Further Reading

Transcript

Episode 094

Welcome to the Partly Political Broadcast, a podcast that informs you about political happenings then avoids going to Zizzis incase I’ve said too much. This is episode 94, I’m Tiernan Douieb and how depressing that it seems like Russia are killing off people with intelligence but allowing those without to be US President.

Yes politics has quickly gone from a National Lampoon tribute to a John Le Carre novel to a John Le Carre novel adapted by National Lampoon all within a week. Former Russian intelligence official Sergei Skripal and his daughter are still in a critical condition in hospital after poisoning from a nerve agent and within hours of the news Foreign Secretary and T-Bone Steak That Someone Punched Eyes Into Boris Johnson was properly and correctly doing his job of tempering foreign relations with caution by immediately threatening Russia that if they are behind the attack, England will pull out of the World Cup. Ooh I bet they are quaking! That’s like threatening to not to go a party you weren’t invited to. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s a great excuse. Considering how they’re playing at the moment, I wouldn’t put it past Gareth Southgate to have poisoned Skripal himself just to save them an awkward few weeks. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, who looks unbelievably like she’s about to give orders to Kylo Ren, said that Johnson’s comments were ‘wild’. Now I’ve not seen that film but I understand it’s about a blonde wandering off by themselves into miles of dangerous territory so I guess that sounds about right. Is anyone ever threatened by Boris? Him threatening Russia feels like an overfed stupid hamster telling a bear to back off. This was only matched by Shadow Chancellor and man who always looks like he’ll give you far too long an answer if you ask how he is John McDonnell who told Russia he won’t be making anymore appearances on state owned new network Russia Today. Terrifying. What next John? Tell them you’ll only give their podcasts 3 star ratings?

The incident is being dealt with by counter terrorism police, though that is largely because they’re the only ones with resources to do so, and Home Secretary and your neighbour that if you see them going into their house you stay indoors for an extra 5 minutes to avoid talking to them, Amber Rudd, lead an emergency Cobra meeting because anything to not talk about Brexit for a bit. One week later people who visited the Salisbury Zizzis’ restaurant where the poisoning is thought to have happened are only now being told to wash their clothes. A whole week later. That’s either what happens when you outsource all your forensics to a private firm who had to be bailed out by the police forces only a month ago because the home office refused to help. Yes really, but also I mean are you even remotely surprised the government aren’t interested in helping gather evidence for something? Their version of Columbo involves everyone seeing who did it straightaway then various Conservative MPs spend an hour saying it was Labour or the EU or immigrants or poor people and nothing gets done. So either that’s why public health and safety warnings have taken a week or maybe Salisbury council have realised they might not need to up council tax by £180 if they just let a ton of them die off. Also, I learned this week that Zizi is French for willy. I’ll let you do your own jokes about people who like to eat there. You’re welcome.

Prime Minister and vampire constantly reacting to sunlight Theresa May has said it is highly likely Moscow are behind the attack, which is a very vague way of saying it’s them what done it. Oh er it’s kinda sorta probably maybe that they did it because we know for sure it wasn’t done by an angry giraffe or Noel Edmunds. She said either it was done intentionally or they lost control of their nerve agent, you know like you do, sitting in a Zizzi’s, scoffing on a Sofia Rustica and whoops, I’ve dropped my highly deadly nerve agent all over that poor fellas mixed olives but I won’t let him know as I’m sure he won’t mind. Labour leader and pinto bean with eyes Jeremy Corbyn has been accused of politicising the incident by bringing up the £820,000 of donations that the Conservatives have accepted from Russian oligarchs since May became PM and suggested that cutting them off would make a statement against Russia. Silly Corbyn, its only fun politicising spy activity in the UK when it’s about making up stories about Jezza sending intelligence to Czech spies and then having to apologise on Twitter. Russia have of course denied any involvement in the attack because they would either way but who else would it be and why, unless this is all an elaborate cover up so no one realises it’s actually the Home Office’s new test run of what to do with foreign born citizens.

Meanwhile the Labour party continue to just assassinate their own party as Sally Hawkins worst role Debbie Abrahams has been forced to resign as Shadow Secretary of State Of Work And Pensions due to being accused of bullying, something that she denies and says actually she is a victim of bullying. This poses a problem as you are meant to stand up to bullies but if she stands up to her bullies and those she has allegedly bullied stand up to her, then they’ll all be intimidated by each other and we’ll be back to square one. This news came as Survation polls, the only group to correctly predict last year’s election, now show Labour at a 7 point lead ahead of the Conservatives. Great, so all they now have to do is freeze all political thought and events until 2022 and they should be dandy. Jeremy Corbyn was in Dundee for the Scottish Labour conference where as part of his speech he said Brexit would deliver the benefit of preventing firms importing cheap labour to undercut UK workers, something that isn’t a thing and has never been a thing. Weird that he cheapens Labour with incorrect comments about cheap Labour. Many have compared Corbyn to UKIP for making such comments which is depressing but I wonder if it’s a super smart plan to gain back both bigot racist voters but also any former Labour voters who dislike Corbyn and hope there’ll be at least 5 other leaders over the next 18 months. Labour also plan to boost the Scottish economy with £70m as John McDonnell told the conference Labour is coming for power in Holyrood, which seems like a really odd way to do and really won’t help the past year’s allegations of inappropriate behaviour.

Meanwhile Chancellor Philip Hammond has rejected calls to announce the end of austerity in his Spring statement, instead saying ‘there is light at the end of the tunnel but we are still in the tunnel at the moment’, which explains why he constantly looks as though he’s not seen sunlight for years. Champion of human wrongs Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman met May despite growing concerns. I understand that as no one here is sure about her either. May signed a £100m aid deal with Saudi Arabia as humanitarian aid, which I can only guess is to allow the Crown Prince to keep oppressing Yemen more effectively, therefore really making sure charities don’t lose their jobs. May defended the arrangement by saying the UK’s relationship with Saudi is a historic one. I agree, it feels like it’s something we should be learning about in schools in order to make sure it never happens again.

In the US President Glengarry Glen Gross Donald Trump has agreed to meet with North Korean leader and grumpy Kirby Kim Jong Un in what’s hailed as being a milestone meeting probably because it’ll be the closest anyone’s ever come to meeting themselves.

And the Chinese government have voted to abolish the two term rule meaning President Xi Jinping can be President for life and not just for Christmas. The Chinese government have hit back at commentators saying this is a return to personalistic rule by saying everyone who says that is a shameless naysayer, because there’s nothing that prevents it seeming like an authoritarian dictatorship than claiming the press are liars. Xi Jinping is regularly known or promoted as Uncle Xi and you see listeners, that is what happens when people aren’t allowed to google what happened in the Lion King.

ADMIN

Hey hey megapods! How’s you? I really do need a better name for you listeners. I mean megapods doesn’t work does it? For a start it’s a type of Australian bird, secondly you’re not the pods, this is the pods. I’m thinking I might have to go back to ParPolBros but that’s very gender specific. This is hard. Any suggestions do send them to where the jingle shall tell you to soonish. As you can probably tell, this week’s podcast is here which means Tiny Douieb is not which is hugely rude of them. I mean we had the due date in our calendar for months but could our baby keep their appointment, no. So myself and my wife are now in what I like to call, the boring waiting bit. Lots of people have given us tips on how to help induce labour, from eating pineapple to lots of sex which I think just makes the baby come out, out of disgust, hoping you’ll stop it if they arrive, and eating spicy food because I imagine nothing helps a woman go through giving birth like also having the ring of fire to take her mind off it. Anyway, we’re mainly walking around a lot and watching a lot of tv and complaining about how un-fun it is, while fully aware that once Tiny Douieb makes an appearance we’ll be very much missing all that. So yes, who knows if there’ll be an episode this week?

No admin this week but I am now only $85 dollars away from the Patreon target I set over 2 years ago, so hey, that’s faster progress than post Brexit UK but if you can even spare a teeny donation please do as it all helps me justify spending an entire Monday on this show rather than do other work that I should be doing or you know, helping my wife walk up and down the stairs 30 times. The Patreon is of course at www.patreon.com/parpolbro and if you can only do a one off donation then buy me a coffee that I’ll probably really need very soon at ko-fi.com/parpolbro. And if you can’t do either of those things then don’t worry, we can still be friends but firstly I don’t really want anymore friends, I’ve been working really hard at getting rid of some recently and secondly, do instead tell other people you think might like this podcast about it please. It’d be a huge help. I find podcast listener numbers generally baffling and there’s a nice amount of you out there but last week’s had a dip, which is fair, my opening gag was hella weak, but then also weird things like the bonus episode with Bob Singha got about 100 more listens than the main episode with Bob Singha. So what is going on? 100 people wanted to just hear the deleted scenes but none of the main content. Who are you? Baffling. But overall there’s more and more of you every week and that’s amazing and I’m super chuffed, but if you could persuade even more people to, then I’ve got even more reason to keep doing the show because I’m that sort of shallow. Oh and I know you’ve been waiting for the admin jingle so this week, it’s like this:

JINGLE – JAZZ?

So on this week’s show there’s sort of two interviews as I chatted with Dave Pickering about his new book Mansplaining Masculinity which is about men’s rights but, before you switch off, not in a scary Philip Davis way, trust me it’s fascinating, and that interview was so long that I will release about 20 more minutes of it immediately after releasing this podcast. That way if you want to listen to more Dave Pickering you can, and if not, you don’t have to. I’m not going to tell you what to do, I’m not your dad. Then I also caught up with Charlotte Chorley at What Women Want 2.0 who I interviewed back in November on Episode 80, and the report they were compiling was presented to parliament last week so she’s kindly given us a quick update on it all. Yes, it’s all gender politics this week because intensive discussions on sex-based social structures sells. That’s the phrase right? Also of course, there is some Brexit fallout because it’s all over the news like an unwanted rash covering up everything else and oh god I wish there was a cream to fix it because damn it’s dull. Corti-Eurozone anyone? But first, this:

INTERVIEW 1

Waaay back in episode 80, remember then?, I interviewed Charlotte Chorley at What Women Want 2.0 who told me all about their survey of over 8000 women, an update of the ground breaking historical feminist survey that took place in 1996. It asked women who took the survey, well like it says on the tin, what they want. In terms of life and society and aspirations that is, not say, a drinks order or for lunch, that wouldn’t be that helpful and they’d have had to wait ages to get served. Anyway, do go back and listen to that very fascinating chat for a more in-depth discussion on how the original survey went, what the new one sought to find out, and how they went about it as well as a fascinating chat about gender inequality issues and more. The report was launched in Parliament last week on March 7th just before International Women’s Day, hosted by Shami Chakrabarti and with a ton of guest speakers and I very much wanted to go but I was on baby watch so I couldn’t. Boooo. Next best thing though, is that I asked Charlotte if she’d kindly give me a quick update on how the launch went and what the findings of the report were and luckily she agreed. So here’s a very quick chat with Charlotte:

CHARLOTTE INTERVIEW

You can find the whole report at thisiswhatwomenwant.org and as I mention in our chat, I’m not great at reading reports but this is so well put together, with really interesting analysis from June Eric-Udorie, Polly Neate the CEO of Shelter and many more, as well as some really fascinating snippets of responses and amazing art work and design from a number of excellent artists too. I blitzed through it in about 25 minutes, so would highly recommend you taking time to give it a read. What Women Want 2.0 are also on twitter @whatwomenwantXX and on Facebook at what women want 2.0, and Charlotte can be found on Twitter @charchorley. So go follow ‘em all.

HEADLINES:

There’s not really time for a headlines bit this week so instead, here are some:

SPEEDY HEADLINES JINGLE

The UN has said that the UK may have breached human rights in one of those comments that can only be responded to with ‘well duh, ya think?’ Leilani Farha, the UN special rapporteur, who I think is someone who raps the news, has said human rights standards in terms of housing might have been breached as well as the way in which residents views have been neglected since. Its great that Farha has made these comments though whether or not the government will pay any attention is a different matter. In 2013 her predecessor in the role told ministers that the bedroom tax had to be abolished as it violated human rights and they just said she was meddling. Then three years later they had to back track on it. So fingers crossed Grenfell residents might finally get looked after and treated properly by…er….2021. Shit.

230 court buildings in England and Wales have been sold off since 2010, which is great news for budding new criminals! New analysis says the sales amounts to a total of £224m has been raised as a result but two thirds of that from the sale of 24 London courts, while over on eBay corner Ely magistrates court was got rid of for £1. A magistrates court for a £1! Can you believe it? I’ve never found one of those in Poundland before. Most of the properties earned less than the average house price, and ultimately all its done is create longer travel times both for defendants and witnesses meaning hearings will take longer to do and courts are likely to be more overcrowded. The original excuse for these sales was that crime levels are falling and the number of court cases were less, plus the digitisation of courts would mean video hearings could be done. I’m not sure I like the idea of that. If I was on trial for something I wouldn’t want to know the jury had me in a corner of their screen while tweeting away and trying to buy Beyonce and Jay-Z tickets on another tab. The justice select committee has written to the ministry of justice pointing out this increase to travel times and asking for justification but the MoJ are adamant they are making it more convenient to use. I guess that makes sense. It’d be so convenient to, you know, get a quick court based face time in, just as you’re boarding a plane to leave the country so you definitely don’t miss it.

Unite official Jennie Formby is going to be Labour’s new general secretary, the worst of all the military positions. This happened after Jon Lansman, one of the founders of Momentum, withdrew from the race with a statement about how his interest to run was to open up a debate about how to encourage all Labour members who felt they were up to the job to apply and that now the NEC is already discussing that he can step down. As is the case with the new selection of Jennie Formby, the general secretary is selected by the NEC, subject to approval at the next party conference and it’s a pretty serious position, being in charge of employing staff, as well as being responsible for all campaign strategies and running the party conference amongst many other duties. Lansman and Momentum’s objections to this were that by this position not being open to election like the leadership, it just panders to as they call it ‘old machine politics’ which sounds a lot like a sub tweet about Theresa May. There were also some concerns that by having a Unite official such as Formby as general secretary it’d mean unions held too much power over Labour too. Basically left wing were fighting left wing in a move I like to call ‘no you’re not the opposition because you oppose even yourselves’. Anyway, all sorted now and who knows, in but a few years any Labour member might be able to have a go at being general secretary and then we’ll all gasp in horror as Ross Kemp gets it and insists on dressing as an actual general and only holding conferences in war zones.

INTERVIEW WITH DAVE PART 1

Men, a gender so domineering that they insisted on taking up 2 fifths of the term for women all for themselves. In recent months, the issue of gender inequality has been quite prevalent in the news with both the Me Too movement, the gender pay gap across pay sectors and the representation of women in society and media is now being questioned in a way it didn’t used to be. Meanwhile the notion of gender as fluid is becoming ever more widely accepted even though I’m still certain based on my emittings that my gender is gas. And if you’re a libtard like me, then you’ll see all of this as a damn good thing. Even though I am one of those men things, you know, like women but replies to tweets with ‘actually I think you’ll find that’, I’m a firm believer in equality, though I’ll admit that is mainy because I think we’re all shit as a species and I often can’t believe that dolphins haven’t taken over yet. Now usually with the progression of equality, you’ll hear someone shouting ‘but what about the mens?’ and it’s usually from someone who looks like a leg of ham complaining about the fact that the woman they’ve just shouted abuse at won’t make them a sandwich anymore. But actually I think you’ll find that what about the men’s is, to an extent, a valid question as it seems the patriarchy and the concept of alpha males, and masculinity is very damaging to the weaker sex, men, too. Men in the UK between 20-49 are more likely to die from suicide than any other cause of death, and in three quarters of all suicides in the UK in 2016 were men. That’s some seriously bleak stats and it means that away from your misogynistic shoutings of evil toby jug MP Philip Davies demanding some sort of men’s rights that hark back to the 50’s, there are actually some serious issues of men’s needs in terms of mental health and societal demands that need looking at.

So this week I spoke to storyteller, writer and podcaster Dave Pickering. In 2015 Dave surveyed 1000 anonymous men about their views on patriarchy and masculinity, which he then made into a show for the Edinburgh Fringe called What about the Men? Mansplaining Masculinity that explored the results of the survey as well as more personally, what being a man meant to him. As he puts it and I’ve stolen from his blurb, it’s not about how men are the problem but about trying to change the systems that surround and contain us. Dave is now working on a book through Unbound and he kindly took time to tell me all about it and his views on the effects of toxic masculinity on politics and society too. Now I should do a warning here that in the second part of the interview sexual assault is mentioned briefly, but not in detail or anything I hope you’d find too upsetting but heads up incase that might affect you. If I didn’t know Dave I’d find this whole topic pretty difficult to talk about as many of my views on it are based on the men’s rights activists that bark online, but trust me, this isn’t at all like that and I’m sure you’ll find it a really interesting chat.

Here is Dave:

INTERVIEW

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

BREXIT FALLOUT

The EU have frozen Brexit talks because they too are so fucking sick of talking about it. Probably. I mean that’s not what they’ve said, they said it was because the British government has to sort out a realistic solution to the Irish Border but I reckon that’s a cover for them thinking ‘holy fuck how can we get a week away from discussing tedious shit with unprepared idiots?’ I mean sure, the Irish Border is still the big problem, and some solutions have popped up such as the proposed Smart Border 2.0 which I think is a border that when you drive through you can shout hey Alexa my goods are alright yeah, and she’ll either say yeah or call for drones to fuck you up then she’ll do a freakish laugh as you die. I mean, as you can probably tell, I haven’t read it but I do know it would involve some sort of pre-registration which Irish Taosich and definitely the model for those little card toys you draw hair on with iron filings and a magnet, Leo Varadaker he’s said ‘nah we’re not having that’ so they’ll have to come up with a Smart Border 3.0 with a better pixel camera and face recognition or something. So I guess these talks may be delayed for sometime. Any chance of a Smart Department Of Exiting The European Union 2.0 please?

In fun Brexit exchange of the week, Chancellor Philip Hammond told the EU that it is in their mutual interest for both parties that financial services are included in a free trade deal. But EU President Donald Tusk said nope. Then Philip Hammond said, but you’ve done similar agreements in the past, and then the EU said, no we haven’t, they don’t exist. I’m starting to think that the next Brexit negotiation talks will start with Michael Barnier asking if anyone has actually researched anything and as the UK team dither he’ll just hold out his palm and tell them to talk to the hand cos the face ain’t listening before playing on his phone till they leave.

The Commons Brexit Committee have released the Brexit impact reports that were leaked to Buzzfeed and then Sky News and well, it’s not great, I mean unless you like schadenfreude and live somewhere other than the UK. Every possible trade deal explained and investigated over the 29 pages results in the UK being worse off than before, with the largest effect being on chemicals, food and drink, clothes, manufacturing, cars and retail. So the good news is, as long as we’re all happy to be naked, starving and walking everywhere, we should be fine. Apparently the Commons Brexit Committee have still held back the final 4 pages which I can only assume have just weird scrawled charcoal drawings of demons, suffering and bizarre incantations.

Still the UK have offered everyone’s favourite Rock after The, Gibraltar barrier free access to its finance markets post Brexit which is a bit like saying, hey if you want, you can come round and play with my dead pets all you want. The UK wants Gibraltar to have the same deal we do post-Brexit even though I’m not sure what they’ve done to deserve that. The EU though is insisting that Spain can stop any future trade relationship that would apply to the Rock, so basically the UK will have to be real nice to them when it comes to trade deals or it could become a very hard place. And for anyone who thinks who gives a Barbary macquaqe, well one in 5 British drivers insures their car with a company based in Gibraltar so this whole thing could be a car crash on several levels.

So that’s the general chat this week but two things that are worth looking at. One is that Labour leader Jezza Corbs said during his speech to the Scottish Labour conference that Brexit would stop big companies importing cheap labour to undercut wages. Now apart from the fact the rest of his speech accused May of tying the UK to EU rules and sounded a lot like the softer Brexit stance Labour was taking last week is now one he’s immediately backtracked on, his comment is hugely problematic. Firstly, there is little to no evidence that immigration affects the wages of UK workers. Admittedly, most studies are a few years old now but one study from 1992-2014 said an inflow of immigrants the size of 1% of the UK population leads to a 0.2% decline in wages of the 5% lowest paid workers. But firstly that requires a more immigration to come through than the UK has had in some time, but also that was before the not really a living wage was introduced. Not only that but a number of other studies said actually it increases wages by a small percentage. Again most studies say that because people who come to the UK for work are of working age, they tend to contribute more in taxes and social contributions than they take in benefits. And if we didn’t consider foreign students as part of the overall immigration statistics like the government insist on doing, there’d be 139000 fewer immigrants every year that wouldn’t be considered as not working because they are quite clearly studying. And possibly also working. So by repeating this myth that immigration effects UK workers pay, what is Corbyn trying to do? He hasn’t just decided to go for the ‘if you can’t beat them join them’ method of increasing Labour’s poll points share is he by doing policies Tory and UKIP voters might want to hear? If he lumps in something about gay sex being bad and Scottish independence in his next speech then I’m calling that that’s what’s happening. It does mean that for Labour voters we’re back to square one on what on earth the party’s Brexit stance actually is and if it’s a stance at all or squirming around on the floor wondering what way up they are.

And lastly, France have signed a deal worth $16bn in India for deeper defence and security ties, with President Macron telling Prime Minister Modi that he wants India to be able to gain access to Europe through France, tweeting that he wants to double the amount of Indian students coming to France. Firstly this could mean a lot of Indian businesses relocate from the UK to France in order to stay within the Customs Union and Single market but also overseas students provide over £25bn a year into the UK economy so to lose any of that would be painful. Boris Johnson tweeted Macron with all the tact of a pug falling on a keyboard, saying that ‘we are proud too to have more than 14,000 Indian students coming to the UK in 2017’ with the hashtag #educationisgreatinEnglish, forgetting that his government are so proud they lump foreign students in with overall immigration figures despite very few of them staying on after their visas expire. And he also seems to forget a lot of French people can speak English too. So that’s how one area of our post Brexit trade is looking. In another US Policy experts have warned UK ministers that they will have to concede everything to get a trade deal with Trump’s America, that Britain was in a weak position and would be used as a guinea pig for harsh US trade policy. So that’s where we are this week. Talks stalled, reports looking awful, the opposition pedalling bullshit, and all our trade going to France while we let America send us whatever mutant chickens washed in ninja turtle bile they want to send over or something. Not so sure this is taking back control as losing it behind the sofa while someone snatches our TV and sells it for a profit outside.

And now back to Dave, and just another warning that this is the bit of the interview that contains a brief mention of sexual assault.

INTERVIEW 2 – Dave Pickering part 2

Big thanks to Dave for the chat. I stupidly cut off the bit of the chat where Dave talked about his book, that will be in the bonus chat I’ll release asap, but if you miss that then do go and pre-order and help it get made at unbound.com/books/mansplaining-masculinity. Dave also hosts and produces several excellent podcasts including Getting Better Aquainted and Family Tree, and if you want to hear his live show that kickstarted the book, you can download that as part of the Stand Up Tragedy podcast, and there is a short 15 minute version on Radio 4’s Four thought podcast too on the episode called Liberating Men. You can find Dave on Twitter @goosefat101 and I have to give him extra credit as he’s suggested several guests for this podcast before which is hugely appreciated. If you’d like to hear 20 more mins of our chat, including Dave’s recommended follows then subscribe to this show and it should land in your pod listening device imminently.

And as I say every week like a repetitive automation as though I’m trying to get a job as a government spokesperson, if you have someone you’d like to recommend I interview or a subject you’d like me to find someone to interview about, please let me know at:

JINGLE

END

And that is all for this week’s Partly Political Broadcast podcast. Thank you for listening which I think is all you can do with this show. You can’t smell it can you? What on earth would this podcast smell like? I’m going for a citrusy thing but that’s only due to my bitterness about life. Do send suggestions in, and of course do donate too, review the show on iTunes and all that and do please spread the word about how much you and your ears enjoy the aural party that is my droning voice vomiting gags and interviews into your brain.

Thanks to Acast for pod supporting, and my brother the Last Skeptik for all the music and regularly texting me to tell me he needs our baby to be an Arsenal supporter.

This may or may not be back next week, who really knows, but if it is, I’ll be asking if it’s true that Russian secret agents get away with murder because when they’re done they hide inside multiple bigger people and sneak off?

BYYEEEEEEEEEEEEE

This week’s show was brought to you by Zizzi’s Classic Putin Pizza with a large base covered by layers of secrecy and a variety of toppings depending on how you want the job done.

Bonus podcast

More Dave Pickering Chat!

INTERVIEW 3 – Dave Pickering part 2

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