andy: thank you very much for listening to this episode of page 94.
We'll be back in a couple of weeks with another one.
Until then, why not ascertain the truth for this week?
Adam: Good.
Andy: Yeah, the Truth in Private Eye, go to your local news 10 or go to private
hyphen i.co uk and get a subscription.
from all of us, professor Macqueen.
Helen: Thank you,
Andy: professor Lewis.
VI count, Muir
Helen: Commodore,
Andy: vice Admiral Hislop, and, of course Earl, hill
Adam: Supreme, ruler of the universe.
Matt Hill, every
Andy: Matt Hill, senior producer.
Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time.
Bye for now.