Further Reading

Transcript

Ep58

Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast episode 58. I’m Tiernan Douieb and I am not a mugwump even though being a person who remains aloof and independent from party politics sounds ideal right about now, as being aware of them means you have to read stupid as fuck stories about chicken hearted dunderheaded nincompoop Boris Johnson using terms like mugwump when there’s real news happening.

And this week I’d like to start by reading a rather sad report from some of the UK’s top robotic scientists, David Robotscience. And warning this contains some disappointing accounts and infuriating stupidity, as well as real kick in the face for the possibility of real AI anytime soon so if you are someone who like me, feels like the Matrix or Robopocalyse would be a better situation for humanity than what we have now, maybe turn off your earsets, headplugs or brainphones now. It reads:

We, the top, top, robotic scientists massive were saddened that despite all our efforts and hard work, the Prime Minister Theresa Maybot 3000 yet again didn’t pass the Turing Test during the experiment runs on the Marr or Peston shows. Despite seeming almost human in appearance, the Maybot’s interactions still largely revolve around repeating the same responses again and again, unable to respond to questions with corresponding statements instead of answers. Having never programmed in the phrase ‘strong and stable’ we can’t figure out why it appears constantly in all speech. It’s possible the microcontroller is damaged. This would also explain why when campaigning in Wales, the Maybot referred to wanting to ‘lead the world in preventing tourism’.

CLIP

While this could be a simple muddle or text error between tourism and terrorism it could also be that programming has lead the Maybot to conclude that post Brexit Britain will be such a decrepit isolated shithole that no one will visit again. But these were not the only noticeable errors. When asked by unsuspecting human Andrew Marr ‘why are nurses having to use food banks?’ the Maybot responded with ‘there are many complex reasons why people go to food banks’. A confusing reply since most of us can think of only one reason people go to food banks, which is because they can’t afford to buy food. We can only assume that perhaps a glitch caused the Maybot to calculate a variety of other improbable possibilities and complex reasons why, over the course of the projected 1000 year Conservative rule that people may go to food banks including ‘they crash landed their space ship there’, ‘they are parliamentary footsoldiers sent to clear out the poor and scavange the food for the stocks now present in parliament square’ or even ‘because their bodies are now the Soylent Green food supplies stocked in the food bank.’ On the plus side when asked the same question posed to Liberal Democrats leader and haunted boyscout Tim Farron, as to whether she considered gay sex a sin, the Maybot replied ‘ No’. This showed us that we had successfully programmed her to be comfortable with all methods of fucking the British people.

The report on the about the Maybot’s test conversation with President of the EU Commission from a German newspaper FAZ or Frankfurter Allgemaine Zeitung for you acronym haters out there or ACHOTs as I like to call you is also pretty upsetting for us. Despite uploading all necessary documents explaining how the EU, laws and common sense all work, the Maybot appears to have not been updated past beginner’s stage of the Brexit code. Unable to recognise the money owed to the EU by the UK or the timeframe restraints given to it all, we can only conclude she has been infected with some sort of rogue virus that has sadly narrowed her mainframe so the user interface only works for those that shout loudest regardless of a lack of coherent or plausible content.

We conclude that the decision was to correct to not allow the Maybot to do television debates or meet members of the public unless she is helicoptered in and they have been specifically invited and told not to ask questions. Unless bugs can be fixed, data can be rebooted and patches stabilised, we suspect the Maybot 3000 would be more use to people if she were scrapped and made into 46 loo roll holders.

Awww. How sad. That report was from David RobotScience at the Institute Of Real Series Robot Science With Robots and Everything. Sorry to start today’s show with such a sad and upsetting statement.

Hello you and your face and your knees and I hope you are enjoying yet another four day week due to May Day, a bank holiday that began as a spring festival but now feels more like an appropriately named international day for distress calls. Thank you for continuing to listen to this show and it’s nice to see from all the stats and the info digits that a few more of you are joining this weekly audio summarising of all the ways things are going wrong. In fact, cos this show is on on Acast and they have fancy stats, I noticed that this show has a more global audience than I thought, with over 70 listens in Katmandu which is amazing. I understand that while Nepal still has high levels of poverty that it is aiming to be a developing country by 2022, which is around the time the UK won’t be, so good luck Nepal! And if you are one of the listeners from one of the more exotic locations, 26 listeners in Middlesborough, I’m looking at you, then please do get in touch and let me know if there’s politics closer to home you’d like me to focus on or particular aspects of UK politics that are more interesting from a global perspective. Similarly thanks to everyone who sent me thoughts on what they’d like for the election based shows and I’m keen to hear from more of you on what you’d like me to put on this show to make the next six weeks less shit awful. Do drop me a line @parpolbro on Twitter, the Parpolbro group on Facebook or partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com.
Quick thanks to Sophie who donated to the ko-fi.com account this week and you can do that too at ko-fi.com/parpolbro or if you fancy giving a more regular donation head to patreon.com/parpolbro and if you don’t fancy doing any of those despite how goddamn fancy-able they are, mmm I would, then why not give the show a 5 star review on iTunes? In Nepalese if you like, then I’ll use google translate to misunderstand your intentions entirely and see it as a threat.

Also, I always forget to plug this but if you’re one of the Alpha team, the parpolpros who listen to this show on the day it comes out, my May mailing list email will be going out at some point on Tuesday or Wednesday so if you’d like more words from me in your inbox and details on where I’m gigging and stuff, do sign up at my website on www.tiernandouieb.co.uk/contact. And there’s good stuff on it this month like the show I’m going to run on election night, June 8th at the Phoenix in Oxford Circus in London called ‘Partly Political Broadcast Presents: Fuck The Election’ and it’ll be me, and acts including Marcus Brigstoke, Josie Long, Jonny and the Baptists, Bisha K Ali, Joe Wells and several others too. I’ve not announced the line-up anywhere yet as I’d like you pod heroes to get first dibs. It’ll only be from 8pm to 10.30pm so we can either then carry on drinking afterwards till we stop feeling sad or go home and sleep until 2022 and miss it all. Your call. But I thought it might be a nice way to laugh before it potentially all goes horrible. So if you’d like tickets, they are £10 and you can either go to wegottickets.com/event/399962 which is complicated or it’ll be up at the phoenixcavendishsquare.co.uk site soon or just sign up to my mailing list or check the twitter as I’m tweeting about it loads. I mean, you know how the internet works right? Also as I mentioned last week the kids show about the election that I’m doing with Simple Politics creator Tatton Spiller is on June 4th at the Udderbelly Southbank and you can grab tickets for that at underbellyfestival.com. Sorry these are all London based but I’ll be priced out of living here really soon so I’m just getting stuff in before that happens. Last admin thingy is that if you’re feeling really disillusioned about this election thing, as many are, have a look at moreunited.uk. I’m hoping to get someone from the campaign on the show at some point but they are a crowd funding movement who aim to support candidates from any party who uphold the progressive values they believe in. So much less about party politics and more about who might actually be good for where you are. It’s an interesting and seemingly properly progressive idea so do check them out and I think they’re choosing who to support with the money in the next few days so sign up asap if you want to be part of that. Moreunited.uk

Right on this week’s show there are two interviews. TWO! I know! First is Yannis Koutsomitis who is a global politics analyst and contributer to France 24 on the 2nd round of the French elections happening this coming weekend, and then I speak to Gracie Bradley at Against Borders for Children on why, if you’re a parent, you need to be boycotting the school census. Also general election shizz, local election shizzles and a look at the first 100 days of a giant melted satusuma in the White House. But first this week, let’s start with:

BREXIT FALLOUT

If Theresa May was on Deal or No Deal, it seems she’d tell tiny entertainment Manticore Noel Edmunds that either she opens all boxes or nothing at all, and nothing would be better than just opening one or two boxes despite the fact she’d definitely then leave with nothing at all, rather than at least 1p. Then she’d call up the Juncker and tell him how to do his job before storming off. Well that’s how it’d be based on the report in German paper FAZ of President of EU Commission and slightly melted old John Oliver Jean Claude Juncker’s informal dinner with her anyway. To summarise a collection of tweets translating the German article, May seems to think that she can do Brexit negotiations her way, assumes the issue of EU or UK expats living in the UK or EU respectively can all be sorted out in two months time, doesn’t think the UK needs to pay the EU any money and doesn’t seem to understand that by avoiding paying back the debt for services already issued Britain will be made a third country in relation to the EU like say Hong Kong or Australia and given no trade deal at all. Apparently Juncker left 10 Downing Street saying he was 10 times more sceptical than he was before, which considering he was pretty sceptical already, makes me wonder if dealing with Theresa May and David Davis in the same day has left him even questioning what the point of existence is in the first place. To be fair the idea of dinner with either of them would be awful. What are we having? ‘I can’t tell you but dinner means dinner!’ Now this report was leaked with the intention of making May look bad, but even with that in consideration, it makes her look fucking awful and as though she doesn’t have a clue and we’re all in trouble. Downing Street responded by saying that report was Brussels gossip and that the Prime Minister didn’t recognise that account of the meeting. Though to be fair May doesn’t seem to recognise how any of this works and I wonder if she has some sort of sensibility blindness.

Part of the report says that when May said to Juncker ‘let’s make Brexit a success’, he replied ‘Brexit cannot be a success.’ That comment, sounding like something Simon Cowell might tell an Argos employee after they’ve wailed through two versus of Firework in the wrong key, is another in a series that shows that while May is making a pig’s ear of everything, the EU are clearly playing hardball too as they know that the UK doesn’t have a lot of ground here and they don’t want to make leaving the EU look easy or everyone would have a go popping in and out of it like, well, Tony Blair and his self interest pop in and out of politics. And we all know how unconstructive and relentlessly annoying that is. One of the big issues is that of the rights of EU citizens in the UK, which European Council President Donald Tusk said he wants to be at the centre of talks and with May assuming that can be sorted out willy nilly at the end of June, ignoring all the complications of health care and visas, isn’t really helping. Similarly all 27 states are pretty keen on the UK paying back the 60bn EURO bill, which is a mix of money owed for legally binding commitments we’ve already made for up to 2020, pension promises to EU officials and UK citizens in the EU and costs of moving EU regulators from the UK back to Europe. So May saying the UK doesn’t want to pay any of that is like her eating an entire meal, then refusing to pay the bill or any costs of lost customers who saw she was in there and decided to go elsewhere. And really all this shows is that the EU, like Snap, have got the power in these negotiations, so May can’t just swan in demanding they work for her. She warned that the 27 member states were lining up to oppose Britain. Of course they are, idiot. It’s like someone running into a 40ft brick wall by choice, cracking their head on it then demanding the wall apologise and dismantle itself to make things evens. It also looks a lot like the big wall is expecting May to crumble and collapse first.

Labour’s Shadow Secretary for Exiting the EU and sad Max Headroom Keir Starmer responded to the FAZ report saying it was a deeply worrying account, that May was putting party interest before National interest and that Labour will bring a new approach. Which all sounds dandy except judging by Starmer’s announcement of Labour’s Brexit policies last week, their approach seems to be going in circles before forgetting where they’re meant to be heading and walking back to the beginning. I mean, there are some good bits in Labour proposals, including guaranteeing EU citizen’s rights in the UK, then there’s also scrapping the not so Great Repeal Bill and changing it for an EU rights and protections bill which would make sure all workers rights and environmental law and bits that we want are fully protected. But then it also mentions leaving the single market and customs union while retaining the rights of the single market and customs union. Why not just not leave them then? Like leaving a flatshare but then paying them extra to visit daily and use the wifi and have a sleep and eat and use the bathroom. Starmer said Labour would end free movement but not sever ties with Europe and it sort of feels like he’s somehow trying to play to both leave and remain voters. I get the feeling that at the end of a relationship Starmer would say ‘let’s at least stay friends’ and still invite you to a few parties that you didn’t feel comfortable at before you both realised it was pointless. Compared to May though who’d keep turning up to your home demanding she can take whatever she likes from it and saying it’s all definitely your fault, Labour’s policies do seem preferable.

Oh and this week can you guess?

WHO’S LEAVING?

Seven international banks, including CityGroup, Goldman Sachs, Creit Suisse and Deutsche Bank who are opening offices in Frankfurt. I mean, you’d assume Deutsche Bank had one there already. And yeah sure, there’s something about bankers having to fuck off that feels great, except that profiting from global crashes requires a lot of people and Deutsche Bank moving would take 4000 jobs from the UK. Typical banks eh? Very hard to save anything, lots of penalties if you withdraw early. Still I’m sure the UK will be fine without all the financial institutions that we use as our main globally sought after service. It’ll just mean the rest of the world starts coming to us for our other great services like er….delayed trains and chips in the rain and er…oh god, I actually want the banks to stay. How did that happen? Bloody Brexit.

INTERVIEW 1: YANNIS

It’s time for Diffusion en partie politique! Oui nous sommes, er, mere days away from France election a new President. And oui, I am years away from being fluent in French despite me using two phone apps every day which insist on teaching me phrases I’ll never use. Un requin mange un dauphin. Great thanks for that, now on my next trip to Paris I’ll just hang around until I see a great white devour a bottle nose by the Eifell Tower. Very useful. Anyway, it’s down to Emmanuel Macron or Marine Le Pen, two very different characters with a number of similarities. One is a centrist, one is very much a racist, yet neither are from the main political parties signalling that France too is full of Ennui politique even more than you are of my attempts to throw in bits of French I don’t really understand into this intro. It’s a big election for France and whatever the results it will mean the shape of French politics will be set on a new course, possibly one of seven, followed by a nap. And whatever happens it will affect us too. Not just because it’s so nearby – I mean if you live in Plymouth you’re only a few miles away from touching Brest, eh? – but because the French president will have a big ol’ say in how Brexit pans out. So I’ve given a few run downs on the Election Francaise but I thought it’d be useful to get some proper info about whether the French believe their own phrase of ‘Qui n’avance pas, recule’ or if they’d much prefer to sadly regarder un singe manger une orange. No that’s not what I meant. Bloody apps. I meant revenir aux temps du fascisme. See? That’s why I asked Yannis Koutsomitis, a global political analyst and sometime contributor to France 24 to explain not just what might happen next week but why and how. So have a listen to that and I’ll be here working out just where in France I can go to talk about having some butter with an apple before pointing out that a horse is an animal.

Here’s Yannis:

INTERVIEW

Big thanks to Yannis for chatting with me. You can find him on Twitter @yannikouts, his blogs can be found at yannikouts.wordpress.com and many of his articles can be found on France 24. The Twitterers he recommended following are @mathieugallard ‏, Henri Gibier @hgibier and Pierre Briançon @pierrebri. And as they say in France, ‘Actually I speak English so please stop pointing and shouting at things’, sorry I mean Qui Vivre Verre, the future will tell. And we’ll see how right or wrong Yannis was in a week’s time when either Macron will be French president or Le Pen is. Yes, that was a cheap penis gag. You’re welcome.

GENERAL ELECTION 2017 – LOCAL ELECTIONS

So far the general election has already been a lot like everytime I attempt to do exercise. Tons of bluster but with very little substance or progress. Over the past week the main highlights have been Theresa May saying she’ll prevent tourism instead of terrorism, which temporarily lost her all the votes of all the staff of Madam Tussards, before they then saw her lifeless interview on the Marr Show and Peston and realised she was a useful promotion for the waxwork industry. Then Foreign Secretary and marshmallow in a suit Boris Johnson referred to Jeremy Corbyn as a ‘mugwump’ because Johnson can only use words from the era he gets all his political ideals from. Then Rachel Johnson, BoJo’s sister, announced she was joining the Lib Dems as a protest vote against Brexit which if it was against anyone other than Boris I’d class as a grade a shitty younger sibling move. While it’s got the Lib Dems giddy like a geek kid who just made eye contact with the prom queen unaware it’s because she was looking through them, daydreaming about screwing over her brother, I’m concerned about a Johnson family feud effecting the election. I mean, look at what happened last year when he had a fall out with his mates? Fucking Brexit. Exactly.

With six weeks still to go, polls are showing Conservatives still very much in the lead with people who are home during the day and actually answer the phone, while Lib Dems are also making gains, and Labour and UKIP making losses. According to a yougov poll people who are switching parties and voted leave are mostly going from UKIP to Conservative which is risky for Labour as it strengthens the right wing vote and in seats where Labour only has a marginal lead, if the Tories sweep up the UKIP votes too, it’ll be theirs. The poll also suggested that Remain voters are mainly switching from Labour to Lib Dem because everyone loves an underdog and infact most polls suggest a lot of voters are switching parties or changing their minds this year, except for, you guessed it, Conservative voters who are sticking with their party. As they always do, and this is key to why the Tories win, because when needed they operate like the Borg, one assimilated mind, while all the centre left parties spend their campaigns tearing each other apart, or in the case of Labour just kicking their own party to death and then boasting how they’re at least giving one party a good kicking.

Thing is, as I mentioned last week, the Conservatives policies aren’t strong. They look to be scrapping the Triple Lock pension ensuring pensions rise by wages, inflation or 2.5%, they won’t promise not to raise tax or VAT again, this week they rejected the petition to scrap the horrific rape clause making women on tax credits provide evidence they had a child through non consensual methods. On the Marr show May didn’t seem to think the government’s wage cap on nurses had lead to an increase in nurses having to use food banks to stay alive. No I’m sure she’s right, I’m sure it isn’t that all. I’m sure all it’s just that all those nurses just can’t help but spend all their wages on expensive gifts during all the free time they don’t have. Borrowing is now at it’s lowest since before the financial crisis, which sounds good and means sad vulture Philip Hammond has met his target for 2016-17. But borrowing helps in a recession, as it means the government can avoid making cuts elsewhere or increasing taxes and with many predictions that Brexit could kick start another recession, it could mean that once again the public have to pay for it. Hooray! That’ll stop those pesky nurses spending their low salaries on ponies to ride to the food banks on.

But of course first this week are local elections which the press will choose to use as an indicator of how the general elections will go even though they’re not a great indicator of how the general election will go. The whole country isn’t voting in them, nor do people vote the same choosing to use local to vote for opposition more as a message to government, which I always find as weird. Let’s send them a message by voting in the opposition as councillors then vote for the government for main election to deny those councillors funds so we get less. But polls are suggesting it’ll be a mega win for the Tories again anyway, and as it’s on May 4th Star Wars day we’ll have to assume this is just Episode 5 Empire Strikes Back and at the next one all the Conservative councillors will be attacked by small bears with sticks. Thing is local elections are super important as they dictate how all your local shizz is run, from education and social care to local environmental and transport needs. In fact local elections probably directly affect your lives in more ways than general elections, though of course whoever gets in in June will choose how much money your local council has to work with. But with the June election round the corner there’s concerns these local ones will have low turnout as seriously, going out twice in a month to use pencils on a bit of paper so that your area can benefit? Effort right? Local elections to look out for are Wales which could have Labour losses and Lib Dem gains, and hopefully have a complete wipe out for UKIP, and across Scotland to see if Yes voters are sticking with the SNP or move to the Greens. There are six mayoral elections too in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough which is likely to go to the Conservative candidate, Greater Manchester which will probably go to Labour’s Andy Burnham, Liverpool, which will also probably be Labour, and Tees Valley too, then West Midlands and West Of England could be anyone’s. Even yours, go on give it a go. Live a little. And while it’s not a great indication of how June 8th will go, if Labour do lose a lot of seats, that’s not a great sign. On the plus side if UKIP have huge losses, then there will be little more satisfying especially as they’ve vowed to bring back the power to local people proving that local people, if given it, still want them to fuck off. I’ll look at the results next week but if you’re registered to vote on Thursday and your area is having local or mayoral elections, do go and use your vote as it’s as important on many levels as the one in June. There’s no local elections near me and I’m gutted as I love voting. I’m tempted to pop by my local school on Thursday and just pop a cross on some paper next to name anyway, but then I realised there’d be some poor kid having a crisis about why his name has been crossed out even thought he’s sure he spelled it right.

INTERVIEW 2: GRACIE

So there are two interviews this week and the reason for that is that I had promised to speak to Gracie Bradley at Against Borders For Children at some point in May, but then the stupid bloody stupid stupid election happened and in focusing on that, I forgot that the reason we said to speak in May is because of a deadline for ABC’s campaign. May 18th is the day the current school census is submitted and if you’re a parent you only have until then to boycott filling it in for your child. Why would you do that? Aren’t census’s just fun things where everyone pretends they’re Jedis so as to confuse historians? Well school censuses aren’t the same, and the info about your children that you submit, isn’t protected. On top of that, new additions to it are putting children from certain backgrounds at greater risk than others. I wasn’t aware of much of this until chatting to Gracie so you might want to listen in. Particularly if you’re the owner of small people, sorry I mean a parent of children, as this could affect your family. Here to explain all is Gracie:

INTERVIEW WITH GRACIE

Thanks to Gracie and you have till May 18th to boycott that census. If you head to schoolsabc.net you can find a template letter and please do spread the word to other parents who might be concerned about just handing out information about their kids to any old Tom, Dick or advertising company. Against Borders For Children are also on Twitter @schools_ABC as are the campaigns Gracie recommends, @defenddigitialme and @privacyint. Check them all out. Next week starts election based interviews so if you have any area of the election you’d particularly like me to interview someone about, or anyone in particular you’d like me to talk to do let me know @parpolbro on Twitter, the Parpolbro group on Twitter, partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com or give the cursed nut shell to the guard who will open the gate allowing you to pass the shaman relic to the king who’ll call me on my mobile cos I got the royal link ups. Again, email is probably best.

PPB QUESTION

Last week I asked you for slogans for the Conservatives 2017 election campaign, so naturally this week, I thought it only fair to ask you for slogans for Labour’s one. Whereas all the excellent entries last week were pretty much along a similar line, this week’s on Labour, are, much like the party itself, divided in tone. And I should also say you lot are so good at this, I hope all parties are listening and give you some hefty paid work to use these:

@AndyGilder
“Tired of strong and stable? Vote Labour. No, wait. Hang on, don’t print that on the leaflet. I’ll call you back.”
@neilwrightlegal
“Confused? You will be”
@EthanDLawrence
LABOUR 2017: Erm….. pffffft…. *Whistling*…. well….. uuuuuuummmmm….
@chronicleflask
Labour: umm, at least we’re not as bad as Them?
@hullodave
“Repair works in progress. Expect delays in the fight starting. We apologise for any inconvenience.”
@VaunEarl
Labour, helping Conservative victories since 2010.
@AndyWalker9
”Yes We’re A Mess But We Aren’t The Other Lot”
@flufflogic
“If she’s Strong and Stable I’m David Hasselhoff”
@bensonmic
Labour 2017: “Hold me.”
@GavinCurnow
Labour 2017 FFS Come On! Please?
@stephenmcdaid
‘Make Great Britain Again’ ?
@rainy101
Vote Labour – not the shittest, despite our best efforts.
@bechillcomedian
“Labour may be painful, but it’s how we get life.”

That is genuinely good. Next week, slogans for the Lib Dems. Look out for the post on the @parpolbro Twitter or Facebook next Sunday and I’ll read out my favourite replies on next week’s show.

100 DAYS OF TRUMP

Cheese Puff Eruption Donald Trump has now been President of the USA for 100 days! I know right? It feels way more like a 1000 or more. If times flies when you’re having fun then these 100 days have definitely dragged almost to the point of going in reverse. And my oh my has he served the American people well in those 100 days. Unnecessary bombings of other countries, flagrant use of taxpayers money to go golfing and give his family jobs, visiting absolutely no other countries, going back on several of his campaign promises including repealing Obamacare, forced one member of staff to resign due connections with Russia, complained that the job of President is more work than he thought it’d be and according to the Washington Post he’s made 488 false or misleading claims which is an average of 4.9 false claims a day. That’s more than one of those dodgy PPI callers on a good day. If Trump has the qualities of Pinocchio right now his nose would’ve been to more countries as President than he has. Trump currently has a 52.8% disapproval rating but he still has core supporters onside because polls suggest his constant attacking of the media mean they believe him more than the news.I guess if ignorance is bliss then believing the yarns of a sienna windsock is probably far more pleasant than hearing things that don’t fit your confirmation bias. And so what of the next 100 days which it looks like he’ll last through, even though he asked in an interview today ‘but why was there a Civil War?’ a question that is only acceptable for Americans under 5 years old to ask, or anyone who’s been to Trump university. Well he plans to lower corporation tax to 15% which could bring more companies to the US and generate more work and jobs, or could just be essentially a tax cut for the rich . 43% of corporate tax in the US is paid for by the 1% richest so for the top earning companies, over the 18.3m threshold currently at 35% that’s a real sweet extra chunk of dough to get back. Hmm I wonder how much the Trump Organisation makes? Oh $9.5bn? Funny that. It also seems like saggy gargoyle and alt right twat Steve Bannon is back behind Trump and they are working out how best to implement his alt right racist ideology. Lemme guess, is step one not understanding why there was a US Civil War?

END

And that’s all for this week’s Partly Political Broadcast. Thanks again for listening and please do spread the word if you enjoy this show, get in touch if there’s stuff you’d like me look into on it, subscribe, gizzus a nice review on iTunes, and chuck me a £1 or 2 at the patreon.com/parpolbro or ko-fi.com/parpolbro

Big thanks to Acast, my brother The Last Skeptik for the tunes and the global political system for the endless state of disarray that means I’m never out of material. This will be back next week by which point Boris Johnson will have reverted to Chaucerian diatribes that no one understands, Labour will still be trying to explain their Brexit plans, while Theresa May will still be telling a bunch of selected people in an invite only room that Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t communicate with the public.

Good bye!

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