The Untold Podcast
UNTOLD Podcast is where business, family, and life collide—raw, unfiltered, and brutally honest. No fluff, no fake success stories—just real conversations about the highs, the struggles, and everything in between.
The Untold Podcast
Episode 3 | Mental Health Crisis in Construction: The Untold Story
The silent crisis devastating Britain's building sites finally gets the spotlight it deserves. Mental health in construction reaches far beyond occasional stress – it's a systemic issue destroying lives, livelihoods, and families across the country.
The "alpha man" mentality continues to suffocate meaningful conversation about emotional wellbeing. Men on site are expected to embody strength and stoicism, creating an environment where vulnerability equals weakness. This toxic culture persists despite construction workers facing some of the highest suicide rates of any profession.
Beyond psychological barriers, the podcast exposes the financial warfare waged against subcontractors by major house builders. With 90-day payment terms, arbitrary invoice deductions, and dedicated "quality inspectors" whose sole purpose is finding faults to justify non-payment, it's no wonder small firms regularly collapse under the pressure. Meanwhile, site managers with minimal practical experience make decisions that impact the livelihoods of skilled tradespeople who've spent years perfecting their craft.
The conversation takes a particularly raw turn when discussing tool theft – an epidemic that leaves workers in constant fear of losing equipment worth thousands of pounds. With inadequate insurance options, minimal police response, and stolen tools openly sold at markets, tradespeople face a security nightmare that compounds their already significant stress levels.
What emerges is a damning portrait of an industry where those who physically build our world are treated as expendable. Yet despite everything, the camaraderie and banter between workers remains a lifeline – providing moments of escape from the relentless pressure of the job.
Share this episode with anyone working in construction or trades. Let's start having the conversations that might save lives.
This isn't talked about enough. It's this mentality of the alpha man. We go to work, we have to be strong, Doesn't have to be like that.
Speaker 2:Their job is to go around the site at the end and they'll pick holes in your work and his work. Yeah, but that wasn't done properly. That wasn't to our standard. We're knocking 30% off your input.
Speaker 1:Worst thing is there's a geezer that should be doing the job before that man to stop the snags from appearing anyway. Yeah, but he doesn't. He sits in his office doing nothing all day, getting paid good money. This is why most companies go bust Companies as a subcontractor that work for big house builders. They go bust because they get shafted by the big mass.
Speaker 2:The Untold Podcast is proudly sponsored by Aura Surfaces, specialists in luxury surfaces for extraordinary spaces Like creating dream homes. Building a dream life takes work. That's why we had to get behind this podcast. Real stories, real challenges and real success. Let's get into it.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to the Untold Podcast. This one is a banger. Before we get into it, I'm des. Over here we've got ash, hello. And over here we've got chris.
Speaker 1:Oh, you've got your vocal cords warmed up for this one today we're talking about mental health in the building industry, in the construction industry, because this isn't talked about enough and we are going to touch on this subject time and time again because it is vital. So let's get into it. Why is the mental health aspect of what you do in construction so important? Because it's such a stressful job and there are so many people in the construction industry that don't like talking to people about their mental health. And from day in and day out, it is on your shoulders constantly.
Speaker 1:As a man in the construction industry, I don't know many females in the building going. There are, but obviously men. It's this mentality of the alpha man. We go to work, we work on site, we work with our hands. We have to be strong, we have to be secure, we have to provide. It doesn't have to be strong, we have to be secure, we have to provide doesn't have to be like that, you know, but it always has been, from since the start of time. Anyone that works at their hands is the man that doesn't talk, and that's why the construction industry is such an absolute minefield for mental health.
Speaker 1:So let's let's break it down, because I'm I'm looking from the outside in. I've got a lot of family members and a lot of friends who are on the tools. So I've always sort of sympathized with the things that they've gone through, because it's not just the hours or the work involved or the expectation you've got from the customer or the expectation you've got from everyone who walks around, because they see you've got cash in your pocket and they assume that you've got loads of money. What's the number one driving thing that pisses you off? Clients clients having fuck loads of money and trying to bury every little man below them, because that's what they do. They charge a fucking.
Speaker 1:I said there'd be a lot of swear in this one because I'm quite passionate about this. They charge a shitload of money and every time you put a quote in they go it's a little bit expensive. Could you drop your price a bit? Or what do you think I've done in my quote? I want the job. I've given you a good price because I want a job. I want to take that money home to my family. All right, I'll see what I can do.
Speaker 1:You go home and you think I should really just tell them to piss off. But if I do that, I've got no money coming in. So you sit and you work on the quote. I don't know whether you do it, ash, you might be a bit more set in stone now with the stuff that you do, but you sit at home and you're spending more time doing it and then you give it to them and they go. Oh yeah, I suppose that'll do. No, yeah, thanks, chris. Really appreciate you doing that for us. We'll make sure you look after you on the next job. Just, there's nothing. It's just the big corporations. The big companies they just do take the piss out of the little man, and the little man, unfortunately, is the main reason the construction industry works so well.
Speaker 2:It's the backbone of the construction industry. These big sites. They're using self-employed sole traders to get the work done. Occasionally they'll use a big firm, but the big firms don't employ the staff anymore. It's all done on a. If I've got no work for you, mate, really sorry, sling your hook. I'll ring you if there's anything comes up.
Speaker 1:And the thing that gets my goat as well is the big corporations. I'm not, I don't want to get into it, because you'll know what I'm going to do. I'm talking about because I've got a bit of a thing issue with one of them anyway. But these big house builders, right, they try and get the subbies on and they go right, we want 50 blokes on this site. We want them here every single day. We want all the roofs built on these houses within three months, right? So the bloke gets all those 50 people in.
Speaker 1:He's got overheads fucking beyond his wildest dreams and he sends an invoice in and then he gets the terms of payment back oh, we're not paying you for 90 days. 90 days. That poor bastard's got to wait for his invoice to get paid, so he's got to go to the bank, he's got to borrow a shitload of money, he's got to pay all his blokes. And then the big corporation turns around in 90 days time and go actually, you didn't do that one roof properly, so we're going to not pay you for that house. We're not going to pay for this one, this one and this one. And actually, while we're on the subject, we haven't got the money in yet and it just becomes a complete well. It just messes with people's heads. Wow, how can you have Is that common, massively common? This is why most companies go bust, most companies as a subcontractor that work for big house builders. They go bust because they get shafted by the big mans. The big mans sound like road men, don't they?
Speaker 2:The big companies. I've heard that these big companies are employing people, snagging investigators. They are employing people and they get paid based on how much money they can save off the invoice.
Speaker 2:I don't know how true it is, but I can imagine it is so their job is to go around a site at the end and they'll pick holes in your work, in his work, the chippy's work and that, yeah, but that wasn't done properly, that wasn't to our standard. We're knocking 30% off your invoice, wow, and that is a full-time job for people. Look it up, I bet you there's something they call it something where it's not that. No, but there is someone that's employed to and not people and not money off of the invoice. Now, obviously, some of it is probably relative, yeah, but it's got to be so difficult. Now my take on this… they would call him a quality inspector. Yeah, that's it. Quality surveyor, inspector, man that goes around.
Speaker 1:Worst thing is there's a geezer that should be doing the job before that man to stop the snags from appearing anyway. Yeah, and checking the job, but he doesn't in anyway. And checking the job, but he doesn't. He sits in his office doing nothing all day, getting paid good money, and then the job doesn't even. I mean, I have to be careful what I say here because I could get taken to court.
Speaker 1:But the industry, the people that come in and are supposed to check every house and make sure every house is okay, they're checking one in three so we know what houses aren't getting checked, so those houses don't get completed properly. That's why there are companies out there on TikTok and YouTube doing videos of the snags that are found from new builders, new build homes. So I insulated my loft myself and I'd never done it before and I wasn't sure. So I brought all this cellar text in and you know, putting it in and doing all that between the joists and I'm ringing up mates going right, what depth should I have in the ceiling? What should I have on the outside wall in a dormer, and all this business. And you'd be amazed how many of my mates went just whack loads in there. Take a picture of it and then do what's cheapest, but it's my house.
Speaker 1:It'd be freezing in here. What are you doing? My kids are sleeping in this room, but I think it's that, isn't it? There's so much distrust, so much unethical stuff. It's the good ones that are getting shafted, right? Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's got to be, especially in the winter months. Now, you've said it before in one of the episodes banter on site will really pick people up, especially in the summer months, but then in the winter months for the eight months we have cold, miserable, wet being on a site. I can't think of anywhere worse to be. It's cold, it's wet, there's no heating on there. And then obviously you've got construction in residential and you've got commercial construction. Now, residential probably not so much, but in the commercial sector it's got to be.
Speaker 2:It's got to be. You've got blokes walking around with clipboards Right, you've got to do. We need you to do six houses this week. We need you to tax six houses, and the lads aren't getting paid enough. But these big, big, big big corporations earning millions, the lads aren't getting paid enough to be able to do a good job. That's the way I see it. They're not being because they've got to do so many things in a single day or week or whatever the terms are, and if they don't do that they won't get paid. They're having to cut corners and do it to a standard where they're not quite happy with, but they've got to do it to get paid. That's where I see a lot of the downfalls. Yeah, the lads aren't being paid enough so how are you getting by?
Speaker 1:Well, I'm, I'm lucky, I, I chat, I chat a lot of rubbish. You know, I don't mind talking about things, but, um, I don't know how some people do it. Personally, I know a couple of guys that have have really struggled in the last 12 months. Um, one of them has tried to take his life. Uh, it's it, and there's no quick fix, there is no easy way out. I think companies as an organisation, they need to get together, these big companies, and realise why the construction industry is so massively high on the list for suicides. Yeah, you know, because they are squeezing everybody. They're squeezing the life out of everyone. They're taking all the fun out of everything. You know, the banter is the main thing why people work on site, I guarantee you if you ask or maybe not all of them, because there are some miserable bastards on the sites, but if you ask most of the people under the age of 45, why do you still do this?
Speaker 1:if it's so hard, if it's so stressful? They'll do it because of the people they work with, because of the fun they can have at work, Because it's a way of getting away from your everyday life, although you're at work. I can go to work feeling really down in the dumps because I've had a row on my missus or something, with little boys playing up or I've got financial worries. I can go to work and 15 minutes later I can forget about all of that for two hours because I'm taking them, taking the mickey out of someone that I'm working with, or he's taking the mickey out of me, or someone stinks and you're having a bit of a laugh of them. You know like it disappears. But they need to get together and work out.
Speaker 1:Why is that? Everybody is so destroyed by mental health on site and do something about it and not just go right. Let's get everyone in for a toolbox talk. Um, well, basically, if you work on a big site the first day, everyone goes in for a toolbox talk. They talk about health and safety of the site and blah, blah, blah, and it's a load of crap doesn't really mean anything. It's common sense. It's a box ticking exercise.
Speaker 1:I spoke about the other week. They need to get something in place where they need to say to people look, we are aware of what goes on, we are aware that you are stressed, this is blah, blah, blah. We have, even if they put a fucking site hut in the middle of the in the middle of the site and just have it as you can go and speak to somebody, what's it going to cost someone once a week to have somebody in there to talk to? Because if it's in the canteen no one's going to go. Oh, look, chris is going over to the mental health box. Nutter, you know, you've just got to slide into the side door and no one knows you're going in there. But they won't because it's something else they've got to pay for, else They've got to do that. We'll take their time away from just being the richest building company on the planet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's like the government, I've got to be held accountable. Well, we've got to build one and a half million homes in the next four years. Yeah, that is a massive amount of homes to build. And without the sole traders, without the the one man bands who are jumping on these sites because the agency have rung them up and said oh, we've got 30 houses for you, they're having to do the work. They don't really want to do the work, but they're having to do the work Without those people there is. I mean, there's no way you're building one and a half million homes in the next four years anyway. However, even if you wanted to, your best bet is to look after these people, not try and screw them down on price. Everything is screwing down on price. Why can a banker earn £1,000 a day but an electrician gets frowned at because he's put an invoice in for 300 quid for?
Speaker 1:him and his lad Exactly right. It's because it doesn't feed into the narrative of society where you need to be educated the builders, the workers, the ones on the tools even though some of the people I know on the tools are fucking clever, really intelligent types because they haven't got the education they're not worthy of the same amount of respect and it's nonsense. I kind of look as and I hate to say this, but I've always thought about this, I think as subcontractor trades are looked upon like cannon fodder. You know we are the ones that just get pushed in to do everything and we've just forgotten about it. Look at COVID. Right, covid?
Speaker 1:Everyone sits at home, everyone's locked in their houses. Don't go to work, don't speak to people, don't breathe the same air. Builders, fuck off. Back to work, get back to work. I'll tell you what 15 of you can use the same two toilets. You know we won't have any cleaners cleaning the door, we won't have anything. And then when you're in that toilet and you're thinking, who's just been in here? Have they got COVID? Because that geese are on sites, because we're all crapping ourselves about COVID, because we were told you know, and you're all in the same room, you're all coughing and sneezing.
Speaker 1:Someone's going oh yeah, my mum's got COVID. Oh yeah, my daughter's got COVID. But you know, I've got to come to work because I've got to earn me money. Oh yeah, well, I took a 10 grand loan out, but I'm still coming back to work anyway, even though I don't feel too well, because I can, you know, or I'm supposed to a nest egg to sit on or anything like that, because furlough didn't apply to you. Yeah, we got.
Speaker 1:What was it? If you were self-employed? I mean, I'm a director of my limited company, so I got what was it. I got something like 400 pound a month or something. And then there was other people that were getting furloughed and they were earning. We had a chippy at work. He was getting paid full pay to sit at home Wow, you know. So he was never going to come back to work.
Speaker 1:But the boys that are on the prices that are on the day rates, that are not having that luxury, they're all on site, grafting their ass off, listening to everybody's moaning and problems and and you just feel like and I should imagine, because you guys were the only ones working prices were actually down because it was easy to get a builder. Well, I Well, I mean, you'd struggle to get hold of a contractor, to be fair. Yeah, because nobody wanted to know anything, you know. But yeah, I mean, the government have got a massive role to play in this. You know, we said the other week that we don't really do politics that much, but the government have got a massive, massive. You could give them a list of stuff to answer to, but they never would.
Speaker 2:No, you know.
Speaker 1:What would it be? What would it be, what would be the number one thing that you could fix? It's really difficult, really difficult.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean I've got notes on my phone. I've took notes because I knew this episode was coming up and it mainly just it mentions the health and safety and big corporations. I'll tell you what a government could do. They could actually allow you to have common sense on a building site again because since they've put all these fucking health and safety things in it has destroyed everybody. You know, I worked at the Savoy when they'd done the refurb on the Savoy. I was lucky enough to be involved in that and I got a red card which gets you booted off the site for taking my glove off and scratching my eye, because I'd already done it once before.
Speaker 1:Wow, a yellow card. You get two yellow cards. Well, I don't know how it works now. This was quite a long time ago. Two yellow cards on a building site. If the site say you have to wear gloves, you have to wear glasses, you have to wear your hard hat, you have to wear steel toe cap, boots, high vis safety vest, whatever, if you are seen wearing not one of those items, yellow card. Instantly. There's some guy that walks around site. His entire job, sole job, is to give people yellow and red cards. I bet he's liked Jumped up.
Speaker 2:And he's getting paid more than the guys doing the work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's on like 35, 40 grand a year. How do you apply to be one of those?
Speaker 2:I didn't doing the work. Yeah, he's on like 35, 40 grand a year.
Speaker 1:How do you apply to be one of those?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't get the job. I was too normal too nice.
Speaker 1:But no, you get a yellow card for doing something simple like that, and even if you want to write on a piece of paper, take your glove off. Yellow card, it's pathetic. You're not allowed to use a hop-up, so a hop-up. So hop-up is a little platform, right, I don't know whether you know what hop-up is, but, um, it's a little platform, not even 500, maybe 600 off the floor sounds like a skateboard trick.
Speaker 2:yeah, you have to have a rail around that now to be able to use it safely on a building site.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how high are we? Talking literally I'm, I'm talking less than waist height less than waist height, you have to have a ladder license, a permit to use a ladder. It, honestly, is just become a joke, and I can understand why, because obviously there's people on a building site that don't speak particularly good English, so you have to set these rules in place. But if you're, if you're, if you can't speak English, I'm trying to really I'm really trying really rattle this out because I'm not that kind of person.
Speaker 1:But if you can't speak English and you go into a toolbox talk and you come out of that toolbox talk and they think that you know all the safety on site, you don't know the safety on site. Of course not. So how can you act safely anyway? So you can't put one rule in. And I'm completely sure that, whatever country they're from, do not have the same stupid yeah we're the only country on the planet that have health and safety like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, nobody else has it, and we laughed at by other other countries. You know, um, but if you can't come out of that toolbox talk that the, the government and this building company have set up, that put in place to make it safe, how are you safe? How are you safe on a ladder if you've got a ladder license but you don't know what has been told to you in that safety meeting? You know. So I get the hard hat, get the goggles.
Speaker 1:What's the damage in taking your glove off, honestly, from time to time? This is it. This is what I do not understand. It doesn't make any sense, and this is why it's so hard for people to get their head around it all. It's really, really difficult to understand what is going on from one day to the next, but then you walk onto another site and there'll be no health and safety at all. I've been to jobs where I'm three stories high and the stairwell is completely open and it is literally like a I don't know 80-foot drop and you just think okay, well, yesterday I was on a site and I couldn't even get on a small platform, and today. I'm 80 foot off the floor on a scaffold tower that looks over this pure drop. There's no crash mats, there's no, nothing Like if you're going to do something, you've just got to put it across the board and if anybody gets caught, you shut the business, you shut the building company down. Yeah, but you are right.
Speaker 1:This started at government, with things like the birth of the HSE, with the health and safety executive, or with the birth of corporate manslaughter and stuff like that, where, yeah, of course, horrible things happened that created the birth of this, but it's just gone down a rabbit hole now. That is just insane, isn't it.
Speaker 2:There's so much red tape isn't there on a building site. You must see loads of this in your job. You've got like I don't know much about, like cis and all these cards and stuff. But the government are making lads pay money. If you work, want to work on a site, you've got to pay your license every year to be able to work on a site and you get these cards. I'm a laborer card on this card, on that card, different, different tiers of cards and it's fucking expensive and it's all bullshit. It's all red tape bullshit. I've never actually done it, but I'm sure you're.
Speaker 2:I'm sure you've done it yeah and it's these, these, these silly things that have been bought in by someone sitting in an office who's probably never stepped foot on a building site other than when he had his kitchen done.
Speaker 1:That's the closest he's ever been to a building site, into college and learn the paperwork that the government set together, put together for him.
Speaker 2:That's it. It's just bizarre and they're like, yeah, common sense. A lot of it is working on a building site is common sense.
Speaker 1:I used to do some like cashing hand work when I was younger for a security firm and basically do night shifts in like abandoned warehouses or building sites or something like that, or sometimes like just a portal cabin. And I had to stop doing that because the SIA license thing came out and I couldn't sit in a isolated portal cabin in a night shift where there was no bastard around ever. Yeah, it was ridiculous and I had to fill out forms. I was a bouncer, I was a copper at the time and I couldn't do that because it would constitute as a second job. Hello, everybody, don't tell anyone. But yeah, nuts, nuts and that was 2005.
Speaker 1:It's got significantly worse since then. I mean, I'm laying a lot on the business of the big companies here. I think tradesmen themselves need to take a little bit of responsibility as well, and this is something that I do anyway. There's a hierarchy on a building site, you know, and there's a lot of piss. Taking the banner is good, but at the same time, I don't like the fact that people think they're better than each other.
Speaker 1:You've got I'm going to call them out the plumbers, the electricians, I mean, the ones that I work for are very nice people, to be fair, I'm very lucky on the site that I do work at, but they seem to think that they are better than everybody else. Yeah, a lot of certainly the older school, I think, the younger lot now that are coming through, they are much more, you know, they accept everybody inclusive. Yeah, yeah, that's that's the one, that's the one I was looking for, um, but the hierarchy is it's not a nice thing because, you get, I'm a painter and decorator, so I'm I'm if you can piss, you can paint. You know, um, which we? We get told we're alcoholics and they're not probably far off, to be fair. But, uh, we get, you know, we get told that we're alcoholics and they expect us to come to work drinking and blah blah. You only have to go on social media and there's memes of you know. There's this very, very funny guy on TikTok. He takes the mickey out of all the trades and you know he does all the different faces and actions and stuff.
Speaker 1:But I think we all need to work together more because you know, we know that the corporations are ripping us off. We know that they're taking all our money and making us get the life squeezed out of us. But if we work together more and we all don't have this massive divide in money, that's the difference. You know, we're all the trades. At the end of the day, we all do a good job on site and just because you're a plumber doesn't mean you're any better than a laborer. No, a laborer is still doing his job correctly. Yeah, you're doing your job correctly. Yes, you earn more money because you've spent more money on your tools and you've spent more money on courses and stuff. But it doesn't make you any better, just makes you that person that's tried to just become something else.
Speaker 2:That you were a laborer once, exactly. Yeah, that's what people have got realized. Yeah, you were a laborer. Yes, like, and it's a horrible.
Speaker 2:I remember when I was younger, the agency oh, we got a laboring job. Get your broom, get in your, get on your moped and get down to this big site and you're on site and you're literally like the shit that they scraped off the bottom of your shoe. And unless you're at 16, 17 years old, you need to understand that if you're a labourer on site, you've got to have common sense, because they're not going to tell you more than once to go and sweep that room. We used to walk around sites all day. Me and my mates used to do it. We'd get paid what? £6.50 an hour, probably, back in the day from the agency. We'd just walk around with a broom all day, provided they see you with a broom.
Speaker 2:And then you go on some sites and you've got some guy watching you do your job to make sure you're doing your labouring job properly. Hoover this right, it's hand over there tomorrow. We've got to get this done and they've brought in 30 agency workers. It's a literally young 17. I mean there was 40-year-olds doing the same job that I was doing at 16, 17. But it's just bizarre that there's some guy who don't really know anything being paid to, being paid probably a decent whack. The bloke can't even put a shelf up and he's managing a site. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know one of those at the moment.
Speaker 2:actually, I just think I know someone who is on fucking stupid money up in London as a site manager. He got the money because he got the job, because his dad was doing the same thing.
Speaker 2:The bloke can't tie his own shoelaces, let alone put a shelf up. He's never held a drill in his life and he's a site manager for a site building a thousand fucking homes or flats or whatever. And I just think that's where everything went wrong, where they needed the people to go up through the ranks. It's like any company you start at A lot of successful companies the laborer starts doing laboring and before you can get to management position, you've got to have pushed the broom around, You've got to have learned plumbing, You've got to have been plastering, You've got to do this. A lot of the decent property development companies they started off as general builders. They were doing this, this.
Speaker 1:They invested their money and they went into this and they did that otherwise you don't get any respect from the people on site, because they know that's what's happened. Well, where have you got that job? Because you don't even know to do mine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's it and I feel that it's got. They've got it. It's sort of at the top of these big firms where the people they're getting in. Now I trust you a hell of a lot more to manage my site than I would some guy that went to uni and got it a degree on paper, absolutely and I think that's where these lads that are working, that are working with their hands. They're working on the site. It's freezing cold. They've got someone screaming down their neck saying we've got to get this done, we've got to get this done. Then they're being knocked. Then they're waiting 90 days for their money. Then they want to buy beers on the way home because they've had such a shit day. And they get home and their missus is stroppy because they're stroppy. I think there's a massive cycle of this.
Speaker 1:I completely agree. This is why this is such a massive topic that we can't do in a single episode. We haven't even talked about the early mornings and the cold and the wet. They're doing the quotes for free hours at a time, the paperwork that comes off the back of everything and the invoicing, the late nights, the fact that you might have to take on two jobs in a day just to make money that month, then the exhaustion that you get from putting in that amount of graft, and then you've got the family struggles on top of that and the demand that they would understandably need from you as well. Throw all that with the pressure of the money that you're making and the fact that you're being pulled from pillar to post and that you're treated like shit by people that are paying you. It's no fucking wonder, is it there's? You know what I just? I just listened to you. Then I've just realized one of the one of the main things. I don't know how I haven't remembered this already listening to Ash doing all this, this and this, and then going home and blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:When you get home, it doesn't end then, because you go to bed every night and you worry that some bastard's going to break into your van and nick all of your tools that you've spent thousands and thousands of pounds on to be the best that you can be at your job every night. You have that fear. I mean I'm lucky, I live in a. I'm going to touch wood, but I do this, but I live a. I live in at the end of a, an estate where I feel like I'm quite protected because you've got to drive in and drive all the way out again, but I I don't know how people do it.
Speaker 1:I've got mates that have had their vans broken into three times in the last 12 months. Oh, and they're only broken into. They've had their doors completely ripped off the side of their van to get to their tools. And that and some of those boys that you know. If you're a carpenter, if you're a carpenter or a plumber or an electrician, you've got some serious amount of tools. Carpenters are the most I know a carpenter. I reckon he's probably got 25 grand's worth of tools in the back of his van. He's insured for five of them, because if you try and insure 25 grand's worth of tools, you ain't having it no, and you're expected to take him out of your van and put him into your house every night.
Speaker 1:Yeah literally, you ring for a crime number. Well, ring the police for a crime number, that's all you're doing. They don't care what anyone says. Everything that goes on in this country is is happening for a reason. All the theft of tools, all the sale of second-hand tools that money is all being contributed somewhere to the system. And if it's, you know, if a tradesman's going back to a shop and he's spending 20 grand on his tools every six months or every two years, it's taxed. That money is getting taxed. So that's why they don't want to sort it out. They don't give a toss.
Speaker 2:They don't care, though I think it's even. Whatever the reasons behind it is, they don't give a shit. And the thing is you can spend 20 minutes every night and every morning taking your tools out of your van and putting them back in. You pull up outside your house, you pull up outside the job and they're pulling up outside. They're pulling up outside. They're peeling the side of the van off. It's 20, 30 seconds. Yeah, 20, 30 seconds.
Speaker 1:And I know that the police haven't got the resource to do it. They just haven't got the resource and the chances of them catching someone are so minute they won't even waste breath on it. Listen, the thing that pisses me off is right. You see on social media all the time, car boot sales Go to a car boot sale with an army of police. I don't care whether they've got the resources or not. I genuinely don't care.
Speaker 2:No, it's a good show.
Speaker 1:Take them out from doing something else, you know, stop them from pulling cars over on the side of the road Because they haven't got a front plate.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like go to a car boot sale in Essex or somewhere like that where they know that there's big car boot sales. I guarantee you 90% of the tools on those massive tool stands are stolen. They've all got serial numbers, and they've all got people's names stamped on the side of them. Honestly, it drives me up the wall.
Speaker 2:I can't believe I didn't remember that beforehand. There's a video I watched of a guy. He went to the local we Buy Any Tools For Cash shop and his tools were on the shelf with a stamp on it that he'd put on them. He did the marks he had the photos of and called the police. The police were like without the receipt, mate, you haven't got what do you do honestly?
Speaker 1:what do you do?
Speaker 2:but it's not. It's probably not the police. I don't think it's the police. The police haven't got the resources. It comes from a higher level. It is and yeah, it comes from, if it is the police.
Speaker 1:We're talking top, top, top of the tree commissioner, chief officer type job because the police. We're talking top, top, top of the tree commissioner, chief officer type job, because the police on the ground, the level that I was at, I'd have loved to have done that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I know I wasn't the best copper in the world, so if I would have loved to have done it there's a bunch that would have loved to have done it even more. That is brutal. You're right. They couldn't go in and nick the geezer that run the shop because he they can't, yeah. And he could say I didn't know, I thought this geezer was dead, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:But they can put stuff in to say, right, if you're selling secondhand tools to a, we need a photocopy of your passport and we've got to keep that on file for two years.
Speaker 1:That's it. And what they certainly can do is, you know what I mean? And that's a little argument settled. Yeah, yeah, loads of little things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's bizarre, though, like you see, in London, when was it? In February, they arranged a big protest and there were thousands of people. You see it on TikTok. You won't see it on Sky News or BBC News. No, because the government don't give a fuck, whatever.
Speaker 1:Mate, the government are running their news channels. Yeah, it's not even a conspiracy. The names of people they're literally running their news channels. Just don't watch the news. Oh, we said it the other day, didn't we? I don't even watch it. I've stopped since then, completely stopped, yeah.
Speaker 2:Look how happy I am. Yeah, oh, it's mad.
Speaker 1:I'll get my news day there, because we could talk for hours on this, but there is an awful lot we will do and continue to do. Listen anybody that is affected by this, because we know there are a lot of you, and it doesn't just have to be you yourself. It could be your husband or your boyfriend, or even your girlfriend, or anyone that you know that's in this game and is feeling these things. Please send them to this show Number one so they can listen to the things we're talking about. But number two, put things in that they want us to discuss so we know what we can talk about to help you more in future episodes. This was a big one, not as many laughs as usual, but I think it was justified. Please tell your friends about this show. Support us as much as you possibly can, because these things matter. Cheers, guys, cheers.