James O'Brien - The Whole Show

00:02 This is a Global Player original podcast. 00:06 Good morning. It's three minutes after ten, and you are listening to James O'Brien on LBC. Yes, we are. We are going to do the Monday Morning Bob, but I tell you now, I'm going to forget. So remind me not to get irritated with you reminding me to do something that I've already remembered to do. It's the way my mad mind works sometimes. Why are you reminding me? I remembered that. But you forget so much. Of course, it's better to be reminded, right? Even if you've already remembered, then it is not to be reminded in case you have actually forgotten. So we'll be doing the Burnham Optimism. 00:36 But that's basically Keith's job is to remind me of things that I have not actually forgotten. The Burnham Optimism Barometer will be with us. We open it at 10 o'clock and then we close it. 00:48 at quarter past. And then Joe adds up all the figures, promoted Joe, he's now head of Bob. He adds up all the figures and we come back with where we are. Two weeks if you've been following things or two weeks if you haven't, eight out of 10 on the Burnham Optimism Barometer. And unfortunately, I think that this would mean Yaz. It's a bit of a nod there to people who were listening to the hit parade in 1988. Yaz and the plastic population probably not right on this one when they opined very tunefully that the... 01:19 The only way is up. But we will see. We will see. Five minutes after ten is the time. I'm going to ask you a question. Listen, if you've got me on in the background, just as a sort of a noise or company or whatever that may be, I just wonder if I could break through to whatever else it is you're doing at the moment with this question. 01:39 Okay? Because it's about you. 01:43 When or in what circumstances... 01:48 Might you expect to have a baying mob of human beings outside your house? We can add in if you want, throwing bricks or threatening violence or even perhaps being violent. Don't send in your votes for Bob yet. I'm opening it at 10 past 10, all right? For goodness sake. 10 past 10. And don't distract me. This is a really important question. 02:15 In what circumstances, genuinely, you, the life you lead, I don't know much about it. I don't know who you are. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that you're mostly law-abiding, right? You haven't done much wrong lately or possibly ever. In what circumstances might you go to bed thinking, do you know, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a baying mob of people outside the house later tonight or this time tomorrow. 02:46 What do you think you would need you personally? Or, listen, for the avoidance of that, somebody else in your house, because as you'll see, I think this is relevant, somebody else in your home. 02:56 What might have been done to merit a baying mob of people turning up outside your home, not your workplace, specifically your home? 03:13 Hundreds of people turning up outside your home. 03:19 You can answer this question if you want, actually. 03:24 I mean, you can tell me, because I think we've all got thoughts in our head. You'd have to have done something pretty gross. But even then... 03:32 we would struggle to think of examples when it had actually happened. 03:36 There was a period of vigilantism, 25 years ago was it, when an awful lot of reporting about child sex abuse was going on, and people were taking it upon themselves. I mean, the infamous story involved, I think, a brick being thrown through a paediatrician's window, as if you'd put a sign up outside your house announcing the fact that you were a paedophile. But Mobs are generally not the brightest of us, generally. There'll be exceptions to that. But in what circumstances might you expect a mob outside your home? 04:17 So, I'm really confused about the way in which these... 04:29 I'm going to read you a dictionary definition of a pogrom. A pogrom is a violent riot or attack directed against a specific ethnic or religious group characterised by the destruction of property, looting, physical abuse and murder. So the culmination is murder. It doesn't have to involve murder. The word comes from Russian meaning to wreak havoc or demolish violently and originally described mob attacks. against Jewish communities in the Russian Empire. 05:03 Now, on the streets of the Norfolk town of Thetford last week, on three consecutive evenings beginning on Tuesday, there were gatherings of hundreds of people outside an address where they believed asylum seekers were being housed. 05:24 I saw the word alleged in some coverage. I've got a horrible feeling it was even the BBC. And you have these little moments where you realize how far we've fallen. An alleged asylum seeker. Alleged is a word that we normally reserve for criminals, right? 05:39 And yes, some asylum seekers are criminals. Some asylum seekers commit terrible crimes. But here's the thing. Some police officers commit terrible crimes. Some teachers commit terrible crimes. Some radio presenters commit terrible crimes. Some Capricorns commit terrible crimes. Some Sagittarians commit terrible crimes. Some bus drivers commit terrible crimes. Some asylum seekers commit terrible crimes. 06:02 No one ever says an alleged bus driver or, well, maybe in my case you might go for alleged radio presenter, but you take my point. An alleged asylum seeker converging on an address where they believed asylum seekers were being housed. And the Home Office puts out a statement about this, which begins with the line, the right to protest is fundamental to our democracy and the concerns of communities are central to our immigration reforms. 06:32 That's the first line. Then you get the but. However, violence and disorder are never acceptable, and we absolutely condemn the behavior seen in Thetford, including attacks against frontline police officers. Sorry, I should have mentioned that. 06:44 Two police officers taken to hospital, including one who had been bitten. 06:49 Hashtag protect our women, protect our girls. I think it was a WPC, a female police officer, who had been bitten, and I read somewhere, to the point where the skin was broken. 07:01 Hashtag protect our women. 07:03 There were other arrests on suspicion of offences including public order harassment and possession of an offensive weapon. 07:11 It appears, I haven't checked last night's event, but it appears to have boiled down now. 07:16 Bob is open now. Send me your mark out of ten for how optimistic you feel about Andy Burnham today. It was eight last week, it was eight the week before. We'll have a little look at some of his more recent announcements later in the programme. But we're looking first at this. So windows were smashed, fences were broken, and people attempted to break into a residential property. 07:37 I'll read you the definition of a pogrom again. A violent riot or attack directed against a specific ethnic or religious group. I suppose that's tricky, isn't it, in the context of asylum seekers? They could be from anywhere. There may not be a specific ethnic or religious group, although I suspect that most of the mob would have a notion that they were part of the same perhaps religious group, if not ethnic. 08:00 Characterized by the destruction of property, looting, physical abuse, and ultimately murder. So let's run through that again. 08:09 Looting, physical abuse, destruction of property. Two police officers were taken to hospital, including one who had been bitten. I think we can put that down as physical abuse, right? 08:21 There were arrests on suspicion of offenses, including public order offenses, harassment, and possession of an offensive weapon. We know that a window was smashed. Fences were broken. So property was being destroyed from the Russian, meaning to demolish violently, destruction of property, a precursor of a pogrom. 08:47 We also had one arrest on drug driving, which I don't think does meet the parameters of a pogrom happily, but there we are. 08:55 And, I mean, so many elements to this story. 09:02 But the first I had was this, which is why I asked you the question at the beginning that I asked you. 09:08 Remember the protest in Epping where a man had been arrested. I think he's subsequently been convicted of a crime against a young woman from the area. But at the time of the protest outside the centre... 09:22 I think he'd already gone. I mean, he'd already been, I think, arrested and charged. I think he was already in police custody. So even though there's probably more of a rationale there than there is here, you know, you could argue you're protesting against someone who stands accused. Let's use that lovely word alleged again. 09:45 An alleged criminal who is, we now know a criminal, but at the time of the... 09:54 protests in Epping, it was not true. It was an allegation. 09:59 We know that two out of every five people arrested after participating in last summer's riots, and that is all of, I beg your pardon, the 2024 riots that happened after the hideous Southport killings. We know that two out of every five people arrested after participating in last summer's riots had previously been reported to the police for domestic abuse. Hashtag save our women, hashtag save our girls. 10:27 And I'm pretty sure there were some figures about Epping as well, but I haven't got them in front of me, so I will speculate no longer. 10:35 And that's why I began by asking you this question. 10:38 In what circumstances might you expect to have a violent mob baying for your blood outside your home tonight? 10:50 Now, what are you going to put on that list? You've been accused of a sex offence, right? Probably against a child. 10:56 You may have been a victim of an online lie campaign. So they may be spreading rumours about you online or claims about you online. But the point is they've provided your address. They've told you where to go. 11:09 And if you were in that hideous position, then you might, quote, expect, end quotes, to have a violent mob. 11:20 Baying for your blood outside your house. Demanding that you be run out of town. 11:28 Demanding that you be run out of town. 11:33 Listen, correct me if I'm wrong, right? 11:36 But not that long ago, you'd say, what have they done? 11:41 Wouldn't you? Wouldn't you? 11:43 There's a baying mob outside number 34. 11:47 You'd say, well, what have they done? 11:50 You would, wouldn't you? How long ago did that change? When did that change? 11:55 It's a baying mob of people, a violent mob of people outside number 34. 12:01 What the hell's he done? 12:03 What's he done? 12:05 And the answer tonight is nothing. 12:09 Nothing. 12:12 They are alleged refugees. 12:14 So the suggestion is that they've fled... 12:18 a war zone or famine or persecution or similar. And, of course, there's a possibility they're not telling the truth, but unlikely, given the successful application rates for genuine asylum. Not impossible. Of course not. Don't rule out the lead swingers. Never rule out the lead swingers. 12:36 But what do you think you would need to have done for this to happen to you? 12:44 Well, exactly. 12:46 Exactly. 12:50 Now, a slightly different question. 12:54 Deserve. 12:59 In what circumstances might you deserve to have a baying mob outside your home calling for your at least removal from the entire area or possibly baying for your blood? 13:17 Is this getting to you like it's getting to me? It's just this idea that something really bad is happening and we're not really clocking it properly. There are two universes at the moment in this country. There's the online universe and then there's the offline universe. And they are bleeding into each other more, I think, than we realize. Elon Musk has been essentially calling for violence in the immigration debate now for some time. Sundar Katwala from British Future chronicles it with a sort of um a very clear eye and and i'm told that there are lots of there is lots of activities and on tiktok and elsewhere encouraging this sort of behavior which means it's going to happen more someone will put an address up it'll go viral facebook will you know go to we're all going around number 19 there's asylum seekers there and you go back to epping which was what last summer was that and and there had been a crime I mean, in percentage terms, negligible. 14:19 No way would anyone read into a crime from that one person how they should treat people staying in the same building. We'd never do that in any other circumstances. You don't even do it with prisons. 14:32 You'd be in prison with a serial killer. No one thinks that you're a serial killer. You're in for burglary. We don't even do it with prisons. 14:40 Take the activity of one resident, one inmate, and use it as a predictor of what everybody else is guilty of. 14:52 So, why are we allowing it in these kind of spaces? Why are we allowing it to happen, or not allowing it? Why are we not getting more worked up about it? 15:04 Question number one, do you share my concerns? Do you, like me, feel that this is a hideous development? 15:14 But really, question number two picks up on that Home Office statement. 15:20 That Home Office, I think, mealy-mouthed, the right to protest is fundamental to our democracy and the concerns of communities are central to our immigration reforms. 15:30 I kind of, I think I want you to tell me first and foremost this morning, Whether you agree with that. Should people be allowed to protest outside your home? You're not going to get that, are you? It's not going to cross over. It's not going to happen outside my home. I didn't come here on a small boat. You don't know that they did, of course. 15:57 I think we passed legislation quite recently to outlaw gatherings outside politicians' homes, and good. For the avoidance of doubt, you do not want to see mobs, angry mobs, let's say, not necessarily violent mobs, outside any politician's home, anybody in public life who has done nothing wrong in criminal terms. 16:19 But should it be allowed? Should people be allowed... 16:23 Should angry people be allowed to protest outside buildings that they believe asylum seekers who've done nothing wrong are living in? 16:34 Because I don't see how anyone answers yes to that question. And yet the country is a place where that's now normal. It's baked in. 16:44 The attacks on officers followed unrest on Tuesday in St. John's Way, Brecon Road and Elm Road where properties were damaged with windows smashed and fences broken and people attempted to break into a residential property. How frightened would you be? 16:59 In what circumstances might you expect an angry mob to be trying to break into your home in the middle of the night? 17:08 What do you think you might have been accused of doing for that to happen? 17:15 0345 6060 973 is the number that you need. 17:23 And, of course, they are illegal immigrants, which is technically true, albeit you can't claim asylum illegally thanks to Tory policies. And you can have that. 17:36 Of course you can. You can talk about them being illegal immigrants if you'd rather, but still, to be breaking into their home in the middle of the night. What are you going to do if you get in? If you're here to defend that, give me a ring. Tell me what you're going to do when you get into their bedroom. 0345 6060 973. What's the plan, lads? 17:54 What's the flipping plan? Eh? 17:57 Well, Dave, the point you're missing is they're illegal immigrants and we don't want them here. Okay, give me a ring then. Tell me what you're going to do when you get into their bedroom in the middle of the night. What's the plan? 18:06 And now tell me who's the criminal. Now tell me who's the threat. 18:11 Hit the numbers now. You will get through. 03456060973. I can't just say what the fudge is going on here. 18:18 But I can ask you. 18:21 And maybe if you feel very strongly about this issue, you can tell me why you think... Because I don't think you can have a peaceful protest. Sorry. I just think that you might turn up to protest quotes peacefully, end quotes, and you might be telling the truth, but there's nothing you can do to stop the policewoman biter. 18:38 joining in, or the drug driver, or the criminal, or the domestic abuser, just coming along for a bit of a ride. I don't think you can do it. I don't think you should be allowed to protest outside these buildings. Do you? 0345 6060 973 is the number you need. It's 1022. 18:56 24 minutes after 10, it is now a criminal offence to protest outside the home of someone in public office where the intention is to influence them in their role or an aspect of their private life with perpetrators facing up to six months' imprisonment. It is not a criminal offence to protest outside the home that you think might contain asylum seekers. There's a definition of terrorism that looks at the use of violent action in order to achieve political aims. And so technically, we are looking possibly here at pogroms and or terrorism on British soil. 19:32 in the middle of an otherwise ordinary August week, and with none of the outrage and or upset that I think I would have expected from my country. 19:45 Am I going mad or is the country going mad? 0345 6060 973 is the number that you need. 25 minutes after 10 is the time. And I keep steering you back, if I may, to the circumstances in which you think it would be acceptable or likely or whatever else, whatever other word you want to use for your home to be targeted in this way. 20:12 Okay? And remember, none of the people concerned in any of these cases are known to have committed any crimes or even been accused of any crimes in the community. 20:24 Alan is impressed, Rich. Alan, what made you pick up the phone? 20:28 What made me pick up the phone? Well, there's a couple of reasons. Oh, morning, James, by the way. Nice to speak to you again. You mentioned the online world, and I've had pictures. I'm a councillor in Bury, North Manchester. I've had pictures of my house put on Facebook because we had the audacity to, during the Oasis concerts, to stop a couple of people weeing up our drive. We asked the organisers, could we have one of 1,500 barriers across our drive, please? I didn't see the posting because I don't do Facebook because it just depresses me. 20:58 um as a local councillor when we passed a budget so it was there as a as just a citizen not it had nothing to do with your role as a councillor or was it because you had passed it was no it was i am a councillor that made the decision to put up the barriers what it was you remember the oasis concert of course i remember the oasis concert i'm not a high court judge i just i'm just trying to work out why they put up a picture of your house was it because you were a resident of that area or was it because you were a councillor 21:25 Basically, we had a group of lads go to drive, wheeled me well, so my wife rang up with the organiser and said, can we have someone in bad days to stop it happening again? And because I'm a counsellor, I was receiving preferential treatment. 21:36 Oh, I see. Okay. So it was both, actually. There you go. Don't teach me to get impatient with you. It's because you're a resident and because you're a counsellor. What did you feel? I mean, actually, maybe what did your wife feel when you found out there was a picture of your house online? 21:50 Well, honestly, because I don't do Facebook, James, it was about In the evening, when someone said, I was in the curry house, ordering a takeaway because, you know, could we bother cooking? 22:02 Someone put pictures of your house on Facebook. I went, where? 22:06 They were on for two hours and then they got tucked down. 22:10 So Facebook actually did its job for once. What do we think about? Because you're a councillor. Unlike Kemi Bader, I think you do much more important work than just sorting out bins. And you're a Labour councillor as well, I remember, Alan. So this is your party opening up a comment on these hideous gatherings in Norfolk. This is their first priority. The right to protest is fundamental to our democracy and the concerns of communities are central to our immigration reforms. That sounds to me like they're saying to the people that didn't bite police officers, you carry on, that's fine. 22:42 And then the second paragraph, however, violence and disorder are never acceptable, and we absolutely condemn the behaviour seen in Setford, including attacks against frontline police officers. Should anybody be allowed to gather outside a building because they think there might be some refugees inside? 22:59 I've not got a problem with people peacefully protesting, like you say. 23:04 You can't peacefully protest in this way. How are you going to make... That's never happened. 23:10 No, yeah, but what I can't get my head around, James, is why our coppers have to stand there... and face a barrage of half bricks and this and that. My view is they should face the full weight of the law. 23:25 But you're not. You're dodging the question. And you might want to dodge it because of your own public office, and that's fine. But you can't. There's no way anybody can guarantee that a protest outside a building that might or might not contain alleged asylum seekers is going to remain peaceful. By dint of allowing these people to gather, you are... 23:47 You are setting the tinder that may be later lighted. 23:51 Well, I think what you need is a dispersal order, James. Honestly, I genuinely, if you want a protest, and then the thing is, all of this stuff he's done on Facebook, it's all on rumour. We've had bonfires in my neck of the woods with effigies of Keir Starmer on the gallows on the news, and all this stuff spreads. But I know what you're saying is, you know, these people are going to riot anyway. 24:17 They're not allowed to gather outside your house. 24:22 Sorry? 24:22 They're not allowed to gather outside your house. 24:25 No, you're right, James. 24:28 As someone in public office, if they were coming there to influence you in your role or an aspect of your private life, they could face up to six months in prison. But they can gather outside these people's house. 24:39 No, no, you're right. I mean, it is wrong, James. I think it is, right? I've worked with asylum seekers. 24:45 I've worked with Peter. I've worked with one guy. He was arched over in pain. I said, what's up with you? 24:54 He said, no, it's me back, mate. I said, come on, I'll take you down to work surgery. And he was telling me the story. And he kept mentioning they. They did it to me where they come from. I said, who's they, mate? 25:05 They went to the police where they come from. He said, they jumped on me back till they broke it. I went, what? And as soon as I'm sat here, James, he said, then they shot me. 25:15 And there will be other undeserving cases, of course, that would arguably receive a lot more coverage and are much more likely to appear on people's social media. I just have a sense. Thank you, Alan. And I'm sorry for what you went through, albeit that it doesn't bear, as you well know, it doesn't bear comparison with what these people are going through. What happens if you get into the bedroom? 25:35 You know, I get these messages. James O'Brien obviously does not have an HMO full of illegal immigrants in his street and his wife or daughter having to run the gauntlet of abuse and abusive remarks every day. He has no clue. Nor do you, William. I think we can say with absolute certainty that that is not your experience either. But what do you do, William, when you get into their bedroom in the middle of the night? What's the plan, mate? 25:58 Seriously, give me a ring. What's the plan? 26:02 Unless you're approving of this kind of behavior up to the point that they start biting police officers. 26:08 I don't know what you'd rather have on your street. A mob of angry drunks biting police officers or a house which is so innocuous that they're not even sure asylum seekers live there. 26:22 I don't know what picture this paints. I don't know what story this is telling us about the state of the nation, but it can't be pretty, can it? Can it? 03456060973 is the number you need. And it's a bit of a kind of classic phone-in question, this, compared to the usual complicated questions that we ask on this program. But... 26:43 Is it right that people can gather outside buildings where they think asylum seekers may be housed? That's all. 26:52 And listen, you are not just welcome, but you're positively encouraged to answer yes to that question. But you are equally welcome to answer no. You can't guarantee the safety of anybody present, up to and including police officers, so the dispersal order should be issued immediately, no? 27:08 They didn't issue, well, they've issued some notices, but after three challenging nights, the Deputy Chief Constable said, I'm pleased to report that last night passed without any significant incidents of disorder. Should they be doing more? Should the Home Office be doing more? 10.32 is the time. 03456060973 is the number you need. 27:27 Dominic Ellis has your headlines. 27:30 It's 10.35. I guess if the property is safe, I don't think this is quite as black and white as you may think I think, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, every protest could potentially turn violent. I mean, it is unlikely that a protest at Agbra Stadium calling for a new kid of Mr. Harry as manager, which... after Saturday's performance in Hornchurch is frankly not impossible, but it might be a little bit premature this season. We will keep the faith for now. 28:01 It's highly unlikely that that is going to pose a direct threat to anybody's life or safety. 28:06 And even if they are planning to house asylum seekers, let's say, at a former RAF base up the road, and they're not there, I don't really see how gathering outside to express your displeasure at the prospect is... 28:21 is on the same page as turning up outside a building that actually contains asylum seekers. And then you've got another grey area, because I'm going to add none of whom have been accused of crimes, because there was a resident of the hotel in Epping who has subsequently been found guilty of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a woman. 28:44 He was from Ethiopia originally. He touched the girl and said he wanted to have a baby with her during the incidents in Epping on the 7th and 8th of July of 2025. 28:55 By the time that the protests started taking place outside the former hotel, I don't think he was there anymore. But if he had been, I'm going to wave my placard. I'm going to chant my slogans. 29:09 When they start trying to break in... 29:12 Would anybody argue that's acceptable? 29:17 What are they going to do when they get there? What are they going to do when they get to your bedroom? So how do we do this? 0345 6060 973. How are the protests? How do you police these protests? 29:31 How do you prevent pogroms? 29:35 We know two things. 29:37 We know, and some people won't like me saying this, but some people who do not want asylum seekers being housed in their community are not bad people. 29:45 But we also know that if they choose to protest at a property, then lots and lots of bad people will soon get involved. 29:53 So what do we do? 29:54 Maybe the police in Thetford have got it absolutely right, but it's the media response that is really troubling me today because nobody seems to be particularly worried or outraged by this idea. 30:05 Your thoughts, really. 0345 6060 973 is the number that you need. 1038 is the time. Greg is in Harlow. Greg, what would you like to say? Good morning, James. Thanks for having me on. 30:16 Listen, I think the point of this is the frustration that the government and Andy Burnham isn't actually listening to people, which is actually making people want to go to these riots. I'm not supporting violence. I'm not supporting break-ins. I'm not supporting any of that. What I'm saying is the right to actually protest is the only thing we've got left when our ministers don't listen. 30:38 What percentage do you think small boat crossings have gone up by in the last year? 30:43 Since 2018, over 200,000. In the last year? 30:46 Because Andy Burnham's only been Prime Minister for two weeks, mate. Absolutely. You can't be sticking in. So just in the last year, how much do you think they've gone up by? 30:53 They've gone down. 30:54 By how much? 30:56 I think about 30%. 45%. 45%. So how are they not listening? 31:02 They're not listening. They haven't been listening for a long time. So why have they done that then? The reason being is, as I say, we have got food shortage in this country. We are coming into a bad time because of the weather. 31:13 Why have they done this? Why have they introduced laws? No, you are. Let's look at legal migration. How much has that gone up by in the last year? 31:21 I wouldn't know that. 31:22 OK, so it was 944,000 in the year to March 20th. No, no, numbers are the point. We've just talked about the boats. They're down 45%. 31:31 You ask people to phone in, and when you do, you're not listening to what they say. I am. 31:35 You're saying that the politicians aren't listening to you, and I'm saying, why then have the numbers gone down by 45%? 31:41 Because possibly the French are doing their job properly. 31:45 So the problem is getting smaller? 31:48 The problem is getting smaller. 31:49 And why are the French doing their job properly? 31:51 Until actually our ministers listen and say that we've got... No, mate, let's not fall out. 31:55 You can't have it both ways. They can't be plummeting. They can't be coming down. They can't be coming down by 45% in a country where... 32:03 I really like your programme and I really want to say something and you're not listening... 32:07 I've listened to what you've said. You've said the politicians aren't listening. 32:10 Are you for illegal immigration? Do you want immigrants coming in this country? 32:13 I think we should have a decent refugee policy and we should open up safe routes so they can get here and don't have to risk... You're accusing me of not listening. You're accusing me of not listening. I can't get a word in edgeways. So, let's just focus on facts, all right? Not feelings, but facts. The facts are that the politicians who aren't listening to your concerns about small boats have somehow presided over a 45% fall in numbers. 32:37 Which is good. I agree with that. 32:38 The politicians who aren't listening to broader concerns about immigration have somehow presided over a fall from 944,000 to 171,000 in the last three years. And it's still come. An absolutely epic... 32:50 decline and fall. 32:51 One thing I would like to say before you chop me off. 32:53 I'm not going to chop you off. I just want you to acknowledge why the politicians... No, you listen. Why have the politicians done this? 33:00 I'm worried about this country and the safety of this country. Why have the politicians... 200,000 since 2018. The only forces we've got left. The army, the air force and the navy are numbered with the police as well. 33:13 Greg, why have the politicians introduced policies that have reduced these figures so starkly? 33:19 I am really welcoming that. 33:21 No, I want you to answer the question. Why have they done it? 33:25 Because perhaps they're concerned as well. 33:27 Right. So they're listening. 33:29 Let's hope they listen more. 33:30 What other answer is there to a fall from 944,000 to 171,000? 33:37 I'm just saying put them into camps, protect them, put guards on them until they have actually been verified that they're safe. 33:44 Well, I think that the ones that were being housed in Thetford have been. 33:47 Yeah, but the point being is we've got bases that are not being used in this country. 33:52 And there's a protest outside one of those bases at the moment in Suffolk. 33:56 But they're not guarded. There's no one in it. 33:58 There's no one in it yet. 34:00 Well, that's what I'm saying. There's not going to be guarded once they're in there. 34:03 But there's no one in it and the protests are already there. So you want prisons, effectively. 34:09 No, I don't want prisons. I want them to be guarded until they've been documented and okayed and they're official. 34:14 And the people that have been put in the homes in Thetford have been. 34:18 Okay. Well, I'm just saying that perhaps... What are you saying, Greg? 34:22 Because I think you speak for a lot of people. 34:25 Hang on. I just want to say a few things. Because 67% of people who don't like immigration or think it's too high, they think it went up last year. 34:35 And it went down by loads. Six in ten... No, I know, but I'm just... I think you're speaking for a lot of people who perhaps are in that category. Six in ten people who would like to see immigration reduced, like you would, believe it is still rising, when in fact it is coming down at a rate of not. 34:50 Absolutely. I'm pleased to see that. 34:51 So what would be your ideal case scenario? 34:55 What I would like is Andy Burnham, now he's in actual post, to actually... People who come on small boats are in a secure location to protect them and also to protect us and get documented until they've been documented and then either authorised or unauthorised. Because we haven't got the facilities or the food or anything. I'm all for legal immigration when they bring something to this country and help us and we help them. 35:26 I don't want to see all these boats coming across undocumented. We haven't got the full suit. 35:31 So they should be kept under lock and key, and I'm not being emotive, until it's been proved that their asylum application is genuine. 35:39 Yes. 35:40 And then they'll move into a house in Thetford. Then they'll move into a house in Thetford. They'll move into a house... Oh, come on, Greg, we're being a bit... 35:47 Well, why don't they go do it the legal route? You can't. 35:50 There isn't one. 35:51 Why can't they go to an embassy or something like that? You can't. 35:53 There isn't one, Greg. 35:55 Well, you can't walk up there and say, I'm looking for asylum? 35:57 No, not since the last government was in power. 36:00 That's ridiculous. 36:01 How can you not know that? Respectfully, don't think that I'm bombarded, but how can you not know that? 36:06 I'm just a normal person, ex-forces in this country. 36:09 So you're talking about a form... Well, what about if I used the phrase concentration camp? That would be too emotive, right? 36:15 I think that's emotionally charged. Yeah, I do too. But that's what we're talking about. I'm not accepting that. What I'm talking about... 36:20 It would be a concentration of people in a camp called for by people who don't know that you can't come here via a safe and legal route. People like you, Greg. 36:29 Well, perhaps Andy Burnham should listen to that. And actually say, I know he said on TV that, you know, legal routes, you know, will have to be improved, et cetera, et cetera. I'm all for Andy Burnham. I hope he does well in post. But I don't think he's looking at the bigger picture. There was over 200,000 since 2018. I know they're coming down. But the point is, we haven't got the food. We haven't got the resources to keep allowing them to keep coming in. 36:57 We haven't got the food. 36:59 At the moment, the situation is this country is not producing enough food and we're going to have food shortages at the end. The farmers have just said that. It was on your news. 37:10 And that's another reason to oppose immigration. Just before you go, and thank you for talking to me today. 37:18 I'm not as intelligent as you. I'm not as intelligent as you. 37:22 You probably are, mate. It's just I went to an expensive school. So, you know, that's what people pay for. I'm not even joking. I promise you. But I do. I just wonder. 37:32 I make forces. I see the worry. 37:35 I just wonder how big a deal in the course of this conversation you think it is that you had no idea that you couldn't apply for asylum safely or legally. 37:46 They're not talking about it. 37:48 But how big a deal do you think it is that you didn't know that? 37:51 I think it's down to our government that are getting paid quite well. 37:54 No, I want to talk about you. Because you accuse them of not listening. It's really easy to... 37:59 I am really worried that they haven't got a legal route to get into this country. 38:03 And yet, when you phoned me earlier today, you had no idea that that was the case. 38:07 No, I thank you for the information. 38:09 And your attitude towards the bigger issue hasn't changed at all. 38:13 But I don't want small boats undocumented coming into the country. 38:19 The best way to get rid of that is to process documentation in the ways that we were doing until the last government responded to. 38:27 I think I can say people like you, can't I? That's not going to offend you. The last government responded to people like you by shutting down those routes and just sort of, I don't know, crossed their fingers that things would get better. I really don't know. 10.46 is the time. I don't know what to say. Thank you, Greg, apart from that, of course, because, you know, this is a conversation about people Lying in bed at night, hearing a baying mole outside their home, and Greg is not alone in thinking that, yeah, it's not ideal, but, you know, it's Andy Burnham's fault. 38:59 It's not Andy Burnham's fault. 39:03 Whose fault is it? 0345 6060 973. It's 1047. 39:08 It is 10 to 11. You are listening to James O'Brien on LBC. Listen, it's my fault that the conversation is not really at the moment about what should be allowed to happen outside the home of somebody who's done nothing wrong. It morphs inevitably into a conversation about what should be allowed to happen outside the home of people who... might be about to do something wrong or who have done something wrong or who have done something wrong by dint of coming here via irregular routes or illegally if you prefer. 39:40 But I think Greg demonstrated. I'll just read you a quick message, actually. I'll read you two. 39:46 Morning, James. I agree with you regarding immigration, but you went in too hard on Greg. Let him finish his point and then discuss it with him. You spoke over him, probably frustrated him, but you definitely frustrated other people with his views. Go slower and you'll make better progress, which is obviously fair. In my defense, I also do it with people who are agreeing with me, but more so with people who seem not to be. But if you're remotely interested in my motivation, it's a frustration born of knowledge. 40:12 knowledge that if i can get to the nub of an issue for example the question of whether or not you can apply for asylum at a uk embassy or high commission somewhere else in the world i know that i'm going to get to those points and i hurry it and it sounds obviously sounds to to some people that i am barracking the witness that i'm badgering the witness but you always get there and and there'll be some people that's what frustrates the most is that we always get there but greg wasn't one of those people I believed him when he said he was grateful to have had his knowledge increased and enhanced. 40:44 Plenty of people listening to this won't have noted that. You cannot apply for asylum at a UK embassy or a high commission abroad. It's not hard, this. You can Google it. You must be inside the UK or having just arrived at a UK port or border to register your claim. So now you say to me, and again, if you phoned in and said this, I'd sound impatient because I've been doing this for 15 years. Well, why don't they stop somewhere else then? To which the answer is that we do not do more than other countries. You're making a journey here from Eritrea and all of the other countries that you pass through on the way. 41:18 Their figures are not smaller than ours. Many of them are higher. 41:23 It isn't as if this is a destination of choice. This is a destination of choice for people who would rather be here than somewhere else for the same reasons you would rather be here than somewhere else. Issues of language, issues of connectivity, issues of friendship, family. 41:38 So there are two big myths. Number one, you don't need to get in a small boat if you want to come here. Number two, if you're coming here, it's because you've turned your nose up at other places because they are stricter than we are and less welcoming. Well, then why are the figures so high in Spain, in Germany, in all of the countries that you are likely to pass through if you were making your way here from somewhere like Eritrea or Syria? 1053 is the time. 42:08 Shahad is in Lincoln. Shahad, what would you like to say? 42:11 Hello, Jane. How are you? 42:12 Very well. What's on your mind? 42:14 I just get frustrated. First of all, I'm very happy that you're holding this conversation. It's definitely invaluable at this time. 42:24 I am coming from an angle of an Arab... Is that a heckler? 42:30 I don't need hecklers on my radio show, Shahad. 42:33 An Arab immigrant. But we moved in 2004 following the fantastic legal war. 42:40 So you're from Iraq? 42:42 Yes, I am. 42:44 And my dad miraculously managed to move here through what you'd call a legal route, or anyone would call a legal route. He's a consultant psychiatrist, and he managed to... He was incredibly overqualified for a job and accepted a low pay cut just to move us to a safe home. So... 43:04 When we moved here in 2004, I will answer your question at the end. So in 2004, when we moved here, it was obviously a massive lack of support for the Iraq war. And you kind of feel that when you were walking around, people recognised you were different. There was racism, but it was, to be honest with you, much more comfortable to deal with than now. Like I recognised I was different. I understood that I had to work harder. However, it was an acceptable amount of racism. 43:36 Yeah, mum, you work hard, mum. You're the best. 43:40 The amount of racism that you could deal with is tolerable, even though you shouldn't have to tolerate it. Now I'm postpartum. I have a job. I'm a clinical pharmacist. My husband's a doctor. Our family, the majority of them are in the medical field. We're paying lots of taxes. We love the country. But... To be honest with you, it's becoming intolerable. And now we're looking at other routes to leave and find a home where we feel less unsafe in. Because we've already felt unsafe to you. 44:13 I'm sorry. 44:15 So, for example, now I'm postpartum and want to go outside. I'd love to go for a run. I'd love to just walk with my child and I wear a hijab. Before I did not wear a hijab, I actually recently wore it. So I definitely feel the looks. I get comments. 44:32 I get people that call me a terrorist. 44:35 So the dial in the last, what, five years, maybe less, has been turned quite sharply. I mean, it's gone up a lot, but it goes up in increments, doesn't it? Absolutely. I'm not going to notice it, really, but you are. 44:48 No, no. I think that's part of the issue as well. So I have friends of all different backgrounds. 44:55 let's say, Caucasian, white, British, they don't, not that I'm empathetic, it's that they don't understand it and you can't understand it. You can't understand the odd look. You can't understand. It's a bit like being a female in a workplace and you feel there's a certain level of misogyny, but you can't put your finger on it. 45:14 Yes. And here I am with my white male privilege. So, you know, my finger is less likely to land on it than anybody's. But just if I may nudge you towards what you feel when you see mobs, and I'm going to call them a mob, gathering outside the homes of people who are in 2026, roughly who you were in 2014. 2004. 45:36 So my point was that if I feel this now and I'm not an asylum seeker and I have a language, I am able and capable to convey a message. I know where to go to for help, et cetera. I'm terrified. I can't imagine what everyone is feeling. There's been a certain level of indecency that has occurred now. And there's no longer a social contract between neighbors, let's say. 46:01 And so, For that, and because of that, we do need to have laws that now need to put pressure on people that you can't behave that way. It's indecent. It's reactive. And if there is an issue with, well, there is an issue, as everybody wants to point out, with immigration, then that needs to be taken up with people who can fix it, not the average person who is just fighting to just have a home that's safe. 46:27 Just doing what we're all doing and dealing with what we're all dealing with. 46:32 And I'd like to point this out as well. I might offend some people. As you said, it's not the UK. I mean, we love the UK because it's given us so much and so much safety. However, I have to say my life back in Iraq prior to the war, we were much more privileged with due respect. We lived a life that was much more lavish. We didn't want to pack up and come to the UK. And we weren't dying to, you know... 47:02 take part of this country but we have and we've done so very well but to be discredited discredited every day is becoming a bit tiresome um yes and i mean you know it would be a mistake to hold you up as being representative of every refugee in the united because you know you're a farmers clinical pharmacist your husband is a doctor and It would be wrong to hold up every refugee who's committed a crime as emblematic. 47:29 So the reality lies between the two. But it is extraordinary to hear you describe the consideration of going somewhere else instead. Answer this question if you don't want to. You may not be able to yet. Where might be nicer? 47:43 Nowhere. No, that's what I meant. This is the land that Elon built. 47:48 Yes, yeah. I mean, I firmly reject... 47:52 wanting to leave but if it meant that my son would be safer or meant that I could go out and not feel so uncomfortable that I don't want to go out then You have to cave there. 48:04 You have to find somewhere where you can. I suppose most obviously it might be a bigger, more cosmopolitan city wherever else in Europe and possibly in the United Kingdom as well. And that is why being in Lincoln is relevant to the conversation that we are having about Thetford. Because there is something about areas that don't have histories of and traditions of integration and migration that makes them a lot more susceptible to rabble-raising. I say rabble-raising. You call it what you will. 48:33 It's why that exchange I keep referencing between Jonathan Miller and Enoch Powell from I think some point in the 1960s was so powerful and Enoch Powell is sitting there saying there is going to be change and it is going to be awful and Jonathan Miller just responded by saying well of course there is going to be change but why do you keep telling people it's going to be awful? 48:53 You know, the person moving into your street who wears a hijab could be a clinical pharmacist who's married to a doctor. That's okay, yeah? It is three minutes after 11. I want to stay with this because I feel, well, two things really. I haven't got to the heart of it, which would be when are you or when should I be allowed to protest outside your house because I don't want you living in my town? 49:20 And you might say, well, you've come here irregularly. OK, so how do we protest outside your house? What's the end game here? We're going to move you somewhere else. But you've still come here irregularly. Or illegally, if that's the language you prefer. But I'm not soft-soaping it. I prefer the language irregularly. Because if we say illegally, then callers like the one in the last hour, Greg, would not realize that that is pretty much the only way you can apply for asylum here. You could be the most deserving refugee in the history of refugees. 49:53 And if you wanted to apply for asylum in this country, you would have to come over the English Channel on a dinghy. 49:59 if you come from pretty much every country in the world. 50:05 As I say, the most deserving refugee on the planet would have to come via those routes in order to get here. 50:15 Then you have the money argument. And again, I think that it's too easy just to sort of shout at people who don't understand this. Why would you not understand this? We can't afford it, James. You're so out of touch. You just can't afford it. So the budget on asylum seekers is, I think, about between four and five and a half billion pounds. How many noughts are there in a billion dollars? 50:41 Go on, tell me, remind me, how many noughts are there in a billion? Because I know how many noughts there are in a trillion, in a UK trillion, and you have to keep an eye on the Americans here because they've messed everything up. There are 12 zeros in a trillion. And if you look at what UK government spending is... 51:01 on the asylum system, you are not really touching the sides. Annual spending on asylum compared to the £1.368 trillion that we spend on a total managed expenditure in this country is not the argument. But here's the thing that I struggle with, and you've probably heard me struggle with this over the years, I am... 51:35 I don't blame, I shouldn't blame people for not knowing that. It depends how pungent your opinion is, doesn't it? 51:43 If you're one of the people outside that house in Thetford biting a policewoman, then I don't know that there are many people who are going to stick up for you or speak for you or claim that you've got legitimate concerns. But what about the people standing around the chap who's bitten a policewoman who just think that we can't afford this anymore? or that they are all criminals, or that there's some terrible things going on. Or that you can come here, if you had a proper case, you could walk into the embassy in Berlin and apply that. People who believe... I just don't know. I've never known. 52:14 I've never known how you can police that place where someone is either going to bite a policewoman, whether or not they're racist is moot at the moment, but... 52:32 Or someone who has just believed things that are not true. So that's why I find these figures, these latest figures, so extraordinary. A drop of, in legal migration, in the year to March 2023, that 944,000 people came here. In the year to December last year, that was down to 171,000. And it's still falling. People are talking about net migration reaching zero in this country. Talking about it reaching zero. 53:02 And on the question of the small boats, I've noticed something with the small boats. I don't know if you've noticed this. There was a fascinating quote in one of the newspapers last week. And I had to read it two or three times before I could work out what had happened. In order to avoid telling you that the numbers of small boat crossings are plummeting, and listen, there's been a spike recently, and no one is claiming that this is definitely a done deal. I'll be clear about that. There was a spike last week. I think it's been very little action for the last three or four days. But the boats that are crossing the Channel are bigger. Right. 53:33 So it got reported in one newspaper last week. I think it was the Daily Mail. And you read the headline. I'll try and find you the article. I think it quoted Zia Yusuf in it, talking about the boats are enormous. And it was written... 53:45 entirely to make you think that the numbers were bigger than ever. Whereas, in fact, the numbers are smaller than ever and the boats are getting bigger. Fewer crossings with more people on each one. And I've already had a couple of messages today telling me that, you know, they can't be coming down. The boats are getting bigger. And that's... 54:04 That's being done very deliberately. That's being done very deliberately because it brings you power, it brings you attention, it brings you money. And of course, as many people tell me, if you really are that exercised about something, then you owe it to yourself to do the digging, to do the homework. To find out what the facts are. And I do still, and this is possibly a very personal position, but I do still marvel at the idea of thinking, I'm going to ring that bloke on the radio and I'm going to tell him what's what. 54:37 If you aren't sure what's what, it's such a strange place to be. 54:43 to be absolutely adamant that this is true and that is true. But of course, the reason why it happens is you're constantly being told that this is true and that is true and the other is true by people who benefit from your fear. 54:57 But how do I tell the difference between you and somebody who is going to turn up and bite a policewoman? Nine minutes after 11 is the time. So let's move it on a little. And if you're waiting to talk to me from the last hour, we'll still find room for you. 55:13 But having listened to what you've listened to, take two calls from the last hour, I think. So one chap who is adamant that the politicians aren't listening, but is, and I don't think you'll mind me saying this, either ignoring the statistics which show that this is a major, it's one of the reasons why the left fell out of love with Keir Starmer. 55:32 Because him and Shabana Mahmood were beginning to sound like sort of Nigel Farage on this issue. So that is not true, that people aren't listening or that action is not being taken. But it is also true that 67% of immigration sceptics in this country believe that net migration went up last year when it actually plummeted. 55:52 60% of people who think that they want to see immigration reduced believe that it is currently rising. 56:00 You see what I mean about the strength of opinion having very little to do with the depth of knowledge, the strength of feeling having very, very little, if not nothing to do with the breadth or the depth of knowledge. 56:17 So the protests outside the House in Thetford, that is about people who believe, A... 56:25 that you can only come here in a small boat if you've decided not to apply via a safe and legal route. B, people who think that we can't afford to house these people. C, as we'll see, because the Daily Express has very helpfully added petrol to this already smouldering fire. 56:44 C, they get a really good deal. They get really well looked after. They get a luxurious lifestyle when they get here. The jaw-dropping list of all the things you get for free, the people in Thetford. 56:57 And D, I don't know what D is, but then the numbers... 57:03 The numbers don't support any of it. And even if you say, well, I don't care about all of the other immigration, which has gone down from 944,000 to 171,000. I really care about the boats. My question sometimes is why? Because the other story in the news today is about how attitudes to immigration have hardened in the last 10 years. And the boats are the reason. The small boats, the channel crossings, are the reason given by the researchers for the hardening of British attitudes to migrants. 57:35 And the small boat route exists only because they shut all the other routes that were in place when attitudes to migration were softer. 57:45 I mean, I'm not going mad, am I? I don't know if this was the intention, when they did it, but there is something obviously provocative about the idea, particularly for an island nation, of people crossing the ocean, like the Vikings did, like the Spanish Armada tried to do, like the Normans did in 1066, crossing our ocean and coming here and wishing us ill. 58:10 It is a much easier picture to paint than it is someone walking into an embassy in Tirana and saying, I'd really like to move to Britain because I'm being persecuted for my political beliefs or my sexuality or whatever else it may be. More than a fifth of voters now saying they don't want anyone from Nigeria. They don't want anyone from Pakistan. A quarter saying they don't want anyone from Pakistan. And these numbers have got worse or have got harder, have got bigger, have got stronger since... 58:38 Brexit caused various governments to shut down the routes by which you could come here previously. 58:48 I was going to do a phone-in on why, but I think we know why. I think we know why. YouGov has returned to a large-scale survey that it carried out in 2016 to see how our views on European and wider migration have changed. And we've now got a figure of 43% saying it has been mostly bad. 59:07 And yet every single one of the people in that group, that 43%, would say to the immigrant that they know, almost all of the people in that group would say to almost all of the immigrants that they know, oh, I don't mean you. 59:24 Do you see what I mean? So find me someone who has told YouGov that they think that the level of immigration over the past 10 years has been bad for Britain. 59:34 And then ask them to point you to the people they know who are part of that problem. 59:40 And they won't be able to. They'll be able to point at very well publicized stories about crimes. They'll be able to point at small boats crossing the English Channel being reported with almost sort of... 59:54 salivating um feelings all of these people would not be able to say oh oh yes well there's 17 people or they might say well there's a house in the next town or there's a 300 people have just been moved into an airfield up the road from me but do you do you know them no but i mean they stand around town all day doing nothing but that's not their fault either That's not their fault either. 60:20 Quarter past 11 is the time. I mean, you get the occasional message that you think might be a mickey take. You think it might be a, I don't know, a joke or someone who is mocking the position of people who, other people who might ring the program. This is from Dave. You still don't get it. You do realize your children's children will be taught in Islamic schools if reform don't get in. 60:53 Already we're seeing natives being outvoted in their own constituencies and soon many cities. It's true that they want to discard Christianity for their own faith. When will you wake up? And again, you know, you'd say to Dave, where is it that I'm not allowed to practice? Dave, mate, genuine question. When's the last time you went to church? 61:14 When's the last time you went to church? Text me, ring me, let me know. 61:18 That's all. Because why are you worried about a reported discarding of Christianity? First of all, provide me with the proof of it. Second of all, tell me when the last time you went to church was. 61:30 Because you won't be able to. And I'm seeing Christianity creep into the conversation. You can't be British if you're not Christian. Which is, you know, such an appalling abandonment of our secular values. 61:44 that it beggars belief. It beggars belief. 61:47 Anyway, I'm not exactly hitting the phone-in marks today because I am absolutely reeling from the reaction to events in Thetford and the idea that our own Home Office can, in the first paragraph of response to a borderline pogrom, recognise the validity of... recognise the validity of peaceful protest. And, of course, because any peaceful protest can become violent, my idea... 62:13 or my question about whether or not you should even be allowed to have protests outside homes possibly falls apart but okay think of it this way round think of it this way round why am I not allowed to protest outside a politician's home about government policy but I am allowed to protest outside a refugee's home about government can you justify that for me I'm not allowed to protest outside a local councillor's home or a home secretary's home or a party leader's home about government policy. 62:51 But I am allowed to protest outside an asylum seeker's home. 63:01 Darren tells me that 230 people have crossed the channel today. And, you know, that's true, I believe. 63:08 James not talking about it. I am, mate. I'm literally talking about it now. But it doesn't change the bigger numbers. 63:14 230 people crossed the channel today. 63:17 The population is 60 odd million. 63:19 And there's no other way to get here. And you can't apply in embassies. And it costs, in the great scheme of things, a negligible amount of money. And if we process people better, it would cost even less. And we've got lynch mobs turning up outside a house in Thetford, mate. 63:35 Why? 63:37 18 minutes after 11 is the time. Listen, just your general thoughts on this, whether or not things are as dark as they sometimes seem to me to be. Also, you might be in Thetford and you'll say, James, we're a big old town. 63:51 And these people would turn up for the... If they thought there was a fight on, these people would turn up anywhere. They'd turn up for the wrestling at the town hall back in the day. You don't need to read too much into my town because of these things that are happening. And then you've got the people who might be loosely described as peaceful protesters who could claim that their cause is somehow being polluted. But why am I allowed to protest outside an asylum seeker's home and not outside a politician's? For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not sure that you should be allowed to protest outside anybody's. 64:24 Not their home. 0345 6060 973. It's 11.19. 64:29 21 minutes after 11 is the time. I'll find you that article in which they tried to portray the size of the boats as proof that the numbers were rising when actually the numbers are coming down. But it's a little bit... 64:44 It's supplementary, isn't it, to the broader conversation. 230 people on one boat have landed in England today. And that is a record. So that is where the narrative is going. That's where the coverage is going. The boats have got bigger. So please don't take any note whatsoever of the fact that the numbers have come down because the boats have got bigger. And I'll prove my point to you shortly from one article in the media last week. 65:13 But what I'm really interested in is your attitude to protest outside homes that contain asylum seekers who haven't been accused of any wrongdoing at all. I just want to know how we feel about that because I feel quite scared. And I would like you either to reassure me that I shouldn't or to tell me that it is a necessary corrective to, I don't know, current affairs. Carlos is in Guildford. Carlos, what would you like to say? 65:42 Yeah, hi, James. It was really about not quite understanding why they are allowed to protest. We were discussing in the office, really, about if I decided now to go up to, people might not know St George's Hill, but it's quite a posh part of Weybridge. It's got some gates on the front where the average house is about 12 million. But if I decided to get a bunch of 50 or 60 people outside and say, I want to protest at the billionaires... and the millionaires aren't paying enough tax. We were debating how long before the police would move us on and say, well, you can't protest here, you're causing a right ruckus. 66:17 And it might be that the house you're outside does not contain someone who has creative tax arrangements, but the asylum facility in Thetford doesn't contain anybody who stands accused of the kind of crimes that usually accompany this sort of rhetoric. 66:31 And even if one was, what about the others in there that are innocent? What about the lady with the two young children cowering behind the bed? They can't make the decision, James. They're not the decision makers. If those protesters were really free speech advocates and their right to protest, they would be standing outside the people that can actually make the change, and that's Parliament. They don't go to Parliament because they can't scare Parliament. 66:57 Well, then you're moving the conversation back then. I mean, I say to you, why am I allowed to protest outside their house but not outside a politician's house? And I know this isn't your intention, but a couple of people have texted to say, well, why aren't we allowed to protest outside politicians? To my mind, two wrongs don't make a right. 67:17 But, I mean, we're not allowed to because of what's happened to politicians. And you can't get democratic change by threat. That's a fascist country. I was born in a fascist country. 67:29 Were you? 67:30 Yeah, in Spain, in 69. I remember my parents telling me they couldn't walk down the street holding hands. 67:37 I've been there, and it starts with small little changes. But am I scared? No, I'm not scared. Why not? 67:43 Because we've just had, I've just come back from holiday in Spain, we've got 70,000 people across the border, and you've got the knuckle-drager saying, I mean, there was one... Go on, sorry, I'm talking over you. 67:53 So just to say to the people who say I never talk over people who agree with me, there I was talking after Carlos, so yeah, put down your pipe and smoke it. 68:01 And we've dealt with them, and not only did we deal with them, we've dealt with them beautifully, with compassion. And the heroes were our army, our armed forces and the police. Heroes across Spain. And the knackle draggers were struggling to say, we've cleared the problem. We've got the genuine ones, which are about 2,400 that are left, that have to be processed. We've separated the children and brought them straight to Spain. 68:24 And everybody else has gone back to Morocco. 68:26 Everyone's gone back to Morocco. 68:28 A great piece by David Aranovic. David Aranovic writes a substat, which is... No, it wasn't that. Sorry, I beg your pardon. 68:34 He did write one. 68:35 No, I know, but it was Simon Nixon writing for Byline Times about it today, and the story's gone away. So why... I mean, that's Spain. How does that reassure you that the events in Thetford are not a sign of things to come? 68:48 Maybe I live in Guildford. Maybe, James. And most of the people are nice. And we've all got neighbours that say this. I've got colleagues that say this. You know, I mean, I've got one in Hayling Island, a retired colleague of mine, who thinks he's going to be invaded any minute now. But I still go swimming, hailing island, and I get my paddleboard out, and I go, what a wonderful day, and I still drink in the pub. And everyone else on the beach isn't remotely worried about this so-called invasion that's coming. No. Because I think most people are genuinely great. 69:16 Yeah, but 45% of people think that immigration over the last 10 years has been a bad thing. 69:23 And we have other... 69:26 Research showing that things, as I say, over the last decade have deteriorated even after most of these people would have voted for Brexit. Not all, by the way. Remainers are pretty well represented in these numbers as well in the hope of reducing immigration. And as long as small boats are crossing the channel, regardless of how many people are in them or how often they successfully cross, I don't know how you can extinguish the fires that are blazing in places like Thetford. 69:52 I just don't know how you can do it. I don't even want to use the word ignorance, Carlos, but the lack of knowledge is a choice that this country has taken. The lack of knowledge is a choice. No one is standing up. Siobhan Mahmood is not standing up and explaining why things are happening or explaining... what the reason is or sharing the statistics, they are saying in the first line of the response to the violence, they are saying, we understand the protests, we are addressing them, we are dealing with them. 70:24 So it's like a sort of chicken and egg situation in which this government, and I think Keir Starmer's especially, but potentially this one, have put their hands up and says, all right, this battle has been lost. The country is a place where the massive majority of people think immigration is a bad thing for Britain. Despite the fact that it isn't, we are going to legislate as if it is. And once you've done that, I don't know how you can go to Thetford and tell people to wind their necks in and calm down. 70:51 It's a hard one, but we've just got to keep talking. Yeah, we've just got to keep talking. 70:56 I guess so. And of course... 71:00 conversation isn't one that's held very often. And even I had to do a little double take at the numbers when I was looking for them last week for another job that they do. 67% of immigration skeptics believe net migration increased last year. And six in 10 people who would like to see immigration reduced believe it is still rising. So put these two stories alongside each other, right? Britain's attitudes to migrants have hardened in the past decade. And it's reported in the Times, in a way, and Times isn't the worst offender in this field, but it's reported in a way that makes you think that these opinions are sourced in knowledge and experience, in facts. 71:39 And the article doesn't mention the fact that the massive majority of people who think that immigration is a bad thing are wrong about what immigration levels are. 67% think that it is a bad thing and believe that it went up last year. 60% who want to see it reduced believe that it's still rising. So elements of this are kind of meaningless. I don't know. 11.28 is the time. Boris is in Luxembourg. Boris, what's going on? 72:10 Thanks very much for taking my call. You're very welcome. Just connecting to what one of the things your previous caller said is we need to talk about it. Absolutely agree. But the entire conversation has to start with a very basic concept that our politicians are not talking about, neither from the left, from the right. Immigration is brilliant. The fact that people want to go to Britain or to the EU nowadays is a positive thing. The alternative is North Korea, South Sudan. That's where places don't want to go. So the first thing in terms of our mentality is not to say, how can we pass some policy to make immigration less? 72:45 but to embrace the fact that we are saying what a brilliant country people want to come here legally as well as illegally people are taking the risk of getting on a dinghy risking their lives the lives of their children the lives of their wives to make it to britain don't these people deserve to be there maybe if you're thinking radical about this james maybe somebody like nigel farage who's done absolutely nothing To the fact of being born in Britain, whenever he was born 50-something or 60-something years ago, he contributed nothing for that fact that he was born in Britain. 73:18 Similar to 69 other million people in Britain who were just by the pure chance born in Britain. And we compare that to somebody who pays money, who takes risk, who takes time to reach the shores of Britain, to make a new life in Britain. 73:33 Isn't that admirable? 73:35 Well, to you it is, and to me it is, but all it takes is one person to stand up with one genuine case of one of these people who's come over doing something awful, something hideous, something criminal, and what no one seems to be attempting in the political sphere is to ring-fence that. And that's why I began the show this morning, oddly, by talking about the fact that some teachers commit terrible crimes, and some footballers commit terrible crimes, and radio presenters commit terrible crimes, and Capricorns commit terrible crimes, and nobody ever tries to pretend that because of that terrible crime over there, everybody with a shared characteristic should be punished, should be held responsible, should be treated with suspicion. 74:14 That's the bit. That's where it all falls down. I love your warm words. I love your rosy worldview, but... 74:21 It all falls down because here is one person who proves that they're all wrong. And that's what you get Elon Musk doing on social media. You get the argument that because you find what, you know, look, Farage, you mentioned Farage when he did Henry Novak's killer somehow was evidence of immigration policy having gone wrong. What would he have said if Henry Novak's killer... had been able to trace his family back to the doomsday book. Also, absolutely nothing. But that's the bit that works, Boris, is that you get in there and you say, look over there, there's another one of them. 74:52 You know, it was one of them that killed that lad last week, so we should be treating them. We better keep an eye on this lot. No one ever does that to you or to me. No one ever points at us and says someone who looks a bit like him committed a crime last week. You better keep an eye on him. I don't know how... That's the bit that I don't... Presidents commit terrible crimes. I mean, you know... 75:10 That's the bit I don't know what the answer is. Anyway, the phone lines are open, so if you know what the answer is, 0345 6060 973. But there is more money, there is more attention, and there is more political capital to be made in pretending otherwise at the moment. And Boris is right. There's a phrase you've never heard me say before. Boris is right. The political responsibility to stand up to this has been completely abandoned. Ed Davey does his best. Zach Polanski, I presume, is trying to swim in a slightly different direction. 75:44 But they're not making much inroad into national discourse. 75:50 I always think of the Ukraine refugee crisis. 75:53 I'm trying to wriggle or riddle my way through some of these questions because there was a moment where you could actually apply to be a refugee for refugee status in this country without having to come here via a hazardous route. 76:09 It is a thing to try on for size. If you thought Boris was idealistic, let me join him on the idealistic side of this conversation. If you introduced the kind of immigration system that we had, because this is another Brexit story, isn't it? If you introduced the rules that we had before Brexit, or go back further, if you had genuinely safe routes and legal routes, and they were easily accessible, then you could conclude that anybody trying to come here on the back of a lorry or in a dinghy was not expecting their application to be successfully processed. 76:49 I don't know how you would... 76:50 use that suspicion or information but if there were genuinely safe and legal routes then somehow the prejudices that many people feel towards the people coming via the unsafe and illegal routes might be a little bit more justified so would that work you know right we're just going to go back to a system whereby you could apply for asylum or to be a refugee legally and safely and in various places around the world, just as you could when people were fleeing Ukraine in their thousands after Vladimir Putin's illegal invasion. 77:21 I don't know. I mean, I just sort of think that if the small boats are what is driving the negativity, and the negativity is not reflected by the statistics, and the sharpest end of that imbalance between negativity and statistics is the kind of scenes that we see on the streets of Thetford last week, Somebody really should be trying to unravel this mess rather than simply appease the people angered by it or appease the people pretending not to understand it. Here's the story I was talking about. 77:53 Have we got missed information ready? 77:55 I don't know if this is missed information. It's not an unhinged headline. So how do you respond to this story, right? Average number of migrants crammed onto small boats more than doubles over five years to record high under labour. Takeaway words from that sentence. Record high under labour. Am I right? I'm not wrong, am I? What are the words you take away from that? Average number of migrants crammed onto small boats more than doubles over five years to record high under labour. You take away migrants... Small boats. Doubles. Record high. Labour. 78:24 Yeah? This is Greg in the first hour. 78:28 Migrants. Small boats. Doubles. Labour. Record high. 78:35 Analysis fines amid surge of mega dinghies as people smugglers shift taxes. We need to get a politician on because we know what we're doing over at the Daily Mail. That's exactly what we're hitting people with. Migrants. Small boats. Doubles. 78:47 Labour. 78:48 Five years. Record high. Record high. Record high. 78:52 Get a politician on. Who can we get on to talk about this? Here you go. Here's Zia Yusuf, one of Nigel Farage's donors who gets rewarded with, I don't know, some job title to stick on his business card. The number of illegal migrants cramming onto a single boat in the Channel and breaking into Britain is skyrocketing. What are you taking away from that? Illegal. Breaking in. Skyrocketing. So is the problem better or worse than it was a year ago? 79:17 if you think it's a problem. And I've got no beef with you if you think that it is. Let me make that clear. We should chat more. 79:24 So what do you reckon? So headline, migrants, small boats, doubled, record high, Labour. 79:32 And here's Nigel's mate. 79:34 What words are we going to take out of this? It's illegal, channel, breaking into, skyrocketing. 79:41 Up or down? Higher or lower? To channel the late, great Bruce Forsyth. Is it higher or lower than it was a year ago? Is it higher or lower than it was before it skyrocketed? 79:51 Is it higher or lower than before the record high was reached? You're supposed to think it's higher, right? You can read this article 57 times. 80:01 and come away absolutely convinced things are worse than they were a year ago. They're 44% better. Still room for improvement if you think it's a problem, and I've got no beef with you if you think that it is. But at what point do you start getting crossed with the people who are lying to you, rather than with the people that they're lying about? 80:18 Record high! 80:20 The story, if you're interested, is about the fact that there are now more people on each boat that crosses. 80:27 The average number of people on a boat for the whole of 2021 was about 28. It has now gone up, I think, to about 62 or higher, actually, 66. But there are much fewer boats and therefore there are much fewer people. But they're not. I mean, this is significant, right? This is significant. 80:51 Because they are telling you that things are skyrocketing. They are telling you that records are being broken. And they are, in a sense, telling you the truth. But it's not the truth that you deserve to hear. The truth that you deserve to hear is about, if you care about the number of people coming to this country via these routes, is about how many are coming. 81:11 It's a funny one, right? 1140 is the time. And I haven't, well, actually, I say that. 81:17 We are wrestling with a knot today. And it's a knot that has at least three strands caught up in it. One is the gulf between facts and feelings. The fact that we read the latest YouGov polling telling us that 43% of people now think immigration has been mostly bad for Britain over the last 10 years. And then we read a story that was much less widely reported, that huge numbers, 60, 67% of people who've got problems with immigration have a deep, deep misunderstanding of the facts and the figures. And then we've got the events in Thetford, which to me are a symptom of what we're describing. 81:52 And the government's response, arguably making things worse, not better. 81:58 And let's go to Thetford. Stephen is there. Stephen, what made you pick up the phone? 82:03 You know, I'm really sort of like sick of these people in Thetford that are starting all this trouble. It started when they started putting the flags up in the town centre. 82:12 That started making the mood a bit iffy. Then they started protesting outside the police station over local politics. A local MP was chased up the high street by a mob. It was disgusting. All put over Facebook because they've got a little TV channel. 82:29 There's a lot of that about, isn't there? This kind of stick a camera in someone's face and pretend that you're a journalist. 82:36 Yeah, and then they're all outside Barnum camp because apparently migrants were going to be put into Barnum camp. So they protested, don't want them around there. Now they're being put onto the housing estates in the local area. And now they're kicking off about that. 82:51 It worries me that if the Tories get in and they decide, oh, pure Polish, Portuguese, you're going to lose your council house, like I was hearing on the news last week. 83:02 Is that the next big argument? 83:03 Well, we've had problems with Portuguese in Thetford before, haven't we? 83:07 There was a big riot. It was in the pubs. It was the Green Dragon and the Red Lion, I think. 83:13 Was this 2004 or is this more recently? Because there was a football game, wasn't there? And I think 20 people got jailed for attacking a Portuguese pub. 83:21 The police were actually stuck in that pub because they couldn't get out because everybody was outside. One bloke was even nicked for kicking the police dog. 83:29 He got six months. They're biting police women this week. Do you think it's the same people? Not like literally. Yeah, it's old Bob from number 54. But it's the same. They're driven by the same feeling. Yeah, it is. Because that's interesting because this is a pre-Brexit attack upon a Portuguese pub in Thetford. And the same... 83:51 motivations, the same feelings being expressed by the protesters outside. I mean, if you don't want people moving on to the camp, the former RAF camp, there is a case for a peaceful protest there, especially when there's no one in it yet. But you're telling me that you watch this as a member of the community and you watch the same people or people with the same motivations moving from attacking a Portuguese pub to congregating outside a house where there may or may not be asylum seekers inside. 84:18 Yeah, and the trouble is they even published the addresses of all the HMOs in Thetford. 84:23 Despite the fact that there will presumably be plenty of people living in houses of multiple occupation who have got absolutely nothing to do with the asylum system. 84:30 Nothing to do with it, yep, yep. 84:32 And they're being published online. So we're back to that observation at the beginning about the gulf between the online community and the offline community. And it's getting smaller because you've seen the flags. Oddly, Stephen, for me, the flags were one of the first things. I saw one of the flag people being challenged in the street the other day about why he was doing it. We're opposed to illegal immigrants. And no one really said, well, how does this help? This is just a sort of articulation of protest or of anger. But it was almost as if the stuff you see on Twitter had assumed... 85:07 corporeal form you know it had moved from the online to the rear they're just going to dangle it from lamppost everybody knows what this means it's the same as having a flag on your avatar which is you know usually the preserve of the nativist or the racist but but the flag starts it's interesting that you picked up on that and then it moves to chasing the local mp down the street and um 85:29 Well, it's the same people that were chasing him and all the rest of it that were causing trouble at the police station when they tried to put a flag on the police station. 85:36 So, I really, that as well... And there were arrests. There's a few stories around about some of the prominent members of that put-the-flags-up party, and they're not necessarily people that you'd want to babysit or trust with your family's safety, but we're going to do a little bit more on that in the coming days or weeks, just to steer back to who should be allowed to protest. 85:59 Here is a building in the middle of Thetford. 86:02 Here is a group of people that don't want asylum seekers housed in their community. Rightly or wrongly, that is the opinion they have arrived at, the strongly held opinion that they have arrived at. Where do they register their disapproval or their displeasure? 86:17 Well, you've got MPs, that's what they're for. 86:21 Terry Jeremy, he's our MP. And he even said he doesn't want the camp being used. I mean, I don't know why the people are having a go at him. He's agreeing with the people. 86:31 He's been quite outspoken on the subject, actually, hasn't he? Yeah. There's no room for doubt about what his... 86:37 I've never been a fan of the bloke. Okay. Never have been. But until one day he actually turned up on my doorstep and said, sort of like, you know, I'd be interested in your vote. And I thought, you're the only one that's actually bothered walking around and doing anything. So I was like, okay. But yeah, I mean, like, go to him, let him do it. There's a reason and there's a way of doing that. 86:55 I'm not going to get any pick-up on social media if I'm writing letters to my MP or if I'm attending constituency surgeries and holding his feet to the fire. I'm never going to get any pick-up on social media if I'm sticking my hand up at a public meeting and hitting him with statistics and facts. I'm only going to get any pick-up on social media if I'm chasing him down the street with a camera phone and sticking in his face certain knowledge that I'm not going to make any progress whatsoever because that's not why I'm here. 87:20 Yeah. 87:21 It's all there, isn't it? 87:22 It was grim. 87:24 And many people will be unaware of that Portuguese. There's a long history of Portuguese. Why is it? Why did Thetford draw a large number of Portuguese people? Do you know? 87:34 We're industrious. I mean, it's all warehouses, factories and stuff like that. 87:39 Yeah, so more of a recent, more of a kind of freedom and movement type of arrival as opposed to the sort of Huguenots arriving in King's Lynn to work in the textile industries and similar. 87:51 It's no different to sort of like there wasn't any work in England, was there? But so all the brickies went over to Germany. But I don't want to remember that, do we? 87:58 No, we don't. Auf Wiedersehen. It is 11.47. 88:02 It's 10 to 12, you're listening to James O'Brien on LBC. Maybe we need to change the way we do things together. Actually, I normally steer clear of immigration conversations because I just feel that we've been having them for years and everything's getting worse, not better. So maybe I'm... But actually, those words from Luxembourg of Boris, you've just got to keep having the conversations. This figure, and you're right, actually, Boris, you keep hitting these numbers in that you are more likely to believe that immigration is going up if you have a problem with immigration. 88:34 Should be the other way around, right? 88:37 If you're largely comfortable with immigration, then why are you the one that knows the numbers and the figures? Why are you worried? You wouldn't even be particularly worried about it. 88:47 So why aren't they celebrating? 88:50 Why are they not doing laps of honor almost? So, God, the numbers, what really? They've come down, that phrase, net migration, zero net migration, being a feasible, moment in recent or imminent British history, something that is perfectly feasible now to happen, zero net migration, And the narrative is identical across the media and the political world. The narrative is identical to what it was like when the figure was 744,000, as opposed to the figure last year, which was 170,000. 89:28 How can the conversation have the same amount of heat and anger if it's come down by that sort of factor and is still going down now? 89:40 Answer, read that Daily Mail article about small boats doubling five years, record high labor, when it was actually describing a country in which coming here via small boats has gone down by 44% in the last year. So they can't write about that. So they're going to write about how the boats have got bigger. 90:02 Maybe that's what we should just do more. Talk about it more and hope that you reach people who didn't realize there are no safe and legal routes. Didn't realize numbers are coming down, not just to the small boats, which have come down by quite a lot, but also of legal migration, which has come down by a hell of a lot. Just keep talking. Keep telling the truth. 90:19 But it's only little old me. And I'll give you the bob in a minute. I'll give you the rigorous analysis of the Burnham Optimism Barometer. So I remembered to do it. That's progress. Got it up and running in the first quarter of the programme. We're now approaching 12 noon, and I've remembered to give you the results. So, you know, nobody's perfect. Richard's in Southwark. Richard, what made you pick up the phone? 90:40 Well, basically, I wanted to... 90:44 sort of speak about what it feels like to be a victim of a mob outside your property. So I served in the military quite a while ago now. At 17 and a half, I went to Northern Ireland, got posted on my first posting after passing out. 91:03 And the regiment I was in, there was no other black people involved. 91:08 And they made it very clear to me all the way through my training. And when I got to Northern Ireland, I got a nice welcome party in the middle of the night. 20, 30 odd drunk soldiers coming to Bain for Blood, coming for me. 91:23 And if it wasn't for a couple of my peers that saved me, I don't know, I probably might not have been talking to you now, actually, to be honest. 91:32 So I know what it's like to be on the receiving end of that. And I don't think there's enough focus, especially in the media, on what it's like for, you know, migrants who come to this country when they are faced with this type of behavior and treatment. 91:49 It is. I mean, I tried at the top of the show. I don't know if you were listening just to say what I've been listening from the beginning. No, well, I said, what do you what would you have to do in order to have people gathering outside your home begging for your blood tonight? What might you have done? 92:06 in order to... You might have been a rapist, you might have been a paedophile, you might have definitely migrant, immigrant would definitely fall into that because we've seen that over the last, what, four or five odd years. 92:16 Well, exactly. And yet nobody... That's not true. You or I are many people are. But the... 92:22 idea that i well that person deserves to have a mob outside their home because they have come here from somewhere else on a small boat that leap is one that i don't know if anyone who hasn't already made that leap can ever really understand the people who have Richard, do you know what I mean? It's just like such an extraordinary thing. And, you know, no one's actually rung me up to say, I'm glad that policewoman got bitten. But a few messages in my inbox saying you don't understand anything. We've had enough. That's a justification of pogroms, of violence. 92:53 Pogroms are an articulation of people who claim they've had enough, that their lives have been so damaged by violence. people from a different ethnicity or a different religion or a different area that we are going to drum them out of town and and the point of a pogrom is they don't have to have done anything wrong they are being punished for their characteristic not for their conduct yeah and that's the problem in britain i you know i've experienced that from from a child all the way through school in the military yeah uh there's a problem with uh certainly race there is a problem with how you look 93:28 particularly colour, but also, yes, other characteristics as well. 93:32 And if people think that Richard is exaggerating, then they just need to look at what happened when Henry Novak was murdered by a British man with brown skin. Nigel Farage sought to make it into a conversation about all British men with brown skin and in part succeeded. 93:49 You know, a bit earlier you mentioned Enoch Powell. Yes. And, you know, as part of my extensive research into racism and xenophobia over the last 40-odd years, obviously he came up in my research. And to be honest with you, I don't think the attitudes that he created back then has changed at all. You go back, you know, over those last, what, 50-odd, 60-odd years, and you see the... 94:18 incidents that have happened on the basis of race, on the basis of immigration, has not changed one bit. And I think it is going to get worse. 94:25 I think you might be right. I hope you're wrong, obviously. And you've got to forgive the figure of speech. But you've got more skin in the game than I have on this. And therefore, I doubly hope that you're wrong. But where do the small boats fit into this story? Because I do think they've created, even though they're a direct consequence, of course, of both government policy and ultimately Brexit, which was voted for by people who insisted that immigration was ruining their lives, but somehow their lives haven't improved despite the fact they got the Brexit they were desperate for. There is something curiously provocative about the small boats, right, which doesn't necessarily equate with racism. 95:04 It may do, but I'm interested in your thoughts. 95:06 Isn't that, I don't know, I'm just putting it out there, right? Is that not part of this country's history, an island mentality? Look how many small boats and big boats have come to this country over the last thousand or two thousand odd years, right? And they were immigrants and they, you know, practically... you know, populated or helped to populate this country, you know, whether it be Vikings, whether it be Romans, whether it be, you know, Nordic tribes. 95:32 Yeah, and except that, of course, the people who've got a problem with the small boats would probably use phrases like the indigenous tribes of Northern Europe to describe the people that they want to come here, as if... 95:43 Yeah, I mean, I don't know how you diffuse it, I suppose, is the point that I'm nudging out. And the only way you diffuse it is by stopping it from happening. And that would involve... I guess what I'm wondering, Richard, a little bit rose-tinted glasses, is whether or not people who are objecting to the numbers, despite the fact that the numbers are coming down, would be able to sit down again if... 96:08 the system were providing safe and legal routes for people and the boats were no longer appearing on their screens and in their feeds and on their consciousness. Do you see what I mean? Are the boats a peculiar provocation or not? 96:21 Yeah. I think that's just one button to press for those who are, you know, likely to support and actually take part in those type of sort of riots and protests. I think that even if it wasn't for that, it would be something else. 96:37 I guess the question I would ask is, if you change the nationality or ethnicity of those people in the boats that are coming across now to maybe Americans or Australians or New Zealanders, would that have the same impact? 96:54 Not overnight, but it would eventually. They were attacking a Portuguese pub in Thetford in 2004. 97:00 And now they're attacking houses where they think there might be some asylum seekers inside. And don't forget that Farage was going after people with Eastern European surnames 10 years ago. And today, when someone with an Eastern European name gets murdered by a brown-skinned man, he is suddenly on an entirely different mission, an entirely different thing. 97:21 Sheesh. 97:22 It's coming up too. It's just gone 12 noon. You are listening to James O'Brien on LBC News. 97:27 I'm torn, actually. There's two stories that I'm thinking about doing next. One of which, if we don't do it today, we'll almost certainly do it later in the week. How big a story, send me a little message on this, is the Andy Burnham? And he's bringing forward something that Keir Starmer had already announced. It's important to make that clear. But how big a deal do you think this assault upon difficult to cancel subscriptions is? 97:53 It is four minutes after 12, and I can't believe that this wasn't in Dominic's news bulletin. The Burnham Optimism Barometer has been calculated for this week. We've gone into even more detail than before because we are scientists on this programme and sophologists. 98:09 after a rigorous analysis of millions of messages, millions of messages that came into the studio this week, I can tell you exclusively, because no one else cares, that this week's Bob, the Burnham Optimism Beranda, Beranda Barometer, stands once again at eight. 98:27 The figure is eight. So the Burnham Optimism Barometer, how optimism you feel about the new Prime Minister, who's now been in post for three weeks. I say weeks, three goes at the Burnham Optimism Barometer, which is a much more reliable gauge of how long he's been there. First week, eight. Second week, eight. Third week, eight. Three eights. I can also tell you that this week, the mean is 7.71, but the median and the mode both remain at eight. Last week, the mean was 7.67. 98:55 I don't know what that means. And the reason why I don't know what that means is because I got a grade E. I don't think I've ever told you this before. I must have done. I've told you everything. I've got a grade E in my AO level statistics. A grade E. I fully expect that to be in Dick Littlejohn's next Daily Mail column. How can this man be allowed on the radio when he got a grade E in his statistics? Do you know why I had to do a statistics AO level, Keith? 99:23 You don't know. See, I haven't shared everything on the radio. Because I did my maths O level a year early. 99:30 And you're not legally allowed to give up maths. They never told us that when they put us in early. Do you want to do your maths O level a year early, O'Brien? Yes, please, sir. Get it out of the way, eh? No more maths for me. 99:40 I did the maths O level a year early. 99:43 Did all right, I think. I got a B, I think. 99:46 Yeah, I did get a B. And then you come back the next term. You come back the following term to start your third year, the year that you're doing most of your GCSEs, because I was on the cusp between O-levels. And they say, oh, yes, you still have to study mathematics by law, even though you've already done the O-levels. So would you like to do the A-O-level maths or the A-O-level statistics? 100:04 I don't really care. I'm not going to be doing much work on this. I've already got my maths O level. But that is why I have an AO level in statistics. 100:16 Grade E. And that's not an opinion. 100:19 That's counting. It's six minutes after 12. Right. This is a brilliant article. And it's a columnist who, to my embarrassment, because I just looked her up, I don't know quite how I've missed her before. A columnist in the Times newspaper called Cindy Yu, making a point that has been missing from our continuing conversations about young people not in education, employment or training. 100:39 When do you think we came out of... 100:43 the first lockdown we take you back to covid when when do you think what would you say like roughly without even thinking about it off the top of your head you sort of think what was it was it 10 years was it one year was it two years my memory does strange things when it comes to covid it really does it's just some things i remember with abs abs i don't know what happened to my accent there i remember with absolute clarity i remember when i got it I remember being in the kitchen and I'd made a bacon sandwich, as is my want on a Saturday morning. 101:16 And I thought to myself, this is not a word of a lie. I thought to myself, oh, I must have finally got the hang of it. Because Mrs. O'Brien isn't going to shout from upstairs in a minute that I've forgotten to turn on the extractor fan and the whole house stinks of bacon. So I'm thinking I had forgotten to turn on the extractor fan, but the whole house did not. Well... You can see where this is going. The whole house, as far as I could tell, did not stink of bacon. So I put the pan in the sink and I cut my sandwich in half. I sat down at the kitchen table and I took a bite out of my delicious Saturday morning bacon sandwich. 101:47 I tell a lie. I missed a bit out. I delivered other bacon sandwiches to other members of the household. And then I went downstairs to enjoy mine. And lo and behold, couldn't taste a thing. 101:59 That's very, oh. 102:01 So that memory, absolutely crystal clear. 102:05 Sitting in my little shed in my old house, in the garden of my old house, just feeling slightly surreal, wondering what would happen if the signal went down and you wouldn't be able to hear me, but no one would be able to tell me that they couldn't hear me until the next break, because I'd still be talking. And that was mad, wasn't it? That was absolutely bonkers. 102:26 um but in terms of years what was when and when was what and who was why and why was who i haven't got a clue i've got i can kind of work it out and i might say to you was that 2020 was what what year was that what year was that it is roughly six years ago now um to the to the moment that we came out of the first one um It's only four years ago that summer exams returned for the first time since 2019. 102:58 Just to make the point about how much changed and how hard it is to keep a proper handle on what happened and when. And this great column in The Times today does something that I feel we haven't done enough of. 103:16 And it speaks to the impact on that core constituency of our population who are not in education employment or training and how much of that might be down to the consequences of COVID and she doesn't focus on the medical consequences. This is not an article about long COVID. We have done okay on long COVID, I think, together, you and me. 103:47 We cover it, we recognise it, we're aware of the incredibly debilitating effect it has on lots of people physically. 103:54 Physically. 103:56 But what this looks at... In fact, if I read you the last paragraph, you'll get a really good idea of what the article is about. Few grown-ups, it seems, want to explicitly make the link to COVID. Instead, we sneer at the fragility of Generation Z, their weird Puritan habits. And we retort, in my day... No wonder I like this article. This is the radio programme that invented in my day-itis. In my day, to the youngsters who complain about how hard it is to find a job. But the stuff we took for granted... in our day, was denied to this cohort in the name of saving older generations from disease. 104:29 And now they're finding their way in the world. Let's cut them some slack. And she reminds you of some of the things you may have forgotten. The PCR tests. Do you remember them? The vaccines, the bubbles, the rule of six. 104:42 The controversy over whether a Scotch egg constituted a substantial meal in a pub. I'd had to eat out to help out to that. Six years ago, roughly, we came out of the first lockdown. We started eating out to help out. The pingdemic, five years ago. The app that was kind of disastrous. Four years ago, A-levels and GCSEs returned for a generation of children whose previous cohorts had not done them. 105:10 So I've got one child who was going into secondary school at the point of the first lockdown. And I feel so sorry for that cohort because they didn't get that first term. They didn't get that first. They go for about a week and then it shut. Again, I can't remember the details. I bet you can't either. 105:31 You got denied that incredibly formative period to make new friendships and to make new bonds, especially if you moved from a school. Your primary school didn't move en masse to your secondary school. You've got that really tricky, but goodness me, that formative period where you're making new connections and doing things like that. And it's not just that. 105:52 It's all sorts of things. It's being stuck in the house all the time. It's having no experience whatsoever of things that every other generation in history hasn't even noticed were happening because they were so taken for granted. They were so baked into our experience. You could chalk it up, you know, you could tot it up as about three years. So for me, 54 years old, three years of my life relatively disrupted. I'm 54 years old, but I don't remember it. If you'd only been on this earth for 11 years, when the next three years of your life got thrown into unprecedented disarray, how on earth are you supposed to just sort of pick yourself up, dust yourself down and carry on regardless? 106:35 As if nothing had happened. It wasn't just the studying that was weird. Kids being stuck at home. If your parents were on the ball, you might do some work. If they weren't, you wouldn't. 106:45 Some schools, again, really producing the goods on Zoom. Some schools really not. 106:51 And it wasn't just that. It wasn't just the academic side of things. You didn't do your drinking in the park. This is a lovely column. Your first dates. All of these things that might sound trivial, but which I think increasingly we recognise are not trivial. The numbers are brilliant. Think about that. How old are you, right? Right, knock off three. What have you got? 107:14 Yeah, still a big number, right? How old are you? 107:16 20. Okay, now knock off three. 17. Oh, it's quite a big chunk of your life, isn't it? And to be honest, when it ended, you were 16. So knocking three years off a 16-year-old life, that's three years. 13 to 16? 11 to 14? 107:34 What I want you to do for me, drawing upon personal experience, okay, is is put into words the impact you think it had. 107:44 That's all. So I fully appreciate the horrors of long COVID's physical manifestations. I really do. 107:54 And that will be part of it because you might not have long COVID now, but the tail of your infection, the tail of your viral load may have extended for a year. 108:03 You may not have been able to get out of bed for a year. So that three-year window that got smashed, that got robbed from you, for some of the people in the cohort we're talking about, it would have been bearable. For some, it would have been absolutely fine. For some, it might have been preferable. And for others, it would have been infinitely worse than it was for everybody else. You got a viral load off the back of your COVID infection and you couldn't get out of bed for a year. You would have lost out even more on the socialising element. And I don't mean socialising as in going to a party. I mean socialising as in learning to be social. 108:37 learning to be social i am as you know absolutely haunted by a phrase a friend of mine shared relatively recently about a lovely lovely young woman that i've known for all of her life described to me as being frightened of the world and that is not a consequence of her upbringing it's not a consequence of her education it's not a consequence of her the context in which she has lived her life, it is a context 100% of that three-year robbery. 109:10 Because something that would have settled during that period, something that would have crystallized during that period, something that would have happened during that period did not happen. 109:20 And I don't know, how many times have I said to you recently, I don't know how many of the million this would explain, but but it's got to explain some of them. Big breakthrough last couple of weeks, the number of NEETs who are actually not in education, employment or training because they're caring for a family member in a way that nobody else could do. So let's give them a kicking for being lazy. Oh, no, hang on a minute. They're changing their... mother's bed sheets every other day and dealing with her incontinence and making sure that she's got fit. So yeah, you see what I mean? Talking about them as a homogenous mass of a million is probably not helpful, but it's the only figure we've got. 109:55 And here's another chunk of that million. 109:58 No work experience. 110:00 No work experience, no experience of work, no face-to-face time with teachers or friends for years, for months on end, it felt like. So when you look at a neat, perhaps a neat you know, or when you just draw upon your own knowledge and experience to answer this question, put into words the impact that it might have had or the impact that you know it has had. 110:31 How do you put it into words? For someone who hasn't got young people in their life, for someone who doesn't have a face appearing in their mind at this moment as I speak, how do we put it into words what COVID did to the COVID generation? 110:49 0345 6060 973. Beyond the physical, beyond the symptomatic, there's kind of silent or invisible symptoms. What did it do to the COVID generation? And how much of that do you think is relevant to the fact that a million people now who are loosely in that category are not in education, employment or training? Hit the numbers now. You will get through. 0345 6060 973. And this is a good one. OK, I haven't done it before. You may think you're not the kind of person that rings radio stations. 111:24 But this is important because this is the first column I've read that really nails it. And as this columnist, Cindy Yu, points out at the end. Very few grown-ups seem to want to explicitly make the link. 111:36 Well, let's do it. Let's make the link explicitly. Let's put into words what we think has been done to these children. 03456060973 and how much of that might explain why so many of them are not yet fully connecting or meshing with the wider world. 112:00 It's 18 minutes after 12. 112:03 It is 19 minutes after 12. I get that, Jamie, actually. I'm hearing that song by The The in my head. He refers to the beaten generation. 112:12 Harry points out that, imagine being 11. What did it do to someone who was 11? 112:18 in 2020 someone just beginning to start secondary school how can we put it into words you might see it how do you articulate it not to a skeptic i don't want to make a a program for people sitting there sniffing and um uh what's the word disapproving or being skeptical i just i just want for those of us who are interested to find the way of explaining what it would have done to someone aged 11. Do you need to be a psychologist to do it properly? 112:48 Do you actually have to have an insight into human development and socialization, all of those things? 112:55 Or can we have a crack as amateurs? If you're a professional, you know what to do. You know the number. But what an 11-year-old, as Harry says, Imagine that three years stretching out in front of you at the age of 11 and you had no clue what was going to happen in them. Even that uncertainty, that lack of knowledge must have been absolutely traumatic. And then Sam says, I was I'm 15 now. I was eight during the first lockdown. I felt as if I lost the entirety of my last years in primary school. Then I struggled socially. I'm an only child. 113:25 I found it difficult to talk to others when we went back to school. It took me three years of secondary school to find a settled friendship group. And even now I find myself trying to forget the time that I lost in my childhood. So how does that land in terms of neat? So Sam's not a neat yet, and I hope he won't be a neat. I hope he'll find himself in education, employment or training by the time he's 18. But how might that explain? 113:51 why so many young people are in none of the above. They're not in education, they're not employment, they're not in training, and yet they are... 114:01 Not to blame for it. COVID is a much bigger part of this process, a much bigger part of this issue than we realise. Claire says, my daughter was 11 in 2020 and COVID frightened her. Lockdown frightened her. By 2025, she was a neat... It's when you learn to be an adult, isn't it? It's when you learn... What does that even mean? 114:26 Secondary school, the big difference between primary school and secondary school, you start learning to be an adult. 114:32 You can't go running to teacher every time something goes wrong. You know, mummy can't kiss it better. You're just beginning to learn those things that prepare you for adulthood. And you weren't there. You weren't socialized. You weren't mixing with people. 114:47 You weren't experiencing the differences. And if you were 13, 14, 15 when it started, you've had this three-year bite taken out of the... What do you call it? The kind of package of experiences that everybody else... 115:04 And we sit here now, particularly people my age or there or thereabouts, marvelling at the preponderance of needs, moaning or sometimes perhaps blaming them for the situation they find themselves in, presuming that they're lazy, presuming that they're not, quote, resilient, presuming that they're not robust enough, when actually they have had a life experience that you will never have. 115:29 You went through COVID at the age of 40 or 50 or 60 or 70. Go through COVID at the age of 10, 12, 15. We'll never know what that was like. So how do we think it may have impacted these youngsters? Laura is in Sheffield. Laura, what can you tell us? 115:47 Morning, James. Yeah, my daughter was 11 at the time of the first lockdown, so she was in year six at school. Yes. And so I'm sort of going on all experience with her, but also a lot of her friends as well. Yeah. I think it was hugely traumatic, and I think it's only probably showing itself now as to how bad it was for them. 116:07 And it doesn't get talked about anything like enough, does it? 116:10 Not at all, not at all. 116:12 So go on, make someone listening who is capable of understanding, but doesn't currently understand, understand. 116:22 I think that the way I would say it is, looking at their particular cohort, so year six is a real time of transition going up from primary to senior school, and kind of the summer school that they would do before the transition... 116:37 The residential that they would have had in year six, that was cancelled. So she never got to have that week away from home where they do a lot of that kind of team building. That's huge. 116:47 I remember that. That's absolutely huge. I hadn't thought of this angle, Laura. Tell me what you think of it. It's actually quite a learning curve for a parent as well. 116:57 Absolutely. I mean, I think that her moving up to senior school in itself is a big enough leap. But yeah, certainly missing out on things like that. 117:03 But my tummy was in knots for the duration of that. I think they went to PGL or somewhere like that, a primary school trip. They all go, I was in pieces when she went. So I'm thinking of the parents. 117:16 of the children who never went they never got to learn about oh they never got to learn about letting go in quite the same way that we did or that's right that's right yeah it's a huge thing and then when they went into senior school obviously they did have a shutdown eventually but that that first sort of year they were putting they were putting bubbles really strict bubbles so she she was with 15 people or she was the 15 Yeah. 117:54 And these kids were expected to be on these Teams meetings and things all day. So we were literally saying to them, go on your computer and you're on that all day. And that's how they learned how to interface with other children. They've lost the ability to communicate. They don't even know how to hold a phone properly. They don't speak to each other over the phone. 118:15 Everything is done via text. And that's because they had those two years where that was completely normal. But the only interaction with other kids that they had was on like a group chat on a team's meeting when they were at school. So I really feel they've lost so much. 118:30 And of course, what you remind me of is that we can only look at the child we've got. 118:35 We can't look at the child we would have had they had an entirely normal schooling. So it's quite hard sometimes to measure the impact because you've got no control on the experiment, have you? You might have an older sibling, an older... family member or a younger family member but i mean the first thing you learn as a parent when your second child comes along is holy moly they're not carbon copies of the first one they are completely different people so you're never going to know who who who they would be if they hadn't gone through this extraordinary experience well this is it i mean my my youngest daughter so she's five years younger so we've kind of got that social experiment going on ourselves in our house 119:11 She's actually diagnosed with autism. And I tell you, her social skills are way better than her older sister, who isn't. She's got way more friends. She's way more able to speak to people. She's a bit of a social butterfly. And I look at that and I think that's those two years she lost. meeting people, having to go and meet people in her year group and things like that. 119:33 And the less we talk about it, the less effort we're putting into trying to undo some of the damage that might have been done. That's fascinating that you would see the difference between the two of them, despite, you know, for good or for ill, you would perhaps expect the child diagnosed with autism to be less socially comfortable than the one who isn't. But there it is, because it is a massive impact. I call it a trauma if you prefer, but... It is a massive impact. And by not acknowledging it, we can't undo it or help with it or address it. By not acknowledging it, we can't address it. 120:06 Martin's been in touch. He says, what did the children who lived through World War Two have to do? Pick themselves up, dust themselves down and get on with life. Just what is the matter with this generation? 120:15 Martin, there's a wonderful exhibit. There certainly used to be, I haven't checked if it's still there, at the Imperial War Museum. And there's probably a thing on their website, if the exhibit's not still there, called Growing Up in the Second World War. And it has a look at the impact of the Second World War on the younger generation, many of whom actually died, of course. They weren't just orphaned, they were evacuated, some of them exposed to horrible experiences. As a consequence of that, some of them having relatively idyllic on paper lives, but of course underpinned by fear and fear of abandonment, fear of actual death. 120:55 So if you honestly think that the children, young people who were children when the Second World War came along didn't have a massive long-lasting impact on them, then you are a bit of a wally. Thank you, Laura. Katie's in Forest Hill. Katie, what would you like to say? 121:10 Hi, James. I'm sorry, I'm feeling a little bit nervous. 121:13 It's only me. I know, I know. 121:16 So yeah, I mean, just following on from the whole social experiment idea, I've got four children who were ranged in age from my eldest was in year 10 in 2020. I had one in year six, so like the end of primary school, about to go to secondary. I had a year four and a year one at the time. So I've got quite a sort of varied view of the impact that it had on them and obviously bearing in mind that they're all completely different. 121:48 But yeah, I mean, I just think the damage that it did is... 121:54 unbathomable and and we'll we'll be seeing the effects of it for years to come and we sit here wringing our hands about neats genuinely without really acknowledging what must be if not the biggest then one of the biggest contributions to or answers to the question about why this cohort of young people seems so different from previous ones absolutely i mean my um nice 17 year old who was in year six 122:23 At that time, he's autistic, and he was at mainstream. He was coping okay. 122:32 A couple of years into secondary school, and bearing in mind that, you know, he started in year seven. They had to stay in the same classroom. The teachers came to them. Everyone was masked up. There's no kind of interaction. You can't see people smiling. The teachers couldn't move around the classroom. 122:48 Let's try and put that into work. I mean... 122:52 What does that do? You can't see people smile. Just that little thing, that small little window into another person's world. 123:00 What does that deprive you of? Particularly for someone who is autistic and potentially looking for social cues. You know, you're not seeing it. The facial expressions are so important. I think the damage that it had, I mean, I'm slightly off what I'm saying, but I'm a governor at a primary school and the current reception kids, there's quite a high number of them who are presenting with sort of social difficulties that could be autistic, autism related, but could also be the fact that they had no kind of interaction. 123:41 You've kind of took the words out of my mouth because, in fact, the experiences that a lot of neurotypical people would have had would actually mirror what autistic people would have had in normal circumstances. So they've experienced the difficulty with socializing and relating. And maybe as a consequence of that, you have people who are neurotypical who are masking because they're frightened. 124:04 No, completely. And you've got kids coming into primary school who don't have the social skills because the foundations weren't laid. 124:13 in those very early formative years because everyone was, you know, no one was going out, everyone was in masks. But, I mean, that's obviously not what we're... Well, it is. I think it's all relevant. I just think it's everywhere. 124:23 I think the impact of everyone wearing masks is probably... Masks, Katie, masks. No, no, no, we'll go with masks. No, I know you say masks, but I sound patronising when I find my accent meeting my callers halfway down the phone line. But, you know, walking around... 124:40 The more formative the age, the more impactful that would be. Masks. 124:46 Everyone's wearing masks. Well, with my youngest, who was in year one, so halfway through his second year of primary school. 124:56 He was sent home and had, you know, like your previous caller was saying, the only interaction he had was online, which was just weird with a bunch of five, six-year-olds. And he just withdrew into himself further and further and further until at one point he was just growling at people who came to the house, which is not him at all. He's so... 125:18 sociable and luckily you know he has come out of it but i don't know what he might have been like had that not happened to him yeah had he grown up during entirely i mean as normal as times are but we know what we mean by normal times i mean they've done experiments into this actually you know the more time you spend or the less time you spend with other human beings The impacts are immeasurable, and yet we just sort of glossed over it all. I don't know why, actually, probably because we did a fairly bad job of dealing with COVID, largely thanks to who was in charge at the time, and therefore undoing the damage would have involved a political admission that much of the damage had actually been caused by the people who were in charge at the time. 125:58 I still don't know. I think if we had one again, we'd probably leave the schools open. But the argument at the time was that if the children come home from school, they are more likely to get infected and more likely to be fine after their infection. But they will then be infecting relatives and spreading it through the community if the children all get it and then the children all go home. Everyone's going to get it. I don't want to scare anyone, especially you, Katie. Thank you. It was a great call and I'm late for the news. But I watched 28 Days Later last night and I found myself thinking oddly about COVID for reasons that I'll explain to you in a moment. 126:30 But first, Matt Hewitt is here with the headlines. 126:34 it is 12 37 and you are listening to james o'brien on lbc where um i'm just going to read you something that really stopped me in my tracks again you asked me not to read your name about halfway down always put it at the top if you don't want me to read your name out but luckily this one um got through James, on the claim by one of your listeners that kids during the war just got up and dusted themselves down, my father never got over coming round in what was left of a bomb shelter to see his best friend being taken out of the rubble in pieces before his eyes. 127:09 He never got over it, and obviously, nor did his best friend. And he explained to me later that it affected his ability to form a relationship with me. 127:18 I have had to live with what happened to my dad's friend for my entire life, and I wasn't even there. 127:26 You can dust some stuff off, but not that. 127:29 And there will be children in COVID who lost relatives, of course, not in hideous circumstances like that. Even some, thankfully a tiny number, who lost friends. But it was also the conversation. It was the fear of death. It was the pictures on our television screens. It was the things that you can't always protect your children from. and the uncertainty of it all that makes it, to me, long overdue for a conversation about what the hell happened. 127:58 What the hell happened to them? Not to you, not to me, but to them. And, of course, with NEATS being one of the big stories of the moment, The relationship between the two phenomena, the young people who had three years of their lives put through the mangle and who are now older people, not in education, employment or training. Eleanor is in Barnsley. Eleanor, what would you like to say? 128:19 I just wanted to call because it sparked my interest because I've kind of been on both ends of being in education while Covid happened. And then now I'm teaching and I'm kind of seeing the effects. 128:33 Go on, tell me more. 128:35 So I'm just starting my first year of teacher training. Congratulations. Thank you. That's brilliant. 128:42 Wow, it's exciting for you. I hope it lives up to all your expectations. 128:47 Well, I started off cover supervising to try and get a bit of a taste before I start my teacher training and it kind of opened my eyes. 128:56 to just kind of the state of education. I mean, I find it quite scary. Year sevens are coming in and not, they're coming in with a reading age of about five years old. Which kind of brings complications for their school career going from year seven to year 11. 129:16 And I think the one thing that really stands out is they've not just been affected academically, but it's socially and emotionally. there's been a massive drive in the school that I'm in to focus on Oracy because in the subject of English what we're trying to do is bridge that gap of communication where kids have missed out in primary school because a lot of children were took out of education during COVID and they don't have the verbal skills to be able to articulate what they're being able to say and the kind of The kind of approach that learning takes is we've got to speak it verbally before we can actually write it down. 129:55 And that involves changing it from your end of the classroom as well, because teachers have never had to accommodate that before. 130:03 No, and I think that's what... I mean, I'm only new to teaching, but I think even with the load that I've had to kind of learn... over this six-week holidays, going into my teacher training, the way that learning and teaching is having to adapt is massive, because ultimately we're trying to accommodate that 10% of the class who have got that, who missed out during COVID and have come in year seven with such a low reading age, but there is still those children that are operating at a really high level. 130:37 So there's a massive disparity in classroom areas So I guess that's one of the biggest battles. 130:44 What about you? I mean, we don't know. How old are you now, if you don't mind me asking? 130:48 I'm 21. 130:49 Good grief. They're getting younger every year, teachers. 130:53 We don't know what 21-year-old Eleanor would be like if she hadn't had three years of her education disrupted by COVID. But do you have a view? I mean, what do you think it did for your generation? Because you would be a neat, wouldn't you? Age-wise, you'd fit into that category, even though, obviously, education and employment-wise, you don't. 131:10 I think one of the biggest factors I had is I had a supportive mum and dad, which is one of the biggest factors I appreciated from a young age, but also what I see as critical now being in a teaching position. My mum and dad always kind of drove me to... 131:28 kind of achieve the best that I could. And I went to university and did history and politics. 131:34 Oh, cool. 131:36 And that was always a dream of mine. So I had like an ambition there, but I can see for a lot of children who didn't have that backing behind them, how that would have then disadvantaged them going forward. And I have got friends who've gone to university 131:49 and they're not able to secure those jobs yeah and also they can't engage with university in the way that younger generations older generations have done i i know quite a few young people your age or thereabouts a bit younger who um who couldn't have got their first year and and just couldn't quite get into it couldn't quite yeah you know there's too much going on anxiety and and confusion and that must be because of that three-year chunk that got bitten out of their lives mustn't it 132:18 Yeah and I think as well what I'm seeing in school is that there's a proliferation of diagnosis conditions as well and that is good from a teaching perspective sometimes because we know how to support a young person but then if a young person is aware of this kind of diagnosis sometimes they cap themselves. 132:39 And that is also another problem because they're being told they're reading ages. They're being told their ability all the time. 132:46 Yeah, I'm dozy. I'm not a clever kid. Why should I bother? Why should I work hard? Oh, you're fantastic. They're lucky to have you, whichever young charges you end up with because you're aware. And is this quite a common conversation? Would most of your cohort and most of your older colleagues recognise that you are now dealing with the consequences of... COVID, not medical consequences, but deeply, deeply rooted behavioural and social consequences. 133:11 I think it all comes down like when we speak, I teach in Barnsley in quite a disadvantaged area. So I think if you were going to find a group of kids that were hit the most, it'll be in the school that I teach in. And they're amazing young people who deserve, you only get one chance at education. And it's our duty to be able to support these young people. And just the devastating thing is we're having to kind of do like the foundational work in their middle part of their educational journey. 133:41 which is which is difficult it is doable but the right infrastructure needs to be in place and i don't think that's there to support these students who were obviously missing during covid yeah yeah and of course that is going to be something that has ramifications long after they move out of the 16 to 24 year old age group that um that currently sees them categorized as needs i know you're talking about the younger children the children that you're going to be teaching but you know it's The longer this conversation goes on, the more it gets filed under, duh, no-brainer, right? 134:12 I mean, it's obviously going to have had a massive impact on people. And the younger you are, the bigger the impact I think it's going to be. But I'm sure that most people listening will join me in saying whichever children Eleanor ends up teaching are going to be pretty lucky children to have a teacher who is so on the ball. And while we're on the subject of public servants doing incredible work, I just want to thank whichever consultant... 134:35 I've tried to work out your name, sir, but I found it a little bit tricky and mum wasn't really able to tell me. But someone was on duty in A&E in Worcestershire Royal Hospital on Saturday night. And let's just say, if you ever need a favour from me, you've got it. All right. 134:53 It is 12.48 and you are listening to James O'Brien on LBC. Thank you for your concern. My mum is doing fine, but that wouldn't necessarily have been the case had she not been lucky enough to encounter a consultant at Worcestershire Royal Hospital on Saturday night. And Saturday night, A&E, right? So I was there yesterday. Thank you, David, who's offered to pop in to the hospital and make sure that she's okay. But don't worry, we've got it covered. I was there yesterday and the... 135:22 We had the full thing. When you're a phone-in host, sometimes you forget that you're talking about people because the stories become so familiar. The whole thing, the queue so big that the ambulance stayed outside for two hours, the ward so full that you're on a corridor in A&E waiting to be seen, the staff so harried and overworked that they can't deal with everything. Oh, so there you go. Next time we're talking about that kind of issue, I will be drawing on personal experience, but with that constant, constant conviction that the NHS would probably have fallen apart years ago if it wasn't for the people that are in it. 136:00 The system versus the people being yet another political situation that you... I can't really be blamed for thinking is almost beyond repair. But if it wasn't for the people there, perhaps it would be. It is 12.49. I'm going to play you a clip. I'm enjoying this conversation. Harry's next, then Anna. But if I don't play it to you now, you know me. 136:25 I never will, will I? I'll forget. I'll sit here in six months and go, did we ever play that clip? of Jonathan Miller and Enoch Powell. So, you know, our own bulletins today going in large on the fact that a boat with lots of people on it has arrived in England, having crossed the Channel. And, of course, the size of the boats is getting bigger, but the story should be, in a normal country, the story would be that the overall figure is down by about 44% year on year and, you know, may well continue... 136:57 too full and if it is all migration that keeps you awake at night as opposed to people crossing the channel in small boats because that's the only way you can get hit and you can only play for asylum in this country if you're already on british soil then you will be i suspect absolutely overjoyed to learn that the um Overall figure has come down from 700 and something thousand or possibly higher down to 170,000. So the news for people who are obsessed with immigration figures should be all good. 137:28 But of course, it doesn't seem to work like that, does it? And here's the reason why. And it comes from 1971 when Jonathan Miller was debating immigration's impact on society with Enoch Powell on the Dick Cavett show. And man, if you're looking for a hero, here's Jonathan Miller. 137:48 Nobody seriously imagines that if two-fifths of Birmingham consists of a first generation of descendants born here, of people from the West Indies, from Africa and from Asia, there will not be a profound difference between that part of a population and the rest. 138:07 I think there may be a difference. In fact, there certainly will be a difference. Whether that difference is enough to promote anxiety unless someone declares You think nobody would notice? No, I think they'll notice, certainly. The question about them is whether they will notice with fear and horror unless someone announces to them that fear and horror are an appropriate response to such a fact. I see. 138:26 And you think that human nature is such that unless somebody referred to this, nobody would notice that their own native cities were transformed, that the white population was moving out and a different population was moving in. No, I didn't say that. 138:44 Well, you think then that it would be noticed, but that it would not be merely be tolerated, but would be taken as a desirable or acceptable development. 138:54 No, I didn't say that. 138:54 Well, that is what you have to say. That is what you have to say. 138:57 This is not to be a problem. You're simply putting words which you would find convenient in my mouth. What I said was that I didn't say that there would be no difficulties. Difficulties are in the nature of human coexistence. 139:13 What I said was that the differences that there would be are not necessarily the differences which would excite fear and horror unless someone stands up and says that fear and horror are an appropriate response. 139:27 There you go. I think Nigel Farage has been doing a news conference today. I don't know what it was about. That was Jonathan Miller speaking in 1971 with Enoch Powell, acknowledging that, yeah, demographic change happens. But unless people are putting a lot of effort into persuading others that they should greet the change with fear and horror, then the fear and horror need not happen. 139:51 And the first two hours of the program today actually were looking at exactly the same issues actually a violent mob outside a building in norfolk wherein there may be or may not be some asylum seekers let's get back to covid and the impact it's had on the um the covid generation as i haven't heard them referred to before but i will probably refer to them as in future harry what would you like to say 140:17 Hi, James. I was just listening to your show earlier and I lived through COVID ages 13 to 16. And I was trying to think how it links to the current 1 million needs that we have at this particular age group. And I think it comes from social interaction. People my age struggle with social interaction to the point where I've heard people say they wouldn't be able to make a phone call. 140:43 If these people can't make a phone call, how are they going to perform in a job interview under pressure or in a high-intensity work environment where you constantly have to communicate to people and et cetera? And I don't think it's their fault of their own. 140:58 Covid was, the way I described it to your, one of the background staff was that... You can't call them that, Harry. 141:07 You mean my crack team of production professionals. 141:10 Production, that's the word. There we go. 141:12 Keith is background staff, but one of the people you spoke to, they're production professionals. Carry on. I do apologize. That's all right. 141:21 So COVID was sort of like a bonfire. Not a bonfire. Well, yeah, a wildfire on how people could learn to interact, particularly at my age group. I think that's what you're sort of prioritizing. And then social media boomed alongside with it. And it was like a helicopter dumping petrol onto it. And the only comparison I could draw to this was it would be like someone learning how to work in a workplace by watching Wolf of Wall Street. 141:49 Gosh, gosh. 141:51 Ah, so the social media filled a space that was vacated by normal interaction. 141:57 I think so. God, you're clever. And that's why people like Andrew Tate came out of the back of lockdown with this status that many of us find utterly baffling. Absolutely. Because the only circumstances in which you'd think Andrew Tate had anything valid to say would be where you weren't hearing any other voices at all. 142:16 Definitely. There was no voice of reason. And what Eleanor has said, actually, which is quite interesting and maybe scary... 142:22 would signify that this may get worse if people are starting secondary school with a reading age of five that that's not socializing that was interrupted there that's education yeah that's a six-year age i think you start secondary school at 11 maybe there's at least a six-year age difference between where they should be at and where they're currently at and they they should how long do they have to make up that difference before it's 142:46 Is it too late? I don't know. I don't know. 142:49 You have to hope not. And that's a conversation that we've sort of nibbled at the edges of in the past, whether a cohort is going to be sort of consigned to the scrap heap of history while the system and the professionals start moving on to the ones afterwards. And that means that this current cohort of NEATs would be abandoned. So you raise such a powerful point. You make such a brilliant observation as well, Harry. Thank you. Last word on this to Anna, who's in the Cotswolds. Anna, what would you like to say? 143:19 Hiya. Well, I phoned up because I'm a single mum and I had two teenage boys at home when COVID started. 143:27 And the older one was just starting, you know, the GCSE. So he was in year 10. And the younger one was halfway through year 7. So he only just started secondary school. 143:39 So when they were at home... 143:42 I was an irresponsible parent because I let them do the bare minimum of schoolwork because the older one has parts of ADHD and hated school and it made him happier and so he could then concentrate on the subjects that I knew he was going to pass and not bother with the ones that he hated and that's why he hated school. But I was more worried about him but it was the younger one and the effect is still going on and it's what he didn't learn. Not because he was academic and he didn't get the grades he could have got, but he missed out on all the things that go off on the way to school, on the bus, and you're learning your pecking order, and all that sort of emotional life skills about real stuff. 144:27 And he's almost entitled, but he's not the only one. It's all the boys in that year group. 144:36 Why do we think that is? Is it because they kind of got... 144:40 I think it's crucial what you learn. I mean, school isn't just about lessons, is it? No, I think everyone understands that. It's everything, you know. It's, you know, water bombs and, you know, school bus and... All right, you've been reading the Beano. 144:52 Yeah, that was me. But it's getting caught and the consequences, you know. 144:57 And it never got addressed. We just said, right, you're back now. 145:00 It didn't get addressed until two years later. 145:02 I don't think it got addressed then, actually. You're back now. Let's crack on. And now we all wonder why there's a million young people not in education, employment or training. Anna, I'm cracking on only because of the time. I sense we could have probably talked for a little longer, so my apologies for that. If you missed any of today's show, you can listen back on our free Global Player app or the LBC app, where you can also stay up to date with all the latest news, videos and opinions. You can listen to a range of podcasts, including James O'Brien Daily, the best bits from my LBC show every day. So do download the official LBC app for free from your app store now. 145:35 Coming up at four on LBC, it's Tom Swarbrick. But now it's time. Look at this. Bang on time. Start the week as we mean to go on. It's Sheila Fogarty. I'm always on time. I know you are. I'm talking about me. 145:46 This has been a Global Player original production.