 in Saturday's press conference. Again, Priti Patel excelled in demonstrating, I mean, the complete uselessness. I mean, not just of this particular government, but of the British state, right? So she took the opportunity to celebrate a drop in certain crime figures. Let's take a look. Now, provisional data from police shows a fall in overall crime during this coronavirus outbreak. Car crime, burglary and shoplifting are all lower than the same period from this time last year. Now, Priti, why might burglary, car crime and shoplifting have gone down in this period? So I was thinking, you know, when I was planning this show, maybe we should get a criminologist on and we should talk in depth about what it is that affects rates of shoplifting and burglary and car crime. But then I realized, no, I'm just going to use my common sense, right? Shoplifting goes down when all the shops are closed, burglary goes down when everyone's in their houses and car crime goes down when everyone's cars are parked outside their houses and they're in their houses. I mean, it's the idea that you could as you know, standing up in front of the nation, you're the home secretary is one of the most important jobs in government. And you were there in the middle of a lockdown when literally all shops have been told they have to close and boasting that shoplifting figures have gone down. I mean, Ash was talking about people, you know, not doing their homework properly. I mean, her started up there and saying, you know, we should all be really grateful that shoplifting gone down is absolutely nuts. It's like killing half the population and saying murders have gone down. Aaron, I want to go to you. I know you love this topic of sort of like how neoliberalism has made the state completely useless. I mean, what do you make of Pretty Patel, you know, putting that all on show in these two press conferences? Well, can you imagine what a sort of minister of the interior from China must think if they were to be shown that? And this is the British home secretary. I mean, they must think, sure, that's not possible. Really? This is the country which has the world's oldest and still largest public service broadcaster, employs thousands of people, the BBC, has the world's one of the world's largest employers, the NHS, certainly the world's largest integrated healthcare system, has achieved innumerable bureaucratic and technological firsts for better or worse as a country. And the response to a massive rise in domestic violence is a campaign hinged around you drawing a heart on your hand. I mean, it just, it just, you know, there's these glimpses where you go, how the hell is that? I don't want to sort of channel as sort of, you know, a nativist kind of, oh, Britain was this great, but it did lots of historic firsts. I mean, just did, you know, this tiny line and a bunch of historic firsts. The first commercial airliner that was built was, it was a British jet. The world's first commercial nuclear reactor for civilian purposes was built in Britain, I think in the early 1950s. These are really impressive achievements. The same state is asking people to draw a heart on their hand. I mean, this is the extent to which neoliberalism has just collapsed in his state capacity and problem solving has to go back to problem solving, put the ideology to one side, put the politics to one side. How do you solve certain problems? Could be in work poverty, could be homelessness, could be domestic violence, could be child poverty, whatever. These are problems we need to solve as a society, and they can't solve them. They can't solve them. The solutions are so absurd, they're actually increasingly ridiculous. They're funny. You know, another story, you know, we talked about it last week was Deloitte running one of the testing centers. Deloitte, they're accountants. This is like me asking, this is like me asking Burger King to run psychotherapy for people who've been through trauma. It would be stupid. But the point is, there are people at the top of government who are, you know, very close to senior directors and partners in Deloitte, so it happens, right? I mean, wow, you would have screwed up country. It means Deloitte are doing the testing for your healthcare services and your home secretary is telling people to draw a heart on their hand. This is what you expect in a play school, not government. And Deloitte also, it turns out, weren't, you know, surprise, surprise, very good at doing testing. So it was the Deloitte Center in Chessington World of Adventures where people had gone to get tested and then they sent the results to the wrong people. I also just want to mention that I love it when you both do it is you sort of think, how would other countries see us and how would we talk about other countries if this had happened there? And I think this, the shoplifting example is a really good one. It's like, you know, when people talk about late stage Soviet communism where they're like, oh, because it was all based on targets. It had these disincentives. So people would make loads of useless, crappy products, crappy shoes that didn't fit anyone because they had to meet the quota or whatever. The idea that, you know, you would have a home secretary who would be boasting that shoplifting went down because she'd closed all the shops. I mean, even that you wouldn't believe if it was on like one of those, I'm watching Chernobyl at the moment. So it's full of these ideas that you've got all these disincentives. If it was in a show about a decrepit, declining empire, you wouldn't believe it. It would seem too on the nose. If that wasn't a political satire show in Iran, the audience wouldn't believe it. I'm being deadly serious, but come on. The British, they had an empire that large, they're not this stupid. Come on. My friend, let me tell you something about the running of that empire. Sometimes it was dumb as fuck. I mean, the thing about the thing about what this government can get away with, Matzab cousin, a friend of the show, loves to say the conservatives can get away with playing politics on easy mode. And I think what we're seeing during this crisis is that in particular, since Boris Johnson took over as leader of the party and as Prime Minister, that they're able to play it almost as a tutorial. So you've got these very senior journalists who are helping them along baby step by baby step, even sometimes supplying the very lines and the arguments that a government is simply too dumb to come up with themselves. And meanwhile, you've got staggering levels of, you know, venality of incompetence of outright stupidity. And in Boris Johnson's case, where he's, you know, let this fucking edgy podcast dad dilettante, you know, take over with tinkering, you know, with the scientific levers of state policy gambled with our lives. Now, any fourth estate worth its salt, and especially one which holds itself in as high as a regard as the Westminster lobby does for itself, should be pointing these things out. And instead what we've got is, you know, political editor of the BBC saying, look, Boris Johnson is being very mature, very reasonable here, very tough decisions. We're not going to get literal paradise on earth where everyone is immortal. And there are songbirds and angels, you know, he's being very reasonable. That's what that headline is. And sometimes I can't decide who's dumber, then for writing these headlines, then for coming up with this shitty journalism, or me for sitting here consuming it. I don't know which is the stupidest thing.