Further Reading

Transcript

Ep50

Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast episode 50! I’m Tiernan Douieb and like US President Donald Trump I am also concerned that Obama has ordered tapping for my home. Sorry, I mean a plumber has ordered taps for my home. Either way, there’s leaks coming from somewhere and when I find out who’s responsible there’ll be hell to pay. Sorry I mean the under sink well will go away. Basically it’s the samesies.

Yes right now US politics is like a novel jointly written by both John Le Carre and Hanna-Barbera as merely days after Trump supposedly acted presidential because he was able to read a speech he likely didn’t write off an autocue – which by the way, I’m reading this off a computer screen and I wrote it so America, I’m willing to be there in 2020 if you want me – just days after he managed not to say anything completely ludicrous over a short period of time and now everyone thinks he deserves praise like you might a child that finally learns not to pick it’s nose and eat because now just picking it’s nose is an upgrade to what you had. Just days after that, Trump ruined his temporary appearance at being a semi-functioning adult, by proclaiming outrage that the former President, you know the one that everyone now misses, had ordered wire taps in Trump Tower. There’s no evidence of this and it seems that he got the info from the internet’s pubescent tantrum Breitbart, but let’s be fair, why would Obama want to tap the melted satsuma’s phones? If he wanted to know Trump’s private thoughts he could just check his twitter feed at 4am in the morning. Wool weaving of an infected bunion Trump has signed a revised version of his travel ban but this time not including Iraq because yes mate, that was clearly what was stopping it being a good idea in the first place. Assuming that the ban is now fixed because it no longer includes Iraq is like assuming the unsolicited dick pic you sent everyone on your phone when drunk can be fixed by sending it again but this time excluding the number you had for that plumber.

Meanwhile on home shores, the Department Of International Trade which I’m starting to believe more and more is aiming to block any of it rather than promote it, is looking at deals with African Commonwealth nations in a move Whitehall officials are apparently describing as ‘Empire 2.0’. Yeah, because that’s how to persuade those African nations to trade with us isn’t it? Why not just name the plan ‘We’re back for the rest of your gold’ or ‘Hey the British Museum is low on stock again’ and be done with it? Aside from this being an archaic, horrific notion that harks back to colonialism and slavery, it’s a terrible idea. I mean, they know what to expect this time and if we turn up shouting and pointing at things with a big flag, they’ll probably just shoot us. Saying that, if we’re sending total disgraced disgrace Liam Fox the double disgrace over first, I say let’s give him the biggest fuck off Union Jack we can find and hope for the best.

Labour have been pushing for more transparency, which would be nice as for the past few years it’s been very unclear what their plan is. Actually, the party are saying that anyone in high office should be made to publish their tax returns. The Chancellor Phillip Hammond and Prime Minister Theresa May have refused to do as ‘there is no long standing convention for it’. Well if the government only do things there is a long standing convention for, then you wonder why they’re spending quite so much time on Brexit, instead of say, nationalising morris dancing for the people. Jeremy Corbyn did publish his tax returns leading many to say that he had forgotten to declare £40k of his income, but it appears that actually he’d…oh god. Look it’s boring. Really boring but he’d done it all properly and if nothing else maybe everyone should publish their tax returns as definitive proof that our tax system is so over complicated that no one has a fucking clue how it works even those in charge of it.

UKIP’s main donor and what happens when you anthropomorphise an arsehole Arron Banks has said he’ll run against UKIP’s only MP Douglas Carswell in 2020 in Clacton. Because I’m sure it’ll be easy for a millionaire no one’s heard of except when said the families of Hillsborough victims were milking a tragedy to be voice of the working people, over an MP who’s kept his seat since 2005. If nothing else it might divide the UKIP vote in Clacton ensuring neither of them win and creating the first bit of good news since around 2007.

Oh and Theresa May has given up crisps for Lent, though lets be fair, when it comes to the crunch she’s often been lacking anyway. May didn’t specify what her favourite type of crisps are but judging by how she treated protestors as Home Secretary, it’s kettled.

Partly Listeners! We’ve made it to the big 5-0 like muthafrikkin’ Hawaii or ways to leave your lover or the article or something which I guess means I should probably leave after this. Actually I think 50 episodes means this show is now in pod life crisis which means I’ll have to do the next one from a motorbike while wearing a leather jacket or something and filling it with references for much younger listeners. I would never do that to you, though mostly because it took me months to realise that ‘dabs’ was a dance move a not the plural for digital radio. If you’ve been with this show from the beginning then thank you for enduring over 50 hours of bad gags, self taught reporting and lots of interesting interviews with people who actually know stuff. I certainly feel like if nothing else, I’ve learned an awful lot doing this show – except maybe that one episode about Syria, ahem – but I very much hope you have too. If you are a new listeners, you are also very welcome. Why not go back over the last 50 episodes and hear how wrong I’ve been about how people in the world might vote for things. Yes I really will leave getting wrong about voting to the experts. So look, 50 episodes deep, and I’ve got a favour to ask. No not the usual ones about how if you review it on iTunes that’d be really helpful because it is and it would be. Or even how maybe you should review it on Stitcher too. Nor is it about how you if you have a spare pound or dollar or rare Hungarian kekfrank then you could donate to the Patreon at patreon.com/parpolbro to gain occasional extra stuff and allow me to spend more time & money on this show for the next 50 episodes. Mega thanks to Dave and Stacey for donating this past week and to Chris who, thanks tons Chris, upped his monthly donation which was crazy lovely of him. If you don’t want to do a monthly thing, the ace people at Ko-Fi have given me a personalised link! So you can throw me a one-off of a few quid for a coffee which I’ll use for tea and keep the change for a biscuit beause I’m no chump at ko-fi.com/parpolbro. So no, it’s none of those things and in fact I won’t even mention them. Ahem. Instead, there are lots of you listeners out there which is pretty much the only reason I keep doing this show otherwise I could just shout bits of it at people in the park, although my local park is mainly full of professional dog walkers and I reckon I’d get bitten to shit. But there are loads of you, but this show is no where near any of the iTunes or any other podcast charts. So there is a lovely initiative happening this month, set up by a US podcast producer called #trypod where people use the hashtag to recommend podcasts they like to new listeners. Similarly people who make podcasts also recommend shows they like on their shows. So if you could all recommend this to others I’d be hugely grateful, and if it’s on social media do use the #trypod hashtag till the end of March. In return here a few of my current favourites to listen to: The Talking Politics podcast is fascinating and very useful for a different, actually informed view on current happenings. It’s various politics experts, professors, students etc from Cambridge uni with different guests every week and the one with Mary Beard a couple of weeks ago was particularly good. Also as I’ve plugged many times before, Abe Lincoln’s Top Hat is my go to for US politics at the moment. I had Ben Kissel, one of the hosts, on this show just after Trump was elected and the way he and Marcus Parks discuss things is very down to Earth and hugely explanatory. Lastly for this week and I’ll do more next week, is the Comedian’s Comedian which is the first thing I listen to every week and Stu Goldsmith is a bloody lovely man and excellent comic who is brilliantly skilled at chatting with comics about how and why they write what they do. So go subscribe to all those!

Last two things before we crack on with this week’s show. Firstly, if you’re hearing this before March 12th and live in or near Glasgow or have heard about Glasgow on the telly or in a book, come and see me and Bec Hill a the Glasgow comedy festival. We’re both doing works in progress shows but Bec’s is really good and I have at least one joke. We’re at the Hug and Pint on the 12th and I believe it starts at 7pm but do check that as I’m an idiot. There are currently loads of tickets left but I’m sure that’s just because no one likes a sell out. That’s a joke. Please buy the tickets. Lastly lastly, time for a little new jingle:

HOORAY FOR ONIONS

A very nice listeners mentioned to me on twitter that they thought I had been unfair to Jeremy Corbyn the past few weeks and so, as is hugely unnecessary in the current world of opinion pieces and social media I thought I’d bestow you with a little bit of my personal opinion as though this podcast isn’t just that anyway every bloody week. Numero uno is that I aim to be able to take the piss out of all politicians on this show and equally, praise any of them for doing things I think are good. Which is why I haven’t done that over the past 50 episodes. But it’s important to me that we can make fun of all politicians. I remember years ago doing a stand-up for labour gig and the audience all laughed when I mocked the Conservatives and Lib Dems but as soon as I did a gag about how shit Labour were being – do you remember? Do you remember when they were shit? Oh – the audience got all shitty with me. No it wasn’t just because my jokes were awful. Not being able to take people mocking you is a political weakness, and you need only to look at Donald Trump’s twitter to see that. So numero duo, my onions as it were, is that when it comes to Corbyn, yes the press have had it in for him since the start, yes so have most of his own PLP, but as someone who voted for him, I’ve been hugely underwhelmed by him, especially recently and a good strategy would mean bad press shouldn’t matter but when I spend my week looking and reading about politics from a variety of sources and writers and still don’t feel like he’s got strong plan, I’m not sure how he’ll persuade voters who don’t pay that much attention to the news because they’re too busy having real lives instead of, like me, shouting at Victoria Derbyshire for 2 hours then seeing how much tea a man can drink in a day. Yes it’s great to have a left wing politician for once, but if he can’t vocalise his views or come up with coherent plans, or deal with constructive criticism then it’s clear someone else, who he supports, should be in charge instead. Who? Fuck off I didn’t say I had answers. It shouldn’t be anyone from the previous camp of New Labour who clearly aren’t what people want or need anymore either. The excellent Natt Tapley @Natt on Twitter, wrote a nice list in reply to someone’s twitter list of all the good things new labour did. Natt’s list was of all the shit things they did. Here’s the thing, Blairites think Corbynites are the worst people on earth, Corbynites think Blairites are the most evil creatures ever. Truth is, they’re all shit but Nigel Farage is even worse so we should throw him in a well. Go to mouthpiece for the left wing Owen Jones wrote a good piece on Corbyn last week that I pretty much 100% agree with and it’s very worth a read I popped it up on the parpolbro facebook group and twitter if you want to catch it. So that’s my onions. Not that any of you were asking for them, but they may pop up again from time to time. Feel free to email me your own opinions at partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com on the parpolbro facebook group or try to send me a thread on Twitter @parpolbro and see how quickly I ignore it as an automatic response to threads that I can’t help because they make me sad.

ONIONS JINGLE

Oh and no Partly Big Question this week as there is too much news and there was meant to be one last week but I forgot to do it, so just let it be known that all your answers you sent it were amazing. Look at me, ignoring the responses of the people like some sort of 21st century politician. Right this week for the 50th episode I’ve got the first ever returning interviewee on this show, the brilliant Tatton Spiller from ever useful website Simple Politics who explains exactly where we are with fucking Brexit. Which is the correct adjective to put before it. I’m also going to look at some recent UK government decisions and possible arsing budget announcements, which is the correct way to mention that and of course, more bloody Trump, which is also the correct adjective to put before his name too. It is very important to get all these terms right wherever possible. But before all of that, there is this shitting news:

HEADLINES:

NORTHERN IRELAND

Last week Northern Ireland voted in their Assembly Elections, which aren’t about who gets to perform the poem about skeletons after the headmistress talks about harvest week. Instead the NI Assembly elections, are nothing like that and definitely don’t include hymns as it’d get complicated. They were to decide who is in charge of the country, and once again, the Democratic Unionist Party, who are only ever one of those things, came out on top. However after this election they are now only one seat ahead of their opposition, Sinn Fein, losing ten seats in the process. Sinn Fein now have their highest ever vote share and between Sinn Fein and the Social Democratic and Labour Party have more votes than the unionist parties of the DUP and the Ulster Unionist Party, which spells UUP, yes correct, the noise of someone inhaling a burp. Now if you head back to episode 45 with my chat with Matt Fulton at Progressive Politics Northern Ireland, you’ll realise that this is partly to do with the Cash For Ash scandal which sounded like a big waste of money and energy literally and Arlene Forster, the DUP’s leader not stepping aside or well anywhere except her seat, and it’s probably also to do with Brexit which the DUP backed despite the fact it’d cause all sorts of border issues with the Republic because this half of the decade seems to be on the theme of unnecessary divisions, to the extent where I’m sure 2019 is going into involve lots of policies for polynomials. So where this leaves Northern Ireland is negotiating it’s joint power sharing government and with the DUP no longer having a majority to push through things like veto gay marriage or block changes to abortion laws. So there’s every chance NI could become a more progressive place. Then again with Arlene Foster refusing to resign and if Sinn Fein and the DUP can’t agree on how to power share – and I’d recommend a USB double adapter – then it might need to go back to election until one can be made.

SCOTLAND

It was the Scottish Conservative Conference last week which probably mostly involved David Mundell and Ruth Davidson taking all the MSP’s to aggressively crowd around the pandas at Edinburgh zoo to show them they are definitely more in their Scottish gang now. Theresa May addressed the conference by attacking the SNP saying their policies were not in the best interests of Scottish people which is odd coming from someone who’s government pushing through the biggest constitutional change of the last 44 years that Scotland didn’t want after they also denied Scotland any sort of extra devolved powers that they promised in order to get them to stay in the British union. I mean while May could be right about the SNP, being lectured on what is and isn’t in the best interest of Scottish people by the Prime Minister no one elected is like being told by a serial killer that the person who saved you last minute from their clutches was only in it for the good PR. May’s speech mostly boosted keeping the British Union but then gave no one in Scotland a reason to want that by saying the UK government won’t be devolving powers currently exercised by the EU to the Scottish Parliament as requested by first minister Nicola Sturgeon. She said doing that would create a looser and weaker union between Scotland and the rest of the UK, in the same way that parents refuse to give their children responsibility incase they realise they don’t need them and leave home. Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson told the conference that if there was another independence vote unionists would win by an even bigger margin than in 2014, and that Theresa May wouldn’t allow another vote anyway so she’s definitely right because you can’t prove she isn’t. There are big issues in Scotland under the SNP, particularly in the education and NHS waiting times but nothing the Conservatives are doing in the rest of the UK shows they’d do a better job so I can’t imagine May’s speech was much more than preaching to the choir. Ruth Davidson promised in her speech a back to basics review of the school curriculum with traditional emphasis on knowledge and facts, which if that’s true will mainly encourage children not to join the Conservative party when they grow up. Local elections happen in Scotland in May so we’ll see how voters are feeling about those promises then. Still, keeping a few Conservatives in Scotland is always a good way to encourage reluctant pandas to breed just to outnumber them again.

FRENCH ELECTIONS

Oh mon dieu c’est la diffusion partiellement politique! Those French elections are getting heated, or I suppose for France, sauteed as they’re very particular about that sort of thing. Right wing candidate Francois Fillon has been summoned by judges, not sorcerers or that’d be weird, over the allegations that he gave his wife a taxpayer funded fake job which he denies, probably because his wife would be pretty angry with him if she found out he thought what she did was a fake job. Imagine that argument yeesh. However while Fillon is saying it’s a political assassination and that he will continue to run, his party the Union of Democrats and Independants, a group who’s first part of their name seems to be contradicted by the last part, have suspended their support for him and are looking to back another candidate instead. The UDI aren’t a massive party but they are all buddy with the Republicans so it won’t make it easy for Francois to continue without them. Fillon has previously promised to drop out if an investigation about him took place, but by deciding against that, it seems he may be forcefully dropped out instead and will have to hope his family return the employment favour for the next few years.

If Fillon does drop out that leaves the main two contenders for the French presidency. The first of those is Marine Le Pen who had her immunity to prosecution as an MEP taken away by the European Parliament which will probably make her rethink some of her comments about them over the last few years. She’s under investigation for posting horrible images on Twitter which makes me wonder if I should drop the EU a line about half my time line. But Le Pen in her typical untactful, hate stirring fashion posted graphic pics of IS killings which really isn’t a great way to gain followers, she’d have been much better off with the sword emoji and then the face with the crossed out eyes. While she’s being investigated for that, the immunity lift doesn’t cover the investigation into her misuse of EU funds and she’s currently refusing to attend a summons and police interview about it, which really isn’t the best look if you want to appear innocent.

She’s now unnecessary head picture to head with centrist candidate Macron in the running, though it looks like Le Pen is unlikely to win against him I say in the sort of comment I should know better than in 2017. Macron has finally unveiled his manifesto showing how patriotically French he is by doing it all laissaz fare months after everyone else. First on his manifesto was a big ol’ putain vous to Fillon by saying he’d ban politicians from employing relatives. He also wants to reduce the amount of seats in parliament, tackle unemployment, abolish residence tax, and make retirement the same for everyone. Oh and he wants to ban mobile phones in schools which sounds harsh to kids, but when you see how distracted they’d get from school work by the awful shit Marine Le Pen posts, it makes sense. Also in his education policy was a promise to return the three r’s to the curriculum, except in French they aren’t three r’s, they are an L, an E with a thingy on top and an A, so perhaps he’s insisting on talking like a pirate classes? There is still over a month to go to the first round of elections so who knows, by then all the candidates might have been arrested and have to resort to hiring each other for poorly written violent pirate social media marketing opportunities that appeal to no one.

INTERVIEW WITH TATTON

By the time you hear this the Lords will have voted for or against the Article 50 bill causing papers to decide if they are enemies of the people, champions of the people or just old unelected people who are sometimes both depending on your opinion but hey, it’s really hard to put nuance in a headline. Whatever happens it looks very much like Brexit is happening hard and not at all fast with the next 2-3 years likely to be filled with the sort of articles that makes you wonder if you’d have more interesting insights listening to a tin telephone with one end attached to flushing toilet. Brexiteers insist on using threatening language about what will happen if people don’t support the process of leaving the EU, with the Department of International Trade telling firms bidding for government contractors that they must make the right cultural choice if they want the job. This coming from disgrace squared Liam Fox who wouldn’t know culture if it was growing on his lumpy old yoghurt face. At the same time Remainers refuse to accept that a democratic vote has happened, narrow a margin as it was and still seem to assume rather than ensure Brexit is the best it can be for the people, it should just be stopped altogether and that the best people to inform a public sick of the establishment are two former Prime Ministers.

Companies are urging that Brexit is delayed if there’s no deal by the end of the two years given by article 50, EU citizens have no idea if they’ll still have the right to live the UK even if they’re already based here, and with General Motors buying Vauxhall and Nissan saying they want a Brexit that works for them it looks free movement will stop for anyone needing to drive anywhere in a reasonably priced car too. And you think car companies would handle being tyred and exhausted by it all so that’s worrying. With the government now saying they won’t shut the door on low skilled EU migrants, upsetting xenophobes who like being unskilled and hate fruit, and the costs of leaving the EU looking like they might equal those we had staying in with nothing extra going to the NHS or buses, you do sort of wonder what the point of it all really is? And does anyone really know what’s going on, what will happen and why oh why we’re letting Liam Fox be in charge of any of it, when he’ll probably just use it to take his best mate on all expenses paid holidays to talk trade deals with people he’ll probably offend before he’s finished saying hello by saying something about how great colonialism was?

Well this week I dragged the creator of Simple Politics, Tatton Spiller, back on the podcast to explain. Simple Politics.co.uk is a fantastic site dedicated to making political processes easy to understand. Long time listeners will remember Tatton from episode 22 when I had a chat with him the afternoon after we’d received the Brexit referendum result so I thought it’d be useful to get him to update us, on episode 50 about what the hell is going on with fucking Brexit.

Now a quick heads up. We were having a nice chat about how each other is when I jumped in and started asking questions so there’s a bit of talking over each other for the first question before I remember to get out of self indulgent chatty mode and act like a podcast interviewer again. But we had a very fun chat and I think you’ll find Tatton makes things all that little bit more clear, in as much as you can something that has more grey areas than a House of Lords shower room.

So here’s Tatton:

INTERVIEW

We’ll be back with Tatton in a minute but first.

THINGS AT HOME

With the news constantly focused on fucking Brexit and bloody Trump it’s easy to miss out on some pretty important things closer to home. No, not how your local shop has stopped stocking those disgusting cheese triangles. I mean UK policies and in particular, UK funding cuts. The first and last Spring Budget is this Wednesday and while it’s name sounds like it’ll be hours of how much bouncy things should cost, it’s sadly more likely to be about how little funding will blossom for areas that need it. There is a lot of speculation that Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and example of what happens when all you eat is dust, will demand a further £3.5m in cuts from many Whitehall government departments and while George Osborne in his spending review in 2015 which took place somewhere between building site visits and hard hat wearing opportunities, that the police budget would be protected, as would funding for children aged 16-19 in education, 30 hours a week free childcare for 3 and 4 year olds and a protection of adult skills. But the only ones of those that have been reaffirmed in the treasury’s ‘efficiency savings’ drive are core school budgets, to keep the lack of insufficient funding for the NHS and to meet the Nato target of 2% of GDP on defence, because there’s nothing like having a ton of defence with no skilled or educated adults to be in charge of it.

And if some of those ring fenced areas aren’t going to be protected then considering the trouble they are already in, it could get pretty bleak. I mean, in things that have already been cut harsher than a drunk hairdresser using a machete to do a short back and sides, the school system is diced like educational sushi. The education secretary Justine Greening announced a new national funding formula in December of last year that is meant to increase funding for schools with additional needs such as having lots of kids from deprived backgrounds. That’s deprived, not depraved backgrounds, as all of them go to private schools. These changes are going to come in next year, but the National Union of Teachers and the Child Poverty Action Group have found that unless funding is hugely increased the funding formula seems more like poverty potion as 98% of schools will be hit by it. 98%. You have to wonder what sort of maths education Greening had. 60% of secondary schools already spend over their budget and yet the department for education is currently asking for £3bn more cuts in school budgets. Imagine setting that as a GCSE question? You have nothing, but the government wants you to have £3bn less but you still have to cater for the education of millions of children, so how soon do you resign from teaching? Disadvantaged primary students look set to lose £473 of funding each which is £140 more than average for that age group. Secondary schools with high numbers of poor students will lose £803 per pupil, £326 more than the average. So basically those who need the most support, will receive even less support than they already have. Unless this is some sort of secret way to give kids without much money a head start when perhaps post Brexit the UK becomes like some sort of barren wasteland where you only need survival skills, then it’ll just create an even bigger class gap in education. If you look at school cuts.org.uk you can find what schools near you will lose. The primary school at the end of my road is going to lose £129,927 by 2019, that’s £722 per pupil and two teachers gone. If you saw how often the little shits take up the bus on school trips when I’m travelling into town, you realise how important it is they have enough teachers to stop them asking me stupid questions about what I’m listening to on my phone. It’s got swearing in, IT’S NOT SUITABLE FOR YOU! STOP GIGGLING AT ME! Oh god.

After schools are some really nasty ones. As of April 6th this year, benefits given to bereaved parents with children will only last 18 months as opposed to the previous rule of funding till the child is 16. According to Conservative minister Richard Harrington who swapped having emotions for a face like a sex criminal, funding a bereaved single parent till their child is 16 stops them from readjusting to life as a single parent. That’s right. Harrington thinks it’s much easier to adjust to the loss of a loved one if you can really feel how screwed you are without their financial or emotional support. Why not send a government employee round every week to shout ‘LONELY ISN’T IT?’ into their faces in the hope that it’ll give them a kickstart into a more balanced life? These minimal benefits only apply if you are married or in a civil partnership with your partner too, because let’s face it, in the eyes of the government, if you don’t even have to miss putting a ring on in the morning you’re unlikely to even notice your partner isn’t there. Richard Harrington was only at the parliamentary debate about this issue because he was replacing another minister who couldn’t be there as they were attending a funeral. No doubt walking round, taking all the cash out of people’s wallets and shouting ‘YOU SHOULD FEEL FINE NOW WHY ARE YOU STILL CRYING?’

Also in April housing benefit for 18-21 year olds will be axed because it’s just so easy for young people to find affordable accommodation right now right? I mean they could totally sleep on the streets or join the army, and I don’t know why these young people are always complaining about not having enough opportunities when right there are definitive individual choices about how you’d like to die young, shot to death or frozen to death. With no housing benefit, 18-21 year olds are unlikely to be able to rent anywhere as landlords will know they can’t be benefits, and if they are at risk of homelessness there are issues about hostels and shelters taking them as they too get paid by housing benefits. There will be exemptions such as kids that can’t go home due to threats of physical or emotional abuse, and I don’t think they count having to talk to your parents everyday when you’re 19 as emotional abuse even though it definitely is. Again the reasoning behind this is that they don’t want to set young people on a life of benefits, so by taking away their housing benefit it makes sure they’ll be dead before they can start claiming anything.

To ensure there’s a lot of smoke to mask all of this funding cuts fire, the government have also scrapped cost caps on any person or organisation that wants to bring a judicial review against the government in an environmental case. Previously there would be protection of maximum costs of £5k for an individual and £10k for an organisation if they lost, but now they’ll have to pay full legal fees in an unsuccessful case. So it’s either take up the challenge and maybe lose your home in legal fee costs or not bother and lose your home as whatever ignored environmental disaster or lack of green initiative scheme destroys it anyway.

Add to this the PIP benefit cuts, police force cuts – both of which I’ve mentioned on previous shows – and reports that due to cuts fire fighters in Manchester have been having to catch taxis to blazes, where I hope the cabbie didn’t make them wait while they spent years filling out a receipt – you wonder if Hammond’s budget will do much to help any of the just about managing people they keep promising to. There is some hope he’ll finally give much needed funding increase to social care, but judging by how many people will be full of air pollution, without a home or education and in mourning, the demand on that will increase tenfold too. Infact, thinking about how kids won’t get the education they need, young people will be homeless, you have to get over deaths super quickly, the emergency services are fucked and the environment will be in tatters, the smartest move based on all of the above would probably be to spend a lot of government budget money making sure everyone’s seen Mad Max Fury Road then we’ll all be appropriately prepped come 2020.

INTERVIEW PART 2

Big thanks to Tatton and it was very nice to get him back on the podcast and hopefully that’s cleared some Brexit nonsense up. His amazingly informative and clear guide to how things work in politics is at simplepolitics.co.uk, on Facebook at simplepoliticsuk and on Twitter @easypoliticsuk. There are now simple politics tshirts at the teemill website including some ace ones with descriptions of what socialism, liberalism and conservatism are as well as tea towels too, and there are great fun politics based games on the site you can get too. Tatton wanted me to mention for any of you that are teachers or in the education sector, he’ll be at the Education Show at the NEC Birmingham so do go see him if you’d like to find ways to implement teaching politics into your lesson plans and if you’re going to be there but are still interested in that, drop him a line via the website.

As always if you have anyone you’d like me to interview or any subject you think I should interview people about please do drop me a line @parpolbro on Twitter, the parpolbro group on Facebook or partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com. Or shine the special Parpolbro signal into the sky on a dark night and you can tell me when I appear on your roof in a cape, very tired from running up all the stairs in a stupid cape.

TRUMP

Again it feels like I need a whole separate podcast just to catch up on what’s been happening in the US this week but I don’t have one of those. I’m not even sure what I’d call it. Tiny Handed Tantrums or something. So look, again it’s a longish podcast this week so here’s some quick outlines of trump fuckery. He read the whole thing off an auto cue which is hugely hypocritical after his condemnation of actors speaking out against him, yet he reads on script and he’s now presidential. Anyway, Trump actually condemned the shooting of two Indian men in Kansas and the vandalism of Jewish cemeteries, but then that was kind of undercut by him saying the day before that Jewish people could be doing anti-Semitic crimes themselves in order to make him look bad. Not only an absurd suggestion due to its anti-semitic nature but also because of the sheer idea that anyone has to do anything to make Trump look bad when he’s perfectly capable of that all by himself. Trumpo’s speech also talked about immigration reform and an earlier press interview said he might be open to granting legal status to undocumented migrants. But this is all undercut by his talks of reports on crimes caused by immigrants, and him bringing back the Muslim travel ban today, a ban that Trump and his team are saying isn’t just a repackaged muslim ban even though it totally is. From early reports it sounds pretty much exactly the same just without Iraq in it, which wasn’t the problem everyone had with it in the first place. In fact, while I don’t think Iraq should be included in any sort of ban, it’s absurd to believe the other countries that are back in the ban, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen and Libya are anymore of a terror threat than Iraq a country who’s name actually features in the acronym ISIS. What do you think Trump thinks the second I is for? Does he reckon it stands for Islamic State Islamic State as they think it’s so good they named it twice? There’s also exemptions for green card holders which is good as otherwise all that shit they have to go through with Andie McDowall is a total waste. The rest of his speech that’s being hailed as measured and upbeat because he didn’t say sad or get everyone chanting, included a promise of a renewal of the American spirit which is good for Jack Daniels, then a ton of similar crap he’s said before but this time not shouted so people immediately thought it was more sensible. Oh and he paid tribute to the widow of Navy Seal Ryan Owens who died in a raid in Yemen while Trump was outside the White House operations room tweeting about a TV appearance because it turned out the live footage of a raid where lots of innocent people died didn’t feature him so why bother watching?

It’s amazing how this week Trump has criticised Arnold Schwarzenegger for leaving the apprentice yet when it comes to who’s he’s appointed for his own team, he’s the terrible boss of a shit show. Although it seems a lot of them would make great members of the Russian government. Jeff Sessions, Attorney General and not so much a musical jam as currently in one, has recused himself from an investigation into himself, which sounds about right as he might discover what a total racist arsebag he is and feel sad if he did. He met with a Russian ambassador Sergey Kislak twice during the Trump’s election campaign, which as Sesssions was part of the armed services committee isn’t a bad thing in itself although judging by his record anyone meeting Jeff Sessions is a bad thing for them incase he makes a racist gag that isn’t even trying for irony. What is bad is that he lied under oath when he told the senate he had had no contact with Russian officials. Considering that during the Clinton administration’s Monica Lewinsky scandal Sessions said that ‘no one is above the law’ he was definitely at least trying to stand behind it in a way it wouldn’t see him unless it turned round suddenly. Trump’s senior advisor and son in law Jared Kushner also met with the same Ambassador and it seemed Kislak also attended the Republican Convention last year which makes it really crystal clear that Russia had some hand in Trump’s election or Kislak loves watching a bunch of old white men shouting stuff at people in stupid hats for entertainment. Let’s be fair, it is funny viewing.

That sort of brings us up to Trump’s allegations that Barack Obama ordered a wire tapping on the Trump Tower, which while it wasn’t Obama, it has been reported for a while. The FBI were granted a Foreign Intellegence Surveillance Act warrant covering El-Dono’s ties to Russia which was granted by the FISA court in October. So they obviously thought there was a good reason to tap Trump and we’ll have to see what they found. I bet there’s some interesting stuff in there hidden amongst hours of him shouting for help with using his phone, shouting about ratings, and asking for help opening jars that are too big for him. Lucky lucky FBI.

END

And that is all for this week’s Partly Political Broadcast. Thanks, as always, for listening. I mean, 50 episodes eh? It almost makes me worried about what I’ve been neglecting while doing this, I say as I stare at two almost dead plants in my room. But yes, if you haven’t reviewed the show on iTunes, stitcher or a random public loo wall, please do and please do join the Patreon at patreon.com/parpolbro or chuck a £1 at ko-fi.com/parpolbro if you can. There might not be a show next week as I’ll be up in Scotland then some shows in Darlington and Seaham so not sure I’ll have time or wi-fi but I promise to try and get some post Spring budget analysis out when I can, even if it’s a late or super early mini-episode. If you’d like neither of those or would like to tell me how my onions are wrong or well anything negative or indeed and preferably positive about the show, do drop me a line @parpolbro on Twitter, the parpolbro group on facebook or email me partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com like they used to do in the old days. I’ll hopefully reverse hear you all next week but if not, definitely in two unless this sort of thing has been decided as not patriotic enough and I have to replace it with 3 hours audio of me waving a flag around. GOODBYE!

This week’s show was brought to you by the number 50 and the letters from you containing presents because I’ve done so many episodes all by myself like a big boy. What do you mean you need my address to send letters? Hmm. I’m not falling for that one again.

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