Episode 78 – Not Groundhog Day | Partly Political Broadcast

Episode 78 – Not Groundhog Day

Released on Tuesday, October 24th, 2017.

Episode 78 – Not Groundhog Day

Episode 78 – Tiernan interviews rapper Awate (@AwateMusic) plus New Zealand elections, Russian politics, a general lack of Brexit progress AND WHY OH WHY CAN’T ANYONE UNDERSTAND HOW THE INTERNET WORKS??? Tiernan had a cold all episode & it sounds a lot like Jabba The Hutt is hosting this week. Soz.

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THIS EPISODE IS TAGGED WITH: • New Zealand, parpolbro, Partly Political Broadcast, Patreon, podcast, political, politics, Putin, Russia, satire, Theresa May, Tiernan Douieb, Tiernan has a cold

Transcript

EPISODE 78

BEN’S ADVERT

INTRO

Hello and welcome to episode 78 of the Partly Political Broadcast. I’m Tiernan Douieb and this week as Prime Minister Theresa ‘I consider being unable to punch my way through a wet paper bag a sign of strength’ May insists the UK will continue to play a full role in Europe, I’ve been wondering if that’s as the bad guy character or some sort of petulant child who eventually gets their comeuppance like Violet Beauregarde in a sort of globalised Willy Wonka scenario? Exciting and either way I’m going to contacting my agent about getting in as an extra who repeatedly face palms in the background throughout.

Yes once again to say the route to Brexit is a rocky road would be like saying King Kong is a chunky monkey. Not wrong but a relatively huge understatement and yet another way to unfairly tarnish ice cream. May went into talks at the EU Summit last week proclaiming that the EU leaders would have to take urgent steps to move the Brexit talks forward, a statement that could either be seen as yet again placating the hard Brexiteers who like believing that Britain’s incompetence is the EU’s fault as though it was part of EU law to put idiot pills in the water supply at Parliament, or perhaps May’s call for the EU to take urgent steps to move things forward could be taken as some sort of cry for help hoping the EU will understand they have to dispose of her in some sort of honourable samurai killing so she can die with at least a tiny shred of dignity left or if nothing else, a cool Kasa hat. French president and France’s own milkshake canard Emmanual Macron said there was still a lot of work to be done on the financial agreement adding that ‘we are not halfway there’ which is a surprise to me as it really feels like the British government are living on a prayer. Disgraced MP Liam the disgrace Fox said in an interview that the government’s No Deal stance was a negotiating tactic to scare the EU into giving a better deal, seemingly forgetting YET AGAIN how the internet works. I’ve said this a lot on this podcast, but seriously, does no one in the government understand that other countries can use Google as well? Are they assuming the EU think they are super knowledgeable and a force to be reckoned with because none of them are able to quickly do a search for what the actual lyrics to that Rihanna and Drake song. Yes it is haffi. It’s patois. It’s not that hard. I wonder if Liam Fox’s neighbours constantly have to come round telling him that they can see he’s making those sex noises by himself while jumping up & down on the sofa because his windows are actually transparent both ways.

Labour leader and man who I’m sure is just waiting for someone to pass on a rare item they found to so he can give them a clue to help them with their quest Jeremy Corbyn met with the EU’s Brexit negotiator Michael Barnier last week where apparently he was treated as a prime minister in waiting, although right now that’s probably a lot like waiting for a public toilet where you didn’t see anyone go in there and you’re starting to suspect whoever’s inside has died & will have to be forceably removed by which point you’ve wet yourself. Corbyn said the EU were bemused and confused by the lack of clarity from the UK government so it seems the EU really are in tune with the British public then. The Labour leader also said that the UK should pay the EU what we are legally required to pay, a suggestion that the tabloids have already said is Jezza offering a blank cheque, something that they’d probably actually applaud once they realized how financially screwed the UK are & how likely it’ll be that the cheque would bounce.

Meanwhile in UK parliament, Labour defeated the Conservatives in an opposition day motion to delay the roll out of universal credit 299 votes to 0. This is because the Conservatives abstained on the vote, something I think they should be sanctioned for, for refusing to take part in a work related activity. The government have no obligation to uphold votes on Opposition Days, but they have already made the Universal Credit helpline a free phone number after pressure from MPs, so at least it now won’t cost any money to wait for ages to hear you won’t be getting any money for ages.

Across the pond US President and the missing link between a stomach ulcer & a blobfish Donald Trump defended his lack of comment on the deaths of US soldiers in Niger by saying that neither President Obama or other US presidents made calls to families of dead military. Something that is not only the sort of provable falsity that makes me wonder if he, much like the Brexit team, have no idea that people can just search for things online and how many times white house staff have to tell him they can see him pretending he’s Barack Obama in the mirror because they yes these windows are transparent both ways as well. Following that Trump told the pregnant widow of one of the fallen soldiers that her husband knew what he was signing up for, which I don’t think is true of any of the soldiers who’ve been in the military since January of this year who were completely unaware their commander in chief would have less decency than Joseph McCarthy flashing people in the park while shouting how’s this for a classless state? Donny’s comments resulted in both former presidents Barack Obama and George W.Bush making statements in agreement this week about the need to live up to the American creed and a need to stop dividing people. If you’ve got Bush and Obama agreeing on something other than pet names for drones, then you know America is in trouble. Trump has announced he will be releasing the classified FBI & CIA files on the Kennedy assassination, so if nothing else, Americans can see why Lee Harvey Oswald got caught last time & try to make better plans for this time around.

The Spanish government is insisting it will remove Catalonia’s autonomy and inflict direct rule on the area, which is like convincing your partner not to leave you by romantically tying them up in the basement & keeping them hostage for 5 years. As Catalonia look set to declare independence this week, the Spanish foreign minister has said that footage of Spanish police attacking protestors are all fake news. Yes. The ones that were filmed on the day of the referendum and some even live streamed. He said those were fake news. Bonkers. I mean, maybe the Spanish government doesn’t have the internet and Liam Fox was right? On the other hand if that really is all a staged fake scene with thousands of extras and very realistic horrific police violence then an independent Catalonia could probably survive just on it’s film industry business alone.

And lastly the World Health Organisation briefly appointed Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwean president and abuser of human rights and regularly also fashion, as a Goodwill Ambassador. Yep. Maybe the WHO don’t have the internet either. Robert Mugabe as a goodwill ambassador is like hiring Bashir Al Assad as a Clown Doctor or Donald Trump as your Social Media Guru. The appointment lasted no more than a couple of days before the WHO revoked it, making me more certain than ever that it was a drunken plan that went waaay too far and I bet they cancelled his position at the same time they had to find the phone number for a French polisher.

Hey hey! Oh my god it’s cold in my flat today. This week’s show has taken four times as long to write and record then normal because for the first time ever, my macbook is fine but I keep freezing. And that is tricky as I wasn’t sure how to restart myself, but it turns out tea helps, something that is definitely not the case with my laptop. I hope you are ok and weren’t too affected by storms this past few weeks. I know they’ve been terrible but it was hard to feel too threatened by Storm Brian as my dad is called Brian and so I just kept assuming that like him it’d be mild but continuous wind. Thank you again for listening in and this week’s show is, as someone said to me recently, a bit of a curve ball. Yes, it was my doctor, I’m in a lot of pain. Ha! No it wasn’t. But more on that in a minute.

Firstly hello if you’re a new listener – hello to the old listeners as well, and the middle aged ones. I was meaning in terms of how long you’d been listening to this podcast for but I also didn’t want to sound ageist. But now it sounds like babies listen to this show which is weird. Right what I meant was if you’re a recent listener to this show thanks for getting on board the weekly shouty train and please do listen back to old episodes if you get a chance as while the gags on it often stop being relevant, the interviews tend to stay very important. The website is in the process of being sorted which will allow you to find what the interviews were about on each episode, but it is largely down to me doing a lot of admin that I keep not doing because I have the new Philip Pullman book and it’s very good. I will though, soonish. Thanks tons this week to Sam and Helen for donating to the Patreon at patreon.com/parpolbro and that does help give me more time to spend on things like the website or just buy more warm things which is probably as useful right now. If you don’t want to do a monthly donation you can head to ko-fi.com/parpolbro and give a one off donation there, or buy me a coffee as it says, which I will use for a pumpkin spiced latte because I’ve tried so hard but I can’t keep away. They taste like someone is hugging my insides but in a nice way not a creepy horror way. If you can’t donate then please please do spread the word about this show. It’s never ever been on the iTunes charts and it’d be lovely if ParPolBro made it there even once. What does help is reviews on iTunes, Stitcher or your pod app of choice and big thanks to RicePoppy for their iTunes review telling me to ‘keep up the good work Mr Unpronounceable’. That did make me laugh, though if you do really struggle with how to say my name just try throwing a T, N, D & B into a word generator with various vowels of your choice and you should get there.

Secondly, two admin things this week. A) is if you are in London, have heard of London or read about London in a book or seen it in a film, I am doing my last performance of my EdFringe show on November the 19th at 2Northdown in Kings Cross. It is only £5 to come see it and I am filming the show too so it’d be great if it was full of your bums. I mean, on the seats, not just chopped off bums in a creepy horror way. I’d like your face and other bits there too please. You can grab tickets for that by searching for my unprouncable name on tickettext.co.uk and I’ll be tweeting & posting the link endlessly from now till then as well. And admin thing Deux, you might have noticed that at the beginning of this week’s show there was a pod ad for my pal Ben Van Der Velde’s Worst Foot Forward podcast. I will be popping a few ads for other ace pods on this show over the next few weeks and they have kindly offered to pop an ad for this one on theirs. It’s just a nice friendly way of us all trying to share our delightful listener ships. I don’t mind you seeing them as long as you promise you still love me.

This week’s show and back to that curveball I mentioned, as the guest is brilliant rapper and activist Awate, and we discussed a variety of things politics and music, so not just on one issue like previous interviews. There is also a look at Russia’s upcoming elections, New Zealand’s just done one, and of course, Brexit because apparently it’s still a thing. Oh and because several of you have asked, next week I have a guest to explain the situation in Catalonia so I’ll be leaving that till then by which point god knows what will have happened there. But what this show does have is a big ol’ spoonful of this:

HEADLINES

Universal Credit Vote

On Tuesday last week in Parliament it was Opposition Day, so not a day where they have to paint everything black white and everything white black and pretend they’re doing all parliamentary things in a parallel universe or a photo negative. No, instead it meant that motions were put forward in the Commons by the Labour party opposition and they put forward for a pause in the roll out of Universal Credit, the new benefits system that successfully to combine lots of different benefits and then not give them to any recipients for ages making their lives awful. The Conservatives have been under pressure about making Universal Credit something better than just a huge turd left by Iain Duncan Smith in the Department of Work and Pensions before he resigned and left others to clean it up. Theresa May has insisted, it is a system that is working, but that doesn’t mean it’s working well. My system of getting dressed under the duvet to avoid being cold is working but three times this week I’ve put my jeans on back to front. This pressure, in particular to reduce the six week delay in claimants receiving their first payment, isn’t just from Labour and other parties but also Conservative MPs and so far it’s managed to get the government to vow to change the Universal Credit helpline now a Freephone number, rather than one that charges people for calling up to say how little money they have, like a crime report helpline asking for you to hand over all the big notes in a bin bag before letting you ask for assistance. So that’s a good step forward but when it came to the vote the Conservatives chose to whip the party to abstain, because they have no duty to adhere to any motions passed on opposition day and in fact, if no MPs shout noe to the opposing teams aye when asked if there should be vote, one doesn’t happen at all. So as it was, Labour had to get some of their MPs to say Noe, just the rest could say aye and vote it in 299 to zero for a delay, with only one Conservative MP, Sarah Wollaston voting with Labour. The Conservatives did this with two motions on NHS pay and university tuition fees, because they hope that by showing they didn’t take part they therefore didn’t lose the vote, which isn’t how it works, otherwise I’d have definitely not lost the lottery for quite some years now. Both Conservative peer Sir Edward Leigh and Speaker Bercow stated how ridiculous this was as parliament is not simply somewhere to express opinions, unless you’re Dennis Skinner in which case it’s totes allowed. But also the win means the government are now under more pressure to change the six week wait and rumblings from backbenchers suggest this will happen pretty soon as it’s becoming harder and harder for the pensions secretary David Gauke to justify the delay. At the time of recording this, Labour have just managed to secure an emergency debate on it which should be happening soon. So while the opposition day motion and constant harassing from cross party MPs hasn’t caused an immediate effect, it is a system and it does seem to be working.

There has been a lot of disturbing sexism unveiled in the last few weeks from all the allegations and stories about disgusto movie walrus Harvey Weinstein, to various journalists and others also being outed as being the sort of people the Handmaid’s Tale warns you about and huge kudos to all the women who have spoken out about the abuse they’ve suffered. I’ve generally not commented on it because I find it all pretty upsetting but it’s evident that sadly like with all areas of life, sexism is rife in UK politics too with Labour MP and enemy of a sunny day Jarad O’Mara being outed for some really grim social media posts that were misogynistic and in some cases also homophobic. These were uncovered by blogsite Guido Fawkes, a website I’d usually tell you to avoid like a plague that keeps accusing others of being a plague, but this story is concerning because Jarad O’Mara sat on the Women and Equalities Commission, well he did until he resigned from his post there due to the finding of his social media posts. Good although also on that committee is Conservative MP Philip Davies who tried to block an anti-domestic violence bill and speaks at men’s rights conferences. So you have to wonder what is going on with a parliamentary committee who’s role is to monitor the government’s performance on equalities. Are they trying to for a balance in the same way TV does a balanced climate change debate whereby 99% of scientists are represented by one clever person and climate change deniers are represented by someone who shouts things they’ve made really loudly so it looks like equal sides? As well as resigning from the committee Jarad O’Mara apologised saying that he made those comments in 2004 when he was only 23 and therefore an idiot because let’s face it, everyone’s an idiot at 23. If you’re 23 and listening to this, you’re obvs an exception to the rule. Ahem. But really that’s not enough of an excuse for someone in his position. And if Labour were smart they’d suspend him & that way Labour can be pro-active in dealing with misogyny in parliament. Although now O’Mara has resigned its up to the Conservatives to remove Philip Davies or prove they have more double standards than an ambidextrous ensign. As long as he’s still part of the Women and Equality Commission it’s pretty much the moral equivalent of the Environment, Food and Rural affairs committee insisting on only holding meetings at coal fuelled bbqs.

You know health tourists right? Those annoying people who insist on taking a photo of you eating quinoa or keep trying to pay for tickets to the rides at the gym. Yeah them? Well as I’ve said a trillion times on this show, they aren’t a thing with Full Fact’s website saying health tourism only costs the NHS a tiny 0.3% of their budget every year. But of course that hasn’t stopped new regulations being introduced today by the Department of Health that means healthcare providers in hospitals in England by law have to check patients eligibility for care and will charge overseas patients upfront unless it’s consider urgent or emergency, then they’ll get charged at a later date. Considering how long it takes me to get my passport ready for actual border control at an airport, I can imagine it’d be a damn sight harder if I was bleeding to death. These charges have already put one in three migrants in the UK off from visiting the hospital due to fees and that has increased risks for pregnant patients and those carrying illnesses that could spread as a result. The charges range from £40 to £80,000 with £2600 being the average which is a lot of dough and there have already been a lot of protests against it. If you too would like to complain, you can take part in the #patientsnotpassports hashtag on twitter, call the Department of Health complaints line on 02072104850 saying you oppose these new regulations, and you can email the department of health via their dh.gov.uk site and follow @docsnotcops on Twitter too. This is further proof that overstretched platypus Jeremy Hunt understands nothing healthcare as this is not what is meant by doctors having to save patients from an invasion of foreign bodies.

AWATE INTERVIEW PART 1

So as longer term listeners will know, sometimes I like to speak to people on a specific issue, sometimes I like to speak to a specific someone on various issues and this week’s chat is one of the latter. And longer longer term listeners will know I’m a big hip hop fan and have been ever since Carl Black handed me his headphones at the back of our science lesson in 1992 and played me Snoop Dogg for the first time, which blew my mind and made me miss what are probably important things about how pollen tubes grow. Sure my hayfever is awful every Spring but my sneezing is drowned out by some heavy beats. You may or may not be a hip hop fan, like you know, how all music works, but it’s inherently a political genre, from it’s beginnings from the black civil rights movement, to today with Kendrick Lamar using it to protest against police racial prejudice in the US, or Eminem slamming Trump which we still haven’t had a retort for yet, though I’m sure it’s just cos everytime the President tries to rhyme orange with something it hurts his brain. In the UK the grime for Corbyn movement was a massive part of getting young people on board with voting Labour, and recently a number of tracks by rappers such as Lowkey and Dave have reflected on the Grenfell Tower fire and the incompetent UK government.

So while, as you’ll hear from the beginning of our chat, he doesn’t class himself as a political rapper, this week I had a chat with Awate, who I first met about 4 years ago and who’s music I’ve been a big fan of ever since. His tracks are political and punchy, speaking out against class and racial inequality with serious skill over proper lovely head nod beats. His latest single Jewels confronts police brutality, social injustice and a Withnail and I reference that I keep finding myself singing on a daily basis. While Awate classes himself as a rapper first and foremost, he’s also an activist and caused a ruckus online after his C4 News appearance where he said he didn’t feel British because Britain tore his home country of Eritrea apart. A comment that caused racist nationalists to get all upset and everyone else to go ‘Oh wow, someone actually said that on TV, amazing!’ Lots of people called him a racist for suggesting the British Empire wasn’t all that rosy. Weird right? Almost as though enslaving people, and the pillaging of their wealth isn’t a good thing or something? What is this? The modern day? Since then Awate’s been a guest lecturer at St Mary’s university on the subject of Architecture and Utopia, and his music has been lauded by Idris Elba, Frankie Boyle and many, many others. I spoke to him just a day before he was going to be supporting the amazing Yaslin Bey and Talib Kweli aka Black Star onstage at the Troxy in London, and we chatted about, well, tons of things, as you’ll hear.

This was recorded in my living room so there is the occasional traffic noise outside and, as always happens with any face to face interviews I do, the mic was right near Awate and I was across the room, but due to my stupid loud voice, I’m still louder. I honestly wonder if I should have a silencer attached to my gob at all times. Please don’t write in and let me know.

Here’s Awate:

INTERVIEW PART 1

GLOBAL PARTLY BROADCAST

Yes it’s time once again to remember that occasionally other countries do the politics as well! I know! It amazes me everytime. I guess they do them in their other languages and everything too, I can’t even imagine how confusing that must be! What are they like!

First up is New Zealand who have just elected Jacinda Ardern as their prime minister after the New Zealand First Party agreed to form a coalition with her Labour Party. Ardern has already said capitalism is a blatant failure which is quite full on for a first statement. You think she’d at least go in with ‘well look it’s tried it’s best but it’s out of shape’ before slamming home the full report. She said that measures used to gauge economic success have to change and has already pledged to increase the minimum wage, put child poverty targets into law and build thousands of affordable homes. So far, so dandy especially as under the right wing National Party for the last nine years, New Zealand’s economic growth has continued to slow over the last few years and they now have the highest level of homelessness of all the OECD countries, or organisation for economic co-operation and development for all you acronym haters, SMH. So Ardern’s leadership could be a welcome change, but there are a few issues, one being that the New Zealand first party that the Labour party are in coalition with are a nationalist populist party who campaigned on very restrictive immigration issues and were only able to form a coalition with labour when leader Winston Peters backed down on his call for a referendum to abolish Maori electorate seats. Always amazing how parties who against immigration seem to be just as shitty to native inhabitants too. With New Zealand first having 9 seats and being the king makers in this government, they’ve been offered four cabinet roles so their might be issues with policies they’re in charge of. The other issue is that the National Party had 56 seats to Labour’s 46, but neither with the 61 needed to form a government. Add to Labour’s 9 New Zealand first seats, that leaves the government with only 55, meaning they’ll have to make a confidence and supply deal with the Greens which they are voting on this week which might be troublesome considering the Green party and New Zealand first have previously called each other racist. Whatever happens, it’s a new direction for New Zealand under Jacindamania which sounds a lot like a condition but hopefully for the kiwis it’ll be an extend burst of feeling great rather than further depression.

Meanwhile over in Russia angry pork sausage in a suit, Vladimir Putin continues to assume that in Russia Democracy reforms you. Next March sees the Russian Presidential election and considering Putin has been in a position of power since 1999 and is now running for his second term of his second presidency, a lot of Russians are unhappy with the idea of having this authoritarian in charge for another 6 years. More than 80 anti-Putin rallies took place across Russia last week and police made over 260 arrests all because they support the opposition leader Alexei Navalny and demand Russian elections allow genuine political competition. As it stands Alexei, who has just been released from his third jail sentence this year for organising unsanctioned public rallies but appears more to be because it allows the government run elections to declare him ineligible to run against Putin next year. Another contender is TV presenter Ksenia Sobchak who is running as the ‘against all’ candidate hoping to give liberal voters another option to vote against Putin’s regime. She was known as the Russian Paris Hilton which isn’t much of a compliment unless they mean she’s excellent at doing nothing of note. But there is concern that she is part of a Kremlin plan to split up the opposition vote, something she denies. Which she would if she was. Or if she wasn’t. This is tricky isn’t it? So if she is that, and if Navalny can’t run, then once again there is no real opposition to Putin for the elections, something that is less strong leader of Russia, more can only win a fight if everyone else drops out. This is how he works though, any critic gets silenced one way or another, like if anyone let Trump have more power than just being able to use his twitter account by himself. Bill Browder, a British businessman who is one of Putin’s biggest critics has just been put on an Interpol arrest list and had his US visa suspended so that he now can’t leave the UK to discuss with Canadian politicians about targeting Russian officials who are accused of the death of Sergei Magnitsky who was Mr Browder’s lawyer and exposed Russian money laundering of $230m. This is the thing with Russian politics under Putin, it’s almost like they read John Le Carre’s novels for inspiration.

Putin is currently set to win according to opinion polls but given that the opinion polls also come from Kremlin owned media outlets, who can actually say what they mean and with the last presidential election in 2012 facing a lot of fraud allegations there’s not much to say things this time will be any different and instead it’ll be another plebiscite election, merely there to ratify Putin’s time in power. However if there are any anti-Trump American or anti-Brexit hackers out there now would be a great time for revenge….

If you listen back to episode 49 with Russian translator Konstantin Kisin he goes into a lot more depth on Putin’s regime there so worth checking that out. More on all these things soon! But now, back to Awate:

INTERVIEW WITH AWATE PART 2

Thanks to Awate for that. You can find him on Twitter @AwateMusic, and his music, which I played a few snippets of, and new single Jewels on iTunes, Soundcloud and all of those sorts of places. He has a new album coming soon which I’m looking forward to checking out. Do check out his videos too, especially for Displaced which is my fave and go see him live if he’s playing near you. The names Awate mentioned were @desusnice who does the @bodegaboys podcast, Flip Tv who’s channel you can find on youtube and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow who is on Twitter @maddow and who’s podcast is available on all the usual pod places.

On next week’s show I’ll have a guest explaining the current situation in Catalonia, but as always, if you have someone you’d like me to interview or a subject you’d like me to interview someone about, please do let me know via @parpolbro on Twitter, the Partly Political Broadcast group or partlypoliticalbroadcast@gmail.com. Or you could spend a long time inventing superluminal communication devices and transmit a message to me via a quantum–entanglement communicator but accidentally miscalculate it, send the information into the past before podcasts even existed and cause a logical paradox and problems with causality so no one ever makes podcasts because we instead develop extra hands for ears which means gloves sales rise and ear muff sales plummet. As always, it’s much easier to send an email.

BREXIT FALLOUT

According to Theresa May important progress was made on Brexit last week at the EU summit, however I’d argue that she didn’t specify what we were progressing towards because technically you can progress backwards if that’s what you’re intending. When she announced this to Parliament on Monday, Jeremy Corbyn said her updates sounded more like Groundhog Day which I don’t think is right as I enjoyed Groundhog Day and think it’s a brilliant film that was well planned out with a very funny script. Hugely unlike Brexit which is far more like Adam Sandler’s film Little Nicky which was so unfunny it made me feel unwell and I spent all of it realising that it was just wasted life time I’ll never get back. There is no sign of actual progress though other than Theresa May saying progress a lot, almost as though she hopes that if she says it enough times it’ll appear like candyman and put her out of her misery. Instead what we have had from the EU summit was German paper Frankfurter Allgemeine report that said EU Commision President Jean Claude Juncker said May appeared anxious, despondant and disheartened which sounds about right, that she was marked by her struggle with her own party which also sounds about right and that she looked like someone who doesn’t sleep much at night which is the same for all Conservatives because when else can they fly around in search of blood unnoticed? Juncker has denied this but it does sound about right, except him saying it to a journalist which he’d only do if…OH MY GOD, DO THE EU NOT KNOW HOW THE INTERNET WORKS EITHER? DOES EVERYONE JUST THINK THEY HAVE THEIR OWN LITTLE WEB? WHAT IS WRONG WITH EVERYONE? Anyway it seems that there is a still a deadlock because if May admits that the UK owes the EU money that it legally owes then the ardent Brexiteers in her party will go bendy bananas, and if she doesn’t, then the EU negotiations can’t move on. Really any sane person would understand that the EU negotiations are more important than angry blue blood nationalist dinosaurs who don’t understand how contracts work, but of course, the same sane person probably wouldn’t choose to do anything May’s done in the past year because they’d realise you could have the same amount of fun spending your days continually tying your own shoelaces together then going for a jog. Any further discussion on the EU withdrawal bill has been pushed back due to the negotiation deadlock too, so May doesn’t have to give an answer to Labour’s demands for changes to the bill till then. The demands are, MPs get the final say on the whether to approve the withdrawal agreement and how best to implement it. The transition period requested by Prime Minister Theresa May is added into the legislation so that her own MPs don’t keep saying it isn’t happening. They’ve asked for a “completely different approach” to the use of powers the government argues are needed to make technical changes to regulations from Brussels. Not 100% sure if that means an approach that involves parliament rather than the current power grab change things without a vote stance, or an approach that is just less creepy and not on tip toes. A guarantee that workers’ and consumer rights, as well as environmental standards, are not watered down after Brexit, especially if its polluted water due to lack of environmental standards. A concession to devolved administrations who want repatriated powers that would normally fall under their remit to go straight to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, rather than the Westminster government first. And finally putting the EU charter of fundamental rights into UK law which considering how many of those were written by Brits anyway, makes a lot of sense. Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer said if May doesn’t agree to all those, Labour will back Tory rebels to force a vote on the final deal if we ever get a final deal because it feels like this will all go on forever and ever like a Peter Jackson film or the inevitable director’s cut of Blade Runner 2049 that will be 7 hours long.

In the meantime, the national audit office has warned of a big increase in workload for border forces as a result of Brexit which isn’t good as border workforce has been reduced by 4% in the last four years, which is why lots of people keep colouring outside the lines now. HA! Of course with gaps in other industries due to a lack of EU migration, the only way the government will fill those placements in the border control workforce will be to hire migrants from abroad. Excuse me while I laugh cry and cry laughing all at once in a frenzied inability to work out if this is funny or horrendous. The OECD, remember that acronym from earlier folks? Have recommended the British government have a second referendum and reverse Brexit, The Creative Industries Federation has says it’ll cause a severe skills shortage in the British movie, TV, music and fashion industries and Britain’s five biggest business lobby groups have said unless a transition deal is sorted out asap, the UK will lose a lot of jobs and investment. Sounds great doesn’t it? And this is what I mean, because at least Groundhog Day had a happy ending. Whereas unless the government can work out how to be nice to people and stop committing suicide they will never get won at the dinner dance, a dance that likely won’t have any music at it because of bloody Brexit. IT’S ALMOST AS THOUGH THEY HAVEN’T READ ANY SENSIBLE IDEAS ON THE INTERNET BECAUSE THEY DON’T KNOW HOW TO USE IT OR SOMETHING.

END

That is all for this week’s podcast. Thank you again for listening. No thank you. No seriously, thank you. And please don’t forget to donate to the patreon and ko-fi, and review on the iTunes and elsewhere and generally tell other people to listen and subscribe to the show in conversation or when you’re asked a question at school or when you’re being arrested or asked what you want to eat or performing a play. Just chuck it in there. Mid-Shakespeare I’m sure it’d really grab some people’s attention. Is this a dagger I see before me? Or is it a new episode of the Partly Political Broadcast a comedy and politics podcast available on all podcasting platforms? Etc etc. Try it!

Thanks as always to Acast for hosting this noise and to my brother The Last Skeptik who’s new album This Is Where It Gets Good and his podcast Thanks For Trying are both available on the wwws.

I will be back next week when I’ll no doubt be saying ‘Oh no, Liam Fox has discovered how the internet works and now won’t stop posting cat memes insisting that they are dog memes and that anyone who says otherwise hates Britain.’

BYE

This week’s show was brought to you by the internet. A new device that is really handy for government’s everywhere to use. Just try it. Maybe don’t start with googling yourself though as that could…oh dear….oh well.

SIMON’S ADVERT

Episode 78 – Not Groundhog Day

Released on Tuesday, October 24th, 2017.

Episode 78 – Not Groundhog Day

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