TRASHFUTURE - Modern Feudalism Guidance feat. Emiliano Mellino
Episode Date: July 3, 2023This week, we speak with Bureau of Investigative Journalism reporter Emiliano Mellino about how changes to the UK’s migrant visa system for agricultural workers have created unbelievably exploitativ...e conditions—often reported to be worse than in any other developed or developing country—and how the agency charged with enforcing the rules gets less money each year than the Home Office spends on pens and stationery. However, before we get to that, we also have to catch up with a Season One-style terrible startup, and discuss how a Shelley poem made a lot of Britain’s dumbest people furious. Check out Emiliano’s reporting here: https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/profile/emilianomellino Also, we discussed some organizations helping agricultural labourers in the UK. They are Workers’ Support Centre Scotland (https://workersupportcentre.org.uk) and Work Rights Centre (https://www.workrightscentre.org). The former is funded by the Scottish government, but the latter does accept donations if you want to help them out! If you want access to our Patreon bonus episodes, early releases of free episodes, and powerful Discord server, sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture *LIVE SHOW ALERT* We're going to be recording a live podcast in London on July 26! Get tickets here: https://bigbellycomedy.club/event/trashfuture-live-in-london/ *STREAM ALERT* Check out our Twitch stream, which airs 9-11 pm UK time every Monday and Thursday, at the following link: https://www.twitch.tv/trashfuturepodcast *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here: https://www.tomallen.media/ *MILO ALERT* Check out Milo’s upcoming live shows here: https://www.miloedwards.co.uk/live-shows and check out a recording of Milo’s special PINDOS available on YouTube here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRI7uwTPJtg *ROME ALERT* Milo and Phoebe have teamed up with friend of the show Patrick Wyman to finally put their classical education to good use and discuss every episode of season 1 of Rome. You can download the 12 episode series from Bandcamp here (1st episode is free): https://romepodcast.bandcamp.com/album/rome-season-1 Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and Alice (@AliceAvizandum)
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hello everyone and welcome to this free episode of the free one.
T.F.
It is indeed the free one.
It's the Riley's remote one unusual.
Yeah.
Yeah, Riley's coming at you from his small submersible
on the way to find the wreckage.
Yeah, trying to get what really happened.
I'm investigating the wreckage of the previous submersible
that went to investigate the wreckage.
It's an old lady in the fly situation here.
You're down there with RFK Jr.
and you're going to teach the controversy.
You're going to find out what the deep state's
been doing to all these submissibles.
James Cameron hates him.
But today, we are going to be joined in the second half of the episode by Emiliano Molino,
who is a journalist and organizer with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
who has been investigating labor conditions on farms up and down the country.
And how far... That gonna law fry it?
Oh, yeah, it's gonna be a mile laugh a minute and how farmers have been taking advantage of the hostile environment and
various dollar short day late labor market fixes to further abuse and emisorate their employees
But because this is allegedly a comedy podcast of course we have to talk about the news first. Yeah, I love the news item number one
Jeremy Corbin you remember him
Bagley yeah has assembled a book of poetry and look you know I wouldn't say I fuck with him your honor but
You know you know me I will only do Twitter review if
It's really funny if it's really funny, if it's really good. And after he announced that he was going to do this poetry with a stanza of his favorite poem,
The Mask of Anarchy, you know the one, you know, rise like lions, shake off chains, year many, they are few,
that the Shelley one makes me feel bad now. Yes. The one that gives you a kind of twinge of what could have been and makes you wistful.
That one.
Well, the professor of international relations and director for center of advanced international
studies at the University of Exeter, Doug Stokesokes decided to have something of a poetry battle with Mr.
Corvin and has taken his pen.
He came in like Eminem in eight mile.
Right.
He came in as the underdog.
He was wearing the grace wessa.
Nobody thought that he was going to like, he was going to rhyme this good.
Yeah, he had his mums pagassionist show.
Yeah.
So Doug Stokes has written in response to this,
frolic knot with tyrants masked in their glow,
you bask unasked utopian dreams in the state.
In oh, sorry, utopian dreams in states cold hand.
So the state turned to nightmares on command.
Is this the piece for which you stand?
Buzz, buzz, buzz, you know. Do you have, do you have any like rap air horns that we can add to that? I, yeah, you know, yeah, I think I do. If you just bear with me while I scroll through, Well timed rap airborne. Fuck, it goes on.
It goes on.
It goes on.
Yeah, boss for days, man.
It's very funny that Corbin D'Arrangement Syndrome has remained real among a certain subclass
of professional D'Arrangement Syndrome CDS.
Of a kind of, I'd say like,
professorial opinion, Haver,
who is not yet accepted that they've won,
and is so, get so mad,
he's writing his own poetry.
This is the most opinion, Haver guy you've brought us yet,
is like, he's a professor of being like the guy
at the Institute of Advanced Guy Studies
at Guy University.
It's like, it's nothing. And there's like, all of those guys, for some reason, will never, ever forgive Corbin for trying to like make the country a slightly better place, or engaging in
any kind of sort of like artistic pursuit. I think a lot about the Helen Lewis thing where
Corbin said, you know, every working class person has a knothole
or a symphony inside them,
and she's like, don't encourage them, generally.
And yeah, the ultimate sort of like,
fruition of this was Corbin announcing a poetry anthology
with Shelley and a bunch of people,
the dumbest people in the country,
assuming that he had written this himself
and going, oh, this guy is a terrible poet.
But I also just love that like, how into the neoliberal 90s consensus must you be to
write some highekian poetry in response to this utopian dreams in states called it, basically
a poem about how like public choice, economics is perfect.
Yes.
Yeah. And it's just, it's just, it's so grim. about how public choice economics is perfect. Yes, yeah.
And it's just, it's just it's so grim.
Like, you know the tweet that's like,
just got back from the centrist rally,
everyone holding hands, singing better things aren't possible.
That's, you know, I'm used to that kind of shit,
but like to put it in verse,
it just feels like adding insult to injury.
You know what else?
My name's Doug Stoke and I'm here to say that means testing's the only way.
You know what?
You could also talk about if you're not about utopian dreams in the state's cold hand
turned to nightmare as on command is have any of you tried to have any water recently if
you live near the river Thames.
Yeah, it tastes kind of like spicy.
Yeah, well, I like it.
Oh, spicy water. It's about to get up quite a bit more expensive because Thames. Yeah, it tastes kind of like spicy. Yeah, well, I like it. Oh, spicy one. It's about to get quite a bit more expensive because Thames water, because Flavid now,
Thames water and the other water companies are about to hike bills by 40% to quote, deal
with the sewage and climate crisis. Which, that seems like an interesting one to combine.
Yeah. Well, crises, we're about to have to like stealth re-nationalize again. Yes, again, another public utility. We're having to do some like minimum viable socialism
And it's really interesting that this news comes at the same time that they announce that they're going to make Diet Coke like a legal
interesting here is even
Yeah, I mean the thing is I have a I have a trillion dollar idea for Thames Water
The thing that's gonna get them out of administration and back on top. And that is, you know how like transport for London used to be sort of
like relatively uninspiring and stuff. But then they hit on the idea that you can sell people like
gift shop stuff, like the little socks that look like the, you know, the seats or whatever, or a
little cuddly tube train. I think if Thames Water really lent into that and started selling a like water flavored vape
Cuddly fatberg fat boat flavored vape there's your answer
That's what's a barbay
I think a water flavored vape is the only appropriate flavor
To ensure that children who hate water will not get into the kitchen
I
Think you could you could you could maybe say this is a situation, especially with the
coke, the diet coke, as per tame thing where they ban our medicine so they can sell
you their cures.
So the reason that this is all happened, right, it's the reason that it has such an unsustainable
debt burden, but now it can't pay partly due to like, you know, rate rises and stuff.
And all, no, but not just that though, but also they can't pay partly due to like, you know, rate rises and stuff.
And not just that though, but also they had the fact that they're taking out so many
student loans.
Should have.
In fact, yeah, they, whoa, the Tim's water went to go to media studies.
Yeah.
But no, that they have this unsustainable debt burden partly because they had to pay so
many fines for, for, for dumping sewage.
But the reason that they dumped all that sewage is that after they
went private, McQuery, which bought them for several years in the late brown, late,
Blair brown years, basically sold all the assets and then borrowed a huge amount of money to pay
themselves dividends. So the regular kind of like hostile stuff that we're used to now, the corporate rating.
Yeah, and so it just took a long time because that's a very hard infrastructure. It took a,
it's we basically now know what happens when you stop maintaining water infrastructure,
is that it breaks after approximately 15 years. That's what we know. There's 15 years in it.
I shall hope we learn lessons from math.
And well, there's been a test. This has been a study conducted by Harvard University,
terms of all, so we'll now be wound up. Thank you for your participation.
Go drink. You can just go back to how we used to do it, and you can, hey,
you can get some exciting 19th century diseases again.
Yeah, go down to the mill pond.
Yeah, the fat burger was just a graduate student in a big
costume. Has anyone considered there is an easy solution to this, which is that we all drink from
the puddle. Yeah. That's a good idea. Going down to the puddle in the morning with a big ladle,
to bring back some puddle water for my family. Or better yet, drink from the sewer.
Right, Ben. It is 4 a.m. But it's time. Every one of you has been issued with a long straw.
You will proceed to the nearest manhole and drink. And if you don't drink, don't mean you're okay.
That's right. That's what I call it, the manhole. We've sent in the army to solve the sewer crisis.
By just having Britain's hardest bastards. We have lined up the stock. If you need to piss off, shit. Don't.
And they've all got the big curly straws and they're all standing around manholes
drinking all of the sewage.
That's the way of the future, yeah.
But to finish off on this before we move on though,
right, nationalization at zero cost to anyone
is a very generous option, right?
Because what it says is, okay, McQuerry,
you got, you successfully robbed the bank this much.
And now we are going to stop the bank robbery, but you can keep what you took.
You keep it.
You got it fair and square.
It's you pricing by like supermarkets, sweet brews here.
Yeah.
While you own a public utility, anything you can strip out of it, you can keep.
But then when the buzzer goes, it gets renationalized and built up again. So the next supermarket suite, but it
lasts 15 years.
You know who else, of course, ran, ran Tam's water is not just a, um, a, a, a McQuerry.
It was a number of sovereign wealth funds of other countries.
Oh, cool. Well, we wouldn't want this being run by government, of course, because that would be inefficient.
It has to be run by like not even the Emirati government, but like, or a Catholic
Atari government, but like, uh, an office of the Catholic government, maybe with based
here, even this is, this is a lie to care about, but we are a laughing stock internationally,
aren't we?
We want to be this idea that you can just like come and get like a British, internationally, aren't we? We must be. This idea that you can just come and get
like a British public utility,
run it at a profit, extract all the money from it
and fuck off again.
Well, they looked at monopoly and they were like,
oh, you can buy Warsaw X here for really cheap.
Why didn't we do that in real life?
Yeah, perfect.
And they sold it to a big,
they sold it to a little metal dog.
I'm on, I'm on, it's all four train stations stations and a top hat. The dog was wearing the top hat.
They were just like, well, it was a, it was a Atari dog. Yeah, it was wearing a
deal belt. A couple more things. A couple more things as well. I have a
startup to do that's going to be pretty quick. I want to say check in on an old
friend talk about the London mayoral race,
and then do a start-up.
The old friend, of course, is Lordstown Motors.
We remember them, the first-
Yeah.
The professors, the guys who are gonna go to Ohio
and be like, we're gonna revitalize your economy
by building the trucks here.
Yeah, well, the stock was trading at about $400
for me first started making fun of it.
It is now worth nothing. It is gone.
It is out of business. It is filed for bankruptcy. The Brian Louldstown bankruptcy.
Yep. That is, and so this is another, I'm just going to ring the big we were right, Bell.
But the new CEO is named Edward High Tower, which is some game of thrones as shit.
I was thinking to like Stephen Kingville.
Oh, well, yeah, of course.
The Edward in the high tower told Reuters,
fucking Randall Flag told Reuters.
Yeah, he's come from a reality
where the Nazis won the war
in the war that's to bring this country back from bankruptcy.
Because in that reality, this company did really well.
Basically said that after Foxconn failed to invest in them because the business was not ideal,
that the Foxconn is not that long from Metal Gear Solid.
No, that's Foxconn's, but it's a...
So people would make the iPhones and all that would say, like, be contained by suicide
nets because working there so miserable? It's quite Metal Gear, but not the way you're originally. Yeah, be contained by suicide nets because working there's so much.
It's quite metal-gib,
not in the way you're originally.
Yeah, they care about mental health.
Don't want people killing themselves on the job.
Yeah, after all this big net.
Yeah, so after, so basically, right, yeah, it turns out
this, the false hope company was,
I'll tell you, hope that turned out to be false.
So, jeers who wore this snake oil doesn't even do anything.
I tried to oil my snake multiple times,
but he's not getting any more lubricated.
A lot of the idea of snake oil being oil force snake.
Now, Alice, I want this,
I'm gonna hand to you for this section
because I want you to put your little hat
with the press card on
Okay, I'm telling you now if you're feeling safe with Susan. I am feeling
Extremely safe with Susan and so will all of you be after I finish this segment
So we're gonna do some like London centrist because we don't do enough of that on this show
You may be aware that there's gonna be a London mayor of election
Which sad it kind is gonna win Handily and so the Conservative Party candidate is just sort of like this joke
position that no one really wants to do, as with all the Conservative Party candidate 96
underscore final underscore one underscore. Exactly. And like basically all Conservative
politics in London is like this. Weirdly enough, you know, who's on that train for a while was
Kimmy Badenock until she climbed out into real politics.
Um, but this guy that they sent Daniel Korski, he was, he was going to be like,
a fun sort of like startup mind for us to deal with because he had ideas.
Yeah.
I'd recall one of them was he was like, what if we turned off London's red lights?
Yeah, at night, in order to, you could drive faster.
He wanted to set up a digital core of coders.
He wanted to like install vents in the road
to do carbon capture.
He was a classic weird guy.
You know, basically occupying the same spaces
vault in Europe where it's like,
you can't really do any real politics
and you can't really even be that conservative in London.
So you just have to be like, this strange mix of like odd things.
They're trying to rebuttal the Boris Lightning, you know. Yeah, they need a zeitgeist
ie Tory who seems not Tory enough to win in London. But then he has since dropped out of the race
to spend more time with his allegations of sexual assault. So now the conservative party
is scrambling. And what they're left with is Susan Hall, thus safer with Susan, who
was like, yeah, she used to be council leader, I think. And there's just nothing there.
Well, I don't know why Susan. I like Susan. When you like, even though she was a council leader,
all of her positions and opinions about everything,
give the sense of someone who walked into the council
meeting to complain about, like,
I don't know, like the low emission zone
ruining her TV signal because of like 5G, COVID, whatever,
but accidentally sat in the leader's chair
and then just started leading the council.
Yeah, she's kind of perfectly like Vox Pop in that way. I like, I don't hate her, but
like she has, if you look on her website, she has three policies. Policy number one, stop
the U-Las immediately. You will, more cars. Yeah, she is going to start talking about
15-minute cities if she hasn't already.
Yes, yeah, yeah.
So like no low-emission zones, no loan traffic neighborhoods,
you will be in the car all the time
by order of the mayor or else.
That's one policy.
Policy number two, she's gonna give the Met police
about like 200 million more quid and rocket launches
in order to make the youth afraid of the police again.
Well, it's another one.
It's another one. I'm going to be policing the quiet carriage on the train.
It sounds like what she wants to do, right, is she wants to make the Met more like the NYPD,
it's like we're going to stop doing austerity to you in the sense that you're going to have a mind clearing
vehicle and like airborne entry to if teens are hanging around.
Like, we're going to position artillery around the M25 and the police can call it in anywhere
they need to under a Susan Hall's mayoralty.
So long as it doesn't damage a road, if it does damage as a road, we're not calling it
it. Can you imagine how many metropolitan police officers would die if they
were given NYPD start equipment, just like constantly falling out of helicopters,
blowing themselves up, things of that nature.
Oh, yeah. And there is one third policy, which is being a bit racist to
sedate Khan, which presumably shall wind down what is not mayor anymore. Yeah. which presumably she'll wind down when she's not mayor anymore.
Yeah.
And the thing is, right, she's not gonna win.
She knows she can't win.
And so the whole thing has this...
She'll run out of it.
She'll run out of it.
A little bit racist.
Yeah, exactly.
But the whole thing has this kind of like last day
of term vibe where it's like, yeah, it's conservatism,
but it's so lackluster.
It's just kind of like, yeah, I would probably do some shit, I guess.
It's conservatism, but like, do you guys like that, cops?
Yeah, I think it's, I like it because it's like, um, it's conservatism,
but like having just woken up from a very deep sleep.
Yeah, it's conservatism, but you've just had surgery and you've come to.
Yeah, well, they're building on the success of Sean Bailey.
Remember that guy?
The guy who went campaigning in places that weren't even in London.
The thing that I really like about Susan Hall is that all of the conservative parties politics,
all of the stuff that we know they get up to on a national level is underpinned by an army of like thousands of people who are like this who are just like pretty ordinary, like a bit reactionary and just kind of like getting along and doing all of the bureaucracy that allows Boris to do all of the shit that he did. And it's just, it's so grim,
because you're reward for doing all of this,
for a lifetime of dedicated service is,
like you can lose an election, Dissidique Can, by a lot.
That's like cool.
You can be the Washington generals.
Yes, absolutely.
You can stand in this career exploding election.
I mean, look, I'd say though, you know,
we hear from Sean Bailey more and more every day.
Yeah, we do.
Yeah, all right.
He's coming back.
I want to talk about a startup before we go into our interview.
It's called We Head, and it's all one word.
The W's capitalized, the H's capitalized.
I'll give you a hint. It's a season one way.
Type it in.
And it says stupid is the juicero.
Wow. That it bold promises already.
Oh yeah.
We head.
So season one implies that it's like a product that does an actual physical thing. It's
not like a some wellness bullshit.
Yeah, it's a googa. It's a googa. Is it like a product that does an actual physical thing. It's not like a some wellness bullshit. Yeah, it's a googah.
It's a googah.
Is it like a hat of some kind?
No, no, but replace to juicerat by sticking one
of those Philippe Stark juicers to my head
and headbusting all of my fruit.
No, it's a no.
Logically, if it's like the juicerat,
it would be a machine that squeezes the brain out
of your head like it's squeezing it back.
Oh, and you're like, it'd be like a hat that's a kind of like, like, vice.
It just, like, squeezes your head into your brain, comes out of your ear.
Who's saying, we head?
What do you think?
I was always going to go to like the low ball thing that everyone was gassing, which is
like, it's a machine that sucks you off, but it can make you feel like someone, oh,
no, that's kind of gross.
Okay.
All right.
It's a machine that sucks off most of all people at once,
but it's kind of in that vein,
but I was thinking like something a lot worse.
The same respectfully withdraws his way.
So my more sensible thing is that it's some sort of machine
that allows multiple people to think in one,
but I don't fucking know.
Look, I'll tell you, be the first to quote unquote head in.
We head is the first spatial video communication device
for hosts to perceive remote guests naturally
in three dimensions and for guests
to immerse in the real meeting space.
Is it a VR sort of thing where it's just like,
you can just be in one off, like you can sort of be
in your house, but when you put your VR set headset on or something on those lines,
like, it feels like you're in the same office.
That's pretty close.
But it's not VR.
It's a thing that you put, it's a head in shoulders sized contrivance that you place
on a meeting desk that has several layers of screen.
Oh, it's a Star Wars hologram.
Oh, yes.
Oh, help me, everyone can help me on my only hope.
My other idea was that it was some sort of thing that you put on your head and shoulders
that makes it.
So if your boss wants to like, if you are remote and your boss like taps you on the shoulder
or something, you can feel it. But that feels a little bit.
I'm going to have both punching you in the head.
So I have sent you WeHead.com.
Yes, you have.
This is the thing that they're advertising.
It is a head and shoulders shaped, screen and camera.
I don't hold on a second, hold on a second. shaped, screen and camera.
Hold on a second, hold on a second, no it's not. It's the head and shoulders of a rock and sock
and robot shape.
Yeah, it's great if you're teleconferencing
in one of Darth Punk.
That's what I'll say.
Looks like it's in this prime, it's fucking,
but it looks like five phone screens taped together
at really odd angles in a way that you would look at like a sort of tape
Modern exhibit like 2005 and go oh damn. That's what I've never actually. It's so funny given that it is just a head on a
Plince that it's called We Head that that has made it much funnier now
Oh, that the name was funny to begin with but there's something funny about it turning out to just be a head
to begin with, but there's something funny about it turning out to just be a head. And it's just like it's whipping back and forth. Like it's articulated on a neck so you
can make eye contact with different people. So you could headbutt someone from thousands
of miles away. So here's what we head offers. It offers a full-size face and head gestures.
Best head movements. I love it when I'm off at a full-size face.
Yes, good movements are mimicked by the we heads motors in real time to allow guests
to focus on every aspect of communication. Eye contact feels incredibly natural, which
I agree with. It feels incredibly natural. Due to the fact the camera is positioned right
at the eye display. So also ideally you're supposed to have two we heads. Of course.
Even though one we head is enough for spatial communication,
you can just use a laptop or smartphone
with a conventional camera.
Yeah, how much does one of these we heads run you?
Well, if you want to get the we head founders edition,
that's going to run you $101,999 cash American.
What is the founders edition?
What is that offer?
Thank you for asking, Milo.
You get a,
is there an even bigger face?
Yeah, you get a huge face.
No, you get an NFT.
Oh, awesome.
Yes, great.
Those things that are still really valuable.
Do you get an NFT of your fate?
I would be so much better.
No, it's just an NFT that says we head.
Amazing.
Or loving that.
You can get the we head pro,
which enhances sensory perception
with the most advanced avatar technologies,
a three-axis motor for more realistic gestures
and a stereo camera.
That's gonna be $4,555 cash-American.
That's the thing.
I mean, it's a bargain.
Look, I don't know what you're complaining about.
This thing is going to change lives.
You just get your like $9,000 and you get two of these and then, you know, perfect.
And then we can be sucking each other off from anywhere in the world.
How do I put this?
It makes you sort of look like a transformer.
Yeah.
As in like from the Cartier and Transformers.
Because the way the screens are arranged,
it's mostly like a big T-shaped.
So you have like one horizontal screen
for the eyes and then a vertical one for the mouth
and then the cheeks just kind of get like lost.
Yeah, like I don't mean to say
I'm not gonna say what they've done that.
It would have been so easy just to have a screen
big enough to show the whole face.
Because you have,
because an important part of being on a phone call
with someone is to see when they're
looking to the side.
And so you can see them in profile and that's worth thousands of dollars.
So this is a machine that will determine whether you in fact have a second screen at home
and whether you are looking at that second screen when you're supposed to be having a first
screen meeting.
Correct.
Yes.
That's kind of what it feels like it's only you says.
It's like, oh, we can see, we can see by the we had,
but your eyes are looking somewhere else.
Well, his head has moved 40 degrees.
He's looking at the head tie again.
They said, the futuristic looking smart display
provides an experience of physical presence
of a remote person in the room through 3D screens
and head gestures.
The head-shaped device, I don't know what the fuck
head they're talking about enables people to have a deeper sense of intimacy within a conversation. screens and head gestures. The head shaped device, I don't know what the fuck
had they're talking about.
It enables people to have a deeper sense of intimacy
within a conversation.
Would you feel a deeper sense of intimacy talking
to Chappy, but with his head cut off?
Yeah, I mean, the thing is right.
It looks so easy.
I would if he had buy to me.
Yeah, that would be pretty intimate.
The way that it cuts off the face, it looks like you're,
it looks like you're wearing wearing a Corinthian helmet almost.
Do you get the eyes and the mouth and nothing else?
That's right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Cool.
I find this very intimate.
Well, great use for the We Head is putting them all at the moppally.
Yolea Siddorskin, the founder of Zero Distance, the company that makes We Head commented.
Of course, it's a Russian man.
We Head is an advanced robotics state of the art technology available for consumers.
This device is for tech enthusiasts who want to touch and experience a part of the future
technology we're working on today and support the development of our full-size avatar system.
So they are starting with the head and they're building down from there.
Oh, no.
No, the fish rots from the head. Well, the avatar is built with the head and they're building down from there. Oh, no. No, the fish, the fish, right from the head.
Well, the avatars built from the head.
I'm very scared when they get to like, we dick.
Like, I don't...
We build, we build virtual head in honor of my father, who only
piece left of him was his head.
He found it in bowling ball bag.
The big idea for the fish.
He owned all of hot dogs in Soviet Union. The night with unfortunate end. The big
idea for the future is to bring to the market an affordable avatar system for
spatial full-body presence in a remote location. And the basically idea is
look if it's too dangerous to leave your house just have have an avatar robot.
It's got like a chapy head on it, which is the plot of the movie
Avatar avatars. No sorry, surrogates excuse me, not avatars. It's within the Avatar universe. Yeah,
exactly. It's one of the things that led to Earth getting all fucked up. Yeah, it's just it is such a
funny little doohickey essentially. We're gonna plonk your head on the desk and then everyone's going to feel
very intimate immersed and connected to one another. When this thing goes bankrupt as it inevitably
will, we should try and do like we did for the GiZara and get like the chassis of one for cheap.
I absolutely want to put it in the studio as a whole.
Get the sand, the golden arm, put them together, tell you baby.
We can, we can get a second golden arm, put them together, tell you, baby. We can, we can, we can get a second golden arm.
We can not see salute.
Yeah. We're getting, getting perilously close to building a kind of startup golden.
Yeah, we call the juice arrow could be the chest.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, the juice arrow could be one of its like grabber hands, right?
And then the golden arm could be like, we've got a, we've got a, we've got a fucking
a startup man, a homoculus that can like look
around, head about you, grab and squeeze anything you hand to it and also do it.
It's so, I mean, what if what if you're having a virtual Nazi rally?
Yeah, but also it's like who not we could, we could build.
We're basically talking about is building a space marine dreadnought out of just the various
Living's of the different companies we've talked about
We can utilize bits of the Elon Musk stand
He's somehow it's got it's it's um it's eyes are actually made from view glass
It's got it's it moves around from Lord's town motors wheels and
Cook you a pizza just in the end.
So like the tolls are raging.
Yeah, but because it has the Lordstown Motors wheels,
if it goes over a small bump, it explodes.
By using Wehead, one can, this is Pavel Reckonov,
head of product, said by using Wehead,
one can feel as if you have been teleported
into the host environment, looking around
and communicating freely with anyone,
not constrained by the rectangle of the screen.
I was only constrained by the fact that you are
head on ball joint.
I would hate to be constrained by the rectangle of the screen.
WeHead.
Hello, Rishi.
Hope you're doing well in the rectangle of the screen. We had hello, Rishi. Hope you're doing well in the rectangle of the machine.
We had is exceptionally good at recreating the feeling as if the person is actually there with you.
Is it? Is it good?
Coming soon.
Chad G.
By the way, that's great.
Oh, fuck me.
Why say you can like believe that you're really headbutting Chad G.
P. T. I have no idea what the fuck Chad G. Oh, fuck me. So you can like believe that you're really headbutting chat GPT.
I have no idea what the fuck chat GPT is going to do
in the thing that's used case is to
just your large language.
Well, do you think you're out?
Just just one thing.
One thing here in the group chat in this sort of in the
Zencaster chat, I've put in a link to the links in profile picture of
Pavel Rackenoff.
Yeah, he looks amazing.
I trust him with everything.
Also, is that an NFT?
I think it might be AI-generated.
He's got kind of a galactic background.
It's very, very strange.
So it's got a Cyberpunk 2077 haircut.
Anyway, anyway, that was we had a fun little room.
I felt like I was in 2018 again.
I don't know about you all.
We are now going
to throw to us in the short future to talk to Miliano. And we will see you in a couple
of minutes to talk about farms. Bye everyone. And from part one, we are now into our part two where we are joined by the Bureau of
Investigative Journalisms Emiliano Molino, who is here because he couldn't get on to the
Ed Balls George Osborne podcast called like the best of
best of fiends or whatever it is. Emiliano, welcome. Thank you. Thank you. I got to fire my
management clearly. I mean, this is the best thing. Yeah, it's we are the best of fiends. You are the
best fiends. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you very much for having me. Yeah. It is a pleasure to have
you on indeed. And what sort of spark back to our guy Richie Potech?
What sparked all of it we get distracted for like five minutes in the interim between recording these two segments
We just do a bunch of guy Richie based bits. What is this? What inspired this?
This meaning of mine was talking about
I was talking about like a lot of true, but a very serious social issue in the voice of like Alan Ford in a guy richy movie.
Yeah, that's right.
No, but you have written an article on the frankly alarming conditions faced by migrant
laborers frequently coming under the auspices of like agricultural working visas from South Africa,
Kazakhstan, and further afield to the UK and the conditions that they face on behalf,
on the part of big grocery stores, farms, employment agencies, the state itself, a patchwork
of regulation that won't touch it.
And all of this leads to, I'm'm just gonna read a quote from the evidence
that you recently gave at Parliament.
You said,
Sible from South Africa said that workers
were not viewed as humans, but as chattels
and farm supervisors would refer to them
by their numbers rather than their names.
So can you give us just a little overview
of how we got to this place and what where we are?
Well, actually to start off that quote from Sibel, where she says,
farms refer to them as numbers and not by their names,
or farm supervisors refer to them as numbers in their names.
This was actually confirmed to us by one of the farms.
When we did a right of reply email, we emailed one farm saying,
these are all the allegations against you.
And the farm got back and said, yeah, this is a standard business practice
across the sector.
Geez, they didn't even deny it.
They didn't even deny it.
No, they confirmed it and said everybody else
was doing it too.
And they said, but don't worry about it.
This is not to dehumanize them.
This is because of a business need.
Wait, you got to know to the humanizer.
It's not to the humanizer.
It's not to the humanizer.
It's not to the humanizer.
It's not to the humanizer.
It's not to the humanizer.
It's not to the humanizer.
It's not to the humanizer. It's not to the humanizer. It's not to the humanizer. It's not to the humanizer. It's not to the humanizer. It's not to the humanizer. anchor at the farm. Just like that shouldn't have said who heard of them as number one.
It's like trying to thread that particular PR needle of like it's not dehumanizing, it's
just that for business reasons we had to dehumanize them.
Because businesses are not known to dehumanize, right?
So yeah, so I mean how we got here, I mean the question is where do we start?
I mean agriculture has always been highly exploitive sector. You know, it's time and time again, it comes to the top
of the list by regulators and others as the one of the most highly exploitive sectors.
It's not just in the UK, but across the world. Now, the way the UK is different to other
places is, well, it's twofold. Is it in a good way?
I'll let you guess.
Let's put some money on this.
How many people say good?
And how many people in the studio say good?
The way the UK is different, I'm hearing better.
I'm hearing really great.
So, yeah, so the ways one of the,
one of the,
one of the things that sets Britain apart is that historically people used to come
to do this kind of fruit picking work.
And what we cover here is sort of labor intensive farming.
So it's not wheat and things like that,
cow or chickens, it's fruit picking.
It's vegetable picking, which is like a highly labor-intensive.
So people used to come through free movement.
So Romanian workers, Bulgarian workers used to come
through free movement of people.
But when Brexit ended, the government had to figure out
a way to get all these people in.
So they created a seasonal worker visa.
And since before it was created, or before it was launched, every single human
rights and labor rights organization was saying, this is the recipe for exploitation. Because
workers are on six month visas. So you don't really know what's going on. You don't really
know to get the, you know, get to understand the country, get to understand where the support
services are. People are tied to the recruiter. So the recruiter that sponsors their visa also decides which farm they work in.
And if work runs out that farm,
they decide if they're gonna transfer them
to another farm or not.
So they decide whether they have work or not.
And people are isolated.
And they take, people pay a lot of money to come here
because all the cost falls on the worker.
So if you're coming from South Africa,
you have to pay for the visa for the travel.
You're paying at least before you arrive.
You're spending about 1,500 pounds. So you're 1, least before you arrive, you're spending about
1,500 pounds. So you're 1,500 pounds in debt before you even start working. So within
that context, we also have like the British context, which is that there's very weak labor
enforcement. There's very strong anti-union laws, very harsh anti-union laws. In terms
of labor enforcement, there's this organization called the Gangmasters and Labor Abuse Authority.
They're supposed to regulate dielectric culture sector. They're supposed to license farmer
cruters. The home office spends more on pens and paper than it does on financing the Gangmasters
and Labor Abuse Authority. So they spend just like 7 million pounds.
That's so little. Yeah. I mean, it's less than what this phenomenon
pens and paper.
So, yeah, it's peanuts.
So that's how we get here to a situation
where people are readily exploited.
And this is interesting to bring up as well in the context
of one of the many contradictions of the British state
trying to reproduce itself, right?
Because what do you hear from Tory ministers over and over
and over again? Nobody wants to work anymore. Why don't we just have the, like, you know,
gangs of children who are otherwise hanging out in the town center? Why don't we have them
go pick fruit? And it's because the cost of picking fruit in vegetables and having them
being cheap in the supermarket is borne by people the British state and hostile environment specifically have
made replaceable and easy to screw with.
Well, that's the thing, right?
I mean, workers arrive here and they say that they're surprised like how exploitive the
UK is.
You have people coming from South Africa and they're like, shit, I had people in farms in
South Africa with more rights than they have here.
And a lot of people are surprised.
Like, it's not sold this way, right?
When people are being recruited in South Africa and Nepal, it's not sold this way, right?
When people are being recruited in South Africa
in Nepal, it's not sold like,
oh, you know what, like the supervisor
is going to shout at you, you're going to be punished
if you don't pick fast enough,
you're going to be living in a really dingy caravan
where you're going to freeze over winter.
It's not advertised that way.
People, it's advertised like it's a great time.
Look at this video of people picking and everyone smiling
and everyone picking really slowly.
That's what's advertised like.
And they arrive and they realize it's a shit show.
And the fact is, the fact is,
like if people could go back,
a lot of them probably would,
but they're just have these massive debts
that they have to now pay off.
So if you got the guy from the job center
and forced him to do this,
I mean, you'd have pandemonium on the phone
because likely they wouldn't take this shit.
There's a detail in one of your articles where I think that one of the farm managers has asked
how long it's been since a British person has done any of this work.
And he says, yeah, we had one guy turn up a couple of years, he's going to be left the same day.
It's just sort of, it's just intolerable.
And it's cool, I guess, that the entire sector of the agricultural economy depends on us being
able to trick people into coming here forever. That definitely is, like, first of all, moral and
second of all, sustainable, right? Yeah, it's a better life awaits you in the off-world Britain
colonies. Yeah. Yeah. Well, in trickery has always been a big part of the British economy and I think it's important the way except this cool
Competence what I what strikes me most about I think about your article is how I mean we sort of we joke about feudalism on this podcast
Quite a bit, but how almost literally
copied over into a kind of neoliberal context with an agency rather than a kind of you know
into a kind of neoliberal context with an agency rather than a kind of, you know, barren or knight
as the feudal lord.
How we have the same kind of tying to the land,
we have the same debts and obligations.
We even have the same sort of, you know,
let's say, fixing of the arrangements.
Like, oh, you see, you owe me five bags of grain
and I'm gonna owe you three bags of flour,
but I shake down the bag of grain,
and I don't let you shake down the bag of flour.
These kinds of arrangements,
and the reason that that's possible, right,
is because, and this is what I come back to,
why we say, well, no British person would stand for this,
and you actually couldn't subject a British person to this,
because you know, you can't threaten a British person with deportation.
But what's constantly hanging over the heads of all of these farm workers is you owe us
a lot of money.
By the way, you don't just have to pay for it to get here.
You have to rent your bed in the caravan from us.
And you cite in the article that six workers sharing one caravan can pay two thousand pounds
a calendar month more expensive per square meter than central fucking London. I mean and the space
is smaller than one bedroom flat. It's actually regulations do not allow you to build a one bedroom flat
that small yet you have six workers in a caravan you know in three in three rooms paying that and
living in that space and the caravan has fallen apart. Like this guy, Vajin, who actually gave evidence with me at the House of Lords last week.
He was saying that, well, and he showed me a thermostat photo.
It got as cold as eight degrees Celsius in his caravan.
He was saying to the House of Lords that there was days that he didn't know if he was going to wake up.
There was night he'd go to sleep and he said, if the heater turns off during the night, I don't know if I'm gonna wake up.
He said, like, the girls that were
sharing a bed and cuddling to, you know,
like, to keep each other warm at night.
I mean, it's dystopian.
And yeah, like you say, people are paying,
you know, the people, and there seems to be like
squeezing at every point,
because not only are they paying for the caravan, right?
They're paying for gas and electric,
they're buying gas, you know, electricity cards. They are paying for the washing machines. You know, these washing
machines, you know, communal washing machines, we get to put a pound in to run it. They're
paying for those. And I thought, it was almost like me a thought another day. Also the washing
machines from the 80s or the 90s, you know, these are stuff that is a tremendous level of
disrepair, but they're charging you for everything. Every little page. It's the exact level.
Pay extra for that.
They should put these farms in Hackney and then it would work.
Yeah.
It's the enormous cost of being poor because at every stretch, you are at someone else's
mercy.
That's why being poor is one of the many reasons why being poor is so expensive.
And you say if you want to talk about some of these costs, in other farms,
interviews reported sleeping in small caravans
where farmers would house up to seven workers at a time
at shared rooms with each paying 85 pounds a week,
extra for gas and electricity.
Some farms demand that workers cover the cost of bedlin'
and with one charging 15 pounds for a duvet and pillows
and a pound at a time to use the washing machines
some had to bring their own crockery.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's, it's, I mean, that's the thing.
People, you know, especially if you add the aspect of debts, right?
People rack up huge debts to come and it seems that there's obstacles put in their way
every step for them to actually make money and pay those debts.
It's also interesting to me, and we've, we've had Sarah Taiba on this podcast before and
she has this point
that she always brings out, which is that when we talk about farmers publicly, what we're talking about
is not farm workers, but farm owners, and that sort of like gets flattened. And so, you know, farmers
have like sometimes pretty good political representation and pretty good lobbying. And when you sort
of reflect that like they do this pose of like, you
know, whether people who grow your food, it's like, well, sort of, yes. But you're also the
people who are charging the people who pick the fruit to, you know, wash their clothes.
I mean, they're not even the supervisors, right? So the guys who are going to be the
supervisors are going to be either, you know, people have been their longer, to be like
Romanians or Bulgarians who are then supervising the Ukrainians or the South Africans or the Nepalese who arrived more recently.
So they're pretty disconnected to what's going on on the field.
And you're right.
Farmers have really strong lobbying.
The National Farmers Union is not a union.
It's a CBI for farm owners.
And they have incredibly strong lobbying because also they're really good at bragging about
their lobbying.
They pretty much said that a lot of the changes that have happened
that the creation of this visa and the expansion of this visa,
right?
In 2019 it was only 2,500 visas that could be issued this year.
It's 45,000 that can be issued.
Like a 2,000% expansion.
This expansion happened because the NFU,
the National Farmers Union kept on loving
for more and more visas,
so they could have these workers on the farms.
And if you wanna talk about,
you might say collusion between capital and government
to hyper exploit workers who are deemed to be expendable.
I mean, this is sort of the ur example of that, right?
But I wanna ask another question, right?
Which is, we mentioned the gangmasters
and labor-reviews authority.
That sort of leads us into another,
a cul-de-sac here, which is exactly where these workers fall.
Like, who is regulating them?
Because in your article, what you talk about is a kind of
crack between local authorities, different under or entirely unfunded supervisory authorities
that look specifically at farm labor and how their particular status as living on the farm,
not in permanent buildings, as employees of agencies.
And agencies, yeah.
Basically means they have no rights.
So how can you explain that structure
and where the regulation is supposed to land
and where it doesn't?
It's a really strange web in the UK
in terms of regulation of, well,
how's it on the one hand and then also employment
on the other?
So with employment, there was a number of poorly funded employment enforcement agencies, which through the bomb fire regulation,
David Cameron's bomb fire regulation, have subsequently been worse and worse funded. So we
mentioned the Gang Maxon Labor Abuse Authority earlier, and in the design of the scheme,
and this was something that the director of labor and market enforcement said recently,
it's like, well, the way the scheme is designed is that if you have a problem on your
farm, who you can plane to is to your recruiter, but the recruiter is paid for by the farm.
So the person you're supposed to complain to about the farm is the person I guess paid by
the farm. Then you can try and go to one of statutory authorities, like the gang masters
labor abuse authority, but we said they have, they have very poor funding.
They have almost no inspectors.
They have maybe 20 inspectors for the whole country,
just they over that.
And often, you know, I brought a situation to them
about a woman who complained about first being asked
to share a bed with another woman,
and then being asked to go to a caravan
where there were only men from a country that wasn't hers.
So we didn't even speak the same language as her. And she didn't feel safe doing this. She complained to the gangmasters and
labor abuse authority. The home office is saying that, well, people have problem with their housing
on Karevams. They can go to their local authority. They're the ones who should deal with
with housing issues. But actually, housing regulation says that local authorities,
what's covered by housing regulation is just stuff that has foundations,
is fixed to the ground and caravans aren't fixed to the ground.
So it falls outside the remit of local authorities.
And local authorities can ask for that right, but in the whole history of this regulation,
a local authority is never asked for the right to be able to inspect caravans on farmland.
So these guys falcon,
how interesting, right?
How convenient, right?
And so these guys falcon completely
within between the cracks.
So if you have a problem in your caravan,
well, you know, your best hope is that your farm will deal
with it.
If they don't deal with it,
you really have nowhere to go.
Well, no, because to inspect that,
I'd have to give myself the right to inspect it.
And I've asked myself,
but I haven't given myself the right.
So, nothing I can do, I'm afraid. This kind of feels like, and I don't know whether deliberate's the right to inspect it and I've asked myself, but I haven't given myself the right. So, nothing to do. I'm afraid.
This kind of feels like, and I didn't know whether deliberate to write word, but when I
was going for your article and just hearing you talk right now, one of the things that
keeps coming up is just the hostile environment and how hostile environment has been the cornerstone
of immigration, this type of immigration policy for a very, very long time, but particularly
after 2000, I think when Theresa May was Prime Minister, although I imagine it probably
came during the home office as well.
I wondered what your thoughts were on this because by the way that you explained it, it
sort of feels like, well, you've got this kind of perfect mix of chaos in terms of a state that's kind of degrading and institutions
that don't really know who they are supposed to be kind of regulating or even how to do it.
But it's not really, it doesn't feel like there's any really well, there's will to do it.
And so as a result, and I think as you mentioned, like, particularly after Brexit, where there
is like a real demand for this kind of very, very cheap
labor and this very cheap labor that relies on exploitation.
And so even though this may not be a deliberate extension,
or this may not be a deliberate conscious act of policy,
it kind of feels like this is a logical, not even an endpoint,
but a logical next step of what the hostile environment
was designed to be. This place that you are kind of you're even and you're
going to get like exploited to shit or it'll be so bad that you have no choice but to
like go back.
So, there's a contradiction at play, right, which is that they're always demanding for
more work, right, that the, and a few and others and even the government, well, a certain
faction of the government is always, you know, we need these workers to plug up the shortages.
And I don't know if you saw the statistics, I think it was last year, it was one of the
highest numbers of visas issued ever, right?
And a huge increase, a number of visas issued.
And it's not just for agricultural workers, you know, it's care workers, it's a whole
slew of workers that have to come to plug up the shortages. At the same time, the system is
creating such a way that it makes it incredibly hard for
people to affirm their rights. And you mentioned the
hostile environment, and what I think we alluded to
earlier as well, the way that immigration enforcement is
used as a whipping hand, right? Vadim and Andrew is two guys from Kazakhstan.
We're saying at the House of Lords that they were constantly being threatened by their manager
that if they had, if they had, if they kept them complaining, well, you know what, we can send you back.
You know, it was always that. And you know what, we can send you back. Not only can we send you back,
but the next day, the recruiter can just bring us more workers in a replacement.
And so this idea that we want the workers, but we want the workers to be replaced,
easily replaceable, right? So it's just completely dehumanizing the humanizing people and just
it's funny because there's also this other thing where the government's always talking about,
we're going to deal with the issue of shortages in the agricultural sector,
by automation,
by bringing in machines.
But what happens is that it's not that they bring in machines
is that they make humans be more like robots, right?
And make them be more like machines.
And yeah, that woman I mentioned earlier, right,
who made this complaint about first having
being asked to share a bed with another woman
because they didn't have any more beds in the caravan or when then was told, you know, actually, just made this complaint about first having been asked to share a bed with another woman because
they didn't have any more beds in the caravan or when then was told you know actually just be
with all these strangers who are men. A few months later she was left without work and she asked
her recruiter to transfer to another farm and she kept on asking and ultimately she had to go and
stay with family because the farm didn't let her stay on the farm and then what the recruiter did
with family because the farm didn't let us stay on the farm. And then what the recruiter did was report her
to the home office as an absconder,
even though she had three months left on her visa, right?
And what really puts the cherry on the cake
is that this recruiter is actually a charity.
Just the abuse of the charity sector
and sort of like charity status in itself,
that's an episode in itself.
You guys should look at these guys up.
I mean, it's, it's, what's the name of the,
the, um, cruise running?
Concordia.
And so looking at all of that, right?
This is, this is such, I think, a perfect example of,
as we sort of have been mentioning, the, the direct link between,
like the, um, your usual, like, rightwing immigrant moral panics calling for
ever-more enforcement, ever-more enforcement, ever-more enforcement, and then
the state returning with extreme enforcement for for farm owners because what
the as we say what the hostile environment does is it says to someone like
Sybil or Vadim it says do not unionize. If you make trouble, we, they will deport first
and ask questions later, which means you have no leverage.
Because for whatever reason, there is still a belief
among people that by the way, as these people go back
to their home countries is gonna be pretty fucking quickly
dispelled that this is a good place to work.
Vadim Sardov said, even in post-Soviet countries, no one runs a business like that by making
people live under such terrible conditions.
So, you know, like, we used to recruit workers mainly from Romania to this kind of work.
If you look at the list of where this is no worker visa is being issued, Romania isn't
even in the top 10 countries anymore. So each year, the recruiters go further
and further afield to recruit workers.
And so when I was writing about this,
2022, they were recruiting people from Indonesia,
from Nepal, from South Africa.
I saw in the list, like some guys from Chile.
I think this year, they're going to Bangladesh.
I mean, they're just pushing and pushing the frontier out.
I think more than 60 countries that were recruited in 2020.
But the Labour Party has a solution for this.
They've got a problem here in this country with British people don't want to work through
picking in these conditions.
They bring over immigrant labour and they're very precarious and they use that to make
them accept the poor conditions.
The fundamental reason for this is that these people could be deported at any time.
So our policy will be to make it so that any British person can also be deported to a random
country at any time. You don't like working on this farm? I hope you like living in Sudan.
Goodbye. We're going to replace you with someone from Spins the Wheel Poland.
They'd never come over here.
Yeah, we have relegations.
Yeah.
But so we are just burning through, like, we've got a whole world to get through.
And eventually, we will do it.
Eventually, everyone in the world who might potentially be tricked into coming here and picking raspberries
is going to be aware of what a shitty idea that is.
Cool.
And you guys tried it the first time around.
You know, it sort of worked for you guys.
I'll try and push the frontiers a second time around the other way around.
Yeah, well, we've got to go Australia mode and get gapiest users to do it.
Yeah, well, this is the thing.
Like, what happens after this?
Do we just like keep doing this until we hope someone invents the AI that picks raspberries?
That's literally the government policy.
The government policy is every time they're like,
oh, you know, we have shortages.
And British people don't want to do work.
And every document, every kind of policy proposal,
I was like, we're going to automate.
Well, this is also what people in the later party
have said as well.
I don't know who it was.
I was thinking, I didn't know if it was Kirsta
or not.
But they had said, they had said that, well, we need to sort of who it was. I was thinking, I didn't know if it was Kirsta and Maru not. But they had said, they had sort of said that like, well, you
know, we need to sort of, you know, it was that it was that very like, we're not the
Tories in the sense of like, you know, we don't want to have as brutal and immigration
policy, but ultimately we need to use technology to reduce our quote unquote dependence on
immigration, right? That was the line that was used. I was also thinking about something
that came up in a very, very old TF and I can't remember where it was, but it was this idea
that, you know, the more effective way for, or any, again, it's sort of highlight this
contradiction because, you know, the British state likes to sort of say, but, oh, you know,
it's because we're so generous and we're so kind and like, that's the reason why, you
know, these immigrants are sort of coming here
and exploiting the system and all that stuff.
But then at the same time, it's like, well, no,
objectively that's not true,
but also when immigrants do come here,
like the government and the way in which the state works
is very, very, very much, very much the opposite.
They want to make you have like the worst time possible
so that you'd never come back.
The immigrants we need specifically, the ones we're dependent on.
Well, just like everyone.
It's just like, well, every immigrant that comes here will just have a horrible time.
And obviously, there are other people, there are some groups that will have a really,
really fucking horrible time as the people in the middle of the article have sort of a good
examples of.
But it does kind of feel, I think, you know, your point about the contradiction is really then one that doesn't even make sense is there.
And I wonder whether it's because like, you know, the British state has found itself in a place where
like it is very, very dependent on extremely cheap labor in order to function. But at the same time,
it also needs to sort of prove performatively how brutal it can be and so nothing is ever gonna be enough
like, you know, even if a deport there, even if like the Rwanda project kind of like had was kind of going on
That still wouldn't be enough even if like you sort of you know, uh blew up the dingy's like that was still wouldn't be enough
And so there is this kind of like standing on top of this human pyramid and kicking the absolute shit out of everyone holding me up. It's dependent on the brutality to
function, but it also needs to be more brutal in order to sort of survive. And it can never resolve
the labor market problems. I will deport myself. I will be replaced by someone from East Timor.
I will be replaced by someone from East Table.
And it can, that's the thing. It's not, it's not static.
There, as you say who's saying, there's no place
where it ends.
It's a continuing process because it will never solve
the problem.
So it has to keep purporting to solve the problem
that it wants to solve.
Things can always get more miserable.
The only solution is further brutality.
And talking about 24,
talking about stuff like AI
Somehow being able to
Replace the people you're already making live like robots by constantly threatening them with deportation deportation and putting them deep into debt is
Frank frankly, it's it's a lie
It's a lie that the press is complicit in selling by never interrogating what the fuck you mean by AI and
It's and indeed it's all part of the same big ratchet
It's all part of the same big machine and it's all part of the same big wheel and I guess since we're sort of coming up to
To time a little bit. I wanted to ask you Miliano
You're a journalist and also an organizer if you're some random asshole listening to this show,
and you want to do something anything about this,
what can you, a random asshole listening to this show, do?
Christ, I don't know.
It's difficult.
So the problem we have is that the unions aren't really active in this sector.
So in theory, you andite should be organizing these workers,
but they do not.
And part of the reason is that these are people
on six month contracts are incredibly difficult
to organize people on six month contracts,
or who can be in the country for six months,
although they probably should.
So if you're a unite member, push your union
to do its work in the agricultural sector.
And actually, actually agriculture
was one of the earliest sectors that was unionized,
told pot of martyrs and all that.
If you are, you know, the TUC sitting on a pot of gold, so if you're on another, you know,
it's like a dragon protecting this pile of money, which it doesn't use.
So if you are in a TUC union, push your union to push a TUC to actually invest some money
in creating, you know, advice centers for migrant workers.
I mean, there are two advice centers right now for migrant workers in this field.
One is the Workers Support Center in Scotland.
The other one's called Work Right Center, and covers, I guess, the rest of the UK support
them.
They send them money.
I'm guessing no one says no to money, right?
I mean, yeah, I mean actually I should say that as well. The Bureau is a non-profit where I work, so send us money. Help me keep my job. Please, you know, actually, you know what? Open
democracy also just put out a fundraiser because they're sacking, they lost the funding for their
Russia team, so they probably need money more urgently than I do.
Support the Open Democracy Russia team. Who do great stuff?
Okay, well, I think if you want to act here and you're not a member of a trade union, we'll put links to some of those centers that you mentioned, Emiliano, in the episode description.
And, you know, if you... I know that there are union organizers and members and stuff who listen to this.
So, you know, take a look here, please.
Please look.
I guess, I guess, I sort of brought a philosophical sense.
You just have a duty not to sort of accept the government and the recruiters and the farmers
framing of this, which is that it has to be like this and it has to be miserable forever
until we invent the machine that picks raspberries and then it's going to be fine.
The problem is, we don't admit that Alice.
Like the problem is that they, every time you ask them to say, everybody loves it.
Right.
Because no one's really looking because it happens, it should be behind hedgerows and
Kent and no one look what's causing behind hedgerows and Kent.
Well, no, because you might find people dogging.
Yeah.
That's how we think it's rubbish.
I mean, an errant dogggo discovered a bunch of human rights abuses.
That's it.
Anyway, Sandra would just try and have a bit of the other around the back of the
Zaffira, and then watch it, I'll find, but disgusting treatment in migrant workers.
Maybe that is the answer to us, just like if what we're doing is raising awareness,
and I hope so, then just to extend that outwards, go bother people about this. You know, it goes slap the salad out of someone's
hand and be like, you piece of shit. Do you know what it took to like deliver that to you?
I mean, that's not working with the bureau because we do investigations about the food chain
like across like across many countries. And the colleague of mine just wrote something about how
I have to be careful how I how I phrase this, but basically security guards at a farm Kenya were killing people.
And so, oh yeah, I read about this.
Yeah.
We have a team that does looks into the four stations.
I can't meet or cheese anymore.
That's it.
Like, this job ruined my life.
That's right.
What you can do is dogging the only more of activity.
That's it.
The last, I said, go work.
Emiliano Brathtian arc in coming.
Anyway, I wanna say, Emiliano,
thank you so much for joining us today.
It has been delightful to talk to you,
but about a harrowing subject.
No problem, thanks for having me guys.
I appreciate it, and also as a fan,
keep up the great work.
Oh, thank you very much.
Thank you.
And to delightfully chilling portrait of the way things are.
Indeed.
And to our listeners, a few things to note, we will be doing a live show.
That's right. It's the live one.
My 26th of July in London, London, London.
There will be a link in the show notes to buy tickets.
If you are a $10 subscriber, you get a £5 discount on the tickets, which means it's £10 instead of £15.
If you're not a $10 subscriber, I am sorry. Those are the terms and conditions.
And there's also an Edinburgh show. There is on August 4th, which I am endeavouring
to get on sale.
Oh boy, there are a number of people
in the chain of command towards getting this show on sale.
If I was in charge of it, it would just be on sale already,
but I have to make a guy, make another guy do a thing,
and it's quite difficult.
Milo is in the guy bothering industry.
I know, that's right,
except I'm not bothering him about migrant workers' rights,
I'm bothering him about like doing some mouse clicks.
All right. And then of course, you know, you know it. There's the Patreon. There are more episodes
coming this week. The bonus is going to be with our friend, Hessa, from the Seeking
Derejements and Movie Mindset podcast. We will be watching the documentary that they made about Neyam.
It's feature length.
I'm so excited about that.
Yeah.
I'll also July 18th, me, preview, London, to get some of my website, usual gear.
Oh, yeah.
Finally, a theme song is Here We Go by Jin Sang.
Find it on Spotify.
So with all of the end matter now to the way,
it only falls to me to once again, thank Emiliano.
To once again, thank our listeners, my lovely co-host,
and to say we'll see you in a couple of days
in the premium.
Bye, everyone. You