Further Reading

Transcript

EP 45

Hello and welcome to episode 45 of the Partly Political Broadcast Podcast, I’m Tiernan Douieb and much like Theresa May I’ve spent the past few days appeasing awful fascist powers who imposes rules I have to pretend I abide by. Sorry, I mean I had to pay an overdraft fee on my bank account, but you know, samesies. So wow, where to begin with this week’s very necessarily sweary show? Well if Donald Trump becoming President of America was the shit hitting the fan, it seems that the Trump Administration have realised just how powerful that fan is and decided to throw the vast amounts of faecal matter they’ve saved up over the years, in order to spray it thoroughly and violently across America like a chaotic shit cannon. I know everyone tries to make an impression in their first week in a new job, but rather than bring in cakes or actually try to listen in meetings, Donald Trump thought the best way he could get everyone to warm to him as Commander in Chief was set a lot of things on fire and use his tiny, tiny hands to waft the flames towards many.

The Trump administration have enforced a media blackout at the Environmental Protection Agency because no doubt they’d have reported pretty quickly how dangerous the hot air Donald has been emitting is. Next Trump vowed to investigate voter fraud of the election he won, because obviously he still can’t believe why anyone would be that masochistic and vote him in. Then they signed off on getting the Dakota Pipeline going again proving that the one of the only groups of people in the world who should have been genuinely terrified of immigrants are the Native Americans. Somewhere during all this Trump said he supported torture by saying he knew the illegal interrogation method of waterboarding definitely worked, although I’m still sure he had just got it confused with his favourite Russian pastime of water sports. After that the new US government embraced authoritarian measures and upped the ante more than that time you gave your dad’s sister a gram of quality speed. There was more mention of the fucking wall and talk of listing crimes in America caused by immigrants because Trump wants only all American crime, and refuses to let any crime go outsourced. And then, to finish the week off and because replacing the statue of Liberty’s torch with a flaming pitchfork would take time, Trump signed an executive order implementing the depressingly fascist Muslim Ban which was inflicted in airports across America. People from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen have been denied entry into the US, including citizens of other countries who have duel nationality with those places, meaning that many people who had already been granted visas were detained at the airport, causing outrage across the globe. Trump’s ban means that as well as many people seeking refuge or who have worked for the US in areas of conflict, the ban also looked liked it would apply to knighted Gold medallist marathon hero Mo Farah. It would’ve been easier for Trump to just invest in sports if by America First he just meant in the Olympics. More on all this later in the show, but it is desperately worrying that Trump seems to think he should celebrate Holocaust Remembrance Day by planning a re-enactment. Similarly he seems to have celebrated Chinese New Year Of the Fire Rooster on Saturday by being a massive flaming cock.

And of course the UK Prime Minister Theresa May condemned all of Trump’s actions saying he is the worst thing to happen to the planet and there’s no goddamn way he’ll come to the UK unless it’s because his bloated, drowned corpse accidentally washes up on the Cornwall shore. Ha! FAKE NEWS! No. Sadly instead May got on very well with the Don, telling everyone she knew she would as sometimes opposites attract. And much like that Paula Abdul and MC Skat Kat track, her and Donald have definitely taken two steps back. It seemed at first like a smart move as the joint press conference with May and Trump had Trump backtrack from supporting torture and saying he did back NATO despite earlier comments. May also mentioned the UK/US alliance in World War 2 and pointed out that

• PLAY THERESA MAY CLIP ‘open, liberal democratic societies will always defeat those that are closed, coercive and cruel’*

Which yes does sound like she’s trying to say ‘hey Donald, team up with me and we can take down your own administration!’ But when asked if she agreed with the Trump’s Muslim Ban, May simply said the United States is responsible for the United States’ policy on refugees, which is correct but isn’t answering the question. There’s a difference between being diplomatic and answering everything like you’re Siri and you’ve been asked something by a Scottish person in a noisy area. May had to issue a follow up statement saying she does not agree with ‘this kind of approach and it’s not one we’ll be taking’, which I’m grateful for but don’t entirely trust her word after as Home Secretary, Theresa May’s commissioned vans to drive around with billboards telling illegal immigrants to go home. Maybe now she’s realised that we really need Mo Farah or Tokyo 2020 is a write off? After Trump May visited Turkish leader and champion of human wrongs President Erdogan. I’m slightly worried that she’s creating some sort of evil super group. If her next stops are a press conference with Skeletor on Snake Mountain and a diplomatic journey to meet Dr Doom in Latvia we need to do something. Many are comparing May’s appeasement of Trump to Neville Chamberlain and Hitler. Totally unfair to ol’ Chambers there. He wasn’t able to read up on how it ended in history books.

So phew, you can see why Tim Peake’s said he’s fucking off back to space can’t you? In space no one can hear us all scream endlessly. More on the Trump horrors later in this week’s show as well as a look at what Labour’s not been doing and I’ll be talking to Matt Bowski from Progressive Politics Northern Ireland about their upcoming elections. BUT! Before all that, thank you as always so much for listening. Last week’s show was the most listened to ep so far which is amazing as it included 2 rubbish editing errors due to me being so strapped for time I finished editing it at 2am the night before. In fact, if you downloaded it as soon as it came out, it had 3 editing errors including a massive silence during the interview with Michael Marshall where I just managed to delete my question.
Ahem, sorry, by editing errors I mean Russian hackers totally messed up the show to demean its content. Yep. That’s definitely what happened. So yes, thanks tons for listening and thanks to those of you who gave the show nice reviews on iTunes this past week and a big thank you to Pezski, Sam and Paco who all very kindly donated to the Patreon in the last few days too. I promise there’ll be more bonus content stuff on there soon. If you’d like to help give me more time to this show and better equipment to use improperly and creating editing mistakes, then head to patreon.com/parpolbro and give a quid or two if you can. I’m totally aware that there are a lot of very important organisations in need of cash right now and that if you’re like me, none of your change is spare, so please only donate to this show if you can and if you can only donate a teeny bit, probably best to give it to Help Refugees or Refugee Council or Safe Passage or any of the many human rights groups first. And me probably not even second. Somewhere about 45th. So if you can, please do donate to the Patreon, if you can’t maybe then why not do an iTunes review of the show or tell someone to get listening which is just as good. I mean, if I go into Currys and give them a print off of nice reviews I don’t think they’ll let me exchange it for a microphone, but I’m willing to try. Also big thanks to John who is the second person ever to email me at partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com and he sent me a list of people he’d like to try and interview which I will endeavour to do. I spend a lot of time trying to hunt people down to interview for this show and lots of them don’t respond and some do respond then seemingly vanish when I try to book in a time to interview them. And I’m aware I haven’t had a female guest for a while. Oddly most of the people that can do it and are free are all white men. Not sure why they have so much time on their hands when they’re running everything ever. Weird. I am trying to diversify the guest list, promise! But as I say on this show every week if you have suggestions it really does help me narrow down who to harass into wasting 30 mins of their time explaining politics to an idiot like me. If you wish to send me people to interview or even a list of people never to interview if you like then feel free to do so, and it seems more of you are now on the ParPolBro facebook group and Twitter page too, so please do keep posting discussions and nonsense there too. God so much admin eh? It’s more like admax, am I right? No I’m not sorry.

And I promoted this last week but it’s my podcast and you can’t silence me, unless you have tasty snacks. I’m previewing my new show at the Leicester Comedy Festival at the Exchange Bar on February 9th. By preview I mean saying a lot of things out loud for the first time. It’s free because well you’ll probably still want your money back. But if you’re in Leicester or nearby do come along. If you’re a London listener I’m doing previews at Angel Comedy Club at the Bill Murray pub on the 21st and 22nd of Feb and they’re both free too even though by then I’ll definitely have at least the idea of a joke. All details are on the websites for those places or on my own website or well, you know how it all works. You’ve been outside before. Hopefully see some of you there, and if you don’t live near any of those places tough, life is hard sometimes. Ha! FAKE NEWS! I will be doing loads of previews all over the place, then Edinburgh Fringe then hopefully a tour so more dates coming your way soon.

Right, more chaotic shit cannon:

ROUGH SLEEPERS RISE

The number of rough sleepers has risen in England for the sixth year in a row. Rough sleepers meaning those without homes obviously, not just people like me who wake up looking seriously rough. The official figures are that there are now 4134 people sleeping outdoors but many charities say it is twice this much and the UK statistics authority thinks the government figures are questionable. If you heard episode 43 of this podcast just before Christmas I spoke to Paul Anderson at Homeless Link and a member of their panel of formerly homeless people Noel who explained some of the causes and how bad the situation is. The government say they are investing £550m to 2020 to tackle homelessness and the Homelessness Reduction Bill is currently going through parliament too. At the same time though, many local councils are having to cut their housing support services entirely to save money after budget cuts coming in this April. So the extra funding the government are promising is merely cancelling out some of the money lost in cuts. Essentially they are tackling homelessness by shuffling money like cards and still giving everyone a terrible hand. I mean if MPs really wanted to help, how about turning a few of their extra homes into shelters? I mean how many rooms does the Houses of Parliament have?

GREEN INVESTMENT BANK

The Green Investment Bank sounds like a private project by Snoop Dogg but it’s actually a government owned bank for investing in renewable energy projects. It currently has £2.7bn invested in ghings like a wind farm off the East Coast of England and low energy street lighting schemes in the UK, which all sounds great right? Yes it does. Which is exactly why the government are trying to sell it off. It looks likely that it’ll be sold to Macquarie and Australian bank who’ve already indicated that they’d then just cash in from all the Investment bank’s assets once they bought it. However the green investment fund Sustainable Development Capital say they are interested in buying it and offering to give public investment meaning the public fund might actually continue to get value from it. The energy Minister Nick Hurd told MPs that he couldn’t confirm the identity of the preferred bidder but that they wouldn’t sell it to an asset stripper though no one is particularly reassured. The only time the government ever seem to be actually interested in investing in greens is when it’s sweet sweet benjamins and they’re only ever pro-recycling when they churn out the same old lines about they care about the country before they then sell it all off.

RUSSIA DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Russia have realised they are now falling behind America as everyone’s least favourite super power and so have really upped their efforts by voting to decriminalise domestic violence. Yep. Really. And it was pushed through by two female lawmakers one of whom said in a TV appearance that a man beating his wife is less offensive than when a woman humiliates a man. The law has yet to go through Russia’s higher chamber and then get signed off by Putin but it’s unlikely it’ll have any hurdles at any of those steps. The argument of this bill is that it will make Russian families stronger which is a ridiculous claim and as Human Rights Watch have pointed out, completely wrong. If they really want to make Russian families stronger why not invest in protein drink hand outs or national weekends away at Centreparcs? It’s a hugely worrying move and with domestic violence accounting for 40% of all crime in Russia, it will now be even harder to combat it.

FARAGE’S ONE FUCKING VOTE

Autopsied carp Nigel Farage has finally voted on something as an MEP in Brussels for one of the few times since he was voted into the position in 1999 claiming the £84k salary and expenses every since. Of course his vote was for nothing good and instead against the EU calling for greater measures of transparency of donations from outside the EU to political parties. Despite years of not bothering to vote for important environmental clauses or things that would bring British workers and trade more income, Nige has decided it’s totally worth popping into work in Brussells to make sure where all the UKIP dosh is coming from is totally protected. The other groups that voted against the measures where all far right European groups like Front National who have funding from Russia. Of course Nige said he blocked the measures because these sorts of questions should be set by Britain and not the European commission so I look forward to parliament demanding UKIP make all their donations transparent asap which shouldn’t be hard considering how easy it is to see through most of their motives. Farage is genuinely one of the only people in the world that I wish would fall down a really, really deep well.

INTERVIEW PART 1

As I mentioned in last week’s show, Northern Ireland is having an early election due to resignations and scandals and once again it’s citizens have to a two horse race to vote from, despite the fact that really, both horses are really old, no longer great at their job and should probably be put down. If you live in Northern Ireland you’re probably not enthused by the idea of the same old sectarian carve up between Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party and if you don’t live in Northern Ireland and like me, live in England, you’ve probably not seen anything about it at all on the news and haven’t got a clue. But if you can’t relate to being stuck between a choice of two parties neither of which you’re particularly enthused about now, then you must be my one listener in Thailand.

As well as election issues, Brexit looks set to cause trouble grumblings with border issues between Northern Ireland and the Republic and if all that wasn’t bad enough, an unresolved election could leave them with either another election or the Conservative government in control and while everyone seems to love 80’s & 90’s retro nowadays I think everyone would just prefer leg warmers & big earrings to any of that awfulness happening again. I have been to Belfast many times and even took an open top bus tour there once where the tour guide mentioned how the local ice hockey team were going to be called the ‘Belfast Bombers’ but decided against it. She then laughed a lot while all the tourists on the bus, including me, stared at each other nervously and felt very uncomfortable. But yes despite my many visits I really feel like I grew up slightly too late to understand all the politics of the troubles and how it works now, and speaking to people in NI it does feel there is a younger generation who really do want to move on and change things.

So this week I spoke to Matt Fulton. Matt runs a group called Progressive Politics Northern Ireland who are dedicated to changing Northern Irish politics for the better and to help voters realise there are actually more than two parties they can vote for.

So, for a bit of NI politics education, here’s Matt:

INTERVIEW PART 1

We’ll be back with Matt in a minute, but first:

NEW TRUMP JINGLE

If we were to inspect the glossary of our ancient bestiary tome, it’s hard to classify what sort of threat Trump is. The way in which he shuffles about making mindless noises would class him as a Romero classic zombie, but then the speed with which he’s signed off on authoritarian executive orders this past week would easily upgrade to him one of those 28 Days Later infected proper nasty shits. The Times also reported that Theresa May had to hold his hand when she visited because he has a phobia of stairs which would put him in classic Dalek territory. Which judging by their usual narrative of just shouting violent threats sounds about right, and so the free world’s best bet will either be to somehow inject the President Of America with some human DNA so he questions his own existence and exterminates himself, or we have to dig a hole in the desert, cover it with a cardigan and get him to chase us hoping he falls in.

Those are, I’m afraid, my best ideas right now as in the States, even the law doesn’t seem to have made any ground in slowing down Orange Godzilla. Let’s back track a bit and go through the most major things in the past week of Trump. I mentioned cancelling the TTP, enacting the Global Gag rule, and Israel on last week’s show. So this week let’s start with voter fraud. Trump has been banging on about how millions of people voted illegally in the election, since November. This is despite him winning the election and while we could assume that it’s because he’s desperately hoping an investigation would mean he somehow actually won the popular vote, worryingly it looks more like a way to justify tightening voting rules in America. Trump’s source that there was voter fraud was a man called Gregg Philips who claimed he’d discovered that 3 million people had voted illegally. Now Gregg describes himself as a conservative voter fraud specialist because we all know, if you say it’s what you are then it must be true, so say I, King Duke Tiernan The Supreme, but Gregg refuses to reveal any data or evidence for his claim and he’s no longer allowed to do business in the state of Texas due to unpaid taxes, and a government document that denounced him for facilitating an erosion of the public trust. You can see why Trump trusts him right? They’re basically turd twins. State election officials both right and left wing, rejected this, and said that ballot box fraud is extremely uncommon.

In 2013 the Supreme Court changed the voting rights act so that local authorities can change election rules how they wish, often requiring certain ID that those in poverty and without jobs or cars are unlikely to have. Obama’s Justice Department fought against a lot of this, and managed to stop a North Carolina ID law that specifically targeted and blocked African Americans from voting. Trump however has appointed Jeff Sessions who sounds like everyone’s least favourite acoustic album to be in charge of the Justice Department and he once said that the Voting Rights Act was a ‘piece of intrusive legislation’ so there’s every chance Trump will get in again in 2020 if the only people who can go and vote are the ones that support him. Saying that since December only 4 cases of voter fraud have been found and all four voted for Trump. Donald Fuck said that the voter fraud he wants to investigate include those who are illegal, those who are dead – which is going to upset all his ghost writers – and those who are registered to vote in two states. It was discovered last week that that last category included Trump’s chief strategist, counsillor and bloated racist Russell Crowe Stephen Bannon who is registered to vote in two states and looks like he’s died a few times and Tiffany Trump, daughter of the President who is also registered to vote in two states and if she takes after her dad, is probably dead inside.

Next on the increasing scale of comments that would cause even Jeremy Clarkson to baulk at is that in an interview with ABC News Trump said he believed that torture absolutely works which to be fair isn’t wrong. Let’s be fair, if I was being interrogated and they even so much as threated to make me watch Dapper Laughs videos on loop or listen to Piers Morgan talking then I’d reveal everything in seconds so you can forget how I’d deal with waterboarding. I don’t like extreme sports at all! So silly jokes aside, Trump has backtracked on his comment saying he’ll refer to his defense secretary James Matthis on the subject of torture, and Matthis isn’t a fan and there has been a lot of resistance from FBI advisors, military investigators and Senator John McCain saying that the US must not bring back torture. US law dictates that the army field manual cannot be modified for at least two years and then any modifications would have to comply with domestic US legal obligations. So it’ll just be the enduring torture of Trump’s relentless twitter feed of bollocks for now thankfully.

Next – WE’VE STILL GOT SO MANY TO GO I HOPE YOU HAVE NOTHING ELSE TO DO TODAY – next, is the Environmental Agency Media blackout, and I’ll skim through this one as I hope to get someone on to talk about this in a future episode, but the EPA has been instructed to freeze all of it’s grant programs for research, redevelopment, air monitoring and education. So not only awful for science but is there anything more demeaning than an climate change denier telling the EPA to freeze things? EPA workers were told they couldn’t say anything about this but it was leaked to the press by an employee. The EPA lifted the freeze on Friday because that’s how erratic the climate is, but the silence gag remains in place and the official position on climate change is still unclear, much like over polluted air.

Right, now onto the even more scary stuff. YES EVEN MORE SCARY! It’s like we’ve been working backwords through the Alien films. It’s time to talk about Trump’s executive order on Immigration. And it’s this point I feel I should probably explain what an executive order actually is:

WHAT DOES IT MEAN JINGLE

An executive order is a legally binding order given by the President acting as the head of the Executive Branch to Federal Administrative Agencies. They are usually used to direct agencies and officials to execute congressionally established laws and policies but they can also be used to direct agencies and officials in oppositions to congressional intent. Basically the big man say do it so you gotsta do it.

Trump’s executive order on immigration included several provisions. One is the ban on certain people coming into the US, which I’ll get to in a minute, the ban that is, not the US. This show would be very hard to do on a plane. Another provision was for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to create an office for Victims of Crimes Comitted by Removable Aliens. So more for if ET steals a skateboard than if a facehugger does graffiti. Those bastards are hard to move. What it’s actually for is supposedly to help victims of crimes caused by immigrants and part of it would require a weekly report publishing a list of all crimes committed by undocumented foreign types and would shame jurisdictions that ignored detention requests for those individuals. Now what this really sounds like is a way to fear monger and continue towing the line that people from abroad are dangerous. Really if this is to happen it should be published alongside a list of crimes by US citizens as the American immigration council studied data that showed Americans were a lot more likely to engage in criminal behaviour. I mean, even the President has been accused of fraud and sexual harassment.

Now to what’s being referred to as the Muslim Ban. Let’s look at what it is before I point out why it’s a slice of awful. The order has temporarily halted refugees from entering the US for 120 days in order to improve the border vetting process, which no, has nothing to do with making sure people’s pets are ok when they arrive. The vetting process will cap 50,000 refugee admissions per year, which is more than Bush allowed in and just a bit less than Obama. The border has a temporary 90 day ban on people coming to the US from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen as they are countries, and I quote the order ‘torn apart by jihadist violence or under the control of hostile, jihadist governments’. This is apparently how they were classed under the Obama administration. This ban is there while Homeland Security determine the information needed to prove those with visas are who they say they are because obviously tons of people are just dying to sneak into the States now they’ve got that twat in charge. There are exceptions to all of this on a case by case basis and there is an indefinite ban on Syrian refugees because you know, they’re in no rush to go anywhere right? And Trump stated that this was about keeping America safe, and it’s not just a Muslim ban as there are over 40 countries in the world that are majority muslim and aren’t affected. You know including places like Saudi Arabia where 18 out of 19 of the 9/11 terrorists were from, but also Trump has his several limited corporations so if he blocks them how will they pop by for business meetings?

So that’s what the executive order says but since it was implemented super quickly on Friday causing many to be detained at US airports including those who worked for the US in Iraq, or those who’d already been given visas under the Obama administration. Trump’s aides said they’d discussed this with relevant individuals for weeks but head of customs and border control under Obama said they definitely hadn’t though he is assuming they meant he was a relevant individual rather than y’know, just writing it in a comment under a Breitbart article. Many amazing lawyers, which is a phrase I thought I’d never say, swooped in to help those detained at US airports and two federal judges made rulings to stall the implementation of Trump’s order. Border controls defied these orders but by today the White House has pulled back on the orders saying citizens of those countries with green cards can enter, similarly legal residents of the US with dual citizenship and the officials say no one else is detained at the airports thought lawyers believe many still are.

Trump took to Twitter like a troll to his cave to say that if the ban had a week’s notice the bad would rush into our country during that week. A lot of bad dudes out there!’ Yep. A president said bad dudes. And put that in quotation marks meaning they aren’t bad or dudes. So good nerds would flood the US? Surely that’s great for Silicon Valley? No one really knows. This was after the White House announced they were screening Finding Dory on Sunday, presumably because Big Don can empathise with a fish who forgets what it said two minutes before then finds itself way out of it’s depth. And he’s a fucking cartoon too.

So while I think all Muslims should tweet Donald Trump saying ‘we didn’t want to come to the US anyway as you’ve made it proper shit’ as that’ll probably piss him off, fact is even with some backtracking, the speed with which this was done is scary. It will probably lead to further scrutiny and extensive security checks on those coming from Muslim countries in the future. It’s also had obviously global implications. Iran has stated it will ban US citizens from entering the country which could mean that the Iran nuclear deal is automatically rescinded. Also many international scientists from those countries are cancelling conferences that would require them travelling to the US. Canada immediately said they would receive refugees unable to go to the US after the ban, like the Flanders to America’s Simpsons. There was a very tragic shooting at a mosque in Quebec in retaliation and early reports suggest the shooter was pro-Trump and very right wing and let’s face it if that profile doesn’t say they’re likely to be carrying a gun, nothing does.

And of course here in the UK there’s been a lot of anger about it all and at the time of writing a petition to stop Trump from making a state visit to the UK is at 1.3m signatures. However Theresa May has now got a special relationship with Trump after her visit to the White House on Friday and is hoping for special post Brexit UK trade deals with the US, which I’m sure will be solid considering his talk of investing mostly in American trade and saying any bilateral trade deals he makes with other countries will be able to be cancelled in 30 days. Number 10 said they won’t be calling off Trump’s state visit because it would undo everything, which is ironic that a man who doesn’t believe in science is now somehow responsible for universal causation. They also said calling it off would cause embarrassment to the Queen. Though I’d have thought finding someone Prince Phillip might actually get on with would be far worse. Number 10 have also called the petition populist which you’d assume would mean they’d get really excited about it, call it the will of the people and implement it immediately while May screamed ‘petition means petition’ at everyone. Foreign Secretary and mutant belly button fluff Boris Johnson told Parliament Trump should be allowed a State visit to the UK because the Queen has entertained Nicolae Ceausescu who was a Romanian murderous dictator and Robert Mugabe who is a violent Zimbabwean dictator. Yeah I mean is her majesty trying to complete the set and we just don’t know about it? Three wrongs make a white supremacist society? Hmm, that doesn’t quite work. Boris then said it was distasteful for MP and champion heckler Dennis Skinner to compare Trump to Hitler even though he’d just compared him to Mugabe. I can only assume Johnson is upset that Hitler is dead. Boris also assured that UK passport holders will be unaffected by Trump’s ban which is a) not the fucking concern and b) has been undermined by the US Embassy in London who said that’s not true.

Thousands protested on Monday night outside Downing Street about Trump’s visit and to show solidarity with Muslims, and it looked great and I wish I was there but I was doing a gig that no one showed up to because I’m a champion. Former President Obama has endorsed the protests, of course. Former Vice President, war monger and buddy shooter Dick Cheney has condoned the ban, as have the appropriately named Koch Brothers who helped found the uber right wing Tea Party and so it’s only Trump’s own people, and the British government who seem to be onboard with it. It seems May was informed about the ban when she met Trump but didn’t say anything till Sunday. That’s one of those special relationships that feels pretty great while you’re there but there’s a nagging in the back of your head and everyone else knows you’re a fucking idiot and stops inviting you to hang out ever again then the relationship goes wrong and you’re all alone and you die alone. That’s what that is.

And that is only week one. Week fucking one. And I haven’t even got to how Philip Seymour Hoffman’s worst ever role and mega racist Stephen Bannon is somehow sitting in on security meetings or how Trump’s signed an executive order to say for every new executive orders two old pieces of legislation must go meaning at some point he’ll run out of orders to get rid and get rid of that one and get all confused.

I’m starting to think we should totally let Trump come here and just not let him leave. We could put him in a room surrounded by stairs like a real life Escher painting and ultimately save America. Now go have a lie down.

Phew. Better?

And now, back to Matt:

INTERVIEW PART 2

Many thanks to Matt for chatting with me and clearly explaining the current situation in Northern Ireland. I regulalrly notice the lack of information we get in the news in England about NI politics, as Matt points out, there really are bubbles that you get trapped in and considering it’s only a very small pond away, I feel I should really know a lot more about it. Do support Matt if you can as I think what he’s aiming to do and discuss is really important. Progressive Politics NI are on Twitter @progpolitics NI or on Facebook at facebook.com/progressivepoliticsNI. May I also suggest following Ronan McSherry, a Northern Irish satirist who’s on Twitter @ronanmcsherryUH as his stuff is excellent too. And totally unprompted both of the last two guests, Matt and Michael Marshall have recommended reading as many views and articles as possible and I think that’s really key to getting through this odd odd times. Of course, bare in mind that my views are best and really that’s all that matters. HA! JOKE! FAKE NEWS!

As I’ve said already on this show, do let me know if there’s anyone you’d like me to speak to for the podcast or a subject you’d like me to find someone to talk to about or even a subject you’d like me to interview and a person you’d like me to find a subject to talk about. No wait, I’m not sure how those last two would work. Look, you know the drill now. It’s what people use in DIY for making holes in things. Sorry, just drop me an email at partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com or the Parpolbro twitter account or facebook group.

BREXIT SHIT – ARTICLE 50 BILL / LABOUR

Yeah, still this shit. Ok, so super quick Brexit fall out this week. The Supreme Court last week ruled that the House Of Commons must authorise the triggering of article 50 and that May can’t just do it without warning. Yes there’s a joke about trigger warnings in there somewhere. No, I’m not going to do it. You do it. Go on. So there is now an article 50 triggering bill with only 137 words and two clauses so has less content than a boring Twitter thread about something that someone heard on the bus that no one cares about. The Commons will have 5 days to discuss it because it’s no biggie. I’m sure they’ll have it all done and dusted by Wednesday, have a long lunch on Thursday and leave early Friday. The two clauses are for the PM to let everyone know when it’ll be triggered and that it’ll have an effect despite any provisions the EU have made. So basically the Article 50 Bill says share on social media when it’s out there and fuck ya’ll I said it so it’s happened. Or something. Labour have asked for seven amendments to the bill. One would be for a meaningful vote in parliament. I guess as long the PM looks tearful as she says it, that might do. The other is to guarantee the protection of worker’s rights and securing full access to the single market. Then there’s one about David Davis having to do bi-monthly reports, one about guaranteeing rights of EU nationals in the UK, one about regular assessments of how it’s all going now we’ve fucked off and one about keeping all EU tax avoidance and evasion methods. That’s 6 isn’t it? Well there’s one more. Maybe that Boris Johnson should only be able to travel to a European country if he’s trussed up like Hannibal Lector or something. So that’ll all be discussed this week and of course, as always, while everyone should be focused on how little info the government have given or how they still don’t seem to have any plan, Labour have stolen the spotlight again by being more divided than a superabundant number. MumbleBore the Wizard aka Jeremy Corbyn announced he would have a three line whip so all Labour members voted for article 50 saying they weren’t a party for the 48% or the 52% but for everyone, thought by voting for Article 50 it’s definitely not for the 48%. This whip worked more like a rolled up towel post gym shower than a lion tamer’s as it just aggravated Labour MPs causing a front bench resignation from Tulip Siddiq who is an MP for a predominantly Remain area and so wanted to vote with her constituency. Shadow Secretary of State For Wales Jo Stevens also resigned from the front bench as her constituency of Cardiff also voted mostly Remain. There’s been anger from Clive Lewis, Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial strategy too as he too wants to vote against triggering article 50.
What is the right answer? Should they vote for it upsetting the 48% Remain voters which include 2 3rds of Labour voters, but then work hard to amend it afterwards? Or vote against it upsetting the 51% of the voting population and 1 3rd of Labour voters plus voters they’d need for the next general election if they haven’t died by then? There is of course no winning but with Corbyn apparently having plans for a populist rebrand what he should probably do is just say everyone in Labour loves him, all one million and a half of them before handing out bright red caps that say SAGA on the front. Beyond that, I’m out of ideas which probably means I should apply to be a Labour MP myself I guess.

In other news Nissan are looking at pulling out of Sunderland which to be fair is the least a Nissan car should be able to do. I mean, how big a parking spot do they need? And while that bodes badly for Brexit and for predominantly leave voting Sunderland too, Danish drugs company Novo Nordisk is investing in a new science research centre in Oxford. So is Brexit forcing businesses away or bringing them in? No one really knows but at least without any cars or jobs, we’ll be able to have shit loads of cheap drugs to keep us happy! Woohoo!

What do you think should be the next Brexit move? I’d love to hear your thoughts on it all as it continues on forever and fucking ever.

END

And, phew, that is the end of this week’s show. Look, things are grim out there but it’s constantly heartening to see so many people rally against the bullshit. I keep seeing arseholes on social media kick off the whataboutery saying ‘why didn’t you protest these awful people or these awful people before?’ Well firstly, some of us did, and sometimes its hard to get people to rally behind fighting awful things unless they know it’ll affect them. If the supposed leader of the supposed free world is total arsehole, then the non-free world is also fucked. Seems as good a time to protest, fight and point and laugh at his tiny hands as any so do head to protests if you can and if someone online says you’re a snowflake for doing so, point out that all snowflakes are individual and all fascists are the same boring narrow minded cunts.
Thanks tons for listening. Please do spread the word about this show, review it on iTunes which takes 2 minutes, drop me a bit of change at Patreon.com/parpolbro if you can afford to and say hello via @parpolbro on Twitter, the parpolbro group on Facebook and partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com. I’ll be back next week when no doubt thanks to Rusty Shitbags it’ll have to be 4 hours long.

This week’s episode was brought to you by letters which spell swear words and the number 45th President of Americant.

CLICK TO GO BACK