Further Reading

Transcript

Ep34

INTRO

Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast episode 34. I’m Tiernan Douieb and just like Marmite, you nearly weren’t able to find me in any UK Tesco stores anytime soon, but that was due to nearly getting a lifelong ban after an incident in the freezer isle at the Edmonton branch.

Again 2016 refuses to slow down like a snowball of turds, a turdball if you will, cascading down an ever growing mountain of turds and it seems like most of the UK were on a climbing trip at the time and unfortunately they were carrying all of the British pounds with them at the time. Yes, it seems that when the Conservatives do keep banging on about Making Britain Great again and the UKIPperks keep on harking back to the good old days, it turned out they meant making it seem it’s 1985 all over again with the pound at it’s lowest in 31 years. What with tensions running high between the West and Russia, Argentina also making demands about the Falklands, and bloody Phil Collins making a music comeback that no one asked for ever, we should probably all start donning shell suits and drinking 20/20 and Thunderbird again, if only because that’ll make us tons more flammable and we’ll go quicker when everything is on fire.

The Bank of England has warned that inflation is set to rise, so great news if you’re a bouncy castle owner. Tesco had a dispute on price rises with Unilever, which almost meant they’d no longer be stocking food products such as Marmite. Though with 50% of people liking Marmite and 50% hating it, there is obviously an overwhelming mandate to do without. However it is now all resolved and so now we’ll all be able to spoonfeed Hellman’s mayonnaise out of the jar as a hard Brexit coping mechanism. And at the SNP conference, Nicola Sturgeon announced that a second referendum for Scottish independence is looking more likely than ever and with no marmite, inflation rises and the return of bloody Phil Collins, I don’t blame them. I only hope it’ll be referred to as Indy 2: Temple of Doom.

Theresa May has told the NHS there will be no extra money for them, and that they need to make more cuts, seemingly misunderstanding that the NHS’s job is stitch those up. And it’s been decided there will be no plans to commission a royal yacht, despite MPs saying it’s the only way to make Brexit successful. I guess that’s because sending the Queen off to sea, is pretty much exporting her and we’d make a tidy profit from that.

So yep, all of that, and even more on this week’s again croaky voiced show. It’s almost as if by doing a job where I talk for a living, it takes me longer to heal a sore throat or something. Weird. Maybe just imagine this week that your weekly serving of political quips and chat is served up by Batman, although the fact that he was essentially a rich bloke who chose to be a vigilante rather than you know, just contribute financially to society, really means it wouldn’t be ideal with the ethics I hope this podcast has. Sell your fancy car and sponsor a school instead you pointy eared twat! Thanks as always for listening to this show, whether you be a professional listener or a newbie. If you have arrived here due to seeing me at the QED conference this past weekend, then a very warm welcome to you indeed. I had a lot of fun talking to 650 skeptics and was very pleased someone only tried to heckle me with facts once. It was great meeting some veteran listeners of the show, including Mike, Mikey? Who very kindly interrupted me while getting my breakfast as he didn’t want to interrupt me while eating my breakfast, all just to say how much he enjoyed this. So that was lovely and also considerate as it’s hard for me to say thanks with a mouthful of croissant. I didn’t get to attend much of the conference due to other shows, but I did get a hilarious Derek Acorah commemoration paper plate, I met loads of interesting and lovely people and I did watch a panel on whether or not we are in an era of post truth politics and will hopefully to get a couple of the speakers on this show at some point too. However, there I was listening to a conversation about how cursed ventriloquist’s doll Michael Gove, said ‘the people are tired of experts’ meaning his comment was snobbish elitism in that he wasn’t tired of experts himself but it’s all a bit hard and confusing for the common person. Then merely hours later, I was at the Cheltenham Literature festival as my wife was there reading her essay from the excellent book The Good Immigrant and I found myself backstage, almost face to face with Michael Gove. Weird huh? And I’m sorry to say, I didn’t do, well, anything. I think I was partly in shock that only hours before I was listening to some very wonderful people say what a piece of shit he is, and then here he was. And I was partly amazed that in real life he has a sort of fattish body and a tiny tiny head like a bizarre real life face swap experiment. Oh and I was partly hungover, thanks QED lot. He also had a child with him, I assume it was his own, though you never know with Conservative MPs. So I stupidly didn’t say anything. Nikesh Shukla, who is the editor of The Good Immigrant book and a total hero, made a loud retching noise so hopefully that’ll have made Gove think about his awful life. Anyway, what would you have done or said or have liked to? Drop me a line and let me know. And yeah, I’m sorry I missed the opportunity but it’s an strange situation to be in when you aren’t expecting it and you’ve spent so long shouting at his stupid face on the tv and then all of a sudden he’s there infront of you. If it happens again I will at least call him a weasely bastard before laughing at how quickly he failed to become prime minister before then saying even a non-experts opinion of him is that he’s an awful, awful human being.

Huge thanks to those of you who’ve donated to the Patreon page. If you wanna chuck a few quid my way for making this show then you can head to www.patreon.com/parpolbro and do that there. I still haven’t put a video up yet, because I’ve been too busy not shouting at Michael Gove, but I will do soon, promise and I’ll be adding extra content for donators soon as well. Couple of other bits. My comedy special ‘The World’s Full Of Idiots, Let’s Live In Space’ is still available via tiernandouieb.vhx.tv and if you put in the code ‘ParPolBro’ you’ll get a third off the already very low price. Also tickets are selling very fast for the big charity gig I’ve helped organise for Help Refugees at Conway Hall in London on Nov 8th but there are some left. Sadly a couple of acts have dropped out but we still have Frankie Boyle, Sara Pascoe, Doc Brown, Tez Ilyas, Kerry Godliman, Francesca Martinez, Jen Brister and me, with possibly another guest to be announced too. You can grab tcikets for that via Conway Hall’s website conwayhall.org.uk and search for Stand Up For Refugees.

Oh and lastly, some of you got very upset that last week myself and Karissa pronounced rhetoric, rhetoric which I think is the American way of saying it. Or maybe just a different word entirely, about referring to the word toric which are a type of contact lens apparently. Either way, I promise this week there won’t be any weird pronunciations.

Ok, so on this week’s show there’s a ton of Brexit crap to get through and I’ll be talking to Dr Marcus Parpadopulous about Syria in an, well, interesting interview but more on that later. First….

SNP CONFERENCE

The big issues at the SNP conference this past weekend were independence, as in Scottish and dependants, as in childcare. If only they’d had an event about Scottish Indie music and a stall selling pendants, they could’ve had the whole set of things that sound vaguely similar. The possibility of a second referendum was the big chat what with the possibilities of a hard Brexit meaning that despite deciding to hold England’s hand last time as it climbed up to the cliff edge, it was very much just to headbutt it goodbye as it leaped off by itself. Sturgeon said the anti-foreign rhetoric from the Conservatives and the possibility of leaving the single market were two strong reasons to for a second referendum. That and if they go now, and set up borders, they can stop Liam Fox from ever coming back in.

But Sturgeon’s main speech was actually about, as she said, another i word. No, not ichthytaxidermy, the taxidermy of fish, because that’d mean career wise, Sturgeon would be stuffed. No, it was inclusion, which she meant in a number of ways, though obviously, not towards being part of the UK. Firstly is the aim to increase living wage employers in Scotland from 600 to 1000 by October next year though that is the living wage as determined by former Chancellor & Westworld inspiration George Osborne, rather than the one people could actually live on. She also pledged a consultation to fund paying for parents to choose the nursery or childcare that best suits them and to start supplying boxes of useful things to expectant parents in the New Year. Baby boxes, as they are known, aren’t just an efficient way to post your baby somewhere to allow easiest stacking in a postal van. Instead they are based on the Finnish model, where they are filled with essential baby items such as clothes, nappies, frankincense and murr probably and in the case of Finland, have helped contribute to the lowest infant mortality rates in Europe. It’s a great idea, but you can’t help but wonder if this is the first step towards Scotland severing itself from the UK and joining Scandanavia. I mean, they already have oil, big jumpers and beards, with baby boxes as well, all they’d need are to bring back Taggart as a noir series and they’re in.

UKIP
UKIP get through leadership candidates quicker than Strictly Come Dancing gets rid of all its non-white contestants. Both of which, I’m pretty sure are linked somehow but I’m held back by not being 100% sure if UKIP members are clever enough to use phones or not. Stephen Woolfe, the man last seen in a picture where it looked like Nigel Farage was giving him a tug job in a hospital bed, has resigned from the party, saying there was ‘something rotten’ in the party. I’m pretty sure it’s the old fashioned racist politics now so out of date that they are decaying. Anyway, after allegedly being attacked by fellow MEP Mike Hookem and hospitalized, Woolfe has decided he will be an independent MEP until the UK leaves the European union. It seems he actually had some sense knocked into him and you can’t help but wonder if the cure for believing in a nationalistic, narrow minded party, is just to violently knock out every UKIP member in turn? Worth a try.

LABOUR ANTI-SEMITISM

Labour leader Jam Master J Jeremy Corbyn has attacked the Home Affairs Select Committee, saying that their Anti-Semitism In the UK report unfairly focused on Labour. The report criticised Corbyn for a lack of consistent leadership on the issue, which to be fair, misses out that that is in line with his lack of consistent leadership on every issue. They stated that the failure of the Labour Party to consistently and effectively to deal with recent anti-Semitic incidents shows that elements of the Labour movement are institutionally anti-Semitic.’ But Corbyn said they had heard evidence from too narrow a pool of people and other critics in Labour say the committee was mostly either Conservative or Labour members who then went on to vote against Corbyn in the leadership. But let’s be fair, there’s no point in investigating the Conservatives for anti-Semitism as racism is now part of their remit so it’s sort of expected. I mean MP David Wilshire in 2009 saying the expenses scandal meant MPs were treated like Jews in Nazi Germany, or MP Aiden Burley helping and partaking in a Nazi themed stag party, or the head of the UCL Conservative Society saying ‘Jews own everything.’ Or the Tory Candidate for Derby council who in 2015 said she’d never support ‘the Jew’ meaning Ed Miliband. Or the deputy chair of the Bradford Conservative Association who made inappropriate comments about Jewish people and women in 2016. But there is no point in investigating all of that, as two of them were suspended temporarily and the rest said sorry and stayed in their jobs, so that’s totally dealt with yeah? Corbyn should take a leaf out of their book!

But let’s be fair, it’s a cheap excuse to say ‘well someone else did it first’ to justify Labour’s lack of dealing with it. So just saying ‘the committee are wrong’ probably isn’t the strongest response. However Rhea Wolfson, who is Jewish and was targeted with abuse after standing for the Labour NEC, has backed Corbyn and also disagrees with the report saying there needs to be an open culture of education on these issues. The Home Affairs report also criticised Twitter saying it hosted ‘vast swathes’ of hate speech aimed at Jewish people. Now let’s be fair, Twitter hosts vast swathes of hate speech against everyone. If nothing else, it’s very equal about not dealing with racism in all corners.

INTERVIEW PART 1

Syria is the latest instalment of complicated situations, in the long running series The Middle East. Trying to explain exactly what’s going on over there is hugely complicated with more twists and turns than a George RR Martin book about winding roads and while there are many blame pointing fingers, there isn’t one single cause of the biggest Humanitarian crisis since World War 2. There are many causes including religious tensions, meddling from foreign countries including the UK, oil consumption and severe drought caused by extreme temperatures. This past week in the House of Commons, MPs discussed the situation in the Syrian city of Aleppo, the forefront of the fighting between the Syrian army, the rebels, Kurdish control and it is close to the areas currently taken by IS militants. However casualties have been dramatically increased after bombing and the US and UK say that that is largely to do with Russia, with US Secretary of State John Kerry saying they are responsible for crimes against humanity and that it all could all ‘stop tomorrow’ if Moscow acted decently. UK Foreign Secretary and host body for a mop head Boris Johnson last week called for people to protest outside the Russian Embassy. Russia have now promised an 8 hour humanitarian pause this week in order for aid to be delivered to civilians in Aleppo but UN agencies say they need at least 12 hours to be effective so it seems it’s an empty gesture . Meanwhile M16 heads have warned against the UK protesting against Russia as it could lead to further tensions and today the state owned news channel Russia Today has had it’s UK bank accounts frozen. So you know that bunker you were planning to build incase Trump gets in? That’s right, add another layer to the roof. And of course, all of this is ignoring that the UK and US are also responsible for civilian casualties, albeit not as many, from their bombing efforts meaning all of this is a big pile of depressing horror.

Syria – same amount of Mps at ‘Royal Yacht’ debate.

So this week I spoke to Dr Marcus Parpardpolous, the editor of non-partisan politics site, politicsfirst.org.uk, a Doctor of Russian History and knows rather a lot about Syria so I asked him to explain a bit about what is currently going on and he very kindly agreed to have a chat.

Now, what I will say, and I’ll be tactful about this as Marcus was very kind to let me interview him and seems like a nice man, but I think that while he says a number of extremely interesting and very valid points, I can’t say I entirely share his opinions as they get rather, er, pro-Russian at times. However, it is a view that you don’t hear very often on UK news sites, and I ask that you listen and feel free to email me at partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com afterwards if you have any thoughts or opinions on what Dr Parpadopolus says. I’m certain you will. I should also say that when I started this podcast I very much set out to make sure it wasn’t a debate show, it was me asking my interviewees questions for their opinions, and that’s exactly what this is. Even if, as I said, I can’t say they all resonate with me and so inbetween parts 1 and 2 of this chat I’ve put some other thoughts on the matter for balance. Oh and halfway through Marcus’s lovely sounding dog Erica interrupted. I’ve edited Erica out but I feel bad making her lose her 15 seconds of fame, so she will appear at some point in this podcast.

Right, phew! So now, here’s Marcus:

INTERVIEW PART 1

We’ll be back with Marcus in a minute, but first a few bits of info that I’ve found, and so, let’s face it, might not be fully 100% correct, about the situation with Syria. Yes, that’s right, I don’t have much time to write the podcast this week and I’ve got a sore throat, so I chose a nice easy subject to chat about and investigate. I’m such an idiot. So here’s a few key points that are worth thinking about. Firstly, a quick intro into why Syria is in such turmoil. Yes. Quick. Strap in. It’s not particularly bumpy, I’m just all about health and safety.

So Syria is bordered by Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and by just a teeny weeny toe at the bottom, Israel who actually shouldn’t really have that land and should give it back to Syria but that’s a story for another day children because oh lord, that’s a mess. And while Syria it looks pretty big, only about a quarter of the country is suitable for living or growing things on. The rest is desert and between 2006 to 2011 its experienced a drought more serious than your single friend who won’t stop telling you about it. Massive dust storms bigger than those in your single friend’s pants, removed topsoil and a huge lack of rainfall during those 5 years meant Syria’s agriculture industry was damaged and as that supplied 20% of the country’s income and employed 17% of the population, that hit them hard. As soon as fighting started they also lost their 20% of national income from oil and you realise they don’t have enough resources or income to support the population. So already they’re in a trickier situation than your single friend who could really improve their life if they spent less time on the phone telling you how single they are.

Now look, history wise the whole country is so complicated it should just be renamed Syriaaaaarrgggghhhhh and I really don’t have time on this show to go through it all, nor do I entirely understand it. But currently around 74% of the country are Sunni Muslims including Sufis, about 13% are Shias, then about 10% of the country are Christians and about 3% are Druze and you would be too in that heat. As well as a mix of religions, there is a mix of heritage, as not all the Sunnis are Syrian, there are a large percentage of Turkish and Kurdish too. Now the Assad family are 8% are Alawites which is a minority in Syria with only around one in eight Syrians and only a quarter of a million people in Lebanon and Turkey of that faith, so when Hafez al-Assad started the first Assad regime, it was as part of the secular nationlist Baath Party, which had the nobel notion of wanting to bridge the equality gap through a type of socialism and create unity among muslims and other religious groups in Syria using a sort of modified version of Islam. Islam 2.0 if you like, available on the Apple Mecca. No I’m not sorry. Hafed Al Assad became leader of the Baath part in 1971, then President of Syria that same year, which hugely irked the opposition Muslim Brotherhood party who believed a Muslim should be president of the country, and so riots broke out and shit went down for years, leading to terrorist attacks and all sorts of other mayhem. Lots of civilians died and Assad launched a particularly brutal assault on the city of Hama, which then followed a period of reconstruction where Assad rebuilt the city with schools, hospitals, and new mosques with the aim of stopping further challenges against him. Now zoom forward a few years like a lame Doctor Who, through the Iran-Iraq war where Syria sided with Iran, then in 1991 sided with the US against Saddam Hussein and wham! We’re in 2002, the last time the year was the same when written backwards. Hafez al-Assad died in 2000 and his son Bashar, the one we know all know, took over. By this point Syria has a pretty decent GDP, and decently educated population. Assad tried to legitimize his ruling through elections but his first win was with an unopposed ballot in 2000, followed by a win in 2007 against, oh wait! No one! In that one he got 97.5% of the vote, meaning there were 2.5% that were really hoping there was an invisible person just waiting for their chance on the other team. You sort of wonder why they had a vote at all, or at least Bashar al-Assad should have had to taken on his own shadow in a boxing match or played himself at chess while wearing different hats for each side.

Anyway 2002, US President Bush decides Syria is part of the Axis of Evil as they were so helpful in fighting Saddam. Wait hang on….I’m almost certain George Bush didn’t know where Syria was. In 2003 US airstrikes targeted a refugee camp just outside Damascus and the Syrian Armed forces were unable to stop it. Then the US Congress passed the Syria Accountability Act saying Syrians supported terrorism and were occupying Lebanon and using chemical weapons which is odd because at the time Syria were trying to improve foreign relations including making pally with the American imposed Iraqi government and various talks with European leaders. But in 2010 the US imposed new sanctions ruining further revenues Syria could get from it’s oil exports because well, America says fuck you. I mean, I don’t know what their official reasons were but considering little had actually changed in Syria, the US may as well have just sent over a sarcy teenager to say ‘America says you aren’t her friend anymore because’ before popping a bubble gum bubble right in their face.

So then drought, dust storms, livestock died, Syrians were suddenly in extreme poverty to the extent that the UN said it faced ‘social destruction’, like your single friend. The Syrian government had sold off all its wheat reserves on the world market in 2006 meaning by 2008 in mid-drought they had to export the little they had to keep money going while starving their population. Except for ceolics, obvs. The population that lived in the drought struck countryside moved into the cities, then in 2011 a group of protestors in Daraa kicked off about the government not helping them and Assad though the best way to get everyone to take a large chill pill would be an army crackdown because he’s clearly not into feng shui. Imagine being his friend? Wanna chill out Bashar? ‘Sure! How about I shoot you in the leg?’ No mate, no. Of course, that went horribly wrong, riots kicked off,
Military force was used and then Tony Stark and Steve Rogers got all sassy and boom, civil war. No wait, that’s a Marvel film.

So now, you have a number of Muslim Syrians on the side of Assad, but on the other side, the rebels, you have a number who don’t agree with the Syrian Government’s Alawi and Christian affliations. But you then have the rebels who are Syrian Muslims who want to overthrow Assad and rebels who are foreign Muslims who want to fight Assad as part of a larger battle for the Muslim world. Then it gets YES! EVEN MORE COMPLICATED! As you have Russia backing the Syrian government against the rebels, then you have foreign organised insurgent groups made up of Chechens, Turks, Tajiksm, Pakistanis, French, Egyptians, Libyans, Tunisians, Saudi Arabians and Moroccons, and groups like Al-Nusra Front who are a radical guerrilla group and this bunch is supported by Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the EU, the UK and the US even though, were these groups operating in any of their countries, they’d consider it an act of war and imprison the lot of them. But then, on top of all this, you have ISIS who are a big ol’ bunch of fundamentalists who everyone is against and snuck in to use the conflict to try and gain more ground making everything so much worse. OMG THEY ARE THE WORST!

And since the civil war kicked off the FBI say Assad has tortured at least 10 European Citizens, there is well documented use of barrel bombs by the Syrian Arab Air Force, and Assad’s regime has been documented by the Physicians for human rights as responsible for the deaths of over 600 medical staff. Plus there are records of the Syrian government using chemical weapons on Syrians and the overall stats of deaths caused by Assad’s regime is somewhere currently in the region of 92,000. Yeah, horrific. Assad regime in more than one way.

Now to some stats. Impartial not for profit monitoring group Airwars says that the US/UK coalition aiding some of the rebels but saying they want to protect civilians have caused 900 civilian deaths in 26 months, only 12 of which they’ve admitted to. But Airwars say Russia raids in just the last 12 months have caused 3600 civilian deaths even though they say they are only ‘targeting terrorists’. Yeah seemingly with a surgical precision that were a doctor to use it to take your appendix out, you’d wake up still in one piece with everyone on the neighbouring wards completely dead. When you see that ISIS have killed 3078 overall, while the Syrian government as I’ve said before have killed 92,000, Russian forces have killed 3412, rebels 2470 and 768 to the coalition, you wonder who the focus should really be on challenging.
But it isn’t easy and as Marcus says, is really isn’t black and white, its oh so very very grey with Aleppo right now bang in the middle of the worst of it and many many innocent people suffering as a result of all the bombing and all the fighting from all sides. And Boris Johnson, a man who thinks Africa is one country, vocally blowing off who’s the worst, really isn’t going to help that much.

Now back to Marcus….

INTERVIEW PART 2

Thanks to Dr Marcus Parpadopolous for chatting with me. His website politicsfirst.org.uk is a brilliantly useful resource that I use regularly for this podcast and has contributors from across the political spectrum and you can find Marcus on Twitter @DrMarcusP. I hope to get some other guests on to talk about the situation in Syria in future and have a few I’m currently trying to arrange a chat with. I’m also hoping to do a future episode about Russia when I can. Again I’d love to know your thoughts on this week’s conversation so do drop me a line @parpolbro on Twitter, the Parpolbro group on Facebook and partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com and I’ll read out or mention any next week. Also thanks to QED Conference this weekend I think I have a few guests lined up but as always I’m very happy to hear your suggestions unless they are rubbish suggestions then in which case I prefer to see them, so maybe draw me a picture and send me that instead. I’ll also read that out on the podcast even though it’s pointless because that’ll be a picture and this will all be audio. Though I could do some sort of synaesthesia special I suppose where I just shout smells while touching a sound.

BREXIT FALLOUT

Right, all the Brexit chat this week, which kicked off with Theresa May, an unelected prime minister deciding that the best way for people to take back control with the Brexit vote, was to not allow MPs that the people have elected to speak for them, to have any say in how Brexit will happen. Luckily Labour’s Keir Starmer, the new smart appointment for Shadow Minister for Brexit is now in charge of questioning the government on what will happen. And as a former barrister you can tell he makes good coffee on account of his stern manner in getting things done. I bet he was great at taking people’s names in Starbucks. Labour came up with 170 questions for the government on Brexit, proving that if there were this many unanswered questions about ways to leave your lover, it’d probably be easier to stay together. An apt metaphor for this whole situation if I do say so myself. I won’t read all 170 questions out here, because it’s not very exciting but they range from fishing policies to environmental to border control to will we have to say ‘flaky roll’ instead of croissant etc etc. Ok, not the last one. This backed with cross party MPs still calling for parliamentary scrutiny mean that we might get a Brexit that actually works for everyone.

Or not, as European Council President Donald Tusk has said that Britain’s only alternative to a hard Brexit, is no Brexit , an attitude that I hope he doesn’t have towards cheese as well. And Norway has rejected Disgraced disgrace Liam disgrace Fox the disgrace’s request to form a trade deal taskforce because a) we haven’t left the EU yet and that could jeapordise Norway’s dealings with the European Economic Area and b) because Liam Fox is a fucking disgrace and no one ever wants to do anything with him ever except his chum Adam Werrity who’s also a dick.

Meanwhile two big things, perhaps in long term effects rather than anything else. The great british pound is super low which means if you have savings they won’t grow at all even though banks should be encouraged to raise savings rates but probably won’t because they’re bastards, and adversely, due to interest rates rising and yes, whenever I hear this sort of chat, my interest rates usually fall sharply, but it could mean mortgages go up in price. Booooooo. But what this could mean is that with the pound low on global markets, our exports and tourist trade could hugely increase, getting rid of the deficit and putting Britain, financially, into an ok place. Yeeeeeey! Oh wait! We don’t have many exports and those that we do have, we can’t trade anywhere because no one knows what we’re doing with our Brexit and travelling here may be hard if our government continue to be racist. Booooooooooo! And so really all we will get is increased food and product costs as we have to export them from elsewhere at more expensive prices, nearly causing Tesco to stop selling marmite. Booooooo. But I guess some people hate it anyway. Yeeeeey for them. But Tesco’s have made a deal so they still have it. Booooo for the ones who hate it but yeeeey for me who eats it lots. What a mess. Unless you haven’t got any sort of holiday planned and don’t like eating things in which case yeeearrrrggghhhhhh.

Thing number 2 that may have worrying consequences. There are increased calls by both media and some politicians for those who speak out against Brexit to be punished for it. The politicians including the idiotically named councillor Christian Holliday, which is basically just Christmas, except one of those sad ones where you get stuff you don’t want and the food makes you fart all day. Sad Christmas has now been suspended for starting a petition to make opposing Brexit an act of treason. Which is stupid. Everyone knows petitions don’t work. But also the idea that the 16m people who voted to Remain, plus those who didn’t vote at all, aren’t allowed any sort of democracy or opinion is ludicrous and mimics the frightening chat from Donald Trump saying the US election is rigged. If he wins his supporters will be happy, if he doesn’t they’ll blame the system and revolt, though they are pretty revolting already. Similarly, if brexit doesn’t happen how Brexiteers want it to, it’ll be the fault of the Remainers, even though they didn’t vote a completely unclear unknowable outcome. So civil unrest is nigh. Hopefully the first to be victim of this will be Boris Johnson, with his face like someone stuffed a balloon with bean bags. It was revealed that he wrote a pro-EU column for the Telegraph before deleting it to promote his anti-EU stance instead. Boris, having no conviction at all? Next you’ll be surprising me about the bowel movements of bears in woodland areas.

END

So that’s all for this week’s show. Thanks again for lending me your ears like goddamn Romans and countryfolks, or, er, Van Gogh and don’t forget to give this show a review on iTunes if you’ve enjoyed it. Every star rating helps drag more people into listening and eventually I aim to build up an army of listeners and we’ll go and fight other podcast listeners in an audio war involving lots of annoyingly loud headphones and intellectual chats. Also, on the subject of other podcasts, while I hate to increase the possibility you’ll leave me for a funnier more interesting listen, do check out Abe Lincoln’s Top Hat and Keep It 1600 for two interesting podcasts about the US election. Part of the reason I’ve not mentioned the US election on this show quite as much is because there are so many good US satirical sources covering it brilliantly from podcasts to Last Week Tonight, but I will be focusing almost entirely on it the week before the US election and the week after. Also I’ve been mainlining the Malcolm Gladwell Revisionist History podcasts from a few months back and they are amazing, especially the episodes on the US education system. Do check those out.
Also don’t forgot to check out the Patreon page and drop me a dollar or two, and as always you can get in contact via @parpolbro, parpolbro on FB or partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com. I know I say this a lot, and then it isn’t, but next week’s show may be a day late. The one time I’ve done that before, about half of you seemed to not listen in protest at my time keeping, but I write, record and edit this show on a Monday and next week I’m in deepest Wales in Aberystwyth on Monday, so that may be a problem unless you want an hour of me just shouting in my car followed by sounds of the sea.

This week’s show was brought to you by the numbers DOG NOISES and the letters DOG NOISES. Thanks Erica!

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