The Mailbag: Late Night Frankie V

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This is producer Andy, and you're listening to Here Comes the Guillotine: the mailbag with Frankie Boyle, Susan McCabe, and Christopher MacArthur Boyd.

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Enjoy the episode.

Hello and welcome to Here Comes the Gallatine.

Here comes the mailbag special edition which I'm doing myself.

It's me, Frankie Boyle, in the style of a late night radio host.

Getting you through the night on a long drive home by listening to Scottish People's Problems being dismissed.

Please keep me anonymous in case

in case I ever have a chance of a job again.

For the last 15 years I've worked overseas in the aid sector with all the diarrhea, mental health problems and false sense of superiority that go with it.

My career was going going well until January when I lost my job because of Trump's cuts to the aid sector.

Thanks to Starmer, following suit, and wider right-wing politics, it feels like the humanitarian sector might cease to exist and will certainly never be the same again.

There seem to be little to no jobs about now and several international charities are about to go under.

What's your advice for someone who spent years of literal blood, sweat, and tears in conflict zones to have a way of making money that makes me not feel like I'm wasting my time on earth, but which no longer seems to be a viable career option?

The charity sector in the UK is on its arse and I can't afford to retrain.

I know it's all relative, but how do I figure out my own situation at the same time as horrendous world events have a devastating effect on colleagues in other countries and their families.

Thanks very much.

Anonymous.

It's a fucking comedy show, pal.

Come on, give us a fucking break here.

What we're supposed to do.

I think it's like it's interesting, isn't it, that thing where Trump comes in and everyone goes,

let's go three feet to the right here.

Let's all make.

We don't know if there's going to be an American election ever again.

Let's all just.

He's done what?

Getting rid of aid?

Okay, off it goes, you know.

I would sort of argue that the British thing is separate, because like there's lots of things about Britain that aren't separate, so like the Trident Deterrent, they probably can't fire that without America.

But you can choose your own aid budget, and like Britain has a reason for having its age aid budget, one of which is soft power, and the other one is

it's a kind of subsidy to British business, you know?

Like there are grants that go to things that facilitate mining and so on in other countries.

And George Mumbo wrote a good column about this years ago.

And, you know, obviously there is genuine useful aid as well.

But ultimately it's a general sort of disregard for other people, isn't it?

And,

you know, what's interesting doing a podcast at the moment is

you can see how concession

really cripples political debate about this kind of thing.

So at the moment, at the time of recording,

Rachel Reeves has just announced a whole bunch of disability benefit cuts and essentially this has been done to maintain the headroom in the financial

predictions by the Office of Budget Responsibility.

So it's kind of an accounting

thing that they're going, as many newspapers have reported balancing the books on the backs of the poor right

um so I watched Newsnight the other night and

they've got Jeremy Corbyn they've got a couple other people going you know it's pretty terrible currently is benefits for people who can't move so well a whole bunch of them are gonna die and you know they try and phrase that in some kind of political ease or whatever And then one of the presenters, so Victoria Derbyshire's on there, I really like her, she's a really good presenter.

And there's this other guy, and he goes, goes,

if the government were here, which is an incredible thing to say when the government haven't bothered to turn up to explain why they're cutting benefits from some of the most oppressed people in society, right?

I always think oppressed is a good word, like vulnerable.

I'm always very distrustful of that word.

If you're

if you're vulnerable to the government that's been elected in your country, you're oppressed, you know?

Like I really hate that word being used for disabled folk but

he says it's a government were here blah blah blah he gives two points of kind of rhetoric and one of them is if the government were here they would say look the welfare state in the NHS founded in 1948 when the average life expectancy was 65

And, you know, there's a panel there, you know, they're good people and they're on the ball and it's fucking Corbyn and stuff.

And they're like, yeah, yeah, but, and they've kind of got to respond to their bit of rhetoric.

And there's no time to go and unpack that thing, right?

Number one,

the average life expectancy in 1948

was not 65, right?

So that's a very basic thing, right?

They always take the male figure.

Um so the average life expectancy for women in nineteen forty eight was seventy.

And average life expectancy doesn't mean the mean age of a of an adult, right?

So all the stuff we see, well people in Jesus' time lived to 35 or whatever.

They didn't.

There was a lot of infant mortality and they're all bundled together, right?

So infant mortality in 1948, I don't know what it was, but it would be like 10 times what it is now.

So say now it's about something like three and a half births per

thousand.

Then it would have been like 35, right, or 40.

It's just post-war.

So

the life expectancy wasn't what you're saying it is, pal, right?

That's a really major thing.

If what you're talking about is justification for not giving disabled people money they need to live, the fact that you figure you've quoted is inaccurate is actually a huge deal.

Secondly, the principle behind it, the idea of, oh, they wouldn't have known when they made this thing that people would be living longer.

It was immediately post-war.

Of course they thought people would be living longer.

And in fact, they set up the whole thing so that people could live longer.

And then the expectation of people living longer.

So, the whole thing is just like the most laughable non-statistic that could be quoted, right?

And

nobody gets to unpack that, because it's concision, isn't it?

You have to say something that's ten words long that rebuts your opponent's argument or moves on to your own argument.

And that's kind of how television debate works, that's how political discourse in this country works, that's how tweets work, that's how memes work, you know.

And

the fact that there is no kind of broader space to unpack things, and even broadsheet newspapers are now more tabloid,

means that none of this stuff is ever seriously discussed.

What should Anonymous do then?

What should they do?

I mean

like everybody else start a podcast.

I mean, I don't know, find a path.

There are, I mean, there will still be a charity sector.

It's just that the charity sector might move to like more like a Victorian philanthropic model and much less of its budget will come from

AIDS and direct grants and so on.

And it will be literally like, you know, someone who made a killing in some software will decide, Oh,

I I would like to help get rid of tuberculosis, you know, which is going to come back or whatever.

It's um

harrowing.

It was a very harrowing question to be fair.

But I don't know, I think also that thing where you focus on

don't focus on the stuff you can't do.

Do you know what I mean?

So sometimes we've got oh the big picture.

I can't solve capitalism and I can't mean you're like that's fine.

It's fine to be aware of that and to think about that.

But don't use it as an excuse for paralysis.

You know, there's no excuse for not doing things.

Even I fucking do things, you know.

I'm a complete, I'm completely, I find it completely paralysingly horrible.

But

you've kind of got to get through that and

do things in your own life.

And there's, I mean, there's loads of, and

you could take a walk down around your local neighbourhood and it's not that difficult to find

stuff to do or to donate to or whatever.

Yeah, there's always something.

Right next door is Refuigi.

Refuigi?

Good man.

I was walking around my neighbourhood the other day and I saw a baby bank and I was actually a bit

taken aback.

I was actually a bit kind of caught my breath, kinda oh fuck, people are having babies and they can't feed them or buy nappies and all this kind of stuff.

I've not heard of baby bank before.

Really?

That's new.

It's so like a food bank but for baby items.

Um

so you know there's plenty of stuff to do out there.

But that whole thing, you know, when Cameron came in, that was kind of a victory, you know.

So he said, oh, everybody's gonna have to go and work a day a week in this third sector and blah blah blah and we're all gonna pull through this together.

And everyone's like, yeah, fuck off, Cameron.

But we kind of have ended up having to do stuff like that because of austerity and and now continuing austerity.

But when you take away grants, aid, it's it's just a normal person

having to put into their pocket to give.

And they don't have enough money to give, but the generosity is there.

I always think that about telethons, where it's just like fucking edge shooting going, please send us some it's like, you could just do it.

You could just

build the fucking schoolhead.

The the oppressed are watching it.

And they're using their money.

Well, I mean, there is that thing, but then as well you go, oh fuck, I don't know, I'd rather than make them money.

So I have done things, and I've done like comic relief and stuff like that.

And you're just kind of like, well, at the same time, if that's how it's going to be happening I'd rather be fucking made to dough because in the short term that's all gone to some fucking charity that needs it and

you know.

Well cool.

Thank you Anonymous.

Late night

Frankie Boyle.

Frankie Boyle.

Frankie Boyle.

Frankie Boyle.

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