The Week Unwrapped - with Olly Mann
405. New York water, mobile mergers and marriage
Is the Big Apple drying up? Will we benefit from a phone company shake-up? And is marriage good for your mental health? Olly Mann and The Week delve behind the headlines and debate what really matters from the past seven days. With Vincent Moss, Gary Cafell and Leaf ArbuthnotImage credit: GCShutter / Getty
It's the week ending Friday the 8th of November and this is the Week Unwrapped. In the past seven days we've seen Donald Trump winning the popular vote and the swing states to secure his place as 47th President of the USA, Kemi Badenok becoming the first black woman to lead the Conservative Party and the death of legendary record producer Quincy Jones at the age of 91. You can read all you need to know about everything that matters in the Week magazine, but we're here to bring you some stories that passed under the radar this week. Week news not making headlines right now, but with repercussions for all our lives. I'm Ollie Mann and that's Unwrapped the Week. And joining me today from the Week magazine is Assistant Editor Leaf Arbuthnot and we welcome back Deputy Editor of Money Saving Expert Gary Kayful and former Political Editor of the Sunday Mirror Vincent Moss. I would like your one word assessment please on the US election. Difficult is a good word, Vincent. Dangerous. Dangerous, nice and Gary. I open in. I'm hyphenating that one, so I'm cutting out as one. Ok, well that's dealt with all of our commentary on the most important news of the week because we're here to shine a light on everything else. Vincent, you're up first, what do you think this week should be remembered for? Well this is the week New Yorkers were told not to flush the loo. But we also need your help New Yorkers. Something simple as not having the water run while we brush our teeth and other ways of ensuring we're not watering the lawn too frequently and often, but also just being precautions. For every gallon we save, that is the gallons that we're going to be able to fill our pools and carry out other activities throughout the summer. New York mayor Eric Adams in a video he posted on Saturday, you can tell he's the New York mayor because you can hear the police sirens in the background, he's standing on the street corner. But he's talking about water for swimming pools Vincent, is that the story? Yeah, it's a bit bizarre, they have got a terrible water shortage in New York. Now you wouldn't have thought so surrounded by water everywhere, but they've had their driest October for 150 years, completely the opposite of what we've been seeing going on in Spain and Europe. So all those millions of people there, they've just had 0.02 centimetres of rain in the last month in Central Park and they normally get about 11 centimetres at this time of the year. Now, as I was saying, it's the driest October, but for a city that uses a billion litres of water a day, it's a huge problem. So there you heard the mayor Eric Adams saying, turn the tap off when you brush your teeth, don't flush the loo if you don't need to. Other water saving tips like that iconic image we always see of New York where the water hydrants are always gushing, they've got a lot of leaks, they want to stop those leaks. So they've got a problem, but maybe they don't quite get saving water yet because as the mayor was saying, if the idea is to save water so you've got plenty to fill up your swimming pools, I'm not quite sure they've got water conservation, but beneath all of that is a really serious message because we expect drought orders in perhaps some other places in the world. But when it starts hitting big, big cities, well-run cities theoretically like New York, what does it mean for London, what does it mean for other areas, and one of the things that's exacerbated it particularly in New York is the world's longest underwater tunnel which is about, I think, 89 miles brings water in from the Catskill Mountains to the northern reservoirs of New York, and they're finally upgrading that, spending a couple of billion quid upgrading that, but that means that's out of circulation, that's put further pressure on the water supply. Now, whether or not New Yorkers will actually listen, who knows, but it's just really interesting that it's for the first time that any of my friends in New York can remember they're now under effectively kind of drought provision orders. Yes, I mean, one of the questions that might be asked, Lee, when it comes to whether or not New Yorkers will listen, is whether or not New Yorkers will listen to him, to that mayor. He's been in the spotlight for some other issues recently. Yeah, so in September, the New York mayor, Eric Adams, who of course is a Democrat, was indicted on a bunch of charges, and some quite serious ones, including bribery and fraud charges. He's alleged to have accepted illegal gifts worth over $100,000 from Turkish citizens and one at least Turkish government official. And so for many people, Eric Adams is a fairly tainted figure, and he's been pretty profligate seemingly with other people's money, those are the charges against him at least. And so people, you know, hearing from him, oh, you know, turn off your tap when you're washing your hands, don't flush the loo unnecessarily. They might not really want to do what he says, given he doesn't seem to have particularly behaved in a way that most people can say the proper himself. Yeah, what has the reaction been to this, Vincent, from New Yorkers? Well, pretty relaxed, really. They don't seem to be changing their behavior. I mean, it's a very sort of city where people are more aware than perhaps in other parts of America about climate change and the issues, but I don't think there's been that big behavior or change. But what people have noticed is it is really, really mild. It's unusually mild at the moment. They've had no rain at all. It's very much a city of Four Seasons, New York. And it's been very, very mild. And if this continues, they may have no choice but to listen to the mayor. And Luke's right. He's not the most popular mayor in town, well, he's the only mayor in town. But if it continues much longer, then there's going to be a serious problem in New York. And Gary, you know, as Vincent was alluding to earlier, you hear a story like this, whether it's in New York, or as we discussed on the show, a few episodes ago in Australia, a similar story about water conservation. And you start thinking about how it might affect us, how it affects the rest of the world. How is the UK's water infrastructure? And can we expect to be asked to use less water soon? Yeah, you know, we're talking about New York, but this could just as easily be us. And we all have to be very mindful of what we're using. So to try and combat this, UK water regulator off water set out a £88 billion investment plan to improve services and the environment. That's a five-year plan running from next April all the way to 2030. The idea being this money is spent to tackle issues like stopping the leaks, reducing pollution into rivers, lakes in the seas, you know, those horrible scenes that we've seen recently. Now, $6 billion of this will go to all securing water supply. So progressing nine new reservoirs, seven large-scale water transfer schemes. Obviously, all with the aims, you know, put us in a good position to make sure that we aren't having, you know, the struggles that perhaps other cities are having. Now, walk along the streets, don't you? You see these, you know, we mentioned the New York Hydrants, but you know, because so often you see leaks in the UK as well, and how frustrating is it as you as a consumer, you're doing your bit at home, you know, you're turning your tap off and you see, you know, the pipes pumping out water with leaks here, there and everywhere. Companies will be ordered to replace around 8,000 kilometres of water mains pipes under this scheme. That's a 400 percent increase compared with the current five-year period. And these water companies are all privatised, what does that mean for our bills? So, you know, unfortunately, as part of this, now, off what has provisionally said, bills will rise an average of 21 percent over the next five years, and that's before inflation is added on top of that. Now, rurringly, you know, a survey by the consumer council for water this week actually said 18 percent of households were already struggling with their bills, and 40 percent said they would struggle to afford these new rises, you know, 54 percent of people said they'd have to cut back on non-essentials just to be able to pay for these increased water bills. So, we're in a really difficult situation, I think, at the moment where everybody recognises we need to be better at conserving water, but when you see water companies in England and Wales almost doubling their profits since 2019, I think it's clear that the water companies need to do a little bit more rather than putting all of that burden on consumers who are already feeling the pinch. Yeah, and our reservoir's leaf, I was quite shocked to read just how old they are. I mean, like our sewage system, we go back decades. Yeah, there hasn't been a new reservoir built in England in many years, and yet we've seen the population massively increase, and it's really truly depressing in what is a country that is, like, literally famous around the world for being extremely wet that we're having this conversation, and as Vincent said, New York is not known for being a dry place, but as global warming bites, we're seeing changes in the weather and extra pressure on systems that are kind of creaking, and there's been kind of stagnating, wage increases, and so you just wonder how much people have, you know, how much kind of room people have to spend more on their bills. And in the States, Vincent, a new president coming along, well, the return of the old president, who is skeptical at best about man-made climate change, do you think that under Trump, we could see more of this kind of thing in the USA? Well, yes, he's famous slogan is drill, drill, drill, baby drill, isn't it? So he's not a big fan of supporting climate change and whether he'll be investing in the infrastructure that America needs in the same way we do. They've got sort of bridges that are falling over and terribly infrastructure issues, and that's what it needs. I mean, his leak was alluding to. I don't think it's been a UK reservoir built since 1992, which I think was in Derbyshire, Carcington, I think, and there are plans for more underway, but these Western economies in America and the UK in very similar states when it comes to things like water and infrastructure. Everybody knows they need replacing, and everybody knows that things need to happen, but either a combination of lack of investment, or even in our country, in particular in the UK, people are opposed to things, even new reservoirs, and I would have thought a new reservoir would be rather a beautiful thing to have next door to, not everybody's a fan of them. There are plans underway to have these added at places like sort of, I think there's plans for more in cheddar and down in Portsmouth, there's one being built, but these kind of massive infrastructure projects, it's the balance between we know we need them, but at the end of the day, it's us, the customers that have to pay, and there's a resistance there that Gary highlighted, because almost certainly bills will go up. Yeah, so obviously we're talking about the burden being put on consumers, but there is a couple of things consumers can do to keep a little bit more money in their pocket. With water, it's not like a utility where you switch providers, like your broadband, like your energy to save, you have to stay with the same provider, however, it's all about how you're built, so essentially it's worth looking at, if it's worth getting a water meter, now if you're somebody who has a big house and doesn't have many people living in it, as most bills were estimated, it's likely you could save by switching to a water meter, because essentially what the water company does says, right, you've got a four-bedroom house, I expect a lot of people in this house, but if there's only a couple of people in there, have a look at getting a water meter, because that could be one way to save a significant amount of cash. And for New Yorkers, whether they cut down on their water consumption or not, are they going to notice this change? Well, some of them might, some people who've got very, very sensitive taste buds might. New York water has traditionally been called by locals, obviously, the champagne of tap waters, because it is unfiltered, and it's, you know, flown down from the Catskills, and it's apparently very nice. But there is a concern that... I mentioned the tap water in Champagne in France is better than it is in New York City. I would say probably, and actually I was in New York a couple of weeks ago, and I was drinking the tap water, and it was quite nice. But there is worry that, you know, with this change coming, that even things like bagels, which are made in New York with water, obviously they're very reliant on water, will change because New York's very soft water is apparently crucial to these bagels tasting really good. Some people think that these fares are overblown, and actually the bagels will be completely fine, but juries out. We're talking about climate change and devastation for the world cities, but some people feel the fears are overblown about the bagels, everybody, don't worry. Coming up next, how is the signal on your phone right now? If it's bad, find out why, that's after this. OK, Gary, it's your turn. What do you think this week should be remembered for? Will a mega-merger mean mobile misery is a thing of the past? Ever notice your phone struggling to load the lime app just when you found a bike with full charge, no trash in the bucket and functioning pedals? Or your WhatsApp chat has the spinning wheel of death? Or you finally made it to the front of the queue for that gig that you've been so excited for for months, but you forgot to take a screenshot of the ticket beforehand and now your email won't load? Well, it's not just you. London's phone signal is worse than it used to be. A video posted by Timeout London in October on TikTok. Gary, bad signal, a little unusual for those of us living in the countryside, but now in the cities as well. Absolutely, yeah. We're all facing that at the moment and hopefully there's an acquisition that's looking likely now that hopefully could put an end to some of the problems that we are facing. So this week, we've heard that the £15 billion merger between two of the UK's biggest mobile networks finally looks set to get the green light. So after initially raising concerns last year when this was first launched, the competition and market authority, this week said the merger between Vodafone and free could actually be pro-competitive if they stick to various legally binding commitments they have set out this week. Now those commitments are generally concerned around investing in the UK's mobile infrastructure and also protecting consumers from price hikes. Now this would see 27 million mobile customers all come under one provider. That would leave just three major networks in the UK. And why would that improve the signal? So this deal was first announced in June last year and the two groups said they would invest £11 billion over 10 years to do what they describe as create one of Europe's most advanced standalone 5G networks. This was obviously clearly to try and placate the CMA who were clearly going to go investigate this and just see what it does for competition. Now their original findings in September were concerned around that the merger could lead to higher prices for customers and actually harm the position of some mobile virtual network operators. For smaller networks the likes of Sky Mobile, Leica that piggyback off the signals are the big four networks and they often offer cheaper deals and actually free is one of the major networks to offer some of the cheapest tariffs at the moment so that was a real concern of what does that mean for consumer bills. Now the CMA has now set a list of requirements for this deal to go ahead. Now this makes the networks commit to freezing the prices of certain tariffs for several years and the duration of this freeze will actually be linked to delivery of the promised network upgrades. So it's in their interest to make this roll out happen quicker if they don't then these tariff freezes will continue for longer and they're saying that as part of this they must upgrade all of their sales sites across the UK that's 25 to 30,000 sites working with off com looking at sites in urban areas and rural areas so hopefully this would then spark up the firms into life and we may all benefit from better coverage all round but I think it's clear that we do need some action and action fast. Yeah I mean that hopefully is doing quite a lot of work in that sentence isn't it Vincent and you can understand the skepticism that customers might have about this merger because you know apropro the last story we were just discussing with the water companies and there being no choice I mean if you're down to just four big networks the experience that we all have is that when that happens bills ultimately go up customer service gets worse there's less choice there's less competition how is that good for people. Well that's right I mean the natural instinct is more people in the market more choice means drive down prices we see it with supermarkets and I remember when Uber came into the taxi market we were told that that would drive down prices and it did for a while but now the prices are pretty much up to the price of other cabs and the shrinking of the market generally doesn't do a good thing and I think we've seen with recent surveys that still London and most of the UK when it comes to 5G we're in tenth place I think in Europe behind major capitals we're a long way behind other cities so it's already well upgrading the coverage but you can still ring people in lots of parts of the UK and the coverage is weak and it's poor and it really does need to improve and it's hard to see despite their sort of warm words how a kind of shrinking of the number of choices on offer will boost both prices and for consumers and in more importantly quality. Yeah it's interesting to talk about the cities actually Leaf as I mentioned earlier you know I live in Leafy bits of rural Hertfordshire and so maybe you wouldn't expect my signal to be particularly amazing but it's so bad that I have to do all my calls on WhatsApp because I can't get a mobile signal but it's now the case that people are anecdotally saying actually when they go into London when they go into Manchester it's just as bad as it is out in the country why is that? Yeah that's absolutely right and I've been in parts of London and been sort of holding my phone up trying to catch a few bars. Some phones have a sort of automatically try and get 5G even if it's on sort of one bar rather than plump for sort of you know 4G, 3G type thing when they'd actually be able to get more signals so that can be a frustrating problem but it's kind of crazy that in a world capital you know London you can still be struggling to get signal and like it makes me think that you know we've been struggling with our productivity for years perhaps this is a factor we haven't been able to upgrade our phone networks enough and that's you know one of the reasons why 5G is so bad but another one is that the planning system apparently makes it quite difficult to erect these masks for better mobile coverage it's famously difficult to get reservoirs built in the UK it's also difficult to get phone masks built and I just I've really hoped that the new government which has shown some kind of interest in trying to speed things up actually manages to get it together and do that. Yeah and that new government Gary has been talking all about growth in business hasn't it but you know not having mobile internet to a decent standard is now an absolutely fundamental thing for business in a way that it wasn't back in the days where the only thing that was important was a landline and a broadband connection I mean now if you're taking payments you need a mobile signal so that you can process them if you're running a social media account out and about you need to be able to upload in quality from where you are instantly it's a big deal. It is yeah I mean you can't you know you can't walk down the street can you without somebody using their mobile for some reason or another and I think this is what we're also highlighting you know we're aware a little bit more of how important our phones are to us how important a mobile network is to us and that is why we're noticing a little bit more you know I think 5G as well is particularly difficult because I think it's a little bit harder to cut through walls or cut through various objects it blocks it so I think that's the reason why sometimes with a 5G it's not as good as we as we perhaps were hoping it might be at this stage but the government is aware of this and in the autumn budget the Labor Government has committed 500 million pounds to improve broadband speed and mobile coverage across the UK and on this plays into Vodafone and Free because they're saying look we know you've got targets to hit give us the green light for this merger and we promise we'll do our best to help you reach those targets you know they're saying on their own they just don't have pockets deep enough and can't collaborate well enough to be able to help support this rollout but as a joint force they are saying that they can speed up this deployment across the country and Vincent what is the experience elsewhere in the world how much better is mobile internet if you're not in the UK it's better in lots of other European cities I mean for example in when it comes to download speeds we're sort of long way behind places like Lisbon Barcelona and Munich and places like that well Munich is very bad actually Munich is the second worst when it comes to 5G download speeds lots of European cities and other places do do better and where there's a will I mean in Cornwall for example there was a big effort to put in super fast broadband down there and drive speeds up because the mobile coverage was so bad at least people as you were looting you could connect by WhatsApp and there was a way around it but without the will and it may be that these companies are just using this as potentially as an excuse to sort of drive up profits further but there needs to be will particularly to drive them mobile coverage into rural areas but then we get to the infrastructure issue which is no you want a big phone nast in a beautiful part of the countryside tends to be in a rural area and that's another problem and a fascinating part of this story Gary which I just had not thought of until you forwarded us some links around this today is the impact that the ban on Huawei in UK infrastructure may have had on our depleting signal yeah so you know back in 2020 we started removing these devices from our infrastructure due to a sort of a so-called risk to national security essentially we followed suit after the USA did similar you know and they were fundamental to our 5G network you know providing various equipment and that and that when you remove that you can see why this rollout has been delayed because we just don't have the vendors like them to actually replace that so you know you've taken one bit out and you're still working to these quite tough targets we sort of you know we want on behind your back so I think that's definitely contributed to the problem we're facing what's really unfortunate is that we don't really know how much the Huawei ban has affected and will continue to affect 5G rollout so I feel like we're dealing with a world where we just haven't been given enough information how how upset should we be about the five 5G ban if it's going to hold back you know the UK's economy over the next few years or you know should we see it as a small sacrifice and so I think it's really unfortunate that it's it's such a murky area and Gary I'm sure many people will be heading down to your website and other price comparison websites that give financial advice about you know where to move their contract to if they want to switch mobile network but what's new in 2024 what should we be aware of now if we are looking around to move provider well first of all check your contract because there are 14 million of us out of contracts on our mobile plans now if that is you you are probably overpaying and it's time to look for a new deal and if you're somebody that you know like me that you don't feel like you need the latest phone all of all the time and you're quite happy with the handset you do have look at a Simone you know there's some crazily cheap deals at the moment out there and for about five pounds a month you can get more than enough data than most people can use so Simone you deal is the way to go to save the most amount of cash if you do need a new handset though you know around Black Friday is a good time but do not go directly to the networks most often that will not get you the best deal so pop onto a comparison site and that will scale at the whole market so you know quite a lot of us by tradition just call up our you know network get a re-contract every two years that's not the cheapest way pop on a comparison site and you can get a view of the whole market hopefully save some serious cash Gary I'm feeling really grateful to you right now because I have paid off my phone and I've got this fee I've had this been haunted by this feeling that I'm paying way too much for my phone contract so I'm going to go and research after this podcast and get myself a cheaper deal and I'm really grateful maybe I'll send you some money in the post do you want to know what's up next I do I do I do I do that's after this leave you're finishing the show what do you think this week should be remembered for forever and ever I'm in should you get married to avoid getting depressed it's the day before Jack's horror themed wedding and bride Becca has just found out he's customized the princess dress she's always dreamed of wearing oh no are you okay no what could have done oh my that's beautiful just wait do you want to see the back yeah oh my god what is that what is that bride to be Becca and friends in shock at what her future husband Jack has done to her horror themed wedding dress in a clip from don't tell the bride shared on Halloween what story does this relate to tenuously leaf well very tenuously and I'd like to clarify that in that clip her wedding train you know the kind of bit the back of her dress is covered in what looks like a bloody handprints so it's not kind of it's not the dream wedding dress I would say what you're talking about surely whatever little girl dreams of so this relates to a study that was published in nature human behavior this week so it's quite a major journal and it analyzed data from over a hundred thousand participants in seven countries that included the UK and China and the US and after taking into account various factors it found that people who don't live with a partner who aren't married have an 86 percent higher chance of having depression than those who do so it's basically saying yeah it's a pretty striking figure it's one really important thing that comes up when I that came up when I was looking into this study is that it actually the way that they decide who is married is interesting it's it's not just people who've you know literally gone to the registry office and got married it's people who are in marriage like situations for instance if they're cohabiting you don't have to actually necessarily be technically married but if you're in a relationship and a long-term relationship and you're living with your partner then you count for the purposes of this study as a married person and therefore are less likely to be depressed than someone who is single and much much less likely to be depressed than someone who is divorced or separated okay maybe it's not a massive surprise Vincent you know people sort of by definition who cohabit with someone else might have found someone else and are therefore happier than people who don't but obviously there are a lot of people in loveless marriages there are a lot of people who are in abusive relationships I mean you can't really just take from this one study can you that to cure depression get married that's right it's not the ultimate solution not everybody's you say who's together is happy but I would say a lot of personal happiness comes down to finance and how your finances are sorted out and if you are single you do pay effectively what is a single persons penalty whether that's your council tax laughing he called a discount it's only 25% in my view it should be 50% because you're on your own potentially but also hotel rooms travel insurance Netflix subscriptions anything in life really is cheaper when shared by two people in London for example to rent a single room probably be in excess of a thousand pounds in zone one or zone two but if you're a couple and you're sharing a one-bedroom flat makes far more economic sense and you're spitting all the bills so I would say that money's on issue and if you are single you're paying a lot more for everything and that doesn't affect your mental health in a positive way often yes that's interesting and Gary very much your area isn't it there are actually financial incentives aren't there that were brought in by Cameron's Conservative government to get married there was yeah and I feel like I should start this segment as somebody who's married myself and I know my wife listened to this by saying I did not get married for financial reason just putting that out there for which you listen to this so yeah this is not the reason I got married however there are benefits to being married now if you are in an unmarried couple in law that often means nothing at all even if you've lived together for decades you've got loads of children under inheritance law that just doesn't matter if you're not married don't have a civil partnership your relationship has no status so you know essentially if one person dies you never may not actually get the house so you know it could cause a lot of problems that what makes a will even more important there are tax advantages as well to be married especially with inheritance tax anything left to a spouse or married or a single partner is exempt from inheritance tax so eventually whatever you want to them there's no tax on it but this doesn't apply to those who are just cohabiting no matter how long you've been together it's had that married or civil partnership which counts that funny enough we we highlighted this issue of money saving expert recently and would you believe we had a lovely success in from somebody who actually used our advice to say to their partner who they've been proposing to for years listen this is to get advantages and they said yes because of the financial and so okay so that's the financial picture leaf but i'm sure that's not the reason you chose this story as your story of the week you're recently married yourself yeah what do you take from this well i have to say that the story left me with a strong sense of how unfair society is towards people who aren't married but also a lot of people who are single would actually like to be married it's just that they haven't found the person with whom to settle down i'm in my thirties and i think it's a very common experience in london for women to find that um they are ready to settle down and you know find a kind of a committed relationship but that they're not really finding the right partners um you know around to be able to to make that commitment um so i found it it sort of left me it kind of really furious because it's like okay clearly the science suggests that you know there's definitely an advantage to being married but um that's your kind of left powerless if you you know can actually find that person it's also another thing that i found really interesting and kind of classic about the study is that um it found that this effect of you know you being more likely to be depressed if you're not married was more pronounced among men sometimes men uh have a bit of a tendency to basically allow their wives to control their social lives and they and they sort of don't make as much effort with their male friends maybe they don't talk about you know famously they don't talk about their feelings i mean sometimes they they do but um i think women have a slightly better capacity to maintain social relationships even when they're in a couple and so the data would suggest that that when you're not married um as a woman you're not necessarily um you know as likely to get depressed partly because you've got that sort of social infrastructure around you whereas men are perhaps less good at um constructing it so even if men have a showing sort of an unwillingness to commit it's actually often in their interests to have a very stable relationship because you know studies show that they'll earn more and they'll be happier and they'll be you know uh they'll generally have a nicer life yeah well Vincent you're a man i don't know what your status is relationship wise at the moment whether you co-habit with a partner but in your experience have you found that when you do that kind of problem shared mentality is something very helpful because perhaps you don't talk about all the issues in your life with anyone else at any other time very much so and i think um it's not just the sharing of problems it's um your health and lifestyle and diet and fitness and all those sort of things if you are on your own you are much more likely to eat a convenience meal you're less likely to prepare healthier food probably less likely to do joint exercise things together i mean i noticed some of the gyms around here will offer couples membership as a cheaper option and the same goes for travel as i said earlier it's another huge benefit if you're traveling as a couple you will save an awful lot of money there's no doubt i think if you're on a happier relationship but certainly from a male point of view it certainly does make you healthier because you've got somebody else looking after you i mean famously there's a medical cliches and they're about how men are very reluctant to go and get tested at the doctors for all sorts of things and somebody in their fifties i could probably do with a nudge to get along to the gp to go and do certain things and it tends to be the woman or partner in your life that suggests that you do those sort of things so for a variety of reasons i'm sure that in a in a loving committed and happy relationship you are better than being single i would say in defense of singledom you're never alone as much alone as with somebody you don't want to be with so you've got to be in the right relationship i just want to be rude i mean is that basically your experience you're happier being single is that your situation now well i think yes happier being single than with the wrong person i think but but then happier being in a relationship with the right person but that's very obvious i suppose but and that's actually one of the things one of the drawbacks of the study um it weighed it it just didn't look into the quality of the relationships but there have been other studies that suggest that um you know being in a relationship with the wrong person um is really really bad for you so you know it makes you unhappy so uh yeah i think it's a pity in a way that we don't know more about that sort of things do you think it matters that it's on the political spectrum seen as a more conservative thing to be in a long-term relationship do you think that matters when people look at the the benefits to them of being or not being in a relationship people will see this as being forced into doing something that's conservative yeah i mean i i think that is a problem many young feminists still see marriage as um a kind of throwback uh from uh an era where women were forced into it um and they had no prospects outside marriage um so so it's still got that sort of slight taint and i think if you're it's really difficult to sort of have this conversation in a way that makes women in particular not feel like they're being forced to do something that they don't want to do so i think it's really difficult and not i mean this taps into a bigger conversation about how divorce or the breakdown of the of the family has been seen by some people as something that's really um advantaged um elites so you know if elites can kind of get out of relationships quite easily um without you know you know having the most horrific process well again because they can sort of afford to right exactly they can afford to but but there's been this kind of a body of kind of of argument and evidence that actually family breakdown has been really terrible for working class people and that down that end of the kind of class scale and the income scale it's really disadvantage children growing up in families where where you know that both partners are not there um so yeah the study to kind of taps into that whole really mind you know a total minefield area to both rates do seem to be plateauing uh in the uk i mean leaf you've chosen this as your story of the week what do you think this will have as in terms of implications for all of us a study like this that says more of us should be married do you think marriage is a trend that might continue to grow yeah actually i mean i do think that um that we're kind of seeing a cultural slight resurgence of interest in marriage and my hope is that um not necessarily you know actually getting married officially but that people will see the appeal of staying in in long-term relationships um partly in thanks to um a kind of increasing body of evidence um of which the study study is one part and money no object Gary what would be your dream wedding i have to say my own don't i thought i've already had so i have to say you know i have to say your name the old jacket be in house that i got married at um and yeah with all the friends and family there um and at a wonderful time so yeah i you know i can't get any better than the wedding i've already had cannot um Vincent do you still have in the back of your mind the chance that one day you're gonna have your dream wedding oh yes but i think it's much more likely to be um one of those rather cliched the vagus or some some strange destination something a bit unusual potentially fewer people more exotic destination i think the older you get the more selfish you get so i think it'd be all about all about me and the other person slightly less about the guests which i know of course it's supposed to be i got married with just a few guests in Gibraltar so i don't know if that qualifies as exotic but it definitely qualifies as strange i think it does and leave what about you i mean you've just had a wedding this year was it your dream yeah it was actually it was it was totally lovely and um yeah i i really enjoyed it there we are even just talking about weddings means that you can't be depressed my thanks to leaf Vincent and Gary you can follow this show for free you can get every episode as soon as it's released just search for the week unwrapped wherever you get your podcasts and then tap follow you can also get six free issues of the week magazine with a trial subscription if you go to the week dot com slash subscriptions in the meantime i've been ollie man our music is by tom more be the producer ollie pit at rethink audio and until we meet again to unwrap next week bye bye [BLANK_AUDIO]