B-Side: Handle with Care

0:00Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities, so do like I did, and have one of your assistance assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do at MintMobile.com slash switch. Up front payment of $45 for three month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra, feeful terms at MintMobile.com. Defty Leader of Reform UK Richard Tyce, very good morning to you Mr. Tyce. What did you make of the Prime Minister's speech at Labour Party conference yesterday? It's been described by some of one of the great political speeches of all time. Good morning. I'm on Victoria Gardens. The place is deserted. Even the birds have fled the country. The plains overhead are taking people trying to leave the hard socialism that is coming down. The track has burned and takes us back to the sort of the carnage of socialist chaos.

1:06Welcome to Quiet Ride, beside for the stories, arguments and rabbit holes that didn't quite fit on the Thursday jet. I'm Alex Andreev. And I'm Naomi Smith. This is where we put the needle down and go a little deeper. And I'm Kenny, I'll be here to lift the arm if things get a little bit too scratchy. Have you been following the fair ford? I have. It's wild. They called the police on themselves. What is going on? I know. And there are so many conspiracy theories that the best of times and this is manner from heaven for them. I cannot work it out at all. I mean, presumably if it was a genuine, like terrorist plot, I can't see how they could be released on bail. I mean, under the terrorist act powers, you can hold people for up to a month and then extend with no charge. One line is that they were just out to nick a bit of a diesel. That's why they're ballaclavas on and a fake sign on the side of the van, etc. Then the other people,

2:10the other theories going around are that they maybe did not know they were acting on behalf of a foreign state or whatever and were just sort of driving something. And then as they get closer to an actual airbase, the penny drops and they think, oh, shit. Better call this one in. The thing has got me amused mostly is watching Farage, explored onto the scene, go, why are we told about what's going on? And then, really, you're silenced this sentence, people quietly say, mate, mate, you need to wind your neck in on this one. You do nobody knows what's going on. Alex Trump wasn't quite about it either. We've been watching these guys for a long time. Like, does he accidentally revealed that they've actually been watching another group of guys or did he just make the whole thing up? I know. Like, what are they supposed to do with that now? If they end up saying, no, this was a false alarm, they will make the president of the United States look like a complete tit right. But opinion at there, news just then, Burnham has said Iran was

3:11behind Ferd. Okay. We will say more in due course, but we can confirm we believe Iran to play the part. Oh dear. Now, yesterday we launched into Andy Burnham's emotional and ambitious address to the Labour conference, Liverpool in a more general way. We talked about the European Union direction of travel. We talked about electoral reform. Well, today we're going to look at one particular aspect of that speech in a bit more detail. Social care, indeed, a national care service. Little says more about a nation's values than its ability and willingness to care for its most vulnerable. So we wanted to share our own experiences with the care system, talk about the what, the why, the when and discuss the thorny trade-offs required to improve it. Andy Burnham used his first conference speech as Prime Minister in Liverpool to go big on social care,

4:12promising a national care service for England that he called as significant as the creation of the NHS itself. Free at the point of use, no care charges coming out of your basic state pension and care about people not profit. It was personal to, was warm words for the carers who looked after his late father and a blunt warning that broken social care could break the NHS. There is only one real answer. A person-centered, high-quality care service that starts in the home. A system in the best traditions of this party where everyone contributes and everyone is covered. Free at the point of use and no care charges paid out of your basic state pension.

5:19Care that is about people not profit, which gives peace of mind over care needs in later life, which protects people's homes and their savings and gives proper recognition to the care workers, we will all need to rely on at some point in our lives. Conference, this is the national care service we will fill. So he wants to pay for it partly by changing the pension's triple lock from 2030, with the Institute for Fiscal Studies already saying that won't be enough. An estimates putting the bill north of £18 billion a year by 2035. None of it arrives before the next election with Louise Casey's review June next summer and the whole thing going into Labour's manifesto. So is this the boldest pledge of his premiership to date or just a very long promissory note?

6:21Let's talk about our own experiences first. Alex, you nursed your own mother much at the time, but she did understand it, have some care. How did you feel as he thanked very powerfully the care workers who often get completely forgotten, particularly in horrible debates about immigration, very little thanks given to them by people in leadership positions? And who were very much part of the group were banging up pots and pans for during the pandemic, of course. They were care and workers that had to basically live there away from their family because they couldn't risk cross-infecting. And they do told for really quite shitty money. In a way, I think it's a vocation. It's something that no amount of money can motivate you to do well. I think you have to have a lot of people in respect for older people

7:22building to you in a way to do this job. So that's not to diminish the work, it's too elevated, you know, to exalt it, to say that they do this immensely difficult thing for very little money. I mean, it's hard enough to care for your own loved ones. I cannot think how I could muster the energy and patience and love it takes to do that kind of thing that I did for my mother to do it for a complete stranger. But what I did see because we would always have a sort of live-in person that, you know, took care of the cleaning and the cooking and things like that. And sat with mum in the evening and watched a bit of tele. What I could see is that very, very soon they developed a very real relationship with her that was loving and that was quite filial in a way. It's magical. There is a group of people out there who can connect with someone

8:25they're looking after even when they're not pre-connected. When that person hasn't charged their battery with five decades of love that you then expend to look after them for a few years. I don't seem, can't understand how they managed to do it other than it's a sort of super power. Kenny Scotland already has a much better care system than England and Wales. What's your experience being with it and what lessons could Scotland give England on how to make these changes? Well, I think we've covered this in the show before and the feedback from my friends in Scotland was like access is better up here but by no means is it a perfect system. I think the overarching lesson is that across the UK care isn't where it needs to be. What's, you know, not beat about a bush. This is something that potentially impacts every single one of us. Those of us who've got parents, those who are starting to get older and may have to rely on the care system themselves.

9:28Those are the disabilities or children that have gone far in the disabled. It's huge and the NHS is there to pick up a lot of the time when the unexpected happens. A lot of hospitals are full of people who have been caught by a surprise. The care system is there for something that is just over their eyes and for so many people, for so many families what they like or not. It doesn't come as nearly as much of a surprise as a lot of what the NHS feels with. And that's part of the issue, I think. It's yes, it's a funding issue. Yes, it's a political issue. There's also this idea, of course, so that we're quite rubbish in this country and the Western fact, dealing with end of life. We've had discussions about, you know, many different aspects of this on the show before and there's a deep discomfort about talking about any aspects of end of life care that never mind sort of these very specific ones. There is something profoundly upside down about the value that we place on that work when

10:32we're dealing with people who are at their most frightened often, the most confused often, and certainly when you're talking about end of life at their most vulnerable. So I wait with interest to see some of the meat on the bones of this proposal because this is a big one. Having put it up there, centre stage is not going to be able to back away from this one because we've all got a vested interest in this one working, haven't we? My own father became on well with hospitalised during Covid, not with Covid, and had to be released from hospital because of pressures on beds and had to go into a care home because there was nothing available that would have allowed us to care for him safely at home. And the lack of dignity that was bestowed on him in the last months of his life was just unreal and the lack of agency. Now look, this is locked down, it's very, very different, but

11:38my mum is small, my dad was big, he was going to need a hoist, he was going to need pretty much around the clock care and nothing prepared us for the expense and the cost. You are looking at probably a minimum of £2,000 a week for residential care in a home, not in your own home, and that's without dementia, Alzheimer's, that adds an extra layer of cost because of the extra things that the home has to do to keep that patient safe, that resident safe, because they can walk off or get lost and hurt themselves or drink bleach because they mistake it for water or whatever, there are horrendous accidents that happen a lot of the time. So I welcome anything that is going to help families care properly at home for their loved ones. I think that is critical, because of course then that will reduce the numbers going into acute care in hospital,

12:42because if you are able to have more professional support at home in your own home, that isn't I wateringly expensive to the point that you just can't meet it, then the patient themselves will be healthier, they are less likely to develop other complications that would then require re-hospitalisation. I think it's wonderful that he has made it such a prominent pillar of his pitch. It does release significant resource and don't forget, don't forget though people right now are paying from their basic state pension or with a bit of a top up for care costs. So at the moment you are means tested and your pension is included and we've been through this journey as a family, you know it's hard for people to afford care costs, but it's hard as well for a lot of pensioners isn't it and they will hear okay 15 billion pounds that was meant to come to us that we were expecting in the years ahead is now going to go to this service into the future that pensioners will be paying. Well that's not quite the right way to look at it because I'm not trying to look

13:44at it. But that's how they were looking at it. They were looking at it. They were looking at the triple lock completely, I'm adjusting it. Now I know that might sound like a politician's word, but what that means is rather than every year the highest of earnings prices or 2.5% which is the triple lock you have prices and 2.5% and then earnings over a longer period of time. The triple lock has taken the pension to a record level or will do by 2030 because it's having that effect of really driving it up. So it will be a record level in 2030 and having got it there what I'm proposing sustains it at that level but doesn't carry on the same rate of growth is a really important point. Can I take you can I take you on an ancient Greece slight digression very briefly here we go so we expect nothing less. You have the sort of two models quite prominently. Athens venerated people who had considered you know smart even if they had a physical difference in there are many

14:50many famous examples. Socrates being one of them and venerated its elderly as a matter of fact the duty to look after the elder members of your family was enshrined in law in ancient Athens. The flip side is a society like Sparta which used to throw children babies born with a physical deformity they used to throw them into a ravine called kiavas. Literally they would purge anyone that they considered would not make a good warrior. And so that's the question you know if the question is do you want to be civilized Athens or do you want to be savage Sparta I can tell you that the ideas and principles of only one of those two places has survived and done well through history because it does say a lot about society I think how it treats people who are unable to look after themselves

15:51at the point they're unable to look after themselves and it's a philosophical stance that goes way beyond how you treat those particular people it humanizes and civilizes your entire society to not do so does the reverse. Hey Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile now I don't know if you've heard but Mint's premium wireless is $15 a month but I'd like to offer one other perk we have no stores that means no small talk. Crazy weather we're having no it's not it's just weather it is an introverts dream give it a try at mint mobile dot com slash switch up from payment of $45 for three month plan $15 per month equivalent required new customer offer for three months only then full price plan options available taxes and fees extra see mint mobile dot com. Quiet Ryan Alex world agreed this needs

16:51to happen talk us through the triple lock the impact on pensioners like the detail of how burnem is proposing to fund this and a bit more detail about whether or not you think it can be done within that or whether there may be something different that should be done. Look it can't just be done from the triple lock relaxing the the triple lock I think it's very misunderstood both as a policy and what's happened so it's worth just spending a couple of minutes talking about it it was introduced in 2011 it was actually a liberal democrat policy yet another occasion where the tour is basically stole the policy owned the policy and pretty much exclude their coalition partners from any credit for the policy it very much became a conservative policy the triple lock the idea was this pensions had been falling behind compared to other earnings so in 2011 when the triple lock was

17:55launched the state pension was around 16% of average earnings and the policy was meant to ratchet up basically the state pension to a particular point that point was never explicitly discussed but it is worth saying that it was always a limited time policy because mathematically if you allow this policy to run forever then you get to the point where pensions are equal to average earnings and that is the entire state budget so plainly there is a lesser level at which you are meant to stop this relentless ratchet so what the triple lock did is every April it looked the state pension and increased by either 2.5% or CPI inflation if it was higher or earnings rise

19:00if that was higher the rise of average earnings this means that over the last few years you know it's become some very generous increases when inflation was roaring away pensions increased by 10.1% that April because that was the highest measure and because there is a lag in the economy you know wage is always rise as a delayed reaction to high inflation then the year afterwards it rose by 5% based on earnings even though inflation had plummeted and so it does this thing where it's constantly rasteting up and there's no taking back as it were now there may be an argument for not stopping that in 2030 there may be an argument for saying no it should reach x percentage of average earnings by 2030 by the way it will be a third of average earnings so it will have doubled more than doubled you know as a proportion compared to what it was

20:04so like I said there may be an argument for saying no let's keep it for another five years for another 10 years until pensions are 50% of average earnings make that argument but don't make the argument no you can't touch the triple lock it was never meant to be a policy that would last forever and what it's been replaced by still means pensions continue to rise by either 2.5% or inflation and there is still a link to earnings in that if they ever fall below the level of which they are in 2030 as a percentage so if they fall below 30 odd percent then they will get another ratchess to sort of make them up to that so there's even an extra safety to to make sure they never fall below that one third level that's what's happening it's it's also worth saying that this affects women disproportionately and that may be something that I think the Labour Party has

21:05to reckon with because it's disproportionately mostly women who rely on the state pension as their only source of income I wondered about the earnings side of it I know he has notion he kept a link to earnings but I also think it's really important for the elderly to have a stake in everybody else's earning potential right I think that is helpful and so I wondered if he dropped that one rather than one of the other two locks because the other you know it raises more money that way the 15 billion or whatever the figure is have you done any looking into the numbers of what each raised yeah no I mean the problem the problem is this okay as the pool of people working gets smaller the pool of people needing a pension gets larger you cannot continue to raise the pension as a proportion of average earnings the you know the base will get too small and eventually

22:12that top heavy structure will topple and so it's a hard one like you know all those things and I have some time some time for the argument that Sharon Graham is making the Unite General Secretary although I have no time for her manner of constantly heckling the government it just seems she just seems a very destructive force in every conversation she enters in my view but I have some time for what she's saying because she's saying don't pull that lever there are other levers you can pull the 10% of this country or the 1% of this country they are there are rich people and super rich people that you can go to for this money which is the green policy line that that that grantees come out to attack yeah sure but the problem is that those super rich people still get the state pension so either you have to move into a situation where you say we have to

23:14address this maybe via taxation we have to address this maybe via means testing but if you have a universal benefit like that and you see that the demographic curve of the population means that you have an ever shrinking group of people supporting an ever expanding one there needs to be some rebalancing especially when looking after that larger group of people means the younger base are having fewer children they're having fewer children they're having them later so you're not just relying on a small base you're actively shrinking it I get that there are a lot of pensioners who are very poor I get that but that is not the typical pensioner and it drives an crazy that that is presented as if it's every pensioner actually nearly two thirds of people retire before their actual pension age 69.0 something percent of people over 60 own their own home

24:24when you go to over 70 you get to 70 or to percent of people own their own home outright so they have no mortgage no rent no nothing so you can't keep looking at this model where you know someone who is ill or someone who has lost their job through no no fault of their own gets no operating every year even though their expenses are objectively much higher than someone who is retired you can't keep ratcheting one bit of the welfare state because it's a vote winner while ignoring all the rest you have to do some rebalancing starting or growing your own business can be intimidating and lonely at times your to-do list may feel endless with new tasks and lists can easily begin to overrun your life so finding the right tool that not only helps you out but simplifies everything as a built-in business partner can be a game changer for millions of businesses that tool is Shopify Shopify is the commerce

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26:32Ryan Reynolds here from int mobile I don't know if you knew this but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying it's not just for celebrities so do like I did and have one of your assistance assistance switch you to mint mobile today I'm told it's super easy to do at mint mobile.com slash switch upfront payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first three months only then full price plan options available taxes and fees extra default terms at mint mobile.com quiet quiet Kenny you're down on the south coast of England you've got a bit of a a Tory reform liberal labor fight in that area. Yes a zoo is the war you're looking for. Quite a few MLP predicting a reform gain in X-Turis and X-Meth you have quite a few retired people living not too

27:33far away some very popular areas for retirees in your neighborhood tell us about how you think the rights react to this and and whether it might actually cause quite a bit of division within the right. I think there's some very grown up thinking we'll have to be done at right of centre and I also think that quite a lot of people who occupy that political space will secretly be quite glad Barnum has pulled a pin on this idea because you know as Alex illustrated there the ratchet effect was absolutely unsustainable in the medium to long term and there are two conservative instincts colliding here the first one quite obviously says don't touch pensioners and then on the other side there's an instinct that says look the state can't end as the ratchet upspend the commitments regardless of demographics so there's a real tension there and you know if you're a conservative the triple lock is actually quite difficult is a bit famed from a small state fiscally conservative

28:37perspective because of that ratchet effect you know IFS regards Barnum's new mechanism proposed mechanism as a substantial improvement so you can imagine was there any difficulty younger fiscal conservatives perhaps thinking hang about that liberal lock might actually have a point here and also the libertarian wing the libertarian wing is the right that are often a bit younger you know a lot of them now have their own shows on gven news um oh you're not going to cry Tom I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not but they are that generation that are struggling to get on the housing ladder absolutely that have seen social mobility go in the wrong direction for their generation and they they really like this I mean they they might not have done it in the same way but they are going to have an internal battle with their own elder statesmen over which votes at pooled should we be prioritising here yeah and there's a big jump to be done politically in moving

29:38in really pooling the younger generations into this debate properly in other words not framing the debate something that helps people who reach and end their lives but framing the debate as being about something that helps the families and those who are left to care for people who are reaching the end of their lives is a very different way of framing the issue that we've got here and that sort of holistic approach I think is going to be absolutely central to to making a you know making a decent fist of this let's be quite clear I mean but Bevan and his and his you know um yeah I'm delighted you went to Bevan because that's what I wanted to say what you know what Bevan is saying is that this money will be used to begin to build a national care service you know the the NHS from beverage report to actually launching and launching as a much smaller operation than it became was six years you know six years it took to to get to that stage so I think people shouldn't think that you know next year or the year after the next election suddenly

30:45there will be a national care service in place it will involve small pilots and you know collaborations with local authorities with private companies would to find a way of doing it I think but at least this time round we're not coming off the back of a world war you know except the don't jinx it Kenny bloody no no no no no and I do ask colleagues in the media again can we not let the country look at this in a quite clear-eyed way without all of the the hype and the sort of the the overriding of some of these issues on this issue I just ask it again on this issue please can we have a factual debate can we allow people to weigh up the different options that Louise might put forward and then just come to a considered view based on those facts is that too much to ask I don't think it should be too much to ask because I think the public will give us their view they'll make it really clear what they feel they can accept and what they

31:47can't but what we won't get to that point if there's all of this stuff swirling round and everyone frightened about everything that just won't get us there so we're all in this all in this together do you remember when he launched this in July and I asked you about a teni because he was asking the media quite directly can we please have a grown-up conversation about this and your response was not a chance it's sad though that we can't have that conversation because if you ask every single person in Westminster behind the scenes whether they are Tory or even reform everyone agrees that the triple lock will have to go at some point and that social care needs sorting and yet you still have the sun and the telegraph and the express and the male just going bananas about this they've got a difficult job ahead of them though those titles that you mentioned

32:50particularly the print audiences the whose titles are very very old as a group of people so there's a careful line to be trodden here from a media perspective in terms of not alienating your own core leadership completely by sticking it on the table I think actually Barnum probably will help turn this into something that people can have a grown-up discussion about because this stuff now goes serious and I have to say the only polling is incredibly encouraging yeah that is isn't it to a to a station I didn't expect so salvation did a decent sample and asked people what they thought about changing the triple lock in order to begin to fund national care and the total is net approve or net support 64% net oppose 15% only so that's a plus 49 support and obviously you get some variation in terms of age but actually even the 55 to 64 group

33:58is 61 to 16% in favor and even the 65 of course even the 65 plus group is 55% in favor and only 27% against which I which I find very encouraging and this is the genius of how he approached it tying the things together you will need care and you need a pension that means you can look after yourself in your old age I think tying them together was a very smart political move and more of what we need to see with you go back a year or two and you have the Stammer administration on the one hand saying we are going to raise national insurance contributions on lower paid employees oh and by the way we want loads of young people to get off benefits and get into work get loads of disabled people off benefits and into work while taking out the exact level of job that would probably be most open to them because of the market reaction you have from taxing

34:59them a paid job so here we now have a prime minister who is being strategic and connecting dots across the issues that need to be grappled with and then there you have it you can sell it to people in a way that they guess it winter fuel no you know not not the right way to go about it as much as I do agree with the policy as devised but the execution of it appalling and he has learned from that and done something really quite different and smart I want to get on now to you mentioned beverage a couple of times both both of you and I often think Labour is at its best when it borrows from liberal ideas beverage a great liberal of course who wrote about those five giants far forward to a lesser great liberal a Davy has who pooted he has said and you know this is a man who has had to you know deal with the care system all his life really both with his parents and his children I made social care a very big plank of his own leadership saying that this can't wait like this

36:00is bad because Burnham isn't doing it more quickly does this smack of somebody just being like well jealous that somebody else is getting to deliver on the thing he really wants to do or is he right to say no this needs to be even more urgent you know fine in principle but don't wait so long there is a balance to be struck between doing things quickly and doing things well and what Andy Burnham is going after is sort of large scale reform that fixes this one and for all I don't think it's mutually exclusive with taking action now to sort things out in the care sector as it is now as a matter of fact I think the government is doing quite a lot about that the maintenance announcement about salaries of care workers that will help with a massive amount of vacancies that they're on the care sector and a path from care into the NHS again that will help with recruiting because that's the biggest problem the care sector is facing right now with

37:03immigration falling off a cliff they really just haven't got the stuff and so I think at Davy is wrong to suggest that doing a big reform that necessarily will take time and thought and planning to do well is an alternative to doing stuff to alleviate pressure now I think both can be done at the same time so I think he's making a category error in a strange way and maybe there is a political motivation in there to say something different to anything different because at the moment one does get the sense from both the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party that Andy Burnham is kind of taking their lunch money you know they're going to bleed all those voters back to Labour that they managed to win and we've talked about it before in the show we must learn to take guess for an answer on the left you know in the way that the rights you

38:06very effectively are like okay well look it ain't how I did on it but it's just so much better than what we had we'll get in behind it and champion it and all the rest of it. I don't know no I mean I've seen quite a lot of comrades when the triple lock was introduced recognised very clearly as a sort of bribe to Tory voters and then its maintenance was recognised that's very much a political thing and we're saying talking about generational fairness and now suddenly they're all for the the triple lock and they're all tearing their garments about Andy Burnham doing away with the triple lock but it just feels brittle and desperate to be honest. I agree and actually I wanted to ask you both about that but Kenny maybe maybe you first. Yesterday on the show we talked a lot about Andy Burnham's pluralism the cross-party consensus building he wants to do for major change. Kenny Badenock has already said the consensus won't participate in his cross-party approach on electoral reform which I hasten to add is madness

39:11because PR might actually save their bacon. Given that we've already had Zack Plancky and David kind of poo this do you think the cross-party approach will survive through social care? I wonder whether or not we'll see two sorts of cross-party interaction on this issue. One will be very performative and we'll see it large at question time and we'll see it in headlines and another will take place in the corridors of Westminster behind the scenes where the grown-ups will have discussions and where decisions will actually be made with more than lip service being paid to alternative use as well because at some point this will have to be dealt with by any party that hopes to have the big job into the days. So we've got the performance stuff happening at the moment. I'm disappointed by it. I'm not entirely surprised by it but this was one of those occasions where I thought it would have been okay for people to shut up for a

40:15week or two and have something banal and vanilla to say to move the issue on because it's not as if Barnum isn't going to have a whole bunch of issues between now and whenever delivery of this huge plan happens but a little bit of it's just geese piece. To be honest or they could genuinely engage that's also an option right they could genuinely engage so that they co-own this thing so that they go to the next election and it's not Barnum's big offering because they've all agreed to do that completely actually defends this as an electoral policy for labour but they're not smart enough to think strategically they just think they just think of you know because they're thinking they're not thinking two months ahead or two years ahead they're thinking what will please the telegraph editor right now. Here's what to look out for. The point where instead of just throwing bricks at Barnum another party leader starts to come up with viable alternative suggestions.

41:18In other words Barnum sets the debate or an issue that he feels confident talking about and the other party leaders are forced to tell us what they would do because very quickly I think doing nothing is not going to be an answer that's going to sound like like you're listening to somebody who wants to be Prime Minister for example it's not enough it's not going to be enough to go minimum and minimum and nothing happening here so watch out for that one there's a series of stages that we go through with big policy stuff like this and this is really the we're at the people are in a white heat at the first stage right now but we're relying on there being off-crowlops who who have positions of authority in other parties to do the right thing and I think you'll see it happen it's such a big issue it's the opportunity is there for somebody to really make a name for themselves by doing the right thing. Well we've got a by-election next week which is a great red vibe so yeah I would also ask a bit like a personal plea to people to not compare

42:19the absolute amount of the state pension across different countries. It's not a helpful measure purchasing power maybe disposable income maybe there are loads of better ways of seeing where we are and the truth is that yes on this the UK has in almost everything else believes itself to be much more generous than it actually is but you cannot compare the absolute amount of the state pension to I don't know country put it on the table and look at a country like Switzerland where everything costs 60% more and where there is no healthcare provision you have to pay for a doctor and say oh there's so much more generous with their pensions because the outgroings are insane you can't put it on the table and compare it to I don't know France where most people rent or Germany where most people rent to a situation where in this country most people by the age of 70 own their home are cried you can't even compare it to places like Greece where you need a brown envelope with

43:25loads of cash to even get into hospital even though it's meant to be a national health service but you have to grease every fucking pound with a bride and so it's just not a helpful if there are better measures for doing that you know me you mentioned your dad a lot he features prominently in you're thinking in your politics how much did Burnham's dad shape this part of his speech this part of his offering immensely I cried when he hugged his mom outside Downing Street on the day he moved in and again yesterday when he walks off stage and embraces her and he lost his dad in between those two moments and his dad was too ill of course to come and see him get the keys to numbers 10 and it was palpable in sort of every breath and it was sincere because he actually sort of said

44:34you know my doubles and perfect and that is very true and I always think that the obituaries I most enjoy reading are the ones that aren't just forning that we'll talk about the whole person the complete character often a brilliant person but who also had these failings or foibles or difficult characteristics and so when Burnham sort of he was only like a couple of words that he slipped in there it just made it feel like he had a very real sense of who his dad was and how much his dad had helped show both his parents have helped shape the man that he is today you know you could feel that this was a man who knew his parents were proud of him and that is wonderful and I'm fortunate enough to have been in the same position and after my dad died people said oh no you must remember you know he was very proud of you and I'm like I bloody know he was he didn't stop banging on about it we did not have that kind of clear we would have to tell each other we loved each other 10 times a day you know I remember going to university and a friend saying to me oh I've

45:39got to have got to ring my parents tonight it's like my fortnightly check in and I was like what if my dad hasn't texted me but half seven I have to ring my mom to make sure he's all right you know so so you know that that felt very real to me I'm sure that his experience of dealing with somebody you know at their end of life stage with a progressive and degenerative and difficult illness will have had an immeasurable impact on his determination to sort this out once and for hmm when my mom died the thing that I didn't expect was how much I would miss telling her about my successes yeah how much I would miss the person that I wanted most to be proud of me yeah being there to be proud of me yeah and and it can be a powerful driving force I think and I'm glad that he ignores it do we have a call to action yes so if today's episode has got you

46:40thinking you can actually have your say Louise Casey's commission the one that Burnham is waiting for is running something called the big conversation on care and it is open to anyone in England head over to kccommission.co.uk forward slash big conversation we will leave that link in the show notes you register and then you either post your own idea in a sentence starting we should or you get to vote on other people's good ideas it takes about five minutes to do and if you want to say something on the big money question the funding phase opens after November so bookmark that and come back to it. Quiet Brian. LinkedIn is pretty amazing at helping you grow your small business we cannot make your email response time faster we can help you sell market and hire in one place we cannot help you find space for your three desk drinks why do you have three and while we

47:42can't help you find the perfect volume for your presentation video LinkedIn can help you find the perfect audience for your business grow your small business on LinkedIn learn more at linkedin.com slash small business and now it's time to bring you some uplifting news that will hopefully brighten your day or at least give you something to talk about down the pub let's grin and share it. Penny what have you got up your sleeve to make a smile? Well I met all the terrifying events around in that middle east flight drama this week I'll put another astonishing airplane story but this one didn't really make the headlines so it's about furries. I told you figured me again today's grand ishtheria is not about furries or cruising

48:51at 36,000 feet it's actually about a small plane that crashed peak a few days ago into a cornfield in Wisconsin now there were four people on board and the first rescuers to reach them well they also fell out of the sky this happened on sunday near a place called East Troy when three skydivers preparing for a jump saw a small plane disappear behind trees and they realized it had crashed so they asked their pilot to get them as close as possible to the area where the plane had vanished they jumped out they parachute it down and they went looking for their and because this story is apparent to be scripted by hollywood it timed out two the skydivers had previously warped as emergency medical technicians the universe does its thing there was just one farther problem the corn in the field was tall in fact it was so tall that they couldn't actually find the plane. Ah so forget this one of them decided to play a game called Marco Polo are you familiar with Marco Polo? Oh yeah. All right so for those that don't know

49:52Marco Polo it's often played in American swimming pools but where one child shouts Marco and they've got a blindfold on and everybody else shouts Polo and the person with the blindfold on follows the replies to find somebody you can take so these parachutists when I wandering around a field shouting Marco Marco Marco and somebody on the plane actually shouted Polo back at them so it worked the skydivers found the wreckage they gave first aid to ninja passenger and then they were able to stay with the group until the actual emergency services turned up on old-fashioned trucks all four people aboard the plane survived and they're all expected to be okay so there you go sometimes everything is going tits up help could literally fall from the sky and play games with you never give up. It's truly the word that's really nice. I thought at one point you're gonna say they someone decided to like heat up the corn to turn it into popcorn until they fell down. Does

50:55the Americans love popcorn right? Sorry about the bullet forms. I guess I'm salted stuff. That is why I'm talking. I'm talking. I'm gonna say even the other weird airplane story that's going on even that is quite a grin and share it actually in that. It is sort of isn't it? There were two people on the plane that were basically flying to the other station to take the plane back the next day that managed to lift the nose up and prevent the plane from crashing and then landed it safely and no one actually died which is nothing short of incredible. I used to have I used to have a very good I mean he's still around he's just not a pilot anymore because they retire they tend to retire quite early but one of my best friends was a pilot for Olympic then they do and he used to tell me that airline pilots get very well and they make their entire salary

51:58on one or two flights a year when you're actually needed and it's completely true. It's like most of the time you do nothing. Thank you Kenny and listeners if you spot any particularly grin worthy stories out there do share them with us at quietriaport at gmail.com so that we can bring them to an even wider audience. And that is that for today's B-Side. Huge thanks to all of you out there for joining us today. If you can help support the show head over to keodashify.com slash quietriaport and for a five or a seven month you can help us keep bringing the show free to everyone at the same time regardless of their ability to pay. We'll be back on Sunday with our more relaxed smacking of the political yaking and with a date to be announced for our next online Ask Us Anything Live Show just for our backers to do go and click that link that Alex just wants to be there. I do love those. Cannot really do ask us anything do you think?

53:02They do and this time it's going to be all about furrying at 36,000 feet isn't Alex. I bet you they will want to know the joke with a grandma. Alex. That's Alex riskably beeped out. That's going to be a 30-pilamon subscription to hear that particular nuggets. Listen out there, we love you all more than Andy Barnum loves taking a bus to watch flipping Everton play. Quiet. Quiet. Quiet riots and audio production from Cooler Heads. Written produced by Alexander Miami Smith and Kenny Campbell. Music by Mariana Sanchita artwork by Simonießen Elliott and edited by me Alex Reece.