Vaccination greatly reduces transmission, and two doses provide a very high degree of protection against serious illness and death. But there are still millions of younger adults who have not been vaccinated, and sadly a proportion of the elderly and vulnerable may still succumb even if they have had two jabs. And that's why we're so concerned by the Delta variant that is now spreading faster than the third wave that was predicted in the February roadmap. So we're currently on a trajectory which is worse than that which was predicted in the February roadmap. Obviously, if we stuck to the February roadmap, we would be removing all restrictions on the 21st of June. In terms of the practical consequences of the Delta variant and the fact that we have more cases than had been predicted, here's what Boris Johnson had to say about the planned reopening on the 21st of June. Today, I cannot say that we have met all our four tests for proceeding with step four on June the 21st. I think it is sensible to wait just a little longer. By Monday the 19th of July, we will aim to have double-jabbed around two-thirds of the adult population, including everyone over 50, all the vulnerable, all frontline health and care workers, and everyone over 40 who received their first dose by mid-May. And to do this, we will now accelerate the second jabs for those over 40, just as we did for the vulnerable groups, so they get the maximum protection as fast as possible. And we will bring forward our target to give every adult in this country a first dose by the 19th of July. That is, including young people over the age of 18 with 23 and 24-year-olds invited to book jabs from tomorrow. So we reduce the risk of transmission among the groups that mix the most. So that all makes quite a lot of sense. We didn't pass the first four tests, although there were only four tests. So there is a four-week delay before nightclubs and the like reopen. That will happen on the 19th of July, and that will be after everyone has had their first dose of the vaccine or at least has had the chance to have their first dose of the vaccine, and all over 50s have had a double dose. The good news there, if you are 23 or 24, is that from tomorrow you'll be able to book your vaccine. Historically, you can normally book it as soon as the announcement happens. So maybe if you are in those age groups, check out the website as soon as we go off air. Now, despite the delay from removing most of the remaining restrictions, there were some exceptions. We will hold off step four openings until July 29th, except for weddings that can still go ahead with more than 30 guests provided social distancing remains in place, and the same will apply to weeks. And we will continue to pilot events such as Euro 2020 and some theatrical performances. We will monitor the position every day, and if after two weeks we have concluded that the risk has diminished, then we reserve the possibility of proceeding to step four and a full opening sooner. So weddings and wakes are back on. I mean, they were allowed anyway, but the limit is gone. The limit will now be instead of the hard and fast 30 people. It will be however many people at the venue can accommodate while respecting social distancing. So it will still be, I suppose, fewer people will be able to come to your wedding than they would have done otherwise. Now, in the second clip, we showed you the justification for this delay was that we hadn't passed the four tests which were set, that we would have had to have passed to remove all of these restrictions.  I certainly had. Handily, Chris Whitty gave us a slideshow reminding us of the four tests and which of them we passed. So Fox, first slide, please. So the first test was on vaccines. As you can see from this, we all know this. The vaccination program is going very well and is on track according to the targets which were set back in February. As you can see from this graph, 42 million people have now had their first dose. That is almost 80% of the adult population. 30 million people have had both doses. That's 57% of the adult population. So very impressive there. Of course, if you include children, it's not 80% of the population who've had their first dose. So that's why we don't seem to be close to herd immunity. The next test was on the effectiveness of vaccines. So not just how many of them we'd got into people's arms, but whether they were working on this one, we also passed. So this is showing the effectiveness of the vaccines against the Delta variant, which we know is now dominant. So after one dose, when it comes to symptomatic disease, the vaccines are 26 to 40% effective. That one might not sound huge, but this is just for symptomatic disease. Remember, after two doses, it gets much more effective. So that's 76 to 84% effective. You can see why they want to wait for more people to have those second doses. This is actually what's most important. Now, the estimated reduction in hospitalizations from the Delta variant after one and two doses of the vaccine. Now, this is much more impressive after one dose. There is a 57 to 85% reduction in your likelihood of going to hospital if you catch COVID-19. And after two doses, an 85 to 98% reduction. Again, pretty obvious why they want to put off any more loosening until at least all of the over 50s have been double vaccinated. One last slide here to sort of prove to you if you had any doubt that the vaccines were working against the Delta variant. You can see the age distribution of people going into hospital. So back in January, when almost no one was vaccinated, the vast majority of people going into hospital were 65 and over. Now, when all the 65 and over have been vaccinated, almost all of them, we are talking 97, 98%, that is a much smaller number of people going into hospital. It's also the case that whilst there will be some people who are double vaccinated going into hospital, you're more likely to survive if you've been double vaccinated. So we've got two tests, vaccines in arms and the vaccines working, both passed with flying colours. It's test free where we have the problem. That's the infection rates don't lead to pressure on hospitals. And this is where the Delta variant has really kicked us in the teeth because it has meant a massive increase in cases and exponential growth. This chart shows you that in the Northwest, there's been a 64% increase in COVID cases since last week in England as a whole, a 64% increase. So the same actually in both places. But as you can see the Northwest, it's starting from a much higher point. And this is being reflected in hospitalization. So there is a 61% increase in hospitalizations in the Northwest since last week and a 50% increase in England as a whole. So there are more people going into hospital as there is an increase in cases. Now as you saw from the previous chart, these are younger people. They're probably not going to end up in ICU in the same rates that they did back in January when this was older people. But that's still a really big problem. Finally, the fourth test was the assessment of risks when it comes to variants of concern. Now it's quite obvious to everyone what's going on here. We did have cases which were going steadily down. We're in a really, really good place and the Delta variant comes along because of Boris Johnson's shitty border policy. And suddenly we have a new, really big, significant surge in COVID-19. Now you might be thinking why a four week delay? Why should we trust that this is only going to be four weeks and there won't be another variant that we import or something else? Or that occurs on our shores, as happened with the Kent variant. Will this not happen again? Will we not get bad news that says, oh, sorry, our projections were wrong in June? Something else has come up and you're going to have to have another month away from the nightclubs. Now Patrick Vallance explained why that's hopefully not the case. The four week delay should reduce the peak, whatever it would be, by something between 30 and 50%. So that's the sort of gain you get from the four weeks. And actually it's not very obvious that you get much more gain from going on longer than that at the moment. So it looks like quite a good length of time. You get the three advantages, over 18 single dose, many more people double-dosed and close to the school holidays with the effect that that has to also take the pressure off. And that should, between them, significantly reduce the peak. But there will be an increase in numbers and there will be an increase in hospitalisations, because that's what happens when there's more mixing. So it's a very sensible argument. You know, after that four weeks we'll have many more people vaccinated, even if we do get a surge then the fact that all over 50s or all over 50s who have been offered a double-vaccinated and everyone has one vaccine means that this will not translate into hospitalisations to the same degree that it will now a lot can be achieved in those four weeks. Boris Johnson was also quite keen to suggest this is a hard and fast deadline, which again kind of makes sense because you could say, well, imagine if a variant comes along which is more vaccine resistant than the current ones would still be in a difficult place. Their argument then is kind of like, well, at that point, as it doesn't seem like there's anything we can do in the intervening four weeks, we're just going to have to take the hit. Ash Sarkar, how disappointed are you about this delay? Are you having to rip up any tickets to Wild Nights Out? Well, look, I think the reason for the delay and doing it, it's perfectly reasonable, right? You've got a vaccine rollout which can be accelerated over the next four weeks. It's something which will guarantee that there'll be much fewer hospitalisations and it will contain the infection rate in a context where we have already took quite a large degree unlocked. So I don't think it's the worst thing in the world to happen. It's not like canceling Christmas, which really did bum me out. But one of the things I think we've got to bear in mind is that this is a reasonable response to a problem of the government's own making. So we've been talking a lot in the last few weeks about the failure to get into your onto the red list soon enough. The fact that you had arrivals coming through Heathrow, absolutely. No testing, no mandatory quarantine for many of them. And you also had a problem of local responsiveness. So even if you do hold the view, and this is where I disagree with some people on the left, that it's possible to maintain a relatively open board strategy in the context of a pandemic. I don't think that that's necessarily possible. But even if you hold that view, you can then look at what was going on locally where the variant was identified fairly early on and what was the government response. Update the advice, but in a very light touch, softly, softly way. So you didn't actually have anything being implemented by the government to catch the outbreaks when they were still relatively containable and stop them in their tracks. And that's how we ended up with the Indian variant, sorry, the Delta variant being the most dominant strain we've got in the country today. It's all because of government inaction, real inertia. And I think that unwillingness to make tough decisions at the time where making a tough decision would be most effective. I also don't have much time for people who say, oh, we can't have border controls even in a pandemic. People were absolutely right to stop travel from the UK when we had the Kent variant. And people were right to stop travel from India when the Delta variant was running wild, right? Anyway, that issue of this being a problem of Boris Johnson's making because of his very weak travel policy in particular because of the time it took to put India on the red list when Boris Johnson just so happened to have a trip planned to India to sort out a trade deal, all very suspicious. I was expecting that to be put to him at today's press conference by one of the journalists present. It wasn't. Make of that what you will. It was, though, brought up by Keir Starmer this morning on LBC. June 21st was supposed to be Freedom Day. And why are we not going to hit it? And it looks like we're not.   They didn't introduce hotel quarantine until I think February of this year and then only 1%. Then we went through this ridiculous red amber green where loads of countries were moved to the amber list on the beginning of that hotel. Well, that means you can sort of go on holiday there. Then suddenly, no, no, no, it doesn't. It's only if it's absolutely essential. Then you get another member of the government popping up saying, well, I think holidays are essential. Nobody knows where they are on that. And then the inexplicable delay from the 9th, I think, to the 23rd of April and putting India on to the red list with lots of people coming in. And then on top of all of that mixing at, I think, Heathrow Airport were people on red lists and green lists. Pathetic. Now, this is actually, you know, I've been incredibly critical of Kirsten. Throughout this pandemic, I still am in many areas. But this is one where actually they can't call him captain hindsight because Labour at the start of the year did call for a good border policy, which was mandatory hotel quarantine for everyone who's arriving because we can't guess where the new variants are going to come from. Every country that's introduced that has had a very effective COVID response. Every country that hasn't has had a pretty ineffective COVID response. Labour were saying that at the time. Now they've essentially been proven right on this particular issue. I mean, it'll probably be quite difficult for them to make political hay out of it. There's something about COVID that people don't like to look backwards. But I mean, Ash, this is one of those issues where Labour said one thing, the Tories did another and the Tories have essentially, you know, as we've said, it's not the end of the world that this delay is happening for four weeks.   I can live with that, right? But do you think this is an example where Labour will write the Tories were wrong and that might be helpful for them? Do I think this is an example of Labour will write the Tories were wrong? Yes. Is this going to be helpful to Keir Starmer? I think no. Because in this segment on LBC, he was quite strong. In every other aspect, when he sort of asked to, you know, explain his own, you know, like performance and why the Tories are doing well, he either decides it's time to punch Labour in the face, so repeating the same stuff about unity in fighting, we've got to rebuild trust, which is kind of the Keir Starmer flagellation roadshow going around the country with this hangdog expression going, I know I wish it, you know I wish it, but please vote for me anyway. Right, it's not particularly inspiring. Or you've got the bit where he's doing the government's job for them and heaping praise on the vaccine rollout. In sandwich, what I think is a very good critique and a fair critique in between this kind of, I don't know even why I'm the leader of a political party, the other lot is so good and I'm just so rubbish, then I don't think you necessarily end up with something which is going to benefit Keir Starmer in a polling sense. And as you said, I think there are other challenges there. People don't really like to look backwards and, you know, haul the government over coals for mistakes that it's made. That's it because you don't have an effective mouthpiece for that point of view. You don't have someone who's doing that consistently in a powerful and convincing way. The best you've got is Keir Starmer and he's just a bit... No, I think actually that's very well put. It should have been an answer to other questions as well because essentially he was asked by Nick Ferrara. I watched the whole half hour this morning. He's asked, you know, what do you make of this extension and the answer is correct.  Then later in the interview he's asked, why aren't you doing very well? And what you should say at that point, you should say, because people are letting Boris Johnson off the hook. This is a guy who has just meant that we were supposed to have all of these freedoms which are really, really valuable, you know, next week and now they're going to have to be four weeks later. If you own a nightclub, if you own a bar, this is really, really serious stuff. And this is all because of a personal mistake he made and no one's talking about it. No one in the mainstream media is talking about it. That's why I'm behind, right? And then you're like, oh, now I actually remember what he said, right? That's how you make Boris Johnson be accountable because there is something frustrating about this. I mean, I've... I don't just...  I'm very interesting in its own right and the way it affects all of our lives.  It was all down to his personality, all down to decisions he made or because they didn't make, right? That's all on his shoulders and for him to get away with that, there is something kind of morally offensive about that.  What I was going to say is that I agree with you but I also think it's a bigger problem for Keir Starmer than simply coronavirus because when he became leader of the Labour Party, you had, you know, the likes of Laura Kuhnsberg hailing him as the return of real opposition. One of the first things that he did is completely hamstring himself by saying, I'm not going to play politics on certain issues. You know, it's going to be constructive opposition. We're going to agree with the government when they do the right thing. And what he did was essentially make a rod for his own back and hand over an attack line, which is when he does start to oppose and he does start to criticise and he does start taking a line which is separate from the government is that he gets his own words thrown back in his face of, well, isn't this playing politics? Isn't this, you know, a non-constructive opposition? And the problem is that that's left him kind of with nothing to do. He's in this weird halfway space where he can not really do anything in full throat or with full commitment. So he's got this like very sharp critique, but it's against a backdrop of really uninspiring, flat and unconvincing political lines. And he also can't fully put himself behind the government because the government have been responsible for the deaths of, you know, tens of thousands of people unnecessarily. So I kind of think if you want to talk about, you know, political problems of your own making, you can kind of draw a similarity in Boris Johnson having to defer freedom day because of his own errors of judgement and Keir Starmer being in this kind of horrible purgatory. And that's because he set the terms for his own opposition, which had been defined by people who've got no interest in seeing an effective opposition at all. I mean, we should also say, because it's not just Starmer here letting Boris Johnson off the hook. As I say, I've already mentioned it, but I think it is worth emphasising that no one in that press briefing even mentioned the fact that this four-week delay is because of decisions Boris Johnson made, right? So I would have hoped one of them would have said, you know, will you apologise to the nightclub owners who are going to have to close for the next four weeks because ultimately this is only happening because you didn't have a proper border control policy, which, by the way, the opposition and a bunch of your scientists told you you should have. You know, I accept that these press conferences shouldn't just be about, you know, asking the government about what they got wrong. The public need to be informed about what's happening next. Absolutely correct. But for there not to be one question like that, I do find, you know, questionable. If you're enjoying tonight's show, then remember to hit the like button, as I didn't say earlier. Also, if you're new to the show, do make sure you hit the subscribe. And we do want to hear from you. So if you have any comments about what we're talking about, tweet on the hashtag Tiskey Sour. Next story. Sunday night was the launch of GB News. Now, this is the hedge fund backed right wing news outlet fronted by Andrew Neil, which intends to stoke a culture war and drag the UK's centre ground ever further to the right. Sounds awful, doesn't it? The channel launched with a monologue from Andrew Neil. He railed against cancel culture and metropolitan mindsets, but also reassured viewers that despite having an agenda, GB News would not be purveyors of fake news. We'll be more concerned with what will raise prosperity and create jobs in our left behind towns than what some overprivileged and ahistoric students decide to hang on their walls in Oxford. Social mobility and a fair chance in life for all will matter more to us than the wasteland to know where there is identity politics. And if you want fake news, lies, disinformation, distortion of the facts, conspiracy theories, then GB News is not for you. Because in everything we do, we will be guided by the highest journalistic standards written into the contracts of everybody who works here at GB News. Robust even disputatious debate, of course. A much wider variety of voices than you currently hear in broadcasting, certainly. But never the promotion of matters we know to be untrue or the pushing of facts that are convenient to a viewpoint that may be convenient, but not properly checked. Now, for anyone who watched any of GB News last night, I don't recommend it, by the way. It is laughable, he suggested. We're going to talk about prosperity, not identity, because there's been almost a constant bar underneath whoever is hosting it, saying players taking their knees are okay to boo. So they've actually only talked about... I mean, I don't think that's only just identity politics. I think that's anti-racist policy. But they're taking offense in it that's saying this is disrespect. So the idea, they don't care about that. They're there to talk about prosperity. Clearly a lie, frankly. What I do want to focus on, though, because I think this is more politically significant is what Andrew Neil was saying there about fake news. He's essentially saying we might be right-wing, but we're not going to be a UK version of Fox News because we're not going to spread conspiracy theories. We're not going to spread an anti-science agenda where we say all the experts are wrong. Don't believe that COVID is a big deal. For example, that's clearly the main one at the moment that's coming from Fox News. You'd also associate climate denial, that kind of thing. With a Fox News type outlet. That was reassuring to hear the problem. It fell apart. So the argument fell apart as soon as Andrew Neil's first show ended because he was replaced by Dan Wharton. He has a nightly show on at 9 p.m. He was recently hired from Talk Radio and The Sun. And in his opening monologue, he railed against science and spread unevidenced conspiracy theories. Let's take a look. Tragically, the doomsday scientists and public health officials have taken control. They are addicted to the power and the government has satisfied its 15-month-long never-ending scare campaign has suitably terrified the public into supporting lockdowns. But if we don't fight back against this madness, some of the damage, I think, will be irreversible. Tomorrow night, in an address to the nation, Boris will likely try and tell us it will be just another four weeks. As if there will be the next variant, the next scare story, more intense lobbying by paranoid public health officials repeated ad nauseam by the BBC and ITV. Unchallenged. Why don't they report on the good news? The fact 95% of over 65, the vulnerable age group, now have COVID antibodies. The fact that while infections, yes, are fast-rising, deaths are not because the vaccine programme has worked. Why not look to Florida or Texas or Sweden where a different approach that doesn't keep large parts of the economy locked down has worked? Do you remember what Andrew Neil said? I showed you it quite recently. He said, look, we're not going to misrepresent the facts. We are going to hold ourselves to very high journalistic standards. The next person on the show, who's their star evening host, talking about doomsday scientists, paranoid public health officials, he's saying they've all taken control and they're addicted to power. This is kind of classic conspiracy theory territory. What's the evidence that Chris Whitty and Patrick Ballantz are addicted to power and obsessed with lockdowns? If you hear them talking, that doesn't seem to be what they suggest. In fact, they say, you know, we can't have zero COVID. We're going to have to accept this being an endemic disease, but we're going to need this extra four weeks just to vaccinate a few more people. They aren't really extremists, right, in this success. By the way, I'm not trying to say anyone in favor of zero COVID strategy is an extremist. I think that's also a very legitimate position to take. In any case, what has he said that's categorically wrong there other than just being quite distasteful? He says, Sweden worked. He says, we shouldn't have lockdowns. Sweden worked. Now, what he didn't mention is Sweden has a far worse death toll than its neighbors. So Sweden has three times as many deaths per capita as Denmark and 10 times as many as Finland and Norway. And it also had a bigger economic hit. So its policy failed on all terms, which is why they ultimately abandoned it. That was someone picking up. It's almost a, it's too kind on him to say he's picking out or cherry picking evidence to suit his agenda. There was no evidence there. He's just essentially flat out lying. Let's take a look at one more example of anti-science nonsense from Dan Whitton. Well, I completely disagree with this whole conversation about border closures because actually Benjamin, if you follow international news closely, you'll also know that Melbourne, Australia has been plunged into its fourth lockdown recently. The border policies in Australia are so draconian that the government actually broke international law, in my opinion, by shutting the border from India to Australia to its own citizens. Guess what? The Indian variants still got in. Border closures do not stop the variants arriving. Viruses travel. Again, I mean, that was more explicitly what Andrea was talking about, your cherry picking evidence, which is not actually suitable to furnish your argument, but you're presenting it as if it does. There wasn't much pushback there, by the way.  Border controls don't work to stop variants because Australia had very tough border controls and the Delta variant still arrived. That's kind of true on one level. There were examples of the Delta variant in Australia why it's a completely misleading, I mean, essentially that argument was a lie because Australia's seven-day average for daily new cases is 10. The corresponding figure in the UK is 6,689. So the idea you can say, oh, border controls don't work because they had 10 cases. Well, wait a minute. What about the countries of outborder controls? 7,000 cases, right? And there wasn't an epidemiologist on there to correct Dan Wooten. It was just him able to put forward that completely misleading nonsense. And Ash, I want to bring you in at this point because the whole time I was watching, I watched more of the Dan Wooten show than I would have imagined I would, but because I wanted to prepare for this show, it just, you know, in a sort of sadomasochistic sense. What... Until torture guards reopens. This is all you've got, mate. Exactly, exactly. That's the tickets I'm ripping up. The UK has sort of avoided this anti-science nonsense which we sort of know from Fox News and we see those clips that we say, I can't believe they have this in America where they're just railing against climate science and COVID science. This seems to be what GB News is trying to bring to Britain, doesn't it? Here's the interesting thing about Boomer TV is that it really was riding on the prestige that comes with Andrew Neil because of him being such an institution at the BBC. Now, I will give Andrew Neil his full due when it comes to those live interviews which is essentially like performing a televised vivisection of a politician. Nobody is better at doing them. I've really never seen anyone as rigorous and as aggressive as Andrew Neil really in a way which didn't involve shouting, right? He's a very formidable journalist in that way.  So when he was at The Sunday Times as editor, you had multiple articles denying the connection between HIV and AIDS. So it's not really, I think, anything new for him to be kind of comfortable in a journalistic space which also has these, you know, completely discredited quack points of view.  He's not a serious journalist, I would say, in my opinion. He's a showbiz journalist who, a bit like Piers Morgan, has identified that there's a space for him in his career by stepping out of someone who merely covers celebrity and takes center stage as a contrarian himself. He's very much, I think, following in the footsteps of that kind of model for his own career. You know, he's also worked out that, hang on, there's a space in the broadcasting market here in the UK for something which is a bit more like Fox News. And that's not just in terms of this, you know, anti-science point of view. It's also the manner of delivery. So I think that we would be hypocrites here if we said that, you know, partisan news has got no place in the public domain. I think it's got a place. But the way in which it's being done here is both hyper biased and also not reliable, right? The abuse of those statistics really should be considered a matter for the Geneva Convention. But the manner of delivery in that soliloquizing, very ranty, yelling at the camera, yelling at his guests, that's a very Fox News way to do it. So the way in which I see Dan Wooden's own role in this is completely self-serving, cynical and calculated. The question remains is how successful is this going to be? I think maybe something which is sort of worried some of these figures on the right and perhaps also is one of the reasons why GB News has been, you know, sped into production as it were, is because when it comes to cultural outlook and voting behavior, they very much do have a grip on that older cohort of voters. But when it comes to, you know, lockdown skepticism, they don't. You look at the polling, all the voters are perfectly comfortable with the idea of a four week lockdown. There's only slightly more opposition for the voters. So in terms of who is this channel serving, there are some real, I think, fault lines here. And I'm not necessarily sure if they'll be able to hold together.  I mean, you sort of compared him to Piers Morgan. He might like to be Piers Morgan, but he's not smart. I've spent quite a long time in studios with Dan Wooden and he's like, he's not an intelligent person. If someone gives any pushback in an interview, he's completely lost and just has to start shouting because he can't think on his feet. He's someone, to me, I think, he's potentially got a good contact book. Maybe he's got some dirt on people I don't know. I don't know how he manages to get sort of celebrity scoops. But this move to become a political pundit, I just don't see it working. I don't think anyone in Britain really looks at that and thinks, I really relate to this guy.   Jasmine tweets on hashtag Tisgisau. She's thinking along similar lines to me. I'm sorry, but isn't Dan Wooden a celebrity columnist? Why is he giving his opinion on COVID? Can I give mine on TV in that case? I would, Jasmine, if you went up against Dan Wooden on TV to discuss COVID, I've never met you. All I know from you is this tweet, you would win. I guarantee it, you would win. Because you'd actually have two other guests who agree with him and then they'd all shout you down all at the same time and you'd have to just be like, I can't take this anymore because that seems to be the structure of the show. We're going to talk about the funding of it. Do you want to come in quickly on any more on Dan Wooden before we go to his funding? Because you're right. He's not a smart guy. He's emulating the broadcasting style of others, but I don't think he necessarily has, you know, even the now sort of strategy behind it. I've had a few, but one was on his talk radio show where they decided to jump me with a clip which had been taken out of context from a Navarro video and had gone viral on far-right Twitter, where I was making fun of a way in which a sociologist called Ted Cantil was measuring residential segregation and I made an offhand comment of all that, look lads, we're winning. It was taking the piss out of the research not an endorsement of it. So Dan Wooden decided to try and ambush me with it and then when I said that's a joke, he didn't know what to do so he just started yelling at me and he was like but we shouldn't joke about these things and I thought he believed in free speech and he was like oh well, nevertheless like it was just he really wasn't prepared for the possibility that wasn't saying what he was saying or saying. So he was like I'm just going to yell and hope nobody notices and luckily for him the Daily Express was ready to write an article in his favour.  Let's look at who funds this monstrosity. Solomon Hughes had a great piece about this in Tribune magazine the kind of media it is worth supporting. He writes 20 million pounds of their funding has come from the Discovery Channel so that's supposed to be expected for a TV outfit that a production company is funding them. The other funders are more interesting though so as Solomon Hughes explains one such major player in GB news is Legatum, an international investment firm based in the Dubai International Financial Centre a tax rezone in the United Arab Emirates. Legatum is currently GB News co-lead investor putting a reported 20 million into its initial 6 million pounds fundraising. The firm's founder and chairman is Christopher Chandler who made his fortune investing in emerging markets in times of political and economic uncertainty including the stripping and privatizing of Russia's assets in the 1990s.  Christopher Chandler by the way is worth 1.7 billion pounds like Dan Woodson is from New Zealand. I wonder if there's a connection there. Legatum a little bit more about them. They fund the Mayfair based Legatum Institute which promoted a hard Brexit on the grounds it would allow economic deregulation so we can see what they're about. Another 10 million comes from Paul Marshall. Marshall runs the Marshall Waste Hedge Fund and he's worth 630 million pounds and was alleged to have increased that wealth by betting against companies hit by the pandemic on his politics Solomon Hughes writes Marshall is not a straightforward Tory he backed the Liberal Democrats for decades using his money to move them rightwards. Marshall even funded and edited the Orange Book a 2004 collection of essays that promoted Nick Clegg's more free market Lib Dems over the party's left-leaning wing. Marshall's Orange Book aimed to shift the Lib Dems away from what is called Soggy Socialism and Corporatism or from what it called, Soggy Socialism and Corporatism towards harder, more neoliberal political lines. This included arguing that the NHS was a second rate centralized state monopoly service and calling for the privatization of hospitals, prisons and royal mail. Now the Orange Book MPs, so part of that movement, they were the guys around Nick Clegg who really pushed to go into that coalition with the Tories so essentially responsible for austerity Marshall later left the Lib Dems over Brexit, he then became a Tory donor and helped fund both of Michael Gove's leadership campaign. So we can see their hedge fund manager, the Legatum investment company, both of them super mega rich, really, really in favor of Brexit global financial deregulation they basically want to slash rights, right, but that's not what you're going to lead with on your show. So you have to talk up these cultural issues or for some reason, I think this is probably going to backfire on them they're trying to hide this drive towards deregulation via railing against lockdowns. Ash, what do you think we should read into the people who are paying for this and what do you think the funders for, you know, watching that monologue from Dan Wooden, do you think they thought oh no, we're not sure this is going to appeal to our audience or do you think there's, you know, just kind of, I mean, what are they thinking essentially? I mean, look, this is a class of, you know, vulture capitalists who benefit an awful lot from the degradation of the public sphere.  What they see is a contribution to, you know, the kind of poisoning of the well of our public sphere, the place where all of us get our information and take part in a conversation and that's what shapes our politics. They see that, you know, essentially a swimming pool being shattered and they go actually that's a really great and useful context for us and I think that that's one of the reasons why we have had such a lurch to the authoritarian right in this country is because that process of diminishing the public arena has been going on for decades really and I think that that's part of what has made this country so amenable to, you know, this kind of right wing smash and grab that we've seen since, you know, 2016 and I think what this also perhaps shows us is that Brexit would no matter where you stand on the EU issue, by the way whether you thought, you know, we should leave whether we should have stayed whether we could have reformed or whatever is that Brexit as it actually exists is not a discreet political event, alright, so it's on the one hand an expression I think of a kind of weaponized home-owning boomer class of voters who have really benefited from both the most generous welfare state in history and then the selling off of that welfare state and the financialization of the economy and weaponizing that class I think of in relative terms and statistical terms you know, very well of voters into this really powerful sense of agreement and you can kind of point them in different directions one being the EU and to what these voucher capitalists looks like, you know, constraining regulations which could get in their own way of, you know, turning a profit and says, right go for them and then you've got, I think you know, a kind of not a liberal bias in the country's institutions but at least a kind of institutionalized sense of racism is bad, we don't really like it you know, maybe trans people are human after all and saying, right we're going to point you at that and really riled up and angry at that because one, it's a target that we also agree with, you know, deeply nationalist and aggressive authoritarian set of politics but also a distraction from what's really going on and that's why I find this you know, wolf and you know, the real working classes you know, cheap's clothing just so interesting the sheer dishonesty of it when you look at those funders who've, you know, made their name in part by asset stripping whole states you don't see them as tribunes of the left behind those who have been screwed over by deindustrialization, managed decline people who are victims of this country's outrageous and runaway geographic inequalities you see people who are totally and 100% okay with the deepening of those inequalities just so long as no one, you know wakes up notices them and starts voting for a redistributed party so I think this is also one of the things that the left can get wrong is that it takes some of these attacks on identity politics at face value and says well, of course, identity politics are cancer for the left and you know, we shouldn't go on about racism or shouldn't go on about BLM or shouldn't go on about trans rights because that's turning off the real working class instead of turning to GB news no, this is all a mirage it's a disguise, it's a way of concealing the real agenda here which isn't the empowering of the working class in politics but continuing to dispossess them all in the name of acting in their best interests I want to move on to another clip which is less significant than the ones we've talked about obviously the big problems with GB news are the misinformation and the starting pointless cultural or at least you know inflaming them to distract from the degradations of this country's actual ruling class but what many comments have focused on in the first 24 hours of GB news existence is the technical problems so that goes from bad lighting to very dodgy sound now we're not going to dwell on this too much but this clip is pretty funny we love talking to you guys we absolutely love it so briefly how's your first day how's your first day Paul what's your first day? okay dad's good, Hanisha are you having a good launch day yeah uh oh got some sound dissonance one more, leave it there now of course long time viewers of this show we have we've had a lot of technical difficulties on this show you know on one level I feel sympathy when the sound doesn't work and you can't hear what someone is saying then. At the same time, we didn't receive £60 million in seed funding. Right. So we've always been funded by our subscribers. I can tell you it's never got close to £60 million. However, no, we appreciate your generosity. I haven't got close to that yet. I'm sorry, Michael. Michael, you're being too nice. If we had 60 million of your British sterling, do you think we would be having mics that don't work? Do you think we would be having EchoE studio that sounds like, I don't know, you're like filming it in your mum's garage. Do you think you would have like, I was watching bits of it today, hosts not even looking at the right camera. Are you dizzy?   I'm sorry. Like, we sounded better when we were filming in the shipping container. 60 million quid they can't even compare to Gary and Fox. What can I say? Let's go to a couple of comments. Charlie Wilson tweets on the hashtag Tiskey Sour, Michael Walker and Ash Sarkar excellent show again, no matter how much money is thrown at GB news, its journalism is not up on it. Its journalism is not a patch on Navarra media, which goes to show you can cover a right wing turd in cold, but it will still be a turd and a huge waste of cash. I like that comment on a number of levels. Thank you for that, Charlie Wilson. Michael Deary with a fiverr says this is referring back to our first segment. I think it feels like we live in a satire about a government who always win despite causing misery with every decision, except they forgot satire is a funny. Oh, that's quite a depressing comment, but it's depressing because it's quite true, isn't it? Oh, dear. Right, if you want to be distracted from the depressiveness of how our government get away of everything, you might like surveys and we are doing one. We mentioned this on Friday, but if you missed it then, we're currently running the Navarra media 2021 survey and we want to hear from you. We want to find out things like what do you like about our content, what don't you like and any ideas you have for the organization. So please do go to navarra.media slash survey. You'll be taken through to it. That link is also below the description of this video. Apparently it takes about five minutes. I'm not allowed to fill it in myself because that could be biased, couldn't it? So it's completely anonymous. I'm not going to know what goes in there. You can be as rude about me as you like. Next story. Keir Starmer's leadership so far has been a transparent attempt to appeal to older white voters by waving British flags. It doesn't seem to have worked. It also has caused some problems because Labour has refused to offer anything to anyone else we've seen in you gov polling that this myopic strategy has already led many young people to abandon the party and new polling from Servaiton suggests he has just as serious a problem with Britain's Muslims in a weighted poll of over 500 Muslim voters. Servaiton found that identification with the Labour party remains high but is falling. So to the question which if any of the following political parties do you most identify with 72% of Muslims said Labour so incredibly high that's down 11 points from 2019 but still not huge cause for concern although as I say direction of travel is worrying. That changing relationship of some Muslims to the Labour party is clearer in the following question in the past 12 months has your view of the Labour party become more favourable or more unfavourable here you can see 25% of people have said more favourable 37% of people have said more unfavourable so that's net 12% so on on the whole Muslim Britain's think Labour is going in the wrong direction and most worrying for Keir Starmer when it comes to this poll is British Muslims attitudes towards Keir Starmer himself and we can look here at the comparison between the two party leaders now Boris Johnson very unpopular among Muslim voters 20% of people think about him favourably 53% unfavourably so that's a net minus 33 he's not popular for obvious reasons he compared Muslim women to letterboxes all sorts of other unsavory things in his past writings Starmer though is not doing particularly well either so 22% think about him favourably that's only two points more than Boris Johnson 29% unfavourably now obviously that's not as high as 53% so Keir Starmer is on net minus seven but that's not looking good for a Labour party leader as you can see Labour polling way way higher than Keir Starmer among Muslim voters now you might say this is just a poll it's speculative we won't know what happens until an actual election in fact it seems that this is playing out on the ground right now at least that's if you believe reports from Batley and Spen Batley and Spen obviously the site of a by-election which will be happening on the 1st of July because the MP has now become the West Yorkshire mayor it's a very very high stakes by-election a little bit like Hartley Paul it's somewhere that voted Brexit and where Labour lost in in vote share in 2019 essentially because they backed a second referendum however while Labour was trounced in Hartley Paul there were people suggesting that Batley and Spen would be a different story because Hartley Paul's a very white place Batley and Spen has larger populations of ethnic minorities in particular Muslims which is why this polling has come out at a very relevant moment and the particular worry for Labour in Batley and Spen is that whilst I assume their short-sighted strategists have said well we need to focus on the flags because it's the older white people who are going Tory and the young people and the Muslims have nowhere else to go someone landed in the constituency who's caused some problems for Keir Starmer it's this guy George Galloway he's a former Labour and Respect MP and he is explicitly positioning himself as the candidate to vote for if you're unhappy with Keir Starmer's leadership of the Labour Party you can see a poster here of Starmer out with him looking like he's ready to do some bare knuckle boxing and he's also running as an advocate for Palestinian rights he's saying I'm uncompromising in my support of the Palestinians contrasting himself with Keir Starmer this apparently is being brought up repeatedly on the doorstep this is a tweet from Patrick Maguire from The Times so he tweets Labour sources say their last week on the doorstep has been dreadful the issue is almost exclusively Palestine on Friday evening Galloway had been around 45 minutes before us in one of our stomping grounds nobody wanted to speak to us now this is obviously worrying for the Labour Party Keir Starmer has been very very timid when it comes to basically any foreign policy issue but obviously Palestine is particularly relevant now because of what's been happening because of the bombardment of Gaza because of the evictions the expulsions essentially in in Sheikh Jarrah because of the storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque all of these issues mean that people want to hear a loud advocate for Palestinian rights especially people in the Muslim community and they're not hearing that from the Labour Party now Labour are worried now the fact this is causing electoral problems for Labour is a little bit ironic given that we have seen so much bashing recently from centrists of the Labour Left and it all focuses on this idea that of course no one in their right mind no voter cares about foreign policy and we don't know why Jeremy Corbyn why the Left always want Keir Starmer to talk about foreign policy because no one absolutely no one cares about it this was Dan Hodges one of the Mail on Sunday star columnists in an article last month he wrote redwall voters think Labour cares more about the Palestinians than them and they're right so we're saying that the reason Labour are losing the redwall is because they talk too much about Palestine what's happened now they're going to batley and spend their worry they're going to lose it because Keir Starmer has not been vocal enough about Palestine how wrong could Dan Hodges be now a week earlier former Labour MP Anna Turley had wrote a essentially a similar article she argued a party that waves the Palestinian flag from its conference floor but balks at the flag of its own country will never be able to convince people that it is interested in representing the voters of Hartlepool or fit to govern this country now that Anna Turley piece was published the day Israel began bombing Gaza it was shared approvingly by among others David Milibar and that Dan Hodges article of course was published in the middle of the bombardment of Gaza that was his point he said why are Labour even commenting on this obviously from our perspective Labour were fairly weak on it he said that the fact they even commented on it shows that they're not fit to win an election it's all I mean it's despicable actually it's disgusting anyway if they do want to stick to their guns on this Anna Turley and Dan Hodges will now need to have a word with the people in charge of Labour's election literature because the party have responded to disquiet among the Muslim community in competition from George Galloway by making their election leaflets about Palestine Kashmir and Islamophobia you can see here a leaflet which is being handed out in badly the Kashmir reference there you might remember last year one of Starmer's first moves as leader was to say the constitutional status of Kashmir was up to India and Pakistan to resolve that reverse Labour's commitment to Kashmiri self-determination he has since you turned Ash I want your thoughts on this I mean in a way it's like is it funny is it tragic I mean it's definitely not funny is but it does seem like these centrists for just a month ago for them to be saying oh why the hell would you talk about Palestine this is ridiculous this was everything that was wrong with Corbyn and now Kirstarmer's Labour with a candidate who's not from the left by the way handing out leaflets which are now desperately saying oh these are what we think about Palestine this is what we think about Kashmir this is what we think about Islamophobia like it's it's desperate isn't it it's kind of pathetic and it's kind of desperate here's the thing about you know Anna Turley and Dan Hodges as well as being how can I put this kindly idiots as well as being idiots they're also ideologues so by using the red wall as a disciplinary tool against the left they're able to say look these things that you care about but I am ideologically opposed to i.e. Palestinian self-determination you know a lively Palestine solidarity movement in this country which holds Israel to account the BDS movement these things which I'm ideologically opposed to it's not me saying this it's the red wall and we forget that the red wall is as diverse and as varied as anywhere else so you don't have this complete homogeneity across different seats and within individual constituencies as well you've got a you know vast array of racial groups ethnic groups religious groups voting behaviors social views but it becomes usefully you know homogenized and presented as one thing by the right precisely so it can you know use the left's own guilt for what happened in 2019 against the left and make sure that you never get too many ideas about you know shaping the foreign policy of you know the labor party ever again and so I think that that's what's going on there and that's why Palestine was being framed in that way it's not because you know it stands up to even an iota of scrutiny you've got very rich traditions of internationalism and you know Palestine solidarity outside of London not that you would ever know it by you know reading one of Dan Hodges's columns you've also got large Muslim communities who do feel very strongly about issues like Palestine and Kashmir but it wasn't useful to acknowledge that it was strategic to pretend that the only kind of voter in a Redwall seat whether that Redwall seat is Hartlepool or Batley and Spen or you know whether it's Chesterfield or Derby it's all populated by the same kind of person which is an older white guy who loves pies pints and the queen and that's it you know so it's in its own way deeply patronizing and very stereotypical but I think as for this you know hemorrhaging of support for Kirstama amongst Britain's Muslims you have to I think take a slightly more nuanced view and so there are specific issues like Palestine like Kashmir where the Labour Party have been absolutely atrocious either absent or you know doubling back on themselves and making U-turns all over the shop but I think there's also something which I think is a lot more kind of nebulous a general vibe which was that with Jeremy Corbyn if you're Muslim in this country you knew that he was going to fight for you you knew that he didn't look at you like you were all potential jihadis and you didn't really belong in this country you got the sense that he wasn't embarrassed by you he'd stand by you in your fights and would feel really at home doing so with Kirstama unfortunately there I think is this aura that he and the team around him are embarrassed by their most loyal voter cohorts whether that's people who live in cities whether that's young people or whether that's this country's ethnic minorities in particular Muslims and I think it's because Jeremy Corbyn was hauled over coals for you know a perceived proximity to Muslims which made people tar him with the brush of terrorist sympathiser you know I always say Jeremy Corbyn was a victim of Islamophobia because you know he really was we were used as as a means to discredit and delegitimize his leadership and I think instead of standing against that in a powerful and forthright way Kirstama in many ways has is kowtowed to it and that's just plainly obvious you don't get the sense that he's going to fight alongside you take you seriously not be embarrassed by you the way Jeremy Corbyn was and I also think that there's you know something else going on here which is you know the kind of gestural politics right now George Galloway is in my opinion a snake oil salesman I don't think that he's somebody to be trusted you look at what he was saying about that really wonderful anti-deportation action that took place in Glasgow he was condemning it in the strongest possible terms this is not somebody whose anti-racism is reliable but in talking to Muslims the way that he does I think something which he is exploiting is a sense amongst many ethnic minorities in this country not just Muslims that the way in which the labour anti-semitism crisis was portrayed in the media completely closed down the room to talk about your own experiences of racism it was always treated as secondary issue to the primary one which was labour anti-semitism and then you had that insulting refrain which I've had said to my face multiple times which is Ash you know no other minority would have been treated the same you've got Britons Muslims who are you know subject to prevent subject to surveillance are vilified from pillar to post in pretty much every tabloid newspaper in this country going eh what do you mean no other minority like we've been here this whole time and when you've got that deliberate I think insults to the Muslim experience coming from the press and when it's something which I think implicitly has been reinforced through Keir Starmer's orientation as labour leader it does leave space for somebody like George Galloway to come along with this very shallow gestural politics of recognition and go see you know I'm here for you and that's probably not going to win George Galloway the seat but it might peel off enough voters or you know demoralize enough of Labour's Muslim voters that the Tories sneak through and badly and spend and again it's a crisis of Keir Starmer's making is through his own poor strategy and lack of foresight that he's left himself open to being outflanked on his left. Clearly Labour are worried about George Galloway now they've very belatedly working up to the fact that actually if you treat people like they're an embarrassment they're probably not going to want to vote for you. I mean it's actually you know obviously this is in ways more serious because it involves issues of racism but it's a similar thing that he did with with young people in left wing is he says the fact that you support me that's embarrassing I don't really want people to know that you guys vote for me it's a similar thing with Muslims sort of like yeah you guys can you vote for me but let's not talk about it very much and people don't like that which is why George Galloway is probably going to do pretty well in that constituency obviously we'll be talking more about this by-election before the first of July. Let's go to our final story after reading this one comment. David Barrett with 15 pounds can you wish my sister Rachel a happy 32nd birthday thanks to her for introducing me to Navarra I don't agree on everything but I hate how incisive commentators on the left are so easily derided. Oh that's a very lovely comment happy birthday to Rachel and thank you for introducing us to someone who doesn't agree with everything we say but who respects our incisive commentary. I really do appreciate that we'll go to our final story which as I've said is a bit of a silly season one but I found the video fun. Britain's night clubs might not be opening for another five weeks but with a heat wave finally hitting our shores people are still finding an excuse to get pretty wild. This video was shot on the weekend in Southend. On one level I mean obviously I actually I don't think anyone to get seriously hurt but it's you know it's not it's not nice to see people have a big brawl and a big fight on the beach. At the same time I think I've been so starved of social interaction over the past you know 12 months or whatever that I'm like wow like a big kind of social event even if it's a weird one where everyone's throwing deck chairs it's like kind of like I kind of want to be there you know I don't want to get hit by the chair but I just haven't witnessed you know that kind of you know chaos that you get when lots of people are massing the same place especially in a heat wave in Britain. By the way I do not endorse that I feel like I sound like I endorse having massive deck chair fights at the beach. What was your response to that does that make you want to get involved Dash?  I'm miss brawling as much as anyone you know I've been trying to you know fight my pharmacist just to feel something in the last few weeks but nothing. Something that did actually happen to my mom once is that she was this one she was in her 20s and she was on a beach in Greece and there was a brawl on the beach and because my mom's nosy like me so she went out to like get a better look at the brawl and a beer bottle went flying and smacked her in the gob and she had to get like her bridge replaced you know like in her teeth so there's a danger in getting too close to the brawl Michael I'll warn you about that but no the thing which I did seriously think when I saw this video at the weekend was that you know how there have been recently a there's been this trend of right-wing commentators sharing footage of violence usually in London almost exclusively depicting young black guys and it's you know oh Sadiq Khan's London you know angry face angry face angry face oh it's a crime-infested no-go zone blah blah blah blah but when you see videos like this which predominantly involve white people outside of London there was another video which went quite viral recently of a fight taking place in a pub beer garden and one guy ripped off another guy's but it just doesn't get that same response and it's not seen as an indictment of you know the kind of decadent and yet depraved city where you've got all the ethnic minorities running wild under the dominion of their lord and king Sadiq Khan so when it's not racialized in the same way it's sort of seen as like oh you know lads or louts taking it too far but it's not kind of pathologized in the same way as these other videos you know I've not seen Darren Grime sharing this one for instance yeah yeah and it always says you know London 2021 and then it's just that capture it says what you read into this what you want but I'm sharing some pictures of some Asian people fighting perhaps 2021 you're right no one does that with this I also thank you for bringing up the I mean although you know sorry to your mum for getting hit by the bottle but probably I was sounding a little bit too relaxed about big public I'm just saying you shouldn't do them don't get too close well probably you know in real life I'm actually I'm obviously a massive wimp so I'm not going to get that I'm going to sort of like sneak up and probably take a video like that person with the camera you're sitting there with like this for some background on what happened there hasn't yet been the sort of blow by blow rundown I've looked at all the reporting on this we do have a comment from the owner of the calf where the fight took place though the the fight happened outside pebbles one calf its owner paul thompson told the south end facebook page told the your south end facebook page sorry a group of people were eating lunch at one end of the decking a second group confronted them from the beach and they began throwing deck chairs and chairs at each other they seem to be two groups that were known to each other there were no injuries we know of and the police arrive swiftly to quell any further trouble you sounds quite relaxed you know so that all happened they were his deck chairs it's just like yeah they didn't seem to know each other no one got hurt but it's all fine ash my final question for you people have been starved of social interaction we are I mean it's slightly cooler now but there's going to be a few heat waves this summer how far is this going to go I mean I was speaking to a friend the other day who was saying if you get a heat wave for like about a month you tend to get right it's just because people get so you know tense what kind of summer do you think we're facing I don't know I think I'm hoping for third summer of love so everyone you know in the tie dye just feeling a lot of affection for one another maybe you know everyone's had a few pingers they're having the time of their lives that's what I'm hoping for but I kind of think that there has been this kind of like you know despairing and almost nihilistic energy certainly in my area there's just been like all sorts going on like fights and stabbings and blah blah and I think that there is this sense I'm not sure if this is what was driving what was going on in south end in the video that you shared but certainly in the area where I live there's in the sense of almost like abandonment people feeling really abandoned and I think that when you get that kind of environment then you will see a lot more violence amongst young people and this is what makes me sound like an old person because before I'd been there being like fight fight fight and now I'm just concerned this is why we should legalize all drugs and subsidize ecstasy and highly taxed cocaine and then you have a summer of love instead of a summer of fight summer of gack-induced fights I don't even I mean in my area I don't think it's gack that's driving it I think it's just like despair you know yeah fair we should get rid of that as well yeah get rid of the despair legalize ecstasy ban despair perfect yeah yeah I feel I really felt like the synergy there come together and that is now a really coherent policy offer it has been an absolute pleasure speaking to you this monday evening um we had a big news day today I like that as well um oh you'll be back next monday I'm sure I'll be back next monday and I'll see you in the club in a months time Michael we can do something outside in between now and then um thank you as ever for watching Tiske Sauer if you haven't already of course make sure you hit that subscribe button and we really do appreciate it if you consider supporting the organization if you were already in a bar media supporter thank you so much if not please do go to navarmedia.com slash support and donate the equivalent of one hour's wage a month for now you've been watching Tiske Sauer on navarmedia good night


Abstract background adult T-cell leukemia, lymphoma, ATLL, is a rapidly progressing type of T-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma that is caused by the infection of human T-cell leukemia virus type 1, HTLV1. For major subtypes of ATLL exist, including acute, lymphoma, chronic, and smoldering. There are currently no reliable biomarkers for diagnosing these subtypes. To identify potential biomarkers, researchers used weighted gene co-expression network analysis to analyze the expression patterns of genes and micro-RNAs, MANAs, in ATLL samples from different subtypes. They then identified mRNA gene interactions between MANAs and target genes, which can help distinguish the different subtypes of ATLL. This study revealed several mRNA gene interactions that may serve as diagnostic biomarkers for different ATLL subtypes. We are article.tv, links in the description below.


We also have the second DT here, which is the emerging technologies which are driving the digital transformation, which is the second DT. So two DTs together, is there a bridge, something that we can look at both enterprises and startups and design thinkers like you, what's the sort of a link between these two DTs? And that's the sort of conversations that we are planning to have today. The one thing that I'm sure you would have started looking at is the bridge could be an approach change. Most of the organizations, the startups, not all of them, some of them, have all been looking at a technology-driven sort of an approach to solving problems. How can that change to an experience-driven approach? Is that the right answer for connecting these two DTs? It's a point for introspection, so I've prepared a two-minute video. So I would let the team play the video, and then we can get on to introducing the panel and taking the conversation forward. The video, please. Play for the first place. When I got to know that I need to moderate this panel, this panel is simply amazing with, you know, complete span of portfolio and experiences that they carry. So I took an easy route to do a digital introduction of this panel. But having said that, you need to still have that human involvement. So let me quickly talk about the roles that I have requested the panel to play for this panel discussion. So our first panelist is a corporate leader, an innovator, a VC, a music composer turned serial entrepreneur in Ramana Bokula. Thank you, sir. We also have the second panelist, a technocrat turned VC, Sri Unikrishnan, an ex-Googler himself. Our third panelist is an out-and-out design thinker. He's headed UX in large firms, an UX champ, Nitin Sethi. And our final panelist today is a design leader and a mentor and advisor to startups, Kranti. Okay, so let me start by asking each of you. We've saw the video on design thinking, digital transformation, and the roles that each of you play. So what is, from your role that you play, what does digital transformation mean to you? And if you could look at one element of what design thinking can actually do to digital transformation in terms of catalyzing it, it'll continue to happen. Maybe you can also look at some of the startups with design founders in it. Maybe I can give a minute or two to each of you and start with Ramana. So this was the time before, you know, you could Google for stuff and look for books and look for audio, music, snippets, whatever. So when I walk into a store, if I walk into a record store, I'd quickly go by and say, maybe that record will sound good. That book may be good. And my thinking was always, a book is always judged by its cover. No matter what. I mean, I just look at a book, I look at a record, and I said, this looks really cool. Wish you were here.  I mean, it's an interesting title. I mean, I don't know what the content of the title is. I may not know the author, but I pick up the book. I think that experience somehow I see translating into today's startups and designers and thinkers because you are looking, you know, not looking at the under the covers, but you're projecting what is under the covers with what you see visually. Right. So that's my, you know, not take up too much time, but I think that's where I come from. And we'll talk a little bit more what I'm doing and how I'm applying some of those principles in my work today. Right. Yeah. And if you can highlight on startups with design founders, what's your take on that? I mean, I really think, see, I have a company. I have three startups. Two I failed successfully. And one is moderately successful. There's a company called earth and glow. We do lighting for off grid terrains in India distributed solar. So we had to build design lights. We are designed the circuits and underneath we are a design. How users use the light. So when I went to villages, I figured out they need, don't need more than three to four hours of light, but how they use the light. And unfortunately it's not a digital experience. Mine is more physical where, you know, you have to design a light that works as a study light. It works as a torchlight that works as a ceiling light that works as outdoor light so they can see it. How do you come up with a design like that? Right. So I think design plays a critical role in startups today. Absolutely. But it starts from the customer experience. I mean, I went out to almost 150 villages throughout India, slept with the Knights, understood when they woke up, what, how much light they use, how much kerosene they used. And from that experience, you translate that and transform that into a product that they can use. The same applies in the digital domain too, right? So I think it's very, very important to stop for startups to actually think design from the customer point of view, even before you build a product. So your emphasis on experience, both physical as well as digital and the first impression, and that's what customers carry. Absolutely. I mean, he sees a light, you know, you take a light and you give it to him and suddenly it slips and it falls down and it breaks. Yep. Gone, right? You have one chance to kind of impress a customer and you go in and the light falls. So you should have done that stress test before you took the light there. Absolutely. And that's an experience. Okay. Thank you. Sri, from your perspective as a VC, digital transformation for you. I think the key word there is actually, so everything is digital, right? Our lives have become digital, right? Or digitized, binary, right? Very simple, in that sense. The problem is transformation, right? So what we've seen as a problem is digitizing the business, right? Not the concentration of transforming the business has not happened. I mean, not to say it has not happened, but very less of it has happened, right? To me, this whole process, you know, I have this, the D's that I call, right? This is a discovery, then the diverge, then define, sorry, decide, then define, and only then decide, right? And then comes development. What has happened? If you see the majority of the startups, you know, usually it's from the other end, right? Develop. They have developed, and then they say, hey, we need a designer, right? And then once the designer comes in and you find a different perspective to it, and then we say, oh, now we have to redefine this thing, right? And then there is this whole decision process that happens, right? And suddenly they diverge because they've lost their core goal here, and then they discover that, you know, they're a successor or failure, right? So if you take that path, you know, the first path is what would work, and the other is not.  So the number of originals out there, very less, right? And the scope for an original is also very less. Let's accept it, right? So then what is key is how are you going to create that difference, right? From what is there, this is what you are trying to do. For that, you need to actually spend a lot more effort in the first phase of the discovery or the understanding phase as far as the digital thinking process is concerned, right? Which is good to go look at all your competitors, potential competitors, look at other businesses that have a similar structure, right? See what you can borrow, look at things that you want to copy blatantly.  So you clearly have decided what you want as far as your end product is concerned. And only then you will figure out what to do with it. Okay, so if you would allow me to place you in a spot, unplanned question, given the being a VC yourself and we're talking about multitude of startups out there, if you have to put your bet on startups with design thinking principles in it, would that be one of your primary take points? Would you say so? Just a disclaimer here. So I don't focus so much on the investment part of it, right? So I focus more on the development part of it. But I can answer that question, right? So the thing is that as far as Axel and this, I can talk for Axel, right? Axel bets on founders. Long expertise in the field for Axel. So Axel bets always on the founder, the clarity of thought on the founder. The first investment has to come from the founder. Now for that to happen, the founder has to come and when he's making that pitch, you are gauging the founder on how much he has understood the problem, not what he's going to build with it, right? That can happen. You can build a team, you can build technology, you can innovate technology, you can invent technology, right? But in your mind, have you gone through this entire exercise? And that's actually, it's designed, I think we shouldn't kind of narrow it into the sketch and those kind of things. But if you look at the entire process of starting to put the empathy part of it, to put yourself in the users, your final customers, please look at how is this going to work for you. So from a VC, that's actually very important. Brilliant, thank you. Nitin, yes. So I think in my view, digital transformation is still not started in India. Only maybe 5-10% done. Digital transformation to me is solving basic problems for masters, right? It's making schemes, facilities, services available in tier 2, tier 3 cities, where the growth is coming from. So it's very, very important. Design thinking can play a huge role in making products and services better. But at the same time, in India, designers are not being valued a lot, right? We hardly see startups who have design co-founders. And not to be blamed, I blame each and every person in this room, including all the panelists, because very few of us have taken that courage to go out and start something of our own, including me. So that has to change. We have to lead from front to make the difference. Then only it can happen. Otherwise we'll keep having a situation where somebody will come and say, hey, there is a great technology which we can do, and can you do a UI or visual design for it? And that's a sorry state, but things are changing. Things are changing for good. I'm sure many things have happened in the last 3-4 years. We have seen some fantastic startup design co-founders and startups in India. I've been asked not to name a few, but very good food tech startup has been done by a designer. Very good travel startup has been done by a designer. But if you count, you can count the top five just like that, and there are hundreds. So yeah, the request and the advice is to go out and do more of it. It gets your hand dirty because there is no best time to be a designer right now. So the other part of the question is that how can we play a better role? Yeah, design thinking to amplify. I'll take where the gentleman stopped. So, you know, the customer empathy is something which has to play a huge role in terms of making startups successful. You know, we can't design sitting in offices. We have to go out regularly, validate the product at a recent stage, and then keep writing improving. That is very, very important. Many times designers and design function don't get that budget, but it's taken in a problem. You have to, you know, pitch in, show what it can deliver, and then maybe do it. So yeah, play a customer role. I represent the customer within the company. Thank you, Nitin. So while you were just talking about it, there was a comment that Nitin made that designers, the value that the designers need to have, perhaps we are not seeing it. And I was looking at the audience, there were a few nods here and there. And that's the right time to point to Kranti here. He's been advising a lot of startups, 40 plus startups in the role as a lead designer, a design thinker. So while you would be answering the question on your view of digital transformation, do you agree to the fact or is it like it's the beginning of the way where designers' value is being realized? Your perspective, please. I'll come to the last part of it. First. Okay. No, I'll come to the last. Okay. So I think design provides context for transformation. Like for example, I could give an answer to this question and it could be out of context to this audience. So let me start with that. How many of you are designers? Two of us? Oh. So this is a design audience, right? So hence this answer. And that's the context of it, right? So continuing the thread that Nitin and Sri continued with, which is about putting the consumer in the center. They spoke about empathy. And about putting yourself in the consumer's shoes to understand their pain points, their problems, and therefore conceive a solution. I think all designers do that well. All of you know how to do this. Still, we don't succeed quite often. And here's why. The problem is not wearing somebody else's shoes. The problem is taking off your own before doing that, right? We continue to keep our shoes on while we wear somebody else's. So typically what you end up with sort of is a schizophrenic view, while your biases, your colored views remain. So the real skill to learn has been to unlearn what you already think you know about the problem. And for a designer, this has to be repeated multiple times, because you might work with different audiences. If you're just in one company, all your career, great. But typically you might work in different projects. You might work with different audiences. So the learning and unlearning seem to be a key skill. And that needs to be not just with the designer, but the designer needs to be able to teach this to the rest of the organization. Because otherwise you end up, the problem that he was saying, right? You end up talking to the walls after a point. Nobody's listening to what you're saying. You don't know how to communicate it. So one of the roles that I have seen designers play successfully in design-led startups is to be able to evangelize it internally, to be able to tell others why this is contextual, why this is accurate, and then be able to prove it, stand by it, by the virtue of your designs. So it is really that skill which is under the heading of empathy when it comes to design thinking, but it needs to be unwrapped a little bit. Otherwise that word becomes too large to hold. But it's really this contextual approach which makes it possible for companies to go and succeed. Coming lastly to the role of designers and sort of design-led founders. I think the reason we don't have that many design-led founder successes is because they just aren't enough designers starting companies. If they did, I think they would succeed. It just needs the same advice that more people need to be doing it. Like Ramana did, I started and successfully failed in a couple of startups. So it's worth the effort. You learn a lot. It's more than anything you can learn in books or working. It's sort of a fast track MBA in some sense. You learn it really rapidly. But the role does come down, I think, to be able to also learn the language of translating design both internally within the company in terms of the ROI of design. Why does it make sense? But also in terms of translating consumers to say why this is better than that. Consumers see it more intuitively but internally it needs to be communicated. So I think the designers need to learn to be better communicators. And that is verbal communication. Okay. Now that's very distracting for me. I can't help it. It's an interesting challenge. I would request another 10 minutes if possible. Not more than that. Five minutes. Okay. Fine. We just started. So jumping topics here. We've been hearing about companies where a lot of leaders thinking that we need to look at startups to address the local challenges, which is important. We all understand. But then imitation of successful ventures in another geography is quite obvious. It's inevitable. It is sure to happen. We'll keep the debate on should we imitate or not on a separate note. But then if we are looking at a possible replication, we already have the equivalent of Airbnb's and Uber's here in India. If some of them wanted to sort of replicate what's really happening in a geography to a geography like India, what would be the role of design thinking in it? The key message that you would give to some of the design thinkers here for that. Maybe I can start with Ramana again. Every element of design starts with a problem. So if you have something that's working really well in the US, obviously they have, and successful is because they have solved a problem successfully that pertains to that geography and that terrain. So there's nothing wrong in bringing similar solutions to our country, but it should match a problem. There's no point bringing technology from the US and putting it down here, building designs from there and pushing it on to people when it doesn't fit. So it has to have cultural relevance. It has to have geographical relevance. And it has to solve a problem that is probably at the hyper-local level and then has the ability to scale much larger. That's what I would say, right? But there's nothing wrong. I mean you see music being ripped off, movies being ripped off. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. But the essence is that it has to appeal to the emotion. I'm talking of entertainment, right? So it appeals to an emotion so you can take a movie, you can bring it down here and localize it and it works. But if it doesn't appeal to the emotion, it bombs, whether it's music. Same thing in design thinking too, I think. Thank you. Any one of you need to respond to that? Simple, adopt and adapt. Adopt and adapt, okay. Just having coffee and talking about this is that think of the real-world adoption, right? You take a kid, right? Now let's say you adopt an American kid, right? Who's four years old, or five years old. And then bringing that kid up in the Indian context is important. It's going to be a lot of work, right? Because there's a lot of learning that kid has already gone through like four or five years. That's exactly how you could translate that here. You could bring that thing here, but look at what are the other constraints that will not allow that particular product to survive the way it did in the year. Perfect. So we will take one audience question, one audience question, but one word of advice before that from each of you in adjectives for the designers here would be what maybe we can start from Kranti. If you're a design founder, only advice, persist. Don't give up. Fantastic. Persist, don't give up. Nathan? Design thinking is not for only designers for everybody. It's a culture more than a process. So make sure that you are an advocate in the company to make it in process. The good and bad procrastinate. Procrastinate, okay. Interesting. Well on it. Okay. Thank you. Ramna? I think the best designs come from people who actually understand the customer. I mean, if you focus on the customer and the customer experience, you probably will come up with an awesome design, right? Okay, fantastic. I think it's a problem with everybody, right? Even a technology guy is not a, you know, designer and a business guy is not a technology guy or a designer. So you have to have a right partners along with you to make a startup and compliment rather than, you know, only leading. What we are saying in the panel is saying that, you know, start, but we are not saying that start alone. Start with right complimentary skills, right? Don't four designers starting and you're not complimenting each other and having only one knowledge of one skill doesn't matter. There is one company in the world that is exclusively bounded by two designers. There are no other brands. Any company where there is a designer, it's not just a designer. So let's accept it, right? And there are our weaknesses. We understand what our business is. Perfect. We don't understand what our business is. Post-op business. All right. But you have to. Okay guys. So we would have continued in the interest of time. We have to stop it here. Thank you. If I may request the panelists to be available outside for any one or two questions because I'm sure a lot of energy is here. Thank you so much guys. Next we have Mr. Kranti. Next we have Mr. Srivani Krishnan. Next we have Mr. Ramana. Thank you so much guys.


I think we have to commit to saying this doesn't work anymore in our lives or in our organizations. This doesn't work anymore. And first of all, we need to dismantle that and remove that before we can build something new. Because when you build something new on top of something old, it's like having an app open on your device in the background. You don't know it's open and it's draining your battery.