 As we keep being told by the mainstream media, Britain is in the middle of a pandemic. It's a controversial term as some people think we should be focusing on the cases causing the pinging, not the pinging itself. However, the term does point to an obvious inconsistency in government policy. They've said we can reopen the economy because vaccines means infections are less of a problem. Yet at the same time, the mere possibility that one has been infected means one has to isolate for 10 days. It doesn't really make any sense. I'll be speaking to a scientist about how to solve the problem. As it's a Friday, I'm also delighted to be joined by Aaron Bostani. How are you doing, Aaron? Michael, I'm very well. How are you? I'm very well. Spent today preparing the show in the garden. I cannot complain. We have a bunch of other great stories for you tonight. We're going to be talking about Dawn Butler's ejection from Parliament. Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson, losing in court and a rare victory for renters over landlords. As ever, if you have comments, thoughts about the show, do tweet us on the hashtag TiskeySour and send us your super chats. If you haven't already, hit that subscribe button. Britain's pandemic has continued to cause chaos with over 618,000 people told to self-isolate by the COVID app in England and Wales over the past week. Now, that is hella inconvenient for everyone involved. It's also had a severe impact on the nation's economy. Now, that impact has included dozens of councils suspending bin collections, many small businesses having to close, and most visibly, empty shelves in some of Britain's supermarkets. You can see here some footage from Wales. Now, those empty freezers, partly that could have something to do with the heatwave we've experienced, people are also saying that Brexit could have something to do with the lack of goods on certain shelves. But it is undoubtedly also because absences in food distribution companies reached 20% last week. In response, the government has announced some workers in the sector will be exempt from isolation if pinned. Instead, they'll be tested daily. So long as they test negative, they can continue going to work. This is Environment Secretary George Eustice explaining the move. Well, we recognize that there are some staff absences in the food supply chain. So what we're announcing is that for the top sort of 400 or so sites, things like supermarket depots and some of the key food manufacturers, we're going to change the system and enable them to test to return to work. So somebody who is contacted in future by test and trace or is pinged will be able to have daily contact testing for seven days and able to carry on working provided their test remains negative. There will be probably, you know, close to sort of 10,000, possibly more staff that are working in these types of environments. We're talking principally here, the supermarket depots, the distribution centres, where all of the work happens to get food out to those supermarkets. It doesn't include stores itself because that would be a big departure from the approach we have now. But certainly this is going to go a very long way to getting the food supply chain working. That was George Eustice explaining how the rules surrounding contact tracing will be changed to keep food on supermarket shelves. Of course, many will wonder whether he's coming at the problem from the wrong angle. They'd suggest the problem isn't so much that too many people are getting pinged, but there are too many cases. Of course, if you get pinged, that's because you've been near a case. If we didn't have so many cases, we wouldn't have so many pings. On the number of cases, we had some new data released today from the Office for National Statistics. That's on the prevalence levels of COVID-19. As you'll know, if you watch this show, regulate the ONS data, the ONS statistics, that's not people who turn up to get tested because they're symptomatic. This is a survey of the general population. It should be very accurate with a representative sample of how many people have COVID. They estimate that in the week up to the 17th of July in England, one in 75 people had COVID-19. In Wales, that was one in 210. In Northern Ireland, one in 170. In Scotland, one in 80. Those figures for England alone would mean 741,700 people were positive or were COVID positive last week, which puts the 600,000 figure of people being pinged in some perspective. There is a lag in the ONS data. The NHS data is more up to date. Some people have taken spirit from the fact that today, actually, cases are down. They have been going down for the past couple of days. There were 36,000 cases today, which is down from a peak of 55,000 on Saturday and 52,000 on the same day last week. Now, personally, I wouldn't get too excited about this. I think it would be dangerous to overinterpret that drop. It looks to me that this is the Euro peak sort of trailing off the people who caught it at the final or caught it watching the Euro final. Those people have now gone through the system. I would expect there to be some kind of freedom day peak down the line. Whatever does happen, though, what is certain is that COVID cases will remain very high for a long time unless there is a dramatic shift in government policy. To discuss what this all means for self-isolation, I'm joined now by Alex Crozier, who's a researcher at UCL who's published on the use of testing and isolation in Britain's COVID response in the British Medical Journal, the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine and the Guardian. Alex, faced with a pandemic, is it time for Britain to change its self-isolation rules or should we focus on pushing cases down? So obviously, everything gets very hard when cases are so high. But I think, like you said, just there, the only thing that really is going to reverse that exponential growth now is radical change in government policy, as in realistically a return to step two or possibly step one, a lockdown. I don't really know whether anyone wants that or is comfortable with that or that is of benefit. So certainly, we do need to re-evaluate where we are in the epidemic. Vaccination has changed everything. Transmission while concerning is no longer as great a concern as previously. And I think now, yeah, we need to sort of move away, I think, from the sort of full-scale national emergency sort of response and thinking and more towards re-evaluating harms, rebalancing those harms. And I think that, and we now have the tools to do that with lateral flow tests, I think there was a promising pre-print out today about lateral flow tests used in schools, where instead of isolation, school contacts were took a lateral flow test every day for seven days. And while this trial is really quite complex, as it wasn't this clear change, but there also wasn't a marked increase in transmission. And so they were able to basically prevent kids, basically mass quarantine of children without really noticeably increasing transmission. And so that is of significant benefit. And then if you basically apply that to the rest of society, then there's clearly benefits to be had on a social level, on an economic level, and on a health level. I think it is time we move towards such a response. That study that you mentioned there from Oxford University has made waves today in the media. I've heard it mentioned a lot. I think we can see a headline here from the Times right up of it. And as people are suggesting, what this study claims to show is that replacing quarantine in schools with daily lateral flow tests could mean that there is what the kids miss school and that we don't get much of an increase in cases. People are suggesting we could apply this now to the rest of society. It has, however, been criticized by a number of scientists as well. Deepty Gudisani, who we had on Monday's show, said in response to this Oxford study, in essence, we can't conclude anything at all from this trial because of its extremely poor design. It literally tells us nothing at all. Also worth noting that most of this trial is based on pre-delta periods. And also when infection rates in children were much lower. John Deeks, who leads Birmingham University's test evaluation research group, we've also had him on the show. He tweeted, daily testing in school study report is out. But presentation by BBC here is spin, spin, spin. The trial failed to show convincing reductions in school absence and could not rule out large increases in COVID transmission. Sensitivity of the test was 53%. Alex, our audience can guess because you mentioned it in your previous answer. But I saw also on Twitter you were defending this study. Why do you think the critics of it are wrong? So I think that there's a thing in medical evaluations called equipoise, which is where basically there's harms on both sides. And so the harms of isolating healthy children are significant. We've had school closures, we've had basically mass quarantine of healthy children. And so one of the sort of certainties that was found from this trial was that only 2% of contacts in in school tested positive or under 2%. And so when you think about that, then you actually have to recognise that 98% of contacts being isolated in school are being isolated unnecessarily. And then we have to consider that COVID is in the vast majority of children a relatively mild disease. And we have, like I said earlier, we have to sort of re-evaluate our response here and cases are going wild. And is it really proportional from September all the way through to next spring to continue mass quarantine of healthy children? And so like I sort of said, these sort of cluster randomised control trials are very hard with testing to produce sort of really obvious and significant data. But the very sort of nature that they didn't find an increase in transmission, but they did manage to reduce total time off school. I think personally is very promising. And yeah, there will be critics. So Professor Deeks there obviously said the test has 53% sensitivity, but I think that's figure is basically meaningless to be quite honest. So to start with, we are really what the purpose of testing is to interrupt transmission. And so in a, yeah, we have these sensitivity figures and they're normally useful when you're in a trial, which is actually evaluating onwards transmission, that is the primary at endpoint, not the sensitivity of a test. And also, so viral load obviously goes up and down like that. And so these tests were done not on the optimal day that the PCR test that was comparing to, sorry, was not done on the optimal day to really get a sensitivity figure. So I just think that figure is somewhat meaningless and shouldn't sort of be broadcast. I don't think but yeah, I think it comes down to an argument of how much do we value children's education? How much do we value children having support structures in school? It's not just about education and exam grades and things like that. People, children go to school to receive food often, to stay away from abusive parents and to have fun with their friends. So if we can reduce the total time spent off school, I think that's really beneficial and not just for the UK, but also for the rest of the world. UNICEF and the World Health Organization say that school closures and mass quarantine has had huge, huge harms that will go on for decades, basically. And so if there are ways to mitigate those harms, I think we should use them and we do now have the tools to do that. I've seen on your Twitter at ScienceShare, I do recommend a follow. You've been sort of positing as well as you have in your published work sort of different ways to handle self isolation and disease control in the long term. Obviously, this is a huge topic of debate now. Many people suggesting this is going to become an endemic disease. Huge questions over whether or not vaccination makes it a mild disease, huge disagreements when it comes to long COVID among children who, as we understand, are not going to be vaccinated. Thinking sort of in the longer term, in the months and even years ahead, I mean, how from your perspective is contact tracing and self isolation going to play a role? Is there a point at which, from your perspective, we just end contact tracing altogether? We just say this is now just like any old seasonal flu and no one should have to self isolate unless they're actually sick or will there still be a role for contact tracing and the like? I think there will become a point at some point in the future when we drop sort of mass community-based testing and contact tracing. I don't think we're quite there yet. I think there's a long way to go and we certainly have to get through this winter first, I think. But yeah, it's more about, you know, this, I mean, I'm hesitant to use the word endemic. It's not really endemic yet. We're not really at that equilibrium, but we are at really high cases and they're not coming down and they're not going to come down in Europe or anywhere in the world really at any point soon. And so we have to basically accept that situation and adapt the response with regards to that rather than, I think at the moment, we're sort of, it all comes back to, I think, not moving away from the sort of emergency response and we're still sort of focused on PCR testing and testing every contact. And there's now a sort of, I mean, I've been seeing it for months personally, but I think there's now a growing sort of movement to move to rapid tests for symptomatic cases. And so speed is really key for this virus. So delta variant often spreads from person to person in two, three or four days. And so a test where you're waiting for the result for 24 hours is somewhat meaningless. And we know the symptom profile is very different for the in a vaccinated population and with the delta variant. So we need to be testing for the full range of symptoms and we can't really do that with PCR. And so it's all about sort of accepting the realities of where we are and going with a sort of harm reduction approach and, you know, aligning sort of testing and responses with people's lived realities rather than, you know, this hypothetical sort of perfect sensitive test, but it takes days to get the results back. I think is, we basically need to move away from that and accept where the population is, what people really want, how long this is going to go on for. So realistically, probably at least spring next year. And also we now have other respiratory viruses to deal with. So due to the lockdowns, we have waning immunity. And so RSV is currently raging hard. It's ripping through health services and other places. Flu is expected to come back hard in the winter. And so the winter, I think, will really be challenging. And so yes, we need to control COVID transmission to basically make everything easier. But it's not quite as easy as just, let's get rid of COVID and all our problems go away. We're now in sort of the realms of complex disease ecology. And, you know, I don't think it's quite clear that just controlling COVID with a lockdown is the best way forward. Alex Crozier, thank you so much for speaking us today. It's really good to have different perspectives on this show. I know there is a huge plurality of opinion in the scientific community at the moment in terms of what to do. So it's brilliant to have you on. Thanks, Armin. I want to bring in Aaron at this point. Aaron, your thoughts on the pyndemic. It's a very controversial term. I've seen lots of people on Twitter sort of saying, do not call it a pyndemic. The problem is cases there is not a pyndemic, there is an epidemic. Is it a word that you're comfortable with using? Obviously, you had nothing to do with the title of the show. Should I have included it on the thumbnail? Well, when I saw the title, Michael, I was very worried. I thought that we've got a Tiskey cancellation masterclass incoming. But no, I think you're also talking about two substantially different things. So there's the pandemic. And there is the fact that we have this techno political response to the pandemic, which isn't a lockdown where lots of people receive notifications, push notifications through their phones. And that in itself causes a multitude of problems. And we need to call it something. And with a great deal of poetic creativity, it's been called a pyndemic, you can call it what you like. I don't think it means you're belittling the fact that 130,000 people have died from the COVID-19 pathogen in this country, and of course, millions worldwide. I think, so the title for me, Michael, don't worry, you know, you're very good at this, you know, you tune out of being canceled. I mean, sometimes I think you're wrong, but you're good at tuning out. And that in itself is a skill in the 21st century. In terms of the, I wouldn't have done it, but whatever. It's not a cardinal sin. In terms of the pyndemic, in terms of this techno political response, I mean, what I find really interesting, Michael, is the exception that's being given out to these 10,000 food supply chain workers. This, again, you know, sometimes, you know, I wish we could interview Slavoj Zizek to say this, sometimes you get these moments where they pull back the curtain, and they say, these are the people who create value in society. Logistics workers, food supply chain workers are huge examples of that. Care workers, cleaners, without these food logistics workers, none of us will be able to get food. Society would collapse very quickly. And so it's a really revealing thing for me, Michael. The exception isn't being made for big, big, big dealing city lawyers. It's not being made for bankers. It's not even being made for Instagram influencers and celebrities. It's being made for the people that all of us really depend on, which is food supply chain workers. And guess what? Many of those people are on minimum wage, or on less than living wage. Many of them are working in poverty. Many of them aren't saving up to have a pension. Many of them can't afford to have children. Many don't own their own home or don't have secure tenancy. So really, really revealing. The people our society needs the most, and we know that because we've literally got the government saying the rules which apply to all of you don't apply to them are the very same people who, on the other hand, is told, well, you're only worth £10 an hour because your job isn't that important. Which one is it? As a socialist, of course, we know it's the latter. In terms of also the broader points about the pandemic, I made some notes here. I thought it was a very good guess, Michael. As ever, you've fished around very well. I thought some really revealing points. For me as well, coming out this crisis moment, and we are out of a crisis moment, I don't think we're going to go back to 1800 people dying a day, unless there's a new variant. Which can happen, right? I don't think people can discount that, but it seems unlikely at the moment. I think we had 80 die the other day. I think that was bad enough. I think that was also totally unforeseeable at the beginning of 2020 and would have been rightly called a disaster. But if you look at, for instance, a scenario like tourism, you may now have a situation where people put holidays and so on and so forth, and they get a ping the day before they go or whatever. And you might say, so what? That's fine for a year. We can put large bits of the economy on ice for a year. You can't do it for five, 10 years, which is effectively what that so what is saying. You need a different response to that. Now, that's not to say we let everybody have it, of course. But I think it's that the policymakers, technocrats, business people, politicians, community leaders, et cetera, influencers, thought leaders to say, well, how else can we manage this in an effective way? Which doesn't do that kind of damage. Now, I've always said, look, we put public health, of course, above the economy. But if you're willing to say, well, actually, I have no problem with effectively global tourism collapsing for a decade in a country like France or Italy, that's millions and millions of jobs. And it's no exaggeration to say that would have huge profound political and socio-economic consequences. It would lead to things like political volatility, the rise of political extremism and so on. I don't think that should be taken lightly. So that's so what is a really key point, Michael, because this stage we're entering now, I think we could be in it for five years. And it's only when you actually step into it, you recognize that. It's easy to speculate. But looking at where we are now with the notifications and so on, not having the lockdowns, most people being vaccinated, clear distinction between the global north and the global south, there are big sectors, hospitality, like I said, tourism, where you think they've got no future unless we think about this in a really sophisticated, mature way. I'm going to show just one more bit of information for you on COVID because it's, I think it'll be a preview of what we'll probably be talking about next Friday, which is the age breakdown that you get in the ONS statistics. It's often the most interesting part of their reports. And what this is showing at the moment, there are some signs of hope in there, which is school-age children, cases among them is leveling off, albeit at a very, very high rate. So 2% of secondary school children were last week COVID positive. So that's a huge number, but leveling off, obviously, the summer holidays are about to start. So lots of people will be looking to see if those rates decline. And then the big worrying part in that breakdown is ages year 12 to age 24. So that's essentially 18 to 24. Last week, 3.5%. This estimate suggests would have tested positive for COVID-19. Now what happened on Sunday and isn't yet reflected in these statistics is clubs opened. So potentially you had a lot of people who were aged 18 to 24 dancing and in closed spaces with 3% of them having COVID-19. So we will be looking very closely to see in what direction that line goes over the next seven days. I'm going to go to some comments. Reese with £10 says, instead of addressing the unsafe working conditions we are working in, the government are going out of their way to redevelop the app to benefit employers, which will allow them to exploit us more. I think a lot to be said about that comment. I did hear, I think it was a union boss for one of the rail companies who was very worried essentially that you're saying, look, my workers are being told that while it's still the right thing to do, the sensible thing to do to self isolate for 10 days, they're being told that if any of their colleagues get infected then they should come into work. Now there are some scientists that say actually that doesn't make it any less safer than it otherwise would be, but they're pointing out the contradiction in this particular policy. One thing that's especially outrageous I think about this policy as I understand it is that you're going to be allowed to go into work because you're an essential worker but you're not allowed to do anything else. So they're essentially saying for this 10 days it's safe enough for you to go into work but don't you dare go and socialise with people. Now for me there is really a social contract that's been broken there. You cannot tell people they have to go to work but yet they can't do any of the things that make life worth living. I think that's fairly appalling. A couple more, Valerie Camru with 4.99 says according to the symptom study data today, estimated number of active cases is 710,000 not inconsiderable. Yeah that would be a lot of cases that would be kind of in line with what the ONS are saying so that would make sense. And Jay Caprario says my tune of our t-shirts arrived today, lovely stuff. I hope you enjoy the t-shirts, thank you so much for purchasing those. If you want one of your own or two of your own you can go to navaramedia.com, navaradotmedia.shop. Britain's political system is pretty goddamn weird. We're a country which calls itself a democracy but we have hereditary peers who can influence our laws. We think of ourselves as a modern nation but legislation requires royal assent and as Labour MP Dawn Butler discovered this week we have a House of Commons where you can lie with impunity but you get kicked out if you call someone else a liar. Madam Deputy Speaker, poor people in our country have paid with their lives because the Prime Minister spent the last 18 months misleading this House and the country. Peter Stefanik from the CWU has over 27 million views on his online and let me tell you some of them. He highlights that the Prime Minister said the economy has grown by 73% it's just not true. Reinstated nurses bursary just not true. There wasn't an app working anywhere in the world just wasn't true. Tories invested 34 billion in the NHS not true. The Prime Minister said we have severed the link between infection and serious disease and death. Not only is it not true, Madam Deputy Speaker, but it is dangerous and it's dangerous to lie in the pandemic. And I'm disappointed that the Prime Minister has not come to the House to correct the record and to correct the fact that he has lied to this House and the country over and over again. Order. I'm sure that the the member will reflect on her words just saying perhaps correct the record. Madam Deputy Speaker, what would you rather a weakened leg or a severed leg? You know at the end of the day the Prime Minister has lied to this House time and time again and it's funny that we get in trouble in this place for calling out the lie rather than the person lying. Order. Order. Order. Order. Can you please please reflect on your words and withdraw your remarks? Madam Deputy Speaker, I've reflected on my words and somebody needs to tell the truth in this House that the Prime Minister has lied. Under the power given me by standing order number 43 I ordered a member to withdraw immediately from the House for the remainder of the day sitting. I call Tom Randall. Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker, on perhaps a slightly lighter note I hope. That was Dawn Butler getting ejected from Parliament for repeating things said by Boris Johnson in the Commons and pointing out they weren't true. I'm delighted to say Dawn joins me now. Thank you for joining us this evening. My first question for you, I mean some of our audience I imagine will be surprised that you can get kicked out of Parliament for pointing out that what someone else said in Parliament wasn't true. Did it come as a surprise to you or were you were you quite aware that what you said there was going to get you kicked out of the House of Commons? I knew that I was going to get kicked out. I know that it's Parliamentary protocol but it spans back to a time that you know Parliament can be very antiquated. It's got all these old sort of traditions and this is one of them and it spans back to a time where it was obviously a gentleman's club and people were quite honourable and you wouldn't dare lie to Parliament or mislead the House and there were things you weren't allowed to do so you weren't allowed to call people a coward or a git or a gutter snipe. You know I mean gutter snipe? You know things have changed a lot since those days and I feel that it's really important that we highlight how Parliament works but also the dangers of having somebody in power who doesn't tell the truth because it leads to such corruption and we've seen that. I mean all of this is very orchestrated you know all of this lying all of this stopping our democracy from functioning has been uh Boyce Johnson's um I'm only from the very beginning and that's because they saw an opportunity to be as corrupt as they possibly could. I mean if this was happening anywhere else in the world the UK would be sending overseers to go and have a look at corruption in other countries. They siphoned off so much money for their mates and left this country like poorer. We've had a hundred and you know 30,000 people die from Covid and some of those people didn't need to die. It's it's shocking really what's happened to our democracy over the last 18-19 months. And do you think more MPs should do what what you did because on the one hand obviously it's harder to call Boris Johnson a liar because you might get kicked out of of the House of Commons. On the other what you said yesterday has got way more attention than it otherwise would because you broke this archaic code. So do you think more and more MPs should do a sort of I'm Spartacus thing and stand up and call Boris Johnson a liar until there's there's no one left in there? I think that would be amazing if that happened just just so that it would force Boris Johnson who is our Prime Minister to tell the truth? I mean how basic is it that we're asking the Prime Minister to stop lying? And the thing is he drags everybody else with him you know saying that the scientists have said quite categorically that we have severed the link between the vaccines and death than hospitalisation just isn't true and it's a dangerous lie because it makes people act a certain way feeling that they're completely completely protected when they are not. It's dangerous you know these lies are dangerous it's not just about sort of embezzling money you know this is also people's lives that we're playing with so it would be great if you know MPs did that it's not an easy thing to do it's it's quite nerve-racking and you know when I was asked to leave and then I was then told I had to leave the building I wasn't quite ready for that so it wasn't an easy thing to do but I'm glad I did it and I don't regret it because somebody needed to point out that the Prime Minister comes to Parliament and lies and nothing's done about it but I can't say that he lies in the very place that he's lying why should I stick by the rules I mean this is again the ammo of this government they expect us all to stick by the rules that they don't respect they don't respect the rules they don't stick by them you know there was a time if a minister was found guilty of bullying a civil servant they would have to resign or if a minister was found canoodling in that's you know in the office they would resign they would have their own self-respect to resign none of that happens anymore nothing like that happens anymore it's like all the rules have changed we're living in this Alice in Wonderland topsy-turvy world it makes no sense and it's dangerous the response to your your intervention on social media has been pretty overwhelming millions of views on on the video lots of people surprised that you can get kicked out for for saying you're lying lots of solidarity what's the reaction been like in parliament and I suppose especially from your side from from the Labour Party you've got any any messages of solidarity from from Keir Starmer or anyone else on the front bench well it's interesting to see isn't it it's interesting to see those who are showing solidarity and support and those who you know are being obnoxious let's say you know on all sides of the house I mean I must say like the deputy speaker had no choice but to throw me out of parliament you know that's parliamentary protocol so she had no choice to throw me out of parliament and I'm I'm cool with that you know it would you know Michael you know I like to tell the truth it would be nice to have a bit more support I'm not going to lie but it's fine at the end of the day I you know put forward a new coronavirus bill highlighting the fact how authoritarian this government has become and how we can't afford for that to continue I'm fighting the government on the data grab that they're doing and you know I'm working with lots of different people to do that you know amnesty liberty you know the good law project doing absolutely phenomenal work byline you know I'm working with lots of different people to to highlight you know the dangers of this government and that's fine that's what the people the good people of Brent have elected me to do and I will continue to speak truth to power that's what I'm here for I'm not here for an easy ride I'm I'm here to hold this government to account and finally Dawn there'll be I mean I'm sure almost everyone in our audience loved watching you stand up there and call out Boris Johnson for what he is and you know the fact that it got more coverage because you then got kicked out is only a good thing a cynic might suggest or not you don't have to be a cynic to suggest this but the public doesn't seem to care that much that Boris Johnson is is lying and so there will be some people who say look he might be a liar but strategically pointing it out hasn't achieved much so do we do we need to move on from calling Boris Johnson a liar or do you think that we just haven't tried hard enough and and if we do make an issue with the fact that he has a habit of telling untruths that will will ultimately end up being his downfall so we know that it's baked in to the Boris Johnson brand right and people bake in the fact that he lies and they're like oh yeah well you know he's always lied you know he got sacked from being a journalist for making up quotes we know he lies you know he got sacked I think in 2004 when he was a junior minister for lying so people like sort of say oh well it's all baked in he's a liar and it doesn't matter that much to some but actually I think yesterday and the reaction has shown that there are a lot more people who actually don't approve of the fact that our prime minister is such a liar that they can see the consequences of those lies whether it be in the 130,000 people who have sadly died from Covid or whether it be empty shelves in the supermarket they can see that actually Boris Johnson's lies has consequences for all of us I mean we're not married to the guy right so thank god so like you know if he wants to lie to his wife or his friends and family yeah that's his business but he's in a position of power as the prime minister and he is lying to the country and that's just not on and I think people are like well actually you need to stop lying or you need to step down as prime minister and I think Peter from the CWU has done a phenomenal job in sort of all of the research and ensuring that everything is fact-checked and just highlighting these lies and it's quite interesting that what I says on the floor of the house yesterday has been fact-checked and I think the fact-check people have said that the majority of what Boris Johnson has said is either what do they say mistruths or not factual something like that you know also known as a lie you know he is lying and I just think eventually that's drop him with everybody and he can't get away with it forever can he maybe you can see what happens next time when you when you say what he said was mistruths and unfactual I wonder if that gets you out kicked out of the House of Commons. Dawn it has been an absolute pleasure being joined by you again on Tiskey's Hour thank you so much for joining us this evening we'll be speaking to you soon I'm sure maybe after you got kicked out for calling Boris Johnson a gutter sniper or something like that. I look forward to it. Worth a try. Take care. A few comments Oliver Kant with tenor all this crocodile tears from right wingers about supposed cancel culture and free speech and yet here we have an MP being kicked out for telling the truth and doing their job and Phil tweets on the hashtag Tiskey's Hour we have politicians who are compulsive liars indeed for conservatism lying is vital for its success we have political journalists who collude in this deceit which leads to a misinformed public in a situation where to win a general election you must be the most convincing liar it's a very convincing tweet there no lies detected Jonathan Bates with a tenor referring back oh referring to both stories actually I'm one of the 1.2 percent of my age group who has COVID solidarity to you there and a rough week was made more bearable by seeing Dawn's bravery and watching Navarra cheers or that's a lovely comment thank you so much for that and solidarity I hope you feel better soon and we're going to have a quick break now to show some news from us when we'll be back we'll talk about victory for renters a rare victory for renters and Tommy Robinson being taken to the cleaners let me ask you a question what were you doing 10 years ago here's what I was doing 20% VAT you're being pleased sit down and get these guys to play their attacks instead you see I met this guy called James tall very blue eyes very smart and we started thrashing out our ideas each week from a community radio station in south London that was how Navarra media started and with the help of our supporters we've expanded from something of a two-man band to a team of dedicated staffers if you're watching this video the chances are you've been a part of that journey and we hope we've been a part of yours too whether you've been a listener since the old days a tisky sour fanatic or you just share the occasional article if Navarra media is a taller part of your life thank you but here's the thing we want to go even further and to do that we need your support 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we really do appreciate it and we're very very excited about navarra media continuing to grow in the weeks months and years decades ahead we're in it for the long haul next story we talk about renting and landlords fairly often on this show but it's very rarely to give you good news today that changes that's because as a report out today on navarramedia.com explains a group of london renters who were screwed over during the pandemic have just won 19 000 pounds from their billionaire landlord for housemates had organized during the pandemic to receive a 20 percent rent reduction due to income lost over the lockdown they started a renters group with their neighbors to lobby their landlord who was george christadoulu and he is a monocobe based property magnate and 82nd richest man in britain this was a big bad landlord now this billionaire landlord refused he told them to instead use their unspent lunch money to make up their arrears but the last laugh was with the tenants i was on the tenants as reported by my colleague rivka brown on wednesday night a housing tribunal approved jordan osmond mark sutton foivus dusos and daniel maps request for a rent repayment order or a little known legal mechanism that since 2004 has meant renters can get back up to a year's rent if their landlord has failed to license a house in multiple occupation or a hmo though not unprecedented in itself wednesday's judgment is likely to trigger a chain reaction that will benefit not just this household but the whole block summerford grove renters and association of tenants living in properties owned by christadoulu in stoke newington north london estimates that 50 further sgr households could be eligible for our o's totaling half a million pounds osmond says he expects theirs will be the first of many wins to come so in this situation the landlord was able to say no i'm not going to give you any any rent rebate over the pandemic unfortunately landlord still have that in their power but he had left a let's say it's not a loophole because it's a very important law he had not registered the property correctly he hadn't licensed it as a house a house of multiple occupancy and now he could have to pay around half a million pounds to his various tenants a big win for the renters one of whom i spoke to earlier today this is job jordan osmond i asked him about his expectations for this case and whether they were surprised by their victory at the start of the process we were just asking directly our landlord for a small reduction in rent to help out neighbors who were struggling with finances during the pandemic who were losing income we had no idea that it would go as far as it did we certainly weren't expecting to go to a tribunal fighting our landlord legally but we were fairly confident that we had a good shot at this case you know we did our research and we worked with a lawyer who was volunteering his time to help us out so we knew we had a shot but it was a really tough hearing the judge seemed quite unsympathetic to us and so i think it's really a testament to the work that we did the summerford grove renters campaign as a whole in order to win the case that we did actually win so yeah i would say we were you know we had our fingers crossed but we were pleasantly surprised with outcome this case was absolutely part and parcel of the work that summerford grove renters in london renters union have been doing it this wouldn't be possible without us having constituted the summerford grove renters i mean basically we started as a bunch of neighbors who were trying to help each other out during the pandemic we became a formal organization and then joined the london renters union and it was through that process and learning from what the london renters union has done working with them to build skills in terms of how to like doorknock how to work with our neighbors how to kind of organize collective action it was all of that that that made this case possible so it absolutely wouldn't have happened otherwise it can be pretty dispiriting being a renter and the government is against you the laws are against you landlords are often against you but there are ways to organize and to fight back there are organizations doing incredible work across the uk in addition to the london renters union groups like acorn and also do your research because oftentimes as as was the case for us it required us spending a lot of time learning what rights we did have and pressuring our local council and pressuring other kind of you know power holders to act that that led to this success so i would tell fellow renters i'm hoping that fellow renters will see our case as inspiration for their own struggles that was jordan osman whose whose victory in this case is all the more impressive because as he says the law really is stacked in favor of landlords and against renters it was also particularly unusual situation in this case because there was multiple households with the same landlord so in in this country we have a very distributed system where lots of people just have they're one landlord they don't know who they are quite difficult to organize against them in this situation i think there's about 70 households with the same landlord which is why this can be used as a precedent to get to get other people the same same compensation so very very impressive campaign not to sign that the system isn't broken as i've already said the renters weren't able to to force the landlord to give them a deduction due to the pandemic and also i'm talking about the under discussed consequences of that broken system i want to show you another article from navara media this week this was by aron bastani it's an article with a great picture of aron and his dog geno and aron wrote about how how moving from being a private renter to a homeowner made him realize how much the former was damaging his mental health aron it is a really great piece um can you tell us about it well yeah thanks i mean it's um that's very kind it's lots of positive feedback it's important to say as well michael it's not about oh if you get on the housing ladder everything's fine that's why we have housing security in the title um i lived in london for 15 years i lived in i think about at least 15 properties over 15 years i never had a home the watchword of politicians since i've been an adult is community but our housing model means that it's absolutely impossible for people in my situation i'm sure that applies to many of our viewers to actually be involved in a meaningful community because you know that in a year or two best case scenario you'll be priced out and you have to leave and so in terms of what it changed for me i talk about how i i had a low point about seven years ago just a confluence of things lack of money uh phd i mean look you don't start a doctorate to earn money but it was it was tough it was things were getting really tough uh broken relationship with the next girlfriend didn't work out kind of went uh east enders you know i ended up with my stuff outside the front door and again that's actually it's really important to say that was a function of us neither of us having that much cash and a very stressful situation in london you know little things like having a spare bedroom where somebody can sort of you know let off steam or something none of that existed broader support networks you would normally take for granted often out there because people are having to move into zone four zone five they're neglecting their friendships the work can be stressful and so on so that led to a broken relationship money problems and then my mum died right which was just really tough so i really hit a kind of a rock bottom there after about another year i i started taking antidepressants uh sertraline there was more for anxiety than depression it was the smallest dose 50 milligrams but it was transformative it was utterly transformative and then very quickly after taking that super quickly i sort of had the clarity about what i needed to change to help myself one was to leave london that doesn't mean everybody has to leave london i think if you're a very affluent if you're rich you can definitely enjoy london if you're willing to go through the grind for certain reasons brilliant if you've got family and friends there i get it but for us the calculation didn't quite make sense because we wanted to have kids and our families are down here on the south coast so we moved and then not long after about a year later we bought somewhere we bought somewhere because my partner earns a lot more than i do it's important to say this in our media everybody earns the same wage everybody earns the same wage you have a pay ratio of one to one she had two thirds the deposit i had one third from book royalties not not huge money but it meant we could buy a terrace house on the south coast here in south sea which we never could have done in london and the consequences of that were incredible michael absolutely incredible and i understood all of a sudden why all these quite affluent people really can't understand can't comprehend can't get in the shoes of generation rent now it's not to say you know there are older people out there who still rent of course but we know that home ownership is is just falling off a cliff now in terms of in terms of age for younger people that just far less likely to be getting on the housing ladder than older generations and of course there's less social housing too so the option is to go into the rental market and it's just such a weight came off my shoulder when i left that michael you know it took a couple of weeks and i realized wow i can put something on the wall i can actually change the the surroundings i live in i can actually make meaningful relationships with my neighbors and local businesses knowing that i won't have to move in a year's time and those aren't huge things to ask michael those aren't huge things to ask and so it might seem that oh you're saying well you had a home of your own it's kind of a catheter i think not at all i think secure tenancy would do would do exactly the same thing more social housing expanding minimum tenancies i think we need more rent tenancies five ten years in this country rent caps getting rid of hmo's hmo's are effectively turning these buildings which should be flats and houses and co-ops turning them into effectively machines that just extort value from their tenants and i i i think if you really are serious about addressing the mental health crisis in this country you have to talk about the housing crisis you have to you have to because it's the number one need i got somebody in my reply saying oh first world problems absolutely not shelter is not a first world problem my friend a sense of meaningful community and relationships with other people is not a first world problem you know it is it is expensive to be poor and one example of that is when you have to move every 12 months because you have to pay the removal costs you have to get time off work you sometimes need to buy new furniture because something breaks again people watching this know that story but it's something that's really lost on much of our political media class michael really you know andrew marr he lives i think 40 minutes from from from where he has to work he basically walks there uh at the bbc you know many of these people have never even rented or if they did it was briefly as students and they really don't get the state of the housing market in this country and how it is destroying people it is destroying people and so for me getting out of that situation you know i'm not going to adopt the i'm all right jack attitude it's about wow this is so screwed up and it's actually relatively easy to remediate through a bunch of measures have already already said and the crying shame is that you know where are the politicians where are the leading politicians other than the previous labour leadership saying this is what we're going to do i've not had anything positive from the labour party or from conservative politicians about this it's always build more houses well you can build more houses and that's great but if the price of housing is going up and it is going up i think the last 12 months the average house amounts in like 12 13 14 percent then that doesn't help anybody you know so yes of course we need more more houses being built but we need a fundamental change in the housing that's already there like i say through things like rent caps and and minimum tendencies it's one of the things i find so frustrating about the way we talk about mental health within neoliberal capitalism because whatever situation we live in whatever system we live in i'm sure in communist systems you also have people who are struggling with mental health but there is so much i mean it should be low hanging fruit we'd have so much fewer mental health problems if people didn't have to worry about paying rent didn't have to worry about getting getting kicked out of their house didn't have to worry about feeding their kids and this is all perfectly manageable you know you don't have to have some or you shouldn't have to have some sort of revolutionary communist system that's just social democracy give people who who want affordable rent affordable rent and yeah then we can just stop all of these campaigns we've got Prince William saying oh let's talk about mental health how about we just give people somewhere to live which has some security where they can build some community and where they're not terrified they're going to be be kicked out all the time it shouldn't be that complicated as i say you can check out that article and the article by Rivka Brown about the the renters who have in a rare instance beat their landlord on navaramedia.com our final story tonight you may remember this distressing video going viral in 2018 now in that clip you saw Jamal Hidjazi then 15 being pushed to the ground and threatened with drowning Hidjazi and his family had come to the UK as refugees from alms in Syria it was obviously a horrible welcome for a schoolboy fleeing war it was made worse when Stephen Yaxley Lennon otherwise known as Tommy Robinson made a Facebook video claiming Jamal was not innocent and violently attacks young English girls in his school and that he had quote beat a girl black and blue unquote Jamal Hidjazi sorry Hidjazi claimed that Yaxley Lennon's video led him to be subject to death threats and extremist agitation and this week he successfully sued the far-right activist for libel mr. Justice Nicklin found that as was entirely predictable the claimant became the target of abuse which ultimately led to him and his family having to leave their home and the claimant to have to abandon his education the defendant is responsible for this harm some of the scars of which particularly the impact on the claimants education are likely to last for many years if not a lifetime Yaxley Lennon had fought the case on the grounds that what he had said was true or his claim was that what he said was true this was rejected by the judge the judge said I am satisfied that if the claimant had behaved so repeatedly in the abusive manner alleged including to members of staff then this would have been recorded in the claimant school records there is no trace of any such behavior by the claimant in these records on the contrary his behavioral record is overwhelmingly positive so he's saying Tommy Robinson's claims do not stack up and they also caused an incredible amount of harm he said the language used in the videos was calculated to inflame the situation Robinson has been ordered to pay damages to Hidjazi of 100,000 pounds he is also liable to pay his legal fees which the BBC reports were around half a million pounds Tommy Robinson has since declared bankruptcy Arons is obviously you know a horrible story the consequences of Tommy Robinson sharing those lies was incredibly horrible you know you're a 15 year old kid you're you've already been bullied by people in a in a country you've just moved to after fleeing civil war then you get death threats from far right activists because Tommy Robinson has made up stuff about you on on on Facebook this ruling here though I mean obviously you can't turn back time but it does seem to have damaged Tommy Robinson financially and do you think that this far right fuck is now a busted flush there was a period in time you know a couple of years ago three years ago four years ago where people were seeing him as a variable in British politics someone who people saw had had a following potentially sometimes overstated but he got lots of views on on YouTube etc do you think this is the end of him do you think we can now say yes there there are threats from from the far right in Britain but Tommy Robinson is not one of them he's over yeah it's an interesting question mark I mean look the the payout to the families 100,000 pounds I don't think that touches what's happened to them I don't think that goes anywhere near compensating them on the other hand if Tommy Robinson hasn't even got that then what difference does it make as I understand that their legal costs are also around half a million pounds so Robinson also would have to pay that he was already in financial trouble before this again as I understand it you know I don't want to say things aren't aren't true because I don't want to do what Tommy Robinson's done but from from what has been said in the media it's been written in the media marital problems and so on and so forth and what really like you say what really hammered him was before this it was changes to the Facebook algorithm because that's what really took away his his prominence and his profile the fact that he was blacklisted effectively from Twitter from Facebook from Instagram you know without social media he hasn't got any means to sell his product which is hate which is himself and so he was a busted flush before this but I do really feel sorry for the family because I don't think 100 000 pounds is such a size I really don't the guy this young kid had to leave school it's obviously had a massive impact on his education his mental health this has been going on for more than a year his family's already probably they've probably all got PTSD from leaving Syria fleeing civil war I think it's appalling I think it's really really appalling you know I think I think Tommy Robinson should be doing prison time personally and I'm a prison abolitionist I've no problem with Tommy Robinson going to prison believe me I think what you say there is is very sensible though it does seem surprising that this kind of thing doesn't give you get you time right because for me this seems like inciting racial hatred and clearly that's what happened and I would have thought especially this is about a minor this is about a 15 year old it seems surprising to me that it's just a financial response I think at this time probably Tommy Robinson has has less financial back as any once did but you know a couple of years ago three years ago he could have presumably called in money from he had sort of far right backers in North America potentially that that that moment is over and he has declared bankruptcy but I think you're right it does seem like he's this seems like a light punishment from my perspective although a victory for the kid involved Aaron your final thoughts on this story yeah I mean his big financial backer came from Canada this gentleman called Ezra Levant who's financed a bunch of alt-right media and he was expanding over here I suppose one sort of one sort of counter I can be yes Tommy Robinson was huge in 2017 2018 he was finding a huge audience I remember in 2018 before he got banned some of the analytics were just deeply disturbing you know on Facebook Tommy Robinson was reaching a bigger audience than Facebook than Labour the Tories Jeremy Corbyn momentum Boris you know Boris and was Theresa May back then basically all combined um so on the one hand you know that yes the algorithm screwed him but at the same time like we have to remember that in this country in 2017 we had a high watermark for socialist politics so you know it just goes to show how politically volatile that moment was really both on the left and the right and it was very much a case of you know there's the center ground of politics the common sense was up for grabs you know has that changed significantly I do think it's changed but I also think many of those questions are settled I think many of the parts of the sort of economic agenda of Corbyn and McDonald are now broadly the consensus of the public I think the Tories have to at least acknowledge that and I think that ultimately on the immigration stuff you know the left lost big time big time big time and it expended huge amounts of capital because of chasing a second referendum so Tommy Robinson didn't win but I think many of his viewers his supporters you know we did end up with the government and a set of policy outcomes that they they are absolutely overwhelmingly pleased with a very sober note to end tonight's show I remember it's been a pleasure as always speaking to you this Friday night it's been my pleasure Michael which must say one more thing with the merch so the person who got their two t-shirts I'm gonna remind of our immediate t-shirt here here you go uh organic trade union labor the cooperative which does the printing it's all you know it's all incredibly ethically sourced so if you want the most ethical t-shirts and track suit bottoms are at a good price you know Ravara media is the one that was a very important point do check out that shop the merch is really good at the moment um for now um thank you for your superchats thank you for your comments thank you so much if you are a regular donor we'll be back on Monday at 7 p.m you've been watching Tiskey sour on Navarra media good night