Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Have a place where people can come and say, I'm a bit fucked, you know, can you help me out?
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Me and Martin Windibank went to the Isle of Bute to record a new music video for Jackal Trades. And while we were having a pint trying to figure out what we were actually going to do, we had a random meeting with Granny Annie. Now, I've met Annie a few times, she's a very interesting person, has loads to say. So we just decided to just have a podcast over a pint and talk about data centers, artificial intelligence, localism, community environment, ecology, universal basic income, billionaires living in bunkers, free bus travel, zero waste, food banks, and the charities that are really making a big difference just now, such as Chris House, Sammy, Sonny Govan, Men Matters and Galgale and just those other things, integration, addiction recovery, and just basically what is wrong with the world and how we can make it better. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we enjoyed having it. Shouts to Martin Mindebank for filming it. Thanks to Granny Annie for chatting with me. And the full video is now on YouTube. If you can watch it all there. If you're already on YouTube, hit the like and subscribe button.
And thank you to the patrons who keep this leaky ship that, as you call that radio, sailing on the water.
Patreon.com you call that radio. Let's get to the conversation with Granny Annie and I'd love to hear your comments and see if you agree or disagree with any of the points that either of us made. When I talk about data centers with Annie and I would like to introduce yourself.
[00:01:48] Speaker A: I'm Annie Figavin and I'm going to talk about AI linked to the data centers. But our friend that's making the film. What's your name again?
[00:02:01] Speaker B: That's Martinbank.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: Right. When you said what are data centers for, I've got to say I don't know enough.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: So my opinion on data centres this. Before we start this conversation, because Annie knows a little bit more than I do, although Annie will tell you what she does and doesn't know.
However, the reason I'm quite anti AI at the moment is because from a selfish perspective, I've yet to find anything that AI does that is good for me. What it has done for me is it has taken work off me. People used to commission me to write poems for Valentine's Day and Christmas. Now they're getting rubbish computers to make rubbish poems and I'm a very beginner level, kind of middle of the road graphic Designer and I used to get sometimes paid a little bit of money to do it. Not as good a graphic designer as our cameraman here. He's a real graphic designer.
But what I mean is there's lots and lots of little pieces and now with the, with the whole Suno making its own music for people, it feels like there is less and less sort of side hustles or opportunities because I'm a freelancer so I do lots of different things. It feels like AI is taking away a lot of. Not loads, but I'm noticing a percentage of opportunities from me and I've yet to see AI do anything good.
I also think that water is the new oil. England's in drought. It's rained here constantly for the last month. We've got hundreds of water, England's getting none and I think water's in the oil. And I am a little bit concerned that they're going.
I think 140 new data centres are coming here and nobody's actually explained one good reason why a data center is going to help us.
Let me speak to Annie because I want to be born. So what is the official line in why data centers are coming here?
[00:03:59] Speaker A: Well, I know a wee bit about economics and unfortunately the governments, including the Scottish government, have an idea of growth and they think that AI will put, if we call it Britain ahead in terms of technical innovation.
Now, Ireland already has. I just looked up 120 data centres, mostly around Dublin and people think maybe Scotland could do what the south of Ireland does because they talk in terms of independence. I'm right up for self determination, but Ireland has not done enough in terms of what would be really good. What I'm into is things like restorative agriculture, for example. Ireland and Scotland and Wales and other places in Kuntu used to be really good at that. So we've gone for this growth model for technical innovation. But as I admitted, I don't actually know what they think the data centers are going to be really good for. Now we can talk about water because it's a huge issue. You've just mentioned the drought. I'm just back up from a month in London.
The. The Sutcliffe park that I lived next to had daylighted a hidden river. How beautiful is that? They're all over the place. Glasgow, London. But Sutcliffe park was like a hayfield. When I got back to Glasgow, I put on Tom Jones the green green grass of home because it was the first time in a month that I'd seen green grass. Now the real danger for the data centres is my understanding that they're going to use clean water.
And as Arundhati Roy pointed out a long time ago, water, as you say, is the new oil. So what are they thinking about when you already mentioned, Mark, England was already
[00:06:02] Speaker B: in an official drought and where is England going to get their water from when Scotland is wealthy with water?
So we're already.
We have, there's been theories that reason that we're not allowed independence is because oil, whiskey, the exports that we create. Because obviously the media suggests that we are taking money from England, but with water. With actually seeing in real life the first time I've ever actually heard drought. I mean I've heard of hose pipe vans before, but I've never actually heard that England's in drought.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: Official doubt you're on to something here, Mark, because I've just listened to a podcast with Rory Stewart. Is that his name to be Tory guy with lots of teeth.
[00:06:55] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:06:56] Speaker A: He's in a podcast with Cal the
[00:06:58] Speaker B: best of the worst.
[00:07:00] Speaker A: Well, he's not. He's not, he's not. I used to think he was kind of nearly okay
[00:07:08] Speaker B: for a Tory.
[00:07:10] Speaker A: It's exactly your point. He's in conversation with Caroline Lucas from the Green Party and he talks about, well, England's struggling, we've had drought, so we could build them in Scotland. That's what he actually says. So there will be a push to. And lots of communities are resisting it. There will be a push for lots of data centers in Scotland.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: Will Scotland be getting paid any money by the English to steal our water?
[00:07:39] Speaker A: Well, I mean we don't have anything approaching independence. The devolution. Most of the important things are retained by, by the.
I hate the term UK because we're such a disunited kingdom.
[00:07:56] Speaker B: But the disunited kingdom, I think a hangdom. A Dutch United Kingdom.
[00:08:03] Speaker A: A Dutch United Kingdom that I'm in no way, in no way anti English. All my family live there and I love English people. I love Geordie's, I love the rest from a Munster. You know, I would like to think that Scottish self determination would inspire Wales and other communities.
I'm into a kind of decentralized way. I do politics. We know much more. Regional. Regional. What's good? Regional.
[00:08:32] Speaker B: Yeah, because I mean Westminster, the House of Commons, a mockery.
The arguments that they're having, they're just talking over each other. They're just rude. At least they don't wave their newspapers anymore. That's because they're on the smartphones having a sleep. They're Having a nap.
[00:08:46] Speaker A: Tony Ben that I do admire. He got better as he, as he went on.
He left the House of Commons to see that he could now practice his politics with principle.
So there are big issues in terms of decisions that are made.
Communities don't want the data centres. There's lots of resistance in America as well. But getting back to that fundamental thing, what are they actually for? The creative industry as you've described, Mark is going to be really hard hit.
The uses to me may be medical but. But it comes down, I'm a public ownership, democratic, public ownership person. Andy Cumbers at Glasgow Uni talks about economic democracy. It's a really good concept. I wouldn't go on too much about it, but it's relevant in terms of Google or in the data centers.
[00:09:34] Speaker B: Yeah, so that's a good point.
So for example, before we went, before we started this, we were discussing, because we just bumped into each other and we're discussing that they've been able to. AI will be able to predict someone that might have cancer or dementia before it happens. So that's obvious.
[00:09:54] Speaker A: But not before it happens at a
[00:09:55] Speaker B: very early stage, a very early stage which is important for, for to treat, to treat the symptoms and stuff.
But obviously these data centers are owned by the likes of Microsoft and Amazon and they're not going to be doing that. And these data centers for free, can they just help people for no reason or is there any evidence for that?
[00:10:14] Speaker A: Well, the thing is, why I mentioned economics and why I mentioned growth is that's for profit. You know, everything is done for profit. So the data centres will be part of that growth for profit thing.
So the medical use will be, I would even use the word minimal.
That's not the raison d'. Etre.
The health innovation hub in Gov will be a good thing and they will be using AI.
And I'm not against tech. I mean maybe we should frame it like that. It's in whose hands the tech is in and what is their raisin data.
[00:10:55] Speaker B: And also just regards to the growth, which I think is one of the things that they sell it to. Like I know that Irvin, which I know very well, the date, the data center there, it was like it's going to create 180 jobs, say.
But what it actually is is 180 people who may or may not be local are building the center. But once the center's up and running, it's not 180 people that are running the center.
[00:11:21] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:11:22] Speaker B: I've also watched documentaries. Like I said, I'm still learning at this stage. I'm not, I'm not seeing anywhere. Everything about this, but from the documentaries that I've watched about it is there is a lot of noise pollution and there's a lot of, there's a lot of environmental disasters. Now, obviously ecological disasters. Just, you've, you've studied this. Could you just give us your credentials a little bit and then tell us what is your, your fear of having these things in beautiful places? Because apparently there's going to be one in this. There were beautiful and beautiful islands, places in the Highlands where it's going to, these are massive things that are going to become massive eyesores.
There's going to be a noise pollution, it's going to be still in the water.
But also what's it going to do to the natural environment?
[00:12:12] Speaker A: Well, I'm going to make a comparison here with the thing they call renewable energy.
Now we have to get off fossil. It's fossil is the thing that's really dangerous. Burning fossil fuels is adding to greenhouse gases and we're burning the planet. Now renewables carry a lot of extraction. So here's a statistic that might have changed a bit, but 25% of the north of Ireland has been given over to mining corporations, 28% the South.
I'm in touch with Savour Sparrans. It's a gold mining company that gave themselves the name Dalriada so they appropriate our names. In the south of Scotland it was walkabout resources appropriated the aboriginal name. Now this is key in terms of what we are talking about because we're in a for profit world, a hyper capitalist, late capitalist situation.
Everything is done with less consideration for environment, much less consideration for environment.
Now, funnily enough, I'm going to say something that sounds contradictory. I think we could use AI and robotics to do jobs that human beings shouldn't do. People shouldn't go under. Under the earth, miners suffer horrendously. My, my, my, my husband's grandfather didn't see the sun because he worked in a mine seven days a week. So there are applications for robotics and AI. We will need certain amounts of extraction, although we could recycle, reuse car stuff and not have to use virgin metals all the time. But we will always require a level of extraction. Now if there is applications of AI, like having to mine stuff, I could wax all day about what mining's doing to the planet, but there are applications, perhaps subway trains, driverless, because it's not nice to work under the earth all day. I mean I was on one in Dubai, as it happens, I was going to Australia for a very good reason and I was on a driverless train in Dubai. Wouldn't have been my choice, but that's where the plane was.
You know, I was swapping planes and it didn't bother me to be on a driverless train. Now displacing the workforce is key. Mark, you've mentioned displacing creatives and that's a big concern.
But displacing the workforce, no matter what we're talking about, whether it's minors or whatever or small amounts of employees like you're describing, within a for profit situation, they are not going to care about creating unemployment, more unemployment or whatever, or doing in creative skills. And that for me is the key is about who controls it.
[00:15:12] Speaker B: Absolutely. We, I grew up in the 90s where we had tomorrow's world that used to talk about in place first the future robots will do the work for us so we don't have to.
But it becomes more and more apparent the greedier, the more, the more and more wealth that the less and less people get that they do not care about the typical person. In fact you actually see them. I might even add a few clips in here of billionaires who actually say yes, it's going to be tough time, but it'll work it eventually I think
[00:15:46] Speaker C: AI will probably like most likely sort of lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime there will be great companies created with serious machine learning. I'm a little worried about the AI stuff.
I think it's something, I don't know which we should be concerned about. VR. I may have done some things to accelerate it, which is, I don't know.
[00:16:13] Speaker B: So without any plan. So without a plan, something like Universal basic income, which I think we can all get behind and that for anyone who's unfamiliar with Universal basic Income, it's just something that would give everybody enough money to live and to eat and shelter, which are human rights or should be human rights that suffered debate but it should be human rights. And then if you want to be an entrepreneur, you've not got the stress of having to put a roof over your head. You can then create whatever you want. And I think that would be a beautiful utopia with AI doing all the work that we don't need to. But right now it seems like AI is taking all the fun jobs and we're doing all the shit ones and it doesn't seem like the people at the top have any interest in replacing. In fact right now there's been talk of reform and in the newspapers this week talking about how they want to scale back the benefit system when there's less and less jobs and there's more and more mental health issues than ever before.
People are not well, we're not got a very well society for many reasons.
There's less jobs and nobody seems to be coming out with any sort of solution for this, which is quite terrifying to me.
Would how do you feel about something like that? If we are going to replace people with robots, how do we make sure that people.
Because obviously the biggest fear that I've heard from the Daily Mail journalists is what if everyone gets a universal basic income? What if they just sit around and play the Xbox all day?
And the thing is, as somebody who's been clean 14 years after Xbox, I don't worry about someone playing the Xbox in their house. I would hope they would do something more creative or maybe volunteer in their community and do something that would be more positive for society.
But if they're just going to play the computer all day, that doesn't worry me. I'm more concerned about people starving or people robbing people just to pay for drugs or their dinner.
[00:18:30] Speaker A: Universal basic income would take another discussion.
My worry about universal basic income in the context of what I've already said in a for profit late capitalism society, I would be worried about what they would peg that Universal Basic Income Income Act.
Universal credit's been an absolute failure.
Universal basic income under the current system, without in place what you've talked about, the alternative ways of spending your time for me, we'll have to grow, we'll have to grow more then that's a big nuance thing because there's an International Monetary Fund.
[00:19:13] Speaker B: Do you mean in the sense that we need to have landlord cap?
[00:19:15] Speaker A: So we don't talking economically here, I'm talking straightforwardly. How much would the universal basic income be? How much would they give us for universal basic income?
[00:19:26] Speaker B: And definitely, for example, we were to pick a number that we all, we were all happy with.
Would every landlord just increase the rent immediately? And then.
[00:19:36] Speaker A: That's the context, Mark. Yes, the context was we need social housing. I don't like, like the term affordable housing because that, that or if you
[00:19:45] Speaker B: have a new one in Danish mid market, this is new all the flats and how much is mid market?
[00:19:51] Speaker A: And governor, it's almost a thousand pounds a month.
[00:19:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:54] Speaker A: You need an income of 32,000 to access it. So the context of universal basic income. I'm not arguing against that. I want to know how much do they think? I also think in context of alternative ways of spending our days. For me it's not everybody likes gardening. I mean I'm friends of Elder park and Moguti Garden and we were hard pushed to get people to join in.
You need to maybe create things that people enjoy. If that's making music great and the impact of AI on that is a bad thing.
The ways of creative expressing your creativity, you kind of need to create those ways of people not maybe spending all their day on computer or not spend it. I mean Govan's full of very, very talented people who spend every day in the pub. I know them, they're my friends. They were guys who were engineers.
When there's no work today, that's a song. When there's no work today then if you haven't enabled people by creating alternatives to spend your days fruitfully, creatively, whatever then universal basic income alone doesn't solve a lot of what I'm talking about. On the growing supply chains are breaking down. Did you hear the government has actually issued out.
Is it a request or is it more more than that that we should actually start stockpiling cans of food now? There's nothing wrong with canned food because it's, it's canned when it's fresh. But actually to encourage people to start stockpiling what's going down. Ukraine, Russia, conflict's not away. The, the West Asia, the, the Israel. That's ecocide as well as genocide. So what the. I listened to that. I'm kind of going off piste here. But I do go off piece. There's a Palestinian Californian who lived through the fires and he's got a canary article. It's worth a read.
And he talks about ecological breakdown, the ecocide, you know what they've dropped on in especially in the Gaza Strip is equivalent times, times, times to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It's that bad. American military carbon footprint is massive anyway. So I think they've accelerated the climate breakdown so they're beginning to plan ahead. And they're actually yesterday actually told people to start stockpiling food. So we need to grow more. I mean there's a big thing, International Monetary Fund, structural adjustment. We can't just stop importing because we would further impoverish the majority world. That's a big nuance to be as well. But we have to grow. Cuba got over the embargo by growing everywhere. Sadly, Cuba's really getting stuffed just now. But they started to grow everywhere. We'll have to do that in Scotland. But you can grow in the north of Scotland. Don't let anybody tell you you can't. Because crofting and before crofting, when it was the Commons, people sustained themselves by growing their own stuff. Now I think that's.
[00:23:05] Speaker B: And recycling cars, as you see right behind you, as you've got that car. Because you said you're not against cars. There's just too many.
[00:23:10] Speaker A: There's just too many. And everybody gets brand new ones. In Luxembourg, they gave everybody free public transport, but people still like their big fancy BMWs. I was in Kuala Lumpur. You think I'm a globetrotter. I'm not really. You're a bit of a globetro. I went to meet my Chinese family and there's free buses but the traffic's horrendous. And in Estonia, where they introduced free public transport, it was still aspirational to have a car. So as soon as you started earning about a dosh and you would buy a car rather than sit in a free bus. So everything's nuanced.
[00:23:41] Speaker B: And they have been. Have been doing.
[00:23:43] Speaker A: Sorry, we're away off the point.
[00:23:46] Speaker B: We did do put him and I together.
Glasgow did a. Is doing a thing just now. I think it's. 600 people get free transport. I mean, I don't really know how you're going to get too much data from that. Not when we'll talk about data set. And I said we're talking about the data of people using free transport with. I think it's such a small amount for it to work. So it's. It's quite interesting because obviously somebody I would expect to be pro. Free transport. Public transport. Are you not. You're not convinced?
[00:24:17] Speaker A: I think it's nuanced. I think it works somewhere in some places in France, I've got a good system going.
But here's the thing. Brighton. I love Brighton. My son is a Brighton boy and I loved going to Brighton. Creativity and the whole thing. They've got the big lemon buses. They're fabulous. They're bright yellow and they. I saw one. I saw a school bus here in Bute. Bright yellow buses for school, buses for hospitals.
My son and my blended family worked at Heathrow and they sent a shuttle bus round in the morning to take the workers into work. Do that for a hospital.
The QE's got five car. Car parks mostly still particulate pollution. It's not a good idea for a hospital. So that's why I say lots of things are nuanced and even what we're supposed to be talking about there are applications of AI if they were publicly democratically owned, that you could have the good things, more of the medical, less of the pinching the creativity stuff, but because of who owns them. The oligarch, the. The Silicon Valley. People don't have good intentions because, well,
[00:25:27] Speaker B: they're okay because they're multi billionaires. They're fine.
And they've got. They're building bunkers.
[00:25:34] Speaker A: They're building bunkers.
[00:25:35] Speaker B: They're going to be fine.
[00:25:37] Speaker A: Do you want to come out your bunker but your private militia that might not be feeling very good about having to be in the outside or something because you know they're talking about hiring private militias.
Would you want to come out to a degraded world? I mean what are they thinking about spending the rest of their.
[00:25:54] Speaker B: Well, this is the point. It comes down. The billionaires are not your friends. I know that some people fell for the Elon Musk stuff, but these people obviously don't have the. And you're Donald Trumps and people fell for that. These billionaires thinking that these rich old white male billionaires are somehow anti authority, anti the system, anti capitalism. They're outside the system and people fell for that. And that's not what's happening here. Nothing good seems to have happened from people falling for this stuff. If to wrap it up, is there any positive step steps if you were in charge, if you were in charge, what would you do?
We could complain about everything that's going wrong.
We could do that a day.
So is there anything that you would like to see change?
[00:26:54] Speaker A: Even that question about who's in charge?
The politics has been based on people who quite often go in with good intentions, even sometimes times. Jeremy Corbyn Sultana. I like Zach. I like Zach Polinski. He's kind of my favorite, you know, and the wee plumber from. From Manchester. But you go into a system that's so corrupted that it's hard to make a difference.
[00:27:18] Speaker B: It's a moral technique. The rattler. So who said when you try and change the system, it's not you, it's a system that changes you. Yeah.
[00:27:25] Speaker A: So in terms of who could be helping to run, I would might add the uncle kind of inter localism that communities could make decisions.
[00:27:34] Speaker B: Yeah, because a decision in Govan is completely different from a decision in Bute, for example.
[00:27:38] Speaker A: Yes. And that's like the idea of kind of regional. In fact, a woman, Barbara Williams, talks about bioregions instead of countries because when you look at it, countries are all fake. You know, the borders were colonialism really.
So what will Work in the north of Scotland wouldn't necessarily work work even something as simple as the bin hubs. I said well they might be working somewhere else but they're not going to work in government and they don't. So you've got to look at what.
[00:28:05] Speaker B: There's many schemes in Glasgow that I've lived in that just. They just don't even attempt it.
The recycling scenario just doesn't happen.
[00:28:15] Speaker A: I mean you get people. It sounds patronizing to talk about people who are left out, but people have been very left out of decision making and then they do this consultation which is a joke. I mean I can talk endlessly about the consultations about Elder Park Library being our new community centre and it's not. We've hardly any community space in Govan so there's hardly any spaces for people to come to.
[00:28:38] Speaker B: Am I correct? I've noticed the third space. So it's like it's basically you go to work or you go into your house and that seems to have been accelerated by the, the doom scrolling that we're all. We're all addicted to our smartphones now. So we're basically. We're in our house on our phone or we're at work and there's not or we're in the pub and there's not. Doesn't really seem to be anywhere community wise but obviously you do work with some good community because any people that are doing it right that you would want to shout out people who are
[00:29:10] Speaker A: doing it right are Sonny Govan.
[00:29:11] Speaker B: Rachel Sonny Govan.
[00:29:12] Speaker A: I've shout out to Sunnygovern Community Journalism. They were doing that just before I left talking to people about what they would like more of in the park or wherever. So bringing people into feeling that we bit empowered because they'll go to the forum because they're feeling disempowered.
So if you bring people, if you find the ways. I like the unemployed worker centers in the 80s because folk were out of work and unemployed worker centers sprung up. Warm spaces sprung up during.
[00:29:41] Speaker B: And the civil. The. The gas and Lycia bills. Citizens advice.
[00:29:46] Speaker A: Citizens advice.
[00:29:48] Speaker B: Citizens advice.
[00:29:49] Speaker A: It's quite hard to access.
[00:29:51] Speaker B: They're gone. I mean it's pretty much they've got one in the midst like it's impossible.
[00:29:55] Speaker A: Are you going to go for govern to there? Yeah.
[00:29:58] Speaker B: And also they don't have any kind of budget because I was actually offered a job by one of them but they said you just need to volunteer for 12 months, month or something like that.
[00:30:07] Speaker A: And then it became money advice when you maybe need more advice.
[00:30:12] Speaker B: I used to want the call center so I'd actually be really good at dealing with a gas and Lekki Ball. See, someone's having a problem, I would know how to speak to the person on the phone and.
Yeah, but anyway, I think this is. How long. How long have we done? Is it?
[00:30:25] Speaker A: I've got a beautiful thing to tell you.
[00:30:27] Speaker B: Okay, well, let's end it on a beautiful thing.
[00:30:29] Speaker A: Right, well, the really sad thing is I lost my daughter and she took her life and Ann round set up Chris's house because her son did that. She's got another beautiful thing. She's got a cafe, which is soft entry. You walk into the cafe, your head's busting, you feel like talking to yourself. You're not going to wander into your social work department and say that. So in Govan, in the bank of Scotland, the politicians want it to be a banking hub. Got one round the corner. Corner. Fine. Absolutely fine. But make a cafe, add zero waste good food, alternative to Greggs, sourdough breads and free soup. Because at Diggin we use the. The veg that's past its sale by date to make nice soup. So come in, get a bowl of soup. The markup on coffee would pay for the whole show. But also to have a place where people can come and say, I'm a bit fucked dinner. Can you help me out? And you would train people up on Lekki advice or fuel advice or money advice or did you know about samh? Samh is doing brilliant stuff at the nook.
[00:31:32] Speaker B: Or gambling advice.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: People just there to listen or to sign post if they need recovery services.
And that would be a lovely thing for govern. But wider than that, if we had public spaces where people could come together and help make the decisions about what should be happening. The relayed centre here on Bute is quite good, but it kind of could be better because it's mostly older people and I'm not into this. Older people go over there and young people go over there.
[00:32:03] Speaker B: I did actually have a conversation last week though, that they have amends afternoon and Fridays, which I thought was good because somebody posted is there anywhere for as mental health for men? And apparently Friday afternoons they do that or Friday mornings.
[00:32:17] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:32:18] Speaker B: So, yeah, we need more things like that.
[00:32:21] Speaker A: And those. Those guys that go out, they're not pastors, they go out in Dream Chapel. You know, the men matter people. Yeah, they're cool.
[00:32:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:28] Speaker A: Because men matter just as much as.
[00:32:29] Speaker B: Yes, men matters do. Great stuff.
[00:32:32] Speaker C: So that.
[00:32:32] Speaker A: That idea of people being encouraged enabled to begin to be thinking, thinking that they could be part of a decision making project.
I don't mean projects, that's not the right word. Decisions around what they want to see. Which going back to your idea, if AI could do the shit jobs that we don't want and free us up along with universal basic income as long it was not pegged at a very low level, you know, if it was enough for people to have fun with. But I'm worried about this. I mean already, you know there's this, oh, those on universal credit, they just smoke.
[00:33:13] Speaker B: That's the whole point of universal basic income would take away the fact that oh, they're getting 800 pounds a month for doing nothing but they're also getting 100 pound. So it's like what would you do with that? I know that I wouldn't just sitting there doing nothing, I'd want to do something. And then also you know that the way you were saying that, that like a nice space where people can go into get their soup and, and have somebody that is trained to say what is it that you like? Cuz every single person I've ever spoke to, you say what would you like to do? They don't know. You see when you see me, see when you dig a bit deeper, when you dig a little bit deeper. But what did you used to like to do when you were 13, 14? And it's like I've got a friend who, who wanted to do CRO, whatever croquet things and then one of our, one of her partners said that's a lot of shite. And that was it. The confidence went down and they never did it again. And I went when I dig deep, that's what I heard. I went, do you croquet?
She does her croquet.
[00:34:06] Speaker A: Right, here's another lovely example to wind up on. Apart from a cafe where people could come in and get lots of support and lots of good soup.
I used to do youth work and I worked with people from African conflict places. And so we had six African young people, various countries and we had five young people from Site Hill and this boy was headed into the young offenders for knife crime and he went, this was on the Alba Ventura, it was a youth yacht.
See by the end of the week, pulling together, putting the sails up and Big Kevin from the Maasai brilliant chef, right, so he's chopped me a knife. And one of the youth workers said watch him, he's getting done for nightcame. They let him use the knife appropriately. And see by the End of the week, Kevin and the boyfriend, Sight Hill. Can you remember his name? They were best pals on a ship where everybody had to pull together. That's what I mean. If you create opportunities for people to mix of different cultures, it begins to happen. Sight Hill used to have the site hill festival. 45 different nationalities and they used to have the Site Hill Festival where everybody came together.
The, the women for Sight Hill were going to book the Tom Jones Fan club twirling their knickers and my African pal said what's that all about? I said there's this singer called Tom Jones. Everybody used to say she thought it was the most hilarious thing. So know it was a real mixture. African drumming, Tom Jones fan club, you name it. You bring people together. Eating together is a lovely way to do it. We do that in government.
[00:35:48] Speaker B: We, we, we, we did that.
I went to sort of what's the, the Muslim celebration at the break.
[00:35:58] Speaker A: Eat.
[00:35:58] Speaker B: Break. Breaking the fast. The breaking the fast thing.
[00:36:01] Speaker A: Ramadan.
[00:36:01] Speaker B: Ramadan. Ramadan. It was a Ramadan. Yeah, yeah. Is that what it's called? The end of Ramadan you die? Yeah, yeah. So we, me and you went to that and it was, it was amazing. The food was amazing and it was just a nice, nice environment and. And everyone was just, it was just, it was just, it was just nice. It was just a nice.
[00:36:16] Speaker A: Well maybe a wee shout out for Galgale because we're kind of there.
[00:36:20] Speaker B: Shout out.
And Galgal also my father when he, it was just an issue, he went there too late and has a. And his illness because my father was a roof tailor by trade then he worked in a factory with his hands. So he was really good at that kind of thing. He would have loved that. But unfortunately when the time he went to Kalga it was kind of too far gone. But if he'd been signposted to that earlier, before he'd even been diagnosed with anything, he would have loved that. But at that point it was just the job center trying to make him get a Facebook page so they could apply for jobs. And it was like he'd been working since he was 8, was unemployable by that point.
But he could have, he could have totally have added to the community cuz he was a funny man who had a big heart. So. But he, there was no, he was never sign posted to why don't you do something positive with the local community? So I think that's a really good way to end it on.
[00:37:11] Speaker A: Although I would also say this, that what was I thinking There AI cannibaled boats, you know, they can't do that.
Ancient woodcraft.
So there's a lot of shit that AI will never be able to do. And creating the opportunities where people can bring back the old skills. And that's what Galgale do, because they don't just do boat building, they do weaving and iron work.
[00:37:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:42] Speaker A: So creating those opportunities for people to spend their time fruitfully and let AI do the shit jobs, that would be better.
[00:37:52] Speaker B: And I think that's exactly what we're wanting, is we're not. We're not being anti AI, we're not being lud dikes against technology. We just want to know who's in charge of the technology and why you building a couple of hundred in our most beautiful spots and destroying the nature and not giving us anything back. Because this. This thing that worries me, this is. It reminds me of Keir Starmer. He didn't get elected because he promised us anything good. He's the first politician that didn't have to lie about going to do something good. He just said, I'm not a Tory. You know, he didn't actually say, I'm going to do this, this will be good, and then didn't do it. He just said, I'm no. A Conservative and he is a. He is a fucking Tory.
[00:38:33] Speaker A: Andy Bum. Andy Bun isn't going to be any better. And anyway, we better not get into the politics of it all.
[00:38:39] Speaker B: I think we did it. Poor shouts to Martin on the cam.
We said that be five minutes,
[00:38:45] Speaker A: me and him.
[00:38:46] Speaker B: I don't know how long that was, but you can edit.
[00:38:49] Speaker A: Edit.
[00:38:49] Speaker B: Let's kind of.
[00:38:50] Speaker C: That.
[00:38:51] Speaker B: Yeah, bye.
[00:38:58] Speaker C: Do you think AI will help or hinder social inequality? Yeah, I think it'll make it much, much worse. I think it'll make it much, much work. Why is that? Because the people who own the machines are going to use the machines to replace people and then. And then, you know, then you won't have a job. You know, loads of people are probably going to lose their jobs. It's just going to drive wages down. But it's super interesting, right, because you have a lot of technologies. It does improve productivity, economic productivity, but it does it in such a way that it only benefits the owners of the machines and it hurts the workers. But, you know, if, if we own. If we. If we each had the. I'm going to get called a communist again. If we had ownership of these resources, ordinary people, then we could use them to our benefit. But the truth is, the people who own these things are going to use these things to drive your wages down, to take your job, and that's going to be worse, going to be bad for inequality. Honestly, I think there's a horrible laziness sometimes from these tech bros. They're like, oh, tech's going to make the world a better place. As if all of those generations of poverty, desperate poverty and fighting and fighting for a better share didn't happen. You know, you don't fight for your share, you won't get your share. Go look at what life is like in Nigeria and Brazil and India for new people. Yeah. That will happen here if we don't fight. Yeah. It's not just technology won't fix. It's not Star Trek.
