Hello everyone.

It's Tom Slater here editor of Spiked.

We'll get into this episode of the Spiked podcast in just a moment.

But before we do that, I don't say a huge thank you to everyone who has donated to our Christmas

appeal so far.

As people who listen to this podcast or watch this podcast, no,

Spikes is completely free because we want anyone anywhere to be able to engage with our

ideas, but in order to keep spiked free, we ask people who can afford it to donate to us to support our work.

Your donations have never been more important, particularly given what a hostile environment

in the advertising world is to dissenting voices like ours these days. Indeed even as our

audience has gone up in recent years or advertising revenue has actually gone

down because there's a certain type of woke corporate who would rather pass up the

opportunity to sell you things if it means they don't have to deal with the likes of us.

But who needs them? More than 70% of our revenue now comes from our supporters and our donors.

And as we're going into the Christmas period,

we're asking people who maybe haven't donated before,

maybe haven't donated for a while,

or can maybe afford to donate just a little bit more

to dig deep for us this Christmas

and to fund our work as we go into 2024.

Your money really does make a huge difference. If everyone who reads Spiked any given month

gave us just five pounds this Christmas, we could fund our work for two years, and we could take Spiked to the next level and

...