Possibly the best phone-in about prisons we've ever had | James O'Brien - The Whole Show

Good morning, it is three minutes after ten, you are listening to James O'Brien on LBC

I'm going to leave that one bubbling, and I want you to play it honestly. What percentage of prisoners do you think are recorded as being functionally illiterate

This is confined for the purposes of the statistics that I have to England and Wales

but I don't imagine it's any different anywhere else. I don't want to answer that question yet

But here's a question I want you to answer immediately. How clued up do you think you are on current affairs

How plugged in do you think you are? I mean, you're listening to LBC. You've just listened to Nick, probably

You're now listening to me. You are therefore already in the upper percentiles of people who pay attention to what is going on in the world

Increasingly, I encounter people who've given up, who just don't for various reasons

It's a little bit worrying for me on both a professional, well, no, not necessarily a personal level

but it's certainly a little bit worrying for me on a professional level

But I get it. I mean, everything is so bonkers and has been for so long

that the sense that there's no point trying to cling on to comprehension is not difficult to grasp

But I just wonder, just do it in your own head as a scale of 1 to 10

in your own head, of how clued up you would say you were

about current affairs. OK? So, for example, you are well aware of the fact

that prisoners are being released early. Prisoners who would have been released anyway

are being released earlier than they would have been released to free up spaces in our prisons

for prisoners who need to go to prison. I mean, it's pretty straightforward

You can't... Once a bucket is full, there is nowhere else for the water to go

the new water to go. The bucket is full and the tap is still on. You cannot get the water from the tap into the bucket unless you take some of the water out of the bucket that's already there or unless I'm going to leave the ogy behind now

But unless you don't put any new water in the bucket. So you let all the new prisoners convicted of all the same crimes that the early release prisoners have been convicted of avoid prison altogether

So. So. OK. You know that, for example. Did you know, you knew, I reckon you know that Rishi Sunak still hasn't explained why the election that he called a couple of years ago was so much earlier than it needed to be and B, crucially, than anyone expected

There was a little speculation at the time, but you probably knew it was early

So what have you given yourself? Six, seven, eight? Or I mean, I doubt it's lower simply by dint of what you're doing with your morning

but perhaps it is. Perhaps it's modesty that's kicked in. Did you

know this? Did you know this? And, okay, now, let me put another one on the list. Alex

Chalk. Do you remember Alex Chalk? Who was the Justice Secretary under Rasheed

Sunak? He has confirmed. Did you know that he'd already prepared plans

to release some prisoners after just 40% of their sentence and to

cut the number of people going to jail in the first place because he was

conscious as Justice Secretary of how acute the crisis was. Did you know that? The Tory Justice

Secretary had prepared those plans. He's made that. Did you know that

Did you know that Alex Chalk had warned Rishi Sunak about what

was going on? I reckon you probably did. What would that be? That would be a 7 or an 8

Right? A 7 or an 8 on how clued up you are

about current affairs. They were blocked because they were worried that they wouldn't be able to get it through Parliament

because people like Suella Braverman would oppose it. So they would, if you like, defy gravity

They would deny arithmetic. And, of course, it left Labour with no choice but to extend even further the early release scheme

So what's the bit I don't think you'll know? All right, I'll be honest, the bit I'd missed

I knew about Alex Chalk warning him. I knew he'd called the election early. Stigging around this morning, waiting to discuss the latest developments

and stumbled across a story that I think I might have missed at the time

because the ship had already sailed by the point at which it was published

Rishi Sunak was warned by senior civil servants one week before he called the election

one week before he called the early election, that he was at risk of breaching his legal responsibilities

if he failed to take action over the prison overcrowding crisis. This official advice was sent to him on the 15th of May

and warned him that if he did not make an urgent decision on prison capacity

and those sorts of decisions would involve, as Alex Chalk, his own Justice Secretary, knew

either extending the early release scheme still further or sending fewer people destined for jail to jail

or perhaps a little bit of both, that if he did not do that, then it would leave the criminal justice system in England and Wales

at the point of critical failure. Now, there is a lot of coverage in the newspapers and indeed on broadcast outlets today

of the early release scheme. Understandably, the more hysterical of our media have gone in harder on it

than the more sensible of our media. The Daily Mail, perhaps inevitably, is the most hysterical of all

Thugs in every postcode is on their front page today. Labour frees first of 10 tidal waves of convicts

Now, if your mum still buys the Daily Mail, and, well, first of all, if, of course, she's worried about the recalibration of the triple lock

tell her she can save 800 quid a year by cancelling that subscription now, and she'll be much happier for it

and the grandchildren will enjoy spending time with her again, but she will not know this

If you're relying upon right-wing media for your coverage of the prison release story, you will not know that one week before he called an early election

and of course remember that Rishi Sunak has never explained why he called that election so early

a single week before he called it, he was warned by senior civil servants

adding to the warnings of his own Justice Secretary, that the situation was entirely unsustainable

I just leave that with you, because it is my job to ensure that you are among

the best informed people in this country about the major issues of the moment

Some people think it's their job to do the exact opposite. The editor of the Daily Mail thinks it's his job

to groom and gaslight his readers into not knowing the facts so that they can be more easily manipulated

into the positions of anger and ignorance that allow things like Brexit and Boris Johnson to happen

So you now know that one week before, he called an early election

Rishi Sunak was warned by both his colleagues and the most senior civil servants in the sector

that the situation was entirely unsustainable. And now the second bit of the percolation, if you like, the second bit

We look now at the percentage of adult prisoners who are either functionally illiterate

or have literacy levels below those expected of an 11-year-old. What would you have said Honestly now it going to be a little bit higher than you thought otherwise I wouldn have turned it into a sort of quiz would I But the percentage of adult prisoners

let's go in on the worst scenario, who are functionally illiterate. What would you say

Honestly, hand on heart. I'd have gone 25 and then I'd have thought

well, James wouldn't be asking me unless it was even higher than I might have initially suspected

So I'm going to go 30%. 30% of prisoners in England and Wales are functionally illiterate

No. No, I don't want to channel the late, great Bruce Forsyth

Actually, there's nothing wrong with channeling the late, great Bruce Forsyth. He's one of the only entertainers from that era that you can channel

without fear of embarrassment or worse. Higher or lower than 30%? It's higher

nothing in this game for two in a bed well I guess in our prisons

not quite two in a bed but certainly four in a cell that was originally designed for one person

it's 50% 50% of prisoners in England and Wales are functionally illiterate I

don't even know what words to use to describe the levels of naivety that

I have as I approach a number like that and I must have known this

before. This isn't like the civil servants warning Rishi Sunak about what was

on the horizon. I must have known this before. But I don't know whether

we sort of file away difficult or discomforting statistics to the back of our minds

sometimes and forget that they're there. In the olden days, and I'm going

back a while now, like 15 years, I think I was at my least liberal

or my heart was at its least bleeding when we turned our attention to prisoners

and to prisons. We live in fear of violent men. All of us do

Even violent men live in fear of violent men, unless they're sociopaths. And we balk enormously at the fundamental injustice

of being stolen from. So sympathy for prisoners is a very, very difficult thing to muster

And I didn't used to even try. But if illiteracy runs at 50% of the prison population

you find yourself wondering whether we've made any progress whatsoever from the days of Charles Dickens

50% of the population of our prisons are illiterate, functionally illiterate. 57% of them, the figure goes even higher

if you're counting adults whose literacy levels are below those currently expected of an 11-year-old

And you see the man being released early. You see them having microphones thrust into their faces

and many of them welcoming the experience and being encouraged by journalists from right-wing newspapers

to thank Andy Burnham. I don't know whether they turned up with bottles of champagne this time

so they could hand it to a prisoner and encourage him to shake it and pop the cork

and then stick it on their own front page. I haven't seen that this time round. But again, my mission to ensure that you're among the best informed people

in this country means I explain to you how that happens. Get them to thank Andy Burnham

That will be a good one for the news bulletins. whatever you do don't mention the fact that Rishi Sunak was facing breaching his legal

responsibilities over the crisis that Keir Starmer inherited and that Andy Burnham has now inherited

from Keir Starmer as well this isn't an indefinite excuse by the way give it another couple of years

or another five years or another election and Labour can't say that this is still the fault of

the Tories because they've had plenty of warning and plenty of time or they will have had by then

about the scale of the crisis. But here is the combination of information, right

Here is the combination of information that I want you to dwell on

while I come up with a question to ask you that I think is going to be really simple today

really straightforward. But those are the two things. So the politics of it are absolutely corrupt already

front page of the Daily Mail absolutely dishonest trying to turn this into some sort of

Labour created crisis when even the most cursory understanding of the facts

makes it crystal clear that it's nothing of the sort but of course a cursory understanding of the facts

is the sworn enemy of the people who brought you Brexit Boris Johnson, Liz Truss

Donald Trump or at least fandom of Donald Trump or indeed climate change denial

that's the way it works those are my big five at the moment Feel free to add anything else to that list

But it seems to me that if you want to be collating examples of how populations are persuaded to believe things and vote according to things that are fundamentally bad for them and untrue, those are the five best examples

Although we didn't actually vote for Liz Truss, I suppose. Only the Tory members did that

But no prizes for guessing what newspapers they're most likely to be reading. So those two things there, illiteracy and responsibility, and I mean alongside responsibility for the crisis, utter dishonesty from most of the media about what's caused it, what has created it

Combine those two factors together and ask yourself this. What actually happens in prison

I've got two questions for you today. what happens in prison? Particularly given that half of the men there, we know

are functionally illiterate. What is prison for? What does it actually do

I don't know how many prisoners listen to this program. 03456060973. What happens

What purpose does it serve? Or, more easy to answer, what actually happens in prison

All of these conversations, conducted in almost blissful ignorance of what actually these men are walking out of

I don't care. I just want them locked up. But what actually happened

Surely the two major priorities of prison are justice and reducing recidivism

reducing the likelihood of the person that is being released from prison going back to prison sometime soon

Some of these men who are being released and interviewed are, of course, going to be back there soon

not least because they're still illiterate, which means their chances of finding a role to play in the modern world

are slimmer now than they have ever been. And coming out of prison just adds to the burden of unemployability

What does prison do? What is it? So that's it. I mean, that is the question that I would like you to answer

What is it? I mean, it is a kind of what was it like moment, isn't it

But sometimes when I stare at a story that's dominating the news agenda

I have this tendency to try to take a few steps back and wonder whether or not we should start the conversation before today

Have a conversation about what happens before today. And today is the second bit of the conversation that I want to have

What happens when you leave? Some of the vox pops that I've seen are chilling

You know, they've got nowhere to go. Where are you going to sleep tonight? Do you get a bit of a hostel place for a couple of weeks do you What about after that How many people are able to carry on paying the rent on their home while they in prison particularly if they single What happens when you leave 0345 6060 973 is the number you need And those are your two questions

What happens in prison? What happens in prison? And the second question is, what happens when you

leave. All right. And underpinning all of that, the utter corruption of our media, because this

is being portrayed as a somehow a labor related story when it's obviously nothing of the sort

and the utter failure of everything that we might call the system. If 50 percent of prisoners

are functionally illiterate. 0345 6060 973 is the number that you need. It's 1019

James O'Brien on LBC 21 minutes after 10 it's the best example probably of a story

that everybody cares about and doesn't care about at all it's mad when you think about it, how angry are you

about early release of prisoners, oh absolutely livid James, bloody furious, what do you

think prisoners are like, no idea no idea I mean how concerned are you about re-offending rates

really concerned James, care about it deeply really really hate re-offending best thing that can happen to these people is that something happens to these people

and then they don't re-offend. How much do you know about it? How much do you know about what happens in prison

Ah, naffle, mate. Sorry. Sorry, James. Nothing at all. What do you feel about the early release scheme

Oh, it's awful. It's absolutely awful, James. Whose fault do you think it is? Well, Keir Starmer's, isn't it

Or Andy Burnham's? You know nothing about this issue, and yet you've got really strong opinions

It's weird, isn't it? I just say it's weird. I've explained to you a million times how it happens, but it never stops being weird

um denise is in walthamstow i was not expecting a woman called up first on this denise but here you

are and welcome what would you like to say hi um so i'm i'm now 44 years old but i i went to prison

when i was 15 years old um there was a group of us what i didn't mention to your producer that i

was in the care system as well um but there was a group of us and we decided to go and attack

somebody and we got caught for it and essentially got sent down for assault

with intent to rob. We all went to we got sent to an adult prison

Did you? At 15? Not a YLI? Not a youth offender institution? No

Adult prison. The time was over Christmas and New Year's so you can imagine that was

absolutely awful. Not as awful as getting beaten up by a bunch of

teenagers I don't imagine but I take your point no of course but in terms of

rehabilitation in the prison system there is none it's all about personal choice whether you decide to

stay out of what's going on in there or you get involved

what do you mean what's going on in there so you've got

a lot of offenders in there obviously they've come from different backgrounds

and they're for different things and you either get involved with what they're offering

in terms of like there's drugs and things like that, there's little separate gangs

or you stay out of it. I mean, I had a female who had an interest in me

and I wasn't interested, so they wanted to fight me. I couldn't defend myself

I was told by the prison guards that if I defend myself, then I'm going to be given extra time

so it was just a case of I had to shut up and put up um so essentially I just kind of kept to

myself and I was actually looked after one of the there was an older woman in there that kind of

took me under her wing and protected me from all the stuff that was going on at um in the prison

how long were you in there for and so it was a three-month sentence but um uh I'd done six weeks

I mean, it's a reminder there's nothing new about early release, of course, although the people being released yesterday are people who are being released even earlier than would have been expected when they were actually sentenced

Did anything change? I mean, did it work as a short, sharp shock

100%. I've never been in trouble again. I mean, I went to university. I'm now a psychotherapist. So, yeah, that's not something I'd want to do

I don't know what the statistic is on care, people in care who end up in prison

people from the care system who end up in prison, and I will find out sooner rather than later

but I suspect it's just as shocking and at the same time unshocking as the literacy statistic

It's so overrepresented, and that says to me that it's something that could actually be addressed

It's something that could actually be accommodated. and when you left I mean you're a success story

but on the day that you left and presumably your parents were still in your life when you were that age

or not if you were in care had you lost them completely what happened when you left Denise

Yeah there was no no parents so my that's okay, my key worker

and another member of staff from the children's home come and picked me up

but I made a decision because this was This was not in London. This was up in the Midlands

I made a decision that I didn't want to stay in that area anymore

So I actually ran away and came to London and made a life for myself at 15

Flipping it. I mean, I guess you're not that illustrative of the bigger picture, are you

Of kind of serial criminals or serious criminals being released from jail over the last 24 hours

but in answer to the question of what prison gave you, apart from the shock of incarceration, it gave you nothing

Nothing at all, no. It's personal choice, as I say. What you do when you're in there

Yeah, as I say, you choose to either get involved with the rubbish that's going on in there

with the badness that continues to go in there, or you stay out of it and you make a change for your life

And, of course, I mean, you say that because you're a strong woman, but not everybody is

I don't know whether I'd be strong enough in those situations to hold myself together in the way that you did

And a lot of people, of course, are not. And in a sense, they're probably the ones that are most likely to see the prison gates as a revolving door

And thankfully, you didn't. What an incredible story, Denise. I hope we talk again

And I'll dig out those figures for people in care, how many people in prison, a percentage of people in prison actually came through the care system

because if you're really interested in answering any of these questions or reducing any of these figures, those are the things that matter most

things like care, things like literacy. But I don't know, when's the last time you heard a right-wing blowhard

bothering about any of those things? I'll tell you how much the Tories care about prisons

They put Chris Grayling in charge of them. Joe's in Bristol. Joe, what would you like to say

Hi, James. Nice to speak to you. I was I went to prison in 2017 on a 28 sentence and came out in 2018 after doing 10 months inside Then I came out on tag and I went in and had to do very basic English and maths courses just to check that I could read and write So it wasn a course

it was just a test and that would allow me to get a job in the prison. But when I tried to do

anything, there was a thinking skills course which I wanted to get on to make better decisions and

and they just said, you've not got a long enough sentence to get on that course, so you can't do it

And I was only able to go and do sort of very rudimentary courses, like an IT course, where you learn how to make a PowerPoint and things like that

It was kind of pointless, really. For you, but it wouldn't necessarily have been pointless for everybody

No, you're absolutely right. And also there was prisoners that really couldn't read and write

Had you encountered people like that before? no I don't think so

no I don't think most of us have you see and so it's one of the weirdest things isn't it

is what our normal is you know my normal is not somebody else's you live

in that world where illiteracy is 50% it means it's normal for these men it's normal to be

spending time with other people who can't can't properly read or write

and what help did they get well a lot of them would ask

other people to take the tests for them. Wow. And I have to admit

I did fill in a couple of people's English and maths courses

because I didn't really want to say no a lot of the time. No

And that would allow them to just get a job and get earning money

And when I say earning money, I mean, I think when I was there, something like 40p a day

and you're working for external companies. That's 40p more than zero, isn't it

But it's, I mean, as you allude to, it's a bit of a shocker. I mean, you don't sound, forgive me, I can't read too much into voices

even as a radio phone-in host, but you don't sound like a hardened criminal. No

I don't know what a hardened criminal sounds like, Joe, to be honest with you, but you take my point

No, I'd like to, you know, it would be cool to be thought of as that

but not, I mean, I went to private school and I've got a degree and they thought I was lying when I said I had a degree when I was in there

until I had the form sent in, so I didn't have to do more tests

when I went to the next prison. The staff thought you were lying. Yes. Because they encounter people with degrees

as often as you'd encountered people with no functional literacy. Yeah. Was it drugs

Yeah. Yeah, buying them or intangible supply? Yeah, I bought about... Can I say

Yeah, I think so. Hang on, I better check with Eleanor. Can he say what he did? Can't see any problem with that

Yeah, carry on. Yeah, I stupidly bought some ecstasy tablets, about 50 off of the dark web, to sort out friends

You got caught and you went to jail. I mean, a massive shock to the system

And a privately educated graduate, a very different experience on release compared to most of the men that we're watching walk out of prison gates today

But just to answer the question, what happened when you left? when i left i was lucky enough to go home to a family that had a room for me and i was able to

to get a job um but i mean if i didn't i mean there was people being released i think with a

tent getting given a tent when i was inside um and there was you know you don't get about 30 or 40

pounds upon release which is you know better than nothing but people only just only just and then

and then we're all going to be wringing our hands and clutching our pearls in a couple of days or a

couple of weeks when we start reading reports about people that have already been sent back

or early recall, which is something else I want to talk about. Joe, that was really helpful for me

Thank you. The early recall thing where you get brought back to prison for doing things that

aren't crimes. I wonder how well understood that is. And of course, it's my job to make sure that

it is well understood. Children in care and care leavers account for less than 1% of the general

population. And yet over 25% of the adult prison population has been in care. So again

things you won't be reading in any right wing newspapers today, 50% of adult prisoners are

functionally illiterate, and 25% of them either grew up or spent time in care. Riddle me that

10.32 is the time. Dominic Ellis has the headlines. James O'Brien on LBC

36 is the time. It's not the phone-in that much of the media wants us to have

That's supposed to be about how do you fix this problem that Andy Burnham has got or Keir Starmer created

But that, of course, involves you believing lies, and that's not how this programme works

The mess in our prison system is entirely of Tory making. 14 years in charge, and towards the end of Rishi Sunak's premiership

he was warned that he was likely to be breaching legal responsibility

over the prison crisis, warned not only by senior civil servants, but also about the scale and the acuteness of the crisis

by his own Justice Secretary, Alex Chalk. But turn to the front page of the Daily Mail today

and I do mention it, and I do fully acknowledge that it is a diminishing..

They're all diminishing powers. All of these hideous right-wing rags are diminishing powers

but your mum still buys it. Your mum still reads it. Labour frees first of ten tidal waves of convicts

and one of the prime ministers that was in charge of this country while the crisis was being created

currently writes a column for that newspaper Boris Johnson Rishi Sunak, the prime minister

who I would put money on this called the election early because he knew this was about to explode

that I would actually put money on that it might have been the straw that broke the camel's back

but it's a pretty big straw he's never explained why he took everybody by surprise

on this but I can't see any more compelling answer to the question

It's Occam's razor, it's Sherlock Holmes, it's whatever you want it to be. I reckon, and I bet you, I bet you that's why he did it

and yet I give it a couple of years or even a couple of months under the last Prime Minister

and it's all the fault of the people who weren't in power

But the big question today, what's it like? What actually happens in prison

and what happens when you are released. Dean is in Croydon. Dean, what made you pick up the phone

You're talking about, you see the illiteracy thing? That's been going on in prisons for the last 50, 60 years

Oh, forever, I imagine. Yeah, so it's not a new thing. No, mate, I'm not saying it is

I'm just pointing out it would be something you could address. Okay

Not you, not you, the system. I mean, if you reduced illiteracy in the population at large, you reduced the prison population

OK, just before Labour was voted out of power, they brought in something, you know, level one literacy and numeracy

And you got £50 as a prisoner if you passed it. Obviously, everyone in the prison started passing it

Everyone. I know people who couldn't even spell their own name, but let me tell you, they passed that and got £50 for doing it

really what it meant is about five prisoners in each wing passed it

and then had to pass everyone else's. either by payment or force

That's incredible. And it puts a skew on the figures. But the thing about the overcrowding

that really comes off of the back, and you might not like this, the Tories doing what the public wants

Yeah, I know. They lock people up for longer. They're much harsher to prisoners. And that's what the public wants

See, as much as you hate it, when the Tories can go

yep, look how much longer sentence we give them, look how harshly we treat them

That's what the public wants. And if you say to the public, I'll tell you what, I'll build a new prison

but that hospital you're waiting for, that's going to be another three years

Let me tell you, the prison ain't getting built. You cannot sell that to the public

So they're having their cake and eating it. They're making the situation worse every year

and deliberately doing nothing to alleviate the situation, harvesting votes from people who don't understand the facts

and storing up situations like the one that we're looking at now

and Rishi Sunak hits the road just in time for the real crisis to land

when someone else is in charge. Yeah, if you go up to a person and say

what are Labour like on crime? The most common thing you'll get will be, oh, they're soft on crime

Look at the front page of the Daily Mail. Labour freeze first of ten tidal waves of convicts

as if they are being soft on crime. Thugs in every postcode. What they won't know, excuse me, the people reading that paper

is that Rishi Sunak risked breaching legal responsibilities over the prison crisis

So we want prisoners to be treated appallingly, but we don't want to spend any money on all the prisons

that we're going to need to lock up more people than we're locking up today. And if he would have breached that

just supposing he didn't call a thing and he would have breached that, he would have been an absolute hero in the public's eyes

I think I disagree with you there. I don't know why. He's standing up for us and look how they're treating him

Those horrible prisoners. No, because they'd have been releasing those horrible prisoners early

so that he wouldn't have been a hero in the public's eyes. Oh, I don't know, Because when I was in there, when the Tories was in at the last end of their thing

they was talking about putting beds in tents on exercise yards. So I'm not sure that they would have been released to them how they are being released today

Well, they did. I mean, they did. They did, yeah. They'd done the 30% thing

And now it's up to 40% or 50%. So I think it would have happened. I think if he thought he was going to get a win out of it, Dean, he'd have done it

I think he knew that that was actually going to not wash. Also, I think it would have been in breach of the Human Rights Act

so he probably wouldn't have been able to do elements of that. You've already got two, three prisoners in cells designed for one prisoner

so I don't quite... Yeah, that's been going on for ages as well

I know it has. Can I ask what your literacy levels are like

You don't have to tell me. Strangely enough, they're all right now

But that's through some of the wrong reasons and just simply having access to more money

and wanting to live better. And to live better, you do need to be able to read and write

Whether you like it or not. I mean, that's just self-evident. It's not just the obvious stuff about reading and writing

but it's the way that it allows you to engage and interact with wider legal societies as well

If you're at the higher end of the criminal scale and you start to earn a lot more money

you then have to quickly realise that if you want to spend that money

you're going to need to at least be able to read or write

I'm not sure the message that we want to be sending out to illiterate prisoners

is that they need to be more successful criminals. I know it is

It's what forced me. I hear you. When did you last get released

I'm about 10 months ago from an IPP sentence What's an IPP sentence, forgive me

One where you was given no release date You just had to keep asking Can I go home after a certain point

And what were you in for? Conspiracy to rob a money laundering

Okay, and are you on the straight and narrow now? Yeah, but that's after I'm 47

and I've done probably about 25 years behind the door. So it took a few goes before the penny dropped

And what made the penny drop? Age. It's a young man's sport now

And when you do that amount of time in jail, believe it or not, you start to think

I might do a bit of living outside. And when you're committing crime, you're always on borrowed time

you have to expect that you might get away with nine things but the 10th thing you get caught you

might get away with 20 but the 21 you get caught it's coming it's just when it comes but i was of

the mindset that i understood that i was prepared for it and i when it comes i'll take it on the

chin and well that's the definition of an occupational hazard isn't it yeah that that

is there's many men in there now who are doing 10 year sentences but they're in their late 20s

and that they will all be thinking, yeah, I've got another go in me. I've got one more roll of the dice

that will make me be able to walk away into the sunset. The problem is there's nothing else

that pays as well as committing crime. It's as simple as that

And there's nothing, therefore, that you can think of that might break that cycle

before they reach the grand old age of 47? No, the only thing that normally breaks it

is death in my game. you're being shot either by a rival arm response

or you simply get sick of it like I did and then you think, ah

What about the sort of mid-table criminals? What about the ones that probably would quite like to go straight

but because they are illiterate or because they haven't got really the vocabulary needed

to make their way in the... I'll tell you what happens with them. They're sat in jail

they're illiterate there's the prison officers like this and offense to them but they've got

nothing to provide for them there's no courses but there is some people on the wing who put

their arm around them and say let me just teach you about this this is what this can give you

and so you've got a government who they feel abandoned by or whatever most of them are not

going to have great ties to family some of them or a lot of them will have drug issues

and that person on the wing will be able to say, here, look at this, have a go at that

What do you think about this? And before you know it, there's your next generation of lifers and..

So it's like a finishing school. Is there anything that you could think of

or that has struck you over the years that would make that door less likely to revolve

to make some prisoners? And I fully appreciate what you've said at your end of this business

But the ones that you're talking about now, the ones that could go either way and prison is actually going to make them more likely to go the wrong way, systemic change

Put the money in. Yeah, there it is. Put the money in and teach them proper skills

Now, they'll say, oh, we do bricklaying courses. We do this. We do that up and down the country

And they do. But it's a gimmick course. Most builders will tell you if you walked into and said I learned this in prison they go what did you learn Let see it Yeah right now you need to go and learn this And so they do teach you stuff but that for when you see the justice secretary walking around with a camera crew and they bring out some divvy prisoners and say you just performed for us you good monkeys

look at us, look what we're doing and we're doing it all on a budget

and the public go, that's the Justice Secretary I believe in but they don't believe in the same

Justice Secretary when those same people are getting out and burgling their house

or stealing their car so, you know be careful of what you see

well, yeah, oddly enough we're on the same page when it comes to that kind of thing

and that dichotomy between what people have been told and what is actually happening couldn't be wider than in the prison world

What role, you don't have to answer this if you don't want to, what role does regret play in your life today

Well, first of all, you have to get to where I am now for regret to even register

Yes, I think I understand that. That's the absolute truth, because when you're doing it

it's, oh, I've got this car, but I could do with a better one

and him up the road, he's got that one. And I know that I'm better than him, so I can definitely have..

That is what your mind consists of. What do I fancy for two weeks

What restaurant will I go and eat? So you can find regret is he's just not getting a look in

That sort of thing comes around when you... Yeah, I get that

Committing crime is a full-time job. I know a lot of people think, oh, you just get up, you go and do that

and it's all over with. It's a full-time job. There's a lot of effort

Even if you're a drug addict and you're a shoplifter, they get up in the morning, they're banned from certain shops

so they've got to find new ones, so there's to travel. It takes up a lot of time

I know that sounds mad, but committing crime is like a full-time job

even at the lower end. So having sympathy or regret or understanding of what you're doing

and if you're on drugs, you can have none of them. No, I understand that, but I don't think you were, were you

No, no, no, no. I didn't think so. I was trying to live and do better than what society had carved out

I just wonder how that bit breaks, Dean. Because that phrase, occupational hazard, is quite a flabby phrase

But goodness me, listening to you describe the reality of your existence, it hardens up, it really means something in the context of this conversation

And what would have made you think differently? Could anything have turned you down a different path

when you're looking at him up the road who's got a nicer car than you

and you're thinking, well, the next job will be the one that changes everything. Well, if I had a difference

so where I come from, to do well was important, but how you get there

you was left up to your own devices. Was not important. And if you're not academically smart

you'll find another route. And unfortunately, The route I took was not one that society is best pleased with

Were you not academically smart? I was smart, but not in the right ways, in all of the wrong ways

So I used my smarts accordingly. How naive do I sound when I say that I bet a better school

or better teachers could have found something that... Yeah, well, so when I went to school, obviously, I'm not sure how it is now because I've left many years ago

But when I was at school, the kids that was going to see to produce the A's and all of that

they was heavily relied on to prop up the school figures. And the other ones, I would go into a class and say, I'll read a book today

So as long as I didn't disrupt that class, I could pretty much do what I wanted

But they were happy that you were keeping your head down. But no one managed to ignite anything inside you

No one managed to... No, they didn't think that maybe if we don't educate him

he could go on to cause absolute havoc. That doesn't register. Do you want to say anything else

I've run out of questions, which never happens to me. I just wanted to say that this thing with the figures

the illiterate thing that's been down on for many many decades and the public need

to ask themselves what do they want do you want Tory's harshness battering the

prisoners or do you want something else but if you want something else

you've got to be prepared to pay for it and I mean theoretically they should

want fewer crime that should be the absolute and you don't get that

it's a no brainer because if you pay for it and you reduce crime you reduce you

your family or someone else likely being a victim of crime. But it's a hard sell

It is. And I don't know why. They've done it in Scandinavia. They've done it in a lot of Scandinavian countries

They've made the sell and they've made it clearly. I hate to say it, but I would like to think

that our public are just as intelligent as the Scandinavian public. So quite what we're doing wrong, I don't know

Well, there's a couple of books I could recommend, Dean, but that wouldn't be fair because I wrote them

But I've really enjoyed talking to you. All right. Thank you. Take care

You too. 10.52 is the time. James O'Brien on LBC. 55 is the time

Funny that Dean rings in just after I'd done that little advertisement for the new subscription service on LBC

boasting about the quality of calls that we take to this programme. And a lot of admiration for you coming in as well, Dean

if you're still listening. And I can fully understand why. Extraordinary clarity of explanation

and relatively simple conclusions, albeit ones that are often absent from these conversations

Because, as Dean pointed out, we're being invited to kind of call for prisoners to be treated like absolute scum

and also to be really, really unhappy when the system can't cope with the number of people that we're sending to prison

or the length of the sentences that are being imposed. So what should the national priority be

Answer, fewer crimes, therefore fewer criminals, therefore fewer prisoners, therefore less money being spent

But, of course, as he rather brilliantly related, it doesn't work like that

And, of course, that is only one experience, very much if I understood him correctly, and I think I did

the upper echelons of professional criminality. I think that the real meat and drink here, the real change is to be made in the ranks of the illiterate

And 25% of prisoners are care leavers. So it's as if society has rejected them before they reject society

How on earth do you undo that? So the two questions are, what is it like in prison

And I didn't ask Dean this because I don't think he was in the category concerned

What happens when you leave? What happens when you leave? I sense he was going back to a well-established life and routine

But what if you haven't got one to go back to? 0345 6060973 is the number that you need

Olivia is in Durham Olivia what would you like to say Good morning James I want to give a different perspective from some of the callers you had this morning

I currently work in a prison in the education department. Right. And so my role largely consists of everyday meeting new prisoners to the establishment

and finding out their previous attainment, what their kind of scores are in their maths and English

performing reading screeners when necessary and yeah lots of the educational wheelhouse

And you feel obviously that what you do is worthwhile and often successful

Oh yeah, it's one of those very worthwhile jobs How much of a lottery is it

Because does it depend what prison I get sent to or does it depend what I'm like

I can avail myself of the services that you provide or I can choose not to

What are the biggest frustrations in your work, Olivia? So as far as I'm aware, every prison will have an induction like we do

I think there's maybe some differences, whether they're private or state-run prisons

as to the exact minutia of it. But I know a previous caller mentioned about having to do the maths

and the English test and so on and so forth. So that's exactly what I do

But did you know that... But you also heard him say that he did those tests

for a lot of the other inmates. Yes, that is something that I hear

We crack down on it now, because I'm in the classroom with them

keeping a BDI to make sure everyone's completing it themselves, but I have heard in the past that that was an issue

How steep is the gradient? How much difference can you make if somebody in front of you is functionally illiterate

when they come into prison? I know part of this is going to be linked to the length of sentence

but I mean two questions, really. How much difference can you make

And how much difference does it make if they were to leave prison with measurably improved literary skills

I suppose it's anecdotal, really. I don't know that it's been measured. But in your mind or in your experience, how much more likely are they then not to be coming back into the system sometime soon

How significant is literacy to recidivism? so as far as the sort of support available to the learners we have um well there's a charity that

works in a lot of prisons called the shannon trust to uh do literacy and numeracy help um so there's

a lady on site who does one-to-one reading support um with a an awful lot of the men and her waiting

list is constant so they kind of know some of these men they kind of know that they need to do

this and then you've got one charity paid worker in a prison

of hundreds of prisoners yeah they do I know some of them

they'll one of the job roles available for some of the men

is to be a mentor with that charity so they can also help

with the support but obviously you know the ratio there is not

what we'd like it to be were you surprised by this when you started

because I mean sitting outside the system made sort of rose-tinted spectacles, naively looking in

Surely if you're turning up in prison after all these years, the point Dean made, he couldn't quite believe what he was hearing

because he thought I was suggesting that the literacy issue was a relatively new development

I mean, of course it isn't, but you'd have thought by now somebody would have recognised that it should be the top priority for prisons

It would be improving the literacy of the people in there and therefore massively reducing the likelihood of their coming back

Were you surprised by how poor the provision was within the bit where you work

I mean, I kind of came into it with some expectation that there would be people that struggle

But the sheer scale of it, when it's, you know, almost every day I'm meeting someone new who struggles with illiteracy to some degree

Full-grown adult. Why did you do it? What drew you to this line of work

um well i was always drawn to education because it's played a powerful role in in my own life

um and being in a prison system i thought it just um it seems like there's a very good chance to

enact real change and whilst i'm not a teacher so i don't get to see it quite the same degree

you hear stories of teachers who had learners where they've got their first ever certificate

at 60 years old or so, and that's in the prison system. It's stories like that that really keep you going

Yes. Yeah, well, I can see why, but you point to the plain necessity of doing better

and yet it's completely absent from almost the entire conversation, and it's especially absent on days where newspaper readers

and radio listeners are just being encouraged to bite political chunks out of politicians

who aren't responsible for the current crisis. And all of the ones that do come back, and many will

That's going to be one of the next chapter in this saga

We'll be measurably less likely to come back into jail if they had received the sort of literacy training that people like Olivia seek to help provide

I mean, it's a no-brainer, isn't it? And yet here we are. It's 11.02

I'll continue with this if you want. It's up to you. I'll tell you the number. 0-3-4-5-6-0-6-0-9-7-3

And you can tell me what it's like in prison. the role if you like that literacy plays in criminality i know that might be a tricky one

it's quite a personal question but if you are in this category um if you are or have been one of

the 50 percent of prisoners who are not functionally literate i wonder if you could tell me what that

means what the relationship is because i can probably work out elements of it for myself but

i'm never going to feel it like you do how different your life would have been and how

much less time you might have spent in prison if you were able to read and write very easily and

very effectively. And then, of course, we haven't really done anything on what happens on the final

day, what happens on the day of release. It's 11.03. James O'Brien on LBC. Seven minutes after 11

You can see, or actually, yes, you can actually see, not just hear, the entirety of that video

call between the hero airline Captain Smith Makar, forgive me if I've mispronounced

that surname with the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it really is extraordinary

the bravery displayed by him, but equally not equally extraordinary, the conversation he's had with the Prime Minister

it's on the LBC website if you go to lbc.co.uk do you remember Jones

the engineer, I used to talk about he was Keith before Keith and he's now a pilot

And he was telling me the other day, quite by coincidence, about how hilarious trained pilots find it that men in particular think that if they absolutely had to in the event of a crisis, they would be able to fly a plane

I blame Hollywood. I think that the image we've got in our minds of the air traffic controller talking us through what we need to do and what buttons we need to press and all that, we all sort of somewhere inside think, well, you know, I'm pretty good at video games

if push came to shove I'm sure I could land the plane missing a little bit from some of the coverage

of the story and that's not a criticism it is there but my goodness me quite understandably

you're looking at the celebration of the heroes who fought off the knife man

the co-pilot with the knife who was I mean it a suspected hijacking attempt is the technical term could be could have been so much worse than that There were also two pilots on the plane You know the fickle finger of fate

not just pointing at this absolute hero whose conversation, as I say

with the Prime Minister of India, you can see and watch in full on the LBC website

But also the fact that there were two fully trained pilots on board as well

one of them British, who were then able to land the plane in Saudi Arabia

One British, the other simply described as European. They were in transit on the flight when the attempted hijacking took place

What a story. Nine minutes after 11 is the time. And, of course, the only real story vying for attention on the front pages this morning with that one is the early release of Prisoners

And, understandably, many right-wing commentators and editors trying to blame it all on Andy Burnham

In fact, the Daily Mail has the audacity to call it, while paying Boris Johnson, who presided over the collapse in our prison system

for the entirety of his premiership, they have the audacity to call it Andy Burnham's soft justice programme

The Daily Mail, they're arguing that you can actually fill the same bucket of water twice

even though it's already full. Everybody else with a brain fully understanding that this is a consequence

of all the things that I'll call a dean detailed, not least the fact that we're being encouraged as a population

to believe two things at the same time. Best solution to crime is to be damn tough on criminals

Lock them up and forget about them. Unfortunately, if they then announce

we're going to need a heck of a lot of money to build some new prisons, which means you're not getting a hospital

then they'd be uproar. And I can't move away from this, and I'm not even going to try

If there is another reason why Rishi Sunak didn't call that early election

a week after being warned by senior civil servants that he was going to be breaching

his legal responsibilities if he didn't address the prison's crisis immediately then i'm a dutchman

seriously 10 minutes after 11 is the time more calls please on the simple questions although the

answers have proved to be anything but what happens in prison what what is it like to be in prison and

what happens when you leave what what i mean and the the reason i ask these questions is in pursuit

of an understanding of how the numbers could be reduced in ways that didn't involve even earlier

release than we had before. Do you see what I mean? The best way to reduce

prison numbers is to have less crime. So what is it about the prison

system that is not addressing that point? What is it that happens in prison

and upon release that is signally failing to provide or produce less crime

Catherine is in York. Catherine, what would you like to say? Hi

I feel like I have a bit of a unique perspective on this, to be honest. I'll be the

judge of that Catherine. Look I spend a lot of time shouting at the radio at LBC I've never phoned

in before and spoken to anyone but this is something I feel quite passionate about I mean

my position was I mean this is going back about 15 years but I actually worked in a prison

in the education department as a teacher so I taught literacy and numeracy and that was really

driven by doing some work experience when I was doing my degree and just understanding how

ashamed some prisoners felt at the fact that they couldn't read and we're having to have people read

their letters read their birthday cards for them and and it kind of stirred something in my heart

that that's what I wanted to do so spent a number of years teaching and seeing people in that

revolving door situation and it was heartbreaking um you know just seeing them come back time after

time and then there were other people who were coming in because of a really bad error of judgment

uh i don't know maybe looking at their phone while they were driving causing an accident that ends up

with them serving a lengthy sentence so you know two totally different ends of the spectrum really

people who were almost career criminals and those who were just caught out by doing something, you know

We've spoken to both, haven't we, on the programme today? Yes, exactly. Exactly

And look, I think part of the problem is that there are some great courses

and part of my role was getting people up to an educational level where they could go into workshops

So that could be bricklaying, it could be painting and decorating workshops

The problem with those were that there were so few places on those courses and loads of people wanted to get on them

You've got to do your level one, level two literacy and numeracy to get on to them

But the waiting list could be so long that you never got to you never got there

And they were great because they were obviously aimed at upskilling you

So upon release, you had a qualification. I think part of the problem with that is that once you get out there it's not as simple as that

as soon as you have a criminal record now the what I then go on to say is I again found myself

in the in a desperate situation of um serving a prison sentence myself that's a twist but yeah

Yeah, not a great twist. Not a great twist. And I took in a phone, a mobile phone for a prisoner

And it got found. I admitted that it was me. And I received a custodial sentence

Now, I already knew the prison system when I got, obviously not a male prison, but I went to female prison

I knew what the regime was like. So that part of it wasn't so much of a shock

but what was a shock was that on release my whole life changed beyond recognition I mean I had a

loving family I had people who supported me I was well qualified uh the job that I was damn good at

I could no longer get anymore I couldn't get a teaching job for love nor money if I went for

any other job i was on over skilled over over um qualified for and i had i had a criminal record

and it impacted every area of my life i couldn't get house insurance i couldn't get car insurance

because as soon as you say you've served a custodial sentence it doesn't matter in my

It doesn't matter what it's for. It closes the doors. And you, I mean, obviously, were not ever going to be at risk of recidivism

I mean, it's not even a crime you'd be able to commit twice

because you weren't working in the prison again. But the perspective it gives you on why people with a less secure background

or a less secure life are going to go back again even if they're determined not to, is extraordinary, isn't it? Absolutely

All the things you just listed. Yeah. And you suddenly get a different perspective

on why people come back. You know, people come back because I used to think

well, I'm not surprised people drive around without insurance on their car. And I'm not surprised people drive around

without a car that's taxed because they can't get it. If you can get it, it's absolutely extortionate, regardless of whether your crime was relevant

It's just a red flag. A red computer says no. It's exactly that, isn't it

Absolutely that. Wow. And 15 years later, you know, it's the same thing

So what are you doing now, if you don't mind me asking? I now I work in similar in a similar field but I'm self-employed and I work with adults who are neurodivergent so ADHD autism normally who are at university and are struggling with their studies but the easiest option for me was actually to go self-employed because the pain of every time I applied for a job or you have to declare your your and I think that may have changed

now actually um how long you have to you go before you have to you don't have to declare

you know your conviction anymore but it was painful it was like bringing it back up and it's

a part of my life that almost belongs in a box marked did that really happen i can only imagine

how long were you inside for oh i got a nine month custodial which was i mean everybody was shocked

about i don't think anybody would expect me to get a custodial but i think they want to make an

example you know and i don't underestimate what i did um but because i think because we know without

going into too much there was no money involved i didn't get paid to do it uh i think i probably

got a more lenient sentence than others in my position um but it's a lifetime ago but every

time i it's still there it's almost as if the system the system is designed to make it harder

for people. Yeah, almost impossible. To get on the straight and narrow after coming out of jail. I

mean, that's bonkers. And for me, there was shame attached. Of course there was. A hell of a lot of

shame attached. But for many of these guys who I worked with, there was no shame attached because

their family members, their friends, that where they live, that's what everybody does. I think

Dean conveyed that perfectly when I asked him about regret. And it was almost like it's a

commodity that doesn't really exist until you reach a certain age but i'll tell you when you

did mention shame and i found it fascinating and i i'm so bad at not interrupting but i managed to

resist the urge then because you'd said that your perspective was unique and i was very i think we

can all agree that that was not an exaggeration i think from prison worker to prisoner does indeed

provide a unique perspective so far you know the phone lines are still open who knows we might find

another one but you talked about the shame involved in illiteracy and and I found that a

remarkable moment because you know the mental image we have of these men these serial criminals

these hardened criminals is is of people who lack perhaps an emotional life or people who are

as tough as old boots but in fact you you said that phrase that they are ashamed that they can't

read or write and I automatically saw little boys in my mind's eye. Yeah yeah I mean we I didn't

teach adults who were you know what we would call entry one you know people who really cannot read

at all that wasn't my skill set really but when you saw people who were at that level of literacy

and learned to read their first book so when they had visits from children or grandchildren

children they could actually read a book it was incredible you know but just just absolutely i

mean a very emotional experience for them and for everybody working around them uh i'm not saying it

got my job when they got out but actually it's life-changing just in a different way i and i

mean there should be votes in it as well actually you know thinking about it if anyone bothered to

explain it as powerfully and as clearly as you have done and my other callers have done today

they were there i think i honestly believe there would be votes in it but the problem as so often

in this country is on what platform do you get to explain this stuff to people because you know

we've only got one and a half million listeners i don't know where else you're going to hear conversations like the one you've just had with me um thank you and and good luck i suppose i mean

And it's such an extraordinary thing to think that even after all these years, it is the system is working to prevent people from not going back to jail

Even people, of course, who are never likely to or going to like Catherine

It's 20 minutes after 11. James O'Brien on LBC. It is 22 minutes after 11 and you are listening to James O'Brien on LBC

I've been rattled through a few texts just because I haven't really looked at them

or I've looked at them, but I haven't read any out really today. Here you go. Here's a little bit of a lighter note from Niall

Sorry to disrupt any flow that you might be in right now, James. I'm listening on catch-up and just wanted to say

what an utter cracker yesterday's mystery hour was. Sorry I'm not listening live. I'll catch you later

Cheers, Niall. I'm speaking to you from the future. No, I'm speaking to you from the past, Niall

When you listen to this on catch-up later, I'm talking directly to you from the past

And they say that time travel isn't possible. This in response to an earlier call

I'm not sure if we should be locking up middle class people for pills on a first offense

Is it wrong for me to think like that, asks Anthony. Yeah, it's a tough one because that's what's going to happen

Because obviously the criminals that we all feel shouldn't be released earlier

the criminals that have been violent, especially in domestic abuse contexts or sexual offenses

So yes, given the choice, you wouldn't lock up the people found in possession of 50 ecstasy pills

which they were intending to supply to their friends. But if you're not going to get locked up for it, then loads more people are going to do it

So it's sadly tricky, to say the least. And this one from Ian, 2010 or so, I was leaving a bar near the South Bank in London, and I spotted two people in a bush in a small park

I think I know the park you mean. It's the one by the Millennium Wheel. I went over and talked to them to see if they were OK

They'd been released from prison that day and had no place to go. it was november and and cold but they just had their hmp vests sort of joggers and trainers

so i gave them one of my t-shirts and i gave the other one my jumper i gave one of them my t-shirt

and the other one my jumper um he presumably had his coat with him before i get the usual text from

one or two people who aren't really normal they didn't know where they were going to stay that

night but they were looking for a hostel as that's what they'd been told to look for they'd both been

done for burglary they hadn't been told where a hostel might be and had been wandering around for

a bit let me make sure i can read this properly um they've been wandering around for a bit and

were planning to sleep in the park i went back to a shop got them some sandwiches some water and

that was that given them some directions to where i thought there was a homeless shelter and after half an hour chatting i went home to my warm flat and and of course that experience

needs to be mitigated by the observation of how awful it is to be

burgled. Foolish to pretend otherwise, but two wrongs don't make a right

you see. That's a cliche for a reason. Gavin is in Liverpool. Gavin, what would you like

to say? Yeah James, I'm not actually on the way to Brighton for the Green Conference doing a bit of lobbying on an issue that might affect people But we don need to talk about that We can if you want

We might touch on it. The first thing I want to do is that text message

that you just read out there. I don't think we should be locking up middle-class people

for first offensive pills. The middle-class bit is a serious issue. You never even realised it

No, I didn't clock it. Yeah, and really, the sensible thing would be to say

maybe we shouldn't be locking up anybody from any class. I suspect Anthony is now feeling a little bit silly

Because he's referring to a very specific caller in that context. I heard him, yeah

So I suspect Anthony would withdraw the middle class from that comment

now that it has been pointed out to him, and indeed to me how ludicrous it is to be in the sentence

But, I mean, who knows? But it is a big part of this. Yes, it is

Because I'm a working class man. My mum brought me up on benefits. My dad's a scrap man, yeah

Yeah. And I have been slammed and slammed and slammed all through my life

And that has always been a factor. That's an unconscious bias there

The police don't realise they're doing it. The courts don't realise they're doing it. It's just part of our culture to hurt working class people more

for the exact same offences that middle class people do. I witnessed it in university, a middle-class kid attacked somebody

punched and battered hell out of them when he was drunk for no reason. On the other hand, I got attacked and I did jail for one blow more

in excessive self-defense. You know, two blows in total, which was just ridiculous

You were talking earlier about prison and inside prison. That was what I originally called for

to say what goes on there. And in a nutshell, people are just sat around steward

You're just in a waiting room waiting to get out forever. It just causes a huge amount of mental health damage to people

which then has to be picked up by everybody else. There's also a lot of crime

The hotbeds for crime in Britain are the prisons. There's more crime in there than there is anywhere else

partly because stupid things like the criminalisation of phone calls your last caller

got jailed for bringing a mobile phone in, I can understand how

she would have felt perhaps sympathetic to somebody's plight in prison I couldn't apply for university

in prison which is ridiculous because you couldn't communicate with the outside

you're looking at someone whose marriage is falling apart and he's convinced that if he could just talk to his wife a bit more often

it wouldn't. He could hold it together. Housing situations, you know, you need to call around

I'd never thought of that. I'd never thought of that. And the private sector is scamming prisoners like you wouldn't believe

You can see the credits disappearing live in front of you on the phone systems they have in there

It's infinitely more expensive than phone contracts. Why we can't have just an equivalency, you know

a £10 a month phone contract or something like that and have somebody outside

of the prison system pay it for you so that you can have that contact

in a safe way through the phone systems. We need to pay

that. We're 30 years behind on that. We need to make it happen

I know that calls have to be recorded because there is the whole drugs industry in prison

but it needs to happen because you can find a middle ground

where you have communication. Well tell me about that. How many times

I mean, have you been in and out of jail subsequent to that? I've been in jail twice on remand and once for a sentence

Okay. The first time I was a victim of remand abuse for 12 months, you know

so that's when a lot of your listeners won't know what remand abuse is

That's when you get remanded in custody, and then at the end of the process

you find out you shouldn't have been in jail anyway, either because your sentence would have been so low

that you couldn't have went to prison, or because you get found not guilty altogether

and so you shouldn't have been there. And there's no compensation for this as well. We're not an honest, decent nation that compensates people for their losses

So you're torn away from your job, you're torn away from your home

and then you're just thrown out there with a little chitty and a train ticket back home

And a deadline, oftentimes a deadline too, but I've known people released in the north of England

and they've got to somehow get to the south of England before the offices close at the probation at five o'clock

And if they don't get there, bang, recall, straight back to prison. I alluded to earlier the fact that people are getting recalled

we think, on the outside world. Oh, you've been recalled to prison, you've committed another crime

but it can be the fact that the bus wasn't running, can't it? Exactly, yeah

You know, you're at least ten hours away from your probation office

and you're released six hours before it closes, stupid things like that

There's just so much, so many stupid things. Nobody has went in there and took a lean approach to it

Nobody with any sort of project management background has went in there and looked for the low-hanging fruit

looked for the opportunities to improve the system. There was one guy who did try, and his name was Michael Gove

Believe it or not, I bet you didn't think I was going to say that name. No, I didn't. I didn't, but I was hoping it would take me by surprise

And he took his responsibilities as Justice Secretary quite seriously, I think

Well, his strategy, I think he probably reflected on his time as Education Secretary

and realised he did everything wrong there. You're not expecting this. Let's play that game

I'm not sure that's true, actually. I'm having a bit of a rethink about some of that. But, well, that's a conversation for another day

I might be a bit tongue-in-cheek there. But one thing he did is he listened

He went quiet for months. He went and spoke with Nils Olsberg over in Norway

Yes, that's right. I remember that. He went over to America to look at their systems. And he was effectively silent on the subject for months

And then he gave a big speech. And the whole of the prison system, from the guards to the prisoners, to the teachers, to the desistance networks

like the Longford Trust, a brilliant organisation, by the way, who've helped me

and, you know, all the other, Unlock, etc. They were all blown away by his plan

But then, of course, Boris, the name, had a fallout. He was only there for a year

And do you remember who they replaced him with? I can't remember the name, but I remember they were..

Go on, go on. Who was the worst possible name I could say now? I think it was a female, was it? Yeah

Am I right? It wasn't so well a braverman, was it? No. Worse

Ooh. Yeah, worse. Can't remember. Can't remember. You got to help us, James

Liz Truss. It was Liz Truss. It was Liz Truss. I don't know who it was. Who banned the books? Was it Grayling

I think it goes Grayling Gove Truss. Grayling banned the books. Grayling banned the books

What an absolute... I was a victim of that, James. I was locked up on remand after I was assaulted

It was decided in the end it was excessive self Two blows The second one was too much Yes I still don most people don agree with that when I tell them the story I won go into it But I was locked up middle of a degree

when I was trying to reform my life, and did three months on remand

and I couldn't get my textbooks to continue studying. It was so frustrating

I think it was one of Lord Longford's family who actually challenged that in the courts

and got it overturned. Pakenham, somebody Pakenham, I think. You're right, yes

I think she's a descendant of Lord Longford. That's correct. That's the family name

Wonderful woman. Do you campaign in this area now? Is that why you're heading to the Green Conference

It's adjacent, but I'm not using the language of an ex-convict or a penal reform network

I'm trying to get a small amendment to the Children Act because I found many, many, many years later

with no unspent convictions yet, at a point where nothing should be affecting me

I found that it affected me very, very badly in family court. I'm not allowed to go into details

But a bit like Catherine talking about the darkness of the shadow

that follows her everywhere now. Exactly, I understand that. I mean, I'm a structural engineer from a Russell Group university

and I just get discrimination everywhere I go. We've got to get rid of that

And you know what? If you're not going to get rid of it internally, at least let people leave the country

At least stop giving old criminal records to foreign countries so that they don't let them go there, you know

Because, you know, if you don't want us, let us go. Well, again, you speak to the system actively preventing people

from leading more productive and legal lives, actively preventing you from leading the life that you want to lead

Yeah. And then for a different character, that would make you more likely to re-offend, of course

I'm at a point, James, where I just think that my life has been a write-off and I can't turn it around

I've done everything I'm supposed to do to turn it around. I've even mentored other people

One of them's doing great as a high-flying architect in London right now

Well, then those two things, listen, I'm not going to patronise you because you feel what you feel

but that second thing you just told me gives the lie to the first thing

If you've managed to make a change in... I know, but there's a degree... Of course there is. There's a degree of luck

Yeah. But my aim, though, is just to make sure that the next generation, that my children

my nieces and nephews, that they have a better world and that they have a better shot

And if they do make a mistake, it doesn't actually wreck everything for decades afterwards

Exactly, exactly. I hear you. I said I wasn't going to patronise you

and you already know this, but you're really clever. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I have an IQ over 130

I'm a polymath. I know you know it, but I'm just pointing out

that if you had had a slightly different start in life, goodness only knows

where you would be now and that's why you understandably mentioned class first

when you came onto this program. Yeah, yeah. The change I'm trying to get anyway

is a simple change to family law to make sure that social workers

don't use their gut feeling anymore for risk assessments, but they will be forced to use a quantified risk method

Really basic stuff, but hopefully it will mean that ex-convicts aren't discriminated against on someone's gut feeling

On a whim, on a whim or a gut feeling. Good luck with it, Gavin. Good luck. Thanks

You take care and drive carefully, if you are indeed driving to Brighton

Very late for the news, I'm sure everyone can understand why. It is 11.37, and Dominic Ellis has those headlines

James O'Brien on LBC. It's 22.12. You are listening to James O'Brien on LBC

where this extraordinary conversation continues. And make no mistake, the bit of it that's not extraordinary

is the bit that I'm contributing. But if you've only discovered this programme quite recently

and you've wondered, I don't think you would have done this, but isn't he over-egging it a bit when he keeps wanging on

about how amazing all his callers are? I think today you realise that I'm not. I'm not exaggerating it, although I am quite possibly wanging on talking about prison and having a conversation that really should be had instead of the one that everybody else is having, which is, oh, aren't they awful, these Labour people releasing all these prisoners early

And that's the conversation that no doubt we will be having again before the day is out

Omar is in Barking. Omar, what made you pick up the phone? hi James well my mother-in-law actually messaged me to give me a pod um and I'm an avid listener

but I just wasn't listening this time um I'm an ex-prisoner not good enough Omar not good enough

mate do better um what I will say is um I'm an ex-prisoner unfortunately served over seven and

half years gosh and it was and it was the literacy aspect actually made me cool right um because it

was reading that really transformed my life within the prison system and I can actually pin it to

that tell me more what were you in for okay well all all of my crimes were commercial related so

commercial burglar breaking into buildings robbing businesses basically yeah unfortunately and i went

to prison first when i was 15 and it was the first time i picked up a book it was the eagle has landed

by jack higgins and i read half of it understood about a quarter but it just allowed me to escape

from that self-life period of time and every time i went to prison i picked up a book and you know

So he changed me as a person, my identity, my value system, my outlook on life

You know, the older I grew, the more I read. Unfortunately, I didn't have a lot of people outside, you know, supporting my reading

And the only time I would pick up a book is when I was in prison. That's one of the maddest things I've ever heard

The only time you'd pick up a book. So you weren't illiterate. You weren't functionally literate

You could understand some of what you were reading enough to get the gist of the story

I could read words, but understanding them was different. And I think that was the challenge, just understanding what I was reading

and I think that was the task and that's obviously combined of education really supported that

and I think just reading a lot around the world and I think I was

you can imagine prisoners got a large gambit of all conspiracies going around

and everyone believes all types of stuff and you know I had to navigate for all of that and I had to you know

show and tell when I'm having debates and you know a lot of people like I was around some

really educated people that showed me how to research and how to show and tell

when I'm trying to yeah absolutely it was actually I think it was a 70 year old

daughter actually who taught me it was a... That's almost a movie, isn't it

A 70-year-old fraudster played by Bill Nighy, I think, in the film

wouldn't it be? And actually, he was actually a high-up camera crossing, because someone said, who's that man

power-walking the exercise dog? I don't think you can't write it. Anyway, he told me, actually, at the

back of a book, there's something called References. And I thought, oh my God, actually, there's

more to the reading than there's entertainment, and that's when I fell in love with non-fiction

I'm going to read you something that Emma sent to me earlier. The problem

with functional illiteracy is not just writing lists and filling in forms and reading

to your kids. It's comprehension of what you're reading. It's the ability to string

together a coherent narrative to correctly draw inference and implication from the actions of others

It's about holding attention long enough to read and digest the meaning of

even a short paragraph or three or four sentences. An inability to use any of these skills is

an obvious disadvantage to remaining on the right side of many laws

My hair stands up on the end Mine too And do you know what I thinking about when you saying that It the second book I going to mention James And this is the book that really transformed me It was Viktor Frankl Man Search for Meaning And I read that twice in two different sentences

One when I was a bit younger, didn't really understand what I was reading. And when I was an older man, I actually understood, wow

actually there might be purpose and meaning for me to get in this situation. And that's led me to where I am today

You know, I've got my own business. I go back into prison. I support prisoners through literacy programs, through mentoring programs

and get people jobs at the end of the day. He was a Holocaust survivor, I think, Frank

He was. Sorry. Did you get... Were there people, apart from the 70-year-old fraudster

did the system help you at all, Omar? Yeah. Tell me a bit about that, if you can

Well, I'd like to give a shout-out to the Shannon Trust. It's an organisation that supports literacy and reading within the prisons

When you speak to your mother-in-law later, she'll say, someone else already mentioned the Shannon Trust, Omar

I can't be the only smart tool in the box. but what yeah

the Shannon Trust the six book challenge and I think the six book challenge for anybody

whether you're in prison or not it asks you to read six books out of your comfort zone

so if you're into horror read fantasy if you're into fantasy read romantic

and come back and talk about it and you know understand what you're reading

and it's beautiful because you sit with a librarian and see the library I would say

this is funny enough in James but some of the rarest places

I've ever saw a fight in prison was in the library wow you just made the hairs on my neck stand up

I've seen fights in religious places of worship I've seen fights in the GP

I've seen fights in the gym rarely saw a fight in the library that's incredible

that's absolutely incredible and yet it makes absolutely perfect sense as we both know

was there a pivot here is there a moment when you realised

that your life had changed I know you've mentioned Viktor Frankl's book

but in terms of your actual existence was there a moment when you thought I think I'm over the line

Yeah, it was. When I met my partner and become a father, and that was it

I went to university. I left school really when I was nine years old. I had an axiom of change when I was five years old

I was electrocuted. Couldn't write or read for many years. Went to prison when I was 15, like I said

I really left school when I was nine, formerly when I was 13. So when I became a father

when I come out in 2017, I decided that I went back to school, studied at college for two years

went to university, you got a bachelor's degree in business management, worked my way up the corporate sector

become a social value consultant, working with some of the largest corporates

you know, advising them, supporting them on how to support underprivileged communities and people who are who I used to be

And then started my own company and, you know, Anna Branch Plus, I thought I'd plug it there

Yeah, say again. Anna Branch Plus. And James, you're a very wise man

Have you ever heard of the word Anna Branch? No. Okay, so I'll tell you what I mean

Yeah, please. Okay, Anna Branch is a part of a river that breaks away from the main course

to only reconnect a bit further downstream. Wow. What a beautiful thing to do

I'd say it's like an oxbow lake, but that stays a river. Yeah, it breaks away

That encapsulates my own journey and a lot of people at our support. You broke away and then you got back in

Sorry, I'm living in a really bad spot. It encapsulates my own journey

I've been drawn away from the main path of society and been reconnecting a bit further downstream

And that is the entire point of this conversation. And it should be the entire point of justice policy in this country

Yeah. Shouldn't it? It's getting people back in the river, getting people back in the flow, in the mainstream

Oh, mate, I'm so glad that your mother-in-law was listening today. Janet. Janet

Shout out to Janet. You're the best. And she's obviously very proud of you

And she knows your story. And she knows your story. She really is. She really is

She's my greatest champion, honestly. She really is. Wonderful thing. Wonderful thing

Omar, take care and good luck with the business as well, with the work and a branch plus justice sector rehabilitation and employability program

So paying it forward, as the saying goes, or learning from what has benefited him and seeking to provide similar benefits to others

I'm not sure Chris Grayling would understand any of that last sentence. It's 1148

James O'Brien on LBC. 11.51 is the time. A word if you'd allow on why this show today has been so extraordinary

It's because we're all thinking. Whether we've actually got any experience whatsoever of what's being discussed or not

we're all just thinking. Some of the cleverest callers I can remember taking

I hope it wasn't inappropriate of me to say to the lad that was on his way to Brighton

that he was clearly super clever and then he comes straight back with his own IQ. You're thinking, clever people thinking, and you will come up with answers that are a lot more interesting and a lot more feasible than when you have unclever people not thinking, which tragically typifies justice policy in this country for years, except for that one year window where Michael Gove was in the department and wanted to tackle problems, wanted to actually make a difference

I think one of the most pitiful politicians that we've had in recent years, but even a stop clock is right twice a day

And Michael Gove was very right or very stopped during that period

Bookended, though, by Chris Grayling, now in the House of Lords, and Liz Truss, now in a very, very strange place entirely

And by the way, that other bloke I was telling you about who was in charge of the prison system

in charge of the entire country while this crisis was growing and brewing

the crisis that today the Daily Mail tries to pin on the Labour government

The columnist, the Daily Mail columnist, Boris Johnson, who was prime minister for years during the explosion of the prisons crisis

He also, to take us back to the comments about class, he also, of course, conspired with a criminal, a man who subsequently was jailed

He conspired with a criminal to have a journalist beaten up. he was secretly recorded

agreeing to provide the address of a News of the World reporter called Stuart Collier

to a man called Darius Guppy who wanted to arrange for the journalist

to have his ribs cracked as revenge for investigating his activities I'll leave you to wonder

what would have happened if any of the men that have called me today

I think I'm going to confine it to the men had been

secretly recorded conspiring with a criminal to have somebody beaten up. You sort of wonder whether the prominence given to class

in elements of the conversation we have is fair or justified. Boris Johnson became Prime Minister

long after that secret recording emerged, and the Daily Mail, which hates crimes

really opposed to them, thugs in every postcode, pays a million pounds a year to a columnist

who conspired to have someone beaten up and agreed to provide the address to the criminals

that would have administered the beating. if you bump into the editor of the daily mail or of course the i probably best not to ask richard

littlejohn about this because he's still licking his wounds about having half of his columns taken

away by the boss because um nadine dorries has got more readers apparently but if you ever bump

into the editor ask him how you can simultaneously complain about thugs in every postcode and having

one on every page of your paper class is the answer to that question jonathan is in southwark

Jonathan, what made you pick up the phone? Oh, I think it's a few things, really

Obviously, great call from Omar. And I think he represents probably 5% of the prison population

What do you mean by that? In terms of people that come out with a little bit of hope..

Yes, I agree. ...that are willing to turn their life around... And able. Willing and able

I think there's probably more who are willing, but they find that they're not able. So you're right, perhaps

And I would spend nine months, a nine-month sentence, between Belmarsh and Hollisley Bay

Okay. and i remember being in belmarsh my first night i was with tom hayes if you remember him

no he got done for the libel scandal okay you're one of the first people to be sentenced for that

and um again just it's a real experience to be honest with you uh but then i went on to

holiday bay and that's probably where i got my i was there for the longest period i worked as a

prison orderly in the education department okay so every day i was with people that were

were due to be released within the next sort of nine months

And a lot of the times, one of the syllabuses on that auditing course

on that educational course, was getting them prepared, helping them with their CVs

asking them about their spending habits pre-prison, and obviously what they think they'll spend

once they get out of prison. And a lot of the times, you're speaking to people

that have no concept of money. Really? What do you mean by that

In terms of, well, maybe more legitimate money. Okay, got you. You mean earning

You mean the relationship between labour and income and outgoings? Money is more like kind of tokens in a game or

Yeah, I mean, it's a case of they're drug dealers or, you know, they're burglars

So as soon as they get a bit of cash, they spend it. Be it on themselves, on their kids

And, you know, them spending £1,000 a month on clothing for their kids is normal

versus the average person, if you're doing a legitimate job, you're not able to do that

I hear you. So a lot of the times, it is a rolling door for them because they get out

and they're out for maybe a year. So it's an all or nothing existence

Indeed. And literally, their family will have nothing while they're inside. Indeed

And I've also seen the other side where there was someone that got released

Well, he went in for burglary. And again, this guy came from a good background. parents

very well off but they had a lot of money he got released

they gave him a Range Rover and within a month he was back in prison for burglary

how come? oh I don't know why he did it but burglary was the only way

he could have those big chunks of money coming into his pocket even with wealthy parents

indeed yeah gosh that's interesting that warped relationship between effort and income

and he's got less excuse in my mind than somebody who doesn't have security in their life or security in their

background can we talk a little about the day you get released yeah sure i think for me it was a lot

easier than maybe people that yeah you know that i was locked up with because i had a good

family support and again my sentence was very short as well so i maybe didn't going in i knew

i was coming out soon and that was my focus so even though every day felt like a month

I can already imagine what it felt like for people that were there for, you know, four years, five years

Some people there for 12 years, for example. And you come out of the gates and they give you, what, 50 quid

Something like 54 quid. 54 quid. And then train ticket back to your local area

And then the first day you go see the probation officer. Obviously, your address is confirmed before

I was on tag when I got released. So obviously, they come to your house, stick the box up, put your tag on, give your conditions

and then you're going to probation, trying to get a job. But again, for me, I had the hope of

I'm going to get a job and I did. So for myself, it was not easy

but I had hope. Whereas a lot of people that got released

the same time I did, probably half of them went back in

Because they had nothing to go home to. Exactly. That's the absolute peach here, isn't it

Because everyone I've spoken to, when we get to this bit of the conversation

everything depends on how much you've got to go to. It's not about where you're coming from

although obviously one big lesson this morning has been about the darkness of the shadow

that follows you around if you've been in prison and how it actually creates a system

that feels designed to make it harder to go straight, but it's where you're going to

that is determining whether you're going to go back or not. The more you've got to go to

the less likely you are to return to jail. Of course, of course

I just think, for me, my experience in prison, especially on a short sentence

I felt like it was redundant because I gained nothing. The research supports you, actually

that short sentences are largely pointless, but they, as Dean said, what feels like a lifetime ago now

as Dean said, they're designed to appease conservative voters or right-wing voters

Exactly, exactly. So, I mean, for myself, it's just, I couldn't do any educational courses

because I wasn't there for long enough. Other courses like being a bricklayer

doing workshops, again, wasn't there long enough. So the only job that was available to me

was an orderly or just staying on the wing and doing nothing was your day

And you couldn't do that. You couldn't do that. And of course

the idea that they have a PlayStation will cause fury in some corners of our media

because they would rather that these men were just sitting staring at a wall all day

because that's really going to make re-offending less likely and mental health problems less prevalent

Thank you, Jonathan. What an extraordinary couple of hours. I want to move on to something that I didn't realise was so important next

and I'm a bit embarrassed that I didn't realise how important it was. And I know it's a phrase that some people pretend that they don't really understand

but the reason why I didn't realise that the thing we're going to talk about next

is really important, and it involves Suella Braverman, which is why I didn't think it was important

The reason why I didn't realise how important it is, is white privilege

James O'Brien on LBC. Three minutes after 12, I don't know how to walk this tightrope, okay

between ignoring people who are desperate for attention, ignoring the bigotry and the attention-seeking vileness

of damaged men and women who are desperate for attention. because I don't have a metric inside me

to measure how much harm their bigotry and vileness is doing. And if I did, then I would find it a lot easier

to decide when it's time not to ignore that person anymore. I think I got it wrong with Andrew Tate

and I think I probably got it wrong with Stephen Yaxley-Lennon as well, and that thinking people, damaged people

who are being disgusting in pursuit of attention and money, are best ignored right we can all agree about that but at what point do you stop ignoring them

at what point do you stop stop ignoring this latest clown um i can't really talk about that

it an ongoing criminal case but does that make sense to you because i do this for a living and it not like being on Twitter and giving someone a metaphorical slap for being a dingbat or indeed being a racist

If someone is desperately trying to make a list of people over the last 10 years who probably managed to achieve more vileness and emotional violence because we started paying attention to them

It's a really tricky thing, I find really tricky. and I don't get it right

I don't always get it right I sometimes get it right, I sometimes don't get it right

Suela Braverman very much in this category somebody who is obviously damaged

obviously desperate for attention and obviously dedicated to spreading bile and bigotry in ways that have become

increasingly acceptable and fashionable in this country and because she is a woman of colour

I don't want to and will not talk about her in exactly the same way

that I would talk about a white person. So you've got that dreadful woman saying

that she doesn't like seeing black faces and brown faces on her television in Nigel Farage's party

And I feel differently. And I think, by the way, that it's right to feel differently

and correct to feel differently. For example, it is wrong to tell someone of colour

that they're not allowed to have profoundly anti-immigrant feelings. It took me a while to work that out

You're just as entitled because you are English, you see. And so you're just as entitled to be jingoistic or bigoted about immigration as somebody who is white

It's a weird thing. It's relevant to what's coming, as you've probably already worked out

So I have largely ignored her. Even when she did my holiday cover on this radio station, I filed it under regrettable and ridiculous and best ignored

and yesterday I was talking to Eleanor about this because I think she was on with Nick Ferrari

it was one day this week anyway and we're listening to it

and we're sitting there shaking our heads and essentially saying well I said, I'm not going to speak for anybody else here

I was explaining to white colleagues how sorry I felt for her

and I said this is now a tragedy this is now a tragedy

This is now a story of a woman brought so low by her desperation for approval from people who despise her for the colour of her skin that we're watching the media 21st century equivalent of a bearded lady on our television screens

She is, like Liz Truss, a freak show who people queue up to gawp at

and again because these people are doing it to themselves as well as having it done to them

the temptation to ignore is big but i'm white and so when she tells black people or brown people that they can't be english i don't feel it

I think she is ridiculous absolutely ridiculous but I didn't think she was dangerous

and I was really wrong I was really wrong and I'll tell you how I know how wrong I was

I'm going to read you something that a very very good friend of mine posted on a little group chat that we're on together

because he hadn't really clocked this stuff he's too busy delivering milk every morning

So he just saw the question time bit last night that I didn't see

And I'll play you a clip in a moment. And the point is it matters who she is

This is the point that I missed. This is the point that I missed

Coming from a brown woman who held high office, mate, it's effing awful

I'm 45 and this bleep, my friend Wayne is quite foul-mouthed. I don't think he'll mind me telling you that. So I'm having to edit this message as it goes

If you listen to this program on a regular basis, you've probably heard his voice. So you will know that he's perfectly capable of talking without deploying more Anglo-Saxonisms than the average football terrorist

But not not in our group chat. All right. Coming from a brown woman who held high office. That line right there

I want you to hold on to coming from a brown woman who held high office

mate it's effing awful I'm 45 and this bleep gets me I'm Wayne from Basildon

probably conceived on the bonnet of a Ford Capri alright mate we'll wait for the autobiography

I am Arsenal I'm a Muse fan I couldn't be more Basildon

I couldn't be more Essex I couldn't be more English I couldn't be more British

and then this wally that's his word actually see you can do it when you try

then this wally tries to undermine all of my identity based on racism that she's effing followed off you pop you effing tent peg

and i i woke up to that this morning i said i was reading this the first message i read i'm sorry

lads but this one has really effing done me my entire ambition was to be england's number one i

only ever wore england goalie tops for every team i played for when i saw david james turn out for

England, I got proper emotional. I was like, yes, bruv, me next

And I don't think he'll mind me telling you, he actually turned down schoolboy terms from Nottingham

Forest when he was a kid. So, this is real. All these years

later, a mixed race England team nearly gets over the line and this

former Home Secretary says, I ain't English. I will literally, intellectually devastate that woman's whole

world view. I will tell you who I am. you privileged so and so

you don't tell me and I read that this morning and I had in my ear

the echo of the conversation I had yesterday with Eleanor my producer

about how sorry I feel for Suella Braverman and I felt what did I feel

I think I felt a bit ashamed actually for having missed it

so acutely having missed it so completely oh here she is the bearded lady

popping up on LBC again because clicks are everything. I missed it

I missed how gross it is, what she's doing, how absolutely gross it is

because, hey, I've got an apostrophe in my name. There's probably some people out there

who think that means I'm not English. But it's not the same, is it

Because she's not really talking about white people. She's talking about people like Wayne

who's mixed race, for the record. And, of course, she's talking about people like herself

So there was an extraordinary thing on Question Time where she almost addressed directly this racism and said categorically, I think, and I'll play you the clip now, that because she's brown, she can't be racist

That's the phone-in, by the way. Here's the little clip where she responds to an audience member explaining that she is being racist against herself

What you done is just basically reinforce the racist argument I been on this planet for 54 years and the amount of times I been told I not English even though I was born here if I had a penny for every time I been given that

I'd be very rich. And do you consider yourself English, can I? I'm being racist against myself. Basically. Right, well that makes a lot of sense. Basically you are. I'm not going to be racist

against myself. Basically you are. If someone's going to call themselves English, I presume you've got an idea in mind as to what they would be. Obviously you take a reasonable approach, but my parents

were not born in England. Okay, but what would be the approach? My grandparents were not born in England, So in my particular instance, no, I am not of English origin

But I get what you're saying it isn't, but what is it? You have to take a view, obviously

But what's your view? You don't go. I'm not the one saying that it has to be five generations or four generations

I think it becomes pretty obvious when people have got a lineage, an ancestry, a connection to the heritage of this country, which dates back a few generations

And I think that that is not unreasonable to expect of people who come to this country

So that's the phone in. And I don't think I need particularly to over egg the pudding here

Is she being racist against herself? And of course, I want you to tell me, and I'm sorry that I haven't asked you before

And I'm sorry that I missed it when she was on earlier on this radio station earlier this week

I'm sorry I missed it. the importance of asking you how you feel to be told by her that you're not English

How does it make you feel? That man in the Question Time audience, by the way, was a black man, obviously, I think

but this is the radio, so I thought I'd better illustrate that for you

I find it, two things, I'm a bit self-indulgent to talk about how shocked I am that I missed this

but that's why I mention the tightrope, you see, because I want to ignore her

I managed to ignore her even when she was doing my own holiday cover but she, you know, she's upset my mate

and that upsets me and I missed why, I missed the depth of it

I missed the horror of this she is telling you that you're not English

she is telling Jude Bellingham that he is not English she is telling half the England team that they are not English

she's telling, well who isn't she telling that they're not English and she says oh I can't be racist because I'm brown

And that's where I want to be careful about my white privilege

My white privilege meant I had a conversation yesterday about how sorry I feel for her and what a tragic figure she cuts

Instead of feeling sorry for all of the people that she has reduced to heartbroken fury like Wayne and many of you

That was my bad. And that's because I'm white. That's because I didn't see it through the lens of somebody else's experience or ethnicity

That's what today's show is for. What is it like to be told by Suella Braverman, a former Home Secretary

Because this is the other point I missed. It's a bit like Donald Trump, isn't it

You can't ignore him because he's president. What he says is imbued with the authority of all the previous holders of that office

So you can't ignore him. She is a former Home Secretary. She might be a disgusting and ridiculous woman, but she speaks with the authority of all the other holders of that office, probably including Winston Churchill

I could never quite remember what great offices of state he held, but there have been plenty

And she is telling you that you're not English. And I want to know how that feels

That's all. 03456060973. I think it is a profoundly racist position that she holds. But I also want to know what you think about her argument that it can't be racist because she's brown

And that is where I can't really go any further because I don't really know that I should or certainly that I have the qualifications to do so

So that perhaps is where the echo of white privilege kicks in again

You can explain to me why she's right. I can tell you I don't currently think that she is, but I'm white

Do you want the phone number? Is that enough of an introduction, do you think? Or do you want to hear some other examples of her

What word would you use? Oh, I know, racism. Except she can't be racist because she's brown

telling you that you're not English. 0345 6060 973 is the number

So again, confession time. Nearly did a phone-in on what's wrong with her

but that came from a place of sympathy. And reading Wayne's messages this morning

you'd be very surprised to discover that all my sympathy disappeared. Who the fudge does she think she is to tell you

that you're not English. It's 12.17. James O'Brien on LBC. It is 90 minutes after 12

and of course it's a market economy, racism. And the more racist our society gets

the more racist you have to be to get the kind of attention that would once have been much more easily secured

You know, you'd have lost your job as a parliamentarian not long ago if you'd complained about

there being too many black faces on the streets of Birmingham, as Robert Jenrick has done

You'd have lost your job as a parliamentarian not long ago. Even Enoch Powell was thrown out of the Tory party by Ted Heath

Wouldn't be thrown out of the Tory party by Cami Badenoch, I don't think

and certainly wouldn't have been thrown out of reform by Nigel Farage. Far from it

And yet there it is. So you have to go further and further and further in order to get the attention that you crave

And the furthest that they go at the moment is to tell English people that they can't be English because they're brown

Never say it to me. I don't think she said it to Nick, whose heritage is Swiss-Italian, sitting in a studio with Nick Ferrari

She didn't tell him he wasn't English. She was sat there explaining why she isn't, and then by association, everybody else of colour

And that argument there, which I am not having, I'm inviting you to contribute to

that she can't possibly be racist because she's talking about herself, is one that I want you to help examine

But I also want you to tell me, first and foremost, how it feels to be told that you're not English by a woman who was Home Secretary

Home Secretary. 0345 6060 973. Yvonne is in Bexley. Yvonne, what would you like to say

Well, hi, James. Thank you for having such a fantastic, you always do such wonderful debates

I'm not having a debate here. Well, you know, the topic is amazing

I don't see how someone can speak for me. I'm born in this country

My parents were British subjects of a colony. My children are born here

My grandchildren are born here. How does somebody get to decide that I'm not English

What am I? If I'm not English, what am I? What are my children? What are my grandchildren

children If I were an Italian if I was born in Italy or somewhere else would that mean that I not Italian I mean you know as far as I concerned I a product of this environment I went to primary school I went to nursery school I went to secondary school I lived here all my life I never lived anywhere else so how can someone decide

where I come from or what my identity is yes, I'm Caribbean origin

I mean everybody's You sound calm you sound calmer than my friend Wayne

you haven't taken it as personally as some people might have done

because she's just ridiculous or because you've heard this song before so many times

Oh, I think she's a bit of an idiot, to be honest. So I really don't think, I mean, I really don't

it's not nice to call people names, but how can you, if someone as intelligent as her

obviously doing that job, she has to have some degree of intelligence, how can you make a sweeping statement like that

that alienates thousands of people? It's not your job to do that

If you feel that you're not British or you're not English... Well, she would make a distinction. And this is why I talked about the tightrope between ignoring and acknowledging and the mistake I made in ignoring this previously because she was Home Secretary. That's that's the point. I think it's it's a position. It's a status. You know, it's why some people still think it's worth listening to Liz Truss, because she was Prime Minister and Donald Trump is president. So you can't just dismiss them as the as the as the bigoted idiots. So they so clearly are the office

speaks and and it's that and so the argument would be as i understand it that you're british

but you can't be english because english is somehow an ethnicity in a way that britishness

is not it's utterly bonkers it's disgusting and it's base but that's what she would argue

no well you know at the end of the day i had to make a distinction myself having as i said

caribbean origin and having been to the caribbean and i love jamaica i love the caribbean i love

everything about it. I love when I get there, how my shoulders go down and I

feel relaxed. But I do realise there is some English in me because of things that I missed

and things that I've become used to because I'm here. You're talking about values and

culture, actually, aren't you? Right, exactly. She's talking about... God forbid. I don't know what she's actually talking about

So racists who aren't yet prepared to admit that they're racists will say

things... In fact, let me find someone in this cat. Here's one. David, you're deliberately

mixing up ethnicity with nationality but then that wouldn't fit with your agenda

or using the racist labels. So Dave is not ready yet to own his racism. He wants to pretend that English is somehow an

ethnicity that can be measured or counted out. Presumably, I don't know

Norman heritage would exclude you from being English or Saxon heritage would exclude you from being Anglo-Saxon

This is the logic of these bigots. They end up having to argue that, oh no, you can't be

Anglo-Saxon if you're Saxon because Saxon is not in English. Oh, oh

I think she's trying to appease people in her party. I think that people would like to think that for someone to be English

they have to be white. Yes, that's what she means. And that's why I can't be English. And she didn't say to Nick Ferrari with his Swiss-Italian heritage

I think only one generation back on his dad's side, you can't be English either

She would never dream of saying that, would she? She wouldn't dream of saying that

But I just think that people have to claim their identity and how they see themselves

And as far as I'm concerned, I am English. I'm British-born. I'm British

I'm British because my parents were British. I came here, and I live here, and my whole identity is here

and I embrace my Caribbean origin, heritage. You know, I do embrace that, just like someone who is Italian

would embrace the culture, their heritage. But I'm born here. and please stop, you know, what..

Stop your nonsense. Stop it, it's rubbish. It is, and I don't know

I mean, the beauty of these conversations is that you can have Yvonne's..

What word am I looking for? Yvonne's kind of dismissive or disdainful response

or you can have Wayne's deeply emotional response and they are responding to the same horror

which is a woman not only telling them that they can't be English, but also telling them that she can't be racist when she is being racist because she's brown

Aisha is in Bethnal Green. Aisha, what's going on? Hiya. I kind of was listening to your point about your lens being, you kind of didn't pick up on what she may have said

Yeah. And I want to make a few points on that. So her views are a bit distorted, I feel anyway, because of her privilege

being in home office, and then also because of her partner, and telling everybody else that whoever's brown, they're not British

English. English or British. She'd say they are British, but they're not English

which is, I think, a cigarette paper of distinction that allows her to use, and our friend in Kent, to pretend that this is about ethnicity

rather than about colour, or about something measurable called Englishness when there's no such thing, really

well exactly so you know we're third well i'm third generation and i wouldn't i wouldn't say

that i'm anything different i you know i might look i am you know different but i wouldn't

classify myself as being any anything other than english of course you wouldn't that make sense

yes and now i'm thinking i wish we weren't having this conversation because we're feeding her the

flames of her bigotry but i think we have to have it right if she's a former home secretary and she's

touting this nonsense on our television screens then we have to have the conversation about why

she's so ridiculous and reprehensible and wrong and racist and it's more worrying that she held

that office and has these views that's more alarming to me um being in that position but

again you know nothing will come of it because she's now blinded and her views are distorted

it because she's never felt it in that the same way I will because I'm just a lay person

And she was she's obviously a person of power or was in power

So it's completely different. And seeks power. I think this tally slightly was something that Joe sent me saying she's not being racist

about herself. She believes she belongs because she's successful and wealthy. No one can say to her what she says to other people who share her skin tone or background

she's not even hypocritical she's just an opportunist with little or no respect for anybody else

yeah I completely agree with that you know her views are completely

distorted to what everybody else thinks she's probably the most hated woman

in the UK right now but she won't feel it because she's somebody

was in higher office and of power so she won't notice it

I've got a horrible feeling You've taken me back to that tightrope between giving attention to attention seekers and starving them all

I've got a horrible feeling that she would like to stick the most hated woman in Britain on her Twitter profile, to be honest with you

I mean it. And that's why, under the lens of my white privilege, yesterday we toyed with the idea of doing a phone and asking what's wrong with the poor woman

Whereas, of course, I wouldn't have done that if I had... given my head a bit of a wobble and thought a little bit more deeply about what she's doing

to people like you and people like Yvonne and people like Wayne and people texting me with

messages like this, like the one from Joe or this from Mark who's in Lim. How on earth have they

managed to get non-white people to have these racist views? It's not just her. Is it just simple

selfishness drawing up the bridge after crossing it, the drawbridge after crossing it? My Venezuelan

colleague in Houston couldn't leave the country to attend his own wife's mother's funeral and now

tells me he'll be voting Republican. I don't know, actually. I don't know. But that's not today's

phone-in. We're not asking how do people end up in such a mess. We're simply asking how the mess

that she's ended up in makes you feel when you see it coming from the mouth of a former Home

Secretary or being broadcast on the BBC. No criticism here of the BBC, by the way, because

I think they recognize in this case something that I didn't. Sometimes the status of somebody saying something

means that the horror of it can't be ignored. Even if you heard somebody spouting it in the pub on a Friday night

you'd simply move to the other side of the room. It's half past 12. You're listening to James O'Brien on LBC

Do you remember when Kemi Badenock attacked Reform UK for banning journalists from their conference

and insisted that it could never happen were on her watch. You might want to bear that in mind when I invite Adam Bienkov into the studio

after the very latest headlines with Amelia Cox. James O'Brien on LBC

It is 12.34 and you are listening to James O'Brien on LBC

I'm going to talk to Rebecca, who's in Ilkeston, about how it feels to be told by Sarela Braverman that she's not English

And indeed, the other question, this attempt to claim that she can't be racist because she's talking about herself

I don't know how to unpack that. The idea that, you know, I can't be racist because I'm about

And then she does that sort of what's it called? Duper's delight, that weird little smirk when somebody who knows that they're doing something disgusting, but is loving the fact that they're going to get the response

Which, again, to tie myself in another knot, is why I have been reluctant to give her the response previously

And, of course, it is a variation, as Corpsey points out on the old line

So why is she doing it? I can't be racist. I have a black friend. And the black friend becomes Braverman

who has now given her friend permission to spout racist nonsense. Seriously, James, how bad does that look

Very, very bad. Rebecca is in Ilquiston. Rebecca, what made you pick up the phone

Well, long-time listener, first-time caller. Welcome. Really big fan. So, I mean, I'm basically from a little town in Derbyshire

There's very, very few, well, anything else that's, you know, it's majority white

I think it's probably, I think it's 0.2% that aren't white. I was one of three people in my school that, I mean, I'm 42 now

I left a long time ago, but that, you know, was something else

In the whole school, not just your class or your year. No, no, sorry, in my year. Right, okay

But then that was unusual because I know in the year below and above

there wasn't probably any or maybe one. So this is how I've grown up

And I think what Suella has said is abhorrent and is like

I'm so sad about it. I'm so sad at the moment. all the time. I'm worried. I'm worried

for my kids. But it's I think I know why she's doing it though

A long time ago I used to sort of be the same. I felt

like if I sort of agreed with these sort of people then I

would be picked by them. It's kind of a pick me sort of feeling inside

and you make yourself believe that what you are saying is true

because all the people around you and that you sort of mix with

have got a certain view and you want to sort of be on side with them

So my views are very different now. What changed? I stopped sort of being around those sort of people

I grew up, I started working in the neighbouring city, Nottingham, and I just met different people and they had different points of view

I'm not saying everyone in Ilkeston is racist. No, I know you're not

I know you're not. Because they're only around mostly people that look like them

and have the same experiences with them, they don't really get what I get

and they don't sort of understand it. And when I started picking up different points of view

I completely agreed with them. And I'll tell you what's made it a lot more

I've gone the other way even more, is at the moment, all of the racism that's being whipped up

in the media and it's just sort of, it seems to be okay now

In the 90s, it was sort of, and when I was at school, it was sort of seen as a terrible thing if you were a racist

But now, people will say it with chest, you know. They'll say their opinions

They would have hidden those opinions years ago. They may not even have had them

I don't know how contagious it is sometimes. I think it is. I really do think it's contagious because I've heard so many people say

yeah, well, you know, so-and-so down the pub said this and this and this

And I thinking yeah but you known me for most of your life and I not like that So what do you mean And I I don mean you they say I don mean you but they do and and Braverman really Braverman definitely means you yeah

and the thing is I'm I'm I've always been quite patriotic um regardless I mean

exactly but people look at me strange when I say that and I've had friends and I've said

well, I'm as English as you, aren't I? And they sort of looked at me funny

and I said, well, one of my parents wasn't born in this country and that's it. The same as you

But she was white. And she sort of looked at me and said, so what are you talking about

And that's the point, isn't it? Is that once you pump oxygen into these spaces

it breathes more. They just, you know, they might not have much logic on their side

The idea that, you know, the arguments have some sort of intellectual basis

Racists are always desperate to go down the eugenics route or the sort of form of human hierarchy

And these are the entry-level points. So a friend saying that to you is a consequence of the broader conversation

And that's why you came on the show and said that you feel frightened all the time because you can feel the tide turning

I can, and I can just feel sort of a little bit of

not resentment, but I know I'm othered now, much more than I ever, ever have been

I'm othered. And that hasn't happened by accident. No, and I just don't know how it's happening

and how we've got like this. It's just so scary. It's so scary

And that's why I need to do more conversations like this, and I need more callers like you to remind all of us and each other

that Sue Ellen Braverman is disgusting and that it doesn't matter how many people subscribe to that school of thought

or sign up to her bigotry and her racism, she will remain disgusting, even if there's only you and me left

Pointing it out, it won't change the fact that she's gross and it will never just be you and me left

because Big Wayne will always be lurking in the background with all his swear words

Rebecca, take care. it is to another politician that i turn your attention next and these words from a mere

month ago when suella braverman's party announced remember the party of free speech and protecting

women where women get beaten up at the party conference and journalists get banned from it

and this is how kemi badenock responded to reform uk's decision to ban certain journalists from

their party conference we believe in free speech we believe in a free press and yes of course that

might be painful for us as politicians but public scrutiny is part of the gig if nigel farage khan

had handled difficult questions about his uh dodgy five million pounds then he shouldn't be a

politician uh adam bianco is with me from byline times uh you're off to conference anyway sadly not

james no what um yes i was quite surprised to hear those comments from kevin badenock earlier this

month um after having been banned from conservative conference last year along with my colleague

David Engenke, a famous investigative journalist broke the cash question scandal been a journalist for 40 years

but we were both banned last year from a Conservative Party conference

putting us out of pocket quite significantly at the time no explanation given for

being banned, it was just told it was taken by Kevin Baddok's media team

so when I heard No explanation at all, they're not even patronising

you by saying you're not important enough or byline times isn't big enough or anything like that

They refused to explain. I submitted a subject access request to try and get some more information

They ignored that as well. So I was therefore quite surprised to hear these comments from Kemi Baden-Ock this month

And I thought, well, maybe there's been a change of heart from the Conservative Party

Oh, of course. Because this was retrospectively. You're thinking, well, they banned us last year

They must have changed their change. Absolutely. So I emailed the Conservative press team and I messaged Kemi Badenoch's official spokesperson

And I received absolutely no reply. And until this week, when my colleague, Josiah Mortimer, the chief reporter at Byline Times

received an email saying that he wasn't going to be granted accreditation at the Conservative Party conference

Again, no explanation. And my application also hasn't been responded to either

so I also have not received approval to go to Conservative conference. Again, I've been to Conservative Party conference, you know

for the last 10 years prior to this happening. There was never any complaints about my behaviour or about my coverage

We should clear that up. So, you know, it's one thing if there's an issue

but no issue has ever been raised with us. It seems to me this is purely a political decision

taken by Kemibadonok or Kemibadonok's team. Any idea why? I mean, you're free to speculate

I'll tell you what they have said or not said to us in response to this story this morning

But what do you reckon? Well, I think there's a couple of things. So I think obviously they don't like our coverage of the Conservative Party

You know, just to give you a flavour of some of the things that we've written about Conservative Party. I've been on this programme before to talk about our coverage of the fact that the Cain-Badden-Oxie decision to move away from supporting net zero coincides with donations from figures connected to the oil and gas industry

early this year we exposed numerous conservative candidates who had made racist and bigoted

comments online they were suspended by the conservative party again all of these i think

they would thank you for all of these stories there was never complaint about the accuracy of the stories etc you know so so i'm sure that's part of it they don't like our coverage but i

think there's something a bit more pernicious about this which is you know i think it's you

know the french have an expression to encourage the others and i think it's a way of of saying

look political journalism it comes down to access how you get ahead in political journalism is by

getting access to people in power and maintain that access. So if they can pick on us and say, look

you're not going to come to our press conferences, you're not going to come to our party conferences

It a message from the political journalists saying well look be careful Don step over the line Don be too critical because we can do the same to you yeah and and i mean the the spectre of donald trump looms in the background of all of these conversations at the moment because he

shown what happens if resistance is um not forthcoming well absolutely of course in the united

states there was some resistance from uh the white white house press calls um some solidarity shown

even Fox News standing up against the decision to exclude news organisations from

the White House. We haven't seen anything similar in the UK so far. Are you personally disappointed by that Adam

Well I was disappointed I posted a... Because these guys are your fellow lobby journalists

they're your friends, not just your colleagues. Yeah I've been in the lobby for 13 years

so I did post a tweet to that effect yesterday. Since then a few

lobby journalists have spoken up and said that they think this is a terrible thing, full credit to them for saying, but it's fair to say

there's not been any sort of collective action or anything like that. No. Well, I will boycott the Tory conference

in solidarity with you, never having been to any. That's a devastating blow

I'm just looking at the message that Josiah got, the same one you got, I presume. Thank you for your application

to attend. I regret to inform you that approval has not been granted. And that's it

A refund will be issued, should be received within five working days

And I think we probably should listen to what Sueli Berman, what Comey Bader not was saying just one

month ago. Quite a few of you banned from the, quite a few journalists

banned from the Reform UK conference and Bader not was characteristically well I mean, when I say characteristically

I suppose I should say forthright and ridiculous at exactly the same time. We believe

in free speech, we believe in a free press and yes of course that might be painful

for us as politicians, but public scrutiny is part of the gig. If Nigel Farage

can't handle difficult questions about his dodgy £5 million, then he shouldn't be a politician

And if Kemi Bader not can't handle questions about... Yeah, absolutely. Can you think of anything you'd like to ask her that

she's frightened of being asked? I'd like to ask her about her net zero

position, but it's... How dare you! It's part of the job, as she said herself, and it is authoritarian

and I think it's a dangerous road for political parties to go down

And I think there has been a broader trend of this happening across the political spectrum

of journalists' access being restricted on the basis of their coverage. We did contact the Conservative Party

for comment on this. Would you like to hear what they said? I would. James O'Brien on LBC

It is 12.51, and the conversation about these hideous comments of Sue Ella Braverman's

I haven't nudged it yet, and maybe it's less important at the moment. I'm more interested in how you feel about being told that you're not English

And I stress it's only an opinion. It's not a law. And these opinions have been enacted as laws in the past

most obviously by the Nazis and their so-called citizenship laws, the Reich citizenship laws

And those laws sounded almost exactly, with regards to German Jews, those laws sounded almost exactly like this

There's something, if someone's going to call themselves English, I presume you've got an idea in mind as to what they would be

Obviously you take a reasonable approach, but my parents were not born in England. OK, but what would be the approach? My grandparents were not born in England, so in my particular instance

no, I am not of English origin. But I get what you're saying it isn't, but what is it

You have to take a view, obviously. What's your view? I'm not the one saying that it has to be five generations or four generations

I think it becomes pretty obvious when people have got a lineage, an ancestry, a connection to the heritage of this country, which dates back a few generations

And I think that that is not unreasonable to expect of people who come to this country

So I think under the Nazis, it would have been a person who is of German or related blood could be a citizen

But Jews defined as a separate race under these laws could never be full citizens of Germany

So just to stress, this is Suela Braverman's opinion. It's not, as far as I'm aware, Reform UK policy, although I don't actually know what any of their policies are except the one they published about making it incredibly easier for cryptocurrency billionaires to become even richer

complete coincidence that the two biggest owners to the party are cryptocurrency billionaires and

indeed the bloke that slipped five million quid into nigel farage's back pocket hoping that nobody

would ever notice he was a cryptocurrency he is a cryptocurrency billionaire as well based in thailand uses two names i wonder what nationality he is

here's the little short version just just just in case you like your comparisons pithier

parents were not born okay but what my grandparents were not born in england so in my particular

instance no my i am not of english but i get what you're saying uh anna is in merton in county

durham anna what would you like to say hiya um um i'm a long-time listener the first time caller

welcome um can i can i just can i just give you a bit of a background yes i'm 54 years old um

my ethnicity is Pakistani. My dad came here in 1961 and, you know, my mum came straight after

So they worked damn hard in the last 60-odd years. This past year, everything that's happened

especially after Salah Brabman's interview the other day, has just, it makes me very, very upset

to the point that I want to cry because all I've ever done is taught my children

that this is your home. You need to be proud of it. You need to be proud of your police

You need to be proud of the area you come from, your school, your lecturers, your teachers

That's all I've ever taught them. And I don't know if I can say that now, you know

because I feel so let down. You know I walk down the street and I never used work I also I work in a school but I never used words like white person brown person I never had to

But every time I see a white person now, I don't know what they're thinking

You know, I'm a person who smiles a lot. You know, I would smile at somebody

I would say hello. I stopped from a conversation. I can't do that anymore

You can. Because I don't. I know that you know you can't because you feel that you can't but and I understand why I just

wanted to reassure you I'm sorry I shouldn't have interrupted because that's how you feel isn't it

do you know what I do I feel like I feel very upset and do you know what I've just come back

from work and I thought I've never I've never done this before I've never had to go on on you

know tv or radio but i've never done that but because my my opinion matters so much yes it does

that you know this is my home and and it's and it's and it's incredible that she thinks she can

tell you that it isn't or that you're not where do they want where where do i go oh no you're

allowed to stay for now you just can't call yourself english anymore you've got to call

yourself british oh my gosh do you know what you can call me what you want but this is my home

Do you know who else doesn't pass this test? Who? The King

Well, yeah, their background. The King. Boris Johnson doesn't pass this test

Nick Ferrari doesn't pass this test. Sorry, James, but they don't matter, do they

Because they say what they want to say when they want to say it and how they want to say it

It doesn't matter who they upset or make angry, you know? It does matter

They will say it. It does matter. And we might not be able to touch the sides of her, whatever it is that has happened to her that has made her so hideous. But it will always, it will matter. And that's the thing I needed your help and the help of other callers to remember is that there is something about status that means you don't treat Suella Braverman like the racist drunk ranting in the corner of the pub. You have to treat her differently, even if you don't want to

and I have to treat her differently Anna because of fellow English people like you

I don't know why they give her the time of day you know

I don't know that either I don't know that either but once they have decided to do so

then we have to talk like we're talking now thank you maybe I can bring you on something positive next time

I absolutely insist on it it was lovely to talk to you thank you

thank you Anna and stay safe take care keep smiling which is you need to have heard the whole of that conversation to understand why i said that i

haven't suddenly started dealing in ludicrous um aphorisms or whatever the correct word would be

or indeed a bit of low-level misogyny you know um interesting fact well you know i'd love full

disclosure i've never done one that i haven't enjoyed i don't think john robbins would mind

me describing him as as not being among the very very most recognizable names in fact he's coming

on a week after eric idol so i don't think he could complain about me saying he's not necessarily

the most recognizable name we've ever had he's a brilliant comedian if you move in the world

of podcasts you'll you'll know all about the stuff he's done with reese james and others and he's

written an extraordinary book about his lifelong relationship with alcohol that is i mean it's just

sort of i can't really categorize it i can't really describe it to you it's part memoir it's

part, I would say, self-help, actually. And that's why I wanted to meet him. I read another

interview with him and then got hold of the book and then thought, yeah, let's get him on full

disclosure. And here's a little flavor of the conversation that we had. I think a lot of people

especially now that we have social media, so much of it is about optimizing. Here are the 10 things

you need to do, the five foods you need to eat. This is what Mark Wahlberg does at four in the

morning. If you do these six things, you'll be cut out these 10 types of people. It's so stressful

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You checked your phone in the morning, there's immediately 20 things you're not

doing. And yet some part of your brain is saying, this is good for me. Yeah. When it's not, it's

really not good for you. Because the brain, what I'm learning is designed to find problems

And because we're no longer sort of, I guess the cliche is hunter gatherers

and because the internet and social media and our friends and family are telling us

about 100 different things that need doing our brain is like oh what's the next problem what's

the next problem what's the next solution and just to be able to sit for 5 10 15 minutes to go

i think i might be okay in the middle of all of this i think there's a part of me

that is still, I want to get to know that guy. Because the world doesn't have space for that guy

Especially if you live in a city. I live in a, I live about half an hour outside of London

Very lucky to live in an area that's sort of semi-rural. And when I come into London three, four times a week

and I think this is madness. We're not designed for this. It's a lovely conversation

and I was thinking actually I forgot that we maybe should do a phone in on stillness

at some point find out the things that help us define stillness but not now

because it's time for Sheila and my apologies to Ellis James as well who works

very closely with John Robbins because I called him Rhys a minute ago. Rhys James

of course is an English footballer although just to tie everything together quite perfectly with a great

big bow on top not English according to Sue Ella Braverman If you missed any of today's show you can listen back on our

Free global player app or the LBC app where you can also stay up to date with all the latest news, videos and opinions

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Tom Sorbrett will be with you at four. Sheila Fogarty is with you now. James O'Brien on LBC