We need to talk about ideas, good ones and bad ones.

We need to learn stuff about the world.

We need an honest, intelligent, thought provoking, and entertaining

review of what the hell happened on this planet in the last seven days.

We need to sit back and listen to the Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove.

Hello and welcome back, dear Listener.

Yes, the Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove Podcast, episode 482.

I'm Trevor, AKA, the Iron Fist, I'm not that well, I've

got a bit of a cold coming on.

I have coughing fits.

I'll have to moot the microphone occasionally as one of those comes on.

Have sips of tea to reduce the tickle in my throat.

Fortunately.

I've got a couple of able assistants with me who will be able to carry things

through my moments of incapacity, uh, up there in new regional Queensland.

Scott, the Velvet Club, how are you, Scott?

Great, thanks Trevor.

Good day, Trevor.

Good day, Joe.

Good day listeners.

I hope everyone's doing well.

And Joe, the tech guy.

Evening

all.

Yes.

So, um, so yeah, tonight maybe something a bit different.

I was just thinking, um.

I'm a bit inspired actually by.

I saw this clip, and I'll play it shortly.

Of all of these extremely wealthy men, you know, Zuckerberg's and

Apple, CEO, and a whole bunch of very, very rich and powerful men.

All kissing the ring, bending the knee, sucking up to Donald Trump

at a meeting at the White House.

And it just really made me puke as these rich guys were just telling

Trump exactly what he wanted to hear.

And I was just thinking about powerful people like these

guys are so powerful yet.

They, they want more.

They, they are never satisfied.

Like they know Trump is a prick.

Mm-hmm.

And yet they'll praise him and tell him what he wants to hear and make

themselves look shallow and ridiculous in history's page books because they

want stuff and, and he'll keep him after.

What's that?

Yes, you could still, yeah, he does.

Yes.

But they've made a calculation that just suck up to him and

mm-hmm.

It'll help them in their efforts to get even more power or to keep what power they

have, but just to keep playing the game.

They're just insatiable these people, so,

so I just, I was very surprised to see Bill Gates in there kissing up the way

he was Now, he'd always struck me as a.

Moderate sort of influence on the billionaire class, but clearly he's not.

No.

I'll play the clip.

Let's do that.

Get straight into it.

So, uh, here we go.

I might pause it occasionally to tell you who's talking or I'll just talk

over the top of it, see what works.

We'll try it.

Well, thanks for for hosting us Berg and this

is quite a group to get together.

Thank you, Mr. President.

It's a great honor to to work here at the White House and to, to work for you.

Very grateful for your administration support.

We look forward to working together and thanks.

We're so

grateful for that support.

Thank you so much, uh, obviously for bringing us all together and the

policies, uh, that you have put in place.

Thank you very much.

And also, I wanted to thank, uh, Madam First Lady for hosting.

I want to thank you for including me this evening.

It's incredible to be among, uh, everyone here, particularly you and the First lady.

I also want to thank you.

For helping American companies around the world.

I wanna thank the first lady for focusing on education.

First of all, to echo the comments, uh, of Tim and others, thank you so

much for getting us all together, and thank you for being such a pro

business, pro innovation president.

Thank you.

Thank you for everything you're doing.

Thank you for incredible leadership, uh, including getting this group together.

Uh, thank you.

Is, is that, is that not just sick?

Like they're all big, big name

people there?

Some of them looked, um, a bit dark.

I think I should be checking their residency status.

Yes.

Some, uh, Indian, um, tech gurus there.

So, um.

You know, honestly, these people have no moral compass, have they?

To just be ignoring all of the ills that Donald Trump has foisted on the world.

Someone like, um, bill Gates, who's, you know,

got

an interest in the health of people.

Mm-hmm.

And the things that Trump has done to Discre figures that health science.

Picking a fight with Trump or even just ignoring Trump is gonna lead

to worse outcomes for more people.

Yeah.

Kinda stuck with him for president for the next three years, aren't you?

I doubt that's his calculation.

Some honesty is required if you genuinely, if he genuinely thought

mm-hmm.

That, um, he's an bombastic fool and he is a danger to society.

I just to think, uh, if I suck up to him for three years, that'll

be a better option for people.

I just don't see that calculation.

It seems to me

ramp well, of course if they had any guts they'd, um, possibly

poison his food or something, but,

well, yeah, I don't see happening.

Yeah, they could get a, um, beef Wellington recipe from Australia.

Perhaps not.

Possibly.

Does that depress you, Scott, these billionaires?

It does gathered.

It does depress me.

And

you know, I, um,

it's particularly sickening to see Bill Gates there because I always thought

he was one of the more moderate.

Influences on those class of people, but apparently not now.

He can't be comfortable with what RFK JR is doing to the, um,

vaccination in the United States, but.

He doesn't seem to mind kissing up to the guy that, uh, said

you can't take Tylenol because that'll kid send your kid autistic.

You know that sort of shit.

Yeah, that's,

that's the latest one is, yeah, I know Tylenol.

It's just,

yeah, I know.

It is just basically paracetamol, you know, we call it Panadol down

here, but they call it Tylenol over there, you know, it's just that.

And look, ladies and gentlemen, do not take health, do not take health advice

from a podcast, but for God's sake.

Paracetamol is not going to kill you and it's not gonna harm

your unborn child, you know?

Well,

it could

kill you

just, but you have to take a chip load of it before it actually ends up killing you.

It's just

potato chips could kill you if you eat enough of them, I suppose.

Well, yeah.

No, I mean, it's a paracetamol.

The therapeutic dose compared to the dangerous dose is actually quite low.

It's one of the lowest drugs.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Just these people, um, bowing and scraping before him because they just want more.

Yeah.

So I was thinking about power.

We're gonna talk about power.

Um, 'cause so much of the topics that we cover are really just

about the super wealthy, the super powerful exercising their power.

Uh, it actually reminds me there's a video of Putin with all his

oligarchs gathered around the table.

It reminds me of that.

Mm-hmm.

Were they his cabinet ministers or is Oli or they No, no.

They og were oligarchs.

Yes.

And,

um, it's the, the, the famous one where he says, oh, don't go and

steal my pen with all, that's my pen.

Give it back to me.

Which apparently was a setup.

To make him look more important in front of the cameras.

Right.

Um, well there's one where there one of the guys hadn't signed and

he said, where's your signature?

And forced the guy to come up and sign.

Yeah.

I think

that was the one where he then goes, yeah, that's my pain.

To give it back afterwards or something.

Yes.

Yeah.

Um,

but yeah.

Yeah.

So occasionally powerful people lose, but they lose to other powerful people.

Yes.

Ah,

yeah,

it's hard.

It's hard to find examples where powerful interests lose to the small guy.

Okay, well the only one I actually found about that was um, and this is

basically, I knew about it and everything else, but I had, it reminded to me

when I was watching the hack on Stan.

Now that was where the Murdoch empire was basically put on the ropes by a

British journalist from the Guardian.

And he actually got them to admit that they had hacked

phones and everything else.

The result was that, um, Rupert Murdoch stepped away from taking over

B Sky B in Britain, and he also had to sack Rebecca, what's her name?

Well, no, she actually resigned.

I don't believe she's still working for him or anything else.

And it's just, that was the only thing I came up with, uh, where the little

guy had actually beaten the big guy.

And that was probably not the best, not the best example, but it was okay.

Yeah.

Ultimately they kept going in business.

They still had the rest of their media interests and

but they're also saying that, um, had he have actually taken a, sky B would've

had a successful business and everything that he could have leveraged Yeah.

To purchase more shit around the world, which would mean, which means he

would've been completely unstoppable.

Yes.

Now I know what you're saying, that he's still in business and

he's still wreaking havoc through Fox News and everything else.

Mm-hmm.

In Sky News here in Australia.

Mm-hmm.

I'm trying to think of examples.

The only one I can think of recently was the increase in the coal tax in Queensland

when coal miners were making super profits

and

a labor government said, right.

If you are.

You know, the price goes above a certain amount, then we are

taking an extra percentage amount.

And that's been really good for the Queensland State government budget.

It has been.

Yeah.

It's,

and, and Cru Philly has been under pressure mm-hmm.

To reverse it.

To turn that, reverse that.

Yeah.

And he hasn't been able to, 'cause the money is so good Exactly from it.

Have you seen certain, allegedly litigious people have been,

um, knocked back in their ISDS?

Attempt?

Uh, yeah.

Uh, yes.

Clive Palmer.

Yes.

Yes.

So, um, uh, ISDS

is, sorry, investor

state

dispute.

No worries, no worries.

Whatever it is.

Yes.

Um, so Clive Palmer had, um, oh, he had been refused a development mining

deal in Western Australia in 2012.

In 2020, the Western Australian government thought, shit,

we could be in trouble here.

They urgently passed legislation.

Mm-hmm.

To make sure he couldn't sue them.

And then Clive Palmer.

Purported to be a foreign investor.

Yes.

And, um, of, of Asian descent.

His Singaporean company basically sued the WA government, I think.

Yes.

And, uh, fortunately it appears that he lost that case at this instance with

the, uh, adjudicator declaring that he didn't qualify as a foreign investor.

Basically,

however, the Australian government has said that, uh, future

ISDS clauses will not exist.

Future negoti negotiations won't have an ISDS.

Yeah.

Oh, in any of these free trade agreements.

Yep.

Is that right?

They're gonna stop doing 'em.

They, they've said they've seen how people can basically, uh, venue shop for

arbitration with these ISDS clause, and so they're gonna stop doing them in future.

Right.

There we go.

So, dear listener, these free trade agreements that we have, um, with various

countries where we basically say, oh, you know, we'll get rid of the tariffs.

You get rid of your tariffs for us, and, um, here's our arrangement.

Oh, and by the way, we each agree that neither country

will do something that might.

Impinge on the other country's multinational companies from,

from trading, working, and trading in the other country, like

freedom to trade type of clause.

Mm-hmm.

So, and if there's a dispute over that and a claim for damages, it'll

be heard in these strange courts of arbitration, which are not proper courts.

They're like.

Lawyers sitting in an office in Hong Kong or Dubai or places like that.

They're not proper judges who will look at the agreement and make a decision and,

um, uh, really poor rules of evidence.

And, and, and basically, so what happened, for example, years ago

in the Philip Morris case was, um, Philip Morris objected to the plain

packaging rules on cigarettes, claiming that it took away their.

Ability to brand cigarettes, which was an, um, an inhibition on their

free trade and was in breach of the, um, free trade agreement.

And, uh, you know, so you also other companies that might want

to, um, open up a mine somewhere or might have a mine operating

and the country in question says.

We either don't wanna grant the mining license or we want

to close down the mine mm-hmm.

For say, environmental or health reasons, then these companies would say, oh, that's

in breach of our free trade agreement.

Go off to these arbitrators, extremely expensive for the countries to defend,

and extremely risky of very, very, very high, um, awards being made against them.

So, and these things are conducted in secret, like when they're

negotiating these free trade agreements, those sorts of clauses.

Uh, are hidden from us.

We don't even see 'em.

And it's not till the deal's done that they say, oh, we've got this

free trade agreement with America, or the, you know, and oh, by the way,

here's this massive big obligation that, uh, we've all agreed to.

They originally were bought in on the back of, uh, various countries,

nationalizing, foreign owned.

You know, um, oil or whatever the resources were.

Mm-hmm.

And so this was to protect, you know, if, if an American company owned

a, an Australian coal mine, that Australia couldn't just nationalize

it and go, well soya, you're not getting any, any compensation for it.

Mm-hmm.

Which is fair enough.

Mm-hmm.

But people have seen this and gone, oh, here's a nice lip pole that we can use.

Mm. Um, and yeah, yeah, it, it was never in intended to be used for

companies to sue when a government makes a decision on behalf of the people.

Yeah.

Well, having said that, nationalizing things is quite often in the

best interest of its citizens.

So

in indeed, like don't sign one because you might wanna nationalize.

Well,

exactly.

Yeah, exactly.

So yeah, Clive Palmer lost on that round and has appealed, but that's

not a case of the powerful losing, because that's the commonwealth

of Australia versus CLA Palmer.

Like that's a fight between powerful interests.

It's not something where power has lost out to little people in a way.

Um, yeah, in that sort of fight.

Um, what's the other one I was thinking of?

Um, the coal mining one was a good one.

Oh, you know, something like that.

A, b, c defamation case with that Lato, um, can't remember other name.

Small guys win a defamation case, but

it doesn't really what Leticia Lato,

uh, I can't remember exactly, but small people can win defamation cases, but

you know, unfortunately the defamation laws in Australia are, are really

designed to keep small people powerless.

People quiet.

Well, I mean, I dunno.

Do you remember the Simon Singh court case in the uk?

Simon Singh, not Simon says,

no, no, no.

Simon Singh, he is, I don't know.

I mean, he's a mathematician.

He's been a TV presenter.

He wrote an article about chiropractic and basically said

it was a bunch of pseudoscience.

It was quackery and the UK Chiropractic Board, whatever they call

themselves, sued him for defamation.

Mm.

And um, he basically, it was seen as a big free speech, uh, case and

lots of people threw money for Yeah.

Basically, uh, uh, donations to him.

Mm-hmm.

And he won that in the UK high court.

Mm-hmm.

And I think the UK government then changed the, uh, defamation laws after that.

Right

To make

it basically to stop.

Yeah.

Because yeah, historically defamation, anybody who has deep pockets can umhmm.

Litigiously sue somebody just to shut them down because they know that

they can't afford to go to court.

And Yes.

Even if they are correct, they can't afford to take the co, the case to court.

Yeah.

So in the States now, Trump is threatening defamation mm-hmm.

Against different media groups.

Yes.

And he starts the case.

Mm-hmm.

And everybody says it's impossible for him to win.

Yeah.

But.

The media groups pay him off anyway.

Well, the media groups who've paid him off have had, uh, acquisitions

in front of his government.

Yes.

And they figure that if they don't play nice and bribe him,

sorry, settle out of court.

Yes.

Uh, he's going to then stop whatever business activities they are doing

that requires government permission.

Exactly right.

It's an extortion racket.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Nice me.

You've got there.

Shame if anything happened to it.

Yes, and I'm not real happy about the defamation that you're mm-hmm.

You did.

Yes.

It was defamation to allow Hillary Clinton to have a half an hour segment

on the news section or whatever it was.

Mm.

That's what he tried suing for.

Mm. You know, the whole freedom of speech thing, um, that America's

famous for is just deteriorating before our eyes, isn't it?

Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely.

So the Jimmy Kimmel thing for a start.

Yes.

Yes.

He didn't actually say what everyone was claiming that he said.

Mm-hmm.

But, you know, Trump, uh, going at him threatening his, uh, whatever,

you know, media organization he was working for mm-hmm.

Like the president of the United States opening openly saying, you know,

these people are working for Democrats and he's better be sacked, or we're

gonna look at the license that these people have for distributing media.

Well, was part

of the FCC that made that comment actually.

Mm.

So so, yeah.

Famous for their, you know.

Free speech, but it's, it's deteriorating.

And even

that Charlie Kirk, who was supposedly famous for, ah, you know, I

like to listen to all views and

mm-hmm.

Have the argument, but when people want to say nasty things about him, all

those people came out and said, well, if you're gonna say something nasty

like that, we're gonna take away your driver's license and we're gonna do all

these things to you and you'll be sacked.

And, and people were sacked and removed.

Well, there was a website that was set up to.

Uh, list all the people who'd said bad things about Shirley Kirk.

Right.

So that, you know, you could not employ them.

And apparently everyone who signed up to get that information

has had their details leaked.

Right?

So they've been doxed rather than the people that they were trying to

docks, if you know what doxing is.

There we go.

Very good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, so, so much of what we talk about in these various topics, you know.

Um, here are my thoughts.

So the super wealthy use their power to shape our society in ways

that benefit them, but not us.

And they buy or indoctrinate.

Political leaders thrive out potential leaders who can't be

bought or indoctrinated, and they shape our culture through narrative

controls that we don't understand or appreciate what they're doing.

And when we do figure it out, we are powerless to do anything about it.

So most of the things we talk about kind of fit into that statement somehow.

So, um, you know, what are we gonna talk about lately, of course, wars, um, uh,

Gaza and other war going around the place.

These are largely the USA military industrial complex, encouraging

wars all over the planet because they want to sell weapons.

It's not true.

Trump has ended seven wars in his, um, presidency.

Right.

That was in his application for a, uh, Nobel Peace price, no Nobel Peace price.

Yeah.

Not, not that he can remember the names of any of the countries, but

Yes.

Yeah.

He sure he stopped them.

Yeah.

But you know.

In terms of international things, wars, it's it's large, multinational military,

industrial complex types who are lobbying, encouraging and, and working

in the background so that the USA and other countries spend money on weapons

and make money for these companies.

Like that's what's driving so much of what goes on.

Um, uh, inequality around the world between the west and developing countries.

So initially it was colonial powers, you know, basically extracting

wealth from these poorer countries.

But then that's just been entrenched by United States through the World

Bank and the IMF as we've discussed many times in this podcast.

Um, refusing to allow these smaller countries to shelter an industry so that

they can nurture it and get it competitive and then unleash it on the world.

And instead they force them into loan agreements with the IMF, whereby

their economies are completely opened up and they're forced to sell all

their infrastructure and all their goodies and all their resources and

can never get ahead like that is.

Power working at a international level Happens all the time.

All the time.

And then, um, what's the other one that we've been working on?

Oh, just climate change.

Mm-hmm.

Like that is big fossil fuel companies working in whatever

ways they can, can, it's all

scam.

It's not really

happening.

Yes.

Well, exactly as I said, um, they shape our culture through narrative control.

So, um, yeah, which is, you know, what's happening there with climate

change to denial in the same way that cigarette manufacturers were

and

conning people

also aided by foreign states that actually thrive on disorder in the countries.

Yes, because powerful interests within those countries want to maintain their

power that they've got and would rather,

oh, but also, you know, uh, it, it's very easy for a government to spend

a small amount of money buying.

Oh, Joe's gone.

Joe's dropped out.

Yeah.

Mid-sentence completely disappeared.

Yeah,

that, I dunno, Scott.

He, he was talking about powerful interests and uh,

all of a sudden I have been

silenced.

Yes.

His powerful interest pulled the plug on you, Joe.

They did, yeah.

Dunno how they did that, but

they No.

Got your mid-sentence.

Yeah.

Uh, did you finish what you wanted to say then?

Oh, it was just that, um, yeah, there are definitely, um,

advertising campaigns that aren't.

Trying to push a Yeah.

So the fossil fuel industry is trying to push that climate change isn't real.

Mm-hmm.

But there are countries that absolutely thrive on the discourse, um, because,

uh, all the time that you are worrying about internal politics mm-hmm.

You're not worrying about what your neighbor is doing.

Yep.

So the culture wars.

Mm-hmm.

Just this distraction.

Um, to a large extent, it doesn't, it doesn't really help the powerful

interests that much in the sense of, you know, who do they care whether a, a

transgender swimmer is competing or not.

But it's the, the culture wars that they generate and the tribalism

that they generate is, um, what's handy and useful for them.

So,

yeah, there's the old cartoon of the.

Billionaire sitting down with a plate of cookies going, look at

that black person over there.

He's trying to steal your cookie.

Yes, yes.

And because the goddamn Christians with their prosperity Yes, gospel,

uh, really big supporters of the sort of neoliberal ideology.

Then, okay.

If they come with a basket of crazy ideas to do with culture, war issues, the rich

and powerful, let 'em run with it because, uh, they're allied to have on side in, in

sort of keeping the masses under control.

Well, and also, you know, the rich and powerful deserve it, obviously.

God blesses them.

Yeah.

Yes, yes.

So, um, domestically, um.

Uh, what are our problems here?

So, so I was thinking internationally, the big problems of wars, uh, climate change,

poverty and inequality, easy to see, big powerful interests at play, stopping

those problems being solved domestically.

When we think of the big problems in Australia, you know, one of the first

that comes to mind is actually housing.

Yep.

And kind of on the face of it, it's not really so much.

Powerful interests gaining from the housing crisis, but it's like

a secondary effect of the low tax.

Government is big, government is bad sort of mantra that came with neoliberalism.

So powerful interests want less tax so that they can move in and, and

well pay less themselves, but also.

As the services disappear, they come in and provide a private enterprise

version of the service that's been lost.

Yeah.

Which is

precisely what I'm

doing up here, but, but also the whole, you know, uh, free market.

Uh, big government is bad.

Mm-hmm.

A actually, they don't want a free market because they want a regulated market.

They want it regulated in the, their interest.

Yes.

And not, and they want, want big government in terms of

looking after their assets.

So they want a police force, they want a judiciary so they can take you to court.

Mm-hmm.

But you know, the fact that, you know, uh.

Uh, so the upper middle class has a lot of, um, investment properties

isn't so much a rich and powerful thing in itself, but it's a byproduct

of, of that, um, Howard era, uh, neoliberalism, low taxation mantra.

But I would say the vast majority of people with investment

properties have one or two.

Mm. And there's a very, very small subset of people.

Quite a number of those are in Parliament.

Yes.

Who own lots of houses.

Quite a few in parliament have 4, 5, 6.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, I think the, they, they're like two, three, uh, mps that

don't have an investment property.

I think Scott's friend, max Chandler may well, mark.

It was one of the few that didn't own a property at all,

right?

No, he, he was renting, you know?

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

So, um, I wouldn't

describe him as my friend.

I didn't like him.

No, that's why, yeah.

Um, um, what else did I have domestically?

Um,

uh, resource royalties are a big problem in Australia where we've just given away.

Our royalties, uh, well, our mineral wealth without proper exchange.

Also, the whole, um, uncertainty around renewable energy sources mm has just

made it really difficult to build a proper business strategy for any company.

So people are just not willing to invest in renewable energy because they don't

know what the next government is gonna do.

Because the Queensland, uh, LMP came in mm-hmm.

And canceled a bunch of renewable projects.

Yeah.

Oh, the Pump Hydro was one

of, yeah.

The pump hydro up here was canceled

and there was some wind farm somewhere else, I think was canceled.

And I think a solar farm or something, some other projects were canceled as well.

Mm-hmm.

So, to your point, yeah, that's right.

Um, um, and of course, uh, you know, big business would be.

Nuclear, you know, whereas solar is, you know, rooftop solar for

example is mom and dad type stuff.

It's a decentralization of.

Of power.

Mm-hmm.

And, um, the people pushing for nuclear, that's, that's a big bus.

That's a big, big business friendly idea.

Yeah.

It

takes huge investment for, yeah.

So that's, uh, domestically and then, um, and, you know, just, uh, lack

of time that people have to think.

Mm-hmm.

Like when you think about the industrial revolution and then the computer

revolution and now ai, we all should be sitting back three days a week.

Yeah.

We should not be, we should not be working as hard as working our asses off.

Like when you, you see these videos?

And you see YouTube stuff of amazing agricultural equipment.

Yep.

Where, where one man on a tractor or, uh, or these greenhouses

that are producing tons of food with minimal human involvement.

It's, we, it's so easy to feed ourselves.

It,

it was something like 50% of the population up until a

hundred and something years ago.

Um, were involved in agriculture, that's now, I dunno what it is,

one 20.

It's probably barely 5% of the population would be involved in agriculture now.

And I mean, you look at a factory with, um, reducing cars and it's all these

robots, um, tinkering away at them.

Mm-hmm.

Like so the toys that we want, the food that we want.

Um, even, you know, the housing that we want to a large extent with robotic

sort of construction, that is possible.

We should, we sh with so much being done so easily, we should be able

to sit back and be working three days a week and just relaxing.

But we are in this mindset where it's, it's seen as good

to be a hard working person of

consumption.

To be slaving away at a job.

Mm-hmm.

The honor of a hard day's toil.

There's plenty of honor in just sitting around and playing a

guitar, reading a book, spending some time just landing around.

Mm-hmm.

It's one of those things I have thoroughly enjoyed my time off work.

Now I'm just getting to that point now where for the first time in my life,

now this is big for me to say this.

I got bored watching television last Friday.

Yeah, good.

Yeah, that is very big for me to actually say that.

So I've actually gotta find something else to do with myself.

Right?

But I do not want to go back into five days a week, you know?

I just think to myself three, possibly four days a week would be

more than enough to keep me occupied.

And then I can go and do something else at the SES and everything else.

You know, on the other day I awake, you know, it's just, um, now, you

know, I'm very, very fortunate.

You know, I'm a child of privilege.

I have done not anything spectacularly brilliant outta my own, outta my

own self-interest or anything else.

The only thing I did was I got very lucky buying that house.

He was on a double block.

I sold it for an obscene amount of money.

You know, it's just, that was it.

Uh, that was the only thing that I could really put just on myself.

The rest of it's come from the fact that I was the fifth child of

Nolan, Rodney Noel and Muriel Clark.

You know, that's why I'm at that point where I have to debate with myself

whether or not I can actually pull up stumps and not go back to work

anyway.

Yeah.

But

why aren't we talking about, you know.

How, how many years will it be till we're down to a four day week?

How many days will it be till we're down to a three day week?

Why aren't we ever talking about that?

I dunno.

It's, um, one of those things, I just think to myself, the productivity

gains that we have had in this country have resulted in, uh.

Increases in the bottom line of businesses, but it hasn't really resulted

in any big increase in salaries and wages that are paid to the little guy.

Yeah.

And leisure time is so much less.

Yeah.

It's than what it probably was for a medieval villager.

Mm-hmm.

Well, they used to walk to work, you know, it's just that,

um, you have to drive to work.

Now it's probably at least an hour on the road.

It's at least two hours on the road a day.

But we also live in huge houses.

We have gardens, we fly internationally.

I mean, I saw an article that was saying that the cost of an international

flight these days is the same in dollars as it was, uh, back in the eighties.

Right, but the, but you know what, the real dollar, yeah.

Yep.

In real money value, it's dropped considerably.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

But then it's, you know, comparatively cheap to build a plane.

Yes.

Yeah.

It's, yeah.

So, um, and you know, uh, television was a luxury.

A telephone was a luxury.

We now swap out our mobile phone, which is a computer every.

What, three or four years?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Some people do it every two years.

Mm-hmm.

It's one of those things like, you know, my television, I had

to replace it because I ended up with some black lines down there.

Mm-hmm.

Center of it and all that sort of stuff, and I went and got a five

inch larger television for 600 bucks.

Mm-hmm.

It was $300 cheaper than what I paid for my last television, you know?

Mm-hmm.

It's just, they, they, they appear to be getting cheaper.

Mm-hmm.

So why, why aren't we just going, we should be down

aiming for a three day week.

But we don't talk about it.

We've been culturally indoctrinated to glorify days.

The work ethic.

Yeah.

In that sort of Protestant work ethic

to to glorify buying lots of shiny stuff.

Yes.

Yes.

Yep.

Indoctrinated to that as well.

If you were willing

to live a frugal simple life, you could absolutely work three days a week.

Yes.

But we don't talk about it as, as a thing.

No.

So until you actually retire, people don't talk about.

35 year olds just checking out and just going to, it's not things that we

aspire our community to head towards, but we should, we're just having,

yeah, I know what you're saying, but you know, my, you think

it's a bad idea, Scott?

No, I don't, I don't think it's a bad idea to aim for a three day week.

However, um, I do love international travel.

Mm. You know, I do love ducking over to Hong Kong at least once a year.

Um, Vietnam's probably my new favorite spot I've been to.

Who?

Who says you can't have that in a three day week?

Yeah, I know I can because of my personal circumstances.

However, if you're starting out in life Mm, you've only got three days a week.

I just don't see that the employers are gonna say, yeah, you can work 60% of the

time for a hundred percent of your salary.

You know, it's just, um, it is what it is.

But if, if all of these efficiencies have come in Yeah.

In the last a hundred years mm-hmm.

That enable one person to do so much, in theory, it should

have freed up a lot of time.

It should have, it should have freed up a hell of a lot more time than what it has.

Mm. But it has, you know, when I, when I look, when I look back on my time

at, um, Paul Chadwick and that sort of stuff, they're quite proud of themselves.

They said, oh, every, every desk has got its own computer, which is fine,

but you know, by the time I was just talking to 'em partnered there, that was.

Pulling up stumps from his job and he says, well, he's

no longer got a secretary.

They've only got two secretaries in the whole firm.

Whereas back in the day, they used to have, they used to

each have their own secretary.

You know, it's just gone of those days.

You know, they, they, they seem to do their own typing.

Now

it's just, yeah.

When I was an apprentice.

We had, if I wanted something typed up, I'd write it up, send it to the

secretaries to type up, if I wanted something drawn, I'd draw a freehand

sketch and send it to the draftsman.

Yep.

Mm. Now I'm expected to be an expert in Vizio, an expert in Word.

Mm.

So, yeah, there's, there's a lot more, a lot varied work that I'm doing now.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it is.

It's

back in the day.

Um, uh, when I was a junior lawyer, we had Dictaphones.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

God, you could get so much done with a Dictaphone and a good secretary.

My God.

You could get, you could generate some stuff.

That's good.

Alison's in the chat room, Alison did you, Alison would've had a

Dictaphone and a secretary who's there typing away and grabbing stuff.

So it was a very efficient way to work.

Um, yeah.

Bring back the Dictaphone and Secretary.

I say,

I don't think we need to go quite back that far, but you know, it's just that.

Computer.

It is one of those.

Yeah, you can talk to your computer.

You know, you can, the idea of a keyboard in the future will probably

be redundant because we would just be talking to the computer to do everything.

You know, it's just, um, one of those things.

And AI eventually will not be as dumb as it is now.

It is gonna become more intelligent, but I don't believe it's going to

replace as many people as they'd like to think it's going to replace.

Hmm.

You know, Alison says, absolutely, like, yeah, I know you can talk to

a computer and, you know, if you can't type, it'll, which I can't,

it'll, you know, do a reasonable job.

But with a Dictaphone, you could just say to your secretary, go

to the x, y, z file, um, and do a letter back to Joe Blows saying.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And you didn't have to look up their address, their full name, the file

number, all that sort of stuff.

It was all that would what the secretary would do.

And then you could move on to your next thing.

And even better, you could say, can I borrow your Dictaphone?

Yeah.

But see, nowadays you, you don't even, you don't even top up a lid.

You just.

Send him an email.

Yes,

that's right.

Use your finger like everybody else.

Come on.

Yes.

I'm from the search and destroy school of typing.

Right.

Hunt and back as it's otherwise known.

Yes.

So, um, yeah, Alison, I could dictate faster than my secretary could type it.

That's right.

Yeah.

Ah, those are the days, Alison.

Um, it's easy sounding

bloody old now, aren't you?

Yeah.

Um.

So other, so yes, our problems.

I've listed some and I just keep seeing powerful interests

prevailing all the time.

Throw in useful idiots like religion to provide the opiate to help the

powerful, uh, it's subdued descent and uh, religious stories are manipulated

to justify religious wars culture.

And, um, oops, I've just lost my screen there.

Hang on a second.

I'll get that back up.

Religious wars are used to justify.

Um, there it is.

Um, uh, religious wars, culture wars, and prosperity gospel.

So say religion is just this handy tool for powerful interests

to manipulate our culture.

Um, people fall for it.

And it's media control to control the narrative as we've just been talked about.

Long hard work is noble.

China and Russia are evil.

Faith is good.

Government is bad.

Social isn't bad.

Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

Don't read a book, but watch those Broncos trickle down works.

Entrepreneurs are the innovators.

Um.

Yeah, so that was just my thoughts about, as I look at the various

topics that we deal with and, and I just see big power at play.

Um, oh, the other one is just democracy.

I've been banging on about this as well lately, Scott, is this

proving to be too susceptible to modern methods of misinformation?

Yeah, I, no, it's one of those things I, um, I've, I've read something the

other day that said Trump is not the symptom and Trump is not the cause.

He is a symptom Yeah.

Of the whole thing.

But I don't think we should throw out the baby with the bath water over that.

You know, we've still got a main, where, where's the

baby in all this?

Well, I think the baby is democracy.

Yeah, we've gotta keep that alive.

People are getting what they want.

Yeah, that baby, that

baby went down the sinkhole a long time ago, didn't it?

Am I mixing medicine?

Well, I suppose it

did because you know, you've also got Nigel Farage and everything out there.

He's actually saying he is just representing what the people want.

Now, Nira is probably a arrogant fool.

He's also, um, a tof.

Yeah.

He, he's not a man of the people.

No.

No matter how much he presents he is.

Yeah.

It's just that.

Um, and Donald Trump is also, he's a TOF with an American accent.

You know, he's, um, he's what, uh,

an average American's idea of what a billionaire should be.

Oh, I suppose so.

It's, sorry if, if you wanna do a caricature of a billionaire,

Donald Trump is your caricature.

Hmm.

He just looked like the old monopoly man, because he's,

he's looking very fat too, by

the way, sort of a dystopian hunger games type version.

Yes.

Yeah.

But I mean, cookie side, he's

opulent.

He has the gold toilets, he has the, you know, he's, he's everything

that a poor person would imagine a billionaire would live like.

Have you seen the comparisons of the, of the Oval Office?

When he meets people and it's a previous sort of decorating style.

Yeah.

The gold leaf everywhere.

And, and,

and now there's just gold everywhere.

It's terrible.

It is terrible what he's doing.

He's, you know, he's, he's pissing over everything.

Like he's, and God knows what this bloody ballroom's gonna look like I mentioned.

It'll be trashy.

Oh, I'm sure it'll be very glitzy.

Mm-hmm.

Somebody said you don't spend $200 million building a ballroom for a house that

you intend moving out of in three years.

Yeah.

Yeah, that'll be interesting.

But like, take the example of very fast trains.

Mm-hmm.

So China is crisscrossed now with thousands and thousands of kilometers

of very fast trains, an amazing network that, uh, that hasn't stopped and is

being extended like really, really good.

You cannot imagine that happening now in.

A democracy anywhere on the planet?

No, probably not.

But also the thing with technology is you, you get a leapfrogging effect.

Mm-hmm.

So, because China missed out on the road, the car revolution

mm-hmm.

They now, when they have become wealthy, they are able to leapfrog us with huge

investment in public infrastructure.

Whereas we have a sunk cost in roads.

People have cars.

And so, um, we saw this in France with the internet.

Mm-hmm.

Because Minitel in France, which was dial up modems Yeah.

Little box that you had on your telephone.

Mm.

It was so good.

It, it did what you needed.

The internet in France just didn't take off for so long and they were left behind.

Mm.

Because their previous generation of technology was so good.

Right?

Yeah.

And

I, and I, I wonder whether this is the same with China, because they

didn't have the roads and they didn't have the cars, that it was easy for

the government to go, yes, we can invest in a decent real network.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

It's America can't even maintain the, you know, the subways and stuff that it's got.

Mm-hmm.

Like, they're just the Americans horrible places.

The Americans have, uh, they swallowed far too much Ronald

Reagan than they could afford.

Mm-hmm.

You know, and they've got this ridiculous mantra that you've

gotta reduce taxes at all costs.

And it's just gone way too far over there.

Because, you know, if you look at what the tax cuts were in the,

what the, what the tax rates were in the 1950s, they were incredibly

high compared to what they're now.

And no one complained about 'em.

And the Republicans always look back on the 1950s, this golden age.

The golden age was when the working, when the middle class were workers

and that sort of stuff, and they were in highly unionized industries.

They were getting paid relatively well.

And if you are earning a reasonable amount of money, you are paying 90%.

Yes.

The, the upper five 10% of society was paying enormous tax rate.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This, this idea of get our taxes as low as possible, but then you end

up paying for your own healthcare.

Yeah.

Which is a huge expense.

Yeah.

And you pay for, uh, your schooling, which is another huge expense.

And you pay for, and you're going, actually, you're saving yourself money.

Mm.

If you're rich, yes.

Because you're paying, you know, 30, 40% less tax and you

are only paying out 2% of your.

Income on your additional costs.

Mm-hmm.

But for the average person, that's a huge burden.

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Well, the way the system's working, it's the powerful who just keep winning and the

powerless who keep losing and, um, they're losing because of the misinformation

that they don't realize what's happening.

And then for the ones who do realize they can't do anything about it anyway.

So.

Uh, I dunno what the solution is.

Um,

well I think the solution is heat the re Mm. Uh, it's one of those things.

I just think to myself that a revolution is coming in the United States

now, whether it becomes a violent revolution, you end up people, you

end know people losing the, you end up having people losing the heads of

the gear to, you know, I don't know.

But I could actually see that actually happening in that country where eventually

they do actually behead the rich.

You know,

I don't know that a revolution's gonna be possible in the future when

you see all of the mechanical robotic type stuff that's being developed.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's just one of those things, and I think a violent

revolution is, can it be tricky to pull off against, I, I

mean, you know, the, the, where the word sabotage comes from, don't you?

No.

So Sabo is a, is a wooden clog and the workers in the mills through their wooden

clogs in the machinery to break it,

right?

So the, the robots will still need people to service them

and people to program them.

And if you get a disaffected person, uh, in the system, they

can throw a clog in the works.

You're on mute.

You're on mute, Trevor.

The, the rich and powerful might only need a limited number of people

to keep happy, to maintain the machines that keep them in power.

Uh,

but during slavery mm-hmm.

The white people, uh, had the power and they felt they

empathized with the black people.

Mm-hmm.

And they rose up and changed the laws, and that was against the vested interest

of the southern land landowners.

Mm.

I, I can't see.

They, they might have some minions working on very good pay.

Mm-hmm.

But I think that they will be shocked at the suffering of their fellow men.

Okay.

A small percentage will and can't live with themselves and will sabotage.

Yep.

The machinery of power.

Okay.

So the, the, the drones and the robots will

mm-hmm.

Be switched off.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's a happy thought.

Thank you, Joe.

John Siemens, who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution

comes Musk, and I think you probably hit the nail on the head there.

I think he will be the first to go, you know?

Who could be caught first, but yeah, it's a long way off.

Mm.

Because it just, it's hell a long

way

off.

It's just one of those things.

And I think that, um, we've gotta actually sit down with our wealthy in our

country and explain to them that you're gonna have to start paying more tax,

or your heads are gonna end up on PIs.

Mm. Enough.

Enough people think that way.

That's not, that's a reality.

Say again?

I said, it's not a threat.

No, it's a reality.

People go, oh, you can't threaten it.

This isn't when the income equality becomes large enough.

Yeah.

There is a revolution and it is usually violent,

and that's what happened in Russia and it's what happened in France.

Yep.

You know, and both those countries lost their royal

families because of the mm-hmm.

Um, discrepancy in wealth.

Yeah.

You know?

Mm-hmm.

And

I suppose you really

need societal decay and collapse.

Yeah, exactly.

But that, you know, if it continues the way it is going.

Mm-hmm.

You know, I think the three of us will be pushing up daisies by the

time it comes around, but if it continues to go the way it's going,

then I think it could actually happen.

Mm-hmm.

They're certainly on track for it in the States.

It just seems Oh God.

Yeah.

Completely dysfunctional.

It's just one of those things, it's, it's completely outta control over there.

Mm-hmm.

Did you see the one, um, video of some ice agents who were roaming

around the streets and, uh, this guy was following them, playing

the Star Wars Storm Trooper patrol.

Yeah.

That was very amusing.

And the one of the guys turned around and told him to shut it up, didn't he?

Yeah.

Yeah.

But, um, I wouldn't be at all, I mean.

You saw the shooting that happened in the ice facility?

No.

Was happened.

Okay.

Um, somebody allegedly broke into an ice facility, shot three of the detainees,

and then turned the gun on themselves, and the bullets had anti ice scrolled on them.

Allegedly

anti-ice.

But they shot the detainees.

Exactly.

Not the ICE agents.

How's that work?

Exactly it.

It sounds incredibly suspicious.

Mm. Um, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if people started

taking pot shots at ice agents.

Mm. When you have neo-Nazi thugs wandering the streets, somebody is

going to do something about it, I think.

Mm. Yeah.

It's one of those things, I just cannot believe that he's throwing

fuel on the fire the way he is done.

That's all.

John in the chat room.

Beer next week.

T Trav.

Yes.

If you're down the Yes.

John's gimme a call on the coast all this week.

Half and half next week.

Um, speaking of my, um, movements here mm-hmm.

I had a haircut, um, the other day.

$18 haircut.

That sounds cheap.

Yeah, that is very cheap.

Cheap.

Not for me.

Yeah.

Joe with a, you just run the clippers over yourself.

Razor blade mate.

Razor blade.

Um, of course, uh, in getting the haircut, it was an old school barbershop mm-hmm.

Down here on the coast.

And, um, uh, I had to listen to some boomers talking mm-hmm.

Because

Barbara's a nice guy, but you know, people sit in his chair and they talk

about stuff and, um, one guy like just.

Appraising Trump's speech to the un.

Oh, that was the topic of dis God.

That was the topic of discussion at the barber shop.

How Two old cos one the barber himself and one his customer, both of them in

their late sixties, and their topic of discussion was, wasn't it great how Trump

gave it to them at the, in his un speech?

I, I've seen colostomy bags that were less full of shit.

Yep.

How could, how could anyone have been praising Trump's speech to the un?

As I was listening, I was reading the complimentary copy of The Daily Telegraph.

Mm-hmm.

Bloody

$18. But, uh, anyway, we just got a couple of minutes left.

I'm interested in this one.

But moving away from big picture.

Mm-hmm.

Down to small picture, Virgin Australia is now allowing customers to bring

cats and dogs on board flights.

Of all the outrage we've discussed in the last hour, is there anything, is there

a bigger outrage than, than that one?

That's a problem with cats and dogs on the airplane?

Myself.

Yeah.

So do I. It's, I just think it was a ridiculous thing for them to, are

they in the cabin or are they in.

Cabin?

No, they've gotta be in carry on cabin.

They're gonna be in carry on bags in the cabin though, don't they?

Something like that.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

And it's gotta be for small dogs and small cats so they can actually sit them under

the chair in front of you, can't they?

I just dunno how that would fit.

Yeah, I know.

Under your feet.

Yeah.

I mean, knowing how taking a cat to a vet, they don't shut up all the way there.

Whinging away.

Hmm.

I can't, I dread to imagine what it would be like on a flight, like having

a screaming baby, I should think.

Although people are allowed to bring screaming babies on board flights, so

yeah, it could have been one of those cages under their feet maybe.

Yeah.

We flew back to Europe, uh, when my daughter was about 18 months,

and if you are on one of the bulk head seats, they put a carry cot.

Um, so a little bassinet that clips in and, and the baby can sleep in that.

Ah, but the problem is every time the seatbelt light goes on, um, you

have to take the baby out and put them on a lap strap on your lap.

Mm-hmm.

And my daughter refused to sleep all way to Singapore.

And then as we took off from Singapore, she was so tired.

She just crashed and we had thunderstorms coming outta Singapore.

18 times that seatbelt light went on and we had to get her up,

wake her up, take her outta the bassinet and put her on her lap.

Uh, dear idea.

Anyway, I'm a poo-pooing the idea of animals onboard, onboard a plane flight.

They're uncomfortable enough as they are.

I say get somebody to dog sit or cat sit if you've gotta go away.

Use a kennel.

It's, yeah, I mean, traveling internationally, you've normally

gotta go through quarantine.

Even with uh, vaccination, it's still six weeks or something.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Alright.

Uh, quite palm.

We did, I don't think I needed to do any of the other stuff 'cause we've kind of

reached the end of the road there anyway.

Um.

Um, John says, I bet they never even watched the speech,

just the Fox Cliff notes.

Probably correct.

Actually, they would've been watching, uh, the Sky News Cliff notes, I reckon.

Yeah, John.

'cause otherwise you'd realize he's a bumbling idiot.

Yes.

So, um, um, ah, and just one final comment.

There's all these things are depressing.

This one isn't the biggest in the world, but scenes from the Rider Cup, so.

Uh, this is where the European golfers play against the American

golfers in a teams event.

And on this occasion it was held somewhere in America and the European team won.

Mm-hmm.

But the behavior of the American crowd just hurling abuse and

poor sportsmanship at the.

European players was just abysmal.

And these are, you know, golfers are your privileged white

males, big MAGA crowd probably.

Mm-hmm.

And

the scenes you see are just truly disgusting of, um, people

throwing beer cans at the wives of the wife of Rory McElroy.

And just the, uh, just the awful, awful behavior of this crowd.

One more sign of the disintegration of American Culture and Society.

I say another example, if you see it on social media, stop for

a moment to observe, um, uh, a country that's losing its civility.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Okay, gentlemen, I'm done.

Thank you in the chat room for watching.

We'll be Well, I keep saying we'll be back next week and it often

turns out, be back in two weeks.

Who knows this I'm not available next

week.

I'm down in

Brisbane.

Oh, okay.

Alright.

We might catch up with you, Scott, how long are you down for?

Well, I'm, we'll talk about off air three days.

Yeah.

Okay.

Alright.

We will be back at some stage next week or the week after.

Bye for now.

Good night.

Uh, it's a good night from me and it's a good night from him.

Good night.