Are zero-hours contracts as evil as they appear? | James O'Brien - The Whole Show

Three minutes after ten is the time

When do you spend the money that you earn? In your head, I mean

Not necessarily in the tills, in the shops, or even online. You're sort of thinking to yourself

well, hang on, next week I'm going to earn X, right? Which means that I can buy Y, doesn't it

Or, so I've got my rent covered, I have a little bit left over, I might be able to afford that thing

or we can maybe go to the cinema, go out for dinner. I mean, you don't really need to be particularly clairvoyant to suggest that most of us have had, for most of our working lives, a relationship between income and outgoing that is largely defined by foreknowledge of what your income would be

Yeah? It just is, right? And so, you know, you read stories today about a clampdown on zero hours contracts

and they are almost all written from the perspective of the people who've benefited from them

i.e. the employers. The figure that they've arrived at, and I think it's like the upper limit of what the reforms being announced would cost

is £3 billion. You don't need me to tell you. The Daily Mail will stick £3 billion in the headline

and you'll have to read almost halfway down the article before you learn that what they've actually said

is the direct cost to employers of the reforms as a whole could be between 350 million and 2.9 billion per year

So, you know, they could have put 350 million in the headline, but they didn't

They put 3 billion in the headline. So immediately you go for the most frightening figure

You go for the most jarring statistic. You don't necessarily tell the truth

and they're not alone. And the Daily Telegraph also goes with the three billion figure

And they're allowed to, because it is the absolute upper limit, slightly above the outside upper limit of what these reforms may cost

Angela Rayner's crackdown on zero hours contracts is how it is going to be described

And I sometimes wonder whether or not we don't notice the big stuff

Do you know what I mean? whether we kind of just you know the old boiling frog ogy that you just turn the heat up so

slowly it's not true apparently thermodynamics means that the and various other things the frog

will actually jump out of the boy but but still it's a an ogy for a for a reason a famous

ogy for a reason you turn the heat up so slowly that the frog doesn't notice it's cooking

um until it's no longer alive effectively and sometimes i wonder whether we're all a bit like

that, whether the slow introduction of things, the creep, if you like, of change means that

we don't notice it anywhere near as acutely if we would if it was introduced overnight

And obviously, in legislative terms, zero hours contracts are introduced overnight. You went from not being able to have them to being able to have them

but the way that they've insinuated themselves into our society has always struck me as..

Actually, it's always struck me as horrible. I got a message yesterday suggesting I was becoming too mellow in my old age

and that my opinions used to be much more pungent and powerful. And I thought, you're probably right

I mean, you know, you can't... It's exhausting being angry about everything

But I do feel very strongly about this for a whole heap of reasons. The question is going to be, what was it like

0345 6060 973. what is it like to actually be on a zero hours contract

Because a lot of the coverage has always been caveated with positives

Oh, no, it really suits me, actually. It's really worked out well for me. Flexibility

And that's obviously true for some people, but we're discussing, if you like, the utilitarian whole

the whole thing, the whole big thing that zero hours contracts represent

A couple of things occur to me. The first is that I was sitting in a noodle bar

I think I told you this at the time about five years ago. It was a chain, so I won't tell you which one

And I'm not 100% certain what was going on, but I'm pretty sure that this was what happened

I was sitting in a noodle bar, slurping my noodles, and the manageress came into the kitchen

It was one of those noodle bars where you're sitting at a counter and the chefs are on the other side of the counter

The manageress came into the kitchen and told one of them to go home

And she just said, we're not very busy, you can go home

And I remember two things. I remember being quite surprised by that, and I remember his face

which was a sort of curious mixture of resignation and disappointment. And that's why I opened this programme

by asking you when you spend the money that you're earning, when you spend the money that you're earning

Because if they tell you at two o'clock, that's it now, that's what's that, probably four hours, maybe more

of earnings that you were expecting to receive that day, and you're not going to receive them

You're not going to receive them. And when you think about it, you look at the impact of this on people

and wonder how on earth it was ever allowed to happen. How on earth was it ever allowed to happen

And part of the answer, of course, is headlines saying zero hours clamped down to cost firms three billion pounds

and we're supposed to go, oh, those poor firms. Those poor, poor firms

And part of me does. Hospitality in particular at the moment is really, really struggling

But the idea that you keep the boss in business by letting them essentially tell the staff on the day whether they're going to earn any money or not has always struck me as extraordinary

No? and then the second one oddly was a cartoon strip I think it was in Viz

by the brilliant Lee Healy and his collaborator whose name temporarily eludes me

and it was just a half page thing I've told you about this before it was a half page Barney Farmer

was the other I think Lee does the pictures and Barney does the text

and it was a really bleak black and white half page cartoon strip in Viz

and it just involved a bloke getting on the train in the morning

which is going to cost him money to go to work at a warehouse to be told to sit tight for a while

I don't know if there's going to be any work for you yet so I don't know how commonplace this experience is

but Barney Farmer and Lee Healy's work it's social commentary it's incredibly powerful

sit tight for a while and we'll let you know whether or not

there's any work at all for you today. And there isn't. So he goes home again

And it's a bit like that streets track, isn't it? It's by leaving the house today, I've done nowt

He's actually come out of the day worse off by leaving the house than he would have done if he just stayed at home all day

But I'm obviously a very middle-class cliché in many ways. You know, I'm not exposed to this

where my children have worked, they have enjoyed getting their timetables at the weekend. You

know if they working in a pub for example which they done they get told on the I think on the Friday night what their shifts are going to be next week And that is great for them It suits them down to the ground

If they were a little bit older, if they had more financial responsibilities, it wouldn't be perfect, would it

Because they'd want to know every day, I want eight hours' work

But it suits them. It would not suit them to get a phone call in the morning

or a phone call at night to say, yeah, you can come in tomorrow, or you can't. But if that was the only work they could get

they would have no choice but to say yes. They would have no choice but to accept it

The other point, of course, which is why I'm outraged by this phenomenon

but I'm not stupid, I hope. And I can see that it would have... You can also say no

That's perhaps the point of it that gets missed by undergraduate activists like me

It's possible to say no. So I can't really... If I say, no, I'm not coming to work tomorrow, I don't get paid, it's all bad, and, I mean, you'd be keening and gnashing your teeth

because what are you going to do without your daily dose of J-O-B? It doesn't bear thinking about, does it

But, I could imagine my life being such that, because of responsibilities or health issues or things like that

you ring me on Friday, you ring me on Monday night, say, can you come in tomorrow? We've got some shifts, we've got some hours for you tomorrow

And I say, oh, no, I can't, I've got to take mum to hospital, or I've got to be in for the gas man

Do you see what I mean? I can see where the flexibility argument comes from, but I think I want today to paint a picture with quite broad brushstrokes

I don't think that stopping bosses from doing it is going to, well, I don't know actually whether or not it is going to eradicate the possibility of having a more flexible relationship with your employer if it suits you both

and of course if it is simply a case of telling the employer that you can't do this anymore

you can't do this anymore then with a caveat with a little loophole of voluntary employment

they could pretend it was voluntary while effectively telling you that you've got to like it or lump it

and if you don't like it you can go and get a job somewhere else I don't want to do a lengthy introduction on this one

I don't really want to go around the houses I just want you to tell me whether or not zero hours contracts

are as evil as they appear. 0345 6060 973. Because don't forget what the headline would look like

in a different era, in a different age, in the newspapers that are owned by the people

who don't really believe in workers' rights or don't really think that you or I should have much recourse to the law

They don't like trade unions. They don't really like health and safety legislation. You know all this because they tell us

Zero hours clampdown to cost firms £3 billion. a ban on child labour to cost chimney sweepers a fortune

do you see what I mean? I mean, all of these things that we have won over the years

have not been won with ease they would still be sending children up chimneys

and making them work in mills if there hadn't been great pressure brought to bear upon them

if politicians of the left had not defended the rights of the workers

I guess I'm asking you whether or not we should be putting or should have put zero hours contracts on the list of appalling abuses that employers have inflicted on employees over the ages

It's just because we're alive now doesn't mean that terrible things don't happen

You sort of think back to the master sweeps and the mill owners and you sort of thought, thank goodness that couldn't happen

Of course it could still happen. Just because we're alive now doesn't mean that the tension that Karl Marx described doesn't exist

the tension between the owning classes and the working classes. But I don't really have personal experience with this, and I don't really

despite that warning yesterday that I'm becoming too mellow in my old age, I don't want to get all my ducks in a row on how awful this is

I've already used the word evil until I've got a little bit more personal input

until I've got a little bit more insight into what it is actually like

So, you have been on a zero-hours contract. What was it like

03456060973. And if you haven't, join me in thinking, in pontificating, in opining

And, of course, I want employers as well to tell me that it's not unfair. It suits everybody down to the ground

I'm open to that possibility. It just seems to me to stink. and if, like me, you don't have any particular

personal experience of this, just tell me whether or not it whether or not it pushes your

political buttons in the way that it pushes mine and that's what I mean by the frog boiling

you get less angry with each passing year, so imagine you introduce your

OAS contracts in, I don't know 2010 and you were really angry about it

but it didn't really affect you you just thought it was disgusting but your kids

are going to be fine and then by 2011 it's kind of dropped off the radar a bit

2013 you've almost forgotten. 2015 it's all. 2016 it's Brexit. 2020, 2024, 2026

Who still cares about... And that's why I like politicians like Angela Rayner

because if there is a massive injustice here, if it is as grim and as exploitative as it appears to be

then it shouldn't have a time limit on it, should it? It shouldn't have a winding down period

It should be just as disgusting today as it was when it was first introduced, Which is how we would feel, for example, about child labour or about the removal of safety equipment from building sites or the removal of the working time directive

Anything that has been hard won by the trade union movement and the Labour Party to protect workers who spend their entire lives being told by owners that the Labour Party are their enemy

Anything that has been hard won by the Labour movement is temporary

They'll take it away again in a heartbeat. And this is one of the things that they have got away with for the longest time

So why do you welcome its abolition, its imminent abolition? 10.17 is the time

0.345. 6.060. 9.7.3 is the number you need. James O'Brien on LBC

It is 19 minutes after 10. You're listening to James O'Brien on LBC

I think, you know, I read out a message yesterday. I get quite a few saying, what was it

You just don't get it. You just don't get it. And there's lots of things I don't get

Of course there are, and this is one of them. I've got no personal knowledge of what it would be like

to not know until tonight whether or not I've got any work tomorrow

Or even perhaps not know until tomorrow morning, or tomorrow lunchtime, whether I've got any work tomorrow night

tomorrow evening. And there were periods in my life where that might have suited me down to the ground

But if that's the only working arrangement I can secure, it seems to me to be pretty close to gross, right

So what's it like? No holiday pay, no sick pay, no set income

no way of budgeting, no planning forward, no certainty. It seems to me to be terrifying

and yet it's been allowed to seep into our society almost unchecked

Susan is in lead. Susan, what would you like to say? Oh, yes. Hi

I find zero-hour contracts really terrible at the moment. Like what I been doing is I employed by an agency that I have to go to school and I supposed to be a teacher but I not a teacher I not qualified So they can I have a lanyard that says teacher when I go in but they choose me because I can I cost less

Yeah. And I'm called sort of in the morning, any time usually between quarter to seven and half seven

and I just have to leave, which means I have to get up really early

get ready and wait on this phone call, which may or may not have come

So your day starts, every day starts with a just in case. Yes

The call could come and then, so you can't plan anything. You can't arrange to do anything else on those days

in case the phone rings at 7.15. That's right, and I'm paranoid about the phone

and I keep making sure it's on because I can't bear to miss the call in case I don't get the work

And you need the work. And would you want to be working every day if that was an option

Yes. Yes, of course I would. Well, you say, of course I would. I mean, people keep telling me the flexibility is important

and I think for some people it is, but you would much rather know every day that you're doing X hours work

Yeah, yeah, I definitely would. There's been times when I have got the call

and often it's to a school that's round about 20 miles away

I have to prepare beforehand, make sure I've got petrol in the car

I've got everything ready, because they say you've got to be there in 45 minutes or whatever

And then if I'm... It's hardly ever happened, but if I am like five minutes late or something

I get stopped out of my salary. It's just a horrible way to be, a horrible way to..

You sound quite frazzled. Yeah. I mean, I don't know what you sound like the rest of the time

I don't know what you sounded like 10 years ago or before you were. So, I mean, maybe you are just quite a frazzled sounding person, Susan

I think I probably am as well. But it's no way to live. It means you're in a state of sort of perpetual alert

Well, yes, you can't plan anything. You know, you want to plan things

You know, there might be a time when I want, you know, like four days, a day off because I want to do something

But I can't really get there to do it because I can't allow myself not to be ready

This is what the Labour Party exists for. This is what the Labour Party exists for. I suppose the only downside is that if they are compelled to treat you better

then the job would no longer exist. But that seems impossible, given the nature of the job that you're doing

Yeah, yeah. How many days a week do you normally work? Five days

So that you do normally get five. No, no. What I want is five days

Sometimes I get five days. Most times I get four days. but like now, because it's the holiday, I'm not getting anything

Ah, and that's part of the reason why. And that's part of the reason why, of course it is

Yeah, I mean, and that, you know, again, if you want to make this a left-wing, right-wing thing

remember how angry right-wingers get about the fact that teachers get paid in the holidays. There it is

A world in which people working in a school, although not as a qualified teacher in Susan's case, don't

So the zero-hours contract has been a gift, a great boon to the people who don't want teachers to be paid in the school holidays

Happily, the qualified ones still are. Susan, thank you. 23 after 10 is the time

It is, of course, being reported that industry chiefs warn the reforms will also backfire

by making it more complicated and expensive to hire staff. It's funny, isn't it

When the boot's on the other foot, the response is, so what? The response is, well, if you don't like it, you can do something else

But if it is the employers, it reminds me a little bit of the private education coverage

where, you know, poverty doesn't exist in this country. There is absolutely no such thing as poverty

But it's absolutely outrageous that some people are now being asked to pay VAT on the school fees for their children

Absolutely outrageous. Do they not understand how hard these people work? Do they not? The struggle is real

So somebody literally runs out of money before they've run out a month. You know, they get to the 27th and not getting paid to the 1st

They don't know what they're going to do. They certainly won't be able to go out and buy anything at all

They have no cash left. Zero is zero. Zero means zero. That, no, not real, not true, not at all

Everywhere in the right-wing media, you'll see poverty denial. Or simple difficulty denial

It can't be true. Well, everyone's got a phone these days. Of course they can afford a new toothbrush

But then the boot is on the other foot. And wealthy people complaining about having to pay VAT on school fees for their children

People like me, except I never complained. Oh, my Lord, get the violins

This is absolutely outrageous. Cry me a river. And it's a bit similar here

You know, there's someone who can't plan anything because she doesn't know from day to day

whether she's going to be working tomorrow. Or even today, if the phone call is coming at 7.7.30

But please, won't we think of the bosses? Industry chiefs, no less

have warned that the reforms will also backfire by making it more complicated and expensive to hire staff

Maybe you're not a very good industry chief if you can't actually guarantee your workforce work

You're asking them to take the risk. It's the socialising of the risk

and the concentration of the profits. So they get to keep all the profits

and you get to take the risk of there not being enough work

for you to earn your wage that day. Didn't used to be like that

Shouldn't be like that now. Chris is in Oxford. Chris, what do you reckon? James, long-time listener, first-time caller

It's interesting what tempts people out of their self-imposed purder, isn't it

Yeah, well, I was just listening and I was just in shock, actually. That's the spirit. Go on

I run an event staffing agency in Oxford and we have staff on zero hours

Yes. But I just wanted to try and give it from the other perspective. We schedule work two weeks out

and then the zero contract staff have the capability to then decide which particular shifts that they want to take. Yes

And I suppose it's the flexibility and then knowing their earning potential

based on what they sign up for. I think we're slightly different from, say, like

I don't know, maybe one of these warehouse situations where people are sent home on a day

but we would never do that once they're committed to the job. But you see, that to me is not..

I know it is technically a zero-hours contract, but everybody knows two weeks ahead

what work they're going to be doing two weeks hence. Yes, exactly

Well, that's fine. I presume a lot of your staff are students

We have a range of age groups. They're students. There's semi-retired people. So people like that flexibility

Absolutely. And it's not a my way or the highway scenario. And that qualifies as a zero-hour contract

so you wouldn't necessarily want to throw that particular baby out with the bathwater. But there will be people in your sector

who will be phoning people up and saying, sorry, we don't actually need you tomorrow after all

and there'll also be people in your sector who count their heads at an event and send people home

They can't pay you. I mean, I wouldn't say 100% that it's always perfect

No. We do have certain situations where, yes, something's happened, not enough guests have turned up to the certain event

and I think people are asked. But we have within our contracts

that once people commit to a certain amount of hours, they paid for those hours regardless if they sent home or not Yes I mean and you can see why that is problematic in a way but it is the risk being taken by the person who keeps the profit

whereas at the moment the risk is being taken by the person on the relatively low wage

You're obviously one of the good guys, but the system as it stands

leaves far too much space for the bad guys to operate. Because there it is. You know, just think about that

We're not going to make enough money today, so I'm sending you home. What normally happens

What's happened for most of our adult lives? If the company is not making enough money

who takes the hit? Who takes the hit if the profits are down on that event

or on that week? You don't take the hit if you're on the front line

You don't take the hit if Morrison's sells less food next week

than it did last week. You're not going to take the hit on that. It's going to be the shareholders

So what are zero-hours contracts designed to do? They are designed to shift the risk

from the people who keep the profits to the people who do the work

And there is wriggle room here. Clearly, Chris proves that there is nuance

There are circumstances in which the flexibility is a good thing. But the bottom line is they are socialising the risk

They are passing the risk of no income to the workforce. They don't share out the profits

when they have an absolute blockbuster of a day. They don't share out the profits

when they make more money than they were expecting to, but if they look like making less money than they were hoping to

they send you home. It is just disgusting, right? With the constant caveat that Chris is okay

It's coming up to half past ten. You're listening to James O'Brien on LBC. It's a personal experience one, this

because your personal experience might prove that my pungent opinion is wrong

but I don't quite see how you're going to be able to justify the worst excesses of zero-hour contracts

by reminding me that some bosses are decent and using it in a better way

It's coming up to half past ten. You're listening to James O'Brien on LBC

Dominic Ellis has your headline. James O'Brien on LBC. It's the relationship between risk and reward

I'm sure there's a pithy figure of speech. Excusez-moi. I'm sure there's a pithy figure of speech, isn't there

Something, something. I've got this phrase stuck in my head, socialising the risk

What would it be? keeping the rewards and socialising the risk. I mean, think about the instrument that a zero-hours contract is

And it is literally a way in which you get to, if you're the boss

you get to keep everything when things are going well. And when things are going less well

the cost is borne by the lowest-paid members of staff, not by you

So you are keeping the rewards and socialising the risk. I think that's extraordinary

And yes, OK, it suits some people, particularly if you don't want to commit to 40 hours a week or you quite like to have a little

bit of flexibility because sometimes you like to take tuesdays off or you might you might like to

take wednesday afternoons off so you can listen to pmqs but then of course they're in recess at

the moment so you're a so yes of course we've all been at places in our life where we quite enjoyed

being able to pick and choose the hours that we were going to work and we were lucky enough to

have an employer that was going to do it but my goodness me when you look at the explosion in these

modes of employment since 2010, you have to conclude that most people are not having

a positive experience. So what is your experience? 0-3-4-5-6-0-6-0-9-7-3. Jo's in Birmingham

Jo, what would you like to say? Yeah, I worked for a zero-hours company for seven years

When I first started working there, it suited me because I was a carer for my father

And if he was ill, I could sort of say, I can't come in on this day or whatever

which is fine. but I left about two years ago and the year before I left was awful

The company was a private company that facilitated family time for children in care with their parents

And we used to supervise the sessions. And we were expected to go into work

and if the parent or the child didn't turn up we'd still be expected to be there

but we wouldn't get paid for it. Wow. And also when I left

This is the private sector in the public space, isn't it? Yeah, it is

So this is like the privatisation of care, of children's care. It was awful

That's unbelievable. I wonder how many... I just want to make sure everybody took that on board

because you won't believe this, Jo, but sometimes people listen to this programme and they don't pay full attention

So you would be told, we need you in at 10 o'clock. You'd get in at 10 o'clock

The parents hadn't turned up to visit their child in care, which meant that you didn't get paid

because you weren't going to be supervising their visit. Yeah. But the money that you would have been paid is probably still going to the private company

Yeah, they would still charge social services for it, yeah. Yeah, it's very frustrating

Isn't it? Yeah, very. So privatising the profits, socialising the risks. And usually that means that the public sector is getting stuck with the bill

while the private sector is keeping the profits. But in this occasion, it's literally you

you are the one that is paying the price of this scheme

What are you doing now? Have you got a better arrangement now? I do the same thing but for the local

authority and it's so much better. We've got a set contract and full time hours

It's brilliant. I had to leave because my personal circumstances changed and there was no way

I could rely on getting the money I needed to live. It's just so bad

to turn up for work and not get paid I wonder how commonplace

what time is it 10.36 I've got another 10 minutes to see if that because I've got a horrible feeling

that you will be far from alone and you've also highlighted the point

I was making at the very outset about this being a deeply deeply

political issue because you have public services that are publicly run or you have

the same services privatised and the priorities change immediately why would a company

want to have a contract to provide supervision for visits to children in care by parents

if not to make as much money as they possibly can. So if they can legally get away with telling you

oh, look, mum hasn't turned up, Jo. Sorry, mate, we're not paying you today. If they can legally get away with it, then they will

Yeah. What used to upset us as well is we were obviously minimum wage as well

Yes. And if the parents had to pay private to go and see their children

there was some private parents, they were charged £90 for an hour

and to think what they would be charging social services, that sort of money, you know, it was just awful

I mean, there is a scandal waiting to explode in the whole area of children's care

not just in the sphere that you described, but in the homes as well, the children's homes

Some of them are actually illegal. There's a journalist called Martin Barrow who does incredible, incredible work in this field

but doesn't get anything like the attention that he should get, Joan. Thank you

Because, of course, these children are also being used as pawns. The privatisation of profit and the socialising of the losses

Don't turn up for a meeting. The private company still gets paid. The ordinary worker does not

I find that breathtaking, don't you? And it's commonplace in the care sector, of course

My niece is 19, and they told her she couldn't go on holiday

despite supposedly being on a zero-hours contract. They would add and remove hours as they liked

She might get a call in the morning and then a call four hours later, and then another one in the evening

telling her whether or not they wanted her. Just as they saw fit, there was no pay for travel between calls

She's now left, and we wonder why social care is in crisis, says Helen in Devon

So, sorry, the three calls that you get, the gaps in between them you're not getting paid for

So we've got some paid work for you between 10 and 11, between 2.30 and 3, and then between 5.30 and 7

That's the paid work that we've got for you today. What are you supposed to do with your life

and how are you supposed to survive? Oscar's in Farnborough. Oscar, what would you like to say

Oh, hi, James. Hello, mate. I just wanted to actually pick up on that comment of

oh, well, if you don't like it, go find something else. Yes. I'm not saying that, mate

You know that. It's not my argument, but it's a common argument in this kind of conversation

Yes. And, I mean, some industries, you can't do that. I worked in live events industry as just a crew member

and that's the only option available to you. It's zero hours or nothing

All these companies do it. And actually I found because of the nature of live events

and the off-season when you're not in the summer and things like that, there's no work

And so what you have to do is you have to grind out your hours in the summer

So you're doing 50, 60-hour weeks to make sure you're covered for the off-season

and as well as that, you know, I think just the way you're generally treated

in these companies is less than if you were a salaried employee

I mean, I suppose in a way that even if you had some sort of contract for the season

it's not as if you'd still be doing all the hours you could find

because you were not going to get paid off-season or they'd just recalibrate your contract like a teacher's

where you continue to get paid even though the off-season is much longer than it is for most workers

It's more the uncertainty that saps the energy. And the inability to plan

That's the thing I would find it very hard to get my head around, is that you can't sort of make plans

because you can't guarantee what you're going to be earning or what you're going to be doing. Yeah, exactly

And, you know, you'd be incentivized to sign the 40-hour opt-out agreement

where you can work more than that in a week. And actually, one thing I find quite sort of subversive as well is they advertise the hourly rate

But actually, when you go to sign a contract, they're adding on your holiday pay to the hourly rate

So it looks more attractive than it is. Yeah. I mean, listen, it's suboptimal what you're describing, but it's not the worst example that we've heard

And there will be some industries that wouldn't be able to survive without a recognition of seasonal work

I mean, it was ever thus. When I was growing up in Worcestershire, the seasonal work picking fruit was a huge part of the rural economy

And, of course, if you're getting paid to pick fruit all summer, you're not going to be doing much in January

And don't act me to say you might be picking turnips. There was a lot more picking fruit work in summer than there was in winter

So, obviously, there's a balance to be struck, but the idea of not knowing at 7 o'clock in the morning

whether you're going to earn any money today, that just makes it impossible to do anything

It really does. 10.41 is the time. Oscar, take care. Tamara is in Telford

Tamara, what would you like to say? Good morning, James. Tamara in Telford

The mythical, not mythical, you're real, but the Tory with legitimate concern

I mean this genuinely for people who don't know why I'm excited. Looking for people who are not racist or remotely uncomfortable about immigration in general

but who have got meaningful and substantive opinions about the problems in that part of the world

And up you popped, Tamara in Telford. I will never forget you. Why are you here today

Right. I'm here today, James, to tell you on one score you're absolutely wrong

And on another, but in the same conversation you're absolutely right. Okay

That's 52.48 then. Yeah, no, I was an employer in the late 90s, early 2000s. Yes

In a business that made 80% of its profit over three months

because we sold refrigeration and air conditioning products. I bet you wish you'd stayed in that sector, don't you

I do today. I bet you do. Carry on. So, we used a high level at the time of agency staff

Yes. Now, legislation was brought in. This is where you're wrong. It wasn't brought in for the companies as such

At the time, in the late 90s, people were abused by agencies

They had no rights or anything. And employers were paying phenomenal amounts for irregular staff

Got it. And that's what the zero hours contracts used the words when they were first introduced

They were first introduced for use with irregular hours. Not regular

So I had a period from June, July, August, maybe September, where I needed people, but I did not need them October to May. Yeah

Yeah. And using agencies, let's say at the time, minimum wage was £10, agencies were £20

But, I mean, there are two conversations unfolding here, and one of them isn't really the one that I'm having

The notion of seasonal work is very different from the notion of not knowing until 8 o'clock in the morning

whether you've got any work at all today. That was never intended on zero-hours contracts

But that's what's happening. You've just heard three people this hour tell us that's their life

I agree, and this is the bit where I'm going to say you're right. You said zero-hours contracts were intended for

Oh, I see. They weren't. Okay. They were intended for a regular hours and for people who wanted flexibility

The other area you're wrong is you do get holiday pay. You've always had holiday pay on zero hours

Well, some people don't. Well, that's illegal. Oh, so you'll be earning your credits, as it were, for all the work that you do

You'll get the... Yeah. No, you're right. That's the point that Oscar was making about them when they advertised the wage

But again, that's thin... Hang on, that's thin gruel, because if you don't know how many hours you're going to do

you don't know how much holiday pay you're going to accrue over the course of a month or a year

But then you shouldn't be on zero... This is where legislation has to come in

If it is regular work, zero hours, contracts have been abused... I agree

...and should not be used. There we go. And to me, it's easy to legislate

You just ban the practice of clocking people off during quiet periods. Yeah, and to me..

Also, while retaining them on site, Well, I mean, that's the amazing bit, retaining them on site

so that they could be returned to paid work should the need arise

Yeah, no, but it comes even before that point, James, like your events person was saying

I used to have a conversation on a Thursday, and I used what was called, because I used to use students

but they're wholly unreliable, as were agencies. I did something out of the box which you would expect from me of course Absolutely I put an advert in Saga and I called them my grey brigade You got retired people to come and work for you

People who retired at 55, so they were predominantly forces, police officers, public sector

and they used to say to me, Tam, she's got a bloody list for the summer. Yeah, and everybody's happy

Please, can I come? Everybody's happy about that. And I don't think that would be affected at all by the legislation that you're meeting

that you're calling for. They're going to have legislation. Now, to me, once you've made an offer of hours

and someone has accepted them, that's no different to contract law. Completely agree

And, but, to me, this is a legislation issue now, not a zero-of-hours issue

Yeah, but that's what... I don't know if I've missold it. I'm still not entirely sure what I'm wrong about, but that's..

Well, you were wrong about that they were introduced... I wasn't asking you to explain

I was just putting it on the record. I'm still not sure what I was wrong about. But anyway, this is a legislative issue

Angela Rayner is changing the law, which is why a lot of the right-wing media

is having a fit of the vapours this morning. Well, they shouldn't because... I know they shouldn't

...because companies are abusing it for what should be regular work. Nobody, I don't care which side of politics you are

how can you object to something that means these people will have to be given a proper contract

Because that was the intent. This is for irregular work. whether it's only for four or five hours a week every week

or whether it's for a month of work a year. To me, we've got to get the legislation quite clear

If it's a regular worker, zero hours contract... So more power to Angela Rayner's elbow

Yeah, and I never thought in my lifetime I would agree with Angela Rayner. Well, there you go, you see. Stick around long enough

Everything happens eventually. Until 2015, you'll know this, Tamara, but I didn't

Until 2015, or if I did, I'd forgotten, employers in the UK

could actually ban you from having an arrangement, a zero-hour contract with another employer

if they had one with you. So not only could they ring you up at 7 o'clock on Tuesday

morning and say, sorry mate, sorry Keith, no work for you today, but they could also

enforce a rule by which you weren't allowed to have an arrangement with anybody

else. So you then couldn't ring up and say have you got any work today? I mean, it's just extraordinary

but that's the thing, isn't it? It's the political pendulum, once again, the pendulum of politics

Some people still believe that the trades unions had far too much power

and far too much leverage in the 1970s, and that's a strong argument in some of the cases, you know

Let's look at the history of the miners' strike in the 1980s. But the idea that it should all, therefore, be deposited with the owners

with the business owners, hang on, what do the newspapers call them, the industry chiefs should get to decide, is obscene, actually

not just absurd, but obscene. And there is the best possible, the best imaginable example is

we made a ton of money last week, and you got paid a relatively small amount

let's say minimum wage. We're not going to make much next week, so you're not going to get paid anything

But we keep all the profits from last week. It's 10.49. Simon Marks is in the building

Quite a lot going on on the other side of the Atlantic. We will do our level best to get across all of it after this

And then, Mystery Hour at 12, of course. it is Thursday isn't it Keith? Just double checking

Mystery Hour at 12 Henry Riley was in Kidder Minister this morning

I don't know if you heard it at the end of Nick Ferrari's show he was a very very charming

report on a blind horse that's being taught to use braille and it just coincides

with the story about bankers and lawyers and other professionals being encouraged or urged or even perhaps

compelled to move out of London by 2031 this is part of Andy Burnham's devolution drive

And we've been a bit on this lately, haven't we? We even had some sound effects ready for Coronation Street voices to appear on the programme every time I said the word London

But it is really interesting. It's one of the first... London! Oh, flipping it, Keith

It's one of the first easily identifiable elements of so-called Burnhamism, isn't it

A determination to move focus, or at least to dilute focus, away from London

London! and see it arrive instead in other parts of the country

But we haven't discussed it on a personal level. I mean, what is it literally like for a person to make that move

Henry Riley messaging me yesterday to say how friendly everybody in Kidderminster is

Because that is, if you've spent your whole life in the capital, that can come as something of a surprise

It's 10 to 11. James O'Brien on LBC. It is 10.53, and you are listening to James O'Brien on LBC

where, by popular demand, Simon Marks is back. It's hard to know where to start today, Simon

but should we begin, do you think, with the USS Abraham Lincoln? Well, I think the USS Abraham Lincoln is an astonishing story

Yes, I do. This is a Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier with 5,000 sailors aboard

and it has now, thanks to Donald Trump's war on Iran, broken the record for the longest consecutive number of days

that any aircraft carrier has spent at sea without putting into port

We're up at over 250 days now. Normally, these things put into port every 30 or 45 days

And a standoff is developing. I mean, it's not quite mutiny on the bounty, but it's got potential

There were furious meetings over the last week between families of sailors aboard the Abraham Lincoln and top Pentagon officials

Months ago, we started learning from families that the troops were saying that the food was running out

the meals were getting increasingly tiny. I mean, literally, you know, the vittles and the grog are reaching a low point

And what we learned over the last few days is that family members say

that multiple members of the crew on board this warship have had to be restrained from throwing themselves overboard

because mental health is deteriorating at a very, very rapid clip. This is actually chilling

And bear in mind that Pete Hayseth, when the first allegations were made back in, I think, April

about dwindling rations, both on the Abraham Lincoln and the USS Tripoli

insisted, no, no, no, no, we've got more than 30 days of supplies

as is required for the full complement on board, and we're only the best for serving members of our military

And families of those troops aboard the Lincoln have made it very clear now to the Pentagon that something's got to give

They say that they're going to sail the USS Theodore Roosevelt into the region to relieve the Abraham Lincoln

But the USS Theodore Roosevelt, as of yesterday, when I checked the tracking system, is in San Diego

And that's about a three-week sail from the region. So this situation is very serious and it underscores that while Hegseth and Trump project invincibility about the US military and have publicly denied that the weapons stockpile is being depleted

And of course they've already won the war several times. And won the war. Several times. Even though the Strait of Hormuz is still closed, but we control it

But they also control it as well. But while all that going on the psychological and human toll among troops and their family members back at home is really becoming very grave Incredible story Truly truly incredible And as Ash who has been helping us make sense of the Strait of Hormuz story since this madness

began, has just reminded me that this is the military who are going to necessarily draw

more attention than the merchant navy, but there'll be plenty of merchant seamen stuck. Well, we know there are thousands of merchant seamen also stuck in a kind of bizarre limbo

as a consequence of the strait remaining. There's one sailor aboard who did try to throw himself aboard

and was held back. He's been placed in medical hold now, ever since that happened

and his wife told the Stars and Stripes newspaper this week that her husband believes that once this is over

after 13 years in the serving military, he's going to be dishonorably discharged

I read that. I mean, it's devastating. It is. And Donald Trump continues to just spout nonsense on the subject

and claim things that are demonstrably untrue. And not only on that subject

Well, of course not, but that might perhaps explain why the woman who has until now been charged with trying to sanitize the madness

and present it to the press as something that is sane has had enough

Yes, I noticed that some WAGs on social media yesterday were wondering

if Caroline Leavitt had decided that she was going to leave the administration

because 24 hours earlier she had learned that she was flown back from Turkey

on board the plane that President Donald Trump was not on and therefore may have concluded that she was considered disposable

by the President of the United States, along with half of his government. But not his former golf caddy

Not his former golf caddy, the social media woman, the woman who does all of the..

She got on the secret plane. And Pete Hagseth. They were the only ones that were on board the decoy plane

But Caroline Leavitt is departing the White House podium. And look, I mean, she has been an unbelievably effective communicator for him

I mean, one could say that Lenny Riefenstahl was an unbelievably effective communicator

She has lied relentlessly from that podium on his behalf. But the most important thing that I think she's done is purge the White House briefing room

and particularly the White House pool of a large number of what she argues are legacy media figures

and replace them with propagandists. And so when you realize that the Associated Press, America's leading news agency, was penalized by the White House because it refused to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, that was on her watch

She completely eviscerated the rights of the White House Correspondents Association to run the briefing room

And as a result, when Donald Trump is present before cameras and there's a limited pool of cameras and reporters and now propagandists that are allowed into the room

you will often hear that most of the questions get asked by the propagandists and not by the real reporters

And that is, for the moment at least, her lasting legacy. She's changed the nature of the press operation at the White House in ways that previously were completely unthinkable

Making Kellyanne Conway look like a paragon of virtue, honesty and moral probity

I've asked you this a billion times, but do you still pinch yourself sometimes when you look at what's happened

Oh, yes. I mean, I'm now at the point where nothing surprises me anymore

and I think we're in for a very unsurprising and yet surprising few months ahead

as we head toward the midterm elections. I mean, he's made it clear. He said in an interview to, again

one of these propagandists this week that, you know, it's not inconceivable

that he's going to have to declare a state of emergency. He's saying it out loud. Absolutely out loud. Absolutely

Lassie is definitely trying to tell us something very clearly. Most of the media still

the ones that aren't technically propagandists, still not quite sure how to handle this stuff

Briefly, if you would, And I mean, I read the headline, so that ICE plans to equip agents with gloves that can deliver electric shocks

It's absolutely a staggering story, complete Dr. Evil stuff. This is a piece of kit called the Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter

And the acronym, of course, is GLOVE. And that's because it is a glove that can deliver up to 380 volts of electricity

if you place it on another human being. three times the charge of a standard US power outlet

ICE is planning to spend $20 million, nearly 15 million quid, to buy these gloves and equip Donald Trump's thuggish ICE agents

who are still, and we don't talk about this enough, every single day rounding up 2,000 people

in their quest to engage in the president's mass deportations. I looked at the numbers

There are, as of July the 11th, which is the last set of numbers that the Department of Homeland Security has issued

65,765 people held in ICE detention facilities across America. And the president says they're the worst of the worst

But by the U.S. government's own figures, 70.6% of them, nearly three quarters, have no criminal conviction

They've been convicted of no criminal offense. and this potential use of, you know, electric gloves

to force compliance on the part of people whether they are being rounded up or already in detention

is just, you know, yet more Doctor Evil stuff as the country's dystopian trajectory continues

And because, as with all dystopias, you're left wondering about the type of people

that would want to wear them in the first place because that's probably the bit we always miss, isn't it

Yeah, but... That they walk among us. But when you say that, James, think back to the reflecting pool and to the three-time Olympian canoeist

who has just discovered that he's not going to face a possible 10-year jail sentence

for destruction of government property because the Department of Justice concedes he didn't vandalise the reflecting pool

It was Donald Trump's contractor who botched that operation. What's the link here

Well, Donald Trump made it clear he wanted people arrested for vandalism

and in the case of David Hearn, that three-time Olympian canoeist, immediately the US Park Police and the Secret Service snapped

sorry, the National Guard snapped to attention. I mean, that tells you something about what's taking place

in some of these law enforcement agencies in the US. It's a brilliant point. And as indeed it is, I've lost it now

but a caller in Portsmouth, a texter in Portsmouth, just pointing out that this is unheard of

the idea of having, of being deployed at sea for that amount of time would strike, I may send it in his own words

sends a shiver down the spine of a naval veteran currently serving in the British Navy

Thank you, Simon. Always worth remembering, I think, that Richard Littlejohn over at the Daily Mail

has never been more ashamed to be British than when Keir Starmer, here it is, from Kirk in Portsmouth

I am a serving naval officer. The thought of 250 plus days at sea sends shivers down my spine

It represents an absolute abrogation of responsibility by US Navy leadership. This is what we mean by the people who might wear the gloves or jump to the commands

Loyalty, writes Kirk, is a two-way street. 250 days at sea 40 of them in combat Wow Simon Marks thank you We should see more of you I say it every time I see you but I really mean it this time James O on LBC

It's seven minutes after 11. Great piece in The Times today by Hugo Rifkind

one of my favourite columnists, who writes under the headline, where are all those climate deniers now

Something that we touched on yesterday. There were a couple in my inbox

but I couldn't tell whether they were tongue-in-cheek or not, or whether they were just passionate applications for inclusion in Idiot's Corner

It is extraordinary how that strand of conversation or journalism has more or less disappeared as the heatwaves continue

And just talking to Simon Marks there and reflecting upon Dick Littlejohn at the Daily Mail

thinking that he'd never been more ashamed to be British than when Keir Starmer declined to join Donald Trump's insane war in Iran

a war so awful that American naval officers are now... Well, they're now approaching suicidality on the USS Abraham Lincoln

because the people in charge of that campaign, the people in charge of that so-called war

are such dangerous and disgusting idiots. Mad, mad to think about that

So it occurred to me you don't hear Trump derangement syndrome very much anymore either

Do you, as the ICE operatives prepare to be issued with gloves

that can deliver electric shocks as they carry out their law enforcement duties

I'm going to step away from the climate. I just have nothing but good wishes for people who've received their A-level results today

whether it is congratulations or commiserations. Do you know, one of the first lessons I learned from Nick Ferrari

who'd already been at LBC for 74 years, I think, when I arrived here

one of the first lessons I learned from Nick was how to behave on A-levels day

because my kids, in fact, when I started in this job, I didn't even have children

whereas his were already around the public examination age. And so I'm thinking of coming on air with a sort of

what's the point of GCSEs or do you really need to go to university

And he didn't tell me this face to face. I just listened to him while I was preparing to come on air

and he just explained that you can't do that on a day. So it's almost like every other day of the year

you can have those conversations, but on a day like today, you just don't go near it

you just offer nothing but goodwill and good wishes to the young people who have had probably

the most stressful and anxious experiences of their life over the last few months. And now it

is over. And some people will be cock-a-hoop and other people will think that their life is over

And all I would say to the people in the latter group, I promise you it isn't. Even the doors

that you think may have slammed shut in front of you this morning have not slammed shut

They remain ajar. Your options are still there. There are things that you can still do

and the path that you thought you wanted to go down may not have been the path for you in the first place

But you will never hear on this programme or indeed on Nick's any poo-pooing about the public exams

and the people who've sat them on the days that those results come out

It's the end of the line for me as well. it's my youngest

we are in the former category we are happy with what has happened today

but my youngest is now out of the woods that's it now

so that's it now as a parent if I understand it correctly I don't have to ever worry again

about picking they're entirely self-sufficient don't need any more money from me

don't need any support or help or accommodation or any of those it's amazing that

what an extraordinary liberation 11.11 is the time Andy Burnham's devolution push will drive 90,000 bankers and lawyers out of London, figures suggest

Let's all resist the temptation, everybody in London, resist the temptation to say don't let the door smack you on the backside on the way out

But this is a broader story, of course, about potential refocusing. You'll be aware that the Prime Minister wants to boost regional economies

economies. A recruitment agency has done some research which finds that that will, perhaps

inevitably when you think about it, see white-collar jobs that are traditionally located in the

capital shift to other big UK cities by 2031. And remember, you won't be living in the cities. It's

a heck of a lot easier to live in the sticks if your office is in Manchester or Birmingham than

it is if your office is in London. We have long commutes, of course, but it is a massive lifestyle

change for people. You're also seeing London's high cost of living, forcing white-collar professionals

and this is the upper echelon of professionals, bankers and lawyers, to seek alternative locations for their

careers. Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham being the biggest winners. They reckon those three cities

will take over half of the relocated jobs, and they reckon at the moment that those

relocated jobs could run to about 100,000, and that's exclusively bankers and lawyers

So goodness knows who else in that category is likely to find themselves

moving away from the capital to a different part of the country

We have, and this is one of the things Andy Burnham has got absolutely right

and he's got it right from the inside as well and from the very beginning of his premiership

we have one of the most centralised economies of all the countries in the OECD

London generates about one in every four pounds that the nation generates

So about a quarter of the money generated in this country is generated in London

And that is going to change with the Northwest set to be the biggest beneficiary

And I just, I don't know what it would be like. It's mad that, given that I grew up in Kidderminster and my heart, half of my heart is still there

The other half is pure London now. I don't know what it would be like to leave

A couple of pals of mine left during lockdown and came back. Albeit they didn't move to other cities

they moved more rurally and did not find it an unalloyed pleasure

The novelty wore off very quickly. But if you're moving to another city, what differences can you expect

I got a lovely message off Henry yesterday, who was in Kidderminster, reporting on the blind horse that's learning Braille

a wonderful little package that you may have heard earlier on LBC

and I got a lovely message off Henry, including a photograph of Kidderminster Station

at which point I, of course, advised that he had his lunch at Captain Cod's fish and chip shop

just over the road from there, and he commented on how friendly everybody was

and he couldn't quite believe how friendly everybody was at Kidderminster, and that's one of the first things you hear, isn't it

when you are London born and bred. One of the first things you hear from people who are not

is how unfriendly everybody is when they come here. disarmingly friendly, is how Henry described it

I think that's partly because of Henry's face, don't you? Henry's got such a lovely face

How can you not smile when you see Henry coming towards you with his goofy grin and his bouncy demeanour

It would be like not smiling at Tigger, wouldn't it, if you were wandering through Hundred Acre Wood

Up bounds Henry. Hello, hello, can you talk to me about a blind horse

It's lovely stuff to see old Henry bounding down Cumberton Hill in Kidderminster

So it may be partly a personal thing that meant that he encountered

such high levels of friendliness, or it may be that it is, once again, an example of what happens when you get outside London

And that's the question. Mystery Hour coming up at 12. Guy Shrubsold will be joining us before that

to talk us through the most extraordinary juxtaposition of stories in the news today about grouse moors and wildfires

I often point out to you how the same story can be treated in very different ways

according to which organ it is or which outlet it is that you're hearing

or reading the story from. but I've rarely seen a contrast quite as stark as the one I've seen today

although I think I've worked out at least one major reason why one newspaper is pursuing the angle that it is pursuing

So that's all to come. Before that, you moved. You left London

What happened? That's it. That's the phone-in. You don't need any more detail than that. You don't need any more qualification or complication

The more recent it was, perhaps, the more interesting it will be, although not necessarily

I'm always fascinated to hear stories from people who were evacuated during the Second World War

But it is for people who are hearing the story now about the big jobs

some of the big jobs moving out of the capital, what is it actually like

What are the surprises? What are the pleasures? What are the pitfalls? James O'Brien on LBC

I don't think we'll ever leave, actually. Even when, perhaps, I hang up my headphones

I can't quite imagine if we can afford it. I'd love to have another place somewhere else near the seaside or something like that

Probably in this country, to be honest with you. But I can't ever imagine not living in London

And that makes me sound like a bit of a prig, right? That makes me sound like one of them growing up in Kidderminster

the people who sort of shook the dust from their shoes and never came back. I remember upsetting a friend of my parents who just literally overheard me

I mean, the moral of the story is don't eavesdrop on 19-year-olds, But he got the right old hump with me when he heard me saying

I couldn't ever move back to Kidderminster once I'd spent a year in London

But I lived in Manchester for a year. I reckon I could make a go of it there

But I couldn't really conceive of circumstances in which I'd choose to leave

But more and more people have done. More and more people will. It's getting really expensive

You can tell how many people are leaving London by the state of the primary schools. Did you know that

primary schools facing closure and ever-shrinking classes because the people who are living in the central areas of the capital city

can no longer really afford to have children. They are much more likely to be older

and therefore the primary schools are shriveling. So it is really a question of..

I think we are a two-tier nation, not in the sort of racist way that some politicians like to claim

but just in that simple statistic there. And also, of course, the reason why fascists around the world

and various online racists profess to hate London is because we are such a wonderful example

of all the things that racists hate, like, you know, cohesion and community, diversity and equality

London is a flawed city, but an absolute paragon of all of the things that racists most despise

so when you leave London there will be a bit of a shock to the system

I think, particularly if you are of colour not necessarily in the big cities, but certainly

in a lot of the other places as well what happened when you quit

the capital? Paul's in Canterbury Paul, what happened? What happened was nearly two years ago

we moved down here from London I'm a London boy born and bred

now retired and I thought it was going to be a hell of a wrench

You know, we wanted a change of scene, wanted to get a detached house, and that would have meant, in London, it would have meant crippling ourselves even further

So we looked at, you know, we looked at a couple of towns in Northamptonshire, even looked at Kidderminster a few years ago, but just like the shardy, those places weren't for us

We're a mixed couple. Hang on a minute. What was wrong with Kidderminster? We just couldn't quite get the feel of the place, James, and not being negative

but you know when you just find like you've settled in Brentford

you love it there, don't you? I do indeed and the thing is we're a mixed couple

so obviously in London it's nice and easy but what ticked the boxes

for us in Canterbury was when we used to come down occasionally

to the theatre because high speed train for 45 minutes was the fact that with the universities

and the visitors, it's a multi-racial and multicultural mix of people here

you know Okay, so you get a kind of mini London type vibe, do you or not

Yeah, you get a mini type London vibe, but it's also the fact is within 10 minutes walk

we're in open countryside to the back of where we live. We're effectively surrounded three sides by the sea

Whitstable up north, Dover and Folkestone down the south, and Margate and Ramsgate to the, you know, out that way

you know, to the east. What are the downsides? The only downsides are it's the fact of how long it takes to get into London

That's the thing. And there's sometimes been, you know, we used to live within 20 minutes walk of Romford Station

So if it was a miserable, one of those miserable Sunday afternoons in February

you could hop on the Elizabeth Line, get off at Farringdon for the Barbican Centre

Tottenham Court Road for Chinatown and all the rest of it. so it's a little bit you know it's having to adapt that way but overall it's like people are

friendly more relaxed and also because i like my ale there are some very very wonderful yeah i mean

i'm sorry i don't know why i'm interrupting you when you're talking about beer it's one of my top

ten favorite subjects but i i mean you're not you're not the you're not going to get cooler

of the week for this are you because it's you're retired so you're describing leisure really you're

describing um a different stage of life from the people who are likely to relocate at the beginning

of their careers and what differences they could expect as a consequence of doing so

that's a fair comment but it's but it's still criticism yeah but when you get to you know to

my age it's like you know uprooting yourself is sometimes can feel that little bit harder

but people are friendly there's a more you know it's it's i don't know how to describe it james

It's like there's an essence here that... And London, I always found, was friendly

But there's a different vibe in the air. Well, that's it. I said yesterday when we were talking about the eclipse

that my favourite phonings are the ones about putting into words things that are quite hard to put into words

So when I hear you say the words, I don't know quite how to describe it, James

That makes my little ears prick up. Actually, my quite big ears prick up

And makes me think, well, someone else has got to put it into words. What is it that you get out of London

And the air changes. What is it that changes? And listen, working age, if you like, career-based decisions as well, 03456060973, 90,000 professionals are set to move out of London

And that's just in the banking and legal sectors. So you can probably triple that when you've factored in everything else that is historically described as white collar

What warnings would you give them? Seriously if someone has only ever lived in the capital what warnings would you give them about making checks somewhere else starting somewhere else What warnings would you give them What advice would you give them What experiences would you share 0345 6060 973 Paul is in two pools from Canterbury to Leeds Paul in Leeds Paul

what would you like to say? Hi, James, good to speak to you. So, yeah, I made the move from Leeds to London about

30 years ago. Lived down in London for 20 years in Hanwell and Chissey, Richmond, those

kind of areas and I've now actually moved back to Leeds about five years ago

moved back to Leeds but spend a lot of my time commuting back down to London

What are the differences? I think the cadence of life a little bit right

Cadence is a lovely word isn't it? Yeah it's great living in Yorkshire

you know it's kind of I'll see you at the pub at this time there's no rush it's just kind of you get to meet your friends

you get to have a lovely laid back life but then jump on the

train in Leeds two hours and back in London and there's that kind of I wouldn't say excitement but

you know faster cadence here I work within the AI industry so it's very fast moving very

you know quick I also work with government as well so that's based down there in London

but being able to hop on the train two hours in London Elizabeth line you can be where you need

to be within 20 or 30 minutes stay in London if I need to be on that Elizabeth line staying in

Ealing, wherever it might be. So I think there is a difference in the pace of life

Why did you make the decision? What prompted you to make the move back? I think it was housing, to be honest

Was it? Looking at housing down, I was living in Hanwell at the time, looking at it in that kind of area

I was on the Heathrow flight path, a small terraced house. I could come back to where I am now and have, you know

maybe an acre of land almost and a much bigger house for what would have been a very small house down there

This is probably going to be the way forward, isn't it? I mean, we talk a lot about working from home

but we don't really discuss it as a reason for moving home

But the way you describe it, I mean, the logic is impeccable, isn't it

The idea that your earnings are still going to be sort of London-ish weighted

but your lifestyle is going to be much less expensive. Yeah, you can work from home for a couple of days

or even a week and then get done. I think a big difference would be little things like

internet access on a train. Everything we use these days, tools, need internet access to be productive on those journeys

Got it, yeah. People talk about faster train times, but just having good internet would be, you know

a big thing. Would be a game changer as well. I'd tell you why, if I lived in Hanwell

one reason why I'd find it very hard to leave. The golden chip

Oh, I love that place, yeah. It's arguably the best chippy in town

And by that, I don't mean Hanwell, I mean London. Well, I know my way around the fish and chip shops of North Yorkshire

so I take your point. But if you're in the southeast, you will not do better than the golden chip in Hanwell

There's a few nice bars around there, great. Yeah, no, there is, there is. Yeah, I get it

I mean, you're making sense. What we're not getting is the, I love that word, cadence

The description of the cadence. That's what I want next. 0345 6060973

The things that are harder to put into words about the difference

How did your life change? What about parenting? What about the children

You're leaving the capital to go somewhere else. What's going to be different about their childhood

compared perhaps to yours? 0345 6060973. It's half past 11. James O'Brien on LBC

It is 11.34 and you are listening to James O'Brien on LBC

90,000 lawyers and bankers set to leave London and head towards other big cities

You can't criticise me for only talking about northern cities if the cities that are mentioned in the story are Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds

By all means, if you want to ring in and answer the question of what it's like to leave

what's it like to shake the dust of London town from your sandals

and head off, particularly if you weren't expecting this to happen, then you can go wherever you want

I take calls from Bristol, Cardiff, lovely part of the world. There's all sorts of places you can go

But the problem with Londoners is that we forget that anywhere else exists

Not in a bad way, not in a cliched way, like, you know, Watford Gap, M25, or anything like that

But everything is here. Let me read you this from a former Londoner

I left London and found that in Hampshire, they're a weird mix of standoffish and prurient

with a massive side order of racism in London people may mind their business

but they help if you need it London is life who thinks of Ted Lasso when they hear that line

football London is life everything happens there the dearth of activity outside of the capital

is really starkly highlighted especially in the school holidays this is a rural perspective

this is not an urban perspective there's loads going on in cities and big towns

but there's nothing on in the countryside unless you spend two hours going into the city on the train

London's heartbeat, this is beautiful, this is poetic, is a thrum of excitement

Outside of the city, it's the lub-dub of pre-sleep. That kind of speaks to the scale or the tone or the cadence of change

Nitin is in St. Neitz. What would you like to say? I'm trying to think of something funny to say

about the fact that your name is quite similar to your location, but I've got nothing. Carry on

It's good, it's good. I've spoken to you before, James. I always seem to call you well

I've called you twice now, and both times have been when something has massively resonated with me

Last time it was, you know, a school teacher, a drama teacher, I told you about the time when I was younger

the kid who had a massive effect on my life and me becoming an actor and all the rest of it

Now, this is specifically about a warning to all Londoners. Do not leave

Do not leave. Park your bottoms back on your seat. Do not look at..

just close the right move on your browser. There's nothing to see here, right

You're in the best city in the world. Do not do it. I did it about, what, eight years ago now

And, you know, usual story, a couple of young kids, one of their house lived in a flat in Angel

and obviously needed more space. My ex-wife's parents live out here in Cambridge

and we thought, oh, it'd be great for childcare and all the rest of it and you've got all these ideas in your head

But I remember my friend who now lives in Berlin, Ian said to me at the time, he's like, mate are you sure you know what you're doing here you know what year was this what year was this

sorry this was 2018 and he was like you more than anyone i know really like you know if we go to

some old old man's pub whatever and it's it's a bit dead i'm always like oh can we go somewhere

else my mates always say to me mate you're with your friends we're all chatting to each other why

do you need this atmosphere that you're always searching for i was like we're in london why are

we sitting in this pub for we could be any pub in the bloody city you know all that kind of stuff And I've always been like that

And he's always said, he said to me, wait, you don't want to be moving out there into sort of, you know, Tory, white, provincial sort of type

It's just not for you. I should have said, obviously, I'm Indian. You probably got up by me in any way

But Tory Yasser sometimes puts people off. So, yeah, and being Asian as well, you know

it's massively affected how I, you know, how I feel I'm seen

Never noticed the color of my skin living in Newcastle or in London after that for 18 years and then all of a sudden coming out here you know I on my first experience I was out in the pub and I put the jukebox on you know put a couple of quid in the jukebox

and a fellow shouts out to me, he goes, oh, you're not going to put Bollywood on there, are you

Really? I was going to whack away just a bit of charlatans on there, that's all

That should be quite an odd jukebox, wouldn't it, that had Bollywood classics on it anyway

I didn't believe it, and I noticed it then, I was like, oh, God, this is weird. This is a strange thing, you know, people are just picking it out

and I've had a few more serious issues now. I've been, you know, walking down the street one day in the evening

going out for a drink and this young kid shouts at me

Osama. Really? I just could not believe it. Normally, I wouldn't stop

I stopped this kid and I said to him, look, what's going on with you, mate? What did you shout that for

I thought you'd embarrass your friends all around you here. He's outside the pub having a cigarette

And I ended up having a chat with him. I said, you know what? Let me come in here and buy you a drink. I went in there and I bought him a drink

This is just after I moved into the area. and we all had cocktails and I bought them all a drink

him and his friends and all that and we had a good chat. It turns out, he goes to university with this kid

but this is the town he's from. His friends are all embarrassed. I told them I was an actor, mentioned a few of the shows

that I've been on. They're all very embarrassed, but it took me to sort of, you know, dial up the Geordie accent

tell them that I'm kind of one of them and all that stuff and to almost be embarrassed by it

But it was kind of an interesting little thing that I did there because, you know, go on

No, you go on. Well, I was just going to say, you know, because it's an experiment

you know, It was interesting to do because if I walked past and ignored it, you know, whatever perception he had, he would have just kept on having

So when I tell people that, they say, well, if you change one person's sort of opinion slightly

but it's a shame that you had to do that. Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, some people wouldn't be able to do that, would they

Some people wouldn't want to, and some people wouldn't have the wherewithal

and some people would be a little bit outraged. There's a feeling

There's a feeling in these towns, James, and I don't know what it is, but there's..

Look, I'm not saying it's... you know, there's a group of us here, right, you kind of gravitate towards ex-Londoners

and there's a lot of young London professionals here who kind of settled and did the same thing

and we all sort of look at each other, shaking our heads. Well, you're describing familiarity

So, you know, if there were lots of Asian lads in the pub, no one would make comments about Bollywood

And it's not in and of itself a racist, well, I mean, technically, I suppose

drawing attention to your ethnicity, but he wasn't actually mocking you or insulting you

or planning to hurt you or anything like that. It is just a bit like pointing at planes, isn't it

Yeah. Do you know what I mean? You're pointing at something that you haven't really seen much of before

But you're only 40 minutes outside of London. Yeah, I know. It's just crazy to me, you know

Well, that's how Brexit happened, isn't it? I mean, people were persuaded that their own communities

were about to be overrun by geordies called Knitting. Exactly. And the thing is, I was really affected by Brexit

I was living in London at the time, you know, when it all happened. As in, like, how it made me feel

And so moving to somewhere like this a couple of years later, It probably wasn't the best idea for me to do

But look, I mean... Will you go back? I mean, tricky then, family-wise and stuff, is it

Yeah, I mean, look, I'm sort of 50-50 with the kids. And the one thing I will say is if you do end up being divorced

it's a great place to be because of property prices. You can do it, you know what I mean? You can afford two homes

You can afford both. You can separate two homes and you can put the kids in a nice... So I'm here for the foreseeable

I'm 40 minutes away from London, so I work in London. I go back all the time. And, you know, Newcastle

But you really feel it when you go back to the cities that you love, you know

like when you live in these small towns, because sometimes I just fancy a Japanese whiskey

at 10 o'clock, James, you know, in a bar, and I can't get one. I want to see a wine list instead of hearing red or white

You know what I mean? First world problems. Well, not quite first world problems, actually

Red or white. Sweet or dry. It's a nice one. I mean, that is going to be a sort of subjective experience

on one level, and yet quite a common experience on another, the thing that you notice

And that's so neat. So again, it's Cambridgeshire. it's not Manchester. If you're moving to

Manchester, I don't think you're going to have any particular problems. It shrinks a bit, your world

when you move from London to Manchester or to Birmingham, but not a lot

And you're going to get an awful lot of the things that you are used to in London. You can probably

even get a Japanese whiskey at 10 o'clock at night. I wonder if you can, actually. I don't know

To be fair, I wouldn't know where to get one in London. It is 11.42

Hi, James. I grew up in Kidderminster, writes Freddie. I moved to London, and then I moved to New York

and I recently moved to Manchester. Where do you think he's going with this? because I'm thinking he's going to end it with

and after all that, I dream of Kidderminster. No. He goes, and after all that, all I want to do

is jump on the train and go down to London for the day. Not Kidderminster, mate

Everybody's so friendly there. It is, Henry Riley told me, it's 11.42. Charlie is in Honeybourne

which is not a million miles away from Kidderminster actually. Charlie, what made you pick up the phone? Hi, James. An absolute

pleasure to speak to you, sir. Likewise. So, I've never wanted to pick up the phone so much

but we moved my partner, myself, my six cats, to Honeybourne just a year ago

Right. And we previously lived in Wimbledon and Morden. And it is absolutely the best move that we've ever done

What prompted it? Because that's quite a big shift. Was it somebody's job or was it just a complete change of air

No, no. So I still work in London, but I have to go down twice a week

My partner works from home most of the time, but can also jump on the train

I got beaten up pretty badly by a bunch of 14-year-old girls a couple of years ago

and just kind of fell out of love. I've been in London all my life. I'm now 53

And it's just brilliant. It's such a gorgeous village. The people can't do enough to help you

You've still got your characters. You've got, you know, we can't have dogs, but everybody's got a dog

and it's just a wonderful community and everybody says hello when you get out of your house

that is a really jarring thing for Londoners Keith and I were talking about this

first time he started going to Cornwall a lot people just say hello all the time

and you're just walking down the street and they say hello, you alright? I'm alright, you alright

that is not normal behaviour and you forget when you go back to London and you just go oh hi

and people look at you and you go I'm not in Kansas anymore What made you choose Honeybourne

Because it's near Evesham, isn't it? Cotswolds, kind of on the edges of the Cotswolds

People don't realise Worcestershire has some Cotswolds. But how did you end up there, from Wimbledon

Well, we had one house fall through, and one of my very, very dear friends lives..

She lives in Carterton. So you just loved the area. I mean, you could have gone anywhere, though

is the point that I'm making. There was no particular connection with this area

apart from a good friend. There wasn't, like, family reasons or... No, not in the slightest

We just absolutely love the Cotswolds. Everything's basically 20 minutes away. I'm just on my way to Tesco's, which is 20 minutes away

Yeah, completely different. And the lack of traffic. I do not miss the traffic in London at all

So if anybody wants to make the move, people can have good and bad experiences

but ours has been nothing. I'm just fascinated by how you decide where you're going to go

It's a little bit of me that would sort of relish the idea

of just sticking a pin in a map and trying to set up home wherever the pin was stuck

But I don't know that I would ever be able to drag myself away from the big smoke

11.45 is the time you're listening to James O'Brien on LBC. The element of this story that I missed, of course

is not necessarily that the jobs are being moved away from the capital

but that actually the way that we work and our relationship with work is changing As we discussed a lot on the programme And the idea of needing to be chained to a very specific desk in a very specific building in a very specific city for five days of every week is no longer true

There's been a little bit of pushback to the working from home mania that overtook us inevitably during lockdowns

lockdowns but the the central it just meant that things that probably would have happened naturally

over a period of 20 years were enormously catalyzed and accelerated by covid so of course if you've got

the technological capability to do your job at home then you will want sometimes to do your job

at home and if you're doing your job at home you don't need to be in the part of the country where property is immensely more expensive than it is absolutely everywhere else and that is one of the

reasons. I put it to you, my lud. My learned friends on the jury

I put it to you. That's one of the reasons why there is a small crisis in primary school numbers in

London. James O'Brien on LBC. It's 10 to 12 or Mystery Hour minus 10

as it is known nowhere really. I just made it up. But anyway, Mystery Hour with us

in 10 minutes time. Before that, a few stories, well two or three stories

I said to you that we need to obviously continue our conversations about climate change

Not least because we're in another heatwave today. The first one was in May, was it

This is mad now. Who's confident that this is the last one? Could there be another one around the corner

Who would be shocked if there was? And as we discussed yesterday, this is not the new normal

It's not the new normal until we achieve net zero. And then you can just about begin to have a conversation about the status quo or about stabilisation

For now, this is probably the coldest summer that you will ever experience

Moving forward. Coldest summer. Sorry, I'll say that again for the benefit of people at the back

This is almost certainly the coldest summer you will ever experience. And it was somewhat comical yesterday to be talking about a COBRA meeting

which I know it only stands for Cabinet Office Briefing Room A, but it does make you think that something massive is about that

COBRA! It's just even the word makes you sort of sound like you're doing the voiceover on a Hollywood movie in 1984

Cobra. In fact, there is a film starring Sylvester Stallone called Cobra, so I'm not going mad

And as I told you yesterday, there was a roller coaster at West Midland Safari Park called The Cobra

And then they announced a possible future ban on disposable barbecues. Should have been called The Hamster

Should have been a hamster meeting, not a cobra meeting, if all they're going to do is announce a possible ban on disposable barbecues

So I wanted to talk to Guy Shrubsall for one reason, actually

was because it was your freedom of information request, I think, that revealed

Well, you tell us how many members of DEFRA staff are currently working

on adapting to the climate crisis, Guy. Hello. Hello, James. Good to speak to you again

Yes, it was extremely alarming to discover, after I put in a freedom of information request to the Environment Department

to DEFRA, that just 20 members of staff at the government's Environment Department

are working on climate adaptation. And this is out of over 6,600 staff

And, you know, I just looked at that and I thought, we are so unprepared for the climate crisis that we are now in

You know, the world is on fire. Britain is on fire. As you say, we're in our fifth heat wave of the summer

It's the hottest summer ever, I think, according to the Met Office

and you know we we seem to not be doing nearly enough to prepare for this i think the climate

change committee i think even a couple of years ago now and these are the government's independent

advisors on climate change they said that there's been a lost decade for climate adaptation in this

country so you know you might be able to say that a lot of this is down to austerity and the tories

cutting important resources, deregulating and so on. But, you know, this current government really does also need to get a grip

And it was disappointing, actually, to, you know, I've had a lot of hope for Andy Burnham as Prime Minister

but it was disappointing to hear the readout of yesterday's Cobra meeting

being, you know, let's ban disposable barbecues. Great. Let's possibly ban disposable barbecues

Oh, let's possibly ban. And let's do that by all means, you know, but there's some bigger issues at play here

not least the climate crisis and the burning of fossil fuels, but also the way that we have mismanaged our land and that has turned it into a tinderbox

We'll come to that in one moment. Before that, we tried on the programme yesterday to posit ideas that the government might announce

or that we might like to see alongside the piece about your freedom of information request in Today's Guardian

They've put together 10 policies that Number 10 could and indeed should announce right now

veering from the obvious, which would be a rejection of new licences for oil and gas fields in the North Sea

through to bigger windfall taxes, but also, as you've just touched upon, regenerative agriculture

being encouraged to increase food resilience, planting more trees, protecting existing nature

And I would urge people to have a look at that list of 10. implement a maximum workplace temperature would help everybody as well but it wasn't a story that

i was because i saw you posting about the freedom of information yesterday i wasn't expecting to be

talking to you about the next story on on our little agenda today um until i got to work and

i saw an extraordinary juxtaposition of journalism where one newspaper elected to report on its front

page, actually, on grouse shooting and rewilding being the cause of wildfires. I'll say that again

This is the front page of the Daily Mail alleging that rewilding is the cause of wildfires, although

they didn't seem to have any actual scientific evidence for that. It was just a bunch of people

from the grouse shooting community, really, who were arguing against not being allowed to set fire

to grouse moors in order to ensure that the heather grows back

in a way that encourages more grouse to breed so that they can shoot them next August, or this August

on the 12th of this month. But then if you turn to other, and the Daily Telegraph

Labour sets sights on game shoots after caving to pressure from RSPB

But if you looked at the same story in The Guardian, it is, it's the opposite

It's the fact that the drying out of moors, the draining of peat in particular, creates circumstances where wildfires are much more likely to spread

So what's the truth? You've hit the nail on the head there, James

And just to return to what the Daily Mail headline is, you know, front page splash, rewilding link to record fires

If you read the actual piece, there's zero evidence cited for this extraordinary claim in the piece

There's no stats, there's no data, there's no independent studies. there is just, as you say, a bunch of spurious accusations made by some highly biased vested interests

who represent the owners, very wealthy owners of very large grouse moors in this country

And you've got the Country Land and Business Association, CLA, whose members own by their own admission

a third of the land in England and Wales. You've got the Moorland Association being, quote

whose members own or manage, quote, over a million acres of the moorlands of England and Wales

And, you know, not many people perhaps are aware of the fact that vast swathes of our uplands in England

are dominated by these grouse moor estates where people, very rich people, go and shoot grouse each year

as you say, on the so-called glorious 12th of August, which just took place yesterday

But what they do is that each, between each October and April each year

they actually deliberately set fire to the moorland that they own. And they do this for one very simple reason

It's in order to maximise the number of grouse they can then shoot during the shooting season

And, you know, for them, what they've done is they have turned, these guys have actually done the work of turning England into a tinderbox

because they've drained and burned huge areas of peat bogs, which should naturally be very, very wet and very, very good at retaining rainfall and moisture

And what instead they've done is they've turned it into a heather monoculture

a monoculture of heather, which is preferred by red grouse, which they then go out and shoot

So for them to have the gall to turn around and start lobbying for deregulation to, you know

open up the ability for them to burn more of their huge grouse estates each year is quite extraordinary really

Even by the standards of missed information, a feature on this programme

I think you might have helped us with in the past. And my tireless attempts to highlight how the same so-called, or quote

story can be reported from polar opposite positions by different media outlets

This was particularly breathtaking. My favourite bit, and I know you picked up on this

because they've got a picture of a fire under the headline on the front page

Rewilding Link to Record Fires, and they had to caption the picture of a fire with these words

There is no suggestion this fire was as a result of rewilding. Presumably, if they could find a fire where there was even the vaguest suggestion

that the fire was a result of rewilding, they'd have used that photo guy

Well, again, I checked the online version of the story, and they have three separate pictures of recent wildfires

and under each of them they have to say there is no suggestion this fire was as a result of rewilding

They have no examples of where rewilding has caused these wildfires. The fact of the matter is that there are thousands and thousands of drainage ditches

that have been cut into our uplands by landowners over the last century and a half

in order to deliberately send water out of the uplands and faster downstream

Now that does two things. At this time of year, it makes our peat bogs much drier than they ought to be

And secondly, in winter, when we get even worse and increasingly worse rainfall because of the climate crisis

people get flooded more downstream as a result of this. So, you know, these are not the people, these landowners, these grass moorers

are not the people we should be turning to to talk to and learn about how to make our country more resilient to climate change

It occurred to me reading it this morning that it's almost a microcosm of the old climate change debate

which does happily seem to be almost over now. Hugo Rifkin in the Times today commenting on the fact

that you don't really hear the hardcore climate change deniers, where once you couldn't avoid them, they'd be on Newsnight

they'd be all over the Daily Telegraph, they'd be writing in the mail. That, I guess, position has become untenable

given what's happening outside everybody's window as we speak. But this is like a microcosm of it

because this is my pleasure or my profit is more important than the environment or the planet

So where the grouse more is an ogy for the planet and the grouse shooter as an ogy for the fossil fuel industries

We demand that we can carry on doing what we've always done and stuff the consequences

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, to be honest, today's Daily Mail headline

and many of the other articles that have been appearing in the press, in the right-wing press, particularly in recent weeks

they are just simply a concerted campaign to try and remove some of the very sensible restrictions

that both Tory and Labour governments have put in place on this very damaging practice of regularly burning moorland

The fact of the matter is, is that, you know, we hear the grouse moor industry trying to say, oh, we need to burn more of our grouse moors

because that helps reduce fuel load and all this stuff. The fact of the matter is, is you don't fight fire with fire

you fight it with water. You fight fire with water. You heard it here first

And this is why we absolutely need the government to be intervening in a far more concerted way

than just saying, let's ban disposable barbecues. As important as that is

we really need to be transforming the way in which we use land in this country

I really wish that the government, the Labour government, did have a rewilding drive. There isn't one. There isn't one at the moment

But there is an attempt to limit the burning of Grousemores. That's what they're calling

Exactly. And what we really need to be doing is to make Britain wet again

Oh, well done. There you go. He's even got a baseball cap. Make Britain wet again

I mean, in conclusion, Guy, I mean, thank goodness, for example, it's not as if the editor-in-chief of the Daily Mail titles

actually owns Grousemores in Scotland, is it? That would be ridiculous. Well, I mean, that would be almost too hard to believe

Could you imagine? the grouse more owner and shooter but uh you know allow you to draw your own conclusions about yeah

i'll perish the thought uh guy shrubs soul thank you so much guys latest book the light of the land

is is out now but um the lost rainforest of britain who owns england and um any minute now

or actually out next year the um the ghosts of chalk country a man who knows of what he speaks

which is just about right isn't it because it's thursday it's two minutes after 12 it's mystery

hour, the one hour of the week where everybody knows what they're talking about. James O'Brien on LBC

Oh, Mystery Hour. It's like getting into a warm bath sometimes, isn't it? Oh no, a cool

bath, sorry. Remember I've got air conditioning. Who's sitting there now anywhere else in this country

thinking, oh, do you know what I'd like? I'd like a warm bath. It's like getting into a cool shower

isn't it? Or jumping into the sea at the moment. The lovely, soothing

sounds of Mystery Hour keeping you company during in a sweltering heat wave that I managed to forget about

despite talking about it with Guy just a moment ago. This is Mystery Hour, your weekly opportunity to achieve the sort of satisfaction

not available anywhere else on your radio. We refresh parts that other radio programmes simply cannot reach

and we do so together, always together. I benefit from your knowledge, and you very occasionally might benefit from mine

but most of all, we benefit from each other's curiosity. because some of the questions might be silly

and some of them might be serious, but they will all be ineffably human

Ineffably is one of those words I shouldn't use because I've never actually double-checked what it actually means

but it's such a lovely word, like cadence, that I just find myself slipping it into a conversation sometimes

and I need to double-check. Ineffably human. It describes feelings, beauty or sadness that are too great to name

It means an extreme degree that cannot be described in words I like that I running with ineffably Mystery Hour is an ineffably human endeavour Shall I tell you what it is So someone rings

in with a question, right? Well, lots of people, ideally. You, for example, might ring in with a

question, a mystery, a riddle, a who, a why, a what, a where, a when, a whither, a whence

even the occasional wherefore, and somebody else rings in with an answer. There aren't really any

rules. You're not allowed to look stuff up, because that would make a mockery of the whole

exercise, wouldn't it? If you could just Google it. You can share the fruits of your previous

knowledge, if you like. So if you did happen to look it up a couple of years ago, because

one of the kids asked you, Dad, why do we do... Why? What is..

That's fine, but you can't look it up now. You can have... Anyway, you understand

I don't need to draw you a flipping diagram. And that's it. My favourite

contribution of the week will win an actual Mystery Hour game. The tin is

doing is proving very popular at the moment so the the you can either have the tin you can the

travel edition of the mystery hour game or you can have the original board game and it is worth

having both to be honest with you because they are very different things with completely different

questions and answers included in each each box one metal box one cardboard box and you can find

out the full terms and conditions for that competition because it is technically a competition

even though it's just me saying yeah that was my favorite give them a game it's technically a

competition, it abides by all regulatory bylaws, and you can find the full terms and conditions

at lbc.co.uk. Some people think I made up the game, that it never actually exists

Some people still think Keith doesn't exist, because you've never really heard his voice, except when some strange, booming bass baritone bleeds out of my earphones

Keith definitely exists, and the Miss Jower game really exists. Both of them

You can, I can prove it to you. You can go to missjower.co.uk

Chris is in Swainby in North Yorkshire. Chris, question or answer? Question please, James

Carry on, Chris. What would happen if you opened a can of Coke in space

So, what would happen if you had a pressurised container in the vacuum of space and you opened it

I just can't mentally conceptualise what the reaction would be. Would it be a big explosion

Would it be massively underwhelming? Would you be able to get the can of Coke into space

Would it, I mean, would it... So what you've got is a spaceman. coming out of a spaceship in a space suit

with a can of Coke in his pocket. Yeah. And he just cracks it

And he somehow manages, because it would be hard in a space suit

to get the ring pull off a can of Coke, wouldn't it? I imagine NASA can make a tool for that

I was going to say, if anybody can, NASA can. So we don't need to get bogged down in the detail of it

So the spaceman, can of Coke in space, on a spacewalk, opens the can, what happens

What happens? A can of Coke could be, it might be bigger pressurised containers

but a can of Coke could start with. No, let's start with a can of Coke. And, well, it could be absolutely nothing

it could be impossible to get the lid off, or it could explode like a bomb. No idea

No, I know. I love it. Where did that question come from

Just out of interest. Honestly, I've got into Mystery Hour over the last couple of years

and I thought, what would I ask? and that was a question that popped up and I've just been stewing on it for about a year now

and I can't break it. And here it is. Let's hope we get an answer. We might not, of course

That is the magic of Mystery Hour is that you never know. We roll the dice together

but we don't know what numbers are likely to come up. What would happen? I like that

It's got a sort of nice simplicity to it but then incredible complexity quite possibly

involved in the answer. What would happen if you managed to open a can of Coke in space

Russ is in Bangor. Russ, question or answer? Question. Carry on, Ross

Of the time, actually, but we can't mention it today because it's a certain day. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no

Don't scare me like that. Carry on. I'm not scaring you. You are scaring me

How do you know whether you're scaring me or not? Being scared is not in the eye of the beholder. It's in the eye of the scared person

Go on. Hand dryers in bathrooms. There we go. That's safe. Okay, so you know why we've got to be careful what we say now

What's the most efficient way to dry your hands? shake them or rub them together like you're washing your hands in thin air

Both. You shake them before you put them under the hand dryer and then you rub them together. Yeah, yeah, yeah

But I've watched people, some people are shaking them and some people are rubbing them. Not most people do a hybrid version of what you've just suggested

So it's a rub or shake? Some people rub, some people shake

Well, it depends. Because we've kind of been confused. Is this a question

Is this a good question? I'm surprised you got on. I'm not going to lie. I'm not being rude. It's a criticism of my colleagues, not of you

But is this a proper question? It's a proper question. It's keeping me awake at night

Is it? It is. Can't you just do a simple experiment? Yes, but I can't get the timer going on my phone at the same time as the rub and all the shake

Also, it would look weird, wouldn't it? It would look weird. If I got my phone out in a bathroom, I'd start looking like a member of a certain party

Set the timer and doing all that sort of thing. All right. Hang on

Can I rephrase the question? Yeah. Yeah, the most... Go on, go on, yeah

What is the optimal way to use a hand dryer? The optimal... Correct

Because I think... I don't like the binary nature of shake versus rub. What is the optimal way

Because during COVID, we were being taught how to wash our hands, weren't we? We were. We were

And I... Go on. Actually, you asked me... You said about the shaky thing

I did learn about the shaky thing because I once said to somebody, whoever invented hand towels

has never used a single hand towel. But then there's a TED Talk, really

where a guy shows you how to dry your hands with one hand towel. and it requires 12 shakes over a sink before you do it. Yeah

Well, when you think about it, of course it does, doesn't it? Yeah. That's how you use one hand towel to dry your hands

If you've got soggy hands, then you pick up the towel and it falls to pieces in your hands

All right, you're on. Yeah, what is the optimal... And someone might know this

They might get taught it. The hand dryer engineers might get taught it

It'd be nice to know, wouldn't it? What is the optimal way to use a hand dryer

And what would happen if you opened a can of Coke in space? Zenga is in Harlsdon

Zenga, question or answer? Hello? 12.14 is the time. You're listening to James O'Brien on LBC

where Mystery Hour is underway. Just to clarify one thing from the conversation with Guy Shrubsold a moment ago

I mean, it would be good to ban disposable barbecues. No one is suggesting otherwise

But it was a little disappointing to have a Cobra meeting, at the end of which, in the face of a, I mean

absolutely extraordinary climate crisis, all that emerged from the COBRAT meeting was a suggestion that they might ban disposable barbecues

So, by all means, ban them. Great. No one is suggesting we shouldn't. I just think Guy and I were both a little bit taken aback

by the apparent paucity of the policy pronouncements after such an important meeting

James O'Brien on LBC. Sixteen minutes after 12 is the time. You're listening to James O'Brien on LBC

I like this. Where's it gone? Was it Tim who plays a game about who would be most likely to get a Ray Liotta with each question

So on every question they have a little debate about who be most likely to get the Ray Liotta And obviously on the can of Coke in space question you be hoping for Tim Peake to ring in I don know who would ring in on the Optima Can imagine anyone getting a Ray Liotta for telling us what the optimal way to use a hand dryer is but stranger things have

happened. Let's give Zenger in Harlsdon another go but only one more go Zenger. Question or answer

Oh hello thanks very much. I have a question. Yes. I'd like to know why is it that inner city slang

changes so rapidly, whereas posh slang always sort of stays the same

Because I live in the city area of London and I hear this local slang

changes all the time. So one minute people are saying famalam, next minute famalam is out and they're saying

you know, cuz or whatever. And it's impossible to keep up. Whereas posh slang, when you hear

Jacob Rees-Mogg or Boris Johnson I don't know that Jacob Rees-Mogg deploys slang, does he

Yeah, they do. They say, oh, bean. they have the P.G. Woodhouse slang

Oh, I see what you mean. And they say, good show, old bean, or when they say goodbye, they say

chinky-tonk. Pip, pip. And if you Dickens, the slang hasn't changed. They're still saying things like, absolutely topping

So the slang is exactly the same, whereas with the inner-city slang, it changes

I think the question's absolutely fascinating. I think that's a brilliant question

I mean, just to be a pedant, if I may, I mean, it's not identical

So, you know, there's a lot of stuff in Woodhouse that I think Woodhouse actually made up himself

But they're still using it. Even if he made it up, people are still saying Old Bean

They're still saying... Old Bean is a perfect example of what you're describing. I mean, urban slang or inner-city slang

just moves a heck of a lot faster. Although, I suppose, you know, in the demotic

we would still say mate. I still say mate a lot. And mate is the equivalent to Old Bean

And it's not... Actually, a lot of my posh mates say mate all the time, mate. They're always saying..

So you're talking about posh slang staying the same. Yes. And street slang changing all the time

Yes. I mean, people say, or whatever, and then suddenly, you know

a month later. Do you know what, Zynga? It's old-fashioned. Do you know what, Zynga

It's not just a great question. I go so far, Zynga, as to say it is actually a zinger

Oh! You've made my day. You may well have made mine, depending on whether or not we get an answer

Zynga from Zynga. 19 minutes after 12 is the time. Why does posh slang stay the same

while street slang evolves and changes in often fascinating but fast ways

I love that. Ian is in Stourbridge. Ian, question or answer? Question, please, James

Great to be able to talk to you. Likewise. How can toddlers run so quickly

once they escape your clutches and you find it really difficult to catch up with them

I've got sort of three examples of these that have happened recently, and it's just something that absolutely fascinates me

Go on. The first one was my nephew escaping my clutches. Yeah

And that was some time ago. He ran down an alley in an area that was unfamiliar to me

Right. And I really panicked. So you got worried? You got worried? You know, but I eventually caught him, but it took a good..

I think I know why. 20 yards. Yeah, I think I know why

But I've seen it again since. Go on. You know, my friend's little boy, she lives on a main road

Oh. He saw the garden gate open. Yeah. Fortunately, the pavement's quite wide

so she managed to get to him before he caught the road, but it was really quite scary

Yeah. And then the latest one was a friend up the gym, his little boy scouted

And I mean, I'm talking about fairly 31, 32 maybe, year old bloke who's really thick

And it's just in that, over the first 10 to 15 yards

the toddler is enjoying an unexpected advantage. Absolutely. And they've only got little feet and little legs

Yeah, but think about it, though. I'm probably going to make an absolute fool of myself now

Go on. Again. I thought you should have said again. I left that one wide open for you, mate

Left it wide open. It's because their legs are short that they can get going quicker

No, I shouldn't be not. I'm going to use it using the medium of sound, all right

Because you can't see me at the moment. Yeah. So here's the toddler, right

And here's you chasing after them. Boom, boom, boom, boom. So obviously, as you pick up speed

and they've got gravity on their side, because as Alan points out, they're not exactly running

It's more like they're falling. They're sort of falling forwards and getting their feet in front of them at a rate of knots

So they're going... And then you're behind and go... So you're bound to catch them up

and if it was over 100 yards, he'd beat them by a country mile. But over that initial ignition, that ignition point

the little legs are pumping away a lot faster than the long old legs

Yeah, I get that. But as I say, I still find, you know, that chap I just described in the gym was like

it was probably further than 10 yards, and it really took him the best of his strength

to actually get there and get him before he was out through the doors

I think it will be about acceleration versus speed. It's bound to be that

They can accelerate faster than we can because they're lighter or their legs are shorter or something

The acceleration will be faster, even though the speed they end up at

is going to be considerably slower. The journey from inertia, from stillness to maximum speed

is going to be much shorter than it is for the bigger person

But I'd say... Go on. Would that be quicker off a starting block

Yeah, of course you would. That's why we have starting blocks. It'd be weird, though, wouldn't it

if you were just sitting there on the starting block waiting for a toddler to run away, and then, boom, you're off

Leverage. I'm going to get an answer. I think I'm probably about 80% there on that one, Ian. OK

But I'd wait for someone to provide the last 20, or indeed to completely dismantle my own attempts

at answering that question. I like that. I like that. 0345 6060973

if you know the answer to Ian's question. You didn't see Henry Riley yesterday, did you, Ian

at all knocking around town? No, no, I'm recovering from a knee..

I wouldn't be able to catch anybody at the moment. I'm recovering from a total knee replacement last year

I'm not out and about at the moment. Well, stay safe. I wish you a speedy recovery

Henry was in kiddie, but of course if he caught the train, if he was getting the Birmingham train

he'd have gone through Stowerbridge. Jen is in Chiswick. Jen, question or answer? Question, James

Carry on, Jen. Can you wash your freckles off? Well, don't you like them

I miss them. I love them. I used to have a face full of them. Oh, your freckles. I thought you were giving me some cosmetic advice there

I thought you were sitting and judging. Well, no, you know you can't wash your freckles off

Well where have mine gone then I used to have a face full and now I got some just in my hairline which is where I won be taking makeup off my face for like the last 35 years

Oh, so you think you might actually have been responsible for the freckle room. It's a genuine question

Yeah, I've just got a really bland face now that's freckle free and I miss them. Oh, when did you notice that they were going or did it just strike you one day that they'd gone

Struck me about two years ago. Where have all my freckles gone? Yeah, I saw a childhood photo and I was covered in them

Lovely little freckles. Did you have them as an adult? Hmm, I don't know

I haven't kind of... Because it might be... Well, think about it. As your face got bigger

the freckles got stretched until they became invisible. No, that doesn't sound right

It does. It happens with birthmarks sometimes. A little baby has a little birthmark

and then as their face expands, the birthmarks sort of become so stretched out

that you can't see it anymore. That's obviously what's happened. What else could it be

My face isn't that much bigger than it was when I was, say, 12. No, it is

No, it's not. It is. It's about half the size again. It's about 50% bigger than it was

when you were 12, your face. So then, how do you explain the ones that have remained just below my hairline

I'm not sure I can. Thank you. You're welcome. I thought I might

I just gave myself a little bit of space there to come out with that, but I have got nothing

Because that part of your face would have expanded just as much. Well, yes, it would

Otherwise, you'd look really weird, wouldn't you? It's quite insulting, you talking about the size of my face

Well, it's no. There's nothing wrong with having a big old face. It's more room to smile

All the better to smile. It's turned into one big freckle, perhaps

They've joined together. I don't know. So where do all the freckles go? Thank you

Thank you. 26 minutes after 12 is the time. Not just Jan's freckles, of course, unless she is a freak of nature

but all the freckles that were once on a face that are no longer on a face

And it could be that you've been using some sort of product that has... Because you can do..

It's melanin, isn't it? So you can make them come up more

so presumably, maybe, there is something that you've done over the years that might have made them go away

Andy's in Shrewsbury. Andy, question or answer? Question, please, James. Carry on, Andy. Have you got any freckles

Yeah, I have, actually. I've managed to retain some of mine. Sadly, most of my hair's gone, though

Oh, yeah, swings and roundabouts. Are you similarly freckled today to how you were when you were 12

Or would you detect a change, do you think? I notice them more in sunnier weather, actually

Maybe you've got Jen's freckles, then. Maybe they've kind of migrated from Chiswick to Shrewsbury

Go on, then. What's your question? So my question is, I travel all from literally Land's End to John O'Groats for work

and I've driven for many years, and I can't understand why is it that the digital radio signal in cars and vans

is so poor compared to the old FM signal? I don't know that we..

Are you sure this is... I mean, we like DAB digital. It's our livelihood

I don't know that we should have accepted this question. Yeah, yeah

Listen to the app. Get online and listen to the app. Is it worse, DAB Digital, than FM

Definitely. Is it? It's definitely worse. And not only that, when it goes, it just goes

And you're left in limbo. Usually in the middle of a very important interview

where you're just about to nail it home and I'm waiting for the answer. And there it goes

But on the old FM... It's very annoying. And on the old FM system

FM used to automatically scan and find you a slightly better frequency

but DAB is either on or off. And the strange thing about it is

that when I look at my mobile phone at those moments when it's gone off, I've got a very good internet signal

So why has it gone? I bet Keith knows. Do you know, Keith, this one

Kinda. Kinda. No, Keith doesn't know. I should know, really. Why would I know

I don't know anything about what goes on under the bonnet of this. I don't even know which way around my microphone goes

It's very frustrating and as an entire humanity as an entire humanity

we've accepted a load of vehicles that we're all buying with something inside that doesn't work

Yeah, you're on. Okay. I mean, I'm worried. I don't want to sound like

I'm denigrating the technology that pays my mortgage but it is fair to say

that one is better than the other and we don't know why. It's an odd thing as well to have replaced the less

to replace the superior medium with the inferior medium. But there will be reasons behind all of this

and we will find out what they are, Andy. 0345 6060 973 is the number that you need

if you can answer this question. Or indeed, the question about the freckles

the question about how on earth can toddlers outrun adults for a bit when they're so small and slow

Why does posh slang stay the same while street slang evolves and changes constantly

That's a brilliant question, actually, from Zanga. What is the optimal way to use a hand dryer

That, possibly from Russ, is a less good question. I don't know, but, you know, horses for courses

And another contender for question of the week, Chris, is what would happen if you opened a can of Coke in space

0345 6060 973. James O'Brien on LBC. It's 12.32. You're listening to James O'Brien on LBC

where Mystery Hour continues. What a dizzying array. What a pleasant potpourri of questions we have this week

We'll need to get some answers on the board soon, but not necessarily just yet. Simon is in Littlehampton

Simon, question or answer? Oh, hi, James. I've got a question for you

Carry on. So the direct question is, does Beethoven get PRS and all his era mates

of the same era of music? So it's a good question, that

but I think I know the answer. there's a time limit on copyright. So I know with books

you know when you're in the bookshop and some of the old classics are like 99p? There's a section where you can buy all the Dickens

and all the Jane Austens for 99p. It's because they're out of copyright. So there's no royalties being paid

And I think Cliff Richard tried to challenge it, of all people

You know how my brain works. I've got Cliff Richard popping up now. He's pretty close to Beethoven's age, I think

I thought you were going to say talent then. No. They're interchangeable, really, aren't they

Cliff Richard is the Beethoven de No Jour. I'm pretty sure that it's 50 years or something like that for music

and Cliff was understandably a bit cross that some of his early work was going to move out of copyright

Well, he was still in a position to enjoy the benefits, which is the answer to your question

So, no, the descendants of Beethoven and Mozart, and even I imagine Nat King Cole

don't get any royalties from their work. It'd be interesting if there's a steward on that

It's unlikely, isn't it? Well, as the family... Who's going to ring in on that one, then

Who's the current Batehoven? John. Batehoven the 20th. Yeah, John Batehoven. John Batehoven

John Batehoven. He lives in Dagenham. He plays down at the dog and duck every Friday night

Do these great, great, great, great, great granddad kids. John Batehoven. There you go

Yeah. Yeah, if there's a Stuart's inquiry on this, I'll give you the money myself

You can't look for that. Otherwise, there'd be all sorts of rouse going on, and who got that, and who got this

So, round of applause for me, I think. Qualifications, I looked it up

Or I remember the Cliff Richard story, actually, but I also looked it up with books once

I can't remember why. Oh, I do remember why. I wondered if I could leave royalties to my children in the unlikely event of anyone still buying my books in the dim and distant future

And there is a time limit on books as well as on music

It is 12.35. Oh, and speaking of my writing efforts, I think the column that I've written for the iNewspaper today is..

I think it's a really important point that I'm not hearing made in lots and lots of different places

So if you get the chance to have a look at that, then do. On Roberts in Oxford. Robert, question or answer

It's a question, James. Carry on, Robert. Yeah, to continue the space theme from yesterday and the Coca-Cola

Yes. We were watching the stars last night, the shooting stars, and we saw a beautiful one

And I thought... What shootings? No one told me about any shooting stars. You're supposed to be watching the Eclipse

No, no, no. It's a whole sort of, you know, it was a duo thing

Were the shooting stars linked to the Eclipse? No, no. This is every year we go through some sort of asteroid belt

All right. Yeah, yeah. No one told me, anyway. So there we were

And this beautiful shooting star, really bright. And I thought, how many people am I sharing this wish with

So how many people can see that shooting star? have found north and south

I guess east and west works less because then it gets dark in light

It's on the same axis, isn't it? Yeah, but even, obviously, if it's dark..

You're not going to be able to answer that. How many people can see the same shooting

No, no, no. Not people. What's the furthest location? It was the Perseid meteor shower, wasn't it

I did know about that. I could get that memo. I've probably pronounced it wrong. Is that what you're talking about

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So will somebody in Scotland have seen that shooting star

Will somebody in... Norfolk. Yeah, Norfolk. If they were looking up. Yeah, I like it

Yeah, no, I do, I do like it. I mean, no is the short answer, isn't it? Because otherwise everyone would have seen it

No, the answer to what? I mean, the person in Scotland wouldn't have seen the one that you saw

I don't know. because how far, how high is it? Obviously, they must burn up at the same height

Yeah. Yeah, so, you know. I can't believe I said that out loud

Everyone can see the moon as if that's a helpful... Yeah, it was in front of the sun last night. It was, yeah

Everyone was looking at the moon last night. So, shooting stars or meteor showers

I mean... Just a shooting star. Who would see the same shooting star? But I think it was a meteor shower

I think what you saw was a meteor shower. No, no, it doesn't matter. Any night of the year..

Yeah, they must burn up at the same point. They must be just a bit more intense this time of year

Yeah, I like it. Yeah, you're on. I mean, it's a good question

I don't fully understand its parameters because I'm a bit slow on some subjects

So what I'm thinking is, it depends how far it flies through the sky

because you might see the beginning of its journey in one part of the country and the end of it in another part of the country

And they've both seen it, but they haven't seen what you saw. They've just seen the same thing

at different stages in its trajectory. There you go. I inserted a fancy word at the end

to make it sound as though I know what I'm talking about. Thank you, Robert. Let's go back to Laurie in Finsbury Park

So one of your jobs is to sort of make scripts authentic

Yes, to make them sound like... Somebody will send me in a script

that's meant to be set in the modern day, and I'll have to explain to them

why they can't use Cockney rhyming slang. because we don't so someone writes a script set in London

and it's as if Dick Van has risen from the pages of Mary Poppins

and you have to say no gore lummy Eliza Doolittle no one talks like that

the phone line is still not great so give it to me quickly

it's class, TLDR it's class it's immigration, working class people and there's waves and waves of immigration

change versus constancy it's change versus constancy Yes, but also upper class people, posh people

tend to have all these little codes and shibboleths. People learn them deliberately

People learn them on purpose. If the line's good enough, this thing I learned recently

is one of the theories for why posh people don't say they're ours sometimes

Like, you know, oh, terribly, terribly. Terribly. One of the theories for this is that after the French Revolution

when posh French people were coming over, there was an affectation among certain very posh people

to stop saying R because it stands for revolution. I thought you were going to say

that the English people were trying to sound posh by aping the French who couldn't

pronounce their R's very well. That's wonderful. I know you've told us, but tell us again, qualifications

I work as a script consultant. That's wonderful. A script consultant, as I would say

I work as a script consultant. That's a lovely answer to a lovely question

Have a round of applause, Laurie. That's lovely. um and and it is in a nutshell constancy versus change so and and also as laurie says posh people

kind of protecting if you go back to one of them was it one of the mitford sisters who wrote a book

with a academic from birmingham university about you and non and it would so if you used the word toilet it meant that you were non You were you were um you know not posh

Posh people didn't... If you weren't posh, you didn't know that. You didn't know that saying toilet or settee instead of sofa

was somehow a mark to posh people that you weren't posh enough. It's ludicrous. It's insanely ludicrous

But it obviously matters to some people. Otherwise, Hyacinth Bouquet wouldn't have been such a funny character

And you get it with pronunciation as well. The shibboleth is such a lovely word. But, you know, some of the pronunciations of posh people's names are fairly ridiculous

The way that it's spelt and the way that it's pronounced are a million miles away. Beauchamp, as opposed to Beecham

So you see Beauchamp written down, which is French, I think, a beautiful field originally

So Beecham Square is spelt B-E-A-U-C-H-A-M-P. And that's not even the best example

a best example has temporarily eluded me. So it's a code to denote membership to a tribe

and it is a timeless tribe, the posh, the posh tribe. Whereas urban slang is also a code of membership

but it's a constantly changing tapestry of tribes with new arrivals bringing new words and people adopting them

And that is one of my favourites in a very long time as a combination of both question and answer

Tristan is in Stafford. Tristan, question or answer? Answer. Carry on. It's answer to optimal way to use

dry your hands, the hand dryer. Get in, yes. Come on. From the sublime to the ridiculous

So for, this is specifically for the blade ones because they're more efficient than the non-directional ones

So that's your Dyson and, I believe, your Mitsubishi one. So if you hold your hand out in front of you

like a paper, for rock, paper, scissors. Yeah. If you then tilt your hand down 45 degrees to vertical

and then you pull your hand backwards towards you through the air blade

It pushes the water down your fingers, off the tip of your fingers

Oh, yeah. Which is then why it goes, you often find you've got like a metal plate

or a catch below it in the bathrooms. Yes. And what about on an old school sort of manky

On an old school one, you've got to kind of rub your hand, similar motion

but they're just, unfortunately, it's probably easier just to try your hands on your jeans

On your jeans, yeah. Qualifications? I used to work in the motor design team at Dyson

Really? And you worked on the hand dryer? I worked on, I did some modifications for that

because they use the old vacuum motors in the early ones. So I worked on those

That's pretty cool. What are you doing now, if you don't mind me asking? I work in defence now

Really? So you've gone from hand dryers to guns? Yeah, I did some scientific lab equipment in between, but yeah

That's amazing. Have you managed to combine any of the technologies you've worked on

I mean, could you make a hand dryer that could kill people? I don't think so

I mean, I'm colourblind, so I could wire it up wrong. Yeah, be careful with that

On the James Bond game I've been playing a lot on the PlayStation, that's where it came from

It's not quite a hand dryer, but he can turn almost anything into an electrocuting device

when the baddies come round the corner and lean on a fan or something. If James Bond has pressed the right button, the fan can kill him on the spot

So you're not alone, Tristan. You know, fictional computer game characters are also working across the fields that you work across

That's a wonderful thing. Have a round of applause on me. No, thank you

How hilarious. Twelve is coming up to quarter to one. Well, we need answers, really

I've got time for another question or two, but we still need to know about the FM versus the DAB

The freckles question. Why do freckles fade? And why do some freckles not fade

How can a toddler outrun an adult at the beginning of the chase, as it were

Hand-dryers we've done, slang we've done. And what would happen if you opened a can of Coke in space

Because remember, in space, no one can hear you scream. Oh, and the shooting star, who can see it

How far and wide is it visible? Is the visibility of a shooting star

It's 12.45. James O'Brien on LBC. 12.48 is the time. The can of coke, the radio, the shooting star, the freckles, I think

are the questions still in need of answers. It'd be nice to get them all cleared up before home time

It is currently 12.48. You are listening to James O'Brien on LBC

Patrick's in Peckham. Patrick, question or answer? Answer, James. Bring it on

Well, can of coke in space. Yeah. inside a spaceship completely different

to outside of one correct gravity is the main issue there not so much the pressure

this is outside a spaceship not inside so outside a spaceship that can of coke

is likely to boil and then immediately freeze really? you can't just say that I

well I mean you did no you can obviously because you did I believe that fact but why

why? To boil and even in the can, wouldn't it? I mean, I've got so many questions

As soon as you open it. Right. It would boil and then freeze

Yeah, because you've got a difference of pressure. You going into a vacuum Yeah Liquids tend to evaporate freeze and evaporate eventually in a vacuum Do they But initially they start to boil

Because your boiling temperature of something sort of drops drastically in a vacuum as it does to sort of normal atmospheric pressures that we're used to

Fair enough. So, I mean, it would go off like a rocket then, wouldn't it

Not necessarily like an explosion, but it would certainly come out with force

Yeah, I mean, it would fly away. It would go, you know, like a rocket

No, like a rocket is what I said. It would be literally like a little rocket

Something like that. Something like that, yeah. Okay, qualifications? I'm a scuba diver

A scuba diver? Yeah, and I read up about this, oh, it must be 15 years ago

it all started with what happens when you crack an egg underwater really

what does happen when you crack an egg underwater? it retains its shape

if you crack it carefully enough you'll basically get that liquid egg

floating around like in an egg shape like a little egg in its little bubble so to say

have you done it? I haven't done it myself no how have you not done it

when you found that out how have you not done it? I'm going to do it in the bath later my instructor did it

Really? In front of you? In front of us. Wow. Kneeling down on the sand

he demonstrated this, to demonstrate sort of atmospheric pressure on the body

and how it, you know, sort of keeps everything in position. Wow

Do you know, that last bit you said there, I was sitting here thinking

oh, it's another science thing I don't understand. And then I did suddenly understand what you were saying

It's not got that much to do with the Coke can, has it? The egg? No, it isn't

It's completely the opposite. Yeah, exactly. So the boiling point drops to zero in a vacuum

which means the liquid would go off like a... It would start boiling, and then it would immediately freeze

What would it freeze into? Like candy floss, almost. I couldn't tell you

It's mostly sugar, isn't it? I would think it would just freeze into a so-called ice cube

a Coca-Cola ice cube. No, it wouldn't, though, would it? Because it'd be the bubbles and everything

and it'd be all spreading around. it would be the opposite of the egg. Like you said, it wouldn't be holding together in a can shape

It would be freezing and boiling at the same time. Oh, man, I really want to see someone open a can of Coke in space

Do you think we'd get Elon Musk to get someone to do it? I'll ask him. Yeah, nice one

Have a round of applause in the meantime. Thank you, James. Thank you, Pache

What a wonderful answer to a wonderful question. What a magnificent mystery hour all round

Yvonne is in Crosby. Yvonne, question or answer? It's an answer. Carry on, Yvonne

So, the answer to the freckles question? Oh, yes. So, basically, modern-day moisturisers have SPF or sun protection factors in now

Yeah. And so, obviously, continuous use of them protects your skin. Yeah

And freckles are actually sun damage. And the reason that she's still got... They can't be sun damage because babies have them

No, they're moles. No, little young people, you know, little young people, like old people but young

They have freckles. My kids had freckles when they were tiny. We never went anywhere hot

Actually, that's not true. We did. We went to Thailand. You went outdoors, didn't you

Yeah. Well, yeah, only if they were naughty. Okay, well... Go on

Even in this country, we do get the odd occasional day of sunshine

So it's melanin. So you're right. It's come up, it's been brought up from below by the sun

Yeah. Yeah, okay. And the reason that she's still got them in her hairline is because she's missing that area

when she puts her moisturiser on because she doesn't want to get moisturiser in her hair roots

So it is literally successful SPF activity from the moisturiser over a period of time

which means the freckles that came up during her childhood have gone down again. Yeah, and she wouldn't have used moisturisers as such as a child

And it's all got SPF in it these days. Exactly. What a great answer. Qualifications

I'm also missing my freckles for the same reason. Well, I never. Who'd have thought that that would be it then

So people who are really, really freckly and don't want to be

if they slathered themselves in SPF 50 all the time, their freckles would go away

Yeah, not their moles, because the moles are more permanent, but freckles, yes, they would definitely be significantly reduced

Wow, that's fantastic. Have a round of applause on me, Yvonne. Thank you

No, thank you. Lovely stuff. And makes perfect sense with the hairline anomaly as well

being brought into the equation. What a lovely answer. Stephen's in Thetford

Stephen, question or answer? answer my friend. Carry on. The little kiddies. Yes

Yeah, well they've got a head start, haven't they? Because I haven't even noticed they've gone. Don't do..

We're going to do bad jokes on Mystery Hour. They're going to be mine. I want a proper answer to the question

That's a proper answer. I'm a grump. No, I know, but they don't. Even if you note the question was

contingent upon the fact that you've noticed they've gone because they're running into the road

How can they win the first 10 yards or 20 yards of the race when they are

obviously much slower than the adult? Because I had my hip replaced 12 weeks ago

It's not, no, this is you... Autumn, she calls me dump, so she's quick as, like, you wouldn't believe it

I do believe it, but it's not, yeah. But this isn't the answer to the question, you silly man

I'm not going... No no get knotted Alex is in Plymouth Alex question or answer Hello James You all right Long listener long big fan I just hope the line all right So yes it about the It an answer for the comet

Yes, yes, all the shooting stuff. So, yes, so essentially you're familiar with the Earth

the axis. So we're on... Yeah, I am familiar with the Earth

I might sometimes seem like I'm not, but I promise I am. The Earth's axis is slightly

tilted, right? Correct, yeah. So essentially, the Perseid constellation, the galaxy, is a galaxy

And it was at its highest point above our region at roughly 2.30 last night, the actual constellation

So that is why you can visibly see the comets going across up to 50 to 100 per hour

So say, for example, that the chap was, you know, the chap was talking, he was in Scotland

Yeah. And I'm down in the southwest. so it would have been slightly different timings

because of the trajectory, like you said. Yeah, yeah. You did mention trajectory, so I think you were onto it

No, it's a good word to use when you're talking about space. I think you were onto it, James, with the trajectory

Because essentially, yeah. You're nearly there. Essentially where the constellation is, each constellation

If you look up, like, for example, Orion, Pallades, but Perseids was directly above Britain in a perfect time zone

That's why people, they were visible. What about if I'm standing in a specific spot

how far out from that spot would everybody in that area be able to see what I can see

Do we know? What do we think? It's almost like a bit of a paradox of the question, isn't it

because you can only be in one place at once, can't you? Yeah, that's also true

Unless you were speaking to somebody who was directly standing. No, I was going to say, I'm in several places at once

You're in, where are you? You're in Plymouth. I know you are. And people are listening to me in London, people are listening to me in France

I'm in loads of different places at the same time. I know, but that's the beauty of you

Isn't it, Joe? Have a round of applause. This would be so lovely. And for providing a good answer as well

Vanessa is in Cruise Hill. Vanessa, question or answer? Answer, James. Carry on

It's a sort of building on, was it Steve from Thetford? Yeah

We ignored him. Don't bring him back into the conversation. He was a self-appointed comedian

and we've only got room for one of those. He was partway there

Okay. It's in part, and this is only one of many reasons how children do this

men and women's eyes are different women actually, and the chat that raised this question

highlighted three different examples where men allowed the children to get or the children got a head start on men

and this is to do with the peripheral vision that women have due to

looking after children so a woman wouldn't have got away as quickly from a woman as they did from a man

Yep, because men's eyes are for hunting, and therefore their better vision is directly

ahead. And this is being demonstrated apparently in road accidents and all sorts of other things, as well as

to do with children. And that's one of many, many different reasons why they get away

But also little legs. No, I'm sorry. No, come off it. It's got to be part of the little legs theory

They just come out quicker, because their little legs are pumping away at nine to the dozen

I think you need to get yourself on a racing track and try it off the guns

and actually see whether that theory really holds up. Yeah, but you're completely ignoring the de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de

element of this theory as opposed to the thump, thump, thump. So, yeah, so a woman..

So a child is less likely to escape from a woman than a man. Well, have less..

God, that sounds a bit... Hang on a minute, let me rephrase that. I mean, a toddler running away from grandma

is likely to get less far than a toddler running away from grandad

in the middle of a delightful game. And that's where it's correct

And this has been studied as well. I love it. Is that grandad won't even notice the child has disappeared

Wow. I love this. And you're right to say there'll be other elements going on as well

but that's my favourite. And it gets you a round of applause. What a cracking old mystery how that was

I'm going to give the board game to Zenga. I mean, in a way, we should give one to Laurie as well for the answer

and to be fair, I think she should have had one as well. But anyway, it's just Zynga

We're just giving one to Zynga. We've only got one. I'm not made of money. That's it from me for today

If you missed any of it, you know what to do. Global Player, LBC App, yada, yada, yada. You can listen to a range of podcasts

including James O'Brien Daily, the best bits from my LBC show every day

Tom Salbrick with you at four, and Sheila Fogarty with you now. Was Zynga the slang or the language in social groups really interesting

Wasn't that a great one? Very interesting. It was a zinger from Zenga. It was a zinger from Zenga. I was sitting outside listening, and when you said

oh, that's the best one in ages, I literally said out loud, oh, that's good

Yes. Oh, good. There you go. If I can get that out of Sheila, that's it

My work here is done. Your work is done. It literally is for the day anyway. Thanks, James

Have a nice afternoon. There you go. James O'Brien on LBC