The Nick Abbot Habit

00:02 This is a global production. Oh, it's a good one for you this time. In these clips that follow on from the last episode, a woman had a dream about pickles, not the food, and Mr. Blobby went to Ukraine. 00:19 Kimmel Bay. Hello, Linda. 00:21 Oh, hi, Nick. Linda. I was thinking today, looking at the footage of Boris Johnson in Ukraine. I hope President Zelensky has been... 00:34 Washes his hands afterwards. 00:37 Well, I hope he's actually been warned about Johnson being a bit of a security risk. 00:47 His Russian interests. Yeah, I wonder if that message has actually penetrated. Because, of course, Vladimir Zelensky has been a bit busy lately, so he might not have been keeping up with current affairs in this country. But I wonder if he's aware just how much Russian money is still jangling in Bodger's pockets. 01:05 Yeah, because if he's been informed of anything, any sensitive military plans or things going on in Ukraine, we don't want it getting into the wrong hands over here. Oh, I see, right. 01:21 You took what I said and turned it up to 11. Okay, so you think he's on the phone to Vlad. 01:28 You don't know, do you, really? Because his tongue and all that kind of thing. And have you seen the footage where he's walking through the town? And at the very end, this woman gives him, Zelensky and Johnson, these pot cocklels to hold. So there's just so many... What? There's just so many comic captions, really. Yeah, at the very end, this woman's there. Live ones? 01:56 Live ones? 02:00 Oh, right. I thought they were giving out, like, free birds. 02:07 Cockerels. 02:09 So it's like a China cockerel, like porcelain. 02:14 Yes, they're like a pouring pot of some kind. You've got to see it. You've just really got to see it. 02:22 Well, I'll look it up on the World Wide Web. There's probably detailed files up there. All right, thanks for the information there, Linda. Cheers, my dear. Some woman came up to him and said... Want to score some pot? 02:35 DC says, blimey, have you seen all those arch Remainers blocking the M20 with their lorries trying to make Brexit look bad? 02:44 Yeah. How's Brexit going, by the way? 02:45 Oh, fabulous. 02:47 Yeah, quite. 02:49 And it is interesting how the government and their client media have now dropped all mention of the B word. 02:58 And they're really bending themselves into pretzel shapes trying to find some way of explaining things without mentioning that it's about Brexit. You know, like the 500,000 people that the farming industry is in want of. Oh, that's got nothing to do with Brexit. 03:13 Nothing to do with the fact that we yelled at foreigners for five years to get out of our country and then they did. 03:22 Very unpatriotic. 03:26 Simon says, Interesting that Mrs Sunak is happy to pay millions in tax so that her husband can keep his £150,000 job. Makes you wonder why. Hmm. 03:37 Yes, it does, doesn't it? 03:40 curious. Well, I've got more detailed files about that because, like I said before the news, the longer you look at his affairs, the more complicated they get. Just like a Mandelbrot set. Have you ever seen one of those? Groovy. They are groovy. It's the absolute best word I can think of them. You can stare at them forever, and the further you go in, the more complicated it gets. 04:05 But I don't have time to do this now, so I'll have to amuse myself by reading some more texts and emails. 04:11 Paul tweets, oh, any further developments regarding fishy and the non-dom ding-dong? The non-dom ding-dong. There was a ding-dong about his non-dommery. 04:23 Yes, I do have more files. There are further developments, Paul. 04:28 I'll leave you in anticipation. 04:33 Christine texts, who else among our government is also of non-DOM status or green card holders? I mean, that is absolutely incredible, isn't it? He was second in charge of this country, and he was busy trying to be an American citizen, because that's what holding a green card means. 04:51 Well, at least that's what it means to Americans. 04:54 When they give out a green card, it means that you are working your bottom off to try to become an American citizen. 05:02 that you are working very, very hard to live there permanently while he was a member of this government. 05:12 Is there anybody that's in government at the moment who is actually present where they're supposed to be? 05:19 I mean, half of them seem to be working against the interests of the government, actually fighting the government that they are a part of, while on some tax haven island in the middle of nowhere, while pretending to be at work back here. 05:37 And they're all off on their jolly holidays at the moment, of course. You know, they've rewarded themselves for excellence in being them. 05:45 apart from a couple who are staging very, very public photo shoots at the moment. 05:51 As a prelude, I would imagine, to skipping away. 05:55 As soon as he throws off the clothes that he found in the dressing-up box, Bodger will be off, I betcha. 06:03 And then we'll spend the next six months trying to find out whose villa it was that he stayed in and how much it didn't cost him. 06:10 Rona texts, I dreamt of Eric Pickles last night. Ah! 06:17 Can you imagine that? 06:20 Was there any room for anybody else in your dream, Rona? 06:25 She says, I dreamt of Eric Pickles last night. I blame you, as in me, for mentioning him before I went to sleep. It was horrendous. I woke up in a cold sweat, says Rona. Still, at least it wasn't smug. 06:39 Well, at least you have that. Yeah, at least it wasn't a you-know-who. 06:45 The brilliant, the one and only successful genius. 06:49 Yeah, that guy. 06:51 At least it wasn't him. 06:52 I had a really long dream about Smug a couple of weekends ago, and you can hear all about it. 07:00 in excruciating, gruesome detail on the podcast that we do of these shows. The Friday and Saturday night shows get put as a podcast onto the internet. We take the news and the ads out, which means it takes less time to listen to. 07:16 You'll use less electricity and you still won't be able to pay your fuel bill. 07:22 That's because of all the help that Fishy Sunec has given us. Thank you. Appreciate it, Fishy. 07:28 Ask for it by name on an internet near you. It's called Nick Abbott The Whole Show. 07:34 It's the Friday and Saturday night shows. We squirt them up the internet. If you have Global Player, then you'll find it on that. And if you haven't, you should. 07:43 Global Player is available for Android and Apple. 07:48 And you can find it at your favourite app store. Global Player. It's got all the radio stations that we do. Too numerous for me to mention. 07:56 Capital. Heart. Smooth. 07:59 X. Capital. Dance. 08:05 Cool. Classic. Classic. So relaxing. Lovely. 08:10 That's my favourite. 08:12 And a boatload others. 08:15 It'll take me from now until the end of time to mention them all. And loads of podcasts. And I do mean loads of them. Global Player. Try it. You might like it. You can thank me late. No, wait. 08:26 I've changed my mind. You can thank me now. 08:30 0345 6060 973 text 84850 email nicka at lbc.co.uk and if you're on twitter it's at lbc now as i have mentioned eric pickles already at the end of this show i'll talk about spiders for five minutes to eradicate any images or memories that you may have of eric pickles just before you go to sleep you're welcome A big sack of monkey nuts. 09:05 Roger Tex, like you, I spent the whole afternoon inching through central London. Thanks, Extinction Rebellion. No, Roger. 09:12 Thanks to the police. 09:15 Because I wasn't there in the afternoon. I was there in the evening. There weren't no march in the evening. There were just people on the pavements. And yet the police had decided to close all of central London, by which I mean all of it. All of the bits that weren't closed ordinarily because of roadworks. I mean, they closed Westminster Bridge for doing something or other. I don't know. It seems like five minutes since it was closed and they were doing something else. 09:42 I don't know, prettifying the view for the MPs on the terrace, perhaps. I've got no idea. I bet they don't either. 09:49 Why is it necessary to close the whole of London just because there was a blooming march? And the unpleasant conclusion that I reached was that the police were making it as difficult as possible for the rest of Londoners so that we disliked Extinction Rebellion more. 10:05 I mean, you come up with a better reason. It didn't seem to be about health and safety, for crying out loud. 10:12 I mean, ordinarily in London, there's people on the pavement and there's cars on the road. Why does, just because there was a march or some sort of meeting earlier on, mean that that scenario no longer works? 10:28 Madness. Absolutely crazy. 10:31 And like I said before, the exact opposite of what Extinction Rebellion are trying to achieve, which is less pollution, not more. 10:41 Pat tweets, well, I must be missing something. Rishi Sunak is putting the chance in Chancellor. 10:49 And now I hear his wife finds all sorts of legal loopholes to reduce her tax burden. I mean, she might be a philanthropist, but why should she pay less just by collecting stamps? 11:03 A listener with material. 11:06 Good one, Pat. I'll let that one go by. 11:09 Yeah, I have detailed files on Fishy's affairs. 11:13 Even more excruciating detail than you had last night. 11:17 Chris says, Interesting how Johnson took himself off to Ukraine this weekend, just as the heat is building on Fishy Sunak regarding his wife's non-dom status. Johnson probably leaked this revelation in order to distract from Partygate. 11:34 Hmm. Yeah, that is interesting. Yes. 11:38 He just upped and went. 11:41 I bet actually that's the last time that we see Johnson for at least a week. I bet he just disappears from view. 11:47 Highly suspicious. 11:49 Hello, boys. 11:50 Billy texts, by the way, Cressida Dick's last day is actually tomorrow, Sunday. 11:56 Oh, right. 11:57 Well, so it was Cressida Dick's fault. 12:00 that all of the roads in London were completely blocked up because March did happen at some point earlier on in the day. I have honestly never seen so many roads in central London blocked. Not for anything. Not even for New Year's Eve. It's absolutely ludicrous out there. I bet there's still people screaming at their windscreen now, stuck in traffic. 12:23 So Cressida Dick's last day is tomorrow. Well, hand in your epaulettes. Bye-bye. But don't leave in a car, because if you've seen what the roads are like, better leave on foot, Cressida Dick. 12:38 Martin tweets, it would be a shame to have that new Mercedes impounded. Yeah, I haven't got a new Mercedes. Don't believe a single word that Steve Allen says about my automobile arrangements or anything else for that matter. 12:51 He is not telling you the truth. 12:54 Where is it? Oh, there it is. 12:58 Sometimes it takes a while to find. 13:01 Kath says, what do you think of the Grand National? Apparently it was won by a dentist. 13:05 No wonder you can't get an appointment on the NHS. I don't know what to make of it. If a horse breaks its leg, it's put down. Maybe it would be more humane if the jockey was put down too. Good idea, Kath. Let's put the jockey down. Why not? Give it a go. 13:21 That'll teach them. 13:24 Coventry, Fred. 13:27 Hello, sir. 13:28 Fred. Hi. It's just dawned on me that all this business about Rishi Sunak's wife paying all her taxes in the UK doesn't apply because all her money from India goes to that offshore account. 13:44 Well, we don't know that that's true, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was. 13:48 Yeah, in which case it's all a load of twaddle. 13:51 Twaddle, yeah, that's about right. OK. All right, thanks a lot, Fred. 13:55 Twaddle alert. 13:57 John says, all in capital letters. Ooh, no. It's all in capital letters. 14:03 Uh-oh. Warning, warning. 14:04 John says, Tories, spelt wrong. 14:08 Tories have no shame. Austerity for the poor and tax cuts for the rich. 14:12 Yeah, well, that sounds like their manifesto. 14:18 It's what people voted for, apparently. 14:22 Is this mouse loud enough, by the way? 14:26 Steve texts, if you're daft enough to drive a car in London, you deserve to get stuck in a traffic jam. I'm sick of whinging car drivers. 14:33 Wow. 14:35 How else am I going to get in, Steve? More to the point, how else am I going to get out? 14:40 Hmm? 14:41 Ain't no public transport to take me home at night. 14:46 Will you want me to walk? 14:47 Can't do it. Too far to cycle. 14:51 Got to drive. Got to, got to, got to. I mean, unless you live in the centre of town, you've got to have a car. 14:58 Because how would you get anywhere? 15:01 Colin texts. Thought you might like to know that our local travelling circus is looking for three new clowns and one new juggler. Can you possibly think of anyone from your favourite party that fits the bill? If so, I will pick up the application forms when I pass the tent tomorrow. 15:17 Any idea, Bodge? 15:18 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wait a minute. 15:19 He's in. 15:21 Wiz tweets, Bodger in Kiev today. We could have laid money on it yesterday. He couldn't allow Ursula to upstage him. Yeah, that's right. Ursula von der Leyen. 15:33 He wasn't going to allow Ursula to get in there. Well, she did get in there first. 15:39 Bodger was a panting second. 15:42 Running along in her wake. 15:46 Arms and legs akimbo. 15:49 Alan says, just how long do Extinction Rebellion plan to rebel for this time? 15:53 Well, what's quite interesting is that all those people that glued their faces to the M25, they were all calling for the insulation of old buildings. Apparently we have the worst insulated housing stock in Europe. 16:08 which just sounds like totally us, doesn't it? They were thrown up for Thruppenshaveney, the worst buildings that a developer could possibly get away with, and then the government of the day, the Conservatives, gave us a bung to make it seem less like a rip-off, essentially doing their mates in the construction industry a favour. 16:29 A massive, huge favour with our money. PHONE RINGS And so it didn't seem like these awfully made, terrible houses, these cheap little, tiny little rabbit huts with mean little windows, and they're drafty and cold and damp and all the rest of it, it didn't seem like it was such a rip-off because the government gave you, you know, like a bung. 16:52 A bung of your own money. 16:56 In other countries, they make proper houses for, you know, actual real human beings. 17:01 I mean, those flats, those endless towers of executive flatlets that are throwing up and ruining London's skyline, and probably where you live too. 17:11 Who are they for, exactly? They're not for people to live in, because there's no cupboards. 17:15 There's nowhere to put your stuff, apart from anything else. 17:19 You've got to buy another flat just to put your stuff in. 17:23 So they're building them for developers. 17:26 They're not building them to live in. 17:31 But anyway, the Extinction Rebellion people, they were saying that all of our old housing stock is ruining the planet, which it is. And, of course, this war in Ukraine has concentrated mines. And all of the other economic privations that are now being visited upon us, that's concentrating our mines as well. And we all want to reduce our fuel bills. And that's precisely what the Extinction Rebellion people were saying. 18:01 And the government wanted to put them all in jail. They wanted to send them to Rwanda and put them in jail. 18:09 And now, of course, the very same people that were decrying Extinction Rebellion are saying, hey, you know what? We should insulate all our old homes. Why hasn't anybody thought of that? 18:24 Bart tweets, I agree with you that voter fraud does not exist. However, the UK has a major identity management issue. 18:33 What does that mean? 18:35 The UK? What does that mean? Dunno. No, we don't know. 18:40 But thanks for getting in touch there, Bart. We've got no idea what you're talking about. 18:45 Rob texts. How far am I behind, by the way? Let me just check ahead just to see how much reading I've got to do. 18:54 oh my god it's pages pages and pages and pages that's the thing these days nobody uses the phone anymore do they apart from to type i must have said this a thousand times if you'd told people 30 years ago that kids number one favorite pastime in the future would be typing people have thought you've gone insane but here we are Another case in point. Rob says, as I recall it, it was a Conservative Party manifesto pledged in 2010 and 2015 elections to get rid of the non-DOM status loophole. 19:31 Was it? That doesn't sound like the Conservative Party. 19:36 Britain is, after all, the only country persisting with such a loophole. It seems that since Sunak became a person with influence in the Treasury, he quietly forgot about the plan to get rid of non-DOM status loopholes. Is this coincidence that it directly affects the Sunaks by many, many millions of pounds, says Rob? Um... Well, I don't know. You might think that it does, Rob. I couldn't possibly comment. 19:59 Sarah says for Harry and Meghan to get to Holland, they'll have to fly over their granny. 20:06 Give her a wave at least. 20:09 Uh-huh. 20:11 Probably not. 20:14 Fly over her granny. Their granny. 20:20 Complains fly over Windsor Castle. I bet they can't. 20:27 Jane texts. Fishy always said he was a low-tax chancellor. We knew he was... Who knew he was talking about his family? Says Jane. I screwed that up a little bit there, Jane. Never mind. Better luck next time. 20:39 Shall I read it again? No. Fishy always said he was a low-tax chancellor. Who knew he was talking about his family? There you go. 20:49 Second time's a winner. 20:51 Karen texts. Sparkles was in the news this week for saying she was trying to copyright the word archetype. 20:57 It was Archie type, right? Not archetype. 21:00 Isn't that the whole point of her copywriting it? Archie type? 21:05 Now that's crazy, says Karen. I don't know. Well, I mean, Boots. Boots is copyrighted, isn't it? I mean, you can't open a shop that's called Boots. Even if you're selling Boots, you can't do that, can you? Probably not. 21:25 You can't open a restaurant called McDonald's even if your name is McDonald. 21:31 So it's not completely insane, but that's the way the press made it sound. Yeah, of course, because, you know, everything she does is awful. Boo, Megan Sparkles. 21:40 Boo! 21:43 I am not one of your fans! 21:47 Pauline texts, I was a poor child. I am now a rich pensioner. I have always been a lefty. Don't pigeonhole us all. I am not sticking you in a pigeonhole, Pauline. 22:00 I certainly would do nothing of the sort. 22:03 And that does not disprove. Your individual instance does not disprove a generalisation. That's what I'm doing. I'm making a generalisation. The older you are, the more likely you are to vote Conservative. That's just true. 22:16 I'll say it again. I'll say it again for about the thousandth time. 22:21 If you take away the pensioner vote from the last general election and the EU referendum... 22:28 we would still be in the European Union and Jeremy Corbyn would be our Prime Minister if you take away the pensioner vote. 22:38 But thanks for going against the tide there, Pauline. 22:42 Martin texts, this country has become a skipfire ever since David Bowie died. Yes, that's right. 22:50 Can you beg him to come back, says Martin. 22:53 Yeah, thanks a lot, David Bowie. 22:56 You couldn't have just hung on for, say, five, ten more years? 23:00 Look at the state you've left us in. 23:04 It's inconsiderate, is what it is. 23:06 Dave tweets, I would prefer it if the booths at polling stations had curtains around them. I like to... No. 23:17 Well, I guess it's not that rude. He says, I like to do... Yeah, you know what, I'm not going to read that. 23:23 They used to have curtains. 23:27 It looked like the worst made piece of furniture that you've ever seen in your life. Just some bit of old flotsam that had been nailed together by somebody who'd never seen a hammer before. 23:39 And they used to have a nylon curtain that you could pull across behind you. Why? 23:44 Why? You're only putting a cross on a piece of paper. 23:48 It's not a test. 23:51 James says, how many refugees did Bozo bring back with him when he went to Ukraine to cash in on another photo opportunity? 23:56 Yeah. 23:57 Well, it's interesting that there was three or more stories about refugees in the mail today. And they were all as though this had come from a Tory central office, some way to excuse their miserable performance in this regard. It's not their fault. It's somebody else's fault. 24:20 And there were three reasons, top ten reasons, why it's not the government's fault that so few refugees have been accepted in from Ukraine. It had nothing to do with them, nothing to do with their inbred enmity towards anybody that speaks with a foreign accent, because that's what they think their fans want, for us to push them back out to sea. Let them drown. 24:43 That's their chief selling point at the next general election, a lack of foreigners. So it's got nothing to do with that. They're trying their very best. 24:52 Ukrainians are being forced into homelessness as relationships with UK sponsors break down and some female refugees seek new homes after being targeted for sex by their British hosts. Right. So that's why there's so few. 25:05 I think they found one person that that may apply to. One young woman was subjected to advances from a male host, and they've managed to fashion an entire story around that. 25:17 So that was reason number one why we have accepted so an almost invisibly small number of Ukrainian refugees into this country. 25:26 And why we're doing our very best, well, our government on our behalf is doing their very best to make it appear as though they're doing something without, you know, actually doing something. 25:36 And then there was this story. Ukrainian families fleeing war-ravaged cities have been denied sanctuary in Britain because of overzealous council inspectors. Oh, it's not the government, it's the council that's at fault. 25:49 Local authorities checking homes of those wanting to host refugees have been accused of being like something out of Monty Python. 25:56 An investigation found that some homes have been rejected as unsafe because of stairs designed without a banister. 26:02 which I think is against planning regulations, isn't it? I don't think you can have a stair without a banister in this country. 26:10 So it is, by definition, unsafe. 26:15 And a one-inch step deemed a trip hazard. 26:18 OK, well, I've got no idea, but they probably worked overtime to find the silliest reason that a council brought up in order to say, you know, don't blame the government. The government's trying its very best. You know Priti Patel, don't you? Boo! Yes, that's her. She's all heart. Boo! 26:39 And then the third reason that they've come up with why it's not the government's fault is the Ukrainian mother and her two children trying to flee the war were prevented from flying to the UK after a home office official questioned the spelling of one of their names. 26:55 And right enough, there are a lot of vowels in her name, but it's not really enough to say, no, you can't come in. 27:04 So they really are peddling furiously in order to whitewash their reputation. 27:10 How's it going so far? Oh, fabulous. Sally says, I'm with you, Nick. People tell me to get a postal vote all the time, but although I'm 70 and disabled, I'm not ready to give up that little frisson I get when I place my vote. I don't know why, but I'd crawl through three feet of snow to do it and come out with a daft, smug look on my face. I just enjoy the experience. Because, I mean, you don't get to do it very often. 27:37 And you go in, there's nobody ever there. 27:41 And these eager, usually ladies, behind a trestle table, and they're just thrilled to see someone. 27:51 It's like they've been there since 7 o'clock in the morning and they haven't seen a single person yet. And I come round the corner and it's like, oh, finally! 28:03 And I take it very, very seriously. 28:06 You take the piece of paper and you look at this massive long list and you think, I forgot to actually find out which person I'm supposed to be voting for. 28:19 I forgot to do my research. 28:23 And you go through the whole thing and think, monster raving loony, is there a point? 28:29 Like a protest vote? 28:32 A greenie? 28:33 Yowza. 28:33 Maybe a greenie this time? 28:37 Give it a lot of thought while I'm in the booth. 28:41 And you should too. Absolutely no excuse. 28:44 Not now, not ever, never. 28:47 But I bet there's about 50... I bet the next general election there'll be about 50% of the people that just can't be bothered. 28:53 Oh, it's just, like, so boring. I don't want to. You know, it's like windy out. 28:59 They're all the same. 29:02 Nothing ever changes. 29:04 You know, those people... 29:07 David tweets, no one seems to be asking this question. His wife is an Indian national loyal to the Indian government. She lives in number 11 and has possible access to state secrets, let alone kitchen table talk. Obviously a security risk. Hello, MI5. 29:23 Hello, he says. Hello. Hello, says David. 29:29 Yeah, well, I don't know anything about that. 29:31 Don't ask me. What do I know? 29:34 Richard text, you see Bodger got presented with a China chicken teapot in the streets of Kiev today from a grateful citizen. What was all that about? That's a good question, Richard. 29:46 What was all that about? That's going to be the topic from now till the end of time. What was that all about, Bodger? He has no idea. 30:01 Yes, I'm trying to connect a caller in Liverpool called Vincent. Vincent. 30:06 I am super. Thanks for asking. 30:07 It's very hard to hear what you're saying. Again, we're having phone problems. A little bit. 30:25 What, on anything? 30:41 Well, I don't know that one is necessarily connected with the other. 30:45 But if... I'm going to drop that there, Vincent. Terrible, terrible phone. Bad reception. You need to hang out the window the next time you make a phone call and thank me later. 30:54 But always make sure that you're safe when you're doing it. 30:58 But the thing with the tax avoidance by the super rich is that we poor dopes who can't afford to pay tax have to make up the difference. 31:08 This is why it just blows my mind that so many poor people will defend to the hilt the right of the super rich to avoid paying the tax that they have to. 31:19 The consequence of them not paying what a reasonable person in the street might call their fair share is that we have to make up the difference. 31:28 But people seem to be perfectly OK with that. 31:31 And they will call it, oh, it's the politics of envy. I've had that last night, really early on in the show. 31:39 And I made a thing about it, so I didn't get it again. But I bet there's a significant number of people who are thinking that just now. Oh, you're just envious. 31:48 It's not that. It's disapproval is what it is. 31:54 Because all of the tax they don't pay, we either have to just put up with less from government and councils, you know, the less improvement in our lives. It's less money to fix the potholes in the roads, less money for the NHS, less money for the police, the fire service, the security service, the military, absolutely everything that we rely on. There's less money for that unless we pick up the difference. 32:25 I mean, there's no other way around it, is there? Money's just magic itself out of thin air. I mean, I know that technically it actually does. All the Bank of England has to do is to just press a button and there it is. Poof, as though by magic. 32:41 But all of the tax that they avoid, the international super-rich, we poor dopes who have the tax taken from our pay before we get it, we have to make that up or suffer the consequences. But, you know, the international super-rich, they're not going to rely on the NHS. 33:00 Fiji Sunak and his wife, or anybody that they have ever met, is not going to be queuing for an appointment at the NHS, are they? Ever. Not now, not ever, never. 33:13 So what do they care? 33:15 they're probably not going to be using the police. I mean, apart from the 24-hour armed guard that follows them everywhere they go, paid for by us. 33:27 All of this stuff needs paying for. 33:30 And one of the reasons that we are so in want of these various services, that they've been run down so much, is because there's too little money being spent on them. And where does the money come from? That's us poor dopes who pay taxes. And we've got to make up the difference if those above us on the ladder refuse to do their bit. 33:53 And it seems that the richer people are, the more they furiously attempt to avoid losing a penny of it. 34:06 It's weird, that. I mean, I guess I don't understand because I'm not a billionaire. 34:11 But if I was, I don't think I'd be so obsessed with not losing any of it. You know, an amount of money in the bank that you would need 10 lifetimes to get through. 34:22 Why are they so desperate to cling on to all of it? I don't get it. Anyway, in an unrelated story, Rishi Sunak's wife, Akshata Murthy, bowed to pressure to pay UK taxes. 34:35 With the Sunak's position under increasing threat, Mertie said she realised that many people felt her tax arrangements were not compatible with her husband's job as Chancellor, adding that she appreciated the British sense of fairness. 34:51 And I think we can all relate to that, because who hasn't decided to pay taxes that are due on what they earn in this country on the basis that avoiding them isn't compatible with their other half's job? 35:02 Oh, that's right, we don't get to choose whether we pay taxes. Taxes are taken from our wage before we even get it. There is no choice. 35:09 And that is because we were stupid enough not to have been born to a billionaire. We only have ourselves to blame. 35:18 Mrs Fishy will pay tax on all worldwide income in future and for the last tax year, but not on backdated income, which could have saved her an estimated £20 million. 35:32 of UK tax on foreign earnings from her billionaire father's Indian IT company. 35:37 So she's paying some tax, hypothetically, assuming that there are any earnings that are subject to tax in the future, but not on the actual money that she has come into in the past. 35:51 Well, I certainly hope that there won't be any massive reduction in her income that might be subject to tax in the future, because that would be unexpected. 36:00 So she's gracefully elected to pay what a normal person in the street would think of being potentially aligned to what could be called her fair share. 36:11 And that's an end to it, isn't it? No. No, you bet your life it's not. 36:17 I wonder whether the rush to get us out of the European Union at all costs was in any way related to the Conservative Party's fervent desire to avoid any EU clampdown on non-DOM status and tax avoidance and the regulatory havens of impenetrable darkness that are the British overseas territories. 36:36 I mean, do you have any thoughts on that, Smug? You're better informed than I am. I don't know anything. He doesn't know anything. 36:43 He's claiming ignorance. 36:45 I believe him. 36:47 Arjun says, I'm used to listening to you on catch-up on 1.5 times speed, so listening to you live makes it seem like you're very slow. 36:58 Huh. 36:59 Well, that doesn't sound like... Why would you do that? 37:03 I mean, I know you'd get through it more quickly, but can you not just listen to less of it at the right speed? 37:11 That would seem like it would ruin it to me at one and a half times speed. Plus, I would sound like pinky or perky. 37:19 Which do I sound like, Arjun? Pinky or perky? He's thinking. 37:23 Devlin tweets, I'm sorry for any upsetting images that this may conjure before bed, but Eric Pickles once claimed £10,000 for biscuits on his expenses. 37:36 That's almost certainly not true. I mean, I'm not suggesting that Eric Pickles hasn't eaten £10,000 worth of biscuits. 37:44 I just doubt that he actually... No, wait a minute. Is it actually true? Yeah, it's in The Independent. Oh, my God. 37:52 His department spent £10,000 on biscuits, but he defended it. 37:56 So he didn't personally eat them, or do we know that? Well, I think he had a couple of Jammie Dodgers. Yeah, no doubt. 38:04 From the Independent, the Conservative MP Eric Pickles. How weird that he should be named after a food item. 38:12 The Conservative MP Eric Pickles has launched a staunch defence of his government department after it was claimed he spent an extra £10,000 in one year on biscuits. That was from 2013. 38:28 Well, he does look like the sort of fellow who likes a biscuit. Or £10,000. 0345 6060 973 Text 840... I can't get... Whenever I see him, I just remember what Jeremy Clarkson did on his... on Top Gear. 38:47 He held up his thumb to the camera. You might like to do this at home if you want to, you know, play with Eric Pickles. 38:57 held up his thumb to the camera, and then with a biro, just put two dots on it, on a sort of a horizontal line. And there you are. That's Eric Pickles. I'm holding my thumb up that I have just dotted. 39:13 To the microphone. Does that work? No. Not really. But I'm doing it anyway. The fun that you can have on your own with a biro. 39:21 And on that undeniable fact, that's it. If you subscribe to this podcast, the next episode will get squirted up your life as though by magic on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which is also when the podcast that I do with Carol McGiffin comes out. Oh, talk about kooky. She's nuts. 39:40 It's called What's Your Problem with Nick and Carol? And it's a problem-solving podcast. Got a problem? Send it to this address, nickandcarolatglobal.com. That's N-I-C-K-A-N-D-C-A-R-O-L at global.com and prepare to be totally satisfied. Ask for it by name on an internet near you. What's Your Problem with Nick and Carol? And now there is a thing called Nick Abbott The Whole Show Plus. which is the Friday and Saturday shows, advert-free as a podcast, plus an extra show on Mondays, which deals with all of the news stories that I couldn't get through on my weekend shows, plus all the messages that I didn't have time to read out. 40:22 That comes out on a Monday, plus a newsletter straight to your inbox on Fridays, which deals with the rest of the week's news and launches us into the weekend. It's called Nick Abbott of the Whole Show Plus. 40:36 It's available on Global Player and the new LBC app. 40:40 Ask for Nick Abbott, The Whole Show Plus. And I appreciate your attention to this matter. 40:46 And I'll be back on the radio Friday, Saturday, Sunday night at 10. And until then, I'll be seeing you. Bye-bye. 40:53 This has been a Global Production.