Episode 81 - Hidden Beef: The Historic Cryptocurrency of the Future

Hello, I'm the actor Roger Westcott LeMay Grele.

I'm probably best known for an incident in which I was shot with a medieval weapon by the much-loved entertainer, Les Cheese.

We were both in a play that theatrically explored the two sides of Princess Diana's persona.

I was playing the innocent, demure, and doe-eyed debutante, and Cheese was playing the glamorous and wily socialite.

Anyway, on opening night, it turned out that there had been a mix-up and Cheese had learned my lines instead of his.

He was absolutely livid and stormed off the stage.

As an actor, I knew it was important to fill what could have been an awkward silence, and so I began singing and acting out my famous bawdy version of A Nightingale Sang in Barclay Square.

As I reached the line, the moon that lingered over London Town and began unzipping my trousers, Cheese reappeared with the 14th century longbow that he keeps in his car and began to pump me full of arrows at great speed, the stupid old bollock.

Now, the audience did nothing, believing this to be a stunning artistic metaphor for Diana's swift fall from innocence.

In fact, he only stopped turning me into a bloody pincushion when our co-star, the actor Nigel Havers, who was playing the playful side of Prince Charles, stuck a magnet in Cheese's ear, which buggered his pacemaker all to fuck.

And instead of keeping his heart going, it started broadcasting BBC Radio 5 Live!

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that I haven't been able to work since, and thank God I was able to rely on my beef pension.

Without it, I wouldn't have had the beef I need now in my old age.

Do you realize that your body needs more beef as it ages?

I can't stop eating the stuff.

Breakfast, elevens,

lunch, an afternoon's

sorry, what?

Well, what do you mean the advert's taking too long?

Well, no one told me it was meant to be 30 seconds.

You bloody imbecile!

You shit!

You bastard!

Oh, right.

Bloody hell, I'll just read it out.

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How's that?

Right, are you taking me to Pizza Express or not?

It's in my contract.

Ring ahead with my dough bowls order so they're hot and ready when we arrive.

Hot and ready!

Hot and ready!

Hello and welcome to the Beef and Dairy Network podcast, the number one podcast for those involved, or just interested, in the production of beef animals and dairy herds.

The Beef and Dairy Network podcast is the podcast companion to the Beef and Dairy Network website and printed magazine.

Brought to you by the Mitchell's Beef Pension.

I know that many of our listeners will have questions around beef pensions.

I know that when I began investing in my beef pension, I was worried about something rather unsavory to think about, but what would happen to my pension if I didn't make it to pension age?

Well, if this is something you're worried about, don't fret.

I spoke to the people at Mitchell's Pensions this week, and they assured me that any beef invested in one of their pensions on the event of death before pensionable age, all of that beef will be transferred directly to Prince Charles.

So you can invest with peace of mind.

Now, earlier this week, I spoke to Professor James Harkham to hear about his new historical research.

Professor Harkham is maybe best known for his work on the role of cattle in warfare and how the true history of these magnificent, noble beasts has been unfairly eclipsed by the false narratives constructed around the use of horses in warfare.

His belief that horses were bred in Japan in the 1950s by splicing the DNA of cows and rabbits and dolphin semen continues to make him a controversial figure.

Last time we spoke with James, he had been researching the ancient community justice ritual of the beefhead man, and indeed had organized the first fully authentic beefhead day parade in over 200 years, an event which led to the death of a woman accused of stealing an onion at the hands, or should I say, beaks, of hundreds of small birds whizzed up on cream.

Because of his radical views and incidents like these, he has struggled to find tenure at British universities in recent years.

However, good news, he's recently signed a contract with Wyoming State Cattle College of the Internet.

So, sit back, relax, and enjoy this interview with Professor James Harkam.

Hello, James.

Thank you so much for talking with me today.

It's a pleasure and a privilege, of course.

I've got your new publication here.

It's a self-published history book.

That's right.

Hidden Beef, the historic cryptocurrency of the future.

I've had a flick through.

I've got to say it's pretty complex stuff.

So maybe you can just, you know, in a nutshell, tell the listener what it is you've been doing and what you found out.

Yes, now it might seem obvious for the man that's been declared bankrupt seven times to want to question the economic foundations of society.

But

I think this new work is really a significant departure for me.

It represents both a historiographical textbook and in another more real sense

a

kind of pyramid scheme.

What I'm offering the reader is both an investigation into the origins of money, currency, currency exchange, and also the opportunity to get in at a very attractive point point in a brand new investment scheme.

Okay, so a lot going on there.

I think the main thrust academically that we have to remember is that what I've uncovered is the great bovine truth at the heart of the world economy.

The fact that it is beef, not gold, not silver, but beef that has always been at the heart of the world economy.

You write in your book about the gold standard, and you explain how this kind of old system of money was a system whereby, if I had a pound note in my hand, that would correspond to a pound's worth of gold that was kept in the Bank of England.

And you say that this situation really is analogous to how money began, but not with gold, but with beef.

Think about that word, pound.

Yes.

Now, some people would tell you that the Emperor Charlemagne in the year 800 decreed that one pound of silver should be divided into 240 pennies.

But think about that.

The pound.

Is that a pound of silver?

Or

is it a pound of silver-side beef?

Now, of course, if you look at the original text, there is no clue there.

But if you look at my copy, you'll notice that in very small writing in pencil, I've written beef.

Oh, I see, yes.

So you've written side beef to make it say silver-side beef.

Absolutely fascinating stuff.

So it's all there.

I mean, sorry, because

just to butt in,

I'm not a historian, so

I don't know exactly how you should treat primary sources, but sort of writing on them to

change them.

That's isn't that problematic from a historian's point of view?

Like, if I drew a Volvo on the bio-tapestry, I couldn't then claim that, you know, William the Conqueror was driving a Volvo at the Butler Fastings.

Oh, I suppose you think that all historical documents need to be treated with white gloves, do they?

Like you see on who do you think you are?

They're not the national lottery balls.

Yeah, they're historical documents.

They've survived for thousands of years, these things.

Sometimes you've got to make a stand.

Because I'm frankly fed up of sometimes being the only person that sees these things this way.

And

do you know what?

If you want to put a clause on the Magna Carta about the free distribution of beef to the peasant folk of Nottinghamshire, then maybe sometimes you've got to do that yourself so that subsequent generations will agree with you.

And if that makes me some kind of charlatan, then frankly, I don't want to live in your politically correct namby-pamby nanny state.

Right, so just to be clear, you have actually written

on the Magna Carta.

There are several copies of Magna Carta out there, and most of them are in pristine condition.

I will just say that if you go and have a look at the one in Salisbury Cathedral,

there may be some additional interesting material that students might care to think about.

Okay, so, okay, so you have a historical document written by the Emperor Charlemagne.

Yes.

You've written in pencil, you've changed it from a pound of silver to a pound of silverside beef.

A silverside of beef, yes.

Absolutely fascinating.

Right.

And then your contention is that

the historical basis of currency then

is beef?

Yes.

Where would an honest medieval peasant get his hands on gold?

Also, we talk about an accountant cooking the books.

Why?

Because it was beef.

Always beef.

Think about our system of taxation.

These are ancient medieval words.

Think about the word tax.

Remove the T.

Change the A to an O.

What have you got?

Ox.

It's all there in plain sight.

It's there if you look for it.

And sometimes what I'm doing is I'm just helping to draw the eye a little, just give people a chance to think for themselves and think beyond the boundaries that, again, a very restrictive

academic

ivory tower dwelling minority have very much tried to kind of corral.

I would say, people's beliefs over the years.

So

your, you know, let's put it bluntly, your forging of historical documents, you say, is kind of for the greater good, because actually, even if those things were written in 2021 rather than 897,

the sense that you're giving is a better version of the truth than they would get if they were just looking at the primary sources.

I would say it is

a deeper and perhaps more fundamental truth.

Beef is at the heart of every transaction throughout human history.

We have to remember that Smithfield Market, the great cattle market, the great meat market of London, actually predates both the Bank of England and the Royal Exchange by

between 400 and 500 years.

Think about that.

We talk about Her Majesty's revenue and customs.

But

do you know what the C in HMRC really stands for?

That's Her Majesty's Revenue and Cow Stomachs.

Right.

Beef offal, again, paid as taxation by everyday working people.

So I'm just sort of getting my head around this.

If we imagine the great wealth of,

I don't know, Elizabeth I,

who sat on great amounts of wealth.

Absolutely.

She defeated the Spanish Armada.

Well, yeah, we've often put it down to essentially piracy, basically stealing huge amounts of silver from the Spanish in South America, bringing it back to Britain.

And some say that is the very basis on which Britain continues to be a world power.

They had this huge injection of wealth during that time.

Well, I mean, there are two great changes that happened towards

the end of the 16th century, the beginning of the 17th century.

Now, 1588, you rightly mark out the Spanish Armada as a great change in Britain's fortunes.

People remember, of course, great men like Francis Drake.

Now, he did play a role in defeating the Spanish, but the Spanish galleons, much larger than the smaller, nimbler English ships, they were also weighed down by the much larger, much less nimble Spanish bulls that

were inside those galleons.

The English fighting cattle, of course, are up on the decks, on the forecastle

of the English ships.

A fighting cow in the English navy could fire a bow and arrow up to three times a minute.

A Spanish bull is enraged at the sight of a red rag.

They see the English flag go mad inside the galleons galleons and they all sink.

Now in 1603, it's in fact James VI of Scotland who comes down to England, bringing with him the largest reserves of Aberdeen Angus steak the world has ever seen.

And it's that same rapacious beef lust that infects his son Charles I, who will be driven to civil war

because Parliament simply wants to stop his massive acquisition of beef.

The man was beef mad.

Well, let's talk about your personal financial situation because I,

you know, from what I've read, it seems as if

these two things are kind of interlinked.

Many, many listeners may have seen you in the news actually recently.

You did something of

you know,

you could describe it as a publicity stunt, where

I believe you paid your income tax this year

in beef or in or sort of attempted to do that I would contend that

again having been largely accredited by a Wyoming state academic institution most of my income is actually currently paid in beef

what little

else I make on eBay and Etsy is really not

not worth factoring in.

If rumours are to be believed, you've made quite a lot of money in the last couple of years selling horse belts on eBay.

Yes, I mean,

there's more than one way to skin a cat, but believe me, there is only one way to skin a horse, and it is very time-consuming and has to be done in the dead of night.

But

that's

I would hate to be I would hate to be remembered as

the guy that sold horse skin lamps on the internet.

That's what I think

what some of my more unbearable students in years gone by would have described as a side hustle.

So if my insunning is correct,

you got your tax bill,

as many of us do.

Yes, that's right.

Which, of course, would be expressed in pounds, pounds sterling, the currency of this country.

You obviously have to pay that by 31st of January.

You instead dumped a lot of beef on the steps of

Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs,

the centre there in Cumbernauld in Scotland.

Dumped it on the steps there.

I guess people would be asking: well,

can you pay your tax legally in beef?

Is it legal tender?

Well, it was certainly tender.

This was not

a stunt, as you put it.

This was a demonstration.

This was

an active protest

by perhaps a less common man, but perhaps certainly on behalf of the common man.

What did the people at HMRC make of

the sight of a middle-aged historian dragging what must have been quite a lot of beef onto their front steps?

I assume they were confused.

As soon as I presented them with the legal documents dating back over 800 years, I pointed out to them their legal position.

They

honoured their own legal position, and they accepted.

They accepted my beef consignment.

So you have documents which say that it is perfectly legal to pay your tax in beef.

That's what you're saying to the listeners today.

Absolutely.

I mean, again,

if you go to the British Library or the Bodleian Library in Oxford, you will see one version of history.

But if you look at my copy of the Magna Carta,

you'd see a very different version, which I think is quite fascinating.

I'm just thinking logistically for a moment.

Last year when I did my tax return, it turned out I was owed tax.

I had a tax rebate because something had been worked out incorrectly.

So they said, oh, actually, you've paid us too much.

You've paid us £800 too much.

We'll send you that.

And that happened in an instant.

My £800 was returned to my bank account.

In a situation where they owe you a tax rebate of beef, how does that work?

Well, I mean, yes, I have this situation.

Again,

they've been very tolerant.

They've been very understanding.

I would hate to bad-mouth

Jackie or Linda

up in Cumbernold, but

they did actually

make a little miscalculation.

As I say, the online business

should not really have been taken into account, as we can trace back to the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, where animal pelts are not subject to taxation,

provided that they do not stay within the land borders of the Kingdom of England for longer than 28 days,

which was the traditional length of time to hang a side of venison.

Right, so you're using a clause in the Treaty of Utrecht,

made in the 1700s, to not pay tax on your Etsy shop.

Yes, and that's the wonderful thing about the law, is that you can use it to prove literally anything.

And

the best thing about the British legal system is it's existed for so long that almost anything you want to be true probably is.

More from Professor Harkom in a moment, but first, I would like to read out a statement from Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs.

They write, We are aware of Professor Harkom's attempt to pay his income tax and national insurance using beef.

In January this year, Professor Harkom was monitored by security staff at HMRC Cumbernauld as he loitered near the building for a few days.

It was concluded from his bedraggled appearance and heavily laden wooden cart that he was a simple travelling horse pelt salesman, most likely living in local woodland.

In fact, many staff members purchased pelts from Professor Harkam and one member of our executive team spent the evening drinking plum wine with him in a woodland clearing.

After three days hawking pelts on the street outside our office, Professor Harkham then dragged dragged a bag containing almost 1,000 kilograms of beef onto our front steps and started shouting at a CCTV camera, here's your filthy tax, here's your pound of flesh.

For health and safety purposes, that meat was then taken into the building by our employees Jackie and Linda and fed to Alan, our security guard.

The meat has not been accepted by HMRC as a legitimate payment of his tax liability, and we reject claims that the documents he provided us with prove the right of the common man to pay his taxes in beef.

In fact, we call into question whether he has provided us with original copies of Magna Carta, the 1707 Act of Union, the Corn Law of 1815, and the Representation of the People Act 1949, because they largely seem to be written on napkins from Starbucks.

Not all of the documents provided were written on napkins, although we have other reasons to doubt the veracity of these documents.

For example, his copy of the Treaty View Trecht that he provided us with was clearly printed using a modern word processor and contains extensive use of clipart.

We would also like it noted that after the incident with Professor Harkam and his ton of beef, we then began to notice that all of the horses that usually lived in the field opposite our offices had disappeared.

We can't link Professor Harkam with this disappearance, we would just like it noted.

P.S.

Tax doesn't have to be taxing.

If you want help with any of your tax affairs, do call our hotline.

And remember, do your taxes wrong and you will go to jail.

Hello, I'm the actor Roger Wescott LeMagrele and I'm here to tell you about the multifarious benefits of the Mitchell's Beef Pension.

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But even if you aren't pounded with shafts of strong poplar and sharpened iron while trying to pull your trousers up during the course of a boardish showstopper, you can't work forever.

Though McKellen seems to fucking well manage it well enough.

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Right, are we going to Pizza Express now?

Look, just could you be a deer, please?

And call ahead, ask them if I can smoke a cigar in the toilets.

Well, they let me do it in the Norwich Branch.

In the Norwich Branch, on more than one occasion, they've let me have a cigar in the kitchen.

Well, the ash didn't seem to bother them.

At the Norwich Branch, they let me stub out my cigar in a quattro stagione.

Fine people, good people.

More after this.

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As we've heard, Professor Harkam is now refusing to pay his tax in anything but meat.

But that's not the only part of his financial life that he has switched over to beef.

I myself, as I do mention in the book, have been investing heavily in beef futures,

which to many people may look like I've got a fridge full of rapidly putrefying bull semen.

But

again,

every single one of those spermatozoons could become

a cow.

I've potentially got billions, trillions in future beef potential.

And that's why, I mean,

FBP

is

the currency of the future.

Yes, and at the end of your book moves on to talking quite a lot about

FBP,

which, if I understand it correctly, is a kind of sort of cryptocurrency.

Is that the right way to describe it?

Yes, future beef potential.

It's the notion that

if we hold in reserve large amounts of bull semen, then that can be kind of predicated as a notion of the cattle that each of those

sperms can become.

So we can then

and then rather than having to trade the livestock themselves, we can

trade ownership of

the FBP that's held, centrally located, kept in a large chest freezer in my garage.

So if people buy FPP

and it's currently available to buy and trade, I believe.

I would say it is an opportunity to invest.

Okay, yeah.

If I was to invest in FBP, I wouldn't physically take receipt of the semen.

That would stay in your garage, but

I would know that I own it.

Yes,

there would be no envelopes of rapidly defrosting reproductive issue turning up on your doorstep.

Early pilot schemes were not successful.

I think my worry would be that I was sending you, you know, I'm buying FPP with pound sterling.

I'm sending you that.

And then all I'm getting in return really is a piece of paper saying, you own this semen, which is in a man's garage.

Do you see why some people wouldn't feel confident to do that?

My garage, full of semen, as you put it,

is essentially no different from the Bank of England.

What happens if there's a power curtain in your garage?

There are backup generators.

Again, I have a pair of treadmills worked by a very hard-working pair of bullocks who will keep going through the night to keep the power on.

There will be some dip in temperature.

Obviously, there is a degree of collateral damage of up to 20%, but no investment is without risk.

At the moment, yes, I have strung an extension lead from the kitchen into the garage, but

as soon as my uncle gets out of prison, he used to be an electrician.

We're going to do some stuff with insulating cable and gaffer tape that he promises will work very well.

Okay, and I think maybe the other criticism people could levy at what you're doing is that future beef potential were it ever to reach its potential.

You know, you mentioned that

you

have the ability to create potentially trillions of cattle, which would overrun planet Earth.

You know, the environmental impact of that many cattle on our planet would be

more, some would say, unthinkable.

I would counter that argument by saying it's incredibly thinkable.

I've just thought of it now, and it seems

fine.

I mean, what are you going to do?

Buy a Ferrari and drive it at 30 miles an hour?

You know, we can be the best.

We can be the best versions of ourselves.

And

I haven't always had faith in myself.

I'm a historian.

I tend to look to the past.

But since I got into FBP, I have thought of nothing but the future.

They say every week an area of rainforest the size of Wales is destroyed.

But imagine an area of Wales that was just a wall of beef.

Just cattle, every single square foot.

Imagine if Wales was just beef.

I can imagine that, and I think it looks stunning.

And I can achieve that with the contents of one shelf of my fridge.

the small fridge.

Normally use it for Christmas bits, but there's there's been a lot of demand and obviously as as someone who

you know you you own the fbp system

if this system were to replace our

current fiat currencies uh of the world you'd personally become very powerful and i guess my question is

if fvp really is the future why is it then that you're still having to

self-publish history books, sell horse pelts on eBay and Etsy.

It doesn't project success in the way that

maybe somebody who wants that

confidence to invest

would want to see.

Yes, I mean,

I

would like to think that

if you do not see success of the FPP model in my lifetime, then future generations will remember me more fondly.

Best case scenario, of course, yes, I do become a warlord ruling the earth with an unrelenting fist of steel.

But

again,

in all the cost projections that I've submitted to the Small Business Advice Centre at my local bank, that

doesn't seem likely.

And for that reason,

I will also have to keep selling the pelts.

So

if

you do fancy a little bit of horse hair around the house,

do Pop to James these curios on Etsy

and or eBay.

Where do you get the horse pelts from, James?

Just as a

a brief

disclaimer,

I would like to

very strongly

repeat that all horses are locally sourced.

And if you think you you recognise any of those pelts

from the Grand National or trooping of the colour you are very very much mistaken

and the and the spate of local horse disappearances in your area has nothing to do with

no nothing at all

horses

you know horses like to cry wolf don't they?

A lot of young horses, foals,

they're immature creatures, as I say, genetically engineered.

uh they're not they're not clever they're not smart they they they they won't bed in with a family like a like a like a cow lots of horses run away from home they think they can get a better life in the city and yeah they end up doing things i don't think any of us really want to think about uh too much on a family podcast but that's not my business that's their business i i'm uh i'm no judge of uh of alternative lifestyles but uh horses do what horses do Okay, well, James Harkham, thank you so much for talking to me.

And what's your final message for the listener?

There's a lot for them to take in here.

Obviously, they can buy your book and get all this in detail, but if there's one thing you want them to take away from this interview, what would it be?

If you think money, you're already thinking of beef.

Yeah?

We live in a stakeholder economy.

And he who holds the stake owns the economy.

And for a hot slice of that future, there's some FBP waiting in my garage, just for you.

Great.

Well, no doubt, we'll talk to you again in the future.

Thank you, Dr.

James Harkam.

Always a pleasure.

A big thanks to Professor James Harkam for that interview.

His book, Hidden Beef, the Historic Cryptocurrency of the Future, is available now.

His Etsy and eBay horse pelt shops are up there and ready to take your order.

And if you'd like to invest in FBP, simply send beef in a padded envelope to Professor James Harkam, 35 Maple Drive, Aylesbury.

Aylesbury!

So that's all we've got time for this month.

But if you're after more beef and dairy news, get over to the website now, where you can find all the usual stuff, as well as our off-topic section, where this month we get to grips with nutmeg.

What's going on there?

So until next time,

beef out.

Thanks to Mike Shepard and Tom Crowley.

Carrie, is it?

Oh, yes.

Hi, I'm Carrie.

I am Psychic Ross, and I will be reading you this evening.

Oh, interesting.

Well, okay, I co-host a podcast.

It's called Ono Ross and Carrie.

Yes, I'm sensing that.

The spirits are telling me.

It is a show about

like fringe science and spirituality and claims of the paranormal.

Oh, you knew that.

You do research online.

But more importantly, like we do in-person investigations.

Investigate as well.

Oh, my God.

That's amazing.

See?

Me and my friend, this is so weird.

My friend Ross, same name as you.

Weird.

He and I just go and try them all out.

And actually, we've gone to a number of psychics.

And to be honest with you, it's a lot like this.

It's called Ono Ross and Carrie.

They can find it at maximumfund.org.

I could have told you that.

Schmanners, noun, definition.

Rules of etiquette designed not to judge others, but rather to guide ourselves through everyday social situations.

Hello, internet.

I'm your husband host, Travis McElroy.

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Every week on Schmanners, we take a look at a topic that has to do with society or manners.

We talk about the history of it.

We take a look at how it applies to everyday life.

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