B-Side: Passport to Piddington

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1:00Fire. Fire. Welcome to Quiet Ride, beside our chance to flip the vinyl over and luxuriate in the track. I'm justly hidden on the underneath bit. I'm Alex. And I'm Naomi the crisp CD to Alex's crackly old vinyl. And I'm Kenny. Quiet rides vintage wax cylinder. Now yesterday we looked at the state of political funding in this country on a national level. Today we're going to zoom down to community level and take a hopefully more optimistic journey as we look at the newly formed peoples Republic of Piddington. Stick with us in this one please. And we also take some time to discuss community in general with the newest members of the Cooler Head's podcast family. How very exciting. Quiet. Quiet. Piddington this week voted for independence. I say who are we to ignore the will of the people frankly? Put up a border, start negotiating a visa regime, tariffs on goods, a fee to use the

2:01energy grid. Obviously no currency, no chest, no pensions. I know I'm in the minority. But that's because none of you love democracy as much as the people wearing Bella Glovers. If Piddington does prove one thing however, it is this that a community of a few hundred people can capture national attention and put pressure on the government of a country of 70 million people simply by organizing. And this subject, community activism and how to do it right is the topic of a new box fresh podcast. How do you solve a problem like everything? Let's have a little listen. Now that you've accumulated lots of experience, know how talent, do you feel more hopeful than you did 10 years ago? Yeah, I feel actually that the first thing we have to do, our first task is to build home. It's not like an individual's flick of the switch in the head to something maybe more optimistic or in anybody's head. It's about people being able to come together around a program and then ambition to change. So we, I think we have to build hope for that to be meaningful.

3:04We don't just suddenly go well, it'll probably be all right. Is the job of work and then take us to our first job of work. We need to build a coalition for change. It seems to me that whenever there's a crisis, the resource that we find, we found the resource to send people into Iraq, the resource was found to go into Afghanistan, to do with the pandemic. Humanity knows who was there to come up with a vaccine quicker than anyone thought. And I think we doubt our abilities become a less divided greener world. I think we stand on the precipice of that. To talk about grassroots organizing, the good, bad and ugly of it, we are joined again by Kinesh Shade and Will Hayem. Welcome back guys. Hey. Okay. Thanks first. What prompted you to start the podcast? Like what was the actual inception of it? You don't even remember to you. You were a loop puzzle. No, we were puzzled about who should speak first. Right. Luckily you've got me. So we've got different backgrounds which we can go into, but we've got the same track record of 25 years trying to, in our different ways, make the world a better place.

4:05You've failed. I've totally failed. I've totally failed. I saw it out well. I've got no children who have let down. Oh, wait. It's been a disaster. But there's a kind of choice in life where you either think that's it. I'm going to do some, some boho prepping. Learn how to make my own coffee beans and, you know, really reinforce my fence. Or you think, come on, we've actually got to get this right. Isn't as though people haven't been thinking about the problems about communities and poverty for ages. And for all my many failures. I have seen lots of hints of success along the way. So we thought we wanted to bring together people around a podcast where we're hearing from people either with the ideas or the action on the ground that seem to work. And that very bit of bringing people together. We've seen at every great moment in history, like, you know, the post-war investment in communities, just bringing people together itself is the start of different conversations. Can he's, do you get a sense that actually people forget that if you zoom out sufficiently,

5:08yes, there are plateaus, there are areas where we go backwards for a bit. But overall, there is tremendous progress that we can be quite proud of. And all of it happens because a group of people decide that they're not happy with their lot anymore, basically. It does, you know, it starts by a few people coming together and saying, no, we're not happy with the way things are. Or yes, we can do better than this. I've failed in lots of things in my life, including ways to make change. And then 9-11 happened and I got drawn into volunteering and I've failed at lots of things. But then tell us a bit about that. 9-11 happened. Yeah. So 9-11 was my moment when I moved into volunteering. And it happened because, well, it kind of linked to very early childhood experiences when I was growing up in Essex. I was bullied for kinds of reasons. But when I came back and moved to London, I didn't expect to be single out because London's

6:09very diverse. And I was, I was called a terrorist and this and that. And it brought back childhood sort of remebering memories of that. And to be single out in such a diverse area was weird. But this time I stepped into volunteering, we raised a lot of money, I saw the organisational splashy on national newspapers and I felt really let down that money couldn't solve everything. Some organisers came to see me in my college and said, you should come and see an assembly. Now, I've never heard of a public assembly before. But I stepped into a church and I saw the dialogue going on between very, very diverse communities and the leader of the council. And I was just suspicious about it. I thought, how did that happen? What's the method behind it? I got so drawn into what was going on that I then spent the next 25 years training in the States and doing community organising here. And I think there are many ways of making change happen.

7:10But one of the most powerful ways is to organise the community, put an organisers down in a place. And I've been trying to work out, like, but how do I simply explain what organising is? I think I did because lots of people say in the community were community organising. But there's a particular version of Salsa Linsky that is a method that is just so incredible that I have seen evidence of it changing a local place. And it puts simply, it's about pulling together five or more crazy people, leaders from durable institutions, five people that will say, yes, let's make some change happen. Pulling them together in an institution, building their collective power and then training them to be able to act together, to negotiate with other centres of power, like the state and the marketplace. And then actually create some change that improves their lives. And the role of an organiser, the organiser word was made really famous from Barack Obama

8:12because people say, ah, it's an organiser. But a real organiser's job is to go into a town or a place or a city and scout for talent, look for leaders, look for issues. And then we spend most of our time training people. And we step to one side and we watch the leaders actually take over. And then they will, from researching the issue down to meeting political parties, down to coming down to the asks of what they want to change. We don't solve problems as such. We slice bits of the problem and we slice the bits which we think we can win. And then we put our asks to the politicians in a public assembly and they have to respond to our agenda. It's clear yes or no. It doesn't have to be a leader of an institution. Yeah. It doesn't, like, it doesn't have to be someone who's in a position of authority to say that my church is now part of your organising group. It could be a congregant from a particular place of worship that is well respected in that

9:15community. Yes. We're talking about pulling five leaders, established leaders, I guess. But you're talking about finding five people with leadership qualities who are embedded in different places. But the broad base organising is about bringing those institutions in and then working with their followers and people that are in that institution to develop them. We don't go outside the authority of the leader of that institution, like an EMARM or a principal or a synagogue rabbi, we would get their authority to work inside the institution and then they would join in the alliance and then we scout within those institutions to find those leaders. What I love about this podcast is that it is almost like a how-to manual for everybody. So you are somebody who has trained an enormous number of community organisers all over the world, but obviously, particularly here in the UK. And this podcast is offering opportunity to train a massive pool of us while we're tuning

10:16in. So we'll talk us about the first season of the show, how long it is and what you're really hoping to get from it. Well, thank you. So we've set our sights small, obviously, for the first season, as you can tell from the title. Yeah. And there is a, it's exactly, as you say, no, it's a how-to, but it's also a what-to-do element about all of this. You know, I spent my whole career thinking if you just do good projects and good campaigning around the edges, you'll get a good outcome. You'll get a good enough outcome, but every campaign I've worked on has now gone backwards or projects have been closed like funding. So there's something about we've organised communities asking for things. What do we need to fix? So we're going back to the five giants, if you'll forgive me of the beverage report, which lay behind the huge NHS, welfare and other settlements and saying, what do they look like now? So we've got want, poverty, what that looks like now and how that's different from the past and how that affects the communities we work in.

11:16Disease, when the, when the report was out, I won't run through them all in this detail, but almost all disease was people being ill or having an accident. It's now 80% policy and market failure. It's the damp houses, canese has been talking about its diets, it's all the rest of the... Mental health. Exactly. So we've got some amazing experts to really talk through what that looks like in the current form. That's our problem statement, but we're making them all talk about what will make a difference. And then canese and I are going back to Grimsby where I've seen her amazing work turning general anger at everything into a real desire for change in a few shared areas. I'm going to say, does this really mean anything to you? What we found out is this good enough? Is this, is this look as though it's going to cut any mustard in Grimsby? Quiet, quiet. Starting a business can seem like a daunting task, unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website, to marketing, to selling and beyond, Shopify can help with everything

12:18you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Hines and Allbirds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your site, turn your big business idea into... Sign up for your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com slash special offer. Quiet, quiet. What I love about what you guys are doing and your approach is that there's no polyanism about this. This isn't a classic sort of third sector production where we go, do you know what the world could be a better place if we just smile and sing a happy song? It's rooted in the harsh realities of spending years at the call face in communities, communities that have stared down the barrel of complete destruction in many cases and communities which have seen people come and go offering various solutions as well. How difficult has that made what you're doing? This idea that you are bringing a sense of optimism, but at the same time, a big part

13:19of that story is necessarily very bleak. The reason why I really wanted to go back to the beverage report and look at the hope there is if when a country is at war and when it's facing deaths of 250% of GDP, it can find the courage to make a better offer to its citizens, then we can do that now. Until we do that, it's an endless rear-guard battle against populism and rage and everything else. So that's the hope side. I think it's really important. On the other side, having done this work for 25 years, there's been a ratchet effect. Every crisis, every change in our society has made things worse and more hopeless. Contounding. And also a bigger difference too. I mean, if I got on a train in parts of the North, the train would not look anything like a train on the South. It would be coming away with an old diesel engine. The streets would look crap if I can say that in terms of the pavements falling over.

14:20The physical health, it's extraordinary how visible the head to climb physical and mental health is on the streets and the shops of all clothes. So every damn thing that's happened over the last 25 years, every crisis has made the richer and made these places look worse and comparatively worse. So is this in a way the marrying of your two techniques, the taking of your big project and then embedding it with something that has local roots, which means it doesn't need the outside help and funding to keep going. Are we looking at how to build something that can then grow in the wild, I guess is what I'm asking. Yeah, sure. I mean, if we just took about Grimsby for a second, so I spent a year and a half organizing Grimsby town, which actually is actually the whole of Norfis Linkeshire, it's Grimsby Immingham and Cleathorbs. So I established a founded with the leaders there, an organization called Logic, leaders organizing Grimsby Immingham and Cleathorbs.

15:22But after a year and a half, you know, I've exited out of town and we handed, you know, the leadership of that to the local people. But I would say that when I look back at the work there, I know that I helped introduce, for example, the Catholic leader to the Bishop of Grimsby and making those introductions has a long term profound effect on the town because people who would not normally talk to the Imam or the teacher, you know, Franklin College, those criss-crossing of relationships they don't go back in time. The ones those relationships have created, you've crossed a divided bridge in a Christian network in that work. And it makes it extremely difficult for those who seek to divide us to come in and have their narrocities believed. If you don't have that pre-established relationship with the community leader from a different religion to yours or whatever and someone comes in and says, oh, you know, it's their fault, their community is the problem.

16:23You haven't got to rebuttal, but if you're like, that's madness. I was having a cup of tea with him yesterday morning and he's doing great work and he doesn't believe any of those things that there was your putting in his, you know, so it really does act as a shield against those that seek to divide us. And can he's, I want to ask you sort of not sort of quantifying it, but give us the narrative of just how much of a difference it does make to a community to become activated in this way. Yeah, so I guess I can't speak for others necessarily, but my own stories that I worked in a college and when I saw that in, you know, the participation of people in that assembly, I went back and I said to my institution, you've got to get involved. And then through that work, I developed hundreds and hundreds of my young people students. So they got, you know, a chance to talk in front of the stage and they were able to talk about the issues they care about. They were able to speak about their personal stories really powerfully.

17:25Those things remain with them for the rest of their life. They know that they were a small part of a big campaign like, for example, City Safe. The young people were forefront of trying to get some of the shops to have a little bad jazz side. So if they're involved in a, you know, a gang fight or something that can run into the shop, the shops part of a big process where they can, you know, shut the doors and look after the young people because they stick around there. It's quite complicated, but the young people were involved in creating that and making that happen. And so they become stories of their life. But next time in their, in their adult life, for example, if they come up with a problem, they'll say, well, why are we not organizing it in that way? You know, why don't we take control? Now they train their leaders, the most radical tool we have is something so basic. It's what you just said about having a cup of tea, but to reconnect with the basic art of sitting with someone and not saying, hello, you know, what can I do for you? But you're just saying, you know, why did you become a teacher or, you know, tell me

18:26about what did you do in that workshop? Yeah, what did you do? Can I ask about your authority? Basic conversations. Because people going to work in communities will often go and speak to the local vicar, for example, there are recognized shorthands for community leaders right now, but you're talking about taking things to a much bigger level. You're talking about going to bishops. You're talking to, you know, you're going right up the ladder of community leadership. Where does your authority come from? Sometimes literally, right up the ladder, let's have a listen. I'm getting you back to Grimsby now. How did you get involved in community organizing in Grimsby? Oh gosh. So will this is me knew in Grimsby organizing through our mental health work. But on the journey back from our way, Dave, when we were working with a charity, we both, you actually saw Maurice on the tracks, didn't you? Not on the tracks, to be fair. He was on the platform. He was on the protest. Sorry, Maurice. Yes, you saw him on the platform and said, can he look, I think that's Maurice there.

19:27And I said, oh my god, it is. Now Maurice and I got back about 20 years. We shared platforms when Gordon Brown was doing these speeches and, you know, running for prime minister, etc, etc. And David Cameron as well. And David Cameron who I pinned. What do you mean, pin? Oh, that's a whole new story. So in our public assemblies, we pin the politicians. I've pinned a lot of them. Well, no, everyone is a gorgon out and they're what pinning actually means. Pinning is when you've got a politician on the other side of the stage and you put a very specific ask to the politician and say, will you do this? Yes or no? And you just keep going until you get a clear yes or no and you're pinning them on it. Of course they try to avoid sometimes the question. Some are really good. Some are very good, but lots of them go left right and the job of the audience will be really clear. No, really. Yes or no. Right. And what works for you is you've got the power of the room there and it's quite embarrassing if you keep continuously asking them. Sorry, I didn't hear that. Was that yes or no?

20:28Yes or no? Well, I imagine knowing you that David Cameron still wakes up sweating at night about that if nothing else. So where does your authority to add your confidence to go and talk to the big cheeses come from? Because I bet a lot of listeners are going, I've been nervous enough about talking to the victor and never mind the bishop. Simple. Just knock on the door. If you've got someone to make an introduction, that's very helpful. So we normally don't knock on the door. We get somebody that knows the bishop, for example, to make an introduction. And so it is just sitting down with a vicar, with a bishop, with an imam, with a union leader or a rep and just saying, this is my story, what's yours? And it's a shared story, actually, it's not an interview and it's not a call to action and it's not a big ass. Not a big ass. Initially. It's just I sit down and I would like to share my story and hear a bit about your life. That's what it is. And that builds relationship and trust. Well, you talk to prominent people in the field as well to sort of bottle their experience

21:30in a way and make that available to listeners. What's been the experience like of talking to these, I guess, communities organizing big beasts? Well, we've had a selection bias. We've been wanting to talk to people who think you can make a difference. So when we talk to... Are they good talking to people who think you can't? No, I could just... I could do that at home. But we spoke, and when we took on the five issues, we spoke to Professor support Collier from the Blavanting School of Government who had lots of examples of stuff that had happened locally out of that... The kind of fertilization between enabling central government and communities and wider areas that wanted to develop economically alongside the stories of people being left behind and talking about this terrible growth of... Well, let's call it hate and racism on social media, talking about what it meant like to have the right policy framework to set up local, responsible media that brought people together and spread information rather than misinformation.

22:34What it looks like, and to pay tribute to Canis's work in Grimm's speech, there's all the difference between the world, between the town that's angry about everything, because that's a vulnerable town in a funny way. And to town that's angry about two things that people can fix, like the housing. And talking to Baroness Valentine about how you get a community to come together and identify shared problems and then move on to solutions and find the resources to bring that in. So those are the sorts of conversations we've had. You can't really split off the community and the centre. There's an absolute flow of ideas and enabling or disabling between the two. I've just mentioned Baroness Jo Valentine. I want to know, but from both of you, who has been your favourite interviewer so far? Oh gosh, they're all different and they all brought different parts of things out. Oh, you're alive. What about when you interviewed? What about when you interviewed me, Canis? How was that for you? Let's take the question and twist it a tiny little bit there, because for obvious reasons

23:37you don't want to blow up some of these relationships you've made, if I can just... tweak you a question then. Who's your most surprising interviewer? Did somebody make you eyebrows off, hit the ceiling and go, oh my goodness, me, I didn't see that one coming. Or I'd never thought about that before or all. I do think talking to Jonathan Haywood about the modern form of ignorance, which is not lack of knowledge. It's false knowledge, it's fake knowledge. Yeah. I hadn't realised, I hadn't taken in how deep the replacement of local newspapers were reporting standards by racism on Facebook. How deep a change that makes for us. We hear that a lot from listeners writing in. There's a strange thing where people talk about what aunts used to be and what they are today. And I kind of recognise that. They used to go to your aunts place. I don't know if it's true. How are you doing, aunty? And she would give you something slightly unsuitable to eat or whatever.

24:39You'd have a nice time and now you go and she's on Facebook and just furious. Reggie. About some raging, about some conspiracy that is not even happening in people. In a place nowhere near where she lives. They're all like this. I think that's absolutely spot on. But because we're all about hope, we then went on to say, when a new general purpose technology like Radio came out, that caused huge political disruption in lots parts of the world, we set up the British Broadcasting Corporation. Where's our sense of possibility of ways of owning some of this? And I would say when we interviewed people, everybody, he was like an elephant, one had part of the tail, one had a bit of the ear. And so, you know, I remember, I think it was Paul that talked about government. It's all, you know, down to the government and it's down to money. So we interviewed Paul Collier, a professor at Oxford University, and he's taken it, was looking about money and it's about government. But when we spoke to Joe, she said, no, it's about structure and it's about long-term investment. And then Jonathan said, no, no, it's definitely about voice and it's the community.

25:41So each of them had a piece of the elephant. But I think we will consider the entire elephant. I'm not going to wait. It appears there is an elephant in this room. Quiet, quiet. Starting or growing your own business can be intimidating and lonely at times. Your to-do list may feel endless with new tasks and lists can easily begin to overrun your life. So finding the right tool that not only helps you out, but simplifies everything as a built-in business partner can be a game changer. For millions of businesses, that tool is Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the US, from household names like Gymshark, Rare Beauty, and Hines, to brands just getting started. Shopify has hundreds of ready-to-use templates that can help you build a beautiful online store that matches your brand style. And you can tackle all the important tasks in one place,

26:41from inventory to payments to analytics and more. No need to save multiple websites or try to figure out what platform is hosting the tool that you need. And if people haven't heard about your brand, you can get the word out like you have a marketing team behind you, with easy to run, email, and social media campaigns. To reach customers wherever they're scrolling or strolling. Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify, and start hearing. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com slash realm. Go to shopify.com slash realm. That's shopify.com slash realm. Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile with your summer price forecast. Now, unfortunately, we're seeing rising costs across the country with possibility that big wireless hates you 100%. Now, over here at Mint Mobile, we're seeing sunny skies and dropping prices every plan to just $15 a month. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.

27:42Up from payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12 month plan required, $15 per month equivalent to taxes in these extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow in network-as-busy. See terms. Ryan. Ryan. There is a dark side to this activism, right? Maybe that's the other in the room. Isn't Patriot platform exactly what you advocate just with values that you disagree with? No, I think it's built on two things. One is relationships, and there's all the difference between a relationship in a community and lots of people online just swapping stuff and being angry. I think the other is ideas and institution building in our national life. The long heritage of the beverage report includes the thinking that went on in the LSE, in the Fabians, in the Liberal Party, all sorts of other places. I just think we need to find... There's a solvent dissolving all of our real bonds with each other and all of our hope in building a better future.

28:45And on both of those fronts, I think we build those together. And as long as it's built around institutions and relationships, it's not like a Roman politics. Are you genuinely telling me that there isn't a sense in which the far right, actually, is incredibly good at finding the five leaders in the community that will make the difference for them and advocate for them and create a crowd? Why has the progressive side of things become so much worse at connecting with communities than the far right? A very quick answer, but I would see there's this more paramilitary thing where you've got a leader and you activate a lot. And the other thing is that there is a lot of Roman politics going on. There's a lot of very rich people buying mobs that we see. There is one dark side and it is money. One of the hardest things in the world we did in Roomsby is trying to get the institutions to put enough money down to have an organizer. So the seed money that goes into this work is almost non-existent.

29:49People are not investing in organizing and I think they should. That's the dark side. You've got to have a person that is willing to bring and stitch and knit the community together. And if you don't have that person, then institutions is counter-cultural. People don't naturally sit and work collaboratively unless you pull it together. The alternative model we see out there, Will and I spend a long time to connect service provision. There are some brilliant, brilliant service provision work going on out there. But their money comes through government. They can no longer argue back or have any views on that because their funding is coming from it. The institutions that we've tried to pull together through organizing have independent money. So the churches, for example, or the colleges, universities can put independent money in. Therefore, they're not afraid to take on political parties and say, this is what we want to do because next day the money's not going to get pulled. So that is the dark side of organizing. He requires getting cash and that's not the community doesn't have that often in a place.

30:53Well, I'd love to know what you both think about the Piddington example. So just the recap, the area of Piddington having its referendum on voting to leave the UK. 300 odd residents taking the ballot box, the vast majority of them saying yes. And all because I know and all because of objection to asylum accommodation happening in the area. I'm just keen to know what you think about that as an example of a community coming together, knitting together to try and force change. Well, I'll give you my first impression and then how it shifted if that's all right. So it struck me a bit like a kind of healing comedy remade for the age of arrows, man in the purple suit next or whatever. But I had a kind of reaction first. And then I remembered a lot of work I did in rural Warwickshire, dealing with mental health around there, but finding what a profoundly alienated way

31:54the asylum hotels have been set up for the local community. So instead of working with councils, as most people know and saying, here's a bit of money, can you take people on? Private companies have just plopped down, in this case, a lot of people originated from Hong Kong and Ukraine in an area in a well-known place to that area, without any regard to what the primary health could take on or the local school could take on. And we also know the interesting point that places with the highest immigration are not far from the most racist. It's where the change is most rapid. So if you're designed a kind of cluster bomb to go off and cause racism around or reactions around the communities, that would be the way to do it. And I think I'm... But then there are the examples when they do try to communicate with their local authority and get by and all you get is a better organized protest. That means you can't go ahead.

32:56And people don't change in their local area. I'm not sure that's the case. I think if you're working with, in this case, and you're following with resources into cities and larger towns that have existing communities and facilities, and you're having a dialogue, the whole thing can feel very different from that sudden that's closed. Everyone going, no one's told us what's happening. Look what's just happened. You couldn't imagine a way of better trying to create reactions on the country. So that was my second reaction to just think, actually... There wasn't a... Because Piddington is a place where we talk about the importance of communities is something that is close to your hearts. And Piddington, of course, the community of 350 people or so was basically told, we don't care what you as a community think. That whatever our views on the placement of asylum hotels, if we're talking about the importance of community, there is a point where we should probably say, what respect are communities due?

34:01And I mean, you've touched in it well with your sort of two point approach. Particularly, you know, Piddington's challenge was particular because the asylum hotel was going to be populated with roughly four times as many people are actually in the village itself. There's a very particular set of circumstances there. But the point I'm really driving at is at what point do communities deserve to be listened to, even when we might disagree with what they're seeing? Well, I'm going to let Kenese come in in a second. I just have to respond to Alex's herumphing of my earlier answer by saying that asylum-seeker hotels were always a bad idea. You didn't want just in the sense that for the people themselves, a hotel is like a holding space. And in Piddington's case, it's been, they've up the ante on the bad policy with an ex-military base. You know, the right thing of settling people in the country is not to group them together in an isolated place or a hotel. It is to find a path into communities. So that was to- But they don't object to that as well, Will. We have got to this place because exactly the same

35:03people were saying, take them all and put them in a disused military base. If it's good enough for our lads, it's good enough for them because they didn't like hotels and they didn't like HMOs. And then the moment you try to do that, they object to that because the truth is they don't want these brown people to exist. There's a totally in their community. Some communities are our households. Tell me how to talk to our small community. Two things. Two things. I'm going to give you the primer on that. The first is, you're right. There's a ratchet of increasingly crap policy responding to anger. Some people will always be angry. There's the whole world's difference between some people being angry and some people having the cover to see what's really disgusting behaviour is accepted as normal. And I think if you are having a conversation, particularly in this case with local authorities saying massive resources, hey, we're going to nationalize Circus staff. You'll have them to help. You know, you'll have real help on resettlement. You can have the conversation with your local community on that terms. You're then going to be back. These people we're talking about, it might hope would be, they'll go back to where they

36:06always were. The five idiots shouting at the back of the room before everyone removes them. Quiet. Quiet. I was talking to a police and crime commissioner, RIP, that roles were being abolished from the North West, who said that one of the things he did in his community was to go to the people running. I don't know if it was in a silent hotel, but it was certainly a combination for those seeking refuge. And he said to them, why don't we go out and do quite a visible display of volunteering with your residents? And it was all agreed and yes, they went out litter picking. And people in the local community were wondering over going, what's going on here then? And he was then able to say to them, oh, well, you know, these people are awaiting processing on their asylum claim. They're not allowed to work during that time, but they really want to help this community. And so they've come out with me today to do litter picking. And he said in that

37:07moment, either people went from kind of, you know, skeptical indifference towards asylum seekers to, oh, wow, brilliant. What great people. And those who were very, very hostile kind of got moved to neutral and harrumped the way and walked off. Whereas previously, there would have probably been people, you know, hurling abuse towards those people picking litter. So I wondered, is that a good example? Is that something you would commend is done elsewhere? Is that an example of the kinds of cross-community movement building that you think we all need to be thinking more about? Yeah, I think that, visibly, being seen doing good work is a good thing. I think I was actually in a asylum center yesterday and I spoke to a lot of the asylum seekers. And I think that when I talk to them about engaging with other institutions and doing good social work, they would love to do that because it develops their skills. It gets them into relationships with other people. Yeah. And I think the language, one thing that really strikes me is often when people have such

38:10horrible views about the other, they've never actually met them. They've never seen them. They've spoken to them, which comes back to have a cup of tea and talked to one another. It's so basic. But we find lots of reviews coming from a place where people don't have direct experience. When they do have direct experience, often that completely changes is so radical. I think you've got to find ways of interacting. So can I ask, is there any way of also delivering a little bit of tough love? Because some of this is privilege. I spent Wednesday. I spent a long time listening to people from that village being interviewed. And they were saying a lot about their fears of having all those young men there in a small town. Suddenly we're going to have hundreds of young men of fighting age as the term tends to be at the moment coming and going as they please. And then not a single journalist offered this simple challenge to them. What came and went when it was a military base? Bister Barracks, at its peak, had 20,000 squaddies living there.

39:17What was it? Was it old nuns coming and going back then? The problem is not young men. It's brown, young men. The unspoken assumption is that immigrants are here to do us ill and they're all rapists and criminals. That is what's going on underneath that. And if you went to them and said, okay, fine, we're not going to use it for that. We're going to make it into a mega prison, which is very secure. Would they accept that? Of course they wouldn't. If you went to them and said, we're going to make it a massive development with 2,000 flats. Would they accept that? Of course they wouldn't because it's about privilege. I live in South Burmese. I've got a halfway house on one side. A big prison opened. Same distance down the road from in 2012. No one asked me what I thought. I don't even get too big who moves in in the flat downstairs. Let alone being in a position of feeling that I can dictate to government where to put things that are into the public interest.

40:18Like everyone is going no, don't let any prisoners out. Build more prisons, but no one wants a prison in their area. Everyone says don't use hotels, don't use HMOs, but no one wants a big refugee asylum processing center in their area. Everyone says more housing, but no one wants their views spoiled. So that's what I'm asking. How do you have those difficult conversations? Well, you say to that community of 350 people, listen, you have to give a little. You can't just demand that nothing about your lily white, lovely Oxfordshire countryside existence ever changes. That's not a reasonable ask for years of community. I just thought a lot of these big problems that we're trying to solve are top down. They're lifted out of Westminster and then shoved into the community. And the community are consulted and there's a process of like tick box going on and people really don't feel like even if they express their views, it's going to go anywhere. Organising is an alternative where we stitching it the communities together and they have a chance to put some of their issues

41:22up, but we're not saying remove this or remove that. We're not trying to tackle gigantic issue, you know, problems. We're saying slice a bit of that and only put out to the politicians or people things that you can actually change. So when people die, this would use slice. Use your experience and tell me what's the entry point to this really difficult issue because we're seeing this again and again. How do we solve this lack of I guess social conscience, lack of people feeling that yeah, sometimes you've got to take one for the team. I don't see any of that anywhere. Can I just come in very quickly and say what that particular example shows is a complete breakdown of trust and relationships between communities and politics, which gets you into ridiculous stages where you get a rubbish policy like as I don't know, tells followed up any more rubbish policy and still people think more people are coming in even though more people are leaving. And the sort of work that you see Kines doing in Grimsby does two things.

42:25It gets people together in a position of leadership to start thinking about what they really want for their community or rather than being told they should be fretting about toilets or whatever it is this week and someone else's doing that. But then it leads to real conversations between communities and people with power. So in these are the trade-offs, these are the real issues, this is what's possible, this isn't what's possible. And that's a movement for away from being individuals screaming with rage about everything to having real connections within each other and then between the power and the community. And that takes you to a radically different sort of politics. Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile with your Summer Price forecast. Now, unfortunately we're seeing rising costs across the country with possibility that big wireless hates you 100%. Now over here at Mint Mobile we're seeing sunny skies and dropping prices every plan to just $15 a month. Give it a try at minemobile.com slash switch. Up from payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for 12 month plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes in

43:27these extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow in network is busy. See terms. I think consequences play out in the communities. So this more crime because what? Because there's no jobs because the housing is so poor. So what I'm saying is that if you go back to the root causes of a lot of the reasons why have we got silent because the boat crossings are coming over, why have we got prisons because crime isn't getting tackled. Organising starts at the very roots of that and says no actually population health theory tells us we need to tackle basic issues before they become a manifesto to gigantic issues. I think you're right, there can is. I think when you were talking both of you about social cohesion breaking down, that surely follows the social contract having failed. And I think it's very, very hard to keep social cohesion in a community when that social contract has evaporated for many people.

44:28You know, that's a written we've been doing quite a bit of work with the New Economics Foundation. We're looking at how many more hours you have to work to buy the same things now. And actually how many fewer hours you have to work in certain professions. So the overtime, this gap has just widened to such extraordinary levels of inequality. And that's if you're lucky enough to still have a job, which of course, the many of the communities you work in, they don't. So there is as much as there is total value in everything you're saying about community building and that grassroots resilience and stitching back together the fabric of the society that has also got to be the top down re-appraisal of what it is to have a social contract in this country because it feels that that part feels as broken as some of these communities feel. And that's why there's some podcast is so important, I think, though, because whenever we address any of these big issues, immediately there's a ginormous rabbit hole opens up and at the bottom of it

45:30is an insurmountable or apparently insurmountable problem or indeed set of problems that when you started explaining what you were doing, where you podcast, you started with that analogy of the elephant, when I will, you could see all the different parts of the elephant. But you're coming at these huge problems from the other end of the elephant scenario, if you like because you're looking at ways of eating the elephant, that's the cliche isn't it, you eat it one tiny bit at a time and you don't look at the huge insurmountable problem of eating the elephant, you go no, no, no, I'm just a bit here that we can deal with and you chip away at it and chip away at it and chip away at it. And without that approach, these insurmountable problems are going to remain in some way. And I think the answer I'm looking for is effectively the solution to bidding turn is you don't let it become bidding turn is that what you start having. You start having proper conversations and I think to what Kenny was saying about the importance of the local and national, you need to be able to see things getting better to have hope. I think you needed to see the

46:30miners' health support in the valleys before you could imagine an NHS, you need to be having conversations that about things you care about. I'm sure we don't tell. Rather than whatever agenda Elon Musk wants you to be talking about this week. Let's dive into the details then because this is a conversation that could go on forever in this room in particular, we could chat to you. I'm free all night. I don't think there's enough oxygen in here to keep us going for another 15 minutes. Give our listeners a bit of the details, where's the show? When's it on? Is there anything else that people need to know so that they can access it? Have you even got an official release date? No pressure here guys. Just a name check, the podcast is called, how do you solve a problem like everything? We're launching next week on the 25th of September, a day before my birthday as it happens. Happy birthday. It will be your birthday over the weekend to be able to hear us tackle first of all each other as we ask ourselves why the hell we're on this crazy quest and why we want you to join us. We'll be on all the major platforms and you can find us

47:33on Patreon as well. Do go and subscribe to the show. That means as soon as that first episode drops it will automatically appear in your subscription box wherever you get your podcast. We are going to be leaving of course links in the show notes to all of that and to Will and Kinesis Patreon as well. We really hope that you enjoy the show. So, listeners, once you've had a little listen, do give Will and Kinesis feedback. You can send it into us here too. Also, give us ideas for other guests that maybe Will and Kinesis can interview in series two. Now it's time to get into a dinghy of our very own and stop paddling across the Atlantic to get a flavor and perhaps some comfort from the craziness happening in the good old US of A. It is time, of course, for God, less America. Alex, what have you got for us? So, this week there was a session of what is known as the

48:44Major Senate Committee in America that went rather out of control by the end of it. Let's have a little listen to Democratic Senator Corey Booker who is talked over the potential presidential nominee and the chair of the Major Senate Committee Republican Chuck Grassley who sounds like he's 150 years old. That's why so my dog does when he's not being very well. Chuck Grassley. We don't have an FBI director. We have a lackey here who is using government and frankly, he's not even a good lackey, he's an incompetent lackey. He's like an 18 year old kid who wants to join a fraternity that he could never be a member of, doing keg stands and chugging with friends. He's an embarrassment to the agency and wouldn't qualify even to be an FBI agent, sir. He won't answer questions for a committee. He insults Democrats here and you don't step in. He has a little book by a side that he literally is using to try to intimidate people in the same way he intimidates reporters. He is a disgrace, sir. And the fact that we are not asking him, in fact, demanding him

49:49to answer the most best basic oversight questions is a further testimony to what is bad is not just that we have a rogue FBI agent intimidating reporters. What's bad is that we have Republicans in the Senate that are enabling him to do so. You understand, Mr. Director, why during the Kevin O'Harrings, I let people talk and talk because it takes longer to shut them up than it does allow them to talk. Now you go ahead and say what you want to say. I don't have much to say. This guy called me a thug. It's kind of ironic. He's running for president of the United States. He just got his 22nd campaign next. So that was Cash Patel, the head of the FBI being grilled. But why do you think this session got so heated and so out of control? You actually hurt Chuck Grassley, break his gavel. So what do you think it was that made this particular session just swing out of control?

50:53So we have a listen to Democratic Senator Dick Durbin set out the issue here. According to a memo issued this June, the FBI has lowered its hiring standards by dropping automatic disqualification for applicants who have stolen from fire employees paid for sex are engaged in bestiality. In July, you claim the FBI is quote, losing too many qualified candidates to the rigors of requirements from yesterday. So I just simply believe those who have previously stolen from employers solicited sex are engaged in bestiality. I qualified candidates that the FBI is the adult. Thank you for bringing this up so we can get to the truth of the matter. What we did was we did not want to punish victims of bestiality. We did want to go to the automatic disqualification for the FBI to consider you if you are a victim of these awful heinous acts. They still have to go to the same rigors standards and application process. Our standards have never been higher. We are not going to target victims and prevent them from

51:53serving in their capacity to serve this country. Listen to this. Maybe most motivated to serve. Listen to this. I work for. He's no longer protecting those who have been charged with bciality. He's protecting those who are victims. Just turned it upside down. No, you did. No, you did. Because you lied. What I'm reading to you is you dropped automatic disqualification for applicants who have been engaged in bestiality. Not victims of bestiality applicants who are engaged. Do you disagree with that? Applicants who have engaged in bestiality means they were victims. And at this FBI, we are not going to criminalize and prevent victims from serving the United States of America and the premier law enforcement agency in the world. They did that before. I eliminated the bureaucracy that prevented these great Americans from serving or at least being considered from serving and I'm going to continue to do that. Turn it upside down. So there you have it. The FBI has lowered its standards to allow people who have stolen from employers. So listed it sex for money or engaged in bestiality because they were losing too many qualified applicants to the rigors of yesterday year standards as he actually put it. Now even funnier,

53:02he actually reversed that position live on air because Republican Senator John N Kennedy stepped in to try and help him out and try to get him to explain what it was that he meant. And he is that exchange. What about the bestiality? Same thing because the raise wrote it up in a fashion before I arrived that addressed prostitution, bestiality, and trafficking. They were there before I got there. Tell me what it said before. It automatically disqualified any individual who participated on either side of it. Obviously we are never going to hire the criminal. The bestiality? Yes. So you disqualified the animal? Well, I don't think we have great canines but we're not going to disqualify. I understand. I'm trying to understand why you did this. And I understand the game. People try to make you look bad. So I'm trying to get to the bottom of this. So why would you, why would you, in life of the context and what we're going through

54:07and we're having tough time attracting agents, good quality agents, we all can trust. Why would you even get in to bestiality? We are not in to be silly, but a lot of these are the rules. You changed, you changed, but I'm trying to explain it. You changed the qualifications and mentioned bestiality. If Joe participated in bestiality, not as the animal, but as the human. Don't you like the automatic disqualified? If he voluntarily did it, sure. These changes didn't start with you. Somebody came to you and recommended. Yeah. Yeah. And when you saw bestiality, I say this with respect, why didn't you just say what planet did you parachute in from? Why do I want to leave? Well, that was my initiality. Why do I want to leave with my chin and get in to bestiality? That was my initial response, Senator. But they then explained to me and showed me cases. And so I thought they should be considered. It's not an automatic disqualification.

55:09But you're not telling us today that if a human being had sex with an animal that they can still be an FBI agent, no, are you? No, they can't be, can't they cannot. In fact, they ought to be in jail, right? They all are. They all are. Yeah, I see. Just given up. Yeah, wow. He just gave up by the end of that. It's like, so you're not saying this could ever happen. No, no, no, no, never said it. Never said it. So, I mean, Kashpatel, the gift that keeps on giving, going from kindest to least kind explanation, a Kashpatel had no idea what bestiality was going into this. Someone put a memo in front of him and he signed it. And he was realizing life exactly what it was he had committed to. B. Kashpatel has a cousin he would quite like to appoint to a plum position whose hazing ritual at college included an unsuspecting hamster of some kind. See, a story is about to break about Kashpatel.

56:19And he's on again, off again, relationship with a goat called Fifi. And I genuinely don't know which one of those is the case, but having listened to the exchange, it prompts me to say, say it with me. God, less America. Alex, I'm not going to thank you for that one. I'm going to bleach my ears now. Listeners, if you find something amusing from the insammacy over there that you think we should be highlighting, send it in to quietrightpod at gmail.com. Quiet, quiet. And that is the end of today's peace side. Our thanks again that we could remind ourselves who we were talking to before the dogs in the end and we're saying we're stuff right. I don't remember who I am. Thank you to Gideon Will and to all of you at home as well for our out and about for tuning in and listening and indeed enduring some of the stuff today. William Kinesh, you're very welcome to be here anytime you want.

57:22Thank you. Don't forget you can support our frankly prolific output over on kodasify.com slash quiet right pod. Of course we'll be back on Sunday with a more offbeat mix of news and views so please join us then. We love you Morden, Kashpetel loves. Quiet. Quiet. Quiet riots and audio production from Coolerheads written produced by Alex Andru, Naomi Smith and Kenny Campbell. Music by Marianna Sanquita, artwork by Samona Canelo, and edited by me Alex Reese. Quiet. Quiet. In the US there's a break in every 26 seconds but when intruders step near simply safe home security steps up. Stop. This is simply safe. Police are on the way. Using AI alerts US-based live agents help

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