Further Reading

Transcript

Episode 66

Hello and welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast episode 66. I’m Tiernan Douieb and this week as David Davis, Brexit secretary and barely sentient fog patch, says that he is pretty sure the UK will get a trade deal with the EU but he isn’t certain, I too am pretty sure I fit in a Radiohead t-shirt I bought in 2001 but we all know if I try it on, I’ll probably tear it, ruining it for ever and mostly hurting myself in the process.

The Conservatives have signed a special deal with the Democratic Unionist Party aka the political party version of that man with a megaphone who shouts on your local street corner about Jesus. By special deal I mean the Conservatives have basically handed over cash for power and it’s amazing all the DUP asked for was cash considering how easily they got so much dosh. I’d have gone for cash, an island, an insistence that Theresa May only does PMQs while wearing a bee onesi and a promise that Michael Gove would never ever be allowed to talk directly to me. But no they asked for £1.5bn which the Conservatives have now got from seemingly nowhere, just weeks after criticising Labour for policies that were dependent on a magic money tree. The DUP will now be supporting the Conservatives on a number of their policies giving them the sort of majority in parliament that gives them power in the way being two centimetres taller than your pal means you might be able to beat them in a fight but only if you hadn’t been kicking yourself for the last eight weeks. In return for that support, Northern Ireland will gain £1.5bn of extra funds because it seems the only reason there isn’t a magic money tree is because magic is evil whereas this Christian miracle tree just won’t stop giving.

Still we have no idea what the DUP will be supporting as the Queen’s speech last week had less content than a Paris Hilton’s greatest hits album, her majesty turning up in her Ascot outfit because why bother taking her coat off for a 5 minute visit. I’m surprised she didn’t just do a drive by the house of commons, flipping the bird out the window and shouting fuck you all the way down Whitehall. It’s easier to mention what Her Maj’s speech included rather than didn’t, and it seems the Conservative manifesto is well and truly binned. Yes that’s right, whether you voted for or against the Conservatives, they want to make sure they disappoint everyone. Speaking of disappointing everyone, David Davis has been attending Brexit negotiation talks with the European Chief Negotiator for Brexit, Michel Barnier. A man that David Davis described on the Marr Show as ‘very French’. This is presumably because he sighs and shrugs a lot, although considering how often that happens around David Davis he must assume French people are absolutely everywhere. Davis gave Barnier an obligatory gift of a book on mountaineering presumably signifying that he knew negotiations would be a difficult trek thought the talks. Meanwhile Barnier got Davis a hiking pole making it clear what he wants the UK to do. Barnier laid out the timetable for negotiations, denied giving the UK any concessions as it’s our choice to leave and ruled out the possibility of a soft Brexit. Davis agreed to all of this because we’ve taken back control and that means we’ve got an absolute fuckstick who probably spends every second of Brexit talks trying to understand all the funny accents and wondering why he can’t get a proper cup of tea. May has offered EU nationals in the UK a ‘fair and serious’ offer which sounds a lot like they’ll just get a Matthew McConnaughy calendar. The deal offers EU citizens certainty over their future in the UK, and they are all now certain it’ll be a shit one ruled by arseholes. Well it was the year anniversary of the Brexit vote last week, and the appropriate gift for a year’s anniversary is paper right? So it makes sense the government appear to be folding under pressure. There’s every bloody chance by the end of next week the UK government will have just handed over Michel Barnier £1.5bn in the hope he’ll be nice.

Meanwhile Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, a man who plays the game Risk by throwing all the figurines in the bin and popping a potted plant on the board instead, appeared on the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury Festival attracting the biggest audience since the Rolling Stones in 2013. Yes, it seems the Glastonbury crowd love nothing more than old men doing the same stuff they’ve always done for 30 years. All over the festival a Jeremy Corbyn chant was sung to the White Stripes’s ‘Seven Nation Army’, which is exactly the sort of thing a pacifist like him would strongly oppose. They may as well have sung it to the theme from the adverts for Trident gum. Critics have mocked the idea that Corbyn spoke about stopping austerity to a crowd that paid over £230 a ticket but that mainly shows they don’t understand that people do save up for tickets, a number of people that perform or do charity work there get in free and really the only thing that makes anyone upset about champagne socialism is it makes other rich people look shit for having money and not caring about anyone. Also Corbyn’s speech was broadcast on the BBC Glastonbury coverage, prompting puckered arse in a pinstripe suit Nigel Farage to tweet ‘Why should we pay the BBC licence fee just so they can promote Corbyn?’ A question most people have also asked about the licence fee every bloody time Farage is on Question Time despite being the not leader of a completely irrelevant party. If Farage made an appearance at Glastonbury the only notable thing would be the new record for most bottles of piss thrown at an individual. Narrowly beating Daphne and Celeste at Reading Festival in 2000.

Now ahead in most polls, Corbyn has said that Labour will try to force an early general election, meanwhile rumours suggest the Conservatives are looking to replace May with Phillip Hammond as a caretaker Prime Minister, which makes sense as he looks a lot like he might remove his mask at any point to then blame his ruined plans on some meddling kids. The ideas is Hammond would then step down when a proper successor completes the necessary trials involving patronising a nurse, taking money out of a homeless person’s collection cup and proving you can only repeat the same four sentences again & again for weeks. Probably.

Boris Johson cocked up an interview on Radio 4 as he struggled to answer why much of the Conservative manifesto wasn’t in the Queen’s speech. It was unusual because he’s spent months giving answers for why the £350m promised to the NHS wasn’t actually on the side of a bus when it was, yet now he can’t work out why manifesto promises weren’t there when they should’ve been. This came just days after Boris, combination of a bunion and some pissy straw, Johnson complained that there was too much name calling and insulting of politicians. Yes, Boris who called Jeremy Corbyn a mugwump only weeks before. Well if that hypocritical fuckbucket twat farmer wants one rule of name calling for him and one for the rest of us, he can fuck right off like the felt puzzle dismembered big toe that he is. Oh and a cyber attack on Westminster’s main network compromised up to 90 MPs email accounts causing many to be concerned about data loss or leaks or probably just how big the backlog of unanswered emails from constituents is, how Boris definitely subscribes to the Lad Bible and how Theresa May’s sign off is ‘sent from my iBrain.’

INTRO

Hello hello! The show is back to it’s usual ‘what the fuck is going on’ format, and thank you for sticking with it despite the slightly necessarily gloomier episode last week. If you’re an old listener thanks for continuing to tune in. If you’re a new listener then please do spread the word, and review the show on iTunes or stitcher if you can. Someone last week left a very nice review on Podbean but I have no idea how to access it or approve it. Everytime I’ve tried it attempts to charge me $90. So it was a very lovely review, thank you but it’s not worth that much money. With the pound as it currently is, I think $90 is now around £1200. Probably. You can also donate to the show if you like the noises I make, I mean I don’t put all the noises I make on the show, even though I do some great ones like…. And …. But if you want to donate to help me spend more time making this thing then head to the patreon.com/parpolbro page for a monthly thing where even $1 a month would be aces. Yes I think that is about £60 now. Or you can do a one off donation at ko-fi.com/parpolbro which is also appreciated. Last week my paypal, which all that goes to, was hacked. Well not hacked. My Uber was hacked and so someone in Russia kept taking journeys and charging my paypal in Rubles. The bizarre situation of when they ask you ‘why do you think your account has been hacked?’ and me having to say ‘because I’m definitely not in Russia’. Then you spend at least a few minutes feeling worried that maybe you are and what if all along I’m just an employee of Putin who’s been brainwashed until I hear code words at which point I become a lethal weapon designed to take down the entire UK government via a podcast? Luckily it was hacked which is lucky really. Anyway, what I was going to say is if you don’t want to donate, please just spread the word about this podcast. While listening numbers are a big secret – you know you’re my only listener right? – they are often up and down week on week and it’d be great if you enjoy this show if you could tell other people you know and like podcasts to listen and subscribe too. Because how else will I use NLP to build my secret Russian army? C’mon guys, make this a bit easier for me eh?

Two quick live things. This week I’m doing Edinburgh preview shows at Old No.7 in Barnsely on Friday June 30th and then at the Offbeat Festival in Oxford on Saturday July 1st at the Burton Taylor Studio. Please come along to that. Then the following week I’m at the Green Room at the Black Box Theatre in Belfast with the very funny Bec Hill on the 4th July and somewhere in Derry on the 6th. I have no idea where. It could be a trap. But if you live in Derry I’m sure you can find out easily enough, so please come along to that too. If you want to more details about any of these things then you can sign up to my mailing list at my website www.tiernandouieb.co.uk on the contact page and I send a thing out once a month. A thing and an email. The thing is really scary and I have no idea what it is, so maybe just read the email.

This week’s show has two interviews! TWO! A brief chat with Dr Afshin Shahi who was able to spare a teeny bit of time to talk to me about terrorism, and then Austin Rathe who set up More United, a new campaign to elect MPs based on principles not parties. I’ll also be looking at the Queen’s speech and the government’s DUP deal, plus the return of Brexit Fallout. But of course, before all that, there is this bloody lot:

HEADLINES

The government have said that sixty high-rise buildings in 25 boroughs have failed their fire cladding safety tests. That’s currently a 100% fail rate. Hooray! The UK finally has 100% at something! Oh wait. Oh dear. Since the horrific Grenfell Tower fire two weeks ago the government said they would cover the costs of making other tower blocks safe if found they also had the flammable cladding. However the bill looks set to be over £600m with the fail rate as it is, which is a lot more expensive than it would’ve been to just install fire proof cladding in the first place. While they will cover the cladding costs, councils must cover costs of installing sprinklers which considering council budget costs won’t be easy and in the case of Kensington and Chelsea where Grenfell Tower is, it’ll be up to the arms length management company responsible for Grenfell to install it, none of which will really comfort any residents. Camden Council evacuated four tower blocks on Friday with little notice, causing displacement of 3000 residents because there’s nothing that says ‘hey we’ll make your homes safe’ like making people homeless. While it’s well intentioned, it’s a bit like trying to comfort a sad person with a hug but squeezing them so tightly they shit themselves and cry more.

There is no update on the death count for Grenfell itself, or where many of the surviving familes have been relocated too or what help they are getting. Instead focus has been on the fact it was started by a faulty and unfortunately branded Hotpoint fridge. But it’s obvious that no matter how faulty that fridge, it shouldn’t have caused a block of flats to be engulfed in flames like that unless there was something else seriously wrong in the building. The manufacturer of the cladding has in their brochure that this cladding could be a fire risk and should only be used on smaller buildings that fire fighters can reach the tops of. The police investigation is now on going and they are looking at everything from charges of manslaughter onwards. It’s becoming very clear that people’s lives were of less importance than scrimping on costs. I was at a meeting this past weekend where members of the Fire Brigade’s Union came to speak to us and I hope to get them on this podcast soon as there are so many signs of health and safety neglect that need to be addressed asap. Do follow them at @fbunational on Twitter and read their open statement to the government on fbu.org.uk. Also follow @inquest_org who are providing legal support for the survivors and families of victims and they are posted out FAQs and advice on their twitter and website inquest.org.uk which should be shared as widely as possible.

The High Court have said that the benefit cap on single parents with children under two was real misery being caused to no good purpose. A phrase that I feel, could be the Conservatives next election campaign slogan. Four lone parent families brought the charges against the Department of Work and Pensions and the high court judge decided the claims must succeed saying that the evidence shows the cap is capable of real damage to individuals such as the claimants. The DWP have of course said they’ll appeal the decision, stating that work is the best way to raise living standards, although they didn’t specify who’s, and they said that many parents with young children are employed, but didn’t say single parents completely missing the point of the whole case. Single parents working or not are going to be affected most by recent benefit reforms, losing up to just under £3000 a year by 2020 so if the DWP lose the appeal this could change that for the better. I’m more and more convinced the DWP is so called, mainly because they are intent on getting people in work when they can’t manage it just so they can provide less of the pensions. Still nice of the law to confirm what everyone else has been thinking for ages.

Parliament was hit with a cyber attack on Friday, which is incredible as I thought the whole place was so old fashioned it was more at risk of an outbreak of scarlet fever. Fewer than 1% of the 9000 users of the IT system were affected but apparently those that were got hit due to weak passwords. Incredible to think Theresa May wants to stop end to end encryption but there’s nearly 100 ministers who still think it’s cool to have your password as ‘password’. It’s being called a brute force attack which I think means the hackers typed really angrily. Fingers are currently pointed towards either Russia or North Korea and utter disgrace the disgrace Liam ‘disgrace’ Fox said that cabinet ministers passwords were on sale online. Liam Fox’s password is definitely ‘Adam Werrity 4Eva’. While parliament is up and running again, some MPs can’t access their email meaning they don’t even have to find an excuse to ignore constituents or important requests for a while. Meanwhile you have to wonder why we’ll be spending all this money on Trident when the best way to protect parliament in 2017 is a two step verification system and paying for subliminal messages on World of Warcraft telling nerds to calm the fuck down and go outside for once.

INTERVIEW WITH AFSHIN SHAH

Personally I think the only way we’ll ever stop the war on terror is by banning Halloween and making Hollywood promise not to make another movie in the Saw franchise. But sadly as we’ve seen over the past couple of months, the UK has been subject to some pretty horrific terrorist attacks in London and Manchester. Many innocent people have died and the terror threat level has now been at severe in the UK, meaning an attack is imminent, for some time. There was also a bombing attempt in Brussels and Spain last week and several horrific suicide bombing attacks in Afghanistan and Nigeria. But the culprits appear more and more to be individual attackers, despite ISIS laying claim more than a wooden actor in an insurance advert. So how do you stop radicalised individuals? If you ban all cars and knives from London won’t that stop mostly celebrity chefs from travelling? Is any of it to do with 90’s kids and how often the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles used to shout radical?

Well this week I spoke to Dr Afhsin Shahi. Afshin is the senior lecturer in International Relations & Middle East politics at the University of Bradford. He had very kindly agreed to speak to me a few weeks ago and then with events as they were, he understandably got very busy. On the day I spoke to him, we’d planned for a long interview but the Saudi Arabia royal family coup had happened and so sadly he only had 15 minutes spare for me to fire questions at him. This means there’s a lot we didn’t go into and also I didn’t get to ask him about the attack at the mosque in Finsbury Park and the rise of white nationalist terrorism. Though to be fair, that’s not his area of speciality anyway. Anyway, the questions Afshin did answer are very thorough and interesting and hopefully enlightening on the current situation of global terror.

Oh and a quick

EXCUSES EXCUSES

Firstly the sound quality is ok, but you might need to turn it up for this bit as the sound at Dr Shahi’s end wasn’t great. Also I’m having to use a new way of recording skype calls and having not used it before, I forgot to hit record until halfway through Afshin’s first sentence. So the question I asked him was:

‘Over the last couple of months, the UK has been subject to 3 terrorist attacks for the first time in several years. Are we more at risk of these sorts of attacks now than we have been in the past and if so/not why?’

He then said something very thoughtful and considerate about the victims and then I remembered to press record. I’m so sorry. I am, as always, a professional idiot. Anyway, we’ll leap straight in. Here’s, halfway through his first sentence, Dr Afshin Shahi

INTERVIEW WITH AFSHIN

Big thanks to Dr Afshin Shahi. He can be found on Twitter @afshinshahi. I found that a hugely interesting chat – although his comments on the need for a more global conversation just as the UK and US shuts itself off from the outside world is, as always, hugely depressing. Hopefully I’ll get him on for a longer chat on a future episode.

Interview two in a few minutes but first:

THE QUEEN’S SPEECH

The Queen, you know her, like Judi Dench but she was only in one Bond film short. Well every year for the past 64 years she’s officially opened parliament with a bunch of people dressed like alcoholic depressed Santa Clauses, a man who knocks on a door using his black rod, tee hee that’s never not funny, a speech that she hasn’t written or decided the contents of, and basically the government shove a bit of paper in front of her, she begrudgingly reads it with less emotion than Jake Lloyd in The Phanton Menace and then that’s that, the government’s next year is all set out for them to u-turn on several hundred times. Well this year it was all a bit different. This is partly because next year there won’t be a Queen’s speech as like Glastonbury she needs a fallow year for recovery after being stomped all over by half arsed policies. I would like to think that like at Christmas next year we’ll have an alternative Queen’s speech by Edward Snowdon or something but I’ve got a feeling that won’t happen. And yes, I do find it hard not to pronounce it Queen’s Peach which makes it sound like she presents her butt to parliament once a year, a somehow both pleasing and horrific image all at once. Anyway the other reason this year’s speech was a bit different was because it was a little thin in a way that Slenderman would tell it to have a sandwich. With the Conservatives not getting a majority government and their agreement with the DUP only decided several days later, there wasn’t a lot they could promise. The Tory Manifesto has disappeared from their website as though it was never there in the first place. Instead Her Maj read out 27 bills, eight of which are to do with Brexit, which I’ll get to in a min, and the other 19 are things are of a variety of levels of importance.

There’s a bill to boost electric car production in the UK with compulsory insurance for self driving cars. As long as they have to make the boring phone call and pay for it, that’s cool with me. There’s a bill to build a British spaceport. Yes the government are so confident that Brexit trade talks will go well, they’re planning to fall back on trading with martians. The High Speed Rail Bill which takes the HS2 that no one likes and thinks is a waste of money and makes it go past the London to Birmingham route all the way to Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield annoying even more people even more quickly at prices they can’t afford. There’s the Smart meter bill, which means every firm and home will have smart energy meters by 2020, a bill to scrap Class 2 National Insurance for self employed people, and an update for the ATOL travel protection scheme assuming we’ll be able to go anywhere with the pound being so low you’d struggle to buy biscuits in Calais.

The more interesting stuff comes in with the Tenant’s Fees Bill which is a ban on estate agent’s fees. You know how they charge you £200 because they photocopied something and drove you around in their shitty mini telling you a cupboard has enough room to swing a cat in if the cat is a flea and you don’t swing it at all? That’d be great for all renters and house buyers, but this is just a draft bill meaning it may not be a law by 2019 at all anyway so what’s the point? Also a draft bill is the domestic violence and abuse bill, which would be very important, creating a legal definition of domestic violence and sentencing powers if it involves a child, as well as a specific post for a Domestic Violence and Abuse Commisioner. But again this may not happen by 2019, and chances are the man that puts the sexist twat into ‘he’s a massive sexist twat’ MP Phillip Davies will probably try and filibuster this before then by claiming that he once hurt his foot kicking someone so men suffer too you know. Howver the Courts Bill which isn’t a draft is going to ban direct cross examination of domestic violence victims by abusers in courts and use video link hearings to stop victims needs to see assailants face to face. That’s really important stuff. The courts bill will also allow people to plead guilty to minor crimes without going to court, something that will save time and money but feels open to abuse if done online. I mean, if you’ve ever left your computer alone for two mins and found your facebook status now says how much you love boning watermelons then you can imagine how this might go. The last draft bill is the Patient Safety Bill which aims to protect whistleblowers by making the sharing of their information used in investigations illegal and bring in a new Health Service Safety Investigation Body to probe any NHS scandals. It’s draft so again, might not happen but if it does it’ll probably feel pretty weird for doctors and nurses to have a body probing them for once.

The Civil liberties bill will stop people getting whiplash claims without medical evidence which is good because I had someone claim that because I hit their bumper in first gear at the lights and their kid sat in the back still playing computer games so it clearly wasn’t bad enough for me to lose six years no claims you piece of shit. Sorry. It still hurts. UNLIKE THEIR IMAGINARY WHIPLASH. The Financial Guidance and Claims Bill is scrapping the Money Advice Service, the Pensions Advisory Service and Pension Wise to make the Single Financial Guidance Body because we all know things get just as much care and attention when lumped into one massive group and there is a Good Mortgages Bill that is will allow people to use good as security for a mortgage or loan and I knew I was keeping my old Super Nintendo for a reason. It does also promise to ‘cut red tape’ for lenders though which doesn’t sound good and could mean anything from interest rises to those lenders kneecapping me because I didn’t give them the SNES cartridge of Super Mario Kart like I promised.

Then the last few are the Armed Forces bill – my favourite is gravity with a knife. This aims to get people from more diverse backgrounds into the army so that they can shot at too. There is the Data Protection Act which enables the right to be forgotten which would delete all your online records. However the Tory manifesto said it’d be from before you were 18. This bill now doesn’t specify an age and when the party implementing it has just deleted their manifesto from online you feel it may be used for bad.

Things that aren’t official bills but are suggestion are that you hope are happening anyway such as a pledged review of mental health legislation, which is needed, a public enquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire with an independent advocate for the bereaved families, a counter terrorism review which just deals with terrorism in retail stores, ha! I joke!

So that’s it. And the Brexit laws which I’ll deal with in this week’s Brexit Fallout. Oh and there was no mention of the dementia tax, the fox hunting ban repeal or about Trump’s state visit. Though Boris Johnson has guaranteed that will happen and when has he ever lied about anything? But of course, all of this was before….

DUP JINGLE

That’s right the government have just handed over £1.5bn for DUP support in a move that signifies Theresa May is the sort of friendly top negotiating trustworthy leader that can’t get people to do things for her out of friendship. Now there’s a ton of problems with this. The money is going to be used in Northern Ireland for infrastructure, but the UK parliament are meant to attribute money accordingly to all devolved parts of the country at once, according to the Barnett formula which sounds a lot like it solves things by giving everyone haircuts or making them live in North London. Actually the Barnett formula isn’t legally binding and the treasury decides how it is done, but basically it works on the basis that funding for things in England or any part of the UK have the same pound per person effect on money going to the rest of the UK. So if, as the government have promised, they give £1.5bn to Northern Ireland, then Scotland should get 8 to 9 billion extra and Wales get 3 billion. As I said, it’s not legally binding but by subverting it, it rattles more cages than a really angry monkey. Like really angry.

Then there’s the accusations that this deal breaks the Good Friday power sharing agreement in Northern Ireland as it gives DUP a much higher seat at the UK Parliament table than Sinn Fein who don’t even take their seats. Sinn Fein’s president Gerry Adams said this gives the Tories a blank cheque to deliver their Brexit which would threaten the peace agreement in Ireland due to a hard or at least some sort of border. Though if Adams had been watching any of the news for the past week he’ll know that having David Davis doing negotiations means there’s every chance that won’t happen as Davis might cock it up in days. A power sharing agreement has to be made by June 29th or there’s talks that it could end up with direct rule from UK Parliament in NI again and with the DUP now propping up the Conservatives that really doesn’t feel like it’d end well. I saw James O’Brien post this on his twitter feed about how he just can’t help but imagine how this would have played out if Corbyn had won the election then told Sinn Fein he was giving them a ton of money so Labour could become more powerful. It’s like everything the Conservatives warned about the possibilities of a Labour government were a giant Freudian projection. A coalition of chaos, terrorist sympathisers, magic money tree, I really hope this means we’re at least only a few days away from them scrapping Trident….

INTERVIEW WITH AUSTIN RATHE

One of the biggest problems with voting is knowing that while their might be a local candidate that you like, you might not fully like their party, or their leader, or in the case of the Conservatives both and more. The last snap election had the focus securely on which party leader to vote for rather than which local candidate and the results showed that maybe party loyalty just isn’t a thing anymore with people switching sides quicker than me on red button footage during Glastonbury coverage. Yes, occasionally I just wanted to see what it actually is Ed Sheeran does to attract such a crowd. No, I’m still none the wiser.

More United is a movement that focuses on supporting MPs, from across all parties, that stand for a series of values. In the last election members donations went to 49 candidates, 34 of which got elected which really isn’t too bad at all. I donated to More United a while ago and so I got to vote on which candidates they backed, and I really like it as a new way of looking at less divisive politics. So this week I spoke to Austin Rathe, co-founder of More United, about what, why and how More United works.

Here’s Austin:

INTERVIEW WITH AUSTIN

Many thanks to Austin for speaking with me. You can find More United’s website at moreunited.uk and they are on Twitter at @MoreUnitedUK and same on Facebook. As always if you have anyone you’d like me to try and interview or any subject in particular I should try and find someone to interview about, please let me know. As I’ve mentioned before, who I get each week on this show largely depends on who I’ve wrangled that week via bothering them on Twitter, so any useful contacts or recommedations are always always welcome. Drop me a line @parpolbro on Twitter, the partly political broadcast group on Facebook or partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com. Or show off your ploom and do a complicated tap dance on a high branch and either I’ll see it or you’ll find a mate. Win win really. But still emails are probably easiest.

PPB QUESTION OF THE WEEK

For the Question of the Week this week, I asked you, the plebs, what should have been included in the Queen’s Speech that wasn’t? I did have to stress for comedy answers only as the way twitter works now is that people assume comedy isn’t a thing and just reply with a series of manifesto promises that actually weren’t included and I’ve already covered all that dull shit. Luckily many of you sent in proper good uns.

@MiniMeier
Announcement of a Royal Battle Royale Act

@foxhill_matt
‘wait, theres a crossed out bit here. ‘kill all the poor’? yes. Kill all of the poor.. something else about a money tree, can’t make it out’

@AndyGilder
The Queen should have improvised it. Got MPs to shout out a half-baked policy, a random cost and a disadvantaged group of people.

@ed_son
*stands, tears up speech, holds the mic* “Ohhhh Jeremy Corbyn; Ohhhh Jeremy Corbyn.” *points to crowd*

@chronicleflask
“Hello, ordinary person. Please maintain a minimum separation of three feet.” (Thus will make no sense if you haven’t watched #DoctorWho

@al_vimh 17h17 hours ago
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Replying to @ParPolBro
The lyrics to Everything’s Fucked by Pitchshifter.

Matt Kinson The odds for all the Ascott races she was missing along with the tictac hand gestures

Andy Zoidberg Walker The resurrection of Frankie Howerd, repeats of Brush Strokes and then all back to Liz’s for a Swing-a-thon

Paul Jenkins A proper, suistainsble regulation of Freddo pricing policy. The country is in utter chaos and we need action if we don’t want further unrest.

Philip Alexander Just the lyrics to Jessie J’s “Price Tag”.

@bensonmic
loneliness + alienation + fear + despair + self-worth ÷ mockery ÷ condemnation ÷ misunderstanding × guilt × shame × failure × judgment n=y where y=hope and n=folly, love=lies, life=death, self=dark side. I am the Revelation! The Tiger-Force at the core of all things! When you cry out in your dreams — it is Darkseid that you see!
And you see how that works.

@_Cantus Jun 25
More
Replying to @bensonmic
This would be good if she’d said all that, followed by silence. Then she’d sighed, got up and dragged out a white board to explain it.

BREXIT FALLOUT –

It is just over one year since the UK voted to Brexit. The pound’s at it’s lowest in ages, businesses keep leaving the country, and the government only has a slim majority backed up by bribery. But hey! Twitter and facebook profiles with Union Jack flags on are up 640%! So I think you can agree, it’s all going well. But aside from most opinion polls showing that Brexit really isn’t that popular with the pubic anymore while Theresa May says 80% of the public voted for it because she doesn’t know anything, where exactly are we with it all?

The Queen’s Speech had 8 Brexit based bills in it, most of which we’ve known about for ages. There is the repeal bill, which used to be the great repeal bill but now feels a lot more honest and will convert EU laws into UK laws. The customs bill which, like the repeal bill, will replace EU customs law such as the custom of kissing on each cheek or eating wurst in the cinema. Probably. Then there is the trade bill which is currently just those words and some more words about having the necessary legislative framework to trade outside the EU. Yeah well done for doing the thing you’d need to do. Idiots. That’s like me having the take a shit bill where I promise to make the necessary legislative framework so I can have a shit everyday. The fisheries bill is similarly vague but something about having separate fishing quotas but who knows right now it could be a RED HERRING! HA! I WENT THERE! The agriculture bill just promises to give farmers stability so it might just be extra good shoes or something for them to lean on while chewing some wheat, if Theresa May hasn’t already run through and ruined all of it that is. The Nuclear safeguards bill does what the repeal and customs bill will do but for nuclear regulation and the sanctions bill will allow Britain to impose non-UN sanctions by ourselves such as asset freezing and travel bans. If you remember back in episode 56 when I spoke to Naomi Hirst at Global Witness, there is a lot of laundered money that goes through London and the property market so this could be used to clamp down on that though I’d bet a decent chunk of dough that it won’t be. And by dough, I mean bread because I’m trying to not eat it and I don’t have any handy laundered money to throw around.

The other bill in the Queen’s speech to do with Brexit is the Immigration Bill which stops free movement for EU nationals and that brings us to…Brexit Negotiations! Yes Brexit negotiations are now on the table and the EU have a high chair that lets them see all of the table while the UK are on an awkward footstool that means we’re just about peering over the edge with a very numb bottom. So far the Brexit negotiations have mainly involved David Davis accepting the EU timetable offered by Michael Barnier, agreeing to not have parallel talks about trade until this negotiation is over and discussing EU citizens in the UK’s rights immediately. It turns out that when Theresa ‘I once thought I finally had emotions but it turned out to just be a sneeze’ May warned that we could have Jeremy Corbyn at the EU negotiating table, she was right. It’s tons better having David Davis as the way things are going with him, we’ll still be in the EU by 2030.

So May has proposed that Eu citizens who’ve lived in the UK for five years have full rights to stay, as well as access to health, education and other benefits. But this depends on what offer British citizens in the EU will get and also hasn’t specified a cut off date for the five year terms. David Davis has suggested that EU citizens in the UK might be forced to apply for Identity Cards although he said they aren’t ID cards because they won’t have to carry them all the time. Sure David. In the same way a spade isn’t a spade because I’m not always digging with it or a slap in your stupid face isn’t a slap in your stupid face because sadly it cannot consistently be there like you deserve you giant numpty. The EU wants these rights guaranteed by the European Courts of Justice, May wants them guaranteed by British courts with a grace period of two years for EU nationals to gain UK settled status. Yeah cos nothing would make an EU citizen in the UK feel more settled than the last year of politics where they’ve been used as bargaining chips in a power game that makes Zach Morris from Saved By The Bell look like a negotiating grand wizard in comparison.

Lastly

WHO’S LEAVING THE EU

Well not so much leaving but this week it’s up to 80,000 fruit pickers who due to the weak pound and Brexit aren’t helping summer fruit and salad growers in the UK pick their crops meaning we may see a shortage of British fruit and veg in shops very soon. David Davies once again proved wrong when he assumed the UK would be able to cherrypick.

END

And that’s all for this week’s Partly Political Broadcast podcast. Thank you once again for listening. Please please do spread the word about the show, review us on iTunes, Stitcher, podbean just to make me angry when I can’t access it, or etch it in your school desk so a school child in 30 years time can read it while they bemoan that school supplies haven’t changed in ages due to cuts. Do donate to the patreon or ko-fi if you can too as it’s all hugely helpful and this will be back next week all up in your earpieces as I will no doubt be explaining why the DUP have made the government insist the London Natural History Museum’s Dippy Diplodicus has ‘fake news’ written all over it, while Jeremy Corbyn opens for Justin Bieber at the British Summer Time festival.

Till then, BYE!

This week’s episode was brought to you by the letters DUP which not only stands for the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party but also the Dances of Universal Peace, a practice that involves wearing flamboyant brightly coloured clothes and dancing and marching and making a lot of noise. I mean how funny is that? That’s not at all like the DUP party is it? Oh wait. Oh.

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