Yeah.

So, so Christians who, who- Who don't befriend Jews or Sikhs or Hindus or Muslims.

Christians who claim, "This is a Christian country, so there's no place for others," have basically made a very, very big e- error in Jesus' whole attitude to life, which was about acceptance-

Yeah.

Uh, Oasis exists for everyone, and it ex- exists to serve everyone regardless of their race or their religion or their creed or their ethnicity or their sexuality or their gender, et cetera, et cetera.

Why do we do that? Because it's fundamentally what I b- I believe Jesus called us to do.

in the southwest of the country?

Mm.

And we work in other countries too, you know, India, some African countries.

Uh, we, we, we work elsewhere in Asia.

We work in Europe, you know, et cetera.

So it's, there's a giant challenge, isn't there? You know, I, I don't claim anything great of Oasis at all.

We, we have our successes and we have our failures, like, like anyone.

[laughs]

I don't know if you know that song.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ha- Half-breed.

I, I, I had, um, a girlfriend much later on when I was, uh, a, a, a late teenager, and she e- eventually dumped me, and she said that her parents had told me that she needed to because if she fell in love with me and married me, our kids would be throwbacks and half-breeds.

I remember walking up the street with my dad, and people literally crossed to the other side of the street to avoid talking to, to him or, uh, encountering him.

So the truth is, we grew up in poverty, and that's what shaped me.

I knew what racism was all about, and because my dad struggled to find employment, my mum left school very early.

Uh, the, there's certainly hurdles and challenges along the way that led you to being able to actually achieve this calling, this vision, this purpose.

Do you ask for the money for this and it goes somewhere else? I mean, you talked about it, but...

Yeah, yeah.

So part of the role that I play and Oasis plays is to get funding and not for our own use, but for local community groups.

Of course, we need money for our own use.

We run lots of schools, for instance.

We run lots of housing.

But we are now involved in several huge projects where we simply act as a broker for everyone else, an organiser for everyone else.

But how did you get into it? I mean, why didn't you become a banker or an airline pilot or an astronaut or something?

I think

it goes beyond the fact that the Treasury seemed to run everything.

And you've quite rightly said, Ian, this isn't the first time.

Do you know, I've never been in government, but the job I do means that I work alongside various government departments, the MOJ, the DFE, the Home Office, etc., etc.

And I've been aware for years and years, you can work through plans and then it has to be signed off by the Treasury.

And if it doesn't get signed off by the Treasury, you're stuck.

So I think the biggest thing in this is Keir's ability to tell us why he's making the decisions he's making.

And I respect that.