 leaders and diplomats from 197 countries have descended on Glasgow for a conference build as the last chance to save the planet. This afternoon, Prime Ministers and Presidents gave their opening speeches. Tomorrow, the negotiations begin. I'll be speaking tonight to a climate expert about everything you need to know about COP26. In the second half of the show, I'll be joined by Ash Sarkar to discuss whether Twitter pylons are about to become illegal and a shocking story about racism atop flight cricket team. If you are new to the channel, do hit subscribe and please do send us your questions, your comments on the hashtag Tiskey Sour or in the comments box. Today Boris Johnson opened COP26. The UK Prime Minister welcomed representatives from almost 200 nation states. They are collectively tasked with agreeing to measures that would limit global warming to only 1.5 degrees. This is how Johnson described the conference. I was there with many of you in Copenhagen 11 years ago when we acknowledged we had a problem. I was there in Paris six years ago when we agreed to net zero and to try to restrain the rise in the temperature of the planet to 1.5 degrees and all those promises will be nothing but blah blah blah to coin a phrase and the anger and the impatience of the world will be uncontainable unless we make this COP26 in Glasgow the moment when we get real about climate change. Boris Johnson was of course at both the Copenhagen COP and the Paris COP as then London mayor now PM he suggested that while those conferences were about talk this one can be about action the blah blah blah line in case you were wondering was was borrowed from Greta Thunberg. So is Boris Johnson right for a lowdown on everything COP26? I'm joined from Glasgow by Simon Lewis Professor of Global Change Science at UCL. Thank you so much for joining us this evening. To kick us off is what Boris Johnson said correct is COP26 the moment the world collectively gets real about climate change? I hope so but I'm not sure. The leader's speeches from the rich countries were full of strong words but there were actually no additional new policies or announcements made so it was pretty disappointing start and actually the stage was taken later by Prime Minister Modi who basically has taken the first day with his announcement that they'll go to net zero of all greenhouse gases by 2070 and I think also very importantly get emissions down by a billion tons of carbon dioxide by 2030 so I'm sure I'm actually there as well. We're going to be sort of going through all the big players at COP26 who's pushing for what? First of all I want you to take us I suppose through the process because it can seem to me slightly confusing what is being negotiated of course countries come with their own non-binding commitments they said oh we're willing to go to zero by 2050 and 78% by 2035 or whatever that's not something negotiated the countries come with those so what's going to happen over the next 12 days what are they arguing about? Yes so you're right countries come with their pledges and every five years they're supposed to increase those because this was the five years after Paris and then in terms of the like their nitty-gritty of the negotiations then there are a whole host of issues which different countries are trying to push so India in particular and lots of the global south countries are pushing on loss and damage so how are you going to pay for all the impacts of climate change from the cumulative historical emissions by the developed world and of course the developed world only wants to have a dialogue on that whereas countries want actual from the global south want actual payment so there's discussions around that there's also the bits of the so-called Paris rule book the agreement around Paris that still haven't been decided and the really big ones there are on on transparency so will there be allow the UN to check what countries are doing and find out what's worked and what hasn't in terms of their pledges and also on on time scales so trying to reduce the time scales to make more action come more quickly and then I think the final thing will be on carbon markets so there's obviously a big push from the financial industry to get a big new carbon market going and there's going to be detailed discussion around countries who want big loopholes in that because they don't want to take climate action and also those countries that do want a solid agreement to make sure there are no loopholes and that these markets actually reduce emissions rather than just be aware of making money what do we end up with do we end up with with a document that you know has a subheading on phasing out coal and a subheading on money to developing countries what's what's what's the end product of all of this yeah so the end product of those negotiations if countries can all come to agreement will be a document a communicator a communicator I think but with with some legal standing and and I think it's important to to understand about the the cop from now going forward is that not only have we got these pledges from countries nationally determined contributions and the nitty-gritty of the negotiations we've also got all these like side deals going on and that's where Boris Johnson and the UK team really want to hope that they can start to bridge the gap between the emissions that have been that have been pledged and actually where we need to be in terms of 1.5 degrees C so there'll be a big announcement on forest tomorrow there'll be another one on finance and there's going to be another one on methane and there ways of getting emissions down that the sort of allied to but outside of the parents agreement so that's so side deals along the way as well that's really interesting yeah um let's talk in more detail about the role different countries are playing either in in blocking or enabling climate action on that front leaders from the G20 countries met on Sunday in Rome so a day before cop 26 got going at that summit there was disappointment at a failure to come to any agreement on coal the EU and UK had been pushing for a deal to phase out coal power entirely coal currently accounts for 44 percent of global co2 emissions this was Joe Biden explaining after the summit why he believed no agreement could be reached disappointment relates to the fact that Russia and and and including not only Russia but China basically didn't show up in terms of any commitments to deal with climate change and there's a reason why people should be disappointed in that I found it disappointing myself but what we did do we passed a number of things here to end the the subsidization of coal we made commitments here from across the board all of us in terms of what we're going to bring to the G26 and and I think you know as that old bad that old trite saying goes the proof of the pudding will be in eating I think you're going to see we've made significant progress and more has to be done but it's going to require us to continue to focus on what China is not doing what Russia is not doing and what Saudi Arabia is not doing that was Joe Biden blaming China Russia and Saudi Arabia for blocking agreements on coal Simon is that a fair explanation from from Joe Biden as to who is who's to blame for for climate inaction it's it's the other guys who caused the problem yeah well everyone thinks it's the other guys who are causing the problem as you ask most of the countries here at COP26 they'll say the big sticking point is that the United States has not stumped up the cash for the hundred billion dollars commitment to the global south that was pledged back in 2009 and still hasn't been delivered and the big stumbling block is the US hasn't come up with its fair share of that cash so everyone is blaming each other and there's no big push to blame China you know it does have a an at zero target and a and a peaking date of the 420 30 no countries are just not doing enough across the board but the the richest countries have the greatest cumulative historical emissions and are taking way more than their fair share of the atmosphere in the finite carbon budget we've got so should be cutting emissions much faster than they are and and that's what we need to really remember as we look at the kind of geopolitics of this there are kind of three uh a big kind of multi fractional groupings here of you know the poor and the income poor and the vulnerable countries and all the activists outside who are really calling for 1.5 degrees c the funding to make the transition and that this needs to be about equity and then you've got the climate records um the Saudi Arabia's and the rushes of this world the big exporters of fossil fuels who are just trying to delay action as much as possible and then you've got the really powerful countries around the EU and the US and also China who are looking to see how they can have a transition to net zero but on their own terms and that for the the UK and the EU and the US is around mobilizing markets and mobilizing the private sector to do this rather than public funds and then dragging everyone else along by um saying you can only access our markets if you also reduce your emissions for your experts um so there's a kind of complex tense um uh maneuvering at play around those kind of three poles of attraction let's look at a speech from a leader from one of those first groups so a country which is vulnerable to climate change and relatively low income which is Barbados um the prime minister of of Barbados today spoke in that hall to the delegates at COP26 and said the following the pandemic has taught us that national solutions to global problems do not work we come to Glasgow with global ambition to save our people and to save our planet but we now find three gaps on mitigation climate pledges or NDCs without more we will leave the world on a pathway to 2.7 degrees and with more we are still likely to get to two degrees these commitments made by some are based on technologies yet to be developed and this is at best reckless and at worst dangerous on finance we are 20 billion dollars short of the hundred billion and this commitment even then might only be met in 2023 on adaptation adaptation finance remains only at 25 percent not the 50 50 split that was promised nor needed given the warming that has already taken place on this earth climate finance the front line small island development states declined by 25 percent in 2019 failure to provide the critical finance and that of loss and damage is measured my friends in lives and livelihoods in our communities this is immoral and it is unjust if Glasgow is to deliver on the promises of Paris it must close these three gaps so I asked you what must we say to our people living on the front line in the Caribbean in Africa in Latin America in the Pacific when both ambition and regrettably some of the needed faces at Glasgow are not present that was me a motley the prime minister of of Barbados urging leaders to adopt more ambition than has yet been forthcoming um Simon some of the issues you mentioned were repeated there I want to focus on on finance first because I suppose this is what I find the most puzzling because there are there are loads of issues where I can see why it's difficult for a politician to to fulfill their commitments or whatever so Joe Biden for example he seems like personally he wouldn't mind you know weaning the states of weaning the United States of coal but he's now getting blocked in congress there's all sorts of vested domestic interests that make that difficult stumping up 20 billion dollars seems like that should be pretty easy right I don't really see why that wasn't just the first thing they agreed like six years ago then just did it like we're printing that much money every month uh yeah I I just I just don't understand how this is still a stumbling block and you know the Italy waited till the end of the GA the G20 summit on Sunday before announcing that it would increase its its contribution so it was relatively proportionate it should be giving and I just don't understand why this is a stumbling block in the same speech by uh the prime minister of Barbados and she also said that there have been 25 trillion dollars of quantitative easing including eight trillion just in the last two years over the covid crisis when something's important we can get the money to do it and I don't understand and that's why I think a real frustration is that for all the warm words there isn't really you know the appetite to really tackle this as an emergency like it is like they've tackled you know in the in the north um the covid crisis and before that the the economic crisis in 2008 you know the money is there um if we really want to do this uh and I just get very frustrated that um that it just seems to be so little movement and I suppose from the perspective of I mean you talked about you know an alliance between movements outside the conference and then smaller poorer countries inside the conference or countries especially vulnerable to climate change what leverage do they have you know what value is does it have for the the prime minister of Barbados to come to cop 26 is it just to get you know her voice heard on the world stage so that lots of people on television see that you know this is really going to affect lots of people around the world or or do countries like Barbados have bargaining chips when they go into these negotiating rooms I think the protest outside they you know and and the focus that it sets the time but it also does much more than that with these social movements in that you know the divestment campaigns I've got I think about 39 trillion dollars out of fossil fuels um the cost of capital for fossil fuel companies is going up and for renewables is going down and that's partly about social movements making it very difficult for those companies more difficult for those companies to operate and I think that those kind of movements of of what's politically possible and what's politically acceptable change the terrain for these much less powerful countries within the negotiations um so it does it does it does help and it does have an impact let's go back to Britain and the role of our prime minister the UK as Boris Johnson likes to point out has made some decent progress on phasing out coal but a lingering embarrassment is that while we encourage developing countries to completely abandon coal we haven't ruled out building a new coal mine in Cumbria speaking in Glasgow Boris Johnson was challenged on that discrepancy by the BBC when I was a kid 80 percent of our power came from coal when I was mayor of London it was 40 percent it's now one percent well let's talk about coal and that's an amazing that's talk about Colin I know everybody asks you this question but you're going to China you're going to India you're going to the developing world say phase out coal at the same time as not ruling out a new coal mine in Britain a new coal mine in Britain we started the industrial revolution we should have given you the statistics before you but why don't you just say we're going to we're not going to open them I've just given you statistics why don't we be clear on the coal mine the Chinese will say 80 percent we can't take this guy seriously well sorry the what they what absolutely everybody finds incontrovertible is the progress the UK has already made no I'm sorry to bang on about the call but the point is you kind of you know it makes you look no makes you look a little bit weasley not answering the coal question because they're going to go and you're talking about sorry sorry I've answered the call question and I understand that directly and let me say tell you directly okay we are yes I know on the coal mine you personally what do you reckon I I'm not in favor of more coal let's be absolutely clear but it's not a decision for me it's a decision for local planning authorities I think lots of people watching that will think your prime minister probably you you can pass some kind of legislation to take that out of the hands of of the local planning authorities but Simon how significant is that this was the first time that Boris Johnson has said he personally doesn't want any new coal in in the UK people have been saying this is a bit of a stumbling block to to the UK you know trying to show any moral leadership on this question if that's at all appropriate given you know how much historic responsibility we have for all of this anyway but do you see that as in any way a game changer that that answer there today I chose the pressure is under but I don't think it's a game changer because we need to look at the bigger picture here and that is countries like the UK done done a good job on reducing coal use for electricity production they haven't done much on anything else and crucially they've still producing fossil fuels still licensing this new coal mine more importantly the cambo oil field of shetlands and other countries are doing the same so the United States doing exactly the same on the one hand trying to cut emissions on the other hand producing fossil fuels for export and licensing new fossil fuels same with Norway and same with Australia so countries have to stop legislate to stop producing fossil fuels for export while going hand in hand with investing in the alternatives otherwise we're just never going to get out of this climate crisis the projections are that we're going to produce twice as much fossil fuels as we should be burning by 2030 if we don't get these fossil fuel production down then we won't be able to solve it because once it's sold it'll get burned somewhere and that you know leave it in the ground argument I suppose that you're making I I remember in fact I remember seeing you at sort of previous climate protests sort of like a decade ago leave it in the ground was a big slogan of those protests is that something that's present at these these conferences are there people arguing just say just stop digging up the goddamn stuff stop digging it up and exporting it and selling it is is that a demand that's being made at COP26 it's not people talk about because the United Nations framework convention on climate change rules are that you count your domestic emissions so all those emissions that occur within your territory what you're producing for export counts for somebody else and that's one of the one of the kind of problems of this architecture that you've got I mean it makes sense in the fact that your national laws cover your national territory but you really need to yeah pull in that production of fossil fuels into the equation as well otherwise everyone's trying to export it to everyone else and and we can't get out of this problem that's really interesting Simon Lewis thank you so much for for joining us this evening from COP26 I should have made that clear in the introduction that you are in in the conference building which is why we can see people walking walking behind you every now and again but yeah thank you so much interesting as always in what it is enjoy the rest of the the conference the right terms in any case I hope you find it very interesting yeah I'm gonna go get beer okay perfect um that does sound enjoyable um ash I've taken longer to bring you in than I normally would on a Monday night show what are your your thoughts on what Simon said what's what's your take on on COP26 so far Boris Johnson made a bunch of James Bond puns in his opening speech I mean look I think Boris Johnson's attitude which is cavalier and clownish is emblematic of how he has approached the issue of climate change throughout his career so I don't think that we should be looking uh to him for a signal of where this government should be going where we should be looking are where is where the pressure is coming from so looking at uh the youth protesters who are out looking at the pressure being applied by smaller and more vulnerable countries because Boris Johnson fundamentally I think at his heart is still something of a climate skeptic not in that he denies the science but simply he will only take this issue seriously if it's a matter of political urgency then another thing to think about when you're trying to judge what comes out of this conference and whether or not it's a success or a failure is that when it comes to climate change there is not the same amount of interpretive wiggle room as there is with other issues for instance so when we're looking at politics we normally look at compromise when you go off the compromise is more in one direction than the other that means that that side can counter is a win with climate change because emissions are cumulative it is pretty unforgiving so even if you've got a compromise which is more in the direction of decarbonization if it is not enough if it is too slow it means that we are still losing we are losing in terms of rising sea levels we're losing in terms of the increased frequency of extreme weather events and we're losing in terms of the displacement of people and the loss of human life so I think we've got to be pretty strict and unforgiving in the tenor of our own coverage of COP26 because you can see it in the tone being struck by the political lobby this is just an extension of diplomatic game playing for them they're treating it almost the same way as they cover Brexit which is who's up who's down what's at stake I think can get lost in that analysis of you know personalities and political gameplay so we really have to keep our eyes on the price which is a 1.5 degree increase in global temperature changes which is already pretty bad in terms of what's being projected from the commitments that have been already made going into this COP we're looking at 2.7 degree change in global temperatures which is of course catastrophic so we've already been sold out going in now it's about the pressure that's being applied within and outside of that conference no I think that's an important point and I think I suppose the analogy I'd use you say we shouldn't cover this as if it's like Brexit so who's up and who's down what we should cover it as and what we should hold you know the kind of standards we should be holding the government up to is is more like coronavirus so what you often hear from from Boris Johnson or anyone in in the government is say we're doing lots we're doing all of these things we're doing XYZ we've started to phase out coal we're investing a bit in green energy here and green energy there now in March 2020 I mean the government actually did this is why that was so catastrophic they're handling of it but a government could honestly stand up our government could honestly stand up and say look what we've done is already unprecedented we've asked people to work from home we've never done that before we've encouraged people to actually they didn't encourage people to wear masks we've encouraged people to only meet up with people if they really need to we've offered up some cash to businesses to close all of those things you know in the abstract were fairly big moves for any government but what we were judging them against wasn't how significant does this action look compared to past action it was is it going to prevent the catastrophe which is COVID-19 and then ultimately you know that was the standard we held them to they brought in a lockdown we need something of that scale right now now obviously I'm not saying we want a lockdown but I'm saying it needs to be the case that we are pushing as much money into this as we possibly can or as much money as is needed frankly not as not as much as we can just as much as is needed then we'll work out how to pay for it afterwards because the issue here is we are sleepwalking towards catastrophe and while Britain is by no means you know the worst offender right now in this period of time obviously historically disastrous but right now in this period of time we are doing a bunch of stuff doing a bunch of stuff isn't good enough when what you're facing is catastrophe you need to do enough and we're not doing enough let's go to a comment Oliver Kant with a five remember when Johnson snubbed and didn't attend a climate debate at the last election I do I do remember that um but that's that sort of signified two things which was one he doesn't or didn't care that much about the climate didn't want his policies to be scrutinized in that way you'll also remember from the 2019 general election Boris Johnson didn't just didn't want scrutiny in general he turned up to as few things as he possibly could let's go to our next story related but a little bit cilia with almost 200 nations attending thousands of diplomats meeting in any number of complex technical issues to be negotiated cop 26 isn't easy for any media organization to cover however genuine complexity doesn't provide an excuse for a mistake made by us giant cnn this week that's because in their cop 26 coverage they fell at the first hurdle they set up shop in the wrong city their star host wolf blitzer tweeted this morning i'm now reporting from edinburgh in scotland where 20 000 world leaders and delegates have gathered for the cop 26 climate summit cop by the way stands for conference of the parties it's the 26th time they have gathered to discuss and take action on this critical issue well thank you wolf blitzer for clarifying what cop means unfortunately you should have focused on where it was taking place instead of what the acronym stood for ashes they're going to be an intern going you know having a real nightmare today because they've booked studio space 50 miles away from where the conference was was actually taking place i mean it's a pretty hard mistake to make because people have been referring to cop conferences by their host city for ages now so we know it as the paris climate accords we talk about copenhagen we know it by the cities and glasgo sounds very different this belt very differently is pronounced very differently from edinburgh so i'm trying to work out was this a genuine mistake which is so bone headed that it's frankly embarrassing that an organization the size of cnn uh could conceivably make it that nobody went hang on are you sure it's in edinburgh and not the other big city that's in scotland um or maybe was it deliberate it was a sense of going okay space accommodation all this stuff's our premium in glasgo at the moment edinburgh a bit more empty not so far we can shuttle guests there and back enough um you know for us to get content out of it and we get the big castle in the background i'm trying to work out if this is actually a mistake or not because the mistake would be so stupid as to seriously stretch my credibility oh sorry my credulity not credibility although cnn have lost that too yeah yours yours is safely intact ash your credibility not your credibility um yeah i mean i suppose their defense would be yeah there's a shortage of space in glasgo but you'd have thought if they made a decision on that basis also they said joe biden flew into edinburgh apparently so they wanted to be there you know when the plane landed i don't know but you'd have thought they would then be quite careful in what tweets they sent out to make it you know if we're going to set up shop in edinburgh we might have we better make it really goddamn clear that we know the conference is in a different city and he definitely failed this morning that's the way he got rinsed onto it the thing the thing you've got to understand is that you know americans are dealing with a much faster country back home all right the distance between glasgo and edinburgh is what they drive for a taco bell and that's one of the reasons why their emissions are so high so i genuinely think that there is a chance that americans will like uh edinburgh and glasgo are kind of the same kind of the same place look at it on a map that's crazy that's like my kid's school and i'm just like fuck it i don't know i have an announcement to make um tisky sour is hiring two new staff members we're doubling um the the core team because we want to go nightly all very exciting we are looking for a researcher and a more technical role a live stream producer super exciting roles we're incredibly excited to be hiring hiring new people to be able to expand the show and if you are interested in applying first of all go look at the navara jobs page and second of all we are doing an online q and a question and answer about the roles on wednesday at midday so if you have any questions at all if you're considering applying for those roles do attend we'll tell you everything you want to know about what it's what it's like to work for navara media what we're looking for in someone going for that role you know and how you can make the best of your application the link which i have now found is navara.media slash join us navara.media slash join us let's go to our next story details have emerged about the government's planned online harms bill a new law intended to curb abuse and misinformation online according to the times the department for culture media and sport has accepted recommendations from the law commission that the characterization of criminal online abuse should in the bill be based on the likely psychological harm that online messages might cause to their victims this would be a shift from current law which defines illegal online speeches based on what messages actually contain so what's in the message not the effect they might have so currently it would include things like an indecent or grossly offensive content it would be a dramatic change what's more causing psychological damage will not be the only new offense in the online harms bill the times report a new offense of threatening communications will target messages and social media posts that contain threats of serious harm it would be an offense where somebody intends a victim to fear the threat will be carried out a knowingly false communication offense will be created that will criminalize those who send or post a message they know to be false with the intention to cause emotional psychological or physical harm to the likely audience government sources gave the example of anti-vaxxers spreading false information that they know to be untrue the new offenses will include so-called pylons where a number of individuals join others in sending harassing messages to a victim on social media lots of different kinds of online communication there which is you know potentially going to be criminalized misinformation causing harm pylons ash what do you make of this this is not you know this is briefings to the time this obviously they haven't published the bill but is it time to send twitter trolls to jail and criminalize pylons look i've been saying for a long time it's time to lock up michael walker your reign of terror online has gone on long enough it's time you go to real jail not just to a jail um i mean look when i'm very civil online i tweet a lot less than i used to it's actually made my my life much better i recommend it but you're yeah i've seen you're not that you need to tweet less i mean look it's when it comes to the pylon stuff this is going to be impossible to legislate and even more difficult to enforce maybe what it does is that it forces twitter into rejigging its algorithm so it directs people away from quote tweets it's just what it sort of shifted people towards and back into replies because this matter of what is a pylon what it means to participate in it and how you prove the intention is very very tricky indeed because yes you do have cases where you've got organized brigading all right where on a different platform you have trolls organized to harass abuse and threaten one individual or a set of individuals something that's happened to me and it's fairly easy to see where that's been the case all right there is a digital footprint which is left by people and so you can kind of tell when you've been a victim of that level of coordination and obviously social media platform should be doing more to stop that from happening all right that's a really bad use of the platform but a pylon where you know you get accused of participating in a pylon if you quote tweet in response to somebody's quote tweeted you first you've got MPs claiming that they're being bullied when people are quite politely saying hey why did you vote against an amendment which would have stopped you know raw sewage being pumped into our rivers what it means to be the victim of a pylon is unconscionably broad and I think there's room for an awful lot of cynical misuse of that we see people who tend to be protected to some degree by being part of the establishment whether they're politicians or whether they're journalists framing criticism and sometimes you know lighthearted insults as abuse harassment and a pylon and so I wouldn't want to see that outlawed far from it I think that that's actually a sign of a healthy and participative political discussion where all parties can speak back to each other so I think that this would be a very bad law if it actually came into effect I'm skeptical of the ability to draft this as a piece of legislation for it to be effectively enforced but even if it was just one of those laws which is sort of chucked into the atmosphere without any real expectation of there being prosecutions under it I think that this could have a real effect on how social media platforms function how they you know shape their own algorithms and I think that it would have a stifling and censoring impact on freedom of speech. We're going to look at the politics of this in one moment first of all if you haven't already do make sure you hit that subscribe button we go live every Monday Wednesday and Friday at 7 p.m. Given its implications for free speech one might have assumed this bill would be subject to widespread political scrutiny and debate however it appears that may not be the case in the wake of the tragic death of David Amos Keir Starmer made the following pledge at PMQ's. It's three years since the government promised an online safety bill but it's not yet before the house meanwhile the damage caused by harmful content online is worse than ever so we'll have promised to build on the desire shown by this house on Monday to get things done and commit to bring forward the second reading of the online safety bill by the end of this calendar year if he does we'll support it. What we're doing is ensuring that we crack down on companies that promote illegal and dangerous content and we'll be toughening up those provisions but Mr Speaker what we are also going to do is ensure that the online safety bill does complete its stages before this house before before Christmas and I'm delighted or rather that we do bring forward the bring it forward before Christmas in the way that he suggests and I'm delighted Mr Speaker that he is offering his support and we look forward to that. Really bizarre you'll note that what we've just told you about the online harms bill that's not even official information that's what's been briefed to the Times and that was only briefed today right and so weeks ago Keir Starmer was saying I'm going to vote for a law which you are or a bill sorry that you're going to introduce before I have any idea whatsoever is in it and this is you know this isn't like a a bill about what day the bins get collected this is this is quite significant because it's about criminalizing speech it's about you know determining what part of political discourse is and is not legitimate so you'd have thought he'd at least you know forensic Keir Starmer would at least want to read the bill before committing to vote for it. Ash what's what's going on here clearly you know a political decision was was made that this is not an argument Labour want to have so the Tories now have a blank check to put whatever they want in that bill. I think I think that there's sort of two core audiences that Keir Starmer is speaking to and he's giving his unqualified support to a bill which has I think a severe risk of curtailing a lawful political expression to audiences that he's talking to. The first audience I would say is a kind of amorphous you know network of concerned parents who've got concerns about the internet's impact on their kids but don't really know how to deal with it and those concerns I think are legitimate particularly thinking about the impact that Instagram has been having on teenagers and body mystus morphia this is something which has come out with the leaks contained within the Facebook papers and the testimony of Francis is it Horgan is that how I pronounce her name or is it Horne it's one of those names I've only ever read I'm so sorry but Facebook has been aware of the detrimental mental health impacts associated for their apps and essentially they didn't want to do anything about it because it could have you know risked even a smidgen of profit so I think that you know there's concerns that parents have are legitimate I just think that this very broad sweeping bill which I think seeks to allay those fears without getting into the core problems which is how do we have democratic oversight of these social media platforms that we've come to rely on so much is mistaken and misleading so that's audience one. Audience two is the culture that exists in and around Westminster where you've got a lot of journalists and a lot of politicians with a highly inflated sense of self who really do think that acting them as a form of attempted murder who are incredibly thin skinned who don't see their own action in demonizing individuals and particularly marginalised communities as being in the same you know level or order of harm as somebody calling them bald on the internet and I think that he's trying to you know get in quite nicely with these columnists who I think Michael me and you have had some run-ins with as well where we've had you know completely fatuous allegations of bullying simply because we've done things like stand up for our organisation and point out where we've been treated unfairly and these are the kind of people that Keir Starmer is speaking to people who are exceptionally thin skinned and don't want freedom of speech you're indeed a marketplace of ideas what they want is a stranglehold on the public discourse where they get to talk from the top of the mountain and no one gets to talk back. I mean it's also another one of those those situations where I think a focus group has told Keir Starmer that you know we want we want the political parties to come together there's too much disagreement and so he says ah I'll do what they want I'll stand up and say I agree with the government just which is not what you should do people think he plays politics because he plays politics if you disagree on you know on issues of substance people people won't think that it's things like you know saying oh actually let's close the schools when Boris Johnson has already briefed they're going to close the schools and not doing it before that that's the kind of thing that makes people feel like you stand for nothing also maybe pledging stuff and then breaking all of those pledges within a year also that makes people feel like you're opportunistic and don't stand for anything so the response to that isn't to say oh no look I'm not opportunistic I don't play politics actually I agree with whatever the government's going to do even though I haven't read it already that's that's not the correct response. Ash before we go on to our next story I'm told that your your cat is occasionally making you go out of focus so that your your cat is stealing the limer now some of our audience is going to think Michael's just getting bitter and angry about the cat again because we do have a history but this is I'm just I'm just passing on passing on information here but I've got no skin in this game okay cool let's go to our our final story an investigation by a top english cricket team into alleged racism in the club has exonerated an alleged abuser after judging that the term packy is just ordinary banter it's an extraordinary finding from a team in england's top league and the details only make it worse this is the story as written up on the espn cricket info site they write at least one Yorkshire player admitted to regularly using the term I'm not gonna say over and over again so the p word went talking to azim rafiq but he was cleared of wrongdoing on the basis that it was perceived as friendly good nature banter between the two players the player also admitted to telling other people don't talk to him he's a p word asking is that your uncle when they saw bearded asian men and saying does your dad own those in reference to corner shops despite admitting recalling that rafiq broke down in tears at one point the player insisted he had no idea he was causing offense and would have stopped if rafiq had asked the individual concerned is a current senior player at the club it really is an extraordinary story so espn that's the site we're getting this from report that lawyers who were charged with collecting evidence for the report found comments aimed at rafiq had been and i quote capable of creating an intimidating hostile degrading humiliating or offensive environment and they accepted rafiq's evidence that he was offended degraded or humiliated so those were the the lawyers who were collecting evidence for this internal report internal to to the cricket club but the panel who were charged with making conclusions and recommendations including you know would anyone be be disciplined for this they disagreed that panel included a non-executive member of the yorkshire board so according to espn the panel's conclusion state the panel does not accept that azim was offended by the other players comments either at the time they were made or subsequently they go on to say that in the context of banter between friends rafiq might be expected to take such comments in the spirit in which they were intended i.e. good-natured banter between friends so it was not reasonable for azim to have been offended by the other player directing equally offensive or derogatory comments back at him in the same spirit of friendly banter now this whole comments back at him elsewhere in the story they said oh this guy he's he's clearly he's clearly fine with racial epithets because he called another player as a zimbo now i'd never heard that term before for someone who's from zimbabwe apparently as far as i understand from from the commentary that's similar to saying an ozzy it's not similar to saying a paki right but in any case saying that this is just banter is ridiculous um ash um what what's your take on on what the hell is going on here i mean this is like the anti-grey richard keys sexism row all over again when clearly what you have is a very toxic culture in which bigotry is you know has the blind eye turned to it because it's seen as part of the banter and part of the relationship between men and that bigotry you know it's coded as humor actually has hugely detrimental impacts on people who are targets of it whether that's sexism whether that's homophobia whether that's indeed racism so the fact that it's so central to the culture in and around sports i think is very depressing and what you would have hoped is that uh you know yorkshire county cricket club would have shown some leadership and said you know what we need to wipe the slate clean we need to say no more of this we want to have a cultural change we're clearly a diverse club where people you know come from all sorts of different backgrounds and they need to feel welcome and that is is a real failure of leadership on the part of this panel and the fact that they deviated i think so uh dramatically from the findings of the investigation team and the lawyers i think also tells you that perhaps that they've got a particular interest in enjoying a veil over this culture rather than disinventing it with with sunlight and getting it out in the open tackling it head on and saying no more of this so it wouldn't surprise me if there was actually more going on to the surface perhaps more people implicated various forms of uh you know sexist or racist or indeed homophobic behavior and that's why there's an attempt to brush this all off as friendly banter and i just want to say this thing about friendly banter because you know what michael i'm i'm not in the business of trying to police how friends relate to each other okay everyone's got different levels of tolerance for humor which sort of you know treads these lines of offensiveness that's going to differ from friendship group to friendship group and that's perfectly fine but even within the context of friendly banter which involves a bit of teasing a bit of joshing a bit of making fun of someone i could say for instance your hair makes you look like tweetie pie that would not give you the right to call me a packy all right these are not of the same order and this whole business of well he would have been expected uh to take this in the spirit of friendly banter and the spirit in which it's offered well i think that anytime you mobilize a slur against someone you have to be pretty damn certain of how they're going to take in if they are indeed driven to tears as this cricket player was i think that's the point where you go no matter how i thought i meant this it was clearly received in a different way that is my fuck up maybe i won't go around calling people slurs all the time in the interest of cracking a joke but the fact is that didn't happen right that level of upset in the tears went ignored and indeed it seems that there was a pattern of these kind of jokes being made against this one particular south asian cricket player so i think that tells you something about how toxic the culture is and the stuff about friendly banter is just a flimsy excuse for why it is people have turned a blind eye to it for so long i mean it's also the victim blaming in this story is just maddening i say so it's that the panel not only did they say it's banned between friends but they said rafiq might be expected to take such comments in the spirit in which they were intended i.e good natured banter between friends so it's basically saying if he was offended not you know that's completely his fault and actually it's it's pretty um pretty unreasonable that he even he even got offended maybe he should just grow some thicker skin maybe the the unnamed player who abused him has has now been dragged through the mud just because he's too overly sensitive i mean it seems it seems extraordinary that that would ever get written down you know i could imagine that being said in a board room by some sort of racist reaction really people in the higher echelons of a of a cricket club but actually thinking that's a sort of legitimate thing to to write in an official report does kind of beg a belief i assume i know that the english cricket league or the english cricket board are going to come in and sort of have a look at this do you imagine this will be overturned dash well i think that if they've got any sense of pr self-preservation then it will be overturned because it is as you say so egregiously victim blaming that it it can't really stand up in the court of public opinion and rightly so one of the things i want to say is that we have a tremendously contradictory attitude towards racism in this country because on the one hand we have this idea that what racism is is when somebody says a slur so then if you don't say the slur regularly whether that's paki or the n word or something else then you go well i couldn't possibly be racist i just don't want my daughter to marry a muslim um you know so that's the one sort of end of it which is unless you say the slur you know you're not racist and then on the other hand we actually have a remarkably high tolerance for when people do come out and say racist slurs you had jeremy clarkson being caught on camera using the n word for a version of any meanie minie moe that i had never heard in my life which involved saying the n word you had carol thatcher uh margaret thatcher's daughter i think when doing some of the coverage uh for wimbledon allegedly referring to a tennis player of color as a golly walk um there is a tremendously high threshold for this kind of behavior because then when it comes out particularly when it comes out that this language was tolerated within quite elite spaces people start bending over backwards to start talking about how within that context it was okay it wasn't okay it absolutely wasn't okay and if it was okay then you wouldn't have reduced someone to tears in the first place if it you know was okay then you wouldn't have people saying why the hell is jeremy clarkson saying the n word you wouldn't have said people you know people decrying carol thatcher for the use of the word golly walk but that goes right to the heart i think of this you know i think very duplicitous understanding of racism that we have in this country one is we say it's all about the slurs we also have hypersensitivity when it comes to certain forms of language and then on the other hand when the slurs do actually come out we go oh it was just banter it was fine there was no you know real malicious intent behind it i don't actually care what your intent was if you're saying the word packy unless you are literally south asian and you're one of those people who think that should be reclaimed personally i don't think it should um but that's just the difference of opinion unless you're south asian you think should be reclaimed it's it's not for you to say ever zero context apart from if you're quoting it in the context of telling a new story about racism where someone said it but about the twist at the end of the show is going to be ash cancelling me um but no i also wanted to say that your hair doesn't make you look like sweety pie i actually really like it i think it's fantastic and very we've got a super chat on that look like cisco tad can't well with that's what it's going for 10 euros probably late to the party but what's happening to michael's hair i can't handle the change it was actually part of a very very incoherent um halloween costume i sort of hadn't prepared anything but my housemate is a hair colorist so you know i thought we'll go for that i kind of like it though it's probably it's probably not going to be permanent um let's wrap up there um obviously we we led tonight show with cop 26 we will be probably leading a lot of our our shows over the next couple of weeks with cop 26 we will have our members of the navara team up there our and we'll be producing some films from glasgo speaking to lots of experts and activists and politicians up there so do make sure you you subscribe to get all the up-to-date coverage of cop 26 which i am sure you are gagging for i mean it's a historic event it's genuinely you know it's an incredibly big deal it's hard to it's hard to to overstate it um ash sarca a pleasure as always to be joined by you and moosa on a monday well you know that you've got custody of us on friday as well when i will be covering for aron who is at cop so i'll be sandwiching your week michael i hope that's okay with you and we have actually one final super chat we're going to go to a a j thanks nm for covering this story didn't see it covered much elsewhere i'm of pakistani descent and have been called the p word when young and it's hugely dehumanizing and upsetting um really important comment thank you so much for you know for for sharing that um i should say i was i was reading that comment instead of which which meant i wasn't listening to the end of what ash said but i am incredibly excited that ash is going to be sandwiching my week and back here on a friday for now and we'll be back on wednesday at seven p.m you've been watching tisky sour on the bar media good night